“Yes, she had a list of them. The one they recommend is where a lot of athletes go to recover from ‘debilitating’ sports injuries. He said, ‘Oh, just what I need, to sit around with a bunch of jocks. It’ll be just like being back in high school. Let’s bench-press the nerd.’”
Dawn chuckled.
“I had no idea he’d ever had issues in high school.”
“What did Gordon say?”
“For a while he didn’t say anything. Then he tried cheering Matthew up, but by then, his silence had spoken volumes. As Tom would say, they don’t bullshit one another.”
“No, that’s for sure. And they’re so close.”
They both turned when there was a tap on the open door and were startled. There stood a young woman, a girl actually - she couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen, dressed as a witch. A witch.
“Can I help you?” Wendy asked.
“Are you Dawn Iredale?”
“No,” Dawn said. “I’m Dawn. What can I do for you?”
“I have a telegram for you.” As she started toward Dawn, Joe Feigler rushed in behind her.
“Miss? Miss? Miss? I’m talking to you, Miss?”
The girl turned and in a panic, hurled something at Dawn in a bottle. It hit her in the chest and splashed bright red all over her.
“Shut the door,” Dawn shouted. “Shut the door!” It was blood.
Joe shut the door, blocking the girl inside.
“Wendy, call Security!” Dawn said. “No, wait! Don’t!”
The young girl had started to cry.
“Where did you get this?”
“It’s blood on your hands!”
“Blood on my hands?”
“I read your articles. I know you’re lying! These horses are treated horribly here.”
“I’m calling Security,” Joe said.
“No. Sit down,” Dawn told the girl. “What’s your name?”
“How did you get in here?” Joe asked. “You’re that pixie from the other day, aren’t you? Do you have identification on you?”
The girl shook her head defiantly.
“You don’t work for a telegraph company, do you?” Joe said. “Do you?”
“This is a personal assault, Dawn. You have to call Security,” Wendy said, hovering somewhere between shock and exhaustion. Was this a dream? “Dawn?”
Dawn saw the possible headlines tomorrow flash through her mind. A front page photo. “Call Uncle Matt,” she said. “Tell him to….”
“Who’s Uncle Matt?” the girl asked, defiant and yet looking about as innocent as a teenage witch could look, and scared.
“What did you hope to accomplish by doing this?” Dawn asked.
“To make you think.”
Dawn looked at her. “To make me think?”
“I want to know how she got in here,” Joe said. “There’s no way she can get in here unnoticed. Not unless….”
All three of them looked at the girl. Was she familiar? Had they seen her on the backside before? Dawn stood, trying to decide what to do. She reached for the Kleenex and started wiping the blood from her shirt. “I guess we’re going to have to call the police. Races don’t start for an hour. Let’s get this over with.”
“No, don’t!” the girl said. “I’m sorry! Let me go and you’ll never see me again! I promise!”
“And I’m supposed to take the word of a young woman who threw a bottle of blood at me.”
“It’s not blood! It’s glycerin and red dye!”
Dawn sniffed the tissue. No smell. Certainly not blood.
Dawn, Wendy, and Joe looked at one another.
“You can’t let her go,” Joe said. “We have to have her arrested.”
“For what crime?” Dawn asked. “Although, this was one of my favorite shirts.”
“Assault.”
“What horses are being mistreated?” Dawn asked.
“All of them. I’ve seen how they’re treated.”
“Here? On this racetrack?” Dawn gave up trying to wipe off her shirt and threw the tissue in the waste basket.
“Yes, here.”
Dawn looked at her. “So you work here?” When the girl refused to answer, Dawn looked at Joe. “Let’s have her fingerprinted then let her go. If she’s been licensed here, Uncle Matt can have them matched up. Have Security escort her out.”
“What about my car?”
“Oh, your car,” Dawn said. “Well, that’s possible identification. Maybe we should just keep you here until closing and when your car is the last one left in the parking lot….” Dawn glanced down at the girl’s red boots. “Wait a minute. Were you stalking me over at the barn?”
“Stalking you? I wasn’t stalking you.”
Dawn stood shaking her head. Tom opened the door and started in the room. Joe practically slammed the door on him. “What the hell?” Tom said, nudging Joe out of the way. “What’s going on? What happened to you?” he asked Dawn, about the stain on her shirt. He looked at the girl. “Who are you?”
“She attacked Dawn,” Joe said.
“Attacked her?”
Joe motioned to the glass bottle on the floor. “It was full of stuff that looked like blood. We’re trying to decide what to do with her.”
“Well shit, let’s have her arrested,” Tom said. “That’ll make for some excitement. Maybe she’s armed. Are you armed, you little witch?”
The girl shook her head.
Tom walked over and using a pen from the desk, picked up the bottle by the spout, held it up close to his nose and sniffed it. “Glycerin…?”
The girl looked away. Then here came Ben, and right behind him, Dusty. It was not unusual for them all to gather in the office. The only thing unusual at the moment was the young girl dressed as a witch.
“I know you,” Dusty said. “Where do I know you from?” He looked long and hard at the girl when brought up to date. “Were you trying to hurt Dawn?”
“No, I’m just trying to raise awareness.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Tom said. “Are you from ….?”
“I am from nowhere.”
They all laughed. It wasn’t really all that funny, but with the girl sitting there in the witch costume and looking so serious, they couldn’t help themselves.
“You’re all sick,” the girl said. “I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not,” Dawn said.
“You can’t hold me against my will.”
“Oh really. We could hold you here forever. You don’t even exist,” Dawn said. “You’re just a witch from nowhere. Where did you park your broom? Or do you even have one?”
The young girl looked defiantly at her. “Go ahead and make fun of me. I don’t care.”
“I’m not making fun of you,” Dawn said. “I’m trying to make sense of all of this. Joe, go get the fingerprinting pad. And not a word of this to anyone, do you understand?”
Joe nodded and left the room.
Tom looked at Wendy. “How’s Matthew? When’s he getting released?”
“Tomorrow.”
“That’s good news.”
“Yes and no. I’ll tell you more later.”
Joe returned with the fingerprint pad and ID form. If the girl thought Dawn was bluffing, she had another thing coming. When that sunk in, she fessed up. “My name is Hillary Walker.”
“Who do you work for?”
“I don’t. Not on the racetrack at least. I work at Casey Costumes. I’m in high school.”
“How did you get on the backside? How did you get in the offices?”
“I worked here one day. That’s how I got my groom’s license.”
Dawn looked at Joe. He nodded, left the room, and returned in a flash. “Yep, it’s her. She worked for Garrison.”
“I only worked for him that one day. He’s mean to his horses.”
“Yes, he is,” Dusty said. “That’s why he’s not here anymore.”
“He’s not here anymore?”
Dawn reached for
the girl’s groom’s license printout, complete with photo. “Is this still your home phone number?”
The girl shrugged.
Dawn sighed. Enough. “Let her go.”
“You sure?” Joe asked.
“Yes. I’ve got enough right here to track her all the way back to her great grandmother. Let her go. Hillary,” she said. “Tell your mom I’m coming to see her.”
“My mom?” The girl sat back down.
“Yes, now go on. Go home. Get out of here.”
The girl stood up and walked past all of them and looked back at the door. “Would it help if I said I’m sorry?”
“No,” Dawn said. “Now go on, leave before I call the police, and don’t ever step a foot on this racetrack again.” She looked at Joe. “Have Security escort her to her car, accompany them and get me the make, model, and license number.”
~ * ~
Dawn washed up at the ladies room by their barn and changed shirts. She always kept extra shirts and jeans at the track just in case, which normally was when one of the horses had gotten her soaking wet or muddy. She unbraided and re-braided her hair without looking in the mirror. She never looked in the mirror when braiding her hair.
“Why not, Mommy?” Maeve had asked.
“Because I can’t see back the back of my head,” she said. “Can you see the back of your head? Try.”
She loved Maeve’s little giggle in response, turning round and round.
Dawn sighed. How would she feel about Maeve doing something like this Hillary just did? The girl clearly had her reasons and maybe even good intentions. Still….
Someone tapped on the door. “Dawn, you okay?”
Recognizing Tom’s voice, Dawn opened the door and smiled. “Yes.”
“Just making sure,” he said.”I know she was just a little shit and you could handle her and all, but….”
Dawn laughed. She didn’t have a violent aggressive bone in her body and they both knew that. “I kind of feel sorry for her. It was an act of desperation and she’d obviously been planning it for days.”
Tom put his arm around her as they walked to the barn. “Apparently. She was all those characters. Joe said she had all the costumes in the back seat of her car. This world is full of whackos.”
“I don’t know that she was a whacko,” Dawn said. “Though that was my favorite shirt.”
“Can you get another one made just like it?” Tom teased.
“Yes, I plan to,” Dawn said, glancing at the stained shirt in her hand. “Several of them.” She wasn’t kidding.
Tom smiled. “I have to tell you, Dawn. Whenever you do the Fioritto thing, and mind you, it ain’t often, it scares the hell out of me. I forget how much power you have. To me, you’re just Dawn.”
“I am just Dawn. And I luv you and you luv me….” The two of them started singing, announcing their arrival at the barn.
Ben looked up from his desk. “I can’t see crap,” he said. “What’s this say?”
Dawn looked at the note in his hand. “It’s from Dusty.” She started laughing. “It says, ‘Oh no, that little filly got on a van somehow and is headed for Meg’s Meadows. I don’t know how it happened.’”
Chapter Nine
Alley Beau, the three-year-old filly out of All Together sired by Beau Born was in the fifth race today. This would be only her third lifetime start. She’d run fourth in her first race, had a win in her second race after getting left in the gate, and was favored to win today. She hadn’t raced as a two-year old, was “a little squirrely” as Tom would say, and had wide eyes and big ears.
“Lord help us if she ever grows into those ears,” Ben said, the day she was born. As a yearling, she stood close to 16 hands. She was 16.3 as a two-year old, and stood today at better than 17.2, taller than both her sire and dam. She was bay; the first bay born of or sired by either horse, and gangly.
At the call for the fourth race, Dawn did up Alley’s legs in Vetwrap, applied rundown patches on the backs of each wrapped fetlock, and wiped her shiny coat with a grooming towel. Tom was ponying a horse in the fourth, so the plan was for Dawn to meet him up at the gap. Timed perfectly, he’d be coming back off the track with the horse in that race right as Dawn arrived with Alley. If the wind was just right and there was very little traffic or activity on the road between the barns, a person could hear the bell ring on the starting gate. Dawn listened, heard it, put Alley’s bridle on, tied her tongue, and looped her halter and lead shank around her arm. In the past, they had always come back to the barn after the race for the halter and shank if they placed, but with the new ruling by the Stewards, everyone had to bring their halters and lead shanks to the paddock with them.
She walked Alley a lap around the shedrow, then out the barn and up the road to the track. Tom was waiting for her at the gap. “The horse got claimed,” he said. “Jackson’s pissed. If he keeps spouting off, I’m going to yellow card him.”
He was joking. But in all seriousness, both he and Dawn knew what it was like to have a horse claimed from them and you actually did feel like screaming. Claiming races were designed to help keep racing honest. That was Horseracing101. Still….
Alley was not in a claiming race. Tom put the lead on her and Dawn followed him and Red and Alley to the paddock. Jackson was still screaming at the trainer who had claimed his horse. “Damn you, Hannity! Damn you!” He looked at Tom venting his frustration. “Damn him, Tom! He knows how much I love that horse!”
“I know.” Tom shook his head at Hannity. “What the fuck is wrong with you? That’s the man’s one and only horse.”
“He shouldn’t have run him claiming then.”
“You know what? No, never mind. Never mind,” Tom said, trying to stay calm himself. The sight of Jackson following the horse he loved, now going to a different stable, different owner, different trainer was heartbreaking, particularly with the way he was clutching the horse’s empty bridle. The man had tears in his eyes and the horse kept looking back at him.
“Damn!” Tom said.
At the entrance to the paddock, Tom dismounted Red and ground-tied him. Ben was waiting for them in the Number 6 stall. “Where you been, old man?” Tom asked.
Ben shook his head. “Everywhere. You wouldn’t believe.”
Dawn led Alley in past them. She stood quietly to be saddled, her ears like radar turning this way and that, eyes big and watching everyone. Jockey Jenny Grimm approached them with a big smile on her face. Tom put his arm around her and pointed up to the General Offices window. Wendy looked down at them and laughed, waved.
Ben patted the filly on the neck. “Just let her run her race,” he told Jenny.
“Roger,” Jenny said. She’d been the filly’s regular jock since day one.
“Riders up!”
Tom walked out ahead of them. Dawn gave Jenny a leg-up, and led the mare out onto the racetrack to the sound of the bugle. Tom loved that sound. The fans loved that sound. The man had been their regular bugler for a couple of years now, ever since they bought the racetrack and got rid of the cheesy piped-in bugle music.
The filly looked at the fans. She’d become a crowd favorite because of her size and her wide eyes. She had a way of looking as if she were posing for a photo with each step, and had a real long lanky stride.
“Poetry in motion,” an article in Blood Horse called her.
“We love you, Alley!” two little girls called out.
Alley nodded her head up and down as if in appreciation.
“We love you!!”
It was an eight-horse field of three-year old allowance fillies, non-winners of two, going six furlongs. Alley Beau’s odds were 5-2. When the post parade turned at the end of the grandstand the horses and their ponies fanned out and broke into a trot and then a canter to warm up.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” track announcer Bud Gipson said. “This field of three-year old distaffers will be going to the gate in less than six minutes. Do not get shut out.”
Dawn went
into the Secretary’s office to check in with Linda.
“All’s well,” Linda said. “All except for….” She angled a glance toward Joe and whispered, “He is an idiot.”
“Now, now. He has some good qualities I’m sure.”
“Well, then he must be hiding them,” Linda said.
Dawn smiled. “I’ll see you later.” She went back outside and down to the rail, where Ben always stood with Dusty to watch the races. Dusty wasn’t there. “Where is he?”
“He just called from the farm. He’ll be back.”
“What’s his plan with that horse?”
“I don’t know.” Ben shook his head and sighed. “I think he wants to keep her.”
Dawn looked across the racetrack to the starting gate. The horses were being loaded. “He can turn her out with Biscuit and Poncho.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Ben said.
“They’re at the post!” Bud Gipson announced.
Dawn’s heart took a leap. There was a time not all that long ago, when she couldn’t watch their horses race without getting a stomach ache. She used to live in the ladies room for hours prior to post time.
“And they’re off! Taking the early lead is Pining Plum. Miss Twister is a close second. You’ve Got Mojo is laying third. Three lengths back is Tippy Toes. Dab Blast It is closing ground along with My Names Appy and three lengths back is Alley Beau.”
Dawn glanced up at the General Offices window. Wendy was watching the race through her binoculars.
“Approaching the clubhouse turn, Miss Twister is challenging the leader. You’ve Got Mojo is making a move. Tippy Toes has dropped down on the rail. Dab Blast It is making a bid for third….and trailing the field is Alley Beau.”
Dawn looked at Ben. Ben looked at Dawn. “Don’t panic,” he said.
“At the head of the stretch and down on the rail it is Tippy Toes charging to the lead. Miss Twister and You’ve Got Mojo are vying for second. Dab Blast It has dropped back. Pining Plum is no longer a factor. And here comes Alley Beau.”
“Come on, Alley!” Dawn said. “Come on, girl.”
Ben squinted at the fractions and smiled. From his vantage point, even with the fast pace, Alley had reached her stride and the race was over.
“Closing with a rush on the outside, hand-ridden, is Alley Beau. It’s Alley Beau! It’s Alley Beau! It’s Alley Beau at the wire by three.”
Winning Odds Trilogy Page 91