Neither her newspaper pictures nor the brief glimpse Shayne had caught of her at the candlelit dining table did Mrs. Peralta justice.
She was in her early thirties, he thought, and her figure was svelte rather than plump as the pictures had made it appear. Actually, she was quite tall for a woman, he realized, as she stood in the doorway teetering a trifle on very high heels. Tall enough to carry her full hips and prominent bosom with a faint swagger that was reminiscent of Mae West in one of her most seductive roles.
Her features were smooth and even, with a touch of arrogance in the slightly uptilted nose, but there was a hint of smouldering fire in the brown eyes that regarded Shayne from beneath heavy, dark lashes.
Her voice was a low contralto, carefully modulated and with a precise enunciation that indicated theatrical voice culture rather than an expensive finishing school in her youth.
“Who is this man, Julio?”
Michael Shayne got to his feet slowly. A faint grin twisted his lips as he met her eyes squarely and held her gaze across the twenty feet that separated them. From the chair beside him, he heard Peralta’s nervous voice explaining:
“A business associate, my dear. We’re endeavoring to have a quiet and private talk here,” he went on petulantly. “I’ll join you upstairs very soon.”
Shayne knew that Laura Peralta wasn’t actually listening to her husband. She doubtless heard the words as he spoke them, but her eyes were probing Shayne’s eyes, her mind was probing Shayne’s mind.
She shook her head slightly as though puzzled, moved toward him, swaying slightly at the hips and paying no attention at all to the older man in the room.
“The children say you are a detective. Why did you force your way in here tonight, Mr. Shayne? What hold have you over my husband that induced him to admit you?”
Shayne shrugged. “Hadn’t you better ask him that question?”
She was close to him now. He could smell her, and she smelled good. She stopped two feet away and had to tilt her head upward only slightly to look directly into his eyes. She said pleasantly, as though she were discussing an absent person in whom she had little interest:
“Julio is an awful fool at times. He thinks there’s only one place for women and they should stay there. What do you think, Michael Shayne?”
Her voice and the look she gave him were challenging and provocative. Shayne heard Peralta clearing his throat rather loudly, but he followed the woman’s lead by ignoring his host.
“I don’t believe this is exactly the best time or place to discuss my ideas about women, Mrs. Peralta. Some other time, perhaps?” He didn’t need to add “When we’re alone” because that was implicit in the way he spoke.
Her lips quirked faintly and she swung away from him to confront her husband, who had lighted his cigar and was now puffing on it nervously. Her voice took on an intonation of subtle mockery when she addressed him:
“Why do you sit there glowering, Julio? I thought you agreed this afternoon that it was up to the police and the insurance company to get back the bracelet. Why should you go around hiring private detectives to do their work?”
He said wearily, “I told you from the beginning, Laura. I feel a certain responsibility. After all, you are my wife.”
“Still harping on that?” she flung at him. “Just because I didn’t lock it up in the safe that one night. I never promised anyone I would. That’s a chance they take when they insure jewelry.”
He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. It was clear to Shayne that this was an old, warmed-over quarrel between them, and that Laura Peralta fiercely resented having her actions questioned.
She put her hands on her hips now, and squared her shoulders belligerently at her husband.
“I don’t believe you, Julio.” There was anger and scorn in her voice. “You know Chief Painter told us this afternoon that it was practically in the bag and he certainly neither needed nor wanted outside help. I think you’ve some other reason for calling Mr. Shayne in, and I demand to know what it is.”
“What other reason can you think of?”
“I don’t know unless you have some silly idea of trying to put some restraints on my personal liberty as you threatened recently. Go ahead and hire a private eye to follow me around Miami in the evenings and report to you,” she stormed at him. “See if I care. There’ll be no grounds for divorce, I can assure you of that.” She turned to glare over her shoulder at Shayne who was listening with grim amusement. “If you’re starting your assignment this evening, I’ll make it easy for you. In half an hour or so, you’ll find me in the roulette room of the Green Jungle in North Miami. Know where it is?”
Shayne nodded.
“I’ll be there all evening if I win,” she told him with a toss of her head. “Or the length of time it takes me to lose the five hundred my husband allows me to spend on entertainment each evening. If I’m unlucky, perhaps you’ll buy me a drink after I go broke.”
“Perhaps I will,” Shayne agreed pleasantly.
She turned away haughtily and swept out of the room, swinging her buttocks just enough to indicate she was aware two males were watching her exit-one of whom was married to her.
Julio Peralta shook his head and sighed despondently when the door closed behind his wife. “I don’t understand Laura,” he murmured. “I’m afraid I simply don’t understand American women at all. I realize she is young and high-spirited, and that this household may seem dull to her. But she is my wife. I ask only that she keep that fact in mind and do nothing to disgrace the name. In the name of all that is holy, Mr. Shayne, is that too much to ask?”
Shayne shrugged and resumed his seat. He said drily, “We were discussing the possibility that a cheap imitation of the emerald bracelet might have been substituted for the genuine without your knowledge before the robbery occurred. How many people were in a position to have accomplished that?
Peralta puffed on his cigar nervously. “Yesterday I would have said it was an utter impossibility. But since this letter arrived, I’ve been trying to see how it could have been done. How long would it take,” he demanded anxiously, “to make up a convincing substitute of imitation gems?”
“We’d have to ask a jeweler that. A few days would be enough, I should think.”
“And it would be a good enough imitation so it mightn’t be noticed by anyone except an expert?”
“I think so. Depends what you mean by an expert, I guess.” Shayne paused, then went on somewhat harshly because he did not like saying this to the older man: “I’ve been told by jewelers that it is almost impossible to foist off even an extremely good imitation on the owner of a particular piece who loves jewelry and has owned that piece for any length of time. I can’t vouch for this personally, but the experts claim there is a sort of aura about the real thing that can never be duplicated except to the casual observer.”
“What you are saying,” said Peralta impatiently and with a bite in his voice, “is that it is unlikely such a substitution could have been made without Mrs. Peralta’s knowledge.”
“That would be the opinion of experts,” Shayne agreed, cautiously.
The older man drew in a deep puff of smoke and put his cigar down. He turned to the detective with both hands flat on his knees. “What do you advise me to do… about the letter you read?”
Shayne shook his red head slowly. “I’m hardly in a position to advise you yet. I need to know more… about the bracelet and the various people involved. How many know the combination of the safe the bracelet was normally kept in?”
“Presumably, only my wife and I. I impressed the need for secrecy on Mrs. Peralta in the beginning. Not because I didn’t trust others in the household,” he went on hastily, “but because a secret shared is no longer a secret.”
“You said presumably.”
“That is correct. My wife is notoriously careless about such things. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to learn, for instance, that Miss Briggs, the twins’ governess, knows the combination. And probably Freed, also.” He spread out his hands. “Perhaps even the children, too. They do have a surprising way of nosing into things. And my wife’s former maid, Felice, whom I discharged immediately after the theft.”
Shayne nodded. “I understand it was one of her duties to make sure your wife’s jewels were locked up every night.”
“Which she neglected to do that evening.”
Shayne counted the names off on his fingers and frowned. “That gives us a total of seven people who might have had access to the safe in the past and been able to take the bracelet out for a substitute to be made.”
“That is true.” Peralta regarded him steadily. “But there is also the point you made about it being so very difficult to fool the owner with an imitation.”
“There is that point.”
Julio Peralta drew in a deep breath. “So what course of action do you advise me to take?”
Shayne hesitated. “Let’s face it on the assumption that your wife either pulled the switch or connived with someone who did.”
“Haven’t you made it clear that is almost a necessary assumption?”
“Almost,” Shayne agreed, tugging at the lobe of his left ear. “If it was an imitation that was stolen and your wife knows it, she must be on pins and needles waiting to see if it is recovered. How has she been acting?”
“Quite nonchalant about the whole matter. But my wife is an excellent actress, Mr. Shayne.”
“What does Chief Painter actually tell you about the progress of his investigation?” demanded Shayne.
“He was quite noncommittal until very recently. Yesterday, he volunteered the information that he was on a hot lead, as he called it, and today he insisted that we had nothing to worry about… that the bracelet would be recovered very soon.”
“Which is exactly what would worry your wife, if she knows the thing is an imitation. Do you know if she has had any private conferences with Painter?”
“I couldn’t say,” said Peralta, stiffly.
“Your man wants fifty-five grand in his letter,” Shayne pointed out. “As much as he could possibly get from a fence for the genuine bracelet, and twice what he could hope to pick up by making a deal with the insurance company.”
“And if I don’t pay his demand, he will brand me publicly as a crook trying to collect insurance on a worthless imitation. What am I to do?”
“You can’t pay him,” said Shayne, angrily. “Good God, man, that would just be tossing fifty-five grand down the sewer. You have no assurance he’ll return the bracelet after you pay him. Just his word for that. Naturally, he’d hold onto it and blackmail you further.”
“So what am I to do? If I don’t pay him, he will turn it over to a scandal-loving newspaper reporter and the whole unsavory story will come out.”
“How far will you go to protect your wife,” asked Shayne, harshly, “if she was in on the substitution?”
“I don’t know. She can’t have been. What madness it is to suspect Laura of that! There was no need,” Peralta cried out despairingly. “I am a wealthy man. She has all the money she could possibly need. Charge accounts in every store on Lincoln Road and in the best shops in New York. I never protest the size of the household accounts. It’s inconceivable that she should have ever wanted more money.”
It wasn’t inconceivable to Michael Shayne. Not as he recalled her tone when she mentioned the five hundred dollars she was allowed each evening for gambling. To the wife of a man worth many millions, that must seem like peanuts. But Peralta would never be able to understand that. He probably, Shayne thought pityingly, felt he was being wonderfully generous to provide that sum for her to squander at Miami’s gaming tables each night.
“Inconceivable or not,” Shayne said, wearily, “you’ve got to face facts. I’ll repeat my question: how far will you go to protect her in case the worst is true?”
“I suppose,” Julio Peralta said quietly, “I would do anything within reason. So long as it is honest and hurts no innocent person.”
“The man who wrote you that letter deserves no consideration. He is a blackmailer and almost surely a thief. Fix up an envelope for him as he directs and mail it to him tomorrow. Let’s see,” mused Shayne, “fifty bills to the thousand, times fifty-five.” He did the sum in his head. “Twenty-seven hundred and fifty bills in all. In a large manila envelope, they would fit in four packets. About seven hundred to each packet. Have them cut out of old newspapers to size,” he went on briskly, “so it looks and feels right. I’ll arrange to have the receiver of the envelope tailed when he calls for it at General Delivery.”
“But he warns me specifically,” reminded Peralta, “that the imitation bracelet will go to this man Rourke on the newspaper if we do anything like that.”
“We’ll try to prevent his carrying out that threat. If we fail, I think I can guarantee Rourke’s silence until we know exactly where we stand. In the meantime,” he added, recalling Rourke’s description of the governess, “I’d like to have a talk with Miss Briggs, if I may. And I’ll want the address of the maid, who was here the night of the theft.”
“Yes. Miss Briggs can give you that, I am sure. But I’m afraid she isn’t here just now. She mentioned at the dinner table that she was going out for the evening immediately after dinner.”
Shayne said with real regret, “That’s too bad. I look forward to interviewing Miss Briggs. I’ll be here to see her first thing in the morning.”
He got up and held out his hand to the millionaire. “Try not to worry too much about all this. And I advise you to tell no one about the letter. No even your alter ego, Freed.”
“I agree,” said Peralta, hastily. “Ah… about a retainer, Mr. Shayne?”
“We can discuss that in the morning… after I’ve a better idea what I may be able to do for you.” Shayne turned away, in a hurry to get back to Miami and to the Green Jungle before Laura Peralta lost all her money and got tired of waiting for him to show up.
The little maid popped up in the hallway as he strode from the library, and scurried ahead of him to open the front door. He thanked her and went out.
The cream convertible was gone from the driveway, but the dark limousine was still parked in front of Rourke’s old coupe.
Shayne went down the flagged walk and circled the limousine to open the left-hand door of the coupe. Cigarette smoke came out into the night air, and mingled with it was the delicate scent of a good perfume.
Shayne could see only a blurred outline of the occupant of the coupe as he slid under the wheel. She was far over on the right side of the seat, and when he slammed his door shut, she told him calmly, “I’ve been waiting long enough. Let’s get away from here before someone comes out and sees me.”