by Jory Strong
Kix picked up the photos and slipped them back into the envelope, then reached for one of the anti-horseracing pamphlets on the coffee table. He wrote down his cell phone number. “If you think of anything, you call me, okay?”
“Okay.”
They left a few minutes later. Once they were in Kix’s truck, Cady said, “I think she was telling the truth about everything except the AFF.”
“That’s the way I read it, too.”
Kix took her hand and placed it on the hard muscle of his thigh before covering it with his. Cady looked at their joined hands. It was so corny, but him doing that made her heart jump and flutter and her stomach go all weird and silly. “I think we should tackle Angel Valdez,” she said.
“All in good time, little darlin’. Today’s a race day, so he might not be easy to get a hold of without an audience.” Kix gave her hand a squeeze. “Here’s what I’m thinking. Why don’t you head back to the grandstand and see if you can hook up with Ernie the Weasel. Maybe you can get a fix on where Roberto Gonzalez and Tiny Johnson are hanging out these days and why Ernie pointed you in that direction to begin with. In the meantime, I’ll pay a visit to a few other folks and see if I can whittle this puzzle down a little closer to its true shape.”
He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss against her palm. “And later we can hook up at your place and swap stories.”
Chapter Twelve
As sure as there were oil wells and beef cattle in Texas, it was going to be a long, lonely trip to the doghouse once his little darlin’ found out about this. But damned if he was going to put her out on the firing line.
Valdez was the key right now, but he wasn’t the man behind what was going on at the track. Kix was willing to bet every one of his trucks plus throw in his silver-plated Winchester rifle on it.
He was still working through the situation, and for the most part he always favored a money motive when it came to crime. Trouble was, right now he just hadn’t figured out who stood to make the most money by running off Adrienne.
Valdez’s involvement was a real puzzler. Adrienne had put him up on some of her horses and he’d finished in the winner’s circle more often than not. A man didn’t usually cut off his own income just to get even.
Sure, Terry whipped Valdez in a fistfight, but according to Adrienne, Terry’s father didn’t own a share in any of the drugged horses. They belonged to other family members. And why was Valdez getting the coke from a race protestor paid to be there?
It stunk. It had from the beginning but now it was getting worse. Someone was pulling some mighty tricky strings to cover their ass and hide their real motive.
Kix’s gut got tight just thinking about Cady coming to the attention of whoever was behind this thing. He didn’t want her ending up dead in some fabricated “accident”. Because that’s what he was dealing with here, someone who liked to stay hidden in the shadows and put distance and confusing circumstances between himself and the crime.
Well, no time like the present to try and scare up some answers. Kix pulled his truck over and parked in front of the address that Adrienne had given him.
* * * * *
Red, Jimmy and Ernie were in their usual spot. They hailed Cady like a long lost gambling buddy.
“My good lady,” Ernie said. “This is a surprise and a pleasure. Unfortunately there’s only one race left on the program.”
Red rolled his eyes. “Good to see you. You feeling hot again?”
Cady laughed. “Give me a second to look at my program.”
Jimmy dug into the bag on his lap and retrieved a bagel. He munched loudly as he looked over the entries for the final race.
“Don’t you ever go and look at the horses in person?” Cady asked. There was an enclosure where anyone could watch as the horses were brought in and saddled before going out to the track for the warm up and post parade.
“Naw,” Jimmy said around the bagel. “That just confuses the issue. He tapped on the Daily Racing Form. “Everything you need to know is right in here.”
She looked at Red for confirmation. He nodded in a serious manner. “A horse can be pig-ugly and it doesn’t matter. The numbers don’t lie.”
Cady grinned. She couldn’t help yanking their chains a little bit. “If the numbers don’t lie, how come people like yourselves, who know how to read them, don’t walk away rich every time they come to the track?”
Ernie sighed dramatically. “Ah, my good lady, you have hit upon the very thing that drives professionals, such as we are, crazy. The vagrancies of fate…the will of the gods…the fickleness of Lady Luck…”
“Jesus, Ernie,” Red interrupted. “The problem is that the numbers don’t tell the whole story.”
Jimmy nodded. “Sometimes a horse is having a bad day. Sometimes a jockey screws up.”
“And sometimes shit just happens.” Cady said.
Ernie sighed. “My good lady, that’s it in a nut shell.”
Red looked up from his program. “Maybe I’m going to start playing church bingo instead of the ponies.”
“It’d be too tame for you,” Cady said. “Unless you’re on the lookout for a nice widow. Then church bingo could be a lot of fun.”
“Count me out,” Jimmy said as he finished off a king-sized candy bar. “My luck with women is worse than my luck with the ponies.”
Cady grinned. “Well, your luck just changed. I’m still walking around with some of my winnings. How about if I treat you guys to dinner after the last race? Is there a place around here where track fans like to go?”
Jimmy levered himself out of his chair to go place his final bet of the night. “Sticklers has the best burgers and fries around.”
* * * * *
There was flash of recognition and fear in the jockey’s eyes when he realized too late that he should have checked before opening the door. Kix pushed into the apartment and closed the door behind him.
“You know who I am and what I’m after,” Kix said, towering over the much smaller man.
“I don’t know nothing.”
“Wrong.” Kix opened the manila envelope and pulled out the photo of the coke hand off.
“Madre de Dios.”
Satisfaction rippled through Kix. He could smell the fear rolling off Valdez. “You’ve got bigger problems than doping Adrienne’s horses. Your buddy in the picture is dead,” Kix said, watching Valdez’s reaction carefully.
The jockey tore his eyes away from the photo and if Kix was reading him right, Valdez’s fear had just ratcheted up to a whole new layer and not because he was guilty of killing Meyers. “The cops found him murdered,” Kix bluffed. “Right now they don’t have his appointment book or a copy of this, so they don’t know about you meeting up with Meyers just about every Monday. Here’s your chance to try and work a deal, with me as the go-between.”
Sweat started to bead on Valdez’s forehead. “What do you want?”
“I want to know who told you to drug Adrienne’s horses and why.”
Valdez’s gaze dropped to the photo again and Kix practically choked on the smell of fear rushing off the jockey, but Valdez said, “No one told me to do it. I did it on my own.”
Kix shook his head. “Try again. You don’t have a beef with Adrienne.”
The jockey’s eyes darted around his apartment as though he was looking for help. Kix shook the photo and Valdez’s attention instantly locked on the picture. “Come on, Valdez, why take the fall for someone else? You tell me who wanted Adrienne suspended and I’ll do what I can to see that the DA cuts a deal with you.”
Valdez began shaking his head no before Kix even finished. “No one told me. I did it on my own.”
Kix ground his teeth. He was between a rock and a hard place. Valdez wasn’t going to roll on whoever was calling the shots. He was too afraid. And Kix didn’t have jurisdiction in the case—hell, the ME hadn’t even signed off on cause of death yet for Meyers. The photo coupled with the appointment book was circumstantial
evidence at best.
Kix pulled out his badge and a pen, then sweat Valdez some more—sweat him enough to get a signed confession on the back of the photograph.
It wouldn’t stand up in a court of law, but it didn’t need to, not if it caused whoever was jerking Valdez’s strings to do something stupid, or made Valdez spook and come clean.
Still, Kix didn’t like walking away from Valdez. It was a calculated risk, with a little insurance for Adrienne. If they had to, they could use the confession to clear Adrienne’s name. But as far as Kix was concerned, he couldn’t head back to Texas until he knew for certain that whoever had tried to ruin Addy wasn’t going to get a second chance.
* * * * *
Sticklers was a block away from the track. The decorator theme was yard sale eclectic and though the sign on the door said maximum occupancy was sixty-five people, there probably weren’t more than ten in the place, including the staff.
Jimmy led the way to a table at the back of the room. A waitress followed a few minutes later. Cady ordered an omelet with fruit on the side, and a chocolate milkshake to wash it down. The men with her shook their heads and told the waitress they’d take the usual.
“Eating like that’s going to kill you,” Jimmy said when the waitress disappeared. “The body needs a certain amount of grease to keep things moving along. It’s lubrication.”
Cady leaned forward, a serious expression on her face. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this,” she whispered. “It’s what gave me the winning edge the other day.”
“What?” Jimmy asked, leaning in so close that his nose almost touched hers.
“Purifying the mind and body, that’s the ticket. No junk food, no sodas, just clean living and clean eating. If you adopt that lifestyle, your mind becomes open to the cosmos and you can look at a race program and just ‘know’ who’s going to win.”
The expression on Jimmy’s face as he contemplated giving up all of the things he held most dear was so comical that Red snorted and slapped his thigh. Ernie hooted and laughed until tears formed at the corners of his eyes.
Jimmy grunted in disgust and leaned back in his chair. “You had me going for a few seconds. The way my luck’s been holding, I’d almost be willing to try a diet—but then what would I be left with?”
A short balding man brought the drinks over and set them on the table. Red turned to him. “How you doing, Russell? Looks like business is slow.”
“So what’s new? Place is dead night after night. Used to be it was flooded on race days. Had to hire extra waitresses during a meet. Made my best money then. But it hasn’t been like that in a couple of years.”
“Besides business being the pits,” Ernie said, “what’s the news with you?”
Russell paused and glanced around, then took a seat and leaned in. Voice low, he said, “I’ve been hoping you’d show up. You hearing any whispers from your friends about the track maybe closing down?”
Ernie glanced over and caught Cady’s eye briefly before asking, “What are you hearing, Russell?”
“Only heard it once. Valdez and Gonzalez were in here drinking a couple of weeks ago. I was shorthanded that night, so I was waiting the table myself. They were both drunker than I’d ever seen either of them, and more talkative than usual. So I asked if either of them had any hot tips—hell, why not throw some money away on the horses before this place drains me completely dry?
“Gonzalez said, ’I got a hot tip for you, Russell. Say adios to racing. Pretty soon the only thing that’s going to be here are apartment buildings and condos.
“That set Valdez off on a tirade. Far as I could tell every other word was a curse word.” Russell shook his head sadly. “The Spanish was too fast for me to catch any of it. And when I asked Gonzalez what he meant about apartments and condos, he acted like it’d all been a joke.
“Afterward I started thinking about how dead the track is and how much rent I pay for this place, and how the land that the racetrack is sitting on has got to be worth a pile of money. Hell, it’s about the only place around to build…” He shrugged again and looked at Ernie. “So you hear anything about the track closing?”
Before Ernie could answer, Red stabbed a french fry into a pool of catsup. “I can’t see ’em closing the track down. Place is a landmark.”
Russell shook his head. “Times have changed. Everywhere you look they’re tearing places down and putting up townhouses and apartments in its place. I’ve gotta tell you, and I hate to say it, but the reason I’m so interested in the rumor is because I’d like it to be true. In the old days, the track was good for business. But now, I’m dying here. I’ve got a few regulars from the track that still come in. But that’s it. A bunch of apartments and townhouses, they’d be good for business. Folks’d start seeing this place as the friendly neighborhood bar. Maybe I’d even get to hire more staff and go on vacation a couple times a year.”
“I still can’t see it,” Jimmy said. “Beside being a landmark, you’d have to get the Johnsons to agree. That’d be one hell of a fight. Hell, they aren’t even talking to each other half the time.”
Russell’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, there is that.”
The waitress came by with the bill. Cady pulled out the wad of cash and peeled off enough to cover it, plus a good tip and got a grateful smile.
As they walked back toward the racetrack parking lot, Cady moved in next to Ernie. “You never answered Russell’s question about whether or not you’d heard anything about the racetrack closing down.”
Ernie slid a smile Cady’s way. “I’ve been hearing things, things that make me think Roberto is the man you want to talk to.”
“The trouble is, Roberto Gonzalez is a hard man to find these days.”
“For a visiting Texas sheriff, yes, but not for a photographer who just happens to be Bulldog Montgomery’s granddaughter.”
Chapter Thirteen
Kix was still thinking about the meeting with Valdez when he parked in front of Cady’s house. Damn, if he didn’t know better, he’d say that was guilt festering in his gut and not just indigestion from the burger loaded down with California beef. But hell, since when did a law officer share everything he knew with a civilian—even if that civilian was a mighty fine PI and a heck of a woman?
He stiffened his resolve. Start as you mean to go on. Hadn’t that always been his motto when he was training a deputy or working a suspect?
He hadn’t even told Adrienne about his little chat with Valdez when he stopped by her place and asked her to put the sealed envelope containing the confession in her office safe, and if anyone deserved to know, then it was Addy! But the way he saw it, there were too many things in play that he hadn’t gotten a handle on yet.
The confession and the photo of Valdez and Meyers along with the police report about the coke, well all put together, they’d probably be enough to get Addy’s license reinstated. But he needed a day to hunt down Tiny Johnson and maybe sweat some information out of him—’cause based on everything he’d been able to learn about the man, Tiny’s brain wasn’t much bigger than his name. And sure as the sky was always prettier over Texas, he didn’t believe for a minute that Tiny could put a complicated plan in motion or come up with the money to fund it any more than he could turn out winning racehorses.
Sighing, Kix grabbed the bag in the passenger seat then climbed out of the truck. He was damned whatever he did. If he told Cady what he’d been up to, then he’d have to worry that she’d hare off and maybe get hurt. But if he didn’t tell her right away, then he stood a good chance of spending a cold, lonely spell in the doghouse.
He squared his shoulders and headed for the front door. Well, granted, she wasn’t like most women, but in his experience, they all came around with some good loving. And in the meantime, there was no defense like a good offense.
His cock jumped at the thought of exactly what he was planning. No time like the present to experiment, though damned if he wasn’t going to pay the price w
hen he got together with his brothers for some poker. He chuckled and shook his head. What was the world coming to when a man had to track down his younger brother and grill him about butt plugs? But hell, he’d walked into that little specialty shop and been confronted by more choices than a rancher at an auction.
Now, normally he prided himself on being willing to ask strangers some pretty tough questions, but he’d had to draw the line in that particular shop—not that the man running it wouldn’t have been more than willing to help. Hell, there was no doubt in Kix’s mind by the way the guy had fluttered his eyelashes and swished his hips that he’d had plenty of firsthand experience with things being shoved up his ass.
Kix had not wanted to go there! Not that he cared what a man did in his bedroom or who he did it with, as long as it wasn’t breaking any laws. But he had not wanted to hear any personal comments on the virtue of one device over the other. So lacking time to hunt up another shop only to be confronted with the same overwhelming selection of sexual aides—he mentally sniggered at that—he’d called Walker.
Kix shook his head. Oh yeah, these cards would end up on the table. No way would his brother keep this to himself. And next poker game, Kix was sure to end up the sorry, sore butt of a lot of jokes.
* * * * *
Cady’s heart jumped at the sight of Kix coming up her walkway. Damn, that loose-hipped cowboy walk and crooked smile warmed her from the inside out.
Ranger cocked his head and padded over to where she stood by the window. She gave his ears a quick rub before moving to the front door and opening it. The wicked gleam in Kix’s eyes combined with the lethal smile had her clamping her legs together. “I did a little shopping, darlin’. Why don’t we head on back to the bedroom?”