by Sasscer Hill
From the Agatha and Macavity Award-Nominated Author of Full Mortality
RACING FROM EVIL
A Nikki Latrelle Mystery Novella
The Prequel
Sasscer Hill
Wildspirit Press, 2016
Cover Art by Teresa, DESIGNS BY BMB
PRAISE FOR THE NIKKI LATRELLE MYSTERY SERIES
“Sasscer, the honor comes in your accomplishments and talent, and you should take great pride in such a magnificent trifecta. Congratulations!!! Well done. Dick Francis lives!”
– Steve Haskin, Senior Correspondent, Blood-Horse. Former National Correspondent, Daily Racing Form, winner of eighteen awards for excellence in turf writing.
“This twisty and fast-paced page turner is cleverly plotted and genuinely entertaining—Hill’s insider knowledge and love of the horse-racing world shines through on every page. Sasscer knows her stuff!”
- Hank Phillippi Ryan. Agatha, Anthony, Mary Higgins Clark, and Macavity Award–winning author
“If you miss the late Dick Francis’s racetrack thrillers, you’ll be intrigued by Sasscer Hill’s Racing From Death”
– The Washington Post, August 29, 2012
“Hill, herself a Maryland horse breeder, is a genuine find, writing smooth and vivid descriptive prose about racetrack characters and backstretch ambience that reeks authenticity.”
– John L. Breen, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
"Sasscer Hill brings us another exciting racehorse mystery . . . an utterly unique take on racetrack thrillers." - Betty Webb, Mystery Scene Magazine, Summer Issue, 2012
"New novel about a Laurel Park jockey is a wild ride. While compared to Dick Francis and Sue Grafton, Hill's work reflects her respect for horse racing and the influence of the late Walter Farley. A page-turner, the book's sentences are short and crisp. The action comes off as authentic."
- Sandra McKee, Baltimore Sun, April, 2012
“If you like the work of Dick Francis or Sue Grafton, you will like Sasscer Hill. With a true insider’s knowledge of horse racing, Hill brings us Nikki Latrelle, a young jockey placed in harm’s way who finds the courage to fight the odds and the heart to race for her dreams.”
–Mike Batttaglia, NBC racing analyst and TV host.
“This is a major new talent and the comparisons to Dick Francis are not hyperbole.”
--Margaret Maron, New York Times Best selling author and winner of the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards.
“Facing potential death and long hidden secrets in her family, ‘Racing from Death’ is an exciting thriller set in the world of horse racing, very much recommended.”
– Carl Logan, Midwest Book Review, February 8, 2013
“Nikki is one of the most appealing fictional characters I’ve ever met. You are rooting for her every inch of the way. The descriptions of backstretch life are enchanting.”
– Lucy Acton, Editor of Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred
“I thoroughly enjoyed Full Mortality–the pages fly by, the characters are vivid, and Hill captures life on the backstretch perfectly.”
–Charlsie Cantey, racing analyst for ESPN, ABC, CBS and NBC.
“Anyone reading The Sea Horse Trade, needs to be sure to have plenty of time because it’s impossible to put it down.”
– Martha Barbone, Horse of Delaware Valley, June 2013
This novella is dedicated to Sisters in Crime
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A huge thanks to the individuals who took their time to answer medical questions about drugs and technical questions about racing procedure.
Judy Melinek, M.D., PathologyExpert, Inc., and
Denver Beckner, Maryland Jockey Club.
1
My name is Nikki Latrelle, and people tell me my childhood was a nightmare. That isn’t true. Maybe I was fatherless, and Mom and I didn’t have much, but it was okay until she brought Stanley Rackmeyer into our home. That’s when the bad stuff began.
Before that, we had some good times. When I was nine, Mom took me for my first visit to Pimlico racetrack. I was horse crazy and filled with an excitement that seemed to razz Mom as much as it did me.
After rushing through the cavernous interior of the grandstand, we crossed the concrete apron outside, and pushed against the track railing. The third race was about to go off, and the post parade was approaching.
Leading the field was a dark bay with a white blaze. I’d never seen a Thoroughbred racehorse before. I’d never seen anything so beautiful.
His neck was bowed, he was on his toes, and his eyes were partially hidden by blinkers. As he came past me, he turned his head, revealing a bright, liquid eye that stared right at me. He pricked his ears, ducked his head in my direction, and nickered.
The sound pierced my heart.
My mom, Helen Latrelle, loved horses too, and she liked to bet a little. Being at the track with her was always fun. She seemed more carefree and relaxed there. After that first day, she took me to Pimlico quite often during live racing. When the action moved over to Laurel Park racetrack in the winter, we’d take a bus out the Baltimore Washington Parkway, and watch the ponies run at Laurel.
All those times we went to the track only one bad thing ever happened. It was the day Mom gave me a five-dollar bill to buy hot dogs and sodas while she sat on a bench with her red pen and handicapped the next race.
I had the five clutched in my hand, when an older boy with white blond hair, eyebrows, and lashes swung toward me and began to walk alongside as I headed for the grill. It was on the far side of a supporting wall that divided sections of the grandstand, and as I walked past the cinder block partition, he shoved me into the wall, knocking me to the concrete floor. He snatched the bill, and turned to run.
“Hey,” I yelled, “that’s mine!”
He stared at me with irises almost as dark as his pupils, making his eyes appear like black holes in his pale skin. His expressionless eyes and ghost-white face frightened me, and my outrage dwindled into tears. I ran back to Mom as fast as my young legs would carry me, sobbing.
Fortunately, I never saw him again. At least, not when I went with Mom to the track.
Though I shared Mom’s blue eyes and brown hair, I always thought she was prettier. She had big, warm eyes, and her mouth was full. Sometimes I’d notice men looking at her.
I don’t remember my dad. A heart attack took him when I was two years old. His father’s family, who lived somewhere in Iowa, was indifferent to us, and my mother had no use for them. Like me, Mom was an only child, and when I was five, her parents died in a plane crash. From then on, we were on our own.
My mom managed to land a job as a cook at Miss Potter’s School for Girls. The school was what Mom called “exclusive,” with a bunch of rich girls from “nice” families. It even had stables and offered riding lessons to its wealthy students.
Mom would take the city bus up 83 at seven each morning, and get off north of the Baltimore Beltway. The area near the school was studded with expensive homes, so unlike our narrow row house with its barred windows and leaky roof.
I had a key, and after school, I’d walk home and let myself into the dark, narrow house on a street off Garrison Avenue. Crammed between two other row houses with windows only at the front and rear, we didn’t get much light.
As a ten-year-old, I was thrilled when Mom told me she’d finagled the school into giving me riding lessons on Saturdays in exchange for my help with stable chores. She took me to a shop that sold used equestrian clothing and bought me a pair of rubber riding boots, a helmet, and britches.
The following weekend, we took a bus north and arrived at the school early, before the riding classes began. It was a sunny morning in fall, but the air held a chill, as if warning about the winter to come.
We walked past the fancy stone buildings of Potters’ campus and into the barn, where I breathed in the smell of horses, and the mingled scents of hay, grain, molasses and manure. Somewhere inside a stall, a horse nickered and a bucket rattled. A calico barn cat hopped off a bale of hay and rubbed herself against my leg. I leaned down to pet her.
“So this is Nikki?”
Startled, I straightened and saw a tall, weather-beaten woman with a slight limp emerging from the shadows farther back in the barn. She wore an old wool jacket, and a frayed tweed cap. Her hair was steel gray, her hands wrinkled. When she reached me, she gazed down with an unreadable expression.
Mom nodded at me encouragingly. “Answer Miss Boyle, Nikki. She’ll be your instructor.”
I stared at the floor and dragged the toe of one boot through the dirt leaving a wavy line. “Um, yeah. I’m Nikki.”
“Come on, let’s get your pony out and see what you can do.” Her voice was gravely, which I would soon learn was from yelling at her students for so long. Behind her back, they called her “Boiler.”
She brought out a dappled gray pony, tacked him up, and boosted me into the saddle. The pony shifted his weight and tossed his head. As he moved beneath me he snorted, and the resulting vibration coursed through my body. Something stirred deep inside me. I felt like I’d come home.
Leading the pony into a nearby ring, Miss Boyle put the reins in my hands, and stepped away.
“Okay,” she said, “walk him around the ring.”
I’d watched westerns on TV, but had no real idea what I was supposed to do. Some instinct must have kicked in. I picked up the reins, thumped the pony gently with my heels, and clucked. He stepped forward and we moved sedately around the enclosure.
Miss Boyle gave my mother a funny look. “Helen, I thought you said the girl has never ridden.”
“She hasn’t.”
“Then she’s a natural.”
It didn’t take me long to realize I was a charity case, and that the Bitsies, Muffies, and Bumpsies at the school knew it. The first time I rode in the beginner’s class with other students, the real lesson I learned was that money separates people. Dressed in my new-to-me clothes, I was surrounded by girls wearing fine leather boots and beautiful tweed riding coats with velvet collars.
As the school horses plodded around the dirt ring, I listened to the girls’ chatter. Their speech was polished and clipped. They talked about things I’d never heard of like martingales, finger bowls, and skiing in Vale.
I caught them stealing glances at me like I was an oddity, and some of the glances said an oddity that didn’t belong.
As the horses circled the enclosure, I couldn’t help staring at a deep teal jacket, the color rich against a black velvet collar.
When its owner caught me looking, she said, “You like my coat? Mummy bought it for me in London. You’d probably like my blue one even more.”
“You’re not in school here, are you?” a girl named Bitsi asked, swiveling her upper body to stare back at me as I rode behind her. She had shiny, curly blond hair tied with a black ribbon.
“No,” I said, gazing at my hands gripping the reins. “I’m just taking lessons.”
She continued to stare, “But who are you?”
She made me nervous. I tried but couldn’t find the words to answer her.
“She’s the cook’s daughter,” the girl riding behind me said. “I can’t imagine why she’s here.”
In the middle of the ring, living up to her nickname, “Boiler” slapped her riding crop hard against her boot. Her mouth twisted with annoyance.
“Pay attention to what you’re doing Muffy. Your horse is about to walk into the back of Nikki’s pony. Your reins are sloppy. And you need to get your heels down!”
I stared straight ahead through my pony’s ears, afraid to look at anyone. Focusing on the warm animal beneath me, I patted his chestnut neck. The strength of his muscles and the silky feel of his hair soothed me, easing a little of the hurt inflicted by the other girls.
At my public school the next week, I made myself feel better by mimicking Muffy’s prissy accent and behavior to amuse my classmates. Every week, I had a new “Miss Pompous” story to tell my school chums Letitia, and Carmen. My descriptions would leave them giggling and making rude noises. After a while, I could copy those prissy Potter voices and affected mannerisms perfectly.
Six months later, amid baleful looks and snide comments about “teacher’s pet,” I was promoted to the intermediate riding class, where the young women seemed more interested in riding than in picking on me. Still, I was an outsider, and an invisible wall rose between us.
At the end of that first year, Boiler surprised me, asking me to stay on during summer riding camp. There was no school during those months and Mom wouldn’t be working in the kitchen. I‘ll never know what favors Boiler called in to make this happen, but her kindness meant I could ride five days a week. For me, it was like winning a trip to Disney World.
Riding camp chiseled a bit at that invisible wall. Everyone had to groom the horses, bed down the stalls, and clean the tack. It made us more of a team and brought some of those girls down a peg or two.
Out of all the students, Jill, was one of the few who treated me with kindness. She had brown hair she wore in pigtails and braces on her teeth. A constellation of freckles spread across her nose beneath eyes that were filled with confidence. She didn’t seem to care what others thought.
“Do you like to read?” she asked me. We were cleaning bridles, and the smell of saddle soap and horse sweat hung strong in the air around us.
“I guess,” I said. Mom wasn’t a reader, and had never encouraged me. We had no books at home, anyway. “I don’t really read that much.”
“You don’t read?” Her eyes widened as if she couldn’t imagine such a thing.
Embarrassed, I shook my head and shrugged.
“But you can read, right?”
“Of course I can!”
The anger in my voice didn’t faze her. “Good. Then, I’ll bring you some books tomorrow.”
The next day, after classes and chores, she handed me a canvas bag filled with books by Walter Farley. “Read ‘The Black Stallion’ first. You’ll love it.”
What if I didn’t? What if I hated it? Should I pretend I liked it? But when I opened the book at home, and met the Black on page six—“beautiful, savage, splendid”—the same emotional response welled up inside me that I’d felt for that first racehorse at Pimlico.
I couldn’t put the books down, and when I finished them, Jill gave me more. During the next two years, she lent me books from the school’s summer reading lists, from the classics to the latest novels from pop culture.
Vivid, well-told fiction novels taught me that people have been acting out the same stories forever. They love, they are kind, sometimes heroic, and often as not, they betray, cheat and con one another. And sometimes they lie, even to themselves.
The day I realized my mother was lying, I was spun into a terrible place. A place where I had to grow up fast.
2
By the time I turned twelve, my days at Potters had become the best ones of my life.
One Saturday, when I was doing my after class chores, I saw a van pull in outside the barn. Next, I heard hooves stomping on a ramp, as apparently, a horse was unloaded on the van’s far side.
Boiler hurried into the barn from her office. “Nikki, stop what you’re doing and come look at this horse. His name is Wishful.”
I jogged around the back of the van and studied the new horse. A chestnut gelding with a white blaze and four white stockings, he stood on the end of a lead line held by the man from the shipping company. Boiler took the horse and led him into the barn.
“What do you think, Nikki?”
“Speak up,” Boiler said, “I’m not going to stand here all day.”
“He’s younger, thinner and a lot more fit than our other horses.”
“What else?”
“He looks intelligent and . . . proud.”
“That’s my girl. Get that Stuben saddle you like and see if it fits him. I’ll get a bridle. I’m thinking a snaffle bit will work.”
Darned if she wasn’t as excited as I was. We got him ready, took him to the ring, and I climbed aboard. Just before I settled in the saddle, Wishful tried to scoot out from under me, but Boiler kept a firm hold on his rein until I got settled.
As she’d done that first day, she let go, and said, “Okay, walk him around.”
Our turn about the ring went smoothly at the walk and trot. Boiler’s scrutiny was intense.
“Okay, ask him to canter.”
I did, and he busted forward, quickly gaining speed until I got my feet on the dashboard and pulled him up. I felt giddy.
“You look like you just won the lottery,” she said. “What do you think of him now?”
“He has a really light mouth, his walk is powerful and very forward, his trot’s wonderful, and he’s fast as shi–uh, really fast.”
“I want you to teach him to jump.”
“Me?”
“Nikki, don’t be coy. You know you’re the best rider here.” She gave me her hard look. “But if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll call you a liar!”
I flinched, making Wishful tense beneath me, until the tiny smile at the corners of Boiler’s mouth gave her away.
“My lips are sealed,” I said.
She nodded. “You’ve been jumping well, and your hands and seat are just what Wishful needs. The school bought this horse so the team could win some shows next spring. I want you to go on with him.”