So Lush, So Deadly

by Brett Halliday

  “You talked to both Mrs. De Rham and De Rham the same day,” Rourke said, still unconvinced. “How about the voices? The hands?”

  “O.K., the hands,” Shayne said. “I never saw Mrs. De Rham’s hands. They were under the sheet. She had a low, hoarse voice. His was high for a man and slightly nasal. The easiest way to change the pitch of a voice is let it come out through the nose. They arranged it so she didn’t have to say much. A few words here and there. She’d been drinking for two weeks and she was badly hung over. Drunkenness is a good disguise, and a hangover’s even better. She lay in bed and groaned, and Brady did the talking.”

  “How about the—well, breasts, Mike?” Rourke said.

  “Padding,” Shayne said impatiently. “A fluffy bedjacket. But the big point is that when I saw Mrs. De Rham in the morning and De Rham at night, I saw two entirely different faces. The blinds were closed because her eyes were hurting, and of course she was wearing a goddamn pair of wraparound dark glasses. A wig, with bangs over the forehead.”

  He pulled out the wig he had taken from the woman in the water. “Here it is, if you want to try it on. He darkened his eyebrows with make-up. His mouth was plastered with lipstick, and he was pretending to be drunk when he put it on, so there was a lot of it and it was a little crooked. Heavy suntan makeup on the parts of his face that were showing, and those were the same parts that were covered by a beard when he was playing himself.”

  “A beard!” Painter exclaimed suddenly. “That’s what was beside Moseley’s body. A piece of a false beard.”

  Shayne grinned. “It’s hard to fool you, Petey. Yeah—it was a different beard from the one De Rham was wearing in the photographs I saw, but I just thought he’d trimmed it a different way, as a kind of token disguise. What does that leave, Tim?”

  “The teeth.”

  “I didn’t ask him to open his mouth so I could count the fillings. By the time I was back on the boat later I’d begun to realize something was wrong. I wanted to talk to her, but she was in the head, throwing up. You can’t barge in on a lady when she’s vomiting. That’s one of the rules. It was Henry, of course, making gagging noises and flushing the john.”

  Painter had listened to this open-mouthed, with his eyebrows all the way up. Now he said smugly, “This is one of the nicest things that’s happened to me in a long, long time. When it gets round town that Mike Shayne fell for something like this—and I’m going to make sure that it gets around—your stock may not be quite so high.”

  “How long were you in the room with them when you talked to them, Petey?”

  “That’s quite different! Maybe two minutes in all, and she didn’t say a word, did she, Luke?”

  “Well—”

  He flicked his mustache and said crisply, “All right, Shayne, you’ve made your point. De Rham was impersonating his wife. Now we come to the main question. Why?”

  “You must have figured that out by now.”

  “I haven’t been working on this case as long as you have,” Painter said stiffly. “You have information which for various reasons hasn’t been made available to the police.”

  “I’m still just speculating,” Shayne said. “I don’t want to hog the spotlight. I’m willing to stop talking at any time.”

  Rourke chortled. “He’s going to make you say please, Petey.”

  Painter started to speak, swallowed it, and said through set lips, “Play the goddamn tape. I’d—appreciate it.”

  Shayne pressed a button and the reel began to revolve. A voice began.

  DE RHAM: Now we’ve got to talk about the timing, Paul.

  BRADY: Relax. Relax. We’ve just bamboozled a guy who’s reputed to be the smartest and toughest private investigator in the United States. Worry can give you a heart attack. Let’s not worry.

  DE RHAM: You thrive on this tightrope walking. I don’t. I’m exhausted.

  BRADY: You did fine, baby, just fine. You were so irresistible in that bed jacket I almost climbed in with you myself after Shayne left.

  DE RHAM: Cut it out with the queer stuff. I never did think that fag act was too funny.

  BRADY (softly, after a moment): What makes you sure it’s an act?

  DE RHAM: Come on. I know you too well. You made a ravishing chorus girl in the Pudding show—

  BRADY: True, old chap. But who was the leading lady?

  DE RHAM: Seriously. There’s enough tension around here without going out of our way. I’m a dedicated heterosexual, and if I ever had had any doubts about that, this hippy chick resolved them very satisfactorily. She’s a talented performer in the sack.

  BRADY: Spare me the details.

  DE RHAM (laughing): No, a queer like you wouldn’t be interested. (more seriously) This is my last day as Dotty De Rham, alcoholic. No reason to drag out the drag bit any longer. This is D-day minus one.

  BRADY (sharply): You don’t mean that. We wowed everybody. Just because a clown like Shayne—

  DE RHAM: That clown happens to send cold shivers up and down my spine.

  BRADY: We haven’t used the sick-to-the-stomach business yet. Hell, we can handle him.

  DE RHAM: If he got Loring to send him a picture of Dotty, for example—

  BRADY: Why would he do that? He’s been getting by on muscle for years. There’s nothing but reflexes behind the eyes.

  DE RHAM (slowly): I don’t think so. It’s too big a chance to take. Tomorrow morning we give our make-believe friend Dotty a funeral at sea.

  (A moment’s pause.)

  BRADY: I hate to bring up a promise, but you said you’d wait for the real estate money to come through. That’s only four more days. Let’s sweat it out.

  DE RHAM: That’s earmarked for you, baby. Believe me.

  BRADY: But there’s no way you can put it in writing, is there? Somehow I feel sure you’ll find some technical reason for hanging onto it.

  DE RHAM (lightly): You can always blackmail me.

  BRADY: Can I? I’m in it as deep as you are now. What I want is cash, and I want it before we dispose of Dotty, not after.

  DE RHAM: Well, you’re not going to get another penny, because we’ve run out of time. And don’t give me that now crap. This has been a joint venture from the start. It was your idea.

  BRADY: I take credit for it. And where would you be if I’d gone into a tailspin like you that morning?

  The room was quiet. Shayne pressed the rewind button, and listened to the last few speeches again. Then the voices resumed.

  DE RHAM: I’ve been wondering about that. If I hadn’t panicked like a damn fool—

  BRADy: Hell, it was understandable. You’d just knocked off your wife.

  DE RHAM: I’ve told you approximately one hundred times that I didn’t kill her. I’ll tell you another hundred times. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t—

  BRADY: I seem to remember dragging you off when you tried to throttle her. She was blue in the face before I could make you let go. Petrocelli must have heard her scream. He knew she’d written a new will. Of course I could be wrong. All I know is, she was on the boat when I went to bed and she wasn’t on the boat when I woke up. If you didn’t kill her, give me a better explanation.

  DE RHAM (sullenly): I can’t remember exactly what happened.

  BRADY: Which would make a very lousy defense in a court of law. The will, baby. What happened to the will? I saw her put it in the desk drawer. And when we looked for it, where was it? Gone with the wind.

  DE RHAM: I’ve had two weeks to think about that. I don’t deny she got under my skin. Maybe I killed her and threw her overboard and blocked it out of my mind. I’ve got an uncertain memory at the bottom of a bottle of scotch, as you know very well, incidentally. O.K. Or maybe you killed her.

  BRADY (with a short laugh): She wasn’t my wife.

  DE RHAM (very slowly): But she’d written you a check for forty thousand bucks and she was talking about stopping payment. You were on funny terms with her, Paul—I don’t know if it was sex or not, but there was
definitely something. I could feel the static.

  BRADY: That static always went one way.

  DE RAHM: I’ve seen you when you lose your temper. It’s a frightening thing. She was teasing you and working you up, and if you did lose your temper with her, if you did kill her, it would be a smart thing to destroy that will.

  BRADY: Baby, let’s cut this out. If we’d notified the Coast Guard that we had a woman missing, you’d be getting a big jolt of electricity two years from now, and no amount of hindsight can change that. I don’t think they could have touched me. I took a hell of a risk helping you, because if they catch us now I’ll be in for conspiracy. Well, we’ve cleared a hundred and seventy thousand bucks—what the hell, man. I’ll settle for that. Let’s wind it up tomorrow morning, then, if you feel that strongly about it.

  DE RHAM: I do feel that strongly about it.

  BRADY: We’ve got to pull together, Hank. That’s essential. I had the basic idea, but you executed. You did more of the hard work and you deserve a prosperous life. Have some more scotch. How can you pretend to be drunk tomorrow morning unless you’re actually lightly drunk?

  (They both laugh. Drinking noises.)

  DE RHAM: That first move with Petrocelli was the hard one. Everything after that was candy. I sometimes think I should have gone into the theater, except people tell me it’s hard work. When I was a kid I used to do an imitation of my mother, did I ever tell you? From the next room you couldn’t tell the difference.

  BRADY: You told me. Do you want to go over the schedule again?

  DE RHAM: Hell, no. I could do it with a broken leg and a temperature of a hundred and four.

  BRADY: Then let’s get some sleep. Set your alarm for four-thirty and I will too. One is sure to go off. Good luck.

  DE RHAM: Good luck.

  (A door closes.)

  The reel went on spinning. After a moment’s silence Shayne turned it off. “That explains most of it,” he said. “Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” Rourke said. “What happened?”

  Shayne laughed. “You mean what happened to Mrs. De Rham the last night before the boat got to Miami? Maybe Paul will decide to tell us after he’s thought it over. Or maybe he doesn’t know. I even wondered at one point if she tore up the will herself and jumped overboard after the boys went to bed just to make trouble. Did she have suicidal tendencies? We’ll have to ask her psychiatrist. Think of how it looked to Brady and De Rham when they woke up that next morning and she wasn’t aboard. Both of them had a good reason for wanting her dead. As a cop, Petey, if you’d known she was missing when Petrocelli came in with his story, what would you have done?”

  “Put them both under surveillance,” Painter said promptly.

  “Surveillance, then arrest, then a long sensational trial and a good possibility of conviction. But if they had nerve enough to hang on for a week or so, they could work out some kind of accident at sea to dispose of Dotty in a way that wouldn’t require them to produce a body. Meanwhile, they could be transferring cash. All they had to do was make it seem that Mrs. De Rham was still aboard and her husband was the one who was missing. De Rham was an accomplished mimic. Somebody mentioned the Pudding show—that’s a show put on by the Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard, with boys playing girls’ parts. Mrs. De Rham was known as a heavy drinker. She wore sun glasses and a wig. And of course they had no real choice. They had to try it. De Rham stayed below most of the time, and only came out at night to phone. He had three visits, one from the cops, one from me, and one from the lawyer who drew the new will. His signature was a little shaky, but there was no reason it wouldn’t stand up.”

  He sat down beside Brady. “I don’t know if you’ve heard all this, Paul. I hope so, because it will save us time later. You didn’t want to move too fast. De Rham had to call Loring, imitating his wife’s voice to establish the fact that she was still alive. And he heard some bad news. She had already changed her will before she sailed. He used me to plant a motive for changing it back—as bait for the runaway husband.”

  Rourke said, “Can you skip to what happened this morning, Mike? I ought to phone the paper.”

  “In a minute. Everything went fine until Petrocelli started getting suspicious. He brought in the cops. Brady and De Rham were getting ready for the big climax, and they didn’t want cops hanging around. I was brought in to find the missing husband and prove he hadn’t been murdered yet, one of the easiest assignments I’ve had in years. I called Luke Richardson off and reported to Loring that the little three-person group was apparently still intact. But Loring thought his god-daughter was being blackmailed because of the cash transfers, and he kept me on. Last night, when I came back to the Nefertiti, they did some fast thinking and invented an errand to keep me busy. Henry swam ashore and set up an ambush, a half dozen tough kids with bicycle chains.”

  “That explains that,” Rourke said impatiently. “Now bring us up to date.”

  Shayne turned to Painter. “Did your men find a rented car at Haulover Park?”

  “Yes, a Hertz Chevy rented to Henry De Rham.”

  “That was the logical place. Here’s what they planned to do this morning.”

  “Finally,” Rourke said.

  “Mrs. De Rham, with her mental instability and her history of arson attempts, was going to get a few miles offshore and set fire to the boat. Henry gave his Mrs. De Rham imitation for the benefit of the neighbors in the marina. Wig, woman’s clothes, sunglasses, gin. It was dark, and even an observant girl like Sally Lyon never doubted that she was looking at Mrs. De Rham. It was still dark when they went out through Haulover Cut, where Henry was supposed to glue on his beard and swim ashore. This would leave Paul alone on board to finish it up, but it wasn’t really too complicated.”

  “They used a dummy!” Rourke exclaimed.

  “Sure, with a burned face so it didn’t have to look too lifelike. It had to be wearing Mrs. De Rham’s clothes, and by that time the jacket had a bullet hole in it. But the dummy was supposed to disappear, so Paul didn’t think it would matter. The sequence was supposed to be—start the fire, call the Coast Guard, wait till the helicopter was overhead, jump in the water with the dummy wearing Mrs. De Rham’s wig and clothes, flounder around until rescue was close, and let the dummy sink. It could have worked. The trouble was that neither Brady nor De Rham really trusted each other. They were on each other’s nerves. That reconciliation at the end of the tape had a hollow sound to me. Would Paul be satisfied with a hundred and seventy thousand, when he’d done most of the staff-work and made all the really dangerous moves? Do you want to comment on this, Paul?”

  Brady remained motionless and silent.

  “De Rham used the word blackmail,” Shayne went on, “and it must have been very much on his mind. At the same time, Brady would be scared that De Rham would do something dumb or impulsive. If you were one of these two characters, would you want the other one tied around your neck the rest of your life? They both decided, independently, to do something about it. Brady finally used his little. 25. He shot Henry point blank, undressed him, and dropped him in the water. He wouldn’t bother to weight the body because he’d have nothing to worry about when it came ashore. Henry, meanwhile, had rigged a nasty surprise for his old friend. I had a look at the burning boat through binoculars. One side of the wheelhouse was blown out. A simple little home-made bomb and a bottle of acid inside the radio. After the fire was burning nicely, Paul switched on the radio to call the Coast Guard. Bang. Acid in his eyes. He was blinded and helpless. He couldn’t put out the fire, he couldn’t call for help. Henry assumed he’d go down with the boat or swim around helplessly until he drowned. And Henry would be rid of both his wife and his good friend, and he could take it easy the rest of his life. Paul did what he could when he heard the helicopter, but he couldn’t see the Panther and his timing was off.”

  “Great,” Rourke said, sticking his notes in his side pocket. “Where’s the phone?”

  “There’s more,” Sh
ayne said quietly.

  He had heard a car arrive. Shayne had arranged many confrontations in his time. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t, but this one worked very well.

  Raphael Petrocelli, unshaven, his hair uncombed, was hustled in by the detective Painter had sent for him. Katharine Brady hastily covered her mouth, but there was no place to hide.

  “Mrs. De Rham!” Petrocelli said in surprise. “They were talking about you on the morning news. The announcer said you were drowned.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “You must have known it wouldn’t work when they pulled you off the plane,” Shayne said.

  “I still had hopes.”

  Her lips were pursed. She was still one of the coolest people in the room. Painter jumped to his feet.

  “Shayne, I warn you. One of these days you’ll go too far. If you knew who she was all along, why in God’s name didn’t you say so?”

  “I didn’t know who she was. All I knew was that she wasn’t Katharine Brady.”

  She turned to Painter. “I want to talk to Mike alone.”

  “You aren’t talking to anybody alone, madam!” Painter snapped. “From this point on, I’m asking the questions. What were your relations with Tom Moseley?”

  She smiled and remained silent.

  Shayne said, “Moseley worked for the Loring law firm. He handled her income tax. He was in the same Harvard class as her husband and Paul Brady. I believe they were lovers.”

  She looked at Shayne, amused, but her fingernails were digging into her palms.

  “Moseley was getting more and more nervous about what he’d let himself in for,” Shayne said. “She’d already tied him up in one killing. That was his limit. He wanted her to surface and stop the action before anything bad happened, and the way it was going, something bad was bound to happen. But she couldn’t bring herself to call it off. She killed him with a gin bottle. She left a piece of false beard to point to Henry. In a way that wasn’t too clever. We can use it to prove premeditation.”