A Killing At The Track (The Jeri Howard Series Book 9)

by Janet Dawson

  I stopped speculating and moved out of sight behind a group of grizzled-looking railbirds who were dissecting the last race and handicapping the next. Ron Douglas had turned in my direction and I didn’t want him to see me. He’d gotten a good look at me on Sunday when I was in Niles asking questions about the fire, and I knew he might recognize me.

  I saw Benita Pascal come out of the Jockey Room, dressed in another set of the Holveg black and red silks. She was riding Motherboard. I moved away from the paddock, toward the barn area, and caught up with Molly, Carlos, and Good and Ready as they approached the testing barn.

  “Nobody claimed him,” she said, running pleased eyes over the bay colt. “Which is great. He did so well today, I’d like to hang on to him a while longer.”

  “I’m going to watch the second race up in the clubhouse,” I told her. “Who do you like?”

  Molly reached for my program and quickly scanned the list of entries. Then she glanced up at the tote board. “Motherboard’s the favorite, according to the odds. But keep an eye on Gold Dust Girl. She’s trained by my friend Ellie Fredericks, the trainer I introduced you to this morning. The horse came in second last time she raced, and she may be ready to break her maiden.”

  “What about Stella Darling?” I pointed at the horse’s name on the list.

  Molly shrugged. “I don’t know. Kind of a mediocre horse. She’s never finished in the money, as far as I know. Longer odds, though. And I know you like to bet the long shots.”

  “I may sit this one out.”

  “Go take a look at the horses in the paddock,” Molly said, running her hand along Good and Ready’s flank. “If you see one that’s as ready to run as this guy was before the first race, that’s the horse to bet on.”

  “I’ll catch up with you later,” I told her.

  But I didn’t have Molly’s practiced eye for horseflesh. Back at the paddock railing, I examined each of the eight fillies waiting in their respective enclosures, and I couldn’t see anything that made me want to bet on one horse as opposed to another. Stella Darling was a chestnut with two white stockings. She looked alert and restive. Zeke Ramos stood to one side, decked out in purple silks with gray stripes, talking with Espinoza, the trainer.

  I saw Molly’s friend Ellie Fredericks talking with her jockey. Gold Dust Girl was also a chestnut, though paler in color, big for a filly and looking to be in prime condition. Motherboard, the Holveg horse, was another dark bay, almost black. She was still the favorite, according to the tote board, which meant that plenty of people in the grandstand were betting on her to win.

  Benita Pascal stood in the enclosure next to Motherboard, her sharp brown eyes moving around her, as though she was assessing the competition. Gates Baldwin said something to her. Then she saw me watching her, and stared back at me, stony-faced.

  I heard the call of “Riders up!” The jockeys mounted their horses and headed for the track. I turned and went upstairs to the clubhouse. Pam Cullen was standing near the bar, head back as she laughed at something her companion was saying. The Frenchman, the man she’d called Yves, put his hand on her arm. I wondered which horse he was betting on.

  I didn’t see Cliff Holveg or Ron Douglas until I headed outside to Molly’s box to watch the race. They were sitting in companionable silence, Douglas perusing the Racing Form, while Holveg had a pair of binoculars to his face, watching his horse down on the track.

  The race was six furlongs, which meant the starting gate was on the other side of the track. That made it harder to see the horses as they were loaded into the gate. Then came the bell and, simultaneously, the cry of “They’re off!” The race caller kept up a steady patter as the horses streaked down the backstretch, an early front-runner setting a fast pace, with two other challengers behind. Gold Dust Girl, Motherboard, and Stella Darling were bunched in the middle, with another pair of horses bringing up the rear.

  As they entered the far turn, one of the horses with early speed moved up to pass the front-runner. At the same time, Gold Dust Girl began making her move, steadily gaining on the horses in front. But so were Motherboard and Stella Darling. Of these three, Stella Darling appeared to be having some trouble on the rail, behind one of the speedsters that was slowing down. Gold Dust Girl started gaining ground on the outside as the horses came out of the turn, with Motherboard staying even on her left. Then Stella Darling found a gap between the horses in front of her and shot through it.

  It looked like a three-horse race now, with Gold Dust Girl, Motherboard, and Stella Darling fighting for the lead. I saw Benita crouched over Motherboard, the whip in her right hand flailing at the horse. Then my eyes moved to Zeke Ramos, on Stella Darling. He was right-handed, too, and I focused on his whip hand, not sure what to look for. People were yelling all around me but I felt detached from their enthusiasm, waiting for something to happen.

  And it did. Stella Darling put on an amazing burst of speed and blazed toward the finish line, crossing the wire a neck in front of Motherboard, with Gold Dust Girl in third.

  I leaned back in the chair in Molly’s box and tried to figure out what I’d just seen. Or whether I’d seen anything at all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  IF ZEKE RAMOS HAD DONE ANYTHING TO MAKE Stella Darling win the horse race I’d just seen, he’d done it so slickly that I couldn’t be sure. I replayed the stretch run in my head as I got up and headed into the clubhouse. He’d had the whip in his right hand, but I couldn’t see his left. Had he done something to the horse in those few seconds before it crossed the finish line? Maybe. But I couldn’t pinpoint anything.

  There were three things that made me suspect him, all circumstantial. The first was that envelope he’d collected this morning from the Frenchman, Yves, who was evidently a gambler who had no business being on the backside, as far as I could tell. The second was the rumor that Nate Abernathy had mentioned, that one of the jockeys at Edgewater Downs was using a buzzer on the horses, electric shock insurance for victory.

  The third was Pam Cullen. Her visits to three parimutuel windows down in the grandstand, and her substantial wagers on Stella Darling at all three, made it a good bet that she’d had some information on which horse might win the race.

  But those three things were like three marbles rolling around in a bowl. They were all in the same place, but there was nothing to connect them.

  Inside the clubhouse, I scanned the crowd until I saw one of my marbles, the one that dressed well, smoked cigars, and parlez-voused. Yves was queued up at one of the parimutuel windows. I watched him cash in a winning ticket on Stella Darling. Then he moved to another window and did the same. I didn’t see Pam Cullen, but I guessed she was doing the same thing down in the grandstand. It was an old trick, making several smaller bets at a variety of parimutuel windows rather than one or two huge bets. Smaller bets didn’t draw that much attention, while a parimutuel clerk was sure to remember someone wagering a thick wad of money.

  By the time I got down to the paddock, the horses had been unsaddled and were being led back to the barns by their grooms. Jockeys were giving postmortems to trainers, all except for one. Benita Pascal looked furious, and she wasn’t talking to Gates Baldwin. She twitched the whip in her hand, hitting it against her boot like a snare drum, and it looked as though she wanted to take the whip to someone, possibly the trainer. Did she somehow blame him for her loss? Instead of striking Baldwin, she pushed past him and strode toward the Jockey Room. A woman who hated to lose, I thought, particularly when she’d put such a good effort into winning.

  I headed for the backside. Molly and Carlos were in the shedrow in Barn Four, getting another horse ready for the third race. “Who won the second?” she asked.

  “Stella Darling.” I didn’t elaborate on my suspicions.

  “You’re kidding. I thought Gold Dust Girl had a shot.”

  “Came in third. Motherboard was second.” I glanced over at her entry, a bay colt. “What are his chances?”

  She laughed. “Hi
s name’s Bless Me. And it will take a blessing for him to win this race. He’s actually a pretty good horse, but he’s outclassed by his competition in this race.”

  “After the first race,” I said, “I overheard Gates Baldwin telling Benita that Megahertz must have bled through his Lasix. And I thought I saw some blood on the horse’s nostrils.”

  “If you could see blood, that’s serious,” Molly said. “Usually you have to scope the horse — that’s the endoscope I told you about, a flexible tube with a light on the end of it. You stick it up the horse’s nose and into the trachea to see whether there was pulmonary bleeding.”

  “There must have been. I’m sure it was blood. So what happens to the horse now?”

  “Goes onto the vet’s list,” Molly said. “Which means no racing for two weeks. After that he’s got to do a five-furlong workout with no bleeding before he can race again.”

  “That does sound serious.” But you wouldn’t have known it, I thought, from the way Baldwin had reacted.

  “Are you going to stay for the third race?” Molly asked, taking the bay’s lead rope.

  I shook my head. “I’m going back to my office. I have a few things to do there.”

  She glanced at her watch. “After Bless Me runs this race, I’ll be heading home, to get some shut-eye. You coming back early tomorrow?”

  “If I can get some shut-eye myself. I don’t think I could keep the hours you do.”

  She laughed. “You get used to it,” she said, not for the first time.

  Back in my office an hour later, I picked up the phone and called David Vanitzky at Weper and Associates in San Francisco. Of course, I made sure to tell him about my win on the first race at Edgewater Downs that afternoon.

  “A twenty-to-one long shot and you pick him for the exacta,” he said in his raspy voice. “Talk about dumb luck.”

  “I prefer to think of it as a flash of insight that came to me as I was standing at the parimutuel window.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, right. You nickel-and-dime horseplayers are all the same.”

  “Well, since you’re a high roller, I figured you might be able to tell me if you’ve ever heard of a heavy bettor named Yves.”

  “Yves? Is that a first or a last name?”

  “First, I think.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” David said. “Is he French?”

  “Could be. He certainly speaks French. About thirty, medium height, dark, good-looking. Dresses well, carries a lot of cash, and smokes little brown cigars that stink to high heaven. Molly has seen him around. She thinks he’s a professional gambler. He was in the clubhouse Saturday and again today. Both times, I saw him talking with Pam Cullen. And I saw him this morning outside Barn Three, with Zeke Ramos, the same Ramos that Molly fired.”

  “The fact that he bets heavily and whispers French into Pam Cullen’s ear bothers me not one whit,” David growled. “But the last does. He’s got no business being backside unless he’s licensed or authorized to be there. He must have come in with someone who is. A trainer or an owner. I’ll check to see if anyone left this guy’s name at the guard shack. Do you suspect this Yves is up to no good?”

  “He caught my attention,” I told him. “And I don’t just think it’s those stinking cigars. Call it my suspicious private eye nature. Or another flash of insight gained at the parimutuel windows. Let me tell you what else I saw this afternoon.”

  I quickly gave him the details about the three marbles rolling in that bowl, from Yves handing what looked like an envelope to Ramos, to the rumors about a jockey using a buzzer. And finally I told him about the substantial bets Pam Cullen and Yves had made on Stella Darling, the horse Ramos rode.

  David swore. “Race fixing? Not at my track. Not if I can help it. We need to talk with Grady Kline. He’s the Bay Area investigator for the California Horse Racing Board. I’ll set up an appointment as soon as possible.”

  “It would help if we had a last name for Yves, to fit with the first,” I said.

  Several other cases demanded my attention, so after David rang off I spent the rest of the afternoon working on them. It was nearly six before I switched off the computer and locked the filing cabinet. My stomach was growling and my mind was considering several dinner alternatives. I was just about to turn out the lights when the phone rang. Should I answer it, I wondered, or let the machine pick up the call? I debated for a second, then reached for the receiver. “Howard Investigations.”

  At first I didn’t hear anything but background noise, the buzz of distant conversation with an overlay of music I couldn’t identify. Was I getting one of those anonymous calls, the kind Molly Torrance had been receiving? Then I heard a woman’s voice, the words abrupt. “Jeri Howard?”

  “Yes. Who is this, please?”

  My question was met with silence from the caller. In the background I heard voices, a shout of laughter, a jazzy saxophone. She was calling from a bar, I guessed.

  “Benita Pascal. We need to talk.” Her words were an order, not a request.

  “Do we? What about?”

  “You’re asking all the wrong questions.”

  “Am I asking the right people?”

  She chuckled, almost in spite of herself. “I’ll let you know.”

  “So talk. I’m listening.”

  “Not on the phone. Especially not here at the Backstretch.”

  “Tell me where and when,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  “Seven o’clock,” she said, giving me the name of a coffee shop on Mowry Avenue, near the Fremont Hub shopping center. “Don’t be late. Or I won’t be there.”

  I was early. But she wasn’t there.

  It was 6:40 when I got to the coffee shop. I know, because I looked at my watch. Once inside, I sat down in a booth near the front door, where I could get a good look at whoever entered and exited. Hungry as I was, I ordered a turkey sandwich and wolfed it down while I waited. Then I nursed coffee and pie as my watch showed 7:45, then eight.

  Benita didn’t show.

  I gave it another ten minutes. Then I eased out of the booth and left enough money on the table to cover the check and a tip.

  “Especially not here at the Backstretch,” Benita had said. But I knew she wasn’t talking about that section of track across from the grandstand. When she made that call she was in a bar. Some watering hole near the track was my bet, the kind of joint where the racetrackers went to unwind. There was a phone near the coffee shop’s waiting area. I leafed through the directory until I found what I was looking for, then headed out to my car.

  The Backstretch was located at the end of a strip mall on the Newark side of Highway 84, on Jarvis Avenue, about a mile or so east of Edgewater Downs. I got there about eight-thirty.

  There weren’t many cars in the lot at the side of the bar, which didn’t surprise me. The people who worked on the backside were early risers. For most of them, that meant early to bed as well.

  Light was at a minimum, but I could see that the decor was less tony than that of the Turf Club. The Backstretch had a dark utilitarian carpet, the indoor-outdoor kind that was supposed to be easy to clean. Booths with brown vinyl seats ranged along the walls, and the bar itself was across the room, to my right. In the middle were scattered round wooden tables and plain wooden chairs to go with them.

  There was a wood-paneled wall to my left, lined with row after row of photographs, some in color, others in black and white. There were thoroughbreds in every one, racing down the homestretch toward the wire in many of the shots. Or posing afterward, in the winner’s circle, with the jockey on the horse’s back holding a blanket of flowers, while the rest of the human entourage wore smiles and held trophies. I recognized the names. Great horses, legendary in American racing. Man o’War, Seabiscuit, and Equipoise. Count Fleet, Citation, and Whirlaway. Nashua and Swaps, Native Dancer, and Kelso. And the big red horse called Secretariat.

  My eyes moved across the photographs, recognizing jockeys, from Earl Sande to Johnny Lo
ngden to Eddie Arcaro. And the two Bills — Shoemaker and Hartack — who’d come up at the same time in the fast and flush years after World War II. Ron Turcotte, who’d ridden both Riva Ridge and Secretariat to victory in the Kentucky Derby. Steve Cauthen as a seventeen-year-old kid riding Affirmed. And the lone woman pictured on the wall, Julie Krone.

  My eye was caught by a color glossy of Majestic Prince, Bill Hartack in the saddle, his mouth curved in an enigmatic smile above the black and gold silks as he held the roses from his fifth Kentucky Derby win. Then I moved my gaze down the bar on the other side of the room.

  Dick Moody and Reggie Trask were deep in conversation over a couple of beers at the far end of the bar. Above this section of the bar I saw a color TV suspended from the ceiling. It was on, tuned to one of the sports channels, and the sound, though muted, added to the general buzz of noise in the bar. There was a jukebox in the back corner, but at the moment no one was playing any music. Next to this a short hallway led back to the rest rooms and a pay phone.

  Several pairs of eyes scrutinized me as I walked toward the bar. According to what Nate Abernathy had told me this morning, the track rumor mill was in high gear, with plenty of speculation about the reason for my presence on the backside. The insurance investigator cover story, flimsy at best, just wasn’t washing with the racetrackers.

  The bartender appeared to be an ex-jockey, short, gray-haired, bulkier now that he wasn’t riding, but he still looked scrappy. “What’ll it be?” he asked when I stepped up to the bar.

  “Anchor Steam.” When he returned with the beer, I lay a twenty on the bar. “I’m looking for Benita Pascal. Has she been in tonight?”

  He picked up the twenty, punched the buttons on his cash register, then carefully placed the exact change in front of me. “Who wants to know? And why?”

  I raised the beer to my lips and took a swallow. Then I gave him the why without telling him who. “We were supposed to meet for dinner. But she never showed up.”