Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 5, April 1974

“I didn’t expect him to die,” Buzby said to the three of them. “How could I anticipate this? I just figured he’d change his mind after a while.” He looked defensive.

“I wonder,” Della Peckinbaugh answered. “Maybe he really did love this one... Anyway, Mr. Shayne, I think you have enough of a motive to look into the young lady in depth. Don’t you?”

“I’ll talk to her,” Shayne said.

One of the servants informed Shayne that, “Miss Dawn is still in her room. She had her breakfast sent up a little while back.”

The two men went on up to the second floor of the mansion where the Master Suite and the quarters for the more important guests were located. The one assigned to Dolly Dawn was at the southeast corner looking out over the blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

They found the room easily.

Mike Shayne knocked loudly on the heavy door of the room. There was no answer. He knocked again, and this time realized the latch of the door hadn’t caught. It moved a little under his fist. At the same time he and Rourke both thought they heard a low moan from inside.

Shayne pushed the door open. There was a partly-clad woman on the floor over by the window.

Shayne took a step unto the room.

The woman sat up and threw a knife, a silver hilted little Italian stiletto. If Mike Shayne hadn’t dodged with lightning speed, it would have skewered his throat. As it was the point stuck half an inch into the solid wood of the door.

VI

Mike Shayne was into the room with the speed of a big jungle cat, ready to grab the woman or pull his gun if necessary. Neither action was needed.

She just sat there on the floor with her hands in plain sight and looked at the two men as they came into the room.

“Who the hell are you?” she said then.

Shayne got the impression the knife hadn’t really been meant for him, that she’d expected someone else to come through that door. It would have helped if he’d known who that other person was.

“I’m a real poor target for that sort of thing,” he jerked his big thumb at the knife which was still quivering in the wooden panel of the door. “If you try that again, I’ll take the shiv and make you eat it.”

She sat there and looked up at him.

“I believe you would at that,” she said.

Long red hair streamed down to rounded shoulders and even without makeup her face was roundly beautiful. She wore pajamas which neither restrained nor concealed the ripe curves of breast and thigh. Under her auburn brows were hard, alert, china blue eyes. Shayne got the impression they looked right through to his backbone.

“I’ve seen your picture in the papers,” she said, “You’ve got to be Mike Shayne.”

“That’s me,” Shayne said, “and I suppose you’re Dolly Dawn.”

She put back her head and rocked with gusty laughter. “Two minutes I see the great detective,” she said between laughs. “Only two minutes and he goes as wrong as he could be.”

“Who are you then? This, is Dolly Dawn’s room isn’t it?”

“It’s her room alright, but I’m not her. Ask your friend there who I am. He danced with me and did his best to do more the night before last. Or were you too sozzled to remember me, Tim?”

“This isn’t Dolly Dawn,” Tim Rourke confirmed. “This is Sally Peters, Slim’s wife.”

Mike Shayne was genuinely startled.

“I came to see Dolly,” Sally Peters told him. She got up off the floor and went over to a portable bar near the window. There she poured a stiff three fingers of whiskey into a glass and tossed it down as a man would have done.

“The door was open when I got here, so I walked on in. A man, or maybe two men, I can’t be sure, came up the hall and pushed in behind me. One of them gave me a karate chop from behind and that was it. Lights out. The next thing I knew you were coming through the door. How did I know who you were?”

Shayne moved quickly about as she talked, checking the closets, bath and dressing room. There was no one else in the suite. “You didn’t recognize the men or see or hear anything more?” He asked her.

“Neither would you have if you’d been me,” she said bitterly. “Whoever it was who clipped me, he knew his business. A real pro that one.” She poured another drink and tossed it off like the first.

“Don’t you worry though, mister detective,” she said. “If I do figure out who it is, I’ll tell you. If Slim finds out first and locates him, all those fly cops downstairs will really have somebody to nail for murder one — and Slim’s too good a man to lose.”

“What did you want to see Dolly about?” Tim Rourke asked the woman.

“Are you kidding, buster?” she said. “The same thing you and the big shamus wanted to see her about. The same thing that hick sheriff downstairs wants to see her about. What else? I want to know what she knows about who wasted dear old Harve.”

“You don’t sound very sorry about his death,” Mike Shayne said.