Free The Corpse That Never Was by Brett Halliday

bag into a parcel not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes and carried in a woman’s handbag.
    Rourke whistled expressively as he looked at them with Shayne. “That wasn’t in the police report. Would have been a nice touch of color for my story. I understand the guy was practically stripped for action. Why not her?”
    Shayne shrugged. “He was waiting for her in pajamas and robe… and probably with the drinks already mixed. How the hell does anybody know how the mind of a suicide works?”
    He went out of the bedroom and into the living room where he skirted around Garroway kneeling in front of the stain on the rug, hesitated and then went to the telephone table at the end of the sofa, leaned over and flipped open the directory to the Miami Beach section of the book. He turned to the N’s and found, “Nathan, Paul,” with a pencil mark in front of it. His frown deepened as he took a slip of paper from his pocket and compared the telephone number with one of those Miss Mayhew had given him in her office downstairs.
    It was the Miami Beach number that had been called three times. There was no doubt that the occupant of this room had telephoned the Nathan residence on the Beach each Friday evening since Robert Lambert had rented the place… just about half an hour before Elsa Nathan had been observed arriving at his door. Old Eli, Shayne thought with a grimace, wasn’t going to like any of this one little bit. If the flaming nightgown and the slippers in the closet were identified as hers…
    But, who the hell else did he think they belonged to? Eli’s theory that she had been lured here last night to be murdered by her husband, somehow, had been screwy on the face of it. Too bad because it meant kissing goodbye to fifty grand, but there it was.
    Timothy Rourke sauntered out of the bedroom as Shayne straightened up and closed the telephone book. He asked sardonically, “What progress is the great sleuth making?” and Shayne shrugged his shoulders without replying.
    Sergeant Deitch came out of the kitchen as they stood there, and said pleasantly, “Nothing worth a damn in there. That guy Lambert was either one hell of a meticulous housekeeper, or else he didn’t do any housekeeping here. No sign that a pot or pan, or a dish or piece of silverware has been touched. Some old prints… month or so… presumably female… probably the former maid.”
    Shayne said absently, “I don’t think Lambert rented this apartment with any idea of setting up housekeeping. Best bet right now is that he only came here for Friday nights.”
    “And for a lot more interesting reason than cooking dinner,” observed Rourke with a leer. “You going to keep on sticking around, Mike?”
    “For a little while. You go ahead if you want to.”
    “Yeh,” said Rourke. “I could use a drink right about now. Come out and grab one with me?”
    “Some stuff in the kitchen,” Sergeant Deitch informed them with a grin. “Dark rum and crème de menthe.”
    Rourke repressed a shudder. “Any cyanide to make it interesting?”
    “No cyanide,” the sergeant told him gravely. “But there is a bottle of bonded bourbon with a couple of good slugs left in it.”
    Rourke said, “Ah,” and headed happily for the kitchen. Shayne started to follow him, checked himself and asked Garroway, “Did you analyze the liquor in the bottles last night?”
    “Yeh. All three of them. They’re okay. The cyanide was added after the stuff was mixed in the glasses.”
    In the kitchen, Shayne found the reporter breaking ice cubes from a container and dropping them into a tall glass. The refrigerator door stood wide open and a glance inside showed the shelves to be completely bare.
    On the drainboard at the left of the sink stood a fifth of dark rum and a squat tenth of crème de menthe.
    Only a little liquor was gone from each bottle. In contrast, the bottle of bourbon on the other side of the drainboard which Rourke was uncorking held no more than six