The Bookwoman's Last Fling (14 page)

“That's what I like about being a vet.” Dr. Tate clapped Sandy on the shoulder. “You get to battle God with God's own creatures and occasionally you even win one.”

“Make sure you send me a bill this time.”

We moved out of the doorway. The doctor was instructing two ginneys on the removal of the tube, which had to be done every week to keep the passage clear. Sandy had not yet said a word in my direction but now he turned and our eyes met. He nodded slightly and thanked everybody on behalf of his stable and his horse. The tiny crowd broke up and only then, when people were well out of earshot, Sandy said, “Mr. Janeway. Sorry I kept you waiting.” We shook hands and went into a tack room at the end of the barn. He closed the door and nodded toward a chair.

“How's Sharon?”

“She was fine when I left her yesterday morning.”

The moment stretched. There was a feeling of discomfort between us as if each of us was waiting for the other to get the ball rolling. At last I said, “She tell you why I'm here?”

He nodded. “Good luck. That's a cold trail you're chasing. Any reason to think you can pick it up and find out anything?”

“You never know. Sometimes a new pair of eyes can make a big difference.” I shuffled through some notes. “If there's a victim I usually start with who she knew. Who saw her last, who knew her best…”

“Is that what you think, Candice was a victim?”

“That would be one of the things I'll have to find out. The possibility's been raised that Ms. Geiger was murdered. Sharon doesn't think a lot of effort went into that investigation.”

“I was truly surprised at that; I had no idea she had these doubts.”

“She never told you?”

“Not a word till now. Look, if anybody other than Sharon was raising these questions, I'd put it in the same corner of my mind where I'd keep conspiracy theories in the Kennedy murder; I just wouldn't give it the time of day. But Sharon's always been such a steady girl. Even as a kid, her judgment was sound.”

“And she has a certain knack,” I said. “She does seem to sense things.”

He didn't ask what she sensed or how, and in that gap a minute went by. Through the closed door we heard a horse nicker and a feed tub clatter to the ground. One of the boys yelled, “Dammit, help me out here!” and the voice carried through the wall. Whatever it was it didn't move Sandy from his perch. He was sitting on a saddle trunk facing the door, deep in thought. Then he said, “How can I help you?”

“If I could start by asking you a few things. Get my bearings, if that's okay.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“How well did you really know Candice?”

My question knocked him back on his ass and he blinked. I saw his hand tremble and he clutched it with his left hand and still he couldn't stop fidgeting. His eyes watered and he tried to look away.

“Mr. Standish?”

“My God, does Sharon think I killed her?”

“Did I miss something here? Nobody's said that.”

He nodded but his face was pale. “Wow,” he said. “As opening questions go, that one's a lulu. Did Sharon tell you to ask me that?”

“Sharon didn't tell me to do anything. To me it seemed like a natural place to start.”

He still looked winded, but he forced himself to be calm. “It's just…I guess it was that word
really
that set me off. I've never been asked that question that way before.”

“I wasn't aware I had any kind of way with questions.”

But I waited for him to answer it. He gave me a thin little smile and said, “I knew her very well. She was a great woman and I had a lot of affection for her. I don't know how to describe those days except to say she was a close friend.”

“That was quite a difference in your ages.”

He paled again. Now I had questioned a relationship that hadn't been in doubt until this moment, and he had trouble looking at me. “She was seven years older than I was,” he acknowledged. “I wouldn't call that quite a bit. Damn, Janeway, I had no idea you were thinking these things.”

“I wasn't thinking anything.”

But I am now.

I said, “Did the age difference seem to bother her?”

“Why ask that? What difference does it make?”

“Just that she had always preferred older men.”

“Maybe she was trying to break that pattern. Christ, what do you want from me, I wasn't a mind reader.” He was looking at the floor as he spoke, and in that moment something had happened. I had had this reaction with others in my police career. Dozens of times I had looked at people and asked the hard question—
Did you kill her?
—and some of them had melted like wax too close to an open flame. Now it seemed to be happening and I hadn't asked the question yet.

Then he said, “I loved her,” and the way he said it and the way he looked made me want to believe him, at least for the moment. “I've never told this to anyone,” he said. “I sure didn't intend to say it here and now, but it's true. Haven't you ever known a woman like that?”

“Like what?”

“Where you know it's star-crossed right from the first minute and you still can't stay away from her. I'm talking about a woman who can make you dream about her years after she's gone…and when you first met her all she did was say hello and your storm warnings went up.”

“Sure, I can understand that.”

“I thought I was ready for this,” he said. “Sharon called and told me who you are and what you're doing, and I thought,
I can deal with this now; I can answer the man's questions.
But then you come in here and ask me how well I knew her, and I feel a lump in my throat and I can barely talk; I'm right back in those days, my hands tremble when I think of her, and I don't know what I can tell you.”

He tried for a smile but it came up short. “God, I just loved her,” he said again. “When she died, all the joy went out of my life. She took that away when she went.”

“She seems to have had that effect on more than one man.”

“Can I ask you for a favor? Is it possible to keep this between us guys?”

“That's going to be a tough one, Sandy.”

“I know it is. I hear what you're saying.”

“You're asking me not to tell Sharon. But she gave me a chunk of money to come out here and uncover some facts.”

“I have no right to ask any favors. I understand what kind of position that puts you in.”

“I could leave it to you to tell her,” I said. “That's the best I can do.”

“I don't know if that makes it easier or harder. It does change things. This is something I have never talked about with Sharon. I just assumed that's how she wanted it. And now…”

He put up his hands in a surrender motion. “I loved her mother from the first day HR brought her to the racetrack, just after her father died. I remember it like it was yesterday. Mr. Ritchey died and HR began squiring her around within a few weeks.”

He looked at the ceiling and in that moment I could see how vulnerable he was. A fool could see it. I could ask him almost anything now and maybe another little piece of unwanted truth might come out. I could sense it back there in his head, down in his heart. He had lived with a ghost for a long time and now here it was in a stranger's question that hadn't even been asked yet.

“Sharon has never mentioned this,” he said. “She has no idea…”

“Don't be too sure of that.”

His eyes opened wide. “Did she say something?”

“Just that you'd be worth talking to. That you'll help me get around.”

“I will…hell, I'll be happy to do that…no matter what you decide. But you know…”

I cocked my eyebrow, waiting for him to finish his thought. He said, “That kind of comment from her might mean anything or nothing at all.”

“Sharon's a clever young woman,” I said. “All I'm saying is, don't be too surprised if she's figured out some things on her own.”

“She's never said a word to that effect. Not to me.”

“Maybe she's too much of a lady to bring it up. It's a touchy subject, maybe she's waiting for you to say something.”

“Yeah, tell me how touchy it is.” He nodded. “Anyway, you've made your point.”

“So did you have an affair with her mother?”

I tried to say this kindly—a soft question from a man who might have been in that same boat himself once or twice. A woman he absolutely shouldn't touch. Consent implied in her words. The raging hormones of youth. The next logical thought wafted up from somewhere: “Are you Sharon's father?” I asked, and his face went ashen.

“Damn, you do get right to the point, don't you?”

“I know it's a sticky question but it had to be asked.”

“It was only for a short time,” he said. “We were only together…a little while.”

“Once is all it takes.” I looked at him steadily, without wavering, with what I hoped was a fair piece of understanding. But he wouldn't meet my eyes, so all that effort was lost.

“How's the timing?” I said.

He nodded to the wall. Yes, it could've been him.

He looked up at me: another mighty effort to make eye contact. “I've thought of that almost every day,” he said, looking away.

“And you still think Sharon doesn't realize what might have happened?”

“Then why didn't she ever say anything?”

“Why didn't you?”

“I couldn't, not while the old man was alive. But then he lived so long it had become our way, what we were.” At last he forced himself to look at me. “I was very young. Candice was…”

I waited.

“My first,” he said. “In a way it was like that for both of us. Her first real fling.”

I thought this was doubtful, but I said, “I'm not here to pass judgment, Sandy.”

“But now you've got to tell Sharon. I suppose she's absolutely got to know?”

“There are ways to find out today. Tests that didn't exist thirty years ago.”

“Jesus.” He quaked at the thought. “How much time will you give me to decide?”

“It's not your decision to make. It might come up any minute and I can't lie to her.”

“So the clock is already ticking.”

“I think so. She needs…”

He groped for a word and I found it for him. “Closure.” This is an old word with a modern meaning that I loathe and never use except in sarcasm. He stared at the wall and didn't notice.

“Of course she does,” he said finally. “She needs closure. God knows she deserves that, and I do want to help her. If you doubt that, remember this. If it ever comes out that I got you in here under false pretenses, I could be in real trouble with the stewards.”

“I won't tell and I'm sure Sharon won't. I'll work my shift like anybody else.”

He looked at his watch. “I'm sorry, I'm running into a time problem, I've got two guests coming out to visit. Helluva day for it, but I've got a horse in the second race.”

“I'll be fine here.”

“We'll get you a license this afternoon,” he said. “Count on Obie for everything, he's solid. You can bed down with my boys, if that's what you want. I'll put you on as a hot walker. That would leave you time to poke around.”

He opened the door and walked away; then he turned to give me one last look. I thought he was about to say something, but when he did it was only a racetracker's tip. “My horse is ready to run today, in case you've got a little change burning a hole in your pocket.” Then he was gone. I went out into the shedrow and watched him leave. For a moment the barn felt absolutely still, but slowly the sounds of a living world returned to us. I heard a horse nicker and the rain rattling on the roof. I could hear the noises of men and boys talking and working in the next barn. One of them came limping past the gap and in that second before I saw him, I knew it was Cameron. He stopped and turned my way and we stared at each other briefly across the thirty-odd feet of the rainswept tow ring. I looked away first. When I glanced up again he was gone.

I was settled in the corner tack room before noon. By twelve-thirty I had been photographed and fingerprinted, I had a ginney's license issued in my name and I was official; I could now get into the stable area any time day or night without a guide; I could talk to anybody about anything. I was standing just outside the paddock, watching the horses being readied for the second race. The steady rain had made the track a sloppy lake. Sandy came into the paddock and stood in the dry stall, waiting for his horse. He saw me lounging near the rail, but he didn't nod and neither did I. He wore a coat and tie despite the weather and his pants had been pressed to a razor-sharp crease. The horses arrived: Obie led Pompeii Ruler around until Sandy told him that was enough; then they turned into the stall. The riders came out: There was barely any conversation between Sandy and his jockey—this boy, I later learned, had ridden this horse in ten races, had won five and knew him well. He would go off in blinkers, which Sandy was putting on him now. The race was a mile and seventy yards, a bit of a stretch for this animal, who liked to run on the lead and was good at any distance under a mile. That's why the odds were so generous—the tote board had just taken another bump, knocking him back to third choice at 12–1. The
Form
on him looked solid in sprints, but he had raced only once at more than a mile since early last year and had finished sixth, fading fast in a ten-horse field. He was getting no confidence at this distance—the
Form
doesn't cut racehorses any slack for headaches or mood swings, menopause, or the occasional bad-mane day. I remembered an old saying on the racetrack from years of following the races in Denver:
Play the trainer, not the horse.
I dropped $100 on his nose and swore I wouldn't bet again until I had some kind of break on this case.

Thirty minutes later, I cashed my win ticket and came away with $1,350.

I walked back to the stable area with Obie and the horse. The rain was relentless and we were all grubby now: I could see the dirt caked between the horse's legs and I felt it on my face and neck. We arrived just as Sandy got there with his guests. She was a handsome woman in her sixties; the guy I pegged as her husband. They might have been a couple of millionaires celebrating a Derby win from the look of them: there was lots of happy talk between Sandy and the lady: lots of camaraderie, lots of laughs. He called her Barbara. I heard her refer to her guy as Charlie. She wore dressy clothes and a colorful hat and carried an umbrella. Sandy passed through his circle of boys and handed out twenty-dollar bills and the lady looked on with kind amusement. “Did you play this horse, Janeway?” Sandy said, and I told him I had indeed and I thanked him for the tip. He gave me the twenty anyway and I damn well took it: I didn't want to stand out from the others in any way, and soon enough they would all know why I was there.

Sandy got out some folding canvas chairs and he and the lady sat in the feed bin, out of the rain but near enough to see what was going on. Her husband had drifted away down the shedrow and around the corner, to see what he could see. “Sandy always stays to watch his horse cool out,” Obie said. I held the lead shank while Obie sloshed hot water on his horse with a sponge. The steam almost obliterated us, and Obie's voice was like some disembodied entity wafting up from the other side, as if the horse, not his ginney, was suddenly doing the talking. “Man, I love this horse. You can see the intelligence in his face, the pleasure he gets from a hot bath.” He washed the animal's private parts and scraped the water off his back, threw on a heavy wool cooler, and I started him around the shedrow.

Here he was then, my first walk, and it was a cold one under the barn's overhang. I didn't have to learn anything, just walk. I snuggled down inside my jacket and still it was cold. Around and around we went: I lost track of the time and forgot about the cold as I walked. This was indeed a nice horse, so gentle and well-mannered, such good company on a bad day, impossible not to like. I stopped him occasionally to look in his eyes and fondle his head and say a few words. At thirty minutes Sandy took off the wool cooler to run a hand over his flank and cover him with a sheet. He was slow to cool and all this took most of an hour. During that time someone from the stewards' office arrived and stood at the stall while I held a small jar on the end of a stick and waited for the urine sample. “Whistle to him,” Obie said, and I did: just a monotonous series of high-pitched one-note birdcalls. After three minutes of this he was ready to pee, and from this flood we collected the tiny urine sample. The man sealed and labeled the bottle and left.

Sandy was off to an early dinner with his guests. I thought he might say something more, since we had barely made eye contact during the whole time he was in the barn. He's spooked now, I thought: all this talk about the bookwoman had given him too much to think about. This might mean something or maybe nothing at all: anyone's guess was as good as mine. I could hear the horses being called for the seventh race when Sandy said good night to us all and he and Barbara went around the barn to find her elusive husband.

I put Pompeii Ruler in his stall. Obie felt his legs and picked the gunk out of his feet, then filled his bucket with water. The horses ran past in the seventh. I could hear their hoofbeats briefly and I heard the call wafting over the stable area in a muffled monotone. But the crowd had left early and now there was no spectator noise. The horses for the last race were called to the paddock as an early dusk fell over the bay. I heard thunder as Cameron limped quickly past the open gap and disappeared into the tack room opposite mine.

I stood in the open door and looked down our shedrow. There were seven of us in Sandy's barn: twenty-three horses, six ginneys, and me. I was the only full-time hot walker. Sandy no longer carried a jockey on his payroll: he preferred to pick his boy or girl from the pool of available riders as a race drew near. “We used to have a full-time bug boy but the old man's partial to girl jocks in sprints,” Obie said as he showed me around. “He says they're smarter and less prone to use cowboy tactics. But in longer races, he still wants a man.” Obie was the unofficial stable foreman. He was young but he'd be the one they'd all look up to, his word would be final if something came up and Sandy couldn't be reached. In the room next to mine was a Mexican kid named Milo and a pint-sized Texan who played the harmonica and guitar simultaneously and sang country songs about jilted men and the women who broke their hearts. Halfway down the barn was a fellow named Bob from Boston, a serious student of the game who was saving his money to buy a horse. Bob was a drummer; he carried his drumsticks in a bag with his clothes, admired the Gene Krupa legacy, and could beat out a mean rhythm on the flat part of a chair. He had a notebook where he had written down everything he could remember that Sandy did and said. “Sandy's the best trainer in the state,” Bob said.

I met them all that first day. The day waned quickly under its deep black cloud cover.

I raked up the shedrow and did some other chores. All along the row the ginneys were at work with their pitchforks. Filling their baskets with muck. Getting ready for the night. At loose ends in the murky day.

The wind picked up and an early night fell over the bay. All of them had apparently accepted me as just another racetrack drifter; only Sandy knew the truth. Obie might suspect something—once I saw him looking oddly in my direction—but it was one of those hypnotic stares that sees nothing. The days of Candice Geiger were long past and I wondered if any of them had ever heard her name. At last he looked away and beyond me. He might have been staring over my shoulder at a crack in the wall, reliving the race in a dream.

Thunder rumbled across the sky. The rain fell steadily, relentlessly.

The crew felt the weight of the stake Sandy had dropped on us. The extra money seemed to burn holes in every pocket. It called for a night out, but no one wanted to brave the storm even for a run to the kitchen. All during the dinner hour the rain came down in sheets.

By seven o'clock we had decided to stay home and eat our simple racetrack fare: fried egg sandwiches on plain white bread with mayonnaise, and beans in a can. Hobo food, which at the moment sounded elegant as hell. The sizzle and smell of twenty eggs frying on hotplates filled the shedrow and we sat in the canvas chairs and ate, feeling like rich horse owners.

We talked and cracked jokes. I felt insulated, far from the real world, with only a hazy light to tell us that life might exist on the next planet, in the shedrow just across the way.

Tex played his harmonica and Bob kept rhythm with his sticks. They all sang songs of cheatin' women and old-timey horse races, and nobody asked about me. As far as they were concerned I had no life before this one. I felt a growing sense of unity with these guys. Amazing how quickly I had blended in with them. None of them cared where I had been or what I had done, none of them asked, and this was good. I didn't have to lie and then remember the next day what my story was. The good cheer was spontaneous. There was no need to reveal more of myself than I already had, and soon the songs of fickle love and heartbreak gave way to musical tales of ginneys with legendary peckers, of cocks that stood up and yelled
heee-haw,
said
mamma,
and saluted the flag. We laughed at everything and nothing. For the moment we were happy in this bawdy male universe, sealed in by the rain and the good feeling of money unspent from today's winner.

We had no past. The future was unknown, not to be probed or pondered.

Obie walked along the shedrow and checked on his horses. Cleared his throat and said he was going to bed. Four o'clock comes early. But a few of us sat up talking, reluctant to give up the day.

“Tell you what, boys, I've had enough of this weather,” Tex said. “Maybe I'll get to be the lucky one goin' south.”

Everyone but me seemed to know what he was talking about, so eventually I asked.

“Sandy's going to Santa Anita after this meet's over. He's only takin' one ginney with him.”

“He's gonna train Barbara Patterson's horses,” Bob said.

I looked perplexed, which wasn't difficult at the moment.

“That's the lady you just met,” he said.

“Where the hell you been all your life, Janeway?” Texas said. “Maybe Sandy's time has come. I don't think Ms. P. is running short of cash, and cash money speaks out loud to just about everybody anywhere. Anyways, you can bet me.”

“Ms. P.'s got a stable full of really nice horses,” Bob said helpfully. “Got a nice ranch about a forty-minute drive from here.”

“Got a dynamite undefeated two-year-old geared up for next spring's Santa Anita Derby,” Tex said. “If he runs good there, it's almost a sure thing she'll ship east for the Triple Crown races.”

“So why'd she get rid of her old trainer?”

“Real question is why she ever hired that moron in the first place. He's screwed up more good horses than most of us'll ever see.”

“This is all on the q.t. for now,” Bob said. “Word to the wise.”

“We let Sandy make his own announcement in his own time,” Tex said. “Gives him a feeling he's running things around here.”

They laughed.

“You all seem to know a lot about what's really going on,” I said.

Bob held his finger to his lips. “Backstretch scuttlebutt.”

I looked for a way to mention Cameron but nothing opened up. I looked for some door that might open innocently into the topic of Candice and her books, but it didn't happen. Someone suggested a card game but he had no takers. “Damn, boys,” said his voice, somewhere in the ethereal night. “I can't give this money away.”

A light flickered. The tack room across the way went dark and closed down for the night.

The rain picked up again.

I let go my part of it and went to bed.

 

Deep in the night I heard the muffled sounds of people talking. I opened my eyes. The little clock radio said the time was one-thirty. I got up and cracked my door: looked out at the new day, which at the moment looked much too much like the old day. The sky was still black and would be for another five hours. The rain had slowed to a steady downpour and I got the sense, though I couldn't see it, that the tow ring was unwalkable, filled with lakes of mud.

The talking persisted as a faint mumble. I pulled on my pants and cracked open the door. Suddenly the voices were louder. A shadow-man stood just inside the shedrow in the barn across the tow ring. He was huddled in conversation with another guy I couldn't see at all, and their voices carried amazingly well over the rain. The shadow said, “If Bax asks, you don't know where I am. Do not mention the farm. The last thing I need is him busting in on me.” They both came out and went past me in the drippy morning. I watched from there until they disappeared around the corner, then I eased across the tow ring on the other side, water over my shoes, up to my ankles in it, and struck out in the general direction I thought they had gone, out toward the stable gate and the parking lot across the street.

At the edge of a barn I saw their tiny light bobbing on the road forty yards ahead. A truck came in through the gate and its headlights illuminated the two silhouettes. One of them limped distinctively in the glare from the truck. I moved over into the darkest place on the road—couldn't see the gate from there, but I pushed ahead anyway, slowly, and eased around the corner. There they were, chatting and laughing with the night man inside the stable gate.