“But I told you he never reached my office,” raged Gibson.
“You also told me he hadn’t phoned you he was coming,” Shayne reminded him.
“And I still say he didn’t phone me yesterday afternoon.”
Shayne shrugged and said to Gentry, “There you have it, Will. This isn’t my case, you know.”
“I demand that Godfrey be arrested immediately and brought back to Miami to face a charge of murder,” said Gibson.
“What can we base it on?” Gentry asked. “According to Black’s report—”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” Gibson interposed hastily. “I went over Black’s report with you in your office. He didn’t reach the packing-plant until several minutes after Shayne called him. When he did get there he found Godfrey’s car parked outside and there was a light in the office. He assumed—assumed, mind you—that because the car was there and lights in the office that Godfrey was inside all the time he waited. But there is absolutely no proof that Godfrey was in the office during that period.
“I submit,” he raged on, “that there was ample time for Godfrey to have been waiting downstairs at Shayne’s building, that he picked up Mr. Brewer as he left, murdered him, and then hurried back to enter the plant through the rear, turn out the lights, come out, and get in his car and drive away just as Mr. Black said he did.”
Will Gentry frowned. “How about that, Black?”
The disconsolate detective said, “Could be. I don’t believe it, but Gibson is right about one thing. I did assume that Godfrey was in the office all the time I waited—about ten minutes. I can check my notes, but I believe Godfrey came out at five forty-eight. If Brewer left Shayne’s office at five thirty-eight, that’s pretty fast work.”
“Nonsense,” Gibson said. “It’s not more than a four-minute drive from Shayne’s office to the plant on West Flagler.”
“That’s true enough,” said Shayne. “That leaves six minutes at the outside for Godfrey to get a man who was deathly afraid of him into a car, smash him up, drive him to the bay and dump the body, and then get back to the plant in time to emerge as Black saw him do. And don’t forget, Will, that Godfrey’s car was parked outside all the time. What car did he use for the murder vehicle? A taxi?”
“Gibson’s theory leaks like a sieve,” said Black. “It couldn’t be done. If Brewer was alive at five thirty-eight as Mike says, I’ll go on the stand and testify that Godfrey could not possibly have done this job.”
“Perhaps you have put your finger on it, Mr. Black,” Gibson said in a queer voice. “How do we know Milton Brewer was in Shayne’s office at five thirty-eight as he states?”
Shayne grinned and rubbed his angular jaw. “Don’t forget that I called Black and gave him all the dope.”
“But did Brewer actually speak to Black?” Gibson demanded.
Shayne said, “No. I did the talking. He was excited, and wanted me to get a good man for him.”
“What Brewer seems to have accomplished by putting Black on his partner’s trail,” Timothy Rourke interposed, “was an unimpeachable alibi for Godfrey.”
“There again,” said Gibson quickly, “perhaps you’ve put your finger, inadvertently, on something else.” He turned to the police chief, disregarding the smoldering anger in Shayne’s gray eyes. “Here’s a possibility. I’ll give it to you for what it’s worth. We know Godfrey planned to murder Brewer—”
“We know nothing of the sort,” Gentry rumbled wearily. “All we know is that Brewer told Shayne he suspected his partner planned to murder him.”
“I have absolute knowledge that it’s true,” Gibson argued. “Take this as a working hypothesis. Godfrey planned to murder his partner last night. He knows he will be suspected since he knows that I am fully aware of the situation. Therefore, he does exactly what this man—Mr. Rourke—said. He arranges an unimpeachable alibi. How? By picking out a private dick who is well known by reputation to be willing to do anything for money.
“I mean you, Mr. Shayne,” he went on bitterly, turning his head slightly. “If I were in Godfrey’s position, that is what I would have done, arranged the same setup. Then, after I had killed Mr. Brewer while out in my boat late in the afternoon, I would have had you do exactly what you did—telephone another private detective, give him the same song and dance you gave Black, and have him hurry out to trail Godfrey all night.”
Turning to Gentry again, Gibson continued. “According to Black’s notes, it is evident that Godfrey was exceedingly careful to do nothing that would make it difficult to follow him last night. In other words, he was building an alibi. Shayne states that Brewer was in his office and alive at five thirty-eight. Who saw him? We have to concede that Shayne phoned Black, and Shayne says Brewer left his office headed for my place. He also says something that I deny—that Brewer told him he telephoned me that he was coming. Isn’t that worth talking about, Chief?”
Gentry pushed his hat back and mopped his brow. “Let me see if I can get your reasoning straight, Gibson. You’re contending that Godfrey actually did kill his partner late in the afternoon while they were out on the bay together. He then went to his office, after having previously arranged for someone to follow him all night, in order to give himself an alibi for a crime he had already committed. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Haven’t I said it clearly enough? Why didn’t Shayne take this job himself? I know Mr. Brewer was willing to pay well for protection.”
Gentry looked at Shayne, who was absently rolling his left ear lobe between thumb and forefinger.
“I’ll tell you why,” raged Gibson, before Gentry could speak. “He called in another man because he and Godfrey realized that the alibi would be much stronger if it were strengthened by the testimony of a second man.”
“What about that, Mike?” Gentry asked.
Shayne’s eyes were very bright. He shrugged and said pleasantly, “I’ll discuss this privately with Mr. Gibson when there aren’t any cops around. Right now, just for the record, you can tell him that I turned down the tailing job because I had another client—an important assignment for the night that I had already accepted before Brewer came in.”
“Who was your important client, and what was the assignment?” Gibson demanded.
Shayne ignored the attorney and said to Gentry, “You know what the other job was, Will.”
“I know what you told me it was. And I know we’ve got two dead men now.”
Shayne turned his back on the two men and stepped over to look searchingly down at the corpse. The doctor was making notations in a black notebook, and Shayne asked, “Is that hair dyed, Doc?”
“I think so. Haven’t made a thorough examination yet.”
“I thought it was when he came to my office. What will you be able to do about the time of death?”
“That depends on a lot of things. Have to get him in where we can work on him. Give you something in two or three hours.”
“What can you give me now?”
“Couldn’t place it closer than between four and twenty-four hours.”
Gentry and Gibson joined them, and Shayne asked, “How positive are you of the identification, Will?”
“Mr. Gibson is willing to swear the body is that of Milton Brewer. You say he’s dressed exactly as Brewer was when he was in your office. And there was this wallet in his inner coat pocket.” Gentry held out a water-soaked pigskin wallet and added, “Business cards in it, and the usual identification. About eighty-five dollars in cash. If it isn’t Brewer, who is it?”
Shayne said, “Looks like the one he had in my office. I’m not denying that it is Brewer. In fact, I would be almost willing to go on the stand and swear to the identification. But I’m always suspicious when a man’s face is smashed up like that.” He asked the doctor, “What about it? What did that job on him? And was it necessary to accomplish death? Or just some added stuff?”
“I’d say it was done with some fairly heavy object,” the doctor said. �
�He probably died after the first couple of blows, and either the murderer continued beating him in a violent burst of rage, or—”
“Or he continued pounding until there wouldn’t be much left to identify when he was taken out of the water,” said Shayne grimly.
“Not even enough teeth left,” the doctor agreed, “for a dentist to do anything with.”
“Yeh.” Shayne nodded his red head slowly, turned to Gentry and said, “Don’t get me wrong on this, Will. I have absolutely no reason to think the man isn’t Milton Brewer. On the other hand, before we get very far with this we need a positive identification. When this guy Gibson,” he went on, as though the attorney were not present, “states that he can positively identify the body as Brewer, I question it. Are there any identifying marks? What’s he got to go on? I admit he has the same build and dyed hair; the same sort of clothes, and maybe there’ll be laundry marks. What about fingerprints?”
“Take a look at his hands,” Gentry rumbled.
Shayne dropped to his knees and turned one of the dead man’s hands over. The fingers were smashed to a pulp. Intentionally? He wondered. Or had he clung desperately to the edge of a railing, refusing to drop into the water, while the killer pounded his hands until he was forced to let go? Both hands were the same.
“Can you get any sort of prints from them?” he asked Gentry.
“The boys are trying for it. They won’t be too good, but if we’re lucky we’ll get enough if we can find prints to check with.”
“You can probably get them at his house,” Shayne suggested. “Do this for me, Will. Make as positive an identification as you can that this body is Milton Brewer.”
Gentry rolled his rumpled eyelids far up and looked at Shayne curiously. “What’s on your mind, Mike?”
Shayne’s eyes were bleak, and he shook his head gravely. “I don’t know. I do know this whole thing is screwy as hell. First we’ve got to know that this man is Brewer. Once we establish that, we’ll have something to go on.” He paused briefly, then asked, “Did you get that call from the Waldorf Towers Hotel?”
“Yeh,” said Gentry sourly. “Olsen called and told me what you found in Mrs. Davis’s room. Looks like she was a phony from the word go. Probably the whole story she told you about the dancer was just as phony as the hotel room.”
“Why? The girl corroborated it in every detail.”
A voice behind them asked with interest, “What’s that? Are you talking about Dorinda? She denied everything at La Roma, Mike.”
Shayne glanced around at Timothy Rourke and said, “This was afterward, Tim. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Let’s get out of here where we can get a drink and see what we can make of it.”
CHAPTER X
Rourke gunned the press car and drove toward the boulevard. He asked excitedly, “What about your Mrs. Davis turning out to be a phony?”
“That was Will’s word for it,” Shayne reminded him. “My guess is that she was covering up her real identity even from me.” He brought the reporter up to date on developments, then added, “She evidently checked in at the Waldorf just for an address to give me. If she was at La Roma the night before, she must have had a room somewhere else. Probably still has it, and I hope to God that’s where she is now—with nothing more the matter with her than too many sleeping-tablets.”
Rourke wheeled the car onto the boulevard and stepped hard on the accelerator. “I don’t get it, Mike. She could have called up and got your message if—”
“If,” Shayne cut in angrily. “That damned two-letter word has got this whole thing wrapped around it. If Mrs. Davis is Mrs. Davis; if Dorinda is Julia Lansdowne; if the corpse on the beach is Milton Brewer; if Elliott Gibson is telling the truth.” He made a savage gesture and added, “Pull in at that tavern ahead and let’s have a drink. I only caught about three hours sleep last night.”
“It was early enough when you dropped me at the poker game.”
Shayne grunted. “I made another trip to La Roma, and a lot of things happened.”
“Besides the thing at the Waldorf Towers?” Rourke asked eagerly. His thin nostrils quivered like a bloodhound’s on the scent. He pulled into the curved driveway and stopped just beyond the door of the rustic tavern.
There were two other cars in the drive, and when they entered the gloomy room, two booths were occupied by couples who had reached the amorous stage of letting their drinks get warm. The tall, rangy bartender was lounging against the bar eating a sandwich and washing it down with beer.
Rourke ordered a double cognac with water on the side for Shayne, gin and bitters for himself, and they found a booth in the rear.
The reporter waited impatiently until the bartender brought the drinks and returned to the bar, then referred back to Shayne’s last statement and asked, “Such as what? Give me a complete fill-in, Mike. I didn’t get to bed until after four, and just reached the office when the Brewer flash came in.”
Shayne’s wide yawn ended in a sardonic grin. “You don’t know about Moran?”
“Moran? The dancer’s manager?”
Shayne took a drink of cognac and chased it with ice water. “The guy you steered me away from at La Roma. Ricky Moran killed himself in my apartment last night.”
“What the hell, Mike? Why didn’t somebody at the office mention it?”
“Will’s keeping it quiet until we find out whether Dorinda actually is the Lansdowne girl—and until we find her.”
“Where is she?”
“I wish I knew. With this Brewer thing, we’ve got two dead men and two missing women.”
“You think there is any connection?”
“I don’t see how,” Shayne told him absently. “But damn it, Tim, I don’t like coincidences. Let me give you all of it, and see what you make of it.” He took another drink of cognac, then settled back to rehash the entire story.
Timothy Rourke listened with quivering nostrils and burning eyes. He shook his head dubiously when Shayne finished. “It looks like two distinct cases to me.”
“Yeh. That’s what it looks like.” Shayne’s gray eyes were bleak. “But there are so damned many angles that don’t make sense.” He drained his glass and thumped it down on the table. “Are Mrs. Davis and Dorinda being cagy and hiding out? Or, are they both—dead?”
“But who could have killed them? And why?” Rourke protested. “Even if your guess about Moran is right and he did trail Mrs. Davis from La Roma and put the bite on her after she hired you, he couldn’t be responsible for whatever happened to Dorinda, too. Who else is there?”
Shayne spread out his big hands in a gesture of futility. “Who did that job on Milton Brewer?” he parried.
“But that’s different. He expected to be murdered last night.”
“Yeh,” said Shayne sourly. “And the guy he was afraid of is the one guy in Miami who has an unimpeachable alibi. Yet, someone did it, just as someone apparently grabbed Dorinda between my place and Lucy’s apartment.”
Rourke’s thin face wrinkled with feverish thought. “And the only line you’ve got so far on a possible connection between the two,” he said slowly, “is the girl telling you that either Godfrey or Brewer was a friend of her father’s.”
“Which we don’t even know is the truth. But why in hell would she toss in a piece of information like that if it wasn’t true?” He swallowed the last of his drink and got up. “Let’s take a look at that packing-plant on West Flagler.”
Rourke drained his glass and they went out to the press car. He drove at high speed, and silently, until he parked in front of a low, sprawling stucco building with a sign reading: Brewer and Godfrey. A smaller sign over the door read: Office.
They entered a small room where an elderly white-haired woman sat before a switchboard. Her eyes were red-rimmed from recent tears, and her hands lay listlessly in her lap.
She looked up as the two men approached and said, “If you’re here on business you’ll have to see Mr. Broom. He’s back in the pack
ing-room.” She indicated a door leading off to the right and added, “There’s no one else here today.”
“We’re from the police,” Shayne told her gently.
She stiffened and asked anxiously, “Then it’s true that Mr. Brewer—is dead?”
Shayne nodded gravely. “I’m afraid it is, Miss—”
“Mrs. Grayson,” she supplied. Angry spots of color came to her cheeks. “It’s that Mr. Godfrey that did it. I know it is. They were at each other’s throats all the time. I heard him threaten Mr. Brewer.”
“Right now we want to look through the private offices of the partners,” said Shayne. “Save any statements for men from the homicide squad. They’ll be along presently.”
“That I will, and gladly. The office is right through that door marked ‘Private’ to the left.”
Shayne started to the door with Rourke following. He stopped abruptly, turned, and said, “By the way, Mrs. Grayson, how long has Mr. Brewer been dyeing his hair black?”
“Why, three or four years,” she answered, surprised and apparently annoyed at the question. “I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“Just checking,” Shayne assured her, and went on to the door. It opened upon a large, pleasant office, paneled in pine, with a low railing dividing the room in the center. Each office was similarly furnished with a large oak desk, swivel chair, water cooler and filing-cabinets. Even the deep-pile rugs were twins, and of a cool-green color.
“What are you looking for, Mike?” Rourke asked.
“For one thing, an entrance to this office from the rear.” He strode along the dividing rail until it ended near a door. He opened it and found a dead end. The small room contained a lavatory and toilet with a medicine cabinet above the lavatory.
Before entering he switched on the ceiling light and went to the cabinet, opened the small mirrored door, and began examining its contents.
He found a small bottle labeled: Little Peerless Wonder Hair Dye and carried it into the office. With a puzzled frown between his gray eyes he muttered, “I wouldn’t think a man of Brewer’s type would dye his own hair, Tim.”
When Dorinda Dances Page 10
