America, so why was she still here? I had a couple of drinks with individuals who work at the marina, the night guard, the kid who pumps gas. Nobody’s seen any sign of De Rham after the first day. And that’s a real party they’ve been having, she and Brady. A real flow of bottles. She’s only been off the boat like a few times at night to use the phone, and not navigating too well. Well, hell. Extracurricular sex-what’s wrong with that? I’m in no position to judge. I just about decided to let it go when I got a call from her at the motel.”
“When?”
“Couple of days ago. She sounded pretty good, not slurring her words or anything. She said she’d been under the weather lately, which is one way to put it. Now she’d heard I’ve been going around spreading slander about her, which is a lie. I’ve only talked to a few people and I’ve said nothing but the truth, namely that she and Brady are alone on the boat and what happened to the husband? She said she didn’t like to think I was holding a grudge, it was just the way things worked out. So why didn’t I go back to New York? She was willing to give me a hundred, like severance pay, to cover transportation. She didn’t want me coming back to the boat, because Paul and I would be sure to tangle, so she’d send it to me.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything’s wrong with it!” He turned in the seat. “De Rham already gave me an extra hundred for transportation when we parted company. What makes her so anxious to get me out of town? Why should Paul he carrying a pistol? There’s more here than meets the eye. Dig? I’m planning to go back to New York eventually, because, not wanting to say anything against your hometown, Shayne, I’m not too crazy about the weather down here. Meanwhile, I’m in no hurry. I’m shacked up with this Sandy. She was right there beside me in the bed when I took the call. I told Mrs. De Rham sure, send me the hundred, and it came in the mail. Now a hundred bucks may not mean much to you or to me, but she’s in one of the upper tax brackets and she don’t part with that kind of dough unless there’s a reason. I mean she gave me a five for Christmas last year! I thought about it and I thought about it, and the explanation I came up with finally was that she wanted me out of town because she and Brady between them have put De Rham out of his misery!”
He held up his hands to keep Shayne from objecting.
“I know. What have I got to go on? He’s probably alive and well somewhere and there’s nothing to it. But you can’t get around the fact. There were four people on the
“I thought you said she smashed it.”
“No, she just put a dent in it and broke the strings. What I’m getting at is-if he got fed up with the way she was treating him and walked off, he would have taken the guitar with him. It was hardly ever out of his hands on the way down. Anything else he might leave, but not the guitar.”
Shayne was scraping his chin. “Let’s get the chronology. Your two visits to the boat, and the call from Mrs. De Rham.”
Petrocelli shook his head. “The dates have been running together on me lately, Shayne. The call was like five days ago now. You could verify it with the cops, because I called them that same day. I don’t know if you’ll think it was finky or not, but if there’s any chance of a murder! The thing of it is, of the three of them De Rham was the one I liked. I know it’s probably all in my head. But somebody ought to go and ask her one simple question: ‘What have you done with your husband, Mrs. De Rham? Where is he?’”
“Who did you talk with?”
“What cops? I saw a couple. One named Richardson?”
“Luke Richardson. I know him.” Shayne finished his cognac and screwed the cap back on the flask. “Do you have any money?”
“I’ve got about four hundred in the safe at the motel. Why?”
Shayne opened his wallet and counted out three fifties. “I don’t think you’d better go back there. I’ll check you in somewhere else.”
“Why? What do you mean?” Petrocelli said, alarmed. “You don’t think anybody’s going to-”
Shayne said roughly, “I don’t know a damn thing about it, but they obviously don’t want you in Miami. Brady has a gun. Guns have a way of going off. All you have to do is pull the trigger.”
“Don’t be dumb. You don’t really think that creep Brady-” He stopped, his eyes narrowing. “Shayne, do you know it never actually dawned on me until right this minute? If he killed De Rham, if he tied an anchor to him and dropped him in the bay, I’ve been playing with fire! I think you may be right. I’d better stay out of sight for a while.”
He shuddered and drank the gin-flavored melted ice at the bottom of his glass. “Now that I think of it, that Brady has a bad eye. Mean and lazy. He wouldn’t walk a block out of his way, but if he could do it without getting up, yeah-I really think he could pull that trigger.”
CHAPTER 6
Shayne took Petrocelli to a motel in Biscayne Park, on the Miami side of the bay. The gin had finally caught up to him, and he seemed badly frightened. Shayne left him watching a gangster movie on T.V.
Using an outside phone booth, he called Luke Richardson, the Beach detective who had talked with Petrocelli. He was at home, still awake, and Shayne heard gunfire in the background. Apparently he was watching the same movie.
“Petrocelli,” he said, after Shayne told him what he wanted. “I caught that squeal. Who’s your client, Mrs. De Rham?”
“Her lawyer. I haven’t been able to talk to her yet. How seriously are you taking this?”
“I think he could have something, Mike. Did he tell you about the guitar? I didn’t get the full story. My theory with somebody like Petrocelli, you sit still and let him talk. But as luck would have it, Chief Painter didn’t have anything better to do that day-”
“Is he mixed up in this?”
“You know Painter, he doesn’t like anything to happen anywhere on the Beach that he doesn’t know about, especially involving people who own fifty-thousand-dollar boats. He didn’t like Petrocelli on sight. He put him down as a drunk with a grievance, fired for cause and out to make trouble, and he more or less threw him out. As a matter of fact, we’ve been getting a lot of these marina cases lately. After a few days at sea one of those luxury boats is like a pressure cooker, and things happen. Wait a minute till I turn down the T.V.”
He was back in a moment. “We talked to Mrs. De Rham the next day, and a man named Paul Brady, I think, a passenger. She’s the kind of society-page dame Painter gets protective about. She was haughty with him, and he ate it up. If you ask me, she was plastered. She could hardly finish a sentence. But you know Painter-if they have money everything’s understandable. Her husband walked out and she was drinking to kill the pain. Officially that’s where it stands.”
“How about unofficially?”
“Unofficially, I put out a missing persons sheet. I’ve got the marina people keeping a schedule of all traffic on or off the
“What did you think about the situation on the boat?”
“I think Mrs. De Rham and Brady are probably sleeping together, Mike, but that’s not a law we enforce, since we live on visitors. I don’t quite think they murdered him. Why would they hang around? All they have to do is put gas in the tank and go.”
Shayne told him about Mrs. De Rham’s cash transfers from New York, and Richardson whistled.
“Then I think we’d better start looking for unidentified corpses. Keep in touch, Mike. Incidentally, I just got a call. Somebody using your name beat up a woman in a bar. I don’t have to tell you how Painter reacted. I’m sure he jumped up and down. Better stay out of his way for a few days.”
“I always stay out of Petey’s way. I just wish he’d stay out of mine.”
He hung up thoughtfully. After a moment he returned to the Buick and drove back to the Sunrise Shores. Only
