Free Counterfeit Wife by Brett Halliday

clotted blood in the cut. He wet his hair and combed it with his fingers, then loitered in the room until he felt sure five minutes had passed.
    When he called Gentry again, the chief of police sounded weary and worried and angry.
    “Mike! Where in God’s name are you?”
    “Out on North Miami Avenue.”
    There was a long, indrawn sigh at the other end of the wire. “I just got Petey Painter out of here. I’ve spent the last hour proving to him that you were on a plane bound for New Orleans. How the living hell did you get back to town? And why?”
    “I missed my plane again.”
    “No, you didn’t. We checked with National. We know you were aboard when Flight Sixty-two took off tonight. The first stop was Palm Beach forty minutes later and there wasn’t any plane back. Even if you had quit the plane there and driven back the way you drive, you couldn’t possibly have reached Miami by one o’clock. That’s the only reason there isn’t a pick-up out for you right now,” Gentry ended.
    “Why? What the hell is Painter trying to hang on me now?”
    “It doesn’t matter much since you couldn’t possibly have been here. I suppose you did jump the plane at Palm Beach and drive back. Why, Mike? Why didn’t you keep on traveling away from here? Did you know you were sticking your neck out a mile? God in heaven! Less than three hours ago you were selling everyone on the idea you had to be on that midnight plane. Was that just a stall? Are you mixed up in this kidnaping? Is that why the fellow claimed he recognized you at the wreck where you couldn’t possibly have been?”
    “Hold it, Will. What kidnaping? What fellow and what wreck?”
    “The Deland kidnaping, goddamn it. There was an automobile wreck on Thirty-sixth at one-fifteen. A man and a woman in a gray sedan. The woman was cut and knocked out, and the man got away before anyone stopped him. One of the onlookers told police that he saw the man and swears it was you. Says he knows you well. Fellow by the name of Farrel.”
    “Chick Farrel?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve got his statement here. Edward H. Farrel.”
    “That’s Chick,” Shayne told him. “He must have mistaken someone else for me.”
    “Of course he did. That’s the idea I’ve been selling Painter. But when Petey finds out you did jump the plane in Palm Beach, he’ll figure you had an atomic rocket waiting to whisk you back, and even the discrepancy in time won’t convince him you weren’t in that wreck.”
    “What would it matter if I were?” Shayne demanded.
    “Plenty. The people in that car were the Deland kidnapers.”
    “I haven’t heard of any kidnaping lately.”
    “Neither had I until Painter came around an hour ago. They’re on the Beach, and it’s all been hush-hush until midnight tonight when the expected contact failed. The ransom was paid tonight. Fifty G’s. But the kid wasn’t returned by midnight as promised. They don’t know what went wrong. The contact man hasn’t showed either.”
    “You say the couple in the wrecked sedan were the kidnapers? How do you know?”
    “Because the girl’s body was crammed in the trunk of the sedan,” Gentry told him grimly.
    Shayne’s belly muscles tightened. He asked, “Did the woman confess?”
    “We haven’t got her,” Gentry rumbled. “She wasn’t hurt much. Just a crack across the head that knocked her out. She refused to go to a hospital, and an obliging cop drove her home and left her there.”
    “After the body of the kidnaped girl was found in her car?” Shayne asked incredulously.
    “It wasn’t found until later,” Gentry snarled. “None of them thought to look, of course. That would be too much to expect of the brainless wonders on my force.”
    “If you know where she is or where she lives—”
    “She’d skipped by the time anyone thought to go after her. What’s your interest, Mike? Are you mixed up in this thing?”
    “Right up to my neck, Will,” said Shayne bitterly.
    “How?”
    “If