Brett Halliday - Nice Fillies Finish Last

“Don’t just accuse him of killing Joey. Make fun of him for doing it in such a fruity way. Poison’s a woman’s weapon. If you get him mad enough to remember your gun, I don’t want it to be a gun that shoots real bullets.”

He prepared three blank rounds and reloaded the. 38, spinning the cylinder to bring the first blank in under the hammer. He gave it back to Claire.

Then they picked up the room, putting everything Shayne had brought, except the bourbon, back in the paper bag. Claire cleaned the ashtrays. He looked around a last time, to be sure they hadn’t forgotten anything, then turned off the lights and, going to the window, looked down at the parking strip. He swore under his breath.

Claire came over beside him. “What is it?”

“A Yellow Cab, that’s all. It could be a coincidence, but I doubt it, somehow.”

“Where?”

“Not out in front. Up next to the gas station.”

She took a quick breath. “Are you sure it wasn’t there when we came?”

“No. But we’d better play percentages and assume it’s the same cab that was following us before.” He drew on his cigarette slowly. “It must be somebody who knows about this motel. After we lost him in Pompano Beach, he came past and saw the Cadillac.”

Her hair brushed against Shayne’s shoulder. He could hear her breathing softly. Her perfume was sharp and somehow disturbing.

“It can’t be Thorne,” he said. “He couldn’t leave the track. I think his wife saw us leave. If that’s who it is-” He swore again. “He’s going to suspect we’ve been bugging the room. That’s not a specialty of mine, but he won’t know it. He’ll be on his guard. He might even refuse to meet you here at all. So there goes a good idea down the drain.”

A spark of light appeared as the driver, in the front seat of the cab, pulled at his cigarette.

“I wonder if you’re thinking the same thing that I am, Claire,” Shayne said.

“I can’t think at all,” she said desperately. “My brain isn’t functioning.”

He turned toward her in the darkness. “See if you can get it to function. Try to think of some other reason why we might be spending half an hour alone in a motel room.”

He could feel her breath on his face. After a moment she said softly, “It’s functioning, Mike.”

“It could have happened like this. I called you out of the clubhouse and said I had to talk to you alone. I knew you hadn’t checked out of this motel. When we got here-yeah, this would fit-I held the bottle of bourbon up to see how many drinks were left. It might be fairly convincing, if you look a little disheveled when we walk out. If I’m wearing some of your lipstick.”

“Mike, good heavens. I don’t mean it’s such a horrifying thought. It’s just such a change of subject.”

Shayne laughed. “I’m not suggesting that we actually do anything. I just think we ought to put on a small act. Give me your lipstick. I’ll see what I can do in the dark.”

“No, you couldn’t make it look authentic, Mike. I have no objection to kissing you. I might even enjoy it.”

She took the lapels of his coat and came in against him. “But I have a funny feeling. This whole thing is window-dressing, isn’t it? The microphone, the questions you want me to ask Paul. Eighteen thousand people saw us leave the track. You pulled out of the parking lot as though you had all the time in the world. And you weren’t really trying too hard to lose that cab, were you? That was more window-dressing.”

Shayne put an arm around her lightly. “Claire, will you trust me?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a muffled voice. “Here we are, in a motel room with the lights out. Of course we’re making love. What else could we be doing? But how is that going to help?”

“I can’t tell you yet,” Shayne said. “You’re right, there’s a certain amount of sleight-of-hand in this, but that goes for everything else. Everything’s faked. Nothing’s the way it seems. Dolan wasn’t killed because he blundered onto a betting scheme. He didn’t go anywhere near the Belle Mark last night. Your husband didn’t loan me his Cadillac because he was sorry Brossard ran me off the road. And that’s the way it goes, all down the line. This whole twin-double deal is a hoax. Take my word for it, and do what I tell you. You have to talk to Thorne alone and ask him those questions about Dolan, and if I told you everything I’ve found out and everything I guess, you couldn’t make it look real. I hoped that all the dodging around we did in Pompano Beach would convince you. It’s true, I was a bit slow at the crucial turns, but I didn’t think you noticed.”

“I didn’t. I just had a kind of prickly feeling.”

They were still standing together, with Claire clinging to him in the dark as though she had to hang onto something or she would slide to the floor. Footsteps approached along the outside gallery. She froze until they passed.

“I’m in a breakable condition right now, Mike,” she whispered. “But I have to trust you. I don’t have any alternative. Tell me one thing. Do you think I poisoned Joey?”

“Hell, no.”

“Truthfully? Because you might think that the only way I could really close the door on Paul Thorne, so he’d never bother me again, would be to win a big sum of money for him. He still has that stupid letter I sent him, and if he feels pressed enough I know he’ll use it. Not for any rational reason, just for the pleasure of smashing me. Would I let an insignificant drunk like Joey stand in my way?”

“Yes, Claire,” he said seriously. “I think you would.”

She slipped her arms around his neck. “Then we’re really on the same side?”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Her wrists locked and she pulled his face down. Her mouth opened to his and they came together hard. She made a small sound of surprise and alarm, as though she didn’t know what to make of what had happened.

“Mike, I’ve been so frightened.” She kissed the corners of his mouth. “Now I have something I can count on. Mike, hold me. Tighter.”

His embrace tightened, but he could hear a clock ticking inside his head, the same clock that operated the time announcements on the big number-board in the infield at the track. They had wasted too much time in Pompano Beach. The twin-double betting must have closed and the sixth race was underway. If Paul Thorne won it, the machinery would be in motion.

She went on kissing him, and it seemed for a moment that the clock would stop. The bed was only a step from the window. They turned together, without words. Her knees struck the edge of the bed and she sank down on it, drawing him after her. Her mouth and tongue never left him. Her hard, frozen surface had splintered into a thousand fragments, and it might never be put back together again. The jacket of her suit had opened. She was far from skinny, he found; the people who thought so were out of their mind. Her hand was inside his shirt, moving against him.

An instant more and they would have reached a point from which there would be no turning back. Then a siren wailed on the highway. It had nothing to do with them, but it brought the outside world into the motel room for long enough so Shayne heard the ticking again. This time it was coming from his own watch. He turned his arm and looked at the time.

“Please, Mike,” Claire whispered. “I want you to. I know it’s unfair. I don’t mean anything to you. But if you were inside me for a moment, I think I could get through the rest of this awful night. I’ve kept myself-so separate from life. All at once I feel-”

He said gently, “We have to get back. We have to do everything exactly right, or there won’t be one chance in ten thousand of finding out what happened with Dolan.”