Blood on Biscayne Bay by Brett Halliday

planted them in the vanity drawer?
    Of course, he realized it was possible that there was no connection whatever between Natalie Briggs’s murder and the letters. It could be a coincidence. There were too many coincidences piled on top of each other.
    First, there was Angus Browne, private detective who specialized in marital cases. He was undoubtedly spying on Floyd Hudson and Natalie at the Play-Mor Club. He knew from Mrs. Morgan’s description of the shabby little man who claimed to be an officer that it was Browne who initialed A. B. on the letters. Another of the trio was Timothy Rourke.
    Rourke had undoubtedly said something to Natalie in the game room that frightened her and sent her running away in panic. There was certainly a tie-up between the maid and two of the men who had discovered the letters.
    Shayne sat down and clasped his hands behind his head and gave his thoughts over to pure speculation. Assuming for the moment that Christine was telling the truth, who had planted the letters and for what purpose? Blackmail? Or had Morrison engineered the plot because he was madly in love with Christine and determined to wreck her marriage?
    Again he went over every detail of the case thus far, but none of it made sense. He ground his teeth together angrily, got up and went to the phone and asked the clerk to send up the early edition of the Miami News.
    When a boy brought the paper he skimmed over the front page story of Natalie Briggs’s death. There was a photograph of her body being pulled out of the Bay, and another full-face shot of the girl. Neither the Floyd Hudson nor the Play-Mor angle was mentioned. Painter hadn’t given the paper much of a story, though he had allowed them to mention the probability that she had been killed at the back door of the Hudson home and her body consigned to the Bay at that point.
    He dropped the paper and called Timothy Rourke’s apartment on the Beach. Since recovering from his bullet wounds, Rourke hadn’t returned to his job on the paper, but was doing a few free-lance things at space rates for the local papers while he worked on his novel.
    When Rourke didn’t answer his phone, Shayne looked up the Angus Browne detective agency and called the number. Again, there was no answer. He then called Information and asked if Victor Morrison had a telephone.
    He was given a number and he called it. A maid answered and told him that Mr. Morrison had gone fishing that morning and wasn’t expected back until about 1:30. Shayne asked for the Morrisons’ address, and the girl gave it to him. He thanked her, hung up, and went out to lunch before calling on Victor Morrison.

 
Chapter Eight: A DISTURBING VISITOR
     
    THE MORRISON HOUSE was on the west shore of Biscayne Bay between the County and Venetian causeways. The house faced south, and as Shayne went up the walk toward the wide wooden veranda he saw that the expanse of lawn leading to the bay shore was dotted with deck chairs beneath gaily striped beach umbrellas.
    One of the chairs was occupied. An inclined umbrella hid everything but a pair of bare legs stretched out in the sunlight and a bare arm reaching out for a glass on the table beside the chair.
    A maid in a starched white uniform came to the door. She was little and pretty, with inquisitive blue eyes and pouting lips. She looked up at the rangy redhead with approval, and quirked her lips slightly when she said, “Mr. Morrison hasn’t returned yet. Perhaps you’d like to wait,” in answer to Shayne’s query.
    Shayne said, “How about Mrs. Morrison?”
    A change came over the girl’s face. “Oh, she’s out there on the lawn,” she answered in a sulky voice. “I’m sure that she’d be very glad to see you.”
    “What makes you so sure?” Shayne grinned down at her.
    She flirted herself around and was closing the door when Shayne turned and went down the steps. He swung around to the right and went across the close-cropped lawn toward the pair of long and