The Bookwoman's Last Fling (21 page)

“Wouldn't be the first time something like that's happened.”

“He'd need a reason, wouldn't he?”

“Maybe he had a reason. Unless he was a total whacko.”

“He wasn't like that. He was possessive, not crazy—my opinion, for what it's worth.”

“But you didn't know him particularly well.”

“Maybe not. But if you're asking me what I think…” She shrugged.

We ate some more and a period of quiet fell over the table.

“Was she ever despondent enough to harm herself?”

“No, no. Of all the things I
don't
know, I'm sure of that.”

I returned to the premise. “And Geiger had no reason, right?”

We looked at each other and Erin watched us both.

“I'm telling you he didn't kill her,” Gail said. “He loved her. I'm convinced of that.”

“Well, if he didn't, and she didn't, and it wasn't an accident, then somebody else did. Any idea who that could be?”

“No.”

“No idea at all?”

She looked down at her plate. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk about her. I shouldn't.”

“I appreciate that, Gail. But if anybody's ever gonna get to the bottom of this, and I'm the only one trying right now, somebody will have to tell me what she knows.”

She shook her head.

“Did you ever see her with other men?”

She looked away at the kitchen.

“Gail,” Erin said, “you didn't come all the way up here not to tell him.”

“I know you're right. It just seems like such a violation of her life.”

“The real violation of her life,” I said, “was if somebody killed her and nobody does anything about it.”

Suddenly there were tears on her cheeks. I reached across and put a hand on her shoulder and told her I was sorry. She dabbed at her eyes. “I'm having a harder time with this than I thought I would.”

“Take your time. Finish your dinner.”

The food truly was exceptional, and even Gail ate with good appetite. As we were considering dessert, she said, “There was a man. I wasn't supposed to know, and really, I shouldn't have known. I wasn't spying, I swear.”

“It would never have occurred to me to think you were.”

“I felt so bad afterward…”

“After what?”

“I saw them…kissing…in the woods.”

I nodded. “Any idea who he might have been?”

She shook her head.

“This may be important. Did you see him clearly?”

She nodded her head. “Pretty well.”

“Did he see you?”

“No.”

“You're sure.”

“Yes.”

“Could he have seen you without you knowing? Did you look away at any time?”

“I felt so guilty watching them. I did look away, and I thought,
I've got to get out of here.
But then I couldn't even pick up my feet to walk away.”

I squeezed her arm. “It's okay.”

“No, it's not. It'll never be okay.”

“It's time you stopped beating yourself up over it.”

She drank a small sip of water.

“Can you describe this man?”

“He was younger than her but quite a bit taller. He wore a sport coat open at the collar and a black hat, one of those old-style hats you sometimes see in old movies from the forties. And at one point he seemed annoyed and started to walk away. And she yelled after him, ‘Oh pooh!'”

“Sandy,” I said.

“You know who he is?”

“I know somebody who fits. And he did have an affair with Candice, and she called him Pooh. But he told me about that. Would you know him if you saw him again?”

“After all this time, I'm not sure.”

“When was this? When did you see them?”

“Not long after I met her.” She shook her head. “I'm sorry, I'm terrible with dates.”

“Anything might help.”

“At least thirty years ago.”

“Were there others?”

“A few, I think.”

“Did you see any of them?”

“I hope you don't think I was in the habit of spying on her.”

“Not at all. But sometimes accidents happen.”

“I never saw her with anyone else.”

“But you knew there had been others?”

“She told me.”

I leaned forward and looked in her elusive eyes. “In what context did she tell you?”

She shook her head. “I don't understand the question.”

“Did she suddenly tell you for no reason, like a confession, or did she seem to know that you knew? Just tell me how it came up.”

“We were out in the field one day and she said, ‘My God, Gail, I'm having an affair.'”

“Just like that.”

“Yes, it was shocking the way it came up, so suddenly. Then I realized she was very troubled and was asking for my advice.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said I would never presume to judge her about anything, I believed in her always, and I did. I knew she would never do something like that frivolously, and if I could ever help her, even if all I could give her was a shoulder to cry on, she should feel free. Then she hugged me tight and said thanks. Said she loved me and I felt my own tears start.”

“She never mentioned any names?”

“No.”

I said, “What about nicknames?” and she smiled affectionately.

“She was always doing that. She called me Tinker Bell. Her daughter was Goldilocks. She remembered her father as Geppetto, very affectionately.”

“Any others?”

“Fagan. She called her husband that when she was annoyed with him.”

“But not to his face?”

She shook her head, definitely no.

“Did she ever talk to you about her men friends again?”

“Never.” Her hand trembled and she said, “I'm really only guessing about others, but I think I could sense when she was troubled like that. I know her conscience bothered her terribly, I think she had some very bad nights. But she never mentioned it to me again.”

She took a deep breath. “That day I saw her. I think it was her first fling.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “Now the trick is to find out about her last.”

That night I bunked in the tack room. Erin wanted to stay with Gail and drive her home in the morning and I wanted to touch base with Sandy. “Keep away from that farm,” I said, adding “please” as an afterthought. She crossed her heart, we picked up my car, and I watched them drive away together in Erin's rental. Ten minutes later I was at Golden Gate, passed into the stable area by the night man.

I stopped at the office. My note was gone again and I put another up and red-marked the word REWARD. Then I walked off into the darkness between the barns and a moment later I arrived in Sandy's shedrow.

Tonight it was deserted: the ginneys were probably still off somewhere at dinner, and I opened my room and put a chair in the doorway where I could look down the shedrow and see the whole length of it. There I sat, thinking about Candice and her short troubled life. I thought about Candice and Sandy and I wondered, not for the first time, how Sandy fit the mold of a killer. He was skittish, nervous, and, like Junior, had moments of real temper. Clearly he didn't want me nosing around anymore. Who else did I have?…Junior?…the brothers? Baxter was suddenly chummy; maybe, given the eccentric things I had heard about him, too willing now to accommodate my questions. I sat there for a long time and no strokes of brilliance occurred. The shedrow was deadly quiet: not even the eternally curious Pompeii Ruler stuck his head over the webbing to see what I was doing.

I sat still, contributing nothing to break the stillness of the night. I had been there fifteen minutes more or less when I saw a movement down at the far end of the shedrow. A man appeared. All I could tell about him from that distance was that he was not one of ours. He walked with a shuffle, as if life had beaten him down over the years: an older man, I thought, when he was still just a shadow half the barn away. He came under one of the lightbulbs and I saw that he was wearing a red flannel shirt and a ratty pair of Dickies-style pants. He had a hat such as it was, an old fedora that nobody wears today, which made me think of the man with Candice long ago. His hat was battered like the rest of him. He came reluctantly, slowly, and as he passed under another light I saw that the right leg of his pants had broken up the seam to his crotch and was held together with half a dozen safety pins. A ginney's seam job, I thought. I had seen others wearing pants like that.

He stopped thirty yards from my open door.

“You the guy that's been leaving the notes in the office?”

His voice was raspy and he coughed when he spoke. I could see now that he had one of my notes in his hand. I said, “I left the notes,” but still he came no closer. I couldn't quite make out his face yet: that wide brim of his hat kept him in shadow. He held the paper up and said, “This says there's a reward.” I said, “Depends on what you can tell me,” and he took a step back out of the light. “I'm trying to find out who Mrs. Geiger knew back in those days,” I said. “Did you know them?” He seemed to totter unsteadily as if he'd been drinking and he backed off another step. But when he spoke again his voice was steady and clear. “I knew them. Knew her, I should say.”

This seemed unlikely, but almost at once I realized that more than twenty years of bad luck could make a big difference in how a man looked, dressed, smelled, and approached the world. He said, “I need money. I need to know now if you're serious or blowin' smoke.”

“I'm damned serious,” I said.

“Then tell me how much money you're talkin' about.”

“For the right information, substantial money.”

“You're still dancing around. There's no way to know what that means or if you'll pay me anything after I tell you what I know.”

“I'll give you a hundred dollars now, whatever you've got to say; more later if it works out.”

Again he wavered. I could tell he was tempted but he said, “I have a need for quite a bit more than that.”

“Come on over here and let's talk.”

But he stood his ground and held the note loosely at his side. “I need a thousand,” he said finally.

“I can arrange that. But the information's got to be worth it.”

Now I guessed he'd be refiguring it: I had jumped at his thousand dollars too soon, and sure enough, he said, “What if what I know is worth more than that?”

“Then I'll pay you what it's worth.”

“How do I know that?”

“There's no way to tell till I hear it.”

I thought for a moment I'd lose him. He did a slight half-turn in the shedrow and took another step back. “I trust nobody,” he said. “You wouldn't either if you were me.”

“On the other hand, who else is buying?”

Almost thirty seconds passed while he thought it over. “You want me to tell first,” he said. “Pretty good deal for you.”

“I don't lie.”

“Neither did Brutus,” he said, surprising me.

“Two hundred now,” I said. “Cash on the barrelhead.”

“Two hundred just for talking to you. You must want something really bad.”

I knew then he was going to take it. I said, “Give me some general hints. No specifics, just an overview of what you've got. Then we can talk terms.”

“What if I dictate the terms?”

“Go ahead and we'll see where we are.”

Again he seemed reluctant, like a man sitting on an oil well who's being offered a price for cheap desert land. “How high will you go?”

We were getting nowhere. “You mean on a blind like this? I can't be a fool any more than you can.”

“Three hundred now,” he said. “More later. Maybe a lot more.”

“Or nothing later, depending on what you say. Or don't say.”

“But three hundred now. I get to keep that, no matter what.”

“Two hundred cash, in advance,” I said. “Another hundred if I like what you've got to sell. Then we negotiate the specifics.”

“Gimme the money.”

Sometimes you've got to go with your gut. I reached in my wallet and fished out two bills. He came forward slowly, like an enemy expecting a trap in an alien land. He held his head down, keeping his face in shadows, but it didn't matter: He was here, obviously a racetracker; this was a small world and I'd be able to find him again. I handed him the two bills and had a brief clear look at his hands. Rough hands they were, caked with dirt under the nails. He had my money now and he backed away again.

“So,” I said, “what is it you're selling?”

“Not now, I got to do something else tonight. Meet me tomorrow night at the Santa Anita. That's a bar down the road on San Pablo.”

I had seen its lights several times on my way in and out. “Do I at least get to know your name for my money?”

“Cash on the barrelhead, you don't need my name.” But then he said, “Call me Rick.”

“Where can I find you…in case, you know, you don't show up.”

“I'll show up.”

“Okay, Rick. What time tomorrow?”

“After work. Say six-thirty.”

“All right, I'll be there. But you be prepared to say something.”

“And you bring that other bill.”

He turned and walked away. I felt like a fool, but whatever happened I had asked for it.

“Hey,” I said when he was thirty yards away. He stopped but didn't turn again, leaving me looking at his back. “How well did you really know her?”

He didn't move: just stood there looking out at the night. “I knew her for years.” He coughed. “I know everything about her worth knowing.”

“That could cover a lot of living.”

“Worried about your dough?”

Suddenly he heard voices down the shedrow—our crew coming back from chow. He turned and walked across the black tow ring to the barn across the way. He disappeared and in almost the same instant Obie and Bob came around the corner.

 

The shedrow came to life. We sat in the cool evening air talking and laughing, but my mind wouldn't stay focused on the usual hijinks. I was thinking of Erin and Gail and I owed Sharon a report.
Tomorrow,
I thought.
Maybe then I'd have something real to tell her.

It was a long night of little sleep. I lay awake reading into the early morning. At last I turned off my light, but even then sleep was elusive, difficult, poor.

I opened my eyes to the usual morning shedrow racket. Horses nickering, feed tubs rattling, ginneys talking. I started walking a blood bay filly I had never seen. “Be careful with that one,” Obie said. “That's Ms. Patterson's little lady.”

“I'm careful with all of 'em,” I said. But of course he would know that, and I knew there was a message hidden in the warning. “What's her name?”

“North Hills, and she is one classy gal. Undefeated, won six in a row from real stakes competition.”

“Sandy training for Ms. P. now?”

“Looks like it. She's gonna ship this one south pretty soon with some others.”

“Then what happens?”

“All's I can do is guess.”

I could guess as well. Then Sandy would leave his own horses with another trainer and go have his fling at the big time. I said, “You got a trainer's license, Obie?”

He smiled and I wished him luck.

I took North Hills out into the tow ring. The dried mud had been crushed down by now and the walking was easy, a welcome relief from the gloom under the shedrow. Sandy arrived with Ms. Patterson about twenty minutes later. Again her husband was missing in action. Sandy spent most of the morning with his head in the work. It was impossible to read him at that point: If he looked at me at all I didn't see it. The bug boy came and Sandy took Erica's Eyes to the track. Ms. Patterson walked up with him and they watched together from the rail. The sun was just breaking through the pink clouds in the east and the shedrow across the way was coming to life. I heard a voice I knew: Rudy, touting his best bet of the day.

Pompeii Ruler worked a fast half-mile. Eight others were breezed a mile. The last five were walked. When I finished, Sandy and Ms. P. were gone.

I called Erin at the end of the morning. They were sitting on Gail's veranda drinking coffee. I talked to Gail briefly, asked if she had ever heard Candice mention the name Rick, but no, she hadn't.

I killed the afternoon watching the races without making as much as a two-dollar bet. I tried Sharon and left a short message saying I'd call her again tomorrow.

That night I found my way to the Santa Anita bar. Rick wasn't there, the son of a bitch. I waited till the cows came home, at least ninety minutes, but he never did show.