Бретт Холлидей - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 9, September 1982

Aguilar had no retort for that. He sighed after a second, then turned toward his car just as an officer waiting inside it held out a microphone to him. “Radio call for you, Lieutenant,” he said. “It’s Forensic.”

Aguilar strode forward, motioning the other officer out of the car. He took the microphone and slid into the seat.

As he talked on the radio, Shayne took out a cigarette and put it between his lips. It was only when he reached for a light that he realized how the spurt of flame from a match would look to him at the moment.

He put the cigarette up and decided to wait until later.

Aguilar was through on the radio. He hung the microphone up and stepped back out of the car. Shayne came up to him as he leaned against the fender and sighed.

“What about it?” Shayne asked. “Or have you decided not to tell me?”

Aguilar’s dark eyes locked with Shayne’s icy gray ones. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “What I just heard doesn’t really change things, though. They still don’t have a positive ID on the body, but they found something else.”

He paused, and Shayne growled, “Come on.”

Aguilar rubbed at his jaw wearily. “Her skull was fractured.”

Shayne grasped what he meant immediately. He said, “He knew, then. Whoever set the bomb knew she was in the house. It was no accident; he meant for her to die, might have even killed her before the blast went off.”

“Knocked her around pretty good, at any rate. There were no fallen beams around the body when we found it. The wounds couldn’t have been caused when the roof caved in.”

Shayne grimaced. “We knew it was murder already.”

“But now it’s premeditated. The woman could have been an accident, if the torch didn’t know she was there in the house, and the guard was probably just a moment of panic. He knew the woman was there, though, that’s for sure now.”

Shayne nodded and ran his thumbnail along the line of his jaw. After a moment, he said, “You think you could give me the name of that maid and a list of the men who died on the oil rig?”

A look of pure exasperation came over Aguilar’s face. “So that you can start running around and conducting your own investigation? Didn’t I just tell you to let us handle that, Shayne?”

Shayne shrugged. “Just thought I’d ask,” he said casually. It would have been easier if Aguilar had given him the information, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t come up with it on his own. He started to turn away and said over his shoulder, “I’ll be in touch.”

“Hold it, Shayne,” Aguilar barked. “Just what have you got in mind?”

“Somebody’s got to get started on the funeral arrangements,” Shayne bit off in return.

That was true enough, he reflected as he stalked away toward the rented car he had parked several feet away. Somebody was going to have to start thinking about things like that.

But not him. He had more important things to do... like finding a killer.

There were several ways to look at it, Shayne mused as he drove away from the place. The person who set off the firebomb could have been a grieving relative of one of the victims of the rig disaster. At least one person blamed Lomack for that, the person who had been sending the threatening notes. But there might be other reasons someone would want to strike at Lomack, and the controversy over the sinking of the oil rig might make a mighty convenient smokescreen.

For that matter, he thought, it wasn’t even certain yet that the dead woman was Maggie Lomack.

That train of thought led to still more questions in Shayne’s mind. He gave a mental shrug and decided that he didn’t know enough about the case and its personalities to make an intelligent guess yet.

Which meant that he was just going to have to find out.

The offices of the Lomack Corporation were in a neat, two-story brick building not far from the harbor and the ship channel. Shayne drove over the high causeway spanning the harbor and followed the directions he had gotten from Lomack during one of the man’s few coherent moments following the explosion. Despite the tragedy that had hit its owner, the place appeared to be business as usual this morning, Shayne saw as he pulled into a nearly full parking lot.

The carpet on the lobby floor was thick and soft, the music coming from concealed speakers muted and soothing. An attractive receptionist looked up from her desk with a smile and asked Shayne, “Can I help you, sir?”

“I’d like to see Mitch Lund and John Morrall,” he replied. “My name is Mike Shayne; I’m a friend of Mr. Lomack’s.”

The smile on her face tightened a little. She must have assumed that he knew what had happened the night before. She said nervously, “I don’t know if they’re available right now, Mr. Shayne. You don’t have an appointment—”

“I know,” Shayne cut in on her. “But I’m looking into all the trouble Mr. Lomack’s been having, and I really want to speak to them.”

“Well...” she hesitated. “Mr. Morrall’s not here, but I can call Mr. Lund...”

“Please.” Shayne kept his tone polite, but she could see the determination on his lean face.

The girl picked up the phone on her desk, punched out a number quickly, then said, “Mr. Lund, there’s a Mr. Shayne out here to see you. He says he’s a friend of Mr. Lomack’s”

The voice on the other end spoke back to her, and then she hung up, looking up at Shayne and saying, “He’ll be right out.”

A door on the other side of the room opened only seconds later, and a tall, thin man hurried out. He was young, only thirty or so, but his hair was so fair as to be almost white. He extended a hand to Shayne and said, “Mr. Shayne? I’m Mitch Lund. Jack’s spoken of you often. Come on back to my office.”

“Thanks for giving me a few minutes,” Shayne said as he returned the handshake. “I won’t take up much of your time.”

“Take as much as you like,” Lund said as he ushered Shayne down a corridor and into an office that was smaller but just as richly appointed as the lobby. He waved Shayne into a chair, then said, “Would you like a drink? Or some coffee?”

“Coffee,” Shayne said. “But put a drink in it.”

Lund looked haggard, as if he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, but he grinned at Shayne’s comment. He said, “I know the feeling,” then went over to a small bar at the side of the room and poured two cups of coffee, adding a generous dollop of brandy to each one.

Shayne took a grateful swallow of it as Lund walked around behind his big desk and sat down. The operations manager of Lomack’s company said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Shayne?”

“Jack asked me to come down here and investigate the sinking of his oil rig,” Shayne said bluntly. “Now I’m going to investigate the bombing of his house and the murder of his wife, as well.”

Lund winced. “God, that’s an awful business. Terrible thing to happen. Do you or the police have any idea who did it?”

“The cops think it may be the same one who sent him some threatening notes, somebody who held a grudge against Jack and blamed him for the loss of that oil rig.”

“He told me about the notes,” Lund nodded. “Somebody is really warped if they think Jack had anything to do with sinking that platform.”

“You and I know that. But there are a lot of crazy people in the world, people who might think that blowing up Lomack’s house and wife would be a way of seeing justice done.”

“That’s crazy, all right.”

“You’re sure that Lomack didn’t have anything to do with the rig going down?”

Lund’s look of concern was momentarily replaced by one of anger, then he got the emotion under control. “You’ve known Jack a long time, Mr. Shayne. Do you think he’s capable of destroying his own rig and killing a lot of people in the process?”