The Corpse That Never Was by Brett Halliday Page A

better light. All that Shayne had managed to do thus far was to dig up more evidence to clinch the cut-and-dried aspects of the suicide pact.
    And he still didn’t know any more about Robert Lambert than when he started. That irked Shayne. Maybe it wasn’t important to the final solution of the case, but damn it! a man couldn’t just come out of nowhere and carry on a passionate liaison with one of the wealthiest women in Dade County without leaving some traces behind him. How had a man like that met Elsa Nathan… and courted her? What, he wondered, had Elsa been in the habit of doing with her Friday nights while her husband was conveniently going the round of gambling places? At her insistence, too. Paul Nathan had made it very clear that it had been her idea from the very beginning of their marriage. And it was she who had decreed that the servants should have Friday nights off. How far did Robert Lambert go back into her past?
    By the time Shayne reached this point in his thinking he was back in the business section of Miami Beach, and he slowed while he watched for a public telephone sign. He parked in the first convenient place near to one, and looked in the Miami directory for Max Wentworth’s office number.
    He dialled it and let it ring six times before hanging up, and looking again for a home telephone number. He found that Wentworth lived in the Northwest section, not far from Miami’s central business district, and he tried the number listed.
    A woman’s voice answered after the second ring, and Shayne asked, “Is Max Wentworth in?”
    “Not just this minute. Can I take a message?” Her voice sounded listless and disinterested.
    “Do you expect him soon?”
    “He shoulda been home an hour ago. Said he’d be back for lunch and he never is this late. Probably be here any minute… hungry as a bear. Who’s calling?”
    “Tell him it’s Mike Shayne.” He glanced at his watch. “And that I’ll be out to see him in about twenty-five minutes.”
    “Mike Shayne?” Her voice became interested. “Say, ain’t you in his line of work?”
    Shayne said, “We’re practically buddies,” and hung up. He went back to his car and drove across the causeway to the mainland, continued westward across Miami Avenue and found the address he was looking for on a shabby street a few blocks beyond the avenue.
    It was a two-family, one-story house on a larger corner lot. Three young boys were playing on the sparse grass in the unshaded yard, and they all turned to look at Shayne with unabashed curiosity as he went up the dirt walk and rang the doorbell on the right-hand side.
    The door opened and a thin-faced, middle-aged woman looked out at him inquiringly. She wore fresh make-up that looked as though it had been applied hurriedly, and her hair was in frizzy little curls which had evidently just been released from curlers.
    She said, “Mr. Shayne?” and he nodded, and she said, “Max hasn’t showed up yet. Won’t you come in?”
    He followed her down a hall that was littered with roller skates and a velocipede, and into a cluttered living room where the shades were drawn at the windows.
    She snatched a magazine off the most comfortable looking chair in the room, and said uncertainly. “Sit right down. I know Max won’t be long. He always calls me if he can’t make it for lunch. Can I get you a beer… or anything?”
    Shayne said, “No, thanks. You’re Mrs. Wentworth?”
    She nodded and backed away to a shabby sofa where she seated herself with the magazine in her lap. “Is it something about Max’s work you wanted to see him about?”
    “Couple of questions about a case he’s on,” Shayne told her. “He is working, isn’t he?”
    “Oh, he manages to stay pretty busy. Not today though. That’s why I don’t understand him being late for lunch. He promised yesterday that he’d be home all day and take me’n the kids to the beach. Then this morning he made a phone call and said he had to go down to