“Yeah, just wait until I see you. I’m going to punch you for not telling me who Jamie really was.”
Hunter chuckled. “I had to take orders from my wife.”
“Well, at least you’ve finally learned your place.”
“I’m going to leave that one alone for now. How’s the business going?”
“I have a lot of catching up to do. Did Virgil fill you in on some of what’s happening here?”
“Yeah. Anything I can do to help?”
“Funny you should ask. I do need something from you. There’s a woman living in Duluth—far as I can tell that’s only about forty-five miles from your place. She’s Kent Riker’s ex-wife. Any chance you could drive up and question her? I have an address but if she has a phone it’s not in her name.”
Quint filled Hunter in on some background information and promised to see him Sunday at the race. Then Quint hung up and called his sister in upstate New York. It had been over a year since he’d talked to her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The New Hampshire International Speedway, built in 1990, accommodated 101,000 spectators. Small wonder, the September Sylvania 300 turned the peaceful town of Loudon into a bustling community. Their 1.058-mile oval track had twelve-degree banks with sharp turns that came up quickly.
Jamie didn’t have to do her qualifying run on Friday until four o’clock. By that time twenty-five drivers had already completed their runs. Clay had bested Grady, Dunn, Davis, and Sammy Jackson, to take the lead.
At 131.2 mph, Jamie aced Clay out by a mere two seconds. She would start in the pole position for the first time in her racing career. Clay would be beside her on the outside.
When she pulled into her pit she was met with a wild volley of cheers.
A few minutes later Jamie, still in her racing suit, knocked on Ray Bentler’s trailer door. She was let in by one of his Pink Minks. As usual, pink-feathered beauties in skin-tight leotards surrounded him. They were all watching a monitor on his desk showing a replay of her run.
Bentler looked up at her, smiling broadly. For some reason he looked older, his face more deeply lined, than Jamie remembered. He leaped to his feet and rounded his desk sweeping minks aside like feathers in the wind.
“Congratulations, kid, what a great run,” he exclaimed grasping Jamie by the upper arms. “This could be your day. You’ve earned a win. You deserve it.”
Jamie gave him a thin smile. “Don’t start counting your chickens before the eggs are laid,” she said. “There’s a little matter of three hundred miles ahead of me before I can think about winning.”
Bentler laughed. “Don’t be such a pessimist.” When he leaned back he got a good look at her face. His smile faded “You had a terrific run; why aren’t you smiling?”
“Can I talk to you in private?”
“Certainly.” He turned toward his minks, snapped his fingers and pointed to the door with his thumb. All seven filed out, several of them extending Jamie congratulations on their way. When the door closed behind the last one, Bentler motioned Jamie to a chair. “Sit down and spill it, kid.”
Jamie took the seat he offered, folded her arms over her chest and glared up at him, saying nothing, her lips thin with barely contained anger.
Bentler leaned on the edge of his desk and started to light a cigar. When he looked at her face his hand halted with the lighter in mid air. “What? You don’t want me to smoke?”
“Did you start sleeping with my mother before or after she left Buster?”
His face registered the shock she’d expected.
“Where did you hear such a thing?”
Jamie was convinced that the name Penny had given her, Ray Bender, was in fact, Bentler. Ray Bentler was a man not easily intimidated. Still, she persisted.
“Just spare me the denials and answer the question.”
“Why are you digging into this after so many years? I told you before to let it lie.”
“If you expect me to run in the race Sunday, you had better answer, honestly.”
Bentler’s eyes widened. “Are you threatening me with not driving? You can’t do that. We have a contract.”
“I don’t know…my knee injury has been acting up lately.”
“Don’t try pulling that shit with me, Jamie.”
Jamie gritted her teeth. “Just answer the fucking question, Ray.”
Bentler’s jaw tightened. “All right,” he said softly. “But remember, you asked for it. I met Katherine in a bar on Chicago’s south side. I introduced her to Buster and the cronies he hung out with.”
“Were you sleeping with her?”
“What the hell do you think?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “She had dollar signs in her eyes. She wanted to marry a man with money. I had no intentions of being that man and told her so right from the start. I played it straight with her, but she was a beauty and she knew how to wiggle her perfect little ass in just the right way to get a man’s attention.”
Jamie winced but she kept silent, determined to hear it all.
“Do you want me to continue?” he asked.
“Why stop now, you’re on a roll.”
“She saw Buster as having a lot of potential. He was a tenacious driver and winning regularly. She flashed her tail in front of him until she convinced him they should get married. A few months after the wedding an accident put him out of the driver’s seat permanently. After that she lost interest in him. As a crewmember, he’d never make the kind of money and get the publicity she was craving. So she started trolling the field again.”
“Did you continue to sleep with her while she was married to Buster?”
“Goddamnit. Wise up, Jamie. She continued to sleep with everybody while she was married to your father.”
Jamie charged to her feet. “My father? How do I know he’s my father? How do I know you didn’t provide the sperm for me?”
Ray Bentler sighed, shaking his head. “Buster raised you. He loves you. He’s your father. Leave it be, Jamie.”
Jamie turned around and walked out. She would not allow Ray Bentler to see her tears. She looked around trying to find a spot to be alone, but the inner field was cluttered with semi trailers, cars, tents and equipment. She couldn’t see even one square yard that wasn’t taken.
With tears streaming down her face, she walked toward her pit, the place that had been her real home for most of her life. Activity in the pit stopped as the workers turned to stare at her. Jamie breaking down was not something they were accustomed to.
Buster was the first person she saw. She walked straight toward him, threw her arms around his waist and buried her face in the warmth of his soft down vest. When his arms folded around her, she began to sob loudly. Heedless of the crew watching her, she clung to the father she had denied for so many years and cried until there were no more tears left.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured into his chest. “I’m so sorry.”
Buster held her, rubbed her back, and kissed the top of her head. “I don’t know what just happened to you, honey, but there’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”
“Yes, there is,” she said through a sob-induced hiccup. “I’ve spent my whole life blaming you for everything bad that’s happened in my life. Now suddenly I realize you are the only good thing there was in it.”
“That’s not true. T-Roy—”
“Don’t even mention T-Roy. I loved my brother, but he wasn’t who I thought he was; you were the stable force in my life. I just didn’t realize it until now.”
“Let’s not forget that I’ve made my share of mistakes too.”
Jamie pulled back to look up at him, smiling a watery smile. “Well, who hasn’t?”
Buster pulled a grease-stained handkerchief out of his back pocket. He handed it to her, talking in a choked voice. “I don’t know what brought this all on, but I feel like I’ve been handed a gift. I’m not going to worry about it or question it. Jamie, there’s something I’ve been putting off telling you
for some twenty-three years. I’ve just never been able to say it or seemed to have the right timing. No fancy words, just I love you, girl, plain and simple. And I have since that first day when you spouted off to me, defending your mother. You were the cutest little tyke I ever saw and you had my spunk. How could a father not love that?”
Jamie rubbed at her eyes with Buster’s handkerchief. It smelled of grease and oil. It was familiar and pleasant, and it was Buster. “I had your obstinate stubborn streak, is what I had.”
Buster chuckled. “What do you mean had?” He looked around them noticing that everyone else had left, probably to give the two of them privacy. “Jamie, it’s Friday night and we don’t have a lot to do tomorrow other than setting up and organizing the pit. How about you and I go out and celebrate your terrific run today. I’ll buy us a nice dinner tonight and we can catch up on some things that are long overdue.”
Jamie handed his handkerchief back, smiling. “I’d like that, and in case I forget to mention it, I love you too. It’s an odd feeling but I’m going to try to get used to it.”
“Is Quint here? He could come along.”
Jamie shook her head. “He had a lot of work to do so he’ll be flying up in the morning.”
They talked about a lot of things, about the upcoming race on Sunday, about her qualifying run that afternoon, and then about T-Roy.
Sometime during the meal, Jamie realized that the caring parent part of her father must always have been there, but as Clay had pointed out, she’d been too absorbed with T-Roy to see it.
Buster sliced a thin slab off of his inch thick, rare porterhouse steak. “You probably aren’t aware of this,” he said, “but I was planning on retiring in the next year or two.”
“You’re only fifty-seven,” Jamie said, surprised.
“I know, but that’s getting pretty old for this business. Kent and I are the only crew chiefs over fifty. This is a young man’s sport.”
“Is Kent planning on retiring too?”
Buster stabbed his fork into his steak. “I don’t know. He’s so insanely obsessed with Clay winning, and the way that kid is driving I can’t picture it happening anytime soon. I doubt Kent will give it up until his son pulls into Victory Lane
.”
“I find it odd to hear you say that,” Jamie said. “I thought that’s how you felt about me.”
Buster’s lips twisted into a sad smile. “I knew that too, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. You never believed a word I said.”
“You were so angry when I started racing, I was sure it was because you either thought I wasn’t good enough or that women didn’t belong in NASCAR, or both.”
Buster snorted. “I knew you were good enough. And when they shoved you in that car after his accident and made you race, damn right I was pissed. The last thing I wanted was to see you end up like T-Roy.”
“I don’t understand. How did you think I was good enough to drive?”
“You think I didn’t know you were driving? I had more than one fight with T-Roy over your racing.”
“You knew? You never saw me race.”
Buster laid his fork down, folded his hands in front of him and stared across the table at her. “In four years you ran exactly seventy two professional races. You won five of them. Ten times you took second. In all that time you had only six races you didn’t finish. You totaled three cars, which may or may not have been caused by driver error. Bentler wanted you to replace T-Roy a year before he died.”
Jamie stared at him in numb disbelief, opening her mouth, searching for words. He knew all her statistics in detail. How? She’d never seen him at one of her races, never talked to him about them. She’d assumed he either didn’t know or simply didn’t care. “You never came to any of my races,” she said finally.
“I attended every one of your races.”
“I didn’t see you there.”
“Because I was real proud of you, but I didn’t want to encourage you. If I hadn’t been at the hospital with T-Roy that day I would never have allowed them to put you in his car. Your being female or being good enough had nothing to do with it.”
“Did T-Roy know Bentler wanted me to replace him?”
Buster gave her a long, sad look. “Why do you think he was pushing himself so hard?”
Tears stung Jamie’s eyes.
Buster reached over and put his big hand over her smaller one. “Don’t read too much into that, honey. In spite of his shortcomings, T-Roy loved you and he was proud of you. It was no fault of yours that he couldn’t compete with your record on the track.”
Buster sighed. “Bentler’s push to have you race was the main reason I wanted you to marry Clay. I hoped you’d like being married and start having babies, and forget about racing. Hell, I was even thinking of buying you a flower shop to get you interested in something else.”
“You knew about my wanting a flower shop?”
Buster smiled. “Obviously, I know a lot more about you than you think I do. That day you moved out of my house and took your little forest with you was one of the saddest times of my life. I knew it was best for you because we didn’t get along but you took all the color out of my life, and I don’t mean the plants.”
* * * *
When Quint called that night at nine o’clock she had a lot to tell him, the least of which was her conversation with Ray Bentler. He was pleased to learn she had spent the evening with her father. He told her about his conversations with Talon Davis’ ex-wives, and he assured her Hunter and Nicole would be there for her race on Sunday.
Then he told her the best news of all. Instead of flying up Saturday morning as he’d originally planned, he was driving the two hundred and seventy miles to Loudon, New Hampshire and he was already on the way. He’d stopped to gas up and barring any problems he’d see her by midnight. With conflicting emotions he congratulated her on her run that day and disconnected his cell phone.
A few minutes later, Quint turned onto interstate eighty-seven heading north. He mulled over the information she’d given him about Ray Bentler. It was not so much surprising as disturbing. Though he couldn’t think of any reason Bentler would want Jamie out of racing, Quint wasn’t entirely ready to discount her sponsor as a suspect.
Tomorrow he would talk to Charles Decker Jones and anyone else he could pin down. He’d have liked to put Kent Riker on his list of people to see, but seriously doubted the man would give him the time of day, much less an interview. He hoped Hunter would get something from Riker’s ex-wife that would be helpful.
Saturday morning he drove out to the track with Jamie. She left him on his own while she went to take care of business with her crew. Quint found Charlie by the back of the trailer where the grill was set up. He had a Styrofoam coffee mug in his hand.
Charlie, a small wiry, man, had a somber face etched with deep frown lines. With thinning white hair crowning his head, he looked easily ten years older than his high school buddies, Buster and Kent. When he saw Quint coming, he pulled a ragged, old green cap from his hip pocket and jammed it on his head. Quint thought it peculiar since crew members usually wore caps with the team’s color. He shrugged it off, maybe the cap was handy and Charlie was embarrassed about his thinning hair.
Quint helped himself to a cup of coffee and introduced himself.
“Yeah, I’ve seen you around with Jamie,” Charlie said.
Quint took a sip of his hot coffee. “I wonder if I could ask you a couple of questions?”
Charlie shrugged. “Sure, why not? From what I hear you’re new to racing. I’ve been around here a long time, so I pretty much know everything. What’s on your mind?”
“Katherine.”
Charlie’s face clearly showed surprise. “Katherine who?”
Quint was certain Charlie knew exactly who Quint was talking about. “Jamie’s mother, Katherine Devon LeCorre. Just how well did you know her?”
Charlie stared into his empty cup for a moment then grunted. “
What’s to know? She was Buster’s wife. We all hung out together. That’s no big secret. Why are you asking?”
“I’d like you to tell me about the last time you saw her. When you picked her up and took her to the race, the same day she died.”
A beet-red flush covered Charlie’s face. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Decker. Maybe you’d like me to call Buster over and include him in this discussion. I’d rather we talk privately, but—”
“Why the devil are you digging into that after all these years?” Charlie demanded angrily.
“A lot of circumstances involving Katherine’s death were never cleared up.”
“What are you, some kind of a cop?”
“No. I’m—”
“Well I had nothing to do with her death if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Were you sleeping with her?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’m afraid I’m making it my business. And you’ll make this a lot simpler for both of us if you just answer my questions.”
“Who told you I took her to the race that day?”
“That’s not important. I do know you picked her up before noon, took her to the race, and dropped her back at her apartment at five-thirty.”
Charlie whispered an expletive under his breath. He looked out at the track, stared up at the stands. He looked everywhere but at Quint.
Quint waited.
After a few moments Charlie heaved a deep sigh. “She called me that morning and asked me to pick her up. So I did. I dropped her off. She sat alone in the stands. I was working gasman that day. I drove her back home afterwards. End of story.”
“How often did she call you?” Quint asked.
“Periodically. She mostly wanted to know how T-Roy was doing, but that was the first time she called me to take her to the race.”
“Were you sleeping with her?”
“No. And that’s God’s truth. Buster was my best friend. I wouldn’t have done that to him.”
Secret Sacrifices Page 27
