by John Birkett
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 fist—McGraw is four-foot-eleven and ninety pounds—and 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 ‘for who.’ ‘For whom’ is the correct way to say that. Objective case. Whom is the—”
“Stuff it, McGraw.”
“—object 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.
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ALSO BY JOHN BIRKETT
The Queen’s Mare
COPYRIGHT
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 © 1990 by John Birkett.
THE LAST PRIVATE EYE. Copyright © 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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