Shayne took a drag on his cigarette and frowned. “Former show-girl, isn’t she?”
“Right out of Minsky’s.” Rourke took another sip from the bottle and firmly corked it. “You see those first shots she gave the boys that morning?”
Shayne nodded. “X marks the spot.”
“Only the important spot in those pix was a Y and it didn’t need inking in.” Rourke chuckled obscenely. “You think there’s a deal in the making?”
“I don’t know. Fill me in on the actual job. Sort of amateurish, wasn’t it?”
Rourke shrugged. “I dunno. Call it that if you want, but a pro couldn’t have done better. There the bracelet was, lying on top of her bureau, where she’d tossed it the night before. There was a ladder up to her window with the screen cut out. No fingerprints. No clues. No nothing.”
“Did she always leave it lying around?”
“Only when she was too tight to bother with the big wall-safe in the sitting room between her room and her husband’s. After this happened a couple of times in the past, her maid had standing orders from Julio never to leave the room at night until she’d seen the bracelet locked up.”
“And?”
Timothy Rourke shrugged cheerfully. “Your guess is as good as mine. Which is that the maid was more afraid of Laura than of Julio. Her story is that her mistress threw a couple of slippers at her that night when she wanted to lock the thing up, and that, when she went in to knock on Julio’s door to inform him, he couldn’t be wakened. My guess is she didn’t try very hard.”
“So the maid knew the bracelet was left out that night?” said Shayne, thoughtfully.
“Right. And a lot of other people might have guessed it would be if they saw Laura staggering home. Petey Painter put the maid through the wringer plenty, so why not ask him?”
“I will. The burglar didn’t arouse Mrs. Peralta?”
“Hell,” said Rourke, disgustedly, “a whole herd of elephants wouldn’t have aroused her from the one she had hung on, from what I gathered.” He reached for the bottle and took a long swig, grimaced and glared at the amber fluid remaining. “Nasty stuff,” he muttered. “Responsible for nine-tenths of the troubles of modern civilization, according to statistics.”