Read Online Murder Is My Business by Brett Halliday - Free Book Online Page B

it.” He hesitated, and then went on in a querulous tone: “What I don’t savvy is why Towne got you up here to stir up a stink. Not after he went to all that trouble to make it look like an accident. No, sir, I don’t savvy that.” He poked Shayne’s knee with a lean forefinger. “Knowin’ Jeff Towne like I do, I’d guess he’d want to leave sleepin’ dogs lay.”
    Shayne reached for the bottle, and the old man held out his glass. Shayne poured a big slug into it and sweetened his own drink. He set the bottle back and said, “You know Jeff Towne, then?”
    “I usta know him right well. Yes, sir, I guess you might say right well.”
    “He wants to be elected mayor,” Shayne explained. “Running down a soldier at a time like this isn’t a very good way to win votes.”
    “That’s just the p’int.” Josiah Riley waggled his head triumphantly. “Why’d he do it, then?”
    Shayne’s face remained expressionless. “It was an accident.”
    “That’s what he hoped the voters’d think,” Riley agreed. “Then I reckon he got scared an’ called you in to help him out, hey?”
    Shayne shrugged and asked abruptly, “What has all this to do with your reason for wanting to see me?”
    “You might say it’s why I’m here, Mr. Shayne. Yes, sir, you might say that. Jeff Towne’s payin’ you plenty, I reckon, comin’ here from New Orleans and all.”
    Shayne said, “I generally get well paid.”
    “Yes, sir,” Josiah Riley cackled admiringly. “A man can see that.” He looked around the hotel room. “Livin’ here in a fancy hotel an’ all. Drinkin’ mighty fine bonded likker.” He emptied his glass and smacked his lips again. “And Jeff Towne’s the man that can pay plenty. I reckon he’d put out big to win that there election, all right.”
    Shayne said, “I guess he would.”
    “Well, sir, I’ve got a proposition, Mr. Shayne. Yes, sir, a straight out-an’-out proposition. All I wanta know is — does the doctor say the soldier was dead before Towne’s car hit him?”
    Shayne shrugged. “The Free Press will be out onthe streets in a few minutes and you can read all about it. It isn’t any secret. The soldier was dead, Riley.”
    The old prospector nodded his head and cackled happily. “ ’Tain’t no secret to me, neither. No, sir, I guess you might say I’ve known it all along. And Jeff Towne thinks that’ll put him in the clear, don’t he? Thinks he’ll win the election now that he’s proved his car didn’t even kill the lad?”
    “It looks that way,” Shayne agreed. “How do you come to know so much about it?”
    The old man wrinkled his face into a sly grimace. “That’d be tellin’. Yes, sir, it sure would be tellin’.”
    Shayne got up and put the cork back in the whisky bottle. “If that’s all you’ve got to say—”
    “Sit down, Mr. Shayne.” Josiah Riley’s voice no longer quavered. It was thin, but it had a harsh quality of command. “How much do you reckon it’d be worth to Jeff Towne to stay in the clear an’ win that election?”
    “You’ll have to talk to him about that.” Shayne remained standing with the bottle swinging gently from his fingers.
    For the first time fear showed on Riley’s face. “I wouldn’t take a chance on talkin’ to him.” The quaver was back in his voice. “Not to Jeff Towne. I reckon it’d be better for you to handle it.”
    “What?”
    “My proposition, Mr. Shayne. I’m an old man an’ I don’t want much. Two-three thousand, maybe. That’s all I’m askin’ to keep my mouth plumb tight shut.”
    “About what?”
    “About what I saw down to the river last Tuesday afternoon.”
    Shayne eased himself back down into his chair. He uncorked the bottle and tilted it over Josiah Riley’s glass. “What did you see down at the river Tuesday afternoon?”
    “Enough to bust Jeff Towne’s campaign for mayor higher’n a kite,” the old man told him confidently.
    “Exactly what did you see?”
    Riley shook his