“It was a stupid lie,” I told him. I had found him right where I left him, in his office with a drink in his hand. It was as if he knew I would discover his lie of omission and was just waiting for me to come back. “If it was all over the grounds that you and Penny Hopkins were an item, you had to know I’d find out about it sooner or later and come back to you with it. Why lie about it?”
He shrugged his shoulders and took a sip from his drink. I was beginning to think he couldn’t answer a question without a drink in his hand.
Was he an alcoholic?
“I saw no reason to volunteer any information that wasn’t necessary. Besides, isn’t that an occupational hazard with you, being lied to?”
“Only by people who have something to hide.”
He stiffened and claimed, “I have nothing to hide, Po.” I was glad he had dropped the polite “Mister.” “I knew Benny Hopkins wouldn’t mention it to you because he’s furious at the idea. He wouldn’t admit to anyone that his daughter was in love with me. I saw no reason to mention it either.”
“What about you?”
He frowned. “What about me?”
“Are you in love with Penny Hopkins?”
This time he didn’t sip his drink, he set it down on the table with a bang and made a face.
“The girl is a pest, Po. For the record, we do not, as you put it, have a thing going. She may have a thing for me and that is what she has spread throughout the grounds.”
“Have you slept with her?”
“That’s none of your damned business, but I’ll answer it anyway. Yes, I have, on several occasions, but not recently. She still comes around, though. I only tolerate her because — ”
“Because of what?” I prompted.
He picked up his drink and sipped it. I fought an urge to knock it from his hand. “Because she’s dynamite in bed,” he finally finished.
It wasn’t what he was originally going to say, but that was all right. I was pretty sure I knew what he had been about to say, anyway.
“You’re sure you didn’t tolerate her because you knew it bothered her father?” I asked.
He was fixing himself another drink. “I don’t go out of my way to antagonize Benny Hopkins,” he insisted.
“What about Weatherwise?” I asked. Weatherwise was a filly Benjamin Hopkins had been very high on earlier in the year. He had tried several times to purchase her from the owner and at one point thought he had the deal set until someone outbid him.
That someone was Paul Lassiter.
“What about her?” he asked, defensively.
“The papers say you practically pirated her away from Hopkins. He said he knew what it would take to make her a winner, a big winner. You bought her and she hasn’t won a race yet.”
“That’s bullshit!” he snapped. “Nobody could make a winner out of that dud.” I guess no one likes to be reminded of their failures.
“If she was such a dud why did you buy her?”
He set his glass down with a bang again, but this one was filled more than the other had been and some of the liquid sloshed over onto his hand and desk. “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he said indignantly, drying his hand with his handkerchief.
Then something came to mind.
“Are you married?” I asked him.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” he asked, groping for his drink. I took that to be a “yes.”
“What does your wife think of all this talk about you and Penny Hopkins?”
“My wife never comes to the track, Mr. Po,” he answered, getting polite again, “and I’ll add that my wife is no concern of yours.”
He was wrong; she was my concern. Maybe she knew about Penny, and was jealous. Maybe she had something to do with Penny’s disappearance.
I walked up close to him and pointed my finger at him.
“You’ve succeeded in making me think you have something to hide, Lassiter,” I told him. “If you do, I’ll find out. I promise.”
I felt better about not liking him now. I’d given him his chance and he’d blown it.
I left him and went to find Hopkins. He, too, had lied to me, also a lie of omission.
What I wasn’t being told in this case was turning out to be more interesting than what I was being told.