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

by Janet Dawson

  And it’s going to be a real help, I thought, to have you confirm all my theories. I moved a little closer to the doorway, trying to gauge Gates’s response.

  “Keep your voice down,” he snapped, glancing past her to the row of doors on the outer wall. I could still hear the music coming from the radio in the bunkrooms shared by the grooms. The horse in the stall next to me whinnied, and I heard its hoof strike the metal wall that separated us.

  Pam shoved her hands into the pockets of the jacket and pulled out a pair of black gloves which she slid onto her hands. Then she tugged at the jacket’s zipper. But it was stuck. She swore at it in exasperation, then looked up and glared at Gates.

  “I say what I damn well please, and as loudly as I please. Let me tell you what I’ve heard, Gates. Rumors are buzzing all over the backside, like flies on horse shit. Molly Torrance is going to have her father’s body exhumed. Now why would she do that, three weeks after he died? Maybe he didn’t die of a heart attack after all.”

  Gates Baldwin shrugged. “A man clutches his chest and falls over. Sounds like heart failure to me.”

  Pam laughed, a sound totally devoid of humor. “I’m sure it was supposed to. But I have to ask myself, Gates. Just why were you so interested in the oleander growing outside Ron’s house? And the lily of the valley and the purple foxglove in our garden? Interested enough to want cuttings from all three. All of those plants are poisonous.”

  “I told you,” Gates said, flexing his hands now. “I need it for my cocktail. The stuff I give a horse to slow it down. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Just enough to make the nag a little bit sick, so it’ll have an off day. Every horse has an off day now and then. But with my cocktail, the horse loses when I want it to lose. And the plants won’t show up on a urine test, like the other stuff they look for.”

  “Well, lately you’re losing too often,” Pam said with a savage tug on the zipper. It wouldn’t budge.

  “But you like it when the horses lose,” Gates said. His tone was mild, but there was something in the tight set of his jaw and the way he kept moving his hands that set off alarm bells in my head. “You. Ron, with his off-track bookie. And Yves. The three of you have picked up quite a lot of money, haven’t you? Betting the competition on the days that you know your husband’s horses will lose.”

  “I’d like it better if you could tell me which horses will win,” Pam said, her voice full of cynicism.

  “Fixing races isn’t an exact science.” Gates moved closer to her. “I told you that from the start.”

  “Yes, you did. Fortunately Yves is quite a handicapper.” Finally the zipper cooperated. She ran the shiny metal tab all the way up to her chin, then straightened the collar of her jacket. “He’s also quite a gossip. He tells me you owe him money. Big-time. A debt he’s willing to forget. If you’ll make the horses lose.”

  “Yves talks too much,” Gates said, his soft tone belying the coiled energy radiating from him. “And so do you.”

  Pam seemed not to hear the menace in his last words. “You and Yves, you’re both getting greedy. You’re doctoring the horses too often. It was only supposed to be once or twice a week. But you’ve had too many lately, Gates. People are getting suspicious.”

  “Yves paid Ramos to buzz that filly on Thursday, not me,” Baldwin said. “It was too damned obvious. You don’t think people are suspicious about that?”

  “Ron and I think that’s all the more reason to stop fixing races. For a while, anyway. Regardless of how much money you owe Yves.”

  She fired the last sentence at him like a parting shot, and turned as though to leave. Gates moved a few steps as well, as though he would intercept her. She turned back and looked at him then, and her face told me that something had just occurred to her. “Benita was suspicious, wasn’t she? After Megahertz lost on Thursday.” She glanced toward the stalls. I thought for a moment that she was looking right at me. Then I realized that the horse in the stall on the right side of me must be Megahertz. “You told Benita and Cliff some cock-and-bull story about the Lasix. But it was your damned cocktail that made the horse bleed.”

  Gates stared at her, then shrugged. “I suppose it was. I injected more than I’d intended. It never had that effect before.”

  “Now the horse is on the vet’s list,” Pam shot back. The horse in question whinnied, and again I heard a hoof strike metal. Megahertz evidently didn’t like having his evening rest disturbed. “Which means a little more scrutiny than you’d intended. What if Benita called you on it?”

  “What if she did?”

  Pam’s words had been a question. But Gates’s response was a confirmation. I knew that, even if it was slow to dawn on the woman standing out in the shedrow. But it was dawning. I watched her face as she calculated the odds. She tugged on the collar of her jacket, as though in response to the gust of wind that blew through the open doorways at the corner of Barn Two. But I wondered if the chill she felt was inside.

  “Fixing races is one thing,” she said slowly. “From what I hear it goes on all the time. But I’ll draw the line at anything more than larceny.”

  “You will, huh?” Gates laughed, an ugly sound.

  Pam Cullen looked at his face and didn’t like what she saw there. She turned, as though to walk away, but Gates’s arm snaked out. He clamped his hand on her wrist, twisting her arm behind her back. She gasped in pain.

  I heard voices raised in Spanish, coming from the bunkroom. So did Gates. He pulled Pam around and dragged her in the opposite direction, out of my view. Was he taking her back into the tack room? I quickly moved to a better vantage point, on the other side of the stall entrance, in time to see Gates force Pam out one of the corner doors of the barn, in the swirling fog that blocked everything from view. I looked out into the shedrow and didn’t see anyone, so I darted out, following them, hugging the walls.

  Outside there was nothing but the weeds where Pug had done his hunting, and a high, sturdy fence marking the perimeter of the racetrack’s property. In the distance, the streetlights above Paseo Padre Parkway glowed yellow under the fog. A gust of wind picked up a handful of loose straw and an empty soda can before it. With a hollow metallic clatter the can hit the ground and then rattled into the weeds.

  I darted across the shedrow and out the other corner door, the one that faced the racetrack. Then I flattened myself against the cold, damp steel wall of the barn. I peered around the corner. Gates stood over Pam, twisting her arm again as he poured out angry words.

  “What the hell did you think when I asked you to page me, three weeks ago Sunday?” he snarled. “Or didn’t you think about it at all? You self-centered bitch.”

  “Let go of me, damn you.” She tossed the words at him, trying hard to stay calm. He must have eased the pressure on her arm a bit, because her voice got stronger, more confident. “I thought you wanted to get out of a meeting with an owner. Cliff does that all the time. Have someone page him so he can bail out of some boring damn conference. What does my paging you have to do with anything?”

  “It means you’re an accessory,” Gates told Pam. “Just like Ron is an accessory to that fire you started. But you’re an accessory to murder. Don’t draw the line until you’re sure which side you’re standing on.”

  He twisted her arm upward again, and she cried out. “Murder? I don’t understand.”

  I’d heard enough. As far as I could tell, Gates wasn’t armed, but it would still be nice to have some leverage. At the end of a nearby saddle rack I saw a pail and a broom. That wouldn’t be much help. The pitchfork some groom had left propped up against the wall? That was more like it. I picked it up, hefting it in my left hand, and moved toward the door. I slipped my right hand into my shoulder bag and took out my cell phone, punching the buttons 911.

  “Gates had you page him,” I said as I stepped out where Baldwin could see me, “so he could go into the Torrances’ tack room that Sunday, supposedly to use the phone. Instead he slipped a dose of his cock
tail into Stan’s coffee. A lethal dose. One that Stan probably didn’t notice because he drank his coffee so strong. And everybody knew it. Including Gates.”

  Gates Baldwin moved quickly to face me. He made sure that Pam was between us. She kicked at him with her booted feet, but he dodged the blow.

  “So Stan’s death was no heart attack,” I continued. “As the toxicology report will reveal, now that we know what to look for. Of course, I had a good idea what to look for when I found a few samples in Benita’s apartment. She had oleander, as well as lily of the valley and foxglove. All of them containing cardiac glycosides. She knew enough about poisonous plants to figure out what you’d done. It looked as though she was trying to make her own batch. Did she bring you a sample, Gates?”

  He didn’t answer. But I thought my guess was accurate enough. I examined his face in the dim light that spilled out from the barn. He looked cornered. But cornered creatures are often quite dangerous. He still had his hand clamped on Pam’s wrist. She’d stopped struggling, as though she’d exhausted herself in her earlier attempts to get free. Or perhaps she was trying to lull him into loosening his grip.

  I kept talking, to hammer home the point that the game was up.

  “Did you know they used to call foxglove Bloody Fingers? I guess in this case the glove fits. Your card’s got three murders on it. Stan, Benita, and Zeke. Stan because he figured out you were fixing races. Benita figured it out too. She also realized that you’d killed Stan. And Zeke? Well, Zeke was in the way. He was talking to Yves, so he knew you were fixing races. You had him steal Deakin Kelley’s scarf, so you could make it look like Deakin or Molly killed Benita. Zeke knew too much. He had to go. Now it’s your turn.”

  I brought the pitchfork up, balancing it in my left hand. I hit the Send button on my cell phone and hoped that whatever dispatcher was manning the phones would answer on the first few rings. “Let Pam go, Gates. Your lucky streak just ran out.”

  “I think perhaps it is your streak that has run out.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  THE VOICE CAME FROM BEHIND ME, AND IT HAD A French accent that ordinarily would have been charming. But when the man who went with the voice moved into my field of vision, he was holding a very nasty-looking black gun. All the charm in the world wouldn’t negate that kind of menace.

  Yves Boussac plucked the cell phone from my hand just as I heard a female voice answer. He punched the button that disconnected the call and shoved the phone into the pocket of his elegantly tailored slacks.

  “I suggest you drop that farm implement you are holding,” he told me. “It won’t do you any good.”

  I made no move to comply. Yves lifted the pitchfork from my hand and pointed the tines downward. He drove the pitchfork into the earth at my feet, missing the tip of one shoe by a scant inch or so. There was another gust of wind, and the fog swirled around us.

  “I suppose Gates did have to have help disposing of Benita’s car. And Zeke,” I said conversationally. Gates moved toward me, propelling Pam in front of him. “Let’s see if I can envision the scenario. Gates and Zeke drive the car out to that access road near Alviso. Gates shoots Zeke in the back of the head, then climbs into your conveniently waiting car.”

  “Very good, Ms. Howard. Not that such knowledge will do you any good.”

  “Tell me something, Boussac. Was Benita part of the race fixing scam? I wondered, since she lost races on Molly Torrance’s horses.”

  The Frenchman shook his head. “Benita liked to win too much to become involved in losing deliberately. But it’s the very nature of horse racing, is it not? Out of a field of many horses, only one can win. Luck and chance has much to do with it. Benita was merely having a bad run of luck. And my friend Gates and I decided to use it to our advantage.”

  “By manufacturing your own luck,” I said. “You and Gates are up to your eyeballs in fixing races, drugging Gates’s horse with a dose here and there of his ‘cocktail.’ Pam and Ron Douglas are making bets for you — and themselves. Pam’s the one who’s been making phone calls to the Torrances, and she started the fire over at the house while visiting her friend Ron. Quite a scam, and who’s the wiser?”

  Yves Boussac didn’t answer my question, so I answered it for him. “Benita, that’s who. She knew something was up, didn’t she? She knew you were a gambler, because she knew you back in Canada. And she knew you were dirty. As soon as she spotted you at Edgewater Downs, she got suspicious. She’d had a losing streak while riding for the Torrances. Now that she was riding for Gates, the bad luck continued. Or maybe it wasn’t just bad luck that those horses lost when they should have won.”

  Yves wasn’t exactly rushing to corroborate my theory. But his smug smile was confirmation enough.

  “Stan Torrance must have noticed something as well,” I continued. “So Gates poisoned his coffee. Benita put most of it together before she was killed. I think Zeke let something slip Thursday night at the bar. So Benita came over to Barn Two to confirm a few things, and confront Gates. He strangled her with that scarf. Then he put her body in that wheelbarrow over there, took it to Barn Four, and hid the body in the stall across from Molly’s tack room.”

  Baldwin looked startled that I’d figured out the part about the wheelbarrow.

  “I’m surprised Benita didn’t blow the whistle on you earlier, Boussac, as soon as she figured out you were involved in this swindle.”

  Yves shrugged. “Benita would never have done anything to jeopardize her child.”

  “You knew about Benita’s little girl,” I said. “And you threatened to hurt her. So that’s why Benita stayed here in Northern California. Not just belatedly maternal feelings, but a need to keep an eye on her daughter.”

  “Enough talk,” Gates broke in, his voice harsh. “We’ve got to do something.”

  “What would you suggest?” Yves asked, his voice amused. “Shall we kill them?”

  His words got a reaction from Pam. “You son of a —” Gates moved his free hand, the one that wasn’t twisting Pam’s arm. He covered her mouth, cutting off her words.

  “Stan Torrance, Benita Pascal, Zeke Ramos,” I said. “Your body count’s getting too high. People will start to notice. For example, some friends are waiting for me over in Bam Four. If I don’t show up soon, I’m sure they’ll come looking for me. And I do think Cliff Holveg will start to wonder if his wife doesn’t come home tonight.”

  I turned slowly, so I could see through the corner door down Baldwin’s shedrow. I no longer heard the music coming from the bunkroom. I was sure the grooms had gone to bed.

  The horses were getting restless, though.

  I watched Gates and Yves, then glanced down the shedrow again. Was that movement I saw in front of one of the stalls? Yes, but it was a horse. Megahertz stuck his head out and over the cross-ties that kept him inside his stall, swinging his eyes in the direction of the disruptive humans at the end of the shedrow. I saw the thoroughbred shake his head, mane flying. Then he pawed the ground with his right front hoof and grumbled deep in his chest.

  “As Ms. Howard pointed out,” Yves was telling Gates, “you already have several murders to your credit.”

  “Your hands aren’t exactly clean,” Gates said. “You’re the one who shot Zeke, not me. We’ve got to get rid of them.”

  “Alas, I fear you are right.” Yves shrugged and brought the gun up, pointing it directly at me. “Shall I shoot them here, now?”

  “Too noisy,” Gates snapped. “I’ll just give them what I’ve been giving the horses. A double dose, straight into the vein. That’ll do the job, in no time at all.” He jerked his chin, indicating the racetrack fence behind him. “There’s a hole in that, fence, about twenty yards to the north, and a field between here and the access road. We take them through the fence, then I’ll bring my car around. We can dump the bodies anywhere, Alameda Creek, one of the quarry lakes in Fremont. Or the bay.” He sneered at me. “It’s a big bay.”

  I looked at Pam Cullen,
struggling against Gates’s arm, and assessed our chances of running. Our best bet would be through the shedrow, yelling at the top of our lungs. That would at least wake some of the grooms who were bunking there. I tried to make eye contact with Pam. But she had plans of her own.

  She pulled back from the hand Gates had put across her mouth to silence her, and sank her teeth into the fleshy part of his palm, just below the little finger. He cried out in pain, and the horses in the nearby shedrow responded by whinnying and stomping their hooves. Pam started to run, but Gates was faster. Just inside the corner door he caught her. He whirled her around to face him, backhanded her with such force that her head snapped back, then drove his fist into her stomach. She dropped to the dirt floor near the first stall in the shedrow, retching, then moaning as she curled into a ball.

  I walked over to her, knelt, and put my hand on her face. Tears streamed from her eyes and blood trickled from her nose. I reached into my purse. Yves moved the gun in my direction. “I’m just getting some tissues,” I told him. She gasped as I touched a tender spot. I put the tissue packet into her hand and helped her into a sitting position. I straightened, moving to her left, closer to Megahertz’s stall.

  Baldwin was heading into his tack room, pulling a set of keys from his pocket. I would have thought he was too cautious to keep his cocktail, as he called it, on hand. But unfortunately I was wrong. I heard a metallic sound, as though he were opening a locker.

  I moved another few inches to my left, hoping Yves wouldn’t see me. But his eyes were on Pam. She was dragging herself upright, standing unsteadily and swearing at him in a low monotone. He seemed to find it amusing. He hadn’t seen her close her fist around a handful of loose dirt and straw before she stood up. Now she moved to the left, following my lead.

  I edged toward the stall where Megahertz’s head had appeared over the cross-ties. Horses were moving and snorting, whinnying and banging against their stalls.