Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 77, No. 7. Whole No. 454, June 17, 1981

Look of Eagles by Jo Lockwood

© 1981 by Jo Lockwood

This is the 579th “first story” to be published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine... behind the scenes of a sleazy racetrack...

The author, Jo Lockwood, is an ex-model and home-economics director, and has written travel-tourism publicity, political speeches, radio and television copy for a food concern. She loves horses and horse-racing, currently has 11 cats and a dog, and lives in a small house in the country...

A lot of money passes through the turnstiles and over the counter betting windows at even the poorest tracks in this country, and Whitman Downs is one of the moldiest.

You walk around the infield or the paddock and you’ll see what I mean. The fences are chipped and peeling, and the turf is more weeds than bluegrass. The rails lean like willows over a pond, and you wonder if the only bangtails that could win out here would be polo ponies, taking those turns at a tilt.

But a lot of the characters you see are wearing their polyesters with silk ties by Sulka and well glossed shoes by Bally, and their fat hands flash diamond pinky rings.

Not the working stiffs, of course.

Most of them stick to faded jeans and slept-in flannel shirts. Oh, now and then you might spot a fancy tooled-leather belt or a pair of $300 boots, but mostly it’s no-nonsense stuff.

That’s why Ginger stood out in the crowd.

She’d have been a looker anywhere, of course, with that hair the color of a Kansas wheatfield and eyes so big and blue they were drowning pools. Nothing wrong with the figure, either. She was a tall girl and built a little like those slick models, except with curves. Legs as long as a colt’s, but with a nice girl-shape above the slim ankles.

More than that, though, it was the way she carried herself — proud and erect, with a certain class. There was something about her that made you wonder what she was doing around a sleazy back-of-beyond racetrack. Not that she didn’t legitimately belong; her father was one of the trainers, and she’d grown up around tack rooms and stables — some of them pretty good, some of them pretty tacky, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Whit Dunbar, Ginger’s dad, had a small string of horses to take care of and was known to be one of the best. Trouble was, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

One of the biggest problems a trainer has is not the bunch of horses he has to work with, though that can be bad enough, but the owners. You bring a colt along nice and easy, he’s working well and maybe takes a nice little race against his own kind, and right away the owner gets dollar bills in his eyes and Kentucky Derby on his mind.

Then there are the ones who won’t take the trainer’s word, or even the vet’s, that the horse isn’t fit. They seem to think you can give a nag a carrot and shake a little something into his oats and he’ll be ready overnight. Some of the owners, that is. Around Whitman Downs it runs to a pretty high percentage. Ask Beau Jellife, my boss. He’s just working his way back up after being barred from several tracks for sprinkling a little too much “stuff” on the feed of a little filly the owner insisted should go into an allowance race she had no business being in the gate for.

Anyway, it wasn’t illegal drugs but Whit Dunbar’s mouth that kept getting him into hot water. He’d told off I don’t know how many owners. When a horse wasn’t ready, he’d say so, and if the owners didn’t go along with his judgment, he didn’t refrain from describing them and their antecedents. It kept Dunbar with a very limited string of horses, because some of those owners weren’t going to take it from the hired help.

It didn’t matter, either, that Whit Dunbar’s family was once one of them. His grandfather had been the Whitman for whom this track was named, in its better days a long time ago. But the money and the stables had gone the way of a lot of fortunes back in the Great Depression, and Whit worked for other people now. The horses were all somebody else’s.

Except for one animal, and that one he had in Ginger’s name.

I remember the day he bought that filly at Fasig-Tipton’s yearling sales. I was with him when they brought out Number 134, and Whit’s eyes lit up like he’d had a century bet on Temperence Hill winning the Belmont.

Funny, she wasn’t a very pretty thing. Gangly-like, as most yearlings are, and moreover, she sort of shuffled. Now I know a horse can’t really shuffle, but she sure looked as if she dragged her feet. We were positioned right at the rail of the little circle where they walked the horses, and Whit clucked to her. She flipped her head up so fast I thought she was going to lift the little groom who was holding her bridle right off the ground. Whit swears she gave him the “look of eagles” that horsemen are always talking about.

The upshot was he blew nearly every cent he had on that chestnut, outbidding some fancy-pants fellas that strolled around making like John Hay Whitneys while jumpsuited flunkies did their inspecting and bidding. I was eyeing Whit like he’d lost his mind, but all he kept saying was, “She has the look.”

Well, since then she’s proved she can run all right — like the wind. And she’s a kind thing to rate — a dream horse. Whit talks about her as if she might be his ticket back to the Big Time, and he just might be right. She’s due to put it all on the line in her first real test this weekend.

But that “look of eagles” from the chestnut filly cost Whit a lot more than the $15,000 he shelled out last year. Today it cost him his daughter’s life.

If only he hadn’t made it sound like such a sure thing...

Days start early at Whitman Downs, as at most tracks. It wasn’t long after sunup that Ramon, one of the exercise boys, found Ginger’s body alongside the training oval, when he rode Samarkand out for a work. She was lying face down on the dew-wet grass by the timer’s stand, but he didn’t even have to dismount to see that she was dead. There was a big hole in the back of her neck, and her wheat-colored hair was bronze with blood.

That Samarkand must have set a record with Ramon galloping him back to the stabling area, because Ramon was screaming and whipping and sobbing and yelling for the cops at the same time.

First one out to see what all the hollering was about was Whit himself, who’d been talking with Don Hauser, one of the few owners who’ll get up early enough to watch the dawn workouts. The two of them and “Bulldog” Smith, the track’s owner (or that part of it not in hock), ran — fast. My boss Beau Jellife followed at a somewhat slower clip, while he sent me for the police.

I make better time in my wheelchair than most of them can on their two legs. With the powerful arms I’ve built up, it’s an acquired skill. By the time I got back with Lieutenant McLane, Whit Dunbar was cradling his daughter’s body in his arms, with her blood staining his bluejacket.

Don Hauser was standing there looking lost as he helplessly whacked a crop against his boots. Bulldog Smith made strange crooning sounds that were somewhere between a sob and a hound’s wail.

Lieutenant McLane got right to work while I wheeled myself all over the place scrunching this way and that, looking for a bullet casing I figured had to be there.

“For Pete’s sake, Wyman, you’re digging up enough to plant flowers! Keep that contraption still!”

“Sorry, Lieutenant, I thought I could help by finding the bullet.”

“Well, don’t think! You’re not on the force now. When I need your help, I’ll ask” — and then, apparently thinking better of that not-too-tactful remark, he added in a kinder tone — “How about getting these people out of here for me? The boys and the wagon are on the way.”

I touched Bulldog’s arm and steered him off. Beau Jellife needed very little coaxing, and Hauser, too, looked relieved to be sent away. I decided Whit Dunbar had a right to stay there with his daughter. The rest of us, with the still-quivering jockey Ramon, gathered in my quarters which adjoined Beau’s tack rooms.

It seemed a good time for a few strong belts, so I broke open the bar, even though the sun wasn’t hardly full up over the infield yet. Hauser cast an appreciative eye on the lacquered Chinese cabinet where I stocked the booze, and I noticed he also took in the antique French armoire and Kirman carpet.

“Pretty fancy for a stable,” he said.

“Yeah. I like to live as well as I can, and my salary and pension give me enough to get by okay,” I told him, not that it was any of his business. It was true, though. I’d only made it to detective sergeant, but when a wild shot hit me in the spine and ended that career, I’d started another with Beau — part security man, part assistant trainer, part most everything else. My disability pay was pretty good, and Beau wasn’t stingy with the green even if he wasn’t always too heavy with it for himself. And there were always poker games and a good safe bet now and then.

I made out fairly well, generally. Up and down sometimes, but then I didn’t have much besides myself to spend it on. As for living “in a stable,” as Hauser put it, I’d figured that if I had to be at the track to watch over the ponies I might as well move in. And I’m one of those guys who likes even the smell of horses.

I opened the liquor cabinet and told them to choose their own poisons while I wheeled out to the little kitchen for ice. When I’d filled the teak bucket from my specially designed low ice chest and rejoined them, I saw we had more company: Howard Lanier and Sal Verdi, neither of whom I particularly welcomed at any time, and especially not now.

Lanier had, until recently, been one of “those” owners — expecting every horse to be Nashua, but not parting with the bucks to give it half a chance. It wasn’t as though he didn’t have the cash. He was loaded. A tall handsome guy with an arrogant air and a supercilious smirk on his face half the time. I didn’t like him.

I didn’t like him to play poker with either, but he often filled up a game late at night around the barns. At least he lost like a gentleman and helped to keep us in good whiskey.

Verdi was one of those meatballs you wouldn’t want to bump into in an alley. Screwy thing about that, because there really wasn’t much against him except his appearance and his manners. He looked like a cold potato, and he used a gold toothpick to flick away the tobacco that clung to his teeth from the smushed old cigars he sucked in his fat mouth. A gold toothpick. That’ll give you an idea.

Word was that Verdi was trying to buy a controlling interest in the track; wanted to make it into something classier. Maybe he would. But if he saw it for classy, he’d have to keep himself in the background, way back. Bulldog Smith wouldn’t strike you as Ivy League, but seeing him you wouldn’t think you’d wandered into a remake of “The Godfather.”

There wasn’t any doubt that Bulldog needed the money Sal Verdi could contribute, but so far he’d resisted the fat man’s attempts to buy in. Everybody wondered how long Bulldog could hold out.

We sat around staring at each other, the seven of us, and it seemed no amount of alcohol was going to ease the tension. Poor little Ramon had to be reassured that it was okay to sit down in his riding clothes, and still he looked like he was on a horse he expected to bolt for the fences.

I watched every one of them to see if I could catch any signs. In a way I gave them a preliminary grilling, just keeping it conversational-like but trying to see if they knew anything or had seen anything. After all, those years on the force had to give me some advantage.

Came up zero. Hauser had joined Whit for coffee early and then went to the barn to look at one of his horses due to race later in the week. Claimed he didn’t know Ginger was even at the track until Ramon had made his wild cavalry charge on Samarkand.

Bulldog had had an appointment with Verdi for seven o’clock. Ginger was found at a quarter to. Verdi said he’d just parked his car and was headed for the clubhouse when the noise Ramon was making attracted his attention. Same with Bulldog, except he’d come from the other direction. He lived in the old caretaker’s cottage on the south side of what had once been the Whitman Estate. That wasn’t far from where Whit Dunbar and Ginger boarded — ironically, as paying guests in the Big House that long ago had belonged to Whit’s own people. It couldn’t be more than five minutes from the training track.

Beau and I had been gassing in my rooms from about six. I remembered checking my watch just as he knocked on the door. We had gone over strategy for Little Bit, the nice colt he had scheduled for the Havenside Stakes on Saturday, against Whit’s horse and five others that didn’t really count.

I had been a little on edge, and we’d had some strong eye-openers in our coffee. With what I was tossing down now, I should have had some glow, but all I felt was empty inside about Ginger lying out there with that beautiful life oozed out of her.

As for Handsome Howard, he was losing his aristocratic look with every slosh of the Scotch, and I was just starting to get past his hemming and hawing as to where had been, when the lieutenant came in.

“Anybody confessed yet, Wyman?” he asked, lumbering his big frame through the doorway.

“Not funny, Lieutenant. We all knew her. We all liked her,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster.

“Yeah, well somebody didn’t like her. She’s plenty dead out there, and that red stuff all over her head isn’t sign paint.”

“Please, McLane, can’t you take it a little easy?” begged Howard Lanier in a cracked, queasy sort of voice. The cubes in his glass rattled as his hand shook. Hauser didn’t look too good, either.

I offered McLane a drink, knowing he wouldn’t take it because he was on duty, but it seemed the polite thing to do, what with all the rest of us drinking.

As I expected, he turned it down and started right in, going over the same ground with each of us that I’d just covered. He didn’t get anything more than I did, except a few nervous embellishments, until he moved to Howard.

“Well, as a matter of fact, Lieutenant,” Howard told him, with the start of a blush which did him no credit, “Ginger and I — well, we spent the night together.”

“You what?”

It wasn’t only McLane that shouted. At least four others sounded just as shocked.

“Yes, well, um — we’d had a little candlelight dinner at my place and one thing led to another...” Howard stammered.

Just thinking about what he was saying was enough to make me boil, even if I’d pretty much seen it coming. Luckily, Beau caught the rage in my eyes and held onto my chair, or I swear I would have run that rat Lanier into the wall.

Even Verdi looked mad; he was puffing up like a balloon ready to burst. I wondered how Whit Dunbar would feel when he heard about it, and then I thought: maybe he knew.

The lieutenant looked around at us and decided to continue the conversation in private. Not that it could stay private for long, with a murder at the end of it, but I could see where it was the wiser thing for the moment.

He took Howard by the arm with a “We’d better finish this elsewhere,” and left the rest of us with our chins hanging down.

After a stunned silence everybody began gabbling at once, and by the time they strayed off, my head was aching like the little men with the hammers were at work inside. I was squeezing out my anger by kneading one of my rubber exercise rods in my hands. I’d have liked to have been using it on Lanier right then.

Beau Jellife hung behind. He seemed to have some instinct about how I felt.

“Were you in love with her, Paul?” His voice was full of sympathy.

“I guess I was. I suppose everybody was a little. And dammit, Beau, it’s just such a waste. Stupid. Needless. I mean, her dead like that. It isn’t right. It shouldn’t have been Ginger.”

It was idiot’s talk, and I knew it. Certainly not professional, but I wasn’t hurting this way as a pro.

“No, Paul. It shouldn’t have been Ginger. Ever.”

I didn’t know whether he meant it shouldn’t have been Ginger getting killed or shouldn’t have been Ginger for me, but it didn’t make any difference now. I’d never told her how I felt about her, and I certainly had stood no chance with her except as a friend. So I’d made that be enough.

After a pause he asked, “Did you know Lanier had something going with her?”

My lips were dry, in spite of all the liquid that had been passing through them the last few hours.

“I guess I knew. I just wish he didn’t have to be talking about it now, bringing it all out and making her sound like one of his quickies. It dirties her,” I said.

Like a good friend, which he was as well as being my boss, he let it pass and changed the subject to Little Bit and his chances in Saturday’s race. It sounds abrupt and callous now, but it wasn’t. He handled it just right by trying to get my mind away from Ginger and onto the only other thing I gave a rap about. Trouble was, it wasn’t far enough away.

Little Bit had been scheduled — and still was, unless either Whit or Beau decided to cancel — to go against Whit Dunbar’s filly in that race. And the filly, registered in his daughter’s name, was called Ginger Peachy. Swell way to get my thinking off the girl.

Both Beau and Whit had a lot at stake in that race: Beau, because it could put him back in the running for the really good training jobs, and Whit because it would prove his thing about “the look.” Of course, Beau’s need was more immediate than Whit’s. After all, the filly belonged to Whit Dunbar. Beau was just on the line for the owner who, unfortunately, happened to be Lanier.

Beau stayed around a few minutes and then wandered off. I’d just begun to round up the glassware when McLane turned up again, all business and very official.

“Anybody out on the training track this morning before Ramon with that horse?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered. “You can check the sheet. There’s a work schedule. But of course it’ll only tell you if somebody was supposed to be there, not whether they really were.”

“How about you and Beau? You two looked like you’d been up and around a while.”

“Sure we were, and most of the regulars would have been, too. We start with the daylight. Beau and I had Little Bit set for a work at 8:30. Billy Winston was to ride. As a matter of fact, where the bleep is he? He was due here hours ago.”

“Who’s he?”

“Jockey from the Coast. Beau told Lanier we needed somebody topnotch, and Whit had already hired the best around here for Ginger Peachy. Winston was flying in last night. Maybe he put up at the Inn and slept through his call. I’d better check.”

I started to wheel myself over to the phone when McLane broke in. “Hold it. Never mind. I’ll do it. Maybe I’d like to have a talk with him.”

“What for?”

“Use your head, Wyman. Maybe he did get his call, and maybe he was here on time, even a little early.”

“Oh, my God. You think he had some reason to kill Ginger?”

“Who knows? So far I can’t see that anybody had a reason, but she’s dead just the same. I’d just like to see him first, that’s all.”

“Sure.”

My stomach didn’t know whether to sink, or swim up to my mouth. This whole business was getting to me. Where was Billy? I hadn’t given him a thought since they’d found Ginger’s body. He should have been around the jockey’s room long since or even checking out Little Bit.

One thing I knew, he hadn’t come around looking for either Beau or me while we were in my place from six o’clock. Not just in from a plane trip. He’d probably had a night at the bar and was hung over.

McLane was doggedly pursuing it. “Isn’t it a little strange to bring in a rider days before the race? Thought that stakes was for Saturday. This is only Thursday.”

“Didn’t think you followed the horses, McLane. And no, it’s not that unusual. You want your jockey to get the ride and feel of the horse a few times. Get ’em to know each other. Especially when it’s an important race. If you can afford it.”

“This was to be a big one, then?”

“For green two-year-olds, yes. Couple of good horses. Better’n most. Nice possibilities.” It was an understatement.

“You said ‘if you can afford it’ — you and Beau could, then?”

“Not us — Lanier. He pays the bills. Of course, we have to convince him it’s worth it. Usually we can’t. In this case we did.”

“Isn’t it odd, too, for a filly to go against colts? I mean Ginger Peachy running against your horse—”

It hurt just to hear that name. Why did Whit have to call the horse after his daughter?

I swallowed, hard. “There you’re right, mostly. In an ordinary year colts are tougher, stronger, bigger. But Whit thought so much of that chestnut he wanted to see right away what she could do. And there aren’t so many good fillies out this way. She’d outclass ’em, and he figured she might go rank without competition.”

“Rank?”

“Flat, stale, no drive.”

“Oh.”

“Anything else, Lieutenant?” I asked. “I’d like to help you all I can. What did you get from High-and-Mighty Howard?”

“Don’t like him much, huh?”

“I don’t have to.”

“Well, he claims the Dunbar girl left his place about five.”

“Alone? The skunk didn’t even take her home?”

“He says she wanted to go alone. Wanted to take a look at her horse.”

“So that’s what she was doing there in street clothes. Seemed kinda funny. Usually she’s in riding breeches or jeans when she comes to the track.”

McLane was absent-mindedly twisting an exercise rod. “Why would she be out there and not at the barns?”

“I dunno. Maybe she was waiting for the workouts. Maybe she wanted to time everybody and compare Ginger Peachy with ’em.”

“She didn’t have a stopwatch, or we haven’t found it. Matter of fact, we didn’t find any purse, either. Sort of funny, don’t you think?”

“How?”

“Woman comes from an all-nighter, she’s had her purse along. And as you said, she usually wore casual clothes around the stables, so if she’d stopped off home, wouldn’t she’d have changed?”

“I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“Don’t really know, myself. Just puzzling it out as I go along. Another thing, if anybody’d been at the barns, wouldn’t somebody know — you, or security personnel?”

“There aren’t that many. A few stable boys. Of course, Whit has Bessie.”

“Who’s Bessie?”

“Not who — what. Bessie’s a goat. Lots of horses want company, so trainers have a dog or a chicken or something. Whit has a goat, and the darned thing’s a watchgoat, if you can believe it. Sets up a baaahing like you’d never forget if anybody goes near that horse. Except Ginger and Whit, of course.”

“So that knocks out the idea of a stranger around, I guess.”

“Seems so,” I said. “You got any ideas yet? Think maybe somebody shot her by mistake?”

He snorted. “At close range, in the back of the head? In those clothes and with that hair, nobody was going to take her for a jockey or for Bulldog Smith or anybody else. Any other dames around here somebody might be gunning for?”

I tried to think up a good possibility, but Ramon’s wife was tiny and dark-haired, Bulldog’s missus seldom came around and was built like a blockhouse, anyway, and the groupies didn’t turn up until afternoon.

The telephone clanged and I grabbed it, grateful for the interruption. “Yeah, he’s right here. For you, McLane.”

“Yeah. Okay. Got it. What caliber? Any idea yet how long? The angle? Humpf. That makes it a little interesting, doesn’t it?” He looked around at the paintings on the walls and then at me and then down at his own fingernails as if he could find the answer there as he listened to the voice at the other end of the line. I’d recognized it as that of Sergeant Happ, an old friend.

“Um. And I want you to check on a jockey named Winston” — he looked at me for confirmation and I nodded — “Billy Winston. Stayed at the Inn, probably. Planed in from the Coast last night... What? Oh, damn. How is he? Okay. I’ll be down soon. Find out all you can. Get that full medical soonest.”

He jammed the receiver down.

“What’s up?”

“Your Billy Winston got himself clunked on the head in a barroom brawl. Spent the night in Observation at the hospital.”

“So that lets him out. And explains where he was when he was supposed to be here.”

“That it does. Unless the brawl was a put-up job. But I can’t think why.” Abruptly he asked, “You much of a betting man these days, Wyman?”

It seemed a little out of context, but I answered him anyhow.

“A little here, a little there. Play poker.”

“That where you pick up the change for all this expensive stuff?”

It was the second time this morning I’d had to explain how I supported my lifestyle and it rankled a little, but I did it again. He seemed satisfied.

“Bet the horses much?”

“Some. I play my horses pretty safe, though. I’ve never been one for hunches.”

“Yeah. Even on the force you never went off half cocked or on impulse. Got to play it that way sometimes, though — by a gut feeling.”

He reminded me of Whit Dunbar and his “look of eagles.”

“You’ve got a gut feeling about this?” I asked.

“Um. And I don’t like it at all.”

“I guess none of us likes this whole thing,” I said.

“Wyman, she was shot hours before she was found, it looks like. And the angle of the bullet was down. Somebody standing over her, or somebody tall. The examiner isn’t through, of course, but he’s pretty sure.”

I gave him an astonished look. “But that means somebody was prowling around here in the middle of the night.”

“And you didn’t know it, and the goat didn’t sound any alarm. And more likely it was sometime shortly after five a.m., when she left Lanier—”

“If she left,” I suggested. “What if she wasn’t murdered there at the rail at all?” I was thinking fast, making the old detective mind work for me.

“She left Lanier, all right, if you’re saying maybe he did it and dumped her there. He’s got his housekeeper for an alibi.” His tone was rueful. I guess even McLane would have liked to hang it on Lanier.

Abruptly again he switched the subject back to horses. “You still going to use Billy Winston Saturday?”

“Sure, if it’s just a bump on the head. We’ll have to get out a rush order for a substitute if it’s more than that.”

“The show must go on, huh?”

“For cryin’ out loud, McLane, what’re you after? Yeah, the race goes. Whit’ll still run his horse, Lanier’ll run his, and we’ll see what’s what. But if you think it means I’m not sorry or broken up that Ginger’s dead, you’re crazy. Of all people, I wouldn’t have wanted—”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. By the way, let me see your gun.”

“What the—” At first I wondered what he was driving at now, but then I realized that of course he had to ask. “Just a minute.”

I rolled to the little deal table and pulled it out of the drawer. “Here. It hasn’t been cleaned in a week. And it hasn’t been fired.” He hefted it. “Where’d you get this little baby? Thought you had a .38. This thing—” He looked at my two-and-a-half-inch-barrel special and sniffed. “Takin’ up shootin’ mice?”

“Aw, McLane. You know how it is. Everybody around here knows I have a license to carry a gun. Everybody knows I’m an ex-cop. Everybody knows I can shoot. Just their knowing that is as good as having a cannon. Or at least I thought it was, before—”

“Nice little gun, though,” he said. “Where’s your other one? Don’t tell me you found it too heavy to hold, with those big strong arms of yours.”

“What other—”

“The .38 with the five-inch barrel you used to have.”

“Hell, Lieutenant, I don’t know. I guess I’ve got it packed in a trunk somewhere — you know, for old times’ sake. I had it on the force. But a hip holster in a wheelchair isn’t the easiest — that’s why I changed to the smaller gun.”

He smiled, but it was a smile that didn’t quite reach his face.

“Sure. But get it for me, will you? You know how it is,” he added, with just a hint of apology, “we have to touch all the bases. Some goon might’ve lifted it from you.”

“No chance. But let me see. Oh, yeah. Maybe over here.” I wheeled myself to the closet and leaned over to plow through the steamer trunk on the floor. I tossed junk every which way, digging down to the bottom for it. “No luck here. Oh. I wonder if I could’ve stuck it in that suitcase up on top.”

I reached around to the peg on the door for my cane, but it wasn’t there. I can get around a little with the help of that cane, but I can’t lift myself without it. Where the devil was it? Oh, my God...

“Missing something, Paul?” McLane asked softly.

Panic started to hit me, and a sickening feeling that McLane was figuring it out. I didn’t even want to turn around. I could hear the certainty growing; I didn’t want to see it, too.

“I found the cane in Dunbar’s barn, Wyman. Found the gun, too, shoved down in a feed bin. Haven’t had time yet to run a check on it, but I guess we know what it’ll show. She was killed with a .38. I suppose you meant to go back for it later. No purse, but I expect you’ll fill us in about that. — You know, it threw me a minute ago when Happ told me the girl was shot from above. I figured you couldn’t possibly have done it. She was a tall girl, and you in a wheelchair or out of it couldn’t have gotten that angle on her. Until I thought of the cane. If you’d tripped her with it, and she was down—”

“Oh, shut up.” I wheeled slowly around, biting my lip and trying to keep back the tears while I fought for a little dignity. It was almost a relief making my confession, except that I couldn’t undo the part where beautiful Ginger Dunbar was dead.

I expected McLane to be disgusted with “a cop gone wrong,” or at least angry, or even proud of himself that he’d solved it so quickly. Instead, he looked sorry.

“Hard to figure you, Paul. I thought you were sweet on her.”

“I LOVED HER! McLane, believe me, I didn’t want to kill her! I lost my head. She came in while I was giving a little something to Ginger Peachy—”

“You were hopping up her horse?”

“No, slowing her down. Just a little. And the race wasn’t until Saturday, so’s I could tell by the times how much difference there’d be against Little Bit, and—”

He finished for me. “And make the safest bet, is that it?”

It sounded so cut-and-dried.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s it. No permanent damage, you see—”

“Except for Ginger. She got a little ‘permanent damage’ done her, wouldn’t you say?”

“McLane, she walked in and grabbed for me and grabbed for the horse. I just tripped her with the cane, and I guess it was old habit, I whipped out the gun—”

“And shot her point-blank while she was lying flat on her face? Some nice ‘old habit’ you picked up.”

“I mean, I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking of her as her, you see, not as Ginger, just as somebody — somebody—”

“Getting in your way. Boy, you must have wanted that safe bet pretty bad.”

“See, I was into some of the guys kind of heavy. Sal Verdi, for one. And Lanier — all I needed was one sure thing, and it looked so easy.”

McLane sighed. “You sure lost something somewhere along the line, didn’t you?”

McLane had his own gun out now, trained on me as he dialed for the squad.

“You know, your dumping her out there at the rail was kinda smart. If I hadn’t realized how strong you’d made your upper body it might not have occurred to me that a guy in a wheelchair could lift and haul her that far. You did a pretty good job messing up the ruts in the damp ground, too, with all that folderol of ‘looking for the bullet.’ I suppose you did drop a spent bullet there?” I nodded.

“Yeah. — Hello, Happ. Send the boys. What? Yeah, we got him. A track rat? I guess you could call him that. Just a fool who thought he could set up a sure thing.”

He hung up and brought out the cuffs.

“Say, clear up a point for me, Wyman. There should have been blood around where you killed her. How’d you get rid of it?”

“It was on the hay. I— I — fed it to the goat.”

“My God.” He shook his head. “Too bad for you y’missed the cane.”

I’m glad I didn’t have to see Whit Dunbar when we left.

I guess McLane had it right when he told the sergeant he’d nabbed a fool who’d thought he could set up a sure thing.