Brett Halliday - Die Like a Dog

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say. That he put Anita up to it from the very beginning. Fixed it for John to meet her in the first place, hoping he’d fall for her like he did. She was working in his office, you know. I don’t trust that man half as far as I could throw a bull by the tail, and I’ve told John so hundreds of times. I think John was beginning to catch on and he was scared he was going to lose John’s business and that would involve a complete audit… and only Harold Peabody knows what an audit would show. I told John over and over that he was a fool to give Peabody a free hand with his investments and that I bet he was stealing him blind, but John trusted him. Until lately. But I think he was beginning to get suspicious and Peabody knew it. If John was pressing him for an outside audit he’d have a mighty strong motive for seeing John died when he did.”

“That motive doesn’t stand up,” Shayne pointed out. “With your brother’s death there will be an automatic audit of his accounts and appraisal of his estate… for tax purposes, if nothing else. This is the one thing Peabody would want to avoid if your suspicion is correct and there are any irregularities.”

“Oh, no. Give the devil his due. The way Harold Peabody has got things fixed, he’s named executor of the estate and will have his finger in whatever audit or appraisal there is. Don’t think that man hasn’t got every angle figured.”

“What are the terms of his will?”

“Just what you might expect an old fool to do,” she said acidly. “Fifty thousand to Mrs. Blair and a trust fund for me that I can only spend the interest on. The rest of it to his ‘dearly beloved wife, Anita,’ with no strings attached. And my trust fund also goes to her when I die.”

“How much income will you have from it?”

“Oh, forty or fifty thousand a year. All right,” she went on fiercely, noting the expression on his face. “Of course it’s as much money as I need or can spend in a year. But that’s not the point. It’s the principle of it. Half that money is rightfully mine. I slaved for it back in the old days, right alongside my brother in a mine shaft. By every law in the land, I should have half of it in my own name.”

“It was decided the other way when you sued for half.”

“That jury,” she snorted. “What could you expect? Don’t tell me there’s equal justice for women in this country. All they could see was that John very generously doled out whatever cash I needed.”

“When you brought the suit, did you anticipate something like this?”

“John was a man… and I know how men are. Some little slut comes along and lifts her skirt, and he goes panting after her. That’s exactly what happened when Harold Peabody fixed it for Anita to lift her skirt for my brother.”

“You really think,” said Shayne incredulously, “that a man with Peabody’s reputation deliberately planned to introduce Anita to your brother, hoping he would marry her so that she could then murder him and gain control of his fortune?”

“I don’t know anything about his reputation,” she said tartly. “Do you know the man?”

“No.”

“There you are. I don’t say there was any definite murder plan in the beginning. I certainly do think he might have felt it would be handy to have someone like Anita married to John and exerting her influence to keep Peabody in his good graces. Then… if John did start getting suspicious as I think… well, it certainly did fix things up for Harold Peabody when John died when he did.”

“And you think he’s the type to pull something like this with Lucy?”

“I consider him utterly unscrupulous. If he found out you were digging the dog up to have it analyzed, I’m sure he’d stop at nothing to stop you. How did you find Daffy?”

Shayne said, “That’s a trade secret.”

“Now that you have got her body, you’re not just going to sit back and do nothing because of these threats.”

“I don’t intend to sacrifice Lucy’s life in an effort to prove your brother was murdered.” Shayne met her fiercely questioning gaze without blinking.

“Haven’t you any guts at all? Or any decency. What about professional ethics? Do you have the moral right to let a murderer go free?”

Shayne sighed. “In the first place, I don’t know that a murder has been committed.”

“Isn’t this proof enough?” She waved the yellow sheet of paper at him. “They know the dog was poisoned just as I claimed all along, and they know that an autopsy on John will prove he was murdered. Why else would they resort to kidnapping to stop you?”

Shayne admitted, “It’s pretty conclusive, but… so long as we don’t know the dog was poisoned I have no moral obligation to go on and put Lucy’s life in danger.”

“That’s quibbling,” she snorted. “I thought better of you than that, Mike Shayne. How can you go on living with yourself if you weasel out this way?”

Shayne said stubbornly, “The moment Lucy is safe, I’ll start moving.”

“How much?” she demanded suddenly.

“How much what?”

“How much do you intend to hold me up for? I know a lot about you, Mike Shayne, and I don’t believe for a minute that any woman means more to you than money. You’re not married to the girl. She’s just your secretary. Secretaries are expendable.” The old spinster’s face and voice were grim. “How much, Mike Shayne? I’m not a wealthy woman, but I do believe I can buy you. How much for immediate delivery of Daffy’s body to me? Then your conscience will be clear. You can wash your hands of the whole affair and devote your entire time to getting your snivelling secretary back safe into your arms and your bed.”

Shayne got up. He took a step forward and leaned down to set his half-emptied glass on the coffee table in front of Henrietta Rogell. He caught the slip of yellow paper from her fingers and carefully folded it together with the note she had given him. In a remote voice, he said:

“I’ll keep both of these. And I’ll also keep Daffy. Good night.”

He stalked out of the hotel suite and shut the door firmly behind him.

In the lobby he looked for Harold Peabody in the telephone book and found his home address in the northeast section of the city. He made a note of it and went out to a waiting cab and told the driver to take him to the fishing dock where he had left his car parked earlier that day.

Peabody’s address was a glittering, modern, six-story apartment building on Northeast 60th Street. Shayne parked directly in front of wide, chromium-framed glass doors flush with the sidewalk, and entered a large, softly-carpeted and softly-lighted lobby. He strode forward with assurance to a smartly uniformed elevator operator standing at attention outside an open cage that was also carpeted and fitted with an antique loveseat.

Shayne said, “Mr. Peabody,” as he stepped inside, and the operator nodded blandly and closed the door as if it were the most natural thing in the world for Peabody to have visitors well past midnight.

They glided upward smoothly and with almost no sensation of motion, and stopped on the fourth floor. Shayne asked, “Which apartment is it?” as the door slid open, and the man nodded to a door directly across a wide hall and said, “Four A, sir.”

He kept the door open and waited while Shayne stepped across to 4-A and pressed the bell. He remained waiting in the open elevator until the door opened and a plump blonde girl wearing a low-cut evening gown confronted the detective. From the soundproofed apartment behind her came the sound of laughter and voices and modulated music from a hi-fi system. The girl’s careful coiffure was disarranged and her lipstick was smeared. She held a champagne glass in her left hand and her blue eyes were slightly glazed as she tilted her head on one side to look up at him with approval. “Hi there, rangy, rugged and redheaded.” The words were a bit slurred but had an enthusiastic lilt to them. “Where you been hiding all my life?”