Free Framed in Blood by Brett Halliday Page A

rapidly.
    “That’s what he said. How else could he get the call if he wasn’t home in half an hour?” She spoke irritably, set her empty glass on the table, relaxed, and closed her eyes once more.
    Shayne settled back and did some fast thinking. How else, indeed, he wondered. Yet, Rourke had said that he went to the Jackson house at midnight, and Betty denied that Bert had returned all evening. Of course, Bert might have changed his mind on the way home. He could have stopped at a bar for a quick one and decided to make another phone call from there instead of going home and waiting. That would explain what Betty had told Rourke at midnight.
    Setting his angular jaw, Shayne swore silently. If it were not for Tim he could go ahead with the extortion thing. But Marie Leonard was hinting at “another man” and that man was bound to be Tim, in spite of his hopes that there wasn’t another man when he lied to Gentry.
    He came to his feet suddenly and walked slowly around the room, absently studying the two prints hanging on the wall, fingering the artistic statuettes on the lacquered table. Returning to his chair he poured another small drink, downed it, and demanded of Marie, “Why didn’t Bert stay right here to get the call? Didn’t he usually stay later than ten o’clock?”
    “Sometimes.” She opened her eyes, drew one leg up on the chair, turned her body, and rested her cheek on the chair back to look directly at Shayne. “We’d had a big fight about this trouble he insisted on getting himself into. I told him it was all over between us unless he gave it up. I’ll—never forgive myself for doing that to him.” Her red mouth primped, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She dabbed at them with a handkerchief and continued.
    “I sent him away angry. He slammed out without even saying good-by, but I didn’t know then—that I’d never see him again. Oh—I should have made him stay here with me, Mr. Shayne. If only I’d been—kinder to him.”
    “Bert Jackson was a grown man,” he reminded her.
    “But he wasn’t. He was just a boy in so many ways. Did that man kill him, Mr. Shayne? You haven’t even told me how Bert died.”
    “What man?”
    “That other man. You know—the one Betty—”
    “Bert Jackson was shot,” Shayne told her harshly. “His body was found about three o’clock this morning out in the Northwest section.”
    She shuddered and covered her face with both hands, weeping again. Shayne got up and stepped around the table, caught her wrists gently and pulled her hands away from her eyes. She gripped his fingers and cried desperately, “You must know who did it! With the information Bert gave you. He must have told you who the man was. You’ll see that he’s arrested and pays—even if Bert’s story about his political graft isn’t ever printed.”
    “I don’t know who the man is,” Shayne told her.
    “But Bert said that you—that he—”
    “Your account of his telephone call clears up certain aspects of it,” he said soothingly. “If this man believes I have the information, he may come to me to buy it.”
    “But if he does, you won’t deal with him!” She looked up into his eyes, her own wide and pleading. “You wouldn’t do that—not after—what happened to Bert.”
    “If he killed Bert or had him killed,” Shayne promised soberly, “I give you my word he’ll pay for it. I wish you’d try to think back and recall all the things Bert must have told you about everything,” he urged. “Any names at all on this story of his, any facts. He must have talked about it to you, at least back in the beginning when he was so enthusiastic and didn’t realize quite what it might lead into.” Shayne put a small amount of whisky in her glass and sprayed it with soda, then resumed his seat and waited.
    Marie lifted the drink with trembling hands, swallowed half of it, and said, “Bert didn’t talk to me about things like that.” A poignant sadness in her voice