The Last Private Eye
Read The Last Private Eye Online
Authors: John Birkett
The Last Private Eye
Michael Rhineheart, P.I.
John Birkett
This book is for Betty
And for Julie, Ellen, and Lynn
CONTENTS
An Excerpt from
The Queen's Mare
It was opening day of the spring meet at Churchill Downs. A clear bright Saturday in late April. Rhineheart wasn't out at the track though. He was sitting in his office with his feet up on the desk, listening to the radio. Willie Nelson was singing about how the nightlife wasn't the good life.
When the telephone on his desk started to ring, he reached for it. Then, for some reason, he hesitated a moment, letting his hand hover over the receiver. It was just a second or two, a brief, meaningless gesture, but later, weeks later, when everythingâthe whole, sad, sorry mess that began that afternoon with that telephone callâwas over, Rhineheart would remember that moment of hesitation.
He picked up the phone and a woman's voiceâsonorous, somehow familiarâcaught at his ear.
“I'd like to speak to Mr. Rhineheart, please.”
“This is Rhineheart.”
“Mickey?”
Rhineheart's first name was Michael. No one called him Mickey. Not anymore. Not since he was a kid anyway. Not since Saint Joseph's Elementary School on Market Street in the West End of Louisville. Even then, the nuns and all the other kids had called him Michael or just Rhineheart. Except for . . .
“Kate?” he said.
“Hi, Mickey.”
Kate was Kathleen Sullivan. Red-haired. Pigtailed. Freckled. She had deep blue eyes and wore thick horn-rimmed glasses. She was Rhineheart's first girl friend. They had grown up together. Alphabetically, she had sat behind him in school from the second grade through the eighth. Rhineheart had not seen her since high school.
“Kate,” he said. “It's been a long time.”
“It's been almost twenty years, Mickey.”
Twenty years. Twenty years ago Rhineheart had dropped out of high school and joined the army. He had heard, from someone, that Kate had gone on to college, had majored in broadcast journalism, and had gone to work as a reporter for a television station in Cincinnati.
“I heard you were up north,” Rhineheart said.
“Not anymore,” she said. “I've come back home. I've taken a job here. With Channel Six. I've been back almost a month.”
Channel Six was a local TV station. An independent with a good reputation. It had won some awards for its regional news coverage.
“Are you married, Kate?”
“For the last ten years,” she said. “I've got two kids, a boy and a girl. What about you, Mickey? Who's the lucky woman?”
Rhineheart had been married once. To a tall, slim woman with long brown hair and fine delicate features. Her name was Catherine. One afternoon, in the summer of 1976, she went for a ride on the expressway. A semi, travelling the opposite way, had jumped the divider. They had to use machinery to pull her body out of the tangle of metal. It had been a long time ago. Rhineheart never thought about it. Not when he could help it. He never talked about Catherine to anyone. Not ever.
“I'm not married,” he said.
“I'm surprised. I thought you'd've been married three or four times by now. The way you used to go through women.”
“I've been keeping myself for you, babe,” Rhineheart said.
“Yeah, I'll bet.”
“Tell me about yourself,” Rhineheart said. “What have you been doing?”
Kate Sullivan told Rhineheart about the different stations she had worked for, in Cincinnati and Dayton and Cleveland, and the different jobs she had held, feature reporter, consumer correspondent, sports and weather person. She told Rhineheart about her husband, whose name was Jack, and who was in computers. She talked about her children, Megan, who was seven, and Kevin, the six-year-old. She'd come back to Louisville, she said, because Channel Six had made her an offer she couldn't refuse. She was going to be an investigative reporter, something she'd always wanted to do. The salary was great, and she had carte blanche to pursue whatever stories she wanted. And speaking of that . . . she wanted to see him.
“I may need your help in something,” she said. “It's kind of important.” Rhineheart caught a change in her tone, a new businesslike no-nonsense note in her voice. Her TV voice, he thought.
“What's the problem, babe?”
“Can we see each other?”
“Sure,” Rhineheart said.
“When?”
“What about now?”
“Can we meet somewhere?”
He thought for a moment. “You know Baskerville's?” It was a restaurant-bar on South Third Street near the University of Louisville.
“Yes.”
“Be in the bar,” Rhineheart said. “I'll meet you there in half an hour.”
The bar at Baskerville's was a dim cavernous room filled with high-backed armchairs and leather-covered booths. It was crowded, Rhineheart noted. A week from now, on Derby day, it would be empty. Everyone in town would be out at the Downs.
Kate Sullivan was seated in the corner. She stood up when she spotted Rhineheart and waved.
The freckles had disappeared, but the hair was as red as ever. A stylish shag, instead of pigtails, and the horn-rims were gone, replaced by oversized designer frames. Otherwise, she looked as if she hadn't gained a pound since the eighth grade. The same small-boned frame and bright, pretty face. She was wearing a beige blazer and a dark skirt and high heels and she looked very much, Rhineheart thought, like what they used to call a career woman.
She was a hugger and a kisser, Rhineheart remembered, as she got up on her tiptoes in order to plant one on his face and then wrapped her little arms around as much of him as she could.
“It's good to see you, babe.”
She nodded, looking up at him. “You're as handsome as ever, Mickey.”
Rhineheart said, “And you're a lot prettier than you were in the eighth grade.”
She laughed. They sat down and a waitress materialized out of the gloom. Kate asked for a vodka-on-the-rocks, Rhineheart ordered Maker's Mark and water. The waitress smiled at him as if bourbon drinkers were her favorite kind of people and departed in the general direction of the bar.
“Now I want to know about you, Mickey,” Kate said. “What have you been up to all these years?”
What had he been up to? Not very much, that was for sure. Certainly not the same things that everyone else had been up toâpursuing a career, raising a family. Catherine had been his only family, and after she died, his life had lost meaning and momentum. Everything suddenly seemed to require too much effort. He'd tried a couple of different occupations, then had more or less drifted into the investigation business. The years, it seemed, had gone by like a snap of the fingers. He'd somehow managed to survive. No small featâbut neither did it seem like any big deal.
Rhineheart shrugged. “I been staying busy,” he said. The truth was that since Catherine the whole thing, except for a moment here and there, was a matter of just going through the motions. He stayed with it because what else was there? Most of the time he had trouble keeping his eyes open.
“You still shrug,” Kate said with a smile. “It was always your favorite gesture. Whenever Sister Mary Hope would ask you what you were going to do with your life, you'd give her a shrug.”
“Some things never change,” Rhineheart said.
“You're a private detective now. What's that like?”
“It's a job,” Rhineheart said. “It's all right.”
“Do you like it?”
“It beats a lot of other jobs,” Rhineheart said. “You don't have to sell anybody anything.”
She laughed. “What's the best thing about it?”
Rhineheart shrugged. “The freedom. You're your own boss. You don't have to take a lot of . . . crap off people.”
“You do what your clients ask of you, don't you?”
“If I feel like it.”
“It must be nice to have that kind of independence.”
“Yeah,” Rhineheart said, “it is.”
“Someone told me you were working for the government for a while.”
Rhineheart nodded. “I used to be with the Commonwealth Attorney's office. As an investigator.”
“That sounds kind of interesting.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was, sort of. But I got fired. I couldn't handle the procedure.”
“The procedure?”
“Following orders. Typing up reports. Stuff like that.”
“Yes,” she said, “you always had a tough time following orders.”
The waitress returned with the drinks.
Rhineheart held up his glass for a toast. “Here's to the first girl I ever gave a valentine to.”
“What a nice toast.” Kate raised her glass to his. They clinked glasses and drank.
“Tell me about your work, Mickey. About some of the things you do.”
“Such as?”
“Do you everâ” She hesitated. “Search for someone who's missing?”
“Sure,” Rhineheart said. “I do divorce work too.” He didn't add that he was broke right now and would do just about anything. If the money was right. And it was legal. And if he felt like doing it.
Kate reached into her purse and took out a snapshot and handed it to Rhineheart.
It was a color photograph of a blond-haired outdoorsy-looking guy. In his mid-thirties. Tall and thin, with a long, sharp face. He was wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt and was leaning on a whitewashed paddock fence. In the background were horse barns and rolling countryside.
“His name is Carl Walsh,” she said. “He's been missing since Wednesday evening.”
Rhineheart lit a cigarette. “This Walsh a friend?”
Kate Sullivan shook her head. “No. I taped an interview with him last spring when I was working for a Cincinnati station. A âlife on the racetrack' piece. Carl Walsh is a hot-walker, a stable hand. He works for Cresthill Farms. Are you familiar with Cresthill?”
Rhineheart nodded. Who wasn't familiar with Cresthill Farms? It was one of the largest horse farms in Kentucky, a big name in thoroughbred racing and breeding, Cresthill was owned by Duke and Jessica Kingston, two of the more colorful figures in Kentucky social circles. The Kingstons, who bred and raced their own horses, were rich and famous and flamboyant. They were renowned, among other things, for the big party they threw every year during Derby week. It was held in a tent on the grounds at Cresthill and was considered the social event of the racing season.