When it answered, he said, “Pat Ryan, please. Security,” hoping that Ryan would still be on duty.
The operator said, “Certainly,” and a moment later a voice said, “Ryan speaking.”
“Mike Shayne, Pat.”
“Hey. How you doing, Mike? Caught up with that juicy blonde yet?”
“I’m just about to.” Shayne lifted his eyebrows at Mary, who reclined on the sofa with her robe carefully arranged to show the smooth line of long, well-fleshed legs. “What I wondered, Pats” he went on hastily. “Has there been any call for me? I haven’t been able to get hold of my secretary.”
“Not a thing, Mike.” Pat Ryan chuckled lewdly. “Why worry about a secretary in Miami when you’re about to catch up with something juicy out here?”
Shayne said, “Thanks,” and hung up. His scowl deepened and he drummed blunt fingertips on the telephone table beside him.
Why, indeed? But none of these people knew Lucy. That was why. He didn’t even bother to look at Mary when her voice floated to him provocatively from the sofa, “For goodness sake, you can call her later, Mike. After she gets home from her date. Remember that kiss I promised you.”
Shayne said coldly, “I still haven’t earned it.” He lifted the telephone again and directed the operator to put through a collect, person-to-person call to Timothy Rourke in Miami, giving her both the
It was some time before they succeeded in locating the reporter, and his voice sounded queer when it finally came over three thousand miles of telephone wire: “Mike? The operator said Los Angeles. Is that right?”
“Yeh. I’m in L.A. Tim, I’m beginning to get worried about Lucy. I can’t locate her, and…”
“What are you talking about, Tim?”
“About a dead man in your office, Mike. Stabbed in the heart with that filing spindle off Lucy’s desk. And she seems to have vanished into thin air.”
7
“Wait a minute, Tim,” Shayne implored his old friend. “What’s all this…?”
“Did Lucy go out there with you, Mike?” interrupted Rourke in Miami.
“No. She was in the office when I left about noon. I’ve been trying to call her apartment and getting no answer. Start from the beginning and make sense, Tim. Remember, I’ve had no contact with Miami since eleven o’clock this morning.”
“I’ll start at the beginning, but I don’t know how much sense I’ll make,” Rourke told him gloomily. “Here’s the way it stacks up. About eight o’clock this evening your cleaning woman unlocked the door of your office and found a dead man lying on the floor right in front of Lucy’s desk… with that long, steel spindle, off Lucy’s desk, rammed all the way into his heart.”
“Who is he?”
“No identification on the body. Middle-aged. Sort of nondescript. They’ve found no one who saw him go in or out of the building. They figure he got it between four and five this afternoon.”
“Go on,” grated Shayne. “What about Lucy?”
“Nothing. That’s the hell of it. Of course they tried to reach you first, but they couldn’t get any line on you. No one knew where the hell you were.”
“Pete did,” Shayne said angrily. “Clerk at my hotel. I told him I was leaving.”
“Probably gone off duty by the time they got to him. Anyhow, Mike, they started looking for Lucy then. Her phone didn’t answer. I went up to her place with Will Gentry to check. Nothing disturbed. Everything spick and span there… just the way Lucy always leaves her place so meticulously in the morning. You know… you and I have kidded her…”
“I know,” Shayne said impatiently. “How about the office, Tim? Anything out of the way there?”
“No sign of a struggle at all. Nothing. Just a dead man lying on the floor… boss and secretary both inexplicably vanished.” Timothy Rourke paused to draw in a deep breath. “They’ve got an All Points out for both of you, Mike. Gentry couldn’t afford not to. I’ll have to report this call, Mike, as soon as I hang up. Right now you’re a Wanted Man.”
“Sure, report it,” Shayne told him harshly. “Tell Will exactly what I’ve told you. And tell him I’ll be back on the first jet I can get out of here. I’ll wire him as soon as I get a reservation.” He put the receiver down and stood up, his eyes bleak and unseeing, his jaw set hard and cheeks deeply trenched.
“Mike,” cried Mary in fright from across the room. “What is it? You look so… strange. You don’t have to leave tonight, do you?”
He blinked his eyes and he saw her reclining there on the sofa; voluptuous, beautiful… and available. “Yeh,” he said slowly. “I’ve got to get back.” He looked at his watch and saw it was almost eight o’clock, Los Angeles time.
“But what about me?” wailed Mary. “You promised you’d help me.”
“I promised I’d listen to you,” Shayne said shortly. “I have. To a pack of lies.” He paused, looking at her coldly and appraisingly. “Now, I wonder, by God…?”
She squirmed under his gaze. “At least take time to let me tell you the truth. There can’t anything so terrible have happened in Miami that you have to rush back at a moment’s notice. Tomorrow morning will certainly be time enough…”
He turned his back on her and her voice trailed off into troubled silence. He lifted the telephone and asked the operator to connect him with United Airlines Reservations. When he got a connection he asked about the next flight to Miami and was told there was a jet flight leaving forty minutes after nine o’clock.
“I want space on it,” he said. “First-class. I have a return ticket. Michael Shayne.”
“One moment, Mr. Shayne.” He waited, and thirty seconds later was assured that space was available and would be held for him on Flight Seventeen, scheduled to reach Miami at six o’clock the next morning, Eastern Standard Time.
He hadn’t heard her movements or the rustle of her robe, but the smell of her perfume and the woman smell of her body was strong and close to him when he put the receiver down. He turned slowly and Mary pressed herself against him hungrily, twining her arms about his neck and looking up into his face beseechingly with parted lips and imploring eyes.
“Don’t leave me, Mike,” she whispered. “Not tonight. I need you so. I can make you… need me, too.”
The length of her well-fleshed body pressed against him warmly, and he knew she wore nothing beneath the silken robe. He looked down at her broodingly and agreed, “Yeh. I think you could do that all right… if things were different. But the way things are…” He sighed deeply, reached up and caught hold of both her wrists at the back of his neck, pulled them apart and pressed them down against her sides, put pressure on both of them so pain showed on her face.
“No, Mike,” she whimpered. “Don’t do this to me. I’ve been so alone and frightened. You don’t know…”
Looking bleakly down into her eyes, he said brutally, “Now is a good time for you to get frightened again. I’m going to have the truth out of you this time… if I have to slap it out of you.” His voice turned into a snarl on the last words, and he thrust her away from him so she almost fell.
She recovered her balance and lowered her long lashes while she rubbed her bruised wrists. “I don’t know what’s happened,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t understand. I promised to tell you the truth this time, and I’m just waiting for you to let me do it.”
“No more carefully rehearsed stories,” he warned her angrily, turning aside to splash cognac into his glass. “I think I’ve been taken, goddamn it. I think you’ve made a Patsy of me. Trailing you around all over this town like a tame puppy while all hell was breaking loose back in Miami.
“You know what I think right now?” He swung around on his heel to glare at her. “I think this whole thing from the cute Special Delivery letter was a carefully calculated plan to get me out of Miami and away from my office
