The Stars Shine Bright

by Sibella Giorello

  “Raleigh?”

  Sad. That’s what I felt. Not just the self-pity. It was the realization: maybe, just maybe, I loved DeMott for the way he dealt with my crazy mother.

  “Raleigh?”

  But that wasn’t love. Not romantic love. Not the love DeMott felt for me.

  “Raleigh, their time is almost up.”

  I nodded, vaguely.

  “We need to leave before she sees you,” he said.

  Gratitude and sadness. That’s what I felt. And it made me wonder.

  What about love?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sunday at dawn, the Ghost was the only car in the Point Defiance parking lot. The air smelled of cedar and cloistered dew.

  I looked at Madame. “Stay close.”

  We ran over the woodland trails, our steps almost silent on the soft forest floor. Overhead a canopy of evergreen boughs blocked the gray light, making the world feel secluded and beautiful. Madame ran beside me, pulling hard for the first miles. When we reached a rose garden, the trail was carpeted with blush-colored petals. Every step perfumed the air, and the fragrance lured something from my mind. Twain’s words about forgiveness—it was the flower shedding its fragrance on the heel that crushes it.

  When we reached the beach, I couldn’t tell if I was panting or crying. Madame splashed into the cold water, tail high and happy, but I turned away, walking toward a sandstone cliff. The brown and taupe layers rose above the water, as evenly spaced as pages in a book. Kneeling in the rocky soil, I listened to the water lapping at the shore and smelled the briny chloral odor of the kelp that high tide left behind. I closed my eyes. Last night, after leaving Western State, DeMott and I ate dinner with Eleanor. The two of them charmed each other. Of course. Eleanor with Southern words purloined from the playwright, and DeMott entertaining her with tales of Weyanoke. For the most part I remained quiet because my mind kept flashing with images of my mother. The once-proud and ladylike Nadine Shaw Harmon looked like any other mental patient. Lost, lonely. Loaded with pharmaceuticals. And Felicia Kunkel, watching over her. All through dinner I resisted the urge to pick up the phone and call Aunt Charlotte. Surely she was behind Felicia’s new job. When we took the cruise to Alaska, Aunt Charlotte had hired her to house-sit her place on Capitol Hill. But I couldn’t call, not while undercover. And when dinner ended, DeMott and I sat on Eleanor’s porch, talking for a while. We studiously avoided the topic of my mother. And DeMott’s internal clock was three hours ahead. I left at nine, heading straight for bed.

  But I barely slept. All my dreams circled the asylum. Freud showed up calling me a liar, liar, liar. My mother appeared dressed in a clown costume. She stood next to DeMott who wore a tux and tapped his watch and told me we were late. Every time I woke up, I couldn’t breathe.

  Now I pressed my knees into the coarse sand and asked for help.

  No. That wasn’t right. I begged. I begged for wisdom from the same God who created my mother in all her perfect imperfection. Who placed DeMott in my life. Who promised that if I asked in His name, it would be done. I asked for the answer: If I wasn’t the fiancée DeMott deserved, did that mean I wouldn’t be the wife he needed? Or would things settle down with time, when I moved back to Virginia, went to live at Weyanoke, and . . . something wet touched my hand. I opened my eyes. Madame pushed her nose beneath my clasped fingers. Her fur was soaked with salt water. And she was happy. Ready to run again.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  We finished five miles and I drove back to Thea’s Landing, smuggling her warm body into the building under my windbreaker. Something about the condo’s sleek atmosphere and modern attitude told me dogs weren’t welcomed. And right now I didn’t have time to renegotiate a lease that would end when Raleigh David disappeared, in about a week. Upstairs, I fed the dog, then showered and dressed myself in the nice clothes that didn’t belong to me. Just before leaving, I took a pillow off my bed and carried it into the living room, placing it inside Madame’s dog crate.

  “Please,” I said.

  She looked at me as if I’d offered a final meal before the electric chair.

  “Just for today. I promise to come home as soon as possible.”

  She tiptoed into the box, her head hanging low between her shoulders. When I locked the wire door, I felt like a complete creep.

  Eleanor demanded we eat breakfast with her, right after she gave DeMott a tour of the Hot Tin barn. It was just past 9:00 a.m. when I found them touring the stables like old friends. She had paired fire-engine red ballet slippers with a midnight blue pantsuit—rhinestones on the pockets—while DeMott was dressed for the Kentucky Derby. Chinos, another white oxford, the blue seersucker jacket, and a deep blue tie that graciously matched Eleanor’s outfit. She kept both hands wrapped around his arm.

  I was coming up from behind, about to call out, when I saw DeMott stop at Stella Luna’s stable. Eleanor, sensing something, let go of his arm. He moved toward the horse, and Stella responded by craning her neck to the side, as if reading him the way children and animals and prophets search people for signs of dishonesty. Slowly he lifted his hand, and after a moment the horse pressed her face into his palm. She closed her eyes, and my stomach tingled. DeMott’s many gifts included a gentle touch. That cultured strength. Somebody once tried to apply the cliché to him—about still waters running deep—but that wasn’t it. DeMott was deep water capable of holding perfectly still.

  Until my cell phone erupted. That awful version of “Camptown Races” doo-dahed through the barn. All three of them turned to look at me. DeMott, Eleanor, Stella. But only DeMott’s eyes were full of pain.

  “Sorry,” I said, rummaging through the bag. Please, God, don’t let this be Jack. Please. “Hello?”

  “You ordered roasted pork on a ciabatta roll?”

  Lucia Lutini.

  I felt relieved and almost laughed. But DeMott’s hand was slipping from the horse, and Eleanor rushed to his side, once more wrapping her ringed fingers around his arm. I gave a signal, indicating the call would just take a moment, but Eleanor was already lifting her chin, delivering choice words to his wounded Southern sensibility.

  “Hang on a second,” I told Lucia, walking out from under the barn eaves.

  The horses were coming back from training runs and had been hooked to the hot walkers. They circled the sawdust with prancing strides, long legs sashaying like supermodels. I headed toward the big tractors sitting idle beside the maintenance hut.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Mr. Cooper got himself kicked out of Saratoga.”

  “What for?”

  “What was never proven, but the accusation was sufficient. You may have noticed, the racetracks don’t believe in innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt. They operate on the presumption of guilt.”

  “Without search warrants.”

  “Correct. Suspicion alone is probable cause. And in the case of Mr. Cooper, he was suspected of throwing his races.”

  “Wouldn’t that destroy a trainer’s career?”

  “A trainer, perhaps. But Bill Cooper was a jockey.”

  I lifted my hand, pretending to shield the sun from my eyes. I tried to imagine Cooper as a jockey. He was short. Probably five-two without those cowboy boots. His torso had been colonized by middle age, but now that expression in his cold eyes made more sense. Cooper was a high-performance athlete, ruthlessly competitive. He wanted to win at any cost. Maybe even death. “How’d he throw races?”

  “He was suspected of pulling back on the reins.” Lucia, the profiler, offered a quick biography. Cooper was a working-class kid who got a job as a pony rider at Saratoga, the prestigious track in upstate New York. Hardworking, strong, and competitive, Cooper rose up the ranks to become a jockey. “He made his first mount at sixteen. By seventeen he was making good money. But by nineteen he apparently switched to losing. Care to guess why?”

  The simplest answer was always money. But after watching Cooper deal with Eleanor, my in
stincts told me there was another element. Our records showed Cooper was divorced, chronically late with child support, and upside down on his mortgage. But that wasn’t what scratched at my mind. It was his simmering servitude. The resentment that seemed to radiate from his tight neck.

  “Money,” I said. “But money he’s forced to make.”

  “Very good. He began losing because he owed somebody. I’ll give you a hint. They are men who reside in various Manhattan boroughs and whose last names contain far too many vowels.”

  “The Mob?”

  “Correct. Organized crime.”

  I turned, looking down the median between the barns. Grooms removing the thoroughbreds from the hot walkers and adding others. Ashley was among them, leading KichaKoo to an empty station. The horse nodded its brown head up and down as though agreeing with something the girl said. But Ashley wasn’t speaking. She looked bedraggled; the blond hair looked flat as a melted yellow crayon.

  “Do we have any hard evidence to support Cooper’s connection to the Mob?” I asked.

  “Yes. But it’s not what you’re thinking of.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Despite my background as a CPA, I consider signed napkins from my father’s restaurant official. Should any of this information prove incorrect, my sources have enjoyed their last sandwich at Donato’s.”

  “Your dad would cut them off.”

  “Abassolutamente.”

  “How did Cooper get here, from Saratoga?”

  “Unfortunately, my sources couldn’t answer that question. But we can assume he paid off the debt. Or he is still paying.”

  “We can assume that?”

  “He’s still alive, Raleigh.”

  Point taken.

  “However,” she continued, “I did find out when he arrived at Emerald Meadows. Five years ago, as a trainer. He worked for that famous female jockey, the one who still makes the papers—”

  “Claire Manchester?”

  “Yes. Eleanor Anderson hired him away from that barn.”

  I thanked her and hung up, then spent several moments gazing at Mount Rainier and trolling the information through my mind, committing it to memory. But something moved over to my right. By the maintenance hut. I saw a dark-haired man. Young. Shaking his head back and forth, flinging a ponytail across his shoulders. He paused to puff on a cigarette.

  I moved over to the tractors. The front tires so big the tops were level with my head. The nubby treads held bits of turf soil. When I pinched the sediment, sliding it between my fingers, I could feel the combination of sand, silken clay, and a creamy loam that came from the finest silts. And the fineness of those grains bothered me. How did the tractor driver fail to notice that buried tube?

  When I came around the other side of the machine, the pony-tailed smoker was blowing his nose and staring at the tissue.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Yeah, hi.” He threw his cigarette into an empty oil drum that sat by the door. “Help you?”

  A contrail of gray smoke rose from the oil drum. It smelled like sweat socks and moss, a stench that explained his expression. Half annoyed, half scared. He had just thrown away a joint.

  “I’m looking for the track’s groomer.”

  “Which one?”

  “Whoever worked Thursday.” I smiled. “My aunt’s horse was in the first race. SunTzu.”

  “You must be Raleigh.”

  I felt a burst of adrenaline, caught off guard. “Have we met?”

  “No.”

  “How did you know who I was?”

  “SunTzu, he belonged to Eleanor Anderson. And everybody’s been talking about her niece being in the barn fire. You said the horse belonged to your aunt. I can put it together.”

  He leaned back against the building. Mr. Casual. His eyelids were swollen, like sandbags holding back the murky color of his brown eyes, and he couldn’t hold my gaze. He watched the smoke rising from the oil drum. The music playing inside the maintenance hut sounded tinny, bouncing against the corrugated metal sides.

  “And you are . . . ?”

  “Gordon.”

  “Were you driving the tractor that morning?”

  “Yeah.” He blew his nose again and once more stared at the Kleenex. It was stained with blood.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Hey, no biggie.” He shoved the tissue into his back pocket.

  “Thursday morning, did you notice anything amiss?”

  “Amiss?”

  “Different, out of order, not right.” I wasn’t sure how many synonyms his pot brain required. “Did you feel any weird bumps in the turf?”

  “There’s always bumps. That’s why we groom it.”

  “Right.”

  “But we’re not pressing down real hard. Pack the turf and it’s rough on the horses. They can break an ankle. Like that.” He snapped his fingers, indicating sudden fracture. “And you don’t want it too loose either, ’specially when it’s dry. Horses start running and it’s a dust storm. Or it rains and you’ve got a mud bowl.”

  “It rained that day.”

  “Yeah. But we only got some puddles. Because I did a good job grooming. And I didn’t see anything weird.” He squinted, puffy eyes almost closing. “Wait. Is somebody blaming me for what happened to the horse?”

  “No.”

  “’Cause I heard they already hauled Harrold off for questioning. The starter? I heard he might go to jail.” He wrinkled his nose and reached into his pocket again. After giving the Kleenex another blow, he once again stared at the blood that came out.

  “Gordon?”

  He looked up.

  “Are you in charge of grooming?”

  “No, my dad is. Gordon. Senior. I’m junior.”

  “Is he here?”

  “No. My mom’s sick. He gets here at three in the morning. Then he goes home at eight to get her to the doctor.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Something about her blood. It’s not working right.” He shrugged. But it was the gesture of a kid who got slugged and insisted it didn’t hurt.

  “Maybe I can call your dad.”

  “He’s pretty busy, running her back and forth to Fred Hutch.”

  “Where?”

  “Fred Hutchinson. The cancer place, in Seattle? He doesn’t want to leave her alone.”

  “He sounds like a good man. Thanks for your help, Gordon.”

  “That’s it?” He looked surprised, then annoyed. He lost a joint—for this?

  I smiled and lifted my fist for a bump good-bye. As I was walking away, I heard a sudden burst of metal music. Then it disappeared. When I turned around, Gordon was no longer standing by the back door. Circling back with a frown that said I’d forgotten to ask something, I walked up to the oil drum. The music was louder now, and clearer, rocking through the corrugated steel. Mick Jagger was pleased to meet me, hoped he guessed my name. I leaned over the oil drum. No burning joint remained. Gordon must have grabbed it. But there was some trash in there. Soda cans, foil wrappers that looked like they came from the Quarterchute. And some bloody Kleenexes.

  Holding my breath, I pinched a white corner, carefully lifting it from the drum and thanking Gordon for his DNA sample.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I was hurrying back to the barn, ready to apologize to DeMott for running off, but I never got the chance.

  Sal Gag stood next to my fiancé and asked, “How many horses?”

  “Twelve.” DeMott stepped aside, giving Ashley room to walk Cuppa Joe from his temporary stall to the hot walker. She still looked glum.

  “A dozen ponies is a good start.” The bookie watched Ashley. “Got plans for more?”

  “My sister does. She’s the equestrian. She bought her first horses from Rokeby.”

  Sal Gag’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean, Sea Hero—that Rokeby?”

  “Her husband grew up just down the road from the farm.”

  It sounded so quaint—“down the road.” But Rokeby F
arm belonged to billionaire Paul Mellon, whose thoroughbred Sea Hero took the Triple Crown. And the man DeMott was referring to, his sister MacKenna’s husband, was a dubious achiever named Stuart Morgan. I had strong reservations about Stuart, but they paled in comparison to Sal Gag, perched at the top of my suspect list. And now I was worried about what DeMott had revealed, what information might have slipped out. And where did Eleanor go?

  “Hi,” I said.

  DeMott turned around. “There you are.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “Mr. Gagliardo was just telling me how rough it’s been for you.”

  And this is what a heart attack feels like.

  He said, “No wonder Eleanor kept changing the subject last night.”

  “Speaking of Eleanor,” I said, smiling like a wooden puppet, “where is she?”

  “She demanded her breakfast.”

  “Your aunt,” Sal Gag said, shaking his head. “Ten sharp.”

  DeMott squeezed my shoulder. “I told her I wanted to wait for you. But she said something about everyone being sentenced to solitary confinement inside their own skin. Whatever that means.”

  My hands felt hot, clammy. I glanced at my watch. By the time we reached the private dining room, Eleanor would be finishing her dry toast. “I know where we can get a great bacon-and-egg sandwich.”

  “Let me guess. Burger King?”

  “No, not Burger King.”

  “I’m not eating at McDonald’s.”

  I glanced at Sal Gag. He watched us with a shark-like smile. But DeMott wasn’t getting it.

  He said, “Raleigh takes in more grease than Jiffy Lube. But I can’t handle that food.”

  “You kids are welcome to eat with me.” He was still smiling when he said it. “I got a private table.”

  “Oh no,” I said, “we—”

  “We would love to,” DeMott said, giving my shoulder a good hard squeeze, letting me know my manners were failing again. “We would enjoy that very much. Thank you.”