“Next thing,” he prophesied, “I’ll be looking for corpses under my bed at night. But if I wanted to dispose of a body, I wouldn’t look for a better place than that morgue. Let’s see, this was Nora Carson’s dressing-room, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. She shared it with Miss Moore.” Johnston stood in the doorway while Shayne entered and looked around.
He nodded with satisfaction when he saw a black evening wrap hanging on a hook. “I’m slipping. For the life of me I didn’t know whether I saw that wrap hanging there last night, or whether I just conjured up the memory of seeing it there.”
“It’s Miss Carson’s cloak,” Johnston volunteered. “Is it an important clue?”
Shayne’s face was cheerful. “Not particularly important — except that it ties up with a lot of other things. It helps explain why she might have gone up to her room for a coat last night — and indicates she was in a terrific hurry when she left this dressing-room. Either that,” he frowned, “or when she went out of this room she had no expectation of leaving the building. Well, thanks for showing me around. I guess this is all I can do here.”
Johnston followed him upstairs. “Glad to have been of help. And I’m glad, too, I could set your suspicions of Carson at rest. Do you think Joe Meade is guilty?”
Shayne stopped and faced both Johnston and McLeod. “You both know Meade better than I do. What do you think?”
They looked at each other.
Johnston asked, “How about it, Mac?”
McLeod shook his head. “You can’t make me believe it without proof. He’s a strange one and given to wild ideas, but I wouldn’t put murder among them.”