Brett Halliday - Mermaid on the Rocks

She gave Shayne another up and down look. “Come down in the daytime and go swimming with us, Mike Shayne. The men we’ve been getting down here have been getting pansier and pansier.”

Barbara laughed from the sofa. “Maybe I’ll make myself so fascinating that Mr. Mike Shayne will still be here at dawn. That’s the best time in the whole twenty-four hours for a swim. Not if you get up for it, if you stay up. I’m sure we can find him a pair of trunks.”

“Well, if he’s still here and you do go in, wake me up. I mean it, Babs.”

She gave Barbara a forceful nod, which finally jarred loose the ash of her cigarette. She padded out.

Barbara went on laughing silently. “Did you ever see such a sex-hound? We’re both pretty well fried, incidentally, do you mind? Such an hour. Can you find everything you want?”

Shayne opened a bottle of Courvoisier at the sideboard and half-filled a bubble glass. He took it back across the long room. The rugs were a little threadbare. There was an equally threadbare tapestry on one wall, the dusty pipes of a pipe organ on another.

“Ducks, before you sit down,” Barbara said, “just look out in the hall and see if she’s listening, will you?”

Shayne gave her a look, put his brandy on a low table and went to the hall. It was empty.

“We’ll be talking about Daddy’s estate,” Barbara said when he came back. “She has no share in the property whatsoever, but the way she takes on you’d think she’s the sole heir. Kitty probably told you. Eda Lou was Daddy’s, let’s say paramour, for ages and ages. Do I shock you?”

“Not especially,” Shayne said.

“It was really more of a common-law marriage. I’ll say this for her, she was devoted to Daddy. She doesn’t look at all mushy on the surface, does she? Well, I happen to know that she takes flowers to the cemetery, for heaven’s sake. I never go near the repulsive place, and I’m the man’s daughter.” She studied her drink, as though it could tell her something. “I often wondered why they never married. My theory, not that I can prove it, is that she has Negro blood. She claims it’s Indian. Now I ask you. I’m not prejudiced, understand.”

She paused for breath, and Shayne put in, “About your offer from Florida-American-”

Barbara had been about to put down her martini glass. Her hand stopped. She took a small sip, and made a face expressing disgust and near-nausea.

“This is pure water. If you want me to make any sense you’re going to have to mix me up another batch.”

“In a minute,” Shayne said patiently. “I have a chopper waiting on Goose Key and it’s costing me twenty-five bucks an hour. As I understand it, Florida-American-”

“I’d like to know how the little bitch found out! Excuse the dirty language, you probably think she’s the Christian and we’re the lions. I’ll just point out while I’m on the subject that you haven’t known her very long.” She held out her glass. “Give me some gin, ducks. Don’t worry, I won’t pass out. I never pass out. I just get talkative.”

Shayne brought over the gin bottle and a bowl of ice from the sideboard. He emptied the dregs of the pitcher into the bowl, dropped in two fresh ice cubes and covered them with gin. After giving the pitcher a quick swirl he filled her glass.

She tasted it. “I must say you make wonderful martinis,” she said approvingly. “Imagine Kitty hiring a private detective! I thought she was supposed to be so broke. How can she afford your rates? I’m not trying to stall, Mike. I’m going to answer your question sooner or later. I really am. I’m just curious. What kind of a story did she give you?”

“She said somebody cut her cat’s throat.”

Barbara smiled. “That sounds like Brad. He believes in the old-fashioned methods. Imagine anything like that working nowadays.”

“I haven’t had time to look up his record,” Shayne said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised to find at least one killing in it.”

She waved her hand. “Long, long ago, dear man. Of no consequence whatever. The mores of those days were altogether different. Though the funny thing is, I mean it seems funny now, that’s why Daddy spent all that time in jail.”

Shayne looked at her sharply. “Let’s stop there for a minute.”

“If you want to,” Barbara said pleasantly. “But where’s the connection with your client who wasn’t even born at the time? Is that what you call her-a client?”

“She’s my client,” Shayne said.

“The year was 1927. Brad killed somebody in a speakeasy fight. Trust Brad-he had to do it in front of a dozen witnesses, including the sheriff, if I remember the story rightly. That entitled him to twenty years to life, and Florida still had the chain gang in those days. Let me see. What was the expression they used to use? Squeal. Brad squealed on Daddy in return for a nolle-pros in his own case. Daddy was in the export-import business, which was how I used to describe it to myself, isn’t it silly? He was a rumrunner, as a matter of fact, a damn good one. The sheriff couldn’t have cared less about that speakeasy manslaughter of Brad’s. I think he was up for reelection-I was the merest infant at the time, Mike, so don’t hold me to any of this-and the papers were saying he was getting rich from the liquor interests, which was true except that he didn’t happen to be getting rich from Daddy. Bootleggers weren’t getting more than thirty days if they had a good lawyer, and Daddy believed in hiring the best. So it was Daddy’s thirty days against twenty years for Uncle Brad, and Brad made the deal. They bottled Daddy up in the cove right in front of this house and the irony of it was-he killed a man. He never held it against Brad. He understood how it happened. Maybe not at first, but he had plenty of time to think about it. Does that dispose of that? Because I want to ask you a question. Did you go to bed with Kitty yet?”

She laughed at the look on his face. “She’s moderately sexy, I suppose, if you like the type. She’s paying you a contingency fee, isn’t she? That’s the explanation! And from our point of view that’s fine. Mike, they’ve made us a perfectly fabulous offer. An even one million dollars in cash! A quarter million apiece! Kitty can invest hers in an apartment house and get an income of twenty thousand a year, pretty much taxfree. How in heaven’s name can she have the effrontery to turn us down?”

“Has anybody offered her a quarter of a million?”

“No-o,” Barbara admitted. “I wanted to, but I was outvoted. My Uncle Brad, that great IQ, thought we should put on the screws, in his phrase, say nothing about the resale possibilities, and persuade her to resign her share for a more modest figure, say forty or fifty thousand, in the interests of peace and quiet. We decided to let him try. But I’ve never underestimated that female. She wound Daddy around her finger. He was in his dotage, granted, but even so he was never easy to fool. Come on, Mike. How did she find out about the deal? Everybody swore they’d keep it a secret.”

“That’s a hard kind of secret to keep. Her husband’s in the real estate business. Maybe he told her.”

“No, they aren’t on speaking terms. Of course,” she added, “if he had hopes of getting a slice-Anyway, it’s out of the bag now, and I’ll call Brad in the morning and tell him a change of tactics is in order. I can see why Kitty wouldn’t want to sell for peanuts. She wants to hang on till the rest of us die off, which in my case, by the way, isn’t going to happen for years. I know she thinks of herself as the child of the group. Stistically-and by that I mean sta-tist-ic-ally, I have trouble with that word, drunk or sober-she may be right. As a practical matter I intend to outlive her, if only out of spite. But that’s not the point. Who knows what prices will be like on that faroff day? If they’re as high as a quarter of a million I’ll be astonished. You tell her. Leaving personal feelings aside, and I’m as much at fault as anyone, doesn’t it make sense? A certain quarter of a million now, or wait till she’s a very old lady, when she won’t have any guarantee that she’ll inherit, or that she’ll get as much as a quarter of a million for the whole thing. But we have to get all four signatures by Wednesday or the deal’s off. This is no time for Kitty to go off on a vacation.”