The Stars Shine Bright (34 page)

“Now hold on.” Cooper waved his hands, as though wiping away the accusation. “We were doing this guy a favor by keeping the horse. And it was temporary. Like a day. So when two guys showed up with a trailer, saying they were here to pick up the horse, what were we supposed to say—no?”

“Yeah!” said Sal Gag.

“You
told
us the trailer was coming.”

“When Ashley said he was ready.”

The next silence felt as itchy as the sawdust.

Finally, Mr. Yuck said, “Who?”

“The groom, Ashley. Ashley Trevor.”

“Trenner,” Sal Gag corrected him.

“Whatever,” Cooper said.

Mr. Yuck looked around, the odd smile playing on his lips. He looked like a toad preparing to snap his tongue at a fly. “And where is this groom, this Ashley person? Hmm?”

Nobody answered.

I said, “She's in the shower.”

Cooper narrowed his eyes. “Why's she takin' a shower?”

“She's throwing up.”

“Oh great,” Cooper said.

Sal Gag leaned toward him. “She shoulda been watching my horse. You're workin' her too hard.”

“You got that right. She was supposed to watch that horse. Not Juan.”

As though answering to his name, the groom stepped out of KichaKoo's stall. And I now understood why the horse had been leaning forward earlier. Her back legs were taped, matching the green silks that draped over her muscular shoulders.

“Yo.” Sal Gag pointed at Juan. “Get over here.”

“Oh, courage.” Eleanor lifted her face toward the rafters. “Could you not dwell in the frightened heart of me?”

The police officers stared at her.

“
Night of the Iguana
,” she told them. “Nonno's last poem.”

The younger of the two cops turned his head sideways, as if Eleanor might be carrying a weapon. Juan still had not moved and his face looked as remote as mesa rock. When Cooper said something to him in Spanish, the groom came closer and handed the trainer the horse's reins. KichaKoo didn't like it. She bit Cooper's shoulder.

“Hey!” Cooper pushed the horse's face away.

I gave a small gasp.

“It's nothing,” he said. “She does that.”

But it wasn't the bite that startled me. It was Cooper's shirt. Unless I was mistaken, it looked like the same one Claire Manchester bought from Tony Not Tony. My mind began reeling with questions. Was Cooper conspiring with Claire Manchester? Why? I watched him walk the horse down the gallery, remembering what Lucia said. Cooper was Manchester's trainer, until Eleanor hired him away. At the end of the gallery, Tony Not Tony waited with a jockey dressed in green silks and white jodhpurs.

“You were here,” Mr. Yuck began his inquisition of Juan. “When the horse was taken, you were here?”

“Si,”
Juan said. “Trailer come. Take horse.”

“Trailer.” Sal Gag waved the cigar. “The trailer drove itself?”

Juan shook his head. “
Dos
men.
Desaseado
.”

“Speak American,” Sal Gag said.
“Capiche?”

But the young cop was lifting his hand, signaling a truce between Latin cultures. “He's saying two men. And they were dirty.” He turned to Juan, asking a question in Spanish.

“Si, si.”
Juan ran his rough hands through his hair.
“Muy desaseado.”

The cop asked another question. Juan replied in Spanish, and the cop turned to his older partner. “He says they both had dreadlocks.”

“Hippies?” Sal Gag's eyes seemed to bulge. “You're telling me hippies stole my horse?”

Mr. Yuck made a phlegmatic sound, clearing his throat. “Did he notice anything about the trailer, such as a license number?”

The young cop asked several more questions, but the only answer I understood was “blanco.”

“White trailer,” the officer said. “Two windows. One window on each side.”

Sal Gag jammed the cigar between his teeth, biting down and muttering. “When I had the chance, I shoulda shoved that pony in the trailer.”

“License plate?” Mr. Yuck asked.

The younger cop asked. Juan replied by tracing the air with his finger, spelling while he spoke.

“Doe-bell-u,” he said, spelling W. “And aye.”

The cop clarified. “W-A?”

Juan nodded.

“Jibone.”
Sal Gag tore the cigar from his mouth. “Every plate's got W-A. We're in Washington!”

But Juan shook his head, saying something more to the cop.

“He says it's not the state letters,” the cop said. “There's also an E and a K. But the rest of the plate was covered with dirt.”

“Si.”
Juan nodded.

“I see,” Sal Gag said. “I see something smells fishy.”

The older cop stared at the mobster, dragging his tongue across the inside of his cheek. “What's the horse look like?”

“Black as coffee,” Sal Gag said. “His name's Cuppa Joe. Get it?”

“Any reward?”

Eleanor stepped forward. “Fifty thousand dollars!”

“El'nor.” Sal Gag placed a hand on his chest. “That's very generous.”

“It's not for you,” she said. “It's for that poor animal.”

She had let go of my arm, stepping forward to offer her reward. And now I took a small step back, inching toward the open section where trailers pulled up. The weight of the vehicles had tamped down the sawdust, which was further compacted by horses and people walking over it. But the scrim of new treads ran like rickrack over the surface. It was the kind of evidence most local police weren't trained to handle, and I was in too much of a hurry to try to segue them into it. While the older cop asked more questions about the reward, I reached into my pocket and let Ashley's key fall from my fingers. Then I kicked it into the sawdust.

“Oh rats,” I muttered.

The men turned and Eleanor glared. I had interrupted her speech.

“Sorry.” I tried to look sheepish. “Ashley wanted me to get her clothes. I dropped her key.”

They were already focused on Eleanor again when I lifted a steel rake from the stable wall.

“Anybody got a picture of the horse?” asked the older cop.

Sal Gag foisted the cigar at Mr. Yuck. “Do something useful. For once.”

Mr. Yuck asked the officers to follow him. He didn't invite Sal Gag, but the bookie went anyway. I drew the rake's teeth through the sawdust. Cooper was coming down the gallery. The brass key rose, swimming to the surface like a fishing lure. Eleanor watched me push the key back down into the sawdust.

The actress was a pro.

“Bill,” she said, turning to Cooper. “May I speak to you, in private?”

“Now?” Cooper watched the three men leave. “It's not a good time.”

She took his elbow. “Five minutes. Your office, shall we?”

Juan followed them as far as Stella's stable. The horse was still kicking the wall and the groom opened her Dutch door, stepped inside. I heard his voice singing, in Spanish. The song drifted out as I pinched some of the clay scattered over the open area. I saw some small pebbles. Porphyrous, like pumice. I carried them across the hall to the storage shelves, where the Saran Wrap waited. No longer needed in the stalls, since the mud had been confiscated. I tore two sheets. I placed the geology in one, then reached into my purse and took out Gordon's bloody Kleenex. I wrapped it and shoved it back into my purse.

Eleanor's stage voice projected around the corner. “I'm very pleased with how you've handled yourself, Bill. And I do believe we will find Cuppa Joe.”

Cooper looked at me. The cold arctic eyes matched the color of his shirt.

“Raleigh,” Eleanor said, “did you find the key?”

I reached down, plucking it from the sawdust. Cooper squinted at me.

“How sick is she?” he asked.

“Very,” I said. “And she needs some clothes.”

Eleanor let go of Cooper's elbow. “Let me help you.”

She took my arm and I could feel the trainer's eyes on my back. I didn't speak until we reached the end of the gallery.

“Everything okay?”

“Such an encompassing generality,” she said.

Ashley's room was easy to find. The door was pink. Barbie pink. And inside, the walls were the same color. A musty and sodden odor permeated the small room. The cot was neatly made, but the white pillowcase looked stained with sweat. A paper plate on the floor held a stalagmite of saltine crackers, right next to a plastic bucket for retching.

“They say it's good to see how the other half lives,” Eleanor said, “but I disagree.”

Her clothing was neatly folded into milk crates. I collected jeans, another pink T-shirt, and was going through a third bin to find socks, underwear, and a bra when Eleanor sighed.

“It's pathetic,” she said. “Like the equine version of
Teen Beat
.”

I turned, holding the clothes in my arms. Eleanor was looking at some pictures on the wall. Horses. With their names above the photos. War Admiral. Secretariat. Seattle Slough. And a dozen bumper stickers with militant slogans about animal rights.

“Most people's lives are trails of debris,” Eleanor said.

But I barely heard her words about
Suddenly Last Summer
. I was reading the wall calendar above Ashley's bed. Some promotional thing from a feed store, it had red Xs over the days. I tugged loose the page tacked to the wall to see July, and saw every day was Xed out too. But for June it was only the last week.

“She's about eight weeks along,” I said.

“Pregnant?” Eleanor sounded shocked.

I nodded.

“But Ashley doesn't even like human beings.” She reached up, fiddling with her necklace. “I hate to sound perverted, but is it scientifically possible a horse is involved?”

“No.”

“But that girl has worked here for years and there's never been so much as a whiff of romance. It's always been horses, horses, horses.”

I searched for a towel.

“I'll bet it's a jockey.” Eleanor shook her head. “Do you smell that?”

“Yes. Stale vomit.” I found a clean towel, folded in a cardboard box.

“Not that,” Eleanor said. “Bleach.” She leaned over the bed, sniffing. “The sire of her child probably has fleas.”

I decided Ashley might need shoes too and found two pairs in the far corner. But they were different sizes. Women's 7. And men's 12. The soles were caked with mud. I lifted the men's pair. “Have you ever seen a jockey wear shoes this big?”

“My next guess would be a rodeo clown.”

The mud caked on the bottoms had dried to a pale color, almost white. It looked like the mud I'd taken to the lab. And the mud I just collected from the open area in the barn. I thought of Rosser, tasting the soil for kaolinite, but I wasn't so brave. I wondered who the shoes belonged to. Cooper's feet weren't that big. Nor Juan's.

Uncle Sal?

I looked at Eleanor. “May I have your lipstick case?”

“You may have the shirt off my back, but the resulting view would kill a man.”

She removed a small red leather case from the pocket of her pantsuit. One of those ladies-of-a-certain-age, Eleanor considered lipstick a biological necessity. I took out the filamented brass canister inside the case, handed it back to her, then kneeled on the floor. I gently tapped the big shoes until the mud cracked. I placed an ounce or two inside the lipstick case.

“That's a Chanel case,” she said. “Not that you care.”

“I'll buy you a new one.”

“I doubt it. But I don't mind.”

“Thanks.”

“You're welcome. It's like Jim said in
The Glass Menagerie
. Other people are as common as weeds. But you are blue roses.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

E
leanor drove her battleship to the private dining room, to keep DeMott company. I took Ashley's clothes to the showers.

And found her stripped naked.

Sitting with her back against the tile wall, she watched the hot water pound her bare legs. The skin was marbled and red. I placed her clothes and the key on a shelf by the mirror, then I walked over to the faucets and twisted them off. I offered her my hand. She pulled herself up with no trace of self-consciousness. As if her nudity was nothing more than a horse without a saddle.

“Sorry.” She rubbed the towel over her skin. “I don't want to bug you. But there's nobody else to ask.”

“How about the sperm donor?”