Brett Halliday - Blood on Biscayne Bay

“I’ve tried to get in touch with Mr. Morrison,” Christine admitted through trembling lips. “I’ve called him twice and left my number both times. When he didn’t call back as I requested, I didn’t know what to think.”

“Perhaps the long distance operator made a mistake.”

“Not long distance,” she told him. “Mr. Morrison is here.”

“In Miami? Wait a minute.” Shayne stared hard at her. “What’s he doing here?”

“Why, he and Mrs. Morrison are down for the season. They have a winter home here, but they haven’t opened it for several years.”

“How long have they been here?”

“A couple of weeks,” she faltered.

Shayne’s lean face hardened. “So, he followed you down here a couple of weeks after your marriage.”

“No. It wasn’t that. I’m sure it wasn’t.”

“It may look like that to your husband,” Shayne said with disgust. “All we need to make things perfect is someone to testify that he was in the habit of visiting you in your apartment while those letters were supposedly being written.”

Christine looked frightened and forlorn as she breathed, “I was going to tell you about that. You see, he did take me out to dinner twice, and I asked him up for a drink afterward-once. He was just being kind to me,” she went on desperately. “It isn’t what you think. His wife knew about it. In fact, he told me that she urged him to keep me from being too lonely.”

“He told you she did,” Shayne raged. “If you’re telling the truth this begins to look like one of the goddamndest frame-ups I ever ran into.” He got up and began striding up and down the room, ruffling his bristly red hair. “He must have planned the whole thing,” he growled. “Arranged to have those notes planted here and then sent the men to find them. The new maid explains that very neatly. Natalie. She’d been with you only a couple of weeks. And it supplies a motive for her death. She knew too much and may have threatened to blab.”

“I can’t believe it. Mr. Morrison was always a perfect gentleman in my presence.”

Shayne disregarded her, continuing to stride up and down while he filled out his vague theory. “Morrison wouldn’t be interested in blackmail, but that’s unimportant. One of his stooges could have had the photostats made on the side for his own purposes. It’s likely Morrison knows nothing about that angle.”

“But if the man was going to return the originals-”

“What makes you think he was going to?”

She looked up at him, wide-eyed. “He promised. Just as soon as I paid the ten thousand dollars.”

Shayne made a derisive gesture and snorted, “So, he promised.” He stopped beside her chair and asked, “Do you have those photostats?”

“Yes.”

“Get them for me.”

She hesitated, then asked miserably, “Do you have to see them? They’re so-I hate to have anyone read them.”

“Get them,” he commanded. His eyes were bleak. “I’m in this deeper than you are already. And call Mrs. Morgan up here,” he added. “I want to know more about those three men who found the letters.”

Christine got up and walked across the room and pressed a button. Then she disappeared through the door into her bedroom.

Shayne lit another cigarette and stood in the center of the floor scowling meditatively. He didn’t know whether to believe Christine or not. He wanted to believe her. For her husband’s sake if for no other reason. There had been adoration in Leslie Hudson’s eyes while he was kneeling beside his wife trying to revive her from unconsciousness. And there was another angle he hadn’t covered, Shayne remembered.

As Christine re-entered the room with an envelope in her hand, he turned on her and asked, “That telephone call this morning-Was it the same man who called before?”

“I think so. He sounded as though he were still drunk. He said, ‘So you want the letters to go to your husband, eh? Okay.’ And that’s the last I remember,” she added simply. “Coming on top of the news of Natalie’s murder it was more than I could stand. My husband thinks-” She stopped and blushed, the faint crimson spreading to the edge of her dark hair which was brushed back from her face, and pinking her ear lobes.

Shayne grinned. “Let him keep on thinking for a while. And Painter, too,” he added cagily. “He’ll be easier on you that way.” He held out his hand and she silently handed him an envelope addressed to Mrs. Leslie Hudson on a typewriter and bearing a special delivery stamp.

She said, “No wonder Phyl was so happy with you, Michael. You understand everything,” and sank into her chair.

As Shayne opened the envelope a knock sounded on the door. Christine called, “Come,” and Mrs. Morgan entered.

Shayne drew four stiff photostats from the envelope. The first one was inscribed, to, “My own dearest one.” Four sets of initials were scribbled across the left-hand margin. He studied them intently. The first was “B. J. H.”; followed by “T. R” “A. B.”; and “M. M.” The first set of initials was in bold and flowing script; the second shaky and almost unintelligible; the A and B were in small, neat letters, and the last painstakingly formed.

He turned to Mrs. Morgan and asked, “Are these your initials on the bottom?”

She moved over beside him and glanced at the note, then her calm eyes glanced aside inquiringly at Christine before she said, “Yes, sir,” when Christine nodded her approval.

Christine said, “Tell Mr. Shayne everything he asks you, Maria. He’s going to help me.”

An expression of stern apprehension crossed her placid face. She said, “I was that frightened when they made me sign them. I didn’t know what to do. The police,” she ended almost in a whisper.

Shayne said, “Even if they were the police, Mrs. Morgan, they had no right at all to enter a private house without a search warrant. Remember that in the future. Now, I want you to describe the men to me as best you can. Do you remember which one signed his initials first?”

“I do,” she said in her soft though solid voice. “He was the big one, and the best-dressed of the three. He was about fifty, I’d say, with gray hair and what you might call a ruddy complexion. He had broad shoulders and a bit of a stomach.”

“And the second one-T. R.”

“He’s the one who found the letters. As I told Christine, if I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes I’d never have believed it. He was almost as tall as you, Mr. Shayne, but he looked lean and sickly and had dark eyes that were away back in his head. He had been drinking and his hands shook. From things he said, I took him for a reporter. He said something about what a swell story the letters would make when they were printed.”

Shayne nodded casually, but a smoldering fire ate at his tight belly muscles. As soon as he saw those initials he recognized them as Timothy Rourke’s, and Mrs. Morgan’s description confirmed the knowledge he had tried desperately to put away from him. He had known for many weeks that Tim was still very ill from the wounds he had received, but he could not believe Tim was mixed up in a blackmailing scheme. His gaunt face hardened. Tim had been one of the best friends Shayne had ever had in Miami. But there was no shadow of a doubt that Natalie Briggs had held an earnest, almost frantic conversation with Rourke at the Play-Mor Club last night.

“And the third man?” Shayne asked Mrs. Morgan flatly.

“He was the policeman-the one who showed me his badge and pushed in when I didn’t want them to come in the door. He was dressed very shabbily in a gray suit and a hat not fit for a fishing trip.”

Shayne glanced at all four of the photostats to check the same sets of initials on the margins of each. He didn’t read them carefully, but a cursory glance assured him they were all written in the mushy style Christine had described. Replacing them in the envelope, he said, “Mrs. Morgan, you were not asleep last night when Natalie came in. I’m afraid your alibi of sound sleeping won’t work if the autopsy proves she was killed near the time I rang the doorbell and you answered.”