by Janet Dawson
“There have been some threats,” I said carefully. “Anonymous phone calls, that sort of thing.”
“Directed at the victim?”
“No,” I said, and left it at that.
Eddy glanced at Molly, then pointed one stubby thumb at the stall where the techs were taking pictures of the corpse. “How well did you know her?”
“Benita Pascal? I spoke with her exactly twice. Once yesterday, when I asked her some questions. And once on the phone.”
“You think she was making the threats?” he asked sharply.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah. Right.” He shifted his gum from one cheek to the other. “Anything else you didn’t say?”
“Benita Pascal called me last night,” I said. “A little before six. She said we needed to talk.”
“What about?” Eddy asked.
I shook my head. “No idea. She told me to meet her at a coffee shop on Mowry at seven. She never showed up. I got there at six-forty, had dinner, then I left about ten after eight. When Ms. Pascal called, she said she couldn’t talk over the phone, not at the Backstretch. I guessed she meant a bar. So I found it, on Jarvis Avenue in Newark. Went over to see if she was there.”
“I know the place,” Eddy said. “Racetrack joint owned by an ex-jockey. One of the trainers who was there last night says she was with two other jockeys, Zeke Ramos and Deakin Kelley. He also said Ramos left before Pascal. She left the place around six-thirty. With Kelley.”
He waved a hand in the direction of the nearest doorway. I saw Reggie Trask there, with Dick Moody and Gates Baldwin, and I figured Trask had told the police what he’d told me last night at the Backstretch. The three trainers weren’t the only ones standing outside Barn Four. A crowd of about fifty racetrackers stood talking among themselves, all thought of training and track routine vanished in their speculation about the murder.
“You know Ramos? Or Kelley?” Eddy asked.
“I talked with Ramos once. I spoke with Kelley several times. He rides Molly Torrance’s horses.”
“Are Ms. Torrance and Kelley good friends?” Eddy tapped his pen against his notebook.
“Why don’t you ask them that?”
“Oh, believe me, I will.” He said it as though he already knew about Molly’s relationship with Deakin. “If I can find him. I hear Kelley was supposed to exercise one of Ms. Torrance’s horses this morning. But he seems to be AWOL. When was the last time you saw him?”
“I saw him ride a winner in the first race yesterday afternoon. But up close? Yesterday morning, about eleven-twenty.”
“Did he mention any plans for the evening?”
I shook my head. As far as I knew, the only plans Deakin had were to talk with Benita, to see if he could figure out what was going on with her, and to call Molly to see if she wanted to go to dinner. I decided to keep both pieces of information to myself.
“Any idea when she died?” I asked. Sometimes the medical examiner gave the police a guesstimate, based on rigor mortis and blood pooling.
If Maltesta had gotten any such information, he wasn’t in a sharing mood. “Sometime after she left that bar. Won’t know for sure until the autopsy’s done.” He glanced at the end of the shedrow, where a couple of guys with a gurney waited to transport Benita’s body to the Alameda County coroner’s office. “You know Deakin Kelley was implicated in a murder down in Southern California.”
“I know he was exonerated.” I emphasized the last word.
Eddy quirked his eyebrows at me, indicating he knew full well that Deakin Kelley had been cleared of the Barnstable murder. Then he turned his questions in another direction, one I didn’t like any better. “That blue scarf around the victim’s neck. Have you seen that before?”
I’d known he would get to that eventually. I chose my words carefully. “I’ve seen a scarf that resembles it. I couldn’t say if it was the same scarf.”
“Where have you seen a scarf that looks like it, then?” Eddy asked patiently.
“The colors — sky blue and dull green — match the Torrance Stables silks,” I said slowly. “And there’s a lizard painted on one end. Ms. Torrance has a scarf like that. So does Mr. Kelley.”
“So do I,” David Vanitzky said, materializing at my elbow. “But that doesn’t mean I killed anybody with it.”
David looked as though he’d thrown on his navy slacks and blue sweater as soon as he’d gotten my phone call. That was right after I’d called 911, around six-thirty that morning. He must have broken a few speed records between his condo on Russian Hill in San Francisco and Edgewater Downs. Impressive, since it was after seven and he’d had to contend with the Bay Area’s bruising morning rush hour traffic. Now his gray eyes raked over Eddy Maltesta as I introduced the two men.
“So you’re the owner of this racetrack?” Eddy asked.
“One of them,” David said. There was an edge to his voice.
The crowd outside Barn Four stopped chattering among themselves. I looked up. A tall thin man in loose-fitting clothes cut through the people like Moses parting the Red Sea. Mickey Sholto looked as though someone had hit him in the stomach with a baseball bat. His eyes were dark and wild in his white face as he tried to get past the uniformed police officer at the door.
“Who is that guy?” Eddy asked.
“Mickey Sholto, Benita Pascal’s agent.”
Eddy narrowed his eyes. “Looks like he’s pretty upset at losing his percentage.”
“I heard the relationship was more than just business,” I told him. “At least on his side. I don’t think she felt the same way.”
“I want to talk with him, then. I’ll catch up with you later, Jeri.”
“You know where to find me.”
“I do at that.” He smiled and popped his cinnamon gum, then walked toward the doorway where the uniformed officer had taken Sholto by the arm.
“How much have you told him about the phone calls?” David asked.
“As little as possible, for now. But I recommend we come clean with Maltesta. I know him. He’s okay.”
“If Benita was making those calls —” David began.
“It could look like Molly retaliated,” I finished.
David shook his head, even though it was he who’d vocalized the thought that had crossed my mind. “That’s ridiculous. I can’t believe she would.... Doesn’t it take a strong man to strangle a woman?”
“Not if the woman’s as small as Benita. Molly’s strong. She’s got to be, to work with thoroughbreds all day long.”
“That’s not the right answer,” David told me, scowling. “Come up with another one.”
“I’ll try. How many of those chameleon scarves are there?”
“I don’t know. Half a dozen or so. You’ll have to ask Molly.” He glanced toward the doorway of Barn Four and waved at someone. A burly man with thinning brown hair and a blue Edgewater Downs windbreaker walked over to join us, and David introduced him as George Avalos, head of security. “I talked with George on my cell phone on the way over here. He told me Deakin Kelley’s missing.”
“I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say he’s missing,” I said. “But he was supposed to exercise Molly’s horse Belladonna this morning, and he hasn’t showed up. And he was with Benita last night. They were at a bar called the Backstretch, with Zeke Ramos. The bartender says they were arguing about something. Ramos left, then Deakin and Benita left together.”
“I told you the guy was bad news.” David scowled.
“I overheard one of the uniformed officers say Kelley’s not at his apartment at the Belvoir Hotel in Niles,” Avalos said. “They sent a car over there to check. Nobody knows where he is.”
“For that matter, where’s Zeke Ramos?” I asked. “I want to talk with him too.”
“Don’t know,” Avalos said. “I’ll find out.”
“There’s Nate Abernathy. Maybe he knows where Deakin is.” At the edge of the crowd I spotted the short, sartorially challenged
agent, worry on his round face as his button eyes flicked first toward me, then toward Mickey Sholto, who was now talking with Eddy Maltesta. I glanced up at David, who was scowling. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Why would Deakin Kelley kill Benita Pascal?”
David didn’t give an answer. Maybe he didn’t have one. But we both glanced into the office, where Molly was still talking with the other detective. If Deakin was convinced that Benita was the one threatening Molly, would the jockey kill to protect the trainer? I didn’t even want to go there.
I gave both men a quick overview of the events of the last twelve hours. Deakin said he was going to talk with Benita Pascal after work, and indeed he had. But I was more interested in what the bartender at the Backstretch had said, about Benita exchanging words with Zeke Ramos.
“Trask said when Deakin and Benita left the bar, they may have been going to the racetrack.”
“Why would they go to the track after hours?” David wondered out loud.
“Supposedly because Ramos was bunking in Barn Three. Trask seemed to think Benita and Deakin followed Ramos here. But when I came over here last night, neither of the security guards on the horsemen’s entrance or the back gate had seen them — or Ramos.”
David turned to Avalos. “Find those guards. I want to talk with both of them.”
“Will do,” Avalos said.
“Then there’s the money,” I said.
“What money?” David frowned.
“The bartender at the Backstretch said Benita was carrying a lot of cash in her purse. Trask mentioned it, too, said it was common knowledge on the backside that she usually had quite a bankroll. We can’t discount the possibility that someone killed her for the money. I’d be really interested to know if her purse and wallet are in that stall with the body. I certainly didn’t see it when we found her. But I wasn’t looking at anything else.”
Avalos shook his head. “Don’t know. The cops haven’t exactly been talkative. But if this is plain robbery that got out of hand, it could be anyone. We do have our share of rough characters here. I’ll start with Dick Moody. Ramos has been riding for him a lot lately.”
“Find Ramos, and the guards. That’s a start,” David told Avalos. “And send Nate Abernathy over here.”
Avalos headed for the door of Barn Four, where he stopped to talk with Abernathy. Then he detoured toward the three trainers. I saw Moody shaking his head. Nate hurried over to join us, his round face worried above another one of his brightly colored ties.
“Deakin’s supposed to be here,” Nate insisted when I asked him about the jockey’s whereabouts. “If he said he’d exercise Molly’s horse, it’s not like him to miss an appointment.”
“Is he riding this afternoon?” David asked.
Nate frowned. “He was supposed to ride a three-year-old in the second race today, but the trainer scratched the horse yesterday afternoon. That was the only mount for sure. But I had three more maybes lined up for him on today’s card. I’m supposed to be talking to the trainers of those horses right now. I called last night, about seven, and left a message on his voice mail.”
“He never called you back?” I asked.
Nate shrugged. “That’s not unusual. I gave him the word, I figured he’d just be here this morning, we’d talk with the trainers, and everything would be copacetic. I hope he didn’t drive his car into a ditch or something.”
I saw some movement near the stall where Molly and I had found Benita’s body. Several paramedics were now maneuvering a gurney close to the stall door. Lying on the gurney was an empty black body bag. It looked as though the police had given the okay to move the body. Mickey Sholto and Eddy Maltesta were standing nearby. The detective was saying something to the agent, but Sholto was gazing at the stall with an expression of deep sorrow. Then he turned away and walked toward a saddle rack, punching his balled-up fist into the soft leather of a saddle.
One of the paramedics picked up the body bag from the gurney, and he and his partner disappeared into the stall. A few minutes later they came out again and lifted Benita’s shrouded body onto the gurney. Her slight form didn’t take up much room inside the black body bag. They wheeled the gurney down the dirt surface of the shedrow, toward the door, where an ambulance waited. Once they’d lifted the gurney into the vehicle, they secured the back door, then went around to the sides. The ambulance started its engines. The race-trackers slowly moved out of the vehicle’s way, so it could begin its journey toward the horsemen’s entrance.
“Excuse me,” Nate said, He walked toward Mickey Sholto and put his hand on the other agent’s arm. But the tall man shook off the short man’s solicitude. He turned, without a word, and walked in the ambulance’s wake.
Chapter Nineteen
THE CROWD OF RACETRACKERS BROKE UP AND headed back toward their own shedrows. Molly walked out of the tack room then, her face dazed and bewildered. She saw David and me and headed for us as though swimming for a life raft. She threw her arms around David.
“Oh, my God,” she said, burying her face in his shoulder. “Poor Benita. It was almost as bad as seeing Dad have that heart attack. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget...” She shuddered. I sympathized. Unbidden, the sight of Benita Pascal’s corpse appeared in my mind’s eye. I banished it with a quick shake of my head.
“That detective wanted to know where I was last night,” Molly said. “And where Deakin was. I told him I didn’t know about Deakin, but I was home in bed. Alone, unless you count the cat.”
“Deakin didn’t call? He said he was going to.” She peered at me over David’s arm, then shook her head. “Do you know where he is now?”
“No, I don’t. You can’t think that he had anything to do with this.”
“That’s what the police think,” I told her. “He was seen with Benita last night. You said yourself it wasn’t like him not to show up after he’d promised to exercise the horse this morning.”
Molly pulled away from David. “No. I won’t believe he’s involved in Benita’s death. I can’t. Any more than I could believe he killed Junior Barnstable.”
I pushed aside my own questions about Deakin Kelley — and Zeke Ramos — for now, and turned my attention to something else, the murder weapon. The silk scarf that had choked the life out of Benita was exactly like the ones I’d seen Molly and Deakin wearing this weekend. Molly said the scarves had been made by her friend Tina Lakey. But how many scarves had Tina made?
“I don’t know how many,” Molly said when I asked her. “Tina had several trial runs before she got the shape and color of the chameleon just right. She gave me four. One each for me, Dad, David, and the jockey.”
“But at the time Tina made the scarves, who was the jockey on Chameleon?”
“Benita,” Molly said. “And I never got the scarf back. She still had it, as far as I know.”
“So where did Deakin get his?”
“Tina gave it to him,” Molly said slowly. “She’d kept one for herself, so that’s five. It was right after Deakin got here. We were having dinner at my place, and Tina and I were both wearing the scarves. Deakin was teasing Tina about not having a scarf. Dad offered to give him his, but Tina said no. Then she took hers off and draped it around Deakin’s neck.”
“So Benita could have been strangled with her own scarf,” David said.
She could have been strangled with anyone’s scarf. I didn’t voice the thought. But I was sure that if I was considering the possibility, Detective Maltesta had considered it as well. Molly didn’t have much of an alibi for last night, unless the cat could talk.
David was thinking along the same lines. I could see it in his eyes. He took Molly’s arm. “Let’s go get some coffee in the admin office. If only to get away from here for a while.”
The evidence techs were still combing through the straw in the stall, looking for physical evidence. But the Spanish-speaking officer had finished questioning Carlos and José. Molly told them where she was going and that she wou
ldn’t be gone long. Then we walked out of Barn Four and headed in the direction of the grandstand, where the Edgewater Downs offices were located. As we reached Barn One, a big horse van pulled up and stopped near one of the entrances. Following it was a sleek gold Mercedes. Two men hopped out of the van and opened the doors, as several others came out of the barn. It looked as though they were getting ready to load or unload a horse.
Unload, it was. A big, well-muscled black horse tossed his mane and switched his tail as the grooms led him out of the van and down the ramp. The driver of the Mercedes opened the door and got out. She was a rail-thin blond wearing a pair of big black sunglasses, which provided more eye protection than the pale watery sunshine this November morning required. The rest of her was clad in a scarlet pullover, tight black slacks, and black boots. As the grooms stopped in front of her, she took off her sunglasses, tucked them into the black bag dangling from her right shoulder, and walked over to inspect her horse before directing the grooms to take him into the barn. She turned and spoke to the driver of the horse van, then signed a piece of paper on the clipboard he’d proffered.
“Isn’t that —” Molly began, then stopped. A Fremont police cruiser drove slowly past us, heading for the horsemen’s entrance.
By then the blond in the red sweater had left the horse van and was walking our way. When she reached us, she stopped and put her hands on her narrow hips, tapping one leather-clad toe on the hard-packed dirt. Late thirties, early forties, I thought, checking her out. If she was older, she was very well preserved. She was about my height, maybe an inch or so taller.
She barely glanced my way, fixing David with a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. David looked as though he’d just as soon be anywhere else but there.
“Hello, lover,” the blond said in a brittle voice. “What’s all the excitement?”