Brett Halliday - So Lush, So Deadly

They were alone in the anteroom except for a Coast Guard yeoman on duty at the desk. Sometimes there was only one way to make Painter stop talking. Shayne gathered a handful of his suit in one fist and walked him backward against the wall.

Painter took it well. “I warn you, Shayne,” he said pleasantly. “Take your greasy hand off my suit.”

“Did you find Katharine Brady?”

“Why should I answer your questions when you don’t answer mine?” He called over his shoulder, “Richardson! Foster!”

Shayne pulled him away from the wall and walked him to the inner door. Two Beach detectives held up in the doorway.

“It’s you, Mike,” Richardson said.

Shayne was grinning. “We do better in front of an audience, don’t you think, Petey? I can usually keep my temper when we have witnesses.”

Still grinning amiably, he backed the smaller man into a room in which Paul Brady lay, his head heavily bandaged. A Coast Guard medic was with him.

There was only one chair, and Painter took that, more at ease now. Shayne looked out in the anteroom.

“Can we get some more chairs in here?”

The medic at the bed looked around. “This may not be such a good idea, Shayne. Better wait.”

Shayne went to the bed. “Paul, this is Mike Shayne talking. Did you hear the doctor?”

“Yes,” Brady whispered. “What happened to-”

“Mrs. De Rham? That’s what we’re going to be talking about. If you mean did we recover her body, the answer is no. I got my hands on her but I couldn’t hold her. You’re probably curious about what happened. I have to explain a few things to Chief Painter, who’s sitting here trying to control himself. There’s no reason why you can’t listen. Otherwise you’ll get it in bits and pieces over the next couple of weeks, which would be bad for your peace of mind. It’s up to you. If you’d rather do it later-”

Brady’s lips moved. “Get it over with.”

“I thought you’d prefer that. Any time you want us to clear out, let us know.”

Shayne heard a familiar screech of tires on the asphalt, and Tim Rourke came running in.

“The traffic in this town, I mean it. I’ll have to get the paper to buy me a siren. Who loaned you the jump suit, Mike? Too small, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Shayne said wryly, easing the pull on his crotch. “Painter doesn’t want to answer any questions, for some reason. Something about protocol. What did he find out about Moseley?”

The reporter looked skeptically at Painter. “Let’s put it this way, Mike. Nothing.”

“How about Mrs. Brady? Did they locate her?”

“Easily. She checked out of the St. A. at six to make a seven-o’clock New York flight. It’s five after seven now. They had a good description of her from the hotel people, and they shouldn’t have too much trouble identifying her. I mean, with the seat number and her name on the reservation. Of course with Miami Beach detectives you never know.”

“Birds of a feather,” Painter remarked bitterly. “Now that you have the information you wanted, Shayne, will you kindly return the favor? It’s time to do some talking.”

Chairs had begun to arrive. After they were distributed Shayne sat down close to the bed and said in a low voice, “Some of this may not hit you the first time, Paul, and if you want me to repeat anything, move your hand. Remember you have no obligation to say anything. You’re entitled to a lawyer if you want one.”

There was a slight answering movement from Brady to show that he understood. Painter, across the room, had the sense to remain silent.

Shayne said, “You’ll have to make a full statement to the Coast Guard about the circumstances of the fire. Right now I want to tell Painter how I think it happened. This is all hypothetical. You can indicate assent if you feel like it, but it’s not important.”

He lit a cigarette. “The people at the marina were awakened by loud noises on your boat. Mrs. De Rham was seen drinking gin from the bottle. Gin, or tap water in a Beefeater bottle. You’d been sitting in that berth for two weeks, and now all at once she wanted to go for a sail. You tried to talk her out of it, but she was a hard woman to talk out of things when she really wanted to do them.”

“Yes.”

“She wanted to see the sun come up over the water. And it turned out to be a very nice sunrise. I hope you noticed, Paul. It may be the last you’ll ever see.”

Brady’s hand moved.

“Yeah,” Shayne said, his face impassive. “It’s a bad acid burn and the chances are that nothing can be done about it. But maybe everything else worked out. Let’s see.” He turned to Painter. “There’s somebody else we’re going to need, a guy named Raphael Petrocelli. He’s at a motel in Biscayne Park, the Dunmovin, registered under the name of Sam de Angelis. Will you send somebody to get him? Or Tim will be glad to go.”

“I will not,” Rourke protested. “I want to hear this.”

After thinking about it longer than necessary, Painter nodded and one of the detectives went out.

“To continue, Paul,” Shayne said. “You made so much racket getting away that it makes me wonder if you wanted to be sure plenty of people saw you go. At this point, if you were being questioned in the usual way, you’d point out that Mrs. De Rham was making most of the noise, and she was well known to be a drunk.”

Brady’s hand moved.

“And not only a drunk,” Shayne said. “She had a well-authenticated history of mental disturbance, in which fire always played quite a part. I found that tape, incidentally, just where you thought I’d find it, in a Volkswagen a couple of blocks from Jennings Park, and the only reason I was around to pull you out of the water was that I have a thick skull and a nice girl named Helen scared the boys off before they could do any permanent damage. The tape proved that Mrs. De Rham burned down the Massachusetts factory for the insurance. The watchman saw a woman driving a white Oldsmobile convertible, and I think we’ll be able to establish that she owned a white Olds at the time. I expect to sell this tape to the insurance company for five percent of the amount they recovered, which is why I sound cheerful, in case you’ve been wondering.”

Painter stirred. Shayne silenced him with a look.

“To come back to what happened this morning. The sun was about to come up, and Mrs. De Rham, poor mad Mrs. De Rham, started playing with matches. You’ve been a little in awe of her because she’s the one with the money, and by the time you realized you had a serious fire on your hands it was too late. Now here’s a funny thing. The Coast Guard tells me they didn’t get an alarm from your boat. Why not? Luckily for you, I’d already put in a May Day call and they were on the way with a helicopter. We managed to save you. Don’t comment on this yet, Paul. I’m sorry about Mrs. De Rham. I did my best, but all I came up with was her wig and her jacket. The jacket had a bullet hole in it.”

He pulled the jacket out of the capacious pocket of his coveralls and tossed it to Painter, who held it to the light and looked closely at the edges of the hole.

Shayne continued, “You had a gun, Paul, and one of the things that’s been bothering me is why you needed it. To protect your privacy? People who are looking for privacy don’t tie up at that kind of marina.”

“Brady killed Mrs. De Rham?” Painter said. “Is that what you’re saying, Shayne?”

“No, that’s not exactly what I’m saying. But if you want to arrest him for it, go ahead. You might be able to make it stick even without the body.”

“I’m not about to arrest anybody before I know a little more,” Painter declared. He snapped his fingers. “Let’s have the rest, Shayne.”