Murder at the Racetrack (13 page)

He had said all of this to her an hour or so ago. Now, repeated back to him, he wasn’t sure it was so smart a theory.

“What do you think they’ve done to him?” Eric asked her as the track security guard opened the gate for them.

“I don’t know. We can’t think like that.”

He swallowed hard. She was right. He had to think about their plans, and not just how wrong they could go. “Your guys are
ready?”

“Yes. We all want a piece of these jerks. But they’ll only see Paulo and Estefan.”

She drove to the farthest barn, the one where Zuppa was stabled.

The men who met them were two grooms who had worked for Donna for many years. Paulo and Estefan were brothers, and the grim
expression on Estefan’s face made Eric’s heart sink. Paulo, the older of the brothers, was Zuppa’s groom.

“I looked for him,” Estefan whispered, then shook his head. “But others know—Jimmy, he belongs to us all, you understand?
They will be looking for him, too. They know to be careful.”

Eric knew that an army of about eight hundred worked the backstretch at this track. Not all of them would be here now. But
the four of them weren’t going to be the only ones with their eyes open tonight.

“You’ve got people outside?” Donna asked, just as quietly.

“Yes, everything the way you asked, Miss Donna.” He gave Eric a quick smile. “We had a lot of volunteers.”

“Let’s pray this works, then.”

“Jimmy is here,” Paulo said. “Zuppa, he knows it.”

“What do you mean?” Eric asked.

“Zuppa, you know how he loves Jimmy? When he knows that boy is near, he gets excited. He’s been mad at me today, Zuppa—started
not long before you called, Miss Donna. He wants out of that stall.”

“Maybe that’s exactly who we should have searching for Jimmy, then,” Donna said.

“What if someone’s watching?” Eric asked.

“I think we can make it look good.”

When they reached Zuppa’s stall, for the first time, Eric found himself feeling afraid of the colt. The horse seemed frustrated—he
moved restlessly, tail flicking, and as they approached he snorted and kicked at the walls. Paulo talked to him, and he ceased
the kicking, but it took the combined efforts of Donna and Paulo to get him to the point where anyone felt it was safe to
take him out.

“Stand back,” Donna said, no longer whispering. But once out of his stall, Zuppa seemed calmer. He perked up bis ears, then
gave a call, one Eric had heard him make often—his greeting when Jimmy came to see him. He stretched his head out toward Eric,
who came nearer. Zuppa made a loud sighing sound.

“If I load him in the trailer while he’s in a mood like this,” Donna said, “he’ll get hurt—if we manage to load him in at
all. We made good time getting here, so I think I’ll take a minute to walk him around a little, calm him down.” Estefan and
Paulo said they would walk with her, just to help out if need be, and all three looked expectantly at Eric.

Realizing this was being said for any potential eavesdropper’s sake, he said, “Oh yes, I’m coming, too.”

As they began to walk down the row of stalls, some open, some closed up for the night, he noticed that Zuppa had tensed again,
head high.

“Where’s Jimmy, Zuppa?” Donna whispered to him.

The horse’s ears flicked, and he called again.

Something or someone seemed to be disturbing other horses in a nearby barn. They turned down that row. Two workers appeared
from the other end and began going down the row from there, looking in stalls as if checking on unsettled horses, then made
slight shrugging gestures.

Suddenly Eric heard a familiar noise. “The wake-up bot!”

“Shh,” Donna said, but she was just as excited. “Where?”

Eric couldn’t quite figure out where the sound was coming from, but Zuppa could. He began to strain against the halter, trying
to reach one of the closed stalls.

Eric hurried toward it. Someone had placed a lock on it, illegal if a horse occupied it. Estefan was soon beside him, and
before long, the lock was off. Erie pulled open the stall door and saw Jimmy lying on the cement floor, duct tape binding
his wrists and ankles, a wide silver strip of it across his mouth. On the ground nearby was the controller for the wake-up
bot. Eric ran to him, apologized for the pain that came with removal of the tape gag, and quickly cut his hands and feet free,
too. They hugged each other and cried their relief, and Donna soon joined them. “Are you okay?” Eric asked, and Jimmy nodded.
From the stall door, Paulo said, “You better come see Zuppa, Jimmy, he’s the one who told us you were here.”

Eric helped him stand and he moved stiffly to where Zuppa waited. The horse butted Jimmy’s chest and whickered, lipping at
Jimmy’s neck and ears as the boy held on to him and praised him.

“Don’t give him away to them, Uncle Eric. Don’t.”

“Not a chance. Who did this, Jimmy?”

“That guy Dennis—Laz’s son-in-law.”

Eric was stunned. “Laz? Laz wants Zuppa Inglese?”

“Dennis may not be doing this on Laz’s orders,” Donna said. “Let’s call the sheriff and let him sort it out.”

“Let’s call him from outside,” Eric said, feeling his fists clench.

She looked at him in surprise, then smiled. “All right.”

•    •    •

There was a good chance it wouldn’t work, Eric knew, but there was also a good chance that Dennis would go into the wind and
never be caught by police. Laz was wealthy and might help his daughter’s husband escape punishment.

They put Zuppa into the horse trailer and tucked Jimmy safely into the backseat of the truck’s extended cab, where he couldn’t
be seen through the dark-tinted windows. They had given him blankets, and Donna had the foresight to bring a couple of bottles
of water. Jimmy was downing one of them. When his thirst was slaked, he told them that Dennis had been waiting for him near
the place where the school bus dropped him off, and overpowered him. After restraining and gagging him, Dennis had put him
in a large empty feed sack in the backseat of his car, then covered him with feed sacks and blankets and tack. It was stifling
there, and at first, Jimmy was just happy when some of the layers were taken off. Dennis carried him and other supplies into
the empty stall, took the gag off only long enough to let Jimmy say Eric’s name on the phone call, then left him there. He
had been scared that Dennis would kill him. As the night grew colder, he worried that Zuppa would be killed, and Eric and
Donna. He’d be left alone, with no one. He managed to get the wake-up bot out of his pocket, and used his chin to try to operate
the controls.

“I wasn’t very good at it,” he said.

“You were terrific,” Eric said. “It was a smart and brave thing to do.”

Jimmy was still very shaken, Eric could see, and that infuriated him. Eric knew he had to control what seemed at the moment
to be a perfectly reasonable impulse to beat the living hell out of Dennis.

He asked Jimmy for a description of the car. A black Mercedes-Benz. Jimmy didn’t get a chance to see the license plate.

They pulled out of the backstretch area and checked with the guard, saying just what they had been ordered to say, not knowing
how close to the guard shed Dennis might be waiting and watching.

They moved the truck and trailer down the street a short distance and parked.

“Why would Laz do this?” Eric asked in a low voice. “Was he just trying to make sure Give Me Room had less competition?”

“I can’t believe it is Laz,” Donna said. “I’ve known him a long time. He’d see, I’m sure, that he just couldn’t kidnap every
horse that might be able to beat Give Me Room.”

“Zuppa hasn’t even faced Give Me Room yet. Not until the Fox River Juvenile Stakes next week, right?”

“That race is worth a lot,” Jimmy said. “But Donna’s right. I—I thought about this a lot when I was tied up. Laz would never
hurt anyone.”

“I wish they would call,” Eric said, looking at his cell phone.

As if he had willed it to do so, it began to vibrate.

“You turned the ringer off?” Jimmy said.

“Yes. I want him to think my phone isn’t working.”

“You sure this is a good idea?” Donna asked.

“No,” he answered, feeling his palms sweat.

Within seconds, the phone rang again. He waited a few moments, then got out of the truck, hearing Donna whisper, “Be careful,
Eric!” as he closed the door. He paced anxiously, telling himself that he had to look as if he didn’t know where Jimmy was
right now and was waiting for a call. He kept looking at the phone. The track workers were well hidden, but he avoided looking
at the shrubs where they were concealed.

The cell phone vibrated again, and he did not react to it. He didn’t have to pretend to be anxious now.

After a few moments, he heard a car coming. He moved to stand near the driver’s side window of the truck. When he was sure
the approaching car was a dark Mercedes, he said, “Call the sheriff now, Donna.”

Dennis pulled up behind the trailer, and Eric approached with his hands out to his side. Dennis got out of the car, obviously
ready to yell, but Eric beat him to it. “You said you would call!”

“I did, damn it!”

“Where’s Jimmy? What have you done to him?!”

“He’ll be just fine if you do what you’re told. We’re not off to a good start here. How am I supposed to give you instructions
if your damned phone isn’t working?”

Eric might have pointed out that no plan should be wholly reliant on technology, but Dennis had moved closer to him, within
striking range, and Eric could see movement in the shadows nearby. He gave into selfish desire for the first time in months
and landed a hard punch in the middle of Dennis’s face.

Before Dennis could cry out more than “You crazy bastard!” he was brought to the ground by a group of a dozen track workers.
Estefan and Paulo were among them.

“Here—he has a gun!” someone cried, and wrestled it out of Dennis’s hand before he could fire it.

At that moment, the sheriff’s department arrived.

The confusion was not easily sorted out, but within the hour Dennis was in custody. Several hours later, and after Dennis,
Eric, Jimmy, and Donna had spent time talking to Detective Pearsley, Shackel was arrested. Detective Wade appeared not long
after. He did not seem happy with Eric, but Eric had all he cared about. Donna and Jimmy were safe. Paulo and Estefan had
taken Zuppa back to his stall, promising Jimmy to give him extra apples and carrots.

Laz, informed of his son-in-law’s arrest, was both appalled and embarrassed when he learned why, and told his daughter he
would disinherit her if she posted bail. Dennis remained in custody.

After lecturing him briefly on all the things that might have gone wrong as a result of their amateurish plans, Pearsley told
Eric that Donna and Jimmy were waiting for him and he could go home.

“You’re not going to tell me what you’ve learned?”

He sighed. “You figured out most of it already. We’ve got Dennis singing his heart out, or it might have taken us longer to
figure it out. Dennis and Shackel go way back—back to when Dennis was using another name and had a record for assault and
other crimes. In exchange for not telling his new rich wife about his criminal past, Dennis did some favors for Shackel. Running
your sister-in-law off the road was one of them, I’m afraid.”

Eric nodded, but didn’t say anything. It was one thing to think something was possible, another to have it laid out as cold
fact.

“He said Shackel manipulated your brother, and Carlotta was interfering in that. Shackel had big plans and none of them were
going to happen if Carlotta got her way. He arranged for Dennis to wait for her car to reach a certain point on the road to
Shackel Horse Farm and then run her off it. Dennis would have killed her if the accident didn’t. He was paid well for that.

“Shackel was shocked to learn that your brother was less cooperative after she died. More shocked when your brother seemed
to figure out that he had something to do with her death. Your brother learned which barn was hiding the damaged truck—the
truck Shackel knew better than to take in for repair anywhere nearby. Shackel told Dennis he caught your brother trying to
look in the barn that day, and shot him full of horse tranquilizer. He drove him out to the nearby woods and made it look
like suicide. We’re still working on that part of the case.”

“And tonight?” Eric said after a while.

“That horse has become an obsession of Shackel’s, according to Dennis. Blames it and you for his troubles. They had a plan
to have you take the horse to Laz’s property, where they would injure him. He knew that with Zuppa out of contention, and
Laz discredited, Easy Dreamer was the most likely winner of the Juvenile Stakes.”

“Easy Dreamer. You know what, Detective Pearsley? You can probably get his grooms to talk about all kinds of methods Shackel
used to get to his dreams the easy way.”

•    •    •

Donna came to the house with them. She stayed with him while he explained to Jimmy what he knew about how Jimmy’s parents
died. There were tears and anger, but in the end he hugged Eric and Donna together and said, “You caught him. You caught him!
Thank you so much!”

When Jimmy had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep, Eric took Donna by the hand and led her to his bedroom.

Just before they fell into their own exhausted sleep, she said, “Zuppa is going to win the Fox River Juvenile Stakes.”

•    •    •

It was a sure thing.

Lorenzo Carcaterra

T
his was not the way it was supposed to have played out. At least not the way I had it all figured. I had been behind the financial
eight ball lots of times and lots of ways in my fifty-six years, and I always managed to squeeze my way out of the juice.
This last time shouldn’t have been any different. But this last time was the first time I thought to make Yellow Mama the
solution to my fix, and from that second on, every move I made that could go wrong did.

I’m a horse trainer by trade and a degenerate gambler by choice. I’ll bet on anything with anybody, doesn’t matter what. I’ll
lay you odds on what time the sun’s gonna come up and double down on that when it rolls around to dusk. I once turned a $400
early afternoon daily double winning into a $1,200
Monday Night Football loss,
with a 3 percent vig tossed in on top. I’m so lost when it comes down to a gambling jones, I’ll even lay a few dollars on
a pro wrestling match. I’ve made hundreds of thousands of dollars in my years at the track. Trouble is, I’ve lost thousands
more layin’ down bets and side action. My addiction has cost me everything. Besides the money, I lost the only woman I’ll
ever love, or even better, that would ever love me. Helen stuck around long enough to show me she cared, but gave up the ghost
the night Denny Miller laid a knife across her throat and swore he would leave her head on the living room floor if I didn’t
come across with the six thousand, five hundred I owed his crew. I owned a house for about a year, maybe a little longer,
small three-bedroom in the Bronx, on a dead-end street just off Ely Avenue. Now, some bookie from Pakistan lives in it with
his family, my payoff to him for the Diamondbacks taking down the Yankees in the 2001 World Series, winning run coming home
off the cheapest hit any batter could ever hope to hit. I used to drive nice cars, but gave up that habit when I got tired
of signing over each one to some loan shark that I was in with too deep. Not bad enough they peel out with my car, leaving
me behind with the monthly payments. They also have to break one of my arms, usually the right one, just so their boss knows
they tried to get the cash and settled for the car.