“About two fingers on the rocks.” The chief turned to the girl and said, “Now Mrs. Carrol, don’t you think you’d better start telling the whole truth?”
“I have,” she vowed. “Every word is the truth. If this man is really Michael Shayne and he didn’t send me the key, and telephone me to come here last night, who did?” Shayne came in from the kitchenette with Gentry’s drink and set it on the desk within easy reach.
“You still insist this man told you his name was Michael Shayne?” Gentry asked.
“Definitely.”
The chief’s deep sigh was expelled with a sound between a grunt and a weary groan. He took a long sip of the pale drink and said, “How do you read it, Mike?” Shayne sat down and leaned forward with his arms folded on the desk, his face a mask of concentration. “Accepting her story at face value for the moment, how and why would anyone impersonate me? Let’s work on the how first.” Turning to Nora, he continued, “You say your only contact with this detective was through a lawyer in Wilmington. That is, until you arrived in Miami yesterday and took over.”
“I’ve told you over and over that Mr. Bates handled everything from there,” she said irritably.
“This Bates is your lawyer?”
“Well, he’s actually Ralph’s lawyer. But he took my side against Ralph in the divorce action.”
“And you have no knowledge of the actual mechanics of how he contacted this detective in Miami who represented himself to be me?”
“No. I really don’t know.”