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

“I’m asking you,” Shayne said.

“For the record, then. No, I do not think Jack had anything to do with it. It’s just not possible.”

“What happened, then?”

Lund clasped his fingers together on the desk. “Any number of things. Do you know much about drilling rigs, Mr. Shayne?”

“I used to, but it’s been a lot of years. What I know is probably obsolete by now.”

“You know what happens when a well goes up, though. Depending on what kind of gases are involved, it can be a pretty devastating explosion. I think someone was careless out there; someone caused a spark where he shouldn’t have. The explosion threw the rig out of balance and it went down. That’s not supposed to happen, but many things happen that aren’t supposed to.”

“It could have been sabotage, though?” Shayne asked.

“Of course it could have. But no one’s found any proof of that. And they’ve been looking, I can promise you that. We’ve all been looking.”

“If it was sabotage,” Shayne began, then looked up at Lund, “who would have had a reason to do it? Who would want to hurt Lomack that bad?”

“I can only think of one man.” Lund put his hands palm down on the desk. His face was bleak now, his anger coming through clearly. “You talk to Winslow,” he said. “You talk to Dennis Winslow.”

Twenty minutes later, as Shayne left the building and walked out to his car, he reflected on what Mitch Lund had told him and hoped that the lead Lund had given him would result in something worthwhile.

Dennis Winslow was a name Shayne hadn’t heard before, but it didn’t take Lund long to fill him in. Winslow owned a small refinery up the coast a bit, and until recently, Jack Lomack had supplied him with the crude to keep his operation going. All that had changed, though, when the two men argued. Lomack had simply diverted Winslow’s oil to another refinery, and since then, Winslow had been struggling just to keep from losing everything. It was the kind of story that Shayne knew was common in the oil business, two strong-willed men at odds with each other, with the stakes, even on this level, in the millions of dollars.

Other things had come out of the conversation with Lund, too. For one thing, the operations manager had indeed been out to the drilling rig a few days before the disaster. It wasn’t unusual at all for him to visit the installation, but it proved that he did at least have an opportunity to plant a timebomb on the rig. His motive for doing such a thing was another question; from all that Shayne had seen of him, Lund was an honest, loyal employee to Jack Lomack.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden realization that someone was leaning on the fender of his car. The man doing the waning was tall, well-dressed, and watching Shayne intently with piercing eyes. He was nearly bald, despite only being in his forties, Shayne would guess, and he looked about as friendly as a barracuda.

“Mike Shayne?” he asked as the big redhead walked up.

“That’s right,” Shayne acknowledged, “and that’s my car you’re leaning on. Who’re you?” His voice was blunt. The last thing he was in the mood for was more trouble.

“My name is Earl Craig,” the balding man said. “I think we’re in the same business.”

“You’re the insurance investigator,” Shayne guessed.

“Right.” Craig named the company he worked for, then said, “Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Shayne. I hear that Jack Lomack hired you... to look into the sinking.of his oil platform.”

“You sound a little doubtful about that, Craig.” There was an unctuous quality to the man that put Shayne’s teeth on edge. The smirk on Craig’s face only made it worse.

“Like I said, your reputation is pretty well-known. You’ve been known to pull some pretty raw stunts in the past. You’ll do damn near anything for a client, won’t you?”

Shayne didn’t know whether to take a swing at the man or just ignore him and get in the car and drive off. He did neither. Instead, he held onto his temper and said, “You need to get your facts straight. Call some of your colleagues in Florida. I’ve done a lot of insurance work myself.”

“Yes, but you’re working for Lomack now.” Craig straightened, and the smile dropped off of his face. “We don’t need anyone else poking into this case, Shayne. I’ll get to the bottom of it and find out if Lomack really did cause that explosion himself.”

“You don’t sound like you doubt that very much.”

The smirk came back. “I don’t. I’m convinced that Lomack is guilty as hell. It’s just a matter of proving it now.”

Shayne’s fingers were trying to clench into fists. He made them relax and said, “I guess you heard what happened last night.”

A brief shadow passed over Craig’s face. “That doesn’t change things,” he snapped. “Some lunatic takes the law into his own hands and blows Lomack’s house up. Well, I’m sorry it happened, but that’s not my concern, Shayne. All I care about is getting to the truth about that oil rig.”

Shayne had had enough. He stepped forward, and Craig moved out of his way. Shayne grasped the car door and opened it, then looked over his shoulder and grated, “You’ve got an ax to grind with Lomack for some reason, and that worries me, Craig. Especially since it’s not public knowledge that your company is investigating the sinking of the rig.” His voice dropped and became even more intense. “Somebody else found out about that, found out that Lomack is a suspect in the sabotage, if there was any. How do you think that happened, Craig?”

Shayne slammed the door before the man could answer, started the car, and pulled away, leaving Craig standing there with an angry look on his face.

That was interesting, Shayne mused as he drove away. Craig was definitely hostile toward Lomack and was determined to prove that Lomack was behind the blast that had sunk the rig. The leak that had established Lomack’s guilt in the mind of at least one other person, the one who had been sending the notes, had to have come from one of three sources — Lomack’s people, the cops, or the insurance company.

Had Craig told someone else that he thought Lomack was guilty? And was his vendetta against the oilman a personal one, or was Craig just another example of the syndrome Shayne had seen in other bureaucrats — that everyone was guilty until proven innocent?

Shayne’s mouth quirked in a short, ironic grin. It was starting to look like Lomack had a lot more enemies than he had thought he had. That seemed to happen often to people who were too good-natured to hold grudges themselves...

Winslow had an office in corpus Christi, Lund had told Shayne, though his refinery was twenty-five or thirty miles up the coast. Shayne followed the directions Lomack’s operations manager had given him and found the place without too much trouble.

Seeing Winslow was another matter entirely, though, he discovered. The pretty but nervous girl at the desk in the office told him, “I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Winslow is out of town right now. He won’t be back until next week. If you’d like to make an appointment then...?”

“No thanks,” Shayne grunted. “You don’t know where I can reach him now?”

She shrugged helplessly. “He didn’t leave me an itinerary. When he called me last night, he just said he was taking a short vacation.”

“Last night?” Shayne tried not to sound too interested.

“Yes, sir, he called late last night. I was really surprised...” She broke off, realizing that she might be revealing more than her boss would want her to. “You’re sure you don’t want to make an appointment?”

“I’ll check back if I do,” Shayne told her, then left the office with still more questions buzzing around in his head.