“So just how did you come up with me?”
“I was at the bar with a client last night when you came in with Tom’s sister-in-law. She started crying and you took her out. I told my client I’d be right back. I saw you unlock One-O-nine and took a look at your plate and saw it was a rental number. I got your name at the desk. I have a cop friend I give some work to when he’s off duty and he tailed you today and phoned me when you pulled into the Pike house. I met him here and he went through your room while I hung around the house phone to give him a warning call if you got back too soon. He didn’t find a thing that would give us a clue. I don’t have any official status, of course. And even if I did, I could still get in real trouble taking you in for a shakedown. Penny and I worked out the idea of her seeing if she could pick you up. I knew about the opened bottle from what my cop friend told me. Penny had something she thought would work fast. While you were eating I spiked your bottle.”
“How did you get in?”
“With the passkey from my cop friend. He’s got a master key for every big motel in the area.”
I looked at them. “You people are very diligent and so on. And damned stupid. So if I didn’t want to get picked up? So I wanted to come back here all by myself and kill the bottle?”
“I was five minutes away. She was going to phone me and I was going to come over, use the phone, and get you out of the room on some pretext. She was going to use the passkey and dump the bottle or steal it.”
“Because,” she said in a small voice, “to make one drink strong enough, I had to put enough in so that all of it would have killed you, through suppression of the sympathetic nervous system.”
“Why did Pike give you the twenty thousand?” Holton asked.
“Amateur to the end,” I said. “I never met him until today. Can I prove it? No, sir. I can’t prove it. Do I want to try to prove it? No. I can’t be bothered. Do you want to try to prove it? Go ahead, Holton.” I spun the cylinder of his Police Positive. Full load. I handed it to him. “The doctor was probably a nice guy. And you are probably fairly nice people yourselves. But you two are a nurse and a joiner and if you found somebody who really killed the doctor, he’d probably kill the two of you also. You belong on serial television. If I had killed the doctor, I would rap your skulls, put you in the trunk of the car, and drop you into one of the biggest sinkholes I could find and cave some of the limestone sides down onto you.”
He was flushed as he got to his feet, stuffing the revolver into his belt. “I don’t need lectures from some damned drifter.”
“Stay busier. Join more clubs.”
“Do I have your permission to go, Mister McGee!”
“Nothing could give me more piercing delight.”
“Come on, Pen.”
“Go home to Janice,” she said. “You’ve been out enough nights.”
“Look, I’m sorry I blew my stack when he said…uh–”
“You were so ready, darling. You were just aching to believe something like that, something nasty. You want to think that because you got to first, second, third base, and home, anybody can. Anytime. Go to hell, Rick. You are a mean lousy little human being and you have a dirty little mind.”
“Are you coming with me or aren’t you?”
“I’m going to stay right here for a little while, thank you.”
“Either you come with me–”
“Or you’ll never forgive me, and we’re through, and so on. Oh, baby, are we ever through! If there’s no trust, there’s no nothing at all. Good-bye, Rickie dear. All the way home to Janice you can dwell on all the nasty things you think are probably going on right here on this bed.”