Blood on the Stars by Brett Halliday Read Free Book Online Page B

New Orleans he sensed that there was growing between them a feeling more intimate than that of employer and confidential secretary. He had gone to New Orleans thinking that getting away from the apartment might ease the sorrow of losing Phyllis. Six months ago he had returned to Miami, feeling that in fairness to Lucy and himself a separation would give them a chance to consider objectively what their future relations should be.
    Lucy had a single room down the hall, and this afternoon she had come in with a bag of groceries, competently taken over the kitchenette in his apartment, and cooked a dinner for two which she served charmingly on a small table in the living-room.
    She proved to be a splendid cook. She concocted what she called “Poor-girl steak,” consisting of beef ground twice with a small piece of bacon. To complete the meal she served baked yams, and biscuits of her own devising, with garlic-flavored gravy and black coffee. She wore a frilly blue and white apron over a white skirt and blue blouse, and was very domestic and matter-of-fact as she cleared the table and washed the dishes while Shayne settled himself comfortably with a noggin of cognac and a cigarette in the shabbily furnished living-room.
    Shayne had a curious feeling deep inside him that the episode was more than a game. He had a fair idea of the way Lucy felt, and he respected her for it. Tonight for the first time since Phyllis’s death it didn’t seem wrong to have a woman in his apartment. He had tried to run away from Lucy but it hadn’t worked; and she had tried to run away from him by quitting her job and closing the New Orleans office in a fit of rage, but that hadn’t worked either. He had persuaded her, by long-distance telephone, to come to Miami for a vacation, and now they were here together.
    Shayne took a sip of cognac and reflected upon the situation. A feeling of contentment and inertia possessed him. He had no cases on hand because he hadn’t yet decided whether to re-establish himself in Miami or return to New Orleans. He was thinking of calling to Lucy and telling her to hurry up and finish the dishes and come in to sit beside him when the phone rang. It was an old-fashioned wall phone, and its ringing had disrupted his plans so often in the past that he decided not to answer it. He slumped deeper in his chair, his angular face relaxed, his eyes half-closed, meditatively sipping Monnet and consigning all telephones to hell.
    He wasn’t conscious of Lucy’s presence in the room until the phone stopped ringing. He looked up to see her putting the receiver to her ear. She said, crisply, “Michael Shayne’s office.”
    She listened for a moment, turning her head sideways to look at Shayne. He looked back at her and tried not to scowl. She was still playing the game and getting such a kick out of it he hadn’t the heart to scold her.
    “Yes,” she said, “he’s right here.” She held out the receiver. “He says it’s Chief Will Gentry.”
    Shayne growled, got up and lounged across the room, took the receiver from her, and said, “Hello, Will.”
    “Did I interrupt something important?” Gentry’s voice betrayed a lively and friendly interest in the feminine voice that had answered the telephone.
    “Oh, no,” Shayne assured him. “That was just my maiden aunt from Peoria. You’ve heard me speak of Aunt Minnie.”
    “Oh.” Chief Gentry hesitated a moment, then added, “ Yeh . Rourke was telling me a couple of days ago about that pretty secretary of yours who just blew in from New Orleans.”
    “Tim probably has her out tonight trying to seduce her,” Shayne said cheerfully. “The heel. What’s on your mind, Will?”
    “What have you been doing all evening?” asked Gentry cautiously.
    “Eating dinner right here. Aunt Minnie’s a hell of a cook. Get her liquored up on a fifth of gin and she can do the damnedest things with a dozen eggs, tomato ketchup, and a couple of bottles of beer.”
    “For