Bodies Are Where You Find Them by Brett Halliday Read Free Book Online

to be in my car. You brought her this far—you can keep her.”
    “I brought her!” Shayne stopped short, staring at the ironical smile twitching Rourke’s thin lips. “Who’s gagging now?”
    “By God, I’m not,” Rourke told him with passionate sincerity. “You might’ve told me you’d changed your mind and were taking her away yourself. But, no, you have to be funny.”
    Shayne’s hands caught Rourke’s shoulders again and clamped down hard. In a strangled voice he demanded, “What are you getting at, Tim? For God’s sake—”
    “You ought to know. She wasn’t there.”
    Slowly Shayne’s fingers relaxed. “Do you mean—she wasn’t there when you went back?” he asked hollowly.
    “You’re beginning to get it,” Rourke responded. “Didn’t you sneak her out?”
    Shayne shook his head dismally. “I was busy decoying a couple of birds who tailed me from the hotel.”
    The two men stood and stared at each other for a long moment, then Shayne went into action. He grabbed Rourke’s arm and steered him toward the barroom.
    “I’m either drunk or desperately in need of a drink,” he said solemnly. “I’ve got to find out.”

 
FOUR
     
    THE BOOTHS in the barroom were vacant at this early hour. Shayne led the way to one at the farthest end of the low-ceilinged room, stopping at the bar to order a bottle of cognac and two glasses.
    They sat in complete silence for several minutes, sipping the amber fluid and glowering dejectedly at the crude walls and thatched roof. The inexplicable disappearance of Helen Stallings’s corpse disjointed everything. It didn’t make sense. It injected a sinister note of mystery into the affair which had, heretofore, appeared to be nothing more than a frame-up to throw the onus of a kidnap-killing onto Shayne and thus ensure Jim Marsh’s defeat at the Miami Beach polls two days hence.
    “Who the hell could have wanted her out of there except you?” Rourke’s voice was a low groan.
    Shayne stared, a black frown on his gaunt face. “Someone giving us a friendly lift,” he suggested with heavy irony. “Somebody took the job off our hands. Why should we kick?” He emptied his glass and poured another drink.
    “You’re whistling in the dark,” Rourke charged. “As long as we knew where she was we had control—in a nebulous way. Now we don’t know what to expect—what to guard against.”
    Shayne sighed and settled both elbows on the table, cupped his lean jaw in rough palms, and cocked one red eyebrow sardonically.
    “It does begin to look interesting. For a while I was ready to believe Stallings strangled her himself to shut her mouth and to tie her murder around my neck. But he wouldn’t have taken her away after planting her in my apartment.”
    “Who would?”
    Shayne shrugged and said mildly, “My theory about a good Samaritan or a helpful elf is as good as any until we have more facts to go on.”
    “Yeah—facts.” Rourke downed his third drink and squinted slaty eyes at the detective. “What did you mean when you called me at the paper and said you didn’t need the pictures to identify the girl?”
    Shayne told him about the beaded bag gripped in the dead girl’s hand. “I’m positive she didn’t have it with her when she came to my apartment. The murderer might have brought it with him and left it in her hand so she would be quickly identified.” He paused, his frown deepening. “Maybe that’s a lead. Let’s have a look at those back copies you brought along.”
    “She’s Helen Stallings, all right,” Rourke said. “Some of these pix are mighty clear for newspaper cuts.” He pulled a batch of newspaper sheets from his coat pocket and began sorting them out on the table. Turning them at a convenient angle for both of them to study, he said, “Here’s the first one I found. Little over a month ago. Snapped at the airport on her arrival from New York. There wasn’t any use looking farther back because this is her first visit