Brett Halliday - Framed in Blood

“That’s right.”

“Why did you encourage him to go on with it?” she raged. “You’re older and more experienced. You must have known it would never work. If anything has happened to him it’s your fault.” She grabbed at the crawling silk of the robe and covered her legs.

“Wait a minute,” Shayne protested. “I don’t know that-”

“I know your reputation,” she burst out, spots of red in her cheeks. “You’re tough and cynical, and you don’t care what happens to other people. You egged him on-”

“Is that what he told you?” Shayne broke in gruffly.

“Yes. And you can’t deny it. I heard him make the phone call.”

“What call?” Shayne demanded. “To whom?”

“I don’t know who the man is. Bert never would tell me. He didn’t even mention any name when he phoned.”

Shayne lit a cigarette, and a breeze from the windows floated the smoke across the room before he said gently, “Tell me about the call.”

“Why should I tell you anything?” she blazed at him. “You know all about it. If something-has happened-to Bert-” She stood up and moved closer to him, tightening her robe again. A single tear squeezed its way out from under each lowered lid and ran down her cheeks.

“I think we could talk this out better with a drink,” Shayne told her quietly. He met her stormy gaze through a cloud of smoke, his gray eyes cold and demanding.

She backed away, tucking her hair behind one ear with one hand while the other clung to the lap of the long, loose robe. She nodded without speaking, turned, and disappeared through the swinging door.

Shayne slid down in the chair and stretched his long legs out comfortably, put his head back, and scowled at the ceiling. Something was definitely wrong here. Marie Leonard was certainly not his preconceived idea of the “other woman.” She couldn’t be much more than twenty, he thought wearily, and nothing about her fitted into the Betty-Bert triangle. She acted more like a bobby-soxer with a naive crush on a man who was about to break into the limelight with something big, yet-

Her return broke into his analysis. She carried a small tray containing a tall glass with ice cubes, a bottle of Scotch, and a siphon.

“Aren’t you having one?” he said, quirking his red brows when she deposited the tray on the table.

She shook her head with decision. “I don’t take a drink very often.” She took a backward step as he poured whisky in the glass and squirted soda over it.

“Please tell me about Bert, Mr. Shayne,” she begged. “Is he in jail?”

He stirred his drink and tasted it before saying, “Bert Jackson is dead, Marie.”

She gasped, and her body stiffened. Her eyes widened a trifle, and her lips tightened. Then she shivered and without warning began to sway forward.

Shayne jumped up just in time to catch her. She leaned against him and buried her face against his chest and sobbed convulsively, her arms limp at her sides. Shayne left one arm around her waist and stroked her soft blond hair with his free hand.

She straightened after a while, drew back, and tried to smile. “I’m sorry. I think I knew it all the time-as soon as you came. Maybe before that.” Her lips trembled, and she caught the lower one between her teeth. “Do you mind waiting while I put on some clothes?”

“Not at all. Go right ahead.” He sat down and poured more Scotch over the ice cubes, stirred it in, then settled back with a deep frown creasing his brow to sip the drink.

Glancing around absently he saw that she had left the bedroom door ajar fully six inches. From his position he saw her strip off the robe, and he had a rear view of her nude body as she stood in front of the dressing-table. She sat down and began doing things to her face, leaning close to the mirror. The line of her neck flowed smoothly down to well-fleshed, sloping shoulders and on to a neat waistline and fully developed buttocks that didn’t spread as she sat. When she stood up and lifted one arm to puff powder under it he had a glimpse of one large breast that sagged from the upper muscles, then protruded tuberously.

All of a sudden Shayne remembered that anyone he saw reflected in a mirror could also see him, and he hastily turned his eyes away. He took a long drink, looking squarely at the Japanese table at the opposite end of the room. Then he recalled that Marie Leonard had been wholly occupied with her toilet and had not once looked at his own reflection which had most certainly been in the full-length mirror.

Was it an act?

He was thinking rapidly, occasionally cutting his low-lidded eyes toward the mirror and no longer feeling like a peeping Tom. Marie moved in and out of his view as she dressed. She lived in this apartment, he reminded himself cynically, and must have known the angle of the mirror would reflect her body at certain positions in the room.

Shayne’s wide mouth tightened. It hadn’t been an accident that she left the door open those few inches. If she wanted to put on a strip-tease act for him there was no reason why he shouldn’t look. She had just been informed that her lover was dead, he told himself, and who could blame her if she set about acquiring another?

Suddenly he thumped the half-empty glass down on the glass-topped table and jerked himself erect. A sardonic smile twisted his lips, and he swore under his breath for having almost been taken in by a carefully calculated act.

Marie re-entered the living-room wearing a canary-yellow blouse of heavy, satiny material, and a gray skirt. The neck of the blouse was round, cut low to reveal the even sun tan of her chest and shoulders, and the fullness beneath the youthful neck revealed only the tips of her breasts encased in an uplift brassiere. With heels, she was taller than Shayne believed possible, and her heavy make-up dispelled his former illusions of youth.

“I think I’ll have a drink now,” she said. She disappeared through the swinging doors and returned with a glass full of ice cubes, poured a generous amount of whisky over them, and sat down in the club chair opposite Shayne.

“Did Bert’s wife kill him?” she asked abruptly.

Shayne sputtered on a sip of Scotch at the suddenness of her question. “What makes you think that?” he asked in a hostile tone.

Marie was leaning back with her eyes closed, but the rise and fall of her chest was rapid beneath the bright blouse. “She was horribly jealous of him, you know. And there was that other man she’s been in love with for years.” Her voice was low, gentle as a purr, but, Shayne thought, more effective than wild hysteria.

“What man?” he asked mildly, humoring her mood.

“I don’t know his name,” she answered.

“But you must have some idea,” he insisted.

“If she didn’t actually kill Bert,” Marie continued softly, “she was responsible for his death. She drove him to it-nagging him all the time for money and always refusing to divorce him unless he paid her a big cash settlement.” Her eyes fluttered open. She picked up her glass and took a long drink, then settled back again with the glass in her hand.

Shayne said, “Tell me about last night.”

“There isn’t much to tell. Bert was drunk when he came here. He said you were going to help him get enough money to buy a divorce from his wife. I begged him not to do it, but he was determined.” Her voice was subdued, listless, resigned.

“He made a phone call from here?”

“Just before he left, about ten. He was terribly angry with me for trying to persuade him to give up this plan of his. He dialed a number and then muffled his voice so I couldn’t hear whom he asked for, but I gathered that the person wasn’t there or couldn’t come to the phone.

“He talked to somebody,” she continued, keeping her eyes closed and her features in complete repose. “He said that you were working with him. He got terribly excited and insisted that it had to be done at once, and that if whoever it was didn’t call him back within half an hour with a proposition he was going to give the story to the paper-and if they refused to print it or if anything happened to him that you were going to turn all his information over to Timothy Rourke on the News. He gave his home telephone number for whoever it was to call, and hung up.”