Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 5, April 1974

“Well, you’re too late,” she said. “I’ve a right to inspect my own property, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“You mean you took the police seal off Mr. Yeager’s door?” I said. “You ought to know better than that, Mrs. Farrell. A police seal is—”

“I can tell you what this one is,” she said. “This one is lying in shreds on Mr. Yeager’s coffee table.”

“Surely you know it’s police practice to—”

“The devil with police practice,” she said, and hung up.

I peeled the wrapper from a cigar, struck a match — and then sat motionless while the flame burned slowly up to my fingers and the significance of what had just happened gradually penetrated my overtired mind.

Then I dropped the match in the ashtray, stuck the unlighted cigar back in my pocket, and reached for the Manhattan telephone book.

The number listed for Mrs. Farrell was the same number I’d just dialed, which meant the number she’d left with Barney Fells had been the number of the phone in her own apartment on the first floor.

And yet, when I’d called her just now, she hadn’t answered the phone in her own apartment; she’d answered the one in Larry Yeager’s.

The answer would seem to be that the phone in Yeager’s apartment was merely an extension, and that when someone called, the phones in both apartments rang at the same time.

And if that was the case, Larry Yeager would have no listing in the directory.

I looked under the Yeagers. There were fewer than I would have guessed, only a dozen or so, and Larry Yeager was not among them.

I picked up the phone and dialed Mrs. Farrell again.

“Yes?” the imperious voice said.

“Detective Selby,” I said. “It’s important that I know whether or not Mr. Yeager’s phone is an extension on the one in your own apartment.”

“I’m sure I can’t even begin to imagine why that should be impor—”

“This is serious police business, Mrs. Farrell. Answer the question, please. Is it an extension, or isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” she said, practically spitting the words, and slammed the receiver in my ear.

A few minutes later, Stan Rayder walked in. “Man, I’ll have to say one thing for you, Pete,” he said as he sat down at his desk. “You’re one guy that can really look thoughtful. What’re you brooding about? Your misspent youth?”

“Not this time,” I said. “This time, it’s Larry Yeager’s ex-wife. Reba Daniels.”

“Why? Because she’s such a dish?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Why, then? Hell, Pete, that woman walked out of Yeager’s life years ago.”

“I know,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have walked back in again.”

Stan looked at me for a long moment. “And walked back in with a gun in her hand, you mean?”

“That could be, Stan,” I said. “That just could be.”

X

Six hours of hard, fast work later, Stan and I sat on the white-leather sofa in Reba Daniels’ living room, listening to the sound of high heels coming along the corridor outside. The carpeting out there had been rolled up for waxing, and the ping of the heels was sharp, almost metallic.

The heels paused at the door and a key grated in the lock. Mrs. Daniels opened the door, saw Stan and me, and stopped stock-still in the doorway.

“Come in, Mrs. Daniels,” Stan said quietly.

The gray-green eyes beneath their long, sooty lashes seemed to grow a little darker and the overhead light in the corridor behind her caught the golden highlights in her Shoulder-length auburn hair. She was wearing an expensively simple powder-blue dress that clung to her body tightly enough to mold the dimple in her naval and limn the edges of her lingerie.

“I’m not going to ask you what you’re doing here,” she said, closing the door behind her. “I’m simply going to ask you to leave.”

“We’ll be leaving in good time, Mrs. Daniels,” I said. “Meanwhile, perhaps you’d better sit down.”

She hesitated, then walked to one of the chairs across from us and sat down.

“Just to satisfy my curiosity,” she said, “would you mind telling me how you got in here?”

“By pushing the blade of my knife against the bevel of the bolt on your door,” I said.

“And the reason you wanted in here in the first place?”

“Because it was the one place where, sooner or later, you were sure to come,” I said. “And maybe you’d satisfy our curiosity too, Mrs. Daniels. When I was here yesterday, I wanted to call Larry Yeager’s apartment. But I couldn’t find your phone book. You were in the bedroom, changing your clothes for your trip to Bellevue, and I called to you through the door to ask you where it was. You said you’d taken it into the bedroom earlier, and that you’d look up Yeager’s number for me. A few moments later, you called it out to me. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what puzzles us is how you could have looked it up. You see, it isn’t listed in the book.” I paused. “You just pretended to look it up, Mrs. Daniels.”

She didn’t say anything. The green eyes weren’t merely dark now; they were almost black.