“I’d prefer to do a little talking while we’re all here together.”
“Go ahead,” Peter Painter crowed. “I don’t think even you can talk yourself out of this.”
Shayne shrugged his broad shoulders. “I made the mistake of talking this morning before I was sure of my facts. Like so many theories that look good, mine was faulty in that it didn’t take into account every fact in my possession. I didn’t take into consideration, for instance, the fact that nice girls generally wear pants even underneath a dress and slip.”
Blank silence followed his words. Rourke stared at him wonderingly, and grimaced when Shayne turned to him and added casually, “Remember, Tim? You were the one who noticed Helen Stallings wasn’t wearing any accessories under her dress.”
Rourke snorted loudly. “As if that proved anything. Not here in this Miami climate, Mike. Half the girls I know don’t wear any pants.”
“I said nice girls,” Shayne stressed. “But her lack of underclothing isn’t the only thing I’m hanging my present theory on. In addition to that you also made disparaging mention of the fact that she wore no make-up or nail color, and that her hair was unkempt and stringy. Remember?”
“When was all this?” Painter asked hoarsely.
Shayne shrugged his shoulders. “While Rourke was helping me dispose of her body the other night.”
“Disposing of her body, eh? So, you’ve decided to confess it?”
“Why, yes,” Shayne said. “I held out two or three things on you this morning because they looked bad for me. I lied when I told you the girl was snatched from my apartment while I was at the depot. She wasn’t snatched. She was strangled in my bed. She was lying in there dead while you and Stallings were there a short time later. Then I lost her, but not for long. Remember the crack-up I was in around midnight on Biscayne Boulevard? That was staged to toss her back in my lap. She was a passenger in the car that crashed into me.”