The blonde cried murder

by Brett Halliday

  "My vaunted memory is exactly what it's vaunted to be," snapped Rourke. "Will is right. The Jax police probably didn't bother to put out a pick-up, knowing there wouldn't be a conviction. But you call them. Chief, if you want to verify it."

  Gentry looked inquiringly at Shayne.

  He nodded angrily. "Check on it, for God's sake! This thing has got me going around in circles. If the girl and her brother are mixed up in something like that it changes everything."

  Chief Gentry spoke into the inter-com again. Then he leaned back in his swivel chair and took another thick, black cigar from his breast pocket, snifiEed it hopefully and bit off the end.

  "How does it change everything, Mike?" he asked absently. "You've still got the two of them telling diametrically opposed stories. You've still got a corpse that isn't there—a hysterical girl who doesn't recognize her own brother—"

  He struck a match and put flame to the end of his cigar, contentedly puffed out a billow of black smoke.

  "If they're mixed up in something like that," said Shayne. "I'd say she might have recognized him in the corridor and that's why she ran. Maybe they had a fight in Jax and he's out to get her. All that other stuff she told me—maybe that was just window-dressing—just to befog the issue because she didn't want to admit it was her own brother whom she was deathly afraid of."

  "But you said," Rourke reminded him maliciously, "that she saw her brother's body and reported it over another phone before her brother jumped her. And Patton verified that when you called him."

  "Yeh," Shayne agreed sourly. He angrily ran knobby fingers through his coarse hair and demanded, "Why do these screwy things have to happen to me? Why in the goddam hell can't I for just once in my life get a nice.

  high-priced, clean-cut sort of case like I used to handle back in World-Wide?"

  "Because," Rourke told him cheerily, "youVe got all the taxi drivers in town capping for you and steering clients your way. And you'd turn it down cold if you did get one," he continued happily. "Look at tonight for instance. You have this well-stacked babe proposition you on a nice, high-priced, clean-cut sort of tailing case, and what do you do? Turn her down cold, of course. Why? Because you've got a great big black Irish hunch that something more interesting is waiting for you upstairs. So-o-o. Now you're in the middle of it, and here you are complaining."

  There was a knock on the door and a uniformed man entered with a sheet of paper. He laid it on the desk in front of Gentry, saying, "The information you wanted from Jacksonville, sir."

  Gentry laid his cigar aside and picked it up. He glanced through it and told Shayne placidly, "Tim was correct as usual. Bert and Nellie Paulson. Thirty-one and twenty-two respectively." He glanced on across the typed lines, muttering, "Blonde. Five-feet-four. Hundred eighteen. Brown hair. Five-ten. Hundred-fifty."

  He paused a moment, frowned, and then put the sheet down, "Nothing here about a scar on his face, Mike. It's a pretty complete description otherwise."

  Shayne's jaw was set and the trenches showed deeply in his cheeks. "Did I hear you read that right? Height five-ten and weight a hundred-fifty?"

  Gentry referred to the sheet again. He nodded. "That's right. And no scar."

  "So he was lying," Shayne said thickly. "He's not Bert Paulson at all."

  "Guess not," said Gentry cheerfully. "Here's something else. It says they have evidence this isn't the first of these stunts the Paulson brother-and-sister team have pulled. Two others in the past three months that didn't get re-

  ported until this was in the papers. Didn't your Bert Paulson tell you he'd been living in Detroit and just came down in answer to a wire from his sister?"

  Shayne nodded grimly. "That's what he told me."

  "And now he's gone out with a gun looking for her," said Gentry sharply. "Could be he's one of her victims that finally decided to get sore."

  The telephone on Chief Gentry's desk rang just then. He answered it, said, "Hi, honey," after a moment, and extended it to Shayne. "Your ever-loving and long-suffering secretary on the wire, Mr. Shayne."

  He took it and Lucy said, "She's here, Mike. You told me to call you."

  "Swell." He made his voice light and bantering. "You just keep it right there until I get around. Before midnight as I promised."

  He hung up and grinned. "Just reminding me she's still got that drink of cognac poured out and waiting for me.

  ELEVEN: 10:46 P.M.

  Lucy Hamilton sat stiffly erect in a straight chair near the telephone in her living room, smoking a cigarette and frowning a little, half-closing her eyes against the blue smoke that curled lazily up from the tip of the white cylinder in her left hand.

  Each time she opened her eyes, her gaze went across the room to the big chair beside the sofa and the low table beside it with the glasses and cognac bottle she had set out for her red-headed employer more than an hour previously.

  The untouched glasses mocked at her. Her brown eyes smarted each time she looked at them, and she blinked them shut to keep back the tears.

  It was silly of her to feel this way, of course. This was no difiEerent from many other times. Tonight was just an integral part of the pattern she had cut out for her future when she went to work as Michael Shayne's secretary. For years, she had accepted the pattern. She accepted it now. But, damn it! Tonight—

  The fingertips of her right hand drummed restlessly on the telephone stand beside her. Until his telephone call a few minutes ago she had been not too unhappily quiescent, waiting for him to return so they could have a drink together.

  Tonight? Somehow, tonight had been dijfferent. Michael had seemed subtly different as they drove home together after a perfect shore dinner. With her face pressed against his shoulder in the car she had allowed herself to drift away once again on the wings of a recurring dream. It wasn't often she allowed herself to do that. Not these days. Not after these years of being with Michael. Of working so closely with him.

  Always, there would be a telephone to take him from her side. Her right hand clenched into a tight fist. That was ] the pattern. His work came first. Any blonde floozy who had got herself in trouble and wanted him to get her out ' of it would always come first with Michael. Damn her j anyway I ;

  And now he was pulling Lucy into it with him. She had been sitting beside the telephone like this ever since Shayne had phoned to say he was sending his latest blonde over to her place for her to hold the girl's hand.

  So, he didn't know whether she was "actually nuts" or not? And Lucy was supposed to bed down this blonde half-wit and keep her quiet and entertained while Shayne went off on a tangent hunting a brother who might not be a brother after all because she said her brother had been murdered—

  God!

  Her buzzer sounded from the push-button in the foyer downstairs. Lucy got up and went to the door and unhooked the receiver and spoke into the mouthpiece: "Yes? Who is it?"

  "Miss Hamilton?" The voice was flat and metallic in her ear.

  "Yes."

  "This is— I've a note for you from Mr. Shayne."

  Lucy said coldly, "I know. He telephoned for me to expect you. I'm on the first floor." She pressed the button that released the catch on the inside door below. She held it a long moment, then released it and opened her door, stepped out on the landing and listened to the clack of high heels ascending the stairs.

  She stood there and watched, saw the top of a blonde head of hair appear over the railing, then a pretty young

  face that was tilted upward anxiously. A timid smile fluttered on red lips when the girl saw her waiting on the landing. She came on up, clutching a black suede handbag nervously and said, "Miss Hamilton? I—I know this is an awful intrusion at this time of night, but Mr. Shayne said-"

  "I know just about what Mr. Shayne said," Lucy assured her dryly. "It's all part of my job—giving succor to his frightened female clients. Go on in."

  She stood back composedly and let the girl precede her into the lighted room, closed the door firmly
and made sure it was double-locked, then turned slowly to look at her visitor.

  She had stopped in the center of the long room and stood there with her back to Lucy. For a moment, her young shoulders slumped forlornly, and Lucy had to fight back a sudden up-welling of sympathy. She didn't want to feel sympathetic, damn itl She wanted to hate the girl who had taken Michael away from her on this particular night.

  When the girl just kept on standing there with her back turned, Lucy moved toward her, saying calmly, "So, you're Miss Paulson? May I call you Nellie?"

  The girl whirled about at the words, her features twisting strangely, her eyes wild, and Shayne's warning came sharply to Lucy: "I don't know whether she's actually nuts or not, but she's on the fringe."

  "On the fringe" was putting it mildly, Lucy thought to herself as the girl demanded, "How did you know—who told you my name was Nellie Paulson?"

  "Mr. Shayne. When he telephoned me."

  "Oh—I see." The distorted features smoothed out slowly. She even managed a smile as she fumbled with the catch of her black bag and got it open, extracted a sheet of paper and held it out to Lucy. "Here's the note he wrote for you. Just so you'll know."

  Lucy glanced at the note and found it was about what she had expected. In the meantime, the girl turned away from her to the sofa, removing her jacket as she did so. "You've got a drink all poured out for me," she breathed happily, reaching for the cognac glass waiting for Shayne's return. "I can use one right now—believe me. After all I've been through."

  "Not that one I" said Lucy sharply.

  She drew her hand back from the wine-glass as though it had burned her, and looked up in perplexity. "Sorry. I thought you'd fixed it for me."

  Now her lips were pouting and she looked like a little girl about to cry after her favorite doll had been snatched away from her, Lucy thought despondently. "Dear God. What has Michael let me in for this time?"

  Aloud, she said hurriedly, "You're welcome to a drink, of course. It's just that— I'll get you another glass." She went swiftly into the kitchen and returned with a clean glass, and her cheeks were rosy as she confessed, "I'm just sort of superstitious, I guess. I'd poured that for Mr. Shayne when he was called out to see you, and he promised to be back to drink it with me before midnight."

  "Before midnight?" her visitor echoed speculatively, watching avidly as Lucy poured out another drink, and glancing down at her wristwatch.

  "Not that I believe for a moment he'll make it." Lucy shrugged and reached for her tumbler where she had poured an inch of cognac more than an hour before. The ice cubes were more than half-melted now, and the diluted liquor in the glass was a pale amber. She moved to the other end of the sofa with it, and the girl took a tentative sip of her drink and sputtered doubtfully, "It's awfully strong, isn't it?"

  "I don't like it straight," Lucy confessed. "I'll get you some water or soda if you like."

  "That's okay, I guess. I'll just sip it slowly. How much —did Mr. Shayne tell you about me over the phone?"

  "Not very much. Just that some awful man is chasing you with a gun, and you're frightened and I'm not to let anyone in. So you needn't be worried any more," Lucy went on practically. "I'm quite sure Michael will take care of everything."

  "Oh, I'm sure he will, too," the girl agreed fervently. "He's really wonderful, isn't he? Mr. Shayne? It must be marvelous to work for him. So exciting and interesting."

  "It's very seldom dull," Lucy conceded dryly. "Now look. I don't want to pry, and I know you're all upset and must be terribly worried about your brother."

  She had managed that very well, Lucy thought complacently. Whether the brother had been murdered as Shayne said the girl believed, or whether it was her brother who was chasing her—Lucy felt she had made the statement sufficiently ambiguous to cover either contingency.

  "So if you just want to sit here quietly and not talk about it at all, it's perfectly all right with me," Lucy went on evenly. "And if you want to lie down after you've finished your drink, there's an extra bed all made up. The most important thing is to relax and try to forget all about it. We can just pretend we're old friends and you've dropped in for a chat, and talk about—well, ships and shoes and sealing wax and such."

  She received a humbly grateful look in return. "And cabbages and kings, maybe? But—didn't he tell you anything about what happened at the Hibiscus Hotel tonight?"

  "Not a single thing. You can, if you wish, but don't feel you have to. I'm not a detective and not a bit of good in the world at deductions."

  "I guess you're right. I guess I should just try to put it all out of my mind. Do you think Mr. Shayne will be back for his drink before midnight?"

  "Not unless he finishes up whatever he's doing first. You know better than I what that is."

  Lucy sat erect suddenly as she finished speaking, and leaned forward to put her glass down. "I forgot. I promised to call him as soon as you got here."

  She went to the telephone and dialed a number, and when a male voice replied, she said:

  "I'd like Chief Gentry's office, please. If he's still at headquarters."

  TWELVE: 10:52 PM.

  From the yacht basin in Biscayne Bay, Miami's skyline at night is brilliantly lighted and imposing. Waterfront hotels rise sheerly and almost solidly from the western shore of the bay, their windows glittering with thousands of lights that are reflected from the placid surface of the water.

  During the Season, the basin is crowded with hundreds of varied hulls anchored close together in serried ranks: from the huge luxury yachts of millionaires to sleek, twenty-foot launches sleeping two in cramped quarters.

  At this period in early autumn, only a dozen or so craft were anchored in the basin. One of them was a slim forty-foot sailing vessel named the Marjie J. She rode silently at anchor with riding lights fore and aft, and in her bow there were also the companionable lights of two cigarettes gleaming on and off quite close together.

  One of the cigarettes shone long and brightly and then described an arc over the side and died with a hiss in the water. Muriel stretched indolently in her deck chair, and her left hand gripped her companion's trailing fingers tightly.

  "Darling," she sighed, "I must go back."

  "It's still early," he protested, just as indolently. He held up a bare muscular forearm to study the radium dial of his watch. "Not even eleven." His hand tightened on hers between the two deck chairs. "I thought we'd go down to the cabin again—before you took off."

  "Please, Norman." She drew her hand from his and sat up, looking toward the magnificent sky-line of the Magic City, with furrowed forehead. "You know John comes home early sometimes. I must get back."

  Norman said, "Oh, damn John. Suppose he does come home and find you out? He won't know where you've ! been."

  "He'd have his suspicions." She kept her voice light, but there was an underlying note of gravity. "We shouldn't do this, Norman. It isn't right."

  "But it's nice." He sat up suddenly and showed white teeth in the faint moonlight. "You won't deny that."

  "While it's happening," she said flatly. She got to her feet, a tall, well-boned woman of thirty-five, wearing a thin skirt that whipped about her thighs in the light inshore breeze. "Afterward, you don't have to lie in bed beside John and think how it would be if he ever found out."

  "No," he agreed amiably. "I'm spared that." He swung to his feet beside her, bronzed body wearing only skintight bathing trunks. He put one arm about her tightly and nuzzled his lips in her hair, turning her slowly and tipping up her face for a long kiss.

  Her arms went about him passionately, and sharp fingernails clawed at the flesh of his bare back, not hard enough to draw blood but leaving streaks of whiteness behind them when they fell away limply.

  He lifted his head and smiled down at her upturned face and whispered huskily, "Still want to go back?"

  "No." Her voice was as husky as his. "But we must." She turned away with determination and made her way back to the stern where a
skiff's painter was looped about a cleat, and Norman followed her reluctantly.

  "If we must, we must," he said with as much cheeriness as he could muster, loosening the line and drawing the skiff close beneath the graceful, over-hung hull and helping her down into it.

  She seated herself in the stem, and he leaped down lightly, settled oars in the locks and rowed toward the shore lights.

  There was a faint phosphorescent gleam on the placid surface of the bay, and the only sound was a little sluffing of water against the bow, the occasional splash of an oar as he sent the boat skimming over the surface with powerful strokes.

  Neither of them spoke until half the distance was covered. She was thinking of her husband and of their lost love with a sad sort of nostalgia, and he was thinking about the solid night's sleep he was going to enjoy alone aboard the Marjie J. after he dropped her at the dock and returned.

  "Normanl Be careful." Her voice was a sudden gasp and she half rose, pointing over his shoulder with a trembling forefinger.

  He twisted his head to look just as the bow struck solidly against a floating object.

  There was a dull, curiously sodden thud. The skiff lost way and floated aimlessly as they both stared in frightened fascination at the floating body of a dead man.

  "My God," said Norman, shipping an oar hastily to revolve the stem. "It's a corpse, Muriel. A man. Here, take this other oar and bring me back close. I'll get in the bow and try to drag him in."

  "Do you have to, Norman?" Her voice was thin with terror. "Can't we just—leave him? Someone else will find him. Why us? You'll have to report to the police. They'll take our names. No, Norman I We mustn't."

  "Cut it out, Muriel." His voice was crisp with annoyance. "Get that oar in the water. We're drifting away. Of course, we have to. But don't worry. You can get in your car and drive away before I report it. No one will know I wasn't taking a midnight row alone."

  He knelt in the bow and directed her efforts with the

  oar. "A little more to my left—now forward. Hold it." He leaned far over and got a grip of water-soaked coat, tugged and lifted and grunted, and gradually drew the dead weight upward and over the edge where it plopped to the bottom of the boat in a crumpled heap bearing little semblance to a human body.