by Janet Dawson
“But you don’t now,” I said. “The calls continued after your father’s death?”
Molly nodded. “Yeah. Two or three times a week. Sometimes here, sometimes at home.”
“What does the caller say?”
She hesitated, reluctant to repeat the words. Then they came, slowly, in a low voice. Threats of physical violence, to Molly and her horses, graphic, ugly, and disturbing. And finally, last week, a threat to burn the barn.
I glanced at David. His mouth was pressed into a thin angry line. Then I turned back to Molly. “This is more serious than a few crank calls. I advise you to call the police.” Molly shook her head, “Why not?”
“Go on and tell her,” David said.
Molly looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, okay. I had a little problem, about eight years ago, when Dad and I were down in Southern California. He was training at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. I got in with a crowd that was using drugs. Everything from marijuana to cocaine. I was twenty-two, young and foolish, but I guess that’s no excuse. I got busted for possession.”
She sighed. “Dad pulled some strings, called in some favors. Whatever he did, whoever he talked to, they made it go away.”
I looked at David, wondering if he had been involved. But he was displaying his best poker face.
“The charges were dropped,” Molly continued. “So I don’t have a record. That’s important, because you can’t get a trainer’s license if you’ve got a record.”
“If you don’t have a record, then you don’t have anything to worry about,” I told her.
“I suppose not. But... I just don’t want anybody to know. I turned that page when we left L.A., and I’d just as soon not revisit it. We came up here because Rose was here. And because Dad wanted to get me away from that scene, and those people I’d been running with. It was the right thing to do. I’m clean. I haven’t touched the stuff since.”
“But you wouldn’t want it to get out,” I said. “Has the caller mentioned any of this?” I was thinking blackmail. But that didn’t jibe with the threats to “get” Molly Torrance.
She shook her head.
“Have you been taping these calls?” I asked.
“No. It didn’t occur to me. My first reaction was just to hang up.”
That would be most people’s initial reaction to crank calls. But it put me at a real disadvantage in trying to do something about the calls. I had nothing, absolutely nothing, to go on, except Molly’s description. “You’ve got an answering machine at home, don’t you?” Most people did these days. She confirmed that she had one at home as well as here at the track. I told her to leave it on all the time and to make sure it was capable of recording calls after she answered, in the hopes of getting the caller on tape.
“Do you have any guesses as to who might be doing this?”
“Well,” Molly said slowly, “I guess it must be somebody who knows me, knew my father. Someone who’d be familiar with our routine here at the track. But over the years, that’s a lot of people.”
“What about this fire David mentioned? Did it happen here?”
Molly shook her head. “No. At our place in Niles. It was last Sunday, a week after Dad died, in the middle of the day. I wasn’t home, of course. I was here at the track. The fence on the north side of the house was in flames. Fortunately someone saw it and called it in. Otherwise the house could have caught. The fire department thought maybe some jerk tossed a cigarette butt from a car window and it ignited the grass.”
“No indication it was deliberately set?” I made a mental note to get a copy of the fire department’s report.
“No. It could have been an accident. But the next day, the caller said something about the fire. Several of the calls since then have been threats about fire. That’s when I called David.”
“Tell her about the problems you’ve been having with your neighbor,” David said.
Molly wrinkled her nose. “Him? You don’t think he could be involved?”
“I think you should give Jeri every little piece of information. After all, the fire was near his property line, too.”
“What sort of problem with the neighbor?” Molly was certainly reluctant to part with details. “What’s his name?”
“Ron Douglas.” Contempt colored Molly’s voice. “Some rich yuppie. He doesn’t actually live there. But last year he bought the house next door, planning to fix it up and sell it for lots of money. Dad and I had several run-ins with him. First it was our walnut tree dropping walnuts on his lawn. Then Douglas called the police to complain when we had a barbecue at the house last summer. Then we complained about the construction, which has been never-ending. Dad found out Douglas didn’t have permits for the garage he was building, and made him go back and jump through some hoops.”
Squabbles between neighbors sometimes escalated into more serious hostilities. Douglas was worth checking out, I thought. But, as Molly had pointed out, it appeared the caller had some familiarity with the day-to-day horse-training activities of Stan and Molly Torrance. Would Douglas know about their schedules?
“Anybody else you may have had a run-in with? Here at the track? Did your father get along with the other trainers here?”
“Of course he did,” Molly said quickly. “Well, he may have had the occasional word with some of them. He had this back-and-forth rivalry with Gates Baldwin and Dick Moody, particularly after we lost several horses to Gates. But that sort of thing isn’t unusual in this business.”
“Just the same, I’d like to talk with them. Where are they located?”
“Gates is in Barn Two,” she told me. “Moody’s in Barn Three. Moody’s an old-timer, an ex-jockey, about Dad’s age. Gates is in his mid-thirties, I guess. He trains Kilobyte.” Her mouth turned down in a frown, and I wondered if Kilobyte was one of the horses the Torrances had lost to Baldwin.
I heard voices talking in Spanish, and looked up to see Carlos, the middle-aged groom, in the shedrow talking with a younger man. “How’s your relationship with your groom?” I asked Molly. “Have you fired anyone during the past few months?”
“Carlos is the best groom in the world. His nephew José also works for us. He needs seasoning. No, no.” She shook her head. “Carlos wouldn’t do something like this. He would never threaten to burn down a barn. Besides, he doesn’t speak English well enough to make those phone calls. As for tiring people, on the backside, people come and go all the time.”
“But you have fired someone recently,” I guessed.
“A couple of people,” she admitted. “One was a jockey who’d been riding for us off and on. But I didn’t like the way he handled my horses. And he wouldn’t follow orders. Dad agreed with me. So we gave him his walking papers.”
“When was this?”
Molly thought for a moment. “Mid-September. I can look it up.”
“What’s his name? And is he still working here at the track?”
“Esequiel Ramos. Everyone calls him Zeke. Yeah, he’s around.”
“Who else did you fire?”
There was a touch of irony in Molly’s smile. “Everyone thought I was crazy to do it, but I did it anyway. I fired Benita Pascal.”
Chapter Four
“I THOUGHT BENITA PASCAL WAS A RISING STAR,” I said. “I know she’s won a lot of races back East.”
“She is. And she has. But...” The silence stretched as Molly contemplated her mug of coffee, which was by now cold. Mine certainly was. She got up and topped hers off with the remainder of what was in the carafe, first offering it to me and David. We both declined.
“We had our problems,” Molly continued. “So I fired her.”
“How’d she take it?”
Molly shrugged. “Not well.”
I recalled the dark-haired woman David and I had seen earlier. Benita Pascal looked tough and touchy as she’d exchanged words with Deakin Kelley near the entrance to the Jockey Room. I had a feeling “not well” didn’t quite cover it.
“Pretty damn mad,” Molly admitted. “Hell, call it royally pissed. Both her and her agent, a guy named Mickey Sholto. He told me she’d turned down a lot of other owners to come out here and ride Chameleon. At least that’s the story from his end. But Benita’s free to take other rides. As you can see, she’s riding Kilobyte now.” Her mouth twisted and there was an undercurrent to her words, one that made me certain there was more to the story than Molly was letting on.
“Why did you fire her?”
“I didn’t like the way she handled my horses. And she wouldn’t follow orders.”
Molly had used exactly the same words describing why she’d fired Zeke Ramos. She must have exacting standards, I thought. And she didn’t tolerate any deviation from them.
“Was there anything specific about the way she rode your horses?”
“You’ve got to understand,” Molly said. “It’s Chameleon. He’s not just any three-year-old. He’s special. Dad and I knew it the minute we saw him at that yearling sale at Keeneland. A lot of other people thought so, too. We had to outbid Baldwin and Moody. Dad thinks —”
She stopped and frowned, as though reminding herself that her father was dead. “Dad thought Chameleon had great potential. Most of the time I think we’re doing all right if we manage to win more races than we lose. But to have a horse that can win some of the big stakes races... Dad always wanted to have a horse that good. And Chameleon is that good. He’s going to make some people sit up and take notice. Already is, after that win today.”
“So you chose an up-and-coming jockey to ride your star horse.” Although Benita Pascal’s mount in this year’s Run for the Roses had been a serious contender, she’d finished fifth, out of the money.
“Dad wanted one of the really famous jockeys. You know, like Chris McCarron, Pat Day, or Gary Stevens. But as trainers go, we’re not really big-time. So we considered some of the other jockeys we knew down in Southern California. Or for that matter, Russell Baze or Rafael Meza, right here in Northern California. They’re both good jockeys. But they had other commitments. Then I remembered Benita. I’d met her earlier in the year, when Dad and I made a trip back to Kentucky, for the sales. She was riding mainly on the East Coast. There aren’t as many women riders out here on the West Coast.”
“I’ve noticed that,” I said. “Why not?”
“Depends on who you talk to.” Molly smiled. “Some people will tell you Western tracks are different from Eastern tracks. They’re tighter and narrower, and a rider has to hustle to win. Scoot and boot, they call it. Scoot right out of the starting gate and boot the horse home. They” — her tone put the word in italics — “claim women riders don’t have the physical strength to win that kind of a race. Other people claim there aren’t many women riders out here because of plain old sexism. So you decide which explanation sounds more logical. Anyway, I met Benita. And I liked her.”
I noticed Molly’s use of the past tense.
“Dad and I talked it over and decided to offer Benita the mount on Chameleon. I got in touch with her agent. Benita agreed to come out here and ride for us. She arrived in September, just as the fall season started. From the minute she got here, we had problems. She was different, somehow.”
“Different?” I waited for Molly to explain.
“I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it. She just wasn’t the same person I’d met in Kentucky. That person was friendly and easygoing. The woman who showed up to ride for us had a chip on her shoulder. She wouldn’t follow orders, and she argued with Dad and me about everything from the training to the tack.”
Molly ran her fingers through her curly brown hair. “That woman, she’s got a real temper on her. With a tongue to match. She even had a fight with Hector Melquiades, another jockey. That was right after the race meeting opened. She claimed he interfered with her horse during a race, so she punched him out afterward, when they were weighing in. She pulled a five-day suspension from the stewards for that one, just when we were ready for her first ride on Chameleon.”
“And things went downhill from there,” I said.
Molly rolled her eyes. “You got it. Straight downhill and fast. When Benita got off suspension, she started riding our horses, not just Chameleon, but several of the others. Everything that could go wrong did. I know it’s a cliche to blame the jockey for losing the race. It’s not always the jock’s fault. They have losing streaks just like trainers and owners.” She sighed. “Sometimes I think the horse gods just don’t want you to win. But this was uncanny. Every time Benita was up on one of our horses, the horse lost the race. Some of the owners we train for were really angry. And I don’t blame them.”
“Why? Do you think she lost the races deliberately?”
Although that’s what she’d seemed to be implying in her earlier statement, Molly now backed away from it. “The thought crossed my mind,” she said finally. “A couple of those mounts... well, she just gave them lousy rides. But things happen in horse races that you just can’t predict.”
David nodded his agreement. “Anything can happen, from the minute the starter opens the gate until the horses cross the finish line. I did see a couple of those races, particularly the last time Benita rode Chameleon. There wasn’t anything specific I could put my finger on. Just the feeling that she’d given the horse a bad ride.”
“It sounds like the term ‘bad ride’ covers a lot of territory,” I said. “I suppose if a jockey who is as skilled as Benita Pascal decided to throw a race, she’d do it so that no one would notice.”
Molly was shaking her head now. “No, no, I can’t buy that. Benita’s too ambitious to risk getting a rep for throwing races. She does like to win. She has a good record, a good reputation. Why would she screw that up? It’s tough for a woman rider to make it in this business. There aren’t that many Julie Krones out there.”
“But you say she was losing regularly on your horses,” I reminded her.
“It wasn’t just our horses. She was losing on other horses, other rides she picked up from other trainers. I guess she was having a really lousy streak.”
Something in the way Molly said it made me think she was trying to convince herself that all of this, including the phone calls and the fire, was due to chance. “If Benita was having a losing streak, maybe something was bothering her, something in her life off the track.”
“No kidding,” Molly said. “I mean, yeah, I had that thought. Something personal. But I don’t know what the hell it was. And Benita’s not the type to share.”
“Is she married, involved with anyone?”
The trainer shook her head again. “She’s single, doesn’t date much, from what I hear. Don’t know if she was seeing anyone, here or anywhere else. I try not to pry into anyone else’s personal life. Come to think of it, I really don’t know much about Benita. Just that she doesn’t like to lose. Who does? She was so damn belligerent about it, I hated to even bring it up. With everything that was happening, Dad was reluctant to put her up on Chameleon for his next race. I told him we ought to give Benita one more chance.”
Now Molly frowned. “I wish we hadn’t. Chameleon should have won that race. But Benita lost it for him. She gave him a really awful ride. She let herself get boxed in on the rail, which wouldn’t have happened if she’d followed the instructions Dad gave her before the race. After that Dad said,’ She’s got to go.’ I agreed with him. So we fired her.”
“And called Deakin Kelley,” I added.
“Yes. He’s an old friend of ours. And he —” She hesitated, apparently not wanting to reveal anything about Kelley’s troubles. “He wanted to make a change from Southern California. It was a good thing too. Chameleon didn’t have his first win until we put Deakin up in the irons.”
“Could Benita Pascal be making those phone calls?” From what I’d heard so far, the jockey was my prime suspect. But Molly’s next words seemed to discount that possibi
lity.
“Anonymous phone calls don’t seem like her style. She’s more direct. An in-your-face, tell-you-off person.”
“When did you fire her? Was it about the time the calls started?”
“I don’t know when the calls started,” Molly reminded me. “But if they started a week or two before Dad died — say five or six weeks ago — early October — that’s when we fired Benita. So the timing’s right.”
“I’m surprised she stayed here,” I said. “Given the rough time you say women riders have on the West Coast. If she was doing better on the Eastern tracks, why didn’t she leave?”
“She’s still getting rides from other trainers,” Molly said. “And she’s winning again. Maybe it was a losing streak, and it’s over.”
“These days jockeys are fairly mobile,” David pointed out. “If they get a phone call from a trainer at another track, they just hop on a plane.”
“That’s right,” Molly added. “Benita picked up a few mounts down at Santa Anita last weekend. She’s riding some of Dick Moody’s horses, too. And Gates Baldwin put her up on Kilobyte the minute she walked out of our barn. Once he’d stolen Kilobyte.”
These last words were loaded with bitterness. “You used to train Kilobyte?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, anger leaking from her eyes. “We used to train three horses for Cliff Holveg. Until Baldwin convinced him that he could do a better job.”
That bore further investigation as well. I glanced at my watch as I set the coffee mug on top of the little refrigerator. “Tell me, did you get any phone calls while Benita Pascal was riding at Santa Anita last weekend?”
“No.” Molly shook her head, hair flying, a troubled look in her wide brown eyes. “No, I didn’t.”
Despite Molly’s hesitation to accuse Benita Pascal outright, I still put the jockey at the top of my list. It sounded as though she had a volatile temper. And the fact that Molly and her father had taken her off Chameleon could mean the jockey was nursing a grudge against the Torrances.