“She’ll be fat and satisfied,” Lucy warned him. “All Spanish women are at thirty.”

“Not Carmela Towne. She won’t be married — unless Towne has changed a lot. That’s the job I did for him. There was a chap named Lance Bayliss. A poet, Lucy, and a poet is lower than dirt to a two-fisted, self-made financier like Jefferson Towne. He broke up their engagement and he broke Carmela’s heart. I doubt whether she’s looked at another man.”

“So you expect her to welcome you with open arms?”

Shayne grinned crookedly. “I’d like to see what the years have done to Carmela Towne,” he assented. “And to her father. He was on his way up ten years ago, rough and ruthless and domineering. Now he seems to be at the top of the heap, local magnate and mayoralty candidate.” He scowled at his glass. “He must have changed a great deal since I knew him — though I didn’t think Jeff Towne could ever change.”

“What made you ask for an autopsy on the soldier?” Lucy asked him. “I read the letter and the clipping before you saw Mrs. Delray, and I don’t see why you think it wasn’t just a traffic accident.”

Shayne looked at her in surprise. “I’ve just been telling you.”

“You’ve been mooning about a half-blooded Spanish girl whom you hope to find frustrated and beautiful,” she reminded him bitterly.

Shayne shook his head and complained, “Sometimes I fear you’ll never make a detective, Lucy. Call the airport and see about the plane.”

CHAPTER TWO

The plane set Michael Shayne down at the El Paso municipal airport early the next morning, and a taxi took him to the old yet still magnificent Paso Del Norte Hotel, where he had reserved a room by wire the preceding evening. He went up for a shave and a quick shower, and then down to the coffee shop for breakfast, picking up a copy of the evening Free Press as he went by the newsstand.