Read Online Murder Spins the Wheel by Brett Halliday - Free Book Online

promises.”
    “That’s not what I heard.”
    “I wasn’t dumb enough to believe them. Please. You don’t know as much as you think.”
    The redheaded girl flounced off.
    Rose went on to Shayne, “Vince slept with her once, just once. She thinks that makes her the local expert on Vince Donahue. Everybody thinks I’m biased about him, but I know exactly what he’s like. You thought Grace was the one he’d go for, didn’t you? Yes, you did. You weren’t even going to ask me if I knew him. But she couldn’t give him what he needed. Everybody thought it was temporary with me. As I very well know, I’m not too terrific. I do all right in bed, but I can’t carry on a conversation about nothing, like some girls. And he told people it was just an in-between stand with me, the nice thing about it was that I didn’t make him work. That’s not why it happened. He needed somebody to listen to him who loved him. Who knew he was a heel in a lot of ways, but who loved him just the same. He told me about those other girls because he couldn’t boast about them to anybody else. And after a while he cut out the other girls. Well, I don’t want to fool myself. He’s like butter on a hot skillet, and he always will be. Mr. and Mrs. Al Naples—there was a combination I couldn’t beat. What would you call Al Naples? A mobster, I reckon. Vince couldn’t ever be that important himself, because you have to work your way up and he can’t stick to one thing that long. But he could get a tiny piece of it, do you see, Mr. Shayne?—through Naples’ wife.”
    “How did she turn out?”
    “She was very good,” Rose said without irony. “I mean sexually. She’d been so scared of her husband that she’d never had anybody before. Vince said it was like turning loose a skyrocket. They had some busy afternoons. Vince wasn’t exaggerating. I was in a position to know.”
    “The more I hear about Vince Donahue,” Shayne said, drinking, “the less I expect to like him.”
    “That’s the trouble with talking about him! I can’t explain him to you and I’m not going to try. I think the reason the sex part was so good with them, if you want me to go on, was that it was so dangerous. Naples almost walked in on them a dozen times. Boy! One time Vince had to hide in the closet. That sounds funny, but it isn’t so funny when you think that the husband’s Al Naples, and he used to murder people. They both knew what would happen if he caught them, and I couldn’t compete with that. So far they’ve been lucky, but there is such a thing as the law of averages.”
    “And he can’t catch them together if Vince is in jail?”
    “That. Other things, too.”
    She finished her drink and shook her head when he looked at her to see if she wanted a refill. “I was so worried I tried to get him to stop seeing her. I never did that with any of the other women, doesn’t that prove I’m not really jealous? ‘Realistic’ is a better word. She gave him money to move out of here. He didn’t want to go, but I sort of made him. I thought if they had a place of their own to meet it might not be quite so risky. They can’t deliberately take chances. I told him not to tell me or anybody else his new address. He’s been making some new connections lately and I thought—well.”
    “What new connections, Rose?”
    “I can’t tell you everything. There’s a limit to how much trouble I want to get him into.”
    “Did he have a gun?”
    “Never! He was very snooty about people who went in for that kind of thing.”
    “Do you know anybody named Pedro Sanchez or Tom Pond?”
    She groaned. “Oh, no.”
    “Does that mean you know them?”
    “I met Pete once. I didn’t know he was in town. I have to stop talking now. I think it was all right to tell you about Mrs. Naples—you could have picked that up from any number of people. But I want to ask you a favor.”
    “You don’t want me to tell him I’ve talked to you?”
    “That’s right. I