Brett Halliday - So Lush, So Deadly

“Cash must have been mentioned.”

“I’m sure it was. He wouldn’t sneak back just to see the will with his own eyes. That’s been trotted out so often it’s lost its magic. They had a private conversation. I tried to listen, but that’s a tight-fitting door. All I know is what she just told me. He said he was having fun and he wouldn’t think of coming back for less than fifty now, in real bills, and twenty a year from now on, which is the sort of deal I’d like to get from Katharine and I haven’t a prayer of getting. You know, your own checkbook. The difference between me and Henry is, he’s got a tape.”

“Proving what? That Mrs. De Rham burned down her factory for the insurance?”

Brady raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know about proves. I suppose you heard about the fire from Loring?”

Shayne snapped his fingers. “Come on, Paul.”

“I told you I can’t tell a story that way. You’ve already spoiled a couple of good effects. Do you know about our Fifth Reunion?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Take it easy, Mike. Hell, it’s only one in the morning. There was a dance that night, in the indoor tennis courts. Henry was on the committee and he had plenty to do. There are always enough unmarried classmates at the Fifth to take care of loose wives. What Dotty did-she denies it, but from the way she’s been acting since she heard there was a tape I tend not to believe her-was get in her car and hit the Mass Turnpike, which lets you move across the state at eighty miles an hour. If she was missing a couple of hours Henry would think she’d ducked out to a parked car with a stag.”

“Who’s talking now?”

“I’m talking. I’m paraphrasing. This plant was a terrible dinosaur, high cost, lousy transportation, a tough union. Everybody always kept saying they could start making money again if they could only move to South Carolina, to take advantage of all that lovely nonunion labor, that lovely modern facility the state was willing to give them for a dollar forty-nine, forgiving state and local taxes for the first ten years. But they couldn’t afford the move. The fire made it possible. The minute Henry heard about it he rushed to the scene. The night watchman was in the local hospital with bad burns. Henry got in with a tape recorder. He must have claimed to be a cop of some kind-he’s a great actor. The guy was coming out of a coma. After he finished talking to Henry he went back in the coma and died.”

“You don’t know what he said?”

“Whatever it was, it was hot enough so Henry thinks he can use it to collect some long-range dough. What are you looking so doubtful about?”

“There are laws against defrauding insurance companies, not to mention laws against arson and manslaughter. She could lose quite a bit of money and go to jail.”

“Hell, I realize that. That’s the point. She wants you to find out if he actually has a tape and to get it for her if he does. The price tag on this is ten thousand bucks.”

“If I find any evidence that a crime has been committed,” Shayne said, “it has to go to the appropriate district attorney. He’ll decide what to do with it.”

“You’re kidding. I’m talking about something worth an easy ten thousand.”

Shayne drank his cognac without replying. Brady studied him, then stood up.

“I wasn’t expecting this. I thought you guys were supposed to be pragmatic. Give me another few minutes.”

He went back into the stateroom. Shayne had finished his cognac by the time he came back. He fidgeted around the room and started to speak several times before saying finally, “She said to go ahead, she’ll take a chance on it, to get him off her back. She’s hanging over the john with her head in her hands. Does she know what’s at stake? Probably not.”

He dropped into his chair. “She mumbled something like, ‘Can’t arrest me, it was Tom.’ Who the hell would that be?”

“Tom Moseley?”

Brady looked up. “Moseley,” he said slowly, then shrugged. “I’m beginning to unravel. I’m not the type to make decisions.”

He picked up a coin, a quarter, and flipped it, catching it neatly and clapping it on the back of his other hand. “Heads. Henry told her if she didn’t believe he had it he’d play it for her. That means it’s here in Miami.”

“It’s not in his room,” Shayne said. “I looked for a claims check or a key to a coin locker. I didn’t find anything.”

“Here’s an idea. When he left tonight I thought I’d better find out what he was using for transportation-he wouldn’t depend on cabs. I whipped out to the other end of the dock. And he was driving a red Volkswagen, Mike. If there wasn’t anything in his room-”

He flipped the quarter again. This time it came up tails. “Somebody’s going to get the dirty end of this stick, and I have a feeling his name’s going to be Brady.”

Shayne stood up. “You’ve put in a lot of work on this. How much have you cleared so far?”

Brady drew a deep breath. “She bought some stock from me. I get a commission on that. On everything else I’ve been working on spec. And all of a sudden it occurs to me-” He swirled the whiskey around in his glass. “Do I really want to be husband number two? When you think about it, I mean, it’s a funny ambition, isn’t it?”

Shayne started in Jennings Park and radiated outward. The neighborhood still throbbed and jumped. An open-fronted cafe on one of the side streets blazed with light and loud music, and the sidewalks in that block were jammed with drifting teen-agers. De Rham wouldn’t leave his car this close to the park. Most of his new set was opposed to the ownership of cars, including economy-sized imports.

Shayne found it on Flagler Terrace, in a quiet district where people went to bed early-a red VW with dealer’s plates. He double-parked and walked back.

The little car was locked. Using his picking apparatus, he had the front door open in less than a minute. He stooped to stuff himself in. But then he hesitated.

He looked around carefully. He was under a streetlight. There was an indistinct roar, punctuated by the solid thump of amplified drums and guitars, from the crowded blocks nearer the park, but here it was quiet and nothing moved. Finding the Volkswagen had been as easy as finding De Rham himself earlier. Both times Paul Brady had given him the lead. Things sometimes turned out to be simpler than Shayne had expected, but it rarely happened twice in a row. The little car suddenly seemed like a trap. Once inside it, he thought he might have trouble getting out.

He had learned to trust his instinct in these matters. Reaching in, he rolled down the windows and conducted his search from the outside, alert for any new sounds on the block. He emptied the glove compartment, felt along the underside of the dashboard and pulled up the floor padding. He brought out his picks again and opened the luggage compartment. Finding nothing, he bent down, gripped the frame between the doors, and straightened, tipping the little car on its side.

He saw the flat, cloth-wrapped package wired to the inside of one fender-well almost at once, and at the same instant his built-in radar picked up a surreptitious movement not far away. He moved fast. He slipped one of his picks between the package and the wire and used leverage to snap the wire. Stepping back, he saw Henry De Rham coming toward him. Shayne wrenched the package loose and slipped around to the other side of the car. Now he heard running footsteps. He dropped to his knees, keeping in the shadow. He saw a catch basin in the curb, and with a quick sideways flick, he scaled the tape toward it. It slithered across the asphalt, bounced against the grating and dropped in.