Murder by Proxy by Brett Halliday Page B

down by Shayne, but that was perfectly natural under the circumstances. He would have resented it himself in the same situation.
    Shayne went over Blake’s story of Monday evening point by point while they waited, and he was inclined to believe it… or most of it at least. It shouldn’t be too difficult to check what had happened at the Gray Gull on Monday night. The cashier would remember passing out the packet of free chips to Blake, and what sum he returned. One of the roulette dealers would almost certainly remember the striking blonde whom Gene Blake had brought in, and who deserted him during the course of the evening for another man. With more opportunity to observe them together at his table, he might well have formed an opinion as to whether they were strangers when they met.
    At the moment, this was the most puzzling aspect of Blake’s story. If this later meeting had been prearranged before her arrival in Miami… if it were, in fact, an assignation, why go to such a roundabout, cloak-and-dagger way of effecting it?
    There was only one answer that made sense to Shayne. If she suspected she was being tailed, all that circumlocution about picking Gene up in the bar might have seemed necessary. Otherwise, for God’s sake, she was ostensibly on her own in Miami for two weeks with no strings attached. All they had to do was to meet some place. Her reservation had been made in advance at the Beachhaven… her plane ticket purchased in advance and time of arrival known.
    Yet both she and her husband had gone out of their way to make it clear that he had wanted her to make the trip, that he expected her to have fun, and had no intention of spying on her.
    If not her husband, then whom had she suspected of keeping track of her movements in Miami so that she felt the need to cover up her tracks?
    Of course, the simpler answer might be the correct one. It was entirely possible that she did just want to go out on the town and had tired of Gene Blake’s company after an hour or two. It is simple enough to strike up an acquaintanceship with a fellow gambler at a roulette table, and as Peggy had phrased it in the hotel, maybe the chemicals were right with this new man. In that case it was going to be much more difficult to trace a casual bystander than if there had been a previous connection between the two.
    A young officer opened a door into the waiting room and stuck his head in. “The chief is ready for you, Mr. Shayne.”
    Shayne got up and nodded to the couple, and preceded them into Painter’s office.
    The detective chief looked up irritably from a desk littered with papers. He was a small, dapper man, with a very black, pencil-thin mustache.
    He snapped, “What is it, Shayne? I’m extremely busy.”
    Shayne said, “I’ve brought in a couple of people who want to make statements about Mrs. Herbert Harris.”
    “Harris?” sputtered Painter. “That New York woman who’s been sleeping out a couple of nights? What’s your interest in her?”
    “The New York woman who’s been missing since Monday night,” the redhead corrected him. “I’ve been retained to find her.”
    “He came to you?” Painter’s voice trembled with wrath. “After I assured him everything possible would be done to locate her without publicity or a scandal? Why?”
    “Possibly,” said Shayne modestly, “because I have a reputation for being one of the best men in my field in the entire country?”
    “Who says so?”
    “Mr. Harris,” said Shayne. He shrugged and grinned innocently. “I thought maybe you told him Petey, because he came straight to my office from here.”
    “I told him nothing. Except that we have far superior facilities for that sort of work than any private detective, and that it would be a waste of money to hire one.”
    “What have your facilities turned up?”
    “Nothing very definite… as yet. We have determined that she allowed herself to be picked up in the Beachhaven bar Monday evening by some