by Nora Roberts
Frowning, Kelsey watched the horses being loaded in the gate. The big bay filly was fractious, nervous. She took a swipe, a bad-tempered kick, at a groom and sent him sprawling.
“She’s wound up. That’s not unusual.” She shifted her gaze to Three Aces. He was giving his own handlers a fight. “Your colt’s feeling frisky himself.”
“Just watch.”
The bell sounded. Horses charged. Cunningham’s filly took the lead, her long legs extended, digging up dirt. Kelsey narrowed her eyes behind the binoculars. Big Sheba was sweating heavily by the first turn.
“She’s fast. Why is he pushing her so hard?” She winced as the jockey used the bat, quick and often.
“He’s doing what he’s been told.”
At the halfway mark she began to flag, just a fraction, but enough for the field to close. Kelsey felt her eyes begin to tear. Big Sheba had gallantry, but she didn’t have wind. And they were hurting her.
On the backstretch she fell a half-length behind Gabe’s colt, then a length. Sheer heart kept her in the place position by a nose when they crossed the wire.
“That’s inexcusable.” Furious, she whirled on Gabe. “There have to be rules.”
“We’ve got plenty of them. None say you can’t push a horse past its limits. Rumor is she’s got lung trouble. So the idiot has his jockey run her full out at seven furlongs. He wants the fucking Derby so much he’ll kill her to have a shot at it.”
“I thought he was just a fool.”
“He’s a fool, all right. An ambitious one. He wants that first jewel.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Yeah. The difference is just how far we’ll go to get it.”
He left her to head down to the winner’s circle. Kelsey turned her back on the track. Suddenly it had lost a great deal of its glamour.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
JACK MOSER RAN A CLEAN PLACE. MAYBE SOME OF HIS CLIENTELE rented a room by the hour, but that was none of his nevermind. Jack figured what went on behind closed doors went on behind closed doors at the Ritz Hotel just as it did at his place.
Only they paid more for it.
He didn’t have bugs, wouldn’t tolerate carryings-on after the decent hour of midnight, and paid extra so his guests could have cable.
At twenty-nine dollars a pop for a single, it wasn’t a bad deal.
Children under eighteen stayed for free.
He gave his guests the amenity of a sliver-sized bar of Ivory soap along with the bath-mat-size towels, and for their convenience, he had a deal going with the nearby diner to deliver meals after six A.M. and before ten P.M.
Maybe he slipped some of the cash under the table and didn’t push for ID, but that was his business.
The sheets were laundered, the bathrooms disinfected, and there was a good sturdy lock on each and every door.
He liked the summers best, when vacationing families heading north or south spotted his blinking vacancy sign. Mostly they just tumbled out of their aging station wagons and into bed. Didn’t have to worry about them spraying beer on the walls or tearing up the sheets.
He’d been watching people come and go for twelve years and figured he knew a thing or two about them. He knew when a couple rented a room to cheat on a spouse, when a woman was hiding out from the guy who was as likely to put his fist in her eye as look at her. He recognized the losers, the drifters, the runners.
He’d pegged room 22 as a runner.
None of my nevermind, Jack told himself as he hooked the passkey from the Peg-Board. The guy had paid cash for three nights in advance. So what if he’d had the smell of fear around him, or if he’d had a way of looking over his shoulder as if he was expecting somebody to shove a knife in his back?
He’d paid his eighty-seven bucks plus tax and hadn’t made a peep since.
Which was the problem. Room 22’s time was up, and according to skinny-butted Dottie, the housekeeper, his lock was still bolted and the DO NOT DISTURB sign was out. Just the way it had been for three days.
Well, he was going to have to be disturbed, Jack thought as he strode across the parking lot to the line of identical gray doors and shaded windows. Room 22 could come up with another day’s rent, or get his butt moving.
Jack Moser didn’t extend credit.
He knocked first, sharp, authoritative. Nobody but Jack knew the secret pleasure it gave him to hustle along a deadbeat. “Manager,” he said crisply, and caught Dottie poking her head out of 27 where her cart was parked, to give him the eye.
“Probably dead drunk,” she called out.
Jack sighed, and straightened his sloped shoulders. “Just do your job, Dottie. I’ll handle this.” He knocked again, missing the face she made at him. “Manager,” he repeated, then slipped his key into the lock.
The smell hit him first, gagging him. His first thought was that 22 had ordered something from the diner that had disagreed with him, violently. His second was that it would take a frigging case of Lysol to cover the stench.
Then he had no thought at all. He saw what sat slumped at the tiny, scarred table, eyes staring, body bloated. Whoever had checked into 22 had metamorphosed in three days into a thing as horrible as anything Jack had ever seen on a late-night horror movie.
He staggered back, overwhelmed by the sight and the odor. A strangled cry caught in his throat, and he threw up on his shoes. It didn’t stop him from running. He continued to run even after Dottie hurried into room 22 and began to scream.
The body had already been bagged by the time Rossi pulled up at the motel. It had been through sheer doggedness and a touch of luck that he was there at all. His ears didn’t perk up at every suspicious or unattended death that came into Homicide. But the name Fred Lipsky had rung a bell. It was a name on his list, one he’d been unable to check out.
Now, it seemed, he had his chance.
The medical examiner, Dr. Agnes Lorenzo, was packing up. Rossi nodded to the small, athletic woman with graying hair and puppy-dog eyes. “Lorenzo.”
“Rossi. I thought this was Newman’s case.”
“It ties into one of mine. What have we got?” He hooked his badge to his pocket and moved through the uniformed men stationed at the open door.
The body was already zipped, ready for transfer to the morgue. The air still smelled ripe, but it wasn’t a smell that affected him much anymore. He scanned the room, taking in the unmade bed, the bag of clothes tossed in the corner, the dust left over from the forensics team. A bottle of gin, three-quarters empty, a single glass, and an ashtray full of Lucky Strike butts.
“Don’t ask me for cause of death, Rossi,” Dr. Lorenzo began. “I can tell you it occurred forty-eight to sixty hours ago. No wounds, no sign of a struggle.”
“Cause of death?”
She’d known he would ask, and smiled thinly. “His heart stopped, Rossi. They all do.”
He ignored the jibe and formed a picture. A man drinking alone. Angry? Guilty? Afraid? Why did a man rent a cheap room to drink in when he already had a cheap room thirty miles away?
And if Lipsky had been running, it meant he had something to hide.
Since he’d taken her sarcasm well, Dr. Lorenzo decided to give him a break. “He had about three hundred in his wallet, and an expired credit card. There was a copy of Daily Racing Form in his bag, four days old, and a knife in his left boot.”
Rossi sprang to attention like a setter on point. “What kind of knife?”
“Six inches long, thin blade, smooth edge.”
Rossi’s cop’s heart began to swell. Forensics would have the knife, and if there was any trace of blood, man or horse, they’d find it. “Who found him?”
“Manager. Name’s Moser. He might still be in the office over there, with his head between his knees.”
“Not everyone’s as tough as you, Lorenzo.”
“You’re telling me.” She stepped outside again, sorry the spring air was marred by the whoosh of traffic on Route 15. She’d left a b
ody on the slab, and now she had another to add to her backlog. Every day, she thought, was a picnic.
“I’ll need a copy of the autopsy report.”
“Two days.”
“Twenty-four hours, Lorenzo. Be a pal.”
“We’re nobody’s pals, Rossi.” She turned away and got into her car.
“Hey.” He grabbed her door before she could close it. He’d known Agnes Lorenzo for three years. She didn’t have many buttons that could be pushed, but he’d uncovered a few. “You know that stiff you did last week? Gordon. Mick Gordon. Old man, gut-knifed.”
She pulled out a cigarette, a habit she no longer bothered to feel guilty about. “The one who got his skull cracked and most of his internal organs smashed for good measure? Yeah, I remember.”
“I think this stiff’s the one who did him.”
She blew out smoke. She hadn’t gotten a close look at the knife. There had been no need for her to examine it. But she remembered the wound. She had dozens of wounds filed in her head, never to be forgotten.
She nodded. “The weapon could be right. Okay, Rossi, I’ll burn the midnight oil for you, but I can’t promise all the tests will be done.”
“Thanks.” He closed her door, forgot her, and zeroed in on the office and Jack Moser.
* * *
Gabe learned about Lipsky ten minutes after he returned from Florida. The press had found a gold mine in Dottie, the housekeeper.
The news that Lipsky had died in a motel room spread from barn to track, from groom to exercise boy. Gabe’s twice-weekly housekeeper brought him the news, and the paper, before he’d done more than tossed his bags on his bed.
Fury flared, like a gasoline-soaked match. He was working on banking it when Rossi tracked him down.
“Nice to see you again, Mr. Slater.”
“Lieutenant.” Gabe offered the paper he’d brought down with him, then sat in the sun-drenched living room. “Odds are you’re here to tell me about this.”
“You win.” Rossi set the paper aside and made himself comfortable. “Fred Lipsky worked for you up until a few weeks ago.”
“Up until I fired him, which I’m sure you know. He was drunk.”
“And objected to the termination.”
“That’s right. He pulled a knife, I knocked him down, and I thought, mistakenly, that that was the end of it.” His face still sternly controlled, he edged forward. “If I’d had any suspicion that he would have used that knife on one of my men, or one of my horses, he wouldn’t have walked away.”
“You don’t want to make statements like that to a cop, Mr. Slater. It hasn’t leaked to the press yet, but the knife in Lipsky’s possession at the time of his death was the weapon that killed Mick Gordon. As yet, no one can definitely place Lipsky at the scene at the time of the murder. But we have a weapon and we have motive—revenge.”
“Case closed?” Gabe finished.
“I like them neat before I close them. This one isn’t neat. How well did you know Lipsky?”
“Not well. He came with the farm.”
The statement made Rossi smile. “An interesting way of putting it.”
“When I took over here, I kept on anyone who wanted to stay. It wasn’t their fault Cunningham played lousy poker.”
Intrigued, Rossi tapped his pencil against his pad. “That’s a true story, then. Sounded made up. No point in mentioning a deal like that would be on the shady side of the law?”
“No point at all,” Gabe agreed.
“I’ll talk to your trainer again, and the men. I’m interested to know if anyone who did know him thinks he was suicidal.”
“You want me to think Lipsky killed himself?” The rage began to work in him again, gnawing away. “Why? Out of guilt? Remorse? That’s shit, Lieutenant. He was as likely to stick a gun in his mouth or put a rope around his neck as he was to dance on Broadway.”
“You said you didn’t know him well, Mr. Slater.”
“Not him, but I know the type.” He’d been raised by Lipsky’s type. “They blame everyone else, never themselves. And they don’t take that last dive because they’re always figuring the angles. They drink and they cheat and they talk a big game. But they don’t kill themselves.”
“An interesting theory.” And one Rossi subscribed to himself. “Lipsky didn’t eat a gun or string himself up. He drank a nasty cocktail of gin and what I’m told is called acepromazine. Are you familiar with it?”
Gabe’s voice was carefully blank. “It’s used to relax horses. It’s a tranquilizer.”
“Yeah, so I’m told. Funny, I thought when a horse broke his leg, you put a gun behind his ear.”
“The noise annoys the customers,” Gabe said dryly. “And every break isn’t terminal. There’s a lot that can be done so that a horse doesn’t have to be put down. Quite often he can race again, or breed. When there’s nothing else to be done, a vet gives the horse an injection. There’s not supposed to be any pain. I’ve always wondered how the hell anyone knows that.”
“You won’t be able to check with Lipsky. Do you keep any of that stuff around here?”
“It’s administered by a vet, as I said. Nobody puts a horse down on a whim, Lieutenant.”
“I’m sure you’re right. It would be a hell of an investment to lose.”
“Yeah.” Gabe’s voice was cool. “Have you ever seen it happen?”
“No.”
“The horse stumbles on the track, falls. The jockey’s off him like a flash, panicked, fighting it back. Everything gets quiet and grooms race out from everywhere. It doesn’t have to be their horse. It’s everybody’s horse. Then you call the vet, and when there’s no choice, when it can’t be put off, the vet finishes him—behind a screen, for privacy.”
“Have you ever lost one that way?”
“Once, about a year ago during a morning workout. That’s a more dangerous time than a race. The rider’s relaxed. Everybody is.” He could still remember it, the helplessness, the impotent anger.
“This was a pretty filly. The Queen of Diamonds, I called her. The groom in charge of her cried like a baby when it was over. That was Mick.” Gabe resisted the urge to ball his hands into fists. “So if you’re telling me that somebody finished off Lipsky the way you finish off a terminal horse, I have to say they sent him off in better style than he deserved.”
“Do you hold a grudge, Mr. Slater?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, I do.” Gabe’s eyes were steady and shielded. “You want to ask me if I killed Lipsky, I have to say no. I’m not sure what the answer would be if I’d known what you’ve told me today, and if I had found him first.”
“You know something, Mr. Slater, I like you.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.” Rossi offered one of his rare smiles, an expression that never sat quite comfortably on his face. “Some people dance all around questions, some fumble, some sweat. But not you.” Rossi picked a mote of lint from the leg of his trousers. “You hated the son of a bitch, and might have killed him if you’d had the chance. And you’re not afraid to say so. Thing is, not only do I like you, I believe you.” He rose. “Now, it could be you’re bluffing me through this, and I’ll find out if you paid a quick visit to that motel. But I always circle around, so that doesn’t worry me.” He took another long, careful study. “But I don’t think so. Lipsky would’ve gotten one peep at you through the judas hole and barricaded himself in for the duration. Do you mind if I go down and talk to your men now?”
“No, I don’t mind.” Gabe stayed where he was; Rossi knew the way. He closed his eyes and concentrated on relaxing one vertebra at a time.
* * *
He gave Rossi an hour before he went down to the barn himself. The atmosphere was charged with the combination of excitement and dread that blooms around death. Men stopped their gossiping and instantly looked busy when Gabe appeared.
He found Jamison in conference with Matt over the injured colt.
“The inflammation’s down,” Ma
tt was saying. “It’s healing well. Go to changing the dressing once a day, using the same antiseptic.”
“He’s going to scar.”
Matt nodded, eyeing the long healing slice along the flank. “More than likely.”
“Goddamned shame.” Jamison picked up the syringe to bathe the wound. “Prime-looking horse like this.”
“It’ll add to his prestige,” Gabe commented, moving up to take the colt’s halter himself. He ran his knuckles down Double’s cheek, as a man might caress a woman. The colt responded by butting his hand, playful as a puppy. “Battle scars,” he murmured. “It won’t affect his time, or his ambition. How soon can we put a rider up on him?”
“Don’t be in a hurry.” Matt jerked aside as the colt swung his head and aimed for his shoulder, no longer a puppy but nine hundred pounds of temperament. The teeth missed by an inch or so. “This one’s always testing me. Like to take a chunk out of me, would you, fella?” He gave the colt a good-natured slap on the neck when he was sure Gabe had tightened his grip. “He’ll run in Kentucky for you, Gabe. If I was a betting man, I’d put money on him myself.”
Gabe accepted Matt’s diagnosis, then turned to his trainer. “Jamie?”
“I’ve been laying out a new training schedule for him. It’ll either work, or it won’t.”
“That’ll have to do, then. Did Rossi talk to you?”
Jamison’s eyes turned grim as he completed the new dressing. “Yeah. He was down here, asking his questions. Got everybody all stirred up. Peterson figures it was a mob hit. Kip thinks it was a woman. Lynette didn’t take to that and took some skin off his nose. They’ve been arguing over it, with the boys taking sides.”
“Nobody thinks it was suicide?”
Jamison shot Gabe a look and stepped out of the box. “Nobody that knew him.”
“He could have gotten his hands on some acepromazine,” Matt reminded Jamison. “He’d have known what it would do. Surely he had to know the authorities would catch up with him eventually.”
“A man like Lipsky could have lost himself at a hundred tracks.” Jamison looked back at the colt. He was dressing the wound himself, as penance for his part in it. “I should have fired him months ago. Everything might’ve been different then.” And Mick might have been alive.