Brett Halliday: Murder Takes No Holiday

Her face was suddenly distorted with pain. The cords stood out on her neck and her grip on Shayne’s hand tightened.

“It’s beginning,” she whispered. After an instant she went on, “Well, do you expect me to say I’m sorry? All you have is a theory. You’ll have your hands full convicting me of smuggling. And as for murder-”

“You hired me to find out who killed Watts,” Shayne said wearily. “With your husband, you used somebody else’s gun, and you’re probably in the clear. But I think they’ll pin Watts on you. They don’t need much. Just someone who saw you together once, someone who saw him being pushed out of the car. A little blood on the seat would do it. There’s a lot of blood in a stabbing. Maybe his raincoat didn’t catch it all.”

She turned her head to look at him as the ambulance pulled up at the curb.

“You must hate me, Michael.”

“Maybe just a little,” Shayne said.

Two interns jumped out of the ambulance with a stretcher. Shayne remained at the girl’s side.

“You had your full quota of luck with Slater,” he said. “He knew you shot him, but he wanted you to take the plane and get away with the diamonds, because he thought it was his fault. He thought he started the smuggling, and turned you into the kind of person who would kill her husband for money, because he’d made money seem that important to you. When I think of that, I’m a little sick. And I’ve suddenly started wondering about the first time you became a widow. Everybody thought Fred Baines was shot by a jewel thief. The guy always claimed he was innocent. I’m going to have another look at that case.”

She stared at him. “You monster! Damn you, damn you. I didn’t!” she cried as the pain began again. “I had to kill Watts and Paul. You don’t understand. After I started I had to go through with it, wherever it led. But not Fred. I loved him! He was the only man-”

Shayne stood up. One of the interns had a hypodermic syringe. Shayne watched bleakly as the needle went in. Slowly and painstakingly, the interns worked the stretcher beneath her body.

“I didn’t!” she sobbed. “You horrible, horrible-”

Her voice died, and with a sigh she went under. As one of the interns went past him, Shayne gave him a questioning look. The intern shook his head.

“Not a chance.”

They slid the stretcher into the ambulance. As the ambulance moved off, its siren howling, Malloy’s Chevy pulled into the space it left vacant.

“I thought that would be you, Mike,” he said, coming out. “I’ve been listening to the trouble on short wave.”

Shayne was looking after the departing ambulance, his face drained of expression.

“Martha?” Malloy said.

“Yeah,” Shayne said heavily, and with an effort he turned toward the smashed bike. “Diamonds. In the frame.”

“Well, well,” Malloy exclaimed. “I knew you’d come through for me with that much dough involved, Mike.”

“What?” Shayne said, and then he thrust his head forward. In an instant he had thrown off his depression. Everything seemed in much sharper focus. “Open it up, Jack. Twenty-five percent of a hundred and twenty grand-”

Malloy said suspiciously, “Where’d you get that figure?”

“Alvarez said that’s how much he lost when he was slugged.”

“That’s wholesale. We’ll put it up at auction and get pretty close to the market price. It should run a quarter of a million or better, if he figured it at a hundred and twenty.” He went to pick up the bike. “But I might as well tell you. You’re only getting half.”

“What do you mean, half? I did all the work. They were shooting at me, not you.”

“I’m not talking about me. I’ll go on drawing my modest salary for another twenty years, when I’ll become eligible for a modest pension. But there’s a character named Powys-”

“Powys!” Shayne said. “The guy who claimed he was working on a Ph. D.?”

“Doctors in anthropology get even less than people who work for the U. S. government, I understand. It could be that he was also having himself a good time, but this twenty-five G’s will come in handy.”

“Good God!” Shayne said, clapping his thighs as many things suddenly became clear to him. “He must have thought I actually was a hoodlum.”

“He saw your face on a Wanted flier. What else would he think? There’s one thing wrong with our way of paying for information-when one of our tipsters gets wind of a shipment, he wants it to go through so he can take his percentage of the seizure. Powys didn’t want you arrested. He wanted you and the Slaters to get away. The moment your plane took off he cabled me.”

“You didn’t find anything on the plane,” Shayne said. “So how does he come in for half?”

“This is a one-shot with you, Mike. If Alvarez beats this murder charge, and I have a hunch he will, he’s going to start operating again. And Powys is still on the scene. I want to keep him happy.”

Shayne looked at him for a moment, somewhat groggily. Then he pulled himself together.

“I can’t stand here arguing. Sergeant Brannon or no Sergeant Brannon, I’ve got to get back to St. Albans.”

“Why?” Malloy said, surprised.

“You forget I’m on vacation. I have to send postcards, get a sunburn and do some shopping. And then come in at the International Airport on the right plane so my secretary can meet me. If she knew I’d come home ahead of time she’d wring my neck.”

“Mike, you can’t mean-”

“That’s exactly what I do mean,” Shayne said grimly.

But life, as Shayne had known for years, is full of surprises. There were almost a million people in greater Miami. The odds that Lucy Hamilton would be passing that spot on Miami Avenue in a taxi at exactly that moment were rather long. For one thing, she only came into that part of town once or twice a year. For another, when Shayne was out of town she usually went to bed earlier than this. But as it happened, she had had dinner with friends nearby, and had been listening to records all evening, and was now on her way home. She called out sharply to her driver. When he came to a stop in front of Malloy’s Chevy she leaned out the window.

“Michael Shayne, what are you doing in Miami?” Neither Malloy nor Shayne could answer. They were laughing too hard.