He could hear Phyllis’s breathing quicken. “Did you see me before you came to my room with the others and wakened me?”
“What makes you ask that?” He looked at her.
She was frowning perplexedly. She looked older than he had thought her this afternoon. Twenty, maybe. And she was beautiful.
“Because I remember, or dreamed, that you talked with me. That you put your arm around me and walked with me. That you—made me take off my nightgown in front of you.”
Shayne couldn’t stand that look of tortured questioning in her eyes. She was thinking about that locked door. It was the one thing that stood between her and the belief that she had committed matricide. If he took that away from her—
He shook his head. “That’s a hell of a thing to imagine, youngster, even for Freud. You’ve got a lot of goofy ideas. I’m not the kind of a guy to watch a girl take off her nightgown in a bedroom—and not do anything about it. You can mark me out of your dream.”
“I—wondered.” She shivered and swallowed hard, looked away from him. “There are some women who don’t—appeal to men that way.”
“What are you getting at?” he growled.
“I’ve been reading some of Doctor Pedique’s books. He lent them to me to study so I might understand myself better when he discovered what he thinks is my—unnatural love for Mother.”
Her voice trailed off, and again there was only silence in the room. Shayne sipped his cognac and fought to keep a rational grip on himself. Something inside him was beginning to feel sick. The girl’s voice began again, quite impersonally, as if the whole thing were hateful but she was resigned to it. “His books are full of case histories of people with curious sexual complexes. I didn’t realize—I didn’t know there were that sort of people in the world.”
“There are lots of things you’d be just as well off not knowing.”
“But it was important to me. It fascinated me after Doctor Pedique hinted I wasn’t—normal that way. I read everything he had, to try and find out for myself whether he was right.”
Shayne’s fist thumped on the table. “He was screwy to give you those books to read. You’re too young and you’ve got too much imagination. It’s not healthy to study that sort of stuff.”
“I wanted to,” she cried wildly. “I had to find out about myself.”
“Well, did you?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I thought I recognized the same feelings inside of me as the books described.”
“Autosuggestion,” Shayne muttered. “You were wide open to that sort of stuff.”
“I’ve got to know, now.” She leaned toward him pleadingly. “I can’t go on any longer without being sure. You’ve got to help me.” She caught his hands in hers.
“I?” Shayne frowned. “I’m not a doctor. I can’t—”
“But you’re a man.” There was frenzy in her voice. “A normal man. You can tell. The books say normal men can tell and won’t have anything to do with girls like that. If you can’t—if you won’t—if you don’t want me, I’ll know. And I’ll kill myself.”
Shayne pushed his chair back and stood up. It was hot in the room, stifling. He loosened his pajama collar and went to the window, drawing in great drafts of fresh air, and tried to get a grip on himself.
When he turned about, she was also standing, trembling, her face white. “You are repulsed by me. Then—it’s so!”
“Don’t be a fool,” Shayne said roughly. “You’re just a kid. I can’t—Good God! I’m old enough to be your father.”
“I’m nineteen. And you’re only thirty-five. You said so this afternoon.” She was moving toward him, hope glowing hotly in her eyes.
There was a weakness inside of Shayne. Phyllis Brighton stopped very close to him.
She said, “Don’t you see I have to know? I have to. Nothing else matters. You promised to help me. You can. By proving to me that I’m a normal woman—desirable to a normal man.”
“You’ve been out with men before, haven’t you? Haven’t they—”
“Not with ones that are grown up, like you.” She held out her hands. “If you’d just kiss me I’d know,” she said, as if it hurt her to ask him.
“If I kiss you,” Shayne told her somberly, “it won’t end there.” He had hold of her hands and he didn’t realize that he was crushing them in his hard grasp.
“I don’t want it to end there.” Her voice was quiet, and she didn’t seem young any more. Shayne forgot that he had been thinking of her as just a kid who was trusting herself with him alone in his apartment. He was drawing her closer, hurting her cruelly, but she did not flinch. Exaltation shone in her eyes. She lifted her head, offering him her lips.
He said, “God have pity on us both if I kiss you, Phyllis.”
Her only response was to press close to him. The resilient warmth of her body against him was too much for Shayne to resist. There was a blaze flaming inside him now. He kissed her lips, and she gave herself to him, eagerly, utterly.
He put her away from him after a time, and his gaze was hungry, brooding. “I warned you. You can’t turn things like this on and off, you know—like an electric switch.”
“I don’t want to.” There wasn’t a trace of coquetry in her smile. It was a smile of sincere and honest gladness. “Where’s the bedroom?” She glanced about the room.
“That door.” Shayne’s forefinger stabbed at a closed door. “The bathroom is the door on the right.”
She patted his hand and went to the bedroom. Shayne stood there, and his gaze followed her until the door shut her from his sight. His mind was racing, trying to puzzle something through in spite of the clamor in his blood. Nothing quite like this had ever happened to him before. He poured himself a drink, held it up, and let light spill through the amber fluid. Then his eyes became abruptly intent, and he set the glass down without tasting it, went to the bedroom, and knocked.
Phyllis’s muffled voice called, “Come.”
Shayne saw that she was already in bed, the coverlet pulled up to her chin.
There was a loud thumping on Shayne’s outside door as he started to say something to Phyllis.
He whirled tautly. A heavy voice called, “Open up, Shayne.”
He turned to look at Phyllis. “No. They didn’t follow you. Like hell they didn’t. Stay in bed and don’t move. Don’t make a sound. I’ll try to stall them.”
He whirled and went out, switching off the light and closing the door quietly. “All right,” he growled as the thumping continued, “give a man time to get out of his bathroom.”
Stepping softly to the table he pocketed the .25 automatic, set Phyllis’s wineglass upside down in the cabinet, and emptied his. Then he strode to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, sauntered to the door, and opened it. He didn’t bother to act surprised when he saw the heads of the Miami and the Miami Beach detective bureaus standing in the corridor outside. Instead, he scowled and said, “This is a hell of a time to come visiting,” stepped aside, and let them enter.
CHAPTER 4
WILL GENTRY CAME IN FIRST. He was a heavy man with a face the color of raw beef who walked solidly on the thick soles of square-toed black shoes and wore a dark suit and a black felt hat tipped back on his perspiring forehead. A stolid, persevering man who ran the Miami detective bureau as it had been run for thirty years. He said, “Hello, Mike,” and went past Shayne to stand by the table.
His companion was Peter Painter, “dynamic and recently appointed chief of the Miami Beach detective bureau,” as the press had been describing him. Shayne knew him slightly. He was medium in height and slender, a few years younger than Shayne, and his appearance at the moment was characteristic. He wore a double-breasted Palm Beach suit and a creamy Panama hat. White-and-tan sport shoes, a pin-striped tan shirt, and a brown-and-red four-in-hand tie completed his ensemble. Shayne’s eyes flickered as he took in this sartorial tour-de-force, but not from admiration.
Painter had flashing black eyes, a thin face, and
mobile lips across the top of which there ran the narrow line of a beautifully trimmed and exceedingly black mustache. He had been a New York detective for three years, and had resigned to head the Miami Beach detective bureau. He nodded and followed Gentry into the room.
Shayne closed the door and moved toward the table. His eyes were hard but his manner affable. He stopped at the cabinet and took down two clean wineglasses, set them on the table, and unstopped the brandy bottle. “Have a drink?”
Gentry nodded absently, his eyes going around the room.
Painter drummed on the table top with hard finger tips and said, “I don’t drink while on duty.”
Shayne lifted shaggy eyebrows in quizzical inquiry as he poured two drinks. “I thought this was out of your territory.” He handed Will Gentry a glass and poured fresh ice water from the pitcher.
“That,” Painter told him, “is why I asked Gentry to come along with me.”
Shayne nodded and drank. Then he drew up a straight chair and motioned toward the two easy chairs close together in front of the table. “It isn’t against your principles to sit down, is it?”
He sat down, as did Gentry. The older man shook his head slightly at Shayne. Painter did not move. He said, “I want that girl, Shayne.”
Shayne shrugged and sipped from his glass. “There are lots of girls,” he said softly.
“I want only one of them. Phyllis Brighton.”
“Christ,” murmured Shayne, “you’re welcome to her.”
Painter’s eyes were fixed on his face. “Where is she?”
Shayne gravely patted the pockets of his dressing-gown and looked at Painter with guileless eyes, murmuring, “Gracious. I seem to have mislaid her.”
Painter’s dapper figure grew tense. He leaned forward angrily.
“Now, now,” Gentry interposed. “Cut out your horsing, Mike. Painter thinks you had something to do with her disappearance from her home.”
Shayne asked, “Has she disappeared?” His tone was noncommittal.
The Miami Beach man said, “That won’t get you anywhere, Shayne. Maybe you can get away with your kind of stuff on this side of Biscayne Bay, but you can’t on my side.”
Shayne grinned and said, “Can’t I?”
“No. By God, you can’t.” Peter Painter’s dark eyes flamed dangerously. “That girl’s guilty as hell, and I’m going to break that case tonight.”
“Fair enough.” Shayne lit a cigarette and smiled mockingly at the little man. “Cherchez la femme.”
“You,” said Painter, “have got her hidden out.”
“Want to search the dump?”
“Hell, no. I don’t think you’re dumb enough to have her here. Where is she?” The question crackled at Shayne.
“She was in bed when I left the Beach.”
“What have you been doing since you drove away?”
“Sitting here drinking some very excellent cognac and cogitating upon the devious ways of murderers and the like.”
“Why,” asked Painter savagely, “did you run away from the scene before I arrived?”
“That’s your bailiwick,” Shayne reminded him. “I wanted to give you plenty of room for your schoolboy antics.”
Painter stiffened and said, “By God—”
“Now, now,” Gentry interposed again. “There’s no use getting tough,” he admonished Shayne.
“Why the hell shouldn’t I get tough?” Shayne flared at him, disregarding Painter. “This mail-order detective busting in here with his damfool questions and accusations. To hell with him! I was all set to give him what dope I had picked up, but now he won’t get a thing from me.”
Through tight lips, Painter said thinly, “I’ll jerk you in as an accessory if you don’t watch your step.”
Shayne didn’t pay any attention to him. He went on talking to Gentry.
“What’s the angle? Suppose the girl has disappeared? Does that make her a murderess? And what am I supposed to do about it? If he can’t keep tabs on his suspects am I supposed to do it for him?”
“See here, Shayne.” Painter sat down, making it evident that he controlled himself with difficulty. “Do you want to answer my questions now or shall I swear out a warrant for your arrest and drag you in where you’ll have to talk?”
“I’ve been in better jails than yours.”
“All right. Come clean and you needn’t get in mine.”
Shayne added, “And worse.”
“Now wait,” Gentry said hurriedly to Painter. “You’re off on the wrong foot. I’ve worked with Mike Shayne before. He’ll rot in your Miami Beach jail before he’ll answer any questions he doesn’t want to answer.”
“And I’ll stink like hell while I’m rotting,” Shayne added sardonically.
Painter compressed his lips and said, “I’ll take that drink you offered me.”
Shayne emptied the bottle of Martell into the third glass and handed it to him. “Off duty,” he said, “you might not be a bad guy.”
Painter drank half the liquor and set the glass down, fiddling with its slender stem. He said slowly, “I understand you were retained on the case by Doctor Pedique.”
“I was.”
“Because he feared the girl might murder her mother.”
“Right.”
“And you arrived this evening too late to avert the expected tragedy.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Shayne told him. “A tragedy, if you’re talking for the headlines.”
“The girl had already killed her mother when you got there, hadn’t she?”
Shayne emptied his glass and grinned wolfishly. “Had she?”
“Well, damn it!” Painter exploded. “She was dead, wasn’t she?”
“She was dead,” said Shayne carefully, “when Doctor Pedique took me to her room.” He gazed benignly into the Beach detective’s angry eyes.
“Which makes a strong case against the girl,” said Painter harshly.
“Admitted.” Shayne paused, then added casually, “Did they tell you we found the girl’s door locked—on the outside?”
“There might be a dozen explanations for that.”
“Sure,” Shayne agreed soothingly. “The kid might have bumped her mother, gone back and locked her door, and then crawled into her room through the keyhole. Only trouble with that theory,” he added, “is to figure how she got the key back into the keyhole after crawling through.”
Gentry choked on the last of his drink while Painter snorted, “Being funny isn’t going to help.”
“Then your methods,” Shayne told him, “aren’t going to solve the case.”
“For God’s sake,” implored Gentry, “you two guys quit knifing each other.”
Shayne said, “I’ll get another bottle,” and went out to the kitchen. When he came back with a full bottle of Martell neither detective had changed his position.
“I should be getting almost drunk enough to do some real detecting,” said Shayne pensively as he opened the bottle.
Painter rubbed his sharp chin and asked, “Then you don’t think the girl did it?”
“When you grow up enough to shave that silly mustache off,” Shayne muttered, “you’ll maybe have learned not to indulge in too many theories on a murder case.”
Peter Painter stood up, quivering with indignation. “I didn’t come here to be insulted.”
Standing, Shayne towered over the dapper detective chief. “No? Then why did you come?”
“To give you a chance to clear yourself,” Painter snarled.
Shayne poured himself and Gentry a drink, held the bottle invitingly over Painter’s glass. He muttered, “You’re hell on duty,” when Painter shook his head.
Painter turned away indecisively, and Shayne sat down, asking in an interested tone, “Did you find whatever they used to kill Mrs. Brighton?”
Painter swallowed hard and looked back over his slim shoulder. “I have a hunch you know more about the murder weapon than anyone else.”
“You’re giving me a lot of credit,” said Shayne mockingly. “Hell! Didn’t they tell you I wasn’t alone in the house a minute?”
Painter turned about with his jaw rigidly jutted. “I know your record, Shayne. You stay out of my territory hereafter or I’ll throw you in the can on general principles—and keep you there.”
Shayne stood up. His fists were knotted, and his eyes were mad. “You’re in my territory now,” he said softly, and moved around the table toward Painter.
Gentry lurched up and got his solid bulk between them. “No, Mike. No.” He pushed the redheaded detective back and said out of the corner of his mouth to Painter, “Scram, for Christ’s sake. I’ll see you in my office later.”
Shayne said thickly, “The little twerp. I’ll wring his neck.” He pushed Gentry aside and moved toward Painter, breathing heavily.
Painter whirled before Shayne reached him, went out the door, and slammed it shut.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Gentry said when Shayne came back.
“Why not?” He poured out a drink, held the glass up to the light and peered through it, shook his head unsteadily, and poured the liquor back in the bottle, spilling a few drops on the table.
Gentry said, “He’s a smart little guy.”
“He can’t push me around without getting pushed.” Shayne dropped into the chair Painter had vacated and lit a cigarette.
“I told him to take it easy,” Gentry rumbled. “But God, you know how these city guys are. Always got to be shaking a leg.”
“He’s not a city guy now,” Shayne told him. “He’s nothing but a chief of detectives.”
Gentry grimaced wryly but didn’t say anything.
“What the hell sent him prowling around here looking for the girl?” Shayne went on. “I haven’t started taking up with the screwy kind—or kids—yet.”
Gentry sipped his cognac. “She’s got to be somewhere, Mike.”
“Hell, yes. So has prosperity, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got a line on her.”
“Haven’t you, Mike?” Gentry did not look at him.
Shayne grinned amiably. “That’s a Beach case. Let him find out where she is.”
Dividend on Death Page 4
