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

to Miami. I suppose you know Stallings met the girl’s mother in New York. They were married there a few months ago, left the girl in college to finish the school term when they came down here, and Stallings built a mansion for his bride.”
    Shayne studied a blurred halftone of a girl stepping from an air liner. “This is not too clear of her face,” he complained. “Looks like her, all right, but—”
    “There aren’t any buts about this one.” Rourke selected another photograph, a front-page posed shot. “This was taken about a week later, the day after she filed suit against Stallings for alleged misappropriation of estate funds.”
    Shayne nodded, disappointment clouding his face. The second picture was very clear in facial detail, unmistakably a picture of the girl who had staggered to his office and was later strangled in his bed.
    “And here’s another one that’s just as clear,” Rourke went on. “Our regulars do a better job than the society photogs. This is a few days later, after she withdrew the suit against Stallings. Her mother had had a stroke in the meantime, presumably brought on by the girl’s action against Stallings, and was seriously ill. They had just moved from an apartment to that swanky new home on Swordfish Island.”
    Shayne stared somberly at the two pictures. There was not the shadow of doubt as to the identity of the murdered girl. He shook his head slowly and admitted, “I thought for a moment there was a possibility that the handbag was planted for a false clue—so that the body would be identified as Helen Stallings. That’s the way with most neat theories,” he ended with deep disgust.
    “Here’s some more.” Tim Rourke continued to spread out sheets of newspaper and pass them over for Shayne’s inspection. “She seems to have jumped into what the cliché boys would call a mad sporting and social whirl after deciding not to sue her stepfather. Surf-riding and golfing, cocktailing and dancing.”
    Shayne glanced casually at each succeeding photograph offered for his inspection. “Who’s this lug hanging around her in all these? His face looks familiar, but I can’t quite place him.”
    “That’s Arch Bugler. He cuts quite a dashing figure, don’t you think?”
    “Arch Bugler?” Shayne snorted. “Hell, I didn’t know he’d stepped into society.”
    “And how! He’s out of the slot-machine racket, you know. Ostensibly, at least. He opened a place on the Beach a few months ago. Made quite a flurry with it at first, but the cops clamped down on the back-room gambling, and he’s had to concentrate on selling food and drinks.”
    “Sure. I know about his place on the Beach,” Shayne murmured, “but I didn’t know that qualified him for a place in society. Hell, Tim, everybody knows he’s a mobster—and one of the toughest ever to invade Miami and the Beach.”
    “Mobsters are the latest social craze.” Rourke pointed out with a wry grin. “The blasé debs have found a new thrill. They get a perverted kick out of stepping with a known killer.”
    “I wouldn’t know about that.” Shayne leaned back and drank deeply from his glass. “Still, I’d think Stallings would put his foot down. Didn’t he and Bugler have a run-in a couple of years ago on a labor-racketeering angle?”
    “Yeh, but that’s all patched up now. They’ve been as thick as thieves since then, and Stallings was one of the biggest plungers when there was gambling at Bugler’s new joint.”
    “I ought to take you into partnership,” Shayne growled. “I’d do less guessing if I had your sources of information.”
    “It’s a reporter’s job to get around,” Rourke admitted modestly. He emptied his glass and reached for the bottle.
    “Lay off. We’ve got things to do.” Shayne came out of a brown study. A look of grim alertness supplanted the bemused expression which had clouded his face since Rourke announced the disappearance of Helen Stallings’s body from his