Brett Halliday - Mermaid on the Rocks

His eyes rested on Hank Sims’s face without really seeing him.

“Don’t ask me,” Sims said. “I’m only the guy who gets shot when the cops aim at the hold-up man.”

Shayne pushed off from the table. “O.K., Will. If she didn’t go there to see what Brad looked like dead, she went to get something he was carrying when he was killed. One of the things he was carrying was the key to Kitty’s apartment. I may be wrong, but let’s check.”

On the way out of the courthouse they passed a hatless white-haired man who had just got out of a Cadillac on West Flagler. Shayne, walking behind Hank Sims, saw the young man’s start of recognition.

“Is your name Quarrels?” Shayne asked the white-haired man.

“Yes. You’re Mike Shayne, of course.” He glanced at the others. “Can you spare a moment or two in private? You may not be surprised to hear that I have some questions.”

“Tim,” Shayne called. “Ride with Mr. Quarrels and give him the background. Tell him about Shanahan and anything else he wants to know.”

“I’m not the expert, Mike. You are.”

Shayne made a brusque gesture. Rourke and the real-estate man returned to the Cadillac. Shayne went in the police car with Gentry, the police driver and Hank Sims. Gentry sat in front listening as the reports he had called for came in over the radio. These were uniformly negative.

Presently the little two-car convoy drew up in front of Kitty Sims’s apartment house on 28th Street.

“She has a gun,” Shayne said. “If she’s here she’ll be all cranked up and ready to fly. So I’d better handle it myself. Our casualty list is long enough as it is.”

He strode into the building. The downstairs door only held him up a moment. He took the elevator to Kitty’s floor.

If Barbara had actually used Brad Tuttle’s key and was waiting in Kitty’s apartment, Shayne knew that she had heard the elevator. He pressed another button to send it on its way, and then he let a minute or two pass to give her time to relax. He went quietly to the door. Standing to one side, out of range of the peephole, he slid a strip of celluloid between the door and the jamb and forced the latch. He turned the doorknob silently and let the door swing open,

“Barbara,” he said in a quiet tone. “It’s Mike Shayne. I’m alone here, but there’s a carload of cops downstairs. So let’s not do any shooting, is that O.K. with you? It’s a little late for that now.”

He stepped into the doorway and lit a cigarette. While he was breathing out his first mouthful of smoke, Barbara Lemoyne appeared from the bedroom. She was wearing a low-cut black dress and pearls and her face was pale. Eda Lou’s little automatic was pointed at Shayne’s chest.

“You’ve interfered in my affairs for the last time.”

“Frank’s dead,” Shayne told her. “There’s no gold. There never was any gold. You’ve been fooled, all five of you. Your million-buck deal is cooling off fast.”

Slowly the muzzle of the little automatic came down until it pointed at the floor. “Frank’s dead?”

Shayne took the gun out of her unresisting fingers and kicked the door shut. Barbara looked up at him, the pupils of her eyes enormous. Her lip fluttered and she began to sag. Shayne slapped her hard. She spun around and caught the door frame. Shayne dropped the gun in his pocket. She whirled and flew at him, trying to get the gun. He caught her in his arms.

“That’s better,” he said. “Adrenalin always helps. Don’t break up over Frank. Think about your own problems. You’re in serious trouble, and it’s going to get worse unless you answer a few questions. I want truthful answers this time. Get this fact in your head and you’ll see that the time has come to cut your losses. This whole buried treasure thing was Cal’s idea.”

She still looked dazed, but Shayne was glad to see that her pupils were back to their ordinary size.

“You’re out of your mind,” she said.

“Not quite, Barbara. A little fed up, that’s all. Where’s Eda Lou?”

“I don’t know.”

Shayne tightened his grip on her arms. “Where is she?”

“I don’t! I only talked to her on the phone. We’re all meeting at Larue’s for lunch, Kitty and Eda Lou and I.”

“Kitty went to New York.”

“I know that. But Eda Lou heard you tell somebody what hotel she’s staying at. She called and told Kitty to come back on the first plane. But I know Kitty. She won’t go to a fancy place like Larue’s straight from the airport. She’ll come here to change.”

“Listen to me, Barbara. Eda Lou knows you took her gun. She knows you figured out that Hank and Kitty are still working together, and those St. Albans affidavits are phonier than your treasure map. Eda Lou doesn’t want you killing anybody. She knew you’d come here and stay out of her way.”

“Mike, I honestly don’t know where she is. You’re hurting me.”

“Think about it! Right here is where the killing stops. If you don’t know how many kinds of trouble I can make for you, you’re dumber than I think. If Eda Lou wanted a quiet conversation with somebody, one of those confidential little chats that sometimes end with a gun going off, where would she go? A car would be fine, but neither she nor Kitty has a car here. She wouldn’t rent one. She wouldn’t go to a hotel.”

Barbara shook her head. “I can’t even guess!”

Shayne gave an exclamation of annoyance. “Let’s see if they’ve heard anything new downstairs. Keep thinking.”

He pulled her to the elevator.

“Mike, won’t you explain just one of those things you said? We always knew there was a chance there wasn’t any gold. I don’t see-”

He gave her a look which silenced her. The lines of concentration around his eyes were deeply etched.

He said suddenly, “Are you the one who told me she takes flowers to the cemetery?”

“Eda Lou? Mike, let go of my arm. Flowers? Yes. I don’t know how often, but she did once, on his birthday. It surprised me. She’s not at all religious. Long-stem roses. I thought it was touching, in a way. She was furious that I saw her.”

Shayne gave a bark of relieved laughter. “Touching is right. Long-stem roses? Not the dame I met. Where’s he buried?”

“Out beyond Miami Springs, in the big new mausoleum. Really-”

The elevator arrived. They went down in silence and he hurried her across the lobby to the street, where he put her in the back seat of the police car.

“What happened to you?” she exclaimed, seeing Hank Sims.

He rubbed his clean-shaven chin. “For you, dear. I’m turning over a new leaf.”

“Miami Springs,” Shayne told the driver. “There’s a cemetery out there somewhere. She’ll give you directions. Use your siren.”

He looked out the back window as they began to move. Hilary Quarrels’ Cadillac was still behind them.

“Any late news, Will?” he said to Gentry.

“I have the lab report on the water in Shanahan’s carafe. It’s one of those coal-tar derivatives with the long names. Enough to knock off the whole Court of Appeals.”

“Frank was poisoned?” Barbara said quietly.

“Hank can tell you who did it,” Shayne said. “He was there with his camera. Clean-shaven, so none of his friends would notice him if they had other things on their minds.”

“It does look as though I was there to take a picture, don’t it?” Sims said. “But maybe the picture didn’t come out, have you thought of that? I used fast film, but the conditions weren’t too good.”

Barbara turned to Shayne, but one look at the expression around his mouth told her not to pursue the subject. Narrow gaps kept appearing in the traffic ahead. The police driver widened them with his siren and plunged through, the Cadillac following before the gaps could close. At 22nd Avenue they picked up the expressway. They shot off the entrance ramp and in a moment they were doing ninety.