Dividend on Death

CHAPTER 3

She was wearing a two-piece knitted dress which clung tightly to her firm young body. Hatless, her black hair was wind-blown and very curly; without make-up, her complexion seemed engagingly fresh, though she was unnaturally pale. Shayne studied her sharply. She passed him toward the center of the room, whirled about to face him with the palms of her hands flat on the table behind her as he closed the door.

“Tell me I-that I didn’t do it.”

“You tell me,” Shayne suggested. He moved toward her, and his face was grim.

Her elongated eyes held his, and her body was tensely arched like a drawn bow. When she answered, her voice sounded as if she had been running. “No one else can help me. I had to come to you.”

He stood close to her and said harshly, “You’ll get us both in the jug and then I won’t be a hell of a lot of help. Why in the name of God did you come here and how close are the cops on your tail?”

“I had to come here. They’re not following me. I slipped my car out of the garage and came out the back way.”

“Who saw you come upstairs?”

“No one. I found a side entrance.”

“Where’s your car parked?”

“In a parking-lot on Second Street.”

Shayne nodded glumly and stepped around her to the table to light a cigarette. The girl’s eyes followed him, her body holding the same tense pose, as if she feared she would wilt to the floor if she relaxed one muscle.

Shayne frowned at the cigarette and went to the cabinet where he got another wineglass. Still only the girl’s eyes and head moved. The rest of her was like a brittle statue.

Shayne poured both glasses full and moved in front of her with one in each hand.

“Drink this.”

She made no move to touch the glass he offered, shaking her head despairingly. “I can’t. I never drink.”

“It’s time you learned,” Shayne told her. “You’ll learn a lot of things not in the book if you stick around. Drink it.”

Her eyes wavered before his. Her right hand came up slowly from the table top, and then she swayed. Shayne cursed deep in his throat and caught her, spilling some of the cognac. He held the glass in his other hand to her lips and she swallowed obediently. A brief grin broke the hard intentness of Shayne’s look; he tilted the glass up and kept on holding her till it was empty. Phyllis Brighton choked and sputtered, and he let her down into the chair he had been sitting in.

“The first pint is always the hardest,” he told her cheerfully. “I’ll get some ice water.”

He drained the other glass, and setting them both on the table, went to the kitchen and fixed a small pitcher of ice water. Phyllis’s eyes were watering, and she was still sputtering when he came back. He poured a glass of water and handed it to her, pulled up another chair in front of hers so their knees touched when he sat down.

“All right,” he said. “Tell me all about it.”

“What can I tell you?” She shuddered helplessly. “I came here for you to tell me.”

Shayne lit another cigarette and said carefully, “What am I supposed to know, sister, that you don’t know?”

She set the glass down and gripped the arms of her chair. “Tell me I didn’t-kill Mother.” Frenzy lurked in the smoky depths of her eyes.

Shayne looked at the ceiling and sighed. “I’ve seen queer ones but this beats them all.”

The girl reached for the water glass with shaking fingers. “Can’t you see you’re driving me crazy?”

“Driving you, sister?” Shayne looked at her in mild disgust.

“Yes.” She choked over a gulp of water.

Shayne said, “You’d better fix up a coherent story if you want me to keep you out of jail when the coppers come.”

“I don’t want to fix up any story,” she cried wildly. “I want to know the truth. I don’t know what happened tonight. If I did it I’ll kill myself.” Her body vibrated like a taut wire in a wind. She fumbled with the catch on her handbag and brought out a pearl-handled. 25 automatic pistol.

“That,” said Shayne evenly, “would wind up the case beautifully. Go ahead.” He nodded toward the automatic.

She wilted suddenly and began to sob. Shayne reached out an immoderately long arm and plucked the tiny weapon from her fingers. His wide lips twitched and he ran fingers through his mop of carroty hair.

“God in heaven,” he fumed. “Let’s get together on this. What do you and what don’t you know? What am I supposed to know and what am I supposed not to know?”

“Did I-d-did I k-kill my mother?” she managed to get out between quivering lips.

“That’s the third time you’ve asked me,” he told her irritably. “Suppose you come clean with your end of the story. What do the police think?”

“I don’t know.” She wrung her hands and peered appealingly at him from beneath lowered lashes. “They asked me a lot of questions and told me to stay in my room.”

“Whereupon you sneaked over here to be comforted.” Shayne poured out two more glasses of cognac and pressed one into Phyllis Brighton’s fingers. Then he filled the water glass and put it into her other hand.

“Put the liquor down without taking a breath and follow it with a big gulp of water.”

She did as she was told, and her eyes grew brighter as the dose coalesced with the previous drink she had taken.

Shayne sipped at his glass and said, “Start at the beginning. From the moment your mother arrived.”

She swallowed hard and averted her eyes. “They wouldn’t let me go to the station to meet her. I just saw her a few minutes before dinner and then at the table. She was upset because Mr. Brighton wasn’t well enough for her to see him, and she went to her room to lie down after dinner. I didn’t feel very well and I-went to bed and to sleep and-and I didn’t wake up until you came to tell me what had happened.” She raised her eyes miserably to Shayne’s face. He was peering at the liquor in his glass.

He said mildly, “That’s the story you told the police. All right. It’s a good one. Stick to it. But you’ll have to tell me the truth if I’m going to help you.”

“I have,” she cried wildly. “That’s the absolute truth. Unless-unless-” She began sobbing brokenly.

Shayne said, “Ah?” and waited.

“You were there,” she reminded him. “I thought maybe you knew something else. I-sometimes I do things and don’t remember.”

“I’ve heard,” said Shayne to his glass, “of convenient losses of memory. But this is the most remarkable case I’ve ever personally contacted.”

“Don’t you believe me?” she asked wildly. She jumped to her feet. “If you don’t believe me it’s no use.” Her hand darted for the pistol.

Shayne caught her wrist and forced her back to the chair. “Hell, I don’t know what to believe,” he growled. “There’s a lot of angles-” His voice trailed off as he stared speculatively at her.

He emptied his glass and set it down with a thump. “You and I,” he told her, “have got to learn to talk each other’s language.” He took a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe and wiped the sweat from his face. His voice was faintly incredulous. “You don’t remember anything from the time you went to sleep and when we came crowding in your room?”

“No!” she cried, her eyes bright. “You must believe me.”

“What the hell are you worrying about then? Didn’t they tell you that your door was locked on the outside?”

“Yes.” She shuddered. “But they seemed to think there was something awfully peculiar about that.”

“What do you think about it?” demanded Shayne.

“I don’t-know what to think.”

His heavy brows came down fiercely over his eyes. Phyllis Brighton watched him apprehensively.

“Taking your crazy story for something to start on,” he said finally, “how long have you been having these spells of doing things and forgetting?”

“You do believe me!” She clasped her hands and looked almost happy.

“I learned a hell of a long time ago in this business not to believe anybody or anything-not even what I see with my own eyes. Let it pass. We’ve got to start somewhere. I asked you a question.”

“It’s been going on for months,” she told him breathlessly. “That’s one of the symptoms that Doctor Pedique has been treating me for. And the worst part is the way things that I really do get mixed up with things I’m just thinking about doing before I lose track.”

“Say that again. More slowly. It doesn’t quite make sense.”

“It’s-hard to explain,” she faltered. “When I wake up I sometimes have hazy memories of doing things. And when I check up, I find I really did some of the things I remember-and others didn’t happen at all.”

Shayne was staring at her with hard eyes, but his voice was soft.

“I’m guessing you’ve got some hazy memories about this evening that you haven’t mentioned.”

She jerked back as though he had struck her. “I-they’re so mixed up that I don’t know whether any of them are real or just my imagination.”

“That,” said Shayne glumly, “is what I was afraid of.”

“Are you-keeping anything back from me?”

Shayne nodded slowly and rubbed his chin. “Some things that don’t check up-yet.”

Phyllis’s eyes were very bright. “I remember, or imagined, some things about you.”

It was awfully quiet in the room. Outside, the drone of late-evening traffic sounded distantly faint. Shayne twirled his glass between heavy fingers and did not look at the girl. He finally said, “Yeah?” without raising his eyes.

He could hear Phyllis’s breathing quicken. “Did you see me before you came to my room with the others and wakened me?”

“What makes you ask that?” He looked at her.

She was frowning perplexedly. She looked older than he had thought her this afternoon. Twenty, maybe. And she was beautiful.

“Because I remember, or dreamed, that you talked with me. That you put your arm around me and walked with me. That you-made me take off my nightgown in front of you.”

Shayne couldn’t stand that look of tortured questioning in her eyes. She was thinking about that locked door. It was the one thing that stood between her and the belief that she had committed matricide. If he took that away from her-

He shook his head. “That’s a hell of a thing to imagine, youngster, even for Freud. You’ve got a lot of goofy ideas. I’m not the kind of a guy to watch a girl take off her nightgown in a bedroom-and not do anything about it. You can mark me out of your dream.”

“I-wondered.” She shivered and swallowed hard, looked away from him. “There are some women who don’t-appeal to men that way.”

“What are you getting at?” he growled.

“I’ve been reading some of Doctor Pedique’s books. He lent them to me to study so I might understand myself better when he discovered what he thinks is my-unnatural love for Mother.”

Her voice trailed off, and again there was only silence in the room. Shayne sipped his cognac and fought to keep a rational grip on himself. Something inside him was beginning to feel sick. The girl’s voice began again, quite impersonally, as if the whole thing were hateful but she was resigned to it. “His books are full of case histories of people with curious sexual complexes. I didn’t realize-I didn’t know there were that sort of people in the world.”

“There are lots of things you’d be just as well off not knowing.”

“But it was important to me. It fascinated me after Doctor Pedique hinted I wasn’t-normal that way. I read everything he had, to try and find out for myself whether he was right.”

Shayne’s fist thumped on the table. “He was screwy to give you those books to read. You’re too young and you’ve got too much imagination. It’s not healthy to study that sort of stuff.”

“I wanted to,” she cried wildly. “I had to find out about myself.”

“Well, did you?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I thought I recognized the same feelings inside of me as the books described.”

“Autosuggestion,” Shayne muttered. “You were wide open to that sort of stuff.”

“I’ve got to know, now.” She leaned toward him pleadingly. “I can’t go on any longer without being sure. You’ve got to help me.” She caught his hands in hers.

“I?” Shayne frowned. “I’m not a doctor. I can’t-”

“But you’re a man.” There was frenzy in her voice. “A normal man. You can tell. The books say normal men can tell and won’t have anything to do with girls like that. If you can’t-if you won’t-if you don’t want me, I’ll know. And I’ll kill myself.”

Shayne pushed his chair back and stood up. It was hot in the room, stifling. He loosened his pajama collar and went to the window, drawing in great drafts of fresh air, and tried to get a grip on himself.

When he turned about, she was also standing, trembling, her face white. “You are repulsed by me. Then-it’s so!”

“Don’t be a fool,” Shayne said roughly. “You’re just a kid. I can’t-Good God! I’m old enough to be your father.”

“I’m nineteen. And you’re only thirty-five. You said so this afternoon.” She was moving toward him, hope glowing hotly in her eyes.

There was a weakness inside of Shayne. Phyllis Brighton stopped very close to him.

She said, “Don’t you see I have to know? I have to. Nothing else matters. You promised to help me. You can. By proving to me that I’m a normal woman-desirable to a normal man.”

“You’ve been out with men before, haven’t you? Haven’t they-”

“Not with ones that are grown up, like you.” She held out her hands. “If you’d just kiss me I’d know,” she said, as if it hurt her to ask him.

“If I kiss you,” Shayne told her somberly, “it won’t end there.” He had hold of her hands and he didn’t realize that he was crushing them in his hard grasp.

“I don’t want it to end there.” Her voice was quiet, and she didn’t seem young any more. Shayne forgot that he had been thinking of her as just a kid who was trusting herself with him alone in his apartment. He was drawing her closer, hurting her cruelly, but she did not flinch. Exaltation shone in her eyes. She lifted her head, offering him her lips.

He said, “God have pity on us both if I kiss you, Phyllis.”

Her only response was to press close to him. The resilient warmth of her body against him was too much for Shayne to resist. There was a blaze flaming inside him now. He kissed her lips, and she gave herself to him, eagerly, utterly.

He put her away from him after a time, and his gaze was hungry, brooding. “I warned you. You can’t turn things like this on and off, you know-like an electric switch.”

“I don’t want to.” There wasn’t a trace of coquetry in her smile. It was a smile of sincere and honest gladness. “Where’s the bedroom?” She glanced about the room.

“That door.” Shayne’s forefinger stabbed at a closed door. “The bathroom is the door on the right.”

She patted his hand and went to the bedroom. Shayne stood there, and his gaze followed her until the door shut her from his sight. His mind was racing, trying to puzzle something through in spite of the clamor in his blood. Nothing quite like this had ever happened to him before. He poured himself a drink, held it up, and let light spill through the amber fluid. Then his eyes became abruptly intent, and he set the glass down without tasting it, went to the bedroom, and knocked.

Phyllis’s muffled voice called, “Come.”

Shayne saw that she was already in bed, the coverlet pulled up to her chin.

There was a loud thumping on Shayne’s outside door as he started to say something to Phyllis.

He whirled tautly. A heavy voice called, “Open up, Shayne.”

He turned to look at Phyllis. “No. They didn’t follow you. Like hell they didn’t. Stay in bed and don’t move. Don’t make a sound. I’ll try to stall them.”

He whirled and went out, switching off the light and closing the door quietly. “All right,” he growled as the thumping continued, “give a man time to get out of his bathroom.”

Stepping softly to the table he pocketed the. 25 automatic, set Phyllis’s wineglass upside down in the cabinet, and emptied his. Then he strode to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, sauntered to the door, and opened it. He didn’t bother to act surprised when he saw the heads of the Miami and the Miami Beach detective bureaus standing in the corridor outside. Instead, he scowled and said, “This is a hell of a time to come visiting,” stepped aside, and let them enter.