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

by Janet Dawson

  She frowned. “Track people... their faces are so familiar they’re just part of the scenery. Reggie Trask stopped by. And Doc Ettridge, the track vet. I saw Erin Fraser, Dick Moody’s niece. A couple of other trainers, some exercise riders. Sometimes it’s like a train station around here, with all the people in and out. And I wasn’t here all the time. I do remember coming around the corner of the shedrow just as we were getting ready to take the horse to the receiving barn. Gates Baldwin was over by that saddle rack there, talking with Dad.” She pointed at the saddle rack, silhouetted against the gray fog near the open doorway.

  That piqued my interest. “I thought your father and Baldwin were rivals, that they didn’t have much to say to each other.”

  “That’s true,” Molly said. “Things had really been cool between them since Cliff Holveg took his horses and moved them to Gates’s stable. But it looked like a casual conversation, as though Gates was just passing through and stopped to say hello.”

  “Did Gates go near the tack room?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact, he did.” She looked past me toward the door, as though seeing her father and Baldwin there instead of the orange tomcat Pug, who’d just appeared out of the fog and had jumped up to perch on the saddle rack. “His pager went off. He looked at it and said it was his groom calling him. Asked if he could use our phone. Dad said sure. So Gates went into the tack room. I heard him talking on the phone. But I didn’t see him. Dad and I were out in the shedrow.”

  I looked from Molly to Deakin, who knew where I was headed. “Where was your father’s coffee mug?”

  “On the bookcase next to the coffeemaker,” she said slowly. She stared at me. “He could have done it. He was in there less than a minute. But he could have done it. Right after Gates left, Dad picked up his mug and added some coffee from the pot. Then David showed up, just as we were about to head over to the receiving barn.”

  “So you think it was no accident that Baldwin got paged?” Deakin asked.

  “There’s one way to find out. I can ask Baldwin’s groom. What’s his name?”

  “Felipe Garcia.”

  It wasn’t Molly or Deakin who answered. I turned to my left and saw José, Carlos’s nephew, his brown eyes troubled as he gazed at me. He’d been following our conversation, and now he spoke again. “She asked many questions. Like you.”

  “Benita?” I guessed.

  José nodded. In halting English he told me that Benita had asked questions about the day the Señor died. Carlos interrupted, taking him to task for not telling the police. But he had not seen her that night when she was killed, José said. He had not lied to the police about that. She was there in Barn Four that afternoon, after she finished riding, and she asked about Señor Baldwin’s groom. The man’s name was Felipe Garcia.

  “What does he look like?” I asked, an idea insinuating itself into my head.

  An older man, José told me. Dark like an Indio. Small and thin.

  A man who probably looked like a jockey, from a distance.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  “MAYBE PAM CULLEN DID SEE BENITA WITH A MAN,” I told Molly and Deakin. “But he wasn’t a jockey. He was a groom. I think I’ll go have a talk with Felipe Garcia. Does he live in Barn Two?” José assured me that he did, in one of the bunkrooms on the north side, near Gates Baldwin’s tack room.

  “I’ll go with you,” Deakin said.

  I shook my head. “No, this won’t take long. Wait here for David. Or go rescue him from Lina’s clutches.”

  He laughed. “No, thanks. I’m not feeling that brave. I’ll let Vanitzky manage that one on his own.”

  I left Molly and Deakin standing by Chameleon’s stall, and walked along the shedrow that was perpendicular to Molly’s until I reached the corner door that led outside. As I crossed the twenty feet or so between Barns Two and Four, I saw that the fog was even thicker now. A real pea-souper, so dense I couldn’t make out Paseo Padre Parkway, off to the east, just a bank of gray smothering the streetlights. As I entered Barn Two, I heard something behind me and turned to look. I had company. Pug, the orange tomcat, had followed. He was romping through some loose straw at the side of the barn. Then he stopped, and his ears pricked. He dashed toward the fence at the perimeter of the track property, disappearing into the weeds in pursuit of whatever he’d heard.

  Gates Baldwin’s tack room was at the northeast corner of Barn Two. I detoured down another shedrow in the middle of the barn, then headed for the northwest corner. When I reached the shedrow that bordered the north wall, I looked down its length. If Molly was here during her horse’s feeding time, it was just possible that Gates might be as well. But it was past feeding time now, and it looked as though everyone had turned in for the night, even the horses. As far as I could tell, his tack room door was closed. Was that a thread of light showing at the bottom? I couldn’t be sure.

  I walked down the shedrow, stalls to my right and doors to my left, glancing at the horses, watching for any movement that wasn’t equine. A horse’s head swung into view over one rope barrier, and the occupant of the stall whinnied softly. I heard soft mariachi music coming from a radio behind one of the doors to the left, the bunkrooms where the grooms and exercise riders lived.

  The first door was ajar. I stopped and peered inside. I saw one man stretched out on the narrow twin bed under the high window. The gray blanket that covered him was askew, revealing his white T-shirt, black jeans, and stocking feet. He was asleep, judging from the intermittent snores that punctuated the music coming from a small radio resting on a wooden stool at the foot of the bed.

  Two other men, both clad in blue jeans and sweatshirts, were seated cross-legged on the other twin bed, which was pushed against the wall at right angles to the first. Light from the bare overhead bulb bounced off the red and white pattern on a pack of playing cards. One of the men shuffled the cards, then quickly dealt a hand.

  The sleeping man was too young to be Felipe Garcia. Both of the cardplayers were older men. I was trying to decide if either of them was Baldwin’s groom when one of them looked up and saw me. I rapped my knuckles against the doorjamb as he swung his legs off the bed and crossed the room to the door. He was an older man, short and thin, with an impassive dark face. An Indio, I thought, recalling José’s description.

  “Felipe Garcia?” I asked.

  He looked me up and down, his eyes impenetrable and his face impassive. “Si.”

  “Me llamo Jeri Howard. Habla ingles?”

  Garcia shrugged. “Poquito.”

  My Spanish was more extensive than Garcia’s English. I told him that I wanted to ask him some questions. He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged and motioned me into the bunkroom. That was what I’d been hoping for, since I didn’t particularly want to be seen by Gates Baldwin, or anyone else who happened to be passing through Barn Two.

  Once I was inside, the other man who’d been sitting on the bunk stood and bowed slightly, telling me his name was Esteban Hernandez. He too worked for Baldwin. There was only one chair, a rickety-looking refugee from someone’s kitchen. Clothes had been tossed over the back, but Garcia picked them up and hung them on a row of pegs that had been nailed to the wall next to the door. Then he waved me toward the chair. I thanked him and sat down. Garcia and Hernandez resumed their seats on the bed and stared at me expectantly. The man who was sleeping on the other bed emitted a window-rattling snore.

  I asked Garcia if he remembered Sunday, three weeks ago, when Señor Torrance had collapsed in Barn Four. He nodded. Yes, it was very tragic that Señor Torrance should die like that. He was a good man with a big heart, but his heart had given out.

  “What were you doing before the race?” I asked in Spanish.

  Getting the horse ready, he replied, with a look that said, what else would he be doing? And was Señor Baldwin here with him? Yes, for a time. Then he went next door to Barn Four, to see someone, though Garcia didn’t know who. He conferred with Esteban Hernandez as the slee
per sawed a few more logs. Hernandez didn’t know either.

  Had he called Baldwin’s pager number at any time before the race?

  Now Garcia screwed up his face and he frowned. Then he said something in Spanish so quickly that I didn’t understand him. I asked him to repeat it more slowly.

  The man on the bed snorted loudly. Then he sat up and shook himself, like a dog shaking off water. He raked a hand through his straight black hair and rubbed his eyes. “He says he don’t know how to use that pager.”

  “Really. That’s very interesting. Baldwin told someone that his groom paged him while he was in Barn Four.”

  “Wasn’t Felipe,” the younger man said. “Wasn’t Esteban, either.”

  “How about you? What is your name, by the way?”

  “Name’s Tito. And I got no reason to be calling Baldwin’s pager number. I don’t work for him. I work for Betsy Murphy over in the next shedrow.”

  “So as far as you know, none of Baldwin’s grooms called his pager number while he was in Barn Four that afternoon.”

  Tito fired some Spanish at Garcia and Hernandez, and they both shook their head. “Nada,” Tito said. “Say, what’s this about, huh? Hey, wait a minute, I know. You that private eye I heard about, been all over the backside, asking all kinds of questions. Baldwin got his ass in the wringer about something?”

  “Should he?”

  Tito shrugged. “Depends on what you’re asking.”

  “Ever see him do anything to slow down a horse? Or speed it up?”

  Tito’s wisecracking humor vanished. He looked past me at the open door, then got up from the bed, throwing off the blanket. He crossed to the door and shut it. “Better watch your step, chica,” he said, returning to the bed. “That kind of talk gets people in trouble.”

  “But you’ve seen it happen,” I said.

  He didn’t answer right away. I thought back to what Grady Kline had told me about race fixing. It was difficult to prove, because nobody on the backside would talk about it on the record. But we weren’t on the record.

  “Yeah, I seen it happen a time or two,” Tito said finally. “A jockey used a buzzer. You know what a buzzer is?” His hand closed over the imaginary electrical device and he pressed his fingers to the discarded blanket. “Bzzzzt.”

  I saw Felipe Garcia and Esteban Hernandez jump as Tito made the buzzing sound. Then they stared at him, as though they were trying, despite their limited English, to follow the conversation.

  “Give a horse a jolt,” Tito continued, miming the buzzer again, without the sound effect. “The horse runs like hell, wins the race. Easier to make a horse lose, though. Yank on the reins, hold him back. Get him off his stride. Get him boxed in behind some other horses.”

  “Have you seen someone use a buzzer recently?” I asked. “Here, at Edgewater Downs.”

  Tito was silent for a moment, his eyes shuttered. “Yeah. But I ain’t saying who. That jockey ain’t gonna be riding no more anyway.”

  I had a feeling he was talking about Zeke Ramos. He definitely wasn’t going to be riding any more racehorses at Edgewater Downs, or any other track.

  Felipe Garcia interrupted, demanding to know what I’d asked. Tito told him. Now the older groom looked horrified at my implication. I didn’t need a translator to understand what he was saying. He was denying that Baldwin had ever done anything to alter the performance of one of his horses, denying it vociferously.

  But that didn’t mean it didn’t happen, I thought. Just that Garcia didn’t know about it.

  “Let’s talk about Thursday night,” I said.

  “Thursday?” Tito shook his head. “Man, we had a horse with the colic, over in Ms. Murphy’s shedrow. Had to call the vet, and we was up all night, it seemed like.”

  “I meant Felipe Garcia.” I turned to the older groom and asked him in Spanish if he had seen Benita Pascal that night. He looked uncomfortable as he digested my words, then he nodded, slowly and solemnly. Was she with anyone? Yes, he told me. Zeke Ramos.

  So Benita had connected with Ramos at the track. When I asked Garcia what time he’d seen Benita and Ramos, and where, he told me it was about a quarter to eight. He’d seen them standing in the area between Barns Two and Four. He thought they were arguing, he added. Ramos had taken Benita by the arm, but she’d pulled away. A few minutes later Benita had sought him out, here in the bunkroom. Alone.

  “Why haven’t you told the police this?”

  No one had asked him, he said, with the look of a man who was reluctant to offer information.

  “He don’t trust the cops,” Tito added helpfully. “He’s got his green card and everything, been working in el norte for years, but he still acts like la Migra gonna come swooping down, send him back to Zacatecas.”

  Both Garcia and Hernandez looked alarmed at the mention of la Migra, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. I reassured them that the matter at hand had nothing to do with their immigration status. Then I asked what Benita wanted to talk about.

  He launched into a lengthy explanation, and he spoke so quickly I only understood half of it. Among the words I recognized were Benita’s name, the word Lasix, and Megahertz, which was the name of the horse Benita had ridden Thursday afternoon. The horse whose loss had precipitated that odd scene I’d witnessed between trainer and jockey.

  I looked toward Tito, and the younger man obligingly translated. “He says Benita Pascal wanted to know about the Lasix the horse got before the race. Did he get his Lasix, and was it the right amount?”

  I nodded. Baldwin had told Benita that the horse had bled through its dose of Lasix, bled into its lungs, thus slowing down its performance in the race that afternoon. But it sounded as though Benita was suspicious that the horse had even gotten its Lasix before the race, or that the dosage had been correct. She may even have suspected that something else had found its way into the horse’s system.

  “And what did he tell her?”

  “He told her the vet came that morning and gave all the horses their shots, just like always.”

  “But does he remember specifically whether Megahertz got his Lasix? If it was the right dose? Or if the horse got something else?”

  Tito frowned at me. “What else? You got to be careful what you give the horses. Something shows up in the lab tests, the board gonna come down on you hard. You thinking somebody mess with the Lasix? Not gonna happen. If the horse is getting Lasix, he’s gotta get it at least four hours before the race. And the vet gotta give it to him. The trainers don’t do that injecting themselves.”

  “The track vet, Dr. Ettridge?”

  Tito shook his head. “No, private vet. Baldwin uses Doc Fisseha, same as Ms. Murphy does. Doc’s straight arrow. Wouldn’t do no shit.”

  Garcia interrupted in urgent Spanish, and the younger man answered at length. Then Tito turned to me and told me that Garcia said he knew nothing of any problem with the horse. There was nothing out of the ordinary. He had told Benita this, and suggested that she talk with Señor Baldwin herself. Then she said she would.

  “And did she?”

  Garcia wasn’t sure if Benita had talked with Señor Baldwin. But after he talked with her, she’d walked down the shedrow toward Señor Baldwin’s tack room. That was the last he’d seen of her.

  That was the last time anyone had seen Benita, until she turned up dead in Molly’s shedrow the next morning. And the last person to see her was her killer.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  THE FIRST THING I SAW WHEN I STEPPED OUT OF THE bunkroom was the cat. The orange torn Molly called Pug was playing in the middle of the shedrow, near a wheelbarrow that had been left next to a stall. It looked as though he’d caught something out in the weeds and now he was tossing it into the air. It landed with a thud in the wheelbarrow and the cat jumped in after it. I walked over to see if the creature, a mouse probably, was dead. It was. And Pug meowed at me, inordinately proud of his hunting prowess, as cats are.

  Then something else caught my e
ye. It was wrapped around a protruding screw in the bed of the wheelbarrow, next to the unfortunate mouse. I leaned closer, then reached into my purse for the small flashlight I carried. I shone the narrow beam on the dull metal surface of the wheelbarrow.

  Blue. A strand of blue thread. The same blue as the chameleon scarf.

  I heard voices at the same time I heard the doorknob rattle on the closed door of Gates Baldwin’s tack room. I ducked into the nearest unoccupied stall, moving deep into the shadows as I tried not to rustle the loose straw or arouse the interest of the horses in the stalls on either side of me. I heard the tack room door bang against the barn wall as it was flung open. I edged as close as I dared to the stall’s doorway, teetering between the concealing darkness and the pool of light from the overhead fixtures.

  Gates’s voice first, a low rumble saying something I couldn’t quite make out. Then a woman’s voice, an octave higher and a whole lot angrier. She stepped out of the tack room, into the shedrow. She was wearing tight black jeans and a black turtleneck, with a thick black wool jacket to keep out the evening chill. Her blond hair swirled loose around her shoulders.

  Pam Cullen. That explained a lot. But not enough. However, those who are patient and listen are likely to learn.

  “I’m in this as deep as you are.” With barely concealed fury, she tossed the words back at Gates, who stood in the doorway.

  Gates took his hands from his pockets and balled one of them into a fist, driving it into the open palm of his other hand. “Not as deep, Pam. Not nearly as deep.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she sneered. “To hear you tell it, you’re the victim. But you’re not the only one who’s in trouble here. After all, I made the damn phone calls, didn’t I? And tossed those matches over the fence at Ron’s house, to start that fire. Just scare Molly and her father a little bit, you said. See if you can rattle them. Well, I rattled them, all right. Her old man keels over and dies, and then Molly hires a private eye. A sharp one, at that. It’s only a matter of time before Howard figures it out.”