Brett Halliday - Caught Dead

She hesitated, and said in a low voice, “And if she dies, I suppose there’s no way to find out what she did with them.”

“You gave them up twenty minutes ago, when you thought they were burned.”

“But I do remember you said something about a deal, Mike-”

“The deal was to get you out of Venezuela. I did that. Besides, you’re all right, baby. You’ve got rich clients. Even if the insurance doesn’t cover the real losses they’ll loan you money to open up somewhere else. Maybe you can find an old man who’ll buy you another Watteau, whatever the hell that is.”

“That’s a cruel thing to say,” she said coolly.

Shayne gathered himself to wind up a few loose ends. Mejia sat forward, but Shayne put his hand on his knee before he could get up.

“Tim Rourke’s still in jail.”

“I think in the trial they will say-innocent.”

“If Tim Rourke goes on trial,” Shayne said evenly, “I’ll come back to Caracas with an interpreter and tell everybody who’ll listen why you rushed off to Palm Beach without telling your bosses where you were going. Maybe you could squeeze through, I don’t know. Here’s an alternative. Those paintings are really the property of the Venezuelan people. With some fast footwork and a little help from your friends, Michael Shayne and Tim Rourke, you managed to get them back so they can be hung in the National Museum.”

“Mike,” Lenore said angrily. “If they exist they’re mine. I have the necessary papers.”

“Six great paintings,” Shayne said, continuing to work on Mejia. “Picasso, Watteau, Van Dyck-”

He paused. “Rousseau and two Del Sartos,” Lenore supplied.

“And as soon as the Museum gets them, Tim Rourke will be quietly released. The MIR prisoners now in the La Vega prison will be put on a plane for Mexico City.”

“Blackmail,” Mejia declared.

Shayne said nothing. The County Attorney came in hurriedly, but caught the tension and didn’t interrupt.

Mejia said heavily, “It will be hard.”

“You’re wrong. It’ll be easy.”

“It would be-good propaganda for me. But I do not trust.”

“Tim Rourke, one painting. One guerrilla, one painting. A second guerrilla, another painting.”

“Bandits. Why do you care about this scum?”

“Their group did me a small favor-they hijacked an airplane for me.”

Mejia knocked out his pipe into an ashtray. He looked at Shayne, then at the other faces around him.

“Yes,” he said, shrugging. “I will return to fix.”

Again he started to get up. Shayne summoned the County Attorney.

“This man is Luis Mejia, Chief of Police in Caracas. He’s interested in the way we handle murder investigations. Is it all right if he hangs around for a day or so and looks over your shoulder?”

“Are you telling me something, Mike?”

“Not at all. Give him an escort to answer his questions and don’t let him out of your sight, because somebody might mug him, and we wouldn’t want that.”

Mejia protested, “Pleasant, but there is so much to do at home-”

“I insist. You can phone from the hotel and make the arrangements. One guerrilla, one picture.”

“A hostage,” he said, using a word he had learned when Shayne applied it to Rourke.

“Certainly not. My guest. But make those phone calls collect. It may take some time to talk your people into it.”

Shayne dismissed him with a nod.

“Now, Mike…” the County Attorney began.

Shayne stood up. “We can talk on the way to Miami. I’ve got to catch a plane back to Caracas.”

“Caracas!” Lenore exclaimed. “After everything you went through getting out of Caracas-”

He grinned. “I have to steal some paintings.”

Her mouth opened and closed.

“I don’t think you saw them. That was one of the reasons she was so anxious to get you out of the house. She hung one in her sitting room and another in Alvares’ office. The other four are probably in closets-paintings by L. Dante, dated last year and the year before. You told me you gave up painting when you opened your gallery, and that was longer ago than that. You couldn’t stick those expensive paintings in a storeroom and hope people would think they were copies. You put on a coat of-what’s the stuff called? — white gesso? and painted over them. You could take off the modern paintings later with rags and chemicals. Frost got in some night with a fluoroscope and identified the valuable Dantes, but if he’d stolen them then you would have known they were gone. He wanted to do everything quietly and professionally, with a minimum of risk. Then the widow beat him to it and shipped them back to Caracas, where there were already dozens of Lenore Dantes. Of course the reason she had to burn the gallery was to hide this from Frost and it had to be done before he got here.”

“Damn it, isn’t there anything else you can trade for Rourke? Let me come with you. If it works out, you and I could-”

He touched her cheek. “I want you to stay here, Lenore. Get somebody to look at those stab wounds. If you charter a plane and try to beat me, there’s a good chance you’ll be arrested, and this time I won’t be able to help you.”

“Heavens, I wouldn’t try anything like that.”

But he could see that she was thinking.