Read The Body Came Back for Free Online Page B

his reflection grinned back at him, looking a dozen years younger and a dozen years more reckless than he remembered himself looking for a long time.
    A trace of the grin still lingered on his face as he turned back toward the sofa and said very gently, “You sit tight here for Vicky to call. If she does… tell her to sit tight wherever she is until I see if I can work an angle or two.”

 
5.
     
    “Do you mean…? Oh, thank God, Mike. You are going to help.” She came to her feet with a rush, her face transfigured with newborn hope, both hands outstretched.
    He caught her hands and held them tightly. “I’m going to see what I can do. That’s all I can promise right now. If I hit it lucky and things work out right, we may be able to keep your daughter out of this mess. If she calls before I get back, just tell her to stay put and not do anything foolish until you call her.”
    “I know you can do it,” she breathed. “I know everything will be all right.”
    “Just leave everything as it is,” he told her, releasing her clinging hands. “Including that whiskey bottle,” he ended half jocosely and half seriously. “From the looks of it you’ve had plenty during the time you’ve been in this room.”
    “It wasn’t full when I got here, Mike,” she defended herself. “He must have had a couple of drinks. And maybe Vicky had one or two while she was waiting for me. She does take a drink now and then.”
    He shrugged and went to the coffee table to pick up the parking stub he had found in the dead man’s pocket, studied it a moment and then placed it in his own pocket. He picked up the four sheets of paper and folded them carefully while she watched him, and she exclaimed impulsively, “Can’t we tear her note up, Mike? Isn’t that dangerous evidence to have around? If anything does go wrong, I’d prefer to tell the police I killed him. It’s in her handwriting, and…”
    Shayne said, “That’s why I intend to keep it… in case something does go wrong. I’m not going to destroy evidence in a homicide, Carla. I may tamper with it or twist it a little bit, but that’s as far as I’ll go.”
    He started to go out, then turned back slowly, looking down at his big hands and flexing them indecisively. Gloves were something men just didn’t have on tap in Miami. He said, “Would you let me have a pair of your stockings, Carla?”
    “My stockings?” Instinctively she glanced down at her nylon-sheathed legs. “Do you mean…?”
    “I mean a pair of stockings,” he told her patiently. “Old ones are all right.” He grinned faintly at the look of bewilderment on her face. “In the olden days the ladies used to give their knights a garter to wear when they went out to joust for them. I prefer a pair of nylons.”
    She wet her lips and returned his grin with an uncertain smile. It was evident she hadn’t the faintest idea what he was driving at, but she turned obediently and knelt beside the closed overnight case on the floor. She unsnapped it and opened the lid, straightened up with a pair of fresh stockings still in the cellophane envelope in which they had been purchased. “Are these all right?”
    “Just fine.” He shoved them into his pocket and patted her cheek.
    He then turned to the door decisively. “I shouldn’t be long. Not more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Lock the door and don’t let anyone in until I come. I’ll knock twice and then three times.” He went out without looking back at her.
    The long corridor was empty, and he stood there for a moment, looking up and down the length of it and tugging gently at his left ear-lobe. It ended in a doorway on his right about twenty feet away, plainly lettered EXIT. That would be the stairway. Eight flights of stairs down. He grimaced and turned to the left, strode down the hall and around the corner to the bank of passenger elevators.
    The car was empty when it stopped for him. It went down to the lobby without stopping and he