Brett Halliday - Blood on Biscayne Bay

For once he was completely baffled. He wanted to believe Christine. But how could he? The evidence in the letters was damnably clear. Bernard Holloway said they had been written by Victor Morrison, and there were four witnesses to testify they had been found hidden away in Christine’s room.

But, how did the maid enter into the picture if Christine was lying about the letters? Why had she been murdered unless she had planted them in the vanity drawer?

Of course, he realized it was possible that there was no connection whatever between Natalie Briggs’s murder and the letters. It could be a coincidence. There were too many coincidences piled on top of each other.

First, there was Angus Browne, private detective who specialized in marital cases. He was undoubtedly spying on Floyd Hudson and Natalie at the Play-Mor Club. He knew from Mrs. Morgan’s description of the shabby little man who claimed to be an officer that it was Browne who initialed A. B. on the letters. Another of the trio was Timothy Rourke.

Rourke had undoubtedly said something to Natalie in the game room that frightened her and sent her running away in panic. There was certainly a tie-up between the maid and two of the men who had discovered the letters.

Shayne sat down and clasped his hands behind his head and gave his thoughts over to pure speculation. Assuming for the moment that Christine was telling the truth, who had planted the letters and for what purpose? Blackmail? Or had Morrison engineered the plot because he was madly in love with Christine and determined to wreck her marriage?

Again he went over every detail of the case thus far, but none of it made sense. He ground his teeth together angrily, got up and went to the phone and asked the clerk to send up the early edition of the Miami News.

When a boy brought the paper he skimmed over the front page story of Natalie Briggs’s death. There was a photograph of her body being pulled out of the Bay, and another full-face shot of the girl. Neither the Floyd Hudson nor the Play-Mor angle was mentioned. Painter hadn’t given the paper much of a story, though he had allowed them to mention the probability that she had been killed at the back door of the Hudson home and her body consigned to the Bay at that point.

He dropped the paper and called Timothy Rourke’s apartment on the Beach. Since recovering from his bullet wounds, Rourke hadn’t returned to his job on the paper, but was doing a few free-lance things at space rates for the local papers while he worked on his novel.

When Rourke didn’t answer his phone, Shayne looked up the Angus Browne detective agency and called the number. Again, there was no answer. He then called Information and asked if Victor Morrison had a telephone.

He was given a number and he called it. A maid answered and told him that Mr. Morrison had gone fishing that morning and wasn’t expected back until about 1:30. Shayne asked for the Morrisons’ address, and the girl gave it to him. He thanked her, hung up, and went out to lunch before calling on Victor Morrison.

The Morrison house was on the west shore of Biscayne Bay between the County and Venetian causeways. The house faced south, and as Shayne went up the walk toward the wide wooden veranda he saw that the expanse of lawn leading to the bay shore was dotted with deck chairs beneath gaily striped beach umbrellas.

One of the chairs was occupied. An inclined umbrella hid everything but a pair of bare legs stretched out in the sunlight and a bare arm reaching out for a glass on the table beside the chair.

A maid in a starched white uniform came to the door. She was little and pretty, with inquisitive blue eyes and pouting lips. She looked up at the rangy redhead with approval, and quirked her lips slightly when she said, “Mr. Morrison hasn’t returned yet. Perhaps you’d like to wait,” in answer to Shayne’s query.

Shayne said, “How about Mrs. Morrison?”

A change came over the girl’s face. “Oh, she’s out there on the lawn,” she answered in a sulky voice. “I’m sure that she’d be very glad to see you.”

“What makes you so sure?” Shayne grinned down at her.

She flirted herself around and was closing the door when Shayne turned and went down the steps. He swung around to the right and went across the close-cropped lawn toward the pair of long and well-shaped legs extending beneath the umbrella.

The thick grass deadened his footsteps, and he walked around the tilted umbrella without disturbing the occupant of the chair.

The woman wore a wisp of flowered cloth over her pointed breasts, and a triangular piece of the same material for a loincloth. Her body was supple and smoothly rounded and had the beginning of a very nice sun tan. Her platinum hair was long and flowed around her shoulders, her lips were heavily rouged, and she lounged in the chair with a pair of binoculars held to her eyes.

She lowered the glasses after a time, and saw him standing there. She gave a little start of surprise and glanced quickly at her body as though to reassure herself that the bits of cloth were in their proper positions. She lifted her gaze slowly and said in a husky voice, “Do you approve of what you see?”

“Thoroughly,” said Shayne, his wide mouth twisted in a crooked grin. He took off his hat. “I didn’t mean to play peeping Tom. Your maid said I might wait here for Mr. Morrison.”

“I’m Estelle Morrison,” she told him. Yellow lights flickered in her eyes. “I’ll be delighted to have you wait here for Victor.” Her husky voice was indolently and intentionally sensuous; the sort of voice that put double-entendres into the most innocent phrases.

Shayne said, “Thanks. I understand he’s fishing.” He sat down cross-legged in the hot sun at her feet.

“Yes. He went out very early this morning. I was trying to see if I could find him coming in.” She lifted the binoculars. “Sometimes one sees the most amazing things on the bay with a pair of strong glasses. In broad daylight, too.”

Shayne said dryly, “I imagine. Poor devils who think they’re all alone and safe from prying eyes.”

She turned faintly amused eyes upon him. “Are you shocked?”

“Not at all.” Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders. “One can’t accuse you of hiding much of yourself from public view.”

She laughed softly. “This isn’t a public beach. If strangers insist on walking up unannounced, I’m not responsible for what they see.” She picked up her drink and ice tinkled as she lifted it to her lips. “You are a stranger-to me.”

“My name is Shayne. I have some business with-your husband?” He put a questioning inflection on the last two words.

“I thought Victor left all his business behind him in New York. Perhaps he hasn’t told me everything.”

“Perhaps not.” He turned to look across the bay and muttered, “With a pair of glasses like yours one should be able to bring the other shore into focus.”

“One can,” she assured him with a trace of mockery.

“I have friends who must live just opposite here. I wonder if I could identify their house.”

She held the binoculars out to him. “After you get through pretending to look for your friend’s house, try the view on that little sailboat just off the Venetian Causeway and sigh for your lost youth.”

He moved the glasses slowly around, seeking to pick out the rear of the Hudson house with its stone breakwater and the boathouse protruding into the bay, but he could not be certain which of the houses lining the shore was the Hudsons’.

He deliberately swung the glasses on in a northward arc, picking up the far end of the Venetian Causeway and the small sailboat Estelle Morrison had mentioned. A young girl lay outstretched on some cushions in the bottom of the boat. She appeared to be nude. A boy was propped on one elbow beside her, and he was kissing her. The fingers of her right hand were tangled in his hair.