Nice Fillies Finish Last (9 page)

“No.” She stubbed out her smoldering cigarillo. “If I put it into words, maybe I’ll feel better about it. There hasn’t been anybody I could talk to. Joey Dolan would have listened. I think he might have understood. Last night I came close to telling him, but in the end I couldn’t make him pay for the sherry by listening to my tale of woe. Oh, dear, I don’t know how Joey got into this. I must be trying to put off telling you how I came to find myself in bed with Paul Thorne.”

“People find themselves in bed with other people all the time,” Shayne said. “You can have coffee if you don’t want another drink.”

“Another drink, by all means.”

She had a piece of Kleenex tightly balled in one fist. With an effort that was visible to Shayne, she unclenched that hand and began to shred the Kleenex while he called the bartender.

“You’ve met Larry,” she said. “He’s one of the most intelligent persons I know. He’s kind and generous and proud, in the good sense of the word. He comes of a family that has always tried to live honorable lives. There was a senator, a Confederate general, an ambassador, a famous merchant, and all their portraits are on our dining-room wall. I usually sit facing the Confederate general, in his full dress regalia, who died at Chancellorsville. Larry trusts me absolutely. That’s why what happened seems so abominable. Sometimes I can hardly persuade myself that it actually did happen.”

She tasted her new drink the instant the bartender put it down, and waited till he walked away.

Shayne said, “Your husband’s kind and decent and rich, and you can’t stand him. Is that what you’re saying?”

“No! If it was that way, I wouldn’t feel so awful. I don’t love him, whatever the word may mean. He knows that, and he’s willing to accept it. I was engaged to a man who was killed in a plane crash when he was flying south to marry me. We had hotel reservations in Nassau for our honeymoon. It took me a while to get over it. Larry was exceedingly nice to me. After we were married—well, what went on afterward has a bearing, but you’ll have to take some of it for granted. You’re not a marriage counsellor, after all.”

“Nobody’s ever accused me of that,” Shayne said gravely.

“Damn it, are you laughing at me, by any chance? Maybe it
is
funny, but I didn’t do any laughing at the time, I can promise you. To Larry the physical side of marriage wasn’t important, so I found other things to occupy me. I like horses. I think they like me. From the first day I showed up in the stable, Paul Thorne assumed I was available, the restless young wife of a middle-aged rich man. I won’t deny I was restless. Any self-consciously virile person like Paul would be able to guess the cause. He set out to get me. I know that’s what he did, because he told me so afterward. He planned it like a military engagement.”

After another swallow of whiskey, she said quietly, “And he won. It was at a moment when I had faced some hard truths about my marriage. It may sound immoral, but I never regretted the
fact
of what happened. I would regret it very much if Larry knew about it, because I know it would hurt him. What I regret is that it happened with Paul Thorne. That was unforgivable.”

Shayne started to speak. She put her hand out quickly and touched his wrist. “What connection can my stupid sex life have with Joey’s death? I can’t believe it has any. But now that I’ve started, I can’t just say we went to bed together but I didn’t enjoy it. It’s not the full truth. I came to know him quite well, much too well. People think he’s a lucky driver, but he’s too tense to be really lucky. Other drivers get away with things that get him into serious trouble. He wants to win too badly. It shows. He grew up on a Georgia hill-farm, desperately poor. He wanted to punish me for being married to a man who owned three hundred horses and could buy hundreds more any time he felt like writing a check. He borrowed the key to Brassard’s apartment. I felt—it’s hard to say in words—that it would be terribly unjust if I didn’t have a tempestuous love affair once in my life—Now you’re laughing at me again.”

The corners of the detective’s mouth quirked slightly. “Go ahead, Claire.”

“Do you know, it really
is
better to tell somebody. Maybe it isn’t as tragic as it seemed at the time. Fifteen minutes after I was alone with him, I knew that all he wanted to do was humiliate me. I don’t think he considered me a person at all. I told him I realized I’d made a mistake, which there was no point in repeating. But I’d written him a letter, like a fool, and he said he would stop seeing me when it suited him and not before, unless I wanted my husband to know about it. So my tempestuous love affair began.”

“How long did it go on, Claire?”

“Oh, for months. Months and months and months. Only two, I suppose, but it seemed like a century. I knew I had got into it by my own foolishness, and I had to take my punishment. Sex to Paul was like a horse race. He went all out to win. One day I discovered I was pregnant. Paul had fooled me, in a way I won’t go into. He was delighted! Planting his child in the straight line of inheritance from General Lawrence Domaine of the Army of Virginia—he thought it was uproarious. When I had a miscarriage, he nearly killed me. I had to run my car into a telephone pole to explain how I got those bruises. After that he wanted money. He wouldn’t believe I didn’t have any to give him. He worked out a plan for a fake burglary—I was supposed to give him my jewelry and other things, and tell the police I’d been robbed. I wouldn’t do it. And then it turned out that he’d only been bluffing about sending that letter of mine to Larry. He was afraid of Larry, I think, in spite of his talk. I don’t mean personally, but of what he represented. I finally told him it was over, and made it stick. He’d started his own stable by that time, and he didn’t need me to work out resentments on.”

“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.

“Thorne’s in the number-three slot,” Granby said over the whir of the projector. “Driving Don J. A pretty horse, very spirited horse. Three-year-old, great blood line, he had all the makings of a free-for-aller. His best time for the mile was 2:04 on a half-mile track. He’s going in a Class A race here for the first time. He went away at three to one, as I recall. He’s fourth there at the turn. That’s Star Music, a Domaine horse, ahead of him.”

A new camera picked up the horses as they rounded into the backstretch. The tape’s fidelity was very good, but the total absence of sound made the action seem unreal. The accident happened at almost the exact second when the camera on the next tower took over. Star Music drifted away from the rail going into the turn. Thorne was using his whip as he tried to brush Don J. through on the inside, along the rail. Suddenly his horse veered sharply to the right. Star Music bounced and went into a gallop, and the inner wheel of Star Music’s sulky struck Don J. on the leg. There was a moment’s tangle and Don J. veered back, breaking clear, and went into the rail.