Free Tickets for Death by Brett Halliday

demure glance out of the corner of her eye. “Does it have to be? What I mean is—we were headed out to the Rendezvous for a few drinks and dancing. I could certainly use a drink right now.” She ended with a shaky, high-pitched laugh which the big detective did not believe originated in any gaiety on her part.
    Shayne nodded gravely. He put the roadster in gear and let it snail forward. “How do you know I’m not married with a passel of brats at home?”
    She smiled happily. “I can tell. You don’t look married.”
    “Maybe Fred didn’t either,” he reminded her, “and not many girls would tumble to this old jalopy of mine.”
    She flashed him another quick, searching look, but Shayne’s eyes were mild and he was smiling. “Well, you know how it is. I did hesitate to get in with you, but a girl gets bored stiff doing nothing night after night. I didn’t think it would be any harm to go out to the Rendezvous with Fred tonight. My name,” she tagged on as an afterthought, “is Midge.”
    Shayne inclined his head. “I’ll answer to Mike—from you.”
    “You’re nice,” she breathed. “I can tell it already. You’ve got hair that makes a girl just itch to run her fingers through it. You’re the kind who would know when a girl wants to be petted and when she wants to be let alone.”
    Shayne chuckled with genuine amusement. “I call this old jalopy of mine the Mayflower,” he warned, “because so many puritans have come across in it.”
    Midge laughed delightedly and leaned back, pressing her silk-clad shoulder against him.
    “I thought that gag was old enough to be new to a gal your age. Is that the Rendezvous ahead?” Shayne asked as they approached a building gleaming with red and yellow neon lights.
    “That’s it.” She shivered and moved closer to him. “If you haven’t ever been there before, drive around to the west entrance,” she cajoled. “We can go in through a side door and upstairs to a private room where no one will see us.”
    “A private room? Are you ashamed of being seen with me?”
    She laughed lightly. “Don’t be silly.” She trailed her knuckles over one of his big hands. “It’s only—well, I can’t afford to be seen at a place like the Rendezvous. My family—you know. Dad’s a deacon in the church and he and mother would have a fit if they knew I’d ever taken a drink.”
    Shayne nodded and drove through an arched entrance, past rows of parked cars, and around to the west side of the rambling two-story building. A single green bulb burned over a closed oak door. Midge pointed it out. With a giggle that didn’t quite ring true, she explained, “That’s where all the high-school kids go in and out.”
    Shayne parked, got out, and she slid out after him. She caught his arm and held it tightly, pressing against him. The heavy door opened at the turn of the knob and they went into a long carpeted hallway. A burst of music came from beyond the partition, and there were loud voices and laughter.
    Midge turned him to the right and led him to a stairway. “They gamble in the back upstairs,” she told him in a conspiratorial whisper, “and they say you can order most anything you want served in the private rooms.”
    Shayne climbed the stairs with her and didn’t probe further into the suggested evils of the upstairs rooms. A dark-featured man wearing a white mess jacket lounged at the top of the stairway. He nodded woodenly to Midge and led them to a closed door at the end of a row of closed doors. He opened it onto a dimly lit cubicle with a small table set for two. There was an overstuffed couch in the room and a deep club chair in the opposite corner. The man said, “I’ll send a boy right up,” and went out, closing the door behind him.
    Shayne stood in the center of the small, intimately furnished room and rumpled his coarse hair. “It’s a nice quiet place for high-school youngsters to do their consorting,” he observed dryly. “Lots more fun