Blood and Roses (Holly Jennings Thriller) (10 page)

“Assholes.”

“Yep. I think maybe they have some cash flow problems. They both throw money around like it grows on trees. Then they let the security people go the other day and asked me to check the horses at night. That was partly why I got so pissed off at them, but I need a place to live, and I like it here. I like the horses. But I don’t like those two. I’d get back at them if I could.” He laughed. “But money rules the world and the racing capital of the world is no exception.”

Sitting at his computer, O’Leary thought he understood why the two power players, Tieg and Laugherty, hadn’t fired Ivy during that phone conversation. Being who they were, no one would have questioned their decision. And no one would have cared what Ivy said.

Ted Ivy was just a groom.

But O’Leary now thought he knew why they hadn’t fired Ivy then. In his gut, ten years ago, he figured there was a possibility…but he didn’t want to believe it. He chose to believe the gossip that spread like wildfire across the bluegrass. As everyone else did.

But now…

Now that O’Leary had experienced his own dark days, and there were those out there who believed the worst of him, his questions begged answers. He’d heard the rumors about himself—he was a druggie. A drunk.

He’d own drunk.

He wouldn’t own druggie. O’Leary had snorted coke once in his life and hated it.

Rumors.

But he wondered about what had been said about Ted Ivy. He also thought of his involvement in the whole mess.

He was getting tired.

He’d been involved.

No doubt.

But not by choice.

O’Leary was pretty sure why Ted Ivy hadn’t been fired that day by Tieg and Laugherty.

He was pretty sure they’d aimed to set the poor son of a bitch up for what happened next.

15

Joque had just finished feeding for the morning. It was good to be back home. He’d done his job, and he was good at it. He treated the horses well because he loved them, and they loved him back. He knew they loved him far more than any human.

Except for maybe his dead wife, Carol. Joque knew Carol had loved him, and he’d loved her. But that was another time and place.

And maybe his girl now, maybe she did love him as much as Carol had…

Everyone remembered September 11, but those who lost loved ones that day had a much heavier cross to bear. His Carol had been on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. To add insult to injury, all the shit that sent him to jail went down soon after. Shit he didn’t cause and was not involved in, but the fingers had pointed at him anyway and he now felt he had a right to be pissed off—he was a tad over humankind. Most of humankind was unkind.

And Joque knew who had caused his demise, who had put him in the hell he’d been through. He had the names and faces of those who had done him wrong burned deep, and they would pay. They would pay for the eight years he had spent in hell.

He entered through the sliding door into the office just off the barn at his farm out in Lexington. Racing country. This is where it all went down. The cream of the crop lived in Lexington—the racing industry’s high and mighty—and he’d grown up here. He was
once on his way to becoming one of the high and mighty himself, but a handful of people had ruined that for him.

The evil that people do.

He opened the fridge, took out a container of orange juice, and poured himself a glass. Good to be home.

The venom they will strike with.

He sat at his desk, reaching over a pile of
Thoroughbred Times
, racing forms from all over, State Line Tack, and other paperwork to turn on his laptop. He entered his password.

The deceit they will spread for power, money, and greed.

He navigated to his public e-mail and logged in. Good. He had a couple more bottles of Ace on the way. That would likely come in handy. He didn’t believe his work was finished. In fact, he knew that it wasn’t. Not even close.

He logged out.

He logged into his private e-mail account. An address that only one other individual in the world had.

Joque smiled and rubbed his palms together, seeing what he’d hoped for—new instructions. He took a nice big swallow from his glass of juice and clicked the e-mail. As it opened, he smiled.

Yessiree!

His work was far from done.

Looked as though he was headed for New York.

16

The first telltale signs of the day broke at a few minutes after five. The inky blue of the night sky faded into a lighter shade as the moon began to sink in the Western Hemisphere.

A bird chirped in a tree outside of Janet’s Café as Elena opened the door. She spotted O’Leary already seated in the corner. Her stomach growled thinking about bacon, coffee, and eggs. She walked to the booth and sat across from him. He smelled of booze. “Been out?” she asked.

“Nope. Stayed in,” he replied. “Have a seat. I got a place here now. Not far. I’m still exercising horses. I get a ride now and then, you know. You? Still got the ranch in Ramona?”

“I do. When I’m up here, I stay at a friend’s place. She travels a lot, so I’m usually there on my own. It’s nice. Different from being out in the middle of nowhere.”

“I bet.”

“You smell like a distillery, O’Leary.”

“And you look beautiful as always.”

“You’re still drunk.”

“I am not.”

She sighed. “Pete…”

“Elena.”

A bottle blonde approached and set a coffee cup down in front of her.

“Here I am,” Elena said after taking a sip.

“Here you are, and here I am. So, how are you?” he asked. “What’s new?”

“I’m good. You know I have a nice filly.”

“I do know. Karma’s Revenge. I’ve been watching her. Everyone’s watching her. The Infinity is going to be some race. That is going to be insane.”

“My fingers are crossed for a win there. Lot of scuttlebutt on the track though, you know. That colt of Farooq’s is nice. Then you got that horse Tieg and Hodges own—Skeedaddle. I’m sure Hodges will still run him. Don’t know what to think of Tieg’s murder.”

O’Leary nodded. “Dark stuff. Very cloak and dagger. I heard, though, that horse of Tieg’s and Hodges’s pulled up lame in workouts, so he’s likely out of the race. Hope they get the son of a bitch who killed Tieg. You think it’s the same guy who killed Lyons and Katarina?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be much information available to the public yet. But it is scary.”

“I agree. We’ll have to wait and see. Here the commissioners and everyone involved are hoping to bring back the glory days, shine a ray of sunshine on our sport. Those murders aren’t helping much.”

“No, but the stories are all over the news. The murderers coinciding with the big race…that’s creating a lot of intrigue. You know how people work. They eat stuff like this up. It’s disgusting but true. The race may even get a boost from all this terrible business.”

“I suppose so.” He took a sip of coffee, then changed the subject. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, letting Perez ride your filly.”

Before she could respond, the waitress returned and took their orders, then left.

“He’s a good jock,” Elena said.

“He’s a snake, El. You’ve heard the rumors. Lots of people think he was the one who helped get dermorphin into Cayman’s Cult.”

“Rumors are simply that. Rumors. It was never even proved the horse had that crap in his system.”

“That’s because they didn’t have a lab with the right kind of resources.”

“What I can tell you about Perez is that he has a connection with my filly, and it works. They’re a winning team.” She shook her head. “And I can also tell you that no one shoots anything into my filly. She runs clean.”

He sat back in the booth and eyed her, his blue eyes twinkling. She wondered if the twinkle came from the alcohol, or if he was excited to be spending time with her after all these years. “Uh-huh. You got the filly, and that’s good. What else is going on? How’s your sister?”

“Leann is good. She’s got some breeding horses that we’re in on together, and she’s still running Golden Hearts. And we should start making some money off Cayman’s Cult, you know. Once the syndicate gets paid back, though, it cuts a little.”

“Yeah. I bet he proves himself. Sort of was surprised to hear you bought that horse, but good for you.
Anything
else going on in your world?”

She ran the tip of her finger around the rim of her cup. “What are you asking, O’Leary? Want to know if I’m seeing someone?”

He leaned closer. “Actually, yes. I know you and that asshole, Carter, split up.”

She swallowed hard when he mentioned Carter’s name. “Yes. We did. He’s married now.”

“Word gets around.”

She nodded.

“So?”

“No. I’m not seeing anyone, and don’t get any ideas, because I won’t be seeing you either.”

“You’re seeing me now. And we are going to have dinner in Vegas.” He winked at her and sat back as the waitress set down their breakfast. Eggs for her, pancakes for him.

“You’re terrible. I did not agree to dinner. You’re lucky we’re having breakfast. I said coffee.”

“Everyone has to eat, El. You’ve said that I’m terrible, or maybe it was rotten, before. Probably true.” He spread a slab of butter over the cakes. “What happened between us?”

She set her fork down and stared at him. “Really?”

His face turned red, and he smiled sheepishly. “Just trying to walk down memory lane.”

“Really?”

“I always liked that about you, El. You got that spunky little hard-ass thing going on.”

She put a piece of egg on her fork and flicked it at him. “And you have that total ass thing going on.”

“Let’s have dinner together. Vegas. Come on.”

“No.”

“I’ll be good.”

“Liar,” she replied.

“Maybe. Okay, I will
try
to be good.”

She took a bite of her toast and poured a little more cream into her coffee, pondering his offer. O’Leary was handsome. Sure he was five three. She was only five feet, so that didn’t matter. He was still, at forty-two years old, one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen. His eyes, his smile, the way he carried himself. But more than that, Pete was smart and funny, and damn him, the time they’d spent together was the most alive she’d ever felt. Granted, she’d been twenty. Not too difficult to feel alive at twenty. But lo and behold, as she sat across from him sharing the type of banter they always shared as if twelve years hadn’t gone by…

He made her smile.

But a reality check was in order. O’Leary had a drinking problem. He had fallen from grace. He held a few grudges, and a few were held against him—some justified on both sides of the coin.

Plus he had broken her heart.

Well, she had been a girl then.

She was much tougher now.

Broken hearts were for much younger, weaker women.

She had a life now. One that O’Leary couldn’t mess up.

“Sure, why not. Let’s have dinner,” she finally said, stirring the cream in her coffee.

17

The horses paw and prance and neigh,
Fillies and colts like kittens play,
And dance and toss their rippled manes
Shining and soft as silken skeins;
…
—Oliver Wendell Holmes

What does it mean to be a horse? To live on tall green grass and eat and play. To toil on farmland. To thunder down a track.

To be bought and sold, moved from barn to barn, placed inside fences, eating what’s provided, benefitting or suffering at the hands of humans.

What does it mean to be a horse?

18

“Okay, so we might have two killers on our hands,” Holly said. It was early Saturday morning. To stay on top of this thing, Holly was resigned to putting in extra hours. She’d given Amar a courtesy call, since he had been decent enough to contact them about Tieg’s slaying. Surprisingly, or maybe not so much, Amar had made the trek to San Diego, where he met her and Chad downtown at the main station. They’d been putting their heads together since before nine o’clock.

“And this is based on the note the killer left inside the racing form at Tieg’s scene. If what Chad is theorizing is possible—and anything is possible—then the implication that ‘we have only just begun’ is huge,” Holly said.

Chad jumped in. “And if you want to really break it down and get literal, we have to ask ourselves if there
are
two killers involved, are they siblings like the Carpenters were? Are they romantically linked, being that this particular song is a love song? Could it be a husband and wife team? Man and woman? I think we can assume that our actual killer is a male. This guy has some strength to commit these acts. But is it possible that there’s someone else calling the shots?”

Amar stood up and made himself a hot tea. “I think that is all possible,” he said. “Maybe we look at husband and wife, or romantic
links on the track. You know, trainer/trainer, trainer/jockey, owner/trainer. That kind of thing.”

“That’s a good idea, Amar. Maybe even Scott Christiansen and his wife, although their alibi is solid for when the jockeys were killed.” Holly input the note on her tablet. “Plus I’ve lined up a couple of our guys to conduct interviews over at Equine Health Systems starting Monday. They’ll have to speak to everyone again to see if there might be a chink in the armor. Could someone within the company, who also has the same passion for horses that Christiansen seems to have, have carried out the killings on his own, or at the will of Christiansen?”

“There are a lot of angles to explore yet,” Chad said. “This isn’t going to be easy. I was able to get a hold of one of Edwin Hodges’s assistants. We got lucky, gang. The guy has a beach house here in La Jolla, and guess who is in town tomorrow for a little R & R?”

“Good work. That was fast. Were you able to schedule an appointment with the great Mr. Hodges?” Holly asked.

“Yeah. It was surprisingly easy.”

“Good. Looks like we will be heading to the beach tomorrow, guys. Amar, are you able to join us?”