Bodies Are Where You Find Them (5 page)

Stumbling back to the walk, he stepped across it into the sand and passed behind the rows of cars to reach his convertible. Reaching through the window, he secured the bottle of cognac with trembling fingers and collapsed. For a few minutes he sat with his head lolling on his chestbone, then lifted the bottle and drank deeply. A warming glow began in his midribs and spread strengtheningly through his body. He emptied the bottle and stood up.

He still hadn’t seen Arch Bugler.

Stepping onto the sidewalk, he walked at a shambling gait toward the entrance to the Bugle Inn. The doorman watched his approach with narrowed, speculative eyes.

Shayne felt strong, but he feigned weakness. He bumped against the wall, righted himself as he neared the gates.

The doorman said, “Beat it, mister. You know all I got to do is whistle.”

Shayne hit him in the mouth before he could purse his lips to make the signal that would bring Donk and Johnny to his aid, dropping the man to the walk with his threat unfinished.

Pushing the gates open, he strode forward under the brightly striped canopy, looking neither to right nor to left. Three stone steps led into a thickly carpeted entrance hall. A tall man wearing a white mess jacket with a napkin over his arm hurried forward from an archway which led into a large, brilliantly lighted dining-room.

Shayne shook his head at the mess jacket and went to the left where the clink of glasses and boisterous laughter indicated a bar. Men and women in formal attire stopped drinking and laughing to stare at his disheveled wet hair and puffed lips when he entered the cocktail lounge, their eyes traveling down over his rumpled, bloodstained clothes.

Striding up to the bar, Shayne announced, “Just been in accident and need a drink.”

The patrons, their curiosity satisfied at the statement, turned back to the serious business of liquor and sex. A bald-headed bartender jovially inquired after his needs.

“A bottle of Martell cognac and an empty glass.”

“Yes, sir,” the man answered.

Shayne poured liquor into the glass and hunched his shoulders forward, resting both elbows on the bar, caressing the glass between his big hands to warm it. He sipped slowly, his nostrils expanding and twitching as the clean, pungent aroma drifted upward.

There were three bartenders on duty behind the long chromium bar. When the bald-headed man became momentarily disengaged, Shayne said casually, “You do a rushing business here.”

“Pretty good this time of the evening. It’ll slack off about midnight, and we don’t do much until after dark.”

“Open in the afternoons?”

“From one o’clock on. Not enough to keep one man busy, though.”

“Did you work a shift this afternoon?”

“Yep. We alternate. I go off at twelve.” Some of his wholesome joviality went. He looked at Shayne with a sudden suspicious leer, then glanced up at a clock on the wall.

Shayne saw his quick change of expression and laughed. “Lucky I had my accident convenient to a bar. This must be the place my girl friend told me about. She was here this afternoon. Maybe you remember her—pretty, with a lot of blond hair.”

The bartender shook his head. “Lot’s of those young dames drop in for cocktails. I don’t notice ’em much.” He turned to move away.

Shayne stopped him, his voice peremptory and hard. “You’d remember this girl. She left with a friend of yours—Michael Finn.”

The man turned slowly to stand in front of Shayne. His gaze was veiled and afraid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think,” said Shayne, “you do.” He finished his drink and frowned into the glass, paying no further attention to the bartender, who remained standing uneasily in front of him.

When Shayne pushed the empty glass and bottle away and stood up, the man reminded him uneasily, “You haven’t paid for your drinks, sir.”

“Tell Arch to mark it up to profit and loss.” He strolled along the bar toward a rear door that said
Gentlemen.
It opened onto a corridor leading to the back of the building. The first door on the right was also chastely lettered
Gentlemen.
He went into a lavatory and washed his face and hands with soap, dried them meticulously, and combed his unruly red hair with his fingers. There was an ugly bruise on his left cheek, and both lips were badly swollen, but the cut on his upper lip had stopped bleeding.

A waiter passed him as he stepped into the hallway. He carried a tray with two highballs on it. Shayne watched him stop at a door near the end of the hall. The man knocked, then entered, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Shayne followed him, treading noiselessly on the rich hall runner. The door was marked
Private.
He heard Arch Bugler’s peculiarly sinister and purring voice, a soft sibilance acquired by the mobster to conceal the naturally harsh and guttural quality of his tone.

“Forget it, Marlow. I should be sore at you for barging in like this, but I don’t blame you for being upset. You can’t trust a skirt nowadays. Too bad you had to make a trip down here to find out how you stand. Put it down the hatch. It’s out of my private stock.”

A thin, shaky voice answered him. “I’m not going to believe it until Helen tells me so herself. There’s something screwy going on.”

Shayne stepped forward quickly as the door started to open inward. He strode nonchalantly down the hall without looking back, turned to the right at the end. An intersecting corridor led to a wide archway opening into a big square room which was deserted except for a couple of workmen busily polishing roulette tables and crap layouts. White cloth covers still were in place over other tables in the rear.

Stopping in the doorway, Shayne scratched a match noisily and put flame to a cigarette. One of the workmen glanced up without interest. Shayne grinned at him and asked, “Getting ready for the grand opening, eh?”

“Yep. That’s about it,” the man replied, and his companion added, winking broadly, “If the election turns out right.”

Shayne nodded and turned away. A deep crease furrowed his brow as he went back to the door marked
Private.
He turned the knob and went in without knocking.

Arch Bugler stared at him across a wide, flat-topped desk of shining mahogany. He was a squat man with tremendous shoulders and torso. His eyes were almost colorless and appeared opaque, slightly protuberant and unblinking, like the lidless eyes of a reptile. He had swart, heavy features and coarse black hair, and was about thirty years of age. He said, “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Shayne.”

Bugler appeared to be alone in the office, but as Shayne stepped forward he saw a pair of brown Oxfords protruding past the corner of the desk. He moved aside and looked down at the limp body of a young man who lay beside a straight, armless chair. Long fingers were clasped about an empty highball glass.

Bugler watched the detective from lidless eyes without speaking.

Shayne nodded toward the recumbent figure and slid one hip onto the desk. “You must have told the bartender to mix the next one stronger after the girl walked out of here under her own power this afternoon.”

Bugler purred, “You’re going to get your nose dirty, Shamus.”

Shayne nodded, his eyes bleak. “It’s one of my failings. Helen Stallings told me just enough before she passed out this afternoon to get me interested.”

Not a flicker of expression changed the stony coldness of Bugler’s swarthy features. He pressed a button on his desk with a blunt forefinger. “You’ve stayed out of my way a long time, Shayne. Better if you kept on being smart.”

Shayne’s gray eyes glowed hotly. “I’ve never stayed out of any man’s way. I’ve been waiting for you to stick your neck out.”

“And you think I have?”

“I know you have.” Shayne touched the bruise on his cheek and his cut lip. “It was a mistake for you to sick your gorillas on me.”

Bugler’s thick lips parted in an amused smile. “You ran into Donk, huh?”

A rear door came open, and Johnny stepped in, followed by Donk. Johnny stopped short and stared at Shayne, muttering in an awed tone, “Jesus God! There he is again,” and Donk blinked happily, moving forward with big fists swinging at the end of long arms. “If it ain’t my sparring partner. You must love to get bounced around and, God, how I love to bounce you!” His wide, flat face wreathed itself in a grin of sadistic anticipation as he moved closer.

SHAYNE DIDN’T LOOK AT DONK. He warned Arch Bugler with passionate intensity, “You’d better keep this apple off me. I already owe you for one beating and that’ll cost you plenty.”

Donk stopped beside him, his doltish gaze questioning Bugler.

Bugler studied Shayne a moment, then raised a broad hand toward Donk, motioning him back. “Hold it a minute. You and Johnny have messed things up enough by letting him in here.”

“Jeez, boss,” Johnny exploded, “I don’t know how he done it. Donk hit ’im solid, and I never saw a man get up from that before. Honest to Christ, I thought his jaw was busted.”

“You’re not paid to think,” Bugler purred. “I told you to keep him out.”

Shayne laughed shortly. “They tried,” he told Bugler without rancor. He transferred his gaze to the lax body of the young man on the floor. “Looks like you’re receiving an influx of undesirable visitors tonight.”

“Just a punk who couldn’t hold his liquor. Take him out and dump him, Johnny. You stick around, Donk.”

Shayne watched with a saturnine smile twitching his swollen lips while Johnny got hold of the young man and dragged him out the rear door. He dropped his cigarette on the floor and mashed it out with his toe, lit another one. “You knew I’d be dropping around tonight,” he mused. “What were you afraid I’d find if I nosed around?”

Bugler said, “I don’t like my place stunk up with private dicks.”

“It’ll smell worse,” Shayne told him softly, “if you keep any bodies lying around.”

Bugler stiffened. His opaque, lidless eyes bored across the desk at Shayne. He didn’t say anything for thirty seconds. He finally spoke with no perceptible movement of his lips.

“You’d better get out, Shamus.”

Shayne shrugged. He took a slow drag on his cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs for a long time, then let it out of his nostrils. He nodded and got up, went to the door and out without looking back.

Donk was twenty feet behind him when he went into the cocktail bar. He waved to the bald-headed bartender and kept going. Donk followed him to the entrance gates where he stopped and stared after the detective wishfully.

Shayne winced with pain as he got into his car and backed away from the curb. Passing by the entrance gates he leaned out and waved a long arm to Donk, who was still standing there looking unhappy.

He drove south along the ocean drive until he reached a drugstore with a public-telephone sign. He called Timothy Rourke’s home address and, after a long wait, got the reporter on the line. Rourke swore softly when he heard Shayne’s fuzzy enunciation. “You sound like the cat got your tongue.”

“I ran into a fist at Arch Bugler’s,” Shayne explained thickly. “And I picked up a chore for you.”

Rourke’s sigh sounded in Shayne’s ear. “Start checking the hotels for a man named Marlow,” Shayne instructed. “He arrived this afternoon, I imagine, from New York or thereabouts. Call me at my hotel in an hour with the dope.”

“Have you got a line on the corpse?” Rourke asked. “I can’t help wondering where she’ll turn up next.”

“Bodies are where you find them,” said Shayne cheerfully. He hung up and went back to his car, circled east on the peninsula to a private bridge over the inland waterway leading to Burt Stallings’s island estate.

The island was small, containing perhaps an acre of ground, protected by a sea wall of coral rock to prevent the ebbing tides from eating away the edges. The entire area was carefully landscaped to give the careless effect of natural luxuriant growth, and the Stallings mansion was situated in the center, screened from view by lush shrubbery and feathery-fronded palms. A narrow, twisting road led up to an impressive stone frontage with two wings guarding a rear patio.

There were no other automobiles in evidence, but lights glowed through the front window. Shayne parked near the steps on the double concrete driveway which circled around to the narrow road. He went up the steps and tried an ornamental bronze knocker without effect. He then searched for and found an electric button. There was a long interval of silence after he pressed the button.

Leaning against the stone casement, he waited patiently. There was an atmosphere of lassitude in the remoteness of the island, a sense of lethargic detachment which communicated itself to one as soon as the bridge was crossed and the mainland left behind. Moonlight silvered the fronds of graceful coco palms and the stately gray trunks of royal palms towering toward the sky. Fish pools set in the lush green lawn reflected the stars in their still waters, and marble benches gleamed ghostly white.

So this was what money could buy, Shayne reflected idly as he waited. He had thought Stallings a fool to sink so much money in a home. Now he wasn’t so sure, even if this island estate, as was rumored, had swallowed up a sizable portion of the fortune the man had acquired in his career as a building contractor. The rumored cost was probably very much exaggerated, he mused. It stood to reason that a contractor could build his own home at far less cost than he built for others.

The door opened to interrupt his vagrant thoughts. A big-bosomed, militant female challenged him with a coldly suspicious gaze. She wore a plain black silk dress buttoned snugly at the neck, like a uniform. Her upper lip fuzzed with black hair, and a cluster of black bristles surrounded a mole on her chin. She said, “Well?” in a harsh, forbidding voice.

Shayne tried to work up his most disarming smile, but his swollen lips were painful, and his heart was not in the effort. She didn’t look like the type to be impressed by any sort of smile. He stopped trying and said, “I want to see Mr. Burt Stallings.”

“Mr. Stallings is out.” She started to close the door, but Shayne interposed, “Mrs. Stallings, then.”

“Mrs. Stallings is too ill to see anyone.” She was closing the door. Shayne lounged forward and put his shoulder against it. “Miss Helen Stallings, then.”

“Miss Stallings isn’t in.” The woman was beginning to put pressure on the other side of the door. In his weakened condition, Shayne wasn’t at all sure he could hold out against her weight and strength. He resisted the pressure with his weight. “I’ll talk to you, then,” he said. “About Miss Stallings.”

The female guardian of the portal compressed her lips in a straight line. “I don’t know who you are, but this isn’t any time—”

“It’s no time for playing hide-and-seek,” Shayne told her swiftly. “I’m a detective—hired by Stallings to find his daughter. I don’t think he’d like it if you withheld any information from me.”

“A detective?” She considered him with doubtful eyes, then said, “All right. You can come in, but I don’t know what I can tell you.”

The front door opened into a wide, uncarpeted entrance room with chairs placed stiffly around the walls.

There was movement beyond an open door leading into an unlit hall.

The woman said, “Lucile!” sharply, and after a moment’s hesitation a girl stepped into the doorway. She wore a maid’s cap and apron, and a short skirt revealed stocky calves. She had bold, brown, wishful eyes, and they rested on Shayne’s big frame with approval. Her upper lip was short and it twitched mutinously when she said, “Yes, Mrs. Briggs. I was just—”

“You were snooping,” Mrs. Briggs snapped. “Go upstairs until you’re wanted.”

Lucile’s lower lip was heavy and pouted. She pouted it still further, hesitating in the doorway and hopefully inviting Shayne’s attention.

Shayne responded with a slow grin of approbation and protested to Mrs. Briggs, “I’d better talk to Lucile, too. I need all the information I can get. Perhaps I can see you later, Lucile.”

Mrs. Briggs surged in front of him like a battleship at full steam ahead. “Go to your room, Lucile,” she commanded sharply.

The girl’s eyes darkened resentfully. The tip of her tongue showed momentarily between her short upper lip and the pouting lower one. Then she turned and flounced away, tossing black curls that hung below her maid’s cap.

“I had a feeling that Lucy had something she wanted to tell me,” Shayne reproved Mrs. Briggs.

“I’ve no doubt of that,” Mrs. Briggs snapped. “She’s man crazy, and not at all choosy.” Her gaze flickered meaningly over Shayne’s bruised face and his coarse red hair. Then she sat down in a straight chair and folded her hands in her lap, looking at him coldly over her formidable bosom. “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t say.”

“Well, what is it? How do I know you’re a detective?”

“The name is Shayne.” He patted his coat pocket. “I have my credentials if you care to see them.”

“Shayne? The detective from Miami who’s been campaigning against Mr. Stallings? Why would Mr. Stallings go to you for help?”

“Because I’m the best in the business.” Shayne sat down. “How long has Helen Stallings been missing?”

“I didn’t know she was missing. She’s usually missing around here. She wasn’t here for dinner tonight but that’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Can’t you give me anything that might be a clue?” Shayne persisted. “Mr. Stallings has reason to believe she’s been kidnaped.”

Mrs. Briggs said, “Humph! Kidnaped?” and shook her head. “I’m just the housekeeper here. I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”

Shayne inwardly agreed with her. He nodded impassively and stood up. Mrs. Briggs let him go to the door alone. As he went out he glanced back at her and surprised a look of dismay and fear on her dour features.

He closed the door and went slowly toward his car, puckering his lips to produce a tuneless whistle. The whistle echoed back from out of the enveloping island silence.

Turning his head, he saw a lighted upstairs window that had been dark when he approached the house. Lucile was leaning out, her head supporting the unlatched screen as she looked down at him in the moonlight. Her lips were softly echoing his whistle.

Shayne halted on the edge of the grass and lifted one hand in a mock gesture of farewell.

Lucile shook her head and gesticulated frantically, pointing toward the north side of the house. Shayne hesitated only an instant, then nodded and threaded his way between clumps of blooming hibiscus in the direction indicated.

Lucile withdrew from the window, and her light went out. A concrete driveway led along the north side to a separate garage in the rear. Near the front of the house an iron-railed outside stairway led up to a hanging balcony of Spanish design.

Shayne stopped at the foot of the stairway and waited. A door opened outward onto the balcony, and Lucile stepped out. She glanced down at Shayne, then hurried silently down the stairs.

She stopped on the bottom step, her head thrown back, a smile parting her lips.

“Good work, babe,” Shayne said, and held out his arms to her. She slid into them, pressing her body close, laughing up into his face while her fingers went up to tangle in his hair.

“Honest to gosh,” she sighed, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I oughtn’t to be here. Mrs. Briggs’ll raise Old Ned if she catches me.” Her big brown eyes were avid, and her lips brazenly invited his kiss.

Shayne bent his head and touched his sore lips lightly to hers, tightening his arms about her. “I’m not in very good shape for kissing,” he warned her, “but otherwise I’m as good as any man.”

“And better than ninety per cent, I’ll bet.” She pulled his head lower and pressed her moist lips against his bruised cheek, cooing, “Was some bad mans mean to you?”

“Sort of.” Shayne turned toward the hibiscus hedge, keeping his arm around her waist. “Wouldn’t we be safer to get away from here?”

“Not too far.” She went across the driveway with him, giggling excitedly. “Old Briggs’d have a conniption fit if she knew I’d slipped out. I’ll have to run if she starts calling for me.”

There were informal flower beds beyond the hedge with garden seats scattered about beneath low, spreading coco palms. Shayne led the girl to a seat in the heavy shadows.

She leaned against him when they sat down. “You’re a detective, aren’t you? I bet you’re just pretending to like me to find out things.”

“Don’t be silly. You know you could make any man forget business.” Shayne pressed his cheek lightly against her hair. “You been working here long?”

“Ever since they moved in. We all have.”

“And I suppose you’re pretty much isolated here on the island,” Shayne said sympathetically. “But you get a day off now and then, don’t you?”

“I’ll say we don’t. Old Briggs is a slave driver. She’s so ugly herself she’s jealous of any of the rest of us having a good time. All we get around here is work from morning till night. That’s the reason I went sort of all loose inside when you looked at me in there and I knew you liked a good time, too.” She turned against him and raised her face hungrily.

Shayne touched his swollen lips to hers again. She caught his face between her palms and held it, gently touching the tip of her tongue to his bruised mouth. She drew away, laughing shakily. “Does that hurt?”

“Soft as an angel’s wings,” Shayne told her throatily. “Couldn’t you slip away tonight—after they’ve all gone to bed?”

“I might get away with it. Would you meet me, redhead?”

“On the other side of the bridge—at midnight?”

“Better make it later. Two o’clock. Briggs is always up till midnight. She gives Mrs. Stallings her medicine then.”

“Is Mrs. Stallings really very ill?”

“I guess she is, all right. She never comes out of her room. Mrs. Briggs is a trained nurse and she does everything for her. You know what I think? I think she’s a hop-head.”

“Mrs. Briggs?”

“No; Mrs. Stallings. I’ve seen Briggs sterilizing a hypodermic two or three times.”

“Lots of nurses give their patients shots.”

“But there’s something funny about it,” Lucile insisted. “Briggs tries to keep it a secret from the rest of us. Sometimes I think maybe it’s the girl uses it. She acts dopey enough, if you ask me.”

“Helen?”

“Yes. There’s something funny about her, all right. Boy, the things I could tell you if I was to cut loose.”

“Go ahead,” Shayne encouraged her.

“Damn you, you’re just working me for information. I ought to have known.” She jerked herself away from him.