Brett Halliday - Nice Fillies Finish Last

Shayne leaned forward. “When?”

“Late.”

She took out a package of little cigars. Shayne lighted one for her and started a cigarette of his own.

“You’ll want to know about my evening,” she said, “I left Paul a message to meet me in Palm Beach soon after the last race. I worded it so it was clear that I wanted to talk about horses and nothing else. I broached the twin-double idea, and he was very excited about it. He showed none of that compulsive amorousness he went in for this afternoon. I’d been worrying, to the point where I took a pistol with me. I suppose you heard our argument about the pistol.”

“Yeah.”

“But he was too full of money possibilities to have anything left over. We drove for a while, talking, and came back to the track in separate cars. Joey and an old man named Rutherford were sitting on bales of hay outside our barn. I joined them. Joey was a wonderful talker when he got going. He had no prejudice against people with money.” She said this seriously, looking down at the ash on her little cigar. “I went into the office for more sherry when theirs ran out. I kept several pints of Joey’s brand in the desk, as an emergency supply. Joey knew he could always fall back on me if he had to. It gave him a sort of security.”

“Did Thorne see you give him the sherry?”

“He came past while we were talking. Yes, I think it was just as I was bringing out the bottle. He didn’t stop. There was no love lost between him and Joey.”

“How drunk was Dolan?”

“Not too. At that time of night his way of talking was always a little more extravagant, but he was in full control.” She picked up her whiskey. “And speaking of degrees of drunkenness, I’d better start pacing myself. I know what you’re trying to do with all this bourbon. You’re succeeding.”

She poured the whiskey into the tall glass, added soda and took a long drink.

“If Dolan was in a position to spoil this twin double-I don’t know why he would want to, or how he’d go about it-is Thorne capable of killing him?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “I’ve been turning something over and over in my mind since you first threw this at me. Paul has no use for people like Joey-they’re an affront to him, in some way. Once when he was driving for us, something went wrong that he thought was Joey’s fault, and Paul knocked him down and kicked him around the barn. It was obvious to me that Joey had it in for him from then on. I always thought he had something to do with that accident, when Paul’s big money-winning horse was killed.”

“What about Thorne’s trotter in the sixth tonight?”

“Joey spotted that. Paul needs a big win, and Joey’s idea was that we should bet the horse heavily as the machines opened, which would shorten the odds. At three to one, say, Paul couldn’t hope to take out enough to solve his problems.”

“Everybody knows he has problems?”

“I think that must be common knowledge.”

“Did you have anything to do with getting him fired from your stable, Mrs. Domaine?”

“Will you stop calling me Mrs. Domaine? It sounds so hostile. My name’s Claire.”

“All right, Claire. Now that you’ve had a chance to think about your answer, do you want me to repeat the question?”

“The answer is maybe. Indirectly. He was always brushing against me so our fields would overlap, making innocent little remarks that were loaded with double meanings. It made me uncomfortable. I think Larry caught some of it. He would have had to do something about it if Paul had stayed, and it was easier to loan him some money and encourage him to move out. Paul wanted to do that anyway. Maybe that was even the reason he kept trying to get under my skin. He may have sized Larry up and decided that was the best way to raise the necessary capital. He’s shrewd about some things.”

“It never went any further than those remarks and minor contacts, Claire?”

She met his look without flinching. “You listened to what happened in the motel. You know how I feel about him. I despise him.”

“I know how you felt about him this afternoon. You didn’t want him to make love to you. You brought a gun with you, but you didn’t use it.”

“He took it away from me!”

Shayne nodded. “I’ve taken guns away from one or two women, but I don’t try it if I’m sure they’re going to pull the trigger. I’ve been wrong on occasion, I admit. That whole scene in Room 18 was crackling with emotion. I don’t know exactly what kind. People have been killed for a lot less than eighty or a hundred thousand bucks, but I know now that there’s more to it than money, a lot more. Do you know anybody who lives at the Belle Mark Apartments?”

It was abrupt, and he could have got the same effect by throwing a drink in her face. But she recovered quickly.

“What brought that up?”

“I’ve been told that Joey Dolan visited somebody there last night. It must have been just after you gave him the pint of sherry.”

She put her cigarillo carefully in an ashtray. She seemed puzzled. “One of our drivers has an apartment there, I believe. Franklin Brossard. It’s in Miami Shores, isn’t it? I dropped him off there once. But why would Joey, at that time of night-no, it’s fantastic. If they wanted to meet, why go all that way?”

The bartender called Shayne’s name from the heel of the bar. Turning, the redhead saw the dangling phone.

“There’s my call. Another drink?”

“Yes, please.”

He signaled the bartender for another round, and was glad to hear Lucy Hamilton’s voice when he went to the other end of the bar, picked up the receiver and said hello.

“Michael, I think I have something, but first you have to answer a few simple questions. Number one, do you have a headache, even a slight one?”

Shayne grinned. “Not yet, angel. The way this is going I may have one when I wake up tomorrow morning. What’s your second question?”

“Don’t joke! I can tell by the noises that you’re in a bar, which doesn’t surprise me. But someday I hope to convince you that the thing to do after you have an accident is to see a doctor. You can have a mild concussion and not realize it.”

“I saw a lot of doctors when I called on Tim,” he said, “but they were all busy.”

“Was he all right?”

“Sleeping like a baby.”

“Sleeping? When I talked to him, he was all wound up and giving off sparks. If he went to sleep, it must be more serious than he told me.”

“I had the same idea,” Shayne said. “It turns out they gave him some sleeping pills. What’s the news?”

“Well, I’ve been to the Belle Mark. The pictures were no problem. Mr. MacMaster, that ogre at Tim’s paper, wasn’t nearly as growly as he usually is with me. They’d already taken a shot of Joey Dolan in the morgue-very gruesome. The picture of Thorne was in his racing clothes, from a racetrack program. That’s what I consider a really handsome man.”

“Everybody out here seems to agree.”

“I don’t think he’d wear well, though. He has a discontented look around the mouth. I found the apartment house, and I thought my best bet would be to go straight to the super. I said I was working for you and showed him the pictures and asked if he recognized anybody. He thought I was trying to trap him. I offered him ten dollars, and that made him even more suspicious. I looked at the names in the lobby, but none of them meant anything to me. You probably want me to boil this down?”

“Take your time, angel. I’m always interested in your methods.”

“Now you’re being sarcastic. I took the pictures to the nearest supermarket. They didn’t mean anything to the clerks, but a lady in the checkout line thought she recognized Thorne. I had to go up to her apartment and have coffee and a really enormous piece of chocolate cake. By that time I thought this was wish-fulfillment on her part-Thorne’s the kind of man that kind of woman has daydreams about. Not at all. She’d ridden up in the elevator with him a few times. He gives off some kind of very potent electricity in an enclosed place, it seems-she was still throbbing when she told me. She thought his name was-let me see, it’s an unusual one and I wrote it down-Brossard. That’s whose apartment he went into. He had a key. She checked the directory downstairs, being a fan of strong, dark-haired, discontented-looking young men. Franklin Brossard. Then she had another piece of cake and thought about it some more, and said she really wondered if she hadn’t seen Mrs. Domaine in the elevator, too. The picture I had was a woman’s page publicity shot, and she couldn’t tell for sure. The woman she was thinking about was blonde and slender and startlingly well dressed. I accumulated some information about her shoes and perfume, but that probably wouldn’t mean anything to you. My friend never saw her with Thorne.”