Michael Shaynes' 50th case ms-50

by Brett Halliday

  “ Murdered? Ellie?” Marvin shrank back from him, aghast. “I don’t believe it, Ollie. I just don’t believe it. Not Ellie.” He began to shake violently, staring at the chief as though hoping for some reprieve, but seeing none in Jenson’s unhappy countenance.

  Shayne stepped up beside him briskly and said, “It’s a hell of a thing to hit a man with, Blake. I’ve been in this business a lot of years and I never have found a good way to break it to a husband.”

  “Shayne?” Marvin Blake said dully, staring at him as though seeing him for the first time. “Michael Shayne. I know. You’re a detective, aren’t you? Then it must be true.” His voice broke and he turned back to Jenson. “What about Sissy? Goddam your soul to hell, Ollie. Tell me the truth. Is Sissy…?”

  “Sissy’s all right,” Jenson told him. “She’s waiting for you right now at the Wilsson house where Minerva’s looking after her, and you got to get hold of yourself and keep your chin up when you go to see her. She’s a right brave little girl, Sissy is, and she needs her daddy right now more’n she ever needed him in her life before.”

  “Sissy,” Marvin cried out in pain. “I’ve got to go to her. What are we waiting here for? Goddam it, Ollie…”

  “Now you just take it easy, Marv. You’ll see Sissy soon enough. Let’s us get a few things straight first, and then we won’t have to bother you later on.”

  “Who did it? How did it happen?” demanded Marvin exactly as though Jenson had not spoken.

  Jenson swallowed hard and looked appealingly at the Miami detective. Shayne said evenly, “Your wife was strangled to death in her own bed, Blake. Chief Jenson suspects some transient who may have got into the house through the front window. You’re just holding up our investigation by refusing to tell us where you were last night. I’m sorry to have to say this, but you may as well understand that a woman’s husband is always the first suspect in a case like this. The sooner we can mark you off the better.”

  “Me? You suspect me?” demanded Marvin incredulously. “You think I… I’d do that to Ellie? I loved her.” He swayed back against the car and began sobbing helplessly. “My God, you fool, I loved her. Don’t you understand that? She was my wife… Sissy’s mother!”

  “So where were you last night?” Shayne’s even voice beat at him through his hysteria.

  “Well, I wasn’t out here murdering anybody, that’s for sure. My God, Ollie! You don’t believe that for a minute. Why don’t you tell him? I got a right to go home.”

  “Well, now, Marv,” Jenson said uncomfortably. “It’s like Mr. Shayne says. Sooner we get that cleared up, sooner we can get onto finding the man that really did it. All you got to do is tell us, Marv. Just don’t try to lie at a time like this. We know you checked out of the hotel. So, where’d you go and where’d you stay last night? That’s all you got to tell us. There’s just the three of us men-folks here, Marv,” he went on earnestly. “It won’t have to go no further than here. We don’t care a damn if you shacked up with some fancy woman, or what.”

  Marvin Blake wilted back against the car and hung his head. “So that’s what you think? You think I was out whoring around while Ellie was getting murdered?”

  “It wasn’t like you knew it was going to happen to her,” Jenson consoled him. “None of us’ll fault you on that. You just come on and tell us, Marv. I’ll tell you one thing right now,” he hurried on. “Not another soul in town knows you wasn’t at the convention last night where you was supposed to be. No need anybody ever should know, I reckon, including Sissy, if you’ll just tell us the truth so’s we can check it out. No matter for you to be ashamed, no matter what you did.”

  “Ashamed? Oh, my God.” Marvin Blake put both hands over his face and it was difficult to tell whether he was laughing or crying. Watching his shaking shoulders there in the hot sunlight, and listening to him, Shayne thought it was about a fifty-fifty mixture of laughter and tears, both of them wavering on the verge of hysteria.

  The three men waited uncomfortably, grouped closely around him, until the seizure slowly subsided. He took his hands away from his face and lifted his head, blinking and licking his lips. “It’s funny… almost,” he said hoarsely. “What you think. When I… all I wanted was to get away from that hotel and the convention last night and get home to my wife… and not get pissy-assed drunk the way I knew I’d do if I stayed on there with the other boys. If I just had of done it,” he moaned, his face twitching with the horror of it. “If I just had made it like I planned… Ellie might be all right. I’d of been here, don’t you see? Nothing like that could have happened, if I’d just been here. It’s my fault, don’t you see? Because I took that first drink like a damn fool, and then another one and another. And so I ended up drunker than maybe I would have if I had stayed on at the hotel, and I didn’t even make it home like I planned to do.”

  “Tell us about it,” said Shayne gently. “Just the straight facts. Don’t blame yourself. You can see it would have happened just the same if you’d stayed over as you meant to.”

  “Well, I… it just came to me suddenly yesterday that I didn’t want to stay on for the big doings last night, but that I’d rather come on back home. And it seemed silly to waste all that money spending an extra night at the hotel and the dinner and drinks and all, and so I just decided to slip out without saying anything to anybody, to avoid any arguments, you know. Because the others would laugh at me and make jokes and say dirty things about how I just couldn’t stand to be away from my wife for another night… and I didn’t see how it was anybody’s business what I did.” He looked about defiantly at the three men in front of him.

  “Check-out time at the hotel was four o’clock, even if there wasn’t any train back to Sunray until after six, but I could save a whole night’s room-rent by checking out then, and so I did.”

  “You mean the ten-twenty express from Miami, Marv?” Jenson broke in with a frown. “It don’t even stop here.”

  “Yes, it does. To let off passengers, if there are any. It says so right on the time-table. I looked it up there in my hotel room, and then was when I decided. One of the reasons I decided,” he went on in a suddenly hushed voice, “was because there was the prettiest pair of earrings in a little store next to the hotel that I wanted to buy for Ellie for a present, but they cost twenty-eight dollars and I didn’t feel like I could afford it. But I figured I’d save at least that much by skipping last night and coming straight home, and so I went into the store and bought them.”

  He raised his right hand slowly and hesitantly to his breast pocket and drew out the gaily wrapped box. “They’re right here.” His face worked convulsively and he paused to swallow twice before he could go on. “She’ll never see them now,” he half-whispered. “She’ll never know.” He blinked back tears and smiled entreatingly at them. “I just can’t believe it. Not yet I can’t. They were just right for her. The earrings, I mean. I just couldn’t wait to see her face when I came home and surprised her and she opened up the box.” He paused, looking down at the box and turning it over and over in his hands.

  Chief Ollie Jenson cleared his throat loudly. “Well, now, Marv, what I say is none of us know for sure. What a body knows or doesn’t know after… well, what I mean is, it don’t do any good to think about that now. It’s the intention that counted.”

  “Maybe… Sissy will like them when she grows up,” said Marvin unsteadily and somewhat vaguely. He sighed and put the earrings back into his pocket. “Where was I?”

  “You’d just checked out of the hotel and bought those earrings to bring home to Ellie on the ten-twenty Express,” Jenson reminded him.

  “That’s right. Well, I walked on down toward the station carrying my suitcase. I had plenty of time and didn’t want to waste any money on a taxicab. And I thought I’d better get a bite to eat because even if there was a diner on the train they charge like the dickens for even a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

  “So I stopped at a place about a block from the station an
d went in and set my bag down to rest and get a bite to eat. And I still had almost two hours before the train, so I thought I’d have a highball first before I ate. And it tasted real good, and I was sort of celebrating because I was feeling so good about coming home ahead of time and surprising Ellie and all… and so I had another one, and I guess maybe another, and then it was getting on toward train time and I’d already spent as much on the drinks as I’d planned to pay for a whole supper, and so I decided I just as well have one more drink and skip the food altogether.”

  He shook his head and looked shame-faced at the recollection. “It was a cock-eyed, dam-fool thing to do. I’m not used to drinking much, and I guess they hit me… without any supper and all. I just sort of vaguely remember getting out of there and going on to the station in time to board the train before it pulled out, and I got a seat in the smoker, and I remember putting my return ticket up in the little metal clip on the back of the seat in front of me where the conductor would see it when he came through, and then the train started out and I dozed off.

  “I was pretty sleepy, you see,” he added by way of a weak explanation. “Being up all hours at the convention every night when I’m used to getting to bed at ten o’clock at home at the latest. That and the whiskey I’d drunk. So I guess I slept straight through until I woke up suddenly thinking I’d heard somebody call Sunray Beach.

  “And there we were stopped at a station and I looked out a window and it looked like the Sunray station, and I heard somebody yelling ‘All aboard’ outside, and I jumped up and grabbed my suitcase and ran back to the door and got off the steps just as the train pulled out.

  “And there I stood.” He looked at them blank-faced, seemingly reliving the appalling moment of realization that had come to him. “I saw right away it wasn’t Sunray,” he explained. “It was Moonray Beach instead. The first big town south of here,” he explained to Rourke and Shayne. “About thirty miles down the road. I felt like the biggest kind of fool there is. Standing there in the middle of the night and not another train until this one today. And the liquor I had drunk was dying inside me and I had a headache, and I was just plumb disgusted with myself and everything. I never did feel like such a fool in my life before. And I decided right then and there that the best thing for me to do was spend the night and just catch this train on up here today and say nothing about it to anybody, and so that’s what I did.

  “There was a restaurant still open down the street from the station and I walked down there and had a couple of drinks and then got a sandwich, and then I went on up to a hotel that’s only a couple of blocks away and got a room for the night.”

  “Haven’t you listened to a radio or talked with anybody all morning?” asked Ollie Jenson incredulously. “I’d think Moonray Beach would be plumb full and bubbling over with a murder right up the road here. Seems mighty funny you didn’t know anything about what happened to Ellie when it went out over the radio at seven o’clock this morning and has been on all the newscasts ever since I guess.”

  Marvin hesitated as though trying to make up his mind about something, then shrugged and shook his head. “Tell you the truth, I slept right straight through until just before time to catch the train on up here. Didn’t talk to anybody or hear any news on the radio.”

  “From ten-thirty or eleven o’clock last night until three o’clock this afternoon?” Jenson said disbelievingly. “That’s a mighty long time to sleep straight through in a hotel room, Marv. I hope to God you can prove that’s what you did. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Shayne?” he asked importantly.

  The readhead nodded. “I’d like to have the name of the hotel… and the restaurant where you went after getting off the train.”

  Marvin rubbed his hand tiredly across his eyes. “It’s the Elite Hotel. Right on Main Street. I don’t know about the restaurant, but it’s right down the street. Oh, hell,” he added miserably, “if you do any checking up you’ll find out anyhow, so I might as well admit it. Just to finish off being a complete damn fool last night, when I finally got to the hotel the liquor I’d drunk in Miami was still churning up inside me and I didn’t feel like I’d ever get to sleep. So I asked the desk clerk if he had a bottle he’d sell me, and he did have one with only a couple of drinks gone from it. So I took that up to my room and poured out about a water-glass full and drank it off straight, and that finished me up, I can tell you. I passed right out cold on the bed and didn’t move a finger until two-thirty this afternoon. Then I went straight to the station and got on the train and came home, and here I am. Now it’s time you did some talking, Ollie. I think I got a right to go see Sissy now.”

  Jenson glanced at Shayne, who nodded and said, “I think so, too, Chief. I’ll just check his story as a formality, but I think you’d better go on looking for your transient killer.”

  14

  Alonzo Peters lived alone in a decrepit three-room shack in a creek bottom about ten miles inland from Sunray Beach on a winding dirt road that eventually came out on the other end on State Highway 419. It was a desolate stretch of low, hummocky country, covered mostly with scrub palmetto, that resisted cultivation and yielded little to man’s best efforts to wrest a living from it.

  Alonzo Peters had given up making much of an effort many years ago. He did a little fishing in the creek, a little trapping and hunting in and out of season, and he had a couple of acres of cleared-off land where he grew some straggly vegetables when he was of a mind to plant and cultivate them.

  He was a short, stubby-bodied man, with thin, sandy hair, a slack, loose-lipped mouth, and watery blue eyes that were set too close together beneath a low forehead.

  He didn’t bathe very often and you could tell it by the smell of him on a hot day, and folks circled around him and just tolerated him when he came into Sunray on Saturdays to shop for a few groceries and maybe try to cadge a drink or two at Dave’s Bar on Main Street.

  He had been born sixth in a family of thirteen sharecroppers’ children, and five of the litter had succumbed to pellagra and malnutrition and just dry rot before they reached adolescence. Life had not, in fact, offered many opportunities to Alonzo Peters, and he hadn’t done too well with those few that had been offered him. He had squeezed through four years of grade school before he quit and went out into the fields to try and do a day’s work and earn a day’s wages, but by the time he was sixteen he had come to the conclusion that no man ever got very far ahead in life by hard work, and so he had quit trying and just let himself drift.

  Despite his unprepossessing background and physical appearance, Alonzo had managed to marry twice (or maybe just once, people weren’t quite sure about that). At least, he’d had two women who came to live with him, and he hadn’t had any better luck with them than with most other things he attempted.

  Both of them were mail-order wives. He got them out of a correspondence club catalog, and both came from far away in answer to letters he painstakingly wrote to them. The first from up north, and the second from Kentucky.

  The first was about fifteen years ago. She was a big moon-faced and broad-beamed widow-woman, and it was rumored around admiringly that she had brought some little dowry with her. Five hundred dollars in cash, a lot of people said; and some put it higher than that. Alonzo had cleaned himself up for the occasion, all shaved and with a haircut and new shiny shoes, and he’d tightened up most of the rattles in his old Ford when he drove into Sunray to meet her at the train.

  People had reckoned it was a fine thing for Alonzo Peters. There was a woman, they figured, who’d take him in hand and make something out of him, if any female could.

  And she started right in, too, soon as he got her home to that three-room shack in the creek bottom. There were stories around about how she turned the place inside out and scrubbed the floors and walls and even the ceilings with lye soap, and in no time at all there was a small but neat vegetable garden in the back yard, and half a dozen laying chickens and a rooster, and even a Jersey milk cow that he bought f
rom a neighbor for thirty-two dollars in cash. And Alonzo stayed cleaned up pretty well and shaved two or three times a week, and they said she wouldn’t permit him to chew tobacco inside the house.

  But it just didn’t work out somehow. Folks didn’t know exactly what happened because they weren’t much for visiting back and forth, and to tell the truth she wasn’t very friendly towards those who did drop by, she being a Yankee and all, and inclined to look down her nose at them.

  Anyhow, Alonzo began to smell again on hot days, and he stopped shaving more than every week or so, and he let it be known finally that she’d just taken off and left him to go back up north. No one saw her go, and he was vague about when and how she’d gone, but they reckoned it wasn’t any of their business to pry into the private affairs of a man and his wife, so nobody pestered him with questions.

  And after a year or so, he let it get out that she had divorced him, but nobody ever did see the papers and that’s why there was some talk around about the rights and the wrongs of it when Alonzo snagged another mail-order woman from Kentucky and went up to Delray to meet her off the train and got married to her at the Justice of the Peace there half an hour after she arrived.

  But nobody made much of a fuss as to whether it was a legal marriage or not, because this one did seem right for Alonzo; she was a real country-bred woman from the hill-country, and didn’t put on any airs like wearing shoes around the house, and she chewed her own snoose to keep him company with his Mail Pouch.

  But Alonzo just wasn’t cut out for luck. Six or eight months later she got bit by a water moccasin down by the creek when she was fishing for suckers one day, and she died on him before he got her into town for treatment.

  There were some who said he was mighty lazy and slack about getting her into town, it being the second day after she was bit that she died, but others argued just as strongly that it wasn’t ’Lonzo’s fault because lots of folks got moccasin-bit and you just sucked out the place and slapped a wad of fresh-chewed tobacco on it and the swelling went away and it got all right after a few days.