So Lush, So Deadly ms-56

by Brett Halliday

  Dotty didn’t have that particular hang-up, but she had others. Among other things, she demanded more sympathy and support than Henry was prepared to give anybody.

  The professional dropouts had the idea. You didn’t argue. You simply refused to suit-up for the rat race. You let your hair and nails grow and wore the same underwear until it fell apart. You lived in a cold-water flat until they evicted you, and then you went somewhere else. The only trouble about this from Henry’s point of view was that he was old-fashioned, he liked booze and was frightened by drugs.

  He was a divided man, he supposed. Everybody was hooked on something, and he was hooked on regular meals. He saw no reason to settle for that cold-water pad unless he had to. He liked to hang over the side of an expensive boat and watch the ocean cream past. He could see nothing wrong with material possessions so long as they cost him no effort and not too much in the way of compromise. In the Catholic countries, where divorce was difficult, once you married the woman you were set for life. But not here. Here you had to exert yourself to keep her contented, or you had to have an angle. He had thought he had Dotty sewed up, thanks to a piece of carelessness on her part and some quick thinking on his. But apparently not.

  He accepted the fact that he was the passive type. He had faced that about himself a long time ago, but she couldn’t accept people as they were. She was always on, she always had to be organizing, manipulating. This byplay tonight with the will-she was challenging him to be assertive and masculine and turn her over to the police, if he had the guts. She was telling him that he was a lousy blackmailer, among other things. She was calling the pot, and what was he going to do about it?

  God, he was tired. Nothing was in focus. Each eye saw its own image, and he couldn’t get them to mesh. Dotty’s face, as she came back from that irritating performance in the doorway with poor Captain Petrocelli, who must have been badly confused by the time he left the room, overlapped so much with the identical face beside it that De Rham couldn’t decide what expression was on it.

  “Would you like to know why I really made a new will?” she demanded.

  Paul complained, “Dotty, it’s your dough and you’ve decided not to leave it to Henry. Now give it a rest.”

  “No, I want to explain. He thinks it’s because I hate him. Not at all. I love him, and I wouldn’t have missed being married to him for the world. He’s not unduly masculine, but he’s a pretty good lover in an effete way, once I can get him started.”

  “All you ever had to do was snap your fingers,” De Rham said.

  “I can forgive him most things, using me, ignoring me, but what I can’t forgive-”

  There were tears in her eyes. If those tears could be analyzed, De Rham thought, they would probably assay at ninety percent gin.

  Her voice broke. “Nobody likes to be made fun of.”

  That again. “Dotty, a joke,” De Rham protested.

  “I know it was a joke, a cruel one. If you try very very hard, do you think you can imagine how I felt, coming into my own house, to find my husband mimicking me to his old college chum?”

  “Why do I need to imagine it, honey? You’ve told me often enough.”

  Paul, on the other side of the room, was trying to keep from laughing. He was about to erupt. Bad tactics, De Rham knew, because the only way to get any peace was to let Dotty unload her grievances and apologize. If you could convince her you were sincere, you had won another day.

  Paul gurgled and blew. She went over to him and poured her drink deliberately on his head.

  “It was a funny imitation, wasn’t it, Paul?”

  “Funny as all hell,” Paul said through his laughter. “Dotty, you’re wasting good gin.”

  “I didn’t think it was so funny,” she said. “I thought it was the meanest thing he’s ever done, and he can be mean without really trying. Those were private matters he was sneering at, things I told him in confidence, after sex. How do you think it made me feel, being played back in that sarcastic, distorted way? I made up my mind then-”

  It was against De Rham’s best interests, but he couldn’t help himself. He was beginning to break up. That cold-water flat in Haight-Ashbury was looking more desirable all the time. Talk about tactical errors! — his imitation of Dotty in a self-examining mood had been the tactical error of the decade. It took place on a Wednesday afternoon. She was supposedly at a matinee. She had changed her mind at the last minute, missing him, and had decided to come home and make love. Paul had dropped in for lunch. He had been talking amusingly about his own deteriorating marriage, with the scotch flowing freely, and suddenly De Rham heard himself talking in his wife’s voice. Paul had shrieked with laughter, stimulating De Rham to come up with more and more outrageous effects.

  They hadn’t heard the door open. She listened to quite a bit of it before interrupting. She really made De Rham labor that time. He thought he had finally persuaded her to forget about it. This cruise and the Brazil excursion were supposed to seal the reconciliation. But he had overlooked the fact that he was dealing with a wack, and as any psychiatrist could tell you, wacks never forget an injury to their ego.

  “I really don’t think I want to be married to you, darling,” she said to De Rham, pouring herself more gin. “You’ll let me divorce you, won’t you?”

  “Yes, that would be the gentlemanly thing to do.”

  Paul said, “Except that he isn’t a gentleman. Don’t be fooled, Dotty. He has a Harvard A.B., but none of those Ivy League values really rubbed off.”

  “True,” De Rham murmured. “I don’t want to compete. I’m essentially a non-competitor.”

  “I’ll make you a small cash settlement-” she said.

  “No-o, Dotty, put it out of your mind. The trouble with me is I’m misplaced in the twentieth century. I’m so easily satisfied. I like things as they are.”

  “But they can’t stay that way!” she cried. “I can’t bear to have you around. I won’t pay any more of your bills.”

  “I don’t require much.”

  “Just a fifth of scotch a day.” She took his face in one hand, squeezing with her full strength. “What do I have to do to make you understand?”

  He couldn’t have spoken even if there had been anything to say. She let him go in a moment. He went back to his contemplation of the designs in the ceiling. He was a bit miffed, of course, but he couldn’t allow her to upset him.

  When he noticed what she was doing, he saw that she had torn a half dozen pages out of the latest New Yorker, crumpled them up and piled them on the low table. She struck her lighter, looking at him.

  “Hmm?” she said idly, and set the pile on fire.

  “Hey!” Paul said.

  De Rham stayed where he was, holding his wife’s eyes, while Paul scrambled off the bunk, bringing a pillow, and smothered the flames. It wasn’t much of a bonfire, just enough to fill the room with smoke and ruin the coffee table.

  “That was really intelligent,” Paul said. “Do you know we happen to be in a boat? That there’s nothing between us and the Atlantic Ocean but one layer of wood, and wood burns?”

  De Rham told his wife softly, “Baby, you don’t fool me a bit.”

  “I thought I might.”

  “You’re crazy like a fox. You may have the shrinks eating out of your hand, but that’s because you pay them fifty bucks an hour. If I had fifty bucks for every hour I’ve listened to your troubles-”

  “Be careful, Henry.”

  “What can I lose?” He shrugged. “I’m no longer the heir apparent.”

  “If I have to murder you to make you realize what you’ve done to me-”

  “What have I done? You had the same flaws when I met you. I’m the one who puts up with stuff in this family.”

  “Your glass is nearly empty. Don’t you want to dull your critical faculties? Have some more scotch.”

  “I’m fine for the moment. Can I get you some gin?”

  “I’m doing all right.” She studied him. “Unl
ess you’ve been keeping something from me, Paul’s just about your only friend. Would it bother you if I went to bed with him?”

  Paul had returned to the bunk to get his breath back. “Thanks for the compliment, love, but no thanks.”

  “Henry, you sleep forward tonight. Paul and I are going to use the stateroom.”

  “Consult me about it first,” Paul said. “I’ve had too many drinks. I wouldn’t be able to produce.”

  She sat down beside him. “Let’s try.”

  “Dot, be human. You’re having a domestic quarrel. That happens to people all the time. It’s not unique, it’s not the end of the world. I don’t want any part of it. If all you’re trying to do is irritate Henry, I suggest Petrocelli.”

  “Oh, Henry wouldn’t mind that.”

  De Rham didn’t like to feel angry. It was a cave-age emotion, and he was a long way from the cave. But apparently that scribbled will had affected him more than he thought. She would tear it up tomorrow. She needed him; she knew that as well as he did. But meanwhile, what if she had a sudden embolism and dropped dead at their feet? Her most recent will, dashed off in a drunken frenzy, was the one that would prevail. He didn’t believe in fooling around with money.

  “The hell I wouldn’t mind it!” he shouted, spilling whiskey on his chest. “Try it and see!”

  She looked across at him, interested. Her hand was on Paul’s stomach. Paul was holding onto it to keep it there. “Darling, you’re shouting.”

  “Damn right I’m shouting! I’m fed up! I’m fed to the teeth with this constant baiting and teasing and tears and acting out!”

  “Time for me to go to bed,” Paul put in.

  “Stay,” Dotty said gently. “I really do feel like sex, and Henry’s so unpredictable when he’s hostile.”

  “Goodnight, everybody,” Paul said. “See you at breakfast.”

  Dotty pressed down as he tried to rise. “You’ll do what I say, Paul. You know that check I gave you. I can always stop payment when we get to Miami.”

  “What check?” De Rham demanded.

  “It’s my money,” she pointed out. “I do what I like with it. I’ve decided to invest forty thousand in an aerospace company Paul’s been telling me about.”

  Paul moved uncomfortably. “Dotty, let’s call it a night.”

  “Let’s not call it a night. The subject of money has come up, and Henry seems to be experiencing a genuine emotion.”

  “Forty thousand!” De Rham said disbelievingly. “Paul, you’re in the aerospace business all of a sudden? What is the aerospace business?”

  “I have to do something,” Paul said defensively. “It’s legit. Dotty had Tom Moseley look into it for her. A hell of a growth potential, they’re just a little short of cash right now. It’s going to pay off for everybody. They’ll make me a vice president if I can come in with some capital. Maybe Kath’ll call off the goddamned divorce. I don’t intend to put in a full forty-hour week.”

  “Kid, you flabbergast me.”

  Dotty was smiling. “I have the power, Paul. Now where were we?”

  She came down and kissed him. De Rham knew it was all planned and calculated. First Petrocelli, now Paul. She was trying to provoke him into acting like a jealous husband so she could throw it at him the next time they quarreled. Being under a psychiatrist’s care gave her a kind of license to do things which were forbidden to ordinary people who couldn’t afford the fifty dollars.

  With one part of his mind he told himself to stay cool. The surest way of annoying her would be to ignore her, take a couple of Seconals and go to bed. The hell with her.

  A new period had opened when she wrote that new will.

  He got up, and managed to stay dignified for about a tenth of a second. Then he felt a wave of murderous rage. He found himself starting for them, and he noted with an odd flash of clarity that his fingers were curled. She had got away with too many things in her time. Right here was where he was drawing the line.

  CHAPTER 3

  The phone rang in Michael Shayne’s Buick. Without hurrying, the big red-headed private detective opened the door for the girl he was taking to dinner, went around to the driver’s side, got in and picked up the phone.

  “I have a New York call from a Mr. Joshua Loring,” the mobile operator said. “Do you want to take it?”

  Shayne put a cigarette in his mouth. He hadn’t heard from Joshua Loring in fifteen years.

  “Sure. Put him on.”

  He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. “An old friend. I’ll have to talk to him.”

  “If it’s anything you don’t want me to hear, Michael-”

  “Hell, no.” He opened the mouthpiece. “Joshua? Michael Shayne.”

  “Mike,” a voice exclaimed. “I’ve been trying to get you all day. You’re a hard man to locate.”

  Shayne grinned. There was a fresh bullet hole near the lower left-hand corner of his windshield, put there at eight o’clock that morning by a.44 Magnum, fired by a good-looking blonde from the open sunroof of a little Renault. Shayne had been reaching for his own.38 on the floor, and the slug had missed him by inches. The phone had been ringing, he remembered, but he hadn’t gotten around to answering it. A few minutes later, the Renault had crashed into an expressway abutment at seventy miles an hour, and the girl now lay in a funeral home in North Miami.

  Shayne meant to leave the windshield as it was, to remind him not to trust people solely on the strength of an intriguing foreign accent and a nice smile.

  “I’ve been moving around town, Joshua,” he said.

  “I’m glad I caught up to you,” Loring said. “Something’s going on down in Miami that I’d like to have you look into for me. I’m worried about it, in fact damned worried. How are you situated? Are you busy?”

  “Right now? Right now I’ve just had a few drinks with a lady and I’m about to buy her an Italian meal on the Beach.” He covered the mouthpiece and looked at the girl beside him. “And after that, who knows?”

  She slid closer and touched her forehead to his shoulder.

  He went on, “But why don’t you tell me about it, Joshua? If I can’t handle it maybe I can get somebody else for you.”

  “It’s my god-daughter, Mike, Dotty De Rham. She was in the papers a lot at one time, before she was married. Does the name Dotty Winslow mean anything to you?”

  “Not offhand.”

  “Well, by papers I suppose I mean New York gossip columns. Nate Winslow was my best friend as a boy. He died when she was three or four. There’s quite a bit of money. She owns a controlling interest in Winslow Mills. I’ve got her out of a number of minor jams, but this time it could be a bit more serious-Mike, I really hate to break into your evening this way.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Go ahead.”

  “I’ll have to give you a little background. Dotty’s mother is a moral lightweight. There’ve been a couple of stepfathers but neither one lasted long. Dotty was kicked out of various European schools. Then she had a breakdown of sorts and spent a few months in a mental hospital. Voluntarily. She’s under psychotherapy now, and the theory is that lately she’s been getting better. She’s thirty. She married at twenty-seven, a man three years younger-Henry De Rham. I’m afraid I may be prejudiced against young men with beards, but she didn’t ask my advice. Like everything else with Dotty, that goes in cycles. Sometimes, for a few months, we have lunch once a week and she tells me everything. Then we go into a period where I represent everything she despises and she won’t have anything to do with me.”

  “She has control over her property?”

  “Complete control. Her father left everything in trust, but that terminated on her twenty-fifth birthday. As a matter of fact, she’s shrewd about money. I have no complaints on that score. When she makes a financial decision she seems to become a different person. All right. They’re in Miami now. They went down on their boat, the Nefertiti III, with a fellow named Paul Brady, a classmate of the husband’s. The plan as I unders
tood it was that Dotty and Henry were going to leave the boat in Miami and go on to South America by air. She changes her mind frequently, and it doesn’t surprise me to learn that they’re still there. But something’s going on, Mike, and I don’t like it.”

  “She’s been in touch with you?”

  “She’s called me three times. Around one-thirty in the morning has always been her favorite time to use the phone. I’m in the hospital, incidentally. She had to bully the switchboard to get the calls through. I’ve had what they call a cardiac spasm, and I’m supposed to stay out of airplanes, or I’d be talking to you personally now instead of using the phone.”

  “I’m sorry,” Shayne said. “I hadn’t heard.”

  “They’re letting me go home in a few days. Dotty asked me how I was feeling and so on, and then she started talking about her will. She was pretty incoherent. She’d been drinking. She and her husband have been having difficulties, apparently. As obnoxious as I find him personally, he seemed to have a stabilizing effect on her at first. But just before she left New York she came into the office and added a codicil to her will cutting him off with a cash bequest of fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “Which isn’t much in that family?”

  “Which isn’t anything. We were very much at cross-purposes in that phone call, but I gathered that they’d had a fight on the way down and he’d left her, at least temporarily. I couldn’t make out what she wanted-a sympathetic listener, I suppose. I advised her to leave the codicil as it was and not cut him out completely, as long as they remained legally married. Whether anything registered I don’t know. I asked what she was planning to do, and she said she planned to have another martini. That was the level of the conversation. The next call was different-friendly and chatty. And then last night, or rather at one-thirty this morning, she called again, very drunk. She wanted to know if I could get her a reliable private detective.”

  Shayne was scraping his thumbnail along the harsh reddish stubble on his jaw, the phone clamped between his shoulder and his chin.