Billy said, “Daddy says she caught a cold.”
“That’s right,” I said.
I heard footsteps running outside, approaching the house. I went over to the window and saw the two of them, the plump one and the lantern-jawed one coming up on the porch.
Then I was wilder than ever. I had killed her. I knew that. But they weren’t going to catch me.
The doorbell rang.
I threw the gun into the closet and barked at the kids, “Head for the kitchen. Beat it. Get out of here.”
They ran off.
I went over to the cedar chest. I would get inside there. It was plenty big. Beverly’s mother had given it to her. An heirloom. She had never been able to fill it.
I was out of my mind. I’d killed her, and I was glad, but I was crazy with it.
I opened the cedar chest.
Well, he lay there, with that pug nose, and that curly black hair, staring up at nothing. He wasn’t grinning. You could see the stab wounds in his chest, ruining his white Nehru shirt. Albert Griner. She had killed him.
I stood there.
They walked into the bedroom and looked at me. The lantern-jawed one came over and touched my arm.
“Mr. Hudson?”
I just stood there, staring-down at him. She had been telling the truth.
The Very Reluctant Corpse
by Brett Halliday
(ghost written by Edward Y. Breese)
Murder stalked its bloody way among the guests on the isolated island estate: anyone could be the next victim, and anyone could be the murderer. Then Mike Shayne took on the case, using Tim Rourke, his friend, as the bait...
I
The charter boat Daisy Belle out of Islamorada on the Florida Keys had an outstanding day. The Detroit auto executive and his friends who paid the charter boated a six foot ’cuda with a mouthful of razor fangs, two sailfish and a near-record black marlin.
Just before dusk, on their way in to port from the Gulf Stream, the Dairy Belle also boated a corpse. The sharks hadn’t gotten to the body yet, and there were still papers in the wallet in its pocket.
There was still a length of frayed rope tied around the ankles. Apparently, whoever put the body in the water had tied on a heavy weighty but the rope had been too old, had parted, and the corpse had come to the surface. It was swollen and sodden and very unpleasant to look at and worse to smell. If it had been a dead horse or pig they’d never have kept it on board for a minute.
The papers in the wallet said it was the body of Harvey Peckinbaugh, however — and in this world the remains of a Harvey Peckinbaugh are never just tossed back for the sharks to finish.
The charter boat skipper got on his radio phone instead and within minutes a Coast Guard Cutter was on the way. Within half an hour three helicopters full of newspaper and teevy people were on the tail of the cutter and there were special news bulletins out all over the country.
The name Harvey Peckinbaugh meant a couple of hundred million dollars and a great deal of political clout in a midwestern State.
Harvey had been beaten over the head before he was put in the water. He’d also been stabbed several times with a very sharp knife.
That’s murder any way you call it. And murdering the likes of Harvey Peckinbaugh is news. Big news.
Somewhere between one and two in the morning the phone rang in the apartment Mike Shayne kept in an old but comfortable apartment hotel overlooking the Miami River close to its mouth.
It rang for three minutes before the big private detective got his head off the, pillow, clamped one big hand over the instrument and grunted a “hello” in greeting.
“Mike, are you wide awake?”
Shayne recognized the voice as that of his longtime good friend Tim Rourke, ace feature writer for the Miami Daily News. “Hold on, Tim,” he said, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “What’s up!”
“Come on down here,” Tim Rourke said. “I’m in a little trouble and maybe you can help.”
“Hold on a second,” Shayne said, coming awake fully for the first time. “What kind of trouble are you in, and where are you?”
Rourke took a deep breath before replying. “I’m down here at Key Paradiso.”
“The Peckinbaugh estate?” Shayne, like most Floridians, knew of the million dollar sportsman’s “hideaway” Harvey Peckinbaugh had built some ten years earlier. “What are you doing down there?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll give you the details when I see you. But as you know I met the Peckinbaugh’s some years ago when I handled the story of that lawsuit between his manager and himself. You remember, when Peckinbaugh’s companies were being broken up by the Justice Department and that manager of his tried to get more of the pie than his salary.”
“Yeah, I remember. I also seem to recall Peckinbaugh threatening to shoot him in the courtroom.”
Rourke laughed. “Yeah, Harvey P. had a temper. Lucky for him, the manager’s doing a twenty year stretch right now. Anyway,” he went on, his voice becoming serious. “Everybody’s being held down here for the night and probably most of tomorrow morning. We got Sam Hill, the Monroe County Sheriff himself, half his deputies and a couple of police from Peckinbaugh’s home ground all nosing around. And last night, some nut put a note in my pocket, claiming that I witnessed the murder, but he’ll pay me to keep quiet.”
“Did you tell Hill?”
“You better believe it! Hiding something down here right now would be impossible. So he wants me to hang around awhile longer. Which is trouble for me. But at least I’m getting an exclusive. And Della, that’s Mrs. Peckinbaugh to you, shamus, hinted that she’d like to have a private investigator of her own to keep track on the locals. Naturally I thought of you.”
“Natch, friend.” Shayne grinned.
“So if you get down here by morning, you can nose around a bit and see what’s going on, and then drive me back to Miami.”
“What happened to your car?”
“I rode down with Peckinbaugh. And he’s in no shape to drive me back. So if you hop to it, you can have the pleasure.”
Shayne grunted as he stood up. “Okay, I’ll be there soon as possible.”
“And shamus,” Rourke said, “Better bring a gun. Looks like the murderer is still around. We might have breakfast with him when you get here.”
“I’ll cross my fingers,” Shayne said.
II
Mike Shayne was starting to dress almost as fast as he hung up the phone.
He called his beautiful assistant, secretary and right-hand-woman Lucy Hamilton at her apartment and told her about Tim Rourke’s early morning call.
“I’m not sure what it’s all about,” he told her, “but Tim thinks I’d better get on down to Key Paradiso. If I can’t do anything else, at least I can drive him back to Miami.”
“If somebody thinks he witnessed the killing of Mr. Peckinbaugh, Tim could be in trouble,” Lucy Hamilton said. “So could you, Michael. I suppose you have to go down there, but please take care of yourself.”
“Don’t worry about me, Angel,” Mike Shayne said.
Even though he wasted no time, it was nearly daylight before Shayne could reach Key Paradiso. He had to pack his bag and then get his car out of the garage where he kept it and make a drive of more than two hours duration south on U.S. Highway One.
Late at night as it was, there was still a surprising amount of traffic on the narrow bridges spanning the water between the Keys.
Key Paradiso itself was off the main road, lying about a quarter of mile out to the East in the Atlantic. It was actually a small island with only about twenty acres of land above high tide mark. Harvey Peckinbaugh had bought the entire Key, erected houses, recreation facilities and even built a private causeway out from the main road. It was the sort of estate that only a man who was many times a millionaire could afford.