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

by Janet Dawson

  It was a two-story wood-frame Queen Anne Victorian, settled like a venerable dowager on its spacious corner lot, surrounded by well-tended flower beds. A couple of thick-trunked oak trees decorated the front lawn. The backyard had other trees, oaks and pines, their tops visible above the roof. There were a couple of cars in the driveway to the right of the house, and a sidewalk bisected the front yard, leading up to a wide front porch where a glider had been covered with a clear sheet of plastic.

  As I went up the walk toward the front door, I heard a voice somewhere above me. “Who goes there?”

  I looked up. The huge oak tree on the left half of the front yard had shed a good portion of its leaves into an untidy orange and gold pile circling the tree. Now that I was underneath, I could see the tree house, constructed of two-by-fours and plywood, nailed into the crotch of the tree where the thick trunk branched into three sturdy limbs. An old wooden ladder, its supports and rungs splashed with a rainbow of paint spills, had two lengths of strong rope tied to one end. The rope and the ladder had been hauled up midway up to the tree house, so that its occupant could repel boarders.

  The child who’d hailed me was about eight or nine, I guessed, but I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. The small sturdy figure was dressed in a bright red sweatsuit and matching sneakers. A length of shimmery gold fabric served as a sash, knotted around the kid’s waist. Curly black hair peeked from beneath a gray felt fedora that had started life as a conservative chapeau. Now it was quite spectacular, trimmed with bright silk ribbons, silver and gold glue-on glitter, and a raggedy-looking peacock feather. A black patch obscured the child’s left eye, and between nose and upper lip an uneven mustache had appeared, courtesy of an eyeliner pencil.

  “Who goes there?” my challenger demanded again, this time flourishing a wooden sword. “Friend or foe?”

  “Friend,” I assured the pirate. “Jeri Howard’s my name. And you?”

  “I’m Jean Lafitte, the king of Barataria.”

  I suppressed a grin and surmised that this little pirate had recently viewed a DVD of The Buccaneer. Somehow I didn’t think the Healdsburg elementary school curriculum covered the adventures of the pirate Jean Lafitte.

  “Bad day to be out at sea,” I told the pirate. It had been gray and gloomy all the way up there, with rain keeping the pavement damp.

  “I’m playing outside because Granny feels bad,” the pirate told me in a conversational tone, removing the hat and the eyepatch. The curly hair tumbled to the pirate’s shoulders, and now I saw tiny gold earrings in her pierced ears. “But I’m gonna go in and have cocoa pretty soon.”

  “What’s your name when you’re not Jean Lafitte?” I asked.

  “Letitia.” She plopped her hat back on her head and dangled the eyepatch around her wrist. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” she said belatedly, as though she’d just remembered. “Granny and Grandpa say so.”

  “That’s good advice. Is it all right if I talk with your granny and grandpa?”

  “Grandpa’s at work. He makes grapes into wine. They put it in big oak barrels. This is an oak tree, you know.” With the flat of her sword she tapped one of the limbs that cradled her tree house.

  “Yes, I know. It’s an old one too.”

  “My uncle Tom used to have a tree house right here, only this one’s better. He built it for me. Oak barrels smell icky after there’s wine in them. The grown-ups say the wine tastes good, but I don’t think so. Grandpa lets me have a little sip sometimes at special dinners. He mixes it with water. I think it tastes funny.”

  “You might like wine better when you’re a grown-up,” I told her. She gave me a disbelieving look. “Is your granny in the house? I’d like to talk with her.”

  “Yeah,” Letitia said. “She’s taking a nap. I used to take naps but I’m too old now.”

  She stuck the wooden sword in her sash and then used the rope and her hands to lower her paint-splashed ladder to the ground. She tested it, making sure it was propped securely against the tree trunk, then climbed down herself, jumping the last couple of feet. Flecks of silver and gold glitter shook loose from her hat and floated through the air, landing on her shoulders.

  Up close, I saw that the sword had been jigsawed from a length of plywood, its edges carefully rounded and sanded. And the sash around Letitia’s midsection looked for all the world like a skirt with an elastic waist and lace at the hem.

  I could also see a strong resemblance to Benita Pascal. Was the little girl a cousin, a niece? Or a daughter? Letitia had talked a lot about her granny and grandpa. But she hadn’t mentioned a mother or father.

  “That’s quite a sword,” I said.

  “My grandpa made it. He makes lots of things for me.”

  “What about your daddy?”

  “I don’t have a daddy,” she said. “I have a mommy, but she doesn’t live here.” She stopped, as though pondering the significance of that. Then she swiped one hand across her mouth, smudging her eyebrow-pencil mustache. “You wait here. I will announce you.”

  Complying with Letitia’s directive, I waited at the bottom of the front steps while she climbed them, crossed the porch and opened the door. A moment later she appeared again, tugging the hand of a small woman whose shoulder-length black hair was streaked with gray. She was dressed in plain black slacks and a gray pullover sweater, and she looked tired.

  “You want to see me?” she asked. “Who are you?”

  I showed her my identification. “I’m a private investigator, Mrs. Pascal. I’d like to talk with you about your daughter.”

  Her dark brown eyes had dark brown circles underneath, and they were rimmed in red. They glanced at my ID, then moved slowly across my face. Finally she turned to her granddaughter. “Letitia, is that Aunt Maria’s skirt you have tied around your waist? I’ve been looking everywhere for it. You take that off and go wash your face. I’ll make you some cocoa. Then you can watch TV.”

  “Can’t I listen while you talk with this lady?” the little girl cajoled.

  “I haven’t decided if I’m going to talk with this lady,” her grandmother said pointedly. “Go on now.”

  Letitia disappeared into the house. Mrs. Pascal gave me a stern look that said she was reserving judgment, at least for now. But if I didn’t pass muster, she’d kick me off her porch, and I could forget an invitation into the house.

  “Why do you want to talk about Benita? What’s your connection to this?”

  “I was hired by one of the owners of Edgewater Downs,” I told her, “to look into a matter that required some discretion. During the course of that investigation, I did talk with Benita.”

  “Was she involved in whatever you were investigating?” Mrs. Pascal asked. She looked as though she wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d said yes.

  I opted for the truth. “I hadn’t ruled her out. I’m still looking into the original matter.”

  “You think it might have something to do with her —” She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder, as though to make sure her granddaughter was out of hearing range. “With her murder?”

  “At this point, I wouldn’t rule that out either.”

  She thought about this for a moment. “The detective that my husband and I talked with yesterday, he said maybe someone robbed her. Killed her for the money she was carrying.”

  “It’s possible. Did she always carry a lot of cash?”

  “Only when she was coming to visit. She brings... She brought money, for the child.”

  As if on cue, I heard the child calling from somewhere in the house. “Granny. I’m ready for my cocoa.”

  A chilly gust of wind blew the leaves on the lawn and they rattled across the sidewalk. I shivered. The temperature had dropped and the sky had darkened. It was going to rain again. I could feel it, and smell it. I looked at Mrs. Pascal, trying to sense what was going through her head. She was reluctant to talk with me, but she was also curious. About why I was there, about what I might tell her of
her daughter’s death. Finally she beckoned me inside. I stepped into an entry hall with polished hardwood floors, facing the carpeted stairs that led up to the second floor.

  Mrs. Pascal walked through the doorway on the right, into a room that looked comfortable and lived-in. Its wooden floors were covered by a well-worn Oriental carpet. A sofa upholstered in a blue and white pattern faced a fireplace. There were chairs at either end of the sofa, one a wide-bottomed rocker, the other a brown leather recliner, angled to face the large TV on a nearby stand. There were shelves on either side of the fireplace, holding books, pictures, and other decorations, ranging from pottery and crystal to a plate-sized object made of white plaster of paris, with a small handprint in the middle and Letitia’s name carefully lettered in gold around the rim.

  “I’ve just made a pot of coffee,” Mrs. Pascal said. “Would you like a cup?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She excused herself and walked through another doorway that pierced the back wall. I glimpsed a dining room with a rectangular wooden table and eight chairs, and just visible on the left, a glass-fronted cabinet full of china. I turned away and walked over to examine the photographs displayed on the shelves. There were plenty of shots of Letitia at all ages of her young life, but I only saw one of Benita. It had been taken at her high school graduation and she looked solemn in her cap and gown.

  I studied a photograph of a compact dapper man with short dark hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. Was this Benita’s father? In the picture, he was dressed in a dark suit and he held a plaque, up to the camera. I couldn’t make out the words engraved on the brass plate but I recognized the logo. I’d seen it frequently on bottles of Sonoma County wine.

  “The Villaven Winery,” I said as Mrs. Pascal returned to the living room with a tray in her hands. “The one that has a tasting room downtown on the plaza.”

  She set the tray on the table in front of the sofa and handed me a cup and saucer made of fine bone china. I sat down in the rocking chair and my hostess settled back against the cushions at the other end of the sofa. I watched her stir sugar and cream into her coffee. I tasted mine. Good and strong, but not bitter.

  “Yes,” she said. “My maiden name was Villavencencio. My father started the winery. My husband, Victor, came to work for him as his assistant winemaker. That’s Victor in the photograph you were looking at. Papa had only daughters, no sons. So it was left to me and Victor to carry on the Villaven winery. We hope to pass the winery to a third generation. Our elder son works at the winery as well. Our younger son is studying oenology at U.C. Davis. And our elder daughter and her husband just started their own winery in Napa. Wine-making is a family tradition, you see.”

  Two boys, two girls, I thought, with Benita the youngest girl. “It must have been a surprise,” I said, “when Benita decided to take a different direction.”

  Mrs. Pascal took a swallow of coffee before she answered. “I thought this thing with horses was a phase she was going through. It started when she was about Letitia’s age, when she went on a horseback ride with her Girl Scout troop. Next thing I knew it was horses. Horses, all the time, every weekend, at the riding stables west of town. Even after all that, I thought she’d outgrow it.”

  “But she didn’t,” I said.

  Mrs. Pascal shook her head and set the coffee cup on the table. “No. It got worse. When she got to high school, she wanted her own horse.” She sighed. “Benita kept pestering her father and me until Victor put his foot down. Still she lived and breathed horses. As soon as she turned sixteen she got a job working after school and on weekends at the riding stable. I thought that was all right. It gave her a little spending money and she could ride the stable horses. But after a while that was too tame for her. The summer before she started her senior year in high school, she got another job, working for a horse trainer.”

  Her mouth compressed into a line, and under the surface of her composure I detected anger. Did it have something to do with the trainer? I thought so. And I thought I knew why.

  “She worked there all through her last year of school,” Mrs. Pascal continued. “After school and every weekend, without fail. When she graduated, my husband and I wanted her to go to college, even if it was just the community college in Santa Rosa. But she wouldn’t have any of that.”

  Mrs. Pascal glanced at the photograph of Benita in her graduation cap and gown, then picked up her coffee cup. “The day after graduation, she packed her things and left. She moved into a room in this trainer’s barn. That was in June. Next thing we knew, she was riding horses, in races at the county fairs.” The tone of Mrs. Pascal’s voice told me how outlandish she thought that was.

  “We didn’t see much of her. A visit now and then over the next few months. Then she came to spend Christmas Day with us. She told us she was pregnant. And asked if she could move back in until the baby was born.”

  “Which was?”

  “May, the following year.”

  “Who is Letitia’s father?” I asked.

  “Benita never told us.” Her voice was steady, but the quivering of the hand that held the cup betrayed her emotions. Mrs. Pascal was still angry, with the daughter who had gone her own way, but even more so with the evil older man who’d seduced her child and fathered Benita’s.

  “But you have a candidate.”

  She didn’t respond, at least not right away. Several minutes ticked by as she struggled with her anger. Finally she turned to me. “Yes, I think so. Benita denied it, of course. The man was more than twice her age. And married. Still is, as far as 1 know.”

  “What is the trainer’s name?”

  “Colvin.” She spat out the words. “Robert Colvin. He lives out on Westside Road, just past Dry Creek.” It was now as though the dam had a crack and the water was bursting through with increasing force. “I thought she would stay here and raise her child. But no, Benita never cared about anything but those damned horses. When she told me she was going back to this ridiculous business of being a jockey, I laughed. But the joke was on me. She left Letitia here with us, a baby just a few months old, and she went East. She comes to visit now and then, bringing money and lots of useless gifts to salve her conscience.”

  “Sounds like Letitia’s better off with you,” I said.

  “Of course she is,” Mrs. Pascal said, the words savage. “A comfortable home with two grandparents who love her. But sometimes she asks where her mother is. Benita’s visits were infrequent and erratic. It confused Letitia. Sometimes she had a mother, most of the time she didn’t. And no father. Her uncles aren’t enough to fill that void. I used to wish that Benita wouldn’t come to visit at all. And now —” She stopped abruptly, as though realizing the import of her words.

  “Now she won’t be coming at all.” This new voice came from the doorway that led to the dining room. I looked up from the conflicting emotions that stained Mrs. Pascal’s face at the man whose photograph I’d seen earlier. Benita’s father was home.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  MR. PASCAL HAD LEFT THE SUIT HE’D WORN IN THE photograph in the closet. Today he wore khaki trousers and a blue and red plaid flannel shirt. He must have come in the back door, where he’d removed his work boots. His stocking feet were stuck into a pair of well-worn bedroom slippers.

  “I don’t think we have met. I’m Victor Pascal.” He crossed the living room carpet toward me, holding out his hand. I rose to meet him. Up close he smelled of fermented grapes and damp earth, and his hand was that of a working man, hard and brown and callused. His soft voice, his manners, and the way he carried himself put me in mind of a Spanish grandee. I sensed steel and sharp intelligence behind the soft voice and the courtly manner.

  “Jeri Howard. I’m a private investigator from Oakland. I have some questions about your daughter, Benita.”

  “So did I,” he said sadly. “Many of them unanswered.” He glanced down at his wife, who’d regained her uneasy composure. “Now that she’s dead, I’ll never get those a
nswers.”

  “Letitia,” Mrs. Pascal whispered, with a glance toward the back of the house. They hadn’t told their granddaughter that her mother was dead. “Where is she?”

  “She’s in the den, Emilia, drinking cocoa and watching one of her videos.” Mr. Pascal motioned me to return to my seat. He sat down next to his wife and patted her hand with one of his own. Then he turned his gaze on me. “Are you assisting the police, Ms. Howard?”

  “I work for one of the owners of Edgewater Downs,” I told him.

  “Is the racetrack concerned about liability in my daughter’s death?” he asked, a sardonic note intruding on the politeness.

  They probably were, since Benita had been murdered on racetrack property. But the racetrack’s liability wasn’t my concern at the moment. “Actually, I was looking into another matter, one I can’t discuss. During the course of my investigation I interviewed Benita about it.” They didn’t need to know, right now anyway, that Benita had been my prime suspect concerning the harassment directed at Molly Torrance. “I’m wondering if Benita’s death is connected to the other matter.”

  Mr. Pascal cocked his head in my direction. “Since you can tell us nothing about this other matter, I don’t know what you think we can tell you.”

  “When someone dies unexpectedly,” I said carefully, “I find it very useful to learn as much as possible about...”

  “The victim,” Mr. Pascal finished. “I see, and I understand. Still, what we know of Benita may be of no use to you. Her life after she left Healdsburg was a mystery to her mother and me, something to be glimpsed only occasionally. I have talked with Detective Maltesta of the Fremont police. Also with Benita’s agent, Mr. Sholto. He was here yesterday. He has power of attorney and wished to assist us in making arrangements for her funeral, and for dealing with her things. Both Maltesta and Sholto seemed to think her death occurred during a robbery.”