The Stars Shine Bright

by Sibella Giorello

  “No.”

  “But that girl has worked here for years and there’s never been so much as a whiff of romance. It’s always been horses, horses, horses.”

  I searched for a towel.

  “I’ll bet it’s a jockey.” Eleanor shook her head. “Do you smell that?”

  “Yes. Stale vomit.” I found a clean towel, folded in a cardboard box.

  “Not that,” Eleanor said. “Bleach.” She leaned over the bed, sniffing. “The sire of her child probably has fleas.”

  I decided Ashley might need shoes too and found two pairs in the far corner. But they were different sizes. Women’s 7. And men’s 12. The soles were caked with mud. I lifted the men’s pair. “Have you ever seen a jockey wear shoes this big?”

  “My next guess would be a rodeo clown.”

  The mud caked on the bottoms had dried to a pale color, almost white. It looked like the mud I’d taken to the lab. And the mud I just collected from the open area in the barn. I thought of Rosser, tasting the soil for kaolinite, but I wasn’t so brave. I wondered who the shoes belonged to. Cooper’s feet weren’t that big. Nor Juan’s.

  Uncle Sal?

  I looked at Eleanor. “May I have your lipstick case?”

  “You may have the shirt off my back, but the resulting view would kill a man.”

  She removed a small red leather case from the pocket of her pantsuit. One of those ladies-of-a-certain-age, Eleanor considered lipstick a biological necessity. I took out the filamented brass canister inside the case, handed it back to her, then kneeled on the floor. I gently tapped the big shoes until the mud cracked. I placed an ounce or two inside the lipstick case.

  “That’s a Chanel case,” she said. “Not that you care.”

  “I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “I doubt it. But I don’t mind.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. It’s like Jim said in The Glass Menagerie. Other people are as common as weeds. But you are blue roses.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Eleanor drove her battleship to the private dining room, to keep DeMott company. I took Ashley’s clothes to the showers.

  And found her stripped naked.

  Sitting with her back against the tile wall, she watched the hot water pound her bare legs. The skin was marbled and red. I placed her clothes and the key on a shelf by the mirror, then I walked over to the faucets and twisted them off. I offered her my hand. She pulled herself up with no trace of self-consciousness. As if her nudity was nothing more than a horse without a saddle.

  “Sorry.” She rubbed the towel over her skin. “I don’t want to bug you. But there’s nobody else to ask.”

  “How about the sperm donor?”

  She shook her head, then tugged on the pink shirt. But before she pulled on the jeans, she grabbed the soaked pair from the floor and carefully removed a rubber band fastened around the waistband button. She reattached it to the dry jeans, pulled them on, and gave the slipknot a good tug, testing the improvised maternity wear.

  She looked at me. “You’re probably wondering who’s the lucky guy.”

  “I don’t believe in luck.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t. He wants me to get an abortion.”

  Condolences, indeed. “What about adoption?”

  “That wouldn’t help. We’re destroying the environment. There are too many people on this earth.”

  “That’s not the baby’s fault.”

  “But why add one more?”

  I ground my teeth into what I hoped looked like a polite smile. “Ashley, do you know how many people there are? Total, on the planet?”

  “It’s a lot.” She gathered her wet clothes.

  “There are about seven billion people.”

  “See? Too many.”

  “And all seven billion can fit inside Rhode Island. They’d still have room to move. Rhode Island. It’s a fraction of Washington’s size.”

  “You’re lecturing me.”

  She was right, and I’d just chewed out DeMott for the same reason. “I’m just wondering why you think killing a baby will save the environment.”

  “First of all, it’s not a baby.” She twisted her hair, wringing out the water. “It’s a fetus, a bunch of tissue.”

  “Some tissue. It made you puke your guts out.”

  “You don’t understand.” She tugged on her shoes. “You’re rich, you have a family. I need a job.”

  I didn’t have a reply, because the wicked bind of undercover was that I wasn’t rich, I didn’t have a family, and there was another plank in my eye. I’d used this very same point with DeMott—without my job, what would I live on?

  I watched her lay the towel on the floor, throwing the wet clothes on it.

  “I saw your calendar.”

  She looked up, startled. “You snooped in my room?”

  “Only the calendar.” And this time it was personal. Not for the FBI. “If you’ve waited this long, you don’t really want an abortion.”

  She began rolling up the towel.

  “Ashley, look at me.”

  She pushed down on the roll, tightening it like a sleeping bag, then stood up. Her face suddenly drained of color. I grabbed her arm. She was swaying.

  “You need a doctor,” I said.

  “No.” She straightened her back. “I don’t need anyone’s help. My mom had me out here, and we did fine. Thanks to Uncle Sal.”

  “Sal Gagliardo?” I kept my voice neutral. “He’s your uncle?”

  “Not my real uncle. Not like Eleanor’s your aunt. But he and my mom, they had a thing way back when. I was already born. But he sorta adopted me.” She picked up her boots, but her eyes had taken on a faraway look. “My mom was a groom out here. Karol Trenner.”

  “She’s retired?”

  She looked at the floor. “She died. Skin cancer.”

  “I’m sorry, Ashley.”

  When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. “Everybody thinks Uncle Sal’s this tough guy. But when my mom died he changed his barn colors to pink. It was her favorite color. She said you can’t feel sad when you look at it.”

  She was entitled to her opinion. “How long ago did she pass?”

  “Six years ago, in October.”

  I came up with an improbable age. “Then you must have been—”

  “For your information,” she said, her voice tightening, “I’m legal.”

  “You don’t have other family?”

  “I don’t need anybody else.” She wiped her nose on the rolled towel. “The horses are my family.”

  I had lectured enough, so I simply nodded, as if that squalid hovel in the barn compensated for a real home, as if high-strung horses and a bellicose mobster provided all that she needed. “Does the baby’s father work out here?”

  “Stop calling him that. He doesn’t want the baby.”

  Baby. Progress, I decided. No longer just a bunch of tissue. “Don’t you think your mom would want you to keep it, like she did with you?”

  “Here we go again.” She clutched the wet bundle to her chest, soaking the pink shirt. “I’m sick of people bossing me around. Ashley do this, Ashley do that. Nobody ever asks what I want.”

  “What do you want?”

  “How should I know!” she cried. “But I can’t handle a baby. What about when it starts crying?”

  “You can handle a temperamental horse. I’m sure you can deal with a baby.”

  She lifted the towel. Her sobs made the room feel saturated, too much hot water and hot tears and now her desperate gasps for breath. And in the middle I could smell that cloying scent from her room, as if it had followed me.

  “I know you don’t feel well,” I said, “but at some point, we need to talk about Cuppa Joe. According to Juan, two guys came to the Hot Tin barn and took him.”

  She didn’t move.

  “Ashley?”

  She lowered the bundle. The color had once again drained from her face. Her lips pursed forward, the
n pulled back. I thought she was trying to say something, but she pivoted to the shower drain and vomited. I looked away.

  A stocky figure stood in the open doorway.

  Bill Cooper.

  “Ashley!” His voice echoed across the tile. “Get out here.”

  She stared down at the metal drain.

  “You heard me!”

  She stood, looking woozy. When she walked to the door, her movements were almost robotic. I picked up the bundled towel.

  Cooper grabbed her arm. “In my office. Now.”

  I followed them back to the barn. Not one word was spoken between them, and Ashley continued to move stiffly, nothing like her usual self. When we reached Cooper’s office, he slammed the door in my face.

  I stood outside, listening. He yelled, cursed, then told her it was all her fault. She should have forced Cuppa Joe into the trailer. Ashley gave no reply. Only more sobbing.

  I made my way to the other end of the barn, still carrying her towel. The atmosphere felt oddly subdued. There was none of the usual bantering among the Hispanic grooms, and even the pony riders, hired for their easy demeanor, seemed anxious, jumpy. The backstretch had been invaded; a horse was taken; and the atmosphere reminded me of a small town struck by violent crime: everyone was on edge.

  It didn’t bode well for gathering more information.

  I keyed open Ashley’s pink door and locked it behind me. The room still reeked with its septic odor, but Eleanor was right. The cot smelled of bleach. I threw the towel and wet clothes into the corner, then pulled out my cell phone. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

  Jack Stephanson picked up on the first ring.

  “I need a quick favor,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You gave your phone to a civilian, Harmon.”

  I stared at the horse photos taped to the back of Ashley’s door. A full magazine page was about Seabiscuit, with a picture of the horse roaring to the finish. I tried to line up the right words to explain why somebody had my phone, but a bolt of panic shot through my system. I checked my watch. DeMott. He had an airplane to catch.

  “Jack, I don’t have a lot of time to argue right now.”

  “No kidding. Do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “That flushing sound. It’s your career, swirling down the toilet.”

  “One of the racehorses was just kidnapped,” I said. “They even left a note, threatening to kill it. The horse belongs to Sal Gagliardo.”

  That shut him up.

  There was a long silence.

  “Gagliardo,” he said, “the Mob guy?”

  “Yes.”

  Another satisfying silence followed. I turned in a circle, gazing around Ashley’s room and waiting for Jack to get the whole picture. More horse pictures were taped to the wall above the milk crates holding her clothes. Creatures of surreal beauty, graceful and frightening all at once. But there were other photos, and they were more disturbing. A horse missing its right eye. Another with its ear gone, a deep depression carved into its head. Damaged horses. Taped below their pictures were more bumper stickers about animal rights. Fur Is Murder, read one.

  “That doesn’t fit,” Jack said. “Just like that tube gizmo, it doesn’t fit.”

  “Because?”

  “The Mob is supposed to take other people’s horses. You know, cut off the head and stick it in the guy’s bed. Why would they steal their own horse? Unless it’s for insurance money.”

  “He probably had a huge policy on that horse.” I stared at Ashley’s collection of weird talismans. They were placed on the milk crates. Small stones. Wine bottle, empty. “Insurance fraud isn’t a bad guess. But they left a note. It’s still kidnapping.”

  “It’s a horse.”

  “Okay, then grand larceny.”

  “One horse.”

  “Will you at least run a license plate for me?”

  “Maybe.”

  I wanted to chew him out, but the ice under my feet was thin. “A white trailer was seen taking the horse. The license plate isn’t a complete read, but see what comes back on William, Eagle, Apple, Kite.”

  He said the letters back to me. “W-E-A-K?”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t think it’s a sign?”

  “Everything’s a joke with you?”

  “No, I’m seriously upset about the civilian with your phone. Especially when you’re working undercover. I almost hung up and started a GPS search. Thought the Mob had you bound and gagged.”

  There was no point defending myself. Jack was right. It was careless. And while I waited for him to pile on the guilt, I read Ashley’s bumper stickers. Eating Eggs Is Murder. I was tempted to post a rebuttal—But abortion is a “choice”?

  “He’s your fiancé.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Enough with the Southern manners. Level with me, Harmon.”

  The next sticker read, If You Wouldn’t Eat a Cat, Why Would You Eat a Cow?

  “I need two background checks,” I said. “One is for a male, first name Gordon, last name Donaldson. He drives a tractor down here. Father has same name, senior.”

  Jack didn’t reply.

  “The second background check is for a female. Last name Trenner, first name Ashley. See if there’s any documented connection with Salvatore Gagliardo. Her mother apparently had an affair with him.”

  “Why is your fiancé here?”

  “Find Gagliardo’s tax return. See if he claims Ashley Trenner as a dependent. She claims he adopted her.”

  The next silence wasn’t like the others. It was disquieting. Painful.

  “Is that it?” he said.

  “For now.”

  He hung up and the phone gave that dull dead sound. But I held it to my ear, reading the last bumper sticker.

  It said, Tofu Never Screams.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I slipped past Cooper’s door. The shouting continued.

  “If they kill that horse, his blood’s on your hands!”

  The sobbing continued as well. I checked my watch and hurried for the grandstands.

  The Sunday crowd was thick, somewhat inebriated, and oblivious to the kidnapped horse. For now. But tomorrow, or the next day, after some reporter saw the police log, the news would spread about Eleanor’s reward and the false leads would come like flies to honey. Running up the grandstand steps, I gave my watch another glance. Cutting it close. But the Ghost had enough speed that we would just make it. Swing by Eleanor’s house, pick up DeMott’s bag, and get him to the airport.

  But when I stepped inside the private dining room, I didn’t see DeMott.

  Or Eleanor.

  The maître d’ stood at the podium. He was a fastidious bald man who always wore white slacks and an emerald-green blazer. He glanced up from a map where the room’s tables were represented in circles and rectangles.

  “Hello,” I said. “I was looking for my aunt, Eleanor?”

  “She just left,” he said. “Something about a plane to catch and time being the longest distance between two places. A young man with her—”

  Anyone following the Ghost down Interstate 5 ate Italian dust. I pulled into Eleanor’s porte cochere in record time and took the front steps by twos.

  I found her sprawled on a fainting couch in the wood-paneled den. She held a bag of frozen peas to her forehead and bellowed even louder than normal.

  “Three snorts of brandy!” She raised her chin. “When monster meets monster, one’s got to go.”

  I didn’t care who said it in what play. “Is he ready?”

  “Ready?” She sat up. The bag of peas slumped into her lap.

  “DeMott—remember?”

  “Young lady, I’m not that drunk.”

  “Fine. Where is he?”

  “Where? He took a cab.”

  I stood rooted, staring as her expression changed. The proud chin lowered.

  “Oh dear,” she said sof
tly. “I assumed you two had discussed . . . that you couldn’t drive . . . I wasn’t going to interfere—oh, courage, courage—”

  I was out the door before she finished the line.

  The Ghost flew through the airport’s parking garage, the tires squealing like bad Italian opera. I pulled into the first open spot and sprinted through the garage and across the sky bridge into the terminal. The crowd at the Delta check-in counter was so thick I had to move sideways, searching for that seersucker jacket and wavy brown hair. After several minutes, I realized his “baggage” was Madame. Otherwise it was just his carry-on duffel. I ran to the display that showed departures.

  Delta to Atlanta, leaving in thirty-three minutes.

  Still time.

  The line for security check-in snaked back and forth. Hundreds of passengers. I walked along the outside of the ropes while people trudged forward with boarding passes and driver’s licenses and faces looking somewhere between hopeless and condemned. When I came to the end of one line, I turned and walked down the other. It must have looked suspicious, because a rotund man in a rumpled TSA uniform headed straight for me. His eyes looked like he hadn’t slept in six years.

  “Line starts back there.” He pointed.

  “I’m looking for somebody.”

  “Boarding pass?” He opened his hand. “License?”

  “I just need to say good-bye.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” He snapped his fingers. “Boarding pass, license.”

  “There!” DeMott stood on this side of the X-ray machines. He was removing his shoes, placing them in the plastic bin. “I just need two minutes.”

  “And I just need your boarding pass.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  His eyes darkened even further. “What?”

  “I’m not flying.” DeMott was folding the seersucker jacket, placing it in the bin. “Please, before he goes through the X-ray.”

  The agent walked away.

  If I had my FBI credentials, I could flash them at that sick excuse for a public servant. But right now the bad bureaucrat was my only hope. I followed him down the line to where he was harassing a guy whose studded jeans didn’t cover his underwear.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “It’s really important.”

  The TSA agent took the guy’s driver’s license and ran a small penlight over it, searching for falsification.