The Stars Shine Bright

by Sibella Giorello

  One split second. But it felt longer. DeMott. “Who called?”

  “Somebody named Rosser.”

  I nodded. But saw an odd look on Jack’s face, like he was hurt. I flipped open the phone. An older model. Something lying around the whiz kids’ lab. The FBI wouldn’t miss it. I stared at the LCD screen that displayed my name. My real name. Raleigh Harmon.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem,” he said. “You can keep the Sig Sauer.”

  “It doesn’t belong to the Bureau?”

  He shook his head. “Hope you find the horse.”

  I waited, expecting a wisecrack. And maybe he was waiting too, so I could point out how this whole situation with Felicia was entirely his fault. But the silence stretched out. The city noise fell between us. A bus wheezed up Spring Street. People chattered past us. The sunlight turned his eyes blue-green. Caribbean waters. Warm. And life teemed below the surface.

  “Hell-llo? Is anybody listening?” Felicia whined. “I said I’m hungry!”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Back in Richmond, my aunt’s house would barely make the historical record. But on the West Coast, her three-bedroom craftsman was considered old. I pulled into the narrow driveway designed for a Model T and opened my door. Ready to get this over with. But Felicia stayed in her seat. She clutched a Styrofoam carton of take-out teriyaki, purchased by Jack. Clutching it because I said if one drop touched the seat she would go straight to the homeless shelter.

  Not only did she not spill a drop, she gave me hope.

  “I kinda abandoned your mom, didn’t I?”

  This was the part of Felicia that kept me hoping. The part my mother never forgot. Derelict, damaged, so self-absorbed she put herself before her children, Felicia’s heart was also capable of making sudden changes, like a baseball that looked like it was headed for foul territory, only to swerve inside the white line at the last possible moment.

  “Felicia, I think you were trying to help.”

  “I should’ve tried harder.”

  And with that, she got out. Slung the backpack over her shoulder. Headed for the house. As though nothing of importance had just been spoken.

  Madame followed her up the front steps to the porch, but since I didn’t see Aunt Charlotte’s decrepit Volvo in the driveway, I walked over to where the key was hidden under a fake granite boulder. I kneeled down, feeling fear and relief and guilt. But mostly fatigue. I was so very tired, and I was prying my fingers under the rock when the front door creaked open.

  I stood up.

  “I remember you,” the voice said. “I read your aura.”

  Oh, dear God. No. No, no, no.

  “Felicity, right?”

  “Felicia.”

  I felt a flash of rage. I repented—and things were only getting worse. It felt like God was piling on the frustration. Felicia wasn’t enough. Here was the woman who had yanked the plug on my life, sending my mother swirling down the drain. The woman who opened her big mouth on the cruise to Alaska and told my mom I was an FBI agent.

  Claire the Clairvoyant.

  “Raleigh!” She had a voice as tuneless as a dented trombone. “I thought you were on some secret mission.”

  “Some secret,” I muttered.

  “Charlotte wanted me to check on the cats. Their auras have been a little off. She’s been busy at the store.”

  My aunt’s store, Seattle Stones, was flypaper for goofy New Agers. People like Claire, who right now was trying to restrain the cats with her stubby legs. The cats were probably desperate to get away before Claire read their auras again. I looked around for Madame. She had stepped off the porch and stood on the small front lawn. I turned back to Claire. My headache was getting worse.

  “Tell Aunt Charlotte I’ll call her soon. And Felicia needs a place to stay.” I looked back at the dog. My heart sank. “Felicia, can you watch Madame for me?”

  “Really?” she said.

  “Feed her whatever you’re eating. Make sure she gets walked. Don’t give her chocolate.”

  Claire narrowed her eyes. “Where are you going?”

  “None of your business,” I said.

  “You’re doing something secret again, aren’t you?”

  I opened my mouth, savoring my chance to speak the truth and tell her that for a clairvoyant she was the densest person on the planet. But a horn suddenly blasted from my purse. I actually jumped. The cell phone. Muzak. It wasn’t “Camptown Races.” But it was just as annoying. I pawed through the bag. Jack’s idea of a good joke. Old-fogy tune. Retirement music on the cell phone.

  “That’s Tijuana Brass.” Claire started imitating the horns. A natural affinity. “Whaa-whaa-whaa-whaa.”

  I headed for the car and Madame followed.

  “No, girl.” I could barely speak, sending her away again. “You have to stay.”

  I turned my back, like the coward that I was, and looked at the caller ID. Emerald Meadows. I flipped open the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Where are you!”

  Eleanor.

  I bent down and gave Madame a kiss, then pointed to the house. Eleanor, meanwhile, was informing me that I was heartless, that I had no idea what it was like for an old lady to worry, and how dare I do that to her, and did I know how abandoned she felt? I watched Madame walk slowly up the stairs, her tail down, as Eleanor described her attempts to reach me at the condo because she couldn’t remember my cell phone number. When I climbed into the Ghost, driving down the street, turning on Pike and feeling like my eyes were on fire, she began quoting something about getting old. I pulled over to the curb and waited until she took a breath.

  “I quit.”

  “That’s just grand,” she said. “Giving up, right when I need you. Here I thought you were made of tougher stuff.”

  “The FBI has relieved me of the undercover assignment.”

  That closed her mouth.

  So I continued. “I decided to quit. Effective immediately. Raleigh David is gone. And I’m no longer an FBI agent.”

  “They fired you?”

  “No, I wasn’t worth firing. Which is different from being worth keeping. Didn’t you once tell me most people’s lives are trails of debris?”

  “Mrs. Venable, she said that.”

  “She was half right.” The other half—the half that mattered—was what we did with the debris.

  “And you’re going to leave me,” she cried, “with all this mendacity?”

  “I’m sorry. But it’s your car. Your condo. Your checkbook.”

  “I hate apologies. Especially for the truth. Who said that?”

  “You did.”

  “Never mind. Will you work for me, on the same terms?”

  I took a long, deep breath. The relief washing over me was greater than what I’d felt in the SAC’s office. Because this wave was grace.

  “Raleigh?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m here. And I’ll work for you.”

  “Good. What do we do now?”

  “Call Mr. Yuck.”

  “What a ghastly beginning.”

  “Call him and tell him the truth. About me.”

  “Must I?” She sighed. “This charade has brought me so much delight.”

  “And tell him I’m on my way. I need to talk to him. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “Raleigh,” she said, “everything is a matter of life and death.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Mr. Yuck’s security staff was woven discreetly throughout the backstretch, with half of them disguised as guys who picked up litter. I only noticed them because as I passed they lifted radios to signal my progress toward the chief’s office.

  When I reached the grandstands, the final man was planted beside a steel door. A video camera hung above it, like a vulture.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  He pointed at the door with his radio’s rubber antenna. The moment I touched the knob, the lock buzzed. Behind it was a concrete-lined hallway
that descended into the ground by about five degrees. The air felt chilly, dank, and another camera waited over the next door. Again, the lock buzzed when I touched the door handle.

  Charles Babbitt, aka Mr. Yuck, was pacing a windowless room that was not much larger than my cell at the Selah Police Department. It felt like a bunker furnished with one desk and no chairs. And no windows, though it had plenty of views. Dozens of flat-screen monitors blinked with images of the track. Entrances. Bleachers. Guard stations. The Quarterchute. And eight views of the dirt oval, dividing the mile loop from starting gate to finish line.

  “I knew you were lying,” he said.

  In the dim light of his hovel, his olive clothing looked more gray than green. His paddle hands reminded me of a mole. And the ghoulish complexion suddenly made sense.

  “You must see a lot of lying,” I said.

  “That’s all I see. And you’re not particularly good at it.”

  “Thank you.”

  I meant it. But he wrinkled his nose and turned back to the monitors.

  “Eleanor explained that I’m no longer with the FBI?”

  The paddle hands took hold of each other. “She claims you’re working for her.”

  I nodded. “Do you still have the note?”

  “I turned it over to the police.”

  “But you kept a copy.”

  The nose wrinkled again. So I began describing my trip to Yakima, tracking the license plate and the trailer to Paul Handler’s property. I even told him about the problems caused by me taking—okay, stealing—the tubing, and how the horse got stuck. His eerie hazel eyes remained on the monitors while I spoke. The horses walked in a line toward the winner’s circle, single file. It was the last race of the day. And I held nothing back. Because all I had was the truth.

  “The note talked about ‘killing,’ ” I said, “but they don’t mean the horse.”

  “Of course not.”

  “You knew?”

  He gave me his dolorous smile. “The same way I knew you weren’t Eleanor’s niece. Nobody steals a horse from Sal Gagliardo and kills it. Not unless they want to die, and that’s too much effort for suicide.” He bent forward, peering at the view of the Quarterchute entrance. A black-haired man stood in the sun, smoking a cigarette. He gazed amiably at the backstretch. “The note was another bad lie.”

  A jockey strolled past the smoker. His helmet was tucked under one elbow. Mr. Yuck leaned in closer, his lashless eyes widening on the image.

  “Have you heard of ELF?” I asked. “Equine Liberation Front?”

  The jockey spoke to the black-haired man, who offered him his cigarettes. But instead of taking one cigarette, the jockey walked away with the entire pack. A sound rose in Mr. Yuck’s throat, a vibrating bug sound, like cicadas in the South. He watched the black-haired man step back inside the café. Only then did he turn to me.

  “ELF losers picketed the track’s opening last year. But they left. Moving on to bother someone else.”

  “Maybe. But SunTzu is dead, and I think they made a mistake. They intended to hurt the jockeys.” It was difficult to tell if he was listening because the bulging eyes were fixed on a teller unlocking a safe. As she placed the money inside the bin, his blunt nose nearly touched the screen.

  “We’re past the forty-eight-hour mark,” I said. “ELF has been known to plant bombs.”

  “And I have extra security stationed at every entrance. And elsewhere.”

  “It’s somebody on the inside. There’s no other way they could have buried that tube. And you know that.” Ashley was my first suspect. But she had an alibi. When Cuppa Joe was taken, she was vomiting in the shower. That didn’t completely eliminate her from my suspicions, but I also couldn’t imagine her doing anything to hurt a horse. “I’m not sure who it is, but somebody’s helping them.”

  “The problem is the barns. Privacy!” His rotund body seethed. “Owners and their privacy.”

  “I can look around the barns.”

  He turned, evaluating me with those tunneling eyes. “If you’re so sure we’re in danger, why isn’t the FBI here?”

  My turn to stare at the monitors. “The FBI isn’t prepared to take action at this point.” A familiar figure crossed the screen. Pale hair. Long. “But I think the FBI is making a mistake.”

  Ashley Trenner stepped into the women’s showers, disappearing from view.

  “And what is it you expect from me?” he asked.

  “The truth.”

  His smile was even stranger.

  “I know, I lied to you. And everyone else. But I promise to level with you from this point forward. And I’d appreciate it if you did the same. We can start with you telling me what information you have.”

  He turned, watching a boozy crowd that milled around the beer garden. The grandstands were thinning. A hot dog vendor counted bills. But the flickering views gave me vertigo. I wanted to close my eyes. And sleep. And wake up to find none of this had ever happened.

  But Mr. Yuck continued to watch the images, unblinking.

  “You can leave now,” he said.

  “What about my offer?”

  “It’s under advisement,” he said.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  In the parking lot, I stumbled for the Ghost, rolled down both windows, and closed my eyes. Within seconds, I was gone, gone, gone, dreaming of DeMott and my mother and the SAC who somehow melded with Dr. Freud and told me I had many problems. I woke up with a gasp. But even after realizing it was only a dream, another bolt of panic hit me. My firearm. If that didn’t get back to the Bureau, the suits would come after me.

  I turned the key and roared toward Black Diamond Road.

  Walter Wertzer was standing alone in the fire station’s lunch room, waiting by the microwave and blowing his nose. When he turned toward me, I couldn’t tell if he had allergies or a cold, but the red bulbous nose combined with the sprouting gray hair and broomy gray mustache made him look like an ash heap with one coal burning in the middle.

  I said, “My name is not Raleigh David.”

  The microwave dinged, as if awarding points for the correct answer. Wertzer tore open the door, sloshing the contents of a bowl. I smelled salt and gummy starch, that heavy scent of my grade-school cafeteria. Chicken noodle soup. He carried the bowl to a small table. I followed him. But I didn’t sit down.

  “I was working undercover for the FBI,” I said. “Now I’m not.”

  “You were playing games with me the whole time?”

  “I was doing my job. I regret that it meant lying to you.”

  He threw a plastic spoon into the soup. It floated, which seemed to make him even madder. “Do you have any idea how much money I spent on that polygraph? It might surprise you, Miss David, but I’ve got a budget.”

  “Harmon.”

  “What?”

  “My name is Raleigh Harmon.” I opened my purse and tore a page from my notebook. I wrote down the ten digits. “Call this number. Ask for Allen McLeod. Head of the Violent Crimes unit. You can send him the gun. It doesn’t belong to me. Not anymore.”

  I offered him the note. He picked up the spoon instead, chuckling coldly.

  “Nice try. You’re a liar. Whoever you are.”

  “You’re right. I’m a liar.”

  The spoon stopped in midair. His mouth waited. But his bloodshot eyes had the narrow focus of the physically ill, when even the simplest functions required too much concentration. One eye was watering. He closed it, then slurped the noodles off the spoon.

  “I have another confession,” I said. “I manipulated that lie detector test.”

  The spoon hesitated again.

  “I ate a lot of salt. Enough sodium to juice my blood pressure. I made sure my heart pounded on the supposedly factual questions. And I knew what Deception Indicated meant.”

  I had his full attention now.

  “It’s not an excuse, but I was trying to protect my undercover identity. I wanted to keep my job, and I didn’t
know what you planned to do with the information. But I didn’t set that fire. And if you want to re-administer the test, I’ll take it.”

  “You already wrecked my budget.”

  “Ask me. Now. Anything. I promise to answer truthfully.”

  He picked up the pepper, shaking it over the greasy surface. I waited, figuring he was trying to load his best shot. A question that would surprise me, catch me off guard.

  “What about the smoke detectors?” he asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “I knew you couldn’t answer straight.”

  “What smoke detectors?”

  He tried to chuckle and ended up coughing. It was a cold, I decided. Not allergies. A summer cold. The kind that ignited the worst self-pity. Winter’s misery always had company, but summer colds were singular sufferings in a world that was sunny and warm and completely unfair. He pressed a finger against the bushy mustache. With a hernia, every sneeze probably felt like a knife.

  I tried again. “What smoke detectors?”

  He started eating. His bitterness filled the air, heavy as the salty broth. But it didn’t work on me. Not now. Not after what I’d just been through. With Ortiz. With the FBI. Jack. Felicia. Claire. I stared at him until every noodle was gone. And when he finally looked at me, his bloodshot eyes seemed annoyed. And just a little bit sad.

  “You really don’t know,” he said, “do you?”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  In his sterile office, a long table had been added. It was covered with a mountain of white plastic disks. Smoke detectors.

  I did a rough count and stopped before one hundred.

  “When the track refurbished the barns,” Wertzer sniffed, “they put in new smoke detectors.”

  The plastic covers were loose, hanging on their hinges. Wertzer picked one up. I could see the inside mechanisms. Every smoke detector had three parts: a printed circuit board, an electronic horn that resembled a small bicycle bell, and a brass cylinder.

  “May I?” I held out my hand.

  He handed me the detector. I touched the brass cylinder.

  “That’s the ionization chamber,” he said.