Brett Halliday - So Lush, So Deadly

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.

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?”