Framed in Blood (18 page)

Marie Leonard glared at him, and the officer said curtly, “Cut it out and bring yours along if you can handle the hellcat. Nothing will do her but to see the chief, so that’s who she’s going to see.”

Shayne disengaged Lucy from her clinging position. “Take it easy, angel,” he said. “Don’t hold anything back from Will this time. He already knows about the envelope addressed to Betty Jackson.” He pressed a handkerchief into her hand, and she went beside him submissively.

Will Gentry met them in the doorway, looked gravely at Lucy’s scratched, tear-stained face and asked, “What’s the meaning of this, Miss Hamilton? The arresting officer says you started the fracas with no provocation at all, and practically forced him to arrest you and take you to headquarters.”

“I—had to—on account of the envelope,” Lucy told him in a choked voice. “She got there ahead of me. I was right behind her when she got it. I couldn’t let her get away, and all I could think of was to get us both arrested so she wouldn’t have a chance to hide it.” She turned to Shayne and added, “She’s still got it, Michael. Inside the front of her blouse. I tried to take it away from her after we left the post office, but this policeman interfered.”

“They were screaming and scratching like wildcats and pulling each other’s hair,” the officer interposed.

“I’ll have to explain one thing you don’t know about, Will,” said Shayne. “Betty Jackson asked Lucy to pick up an envelope for her from General Delivery and made her promise to tell no one about it. Lucy went to the post office to get that envelope right after she left headquarters. Now, Lucy, tell us exactly what happened.”

“When I went to the window, she was there. I didn’t hear her ask for a letter, and I didn’t think anything about it. When she left I asked for Mrs. Betty Jackson’s mail. The clerk looked at me suspiciously and told me that Mrs. Jackson had just picked up her mail, and he pointed her out to me.

“It was that woman,” Lucy continued, pointing a trembling finger at Marie Leonard who stood aside looking sullen and frightened. “I knew she wasn’t Betty Jackson, and I didn’t think she had any right to her mail. So I ran after her and saw her slipping a long white envelope in her blouse. So I grabbed her and demanded it. She denied having it and tried to run away, and so I—well, I tried to take it away from her. I’d have done it, too,” she added angrily, “if this policeman hadn’t come up and tried to separate us.”

“How about it, Marie?” Shayne asked. “Did you get Betty Jackson’s mail from the General Delivery window?”

“Certainly not,” she stormed. “I got a letter of my own and was just walking out with it when this crazy woman pounced on me and started pulling my hair and trying to tear my clothes off.”

“She has got it, Michael,” Lucy declared. “It’s inside her blouse. I’ve been with her every second since she put it there. That’s why I couldn’t let them release us at headquarters when they offered to.”

Will Gentry had listened in frowning silence. He turned to Marie Leonard and said, “It’s simple enough to prove the point,” in a mild rumble. “Show us the letter. If it belongs to you, I advise you to charge Miss Hamilton with assault.”

“I told you it’s mine,” Marie said stubbornly. “I don’t want any trouble, and I’m willing to call the whole thing quits without making any charge against her.”

Chief Gentry took two stolid steps toward her with his hand extended. “We’ll have to see the letter, Miss Leonard. You can give it to me now, or I can send you down to be searched by a matron.”

Marie hesitated, her eyes blazing with anger, then she thrust her hand down the neck of her blouse and jerked out not one but two long white envelopes. “Here they are,” she raged, “but you can’t blame me for trying. How did I know anyone else knew about it? With Bert dead I thought they’d finally go to the dead-letter office and I might just as well get it.” Gentry was studying the envelopes curiously. “Both addressed to Mrs. Betty Jackson,” he muttered. “One on a typewriter and the other in ink. What do you make of them, Mike?” He passed them over to the redhead.

Shayne tested each envelope for weight, a scowl between his gray eyes. There was no return address on either. The one addressed in ink was slightly the heavier. He studied the postmarks and noted that the heavier one had been mailed the preceding evening. The one addressed on a typewriter was postmarked 10:07 that morning.

Comprehension dawned slowly. After a long moment he said, “I’ve been all kinds of a damned fool, Will. I made two and two add up to three.” His tone was bitter with self-condemnation as he held out the typed envelope and explained, “This should contain two hundred and fifty hundred-dollar bills, a payment by some man whose name I don’t know for suppression of the City Hall scandal Bert Jackson dug up.

“This other one—” He paused, studying the envelope again, then burst out, “I have one hell of a hunch it contains all the data on that story. Betty Jackson must have hurried home from my apartment and mailed it to herself at six-thirty yesterday afternoon, the only safe way she could think of to stop Bert from carrying out his blackmail threat. That would explain Grandma Peabody’s timetable of Betty’s movements. She went directly home from my apartment in a cab, had it wait outside while she went in to get something, then was gone again just about long enough to drive to the post office.”

Will Gentry nodded slowly. “Ned Brooks has been telling me about the efforts he and Betty Jackson were making to keep Bert from selling out. But you told Tim Rourke that Betty killed her husband in order to get this money,” he objected with a heavy frown. “After she learned he was going to turn the story in to the paper instead of selling it. Now you say she mailed this data to herself to prevent Bert from selling it. That doesn’t add up, Mike.”

“Like two and two adds up to three,” Shayne agreed somberly. “I muffed that, Will. I honestly believed that when I told it to Tim. But I didn’t know then that Miss Leonard would be at the post office shortly after ten to pick up the money. I thought Betty had arranged the payment that way after killing Bert.” Shayne paused again. His eyes brightened, and his mouth quirked in a crooked smile. “By the way,” he said abruptly, “I haven’t introduced you properly, Will. Meet Miss Marie Leonard of apartment Three A at the Las Felice.”

The name didn’t immediately register with Gentry. He was absorbed in puzzling over the latest developments. He rumbled, “Then Tim was right all the time, and Betty did kill her husband because of him.”

“I’m not too sure about that yet,” Shayne hedged. He turned to Marie Leonard and said, “I think you’d better explain how you knew that money would be at General Delivery after ten o’clock.”

“I’ve told you,” she said sullenly. “Bert made a phone call from my place and arranged for the money to be paid this way. I don’t know why he had it addressed to Mrs. Jackson instead of to him. Maybe he thought it was safer that way. Anyhow, after I heard Bert was dead I thought it wouldn’t hurt just to go down and see if it was there.”

“We might buy that story,” Shayne told her, “if I didn’t know you lied about the call Bert made from your place. He did make a phone call, all right, but it was to the city editor on the
Tribune,
not to the man he was going to expose. Then he left your place to go home and get the data to take to Abe Linkle. That call was made a little before ten o’clock,” he went on swiftly, sure of himself now and of the actual sequence of events. “But Bert didn’t reach home until sometime after ten.

“You fought with him about the phone call, all right,” he went on grimly. “But it was because you were sore at him for turning soft and not going after the money. You saw a chance to get it yourself, didn’t you, Marie? A long chance, but you took it. With Bert dead before he had a chance to turn the story in, it was you who phoned the blackmail threat and not Betty Jackson. But you used her name to make it sound authentic, knowing you could pick up the envelope from General Delivery addressed to her just as easily as one addressed to you.

“And for good measure,” Shayne continued, “you tossed in the idea that Mrs. Jackson and I were working together and that I would turn the dope over to Rourke if the payoff failed to come through. That’s why my office and apartment were searched,” he ended wearily, turning to Chief Gentry, “and why an elevator operator was killed last night.”

“None of it’s like you say,” Marie protested shrilly. “How could I know Bert was dead? He was all right when he left my place. Ned Brooks will tell you he saw him about a block from his own home. Bert was killed right there, wasn’t he? On his own front porch? How could I have done that?”

“How do you know he was killed on his front porch?” Shayne pounded at her. “Only the killer knew that—until a few minutes ago when Tim Rourke admitted finding the body there and carrying it away to protect Betty.

“You were not a witness to that confession,” he went on inexorably. “You knew because you shot him, didn’t you, Marie? From the front seat of your car at the curb while he was going up the steps—and with Tim Rourke’s target pistol which you then tossed out where Rourke found it later.”

“No!” she screamed. “I didn’t do it! I don’t know who told me where he was killed, but I heard it some place.”

Shayne took a step toward her, his face ludicrous with one eye nearly closed and the other wide open staring at her. “Jackson had that pistol in his pocket when he was at my place late in the afternoon,” he drove in relentlessly. “I suppose he found it where Betty had hidden it. He went directly to your apartment from there. He was pretty drunk when he left, and I imagine it was quite easy to get the pistol from him.”

“The doorman will tell you I didn’t leave my apartment all evening,” she protested wildly. “I never even saw his pistol.”

“There’s a back stairway,” Shayne reminded her, “leading directly to the parking-area where you leave your car at night. It was easy enough for you to slip down and follow him home. A neighbor of the Jacksons saw your car pull up to the curb and stop as Bert Jackson staggered up the walk. She didn’t hear the shot because a twenty-two isn’t loud, and she didn’t see him fall because she can’t see his front steps.”

“I didn’t! I didn’t!” Marie Leonard shrank away from him as she cried out in terror.

“It had to be you who made the phone call, Marie. We know about the one call Bert made. This other call was from a woman. Betty Jackson was unconscious from an overdose of sleeping-pills at ten o’clock.” Shayne turned back to Gentry and said wearily, “It could have happened just like I said. In fact, I think you could take her into court and get a conviction on that much, Will.”

The police chief removed a cigar from his mouth and studied the soggy end of it broodingly. He said, “I think so, too. Come on, Miss Leonard, make it easy on yourself. Tell us the whole thing—”

“Which would just go to prove once more,” Shayne broke in musingly, as though he had not heard a word the chief said, but was continuing with his own thoughts, “the dangerous unreliability of circumstantial evidence. It could have happened that way, Will, but it didn’t.”

“No?” Gentry didn’t look up or change the stolid expression on his heavy face. “Then what the devil?”

“We’re forgetting a couple of things,” Shayne told him. “Most important is the fact that while there was a hole in Bert Jackson’s coat pocket, there wasn’t any hole anywhere in Tim Rourke’s suit.”

THE HOLE IN A POCKET

“WHAT HAS A HOLE IN SOMEBODY’S POCKET got to do with any of this?” Chief Will Gentry demanded.

“Everything,” Shayne told him blandly. “That pistol has an eight-inch barrel. The only way you could carry it in your pocket would be to make a hole in the lining for the barrel to stick through. When we found that hole in Bert’s coat pocket I was pretty sure it was there to accommodate a long-barreled pistol—the one that killed him.”

“All right,” said Gentry impatiently. “But what have Rourke’s pockets got to do with it?”

“There wasn’t any hole, remember?”

Gentry’s rumpled lids rolled up, and his eyes were like streaked granite. “Suppose you give out with the information you’ve been holding back,” he said to Shayne. “Maybe then some of your theories will make sense.”

Shayne looked around at the group gathered just inside the living-room door, the policeman from the Black Maria who still held a firm grip on Marie Leonard’s arm, Jenkins, and the cop stationed just outside the open door, and Lucy Hamilton who stood close beside him. He glanced across the room to see Ned Brooks still slumped in a chair in the corner, his head buried in his hands. His gaze came back to Gentry. They had been friends for years, and he had no desire to discredit the chief before his subordinates.

He said, “You know how it is when I have a client, Will. I know I have to hustle to keep a step ahead of you and your boys.”

“So?” Gentry growled.

“So Tim Rourke couldn’t have been carrying that pistol in his pocket when he came here to Ned Brooks’s house. I saw him leave his apartment to come here, and there wasn’t any pistol sticking out of his clothes.”

“So?” Gentry repeated sourly.

“How did that pistol get here—in Tim’s hand, as we found it?” Shayne said pleasantly.

“You tell us,” the chief rumbled.

“The murderer brought it. That is,” he amended, “if Ballistics prove it’s the weapon that killed Jackson. I think you’d better ask Ned Brooks about that, Will.”

“Brooks?” Gentry roared the word and turned to the reporter. “Come over here.”

Ned Brooks dragged himself up from his chair and took half a dozen steps toward the group at the door. “You want me?”

“How about it?” Gentry demanded.

“How about what?” Brooks asked dazedly, moving slowly forward.

“You heard Shayne. If Tim Rourke didn’t have that gun when he came here, how did he get it?”

“How should I know?” he asked. “Maybe he slipped out after I left for the office and went home to get it.” He combed his tousled hair with his fingers and looked around confusedly as if seeing the others for the first time.

“Why would Tim go home to get his gun and come back here to shoot himself?” Shayne demanded.