Murder Is My Business by Brett Halliday Page A

odor of whisky was on her breath. She wore a quilted dressing gown and her hair was brushed back from her face.
    She pressed her lips against Shayne’s and they softened and became warm. He put his arms around her and his hands felt the hard outline of backbone and rib structure beneath the quilted robe.
    When she took her arms from his neck she said, “I’ve been waiting for you to come, Michael.” Sheclosed the door and threw the bolt, took Shayne’s hand, and led him along the hallway toward a wide stairway. “I’m all alone and was waiting for you,” she said again. “I gave the servants a night off after I found out — Father wouldn’t be home.”
    She started up the stairway. She didn’t look at him again, but hurried up the steps as though there was little time.
    Shayne hurried beside her, his big hand tightly clutched in hers. Here in her home, seeing her dressed as she was, he was more fully aware of the change ten years had made in her. She looked older than her years, and he wondered what she had been doing since she deserted the only man she would ever love.
    They reached the top of the stairway, and she turned through curtained glass doors into a sitting room which was thickly carpeted from wall to wall and lighted with one tall floor lamp by the side of a silk-covered chaise longue. The room was done in pastel shades, cream and pink. It didn’t match Carmela’s temperament. It fitted the girl he had known ten years ago, before her father sent her off to Europe, a pathetic reminder of all the things Carmela Towne had been. He knew she had clung desperately to the soft beauty of her suite here on the second floor of the ugly stone house just as she had tried to cling to the love that had been denied her.
    Shayne had a sour taste in his mouth as he looked around and let his gaze finally come to rest upon a low lacquered table beside the chaise longue gleaming in a circle of illumination from the floor lamp.
    Hammered silver ice tongs lay beside a silver ice bucket. There was an uncorked bottle of Scotch and a silver siphon, and a tall glass held two inches of the amber liquid with three partially melted ice cubes floating in it. An ashtray was almost filled with halfsmoked cigarettes, and a second glass, unused, stood behind the ice bucket.
    Carmela had stopped beside him just inside the doorway, her fingers still clutching his hand. She looked defiant and determined, as she said suddenly, “I need another drink — and you need one, too, Michael.” She let go of his hand and went to the low table beside the lounge.
    Shayne stood where he was and watched her put ice cubes and whisky in the empty glass, then splash soda into it. He felt sorry as hell for Carmela Towne.
    She had sent the servants away and settled herself here with whisky and cigarettes to wait. He didn’t think she had expected him. Now she was through waiting. Everything she did, every intonation of her voice, told of her defiant resolve to wait no longer for Lance Bayliss.
    Yet he had just seen Lance drive away from the house. He remembered how Lance had looked at her in the hotel room that day, and he felt sorrier than ever for her.
    She poured more whisky into her glass, sat down on the lounge, and beckoned to him, holding out the freshly filled glass. He went across and took it from her. She brushed her long hair back from her face and said, “I must look a perfect fright.”
    Shayne said gravely, “You look very attractive.”
    She trembled a little and put her hand on his arm. She said, “I’m glad — I want to look attractive for you, Michael. You see — I hoped you would — be nice — to me,” she ended in a nervous stammering voice.
    She looked up at him and smiled, but her eyes were miserable. Shayne bent down and kissed her lips lightly, He said, “We’ve got all night. You’re not quite drunk yet.”
    She said, “No,” and laughed. “Drinking does help, though, doesn’t it?”
    Shayne took a long drink,