Brett Halliday - Nice Fillies Finish Last

“I was trying to persuade him to take a couple of pills myself,” Miss Mallinson said doubtfully. “I know what Greenberg would say if I told him-let him sleep.”

“Will you watch him?”

“I’ll say I’ll watch him. Like a hawk. Tell Mrs. Domaine that if I ever see her again in this hospital, I’ll scratch her eyes out.”

Shayne went downstairs and out through the regular waiting room, giving the volunteer at the desk a pleasant nod. She remembered him and dropped her ballpoint pen.

Mrs. Domaine joined him in the parking lot immediately, hurrying to beat his deadline. He took her to her husband’s Cadillac. She stopped short when she saw the car.

“That’s who you’re working for,” she exclaimed. “I’m beginning to understand.”

“He loaned me his car,” Shayne said, opening the front door for her. “I’m not working for him. What are you beginning to understand?”

“Never mind. I had a wild idea for a minute.”

He got in. She took a comb and other equipment out of her shoulder bag, and checked her appearance. She didn’t like what she saw.

“After what’s happened, I know I don’t have any right to ask, but I’d feel so much better if I could put you into some kind of perspective. If you aren’t working for my husband-”

Shayne considered. “Joey Dolan was a friend of Rourke’s. Dolan may have been as delightful a character as everybody tells me. I don’t know, I never met him. When I first heard about what happened, I didn’t think he’d been murdered. I do now. Rourke’s paper is paying me a small retainer.” He gave her a savage grin. “If you want to offer me any money to find and convict Dolan’s killer, go ahead. By money I mean money, not a chance to hit the twin double.”

“Maybe I will,” she said, and made a vague gesture. “I have to explain, but I don’t know where to begin.”

“At the beginning would be a good place,” he said. “Take one thing at a time. If you want a drink, there’s a bottle of bourbon in back. It’s good bourbon, as you probably know. Or you can wait till we get to a bar.”

“I need a drink now,” she said. “Badly.”

Turning, she came up on her knees and reached across for the bottle. Shayne waited until she poured and downed a slug of undiluted whiskey. Then he backed out of the parking slot.

“That’s better,” she said, sitting back. “How did my husband come to lend you his car? No, I withdraw the question, but it does seem funny-he’s particular about who touches it. All right. At the beginning. I came straight to the hospital from the conversation I had with you at that horrible motel. I could have begged off, I supposed, but I thought I’d better go ahead with the routine as though this was a routine day. Paul Thorne had told me that a Miami reporter named Rourke had been trying to pump his wife, and Paul had thrown him through the window. Paul knew I was due at the hospital, and he assumed that was where Rourke would end up. If he wasn’t badly enough hurt to stay out of our hair, I was supposed to call Paul and let him know. So he could come in and finish the job, I suppose was the idea. I found Rourke, and he was as high as a kite. Win Thorne told him a lot, apparently. No one was paying any attention to him, but if he got out, he was sure to ruin everything. My Treat would be scratched, no one would ever know who gave Joey Dolan that wood alcohol. And that wasn’t my only motive, though you probably won’t believe it-if Paul ran into him again, he would practically kill him. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and I had some pills in my purse. I was afraid somebody would say my name when I came in with the tray but nobody did. He didn’t want to eat at first, and he finally took a few spoonfuls of soup to convince them he was well enough to be discharged. He went to sleep holding the spoon. My God, I hope I never have to do anything like that again.”

“You must really be hungry for that money,” Shayne commented.

“Is that what you think?” she said carelessly.

Shayne, meanwhile, had been looking for the right kind of bar, with booths and not many cars parked in front. He turned onto S. E. Twelfth St. and pulled up almost at once.

“We’re going in here,” he said. “I don’t like to talk to you in public, but I’m expecting a phone call. I want to know a lot more than I do now when we come out. I’m willing to listen as long as it takes.”

He took the key out of the ignition switch and went on, “I meant it when I said you have to talk to me. I have enough now to make a stink in the papers. Once it gets that far, it has to go the rest of the way, and the least that can happen is that you and your husband and Paul Thorne, and possibly Franklin Brossard, will be kicked out of harness racing. That’s why your husband loaned me his car-he wanted to make friends. Why he was willing to put himself into Paul Thorne’s hands, God knows. Well, I’m open to any reasonable compromise. Think about it, Mrs. Domaine.”

“I have thought about it. I’m quite aware of my predicament, I assure you.”

He looked up all around. The bar was just right, fairly noisy, with several empty booths. The corners of her mouth were down, but even so she was probably the best-looking woman who had had a drink there in weeks; there was a flurry among the unattached males at the long bar. Shayne pointed her at an empty booth and stopped at the wall phone.

He dialed his office number in Miami and paid the toll. When the answering service cut in to say that Mr. Shayne was out, he gave them the number of the phone he was calling from, to be passed along to Miss Hamilton when she phoned in. Then he told the bartender his name and ordered a double cognac and a double bourbon.

“Do you want it straight?” he asked when he reached the booth.

“I’d better have soda in this one,” she said. “The last one’s still burning.”

Shayne relayed this to the bartender and carried the drinks himself. He took half his cognac in one swallow, following it with a pull of ice water.

“Before you start talking,” he said, “I’d better tell you that when you and Thorne were in Room 18 at the Golden Crest Motel, I was in Room 17, and I used this listening device.” He showed her the little amplifier. “These are supposed to pick up whispers in a room eighteen by thirty. They aren’t that good. But Room 17 is on the right as you go in. You may remember that the bed in your room is against that wall.”

She stared down at the little gadget in horror. The color that had drained out of her face suddenly came back with a rush. She closed her eyes.

“Yeah,” Shayne said bleakly. He moved a glass swizzle stick between the cognac glass and the water glass, and pushed the glasses together. “Here’s the bed, here’s the wall, here’s the pickup. The reception was fine. That’s why I don’t like these bugs and I try not to use them. Everybody’s entitled to a certain amount of privacy. I’m the one who had the switchboard phone you, and I think you’ll remember that the call arrived in the nick of time. I’m also the one who hammered on the wall.”

“Thank you,” she said in a strangled voice.

“You’re welcome.”

Instead of pouring her small glass of whiskey over the ice in her highball glass, she drank it straight. It burned her throat and started her coughing. Shayne went back to the bar for more bourbon. She had stopped coughing by the time he returned.

“You have a way of springing things,” she said. “That’s your business, of course, and I’d probably better save my indignation for Paul Thorne. I really am grateful for that phone call. I suppose some private detectives might have let it go on in the hope of finding out something. There’s one thing I don’t believe came up in the conversation. I gave Joey Dolan a pint of sherry last night.”