Sam was clutching Lib, using the classic front-stranglehold.
“Mike,” she gasped.
“O.k., I believe you. Sam first.”
Reaching down, he grasped Sam’s collar. She had to claw herself loose. The little man proved to be surprisingly light.
Shayne hauled him over the side and dropped him on deck, where he lay on his stomach coughing out lake water. Before leaving him, Shayne gave him a fast one-handed frisk to be sure he was no longer armed.
Lib reached up for Shayne’s hand. He put the flashlight beam in her eyes.
“I’ve got the advantage for the time being,” he said coldly, “and I’d better hold onto it. What clothes are you wearing?”
“What clothes?”
“Yeah. And don’t repeat everything I say. It annoys me.”
“You ripped off my dress, don’t you remember? You know what I’m wearing. I found a sweatshirt in the boat and put it on.”
“What else?”
“Well, a bra and-Mike, you know, the regular things. I’m not concealing a gun, if that’s what you mean. Please help me get out.”
“Hand up your clothes. You can keep the sweatshirt. I want everything else.”
“Mike,
When he answered only by snapping his fingers she said angrily, “All right, damn you.”
The bra came up first, then a garter belt, pants, and, finally, stockings. Shayne tested the seams before tossing each garment aside.
“Now I’m going to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Let me get in the boat? I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I’m afraid of eels.”
Shayne laughed. “They’ve got sense enough to be afraid of you. Who’s this girl named Anne? Blonde, with an English accent. You know the one I mean.”
“She’s just a face and a name. One of the others recommended her.”
“What is she, a call girl?”
“If you have to have a label.”
“Call girls don’t usually carry guns. It’s all this money floating around-everybody seems to want some. Where did the fire start?”
“I don’t know. I was making a drink. There was a kind of flash and all the walls were burning at once.”
“An explosion?”
“No bang or anything. More like a pop.”
“Did you and Sam give orders to let Tim Rourke in?”
“Apparently Grover did that.”
“Why?”
“He keeps doing dumb things. He’s so sick of his job, he wants to make sure his father doesn’t run again.”
“How much of that six hundred thousand have you and Sam spent so far?”
“You’ll have to ask Sam.”
“I could do that, but you’re the one in the water.”
“I guess most of it’s gone, Mike, I don’t know exactly. Five hundred?”
“How much of that went to Judge Kendrick?”
“You know I can’t tell you that, Mike.”
Returning to the cabin, Shayne cranked the engine and headed out toward the middle of the lake. Sam staggered into the doorway.
“Lib-”
“It’s a game, Sam. She knows I don’t mean it.” He throttled down and looked at Sam curiously. “Have you had a checkup lately?”
“Why?”
“You must be pushing sixty-five. It’s time you slowed down.”
“Don’t I know it,” Sam said bitterly.
“How do you explain all this? You were shooting at me a couple of minutes ago. How long since you shot at anybody?”
Sam sighed heavily. “Years.”
“Maybe I’d be doing you a favor if I cut her loose in the middle of the lake.”
“She’s a fair swimmer. She’d make it.”
They looked at each other for a moment. Then, switching off the power, he moved Sam out of the doorway and returned to the cleat, where he checked the line. In a moment Lib’s head appeared over the side. He loosened the half-hitch he had taken around the cleat and she fell back in the water.
“I asked you about Judge Kendrick,” he said.
“Are you taping this?”
“You never know, do you? It’s an electronic business these days.”
“Can I have a minute alone with Sam?”
“No.”
“Because we might be able to work something out. It’s tricky. I’m not trying to bribe you. I know you better than that, after we shot at you and tried to put you in jail overnight. That gives you an incentive. But Mike, there’s a way you could really clean up, you could clear an easy fifty thousand dollars without going unethical in any way-”
Shayne kept quiet.
“Mike, pull me out. I have to see your face, to watch how you react. If I do this wrong-”
She thought a moment more, and then said decisively, “No. I can’t take the chance. I’d have to be 100 percent sure we weren’t talking into a microphone. So screw you, Mike, to be vulgar about it. Go ahead, untie the rope or whatever. I won’t drown.”
“All right.” Shayne began working at the knot.
Her voice rose. “This isn’t all so gay and carefree, you know. People could get killed.”
“People already have got killed.”
“Gregory’s guy, I know. Sam and I both cried.”
“I mean Sheldon Maslow.”
Sam came careening along the deck and seized Shayne’s arm. “Maslow? Did you say Maslow?”
Lib, from the water, said, “How did he-”
“Let’s all calm down,” Shayne said. “Let go of my arm, Sam.”
After an instant Sam released Shayne’s arm and collapsed on the padded bench along the boat’s side. Shayne decided to find out how they communicated with each other.
“I’m pulling you in now,” he told the girl in the water, “but I’m a little short-tempered so do it my way.”
“Give me something to put on.”
“Not yet,” he said, reaching down to take her hand.
He pulled, and she came up the side and leaped on deck, dripping. Her white hair was a mess, falling stringily about her face. She dragged at the bottom of the sweatshirt. It came down just about far enough.
“Mike, this is silly. Let me get dressed. I feel so exposed.”
Shayne aimed the flashlight in another direction. “Now hold your hands out to the side. Straight out. Further than that, and hold still. I’m going to search you.”
“Search me!” she said indignantly. “I haven’t got one stitch on except this sweatshirt.”
Sam rumbled a warning behind Shayne.
Shayne said sharply without turning, “Don’t try anything, Sam. And Lib, for God’s sake stop being coy. We’re all over voting age. I’ll just call your attention to this Cadillac steering wheel. I’ve already knocked out one set of teeth with it, and I’m ready to knock out two more. Are you listening, damn you?”
“Yes,” Lib said.
