Blood on Biscayne Bay by Brett Halliday Page A

well-shaped legs extending beneath the umbrella.
    The thick grass deadened his footsteps, and he walked around the tilted umbrella without disturbing the occupant of the chair.
    The woman wore a wisp of flowered cloth over her pointed breasts, and a triangular piece of the same material for a loincloth. Her body was supple and smoothly rounded and had the beginning of a very nice sun tan. Her platinum hair was long and flowed around her shoulders, her lips were heavily rouged, and she lounged in the chair with a pair of binoculars held to her eyes.
    She lowered the glasses after a time, and saw him standing there. She gave a little start of surprise and glanced quickly at her body as though to reassure herself that the bits of cloth were in their proper positions. She lifted her gaze slowly and said in a husky voice, “Do you approve of what you see?”
    “Thoroughly,” said Shayne, his wide mouth twisted in a crooked grin. He took off his hat. “I didn’t mean to play peeping Tom. Your maid said I might wait here for Mr. Morrison.”
    “I’m Estelle Morrison,” she told him. Yellow lights flickered in her eyes. “I’ll be delighted to have you wait here for Victor.” Her husky voice was indolently and intentionally sensuous; the sort of voice that put double-entendres into the most innocent phrases.
    Shayne said, “Thanks. I understand he’s fishing.” He sat down cross-legged in the hot sun at her feet.
    “Yes. He went out very early this morning. I was trying to see if I could find him coming in.” She lifted the binoculars. “Sometimes one sees the most amazing things on the bay with a pair of strong glasses. In broad daylight, too.”
    Shayne said dryly, “I imagine. Poor devils who think they’re all alone and safe from prying eyes.”
    She turned faintly amused eyes upon him. “Are you shocked?”
    “Not at all.” Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders. “One can’t accuse you of hiding much of yourself from public view.”
    She laughed softly. “This isn’t a public beach. If strangers insist on walking up unannounced, I’m not responsible for what they see.” She picked up her drink and ice tinkled as she lifted it to her lips. “You are a stranger—to me.”
    “My name is Shayne. I have some business with—your husband?” He put a questioning inflection on the last two words.
    “I thought Victor left all his business behind him in New York. Perhaps he hasn’t told me everything.”
    “Perhaps not.” He turned to look across the bay and muttered, “With a pair of glasses like yours one should be able to bring the other shore into focus.”
    “One can,” she assured him with a trace of mockery.
    “I have friends who must live just opposite here. I wonder if I could identify their house.”
    She held the binoculars out to him. “After you get through pretending to look for your friend’s house, try the view on that little sailboat just off the Venetian Causeway and sigh for your lost youth.”
    He moved the glasses slowly around, seeking to pick out the rear of the Hudson house with its stone breakwater and the boathouse protruding into the bay, but he could not be certain which of the houses lining the shore was the Hudsons’.
    He deliberately swung the glasses on in a northward arc, picking up the far end of the Venetian Causeway and the small sailboat Estelle Morrison had mentioned. A young girl lay outstretched on some cushions in the bottom of the boat. She appeared to be nude. A boy was propped on one elbow beside her, and he was kissing her. The fingers of her right hand were tangled in his hair.
    Handing the binoculars back to her, he said, “Kids grow up in a hurry nowadays.”
    “Don’t they? Did you find your friend’s house?”
    “I’m not sure.” Shayne took a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and frowned. “The Leslie Hudsons’ house,” he told her. “Perhaps you know them.”
    A slight tremor rippled the length of her body. She was like a panther