“Brighton’s son?” Shayne asked. “Or, the doctor’s?”

“Mr. Brighton’s son by his first marriage. Clarence. Mother stayed in New York to attend to some business matters and she is arriving this afternoon.” Her voice grew shaky on the final words.

Shayne waited for her to go on. There was no hurry or impatience in his mind. It was quiet and comfortably cool in the apartment above the Miami River, and he had nothing urgent on hand.

Phyllis sucked her breath in sharply and faltered, “I-don’t know how to say it.”

Shayne lit a cigarette and didn’t help her out. She had something inside her that she would have to get rid of her own way.

“I mean-well-you’re a private detective, aren’t you?”

Shayne rumpled his coarse red hair with his left hand and looked at her with a fleeting grin. “That’s a nice way of saying it. I’ve frequently been called worse-with emphasis.”

She looked away from him, wet her lips. Her next question came with a rush.

“Did you ever hear of someone killing a person they loved devotedly?”

Shayne shook his head slowly. “I’m thirty-five, Miss Brighton, and I’m never sure that I know what a person means when he speaks of love. Suppose you tell me what’s on your mind.”

Tears came into Phyllis’s eyes. She flung out her hands toward him. “Oh, I have to! I just have to tell someone or I’ll go mad!”

Shayne nodded, repressing an impulse to suggest it wouldn’t be a long journey. He looked directly into her eyes and asked, “Who are you thinking about killing, and why?”

She jerked back involuntarily, and her breath came out between clenched teeth. “It’s-Mother.”

Shayne said, “U-m-m,” and looked away from her, taking a deep drag on his cigarette. The girl’s answer had startled him for a moment, accustomed as Michael Shayne was to surprising revelations from clients.