Pigs Get Fat (Trace 4) Read online

  “You’re crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Hell, I only met Collins once.”

  “That’s true. When you came here with Mrs. Collins to bash in her husband’s head. You and Judith took care of that policy all by yourselves well before that. But I think the mud on the galoshes will prove you’ve been here before.”

  “You dirty…” Mabley lunged at Trace but stopped as Deputy Sheriff Carey pulled his pistol from his holster.

  “Hold on, Mr. Mabley. Let’s just take a look at those galoshes,” he said.

  The group walked to the gray Lincoln and Mabley opened the trunk. The galoshes were there, clean as the day they came from the factory.

  Carey looked at Trace, who shrugged. “Sometimes people wash the mud off their galoshes. There’ll be traces of the red mud on them anyway, or in the car.”

  “A lot of theories,” Carey said. “But I don’t see anything that’ll stand up.” He holstered his gun again.

  “One last thing,” Chico said. “And it’ll stand up.”

  “What’s that?”

  Chico pulled a sheaf of papers from her big handbag. “Take a look at the insurance policy. Beneath the signatures.”

  “The date,” Carey said.

  “Right. The date. And that’s the same date that Thomas Collins was in Las Vegas with Laurie Anders. And here’s the proof.” She pulled out the still shot of Collins and Laurie taken at the Fontana Hotel casino by the overhead security cameras.

  “This picture was taken from a casino videotape,” Chico said. “See the date and time are on the photo. They’re right from the TV tape. Collins couldn’t be in Mabley’s office and in the casino at the same time.”

  She turned and smiled at Mabley.

  Mrs. Collins began to weep.

  “I think we had better all go to headquarters,” Carey said. “And I think I should warn you two,” he said to Mabley and Mrs. Collins, “that anything you say may be used against you. You have a right—”

  “They have a right to get out of here,” Tammy Collins said. “My mother’s not going anywhere.” She turned. “Julio, you know what to do.”

  Julio moved toward Carey. “I hate flatfoots,” he said.

  Trace tapped him on the shoulder, and when Julio turned, Trace put a big fist into his face. The weight lifter fell over backward like a tree into the mud

  “Not bad,” Carey said.

  “I hate people who mangle the English language,” Trace said.

  29

  Three hours later, Trace came out of the sheriff’s office and got into his car, where Chico was munching a hot dog.

  “Where did you find food in the middle of this desert?” Trace asked.

  “I saw a vendor driving by. I jumped out and flagged him down. What happened?”

  “They admitted it finally,” Trace said. “Mrs. Collins said that her husband was crazy and getting crazier. She suspected he was stealing money from the firm and that was okay with her. She was only in the marriage for the money anyway. But when he started flaunting all his other women in front of her she was afraid it was all going to vanish.”

  “How’d she meet Mabley?”

  “That snotty kid told us about it when she mentioned that her mother belonged to some artisan’s craft league. Mabley had a citation from that same outfit as a donor. They met there. The bat’s from one of Mabley’s Little League teams.”

  “They should have just killed Collins and had done with it and not jerked around with the insurance,” Chico said.

  “That was the mistake. They figured as long as they were going to kill him anyway they might as well get a few extra dollars out of it. It reminds me of something my father told me a long time ago.”

  “What was that?” Chico asked.

  “Sarge said, ‘Pigs get fat but hogs get slaughtered.’ These two were hogs.”

  Trace chuckled as he drove off. “It must have driven them crazy, them expecting me to keep finding something, and me finding it but not telling them about it. They kept trying to throw suspicion on Mandy—and they didn’t even know Mandy, she was just a name—or Laurie. They didn’t care which. And they wanted me around as an alibi. ‘Of course, Mrs. Collins had nothing to do with her husband’s death. Didn’t she ask Mr. Tracy to look into his disappearance?’ Jerks.”

  Chico said, “I bet you’re going to have one wonderful time calling Walter Marks and telling him about this, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll gloat. Groucho gave me my first clue.”

  “What was that?” Chico asked.

  “When Mabley said that Groucho had told him I was the best investigator in the insurance business. That’s when I knew Mabley was a liar,” Trace said.

  When Trace came out of the shower, Chico walked through the connecting doors into his room.

  “My mother’s left,” she said.

  “Left? Left where?”

  “She’s gone to Hawaii. With Mr. Nishimoto. They just called from the airport. She sends you her love.”

  “And you wouldn’t share a room with me,” Trace said. “What are they doing in Hawaii?”

  “Another convention. And Mr. Nishimoto’s got a computer factory on Maui and a twenty-five-room house on his own beach.”

  “Sounds like your mother could make a career out of going to conventions,” Trace said.

  “Or seeing Mr. Nishimoto,” Chico said.

  “Yeah,” Trace said. He looked out the window toward the street.

  “What’s the matter?” Chico asked.

  “I was just thinking. I suppose you’d be happy with a Japanese zillionaire too, wouldn’t you?”

  “No way,” Chico said. “Too short. I wouldn’t feel right if I couldn’t stare at a blond barbarian armpit while I was dancing.”

  Trace kissed her. “I’m a lucky man,” he said.

  “And a war hero too,” Chico said.

  “Banzai,” he yelled, and scooped her up and carried her to the bed.