Brett Halliday - Mermaid on the Rocks

Shayne picked them up and began to fit them in the holes. As soon as he had the beginnings of a ladder he picked up as many spikes as he could carry in one hand and started to climb.

He moved upward step by step. Several times he had to use the lighter before he could find the next hole. Once a spike slipped from his hand and fell to the ground with a clatter, startlingly loud amid the more natural swamp noises.

After a moment Shayne clambered down, gathered another bundle of spikes and took them back up the tree.

The wire ended in a ramshackle three-sided tree house, crudely constructed of secondhand lumber. He tested the floor carefully before leaving the spike-ladder and swinging in. Part of what had passed for a roof was gone. Holding the branch with one hand, the detective waved the lighter flame from side to side to see where the wire had brought him.

It was a crazy structure about five feet high, narrower in one direction than the other. A faded skull-and-crossbones dangled from one wall. Other objects were more recent-a binoculars case slung from one of the broken roof timbers, a pair of earphones, a peanut can overflowing with smoked cigarettes.

Shayne lowered himself carefully to the floor. He was able to let one leg dangle through a hole where a plank had given way. Another plank in the wall nearest the house had been pried loose. The house seemed surprisingly close to Shayne, no more than a hundred feet in a direct line, though he was sure he had followed the wire a full quarter mile.

He found himself looking through a long horizontal window on the back wall of the living room. Barbara, smoking a cigarette in a long holder, moved restlessly into view. For an instant she seemed to look straight at him. Her lips moved soundlessly. Then she passed out of sight.

Using his lighter again behind the shield of his other hand, Shayne checked the earphones. The wire emerged from a crack in the floor to lead into a small black box with an on-off switch and a rheostat. Shayne clamped on the earphones and clicked the switch. He could hear a faint sputtering.

The binoculars were a good Japanese model with six-power magnification. They brought the lighted living room in so close that it seemed to Shayne he could almost reach out and tap on the window. Barbara came back. Shayne had been told that she was in her early forties, and now that she was alone with her housekeeper, she was no longer making an effort to look any younger. Stopping in front of the window, she lit a cigarette from the butt of her previous one. Tilting back her head, she breathed out a mouthful of smoke.

“OH, I’M TIRED, TIRED,” she said.

In the tree house, Shayne hastily cut down the volume.

Eda Lou’s voice, from somewhere out of sight, replied dryly, “As who isn’t?”

“I certainly fluffed that,” Barbara said. “I can think of a dozen different ways I could have handled it. Everything he said when that phone call came in could have two meanings. Naturally I assumed he was talking about Kitty! I couldn’t be madder at myself. It’s nearly as bad as signing a full confession.”

“I wonder how he is in bed,” Eda Lou said thoughtfully.

“Oh, for God’s sake! Bed, bed, bed. Can’t you think of anything else?”

“You don’t want me to change this late in life. What does he know, anyway? That you had a good idea what Brad was fixing to do. That’s nothing to worry about.”

“I could have stopped him.”

“You could have stopped Brad?” the older woman said incredulously. “Where would you get the bazooka?”

“You know what I mean. I could have warned Kitty.”

“Like so much-You were willing to keep Shayne talking, I noticed, when you thought Brad was still on his way.”

Barbara moved restlessly to the far wall and started back. “I know. And that makes me an accessory.”

“Baby, you’re wicked,” Eda Lou said affectionately. “Except in your own head you can’t be an accessory to a murder that didn’t come off. What do you care what Shayne thinks? You’ll never see him again. You or me both.” She added in a tone that was carefully casual, “What was all that about nitrous whatever?”

Shayne had the binoculars on Barbara’s face. She was facing the window, her back to the housekeeper. Her nostrils flared.

“Nitrous oxide. It’s a kind of anesthetic, I think. He was throwing out things to see what kind of knee jerk he could get out of me.”

“And he got one, darling,” Eda Lou said softly. “I’m sorry to say he got one.”

For an instant there was a small secret smile on Barbara’s face. Then she turned toward Eda Lou.

“I never know what you’re thinking! Why can’t you break down and say two honest words? You could give me some advice if you felt like it. You knew Brad. You’ve known Frank longer than I have. What do I say to him when I see him tomorrow? Do I ask him where he got the idea it was all right to sit outside my front window at three o’clock in the morning and use me for target practice?”

The question sounded eerie to Shayne, but Eda Lou took it seriously. She came into view, still wearing the feathered negligee, and poured herself a drink.

“I’m going to have a pip of a hangover when I wake up,” she said. “You don’t really think that was Frank, do you? The Honorable Francis Xavier Shanahan? I doubt if he even knows which end of a gun the bullet comes out of.”

“But if Kitty’s really put away for the night-”

“Maybe she hired somebody. Maybe Brad arranged it, as a last will and testament. What seems funny to me-I know there’s a little chop in the cove tonight, but he had three or four good shots at under fifty yards. He missed with all of them.”

Barbara threw out both arms in one of her dramatic gestures. “Don’t torture me! Why would anybody want to shoot at me and miss?”

“Maybe because-” the older woman began, then didn’t go on. “Oh, Christ. All I have to say is, if I can see you through Wednesday without losing my marbles I’m going on a long, long cruise, all by myself.”

Barbara muttered something. She was turning as she spoke, and Shayne’s apparatus didn’t pick it up.

Eda Lou carried her drink to a tall carved chair beside the front window, and sat down facing Shayne. She fluffed out the feathers on her collar.

“This is a nightcap. Then we go to bed. Tomorrow’s another day. I’ll correct that. Today’s another day.”

Barbara, beside her, touched the starred bulletholes in the window, as if to persuade herself they were real.

“Even if this deal falls through, I can’t go on living here. Kitty can have the damn house if she’s that nuts about it.”

“Hey, what happened to the old fighting spirit all of a sudden?”

“All gone. Damn it all, if Frank doesn’t want to get married I don’t see why he can’t say so.”

The binoculars picked up the deep downward lines from the corners of her mouth. Shayne looked away. This part of his business was often necessary, but he didn’t ever want to get to like it.

“Once and for all,” Barbara said in a flat unemotional voice, “damn it, are you my mother?”

With his unaided eye, Shayne saw only her outline against the front window. Her face was blank. He raised the binoculars, looking not at Barbara but at the older woman. There was a strange expression on that heavily madeup face. Her lips had a mocking twist.

“That again,” she said. “Your mother’s name was Mrs. Cal Tuttle. A sweet uncomplaining pain in the ass, who never said a cross word to anybody. Why you can’t be satisfied I’ll never know. Very good stock. Churchgoing people, the flower of the Old South. And square? Your mother did one offbeat thing in her entire life, and that was to marry Cal. What’s wrong with you? Now we’re going to bed. We sat up the whole night, what do you think of that? Well, it’s the only wake that son of a bitch Brad is going to get.”