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

Someone was waiting for him this time, too.

Lieutenant Aguilar stepped out of his unmarked car as Shayne approached. There was a smile on his lips, but not in his eyes. He said, “I didn’t expect to see you here, Mr. Shayne. I thought you were going to be making funeral arrangements. Do you mind telling me what you’re doing?”

“Just asking a few questions,” Shayne said shortly.

“I hope you’re not representing yourself as a licensed private investigator, or worse, as a member of the police force.”

A curt laugh escaped from Shayne’s lips. “And I hope you don’t think I’m that stupid, Lieutenant. No, I’m just acting in my capacity as a private citizen with an interest in this case.”

“Most private citizens don’t go around investigating bombs and explosions and possible mass murders,” Aguilar said softly. “They leave those things for the police. That’s the smart thing to do.”

“Maybe I’m not smart. But I do know that Lomack was on the outs with Dennis Winslow, and I know that Winslow supposedly left town in a hurry last night. Sound interesting, Lieutenant?”

Aguilar’s eyes narrowed. Under his breath, he said, “I knew Winslow wasn’t at home, but—” He broke off, then went on in a louder voice, “Look, Shayne, if you’re not going to butt out, then maybe we’d better talk. No point in us duplicating everything the other one is doing.”

“You mean you’d spill what you’ve got so far?” Shayne had his doubts that Aguilar meant it, and that came through in his voice.

“You want proof? All right. We know that someone let it slip that Lomack was being investigated. We know that he and Winslow were having trouble. We know that both Mitch Lund and John Morrall were out at that rig just a couple of days before the explosion. And those two, plus Lomack, were the only ones out there who weren’t there when it went down. The crew changed every five days out there, and the next change wasn’t due until the next day. That enough for you?”

Shayne put a hip against the car and lit a cigarette. There was a warm breeze coming off the Gulf, and it would have felt good if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in what Aguilar was saying. After a moment, he said, “You’ve checked out Lund and Morrall?”

Aguilar nodded. “They look clean. You’re thinking that maybe one of them sold out to Winslow and planted the bomb?”

“It’s a possibility. Then they leaked the fact that Lomack was a suspect to some of the families of the dead men, again trying to cause more trouble for Lomack.”

“And if one of them was doing all this for Winslow,” Aguilar speculated, “then Winslow could have gotten scared when someone actually took the grudge against Lomack far enough to blow up the man’s house. Winslow ran because he was afraid someone would connect him with the whole thing, maybe through Lund or Morrall.”

“It plays,” Shayne said, frowning in concentration. The theory covered all the bases and answered all the questions, as far as he could see.

But there was something nagging at him, something that said the explanation was out of kilter somewhere.

A thought suddenly occured to him. He asked Aguilar, “Did your boys ever come up with a positive identification of the woman found in Lomack’s house?”

Aguilar frowned. The newly-found openness between the two men was still tentative, and he hesitated before saying, “They’ve run into some trouble there. Mrs. Lomack never had much dental work done. They’ve found nothing inconsistent with it being her corpse, but—”

“But they still can’t be sure, right?” Shayne cut in.

“We’re keeping the possibility of a switch in mind,” the lieutenant assured him. “It’s your turn to talk now, Shayne. Do you have anything that makes you think it wasn’t Lomack’s wife?”

“Not a thing,” Shayne told him. “Just some uneasy feelings. One other thing I was wondering about. Earl Craig, the man running the insurance investigation, seems to have something against Lomack, too.”

Aguilar nodded. “You don’t know Craig, Shayne, so I can see why you’d wonder about him. He hates everybody; to his mind, every claim against his company is fraudulent. I guess that’s why they hired him.”

Shayne nodded in acknowledgement of the information and then reached for the door handle on the car. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m glad we’re not going to be knocking heads on this.”

“Wait a minute,” Aguilar said. “What are you going to do now?”

“I thought it was about time I paid a visit to John Morrall. I talked to Lund earlier, and he told me that Morrall was at another drilling rig up the coast, this one on land.”

Aguilar waited a moment to reply, obviously mulling something over in his mind. Then he abruptly said, “Oh, what the hell. No point in you paying that car rental place any more than you have to. I was just going to see Morrall myself, since Winslow’s ducked out. Want to ride along with me?”

“Thanks,” Shayne grinned. “I think I’ll take you up on it.”

“Okay. I’ll have to stop at a phone and call in first, let the station know where I’m going. My radio went out, and they’ve got me calling in pretty regular.”

Shayne smiled. It sounded like Aguilar felt the same way about going through channels as he did. The lieutenant’s irritation with his superiors was obvious.

They drove in Aguilar’s car over Nueces Bay, going north and following the coastline. For the moment, speculation about the case was put aside, as Aguilar asked Shayne about his career in Miami and his relations with the police there. When Shayne hesitated, Aguilar grinned and said, “I might as well tell you, Shayne, I’ve met both Will Gentry and Peter Painter at police conventions before. So I’ve heard about you from both sides of Biscayne Bay.”

Shayne had to grin at that, imagining the difference in the comments from Gentry and Painter, the chiefs of police in Miami and Miami Beach respectively. “Will and I have worked together pretty effectively,” he said. “Painter’s another story.”

“I know.” The way Aguilar said it made Shayne chuckle.

Aguilar was sharp enough, Shayne decided during the halfhour ride, and he was glad the lieutenant had stopped being hostile to him, even though he was certain that Aguilar’s motives were strictly pragmatic. He had realized that Shayne wasn’t going to leave the case alone and decided that it would be easier to keep an eye on him like this. Shayne didn’t care about that. All he wanted to do was find out who had caused so much trouble for Jack Lomack, and he didn’t care how.

Aguilar turned off the state highway they had been following a few miles further on, onto a smaller blacktop road. It soon turned into a dirt road, and Shayne saw the derrick up ahead, in the middle of a grassy field. They were a few miles away from the Gulf now, but it still made its presence known by the smell in the air. There was the bite of sulphur in it, too.

An open area surrounded the oil rig. Aguilar parked at the edge of it. The two men got out of the car and walked toward a small mobile home parked a good distance away from the derrick. Shayne knew this was where Morrall would likely be found; the trailer would serve as a field office and a place for the roughnecks to catch a few winks of sleep when they got the chance.

Shayne and Aguilar were still twenty or thirty feet from the trailer when its door opened and a man stepped outside. He kept one hand on the doorjamb and regarded them curiously. There was a yellow hard hat on his head, and he wore coveralls like the other men who were scrambling around the rig. Shayne glanced over at the lieutenant, and Aguilar nodded. They had found John Morrall.