The Stars Shine Bright (33 page)

“Then you can tell Eleanor.” I grabbed my cell phone and started dialing a number. Any number. Eleanor left her phone in her car, for emergencies. “I'm sure she'll want to recommend you for a promotion.”

“Now wait a minute.” He looked scared. “Maybe you can go back, but he doesn't have a badge.” He pointed at DeMott. “He's got to stay here.”

“No, he's coming with me. And if you were paying attention, you'd remember him from this morning. He came in with Aunt Eleanor. Now step aside.”

Larry grabbed the visitors' log. He shoved it at DeMott. A last-ditch effort at credibility. DeMott signed, but Larry then asked to see his driver's license. I saw where this was going.

“DeMott, meet me up ahead.” I jogged down the hall.

A crowd was gathered outside the betting office. A man wearing an official track polo shirt stood on the large scale used for weighing jockeys and saddles. His quick movements bounced the long black needle, shifting it between 160 and 170 pounds.

“We need everyone to keep their eyes open,” he said. “If you don't know Cuppa Joe, he's a black four-year-old, no color marks on him.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” somebody said.

I tracked the voice to the posse of old men. The Polish Prince was waving his betting sheet.

“Horse his size,” he said, “where's he gonna hide—in the bathroom?”

There was a round of laughter. But the track official didn't crack a smile. The needle shook again.

“This is a very serious matter, Mr. Timadaiski.”

But the posse was already ignoring him. A bald guy next to the prince was holding up three fingers while another crustacean held up five and triggered a series of hand gestures from the other old guys. Betting pool. I decided it was counterproductive to ask those guys what happened. They feasted on speculation. I needed facts. Scanning the crowd, I saw Tony Not Tony balanced on his toes like a veteran eavesdropper. A group of Hispanic jockeys in front of him were whispering. This was the problem with gossip and crime: It had a firecracker quality. One explosive bang of false information that ruined people's ability to hear the truth later.

But I decided right now, even gossip would help.

I moved over to Tony and dropped my voice to a whisper. “What happened?”

He ran his eyes down my clothes, pausing at my shoes. “I heard you left the dining room. Quickly. With your
fiancé
.”

The spat with DeMott was already old news. But I was more disturbed by the way Tony said the word
fiancé
. He made it sound dubious. Like the whole thing was a sham. Suddenly I realized how our fight looked to Sal Gag. Melodramatic. Some ploy to get out of breakfast. Or even a diversion for Cuppa Joe's kidnapping. The irony hit me again. The truth brought more disbelief than my lies.

I glanced over the jockeys' heads and saw DeMott coming down the hall. His face had the same disturbed expression I'd seen last night, after we left the asylum. A man stuck somewhere he never wanted to be. I pressed through the crowd toward him.

“It would be easier if you waited here,” I said.

“Raleigh, you owe that guard an apology.”

“For his incompetence?”

“If you acted like that in Richmond—”

“Don't lecture me, DeMott.”

He glanced around the crowd, refusing to look at me. He was taking in the toothpick-sucking old guys. The starved jockeys with their sunken eye sockets. The betting office personnel who resembled used-car salesmen. All the backstretch regulars who were nursing their predatory instincts. I tried to hold my own judgment of him.

“Go to the private dining room,” I said. “Tell them you're with Eleanor. I'll meet you there after I—”

“Work.” He glared at me. “You have work to do.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but reconsidered. This crowd had ears like satellite dishes. Turning to leave, I felt a pain in my heart. Like he'd kicked it. But suddenly he grabbed my hand. I turned around.

“Sorry.” He squeezed it. “Really. Just be careful. Okay?”

I nodded.

And he let go.

The thoroughbreds paraded down the backstretch to the first race, resplendent in their bright silks. But the prerace jitters were palpable in the air, along with something else. The jockeys' dark faces had ratcheted down with the same clamped expression I saw after SunTzu fell on his rider. Scared jockeys. Who couldn't afford to be scared. And the thoroughbreds must've picked up on the emotion, because more than the usual number of pony riders were accompanying them to the track. Appaloosas and quarter horses, they clopped beside the high-strung racers like stout chaperones escorting beauty contestants to the stage.

I glanced down the line. There were no Hot Tin horses, and I got impatient. Dashing across to the lane, I tried to make a run for the barns. But my sudden movement startled a dark brown filly wearing orange silks. The horse reared and neighed, and triggered a chain reaction. The horses began jumping out of the procession line. The pony riders galloped around the confusion, a deafening thunder of
clippety-clop clippety-clop
. It was followed by barrages of Spanish, unleashed from the jockeys, directed at me.

“Estupida!”

“Idiota!”

I pressed my back against a stone building that blocked my path to the barns. The jockeys passed in front of me and threw dirty looks. I kept my eyes down, listening to the announcer's voice crackle over the loudspeaker. Gusts of wind brushed away half the words, and the other half were drowned out by a hissing sound. It took me a moment to realize where it was coming from. I glanced up and saw steam curling from the building's raised roof. The showers.

And then another sound. Louder. Clearer. Distinct.

A woman, crying.

I glanced at my watch.
What a morning
. Nine minutes had passed since Eleanor called, and I could only imagine how much evidence had already been destroyed. Frustrated, I looked down the line. Four more horses still needed to pass, and the next horse was shifting sideways, deflecting some invisible blow. The pony rider had quickened around its rear, and he came between the horse and me, so close I could smell the animal's loamy breath. I pressed myself back again, feeling every vertebrae touch the stone wall.

The pony rider looked down from his saddle. A teenager with red hair and freckles, he misread my distress.

“She's fine,” he said. “Barbie's just bawling her eyes out again.”

The procession continued to pass, but the sobbing never ceased.

Barbie
.

I checked my watch. Two horses remained, and thirteen minutes had passed since Eleanor's call. It would take me another four or five minutes to reach the barn, and by then the entire backstretch would've beat me there. I knew who the rider meant when he said
Barbie
. One more minute didn't seem that crucial. I stepped into the shower building.

Four faucet heads—two on each wall—were twisted to spray the fully dressed girl bent over the central drain, vomiting. Her long blond hair no longer looked platinum, or even pale yellow. Saturated with water, it looked almost orange.

“Ashley, are you okay?”

She clutched her stomach. “Go away.”

Her heaves were dry and convulsive, the kind of retching that triggered my own gag reflex. The stench wasn't helping. The steam smelled poisonously sweet, like apple juice being stirred with her stomach's hydrochloric acid.

I stared at the floor. “Do you need some help?”

She didn't answer.

I looked up. Her fingers trembled, wiping her mouth.

“Is this about Cuppa Joe?” I asked.

She lifted her face. “Cuppa Joe?”

I watched her expression. “Somebody took him. He was kidnapped—”

She leaned against the wall, then slid down the ceramic tiles to the floor. Her eyes were glassy. Broken blood vessels made her cheeks look bruised.

“Do you need a doctor?”

She looked at me, desperation in her eyes. “I'm pregnant.”

Before I could catch myself, I glanced at her shirt. The soaked cotton stuck to her like a second skin, outlining her stomach's small pouch. I wasn't sure what to say.
Congratulations
.
Condolences?
The silence stretched out.

“Don't worry about me,” she said bitterly. “I'm just peachy.”

Condolences
.

But before I reached the door, she called out.

“Wait.”

She worked her fingers into the front pocket of her wet jeans, grunting because the fabric was so wet and tight. “I need some dry clothes. Can you get them?”

She held out a key. Brass. Just like Juan's.

“It might be awhile,” I said.

She nodded, but the look in her eyes said she knew nobody would ever hurry for her.

“What took you so long?” Eleanor shouted.

“There's a circus in town.” I walked around the back bumper of her Lincoln, parked six inches from the barn. A golf cart was parked beside it, and I presumed Mr. Yuck had driven it because the security chief was presiding over the two men hollering at each other: Bill Cooper and Sal Gag.

Eleanor grabbed my arm to balance herself over the sawdust floor.

“One day!” Sal Gag stabbed the air with his unlit cigar. “I leave a pony here one day. And you lose him!”

Cooper paced back and forth outside KichaKoo's stable. The horse was craning her neck like a tennis judge, watching both men. In the stall next to her, Stella Luna drummed a hoof against the wall, a steady catatonic rhythm. Spooked.

“You told me somebody was coming for that horse,” Cooper said.

“Yeah,” Sal Gag said, “but you see me here when it happened?”

“He was
supposed
to get picked up.”

“By me!” The mobster stabbed the stogie at Mr. Yuck. “And I wouldn't leave no note!”

The security chief held a piece of paper in his hands but his face told me nothing. It had its usual sour countenance. I gave Eleanor a nudge.

“Charles,” she said, “show Raleigh the note.”

Mr. Yuck held out the note, and I felt Cooper's icy eyes on me. But I didn't touch it, certain there were already too many fingerprints. From what I could see, the words were cut from magazines and glued to the page. It was almost comically simple, except for its cruelty. It read:
You have 48 hours. Then we start killing
.

“Death.” Eleanor raised her chin. “Death has set up its tent at our door.”

There was a polite silence, but Eleanor never got the chance to tell us who said that because two police officers were approaching. Their hands rested on their gun belts. The older cop had a wrestler's fire-hydrant neck and an expression in his eyes of practiced boredom. The look of a veteran cop. He immediately zeroed in on Sal Gag.

He said, “We got a call about a missing horse?”

“Not missing, stolen,” Sal Gag said. “Because somebody screwed up.”