She sobbed, “Oh, Joe. I’m so glad.” Her arms tightened around his neck. “I’d have hated you forever if you’d done a thing like that.”
“You would?” He sounded incredulous. “I’m damned if I don’t believe you mean it.” He turned his head and kissed her.
“That’s a pretty fair sneak-out,” Shayne observed sourly. “But it doesn’t prove a thing to me. You’ll get something else on the kisser if you don’t come across with the truth. You sounded mighty sure that Nora Carson wouldn’t be back to take the role away from your girl. How could you know that if you don’t know what became of her?”
“You misconstrued what you overheard,” Meade declared. “I meant that Christine didn’t have to worry about Nora any more. If you saw her tonight you’d know what I meant. She was so damned good she put Nora in the shade.”
Shayne didn’t say anything. The hell of it was, Joe Meade sounded convincing. He might be telling the truth — and he might not. Shayne snorted and turned away, stalking ahead of Casey around the end of the wall.
Phyllis was waiting at the table, and when he flung himself into his chair she asked acidly, “What were you two bullies doing behind the wall with that nice young couple? It sounded like a riot from here.”
Casey said, “Mike was promoting a little game of post office, but the other guy got the wink.”
“Do you have to brawl, Michael — and on our vacation?” Phyllis wailed. “Couldn’t you ever, just once, solve a case with your brains instead of your fists?”
Shayne regarded her intently, then said in a sour tone, “I’ll always wonder whether that guy would have come clean if I had kicked him in the face. That’s your doing, Phyl. Marriage has softened me. Next thing I know, I’ll be starting, by God, to raise a fund for indigent murderers.”
Casey nodded happily. “’Tis a regular cream-puff you’ve turned into, Mike. I’ve seen the day when you’d have strung that bucko up by the thumbs and put lighted matches between his toes.”