A Cat Tells Two Tales (5 page)

7

We were sitting at the kitchen table. In front of us was a carton marked “1985.” Beside the carton were piles of paper and two empty coffee cups and a plate with uneaten toast. We had been working for about an hour and had developed a procedure in our search. One of us would pick up a letter or note or bill, study it, then briefly recite the contents to the other. If not suspicious, we went on to the next one.

Jo was wearing Harry’s old volunteer-fire-department jacket; it was always freezing in their house. “That detective stopped by early this morning when I was in the barn. It must have been seven o’clock. He keeps bothering me about that list.” She paused in her recital and stared at one of her cats.

Then she continued. “I keep telling him that nothing was stolen that I know of. He doesn’t believe me. I am beginning to dislike that man. He’s devious. He also asked me if Mona and Harry were in business together. And then he asked about their relationship. I really did not like the way he used the word ‘relationship,’ as if they were in the Mafia.”

I laughed. Harry in the Mafia was a funny image. But I wasn’t really interested in Senay’s inquiries. I was interested in Ginger.

“What did you mean yesterday, Jo, when you said that Mona Aspen and Ginger were good friends?”

“Well, they
were
good friends. Mona was the one who sent Ginger to us for a job.”

“I’m confused, Jo. Was she living at Mona’s?”

“That I don’t remember. Maybe. But they were friends. Even when she was working for me, Ginger used to go over to Mona’s to help her out in a pinch. If a horse was really sick, or when the blacksmith came.”

“What is Ginger’s last name?”

Jo sat back with a testy flourish of her hands. “I honestly don’t remember. Why are you asking me all these questions about Ginger?”

I waited for a moment to let her calm down. “Where did she live when she was working for you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Not far from here. But a lot of the time she just slept in the barn.”

“Jo,” I said, very gently so it would not appear to be a demand, although I was surely willing to make it a demand if Jo became difficult, “I want to talk to Ginger.”

The request startled her. “Well, I don’t know where she is.”

“Who would know?”

“Maybe Nick.”

“Who’s Nick?”

“Nicholas Hill, Mona’s nephew. You saw him at the cemetery.”

“Can we go there now?”

Jo exploded. “But here is where Harry is,” she yelled, plunging her hand into the pile of aging letters, bills, and notes.

“Calm down, Jo. Listen to me. I have the very uncomfortable feeling that the one person on earth who knew Harry and Mona best was the stable girl. Do you understand?”

Jo shook her head, keeping her face averted from me. “What a cruel thing to say,” she replied.

It was cruel. But I had no option. I was making a point.

Suddenly Jo’s face lit up and she said, “Wait, I remember her last name. It was Mauch. Ginger Mauch.” Then she said wearily, “Okay. Let’s drive over to see Nick. I don’t want to fight with you, Alice. We need each other.”

It was a two-minute drive from the broken-down Starobin farm to the freshly painted, well-manicured complex of buildings over which Mona Aspen had once presided. I followed Jo across a fenced field to the stable area. Nicholas Hill was just inside one of the barns, laboriously cleaning a shovel. I could see the heads of the racehorses as we entered. They were peering out of their stalls without much concern. A few were grabbing chunks of hay from hay nets hung outside their stalls.

Nicholas was a middle-aged graying man, well-dressed even when working. He nodded to us, but kept on cleaning the shovel.

I remembered that Jo had said he was a heavy gambler. He didn’t look like a man who would take large bills out of his pocket and bet them on a horse. But then again, I didn’t look like a woman who did cat-sitting. Nicholas banged the shovel on the ground to shake more dirt loose. His hands were large, lined, and powerful.

A slouch hat with a fishing feather tucked into it was precariously perched on his head. It was an odd hat for winter.

“We’re trying to find Ginger,” Jo said almost happily.

Nick let the shovel drop and stared at it reflectively. He seemed to think he was not doing a good job. Then he looked up, smiling at Jo, removed a glove, and blew on the hand. His actions were very measured, calm.

“I haven’t seen her since about a week before she left your place,” he finally replied.

“Do you know where she lives?” I butted in.

He smiled at Jo again as if they both understood it was a stupid question but one that could be expected from an outsider.

“I never knew,” he replied, “although she did stay with us for a while some time ago. But so what? She was just another wounded thing my aunt picked up. That was Mona, wasn’t it? Wounded birds. Wounded people. ‘Get out of the car, Nicholas,’ she used to say, ‘and see if that smashed squirrel is still alive.’ Of course, he had been dead for a week.”

I could tell by his tone—alternately bitter and loving—that it would be a long time before he would get over the death of his aunt.

“Anyway,” he continued, still looking at Jo, “when Ginger started to work for the Starobins, she got her own place. No, wait. It was before that. I remember she kept moving around from place to place, because she was always borrowing my pickup truck. Look, I never said more than ten words to that girl!”

What a strange thing for him to say. Why should he make such a comment? It was as if speaking to Ginger would implicate him in something. What was he afraid of? I didn’t trust Mona’s nephew one bit. A horse whinnied in a stall down the aisle, and then came two, three, four explosive sounds, like gunshots. Frightened, I stepped back, toward the entrance to the barn.

“Relax,” Nicholas said, “that’s only the new filly they shipped in from Philadelphia Park. Eye infection—nothing serious, but she’s crazy as a loon. She just loves kicking walls.”

A gust of wind blew down the center of the aisle, stinging our eyes and ears. Nick tried to pull his hat down on his head. “There’s coffee in the house, Jo,” he said.

As Jo shook her head, I asked, “Would you have any idea where Ginger is now?”

“Well, she used to be friendly with a guy named Bobby Lopez. He works in the Chevron station on Route 106. Do you know it?”

Jo nodded that she did, smiled at Nick, and we both started walking back toward the car.

We hadn’t gone more than twenty feet when Nick called, “Jo!” We looked back. He was leaning on the shovel, his face now a bright red from the wind. “Jo, do you think we’ll survive the winter?”

Jo stared at him dumbly for a moment, then walked quickly back to him. I saw them embrace. I heard sobs. I turned away. I didn’t want to intrude in their shared sorrow—but I felt a longing to be with them, to hold and be held. It was silly. What, really, had Mona and Harry been to me? Or I to them? And yet these two murdered people were beginning to envelop me in a peculiar way, as if there had always been another me—another Alice Nestleton longing to be part of them. The whole thing was perplexing.

Minutes later, we found Bobby Lopez sipping coffee in one of the repair bays of the Chevron station. At his feet was an enormous mongrel bitch with floppy ears who kept rolling over and over.

Bobby had a beautiful face with deep-set almond eyes. He didn’t appear happy to see us at all. His hands and arms were stained with a bluish grease. But he answered our questions with dispatch. Yes, he said, he knew Ginger. No, he said, he hadn’t seen her in weeks. Yes, he said, he knew where she lived.

When we asked where specifically, he balked for the first time. “Why do you want to know?” he asked suspiciously.

Jo was wonderful. She lied like a producer. She told Bobby Lopez that Ginger was still owed a week’s wages and she wanted to deliver the money to her.

He smiled grimly at us and lit a cigarette. He prodded the dog playfully. He stared at Jo, then at me. He seemed to be evaluating us against some standard.

Finally he said, “She lives over the Tarpon Bar in Oyster Bay Village. It’s right at the crossroads of the town. You can’t miss it unless you want to.”

His knowledge of her lodgings sort of dripped with the idea that they were both very close—lovers, in fact. Jo asked, “Where did you meet her?” And her voice was so incredulous that the mechanic bristled. He understood what she meant. How could a nice girl like Ginger end up with a grease monkey? Jo was making her class prejudice explicit.

“At Aqueduct racetrack, lady. We both used to work for Charlie Coombs.”

Bobby Lopez was right. One couldn’t miss the Tarpon Bar if one drove through the center of Oyster Bay Village. In a hallway next to the bar, we found Ginger Mauch’s name on a mailbox.

A very rickety staircase took us up. The landings needed paint. The floors were covered with pocked linoleum. The doors of the apartments were warped.

Ginger Mauch lived on the third floor in the rear apartment. The door was wide open. A few pieces of furniture were scattered throughout the single large room. The closet was open and empty. The drawers of the dresser were open and empty.

Ginger had obviously moved out in haste.

In one corner of the large room, in front of the window, was a pile of posters, clothes, records, and other items she had obviously discarded as not important enough to take with her. I could see some unopened cans of soup in the pile.

“Poor Ginger,” Jo said, sitting down wearily on a folding chair.

I was mystified. Why had she moved out in such a rush? Was she frightened? Of what? The more I tried to comprehend the stable girl and her behavior, the more elusive she became.

Jo stood up suddenly and walked toward the pile of discarded junk.

“Do you see anything, Jo?” I asked, because her move was purposeful.

Her foot had found something and was pulling it out from the pile, as if it was something dirty. It was a photograph of a laughing Harry standing in front of the barn, a calico cat draped around his neck like a muffler. He was smiling his wonderful smile.

“My God,” Jo whispered, “I’ve been looking for this photograph for a year. It’s the best photo Harry ever took. And that’s Veronica, the barn cat, on him. Harry told me the picture had just vanished, but he was lying. He gave it to Ginger. Why would he do that? And now she just left it in a pile of garbage.”

Her foot pushed the photo back into the pile. The corners were discolored.

I bent over to pick it up.

“Leave it. Please leave it,” she said, sitting back down on the flimsy folding chair, the color drained from her face.

I left it alone, and instead looked about the room. My gaze settled on the denuded wire hangers in the closet. The more elusive Ginger became, the more I realized I had to find her.

“Do you know Charlie Coombs?” I asked Jo, remembering what Bobby Lopez had said.

“The trainer?”

“Is he a trainer? I’m talking about the name Bobby Lopez mentioned.”

“Yes. Of course he’s a trainer. I know him. He used to lay up horses at Mona’s place. Just like his father did before him. A lot of trainers swore by Mona. She had a healing touch with sick horses, like Harry did with all animals. Old Man Coombs even used to call Mona when he had problems training a yearling . . .”

She paused, then added in a choked voice, “It seems like all the wonderful people are gone.”

I walked over to Jo and took her hand, squeezing it. “Come with me back to Manhattan, Jo, for a day or two. We’ll go to the Aqueduct. Charlie Coombs may know where Ginger is. If she worked for him before, maybe she went back to him.”

“I’m very tired, Alice,” she said.

“But Harry and Mona are dead, Jo, and we won’t find their killers in this pile of junk or in Harry’s pile of junk in the storeroom.”

Jo stared at me for a moment, then at our joined hands. “Okay, Alice. Why not? What else are old ladies for?”

8

I was sitting in my apartment watching Jo prowl. My apartment fascinated her. She kept walking from one end to the other, picking up things, putting them down. I didn’t understand her acute interest, particularly after a long day. Was it conceivable that a wise old woman like Jo thought the life of an actress to be exciting and glamorous, reflected somehow in her furniture and bric-a-brac? There was not one glamorous item in my apartment.

Finally she sat down on the sofa and said, “Well, I hope all the cats survive. The last time I left them with Amos, I was afraid he was going to eat them.” She stared down at Bushy as if contemplating Amos contemplating eating him.

It was nine o’clock in the evening. We were both very tired, and Jo had said we had to leave at five thirty the following morning because trainers exercise their horses really early. If we wanted to speak to Charlie Coombs, we had to catch him then.

“Do you want some tea, Jo, or something stronger?”

“Nothing, thank you,” she said, looking around again with that wide-eyed curiosity. Then she smiled. “You know, Alice, I just never thought your apartment would look like this.”

“Like what, Jo?”

“Well . . . so . . . so conservative.”

“Did you think I led a wild life in the big city, Jo?”

“I didn’t know what to think.”

“Men are scarce, Jo, at least at this time.”

“But you’re a beautiful woman,” she blurted. I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe she wanted me to recount my brief fling with promiscuity. But that had happened a long time ago, after my marriage had broken up, and I remembered little about it. Furthermore, it was none of her business.

When I looked at her again, she was crying. I closed my eyes and opened them again only when she began to speak: “You want to hear something funny, Alice? I was a virgin when I married Harry. And I never slept with another man. Only Harry. So if I die tomorrow or the day after, I’ll never really know if what Harry and I had was real love . . . or real passion. Do you know what I mean, Alice?”

“It’s not too late,” I quipped, and then was immediately chagrined at the stupidity of my remark.

She smiled at me. “Oh, I think it is. I think it is.”

Bushy was now circling the sofa, wondering whether to jump up on the strange woman who had captured his favorite place. He looked alternately confused and angry. His tail switched. His ears did what passes for a Maine coon cat’s dance.

I went to the hall closet and pulled out pillows, a quilt, and a woolen blanket older than me that had been on my grandmother’s farm in Minnesota. It was a strange blue—like a frayed psychotic sky. I laid all the bedding on a chair next to the sofa, along with a clean towel for Jo. Then I went to sleep.

When we pulled up at the racetrack entrance gate the next morning, we found it manned by uniformed guards who were very suspicious. For some reason, I had always thought the racetrack was open, like a mall. I soon found out otherwise, for they would not let us in. First of all, Jo couldn’t get Charlie Coombs on the phone. He was somewhere on the racetrack but not available. Then, when she finally contacted him, we had to wait for passes to be made out. And then, after we were through the gate, we got hopelessly lost in the barn areas. “I haven’t been here in twenty years,” Jo kept telling me by way of explanation.

It was past six thirty when we reached Charlie Coombs’s stalls. Suddenly we were surrounded by horses that had just come back from their morning workouts. They were steaming from sweat in the freezing morning air. Young men and women stripped their saddles and bridles, covered them with blankets, and then started to walk them in slow circles around the stable area, guiding them with rope halters.

I had never been that close to racehorses before, and was staggered by their power. I could sense that they were only a step away from flight. These majestic beasts were capable of bursts of awesome speed. And even in the darkness I could sense their individuality—an eye, a turn of the head, a sudden distinctive whinny. Of course they frightened me, but I longed to make some kind of contact with all that power.

Jo pulled me out of an almost trancelike state, and together we entered a small, cluttered office. Seated behind his desk, Charlie Coombs was talking on the phone when he saw us, and he gestured emphatically with his hand that we should sit and wait.

People came in and out of the office without saying a word, wearing riding helmets or stocking caps, bundled up against the cold, their movements quick, almost choppy, as they used the coffee machine occupying the only uncluttered spot in the office. Next to the machine were containers of sugar and milk and a large cardboard box on which was crudely written: “If you drink coffee, pay for the coffee.” I saw no one drop any money into the box.

Finally Charlie Coombs slammed the phone down and said, “Jo, I heard about Harry and Mona Aspen. God, I’m sorry.” He raised both palms as if emphasizing that the world is like that—full of unexplained misery and loss.

I liked the man immediately. He looked around forty-five or fifty, with a weather-beaten, aggressive face but a very kindly smile. He had thick graying black hair which went every which way, and he was dramatically underdressed considering the cold—a dress shirt without a tie, and over it a kind of hunter’s vest.

Jo introduced us to each other. He leaned forward and said, “I like Jo’s friends . . . under any circumstances.”

I could see that he was shorter than I thought—and he was wearing red sneakers. For some reason, that made me feel very good. Imagine a man training million-dollar racehorses wearing red sneakers. It was poetic and crazy, a kind of equine
Red Shoes
, only Charlie Coombs was obviously no Moira Shearer. He was trying to give us his full attention, but it was obvious that one part of him was outside the office, focused on the horses, listening for trouble signs or whatever trainers listen for.

Jo said, “We’re trying to locate Ginger Mauch.”

“But, Jo, she works for you,” he replied.

“She quit. Suddenly. She just went and quit.”

“Well, I don’t know where she is, then. Jo, I haven’t seen Ginger in a couple of years.”

“But she used to work for you,” I said, realizing it was time for me to start leading the conversation.

“Right. She worked here for about six months. Then she quit. Then I heard she was helping out Mona Aspen on the Island. Then I heard she was working for Harry and Jo.”

“Do you remember the circumstances under which you hired her?” I asked him.

My rather pretentious question made Coombs laugh. He leaned over toward me—a bit threatening, a bit flirtatious. “Before I answer that question, I want to know what business you’re in.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s the kind of question an IRS agent would ask.”

“I’m an actress.”

He stepped back, looking at me intently; it was obviously not what he had expected to hear.

Jo intervened apologetically. “Charlie, we just need all the information you can give us about Ginger. We don’t have time to explain.”

“The circumstances,” Coombs said, skillfully mimicking my pretentious language, “were, if I remember—she came into my office and asked me for a job as an exercise rider. I told her I didn’t need exercise riders, but I did need an assistant trainer to do all the paperwork I couldn’t do . . . and a lot of other stupid tasks around the barn, from ordering hay to dealing with security. I told her that since I had become rich and famous I needed more time for myself. She said okay. I hired her.”

“Did she tell you anything about herself?”

“Not really. I did learn eventually that she was born and raised in Vermont, that she usually came to work late on Thursday for some reason, and that she took milk and no sugar in her coffee.”

I could see that he was making an honest effort to remember. “Did you ask her for references?”

“No, I didn’t have to. Ginger was an exercise rider in Maryland before she came to New York. And the horse she rode was Cup of Tea. She showed me clippings.”

“Cup of Tea!” Jo repeated in a startled voice. “She never told me about that.”

“Who is Cup of Tea?” I asked, bewildered by Jo’s response.

Charlie Coombs walked back behind the desk and sat down. He grinned wickedly at me in a good-natured way, as if I should be ashamed of myself. “Once upon a time,” he began in a self-mocking, pedagogic tone, “there was an ugly little foal born on a farm in upper Michigan. He was a thoroughbred, but from a very undistinguished family. Nobody ever heard of his momma or papa. They called him Cup of Tea because his color was so murky—not bay, not chestnut. He actually looked like a cow pony, which is why he was auctioned off as a yearling for only nine hundred dollars.

“The new owner took Cup of Tea around the Midwest circuit—racing him in the cheapest races at the cheapest dirt tracks. He always lost. So he was sold to a trainer in Maryland, who wanted to make him into a track pony. Well, Cup of Tea goes to Maryland and starts accompanying real racehorses out onto the track to keep them calm.

“One day the little horse accompanies a hotshot allowance horse out onto the track for a grass workout. Cup of Tea, who probably never saw a grass track in his life, spooked, threw his rider, and ran around the grass track about two seconds faster than the world record for that distance.

“To make a long story short, the next year Cup of Tea wins the three biggest grass stakes in America, including the Budweiser Million. And right now the old boy is the most expensive and sought-after stud in the world, standing in France. It’s the ultimate rags-to-riches story. It’s Hollywood.”

It was a wonderful story. I could see it as a movie. But who would play Ginger?

A young Hispanic man burst into the office and yelled something in Spanish to Coombs. The trainer nodded, stood up, and said, “I hope I was of some help.”

He shook Jo’s hand and kissed her lightly on top of her head. Then he said to me, “I like telling you horse stories. I have plenty of them. I even have some other kinds of stories.”

I leaned over the desk and wrote my number on his pad.

“His father was even nicer,” Jo said after he left.

I mulled over this new information on Ginger as we drove back to Manhattan and double-parked until it was time for the alternate-side-of-the-street parking clock to change. From what I could tell, we were no closer to learning her present whereabouts than we had been before.

“What do we do now?” Jo asked.

“Wait until we can park legally and then eat. There’s a Chinese restaurant right up the block, with good lunch specials.”

“I mean about Ginger.”

“We keep looking.”

“But who else can we contact? Who else knows her?”

“That horse.”

Jo laughed. “Isn’t it a wonderful story? Cup of Tea is a lovable horse.”

A car drove by too fast, flinging slush against our windows. Finally we were able to park. When we entered the restaurant, I realized the old woman was tired. She stared at the menu as if in a daze and then ordered exactly what I ordered.

She ate the sizzling rice soup but left the rest of her meal. I ate everything. I was hungry and cold. And I was still excited by the racetrack, by the proximity of the horses . . . and by Charlie Coombs.

“I’m just not hungry,” Jo said by way of apology, appalled by the realization that she was wasting food.

When we paid the bill and stepped outside, we found that a brilliant winter sun had broken through the clouds. Everything was brighter, warmer, cleaner.

“I’m tired,” Jo said. “I could use a nap.”

“It’s only two minutes to my apartment,” I assured her.

As I looked down the street, mentally rechecking where we had parked the car, I noticed a small red pickup truck had already double-parked in front of it. Good, I thought, it would protect the windows from slush.

I looked at Jo. She was standing contentedly, her face up to the sun.

The red pickup truck in front of her car started to move. I watched it casually, the sun sparkling along its red sides. Something was wrong, though. The truck crossed to the far side of the street, where no cars were parked—the illegal side.

It began to accelerate, and one set of wheels squealed against the curb. The little red truck was coming straight at us.

I grabbed Jo’s arm. I started to run, pulling Jo with me.

I heard a screaming, grinding noise behind me. Terrified, I tried to run faster. My legs started to wobble like jelly.

I heard a person scream. Showers of glass rained down. All went dark.