Brett Halliday - Nice Fillies Finish Last

“Your husband never found out about it?”

“Heavens, no. I began worrying again after Paul’s horse was killed and he began needing money so badly. I was afraid he might decide the hell with everything, if he was going down he’d take Larry and me with him. I’m still a little afraid of that, but I don’t know what to do about it. When this twin double prospect came up yesterday I couldn’t tell Larry I was scared to have anything to do with Paul. As far as Larry’s concerned, I hardly know him.”

She looked down quickly at her drink. “Mike, none of this has been exactly easy. Would you give me one crumb of information in return? How did you know about the Brossard apartment?”

“I had an anonymous phone call. Joey was uneasy about going there last night, for some reason, and he told somebody before he left.”

“I don’t understand it at all. Paul probably hung onto his key, but why would he want to confer with Joey? Why there? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Neither do a lot of other things.”

“Well, I don’t feel quite as sunk as I did before I told you. If somebody murdered Joey, I want him caught, and if the only way I can help is by getting up in court and saying what I’ve just said to you, I’ll do it. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it.”

“How about an owner named Mrs. Moon?” Shayne said. “Is she part of your deal?”

“She doesn’t even know about it unless Larry’s told her. They’ve been fairly thick lately.”

“Yeah?”

“Not like that! He’s been teaching her to play chess and so on. She has a horse in the ninth tonight, which nobody considers a threat.” She rattled the ice in her drink thoughtfully. “I did hear that Paul Thorne-but it couldn’t be anything.”

“That Paul Thorne what?”

“Oh, that a car like his was parked outside her house late one night. But there are other red convertibles in Florida.”

“Would Paul doublecross you tonight if he could make any money out of it?”

“Of course. Even if he didn’t make any money, for fun. But I don’t see how it’s possible.”

She said that emphatically. Nevertheless, Shayne thought she looked doubtful.

Claire looked at her watch. “Larry’s going to know I’ve had some drinks. He thinks I’m drinking too much lately, and he’s probably right. But sometimes it seems necessary. Mike, none of this really surprised you, did it, about Paul and me?”

“I was listening in on your fight in the motel. Ex-lovers shoot each other more often than total strangers.”

He watched her put things in her bag, his eyes cold and appraising. She touched up her lipstick.

“I told Paul I didn’t have any money,” she said, “but that’s not strictly true. I just didn’t have the kind of money he needed. What are your fees?”

“They vary. In your case, to prove that you didn’t put wood alcohol in Dolan’s sherry and somebody else did, I’ll charge you two thousand bucks.”

She looked at him briefly. “That’s a bargain.” He settled with the bartender and drove her back to the hospital parking area, where she shifted to her Mercedes. Shayne watched her pull out, after a quick wave. Then he went into the hospital reception room and asked the switchboard girl if she could locate Miss Mallinson.

Visiting hours were over for the afternoon and the volunteer in the large hat had gone home, leaving the professional staff to run the hospital. Miss Mallinson came out of the elevator, pert and trim in her white uniform.

“Everything’s fine, Mr. Shayne,” she said. “I’ve been stopping in every five minutes. His pulse is normal. His respiration is the same, deep and regular.”

“You mean he’s still snoring?”

“He is certainly still snoring. He may be coming out of it, I’m not sure. The last time I was in he tried to grab me, without waking up.”

Shayne grinned. “That sounds normal, too.”

“But in all those bandages, honestly, it’s impractical.”

“When do you go off duty?”

“An hour ago, but they’re always after us to put in overtime, so I said I’d stay. I thought I’d better keep a personal eye on him. I couldn’t explain the situation to anybody else.”

Shayne thanked her for taking such an unprofessional interest in his friend, and told her he’d call in for news every couple of hours.

He had a feeling now that he had most of the facts he needed, though he still had ho idea who had killed Joey Dolan, or why. He knew from experience that if he didn’t worry about it, the facts would rearrange themselves without help from him, until in the end a pattern began to emerge. He bought two hero sandwiches and a pint of Courvoisier, and had a quiet, solitary picnic in an ocean-front park he had passed on the way in. As he finished the last of the second sandwich, he sat up straighter, and said, “Sure!” to himself in a soft voice.

He lit a cigarette, then let it dangle unheeded from one corner of his mouth. It was a guess, but a guess that seemed to fit. By the time the cigarette burned down he had outlined a course of action that would show whether or not he was right.

He drove to Joe’s Auto Body, on Route 1, where he identified himself as the owner of the smashed Buick. He unlocked the trunk and made a careful selection of tools and equipment. He locked up carefully and returned the keys to the proprietor.

Twenty minutes later he was being waved into one of the big parking lots at Surfside Raceway. It was seven-thirty, a half hour before the first race, but the lots were filling up fast. He paid his admission and bought a program. The grandstand and ramps were already swarming with horse-players, most of them studying their programs to see what looked good in the daily double, a combination bet on the first two races. Sulkies were coming out from the great paddock barn, where all the horses that were to work tonight had been gathered under the supervision of the paddock judges. Railbirds with binoculars watched as the horses were put through fast warmup sprints under the brilliant 1500-watt lights.

Shayne asked directions, found the administration building and the racing secretary’s office, and introduced himself to the racing secretary, a short, florid man with heavy glasses, named Granby.

“I’m doing a job for an insurance company,” Shayne said, without mentioning that the insurance company he was actually working for was more interested in jewels than in horses. “At this stage I don’t want to say anything more, if that’s all right with you. You film all your races, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” Granby said. “Nowadays we get it on tape, not film. It’s faster. You can run it off two minutes after the race is over.”

“I don’t have the date of the one I want to look at. One of Paul Thorne’s horses was killed in it.”

Granby’s glasses glinted. “No problem. Is this something that can be handled without publicity, Mr. Shayne?”

“We hope so. I can’t promise anything.”

After looking up the date of the race, Granby took Shayne to a projection room, found the spool he wanted, threaded the tape into a projector and ran it off at blinding speed, without dimming the lights. Halfway through he cut the lights and slowed the tape to a normal speed.

“Here we are. This is the finish of the fifth race. The one we want is the sixth.”

The camera held on the finish line until all eight horses were across, then cut abruptly to the tote board for the official order of finish and the payoff prices, then cut again to a new field of eight horses following the starter around the turn. Shayne, slouching in an armchair with an unlighted cigarette in his mouth, watched the horses come up in line, then leap forward as the starting car folded its great wings and shot away.