Framed in Blood (6 page)

Three A was the front apartment on the right. Shayne put his finger on the button and held it down while he counted to twenty. He released it, listened, and started to press it again when a crack of light showed under the door and the knob turned cautiously.

A sleepy voice asked through the narrow opening, “Who is it?”

Shayne said, “Police,” and shoved the door hard to confront the occupant.

ACCIDENTAL STRIP TEASE?

MARIE LEONARD LOOKED SMALL and appealing in a blue silk dressing-gown that trailed behind her and swept the floor around her bare feet. Her eyes were enormous and blue, round with fright in a heart-shaped face that seemed waxen without make-up. Her brows and lashes were dark; and blond, touseled hair fell around her shoulders. She looked almost childish until she drew back from the tall redhead and wrapped the robe tightly around her to reveal the mature curves of her body. She opened and closed her lips three times before she succeeded in gasping the three words, “You—said—police.”

“They’ll be here soon enough,” Shayne said gruffly. He closed the door, took off his hat, and absently rubbed his palm over his stubby hair as he looked around the living-room.

He recognized this as one of the widely-acclaimed efficiency apartments in Miami which were usually rented furnished. This one, beyond doubt, had been done over by the occupant with gray and dull-blue stippled walls to accentuate the richness of deep cream silken drapes at the triple windows that blended into the dull-gold brocaded cover of a day bed, replete with blond end tables and fat pillows resting against the inner wall. The rug was silver-gray, leaving a generous portion of polished floor between the edges and the wall. A lacquered Japanese table with splotches of red at the west end held a combination television set, and at the east end, near the windows, two leatherette club chairs were drawn companionably together with a low glass table between.

Directly across from the entrance door where he stood Shayne saw a swinging door which he guessed led into a kitchenette, and opposite the leatherette chairs a door with an inside full-length mirror stood ajar to reveal a portion of the bedroom.

Two small, oddly shaped lamps on the blond end tables, a larger one on the Japanese table, and three or four choice statuettes added to the decorativeness of the small room. There was no suggestion of crowding, nothing expensive, and Shayne’s swift glance of approval gave him the impression that Marie Leonard strove for an effect of simplicity, comfort, and elegance with inexpensive imitations.

His eyes were softer when he turned back to the shrinking figure.

“What do you mean—the police will be here?” she asked tremulously. “Who are you and what do you mean by forcing your way into my apartment?”

“I’m a friend of Bert Jackson’s.”

Color flooded into her face. “But—why the police?” she stammered.

“Don’t you know the sort of mess Bert has got himself into?” Shayne demanded.

Marie Leonard backed away until she leaned against the sill of the swinging door, lifted her pointed chin, and said stormily, “There was nothing wrong about Bert coming here. It was all in his wife’s nasty mind. We never—” She hesitated, her lashes half closing over her eyes.

“It’s not the vice squad you’ve got to worry about.” He turned away, hat in hand, and dropped into one of the chairs opposite the mirrored door. “We’ve got to talk about a lot of things, and I could do with a drink.”

“Has something happened to Bert?” she cried, taking a few quick steps toward him.

As she moved Shayne caught a glimpse of bare legs and guessed that she wore nothing underneath the dressing-gown. “Didn’t you know he was heading for trouble when he left here tonight?” he countered.

She held the robe at her waist with one hand and covered her face with the other as she sank down on the edge of the day bed. “Yes—I was afraid,” she wailed, bending forward until her chin touched her bare, crossed knee. Then she lifted her face. It was waxen-white again. “Damn him, anyway,” she said. “I begged him not to go through with it, but he was wild. He wouldn’t listen.”

“If you could scare up a drink,” Shayne suggested.

She caught her breath in sharply and exclaimed, “I know who you are! You’re Michael Shayne, the private detective Bert went to see yesterday afternoon.”

“That’s right.”

“Why did you encourage him to go on with it?” she raged. “You’re older and more experienced. You must have known it would never work. If anything has happened to him it’s your fault.” She grabbed at the crawling silk of the robe and covered her legs.

“Wait a minute,” Shayne protested. “I don’t know that—”

“I know your reputation,” she burst out, spots of red in her cheeks. “You’re tough and cynical, and you don’t care what happens to other people. You egged him on—”

“Is that what he told you?” Shayne broke in gruffly.

“Yes. And you can’t deny it. I heard him make the phone call.”

“What call?” Shayne demanded. “To whom?”

“I don’t know who the man is. Bert never would tell me. He didn’t even mention any name when he phoned.”

Shayne lit a cigarette, and a breeze from the windows floated the smoke across the room before he said gently, “Tell me about the call.”

“Why should I tell you anything?” she blazed at him. “You know all about it. If something—has happened—to Bert—” She stood up and moved closer to him, tightening her robe again. A single tear squeezed its way out from under each lowered lid and ran down her cheeks.

“I think we could talk this out better with a drink,” Shayne told her quietly. He met her stormy gaze through a cloud of smoke, his gray eyes cold and demanding.

She backed away, tucking her hair behind one ear with one hand while the other clung to the lap of the long, loose robe. She nodded without speaking, turned, and disappeared through the swinging door.

Shayne slid down in the chair and stretched his long legs out comfortably, put his head back, and scowled at the ceiling. Something was definitely wrong here. Marie Leonard was certainly not his preconceived idea of the “other woman.” She couldn’t be much more than twenty, he thought wearily, and nothing about her fitted into the Betty-Bert triangle. She acted more like a bobby-soxer with a naive crush on a man who was about to break into the limelight with something big, yet—

Her return broke into his analysis. She carried a small tray containing a tall glass with ice cubes, a bottle of Scotch, and a siphon.

“Aren’t you having one?” he said, quirking his red brows when she deposited the tray on the table.

She shook her head with decision. “I don’t take a drink very often.” She took a backward step as he poured whisky in the glass and squirted soda over it.

“Please tell me about Bert, Mr. Shayne,” she begged. “Is he in jail?”

He stirred his drink and tasted it before saying, “Bert Jackson is dead, Marie.”

She gasped, and her body stiffened. Her eyes widened a trifle, and her lips tightened. Then she shivered and without warning began to sway forward.

Shayne jumped up just in time to catch her. She leaned against him and buried her face against his chest and sobbed convulsively, her arms limp at her sides. Shayne left one arm around her waist and stroked her soft blond hair with his free hand.

She straightened after a while, drew back, and tried to smile. “I’m sorry. I think I knew it all the time—as soon as you came. Maybe before that.” Her lips trembled, and she caught the lower one between her teeth. “Do you mind waiting while I put on some clothes?”

“Not at all. Go right ahead.” He sat down and poured more Scotch over the ice cubes, stirred it in, then settled back with a deep frown creasing his brow to sip the drink.

Glancing around absently he saw that she had left the bedroom door ajar fully six inches. From his position he saw her strip off the robe, and he had a rear view of her nude body as she stood in front of the dressing-table. She sat down and began doing things to her face, leaning close to the mirror. The line of her neck flowed smoothly down to well-fleshed, sloping shoulders and on to a neat waistline and fully developed buttocks that didn’t spread as she sat. When she stood up and lifted one arm to puff powder under it he had a glimpse of one large breast that sagged from the upper muscles, then protruded tuberously.

All of a sudden Shayne remembered that anyone he saw reflected in a mirror could also see him, and he hastily turned his eyes away. He took a long drink, looking squarely at the Japanese table at the opposite end of the room. Then he recalled that Marie Leonard had been wholly occupied with her toilet and had not once looked at his own reflection which had most certainly been in the full-length mirror.

Was it an act?

He was thinking rapidly, occasionally cutting his low-lidded eyes toward the mirror and no longer feeling like a peeping Tom. Marie moved in and out of his view as she dressed. She lived in this apartment, he reminded himself cynically, and must have known the angle of the mirror would reflect her body at certain positions in the room.

Shayne’s wide mouth tightened. It hadn’t been an accident that she left the door open those few inches. If she wanted to put on a strip-tease act for him there was no reason why he shouldn’t look. She had just been informed that her lover was dead, he told himself, and who could blame her if she set about acquiring another?

Suddenly he thumped the half-empty glass down on the glass-topped table and jerked himself erect. A sardonic smile twisted his lips, and he swore under his breath for having almost been taken in by a carefully calculated act.

Marie re-entered the living-room wearing a canary-yellow blouse of heavy, satiny material, and a gray skirt. The neck of the blouse was round, cut low to reveal the even sun tan of her chest and shoulders, and the fullness beneath the youthful neck revealed only the tips of her breasts encased in an uplift brassiere. With heels, she was taller than Shayne believed possible, and her heavy make-up dispelled his former illusions of youth.

“I think I’ll have a drink now,” she said. She disappeared through the swinging doors and returned with a glass full of ice cubes, poured a generous amount of whisky over them, and sat down in the club chair opposite Shayne.

“Did Bert’s wife kill him?” she asked abruptly.

Shayne sputtered on a sip of Scotch at the suddenness of her question. “What makes you think that?” he asked in a hostile tone.

Marie was leaning back with her eyes closed, but the rise and fall of her chest was rapid beneath the bright blouse. “She was horribly jealous of him, you know. And there was that other man she’s been in love with for years.” Her voice was low, gentle as a purr, but, Shayne thought, more effective than wild hysteria.

“What man?” he asked mildly, humoring her mood.

“I don’t know his name,” she answered.

“But you must have some idea,” he insisted.

“If she didn’t actually kill Bert,” Marie continued softly, “she was responsible for his death. She drove him to it—nagging him all the time for money and always refusing to divorce him unless he paid her a big cash settlement.” Her eyes fluttered open. She picked up her glass and took a long drink, then settled back again with the glass in her hand.

Shayne said, “Tell me about last night.”

“There isn’t much to tell. Bert was drunk when he came here. He said you were going to help him get enough money to buy a divorce from his wife. I begged him not to do it, but he was determined.” Her voice was subdued, listless, resigned.

“He made a phone call from here?”

“Just before he left, about ten. He was terribly angry with me for trying to persuade him to give up this plan of his. He dialed a number and then muffled his voice so I couldn’t hear whom he asked for, but I gathered that the person wasn’t there or couldn’t come to the phone.

“He talked to somebody,” she continued, keeping her eyes closed and her features in complete repose. “He said that you were working with him. He got terribly excited and insisted that it had to be done at once, and that if whoever it was didn’t call him back within half an hour with a proposition he was going to give the story to the paper—and if they refused to print it or if anything happened to him that you were going to turn all his information over to Timothy Rourke on the
News.
He gave his home telephone number for whoever it was to call, and hung up.”

“His home number?” Shayne asked, surprised.

“Yes. He left right after that. You see—”

“Hold it,” Shayne interrupted with a scowl, jerking his rangy body erect and trying to fit this information into the facts he already knew. “Are you sure he was headed for home when he left here at ten o’clock?” Marie had her glass to her lips and was swallowing rapidly.

“That’s what he said. How else could he get the call if he wasn’t home in half an hour?” She spoke irritably, set her empty glass on the table, relaxed, and closed her eyes once more.

Shayne settled back and did some fast thinking. How else, indeed, he wondered. Yet, Rourke had said that he went to the Jackson house at midnight, and Betty denied that Bert had returned all evening. Of course, Bert might have changed his mind on the way home. He could have stopped at a bar for a quick one and decided to make another phone call from there instead of going home and waiting. That would explain what Betty had told Rourke at midnight.

Setting his angular jaw, Shayne swore silently. If it were not for Tim he could go ahead with the extortion thing. But Marie Leonard was hinting at “another man” and that man was bound to be Tim, in spite of his hopes that there wasn’t another man when he lied to Gentry.

He came to his feet suddenly and walked slowly around the room, absently studying the two prints hanging on the wall, fingering the artistic statuettes on the lacquered table. Returning to his chair he poured another small drink, downed it, and demanded of Marie, “Why didn’t Bert stay right here to get the call? Didn’t he usually stay later than ten o’clock?”

“Sometimes.” She opened her eyes, drew one leg up on the chair, turned her body, and rested her cheek on the chair back to look directly at Shayne. “We’d had a big fight about this trouble he insisted on getting himself into. I told him it was all over between us unless he gave it up. I’ll—never forgive myself for doing that to him.” Her red mouth primped, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She dabbed at them with a handkerchief and continued.

“I sent him away angry. He slammed out without even saying good-by, but I didn’t know then—that I’d never see him again. Oh—I should have made him stay here with me, Mr. Shayne. If only I’d been—kinder to him.”