The Scrambled Yeggs (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Read online

  That was as far as I got; he took another half step forward, put his big hand on my chest and shoved. I put my right leg behind me, eased back, then squeezed my right hand into a fist and bounced it off his jaw like a man driving a spike. He sort of folded backward and went down on his fanny.

  I said, “I forgot to tell you, Kash. Keep your paws off me.”

  He was tough. He sat there for a moment, shook his head, then started to scramble up off the floor.

  “Stop it! Stop it this minute.” It was Robin, standing between us and stamping on the floor with one of the four-inch heels. “You animals,” she said, “why don't you behave?” She turned to Kash and said sharply, “Eddie, you had no right to act like that. Not in my house. I'm ashamed of you. You'd better leave and come back when you're more sociable.”

  He got the rest of the way up, dusted off the seat of his pants, felt his chin, and walked over to me. He said grimly, “Okay, pal. But you just made a mistake. Well get together again.”

  He went out and slammed the door as if he wanted to buy a new one. He seemed to be always leaving right after I arrived. Maybe that was why he didn't enjoy my arriving. Maybe if I'd been indulging in a little tête-à-tête with Robin I'd have resented interruptions myself.

  I turned to Robin. “I'm sorry about that crack,” I said. “The guy irritated me a little and I didn't stop to think how it would sound to you.”

  “It's all right.” She curved her bright red lips into a smile that looked genuine. “He didn't have any reason to act like that. As a matter of fact, I don't blame you a bit; he got what he deserved. He'd just been here a few minutes himself and I guess he wasn't happy about the interruption.”

  “Can't say I blame him much.”

  Thank you, sir. He wanted me to drive down to Santa Anita with him. I didn't feel much like going anyway.” She walked over to the divan and sat down. “I'm sorry,” she said, “I didn't mean to leave you standing all this time. Sit down.” She patted the cushion beside her.

  I didn't need a second invitation.

  “What did you want to see me about this morning?”

  “I could say I just dropped by for your company.”

  “You could, but I wouldn't believe it, Mr. Scott.” She pressed her teeth gently into her lower lip and looked at me, “Or rather, Shell,” she said softly. “I think we'd discarded the Mr. Scott and Miss Brooks business last night.”

  I grinned at her. “That's right. I'd like a little more dope on your brother.”

  The smile went away. “What do you want to know?”

  “What was he doing back East, for instance?”

  “Why, he lived there for a long time. He had a job there. With the racetrack.”

  “Where did he live back East?”

  “New York,” she said. “The city.”

  “That's a good town,” I said. “Anything you want, New York's got it. Ever been there?”

  “No. I'd love to go sometime, though.”

  “Yeah, I know. People always say it's nice to go to, but I wouldn't want to live there. I don't know, I think I'd like living there myself. Joe worked out at the Arlington Park and Fair Grounds tracks, I suppose.”

  “Yes. That's what he said.”

  “He ever write you?”

  “At first. Not for the last couple of years or so.”

  I leaned back into the cushions and pulled out cigarettes. “Smoke?” I asked.

  Thanks, I have some here.” She took a long, cork-tipped cigarette from a box on a table at the end of the divan, and lit my cigarette and hers with a chromium, table-model lighter. I breathed smoke into my lungs.

  “Robin,” I said, “Joe wasn't really your brother, was he?”

  She looked at me steadily out of her wise brown eyes for a moment. “I thought you were working around to something like that,” she said quietly. “How did you know, Shell?”

  “I don't know, not really. Not till now. But I had a pretty good idea you weren't brother and sister.” I looked at her, perplexed. “What the devil made you think you could get away with a screwy, double-talk set-up like that anyway? Don't you know the cops will have all the dope on him—probably today? Maybe right now?”

  She rested her head on the back of the divan and said, “I don't know. I don't know. I just didn't think about it. I didn't know what else to say. I was worried and a little scared, too, I guess. The police came down and started firing questions at me. I had to identify his body. You know, you get a little confused.” She lifted her head and looked at me, “How did you know?”

  “For one thing, you should have made up some more names for Joe. Not that it's really a very important point. It just didn't seem logical that parents who'd name their girl Robin Victoria Ellen Brooks would stop at just Joseph for their boy. That's a biblical name, too, if it means anything. Not much, but it's one of those nagging ideas that sticks in your brain. Then the pictures, too.”

  “What about the pictures?

  “For one thing there wasn't much resemblance. You've got beautiful hair, Robin. I like it. But it's a striking shade of red. Joe was tow-headed, blond as I am. Of course you could have dyed your hair or hennaed it.

  “I do not,” she cried indignantly. “I'll have you know it's natural.”

  “No matter,” I told her. “Whether you did or not, it was only something else to wonder about a little. Then the inscriptions on the photos, ‘Robin—All My Love—Joe,’ not the kind of sentiment usually expressed by a brother to a sister. Then the pictures themselves. I saw four of them anyway, taken at night spots around town, plush places, more like a boy and girl on a date than brother and sister passing the time of night. Conceivable, but something else funny.”

  She dragged on her cork-tipped cigarette and blew smoke through her nostrils, “Anything else, Mr. Private Detective?”

  “Well, Arlington Park's in Chicago, and Fair Grounds is in New Orleans.”

  She took a deep breath and the yellow sweater assumed delightful proportions. “So you figured it out. No matter, I'd probably have told you about it anyway. Or the police—now I've had time to think about it. I suppose you think I'm awful?”

  “Why?”

  She turned toward me and her brown eyes flashed. “Because I was living with him, that's why. Because he wasn't my brother and he wanted to get married later, not right away, and because maybe I didn't want everybody to know I was living with a man I wasn't married to, and because—” her voice cracked and she bit deeply into her upper lip.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “I don't give a damn about your private life. But it looks a little funny, your trying to keep on fooling everybody, the police included, after he was killed.”

  “Put yourself in my place, Shell. Out of a clear blue sky there's a policeman at the door and he wants to know if I'm Miss Brooks; and when I tell him yes, he wants to know if my brother, Joseph Brooks, lives here and I almost have to say yes to that too. Then he says there's been an accident and they got Joe's name and address from papers in his wallet and I have to go down and identify him and he's dead.” Her voice rose higher and higher, then she stopped and put her head down on her knees and moaned, “Dead, dead, dead.” The long reddish hair fell down and brushed against her legs.

  “Now, now,” I said foolishly. “Maybe you'd better have a drink or something.”

  She raised her head and stared at me out of slightly moist brown eyes. “Yes,” she said emphatically, “I will have a drink.”

  She got up and walked over to the yellow and red and green bamboo bar. She turned around. “How about you? Join me?”

  “Thanks. I don't think so. It's a little early for me.”

  “It's early for me, too, and I hate to drink alone. Have something with me, Shell. Keep me company.”

  I said, “Well, it's against my better judgment, but Okay. I'll call it breakfast.” I thought of the nearly naked inside of my stomach. Maybe a little hair of the dog would help dress it up.

  She came back with two
brimming highball glasses. They were dark amber. I asked, “Did you dilute this at all? Or did this come straight from the bottle?”

  She smiled. “Weakling. I suppose you've got a lot more questions to ask me.”

  “Not many. You've explained most of your reasons for saying Joe was your brother. I don't blame you. And I certainly don't condemn you. That is, as long as you didn't kill him.”

  This time she was the one that didn't answer me. She swung her head around sharply to look at me, then her lips pressed together and she breathed sharply through her nose. Finally she said coolly, “You get no more drinks from me, Mr. Scott.”

  “Mr. Scott?”

  “Mr. Scott.”

  She swallowed from her drink and shuddered, “It is a little strong, isn't it?”

  I nodded.

  “You really think Joe was killed? Murdered, I mean?”

  I nodded again, “It looks that way. The police think so, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Several reasons. For one, he had so much liquor in him he should have been passed out instead of wandering around. Hardly in condition to get way out on Solano by himself. Funny.”

  “Yes, it is funny,” she said frowning.

  I was halfway through the tall drink by now and my stomach was beginning to feel warm as a coal heaver's pants. I said, “Who was he?”

  “Who was who?”

  “Joe. What was his real name?”

  “Oh, of course,” she said. “You wouldn't know that. His name was really Maddern. Joey Maddern. He wasn't much of a guy maybe, but I thought a lot of him. You'll probably find out anyway; he was wanted back in Illinois on a couple of bad check charges.”

  “Nice playmate.”

  She dropped her eyes, then raised them and looked at me, “Lay off, will you, Shell?”

  I said, “I'm sorry.” I was. There really didn't seem much reason for me to be getting tough.

  “That's another reason he liked being known as Joe Brooks,” she added. “Joe Brooks wasn't wanted by anybody.” She drained her drink, “Except me.”

  I kept up with her by taking the last swig of my almost straight bourbon. Some breakfast.

  “Something else,” I said.

  “Just a minute.” She took the two empty glasses over to the bar and came back with them filled again.

  “What are you trying to do, woman?” I asked her, “get me drunk?”

  “No, silly. I don't know; I just feel like getting a little stupid. Numb. Even if it is nine o'clock in the morning. What difference does it make what time you get stupid?”

  “Were you addressing me?”

  She ignored that. “What was the something else?”

  “Sort of personal. I'd like some more on this Kash character. What do you know about him?”

  “Like I told you, Shell, he placed bets with Joe—or Joey—when the tracks down here weren't running, or when he just wanted to make a couple of bets. Joey got to know him and Eddie'd come around to see him once in a while. They'd talk horse talk, have a few drinks. Maybe Joey took a few bets on the side. I don't think so, though. He did say he wished he had a horse-room of his own. One like Dragoon's.”

  “I can understand that,” I said. “There's big dough in it if its worked right. This Eddie, he's quite a horse-player, huh?”

  “He claims he's got a system now.” She smiled, “I suppose everybody has a system. Incidentally, don't think he's a complete boor, Shell. That might be one reason he's, well, irritable.”

  “The system's not so hot?”

  “Not so hot. Apparently it picks the wrong horses. But they're usually close, he says.”

  “Yeah. That's the worst kind of system. You pick them close and you think the next selection can't miss.” I grinned. “I know from experience. But I got cured quick. One other thing, how long had the two of you known Eddie?”

  “About four or five months. Joe met Eddie right after he started working for Dragoon. That was early last February. Right after Joey and I, well,” she swallowed at her drink, “after we met.”

  “Okay. Another thing. Did Joey have any folks?”

  “His mother lives somewhere in Illinois. Peoria, I think. I never met her. Joey wrote his mother once in a while. Wrote her last just a couple of weeks ago. Liked to keep in touch and he sent her money sometimes. His father died when he was a kid.”

  “I wonder if she knows about Joey.”

  “Golly, I hadn't thought about that. Probably not.”

  “When the police finish their check-up on him, they'll get in touch with her,” I said.

  “Shell.”

  “What?”

  “You seem like a pretty right kind of a guy. I'd like to tell you a few things. About me. Maybe you'd understand things better.”

  I sipped my drink and looked at her. Both the sipping and the looking were pleasant. I felt relaxed and comfortable. I wondered what was really going on behind those big brown eyes. I let her talk.

  “I never had much of anything when I was a kid; maybe you know what that means. Anyway, by the time I got out of high school for a little while, both my parents were dead and I had to start working if I wanted to eat. I had a lot of little jobs, never mind them all, but the last one was as a waitress in a cafe on Spring Street. These fat, greasy guys would come in and think for a dime tip they had the privilege of squeezing my leg or pinching me where they had no business pinching. One day Joey came in and we got to talking. Maybe you'd call him not much good, but he was all right. Really. At least he was good to me. He bought me things, took me nice places. We had a lot of fun together, went around to the clubs—you saw some of the pictures we had taken—some of the places I hadn't ever been to. We talked about getting married, but I guess he hadn't sowed all his wild oats, or maybe he just didn't want to settle down. Anyway, to make the story short, enter Joe Brooks,” She was quiet for a minute, worked on her drink, then asked, “Does that make me no good?”

  “Not in my book, Robin. Forget it.”

  “Thanks. I don't usually tell people my life history.”

  I looked at my empty glass, mildly surprised. While she'd been talking I'd chewed on the bourbon till there was nothing left but ice cubes. After I've had a certain, variable amount to drink, there comes out of nowhere a slow, warm flush of heat that creeps gently up my neck and over my face. I could feel it starting to creep and it felt good.

  Robin took the glass out of my hand and said, “Let's not be so gloomy.

  “Let's not.”

  She walked over to the bar again. I followed her, watching the pleated white skirt swirling gracefully above her shapely, nylon-covered calves. She started making more drinks.

  “Easy,” I said. “Easy does it.” The little bourbon atoms in my stomach seemed to be meeting relatives I'd consumed the night before. Reinforcements were arriving.

  She nodded, “Easy does it.” She handed me a drink not quite as dark as the previous ones and lit a cigarette.

  “This is the nuts,” I said. “I've got work to do.”

  “You're working.”

  I tried to rationalize that. “Working, yes. Fine work. Very pleasant, rosy work.”

  She smiled at me with full, red, red lips curving deliciously around white, even teeth. I took a big gulp of the drink. I could feel it slide down my throat like a ball of warm wax and plop into the rest of the wax in my stomach. My stomach gurgled pleasantly.

  Robin was standing just a step away; she took a step toward me. That left not much between us except us. She peered at me; her breath floated through her parted lips and whispered against my throat. “What happened to the top of your ear? Your left ear?”

  “Girl bit it off.” I wasn't really trying to be funny; I just wanted to see what would happen to her face.

  Nothing happened. She just took a big drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke into my face. “Shell, Shell,” she said, “you're cute. What happened to your nose?”

  “Girl bit it off.”

  She
laughed softly and tossed her head back and forth; masses of rusty-red hair whipped around her face. She opened her mouth, started to say something else, then changed her mind and giggled instead. She took another drag on her cigarette. This could go on all day. I walked back over to the divan and sat down before I got another faceful of smoke. She came over and sat down, too. Close. On my lap.

  I lowered the level of my drink an inch and a half and set the glass down on the rug.

  “Don't sit it there,” she said mischievously.

  “Why not?”

  “You might kick it, knock it over.”

  “How the hell am I going to kick it, knock it over?”

  “Silly.”

  I looked at her and she was breathing in my face and her tongue was pink and restless on her lower lip. Her wise brown eyes were close; I could see my face reflected in them a couple of inches away.

  “Shell,” softly.

  An inch away, “Shell, Shell, Shell,” a breath, a whisper.

  Then she was all over me and she was all narrowed eyes and clusters of thick red hair and warm wet lips and her smooth arms were around my neck and gentle fingernails, traced a delicate pattern on my cheek.

  Maybe I was drunk. What do you think?

  So who cares what you think?

  Chapter Eight

  I THREW a knot in my tie and Robin said lazily, “Shell, you know what?”

  “What?”

  “You're like a Greek god. A Greek god with a broken nose.

  “Get lost. Broken nose, yes.”

  “I mean it.” I turned and looked at her while she took a deep breath and sighed and stretched slowly. Interesting.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  I looked at my watch. “Almost noon. Quarter of. Time I was downtown. I haven't been inside the office since yesterday afternoon. Business will go to pot.”

  “Let it go to pot. Who cares?” Her eyes smoldered at me.

  “Gotta make a living, Robin. How would I buy bourbon?”

  “I suppose so. Come back and see me, Shell.”

  I grinned down at her, “I'll be back, you witch.”