A Killing At The Track (The Jeri Howard Series Book 9)

by Janet Dawson

  “Somebody died.” David bit off the words.

  The blond raised a pair of plucked eyebrows in her well-made-up face. “Do tell. Anybody we know?”

  “Benita Pascal. Got herself killed.”

  But David hadn’t answered. The terse words came from a man who appeared from inside Barn One. Another jockey, this one Hispanic, with a hard, dark, taciturn face and a pair of hooded black eyes. He was dressed in black jeans and a black leather jacket over a black shirt. They looked incongruous together, but I was sure they were a couple.

  “Really?” the blond said, the smile leaving her face as she glanced down at her companion. “What happened?”

  “I’m sure you can get that information from someone else.” David’s voice was curt to the point of rudeness. “If you’ll excuse us.”

  He swept past the new arrivals, resuming his course toward the horsemen’s entrance and the grandstand beyond. “Who’s the jockey?” I asked when we’d walked about twenty yards in silence.

  “Ruy Camacho,” Molly said, her voice subdued. “He rides in Southern California. Came in first in the Breeders’ Cup last year.”

  “And the woman?”

  Nobody volunteered anything, so I stopped, waiting expectantly for an answer. David stopped and glared at me. “You know I’m going to find out, so you might as well tell me,” I said.

  “Lina Barnstable.” His mouth spat out the words as though they tasted bad.

  Barnstable. The name clicked into place. She was the sister of the horse owner who’d been murdered earlier this year in the Los Angeles area. The man Deakin Kelley had been accused of killing. Which meant that she was now CEO of Barnstable Industries.

  “I assume she has a good reason for calling you ‘lover,’” I said.

  “She calls everybody that,” Molly said, a hint of a smile curving her lips.

  “Oh, really.”

  David wasn’t smiling. His lips were compressed into a thin line and his eyes had turned wintry.

  “Surely there’s more to it than that,” I said, waiting for a response.

  David shook his head, his face still grim. “All right, damn it. She’s my ex-wife.”

  “You’re kidding.” I gazed back in the direction of Barn One, where the gold Mercedes was parked, its owner and her minions no longer visible.

  “I wish I was.”

  David clamped his mouth shut and didn’t say anything else as we reached the grandstand. I glanced at Molly, amused at David’s reaction. She smiled wryly. Her eyes told me she’d fill me in later. I wanted all the gory details about David Vanitzky and Lina Barnstable. I knew he’d been married twice and that he had a reputation as a ladies’ man. He was also known as a risk taker, at least in the cutthroat, big money corporate world in which he moved. Judging from first impressions, being married to Lina Barnstable had involved a considerable amount of risk.

  Once we walked past the Jockey Room, we cut across to the side entrance of the grandstand, which led to the first floor administrative offices of Edgewater Downs. The corridor was carpeted, but when we stepped into the inner sanctum, the carpet moved way up the plush scale. The admin office itself was a world away from the smells and sounds, the straw and hard-packed dirt, of the backside.

  The decor was the same, though. Horses and more horses. Paintings and photographs of horses decorated most of the available wall space. To my left was a large framed sketch showing the layout of the track and all its buildings. Beyond this were several doors, leading to smaller offices. Directly in front of me, I saw double doors open to a conference room with a big table made of dark wood and lots of heavy chairs upholstered in a dark blue fabric. Moving around clockwise, there were more office doors, one of them marked STEWARDS.

  Presiding over all of this, to my immediate right, was a plump woman with short gray hair, seated at a receptionist’s desk. A little brass nameplate identified her as Claudia Hollander. She was wearing a navy blue pinstriped suit with understated accessories, and normally would have looked quite calm and collected. But a murdered jockey in one of the barns wasn’t normal. As soon as she spotted David, she waved a handful of pink message slips at him.

  “We’re already getting calls, from the racing press and the local news media,” she told him. “Do we want to issue a statement?”

  “Where’s Sim Cheung?” David asked, looking distracted. “He’s public affairs. He should be handling this.”

  Claudia Hollander tapped a finger on the calendar open on her desk blotter. “Sacramento. That California Horse Racing Board meeting. He’s due back this afternoon. I’ve tried his cell phone twice. But he hasn’t answered.”

  “Okay,” David said, as the phone on Claudia’s desk began to peal insistently. “Draft a brief statement for my review. And keep trying to get Sim. I want to talk with him as soon as possible. I don’t want to be interrupted unless it’s Sim, or George Avalos.”

  David altered course for one of the offices on the left, an office, he explained, used by him and his fellow directors. He ushered us through the door, then shut it, cutting off the sound of the ringing phone. He moved around a wide oak desk and sat down behind it, motioning Molly and me to a pair of plush chairs flanking a small table in front of the desk. There was a small coffeemaker on the credenza behind the desk. He reached for it and poured each of us a cup, in matching cream-colored mugs with the Edgewater Downs logo on the side. Once he’d handed over the mugs, I took an exploratory sip. His coffee was quite good, unlike the stuff Molly favored, so strong it would eat a spoon.

  “Where do we go from here?” David asked, settling back in his chair. “In terms of finding out what the hell happened?”

  “If you’re talking about the murder,” I said, “it’s Detective Maltesta’s job to find out what happened. Officially I try to stay out of the way of ongoing homicide investigations.”

  David snorted. “I suppose that’s what you were doing when I met you. Officially trying to stay out of the investigation of your client’s murder. Unofficially, you looked like you were poking your nose into every available corner. Including a few where you weren’t wanted.”

  He had me there. “Unofficially, I continue my investigation into who’s making those phone calls to Molly. And if I just happen to uncover some information that assists the Fremont Police Department in solving the murder of Benita Pascal, I pass it along to Detective Maltesta.”

  “He seemed to know you,” David said. “Have you worked with him before?”

  “Our paths have crossed a few times over the past few years. But that’s the extent of it. Most cops don’t take it kindly if a private investigator mixes into any case, let alone a murder case. I can probably get away with more in Oakland. I’ve operated as an investigator in that town for a number of years, and I know a lot of the police officers. Besides, my ex-husband is a homicide detective in the department. He’ll deny it, but he does cut me some slack from time to time, as well as pass me the occasional tip.”

  Molly had been sitting quietly, huddled in her chair, both hands wrapped around her coffee mug. Now she roused herself, frowning as she set the mug on the table between us. “If I don’t get any more phone calls, does that mean Benita was the one making the threats?”

  “It could. It could also mean that someone else wants it to look that way.” I took another sip of coffee. “It definitely looks bad that Benita was strangled with one of the chameleon scarves. Particularly when there are so few of them in existence. I think I should have a talk with your friend Tina Lakey, to see how many scarves there are. Where can I find her?”

  “She has a shop and studio on Niles Boulevard,” Molly said. “I’ll give you the address. But she’s out of town. Her sister in Eureka is having a baby, any day now, and Tina went up there to be with her.”

  I jotted the address in my notebook. “So where is Deakin Kelley? Any ideas?”

  David’s face closed up, as though he didn’t even want to think about the jockey. But Kelley, having been the
last person seen with Benita, was a prime witness. Possibly even the prime suspect.

  Molly shook her head. “I can’t understand it. It’s not like him to miss exercising the horse when he promised to do it. And he didn’t call.” With her next words she echoed Nate Abernathy’s earlier concerns. “I hope he hasn’t had an accident or something. Like Ron Hansen.”

  I’d thought of Hansen too, for a couple of reasons. Several years ago the Bay Area jockey had disappeared after a late night car accident on the San Mateo Bridge. His remains were found months later on a levee near the bridge. No one was sure if he’d jumped or fallen, or been knocked off the span by another car. But rumors had swirled around the incident, tinged with hints of race fixing and foul play. As far as I knew, no one had ever come up with proof of either.

  The other thought that had crossed my mind was that Deakin Kelley had strangled Benita Pascal, dumped her body in that stall, and was now on the run. I had a feeling Detective Maltesta was thinking the same thing.

  Someone rapped on the door to David’s office, and we all looked up. “Come in,” David said.

  Claudia Hollander opened the door and stood with her hand on the knob. “George Avalos is out here waiting to talk with you, with those security guards.”

  “Let’s hear what they have to say,” David said.

  The security guards entered the office, followed by George Avalos. David waved them toward some chairs and we started asking questions. The guard who’d been at the horsemen’s entrance last night was adamant. He was sure he hadn’t seen Benita Pascal, Deakin Kelley, or Zeke Ramos enter the track there. The guard posted at the back gate of the track was less certain. Avalos bore down, and finally the guard admitted he’d stepped away from his post.

  “Just a couple of minutes,” he insisted, worried eyes moving from Avalos to David, then to me. “It was cold out there. I stepped inside Barn Four to warm up and get some coffee and something to eat. One of the grooms I know has a pot of coffee going all the time, and he had some homemade tamales his sister makes.”

  “Sounds like you were gone more than a couple of minutes,” I said, recalling how the back gate looked last night, with cars parked up and down the access road. It would have taken the guard a minute or so to walk into Barn Four, let alone to drink some coffee and eat a few tamales. It would have been easy for someone to enter the back gate in the guard’s absence.

  I tried to pin down the time the guard had left his little shack, but all he could say was that it was an hour or more before I’d shown up, asking the same questions we were asking now.

  Claudia tapped on the door again. “I’ve got Sim Cheung on line two,” she said.

  “I’ve got to take this call,” David said, reaching for the phone. “I’ll talk with you later.”

  “I want the name of that groom,” Avalos told the guard as we left the office. “Maybe he can pinpoint the time you were with him.”

  It was close to ten by now, and murder or not, the track’s daily routine had reasserted itself. There were horses out on the track, cantering and galloping as they exercised, and trainers lined the rails, alternately looking at their charges and their stopwatches. Near the barns, horses endlessly circled the hot walkers. As Molly and I neared the track kitchen, I smelled coffee and grease, and cigarette smoke coming from a couple of grizzled old trainers whose faces were as leathery as their boots.

  “So tell me about David’s ex.”

  “Lina?” Molly chuckled. “She’s something else, isn’t she?”

  “Where did they meet?”

  “At a track, where else? She and her brother have always owned horses. And David likes to play them.”

  “A marriage made at the parimutuel window.” I laughed, “Tell me more.”

  “It was one of those Florida tracks,” Molly said. “Three or four years ago. David was in Miami taking over some company. Lina had just divorced husband number one, a Palm Beach millionaire named Pasmore. She and David got together, and next thing I knew they’d eloped to the Virgin Islands. She kept the name Pasmore. Said it sounded better than Vanitzky. Maybe she knew she wasn’t going to be with David very long. Anyway, now she’s gone back to Barnstable, which is the name she was born with.”

  She shook her head. “When she and David got married, Dad said it wouldn’t last. And it didn’t. Being married to Lina is probably a big adventure, and I think David tired of it pretty quickly. And Lina... Well, she walked out on David for someone else. Lina’s got a thing for jockeys. She’s had affairs with several.”

  “Like the guy she was with today? Ruy Camacho,” I added, remembering the dark, poker-faced man who’d accompanied Lina into the barn.

  “Ruy is a fairly recent addition,” Molly told me with a sidelong glance. “And I must say he’s lasted longer than the others. But the jockey Lina left David for was Deakin Kelley.”

  “That explains a lot.” Here, then, was the reason for David’s obvious antipathy for Deakin. It had less to do with Deakin’s relationship with Molly than it did with David’s injured pride.

  It also had a lot to do with the murder of Lina’s brother, I conceded. And that brought me back to the question of Deakin’s involvement in the death of Benita Pascal.

  “We got interrupted,” I said, “when we were talking about Deakin, wondering why he didn’t show up to exercise your horse this morning. You said it wasn’t like him not to call if something came up. But if it was serious and urgent enough, it could be he forgot to call.”

  “We could call his sister,” Molly said as we approached Barn Four. “Maybe she’s heard from him. I’ve got her number back in my office.”

  The yellow crime scene tape was still up in Molly’s shedrow, and it looked as though the police had also examined the Torrance tack room. To my eyes, things looked slightly askew as Molly entered the office, but then the tack room hadn’t been particularly neat under normal circumstances.

  Molly opened the top desk drawer and extricated a worn address book from under some papers relating to the fall racing season at Edgewater Downs. Flipping through the pages, she stopped at the Ks. I looked at the name, Ginevra Kelley, with an area code I didn’t recognize. While Molly punched in the number and waited, I reached for a nearby phone directory and checked the area code list in the front of the book. Ginevra Kelley lived in Georgia.

  Molly held the receiver out so I could hear. A woman’s voice informed that I could leave a message after the tone. When the beep sounded, Molly said, “Ginny, this is Molly Torrance. Give me a call as soon as you can.” Molly recited her phone numbers, home and at the track, then disconnected the call. “I’ll try again later.”

  “So will I.” I copied the number, then shut my notebook. “In the meantime, I’m heading for Niles to see if I can get a lead on Deakin’s whereabouts.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I TURNED OFF NILES BOULEVARD AND WENT THROUGH the Sullivan Underpass, which angled beneath the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. At Mission Boulevard, I waited for a stream of traffic to pass, then crossed Mission and drove into a modern subdivision, where houses had been built along a narrow strip of land between the road and the bottom of the foothills.

  This stretch of the East Bay hills sloped steeply around the mouth of Niles Canyon Road. Alameda Creek had long ago cut a meandering channel through the canyon. A heavily traveled two-lane highway wound its way alongside the creek, heading northeast toward Sunol in the San Ramon Valley. Given the rain we’d had recently, the hillsides were green with mustard grass. The vegetation sparkled with leftover moisture as the sun poked through the high thin clouds.

  A right turn led me up a dead-end road that climbed steeply to a level clearing in the side of the hill. The old Belvoir Springs Hotel sat on the right side of a small asphalt parking lot. A row of cottages lined the other side of the lot, looking like stair steps on the slope. Behind the hotel the hillside rose again, to the site of the springs.

  The hotel had been in operation since the early part
of the twentieth century. It had once provided living quarters for the silent film stars who made movies at the Essanay Studios back in the studio’s heyday. Now it had been turned into apartments that rented by the month. It was exactly the kind of place someone like Deakin Kelley, who wasn’t planning to stay in the Bay Area permanently, would live for the duration.

  I got out of my Toyota and surveyed the few vehicles parked in the lot — a couple of cars, one red and one green, a beige pickup truck with a plumber’s logo on the driver’s side door, a black boxy Jeep in a spot next to the hotel’s main building. I didn’t know what kind of car Deakin was driving, but the two cars were parked in front of the cottages in the middle of the row, and the truck next to them. I was guessing that the vehicles belonged to the tenants of those particular units.

  I walked over to the row of cottages, looking at the numbers on the doors. Deakin was living in the one at the end, where the slope of the hill angled sharply upward. This morning the cottage had a closed-up look, and there was no vehicle parked in the space near the front door. The windows were covered with white plastic miniblinds, and they were pulled shut against prying eyes, mine included. I knocked, but there was no response. I went around the back of the cottage, but blinds were drawn on the windows there as well. There was a back door, but the small pane on that provided only an abbreviated view of a kitchen counter and a four-burner stove.

  Back in front of the row of cottages, I encountered a man in coveralls coming out of the unit next door. He opened the pickup’s driver-side door. “You looking for the jockey?” he asked, standing with one hand at the top of the door.

  “Yeah, I am. Have you seen him?”

  “Not since...” He thought a moment. “I guess it was Wednesday, day before yesterday.”

  “What’s he driving?” I asked.

  The man in coveralls scratched his chin with his free hand. “Blue sedan, Ford or Chevy, I think.”

  “Thanks,” I told him. “I guess I’ll come back later.”

  Which wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I watched the man get into the pickup and fire up the engine. As he drove out of the parking lot, I walked toward the main hotel. Just as I reached the front steps, a woman appeared from the back of the building, heading for the Jeep. She was about fifty, with short salt-and-pepper hair, wearing an oversized blue sweater with a pair of navy blue slacks. She carried a large shoulder bag.