Brett Halliday: Never Kill a Client

The other stewardess handed him back his ticket and said, “Choose any seat you wish, Mr. Shayne. Don’t hesitate to ask for anything that will make your trip more pleasant.”

Shayne gravely promised her he wouldn’t, and moved into the forward section reserved for first-class ticket-holders. It was less than half-filled even this close to departure time, mostly with singles who had taken window seats; well-dressed, important-appearing men, ninety percent of whom Shayne knew must be traveling on expense accounts… or else they’d be in the cheaper rear section.

Just as he would be if he’d paid for his own ticket. He found a pair of unoccupied seats on the right near the center of the section, and settled himself comfortably in the seat by the window. He fastened his seat belt and checked his hand as it involuntarily moved toward a cigarette in his shirt pocket, glanced at his watch and saw it was only five minutes until scheduled departure time.

There were still a few late passengers boarding the plane, and he watched incuriously as they moved hesitantly down the aisle, appraising their fellow passengers and attempting to make a fast decision as to which one of those already seated might make a pleasant seat-mate for the trip.

There was one tall, luscious and very smartly-gowned female who moved along very slowly, holding up the last two or three behind her, turning her head from left to right to study the face of each seated person as she passed. She either expected to recognize someone, Shayne decided, or she had very definite ideas about the sort of person she was going to share a seat with, and he grinned at her welcomingly and hopefully as she paused beside him.

All he got for his effort was a haughty lift of her chin and a disdainful tightening of her lips which closer inspection proved much too thin to suit Shayne’s taste.

She passed on and a curious thing happened. He was ready to swear that he caught a faint whiff of the same perfume that permeated the square envelope in his pocket. He turned his head quickly to inhale a deep breath and see if he caught it again, and at that moment a dumpy, middle-aged woman dropped into the aisle seat beside him.

He turned back with a frown, telling himself that he had an overheated imagination, or that, hell! any woman on the plane might be wearing that same perfume without the fact having the slightest significance.

His seat-mate had strong, pleasant features, and she adjusted her seat and fastened her belt competently, giving him a little nod and a tentative half-smile as he glanced in her direction.

He returned her smile with a wry grimace, because, now damn it, he could swear the scent of the perfume came from her. Or, was it just that he was smelling the stuff as an emanation from the envelope in his pocket? It was quite warm in the plane standing in the Miami sun, and the air vents wouldn’t begin working until the jet was in flight. He knew that was the sensible answer, and he relaxed, looking out the window to see them trundling the loading steps away from the plane, and then giving his attention to a voice from the loudspeaker welcoming them aboard United’s Flight Two-sixteen, non-stop to Los Angeles.

The plane taxied away to the end of a long runway, hesitated there almost imperceptibly and then moved forward with a whoosh and was swiftly airborne.

When the NO-SMOKING sign winked out, Shayne got a cigarette from his pocket and hesitated with it halfway to his lips, turning his head to say, “I hope you don’t mind if I smoke.”

The woman seated beside him chuckled heartily and said, “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard that question for at least ten years. Of course not. I’ll join you.”

She opened a large black leather handbag in her lap and took out a pack of king-size filtered cigarettes, and Shayne struck another match for her.

Ten years! Her casual words reminded him of the letter in his pocket signed Elsa Cornell. He adjusted his seat so it reclined a little more, leaned back and half-closed his eyes, consciously concentrating for the first time since reading the letter on going back over a period of ten years and trying to dredge up some memory out of his subconscious.

Ten years ago? That was well after the New Orleans period. The actual years were blurred in his memory, but he ticked them off more or less after his return to Miami by recalling the most important cases he had handled during that period.

Ten years ago? That would have been about the year that Brett Halliday made his trip to New York and got tangled up in a murder case of his own and had to call Shayne by long distance to fly up and extricate him from it. When Halliday chronicled that case in a book he had titled it She Woke to Darkness.

Working back from that date (probably no more than nine years ago, Shayne thought) there had been the murder of Ralph Carrol by his wife Nora. Nora who had awakened Shayne so unconventionally in his bedroom that night, calmly disrobing herself as though she intended to crawl into bed with him.

Then a sudden thought struck him and sent a queer tingle through his body. That was just about the time of the Sara Morton case, the one Halliday had called This is It, Michael Shayne.

It, too, had opened with a Special Delivery letter addressed to him and containing the torn half of a bill. Only, that had been a five-hundred-dollar bill, he recalled. Well, that was inflation.

That time, he had discovered the other half of the bill clutched in the dead woman’s hand.

Now, ten or twelve years later, was history repeating itself? Was that how he would get the other half of the bill that now reposed in his pocket?

It was mixed-up and crazy, but maybe it wasn’t so crazy. If the woman who signed herself Elsa Cornell had been around when the Morton case broke, the circumstances surrounding the case might have impressed themselves so much upon her that she had used the same device, now that she needed his help.

That was the period he should concentrate on. From the time of Sara Morton’s death to his flying trip to New York to get Halliday out of a jam. Shayne sucked slowly on his cigarette, keeping his eyes closed while he sought to relive those couple of years, to conjure up the memory of some woman he had met at that time who might have written the letter in his pocket.

Nothing of importance came to him. He mashed out his cigarette and breathed in deeply, trying to catch a hint of the scent from his pocket, remembering what Lucy had suggested about a woman hoping he might remember her perfume for ten years, but fresh air was circulating in the plane now and all trace of the odor had vanished.

He sighed and opened his eyes, sat up a little straighter and got out another cigarette. He glanced aside as he did so, and saw that the woman was intently reading a pocket book.

He froze with the cigarette between his lips and match held ready to strike when he read the title of the book his seatmate was reading.

It was She Woke to Darkness by Brett Halliday. His friend’s account of the case in New York which had occurred approximately ten years ago.

Pure coincidence? Quite possibly. Sure. It wasn’t a rare occurrence for Shayne to see some complete stranger reading one of Halliday’s books. With thirty million copies of them sold in soft cover editions, it would have been queerer if you didn’t run onto one of them now and then. And Shayne also knew that She Woke to Darkness had recently been reissued in a new cover and there were probably several hundred thousand copies of it in the hands of readers throughout the country.

So it wasn’t such an impossible coincidence after all. But, damn it! That first scent of perfume as the woman sat beside him. Her use of the two words “ten years” when she answered his first question.