Murder at the Racetrack (6 page)

Why didn’t you call me, talk to me, tell me how much you were troubled?
That one would be much higher. Far above that would be,
How could you bear to do this to Jimmy?

The inevitable images, derived from Eric’s imagination and what he had been told about his brother’s death, played through
his mind, his personal horror film.

Setting: the rolling hills north of this racetrack. A rural road crests near Shackel Horse Farm.

Action: Mark stands outside his vintage Corvette on a hill that overlooks the farm, watching the morning workouts through
binoculars. Perhaps he had wanted to watch Zuppa Inglese run one last time but did not want to interact with the people who
worked there. Remote, from above.

Another horse owner is the last person to have seen him alive.
{Was she?
His mind never wants to let go of this question.) She drives past him, does not stop to say, “Mark, think of the people who
love you,” “Mark, there is a way through this, let me help you,” or any of the things Eric would have said if he had been
the one to have a last chance to talk to his brother.

But Eric is not there, and Mark gets back into his car and drives to a vacant, wooded lot not far away. He has the courtesy,
at least, to do this away from the house, in a place where Jimmy is unlikely to discover him. Mark takes the gun he has brought
with him and… hesitates? Reconsiders? It does not matter. Ultimately, he lifts it to his mouth and fires it.

No note. Detective Delmore, who investigated the suicide for the Osita County Sheriff’s Department, said that often was the
case. So no note, just the body of a man who couldn’t even bring himself to communicate last thoughts to his son or brother.
All that he had to say to be said by the act itself.

This is what Eric has to be satisfied with. His questions, his initial denial of the idea that Mark has done this to himself,
his insistence that Mark would never kill himself while Jimmy still needed him, Delmore patiently and inexorably, and ultimately
pityingly, refutes. Delmore has investigated many deaths. Eric is no more an expert in suicide and homicide than he is in
horses.

•    •    •

Eric sighed. He knew what would happen if he kept thinking about Mark’s death, and he sure as hell didn’t want to have Shackel
find him in here on a crying jag, so he forced his thoughts in another direction. Rehearsed what he would say again. Tried
to envision success. A former girlfriend had been big on the envisioning thing. Although her vision of Eric proposing to her
was all for naught, maybe envisioning could work in situations like this one. He tried to picture Shackel taking the news
like a grown-up. The horse transport van would arrive and Zuppa Inglese would be moved from Shackel’s barn at the Fox River
Racetrack to Copper Hills Farms. He didn’t really know if that could make a difference in the horse’s performance, but it
would make his nephew happy.

His attempt to picture Jimmy feeling happy about much of anything caused the vision to evaporate.

So far, nothing had gone according to plan. Shackel was the sort of man Eric thought of as a Forceful Personality, so Eric
couldn’t help feeling a bit wound up in anticipation of this encounter—after all, Eric came here to fire him. And the truth
was, he was doing the firing at the insistence of a twelve-year-old. He trusted Jimmy when it came to horses, but that didn’t
make this task a pleasant one. He would do it, though. He would stick to what he planned to say and be done with it.

No sooner had he stepped into the trainer’s cramped office than he realized that things might not follow his hoped-for script.

Shackel was standing behind his desk, frowning, holding an unopened bottle of a sports drink. Several inches taller than Eric,
who was just under six feet tall, right at that moment Shackel appeared to be a broad-shouldered giant. When he saw Eric,
his expression suddenly changed, and he looked for all the world as if he were struggling not to weep. He set the drink down
and came out from behind the desk to take Eric’s hand in a firm grip. “Eric, my God—I’m so sorry. You’ve had a difficult time
of it, haven’t you? I can’t believe we haven’t had a chance to talk since Mark…” He let the sentence trail off, then went
on in a soft, choked voice. “Since the funeral. I hope you know that if there’s anything I can do for you or Jimmy, you just
say the word. That kid practically grew up here, you know.” Shackel guided him to the oversized guest chair, while Eric tried
to quickly figure out a way to go from condolence and reminiscence to telling the man that he was taking a horse away from
him.

Shackel moved back behind his desk and said, “You’ve had a long drive out here. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Bottled water?
I’ve got some cold Pellegrino.” He motioned toward a refrigerator behind the desk. He picked up the sports drink and said,
“I’d offer you one of these, but they’re warm. But anything else… ?”

“No, thank you,” Eric replied, the only words he managed to speak before Shackel’s intercom buzzed.

Shackel excused himself, saying, “Sorry, the vet’s here and needs to talk to me. Make yourself at home, this shouldn’t take
long. And I want to get the times for Zuppa’s workout this morning…” but he was closing the office door behind him as he said
this.

The window air conditioner wasn’t keeping up with the late summer afternoon heat. After fifteen minutes of waiting for Shackel’s
return, Eric’s nervousness got the better of him, and he began pacing around the small office, trying to learn a little more
about the man he was going to confront.

The desk was cleared of any business papers, so Shackel was apparently neat and private. The other objects on its surface
gave few hints: a notebook computer, closed and quiet. A phone, a radio, and a marble and brass penholder. Eric walked around
the desk to see the office from Shackel’s point of view and nearly tripped over a big case of the sports drinks. It was pulled
halfway out from beneath the kneehole. A couple of bottles were missing, and apparently Shackel hadn’t pushed it back beneath
the desk. No points away from neatness, though—Eric had obviously interrupted him before he had a chance to put them away.
A small stack of the
Daily Racing Form
and another of
The Blood-Horse.
A remote control for a television.

He saw a small television set mounted on one wall, cables running from it to a VCR on a long shelf beneath it, the rest of
the shelf taken up by a row of videotapes, all marked with what he eventually realized were names of races. A tray atop a
little cabinet had a few expensive brands of liquor and some handsome crystal tumblers on it, but either the bottles were
new or Shackel didn’t drink much. Something for visiting owners as they watched a replay of races?

A short bookcase held thick tomes similar to ones Mark owned, which Jimmy had told him were called “stud books,” and were
horses’ family trees. Eric spent a while studying the spines of Shackel’s books. A number were about breeding racehorses;
many more seemed to be professional general textbooks on horses and their care; a few were highly specialized titles, mostly
about equine medical issues.

Along the other walls of the room were certificates and licenses from the state horse-racing board and various associations
for horse racing, horse training, and horse breeding. There was a small, gaudy, red-and-white shirt and cap made of silk,
with “SHF” for Shackel Horse Farm worked into the design. Jockey’s silks—Eric knew that from seeing something equally gaudy
at Mark’s house, although the Halsted colors were different, blue and green in a diamond pattern. The wall opposite the bookcase
was covered with finish line and winner’s circle photographs, and a large painting of a handsome horse who looked down at
him with an air of serene self-assurance. A brass plate on the frame identified him as Pete’s Cake.

The name was familiar. Eric had been told by Jimmy that this horse’s parents were Pete’s Bread and Cakewalk. How did they
come up with these names? Shouldn’t a name sound fast? “Lightning,” or something like that? Well, somebody else probably took
that name a long time ago. He shrugged and kept pacing.

He did know a little about some of these horses. Mark had once been a part owner of Pete’s Cake, he knew, and the horse had
won some races. Mark had sold his share to Shackel in a complicated arrangement that Eric could hardly grasp, one that somehow
allowed Pete’s Cake to have sex with one of Mark’s other horses—a mare named Don’t Trifle With Me, a fact that Eric found
amusing, given her role in the proceedings. The baby of the mother horse—no, no, Jimmy said to call her “the dam” and Pete’s
Cake was “the sire,” and the baby was the foal. That’s right. The foal was Zuppa Inglese.

Pete’s Cake was in several of the photographs. Eric studied the jockeys’ names. Were they famous? Were the races important
ones?

He sighed. He might as well have landed on another planet. His nephew’s immediate, scornful, but accurate appraisal of Eric’s
understanding of this milieu ran through his mind in a continuous loop as he paced.
You don’t know anything about horse racing. You don’t even know what you’re looking at when you see a horse.

One additional part of Jimmy’s assessment Eric had deemed going a bit too far:
I’m not sure you can tell a mane from a tail, so if you ever get close to a horse, watch where you put your hands.

The pacing made him feel a little too warm, so he decided to look for that Pellegrino. He opened the refrigerator and saw
beer and a bunch of carrots—well, horses liked carrots. He knew that much, didn’t he? Probably some sugar cubes in here, too.
There were other vegetables, a couple of apples, some sealed plastic containers, a box of baking soda, what looked to be a
wide variety of veterinary medications (perhaps this was the horses’ refrigerator, too?), some nondairy creamer, and a bag
of coffee beans. He looked at the racks in the refrigerator door: two bottles of fume blanc and at long last, the Pellegrino.
He thought of putting away some of the sports drinks, decided he didn’t owe Shackel any favors, and shut the refrigerator
door. He found a bottle opener at the wet bar, poured himself a crystal tumbler’s worth, and sat back down.

He was finishing off the last of it when Shackel returned. For a moment, surprise registered on Shackel’s face, and he glanced
toward the desk. Eric felt a little bloom of confidence.
Didn’t think I’d get out of the chair, eh? No, I didn’t go through jour desk or computer.

“I shouldn’t have left you in here alone for so long. I’m sorry,” Shackel said. “I’m glad to see you made yourself comfortable,
though. Good, good.”

The bloom faded. Eric suddenly felt criminal for taking even this small bit of water from a man he was about to fire. But
he glanced at his watch and regained his resolve. A forty-minute wait!

“Zuppa’s a youngster, a two-year-old that hasn’t let us really see his stuff yet,” Shackel said, “but I’ve made some changes
and—”

“Mr. Shackel, forgive me, I’ve arranged to have the horse trained elsewhere. ”

Shackel went pale. “You can’t— ”

Eric explained that yes, indeed, he could.

“You—you don’t blame me for what happened to Mark, do you?”

“For my brother’s suicide? No.” Was that a lie? Not for the first time, Eric wondered if he did irrationally blame Shackel,
and if that were really what lay beneath his willingness to move the horse from this trainer. He chose his words carefully.
“Mr. Shackel, this has been a difficult time for everyone, but I assure you my decision is final.”

He had no sooner said this than the intercom buzzed again. Shackel answered it, his frown deepening as he listened. “Wait
a minute…” He looked up at Eric. “Eric, they tell me a transport truck you ordered is here, and that Donna Free-point followed
it in. If she’s your new trainer, well—you really couldn’t be making a worse mistake. Not just in taking Zuppa from here at
this point in his training, but in choosing her.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but there’s nothing more to be said, really.”

Eric discovered that from Shackel’s perspective, this was not quite true. The trainer treated him to a tirade that included
a great many terms that Eric was not familiar with and few that he knew well and seldom used, and ended with, “You don’t know
anything about horses! ”

“On that we agree,” Eric said, feeling much better about drinking the Pellegrino now, and walked out of the office.

He stayed on the grounds only long enough to ensure that the horse was actually led into the trailer and that Donna Freepoint
did not meet with physical harm. The daughter of a retired trainer, she was a slender, athletic blonde in her early thirties,
who had a no-nonsense air about her. Eric found her incredibly attractive and completely out of reach. Not only was he sure
the difference of perhaps as much as ten years between their ages would make him seem too old to her, he was certain his ignorance
of horses doomed whatever slight chance he might have. And because he was almost always (eventually) honest with himself,
he owned up to the fact that she had not shown the slightest degree of romantic interest in him.

He saw her watching as Shackel followed him out of the office, still shouting, and so he did his best to appear completely
unruffled. This was not easy, given Shackel’s rage, and only the thought that she might need him to defend her kept him from
hurrying away from the man.

She managed to silence Shackel with one look, and Eric realized that not even the burly driver of the transport truck, who
had just come to her side, was going to need to intervene on her behalf.

Although Eric had seen a number of horses being ridden or walked around the track grounds, when he saw the big dark horse
being led toward them, he suddenly felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. There was something… some something about this
horse that made Zuppa Inglese stand out. He was tall, but not really more of a giant than some of the other big horses in
the stables. Well, now that Eric looked around, he wasn’t any bigger than average. He just
seemed
taller. He held himself differently, Eric decided. He had an attitude.