Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 40, No. 4, April 1977

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Everybody involved in the criminal libel suit wants missing witness Myra Rainey, including the Miami redhead. But the going doesn’t get really rough until Myra’s roommate is murdered in her home.

Shayne had just pulled his Buick to a stop in front of the old pine mansion when the shots blasted the quiet of deepening twilight on the palm arcaded street. There were two of them, a couple of seconds apart, followed by a wildly discordant chorus of birdlife already nested in for the night to come.

But no human sounds followed their shattering impact. No shouts, no screams, no moans.

The detective’s right hand slipped inside his jacket to grip the butt of the big Colt .45 in his shoulder rig. He sat there, waiting, as the second hand on the dashboard clock made two full circuits of the illuminated dial.

Still nothing.

He was in the very oldest part of Miami, where fine antiquated houses were all but masked from the street by the jungle growth of tropical foliage that had grown up in the near-century since they were built. But there were houses, however widely separated, in Coconut Grove, and surely, he thought, there should be some audible or visible reaction to the twin detonations that had shattered the twilight quiet.

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