Murder Spins the Wheel Read Online Free

wardrobe. Too much exposure to the sun had turned his face yellow. He had sharp, agile eyes and a narrow hairline mustache.
    “Mr. Waters, did Harry talk to you?” the girl asked in a worried tone.
    “Sure he talked to me. That’s the whole point.” He peered through the Buick’s windshield, his eyes narrowing. “Mike Shayne?” He put out his hand, which Shayne shook through the open window. “Glad to see you, man. It’s been years. And what goes on around here, please? Those cops on the road?”
    “Harry had an accident,” Shayne said briefly. “Was he on his way to see you?”
    Waters considered briefly, flicking his little mustache with his thumbnail. “An accident. I don’t like that. I knew when I woke up this morning it was going to be one of those days. Yeah, he was on his way to see me. I gave him an hour and then thought what the hell. He’s been getting very chintzy lately, since he moved up here—I’m supposed to stay strictly away, we conduct our business in automobiles. Common people like me would lower the real-estate values, right? Listen, honey,” he said to the girl in a more guarded tone, glancing in at Shayne. “How did Harry come out of this accident, OK or not?”
    “I don’t know!” she said helplessly. “I don’t know anything about it yet, except that it happened.”
    “You’re his secretary. You’ve got a right to talk to the cops and ask them. He was bringing me a package, understand. It could be wrapped up in paper, or in some kind of little suitcase. Watch for it. If you see it, kind of latch onto it, know what I mean? It’s Harry’s property, but if the cops get hold of it, ten to one Harry won’t see it again.”
    “I don’t think I could do that,” she said.
    “Then get a receipt for it,” he insisted. “In front of witnesses. Shayne, you advise her.”
    Shayne grinned at him. He pressed the Drive button and they began to move. The girl called back, “The liquor’s on the terrace.”
    Shayne remarked, “Doc hasn’t changed much since I saw him last.”
    “I knew there was money in that suitcase. Harry doesn’t use names on the phone, but he has a special tone of voice when he’s talking to people like that.”
    Shayne turned left at the foot of the driveway. She looked at him in surprise.
    “The sirens were on the other side of the island.”
    “They’re stopping cars,” Shayne told her. “I’m going in across the golf course.”
    There was a Saturday night dance at the Normandy Shores clubhouse. The building was ablaze with light and activity, and surrounded by parked cars. A boy with a flashlight waved them into the parking lot. Shayne cut all the way through, stopping when his headlights picked up a line of battery-powered golf carts in front of the professional’s shop.
    “I can’t walk in these heels,” Theo said doubtfully.
    “Nobody walks in Miami,” Shayne said.
    He took a three-cell flashlight out of his glove compartment and left his headlights on so he could see to start one of the little carts and back it out of line. The girl perched beside him. He saw red flashes in the sky from the revolving beacon on one of the pieces of fire apparatus, and he set his course by that.
    “Do you think they—killed him?” the girl asked quietly.
    “Maybe,” Shayne replied, steering around a tree. “People sometimes get themselves killed for a couple of bucks, and Harry must have been carrying a lot more than that. But he’s not that easy to kill.”
    They jolted across a rough furrow. She grabbed the rail.
    “If there was just Billy and the Cadillac, maybe they kidnapped him.”
    “No, I followed their car and Harry wasn’t in it. They took a curve too fast. When the cops pry the car open they may find the money, but I doubt it. There’s a third man I haven’t accounted for, and he probably has it.”
    “Mr. Shayne,” she said brokenly, “if anything really bad has happened—I’ve tried to tell myself gambling money was no