Nice Fillies Finish Last ms-52

by Brett Halliday

  His next snore broke into three snorts. His eyes stayed closed. She took his shoulders in both hands and gave him a hard shake. He groaned, and at the end of the breath it turned into another snore. She looked across the bed at Shayne.

  “I know he wasn’t given anything but aspirin.”

  “Your security isn’t that good. The woods around here are full of people who want him to sleep through till tomorrow.”

  “You don’t seriously mean that somebody could walk in off the street-”

  “I walked in off the street,” Shayne reminded her. “Nobody stopped me.”

  She shook the reporter again, with her full strength. His head bounced off the pillows, but he didn’t wake up.

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” she said slowly. “I think I can tell you what he wanted to talk to you about. I got him a list of nurses’ aides from the hospital auxiliary. I had to turn the pages for him because of the bandages. And he gave a loud grunt halfway through. I put the list back but I can get it again.”

  “What about waking him up?”

  She bit her lip, looking down at the slumbering reporter. “First we’ll have to find out what he was given. It’s going-to be hard to make Dr. Greenberg stand still long enough to listen. The conservative treatment would be to let him try to come out of it by himself, and Greenberg is the most conservative doctor on the staff. You’ll have to get a policeman to tell him it’s a murder case.”

  “The cops don’t know anybody’s been murdered,” Shayne said. “If you think doctors are hard to convince, you ought to try cops sometime. First, I need some more facts.”

  There was a sound at the door.

  “Sorry,” a woman’s voice said. “I just wanted the tray.”

  Shayne swung around, recognizing the voice. Claire Domaine, in a blue nurse’s aide uniform, was in the doorway. Her hand went to her throat when she saw Shayne. Her eyes jumped from his face to the tray on the table beside the bed. They jumped back to Shayne at once and past him, but that quick involuntary movement had already told him why his friend Rourke was so determined not to wake up.

  CHAPTER 12

  Shayne looked at the tray. There were two stale pieces of buttered toast on it, sliced into triangles. A plastic yellow soup bowl was half-filled with a dark clear soup, probably bouillon. There was an empty cup and a metal teapot. As far as Shayne knew, Rourke had never drunk tea in his life. That left the bouillon.

  Shayne stepped in front of the tray as Mrs. Domaine started for it.

  “Call Dr. Greenberg,” he said to Miss Mallinson. “And who’s the head of the hospital? Get him in here fast.”

  There was a partially filled aspirin bottle on a side table. He poured out the tablets, rinsed the bottle with stale water from the carafe on Rourke’s bedside table, and carefully filled it with soup from the plastic bowl. Miss Mallinson watched incredulously.

  “You mean she put something in the food?”

  “We’re going to analyze it and find out.”

  Mrs. Domaine gave a kind of shudder, her shoulders rigid. She said in a small voice, without looking at Shayne, “Can I talk to you?”

  “You not only can,” the detective said, putting the bottle in his shirt pocket, “you have to. You also have to start telling the truth. You’re in a jam, Mrs. Domaine, and it’s not the kind of jam you can get out of by spending some of your husband’s money.”

  “Everything I told you was the truth.”

  Shayne snorted. “It was like hell. What did you give him? If it was anything serious, you’d better not waste any time.”

  “It wasn’t lethal, for heaven’s sake!” There was a note of irritation in her voice. “I used a few sleeping pills. It was a barbiturate, but mild, and he didn’t drink much. He may have a headachy feeling when he wakes up, but that’s all.”

  Miss Mallinson cried, “You don’t think you’re going to get away with this, do you?”

  “There’s only one way she can get away with it,” Shayne said. “That’s by changing her clothes and coming out with me and explaining various things.”

  “I won’t be through for another hour,” Mrs. Domaine said.

  “You’re through now. In fact, you’re through at the hospital. You’ll have to find another way to spend your afternoons. Miss Mallinson will see to that. Meet me in the parking lot in five minutes. Five, not five and a half.”

  She gave him a frightened look. When she was gone, Miss Mallinson said urgently, “How do we know she wasn’t lying? What if she really gave him something stronger?”

  Rourke was smiling in his sleep, as though he was dreaming about something pleasant.

  “She couldn’t risk lying,” Shayne said. “It would be different if she’d been able to wash the bowl. This way we have her and she knows it.”

  “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 w
as 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.”

  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 t
o 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?”