“Hey! For God’s sake don’t say you saw me carrying her body across the street,” Shayne shouted.
Rourke grinned. “I turned back the cover for a look at her lying in the bed back there and I’m not putting that down.” The grin went from his face. He said gravely, “I can’t use the kidnap note nor the stuff about Stallings accusing you.”
“Not yet, but you will. I’d be just as happy to let that wait until Stallings decides to give it out. Besides, you’ve got to make your story sound as if you haven’t been lugging her body around half the night helping me dispose of it.”
“Yeh,” Rourke mused. “You get a hell of a story and can’t use it without getting yourself dressed up in a new striped suit and peeking through bars.” He finished the notes, opened the bottle of Scotch, and drank lingeringly.
“You can do something else for me,” Shayne told him. “Make a note of this. A maid has disappeared from the Stallings estate. First name is Lucile. Brunette, stocky build, thick lips.”
“The one stood you up tonight?” Rourke chuckled. “Going to advertise for her, eh? That’ll make a nice human interest story. Private detective seeks soul mate. Brunette—”
“Nix,” Shayne said sharply. “First thing in the morning I want you to start calling the employment agencies that handle domestic workers. See if you can get a line on her that way. I’m worried about her.”
In terse sentences Shayne told Rourke of the brief talk he had with Lucile in the garden and of her inexplicable absence from the house later in the night. “Maybe she has been fired. Maybe it has nothing whatever to do with her talk with me, but I couldn’t help feeling there was something back of it,” he concluded. “I’d like to know just what she was going to tell me.”
“Have you thought about the body of the girl who was found in the bay?” Rourke asked. “Remember the police call we heard while we were going back to retrieve your first corpse?”
“It was a good hunch, but no soap.” He told Rourke of his hurried trip to the morgue.