Mermaid on the Rocks ms-55

by Brett Halliday

  Natalie burst out, “But it’s monstrous! This is the United States, after all.”

  “It’s a fairly remote part of the United States,” Shayne remarked. “These Tuttles have a point. Kitty’s an outsider. I’ve been given two possible reasons why Cal put her in his will-either to break up her marriage or to keep the Key from being sold. The rest of them can’t be pleased about either reason. If there was no actual cash in prospect, I don’t think they’d do anything but talk about it. Even with Kitty out of the way, there would still be three horses in the race, and the purse isn’t that big. Think of Brad for a minute. A smalltime collector all his life, and here all of a sudden he has a chance to pick up twenty-five percent of a purchase price of three or four hundred grand. No, make that thirty-three and a third percent-with Kitty dead of carbon monoxide poisoning there’d be only three survivors. Be realistic, Kitty. Turn it over to a lawyer and tell him to make sure you get your one fourth, plus full assumption of your mortgage. Figure that as your legacy, and buy some ocean-front property somewhere else. Then you can sleep nights.”

  “I hate to say it,” Natalie said slowly, “but Mike’s right, you know. That Brad is a real Charles Addams character. If I had to spend weekends on the same seventy-five acres, I’d want him to think we were good friends.”

  “It’s so humiliating,” Kitty wailed. “The Florida-American option expires Wednesday. I thought if I could only stick it out-”

  Shayne’s eyebrows knotted. “Wait a minute. That might make a difference. What happens after Wednesday?”

  “It’s back to the status quo, I guess. This isn’t the only area they’re interested in, and Barbara can’t keep them dangling forever. If she can’t deliver a clear title, they’ll look somewhere else.”

  Shayne thought a moment. “I still think you ought to deal yourself out. It’s too touchy. But if you want to take a chance on the long run, the thing to do is leave town. They’ll be mad, but maybe not quite mad enough to kill you. Stay away a couple of weeks and give it time to die down. I’ll talk to Brad in the meantime. Maybe I can scare him a little.”

  Her hands together, she was glowing at Mike. “Mike, I knew you could help! I don’t want a house somewhere else. I put too much blood and sweat into this one.”

  “I think you’re out of your mind, dear,” Natalie said. “Mike knows about these things. Brad’s older than you, granted. But he can easily live another ten or fifteen years.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about Brad after Wednesday. Right now he’s taken with the idea of being a landowner, but it won’t last. He’s a city type. In another few months I predict he won’t be coming down at all.” She looked at Shayne. “I’ll go to New York, I think. I can call the paper from there-I’ve still got some vacation coming. I’ll get the first plane in the morning.” She tightened the towel with an abstracted gesture, without looking at the detective. “I don’t suppose anything more is likely to happen tonight.”

  Shayne sighed. “You did save me from drowning. I’ll keep an eye on you until you get on the plane.”

  chapter 4

  After returning to shore, Shayne checked the padlocked closet where Kitty stored her diving gear. The top of the padlock, at the point where the shank fitted into the socket, was deeply scored.

  Kitty’s beach house was a simple rectangle of glass and vertical cedar siding, at the edge of a dense hardwood hummock. Rourke was trying to start a driftwood fire on the sand beach above the highwater mark. Shayne took over and in a matter of moments had it blazing.

  When the flames died down, they broiled the thick steaks Rourke had brought from the city. Kitty changed out of the striped towel into another bathing suit, a fragile affair of cloth and net, nearly as arresting as the one she had taken off underwater. There was a well-stocked portable bar, a battery-powered record player and a stack of jazz records, some of which Shayne hadn’t run across in years.

  Suddenly, from somewhere in the tangle of undergrowth, a bird uttered a piercing cry, as though, like Kitty’s Siamese cat, it was having its throat cut. Natalie upset her paper plate as she hurled herself into Rourke’s arms.

  The reporter patted her back. “Don’t be scared, honey. Nothing but Count Dracula. He has a right to eat, too, you know.”

  She shuddered. “I know I’m being silly, but I keep thinking somebody’s looking at us from the bushes. This is a peaceful, isolated spot, Kitty, and I still say you’re out of your mind. Will everybody please chew a little faster? I’m not driving out through that swamp after dark.”

  “Neither am I,” Kitty said firmly. “This isn’t turning out to be any fun at all. Let’s put out the fire and go.”

  Shayne said easily, “There’s more steak. Make everybody another drink, Tim. I’m still hungry.”

  In the end Shayne had to eat the last steak by himself. After that they poured seawater on the embers, dressed and started back for Miami.

  Kitty left her little Volkswagen at the heliport on Goose Key and transferred to Shayne’s Buick. An hour and a half later they were back in the city.

  Shayne dropped Rourke and Natalie at Natalie’s apartment, in a court in Southwest Miami. Rourke had brought the compressed-air tank from the aqualung. He unloaded it from the back seat, along with the picnic basket, which now held nothing but steak sauce and an unopened fifth of Scotch. He told Shayne that if anything came up he could be reached either at Natalie’s apartment or his own.

  “At your own,” Natalie announced firmly.

  “Hell, Nat,” Rourke protested, “I thought you said you were nervous. You don’t want to be alone.”

  “I was nervous at Kitty’s. There’s nothing to be nervous about here.”

  “Nothing to be nervous about! This is a dangerous neighborhood. It looks all right, but that’s the worst kind. How about that double killing last week in the next block?”

  “What double killing?”

  “You read about it. Two girls. A prowler, they think. I covered the story, and what a mess.”

  Kitty was laughing as Shayne drove away, leaving Rourke and the girl arguing on the sidewalk. She sobered abruptly.

  “I don’t know what I’m laughing about.”

  “There’s still time to change your mind,” Shayne said. “Brad’s the only one we really talked about, and I think he can be handled. But what about the other two? Shanahan’s been practicing criminal law all his life. There isn’t an angle he doesn’t know. And there’s the woman-if she wanted to be vindictive she could be a worse threat than the other two combined.”

  “All I want is one little sliver of beach and a right of way,” Kitty said. “I won’t bother her. Why should she want to bother me? I know I’ll be all right if I can get past Wednesday. She has lifetime use of the house, and I’m paying my share of the taxes. It might be different if she had children, but she doesn’t, and if she and Frank ever actually do get married I doubt if they’ll start raising a family. Can you see Frank getting up for the two A.M. feeding? I can’t.”

  But the thoughtful look stayed on her face as Shayne crossed the Miami River and turned left along the River Drive. Following directions, he turned off at Curtis Park and continued north on 23rd Avenue.

  “Mike, I don’t know how you usually do when you stand guard, but I’m not going to allow you to spend the night in your car. I have a spare bedroom. We’re both grown-up people.”

  She glanced at him swiftly. He gave her a humorous look in return.

  “It’s true I’ve had to spend a certain number of nights in a car. I never do it unless I have to. Around three in the morning the time tends to drag.”

  “Mike, could we do it like this? Come up with me first and make sure there’s nobody there. Then go back down and drive away. There’s a fire escape. God, I hate to ask you, because there’s nothing filthier, but could you come in that way?”

  “Why?” he asked bluntly. “The best thing to do when you have protection is to publicize it. Let everybody know you have a bodyguard and w
e won’t have any trouble.”

  She smiled ruefully. “I was really thinking of my ex-husband, though he’s not quite my ex-husband yet. He’s been making all sorts of difficulties. He may have hired a private detective to keep tabs on me, it wouldn’t be out of character. If you go in with me and don’t come out again, it would be just one more complication, one more thing I’d have to explain.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Maybe I just ought to phone Barbara and tell her I’m willing to do the cowardly thing and sign her damn sales contract. I’m no Joan of Arc. But then the rest of my life I’d wonder if I could have bluffed them out of it!”

  “If you want to find out if they’re really bluffing,” he said, “call Barbara and tell her you’re leaving town tomorrow, and to keep an eye on your place while you’re gone. Then if they want to do anything about it, they’ll have to do it tonight.”

  She turned to him. “You’d be willing to-”

  “Sure. I owe somebody for that tank of air. I don’t like to let that kind of debt pile up.”

  “Oh, Mike.” She hugged his arm. “Am I glad Tim Rourke put me onto you.”

  She pointed. “That one.”

  Shayne pulled up in the unloading zone in front of a modest apartment house on 28th. Kitty said, “One other thing we ought to settle before we get out. Your fee. Tim said to offer you two hundred dollars and see what you said.”

  Shayne grinned at her. “Give it to the Red Cross. If this works out so you can keep your place, let me come down and dive sometime. But next time I’ll bring my own air.”

  “I’d feel better paying you,” she said doubtfully, “but if I’m going to spend two weeks in a New York hotel I’d better accept. You really are quite a nice man, Mike.”

  Shayne unlocked the glove compartment, unlocked a steel box inside it and took out a short-barreled. 38 revolver and a box of ammunition. He loaded the gun quickly while Kitty watched.

  “I never thought I’d be reassured by the sight of a gun,” she said. “I really hate the damn things.”

  Shayne dropped the. 38 into his jacket pocket. Kitty unlocked the door in the inner lobby and they rode upstairs in the automatic elevator. Her apartment was on six. Shayne entered first, the gun in his fist.

  He listened a moment, then switched on the lights. He checked the apartment thoroughly before telling her to come in. There was one moderate-sized bedroom, another very small one. The dining area was at one end of the narrow living room, and the kitchen was only large enough to hold a single person at a time. The furniture and pictures were inexpensive, but they had been chosen with care.

  “It’s not the Fontainebleau,” Kitty said lightly.

  The kitchen window gave onto the fire-escape landing. Shayne freed the anti-burglary bolts on each side, lowered the top sash and looked out.

  “Do you agree about the fire escape?” Kitty said from the doorway, sounding worried. “Don’t do it if you think it’s silly.”

  “It may not work but it’s not silly. You’re the bait. Let’s see if we catch anything.” He closed the window, shot the bolts into the prepared sockets and drew them up tight. “Put the front door on the chain. I’ll be back in five minutes. I don’t want to park nearby.”

  “All right, Mike. I’ll call Barbara and have everything ready so when you come back we can do some serious drinking.” She came in close against him. “It’s a comfort having you around. I’m beginning to realize I was on the point of coming unstuck.”

  She pulled him in hard. Coming up on her toes, she kissed the corner of his mouth, then let him go.

  He heard the chain clank into place as he went to the elevator. He had a cigarette in his mouth when he emerged from the building. Stopping on the sidewalk, he lit it deliberately. There was no movement on the block, but as he snapped the lighter shut, something pulled his eye to the facade of the building across the street. This was another apartment building like Kitty’s, dating from the same period and faced with the same parti-colored brick. He adjusted his sideview mirror before getting into the Buick. The little glint he had noticed came again, appearing and vanishing in a dark fourth-floor window.

  The window was up four or five inches from the bottom, in spite of the fact that the squat bulk of an air-conditioning unit protruded from the next window, surely part of the same apartment if not of the same room. Binoculars, Shayne thought. That would explain why the window was raised, so the dirt and smears on the pane wouldn’t distort the image.

  After getting behind the wheel, he turned on the dome light and consulted a road map, unfolding it and folding it again so the unseen watcher, if there was one, would be sure to see it.

  Accelerating rapidly, he drove away.

  At the next corner he joined the traffic on 17th Avenue, drove two blocks and slid into a parking slot near the YMCA. He strode rapidly back to 27th Street, the street before Kitty’s. Reaching a point which he judged to be about even with the back of her apartment building, he struck in between two buildings and across a paved yard.

  The lowermost flight of the fire escape leading to Kitty’s window on the sixth floor was a vertical iron ladder, held in place by a counterweight, beyond the reach of even a professional basketball player. He tried the back door. It was locked.

  Before going to work with his lock-picking equipment, he checked the next building, a twin to this one, with the same number of stories and a common wall. The back door was warped and had failed to latch. Shayne entered and rode the elevator to the top floor. A final flight of stairs took him to the roof.

  He went cautiously to the front coping and looked over, careful not to let his head show in silhouette against the sky. The fourth-floor window which had been open before was now closed. There were still no lights in that apartment. Shayne waited another moment. When he saw the red glow of a cigarette or a cigar, he crossed the roof to the intervening wall and swung over to Kitty’s building.

  There were eight floors, which meant that he had two kitchen windows to pass. No one was home in the top-floor apartment. A light was on in the window below. There was no way to get by without being seen. He clattered down the iron treads without trying to muffle his footsteps.

  A woman was slicing onions at the counter in the little kitchen. She stared at him, her lips parted. The onion had made her cry but behind the tears her eyes were frightened.

  “I forgot my key,” Shayne said loudly. “It’s really O.K.”

  When he could see that she wasn’t going to yell he nodded pleasantly and continued past.

  Kitty was waiting. She quickly pulled the bolts and lowered the window. He swung one leg through the opening and jackknifed his big body in after it.

  She hugged him quickly. “You said five minutes. It’s five minutes on the dot. I’m beginning to see how people could come to rely on you.”

  “Did you get Barbara?”

  “Yes. I decided not to tell her where I’m really going. I said Mexico City, and I sort of jumped it at her, to see how she’d react. She didn’t react one way or the other. She just wanted to know if I’d changed my mind about signing. I said no, and that was that. At the end she gritted her teeth and told me to send her a postcard, the hypocrite.”

  Shayne decided not to mention his suspicions about the apartment across the street. They would find out soon enough what that meant, if it meant anything.

  She had brought out a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of gin, a bucket of ice cubes, and soda and water. Shayne made the drinks. She had an Ella Fitzgerald record on the record player, turned low.

  “I’ve been trying to think if there’s anything else I ought to tell you,” she said nervously. “I can’t think of anything, and there’s no point in going around in circles. So to change the subject, how are you at backgammon?”

  “Fair,” Shayne said, handing her the drink.

  “Mmm. Now does that mean you’re really only fair, or that you’re very good and you don’t like to boast? Because I was going to suggest that we put
a little money on it.”

  Shayne smiled slightly. “There’s only one way to find out how good I am. Five bucks?”

  She studied him for another moment before assenting. She moved the bottles aside and laid the board on the low coffee table.

  “On guard,” she said, rattling the dice in the cup. “Expect no mercy.”

  After a time, when bending over the table became awkward, they moved to the floor. Kitty kicked off her shoes. She was drinking steadily. She also won steadily, and by eleven, when the phone rang, Shayne had dropped three games in a row and was out fifteen dollars.

  They looked at each other across the board while the phone rang again. She was on her knees, about to throw the dice, her eyes bright with excitement. She put the dice box down quietly.

  “It’s a funny thing. I’d completely forgotten why you were here.”

  She reached the phone and picked it up before it could ring again. After listening a moment, she held it out to Shayne.

  “Tim Rourke.”

  Shayne took the phone. “Yeah, Tim.”

  “What’s that I hear?” Rourke’s voice said. “The faint tinkle of ice cubes? Soft music? The usual pattern, buddy. You relax while I keep my nose pressed to the grindstone.”

  “Did Natalie kick you out?” Shayne said with a grin.

  “She’s threatening to. Mike, this girl doesn’t know that the world is going through a sexual revolution. She’s still playing by grandmother’s rules. I want to talk about love and she wants to talk about real-estate prices.”

  “What’s she say about real-estate prices?”

  “In a minute. My thoughts are all organized, and don’t try to short-circuit me. First-you scoffed when I said I might get that air tank analyzed. It’s Sunday night. Everything’s closed. But you don’t want to underestimate my connections. I know a nurse who works the night shift at Jackson Memorial, and she had a lab technician run off the tests. It’s nitrous oxide, Mike.”

  Shayne rubbed his thumb the wrong way along his jaw. Kitty had her head close to the phone so she could hear what the reporter was saying.