The Body Came Back (3 page)

She sat back and carefully read what she had written, and found it good.

She then crumpled the four sheets together in a tight fist, dropped them to the desk and reached for the Miami telephone book.

When she found the number, she lifted the receiver and asked the operator to get it for her.

Michael Shayne was slouched in an easy chair in the living room of his apartment with a final nightcap of straight cognac within easy reach of his right hand when his telephone rang.

He frowned at the instrument and perversely let it go on ringing. Long experience had taught him that unexpected calls at this time of night were very likely to mean trouble, and right now the redhead wasn’t in a mood for trouble. He had no cases on the fire and knew of no reason in the world for anyone to disturb him at home shortly before midnight.

It continued to ring monotonously, and after six insistent b-r-r-r-s he sighed and reached out to lift it from its cradle. He said, “Mike Shayne,” and a woman’s voice answered him. It was a throaty, modulated voice with overtones of deep emotional stress, and it throbbed with thankfulness:

“Thank God you’re there. I was afraid… She paused abruptly and he could almost see her getting a grip on herself, forcing herself to speak calmly and say the words she had planned to say when she made the call.

“You won’t recognize my name, Mr. Shayne. It’s Carla Andrews. But we do have a mutual friend. Brett Halliday.”

“You’re a friend of Brett’s?”

“I know him… knew him quite well in Hollywood a couple of years ago when they were filming his television series. He told me then… that if I ever found myself in Miami and in trouble I should call on you. I’m in Miami, Mr. Shayne… and I’m in desperate trouble.” Her voice rose and broke on the last two words, and a sibilant sound that was almost a sob lingered on after they were spoken.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Your kind. I… oh God, I hardly know how to say it, but… there’s a dead man in my bedroom.”

“How did he get there?” Shayne demanded.

“I can’t explain over the phone. Won’t you come? Please. This very instant. I’m at my wit’s end.”

“Where, Miss Andrews?”

“The Encanto Hotel. That’s on Biscayne Boulevard…”

“I know the Encanto,” he interrupted. “In ten minutes.”

“Room Eight-Ten. I’ll be… waiting.”

Shayne hung up and clawed the knobby fingers of his left hand through his bristly red hair while he lifted his cognac glass and drained it. He got to his feet swiftly and picked up a light sport jacket from the back of a chair nearby and shrugged his wide shoulders into it, then went out of the room with long strides.

His car was already put up for the night in the hotel garage, and it took him the better part of five minutes to get it backed out and headed east toward the bayfront. The Encanto was only a dozen blocks north, facing the bay, and in less than ten minutes he pulled under the entrance canopy and got out.

He strode around the front of his car to receive a salute and a parking stub from the uniformed doorman who asked, “Will you be long, Sir?”

“Not too long.” Shayne grinned mirthlessly to himself as he hurried through the open doors and across the lobby toward the elevators. How the hell did he know how long he would be? A friend of Brett’s from Hollywood with a dead man in her bedroom!

A half-filled car waited for him to step inside, and went up smoothly, discharging passengers at the fourth and seventh floors.

He was the only one who got off at the eighth. There were signs with arrows, and he followed the arrows around a corner and down a wide, well-lighted hall with his heels thudding softly in the thick carpet.

He stopped in front of 810 and knocked, and the door opened instantly.

The woman who faced him across the threshold was tall and willowy, and appeared to be about forty. Her body was well-fleshed, though not excessively, and in the right places. She had lustrous coal-black hair combed smoothly back from a wide smooth forehead, and very dark eyes which glowed as though with unspilled tears. She managed to look terrified and happy and relieved all at the same time, and both her hands went out to clasp his convulsively while her eyes searched his rugged face and she exclaimed throatily, “Mike Shayne! I think I’d have known you anywhere.”

She held both his hands tightly and drew him into the room, backing away at arm’s length with her intense gaze fixed on his face as though she drew strength and assurance from what she saw there. “It was so good of you to come. I don’t know how to tell you…

He said gruffly, “Any friend of Brett’s… any time. How is the old so-and-so?”

“It’s been more than a year since I’ve seen him. I don’t know whether he’s still on the Coast or not.” She released his hands and moved around him to close the door.

“He settled in Santa Barbara after the show was canceled,” Shayne told her, standing flat-footed just inside the room and surveying it carefully, noting the ice bucket and Scotch bottle and one glass on the coffee table. The ash tray beside it holding half a dozen crushed butts… the closed door leading into the bedroom.

He turned to her slowly with lifted eyebrows and added pointedly, “You didn’t ask me over here to discuss Brett, Miss Andrews. You said something about a dead man…?”

“You’d better… see for yourself.” She nodded toward the bedroom with her eyes wide and glistening, and a single tear slid slowly down each cheek.

Shayne turned on his heel and strode to the bedroom door. He opened it and looked down at the dead man lying on his back a few feet inside the room. He moved closer, noting the bloodstains on the front of his shirt, the tiny pearl-handled automatic on the carpet just beyond. He leaned down and pressed the back of his hand against the corpse’s neck, and guessed that he had been dead between thirty minutes and an hour. He straightened up and thrust his hands deep in his pockets and made a careful survey of the room, noting the neatly made twin beds that had not been turned down for the night, an array of toilet articles on the vanity near the bathroom door, an overturned open suitcase beside a luggage stand at the foot of one of the beds.

He went back and closed the door behind him, and found the woman composedly seated at the end of the sofa leaning forward to reach for the Scotch bottle which was a little more than a quarter full. She looked up at him carefully, studying his face for a clue to his reaction toward what he had seen in the bedroom, and said steadily, “There’s ice but no soda left. And only one glass. I’m sorry there’s no cognac, but… I d-didn’t kn-know I was going to entertain Mike Shayne t-tonight.” She tried to keep her voice light, but it broke at the end and she put her hands to her face and began sobbing.

Shayne lit a cigarette and moved to the other end of the sofa and sat down. When her sobbing subsided, he asked matter-of-factly, “Who is he, Carla?”

“My… husband.”

“Why did you kill him?”

“I didn’t,” she exclaimed vehemently. “I found him like that. I was so utterly surprised. I haven’t seen him for years. I thought he was dead,” she wailed, the sobs beginning again. “I thought that was all ended… that I’d never in my life see his nasty face again. And I walked in and there he lay. Dead. Oh God, what am I going to do?”

“Get hold of yourself and tell me about it,” he ordered emotionlessly. “You say you walked in. When?”

“About… half an hour ago. Maybe more. It was a little after eleven. I flew in from the West Coast and my flight was late. It was a little after eleven when I reached the hotel. I came straight up to the suite expecting my daughter to meet me. She’s been here several days and I knew the room number. When she didn’t answer the door, the boy let me in with his key, and I had him just set my bags down there and go on.” She nodded toward a smart overnight bag and a small hatbox on the floor near the front door. “Thank God he’d gone before I opened the bedroom door and saw Al lying there on the floor. I suppose I had a slight case of hysterics,” she admitted ruefully. “I called out for Vicky, and ran into the bathroom looking for her, and looked in the closet and even under the bed. But there was just Al. Alone on the floor and dead. And Vicky’s pistol on the floor. One I bought for her five years ago when we had a prowler around our house in Laurel Canyon. And I came back in this room and, well… you’d better read it, Mike. You don’t mind if I call you Mike, do you?” She was fumbling nervously inside the bodice of her dove-gray gown and drew out several crumpled sheets of hotel stationery which she smoothed out with trembling fingers. “I found this note lying over on the desk.” She nodded across the room. “First I thought I should destroy it, and then… then I remembered you were in Miami. You read it and tell me what to do, Mike.” She thrust the sheets of paper into his hand.

He spread them out and began reading the excitedly scrawled words:

“Dear Mom—I don’t know how to say this—I can’t think straight—I’m scared to death and sick at my stomach. I just killed a man. He’s lying in the bedroom—dead. I shot him, Mom. With that little automatic pistol you gave me several years ago. Remember?

“Who ever thought I’d use it? I didn’t. I wasn’t sure I knew how. But it was easy. It just went Pow, Pow, Pow—and that did it.

“I know I sound crazy. I
feel
crazy. Like I could just jump right out of my skin. I better start from the beginning and tell you.

“I was waiting for you, Mom. I had the bell-boy bring up a bottle of Scotch and some ice and soda so it would be here waiting for you to have a drink when your plane got in. And I was so happy and I guess I sort of dozed off waiting for you and I woke up suddenly when there was this knocking on the door. I didn’t notice what time it was. I just thought it was you, and I trotted to open the door and there stood this
man.

“I didn’t know what to do, Mom. I was still groggy and half-awake, I guess. I never saw him before and he smelled of whiskey and was positively disgusting and he squinted up his eyes at me and said, ‘Where’s Carla?’

“I still wasn’t thinking straight because I should have slammed the door in his face, but I just said, ‘She isn’t here yet, and who are you?’

“And he pushed in past me with a nasty grin on his face and headed straight for the whiskey bottle that I had set out for you in front of the sofa, and over his shoulder he smirked at me and said, ‘Carla’ll tell you who I am all right when she gets here. You must be Vicky, huh?’

“And he poured a big drink of straight whiskey and tipped it up, and I was purely petrified, Mom. He knew your name and mine and seemed to be expecting you and—well, I’ve been away the last few years and I know you always did know the weirdest characters out there in Hollywood, producers and writers and like that, so I just thought he was another one of them that you had arranged to meet here in Miami and so I didn’t want to make a fuss, and I just said yes I was Vicky and I was expecting you to arrive any minute.

“He said that was fine and he’d wait and he and I could have a good time getting acquainted with each other while we waited for you—huh? And I began to get scared, Mom. I had a funny, queasy feeling inside me. The way he looked at me and licked his lips—and old enough to be my father too.

“He started pouring the whiskey down and I knew he was already loaded to the gills, but I saw it was almost eleven o’clock and your plane was due in at ten so I thought you’d be coming along any minute—and I knew
you’d
know how to handle him without making any fuss, so I just said, ‘Sure,’ and that was fine, but I circled around him toward the bedroom thinking I’d go in and shut the door and leave him for you to take care of.

“And he jumped at me just as I was going in, and started cursing me and asking me what I thought I was going to do in there—‘Call the cops, huh?’ That’s what he kept asking, and his face was just awful and he said ‘No you don’t. Oh, no you don’t,’ and I pulled away from him and tried to run into the bathroom where I could lock the door but he caught me and dragged me back and started to choke me.

“I think he meant to, Mom. I really do. I don’t know why. Except he was drunk and just about crazy-mad. But he threw me down on the floor and tried to choke me and we knocked my suitcase off the rack and a lot of things tumbled out including that little pistol.

“Mom. I don’t know. Right now I don’t know for sure. Whether I meant to do it or not. But I grabbed it and pushed it up against him and it went Pow, Pow, Pow. Not very loud. Nothing like I thought a pistol would really sound.

“But that did it, Mom. His hands went loose around my neck and he rolled off to the side and lay there and right then all at once I knew he was dead. I knew I’d killed him. That I’d murdered a man.

“I didn’t know what to do. I ran out and closed the door as if that would make it all right. And I thought what if someone comes before Mom does. What will they do to me? They hang you for committing murder.

“And then I called the airport and they said your plane was late and they didn’t know
when
you’d arrive, and so then I just gave up.

“I’m writing this so you’ll find it and know what’s happened. I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t stay here with
him.
I’ll go to some hotel where they don’t know me and register under another name—and maybe tomorrow I should go to South America, Mom. You’ll know best. I know you’ll rally round and cope. You always do.

“I’ll telephone every hour or so until I get you. If I call when the police are here and you can’t talk, just pretend it’s someone else and I’ll understand and I’ll call you back an hour later.

“I
can’t
stay here cooped up in this room. I’ll get the screaming meemies. Mom, I can’t ever tell Bill. Everything is ruined. I wish I’d killed myself instead of him.

“I can’t wait any longer. Somebody might come. I’m going now. Out into the night. I’ll call you. Mom, wait for me to call you here. I don’t know what else to do.

“Vicky”

Michael Shayne stared down thoughtfully at the sheets of paper in his hand for a long moment after he finished reading them. Then he sighed and laid the four pages down on the table in front of him and turned to look at the woman seated at the other end of the sofa.

She was sitting very erect with her hands twisted together in her lap. Her gaze was fixed and intense, directly in front of her, and she appeared completely unaware of his presence. Her clean-cut profile was like a tragic mask. She did not start or perceptibly move a muscle when he spoke quietly:

“Is the man her father?”

“Yes.” Still immobile. Still staring straight ahead.

“Why didn’t she recognize him at once?”

“She’s never seen her father. She thinks he’s dead. In fact,
I
thought he was dead.” She turned her head slowly. “It’s a long drab story, Mike. Are you willing to listen to it?”

“In a moment. First: Where’s Vicky now?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been waiting for her to call… praying for her to… and yet, dreading it. What am I going to
say
to her? What shall I tell her to do?”

“Tell her to get back here,” Shayne said flatly. “You can’t run away from reality. Once you start running, you can never stop. This isn’t so bad. A clear case of self-defense if her story is true.”

“She killed her own father.”

“Unknowingly and to protect herself. She has to face it
now,
Carla.”

“All right,” she agreed submissively. “When she calls I’ll tell her. I guess we’re in your hands now, Mike Shayne. I’m at the end of my rope. Maybe I shouldn’t have called you,” she went on wildly. “Maybe I should have taken a chance…”

“Calling me was the best thing you ever did,” he told her quietly. “Now: Before we get the police in on this I’d like to have all the background I can get.”

“The police? Oh, God, I thought… I hoped that maybe you…”

“Not a chance,” Shayne told her calmly. “This is homicide even though it is self-defense. I’m sticking my neck out as it is by not reporting it immediately. But I don’t see that a few minutes either way can make much difference. Actually, it will look a lot better for Vicky if she is here to give herself up when the police come. How old is your daughter, by the way?”

“Twenty-one, Mike. Just past twenty-one. She… was to be married tomorrow. That’s why she was in Miami. I flew in for the wedding… my darling, little girl. Oh, God, I can’t realize yet…” Her face broke into pieces as she fought for self-control. She won the battle and smiled wanly, a ravaged and pitiful smile.

“But I promised to tell you about Al… Donlin was his name. I was just eighteen when I eloped with him from a little farm in Ohio. I think the only reason he married me was because he hoped to stay out of the draft. But it didn’t work and they took him in the army anyhow… a few months before Vicky was born. I was glad. I didn’t want her to know her father. He was mean and sadistic and shiftless. I went home when Vicky was born and he didn’t write from the army. They forced him to give us part of his pay as an allotment, but that stopped when the war was over and he was discharged.

“I left home then, with Vicky and went to Denver and found a job to support the two of us. I used my maiden name and made my parents promise to never tell Al where I was. And they didn’t. He came back and pestered them some, and then drifted away, and I heard later that he’d been sent to prison for knifing a man in a drunken brawl, and I was glad and put him out of my mind.

“And I made a new life for Vicky and myself in Denver. I got into a newspaper job and was finally doing feature articles for the Woman’s Page on the
Denver Post.
Then, about seven years ago… Vicky was fourteen, I remember, they ran a little story about me in the paper with a picture of Vicky and me at home. I thought nothing of it. I believed Al was still in prison… had practically forgotten that he existed… until he turned up in Denver one day.

“He’d seen the story and our picture in the paper some place, and hitch-hiked to Denver. He wanted to move in with me, demanded money, threatened all sorts of things. I stalled him off… promised to borrow money the next day and give him a thousand dollars… and that night I packed up and left Denver.

“You say it never pays to run, Mike. Well, I ran that time and I think it paid off. I couldn’t stand the thought of Vicky ever seeing him… knowing him as a father. I didn’t tell her the truth. I told her I’d had an offer to write for the movies in Hollywood and we had to go at once. That very night. We made an exciting game out of it. I told her a vague story about being under contract to the newspaper and the mean old editor wouldn’t release me to take the movie job, and so we were going anyhow. I had a car and we drove straight through to Los Angeles, and I used that story as an excuse to Vicky for changing our name when we got there… and I became Carla Andrews, and, by God, I made it pay off, Mike.

“From my newspaper experience I knew enough about writing to get some small assignments and wangle my way in to see producers… and within a year I was doing scripts for some of the top shows.

“That’s how I met Brett Halliday. I wrote several segments for the television series at Four Star featuring Richard Denning as you. I read practically all the books Brett had written about you and had several story conferences with him, and got to know him quite well… the way people do in Hollywood. I
worked
at my job of writing, Mike. I felt I could do a better script if I knew about
you.
The real you. What sort of man you were and what made you tick. And from things Brett told me, and things he had written about you, I felt you were the one man in the world I could turn to tonight when I walked in here and saw Al dead on the floor. I thought to myself: In all the world there’s only Mike Shayne who could help me out of this mess… and by the damnedest coincidence it had happened right here in your home-town and all I had to do was pick up the phone and call you and everything would be all right.”

Shayne lifted a big hand uncomfortably as she ended. He said drily, “Brett’s a fiction writer and he has a way of exaggerating about me. You didn’t hear from your husband after leaving Denver?”

“Not directly. Months later my folks wrote me that they’d heard rumors that Al had tried to rob a filling station in Western Kansas and been killed in the attempt. I accepted that gladly and proceeded to forget that I had ever been Mrs. Al Donlin. I did well in Hollywood and sent Vicky East to school. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence with honors and then took a job in New York where she met a young lawyer from Miami who became her fiancé. I told you… the wedding is scheduled to take place tomorrow.” She paused and corrected herself fiercely,
“was.”

“How do you suppose Al came to this hotel tonight?”

“Only God can answer that. I’ve thought and thought. I don’t see how he could have known. If he had been aware that I was Carla Andrews… making good money in Hollywood… I’m certain he would have been after me long ago. But if he didn’t know the name I was using, I don’t see how on earth… Her voice trailed off. “I guess it doesn’t matter… really.
Somehow,
he found his way here tonight. I don’t know whether he’s been living in Miami… what he’s been doing over these years… whether he’s still using his own name. I don’t know whether he’s got cronies here… whether anyone else knew he was coming here tonight… or anything.”

Shayne got to his feet. “It won’t hurt to take a look while we’re waiting for Vicky to call you.”

He went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. When he returned a few minutes later he had the folded newspaper clipping in one hand and the parking ticket in the other. “Looks as though he has a car and drove it here tonight.” He laid the ticket down and unfolded the clipping she had torn from the paper and she watched his face breathlessly while he studied it.

“This
may
be the answer.” He sat down beside her and spread the clipping out for her to see. “It’s yesterday’s paper. Is that a good likeness of your daughter?”

“Oh, yes! It’s perfect.” Tears came into her eyes as she studied the picture and she resolutely brushed them away. “Such a happy couple,” she breathed. “It’s the first picture I’ve seen of
him
except a tiny snapshot Vicky sent me months ago.” She began reading the story beneath the picture, her lips moving slightly as she read.

“I mean,” said Shayne patiently, “would he be likely to recognize her from it? It even mentions what hotel she’s staying at. But that can’t be it,” he went on impatiently. “I forgot you said he’d never even seen his daughter.”

“But there was that picture of her when she was fourteen years old in the Denver paper,” she reminded him excitedly. “He
did
see that. And she looks just the same today. Hardly a day older. I bet that’s it! And my name… Carla. I should have changed it in California, I suppose, but I just didn’t bother. I was afraid I’d forget to
answer
to another name.”

“No wallet in his pockets,” Shayne told her. “No identification and nothing to show where he lives or where he came from. A few dollars in his pocket. Just a car parked downstairs with a number on it corresponding to this ticket. It’ll have a registration card.”

“Mike,” she said in a quavering voice, putting her hand tightly on his arm. “Look at Vicky there. Look at her face. So young and innocent. So full of hope and love. Does
she
have to suffer? Does
her
life have to be ruined? What has she
done
to deserve that?”

“She’s a beautiful girl,” Shayne said awkwardly. “But nothing terrible is going to happen to her, Carla. Not if she faces up to it. No Florida jury is going to convict a girl like that of shooting a man in self-defense. In fact, if handled properly I doubt there’ll even be a trial.”

“But there’ll be the publicity. Every sordid word of it spread out in headlines. Look at
him,
Mike.” She put her fingertip beneath the picture of Vicky’s fiancé. “A senator! Son of an old Southern family. Their wedding the society event of the season! She killed her own
father,
Mike. Don’t forget that. You know what the papers will do with it. You know what the senator will do. And think about the child herself, Mike. No matter what happens, once she finds out the truth she’ll always have to live with the fact that she killed her own father. Think how that will warp her. Is that fair? Is it
right?”

“A lot of things happen in this world that aren’t right, Carla. This thing has happened. You’ve got to face it.”

“Why?” she cried vehemently. “Why does Vicky have to face it? Isn’t it enough for her to know that she has killed a man? That’s no small burden to live with. Why make it worse?”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“If we could just let it go at that. If we could… get his body away from here, Mike. Let it be found some other place. You say there’s no identification on him.”

“But he’s got a police record. He’ll eventually be identified by his fingerprints.”

“All right,” she cried out defiantly. “He’ll be identified as Al Donlin, ex-convict. Nothing in the world to connect him with Vicky Andrews. He’ll be dead and buried and no one will really care who killed him. Let it be marked off as an unsolved murder.”

“But your Vicky will still know,” he reminded her.

“What will she know?” she flared. “She will know that an unknown stranger forced himself in here and she was forced to defend herself. I’ll think up some story to satisfy her, Mike. I’ll say he’s a man I met in California after she went off to school who was my lover for a time, and has been bothering me ever since. You can see by her note that he didn’t really tell her anything. She’ll be able to sleep in peace believing that. She’ll be able to go through her marriage tomorrow… go on and find the happiness she deserves in life. She’s strong. I know my Vicky. Given the ghost of a chance, she’ll throw this off and forget about it in a few months.”

“It’s against the law to move a body in a homicide case, Carla,” Shayne told her. “It’s also against the law not to report one to the police immediately.” He looked at his watch and frowned. “It’s past midnight. I can’t wait much longer for Vicky to call you.”

“You mean that, Mike? You really mean it?” She looked at him wonderingly. “You won’t even lift a finger to help?”

“When I was licensed by the state I took an oath to uphold the law,” he told her mildly. “In that respect I’m no different from a policeman.”

“Uphold the law?” She spat out the words contemptuously. “What devious crimes are committed every day in the sacred name of the law. You’re just mouthing words, Mike. My child’s life is at stake. You have already said she will be exonerated by a court… that there probably won’t even be a trial. What difference, then, does it make if his body is found a mile from here? It will simply save her from a nasty scandal… from the utter ruination of a young life. Think about it, Mike. I’m not asking much. Nothing
wrong.
Nothing that will in any way change the end result. If she were a criminal and I were asking you to let her go free it would be different. But she’s done nothing criminal in the eyes of the law you prate about. You admit that yourself. Then why, in the name of God, should she be publicly pilloried?”

He shook his head doggedly. “I can’t be judge and jury. God knows, I’ll help any way I can, Carla. I have a certain amount of influence with the authorities and with the newspapers in Miami. If she comes back and gives herself up, we may be able to keep the whole affair very quiet and out of the papers.”

She said bitterly, “You know that is a false hope, Mike. With Vicky engaged to marry Senator William C. Greer of Miami Beach tomorrow afternoon. You say you’ll help any way you can. What you mean is that you refuse to take a chance by helping her. You’ll help any way you can without sticking your neck out.

“And I was fool enough to believe those stories Brett used to tell me about you. The way you ran circles around the cops here and on the Beach. The way I remember it from a couple of the books Brett wrote about your cases, it wouldn’t be the first time you moved a body in a homicide case. What about that girl who was murdered in your hotel room just when your wife was going off on a vacation? You and that reporter friend of yours drove half over the city of Miami swapping her body from one car to another.”