Counterfeit Wife by Brett Halliday Page B

handed it to Gentry.
    He said, “Drink that down, Will, and tell us what you found out in there.”
    “Not much of anything, Mike,” he said quietly, belching out a cloud of smoke from a freshly lit cigar. “The dead man appears to be Leonard Slocum, minor executive of an oil firm, recently transferred here from Mobile, Alabama. Contents of his wallet and suitcase are about what you’d expect from a man in his position. No fingerprints in the apartment except yours, his, and another set, probably the maid’s. The vase could be the death weapon. It’s heavy enough, and a man could get a pretty good grip on the neck of it, but the Doc doubts it. More likely the barrel of a heavy gun. Slocum’s prints are on the vase, but they could have been pressed there by the killer as a silly kind of blind after he’d wiped his own prints off. Doc is testing the blood on the vase to see if it’s Slocum’s—or yours, Mike,” he ended solemnly.
    Shayne nodded. “What else?”
    “Not much,” Gentry sighed. “A few drops of blood on the carpet in here leading to the front door. Didn’t that vase use to stand on the shelf by the door?”
    “For years,” Shayne told him. “If someone knocked and Slocum answered the door and was attacked, he could’ve grabbed it to defend himself.”
    “Or the killer could have grabbed it to use on him,” Gentry countered. “He may have been attacked right there in the bedroom, by someone who entered with a key and surprised him in bed.”
    “What about the blood drops leading to the door?”
    “If the killer got slugged he could have dropped those as he went out. Slocum’s about your size, Mike. How many people in Miami knew he’d be sleeping in that bed tonight and that you wouldn’t?”
    “Not many.”
    “Slocum isn’t the type of man to have many enemies here. Besides, he’s a stranger. On the other hand, Miami is lousy with mugs who’d like nothing better than to knock you off. By the time the killer swung a couple of times and bashed in Slocum’s face, he might not have known the difference.”
    Shayne didn’t argue with him or point out several inconsistencies in this theory. At the moment he was quite happy to have the police go on thinking Slocum had been killed as a result of mistaken identity. He wished he could think so, but too many things pointed to Perry and Senator Irvin, with himself as the innocent instigator.
    “Why did you come back to Miami so fast?” asked Gentry casually.
    Shayne grinned and it hurt his swollen lip. “Didn’t you like the story I told Painter?”
    Gentry set his glass down and got up to go over to the coveralls and socks which Shayne had discarded. He bent over them and studied them for a moment, then went back to his chair. “Some garage mechanic has been wearing those coveralls, and there’s old grease on the bottom of your socks.”
    Shayne didn’t say anything. Rourke tried to help by remarking, “Some garage mechanics have good-looking wives and are jealous of them.”
    Gentry paid no attention to the remark. He frowned and said, “I keep thinking about that dead Negro in the basement garage of the house that burned tonight. The boys found an open razor gripped in his right hand. He was about the size to have worn those coveralls.”
    “How did the fire start?” Shayne asked blandly.
    Rourke sat quietly, looking suspiciously from one to the other, trying to fathom the meaning of the seemingly irrelevant remarks.
    “Short circuit in the electric wiring, apparently,” Gentry rumbled. “Fuses kept blowing out and when they had no more, some damn fool tried to make a connection by putting a penny in the fuse box socket. If it wasn’t for a telephone call I received I wouldn’t think so much about it,” he ended gently.
    Shayne nodded. “I know what you mean. Have you picked up Irvin?”
    “Not yet.” Gentry took a couple of swallows of his drink, then added, “I’ve got men asking questions.”
    Shayne tugged