Never Kill a Client

today. That’s the way it looks right now. And, by God, I fell for it,” he added wonderingly.

“Oh no, Mike!” She shrank away from him, moved back across the rug on her bare feet to the sofa where she dropped down again and covered her face for a moment. Her features were composed and set when she looked at him again and said quietly, “Please sit down with your drink and listen to me. I admit I made up the Cuban and communist part of it, but if you’ll just help me get that dispatch case back from Tijuana…”

He said, “Nuts on Tijuana. I’m interested in Miami, Mary… if you are Mary Devon, which I’m beginning to doubt.”

“What about Miami? I haven’t been there for years.”

“There’s this about Miami.” He strode across to stand over her, holding his glass of cognac in his left hand with the big palm of his right hand held open and swung back menacingly to indicate that he had meant his former threat. “My secretary has vanished. She’s been missing for hours, and there’s the body of a dead man in my office.”

“A dead man?” She shrank back, aghast. “Who?”

“They don’t know yet, but the theory right now is that Lucy Hamilton murdered him.”

“But what has the body of a dead man got to do with you, Mike? You can prove you’ve been here all day.”

“That’s right,” he said bitterly. “Being diddled all over Los Angeles on a wild goose chase that would stink like hell even to a rookie cop while a murder is being committed in my office and God knows what has happened to my secretary while I’m out here playing games with you.

“That’s why you’re going to start talking, and tell the truth this time,” he told her implacably. “Let’s not have any more crap about a dispatch case in Tijuana and taxi drivers spying on you all over the city. I tell you this: If anything happens to Lucy from now on because you keep lying to me, I’ll…” He paused and dropped his voice. “I’ll see that you regret it. Now start talking. It was a hoax from the beginning, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t know anything about murder, Mike. Or your secretary. I swear I didn’t. I still don’t see…” She shuddered and shrank farther away from the anger in his eyes, “You’ve got to believe me. It was just a job. They said it was a practical joke and it sounded like fun. I still can’t believe…”

“Who said it was a practical joke?”

“Joe did. Joe… Morrison,” she babbled. “He’s a producer here that I do some work for. Bit parts. I just can’t think that he… that your being here has anything to do with what happened in Miami today.”

Shayne dropped into the chair close to the sofa and said, “Give it to me, Mary. The whole thing… and straight.”

“In the first place,” she admitted, biting her full lower lip, “my name isn’t Mary Devon. Joe suggested I tell you that. He gave me a copy of that book your friend wrote about the Wanda Weatherby case so I could read up on it and pretend I was Helen Taylor’s room-mate and met you briefly that one time ten years ago. He said you’d never remember what Mary Devon looked like and it would make the whole thing sound that much more convincing… a logical reason for me to call on you for help now that I was supposed to be in trouble ten years later.”

“All right,” said Shayne. “I don’t give a damn what your name is. You say a producer named Joe Morrison suggested this to you… hired you to do it. When was this?”

“About a week ago. Joe said they needed an actress to pull a practical joke on the private detective in Miami. Michael Shayne. Of course, I knew all about you from watching the TeeVee series.”

“Who is ‘they’?” demanded Shayne. “The ones Joe said needed an actress?”

“I don’t know,” she faltered. “He never said. I just assumed it was some friends of yours that had planned it for a joke. It all sounded pretty silly to me, but they offered me five hundred dollars and I didn’t see what harm it could do. In fact… well, I guess I might as well admit I was intrigued by the idea of spending the night with you.”

She lifted her chin defiantly. “And if you’re interested, I still am… only more so now that I’ve met you. If you’ll cancel that damned airplane reservation…”

Shayne said wearily, “Get back onto the subject. Who dreamed up all the hocus-pocus about Castro and so forth?”

“Joe did. He dictated the letter I wrote you, and gave me the torn thousand-dollar bill and all. Spilling the perfume on it was my idea. He had a script all written out that I memorized. I told him it sounded pretty silly and I didn’t believe you’d fall for it, and so he fixed up a second story for me to tell to get you to go to Tijuana with me tomorrow if you didn’t fall for the first one. The whole idea was that I was to keep you here at least until tomorrow noon and then it wouldn’t matter if you caught on and went back.”

“Then someone wanted me out of Miami for at least two days,” Shayne muttered. “That’s why you went through all that silly business at the Plaza Terrace and the Brown Derby and the other restaurant on Sunset Strip?”

She nodded, smiling weakly. “The Cock and Bull. That was Joe’s idea of a gimmick, what some of the TeeVee people call a bubble when they stick it into a script. He said a cock-and-bull story like that should have its climax at a place of the same name.”

Shayne said angrily, “It was worth a pretty good hunk of money for someone to get me away from my office. Assuming those two halves of the bill in my pocket aren’t counterfeit, and adding in my airplane fare and your five- hundred-dollar fee for the job… that’s close to two grand altogether.”

She said, “I asked Joe who was putting out that kind of dough on a practical joke, and he just grinned and said airily that it was going to be worth every penny of it when you found out how easy it had been to fool you.”

Shayne said, “I’d like to have a little talk with your Joe Morrison. Where can I find him?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. Not in the evening like this. He’s a producer and you can get him at his studio mostly in the daytime, but I don’t know where he lives. He’s got an unlisted telephone number in Beverly Hills that he never did give to me. Not that I wanted it, but I did try to call him one night and couldn’t reach him by phone. If you do stay over tonight, I’ll take you out to the lot and introduce you to him tomorrow.”

Shayne looked at his watch and said grimly, “I’m boarding a plane for Miami in just a little over an hour from now.” He emptied his glass of cognac, stared at the glass for a moment, then drew back his arm and threw it across the room with all his strength.

He laughed unpleasantly at the expression on the blonde’s face as the glass shattered in fragments against the wall. “You’re still lying to me,” he told her flatly. “This isn’t any goddamned practical joke. This is for real. In place of your commies in the FBI and the CIA, you’ve substituted a television producer named Joe Morrison who conveniently has an unlisted telephone and can’t be reached for confirmation until some time tomorrow. Let’s have the truth now. What in hell went on in Miami today and is going on in Miami tomorrow that made it worth two grand to somebody to keep me out of town?”

“I don’t know.” She shuddered and drew her robe tightly about her body. “Go on and catch your jet-liner and get back there and find out,” she advised him thinly. “What have I got to do with missing secretaries and dead men?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.” Shayne got to his feet, his nostrils flaring widely. She remained crouched back on the sofa and watched fearfully as he strode into the bedroom where she had opened her suitcase on the bed to take out the robe she had changed into while he watched her in the mirror.

From where she sat, she couldn’t see him through the bedroom door as he picked up the open suitcase and dumped the contents onto the bed. He pawed through the dresses, blouses and skirts, picking out half a dozen which he draped over his arm and carried back into the sitting room and dropped on a heap on the floor in front of her.

“Now, let’s talk turkey, whatever-the-hell-your-name-is. Every article of clothing on the floor here carries a label from an expensive Lincoln Road shop in Miami Beach. You said you hadn’t been there for years. So you lied. So what?”

“I didn’t lie. I… those aren’t even my own clothes,” she told him glibly. “They belong to a girl I know. I’m married to a very jealous man and I couldn’t pack a bag to bring with me today and so I borrowed a suitcase of clothes from her…”

“Shut up!” said Shayne in a voice that shut her up. “You’re going back to Miami with me.”

“No, I… I can’t, Mike. My husband…”