Brett Halliday - Counterfeit Wife

She stopped just inside and stood flatly with her feet planted apart a trifle, swaying ever so slightly while her head turned slowly in an arc to study every person in the waiting-room.

She was tall. Big-boned and solid-fleshed. She wore a gray tailored suit that should have looked mannish on a woman her size, but didn’t. It merely managed to look slightly out of place on her, as though the fabric itself dishearteningly realized that the most cunning tailoring could not hide the full, feminine convolutions of her body. She was bareheaded, with two heavy braids of honey-colored hair wound about her head. She wore no make-up except a great deal of freshly applied and very crimson lipstick. Her face glistened with perspiration.

When she completed her slow survey of the room with big, wide-open eyes, her lashes came down to make narrow slits of them. Her mouth tightened and she turned purposefully to the nearest ticket counter and asked a question. The clerk’s reply sent her swinging toward the National Airlines counter with that steady and careful manner of placing each foot solidly before the other, a practice of experienced drinkers who are just sober enough to realize they are drunk.

Men got out of her way and turned to look at her as she passed them by.

She brushed a small man aside and took his place in front of the Immediate Departures window, planted both elbows on the counter, and thrust her face toward the smiling girl with the freckles on her nose. Her neck was a white column rising from solid shoulders. Wisps of honey-colored hair curled downward behind her ears and lay plastered against her moist skin. Her voice was warm and husky. Not loud, but it carried well, and Shayne heard her question clearly.

“Has your plane for New Orleans left yet?”

“Flight Sixty-two has just taken off.”

The woman’s shoulders lifted slightly, swelling the tight fit of her tailored coat A pulse throbbed in the white flesh on the right side of her throat. She said, “I wonder if my husband managed to get a seat on that plane at the last minute?”

The girl said, “If you’ll give me his name I’ll check the passenger list.”

“Dawson,” the woman told her. “But that won’t cut much ice if he was sneaking out on me. He’d probably give another name. It would be in the last ten minutes,” she went on impatiently. “You’d remember him.”

“The last ten minutes have been very busy,” said the girl. “Perhaps you could give me a description of him.”

“He’s a little runt. Had on a gray suit. Not a drop of red blood in his body. He’s nobody you’d get excited about-sort of bald and stupid looking. Funny looking eyes on account of they’re brown, and his eyelashes and brows are pure white.”

Shayne edged closer as he listened. He wondered how a man like Dough-face could be married to a woman like that. There was an impression of tremendous vitality about her. She wasn’t old, not past her middle thirties, yet she gave one the feeling that here was a woman who might have mothered a brood of Vikings, a maiden of Odin straight from the pages of Norse mythology.

The freckle-nosed girl looked as though she were trying hard not to smile. “I do remember him now, Mrs. Dawson. He didn’t give me his name. He got here just before the take-off,” she went on, stroking her cheek with a forefinger. “He said it was terribly important that he get space on Sixty-two, but there simply wasn’t anything for him. We had no last-minute cancellations tonight.”

Shayne was standing at the counter, not more than five feet away from the girl as she spoke. He turned slightly, instinctively tugging his hat lower over his face.

Mrs. Dawson said, “They told me over at the Eastern counter that no other planes have left since then, and that none are due out until morning.” It was more a statement than a question.

“That’s correct.”

Mrs. Dawson straightened to her full height. She was at least ten inches over five feet tall, and her body tapered gracefully from heavy shoulders and big breasts to a neat waistline above the spread of wide hips. She turned slowly to study the interior of the waiting-room again with an intent gaze.

Shayne lit a cigarette and met her eyes from beneath the brim of his hat as her gaze passed over him. Her eyes were blue. A clear, hot blue like the clean flame of an alcohol burner. They dwelt upon him for a moment before going on to the others. She was relaxed now, and steady, with the outspread fingers of one hand lightly touching the counter.

The little man whom she had brushed aside fidgeted behind her, but made no move to take his rightful place.

Mrs. Dawson turned back to the girl and asked in her husky voice, “Where’d he go if he didn’t get on that plane? I don’t see him around.”

“I’m sure I don’t know.” She spoke with the compressed-lip patience of a public servant dealing with a fool or a drunk. “I presume he returned to the city after being told there would be no more planes departing until morning. And now, if you please-”

“I don’t see him around,” said the woman again.

“I’m very sorry I can’t do anything to help you. If you’ll please step aside now-”

The big blonde looked down at her for a moment in speculative silence. The girl looked back at her with a touch of weariness in the bend of her head. The little man behind Mrs. Dawson fidgeted again.

She turned, finally, and strode across the waiting-room toward a door marked Men.

Shayne thought she was going in, but she stopped just outside, beckoned to a porter and said something to him. The man went inside the room and Mrs. Dawson remained firmly planted outside, oblivious of the glances of people standing about.

The porter returned shaking his head. She gave him a coin and went toward the front door, and people got out of her way again.

Shayne picked up his suitcase and followed her out, keeping a dozen paces behind her. He hadn’t made up his mind yet whether to accost her or not. He remembered the terror in the pasty-faced man’s brown eyes, and he reminded himself that it wasn’t up to him to put a Valkyrie on the trail of a poor devil who might be trying to escape from a personal hell.

Yet he was, he realized, the only person in Miami who could tell her the truth about the man who called himself Parson. If she were actually worried about the little guy, he supposed it was only decent for him to put her mind at rest by telling her the truth.

She was moving across the driveway toward a row of parked cars as Shayne emerged into the illusive tropical moonlight. It glistened on the coiled hair about her high-held head, and played queer tricks with the contours of her body, softening and slenderizing her, producing the hallucinatory effect of stripping the severely tailored suit from her and replacing it with a flowing robe of some translucent material that trailed behind her, accentuating rather than hiding the sensuous, supple curves.

Shayne set the Gladstone on the steps, lit a cigarette, and watched her approach a gray sedan parked beyond the fringe of light from the terminal.

The left-hand front door opened as she reached it. She got in and closed it. He could not see the other occupant of the sedan. He couldn’t see anything of either of them as he stood there, undecided. He could, however, hear a murmur of voices from the parked car. Hers, throaty and full-bodied, faintly slurred but still resonant. Mingled with her tones were the strident ones of the man in the front seat with her. He sounded querulous and demanding, though Shayne couldn’t hear any of the words that were spoken.

He picked up the Gladstone, shook his head at the driver of a loitering taxi in the driveway, and passed in front of the taxi on his way toward the gray sedan.