Brett Halliday - So Lush, So Deadly

“They used a dummy!” Rourke exclaimed.

“Sure, with a burned face so it didn’t have to look too lifelike. It had to be wearing Mrs. De Rham’s clothes, and by that time the jacket had a bullet hole in it. But the dummy was supposed to disappear, so Paul didn’t think it would matter. The sequence was supposed to be-start the fire, call the Coast Guard, wait till the helicopter was overhead, jump in the water with the dummy wearing Mrs. De Rham’s wig and clothes, flounder around until rescue was close, and let the dummy sink. It could have worked. The trouble was that neither Brady nor De Rham really trusted each other. They were on each other’s nerves. That reconciliation at the end of the tape had a hollow sound to me. Would Paul be satisfied with a hundred and seventy thousand, when he’d done most of the staff-work and made all the really dangerous moves? Do you want to comment on this, Paul?”

Brady remained motionless and silent.

“De Rham used the word blackmail,” Shayne went on, “and it must have been very much on his mind. At the same time, Brady would be scared that De Rham would do something dumb or impulsive. If you were one of these two characters, would you want the other one tied around your neck the rest of your life? They both decided, independently, to do something about it. Brady finally used his little. 25. He shot Henry point blank, undressed him, and dropped him in the water. He wouldn’t bother to weight the body because he’d have nothing to worry about when it came ashore. Henry, meanwhile, had rigged a nasty surprise for his old friend. I had a look at the burning boat through binoculars. One side of the wheelhouse was blown out. A simple little home-made bomb and a bottle of acid inside the radio. After the fire was burning nicely, Paul switched on the radio to call the Coast Guard. Bang. Acid in his eyes. He was blinded and helpless. He couldn’t put out the fire, he couldn’t call for help. Henry assumed he’d go down with the boat or swim around helplessly until he drowned. And Henry would be rid of both his wife and his good friend, and he could take it easy the rest of his life. Paul did what he could when he heard the helicopter, but he couldn’t see the Panther and his timing was off.”

“Great,” Rourke said, sticking his notes in his side pocket. “Where’s the phone?”

“There’s more,” Shayne said quietly.

He had heard a car arrive. Shayne had arranged many confrontations in his time. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t, but this one worked very well.

Raphael Petrocelli, unshaven, his hair uncombed, was hustled in by the detective Painter had sent for him. Katharine Brady hastily covered her mouth, but there was no place to hide.

“Mrs. De Rham!” Petrocelli said in surprise. “They were talking about you on the morning news. The announcer said you were drowned.”

“You must have known it wouldn’t work when they pulled you off the plane,” Shayne said.

“I still had hopes.”

Her lips were pursed. She was still one of the coolest people in the room. Painter jumped to his feet.

“Shayne, I warn you. One of these days you’ll go too far. If you knew who she was all along, why in God’s name didn’t you say so?”

“I didn’t know who she was. All I knew was that she wasn’t Katharine Brady.”

She turned to Painter. “I want to talk to Mike alone.”

“You aren’t talking to anybody alone, madam!” Painter snapped. “From this point on, I’m asking the questions. What were your relations with Tom Moseley?”

She smiled and remained silent.

Shayne said, “Moseley worked for the Loring law firm. He handled her income tax. He was in the same Harvard class as her husband and Paul Brady. I believe they were lovers.”

She looked at Shayne, amused, but her fingernails were digging into her palms.

“Moseley was getting more and more nervous about what he’d let himself in for,” Shayne said. “She’d already tied him up in one killing. That was his limit. He wanted her to surface and stop the action before anything bad happened, and the way it was going, something bad was bound to happen. But she couldn’t bring herself to call it off. She killed him with a gin bottle. She left a piece of false beard to point to Henry. In a way that wasn’t too clever. We can use it to prove premeditation.”

“Was he involved in your disappearance from the boat, Mrs. De Rham?” Painter said.

“Ask Mike. You can see that I’m not doing any talking.”

Painter hesitated, then turned to Shayne. “Was he?”

“Obviously. She couldn’t have worked it without help.”

“Mike-” she said.

“Did Henry ever play you the statement the night watchman from the Winslow plant made before he died? I have it. They steered me to it. They didn’t think it mattered because they thought you were dead and they couldn’t get any more mileage out of it. In my hands it would back up the fire-at-sea story.”

“O.K., Shayne,” Painter said, “what statement are you talking about now?”

“The De Rhams and the Bradys and Tom Moseley were all at a college reunion in Cambridge. Dotty and Tom sneaked out in the middle of a dance and set a fire that burned down a factory. One of them had left a bottle of liquor in the night watchman’s locker, and he didn’t turn in an alarm. He died of his burns, but before he did he told De Rham that he’d seen a woman in a red dress, a white Olds, and a man in a hat with a funny band, the kind that’s worn to college reunions. Henry got it on tape, and so long as he had it she was stuck with him as a husband. Moseley probably had her promise that she would marry him when she could get something to counteract that tape. They set up the disappearance carefully. Moseley was already in Florida. He rented a boat and made a night rendezvous with the Nefertiti. Everybody but Dotty was drunk and asleep. When he was near enough she slipped overboard and swam across to him.”

“Is that how it happened, Mrs. De Rham?” Painter asked.

“That has to be how it happened,” Shayne said when she didn’t answer. “She destroyed her will and left things in such a mess that both Paul and her husband thought the other had killed her. She knew they wouldn’t report that she had fallen overboard. It was too dangerous for both of them. They were both connivers. All she really needed was one forged check or fraudulent transfer order and she could divorce Henry without parting with any cash. She’s the one who called Petrocelli and threatened him in a way that made him notify the police. She called Loring. Loring was getting two kinds of calls-from Henry pretending to be Dotty and from Dotty herself. She was horrified to hear that the boys were already into her for a couple of hundred thousand. She had to know what their plans were, so she hired a detective, Teddy Sparrow. Tom Moseley was probably semi-hysterical by this time. He was over his head. He may even have changed his mind about marrying her-certainly he wouldn’t marry her on these terms. He wanted to call everything off, just when it was beginning to work. So he had to go.”

“If you can prove I killed Tom Moseley,” she said, “you’re a magician, Mike. I won’t admit for a minute that anything you’ve said is true. I walked off the boat the minute we got to Miami. I was so sick of that man! I moved into the St. Albans and did some drinking. When I started functioning again I called Joshua, and before I could say a thing he scolded me about something I’d said on the phone the day before. I hadn’t made any phone calls the day before. I decided I’d better know what that pair of scoundrels was up to. That’s all. I didn’t even know Tom was in town.”