The Stars Shine Bright (17 page)

“It's a private matter.”

“Not anymore.”

“Pardon?”

“Miss David, this is an arson investigation. And you managed to get yourself right in the middle of the whole thing.”

“Are you implying I'm somehow responsible for the fire?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why do you say that?”

“Something about your tone.”

“My tone.”

“Yes. You're making it sound like I lit the fire.”

“Did you?”

“Mr. Wertzer, do I look suicidal?”

He lifted his pen, poking at the stall's charred wood. “I checked you out, Miss David.”

“I'm sure you did.”

He pushed the pen deeper. The blackened wood snapped. He caught the shard with his notebook, leaving a charcoal smudge on the white paper.

“You're not a groom,” he said. “And you're not a trainer. And you're not really an owner. You just suddenly show up at Emerald Meadows, right after the place gets remodeled and all the smoke detectors are replaced. And suddenly, there's a fire. In the exact stall where you decide to sleep. Where the sprinklers have been cut off. And somehow, you've got a gun, loaded, to shoot your way out.”

“What's your point, Mr. Wertzer?”

“Like I said. You don't seem the type to carry. Especially a Glock.”

“It's for protection.”

“From what, barn cats?”

Juan stepped out of Stella Luna's stall. He seemed to studiously avoid looking our way, but the black horse tugged against the lead. Her sculpted muscles flickered as she turned her white-blazed face, looking directly at me. She nickered. Juan tugged on the bridle, pulling her forward again.

“What's the gun for?” Wertzer asked.

I raised my chin, doing my best impression of Eleanor Anderson's niece. “If you must know, I was once attacked.”

“When was that?” He was writing now.

“The attack?”

“Yeah.”

“Several years ago.”

“Where?”

“Back home.”

“Which is?”

“I thought you looked into me, Mr. Wertzer.”

“Virginia. This happened in Virginia?”

“Yes. I was in college.”

“What college?”

“Ho—” I almost said Holyoke, as in Mount Holyoke College. “Hollins.”

“How do you spell that? H-a-w-”

“No.” I sighed, glanced at my wristwatch, and spelled the name of the women's college in Roanoke, Virginia, that was Raleigh David's alma mater. She graduated magna cum laude in art history, versus my magna in geology at Mount Holyoke. “Mr. Wertzer, is this going to take much longer?”

“You need to be somewhere?”

“I lead a busy life.”

“Really,” he said. “From what I heard all you do is hang around the track, sometimes throwing money away.”

My smile felt as cold as the glaciers on Mount Rainier.

He pressed his thumb into the recorder's Stop button. “Next time carve out an hour.”

Next time?

“Oh.” He pretended to be surprised. “I didn't mention it?”

“No, you didn't.”

“I need you to take a lie detector test.” He deposited the recorder into his pocket. “Unless you got a problem with that.”

“On the contrary. I look forward to it.”

“Me too.”

“Have a nice day, Mr. Wertzer.”

Pulse pounding, I walked down the gallery. The horses were bobbing their long heads up and down, agreeing with me that the guy was one of
those
people. When I reached the end of the barn—still no sign of Cooper—I stepped under the eaves. The morning sun felt like a warm hand on my back, but it couldn't remove the chill sinking into my gut. I passed the shower building, the testing barn, and continued all the way to the gate that led to the turf, making sure the barn was far behind me. Then I turned around.

No sign of Wertzer.

The track was groomed and the big John Deeres were resting beside the maintenance hut. I looked at my watch. Just past 6:30 a.m. But the turf was empty. Right now the first and second training runs were usually ending, and the horses would be walked back to the barns. Whatever the delay this morning, I wasn't about to question opportunity. Lifting my sunglasses to see the numbers on my phone, I called Jack. He picked up on the first ring.

He said, “I was just thinking of you.”

“Interesting. I just met a highly annoying person who reminded me of yo—”

“Not me,” he said. “Couldn't be me. And why are you whispering?”

“I need you to backstop another detail for Raleigh David.” I told him about the arson investigator. “Have the whiz kids write up an assault report from the campus police at Hollins College. Link that doc to a local hospital, adding a sealed medical report. And make a note that the attacker was never found, so the case couldn't proceed any further. But make it look like Raleigh David was pretty shaken up.”

“Okay, got it. Why campus police?”

“Hollins is small, a private college. With students coming back from summer break, this guy might have trouble reaching anybody in campus police right now, especially someone who would remember what happened more than ten years ago. Oh, and tell the whiz kids the attack happened in January,” I added. “Guy wore a ski mask. She never got a good look at him, you know what to say.”

“I got it,” he said. “Stop worrying.”

“You haven't met the arson inspector.”

“That bad?”

“He has a hernia. I think it's from throwing people into the wood chipper. Feet first.”

“Just what you need.”

“Right. And he's figured out something doesn't add up with Raleigh David. The problem is, he came to the wrong conclusion.”

“Wait a minute—you're a
suspect
?”

I gazed at the oval track. The groomed soil looked as patient and ordered as a furrowed field ready for planting. No horses had run yet. Friday morning. Last week of races.
It shouldn't be this quiet right now . .
.

“Harmon—”

“I gotta go. Call me if there's a problem with the backstop.”

I closed the phone and crossed the empty backstretch to Quarterchute. Once again, the Café's perfume made my knees go weak. Bacon and onions and fried potatoes, luxuriating in peppered oil. And my breakfast sandwiches were waiting under the heat lamp.

Only something felt wrong in here too.

The old guys leaned forward around the gingham tables, huddled in conspiracy. Yet none held a betting sheet. Nobody was smacking the racing form, calling the winner and telling the next guy he was full of it. No, they clutched Styrofoam coffee cups and whispered. When the Polish Prince looked over at me, he twisted the toothpick parked between his lips.

I nodded hello. He didn't acknowledge it.

At the soda bar, I pulled a jumbo cup from the dispenser and filled it with cubed ice and Coca-Cola. On the other side of the room, the jockeys had formed another huddle next to the betting window. The chin straps that dangled from their helmets were shaking with disagreements. I moved down to the cash register. Birdie was writing today's word. The black marker's thick wool tip squeaked on the cardboard.

La Verdad
, she wrote.

“You're early,” she said.

“So how come I feel late, like something's going on without me?”

“Nice try.” She wrote the translation for
La Verdad
: The Truth.

I decided it was God's idea of a joke. Once again, I was telling the truth, but nobody believed me.

“Birdie, I really don't know what's going on.”

“Come on. The barn inspection?”

I shook my head. “I don't even know what a barn inspection is.”

She capped the pen and punched a key on the register, catching the cash drawer before it hit her chest. “You didn't call it in?”

“No, ma'am.”

“You didn't come this early to see Mr. Yuck on the war path?”

I shook my head and handed her my money. “Aunt Eleanor asked me to come talk to the arson investigator.”

She straightened the bills, carefully aligning George Washington so that all his profiles faced the same direction before going into the drawer.

“Birdie, I really didn't know. What happened?”

“Yuck closed down the training runs this morning. The jockeys”—she chucked her chin toward the huddle in back—“they ran in here, scared that he's gonna do random drug tests. And the geezers”—she nodded at the old guys—“they're about to start a pool on who Yuck takes out first.” She closed the cash drawer. “My advice is you take that sandwich to go. Your aunt's barn was near the top of Yuck's list.”

Chapter Nineteen

B
ill Cooper stood outside Stella Luna's stall with his cowboy boots splayed in the sawdust. As I came up behind him, I heard his cell phone ring. He snatched it from his belt clip like a gunslinger in a shootout.

“He's still here,” he said. “Probably another five minutes.”

He closed the phone, then turned. As if sensing my presence.

“Hi,” I said.

“What're you, spying on me?”

“You're standing in the middle of the barn.”

The expression in his pale eyes sent a shiver down my spine. Turning his face to the side, he spit a black stream of tobacco juice into the sawdust. “I know your game.”

“Really?” I said. “Because I don't know what's going on.”

“Play dumb. Go ahead. Nobody's buying it.”

Juan came out of KichaKoo's stall, leading the horse. He was followed by Mr. Yuck, who held a BlackBerry in his pudgy palm, tapping the screen with one finger. A delicate tap, like a guest at a cocktail party choosing the tiniest hors d'oeuvre.

Cooper headed toward him. “Did you comb the sawdust, you pathetic excuse of a—”

“Your groom's hot plate,” Mr. Yuck said, not looking up, “it won't be returned.”

“You'll starve my groom so you can pretend you're actually doing something around here. It's pathetic. How do you sleep at night?”

“Like a baby on whiskey.” Mr. Yuck gave a dolorous smile. “And considering that fire, you should be thanking me for confiscating the hot plate.”

The lieutenant who had guarded the conference room door yesterday was striding toward us, holding a sheaf of white paper and waving it like a surrender flag. Only surrender wasn't on Mr. Yuck's face. Removing one sheet from the stack, he handed the page to Cooper. Then smiled, bitterly. I moved to the side, reading over Cooper's shoulder.

F
ORMAL
C
OMPLAINT
was typed across the top. It mentioned “contraband,” which I assumed was the hot plate, and offered numbered steps for appeal and remediation. Cooper clutched the paper in both hands, but suddenly the words disappeared under a spatter of tobacco juice.

Cooper held out the paper to Mr. Yuck. “Here you go.”

The security chief gave a smile as dark and acidic as the trainer's spit. “Have a nice day, Mr. Cooper.”

He pivoted and walked toward the gallery that connected the next stable, his small feet churning through the sawdust. Lieutenant Campbell hurried after him. But Cooper stood rooted to the spot. Crumpling the paper, he threw it to the ground. His hands were opening and closing, the rough fingers flexing as if preparing to take a swing. I stepped back and Juan turned away, leading KichaKoo to the hot walker. The groom kept his eyes down, but something about his stooped posture made me wonder. How did I convince him to let me stay with Solo in Seattle that night? Money. Just money. I glanced at Cooper. How much did the trainer have to pay, to cover anything covered up?

So many guilty consciences
, I thought,
so little time
.

And then, as if punctuating my thought, a scream shot to the barn rafters. High-pitched and horrified, it sent Cooper running down the gallery toward the sound. I took off after him, but my girly shoes were slipping on the sawdust. He turned down the same path where Mr. Yuck had gone, but he was a good fifteen yards ahead of me. But I saw a flash of pink.

Ashley Trenner was struggling to hold on to the black beast named Cuppa Joe. The horse was stamping its hooves, bucking around a tight circle, as the girl clung to the bridle and jumped out of his way. And that wasn't even the real problem.

Two men staggered over the sawdust, locked in battle. Jimmy Bello's elbows were raised high, with his hands wrapped around the thick neck of Mr. Yuck. He drove the security chief into the plank wall. They hit with a thud that sounded like a clap of thunder. Cuppa Joe gave a high whinny.