“Jack?” Shayne interrupted.
“Yeah?”
“What do you figure Dobbs got hit with?”
“Rifle, high-powered. I’ll know tonight. The lab reports will be in by—”
“Can I talk to Mrs. Dobbs?”
“You can not. A doctor is with her.”
Shayne moved out toward his Buick abruptly. His strides were long, heels planted hard as he moved. He fired the cigaret butt off into the green grass. He could feel Jack Leonard’s eyes on his back. He got into the Buick, gunned the motor. Tim Rourke had already cut for the News office, probably was rattling a typewriter by now.
Shayne kept one eye hooked on the rearview mirror as he piloted the Buick. He picked up followers when he hit the busier thoroughfares, but he didn’t spot any car driving out of a secret nook to slide in behind him.
Still, he remained acutely aware. A sniper had snapped a shot at him from a high-powered hunting rifle. A sniper had killed Vernon Dobbs, the slug from a powerful rifle ripping open the man’s skull and spilling him from a wheelchair.
The Tiener Estate was silent and brilliant when Shayne arrived. Windows glistened in the sunshine. There were no cars in sight. Shayne sat for a moment and studied the area, looking for lurkers, someone eyeing him curiously. He spotted no one.
A pert maid at the front door informed him that Tony Andrews was out for the day and she did not know when he would return. Only domestics were in the house.
Shayne returned to the Buick, inventorying windows of the house. They remained blank. No drapes moved, no shadows drifted out of sight.
He drew the same blank at the Montgomery place. No one answered his knock. When he moved around to the swimming pool area, he found only a sparkling unoccupied vastness.
He headed downtown. His scowl was heavy as he chain-smoked. He wanted Tony Andrews.
The sharp crack doubled him over the steering wheel. He tucked tight and battled the wrenching of the wheel, struggling to bring the Buick under control. He spotted an open slot at the curbing, yanked the car into it and jammed on the brakes. He flipped off the ignition key and remained low in the seat for a few seconds. There were no more loud cracks. And a sniper could be pumping rifle slugs into the Buick, making sure he hit his target this time.
Shayne sucked a breath and rolled from the seat. Outside, he squatted and stared at the front wheel. The tire was flat. He found the split in it with his fingertips. The split had not come from a rifle bullet. He’d had a simple damn blowout.
Cursing, he went around to the trunk and dug out the jack and spare.
X
The vivacious blonde came out of Tiener South and turned along the sidewalk. She was tall and straight and flowed smoothly. Suddenly she curved across the walk, bent at the open window of the Buick and looked across the seat at Shayne. Her smile was genuine. Mischief lurked far back in her eyes.
“Hi,” said Carole Ayers and dropped onto the seat beside the detective without being asked. She crossed long legs. “My place or yours?”
“Point to a watering hole,” he told her.
“Hmm. Maybe this isn’t going to be as interesting as I briefly anticipated. Two blocks down. It’s small, dim. The tables are tiny, we can rub knees, the wine is inexpensive — and my car is in the parking lot next door.”
Then over the drinks she said soberly, “Shayne, I’m getting bad vibes from you, I think.”
“Old Man Tiener and Elizabeth Stewart...” He extended two fingers and rubbed one against the other rapidly. “...last night you intimated they might have been like this. For real or not for real?”
She seemed to think for a moment before she said, “Office gossip. I don’t think they were making it, never did — mostly because the Scorn Machine wasn’t his type.”
“His type being?”
“Me, and the thousands like me. Young girls, I think we’re called.”
Shayne yanked his ear. “He had four wives, all young. You happen to know any of them?”
“Sure,” she nodded. “The last one — Jane. There was a day when she occupied a chair four desks down from mine. That was before she professed an interest in yachting, of course.”
“And after she did?”
“Summoning vibes came regularly from the Crown Room.”
“From where Tiener ruled?”
“Right on.”
“How did Elizabeth Stewart react?”
“Stone.”
“Jane Tiener was killed in an airplane crash.”
“Un-huh.”
“You know Vernon Dobbs?”
“Hey, man, I’m just a little ol’ clerk-typist-receptionist.”
“So was Jane Tiener once.”
“The dif being she had universal interests. I don’t. I lean only to rugged looking redheads who wear guns in a shoulder pouch — or something. You take that thing off before you go to bed, don’t you?”
Shayne waved her off. “Dobbs.”
“Never have laid eyes on him. If I have, I didn’t know it. He could sit down here in the next thirty seconds and I wouldn’t—”
“He is dead, Carole.” Shayne explained briefly.
“Lord!” she took a deep breath. “You’re getting scary. Don’t you know any live people?”
“Yeah. Guy named Tony Andrews.”
She frowned deeply. “Never heard of him.”
“Lisa Montgomery.”
She shook her head. “No. Next?”
“Lisa Montgomery is Tiener’s sister.”
“Hmm. I didn’t know he had a sister.”
“Your car is in the parking lot next door?”
She sat back in her chair. “Shayne, don’t you ever relax? Listen to music — or something?”
He turned on a quick crooked grin for her as he rose. “Seldom. And when I do, I, too, have a clerk-typist-receptionist-secretary — and friend.”
“Oh!” She seemed to consider it. Then she lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug and sat forward. She smiled, but her eyes already were inventorying the male population of the small lounge. “Well,” she said, “if she ever dies, remember me. I’m heavy on typing. Really, I am.”
Shayne wheeled to the Miami News office and found Sol Pearbome stuffed inside a tiny cubicle off the main editorial room. The cubicle was cluttered with filing cabinets and overflowing wire baskets. Pearbome sat back in an ancient swivel chair, fishing through a wire basket on his lap, glasses on the end of his nose.
“Damn government safety regulations!” he mumbled. “I live for the day spikes are back in style. Then a man can find what he is looking for. What’s with you, Shayne, Vernon Dobbs Communications?”
“Tiener South and Lisa Hume Montgomery.”
Pearbome frowned over the top of the glasses, popped the basket on his desk and sat forward. “The Montgomery women is Tiener’s sister, but she doesn’t fit in Tiener South.” He steepled fingers, stared at them. “You sort of lit a fire for me yesterday, fella. I’ve been doing a lot of sniffing in the last twenty-four hours. You got me thinking, you know — Tiener supposedly dead — what did it do to the corporate structure? Well, I can tell you the structure is the same and functioning smoothly just like it was ten years ago.”
“But with no Lisa Montgomery involved, right, Sol? She’s my interest.”
He wagged his head. “She’s Tiener’s sister. Period. She doesn’t figure in the corporate structure.” He paused, then said significantly, “Probably because she’s supposed to be a little light upstairs, got a few loose marbles, people say. Not serious enough to consider institutionalizing, I’m told, but enough that she is no more than a shadow in the background.”