So Lush, So Deadly Page 5

  “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 Nefertiti, and I’m going to stay on it myself until De Rham shows. That’s about all I can do, given Painter’s theory about not making waves. They’re visitors in town, and Miami Beach lives on visitors.”

  “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 one light burned aboard the Nefertiti, a battery lantern at the inboard end of the gangway. Tacked beneath it was a message printed on a shirt-cardboard:

  Mike Shayne: Looks hopeless for tonight. She’s sound asleep and snoring. Going to bed myself. Try tomorrow at 9.—Brady.

  Shayne frowned, feeling disconcerted and off-balance, as though he had missed a step coming downstairs in the dark. He had just been picking up momentum.

  But there was nothing he could do except go home. He returned to Miami, taking his time, and garaged the Buick. He lived in an apartment hotel on the north bank of the Miami River, in the same two rooms he had rented when he first came to town. He still needed the same amount of space, he liked the down-at-the-heels neighborhood, and he saw no reason to move.

  He made a final brandy and soda. While he drank it and prepared for bed, he thought about the De Rhams and Paul Brady. There were immense gaps in what he had been told. Something was seriously out of focus, but he had always had the ability to stop speculating about possibilities when he ran out of facts. He added up his checkbook, filled out his expense register, and turned out the light.

  He was instantly asleep.

  In the last year or so there had been a wave of boat robberies in Miami Beach. Professional thieves had discovered with delight that an amazing number of women on boats took their jewels along, and an amazing number of men carried amazing amounts of cash. The big marinas, which at first had been nothing but long floating docks, had begun to adopt security measures, and when Michael Shayne entered the Sunrise Shores the next morning he had to pass inspection by a uniformed guard.

  Nearly every berth was taken. The Nefertiti was at the extreme end of its row, with open water on two sides. Paul Brady, in bathing trunks and sunglasses, was reading the Miami Herald on the forward sun deck. He folded the paper, weighted it with the coffee pot, and stood up as he saw Shayne approaching.

  “Mike Shayne. I knew you’d be up early.”

  “It’s not that early. Is Mrs. De Rham awake?”

  Brady shook his head. Shayne saw himself reflected in the wraparound lenses of the sunglasses.

  “She may be awake but she’s not up. But by God, she’s going to get up. Her husband’s been gone about two weeks now. Don’t you think it’s time she got used to the idea? I’ll get you a cup. Pour yourself some coffee while I bang on her door.”

  He ducked in through a companionway and disappeared in the galley, to return a moment later with a cup and saucer, which he had just rinsed.

  “We run what’s known as an untaut ship, wall to wall filth. Dishes tend not to get washed.”

  “I’m told she’s been drinking,” Shayne said.

  “She’s been drinking. I keep her company up to a point, but after a certain number of drinks I get sleepy.”

  “This is all because her husband walked out on her?”

  Brady threw out his hands. “Ask her head-shrinker. She didn’t do much twenty-four-hour drinking before this happened. They had their fights, but this time I think she’s finally convinced he means it. She’s beginning to pull out of it, I think—I mean I hope. That visit from the cops shook her up. It’s time she took some nourishment. She must have lost about fifteen pounds.”

  “What’s your role here, Mr. Brady?” Shayne asked. “Just a friend?”

  “Just a long-suffering friend. I thought they’d decided to make up, or I wouldn’t have come along. I have a marital problem of my own. But when they had the bad fight and the drinking started, I thought somebody ought to stick around. I don’t mind telling you I’m close to the end of the road.”

  He crossed the salon and went down one step to rap on the stateroom door. He had promised to bang on it; instead, he knocked respectfully and repeated the knock when there was no response.

  “What do you want?” a voice called.

  He ducked his head, tried the door as though suspecting it might be locked, and stepped in.

  Shayne poured himself coffee and waited. He was on the boat’s exposed side. He was half-sitting on the rail, not wanting to commit himself to a deck chair. A girl came out on the deck of the next boat, separated from Shayne only by the width of the catwalk. She had long blonde hair, coming down to where an old-fashioned bathing suit would have begun if she had been wearing that kind instead of a bikini. She came up on her toes and stretched, up and out.

  She smiled at Shayne. “Good morning. Are you through with that paper?”

  “It’s not mine. Throw it back when you’re done with it.”

  He handed it across. She took it with another pleasant smile, found a pair of sunglasses, and settled herself. Shayne stayed where he was. She looked up from the headlines almost immediately.

  “You certainly have some weird murders in Miami, don’t you?”

  “I know. But most of the murderers have only been with us a short time.”

  This was a game Shayne didn’t mind playing when he had nothing else to do. Brady came out before he could make the next move.

  “Hi, Sally.”

  “I borrowed your paper.”

  “Keep it.” He picked up his coffee cup. “It’s going to take Mrs. De Rham a few minutes. Bring your coffee around here, Shayne. There’s a breeze.”

  Shayne lifted one eyebrow to the girl and followed Brady to the blind side of the boat.

  “This is like living in a department store window,” Brady said in a lower voice. He moved a chair so he could sit down and put his feet on the rail. “I’m afraid I gave you the wrong impression, the way I fielded your last question. I wasn’t trying to duck anything. I know it looks as though there’s a little adultery going on here. That was what the cops thought. They kept looking for a chaperone. But how could I walk off and leave he
r? Only husbands are allowed to do that. Of course I sympathize with the guy, he’s an old friend of mine. He’s taken plenty of punishment. So have I the last couple of weeks.”

  “How about her family?”

  “There’s a mother in the south of France. I was supposed to be back in New York last week, so I finally cabled. I haven’t had an answer yet, and I don’t even know if she got it. After the cops were here I got Dotty to phone the lawyer, I forget his name—”

  “Loring.”

  “Loring, yeah, he’s some kind of guardian. But he just had a heart attack, it turns out, which leaves me.”

  There was a bowl of mixed nuts on a low table, and he was shoveling them into his mouth as he talked. His hair was long but carefully tended. He had a petulant mouth and a chin with a deep dimple. His womanish chest and thighs were deeply tanned. He was still wearing his shades, though this stretch of deck was in shadow. Shayne, as a detective, would have liked to abolish sunglasses. They hampered him. Brady’s manner was confident, but Shayne had a feeling that his eyes were darting nervously from side to side behind the screen of the glasses. The salted nuts and the coffee kept his hands busy.

  “She looks like the wrath of God,” Brady said. “And she’s worried about it so go easy on her, will you? It wasn’t exactly simple, talking her into this. It was my idea that a private detective could help, but she only agreed to it because I thought of working it through the lawyer.”

  He threw more nuts into his mouth. “I don’t know what’s taking her so long. She said she’d just put on some lipstick. Well, I might as well tell you. The complication, the thing she didn’t tell the cops when they talked to her, is that when Henry walked, he took some of her cash with him. He cleaned her out.”

  “How much?”

  “She doesn’t know for sure. It could be as much as five thousand.”

  “How did she happen to have that much with her?”

  “Because she’s a little batty.” He lowered his voice abruptly. “Jesus, I hope she didn’t hear that. If you look at her cross-eyed she starts screaming. She always has to have cash around, because what if she sees a diamond bracelet or something and they don’t know her well enough to take her check? What if she forgets what name to put on the check? My own private theory is that it reassures her, it gives a certain substance to her personality. Whenever she wonders who she is she pulls out the dough to prove to herself that she’s really Dotty De Rham. You don’t get that kind of feeling from credit cards.” He made a gesture of despair, which ended with more salted nuts going into his mouth. “She tells me about her childhood sex experiences, but money we don’t discuss.”

  “You said you’re due back in New York. What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m not exactly due back. I’ve got a tentative business connection but it’s still very fragile. The real reason I joined this junket was to get Dotty to buy some stock, and please don’t think it was like shooting fish in a barrel. It was damn hard.” He twitched up out of his chair. “I’m going to see what she’s up to. She must have that lipstick on by now.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “She tried to get up but she couldn’t make it,” he reported a moment later. “Come on in. She wanted me to pick up the room first, but that’s a day-long job. Be careful what you step on, it could be a T.V. dinner.”

  They entered the stateroom. The shades were drawn. Shayne didn’t see any T.V. dinners, but there was everything else, clothes, newspapers folded open to stock market tables, empty bottles. Mrs. De Rham was in the double bed, hiding behind sunglasses. She was wearing a lacy bed jacket. She had tawny hair, and it was in fairly good shape. Her lipstick had been put on with a shaky hand.

  She ran the glasses down her nose to look at him over them, then put them back up.

  “I hope you’re used to squalor, Mr. Shayne,” she said in a pleasantly hoarse voice.

  Brady picked a glass off the bedside table. “Baby, will you stop drinking gin for breakfast? Do you want to starve?” He tasted the drink. “Straight gin,” he said gloomily, and set it on the bureau.

  “And what a Sunday School teacher you’re turning out to be.”

  “Thank you,” he said, sitting down. “Find a place to sit, Shayne.”

  Shayne moved a pile of underclothing off the chair at the foot of the bed.

  “How much did Joshua Loring tell you?” she asked.

  “Just that you needed a detective. I’ve already talked to Petrocelli, and he won’t be any problem. He’s ready to leave any time. But Mr. Brady tells me there’s more to it than that.”

  “Yes. You see my—husband—”

  She sniffed sharply and reached for a box of Kleenex.

  “Now don’t cry, for God’s sake,” Brady said impatiently. “I’ve already told him about the dough.”

  She turned her head angrily. “You—”

  Brady put both hands on his head, as though to keep it from flying apart. “That’s what Shayne is here for, isn’t it? Let’s not go through the whole thing again. Otherwise why not let the cops find him? Or let him turn up by himself?”

  “He can have the damn money,” she said in a muffled tone.

  “Sure. He’ll be glad to do that. And you won’t see him again, I can guarantee you. I’ve known Henry longer than you have. He’s attached to it by now.”

  She blew her nose. “Mr. Shayne—I want him back. I couldn’t tell the police that he—”

  When she didn’t go on Brady picked it up for her. “How would it look? Five thousand is serious money to a cop. Hell, it’s serious to me. But Henry’s no ordinary thief. There was a certain amount of fuss on the way down about Dotty’s will. Shut up,” he said when Mrs. De Rham started to speak. “You really milked that bit, and you know it. You’ve got a choice. You can either tell Shayne what the situation is or give it to the cops. They didn’t sound too interested when it was a case of a husband who walked out on his wife after a fight, but a husband who walked out with the wife’s five thousand bucks—”

  She made a gesture under the sheet. “You’re itching to tell him. Tell him.”

  Brady sighed. “She wrote a new will, Shayne. Everything to charity and nothing to Henry. That was what the fight was about. She wanted to show him who had the power. She showed him, all right, and what was supposed to happen to the human relationship? I speak from experience—I’ve been getting the same business from my own wife. Dotty’s in her late twenties. With luck she’ll live another sixty years, if she tapers off on the gin. So if Henry’s only been staying with her for the inheritance it’s a long-range prospect, no? I know exactly how he figured! She was putting everything in monetary terms. O.K., he knew how it would bug her to look for those five G’s and find them missing. And why not? What else has he got out of the marriage except maintenance?”

  “I want him back,” she said miserably.

  “And if he doesn’t want to come back,” Shayne said, “do you want the five thousand?”

  She didn’t answer for a long moment. Her hands moved beneath the sheet.

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice.

  “How I love you rich people,” Brady commented.

  Shayne said, “Do you think he’s still in Miami?”

  Mrs. De Rham had slipped down in the bed. She seemed exhausted.

  “Paul,” she said faintly.

  “Yes, baby. Do you want a saucepan?”

  She moved her head. “I can’t talk any more.”

  Brady hesitated, then stood up. “Get some sleep. I’ll take care of it. He’ll find him for you, baby, don’t worry.”

  He picked up the glass of gin and took it with him, Shayne followed. After closing the door Brady stood leaning against it for an instant, breathing hard.

  “I can’t help feeling sorry for her, but goddamn it! Why didn’t she treat him better when he was here?” He began shaking himself back into his earlier manner. “Of course a lot of that in there was summer stock. She overdoes everything.” He went to the gall
ey and emptied the glass in the sink. “Not that she doesn’t have a bottle under the mattress, probably. But she’s better today. Yesterday she wasn’t making any sense. You’re going to want a picture.” He found two photographs in a drawer. In the first, De Rham was crouched over a guitar, an absorbed look on his face. The other showed him in bathing trunks, walking along a beach.

  “Would he shave off his beard?” Shayne asked.

  “I doubt it. He’s had it since sophomore year in college. There isn’t much of a chin behind it.”

  Shayne was scraping his own chin thoughtfully, looking around the cluttered room. There was a record player and a drift of records, most of them folk music. He didn’t see a guitar.

  “She didn’t answer my question. Do you think he’s still in Miami?”

  “Shayne, after the pounding he took on the cruise he was in no shape to go through the rigamarole of getting a plane reservation and confirming and showing up in time for the plane. If I read the tea leaves right, and I think I do, he’d hunt for a place nearby to lick his wounds.”

  He headed for another bowl of salted nuts and started working at it. “I think I could even find him myself, but I don’t want to leave Dotty. The thing about Henry, he’s not exactly burning with ambition. He doesn’t want to see his picture on the cover of Time, he just wants people to leave him alone. I used to feel the same, but I’m beginning to see that people won’t leave you alone unless you pay them to. At Harvard he used to moon around wondering what he was doing at a competitive college, instead of in some lazy pad in San Francisco or the East Village.”

  He pushed a stack of records off a chair so he could sit down. “Then he met Dotty. Life with her had advantages, such as not having to pay the rent, but whenever he felt the strain he’d talk about how underneath he was really a frustrated beat.”