Full Mortality (19 page)
On a chilly morning late in October, about 6
A.M.
, I drove Mello into the Laurel Park backstretch. We breezed right past Fred Rockston at the stable gate. Nobody was going to tell me Mello couldn’t watch Hellish’s first speed work.
Lorna pulled up about the time we did, and the three of us walked into Jim’s barn. The trainer sat behind his desk. The tabby cat lay curled asleep in the nearby chair. A dusty picture of Gallorette stared from the wall, and Mello stepped over to it, tracing the champion’s face through the glass with long, gnarled fingers.
Jim set his coffee cup down. “You working her today?”
“You said it was time.” I leaned over, stroking the cat’s fur.
“She be ready,” said Mello. “I get her groomed up.” He mumbled something about brushes and moved away down the shedrow.
“They found Kenny Grimes,” said Jim.
“Alive?” My shoulders tightened against the answer.
“He’s exercising horses for a trainer in Florida. Gulfstream Park.”
“That son-of-a-bitch! Bet it was him gave those syringes with my fingerprints all over them to Clements.”
“Kenny had gambling problems,” Lorna said. “They probably paid him to do it.”
It fit. Kenny had always hustled for extra money. “Then I found O’Brien dead. Kenny must have panicked.” I eased onto the edge of the cat’s chair, organizing my thoughts. “Detective Wells called me yesterday. Said they think Vipe got out of the country. Cops spotted him at Del Mar Racetrack in southern California. Then he disappeared again.”
“Del Mar’s just north of Mexico,” Jim said.
Lorna leaned against the wall. Sometime during the last week she’d changed her green streaks to a more flattering copper. Sun poured through the office window, lighting her hair to a burnished halo. “So there were four of them,” she said. “O’Brien and Clements are dead, Reed’s in jail, and Vipe got away.”
I didn’t want to think about Vipe anymore. “I’ll see how Mello’s getting on with Hellish.”
Lorna followed me down the shedrow, and, nearing the stall, we could hear Mello humming “Camptown Races.” Inside, the old man rubbed the filly’s bright chestnut coat in time to the song, and Hellish bobbed her head with each brush stroke. A tang of liniment sharpened the air.
I heard a car door slam and stepped outside the stall, Lorna close behind. Carla breezed toward us wearing a mocha-colored suede jacket and boots. She’d been at some kind of meat convention for almost a week. After we did the hello thing, her eyes settled on Lorna’s copper streaks.
“Didn’t I tell you Bronze Babe had your name on it?”
Typical Carla. Should have seen her hand in Lorna’s color change. “We found out stuff since you left, Carla.”
“Tell me.”
“Clay and his buddies had a betting scam, like we thought, switching back and forth between Whorly and Noble Treasure.” I paused, thinking about the money. “Did you know in England it’s legal to bet a horse to lose? They’d enter Whorly in a race he couldn’t win, call him Noble Treasure. Then they’d use a British outlet and bet the horse to finish out of the money.”
“With a tortoise like Whorly, they didn’t have to bribe a jockey to hold the horse.” Lorna threw Carla a loaded glance. “But we might need to pull the reins on that Jack Farino.”
Carla’s face sparked with interest. “Do you like him, Nikki?”
“He likes
her
,” said Lorna, sidestepping the colt next door who nipped at her from over his stall gate.
“No way,” I said.
“Oh, yeah.” Lorna grinned. “Big way. He’s been hanging around our Nikki.”
“He just came over to explain stuff.” My face felt flushed.
Carla let it slide. “So what about the insurance thing?”
“Clay found buyers like Janet and Martha, people who’d let him handle everything, including the insurance,” I said. “He’d get them to sign a document saying he was their agent, could act on their behalf. Jack told me Clay’d take out two policies, one for the real owner and one for himself as agent.”
“How could that work?” Carla looked dubious.
“Jack said as long as the insurance underwriters didn’t notice Clay’s name popping up too many times, he’d probably get away with it. Apparently, Clay used aliases to keep the underwriters in the dark. Clements’ shuffled the horses around, O’Brien . . .” I had to slow down, breathe some. “O’Brien or Vipe would kill them. I don’t know how Clay established the insurance value.”
“I can fill in that part.”
I swung around. Jack stood behind me. He knew how to sneak up on a woman. His gunslinger eyes didn’t frighten me anymore. I understood their predatory look . . . cop eyes. Now that he wasn’t undercover, he’d trimmed his dark hair short. He looked good either way. I could smell soap and some pleasant underlying scent.
He greeted Carla and gave me a wink. My body responded. How could a wink hold so much power?
Jack almost smiled, then turned cop. “Reed and his buddies formed partnerships. They’d use the partnerships to sell a horse back and forth.”
“No doubt raising the value every time,” I said.
“Exactly. They had Noble Treasure up to $400,000. Don’t think his days weren’t numbered.”
“But why kill people?”
Jack shifted, took a breath. “We’re not sure yet, Nikki. A lot will probably come out in the trial. I think Clay’s gun will be a match for the one that took out O’Brien.”
“My God,” said Carla.
“We don’t even know for sure it was Vipe that knifed Clements. I’m guessing Reed’s operation was falling apart, he went over the edge and started killing his own people.”
I closed my eyes, pushed away the images. “I got a horse to work.”
Mello had Hellish looking like a stakes winner, her mane and tail combed to a silken finish, her hooves painted with oil. The old man and I tacked her up, and when I led her from the stall, Carla’s eyes got big. “What a beautiful horse. She’s so classy.” Never one to restrain herself, Carla said, “Nikki, I want to buy into her. Can I?”
Startled, I thought a minute. Carla would make a great partner, as long as she didn’t try to take the horse to Nordstrom’s. “It’d be fun. But I’m not sure how to work it.”
“Sell me 40 percent. That way you keep controlling interest and still make some money.”
“Don’t know how much to charge.” I put a soothing hand on Hellish’s shoulder. She knew it was time to do something, didn’t want to stand around while we discussed percentages.
“Whatever you think is fair.” She held out her hand. I shook it.
Lorna watched us seal the deal. Her gaze shifted away and she studied her feet.
“And Lorna,” I said, catching her eye, “you get 10 percent because . . . you’re Lorna.”
She lit up like a candle, for once speechless.
Jim headed toward us, his lips pressed tight with impatience. “Better get her out of here, before she explodes in the barn.” He stepped next to me, laced his fingers together, making his hands into a stirrup. I slid my knee in, and he tossed me into the saddle. “I’d go an easy half-mile,” he said. “We’ll watch from the gap.”
I gathered the reins and headed out. I sent her around the wrong way to warm her up, then jogged to the starting gate. One of the gate crew, a guy named Buster, walked toward us. “What’re you doing with her, Nikki?”
“Going a half, but I’m looking for company.” Some other horses milled around the gate waiting for their turn. A gray mare, trained by a man named Murray Lawrence, stood alone and arrogant. She was a solid performer, a stakes winner.
Lawrence stared at me, nodding toward his horse and jockey. “We’re working a half, and these two . . .” he spoke to the riders of the horses near him. “They’ll go a half with us.”
Buster stepped closer, his hand closing on Hellish’s bridle.
“I don’t know if I want to go with them.” I gestured toward the stakes mare. “Might be asking too much.”
“Might as well find out what you got, Nikki.”
I paused a beat, then nodded, letting him lead Hellish into the gate. The other three loaded, and the starter scanned the track, waiting for a break in traffic. Two horses sped by. Behind them a long gap opened before the next group. I glanced at the gray mare in the gate beside me. Ahead the track stretched wide and long. We weren’t going to the wire. The five-sixteenths pole, near the end of the turn, measured the half-mile from the gate.
The starter called, “Everybody ready?”
Hellish tensed beneath me. Nobody said anything. Then the bell shrilled, the doors slammed open, and I was out of there on a rocket.
Two horses fell behind us as Hellish and the gray mare ripped down the backstretch, head and head. I’d never gone this fast. I hadn’t even asked her. We flew into the turn, Hellish on the outside, eating more ground. The five-sixteenths pole came at us, and the gray pushed her head in front. Hellish pinned her ears, dug in, and shoved her nose ahead of the mare’s. The pole rushed by.
I stood up and thought my knees would buckle. When I got to the gap, Jim was staring at his stopwatch, clearly astonished. Everybody was talking at once, but all I heard was Mello, not humming, but singing, “Doodah, doodah. Runnin a race wid a shootin star . . . ”
THE END
Some wonderful people helped me around every turn of this novel.
Support from the writing world was phenomenal — Sisters In Crime, the Guppies, my critique group members, especially Bonner Menking. I’m still astonished that best selling authors Barbara Parker and Dick Francis took the time to read some chapters and make comments early on. The brilliant publisher of Wildside Press, John Betancourt, grabbed me and the manuscript when we were about to go under for the third time.
From law enforcement, I received advice from Detective Stephen Luersen, Homicide Division, Anne Arundel County Police Department; Joe Poag, Chief Investigator for the Maryland State Racing Commission; and retired Prince Georges County Homicide Detective, Jerry DuCellier.
From the veterinarian world, I thank Doctor Forrest Peacock, the Maryland State Veterinarian and man who read and vetted the manuscript and wanted to read more!
For moral and emotional support I thank my husband Daniel Filippelli, my sister Lillian Clagett, my niece and nephew Alidia and Bartholt Clagett, and a tremendous thank you to friend and cohort Margie Hugel.
Because he is so bright and experienced in the world of horse racing, input from racehorse trainer and steeplechase rider Barry G. Wiseman enabled me to write this story. Barry vetted the manuscript for accuracy. Even more, he believed in my home-bred horses enough to train them and get me my first win at Pimlico, and nothing can beat that!
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