by Janet Dawson
Eddy nodded, as though agreeing with my analysis.
“Then she took the flyer out of her purse again,” I continued. “This time to wrap it around the money she was going to mail. Mr. Pascal could be right. Maybe she wanted to make sure no one could see money through the envelope.”
Eddy picked up the envelope and held it up to the light. “I don’t know. Doesn’t look to me like you could see through this. It’s brown, for one thing. And the paper’s thicker, like one of those five-by-seven mailers.”
“So was the flyer just a convenient piece of paper? Or did she mean to mail the note as well as the cash?”
“You tell me,” Eddy said.
At first all I saw were scribbles in black ink on the other side of the flyer. A jumble of words and numbers and letters, looking random at first. Then I recognized two words.
“Convallaria majalis,” I said, pointing. “It’s the botanical name for lily of the valley.”
Eddy eyed me with disbelief. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. I spent the morning checking out poisonous plant Web sites.”
“Lily of the valley,” Eddy repeated. “Okay, look again. Do you see anything else?”
I pointed at a series of numbers. “Those look like dates. See, nine, ten, and eleven. That could mean September, October, and November.” I thought about the significance of the dates, if that was indeed what the numbers were. Could they be the dates of the anonymous phone calls to Stan and Molly Torrance? The last set of numbers was surely last Thursday’s date, when Molly had received yet another threatening call. But it was also the day Megahertz lost to Good and Ready in the first race at Edgewater Downs, as well as the day Zeke Ramos probably buzzed Stella Darling to victory in the second race.
Race fixing, I thought. It all comes back to race fixing.
“These look like initials,” Eddy was saying, squinting at a group of letters.
I agreed with him. “Yeah. But whose? Benita’s handwriting left a lot to the imagination. I think that’s a G.”
G for Gates Baldwin? And was that a Z, for Zeke Ramos? Or a Y, for Yves Boussac? The H was easier to recognize. But did it stand for Cliff Holveg, or Jeri Howard?
There was one set of letters I recognized: MHZ.
“Megahertz,” Eddy said. “The clock speed on a computer.”
“Usually. But in this case I think it refers to a horse. Gates Baldwin trains three horses for Cliff Holveg, the Silicon Valley bigwig. All the horses have computer terms for names. Kilobyte, Motherboard, Megahertz.”
“Cute,” Eddy said, in a tone of voice that told me he thought otherwise. “Is there something notable about this particular horse?”
“Benita rode that horse on Thursday, and lost. From all reports, Benita hated to lose. All the time, at anything. No matter how insignificant the contest, losing made her very angry. And she lost the first and second races Thursday afternoon. And she was furious about it. Mad enough to have words with Gates Baldwin after the first race. I wasn’t close enough to hear everything that was said, but I picked up on the tone.”
“You said everything, but did you hear anything?” Eddy asked with interest.
“Baldwin said something about the horse bleeding through its Lasix,” I said slowly. “And after the race I did see something that looked like blood in the horse’s nostrils.” I ran my eyes down the sheet of paper again, then stopped and pointed. “There. ‘LSX.’ That could mean Lasix.”
Eddy made a face. “So the horse bled a little. Doesn’t that happen a lot?”
“Sometimes. It cuts the horse’s wind, interferes with the breathing, and the horse can’t run as fast.” I stopped and looked at the note, then another set of letters leaped out at me. “Cuts their wind,” I repeated. “‘SPG.’ Sponge?”
“What has a sponge got to do with anything?” Eddie demanded.
“They call it sponging,” I told him. “And it’s illegal as hell, as well as cruel. There have been some cases of race fixing back in Kentucky where someone sticks a sponge up a horse’s nose. The horse can’t breathe properly, so he can’t run very well. In extreme cases, it can kill the horse.”
“Any of that going on here?”
“I talked with an investigator for the California Horse Racing Board yesterday,” I said. “He told me they hadn’t seen any cases of sponging here in the state. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, just that they haven’t caught anyone doing it. He also admitted that there are some substances that don’t show up on their lab tests when they do urine tests on the horses. Which they do, constantly.”
Eddy gazed at the paper where Benita had scribbled her notes. “So what are you saying?”
“I think someone is tampering with racehorses at Edgewater Downs,” I told him. “Fixing it so horses don’t win races when the statistics say they should. Fixing it so favorites don’t run well. And, every now and then, fixing it so that a mediocre long shot comes in first. And I think Benita found out about it. I’ll bet those dates are days when races were fixed.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told you this morning, when you brought up those damned poisonous plants,” Eddy said. “It’s a great theory. But have you got any way to prove it?”
I stood up to leave. “Not yet. But I will.”
Chapter Thirty-five
STATISTICS, THAT’S WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR.
Not necessarily those past performance charts in the Daily Racing Form, but the kind of figures found in the files at Edgewater Downs. Before I left the Fremont Police Department Monday afternoon, I persuaded a reluctant Eddy Maltesta to give me a copy of the flyer on which Benita had written numbers and letters. Maybe those numbers and letters could tell me something. At least, that’s what I was hoping.
Now I was in the track admin office, plowing through the statistics of the fall race meeting and making notes on a lined pad. I’d already confirmed that the numbers on the back of the flyer that looked like dates matched up with the Edgewater Downs racing calendar. There was no racing on Mondays or Tuesdays, and all the numbers were on the Wednesday through Sunday end of the week. The next step was to take a look at the racing cards for the dates in question, to see which horses the odds and the handicappers favored to win — or lose — on those days. Claudia Hollander brought me stacks of paper, including track reports on wagering, daily programs, and old issues of the Racing Form. I read fine print until my eyes watered.
It was a daunting task. Just because a favorite lost on a Thursday in October, or a long shot won on a Sunday in November, didn’t mean that one horse had been drugged or another had an electrical device applied to its rump. But it did mean something if those horses were trained by Gates Baldwin, or ridden by Zeke Ramos.
Claudia had already closed up the administrative office and gone home when I heard a key turn in the lock of the door leading out to the corridor. I got up to see who the newcomer was. It was David. I’d called him earlier, at Weper and Associates in San Francisco, to let him know what I was doing. He’d said he would come over to the track as soon as he could get away that evening. He was dressed much as he had been when I’d first met him during my undercover investigation at Bates Inc., in an expensive, well-tailored gray suit suitable for his role as corporate executive. He shut the door and locked it as I returned to the comfortable leather chair at the desk where I’d been working.
“I see you didn’t go to Denver,” I said.
“No. And Frank’s pissed.” He set his briefcase on the floor, then took off his jacket and draped it on the back of a chair. One hand reached up to loosen his tie as he walked over to where I sat. He leaned down to look at the photocopy of the flyer and my notes. I caught the faint musky scent of his aftershave. “Making any progress?”
I yawned and stretched, then moved my hand up to probe a knot at the back of my neck. “I’ve come up with several dates when horses trained by Gates Baldwin were favorites or near-favorites, according to the odds, and lost. Some, but not all, of th
ose dates coincide with the dates Benita wrote on the back of the flyer.”
“What about winners ridden by Ramos?” David asked. He stepped behind me. I felt his fingers digging into my neck, kneading the tight muscles.
“Same situation. Long shot or middle-of-the-pack horses winning, on dates that don’t always coincide with Benita’s dates. And on horses trained by a handful of owners, not just by Baldwin.”
“So... nothing conclusive.”
“Nothing yet.” I leaned back into his hands, feeling myself relax.
David’s fingers probed the kinks in my muscles, moving from my neck to my shoulders. “You haven’t said much about that doctor you’ve been dating. Are you two still seeing each other?”
“Kaz? Yes, we are.” Kaz Pellegrino was a doctor over at Children’s Hospital in Oakland. We’d been together about a year, although I hadn’t seen much of him lately, due to his schedule. “He’s been out of town, at a conference.”
David’s fingers dug a little deeper. “While the cat’s away,” he said. “How about dinner, Friday night?”
I glanced over my shoulder at David. “Haven’t you seen enough of me this past week?”
“But it’s been business, not pleasure,” he said, a hint of amusement in his voice. “I was thinking it might be fun the other way around.”
“I’ll take a rain check.” I moved, dislodging his hands. Time to get back to business, I thought. I was enjoying David’s massage too much. “I asked Grady Kline for data on the results of urinalysis performed on horses over the past couple of months. But I don’t think it will be all that useful. If Baldwin’s drugging horses, he’s got to be using something that isn’t detected in the horse’s urine. Or something the CHRB isn’t screening for.”
“Did you find any information on Yves Boussac?”
I shook my head. “Not in the databases I checked this morning. I started a backgrounder on him. George Avalos says he has some friends in the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau. He’s asked for information on Boussac. If he’s involved in race fixing at other tracks, surely something will come up eventually. I’m just hoping for sooner, rather than later.”
I yawned again, and eyed the coffeemaker on the credenza. “I could use a break. Or a cup of coffee.”
He held out his hand. I took it and he and pulled me to my feet. “Let’s walk over to Barn Four and say hello to Molly.”
“This late?” I glanced at my watch. It was past five. “I thought Molly usually left the track by mid-afternoon.”
“Sometimes she comes over for the afternoon feeding, which is around four-thirty. After that she and the grooms bed down the horses.”
“Good, let’s go over there. I have more questions for her. It’ll save me a trip over to her house.”
We put on our jackets and went out the side door, walking toward the backside. It was getting dark. The air was cold and moist. Fog crept ashore from the nearby bay, its gray folds softening the edges of the steel barns and blurring the light from the tall overhead fixtures that illuminated the track and the barns. The fog swirled toward one of the hot walkers, turning it into a fantastic night creature instead of a utilitarian machine designed to cool down horses.
“Hello, lover,” I heard a woman’s voice say as David and I reached the corner of Barn One. I glanced through the door to my right and saw Lina Barnstable in one of the shedrows, her big black thoroughbred just beyond her, its tail twitching as it bore the ministrations of its groom. Standing next to Lina was Ruy Camacho, the hard-eyed jockey who seemed to be with her all the time.
“Damnation,” David muttered.
She walked toward us, sleek and predatory in tight forest green stretch pants and matching sweater. “I think you’ve been avoiding me.”
“I’ve had a lot to do,” he told her.
“So I hear.” She glanced at me, amusement on her narrow face, then put her hand on his arm and drew him into the barn. “Well, bygones be bygones and all that, lover. I do have some questions about the stabling arrangements here. And since you are track management, I’m sure you’re just the man to help me out.”
Ruy Camacho didn’t look the slightest bit perturbed by the sight of Lina vamping her ex-husband. He left them in the shedrow and stepped outside the barn, removing a pack of cigarettes from his black leather jacket. He offered me one. I declined. He shook out a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, then fired it up with a brushed gold lighter. “Find out who killed Benita?” he asked, economical as ever.
“No. Got any ideas?”
His mouth quirked into what passed for a smile. “No. I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks.” I looked past him at David, who was for the moment still caught in his ex-wife’s web. “Catch up with me later,” I called.
He gave me a look that said he’d get back at me for leaving him in her clutches. I chuckled as I crossed the wide area between the odd- and even-numbered barns. The fog was so thick now that by the time I got to Barn Four I couldn’t see anything of Barn Three, except the eerie yellow glow of light where the barn was supposed to be.
I walked down the shedrow toward Molly’s tack room. Carlos and José were done feeding the horses and were now doing a final day’s cleanup, but I didn’t see any sign of Molly. The tack room door was open. I stepped into the room, my mouth open in mid-greeting, then stopped. Molly was there, all right, and so was Deakin Kelley. His arms were around her waist, and hers were around his neck. Their lips were locked together, and I had a feeling they had been for quite some time.
“Oops. Sorry,” I said, as they backed away from each other, startled.
Deakin laughed as he reached up and brushed one of Molly’s curls from her forehead. “Well, I guess our secret is out in the open.”
“Not that you can keep a secret around here for very long,” Molly added. She seemed to be a little breathless. “It was all over the track by noon that I’d decided to have Dad’s body exhumed.”
“What are people saying?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Well, I’ve had a couple of people ask me outright just what the hell I was doing, digging up my father’s body.”
“And I heard people talking in the track kitchen,” Deakin added. “There are two main theories. One is that Molly’s gone ‘round the bend and just can’t accept that her father died of a heart attack. The other is that Molly thinks somebody poisoned Stan.”
“Which is accurate,” Molly said. “At least I think so, based on what Jeri told me.”
Deakin put his arm around Molly’s waist again. “There are several candidates for poisoner, including Benita and Zeke Ramos.”
“Both of whom are conveniently dead,” I said. “And since they were jockeys and either in the paddock or the Jockey Room the afternoon your father died, neither of them could have administered the poison. Whoever did put poison in Stan’s mug should be getting nervous right about now.”
“Molly told me about the plants in Benita’s apartment,” Deakin said. “But it sounds so far-fetched.”
“I know it does. And I know we don’t have any proof yet. But the autopsy and the lab tests on the residue in the mug should tell us something.”
Carlos came into the room then, walked over to Molly, and spoke to her in Spanish. She excused herself and went out to one of the stalls where Carlos and José were working. It was Belladonna’s stall. The roan whinnied as Deakin and I followed Molly. She conferred with Carlos. José was standing to one side, stroking the filly’s neck. He gave me a sidelong glance. It reminded me of the way he’d looked the day Benita’s body was found, and I made a mental note to ask him about it.
“What are you doing here so late?” Deakin asked me as Molly turned back toward us.
“Running the numbers. Running around them, through them, trying to make sense of them.” Molly and Deakin looked perplexed, so I explained about the notes Benita had made on the back of the old flyer, and how I interpreted them. “I’ve been digging through the track
’s files for several hours without a break. Then David showed up. He told me you were here feeding horses, so we decided to walk over and say hello.
“So where is David?” Molly peered down the shedrow.
“He got sidetracked over by Barn One. By the lovely Lina.”
“Damnation,” Deakin said, sounding very much like David had. “She’s here tonight? I don’t want to see her.”
“Amazing,” I told Molly. “The effect that woman has on men.”
She and I laughed as Deakin shook his head. “You wouldn’t laugh if you’d ever been swept up by Hurricane Lina.”
“She’s something,” I said. “I’m not sure what. I was planning to come and see you anyway, Molly.”
“More questions, right?” She grinned. “You sure know how to ask ’em.”
“Years of practice.” Chameleon stuck his head out of the next stall and allowed me to scratch his nose. “I’d like you to tell me everything you remember about the day your father died. Particularly anything that happened before the fifth race.”
“Well, it was a fairly normal day, up until the time Dad collapsed.” She started with their arrival that morning and went through the usual routine of training, feeding, mucking out stalls. There was paperwork, phone calls, visits from owners. Then getting the horses ready to race. “We had a horse in the first and third races, but not in the fourth. So we were back here in the shedrow, getting ready for the fifth.”
I knew there was about half an hour between races, plenty of time for someone to drop the fatal dose into Stan’s coffee. “I know David was here, but he said he arrived just a couple of minutes before Stan collapsed. Did anyone else visit, besides David and the owners? Anyone you wouldn’t expect — or wouldn’t think twice about seeing?”