Caught Dead ms-64

by Brett Halliday

  “What is meant by the word diary? Something that is written from day to day?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Then you should ask that question of his mistress. Here is where he had his clothes washed, where he read his mail.”

  “You never saw him writing in a little book with lined pages?”

  She lifted her face from the champagne. “No, Mr. Shayne. I know nothing of any such book of that type.”

  “You didn’t give Tim Rourke a page torn out of it, to persuade him to carry in those cartons of cigarettes?”

  “No, no. I have no meeting with that person Rourke. When you speak of a diary, I hear about it for the first time.”

  “Will you look around the house and see if you can find it? I might be able to use it to buy Rourke off. Then I’d go home and you people could work things out without any more interference from me.”

  “But why would I care if you stay or go?”

  “It’s a funny setup,” Shayne said. “The minute I showed up everybody started telling me things. That doesn’t always happen. I think it was to keep me busy so I wouldn’t stumble on something I shouldn’t be worried about, such as money.”

  “Money,” she said vaguely, and drank. “The odds and ends he was able to put aside. I have heard this mentioned, but who knows how much or where it is?”

  “Somebody must. How much luggage did he have with him when he left for the plane?”

  “None. Look here, will you open another bottle? Those tiny thin things are not adequate for two persons.”

  Shayne popped another cork and more champagne fumed into their glasses. She drank greedily.

  “I was with him when he received the phone call. I know now it was the one that said all was over, resistance was hopeless. He was calm. If he had packed a suitcase I would know he was leaving. I might demand that he take me to safety. He merely said he would go outside to smoke a cigar in the garden. In casual shoes, not even a necktie. Presently I heard an airplane motor. Soon after that, a smash.”

  “What will you do now,” Shayne said after a moment, “go home to your family?”

  “I will make them move me out of this house bodily! One of their tame judges is even now preparing such a measure. If I had that diary you speak about, do you know what I would do? I would sell it. I am not a wealthy woman, far from it. If my husband had other sources of financing, I never saw or touched any of that. He made me a miserable allowance to run the household, and I had to go down on my knees and beg for such things as a new dress, a color television.”

  “Lenore says you agreed to help get him out of jail because you thought it would pay off financially.”

  “I did it out of softness! Out of sentimentality! Perhaps it occurred to me to bargain a little-if we succeeded, I would expect one third of his property, and that would certainly be fair because I was the one who ran the danger-but it wouldn’t be dignified at such a time. If she told you I said one word to her about money or shares, she is lying in her teeth! I was carried away with the idea that a wife should assist her husband in times of trouble. That has always been the rule in my family.”

  “How hard did you try to get permission to see him?”

  “I went from office to office. I talked to Mejia, the members of the junta, the judges of the high court. I persuaded Mr. Felix Frost, the most powerful man in the North American Embassy, to intercede on my behalf. But they are inhuman, they wouldn’t grant a wife the favor of looking at her husband for the last time. Politics turn men into animals.”

  “Maybe they were afraid he’d manage to tell you where the money was.”

  “I’m sick of listening about this money. Don’t speak about it any more because it makes me physically ill.”

  “Did you have any contact with Paula Obregon?”

  “No, only with the girl’s aunt. I have knowledge of her socially, you understand. Her parents have been to my table. But on this occasion, the one who induced me to make that fatal commitment was the Dante woman, and how coarse, how degrading to me was the moment of weakness. I put my arms around her, we shed tears together as we agreed to conspire to save the life of the man we had in common. But not so much in common, when you think of it. She had the person, the future, I had the empty title.”

  “Do you have any idea how I can get in touch with the Obregon girl?”

  “One day she will take one chance too many, and she will be captured. But until then-” She waved. “If there is no more champagne in the bucket go to the door and shout. They will bring some.”

  He opened the last split and poured. She was still very erect, sitting at the edge of the chair with her knees pressed together, but her color had risen.

  “I think it was Dante who did the bomb. You know that it was her idea from the beginning, the minute she came to me! Do you think a woman of that sort would be very overjoyed at the scenery of spending the rest of her life with this poor grim Guillermo? Definitely not. This is a wild goose chase on my part… but if you knew him… She was a scribbling artist when he picked her out of the gutter, and the dear child slobbered with gratitude. He made her paintings fashionable. She has a certain foothold on the edge of Palm Beach society; she amuses them. And the price she had to pay was not too much… Thank you, a drop more… Two weeks annually, now and then a wild weekend. Sometimes she would be asked to come to Caracas and be available. He was nothing to sing about in that category of sex, I can tell you. Mediocre. He was in power too long, his human qualities suffered. And his ordinary conversation. He would look at you with sleepy eyes and defy you to entertain him. I am quite certain she killed him.”

  “How could she put together that kind of bomb?”

  She waved her glass airily. “I never deny that she’s intelligent. And the reporter Rourke would be blown into pieces by the same explosion, the only person who could give the police her name. That’s what makes me so bloodthirsty.” The word didn’t sound right. “‘Bloodthirsty’?”

  “Yeah, that fits,” Shayne said. “I don’t know if you’ll let me get away with this question. We’ve been talking about your husband’s women. Fair’s fair. Do you have any men?”

  She looked at him haughtily, her lips beginning to shape a chilling answer. Then she smiled.

  “She is intelligent; so are you, Mr. Michael Shayne. I have had precisely the right amount of wine. There are those who have admired me, I believe, but it is a formidable thing, you know, to admit this to the wife of the president, who rules absolutely and has a sudden temper. Those conditions are no longer present. No, I will not return to my family in the provinces. I intend to travel. I wish I had that diary you speak of, then I could travel en luxe. But I am not on that account to be pitied.”

  “How soon is the funeral?”

  “They have not told me. It will be decided by the politicians.”

  She sat back in her chair for the first time and looked at him over her raised glass. “You are a sudden man. I was speaking of my personal desires and you ask the date of the funeral. I wish to ask you how you find me. The wife of the president will always receive flattery she perhaps does not deserve, but you come into my house now when I am the wife of a dead president who no longer holds power. I can trust your opinion. Is life over for me? Shall I sit on a veranda drinking coffee with unmarried cousins?”

  He let her drink before he answered.

  “No, you don’t fit that scene. I could tell better if you weren’t wearing a girdle.”

  Her lips parted. “Do you think, then, that I am asking to be embraced and handled? You are not such an intelligent man, after all.”

  “What’s your guess about how much money your husband managed to get away with?”

  “Impossible!” she exclaimed. “Now it is money again. We were talking about the fascinating subject of how I impress you, a sophisticated man from another country, and all at once, the dull matter of money. I am indifferent to money. Men don’t feel themselves drawn to women who talk always of mone
y. Why do you think the not wearing of a girdle is so important?”

  “It’s a symbol. Did your husband drink champagne?”

  “Diet-Cola.”

  “It must have been a pretty rough life for you in some ways.”

  “Dreary, so dreary. I don’t bother about the insults, the humiliation. That is the lot of women in this world. But the endlessness. Do women tell you that you have a way of moving that draws the eye? In a film, you would fill the screen. You are the one that the audience would watch. My head is whirling, I think you are pressing me to drink.”

  “It’s your champagne.”

  “You noticed that I am confused by questions, so to keep my composure I drink before answering.” She demonstrated. “And you keep coming toward me with questions.”

  “Did he tell you he’d closed out his Swiss accounts?”

  She drank again. “What do you want from me?” She studied him, and it was clear that she was trying to make the images hold still. “You are mentioning my girdle, and yet I know you have no erotic plans. Why do you wish to disturb me-so the wine will take command?”

  “I want to look through a few bureau drawers.”

  She moved a hand in a gesture of permission. “I have hidden nothing. But I will warn you, he was careful about burning papers. It was his religion. Always, in wash bowls, in waste baskets, the servants and I found ashes. Look. Why should I be afraid from you? Before you go, move the champagne within my reach.”

  THIRTEEN

  Shayne called the maid and told her by signs to bring more champagne. She brought two warm splits. Shayne twirled them in the ice water and opened them both to make drinking less complicated.

  “Did he have a room he used as an office?”

  “You must find it by yourself.”

  Her glass tilted. He straightened it for her and she repaid him with a lopsided smile.

  He began checking rooms, trying to get an impression of the life these people had led together. At the opposite end of the cloister he found a room with an immense desk, its surface bare except for an elaborate cradle phone. A large portrait of the ex-president leaned against one wall. Another of Lenore Dante’s geometric oils had been hung in its place.

  Shayne was going through the desk drawers when he heard a faint stirring within the phone. He lifted the handset gently. A man’s voice was talking in Spanish, protesting, explaining. Senora Alvares broke in. Shayne heard his own name spoken. He listened to the exchange until it ended. The woman was by turns hot and cold, plaintive and curt. The man was sulky. Shayne thought he heard the name Frost thrown up out of the torrent of unfamiliar sounds, but it flickered by too fast for him to be sure.

  When good-byes were spoken, Shayne depressed the bar, waited a moment and then dialed the operator. After surviving the usual series of misunderstandings, he was connected with a voice that could respond in English. He asked for a number in Palm Beach, Florida.

  While he waited he continued to open and shut drawers, finding nothing to change the impression he already had, that Alvares had been an orderly, apparently bloodless man. A snapshot of the dead president with Lenore Dante had been slipped under the desk blotter. She was in tennis clothes, holding a racket. Alvares, beside her, seemed to be trying to outstare the camera. There was a bulge in his pocket that could have been a gun.

  The operator established the connection and a man’s voice said, “Katz Protection.”

  “Sam? This is Mike Shayne.”

  “Hey! What’s this thing about Tim Rourke? It’s all over the morning paper. Are they kidding?”

  “They don’t seem to be. I’m in Caracas now, trying to find out. There’s a Palm Beach angle I’d like you to check out, if you’re not too busy.”

  “Everything’s canceled, as of now. Go ahead, Mike.”

  “It’s a lady named Lenore Dante. Do you know her?”

  “Lenore Dante. It rings a sort of bell. Is she year-round?”

  “She runs an art gallery there, and she used to be the girl friend of this Venezuelan dictator, the guy who got blown up in the bombing. I want to know if they’ve spent time together in Palm Beach, and if so, in what kind of style. What did it cost them? Were they asked out as a couple?”

  “I know somebody who can tell me,” Katz said. “How soon do you want it?”

  “Right away. The other part is harder. I want everything you can find out about her business and her personal finances. How much money has been going in and out? This is important. And if you have to spend money to get it, spend it. I want rumors as well as facts. Has Alvares invested any money in Palm Beach? Does he own any property there? Stay on it right through, Sam, and keep a line open because I’ll be calling you.”

  He hung up and continued with his search of the house. He encountered two maids as he proceeded, and told them in English to go on with what they were doing. He worked his way around the square, ending where he had started.

  The widow was asleep on a horsehair sofa under a black lace shawl. A lock of hair had been jarred out of the tight knot at the back of her neck, and lay along her cheek. She was snoring faintly.

  She had finished another split of champagne. He filled his own glass from the last remaining bottle and sipped it, thinking. He worked his way through the cigarette without reaching any conclusions. Stubbing it out, he looked more closely at the overflowing ashtray, and picked a dead cigar out of the debris. He crumbled a piece of the wrapper and sniffed it. The smell was unmistakable. It was the same kind of excellent Havana Felix Frost had been smoking that morning.

  He dropped it in the ashtray. Senora Alvares hadn’t stirred.

  He encountered no one on the way out. As soon as he was back in the stolen French sedan the old man trudged out to open the gate for him. It creaked open. Leaning out, Shayne threw him a coin.

  Since hearing his own name tossed back and forth between the Senora and the unknown man on the phone, Shayne’s internal radar had been emitting a steady series of blips. He didn’t need a reminder that he was not only a foreigner here, he was a foreigner who was asking unpleasant questions. He started the car rolling as the old man picked up the coin and moved out of the way. Shayne came down into second and hit the accelerator hard, exploding through the gate.

  He spun the wheel, accelerating, and heard the shot as he came out of the skid with the gas pedal on the floor. It sounded like a high-powered rifle. His only weapon was a. 38 revolver. The car’s inner wheels ran over a stone curb.

  The second shot went into a rear tire. As the tire blew it threw the car back across the driveway where it caromed off a young cypress. Shayne shifted up even before he was sure he had control and began looking for cover.

  The car was tossing violently. He was on a rough track leading to a cluster of out-buildings, but from the way the car was bucking he knew he had no chance of making it. In the outside mirror, he caught a flash of a white shirt and a slanting rifle barrel. The rifle came around.

  Without hesitating, Shayne wrenched the wheel over, left the road and headed across a patch of cleared ground toward a clump of trees. For that first instant the corner of the wall screened him from the rifleman. The car went up a rise, and then the ground fell away sharply. For a period of time, short but definite, all four wheels were in the air. When they struck, another tire went.

  Shayne unlatched the door and let the car shake him loose.

  He rolled once and was up, racing for the trees. He held steady for three strides, then jumped. A bullet went into the ground near him.

  He broke through the trees and without slackening speed raced down the slope toward the stone buildings. He reached them after a straight, hard run, rounded the corner of a blank wall and leaped into a stable.

  There was one dirty window. Shayne scrubbed the accumulated dirt off one pane with his knuckles and looked out.

  The Renault had ended up against a tree. The walled farm was now a quarter of a mile distant. Smelling Shayne, a horse snorted and stamped inside a stall.
Nothing moved outside until a man carrying a rifle, crouching, ran toward the trees.

  Shayne returned to the stable door. There was another silent building across an empty corral. He gauged distances, but he would be out in the open for five seconds, and it would be a long five seconds. Even if the rifleman held up in the trees before coming farther, he would have a shooting-gallery shot at forty yards. He had been high with his first, startled by the Renault’s sudden eruption through the gate. The second shot had been careful and good. Though he had missed with his third, that had been a difficult, hurried shot downhill.

  Shayne picked up a clod of dirt and shied it across the corral. Watching the line of trees, he saw a glint of sun on the rifle barrel.

  A farm worker moved slowly across a distant field. Work in the fields was about to resume. When it did, Shayne would be badly outnumbered as well as out-gunned. The horse behind him knocked against the door of the stall. Shayne heard the sound of a truck motor starting and decided he could wait no longer. He thrust his. 38 inside his belt and let himself into the stall, telling the horse to hold still.

  It was a gray stallion, enormously tall. He allowed Shayne to pat his flank and slide his hand along his head.

  “I hope you understand English,” Shayne said, gentling the horse with both hands. “We’re going for a run and I want you to behave. If you see anybody with a rifle, stamp on the son of a bitch. That’s right, boy.”

  The horse shook his head as the bridle came down and began to weave. Shayne talked him into taking the bit. There was no time to hunt for a saddle. He upended a feed tub. The horse shouldered him against the wall and Shayne cuffed him lightly.

  “Easy, fellow.”

  Somebody shouted in Spanish and the horse jerked back hard. Shayne mounted the feed tub and flung one leg over his back. The horse reared and came forward; the door sprang open. Shayne slid into place, well forward, and gathered the short reins. A sheathed machete hung from a nail outside the door and Shayne snatched it out of its sheath while the horse hesitated, turning.