Brett Halliday - So Lush, So Deadly

“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.”

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 had 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!”