The Last Private Eye (23 page)

Authors: John Birkett

BOOK: The Last Private Eye

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Kathleen Sullivan left Channel Six and went to work for a CBS affiliate in Nashville, where she is now an anchorwoman.

William Lewis, the chemist, was found guilty in federal court of deliberately falsifying his income tax returns. He is awaiting sentencing.

Calvin Clark continues to live and practice law in Frankfort, Kentucky. Just the other day he was appointed to the Governor's Commission on the Arts.

Rhineheart has moved. His new office is on Market, around the corner from the Hall of Justice. The rent is cheaper.

McGraw is up to twenty-five words a minute.

Read on for a sneak peek at

The Queen's Mare

by John Birkett

Available now from Witness Impulse

ONE

I
T
was a Monday morning in May, a couple of weeks after the Derby, and I was sitting in my office with my feet propped up on the desk looking through the
Racing Form.
The Derby had been won by a longshot who'd paid 37 dollars and 40 cents. My pick was still running.

When the telephone rang. McGraw was seated at her desk, filing her fingernails. She made no move to answer the phone. I was two weeks behind on her salary, and this was her way of retaliating. I put down the
Form
and picked up my extension.

“Rhineheart Investigations.”

“May I speak to Mr. Rhineheart, please?” The speaker on the other end of the line had an old woman's voice, thin, querulous, well spoken.

“This is him,” I said.

McGraw's upper lip curled into a sneer. “
He
,” she said loudly. “â
This is he
' is the correct way to say that.”

“Mr. Rhineheart. My name is Hattie Beaumont. I am interested in exploring the possibility of obtaining your services. I wonder if we could possibly meet this afternoon.”

Hattie Beaumont. The caption under her photographs in the newspaper usually read
The Grand Dame of Kentucky Racing.
She owned Ashtree Farms, which was just outside of Louisville and was one of the largest Thoroughbred breeding farms in Kentucky. Ashtree had bred several Kentucky Derby winners, and the sires and dams of a dozen more. It had an international reputation, as did its owner. Getting a phone call from Hattie Beaumont was something of a surprise. It was on the order of getting a call from the Governor of the Commonwealth, or someone like that.

“You sure you got the right Rhineheart?” I asked. “My name's Michael. I'm a private eye.”

“I know exactly who you are, Mr. Rhineheart. How does two o'clock this afternoon suit you?”

“That's fine,” I said.

“Do you know the way to Ashtree?” she asked.

“I'll find it,” I said. “And I'll see you at two, Mrs. Beaumont.”

When she heard the name
Beaumont
McGraw sat up straight and shot a questioning look in my direction.

I put down the phone, and with a blank look on my face picked up the
Form
and pretended to read it.

McGraw jumped up, dashed over, and snatched the
Form
out of my hand.

“
Who
was that on the phone?” she demanded.

“If you'd answered it,” I said, “like you're supposed to, then you'd know, wouldn't you?”

She doubled up her little fistâMcGraw is four-foot-eleven and ninety poundsâand gave me a shot in the bicep.

“Come on, Rhineheart. Who was it? It wasn't
the
Mrs. Beaumont, was it?”

I nodded.

“Bullshit,” McGraw said.

“Have it your own way,” I said. “But put it down in the appointment book that I'm going to meet with Hattie Beaumont at her place at two clock.”

“This afternoon?”

I nodded.

“At Ashtree Farms?”

“Two for two, McGraw.”

“Out in Prospect?”

“Right again.”

“Take me with you,” she said.

“Get serious,” I said.

“Please.”

“Don't be silly,” I said. “Why would I want to haul you along?”

“It'd be good training,” McGraw said.

“For who?”

“That's
whom
,” McGraw said. A perpetual student who took every half-ass course the local colleges had to offer, she was suffering from one too many night-school sessions in English grammar. Lately, every time I opened my mouth, McGraw could be counted on to correct my usage. “Not âfor who.' âFor whom' is the correct way to say that. Objective case. Whom is theâ”

“Stuff it, McGraw.”

“âobject of for,” she plunged on, without missing a beat, then added, “Good training for
me
is what I meant. Some actual on-the-job detective training, instead of research and typing and answering the phone.”

“Which you don't do anyway,” I said. “I'm the one who answered the goddamn phone.” I was getting as illogical as McGraw, whose big dream in life was to become a private eye. I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. If she ever achieved her goal, I would lose, it was true, a rotten secretary, one who couldn't even answer the phone properly, let alone type and file. On the other hand, it was entirely possible that if she worked for me as an operative she would be an even worse investigator. Any way you looked at it, I came out on the losing end.

“Say I took you out there,” I said. “What reason would I give Mrs. Beaumont for bringing along my secretary?”

“You could introduce me as your associate,” McGraw said.

“Forget it.” I stood up and smoothed out the lapels of my sport coat. “Do I look all right?”

McGraw got up on her tiptoes to straighten my collar. “You look like you always look. Your clothes are one big wrinkle.” She gave the general area of my left shoulder a bad look.

“What's wrong with you?”

“You're packing, aren't you?” She was talking about my Colt Python, which was stuck in a shoulder holster under my arm.

“Yeah.”

“You're not going to wear it out to Ashtree, are you?”

“Is that bad form, or something?”

“It's the pits of tackiness.”

“That's me, babe.” I headed for the door.

“I'll be here when you get back,” McGraw said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOHN BIRKETT
is the author of
The Queen's Mare
and
The Last Private Eye
, both to be released by Witness Impulse, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. He is a winner of the Shamus Award, given by the Private Eye Writers of America.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.

ALSO BY JOHN BIRKETT

The Queen's Mare

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A mass market edition of this book was published by Avon Books in March 1988.

Excerpt from
The Queen's Mare
copyright Â© 1990 by John Birkett.

THE LAST PRIVATE EYE
. Copyright Â© 1988 by John Birkett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition DECEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780062356192

Print Edition ISBN: 9780380754885

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