Dolls Are Deadly (8 page)

“He wants to divorce you,” Shayne said brutally. “He told you so. Maybe he’s changed his mind about that and would like your insurance money instead. He’d be just as free to marry Madame Swoboda if you were dead as if you were divorced. And he’d be out from under De Luca’s threat, with maybe some money left over.”

“You’re horrible, Mr. Shayne!” She whirled away from him and started toward the house.

He caught her arm and swung her around. She bumped against him and for a quick instant he felt her body warm and exciting against him. “You hired me to help you, Clarissa. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

She sobbed on his shoulder. “I know. I’m sorry to be making such a scene, but I’m so worried about Dan—”

“He’s been out gambling before.”

She drew away and wiped her eyes. “I don’t think he’s gambling tonight. I think he’s trying to raise money to pay off D. L. And if he can’t do it—and I don’t know how he can—our house and car are mortgaged to the limit—I’m afraid of what D. L. will do. Dan may be beaten—or killed. Even now he may be dead—”

She stopped as light streamed from the just-opened door of the house.

“Clarissa!” Mabel called peremptorily. “Where are you?”

“Out here. Talking to Mr. Shayne.”

“Good heavens, you’ve been at it long enough. And all over a silly doll somebody most likely left you for a joke. Well anyway, we’re going home. Percy needs some sleep if he’s going to work tomorrow.”

“Don’t go. I’m coming in now.”

The Thains came down the steps anyway and moved toward them across the lawn.

“I wonder if you’d mind telling me,” Shayne said as they came nearer, “how long you’ve been going to Madame Swoboda’s?”

Mabel Thain stopped a few feet away. “Only since Jimsey’s death,” she said tightly. “Dan took us and we found it comforting.”

“How long has Dan been going?”

“A month or so,” Clarissa said. “Ever since she started up.”

“Does Madame Swoboda always incorporate numbers in her messages?”

“Numbers? No, not always. Sometimes.”

“What do you make of them?”

“Nothing,” Clarissa said firmly. “Nothing at all.”

“How about Dan?”

“Dan believes in numerology,” she said slowly. “He says his lucky number is twelve. If her numbers add up to a divisor or multiple of twelve, he believes that’s his day to gamble. I think he loses as fast on those days as the others.”

Shayne turned to the Thains. “What do you make of the numbers?”

Percy Thain looked beaten and dispirited; his hostility toward Shayne seemed to be gone. “I don’t know. I don’t try to understand everything. It’s enough for me to hear my son’s voice.”

“And you?” The redhead shifted his eyes to Mabel.

“They give me a sense of mystic knowledge,” she said exaltedly, fastening her eyes on the dark sky as if probing its mysteries. “It is a cabala, the theosophy of the occult. One senses and one knows, but none of these things can be communicated in words.”

Shayne waited a moment, tugging his left ear-lobe, then turned. “I’ll keep in touch with you, Mrs. Milford. And don’t worry.”

Lost in thought, he walked toward the car. Mabel had, of course, treated the matter of the voodoo doll lightly to keep her sister from being unduly distressed. But Clarissa had said Mabel believed in the séances, therefore she must also believe in the potency of a curse symbolized by a doll.

He patted Lucy’s knee when he got in the car and backed it out the drive. Near the shrubbery where he had glimpsed the movement of a few minutes before, he stopped long enough to call softly to Martin on the shag job. “Nice going, Bill. Let me know when Dan Milford—or anybody—comes in.”

Out on the road the gray Buick picked up his trail again. He put his arm on Lucy’s shoulder, drawing her over so he could feel the warmth of her body beside him. She seemed tense.

“Don’t worry, angel. Somebody’s going to see me take you home, that’s all. And if it’s a spy from a morals squad, he can go back and report I didn’t eat breakfast at your apartment.”

“I’m not worried about that—it’s Clarissa.”

“She was only crying on my shoulder.”

“I know. I feel terribly sorry for her.”

“So do I. She’s in love with her no-good husband, and from the way it looks now, he’s got some of the answers we need.”

Shayne rose early the next morning, showered, shaved, dressed and ate breakfast and, twenty minutes later, was striding through the downstairs lobby to the door. He stopped suddenly, turned back to the desk, picked up the phone and dialed Sylvester’s home.

Mrs. Santos answered, her voice tired and worried. No, Sylvester hadn’t come home or called and she didn’t know where he was. Shayne pronged the receiver, made for the door again and long-legged it to where he had parked his car the night before.

The gray Buick was parked a few cars behind it. The redhead passed, then whirled impulsively and stared boldly for half a minute at the man behind the wheel. He didn’t recognize the face but he would again, undistinctive as it was. The man was about average height with straight black hair thinning a little on top, and lidless eyes, like a snake’s. His skin had that peculiarly dry look which comes as the result of a bad case of acne at puberty. He wore a wilted seersucker suit and no hat. Under Shayne’s gaze, he shifted uneasily, lifting one hand to wipe self-consciously at his long upper lip. The hand was thin and bony, with big knuckles and visible veins.

Shayne waved genially, wryly amused at the startled and defensive look the gesture brought, turned and strode to his own car.

Speeding along Biscayne Boulevard, he turned east to the Causeway leading to the Beach. The morning was already hot. Sun beat on the road, making a mirror of it and intensifying the vivid flower colors along its edge. There was no wind, Spanish moss hung stiffly from the trees.

Through the rear-view mirror Shayne kept an eye on the tailing Buick, realizing suddenly that a green car which had pulled out from the curb too when he left his apartment was holding close behind the Buick. Was it possible that, this morning, he had two tails?

He crossed the Causeway and turned south, the two cars still with him, finally pulling in the parking lot at the head of the long slip where Sylvester’s boat was moored. Most of the other boats were already out, leaving the
Santa Clara
almost alone.

Near her on the wharf, a tall man was bent over, concentrating on something. As Shayne strode closer he recognized him as Slim, the lazy one from Philadelphia, who had lain on his back all day without doing anything more energetic than tilting a rum highball. He was the do-it-yourself man whose hobby was mechanics, according to Sylvester. This morning he had a different hobby. He was cleaning a fish.

He looked up from the mess of blood and guts as Shayne’s shadow fell across him. “Oh, hello, Mike.”

“Good morning. Is Sylvester around?”

“No, he’s down the coast somewhere. Be gone a day or two, he said.”

“What did he do, walk?” Shayne eyed the
Santa Clara.

“Nope. Got a lift.”

“Boat or car?”

There was an instant’s hesitation before Slim said, “Car.”

“What did he go for?”

“There’s a boat he wanted to look at.”

“How come?”

“I think he’s considering a trade.”

“What’s the matter with this boat? You boys just put a new engine in her, didn’t you?”

“Turned out to be a dog.”

“Since yesterday?”

Slim shrugged and went on scraping his fish with the thoroughness of a good Dutch housewife.

“I thought the engine sounded pretty good,” Shayne persisted.

“Doesn’t develop the speed it ought to. Sylvester said his old one was faster. Sylvester’s hell for speed.”

“How’d he know? You boys never let him let it out?”

“He did, I guess. When we weren’t with him.”

“Yesterday he was telling me how good it was.”

“That was yesterday. Today he didn’t like it. You know how these Portuguese are.”

“He’s not Portuguese. He’s Cuban.”

“Same difference.”

Shayne was silent. The only sound was the rasping of Slim’s heavy knife against the fish scales. Without looking up, Slim said, “This is that grouper you caught yesterday. Hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Want a piece of him?”

“No.”

“Got to thinking—” Slim seemed to feel it necessary to explain—“it’s kind of silly to be down here in the world’s fishing paradise and never eat any fish. So I came down this morning to get this one. I’ll clean it up and have the chef at the hotel cook it for me.”

“It’s a pretty big fish.”

“I’ll need it. Some of the boys are coming in to play poker this afternoon. Fish and beer and poker—that ought to be a good combo, hull?”

“Pretty good.” Shayne frowned down at the bloody mess on the wharf planks. “You know, they’d clean it for you at the hotel as well as cook it, if you asked them.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got a thing about fish. I got to know they’re cleaned good. Never eat ’em unless I clean ’em myself.”

“That’s a lot of blood from one fish.”

“It’s a big fish.”

“It’s still a lot of blood.”

Slim shrugged, still not looking up. “I wouldn’t know. I heard groupers are running bloody this season.”

“Hogwash! A grouper’s a grouper, this season or any other.”

“Maybe you’re right.” The knife kept scraping. The scales spattered.

Shayne shot his half-smoked cigarette irritably into the water. A black depression was growing within him. “I think I’ll go aboard for a minute.”

Slim looked up for almost the first time since the redhead had come. “O.K. Help yourself.”

Shayne stepped across and prowled around the cockpit, cabin and deck. It was the same as last night; everything was in place. He leaped from the gunnel back to the dock and then, looking back, he noticed that the coil of rope on the deck forward had no anchor attached to it.

“Where’s the anchor?”

Slim had finished cleaning the fish and was lowering a bucket on a rope over the side of the dock to get water to sluice away the blood and fish offal that was already attracting flies. “Anchor ring needed a weld. Somebody picked it up for the fix after we came in last night.”

Had the anchor been there when he looked over the boat last night? Shayne couldn’t be sure.

As Slim moved in from the dock edge with the bucket of water, Shayne stepped in ahead of him, took off his hat and mopped his forehead. The handkerchief slipped from his hand and landed in the fish blood.

“Too bad,” Slim drawled as Shayne bent to pick it up. “Better throw it away. It’ll smell like hell of fish.”

“It’ll wash out.” Shayne folded the handkerchief so the blood was inside and returned it to his pocket.

Slim tossed the water forcefully from the bucket onto the bloody planks and turned back to dip up some more.

“Funny how things go,” Shayne said. “I ran into Ed last night.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“Séance. At Madame Swoboda’s.”

Slim laughed shortly. “Yeah, his wife goes for that stuff. Sometimes she drags him along.”

“You ever go?”

“Once, for kicks. There weren’t any.”

“You staying at Ed’s hotel?”

“Yeah. Blue Grotto.”

“What about Vince?”

“He’s at the Mirador.”

“What’s his last name?”

“Becker.” Slim gave him a probing look. “Why you so interested all of a sudden?”

“I’m not sure I am, yet.” Shayne turned abruptly and started walking back to his car. “See you around.”

“O.K.” Slim sloshed more water on the wharf.

Before starting the motor Shayne sat staring off over the water, his gray eyes bleak, his face deeply trenched. His feeling of depression had not abated, and now a slow fury grew within him. He thought of Sylvester’s neat cabin and of his love for the boat and a lump choked his throat. Still… there was nothing rational to go on yet.

He gunned the engine and moved out into the traffic stream headed for the Causeway to Miami. His two tails stayed with him, but they were the least of his worries now. On Biscayne he slammed on the brakes in front of a just-opened bar, parked and went in. He ordered a Hennessy from a pale and disinterested-looking bartender, downed it in one gulp, strode to a phone booth in the rear and scanned the yellow pages of the directory. Only a few blocks away, he found a medical laboratory run by a William Fox.

He heeled out to the car, slid behind the wheel and drove the short distance, stopping in front of a modern white stone and glass building. The tails drove past, averting their eyes with elaborate casualness.

The day was growing hotter. Sweat seeped down inside the redhead’s collar, wetting his shirt. It felt icy. He got out of the car and stalked up the walk into the building, went down the hall and through a door marked
William Fox, Laboratories.

The blond receptionist, startled by his peremptory entrance, looked up from a roll and a paper container of coffee.

“I’d like this blood analyzed.” Shayne took the wadded handkerchief from his hip pocket.

“Certainly, sir. But no one’s in yet.”

“Get someone in! This is urgent!”

Shayne’s inner tension and barely-leashed fury, communicated itself to the girl. She stared hypnotized into his stark eyes and her own face whitened. Her fingers tightened on the paper coffee container and she half rose. “I think I just heard Mr. Fox come in. There’s a door to the laboratory from the other side.”

Before she could protest, Shayne strode past her, thrust open the door behind her desk and entered the laboratory. A stout, graying man, just struggling into a white coat, eyed him with acute disfavor.

“No one’s allowed back here. Please wait outside.”

Shayne dropped the wadded handkerchief on a bare, white table top. “I’ve no time for formalities. Analyze this blood.” While the man stammered, Shayne added, “I’m investigating a murder.”