Close Call (17 page)

Sydney

“This place has too
much shit,” Reese compl
ained, scraping her sneaker in t
he grass to wipe off muck. “There are many reasons I hate horses, but horseshit is at the top of the list, closely followed by ‘they bite' and ‘they kick' and ‘they stink.'”

Sydney gave her a sympathetic smile, in her element surrounded by green fields bounded by miles of white fencing with horses grazing.
Sambrano's Elite Training
read a small sign fronting the barn.
Tours daily
. The sun glossed the chestnut, bay, and palomino hides in the distance. Tails swished, flicking away the ubiquitous flies. One horse rolled in the grass, kicking her legs in the air, and Sydney smiled. Always nervous around horses, Reese had preferred softball and track, but Sydney had taken riding lessons from the time she was eight until she graduated from high school.

“It's a horse farm. Horse shit is part of the deal,” she said.

“I'll wait,” Reese said, propping herself against the hood of her Highlander and crossing her arms over her chest. “You can tackle this one on your own.”

If Reese was willing to let her interview Jimmy Montoya alone, her fear of horses must be more intense than she'd let on, Sydney reflected. Reese's need to accompany her wouldn't be due to safety concerns this time—just to nosiness. Prying into others' lives was the equivalent of an addict shooting up for her, and she'd do a lot for that high. Sydney thought about her sister's adventures in war zones and the union exposé she'd written before turning to true crime. At least most of the murderers she talked to now were already behind bars.

Sydney crossed the barn's threshold and stepped into her past. The twilight gloom inside, with dust motes swirling in a shaft of sunlight; the smell of horse, hay, and liniment; and the soft whickers and thuds as the large animals moved about in their stalls transported her back to her days as a horse-crazy adolescent. Now, breathing in the familiar scent, she felt the old excitement rising, the love nurtured by reading
King of the Wind
,
Misty of Chincoteague
, and the Black Stallion series. Maybe she should take up riding again. She could even buy a horse, board it someplace like this …

“Are you here for the tour? The next one is in twenty minutes.” A friendly voice pulled Sydney out of her reverie.

She looked around to see a young woman with an open face, red hair in braids, and the bow-legged stance of a serious rider. Wearing jeans and work boots liberally spattered with Reese's favorite substance, she carried a shovel and a bucket.

“Actually, I'm looking for Jimmy Montoya. I was told he'd be here.”

“Jimmy? He's watching Ed work Banger. That way.” The girl pointed with the shovel handle to a door at the far end of the long corridor separating two rows of stalls.

“Who's Banger?”

The girl smiled, revealing a gap between her two front teeth. “Bang the Drum. Jimmy's Derby hopeful.”

“Does he have a chance?”

The girl shrugged. “They all have a chance.” She nodded goodbye to Sydney and nudged open an empty stall.

The scrape of the girl's shovel followed Sydney down the main corridor. An inquisitive gray accosted her by straining his neck to its full length and bumping her with his nose. “Whoa, you're a pushy one,” she said.

He snorted and lowered his head to snuffle in the vicinity of her pockets. “Sorry, boy. No treats today.” She wished she'd packed her pockets with carrots and apple bits.

He gazed at her reproachfully, his white forelock falling into his dark, liquid eyes. Giving his neck a final pat, she moved on. The far end of the barn opened on a paddock with a couple of leggy horses milling around. Beyond the fenced enclosure was a half-mile track, also ringed in gleaming white, where two men stood watching a pair of horses, jockeys high in the stirrups, canter toward the post. Sydney had never spent any time around racing—her interest had been in jumpers—and she watched with fascination as the jockeys reined in the horses and then let them go at a signal from one of the men. The horses flew around the track, hooves thudding up clods of dirt. Slowly but surely, the horse on the outside, a tall chestnut, pulled ahead of his rival, galloping past the men leaning on the rail. Judging from the way Jimmy Montoya was jumping and shouting, the winner was Banger.

Walking over, Sydney observed Jimmy as he high-fived the man beside him—Ed Sambrano, the trainer, maybe?—and stroked his colt's nose when the jockey brought him to the rail. He looked like a less dynamic copy of his father. He was a couple of inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter, with his father's dark hair but none of his air of command. He was dressed like a cross between the Marlboro man and a Ralph Lauren model in a four-hundred-dollar pair of jeans and a turquoise polo shirt. He sported hand-tooled ostrich-skin cowboy boots, and Sydney would have bet her entire trust fund that he'd never ridden a horse in his life.

“D'ja see that?” Jimmy startled her by asking. He'd turned to face her as Sambrano drifted off to give instructions to the jockey. “He was tearing up the track!” The young man struck her as callow and younger than his twenty-five years.

“He looked fast,” Sydney said.

“Fast? He's greased lightning. Put your money on him for the Derby right now,” Jimmy recommended, bringing a hand to his mouth and gnawing on the edge of his thumb. “You can't lose.”

Unless he breaks a leg or gets colic or just feels “off” on the big day, or if there's a faster horse in the race, Sydney thought. Aloud, she said, “Thanks for the tip. I'm Sydney Ellison.” She held out her hand and he shook it, his grip sweaty but firm.

“Jimmy Montoya. Nice to meet you.” He looked her over without much interest and she doubted he could have described her outside of “white female between thirty and fifty.” Clearly the horses, or gambling on horses, held his attention to the exclusion of everything else.

“Is he yours?” Sydney nodded toward the colt. The sun warmed her shoulders as she propped her forearms against the top rail, imitating Jimmy's posture.

“Yup. Bang the Drum. Out of Ophelia's Heaven by Dancing Admiral, a descendant of War Admiral, you know.”

“Wow.” That seemed like the response Jimmy was looking for. Sydney paused, expecting him to ask if she had a horse being trained by Sambrano, but Jimmy's absorption with himself was total. “I know your dad,” she said finally.

That earned her a sideways look. “Yeah, well, lots of people know my dad,” he said, fixing his eyes on a ladybug crawling along the fence rail.

“Do you think he'll win on Tuesday?”

“Sure. He always wins, whatever it takes.” The words could've been bitter, but were delivered in a monotone that made it impossible for her to assess his feelings. Clearly Jimmy hadn't been bitten by the political bug, despite his position with his father's campaign. Sydney began to suspect that his job was nepotism, pure and simple. Either that or Montoya wanted to keep an eye on him. Jimmy put a finger in front of the ladybug and it crawled onto his nail. He watched it with the fascination of an eight-year-old.

“Politics is like horse-racing, don't you think?” Sydney asked, making a last ditch effort to snag his attention.

“How so?” He turned to face her squarely for the first time, waving his hand to dislodge the ladybug.

“Well, you have a field of contenders and everyone studies their records, trying to figure out who's likely to win. And you have gamblers betting on the outcome in each case. Folks put their money on a horse to win, hoping to cash in, and investors or PACs put money on a candidate, expecting a certain return if he or she ends up in office. And sometimes trainers or campaign managers resort to dirty tricks of one kind or another to ensure their ‘horse' wins: giving a rival too much to drink right before a race to slow him down, drugs, negative campaigning, putting a hit out on an opponent.” Sydney held her breath, afraid she'd been too explicit.

Jimmy's eyes blazed with interest. “Hey, I never thought about it before, but you're right. Wait'll I tell my dad. He's always trying to get me away from the horses, keep me from gambling. Makes me trek around with him to fundraisers and speeches and factory tours. Boring shit. Wait'll I tell him we're really in the same business.” He laughed. “What'd you say your name was again?”

Before she could answer, a gruff voice with a slight accent sounded from behind her. “Hey, Jimmy, long time no see.”

From the way Jimmy's face whitened, she assumed the newcomer wasn't a friend. Casually, she turned around as two men approached. The man in front was younger, about her age and height, with expertly barbered hair and beard, an expensive tweed coat over dark green slacks, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He looked like the dean of a prep school. The older man trailing him looked more like Sydney's idea of a mob enforcer: burly, bull-necked, and with a suspicious bulge under his left arm.

“Mr. Avdonin,” Jimmy stammered. “I've been meaning to—tell Uncle Mat that—”

The men had drawn level with them by this time and Avdonin studied Sydney with dark, detached eyes. “Does your fiancée know about this rendezvous, Jimbo? A stable. At first glance, not as convenient as a Motel 6, and yet there's something about a stable that makes a suitable setting for infidelity. Pheromones in the air. Stallions ‘covering' mares. It's primal. There was a Tom Hanks movie some years back … never mind. I'm faithful to my wife, married nineteen years next Wednesday, but I can definitely see the attraction.” He gave Syd
ney a considering look, like she was a Thoroughbred mare, she thought, and he a prospective bidder. “Definitely. But if she's going to rob the cradle, surely she can do better than a loser like you?”

“I'm not—” Sydney started, just as Jimmy said, “We just met—”

Avdonin acknowledged his mistake with an uplifted hand. “Ah. My apologies. Perhaps you'd excuse us then, miss? We have some business to conduct with Mr. Montoya.” He scanned the fields behind Jimmy, apparently taking Sydney's departure for granted. “I saw your fiancée, the lovely Emily, in the newspaper this morning. At the American Bar Association ball last night. In the photo, she was dancing with her father. Nice. I assume you were there, too? My wife really liked that gown she was wearing, the white one with the ruffle. It looks like she's doing much better. The wedding's coming up, right? It would be a shame if she were to suffer another accident that would make it impossible to walk down the aisle. Or walk again ever.” He shook his head in mock sorrow at the thought.

It was like listening to him discipline a student, Sydney thought, unable to get the image of him as a prep school headmaster out of her head.

“But we don't need to consider such an eventuality, do we, because I'm sure you're going to come up with the half mil you owe … very, very soon.” His eyes drilled into Jimmy's and beads of sweat pimpled the younger man's brow. A horse neighed loudly from the barn.

A half a million? That was serious money.

“Leave Em—I don't want—Banger's how I'm going to raise the money, Mr. Avdonin,” Jimmy said, his voice a pathetic mix of enthusiasm and fear. “You can tell Uncle Mat he's a sure bet for the Derby. I'll be able to pay it all when he wins. And I'll keep up with the vig—”

“The Derby's not til next May, you moron,” Avdonin snapped, the veneer of civility cracking like a thinly iced pond under a snowmobile. “Your uncle isn't going to wait nine months for his money. Your being his great-nephew isn't going to get in the way of business. Maybe your daddy can pull the half mil from one of his campaign coffers.”

A touch on Sydney's shoulder made her turn. The burly man who'd accompanied Avdonin jerked his head toward the stable, suggesting she follow his boss's advice. A piece of blood-dotted tissue stuck to his stubbly jaw. Sydney's eyes fixed on it as she debated whether to do the smart thing—return to the stable and let Jimmy fend for himself—or the stupid thing and ask these men how badly Matvei Utkin wanted his money back. Bad enough to put a contract on Fidel Montoya, for instance? For all she knew, one of these men had killed Jason.

The thought brought a flush of anger to her skin. Her expression must have telegraphed something, because the man took her upper arm in a bruising grip and gave her a shove.

“Syd! You done
yet
?” Reese called from the barn, pointing at her watch. “You know we promised Ella and Shonda we wouldn't be late this time.” Her manner and voice suggested she was an impatient friend or even lover. She held her cell phone up, as if to indicate a text from the fictional girlfriends, but Sydney saw it as a warning to Matvei Utkin's men. One touch and the police could be on their way. The bruiser dropped her arm, giving his boss a doubtful look.

All three men turned to stare at Reese. Avdonin's eyes narrowed at the sight of the cell phone. His sidekick unbuttoned his jacket but stopped there when Avdonin gave a slight headshake. Jimmy gawked, his mouth hanging open, and shot a look at Sydney.

“I got lots of horse photos,” Reese yelled. “That one behind you is my fave. I just love gray horses.” She steadied the phone, ostensibly to photograph a horse prancing past, but Sydney was sure she'd managed to get Avdonin and his sidekick in the frame. She felt an unwilling spark of admiration for her sister's tactics.

“Coming!” Sydney called in reply. “Nice meeting you gentlemen,” she said, repressing the urge to rub the tender spot on her arm. “Jimmy, maybe we can talk more about your horse another time?”

He nodded, looking between her and Avdonin and Reese, completely out of his league. “Uh, sure.”

She felt Avdonin's eyes stabbing her back as she made her way up the slight rise to Reese. He might look like an academic, but she had no doubt he'd order her death without blinking. She had to force herself not to break into a trot as she neared her sister.