So Lush, So Deadly

by Brett Halliday

  This was emphatic enough, and the girl watched him with approval. But Shayne caught a movement at the corners of his mouth. Dotty De Rham, who had been married to him three years, might know him a little better than a girl who had been living with him two weeks.

  “And she said she’d put some Winslow stock in your name,” Shayne went on.

  “She knows what she can do with that stock.”

  “Did she have any cash with her on the boat?”

  “Dotty always has cash. It’s one of her eccentricities.”

  “As much as five thousand?”

  “I’ve known her to carry that much. Then sometimes we’ll be driving on a parkway and she won’t have a quarter for the toll.”

  Shayne got off the table and looked around. “Ursula, how long have these people been living with you?”

  Smoke trickled from her nostrils. “I stopped answering questions when I was a little girl.”

  De Rham’s eyes were bright. “Did she tell you I walked off with five thousand bucks?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  He smiled and spread his arms. “Search me.”

  “All right. Turn out your pockets.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I’m not?”

  He took De Rham by the elbow and squeezed the nerve. De Rham came to his feet, his body twisting. The girl started to move, but one of Shayne’s hands shot out and kept her in her chair.

  “People have been telling me lies, as usual,” Shayne said. “I’m used to that, but when I run up against a point I can check, I like to check it. H., get me your bag and empty it on the table, and don’t give me any trouble.”

  When he released De Rham, the smaller man twitched himself into some kind of order and began taking things from his pockets and piling them on the table.

  “Do as he says, H. It’s unimportant. You don’t strike me as being exactly stupid, Shayne. How could I carry all that money in my pockets?”

  Shayne glanced at the objects as they accumulated on the table. The girl had hung onto her lipstick and eye-liner, he noticed, though she hadn’t used them recently. He went over De Rham carefully. The little bearded man tried to keep his bearing casual, but his skinny body was shaking with fury. Shayne ran his hands down his legs, probed the cuffs of his pants and the insides of his shoes.

  “Are you going to search me, too?” the girl said. “You could probably get away with it. You’re so strong.”

  Shayne grunted and gave her the same attention he had given De Rham. Then he turned to the room. There was no closet. The only furniture besides the table and chairs was a chipped bureau. One drawer contained diapers and other baby things in orderly piles. The baby seemed to have as many material possessions as its mother. H. and De Rham each had a suitcase. Shayne checked them quickly, then ran his finger along the top of the door and the windows.

  “What are you looking for?” H. said at last, after watching him furiously. “Heroin or something?”

  “A key.”

  He hoped to get a reaction, but she had her sunglasses back on.

  He dusted his fingertips. “All right, De Rham. I’ll tell her you’re happily established and nothing can make you change your mind, especially offers of money.”

  “That’s the message,” De Rham said. “And the next time you feel like breaking into a private apartment to turn everything upside down and intimidate people, I’d suggest you get a search warrant and bring some cops.”

  Shayne looked at him narrowly. “Do you really want cops, De Rham?”

  He went out.

  CHAPTER 9

  Shayne shut himself in a phone booth with a handful of change. First he called Richardson, the Beach detective who was handling Henry De Rham’s disappearance. Shayne told him he had found the missing husband, alive and living with a new girl.

  “That’s the way it goes,” Richardson said philosophically. “I was getting a different set of vibrations, but it’s not the first time I’ve been wrong. I’ll cancel the Wanted sheets tomorrow. Thanks, Mike. It’s really just as well—now Painter can’t get on me for insubordination.”

  After hanging up Shayne dialed a New York number and fed coins into the phone until the operator was satisfied. Joshua Loring answered.

  “There you are, Michael. I was beginning to worry.” Shayne gave him a quick report.

  Loring sighed. “Poor Dotty doesn’t have much luck with men. I hope she doesn’t think she’ll improve matters by exchanging Henry for this Paul Brady. He’s more of the same, I’d say. We don’t use the term fortune-hunter any more, but the practice still seems to exist.”

  “Do you have anything more about her finances?”

  “That Hoboken real estate deal is moving along. The closing’s set for next Tuesday, which must mean that Dotty’s been pushing them. I talked to her again this afternoon. She sounded much better, her old self, and I thought I could take a chance and mention the Hoboken sale. There are ways I could have heard about it without doing any snooping. Mike, she blew up. I’ve never heard her so furious. Then I made the mistake of telling her I’d asked Tom Moseley to look in on her. She hung up on me!” He paused. “I’ve seen them together socially, and they seemed to hit it off together well enough. I don’t understand the fury. Damn it, it’s so hard to know what to do.”

  “Is Moseley here yet?”

  “Yes, I just heard from him. He’s at the St. Albans and he’ll wait for your call. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to send him to see Dotty until he’d talked to you and now I’m glad I didn’t. Have you been able to work out any plan of action, Mike? I know you must have handled blackmail cases before, but what do you do about it? How do you proceed?”

  “You have to play it by ear, Joshua. Most blackmail is seventy percent bluff, and blackmailers are the world’s jumpiest people. They can usually be handled. But we don’t know if she’s really being blackmailed, or who’s doing it or what’s being used. If you’re willing to pay for it I’d like to put De Rham under surveillance. I don’t think that hippy set-up is what it seems, or especially permanent.”

  “Whatever you think is necessary, Mike, of course.”

  “I don’t see how he could be blackmailing her unless Brady knows about it, to the extent of being in on it. It’s possible they may be working together. That would explain a few things. There’s one way you could help. You must have some idea about where she’s vulnerable. She’s had psychiatric treatment and she’s spent time in a mental hospital. Why? What brought it on?”

  There was a pause. Loring broke it by saying slowly, “There was an arson episode, Mike, a little ridiculous and fortunately not too serious. She was thrown by a horse, and that night she set fire to the stable. She set several small fires while she was in the hospital. They were put out before any damage was done.”

  Shayne frowned, trying to remember what Petrocelli had said about a fire on the Nefertiti. The top of a coffee table had been burned. But how did it fit?

  “Can you tell me anything else, Joshua? Was there any fire that didn’t get put out in time?”

  “Yes,” Loring said with difficulty. “The main Winslow plant burned to the ground last year. The insurance company paid the claim without question, but I must confess—”

  He stopped. “In the light of those earlier—”

  “Where was Mrs. De Rham when it happened?”

  “In Boston, eighty miles away, at her husband’s college reunion. Not many people know about those other episodes in Dotty’s history, and I—don’t want you to think I was remiss. I did make inquiries. The plant was a fire trap, and the marshal established definitely that the fire began in an overloaded electrical circuit.”

  “Was anybody killed?”

  Loring’s voice was unhappy. “A watchman. He was asleep—drunk—and he didn’t turn in an alarm.”

  “Was De Rham with her in Boston?”

  “Yes, and so was Brady, I believe. You can see why I hesitated about telling you. It’s
a sticky business. I don’t think anyone could possess any evidence that the fire marshal and the insurance investigators overlooked, but if there is anything and you acquire it—”

  “Yeah. It has to go to the cops. This would be a good time to pull me off if you want to play it that way.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late. It could only end in a different sort of disaster. No, stay with it, Mike, and call me if you get anything, never mind how late. I’m sleeping lightly these nights.”

  Shayne hung up and called the St. Albans, a big new hotel on the Beach. In a moment he was talking to Tom Moseley.

  “Mr. Loring told me you’d be calling,” Moseley said briskly when the preliminaries were out of the way. “I think he may be worrying about this more than the circumstances warrant. He’s a bachelor, as you may know, and he takes a godfather’s duties seriously. Dotty’s a lot more competent than he gives her credit for being.”

  “I have a message to deliver from her husband, and then I think we’d better talk.”

  “I’ll be in. I hope we can wind this up by noon tomorrow—I’d like to resume my vacation. I think the way to do it is find out as much as we can before we confront her. But I’ve always found her entirely responsible in financial matters, which is what makes these cash transfers seem so strange. If Brady’s stealing from her, and that’s the way it looks to me, we may need De Rham’s help. Would he cooperate, do you think? He and Brady are friends.”

  “I don’t think that would stand in his way.”

  “How did she strike you, Shayne? I know she’s been drinking heavily, but did she seem in control? Capable of making decisions?”

  “I only saw her for a couple of minutes. Not long enough to make any kind of judgment.”

  “Yes. Well.”

  The conversation trailed off.

  Shayne was on the Julia Tuttle Causeway, crossing the bay, when the phone rang on the seat beside him.

  A girl’s voice said breathlessly, “I’ve been trying and trying and trying! This is Sally Lyon. You met me this morning?”

  “Sally who?”

  “Lyon. You didn’t exactly meet me. I was on the next boat. I was wondering who you were and what you were doing on the Nefertiti, which is a kind of mystery ship in this marina—all that skulking around and dramatic lowering of voices, and there your picture was in the paper you gave me. You know, with the story about the girl who was killed on the expressway. Michael Shayne, eh?”

  Shayne held the phone clamped between his shoulder and his jaw. He was driving with undiminished speed.

  “I’ll give you my autograph the next time I come by. How does it happen I don’t hear music? Don’t girls your age go out dancing any more?”

  “I’m not all that youthful!” she said with spirit. “I’m twenty. And for your information, I’m no longer a virgin.”

  Shayne snorted. “Congratulations.”

  “Laugh. To answer your question about dancing, I’m not out dancing because I don’t know anybody in Miami. Dad and Mother think it would be just too icky to stay at a hotel when we have a boat, but you meet people in hotels. None of their friends happen to have anybody even remotely my age so I’ve had to concentrate on my tan. I don’t suppose you noticed.”

  “Sally, believe me, in that bathing suit I noticed. How are things on the Nefertiti?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you!” She caught her breath. When she resumed speaking it was almost in a whisper. “I’m at an open phone in the office and people keep passing by. Something very funny has been happening, if you ask me.”

  Shayne’s smile had faded. “I’m headed your way, Sally. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “If you’re going to call me Sally, I’m going to call you Mike, all right? Mother and Dad are having dinner at the Sans Souci. I was supposed to go and watch them having a good time, but those dinners get to be a drag for everybody. This is Dad’s vacation, and there’s no reason he shouldn’t drink as much as he wants to, and Mother’s no slouch in the hard liquor department when she gets going, either. I think people that age ought to do their drinking in private. I don’t mean Mother and Dad get sloppy, but they say things they certainly wouldn’t back home in Baltimore. I sit there and suffer, and I guess it shows. They go home early because poor Sally has to get up in the morning for tennis lessons. Tonight I pretended I had a stomach ache and I wasn’t up to one of those fifty-course Sans Souci meals. I had a milk shake and a dog and I thought I’d go to bed early but it was too stuffy in the cabin so I brought up an air mattress and lay down on the deck.”

  The phone cut out briefly as Shayne left the causeway.

  “—noise,” she said.

  “I missed part of that,” he said. “The last I heard you were lying on the deck.”

  “Then you missed the main part. I heard this funny splashing noise and somebody breathing in the water. Or rather, not breathing. Those little bubbles, you know. Blub, blub. I was petrified!”

  “What was happening on the Nefertiti?”

  “Nothing, for once. The lights were on but I couldn’t see anybody. To tell the truth, from that bubbling sound I thought they might be sinking. I looked over the rail, and ducked out of sight, fast. There was this skin diver in the water!”

  “Next to the Nefertiti?”

  “Right next. I was on the back deck—you know what they call it, aft—and we stick out enough so I could look right down at him. His head and the tanks showed up against the white paint. He was fastening something to the back of the boat.”

  “How big?”

  “I couldn’t tell, but there was a wire attached to it, I think, going into the water. He turned around and pushed off. Blub, blub. I think I saw his head after a minute, but maybe it was a log or something. With some people I could knock on the door and say, ‘Excuse me, somebody just did something to the back of your boat.’ But Paul Brady. He can be really cute at times, but he gets very grumpy and alienated after a few drinks. Then I thought of calling you. I never talked to anybody on a car phone before.”

  “Sally, I have to hang up. I’m in traffic. Stay in the office and I’ll honk twice. Are you still wearing that bathing suit?”

  “Heavens, no. I wouldn’t dare wear that in public.”

  CHAPTER 10

  He drew up in front of the marina office and tapped his horn twice. Sally ran out and jumped in. She was wearing a skivvy shirt and the briefest possible shorts. She tumbled against him and hugged his arm. Shayne reminded himself that she was not for him, and began to cruise along Palmetto Drive, looking for a place to leave the Buick. A car pulled out and he beat a Cadillac to the opening, braking hard and reversing savagely, forcing the Cadillac driver to move fast to avoid a crumpled fender.

  “Sensational!” Sally exclaimed. “I knew you’d be ruthless.”

  After leaving the car she said more seriously, “Mike, kidding aside. What if it’s a bomb?”

  “It could be, but it probably wouldn’t be wired to a detonator. The chances are it’s a listening device.”

  “That’s what I thought at first, but things are so keyed up on that boat—”

  “Keyed up how?”

  “I mean, we’re all on top of everybody else and the only way you can operate is by being half-way cordial. If they don’t want people to talk to them, why come to this kind of place? You’re going to think I’m a busybody, but there’s a garbage collection every day, and really, people who drink as much as they do and don’t want their neighbors to count the bottles ought to dump them at sea. Mike, they average three whole fifths a day, the two of them. I don’t see how they do it.”

  “Do they sleep in separate cabins?”

  “How should I know? I’m no peeping Tom.” She added with a laugh, “I don’t know what I’m being so defensive about. Yes, they sleep in separate cabins, but they’re shut up in her cabin together the rest of the time. What I meant by keyed up—yesterday Paul came storming out after being in there with her for a couple of hours. He ha
d a pencil in one hand and he snapped it in two. He saw me looking at him and he tried to smile, but it was like cracking ice. He was holding the rail with his other hand so hard I could see the white lines through his tan.”

  “You make a good witness, Sally.”

  “Mike, what are you doing for them, can you tell me?”

  “I was hired to find her husband. I found him just before you called me.”

  “You actually talked to him?” She sounded disappointed. “I guess I read too many mystery stories. Do you know what I thought? I thought they—”

  “You’re not the only one.”

  Approaching her boat, they fell silent. After boarding she took his hand and led him to the side facing the Nefertiti. There was a light in the salon. The record player was going, the volume turned low. It was an anti-war folk song. Shayne stumbled against an air mattress and nearly fell.

  “After he swam off where did you see his head come up?”

  Her breast touched his arm as she pointed toward the next marina, a hundred yards to the north.

  “But I couldn’t be sure, Mike.”

  Shayne began to undress.

  “Mike, are you doing what I think you’re doing? That’s a wonderful idea. When two people feel like doing it I think it’s hypocrisy not to—”

  He continued to undress without replying. When he had stripped to his shorts she came in against him.

  “I know you’re working now,” she said, giving him a quick hug. “But will you keep it in mind for later? I’m better than you probably think.”

  “It’s lucky for you I know you don’t mean it.”

  He swung over the rail and dropped to the catwalk. She whispered alter him fiercely, “I do mean it!”

  He slipped into the water, feeling the immediate pull of the tide. It was running strongly. Two silent strokes took him to the Nefertiti’s stern. He waved his hand gently until he touched the wire, and followed it to the little amplifying pick-up which had been attached by suction to the Nefertiti’s planking.

  It was no bigger than a half dollar, and nearly as thin. He had tested Japanese units this same size and shape, and if it was in good working order it could pick up every murmur and rustle inside Mrs. De Rham’s cabin.