“There are times when a horse needs a race.”
“That’s understandable. But statistically that’s going to show on their form. They might draw the longshot betting public, but that’s it. The bettor knows they’re playing a longshot. It’s the favorites not winning their share that sours the crowd. It’s like playing the lottery. If you know you have one chance in a million of winning big and your number doesn’t come up, you weren’t that one in a million. Try playing the other games, where one ticket in every ten are supposed to pay off, and you keep buying ten at a time and haven’t won in thirty or forty or fifty. Pretty soon you’re going to stop playing that game.”
One of the women trainers spoke up. “So you’re saying this is all our fault?”
“No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m just giving you one of the reasons why the handle is down. The economy plays a big part as well. And public fickleness.”
“By that,” Dawn said, head down and writing. “You mean there are a lot more choices where a person can wager their money, like the lottery?”
Spears nodded. “Precisely. Thoroughbred racing has lost a lot of its entertainment appeal. We intend to bring it back.”
Ben glanced at Dawn and then at Spears. If Spears had a plan on how to bring the entertainment appeal back, he wasn’t offering it. “There are many variables that play into the success or failure of a racetrack, or any business this size for that matter. Pointing fingers at who’s to blame or who dropped the ball, so to speak, is not the direction to take. It’s what we do from here on in that needs our attention.” He looked around the room. “Were there any more questions?”
“Yes.” A tiny voice came from the back of the room. It was Mim Freemont speaking up, a tiny little woman ex-jockey now trainer who weighed about a hundred pounds soaking wet, and was crusty as one could be. She stood with the help of a cane. “What about the jocks? What about their part in ‘holding a horse?’”
Ben answered that one. “Don’t you worry, Mim. We’ll be heading there next.”
The little woman smiled. “Another question, one that I think’s on a lot of horsemen’s minds. Ben, with all due respect, what makes you think you can run a racetrack?”
Ben chuckled and scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t. But I figure I can’t fail any worse than Rudolph did. The way I see things, the only direction we can go is up.”
Everyone laughed, agreeing.
Dawn laid her pen down, a subtle action that got both Ben and Spears attention. ‘Quit while you’re ahead,’ her body language said. Everyone there seemed agreeable to that. They all had work to do and it was still raining. Dawn and Randy bundled up the children. “I’ll be back by two,” she told Ben. Their nanny was due home around noon.
“Are you going to try and get something in the paper?” Ben asked, motioning to the notes she tucked into her jacket.
“Yes,” she nodded.
Randy hoisted D.R. and Maeve into his arms. “You did good,” he told Spears.
Spears thanked him and when they left, turned to Ben and Tom. “The jocks’ room?”
“Not yet. We have two more horses to do up and a blacksmith due any minute now for Wee Born.”
“Isn’t that the one running today?”
Ben opened the door, peered out into the rain and shook his head in disgust. “She won’t run a lick.”
Spears tucked himself in under the umbrella. “Maybe she’ll surprise you.”
Ben peered over his glasses at him, a look that said volumes.
Tom laughed. Spears blushed. Ben was a man of few words and Spears was learning that the hard way. Very few horses surprised Ben. He was a hands-on trainer and knew his horses inside and out. Wee Born did not like the mud, end of subject. He was having the blacksmith put stickers on only in hopes of giving her a little more traction to keep her from hurting herself.
The jockeys had been forewarned and on the defense. Small men and women in stature, pound for pound, what they lacked in bulk, they made up for with attitude, guts, and tenacity. Ask any jock his or her opinion on who could give a horse the best ride and ninety-nine out of a hundred will point to themselves. Ben liked that in a jockey. It’s what wins races.
He looked around the room.
By the same token, poll a hundred jocks and at least ninety-nine out of the hundred would have to admit to “holding” a horse on occasion, whether by the design of the trainer or amongst themselves to cash a bet.
“What are you accusing us of, Ben?” Juan Garcia, the leading jockey asked.
“I’m not accusing anybody of anything,” Ben said, standing his ground. “I’m just telling you how it is. This isn’t about the past. This is about how it’s going to be from here on in. No more. It will not be tolerated.”
Tom stood at Ben’s side with his arms crossed as he looked around the room at the guiltiest of the bunch. Then he let his eyes rest upon Annie Griffin, a new female jock on the scene. She was rather cute, maybe even pretty, he thought. When she smiled at him, the way most women do, he subconsciously slid the toothpick dangling in his mouth from one side to the other. The Lord would not be pleased at all with the thoughts running through his mind. He forced himself to look away, but just so she wouldn’t feel slighted, he glanced back at the woman and touched the rim of his cowboy hat. Annie Griffin melted.
The next order of business was Wee Born’s race. It rained all afternoon, she ended up running fifth, beaten eight lengths, and as Ben had predicted earlier, never ran a lick. Hours, minutes, morning, noon, afternoon, here, there, the day was a blur. Ben sat down in the tack room and sighed. Bad enough to waste a race, but the filly had also nicked herself on the inside of her left hock. It was a pretty good gash. Racing her back in a week was iffy at this point.
Dawn did Wee Born up and smeared goop on her hock, then came into the tack room and sat down across from Ben. He looked beyond tired and she couldn’t help but worry. “Are you taking your blood pressure medicine?”
Ben nodded. “Why? Do I look that bad?”
Tom walked in behind her and she shifted her attention. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked, from his expression.
“It’s that damned Linda Dillon. I feel so sorry for her ponies.”
When Dawn nodded in agreement, Tom sat down next to Ben and stretched out his legs.
“Is there anything we can do about it?” Dawn asked.
“You mean as owners?” Ben said. “Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “Kick her sorry ass off the track.” Linda Dillon underfed her ponies to keep them from getting high and on top of that, worked them practically to death. And not just her, but about five other pony people on the track as well.
“She’d just take them somewhere else,” Ben said. “That won’t solve anything.”
“Yeah, well at least I won’t have to see them anymore. She was just bathing that palomino of hers and honest to God, you could practically hear the metal sweat-scraper scraping its ribs. And every time it flinched, she took to….”
Dawn held up her hand. “Spare me this. Okay?”
Tom fell silent, staring at the floor.
“Why don’t you go talk to her,” Ben suggested.
“Are you kidding me? That’s woman’s mean. I saw her rip a wing off a fly once just so she could watch it buzz around on the ground in circles.”
“Tom, enough, all right,” Dawn insisted. “I mean it.”
He nodded. “It’s just that as long as it wasn’t any of my business, I could almost look the other way. But now….” He glanced from one to the other. “It looks bad too, you know?”
No argument there.
“Another thing I’ve been thinking. Whatever happened to that guy who used to blow the bugle at the start of the races?” A CD broadcasted over the loud speaker had been used for the last couple of years. “That taped music sounds so cheesy.”
Ben nodded. “Wasn’t it just a few days ago, when all I had to think about was....”<
br />
“Don’t even go there, old man. What’s the point?”
Ben laughed and looked at Dawn. “What can we do?”
Dawn thought for a moment. “We could hire somebody to be a liaison person.”
“A what?” Tom asked.
Dawn chuckled. “A person that patrols the backside, someone designated to specifically address these kinds of issues.”
“How do we find this person?” Ben asked.
“Well.” Dawn paused, thinking. “I don’t know that we want it to be somebody that’s already here.”
Tom shrugged. “Why not?”
“We don’t want them biased.”
“Yeah, but if you bring a stranger in here…” Tom said.
Ben nodded. “Why is everything so difficult?”
“But at the same time, they’d have to be a horseman to know what to look out for,” Tom insisted.
“Or horsewoman,” Dawn said, purposely.
Tom grinned. “All right then. How about a good-looking one, a religious one?”
“What about Missy Brinkley?” Ben suggested.
Tom shook his head. He and Missy had a history; a shit-kicking romp-stomping hell of a history.
Dawn looked at both of them. “Is this going to be full-time or part-time? Deciding on that will help narrow it down.”
“And what they’ll cover and how tough to get,” Tom said. “Maybe your Uncle Matt could suggest someone with some muscle.”
“Very funny,” Dawn said.
The three of them sat there for a moment.
“What about Dusty Burns?” Tom said. “That is, unless you’re hell bent on having it be a woman?”
Dawn shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be a woman. It just doesn’t not have to be a woman. I like Dusty Burns. What do you think?” she asked Ben. “He’s probably available.”
Dusty was a trainer who’d lost all his horses a couple of months back when his owner died. The family sold every one of them right out from under him. Since everyone’s business on the racetrack is everyone’s business thanks to the rumor-mill, they all knew that not only was Dusty devastated with the loss of his friend and employer, he was heartbroken over the loss of the horses.
He’d gone on a binge shortly thereafter and having been there more times than he would care to count, it was Tom who pulled him up out of the gutter, so to speak. “All right, I’ll talk to him. What are we thinking as far as pay?”
Ben looked at Dawn, hands held out.
“I don’t know,” she said. “What do you think?”
Ben hesitated. “I don’t want to insult the man, but we’re broke.”
Tom stood up and adjusted his cowboy hat. “I’ll handle it, don’t worry about it. I’ll play it by ear.”
Ben peered over the top of his glasses at him, a look that related a thousand words. “I don’t want this all over the racetrack. Okay?”
Tom chuckled. “Oh ye of little faith.”
Chapter Six
Ben looked up as the stable guard walked down the shedrow toward the tack room. He didn’t like the look on the man’s face. “What’s the matter?”
“Trouble. There’s two cops up at the stable gate.”
“And…?”
“They claim that they got a tip that there’s a body in barn 14. It came through an anonymous call.”
“Barn 14,” Ben said, thinking. “That’s Billy Martin’s barn on the north side.”
The guard nodded. “I don’t know if it’s true. The cops don’t either. They just want to take a look. They say they have to follow the lead.”
“Well, tell them to go ahead.”
“They said they need you with them.”
Ben shook his head and walked with the guard to the stable gate. He didn’t like Billy Martin, but certainly didn’t want to see him dead. The two policemen were standing by their squad car blocking traffic from coming in and going out.
Ben motioned to the drive on the side of the entrance. “Do you think you can pull over there?”
They both said no. “Sorry.” One officer stayed at the track gate. The other one walked with Ben to barn 14. It was a long walk.
“Did they say who this body might be?”
The officer shook his head.
Everyone they passed by, gawked. Some looked as if they wanted to say something. Some looked as if they wanted to follow. Some look concerned, some looked smug. Ben pointed his finger at one of the smug ones. “That would be Dave Brubaker,” he told the policeman, loud enough for Dave Brubaker to hear.
The officer concealed a smile. Ben and he walked down barn 14 shedrow. All the horses came to the front of their stalls. All their haynets were empty. How many horses did Billy Martin have? Ben glanced back, counting. Twelve. When they reached the tack room, Ben was reluctant to look inside. He himself had almost died in his own tack room a few years back.
“The informant said the body would be in the, uh….” The officer checked his notes. “The feed room.”
It was just beyond the tack room. Ben looked inside and there sat Billy Martin, dead as they come. “I’ll be damned,” Ben said to himself, and to the officer, “Now what?”
“Procedure, sir.” And procedure it was. The officer phoned for the rescue squad.
Apparently someone of authority had to confirm the death. Ben stood by, shaking his head. By now, Tom was at his side. “I dated his daughter once, you know. She was a vegetarian.”
When Ben just looked at him, Tom shrugged. “What, I was just stating a fact.”
The fire department showed up next. “Do you want to turn those sirens off,” Ben said. “You’re scaring all the horses. Turn them off! There’s no fire. There’s no emergency.”
More cop cars. More cops. Then the coroner arrived. “Excuse me. Excuse me,” he kept saying, as he pushed through the crowd. He viewed the corpse. “Does anyone know this man?”
Ben nodded. “We all do, on some level or other.”
“Kin?”
Tom stared. “Kin?”
“Family?”
“He has a daughter. She lives out of state.” Tom gazed in at Billy Martin; on a stretcher all bent over and stiff. “Do you mind if I say a prayer?”
One of the cops shrugged. The paramedics and firemen stepped back. “Lord,” Tom said, bowing his head. “Billy Martin wasn’t the greatest guy in the world. I don’t think he was an honest man. But have pity on him. Amen.”
He raised his eyes and looked at Ben. “I’m sorry. It was the best I could do.” When the body was removed, Tom took it upon himself to fill all Billy Martin’s horses’ haynets, and topped off their water.
Ben walked over to the secretary’s office and had the clerk look up the information on Billy Martin’s horses’ owners. He sat down at the desk about to phone all three of them, when in walked Tom with Dusty Burns. “I’ll take care of that, Ben,” Dusty said.
“Wait a minute. Just like that?” Ben stared.
“It’s my job, right?”
Ben nodded and handed him the phone. “Thank you.” By dinner time, Billy Martin’s horses were under the care of three other trainers. Before Ben left for the day, he had a full report from Dusty.
“I moved his truck to the far end of the lot. It’s locked. The stalls are stripped. The feed tubs and buckets and stall guards are locked up in the tack room. The feed room is still taped off. I’m going to deal with Linda Dillon tomorrow.”
Ben wished him luck.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let you down.”
Ben gave that comment thought as he walked down through the barn area. In the distance, a storm was brewing.
Ben had a restless night’s sleep. Aside from the obvious in regards to Billy Martin and the man being dead, something else nagged at him but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He gazed out the kitchen window, waved to Randy as he drove by in his truck on the way to the racetrack, and then heaved a big sigh. “That’s it…That’s it.” He phoned Dawn. It was not that uncommon to ca
ll her at 5:00 in the morning. She had a cell phone with a nice little bell chime that didn’t wake the children.
“Bring your notebook with you. We’re going to make an announcement.”
Dawn cleared her throat. “About what?”
“About the murder.”
“Murder?”
“Well, I don’t know if it was a murder, but the best defense is a good offense. I’d rather call it a murder before anyone else does.”
“Okay, and who are we going to announce this to?”
“The backside. I’ll have Dusty do it.”
“Dusty?”
“Why not? After all, he is our liaison man.”
Dawn smiled. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Tom was always first at the barn. Dawn and Ben usually arrived shortly after him. Tom had the coffee made, horses fed, and Red tacked.
Ben sat down at his desk and glanced at the “overnight” which listed the horses entered for tomorrow. Tom stood looking over his shoulder. “How’d we go from ten and twelve horse fields to six and eight in the blink of an eye? What’s going on here? Didn’t we ask the horsemen to give us the benefit of the doubt? What are they holding out for?”
Tom crossed his arms and shrugged. “I wonder how that affects the handle?”
“The handle?” Ben had to laugh. “Well don’t you sound like front office.”
The plus side of the morning: at least people greeted Ben as he walked up to the racetrack. Some had a question or two and he even had some answers for a few. “Ask Tom,” he told one. “Check with Dusty,” he told another. “Now if you’ll excuse me.” He walked along, mulling over in his head what he wanted to say about Billy Martin’s death.
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