Racing the Devil (16 page)

I shook it, stepping in close enough to smell alcohol on his breath, if there was any. There wasn’t.

He said, “You say you’re looking at a horse I trained?”

“Two-year-old bay Arabian. Owner calls him Dakota.”

His eyes narrowed. Hardened. “He’s a good horse. Or was, before he lost his eye. Best I ever worked, maybe. But I haven’t seen him in awhile.”

“Owner says you almost blinded him with your belt buckle.”

He stared out across my shoulder, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “She said that, did she?”

“I saw the scars.”

He lifted a shoulder. “She told me it was an accident with barbed wire. I couldn’t say otherwise.” He glanced away. Guilty conscience? “Look, she was my employer. We had differences. That’s all.”

“I’m not going to pass on anything you say,” I told him. “But I don’t want to take on a horse that’s been abused.”

His tongue made a meandering bulge in his cheek as he considered. “She has a temper on her, that girl. You mind if I clean stalls while we talk?”

“No. Go ahead.”

I followed him inside. There was a pitchfork propped beside the door of the first stall and a wheelbarrow in the center aisle, empty except for a few wisps of hay and a crust of gritty brown residue. He nudged the wheelbarrow closer and picked up the pitchfork. Scooped up a forkful of soiled bedding and pitched it into the wheelbarrow tray.

I stuffed my hands into my pockets and drew in a deep breath. The building smelled of sawdust, hay, old wood, and horse. Call me crazy, but I liked it.

“Tell me about her temper,” I said.

“It didn’t happen very often,” he said. “Those fits. Mostly when something else was bothering her. Not quite a year ago, she had a really bad one. That’s when the colt got hurt, and that’s when I finally quit.”

“You quit?”

He paused with the pitchfork in mid-swing. “She tell you otherwise?”

“She said she asked you to leave.”

His laugh was just short of bitter. “Shoulda known.”

“You ever meet her husband?”

“Ex. I knew him. Fact is, he’s the one hired me. Had a problem with the substances.”

“What kind of substances?”

“Most all of ‘em. His family thought she encouraged it. Thought that was what killed him.”

“Did she?”

“Neither one of ‘em was what you’d call temperate. But seemed like she could handle it better. All I know is, they divorced, and he lost his job, and after awhile he ended up in some kind of shelter. Killed hisself, I heard.”

“She got a good chunk of his money when they split.”

“She had a lot of ammunition. Photos, witnesses, letters from some other woman.”

So. He’d cheated on her. That explained the bitterness.

“Ever meet the sister?”

“Once or twice.” He jabbed the pitchfork into the straw. “You know, you ain’t talking like a man who’s after a horse.”

Busted. I’d been too eager. Now I had two choices—bluster through, or come clean. I gave him a sheepish grin. “Guilty as charged. Actually, I’m a private investigator looking into Amy Hart-well’s death.”

“Guy who’s supposed to’ve killed her was a P.I. You working for him?”

“Yes.”

In his eyes, I saw, not hostility, but wariness. “What if he did it?” he asked. “He didn’t.”

“They say they’ve got a airtight case.”

“I’ve found a couple of holes in it.”

He scooped up another pitchfork full of horse droppings. “Man who kills a woman like that. He don’t deserve to be got off.”

“You’re right.” I bent to move the wheelbarrow closer to the stall. “Couldn’t agree more. One more thing.”

“Shoot.”

”I saw a lot of empty stalls at ValeSong.”

“She’s lost a lot of business over the years.”

“The mood swings?”

“That, and she has some problems with women. Mostly on account of men.”

Remembering her aggressive sexuality, I nodded. “Women find her threatening.”

He stopped and leaned against the pitchfork. “She has a way with the gentlemen, Mr. Callahan, but whether anything comes of it, I couldn’t say.”

“But she’s lost business because of it.”

“I’d say so. But if you’re thinking maybe she killed her sister to get some kind of inheritance, you’re way off base.”

“What makes you say that?”

“‘Cause she don’t get nothin’ if her sister dies. Calvin gets it all. Calvin and them little girls.”

I thanked him and walked back to the car, trying to make sense of this new information. Two witnesses. Two conflicting stories. I liked Asa, but he might have shown a darker side if I’d met him after a few shots of vodka. He’d denied blinding Dakota, but that meant nothing. If he had done it, he would certainly have lied about it. He’d changed the subject when I’d asked him about Amy. A guilty conscience, or justified caution? There were still some folks who might be glad to blame a black man with a history of violence for the murder of a white woman.

He might even be guilty, but as far as I could tell, he had no reason to frame me for the murder, so I guessed that left me at square one.

I pulled over and punched Frank’s number on the speed dial. Home was one, Maria and Paulie two, Randall three, and Frank four.

“I got good news and bad news,” Frank said. “You want the good news first?”

“Bad news first. Save dessert for last.”

“Okay. Bad news is, the semen in the victim and on the photographs is yours.”

I’d known it, but that didn’t stop a knot from forming in my gut when he said so. “The good news had better be damn good.”

“The semen in the victim had traces of spermicide.”

“People use birth control, Frank. That’s not unusual.”

“Yeah, but the semen on the photographs . . . They found traces of spermicide in that, too.”

It wasn’t exoneration, but it was a crack in Heather’s flawless plan. There was no reason for a man to use a spermicide while masturbating over pornography. Which meant that the semen on the photographs and the semen in the victim had come from the same source—the condom Heather had taken from the motel room.

I took a deep breath and asked, “Is it enough?”

On the other end, I heard his chair creak as he shifted his weight. “Not for the D.A., probably. But it’s a start.”

ON MY VOICE MAIL
was a terse message from Reverend Avery saying he wanted no part of Ian Callahan’s true crime book, so I drove home and spent an hour dying my hair red and applying a matching beard and mustache. In winter, it wouldn’t be too bad, but I dreaded wearing them out in the July heat.

Every trade has its downside.

When I’d finished, I pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a short-sleeved madras shirt worn outside the belt to hide the Colt. A pair of scuffed work boots completed the ensemble.

“You look like a lumberjack,” Jay said, when I strolled into the kitchen. His hair was rumpled, and he was wearing pajama bottoms and a blue velour bathrobe, belted at the waist. The robe gaped open at the top to reveal a flash of pale white chest with a livid purple lesion under one nipple. Noticing my glance, he flushed and clutched the gap closed with one hand. “Very rugged.”

“That wasn’t exactly what I was going for.” “Oh? What were you going for?”

I shrugged and went to the refrigerator for a beer. “Just something different.”

“Well, honey, I think you succeeded. If you went to the Pearly Gates in that get-up, I don’t think God himself would recognize you.”

“You did.”

He laughed. “Well, I knew it was either you, or you’d spent the night with a delicious-looking lumberjack, the odds of which were something less than minuscule. So what’s the occasion?”

“I just moved to town with my wife and two kids. We’re looking for a church to go to, and I saw the Reverend Avery on TV the other night, so I thought I’d drop in at the parsonage and see if he was what we’re looking for.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Computer programmer.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You don’t know enough about computers.”

“I’ve heard you talk about them often enough.”

“Yes, but if you say you’re in the computer business, he’ll tell you that his system’s down, or that he can’t access some file or other, or that he keeps getting error messages, and he’ll want you to fix the problem while you’re there. It’s kind of like being a doctor. Suddenly everybody has a sore throat.” He took a bite of cereal and closed his eyes, as if in ecstasy.

“What is that? Captain Crunch?”

“Mmhm.” He opened his eyes. “I know it’s not good for me, but sometimes I just get a craving for the stuff.”

“Sounds good.” I thought about pouring myself a bowlful, decided Cap’n Crunch would probably be incompatible with beer. “So, no computers. What’s your suggestion?”

“Why not tell him you’re a cop? Between jobs, so you don’t have to deal with that ‘impersonating a policeman’ problem. Your wife is in computers, and you followed her here when she got a job offer she couldn’t refuse.” He grinned, little gobs of yellow cereal stuck between his teeth. “And tell him that your kids are still small. Toddlers, maybe.”

I nodded. “It’s good.”

“You haven’t started work yet. You’re still in the application process. Which is why you can show up at the parsonage in the middle of the day, dressed like a lumberjack.”

“You think I should change?”

“No. It’s kind of sexy, actually.” He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin and pushed himself away from the table. “So, of course, you’re going to waste it on a heterosexual man of the cloth.”

R
EVEREND SAMUEL AVERY
lived in a red brick, new-money McMansion a few hundred yards from an old-money golf course. I’d called Avery on the way over, introduced myself as Herman Abernathy, and given him the cover story Jay had come up with. Avery seemed pleased with my interest in his church and told me to come on by.

A balding man with thick, wire-framed glasses, he met me at the door wearing tan slacks and a short-sleeved white dress shirt with large wet circles under the armpits. The top button of his collar was buttoned, and a fold of fat bulged over the cloth like a roll of Jimmy Dean sausage with a split in the package. His neck and face were red, as if the circulation had been cut off at the neck. It made him look like a petulant Pillsbury doughboy with a sunburn.

With a fake beard and mustache, could he be said to match my description?

Maybe to a blind man.

“Reverend Avery,” I said.

He grasped my hand in a sweaty paw and gave it a halfhearted pump. “Mr. Abernathy?” he said. The smooth, soft voice still made my gut recoil. I could almost place it.

I ducked my head in an awkward nod and answered, “That’s right. I called earlier.”

He stepped aside to let me enter. “Come in, Mr. Abernathy. My wife left us a pitcher of iced tea. Can I pour you a glass?”

“Thank you,” I said. “Much obliged.”

The tea was strong and very sweet. I sat at his kitchen table, sipped my drink, and glanced around the room. Sparkling marble counters, Italian-style mosaic tiles, white lace tablecloth crisp and pressed and freshly laundered. The curtains were some kind of embroidered silk fabric that had probably cost enough to feed a small village.

He glanced at his watch. It looked like a Rolex, and not a knock-off, either. “I don’t mean to rush you, but I have an appointment in about an hour. What can I do for you?”

“I saw you on TV the other night,” I said. “That was real sad, that lady getting killed.”

His head bobbed, jiggling the skin beneath his chin. “Indeed it was. Very sad. It’s always sad when a young life is snuffed out, but even more so when that life has fallen from grace.”

“You said something like that at the service,” I said, as if I’d just remembered. “You think she’d turned her back on God.”

“I’m afraid she did. The manner of her death attests to that.” He cleared his throat and took a sip of tea. “Mind you, I’m not saying she deserved to die in such an . . . unsavory manner. No, that is not for me to decide. But she certainly reaped what she’d sown. Tell me, Mr. Abernathy, what made you decide to follow your wife across the country?”

I shrugged. “It was a good job. It meant a lot to her. Me, I can work anywhere.”

“I don’t mean to be critical, but if you mean to join my congregation, you should know I disapprove of a man relinquishing his place as head of the home. Especially when there are children to consider. Your wife has usurped your place at the head of the family, and if you’re to live your life as the Good Lord meant it to be lived, you must reclaim it. As Christ is the head of his church, so must a man be the head of his household. Tell me, who cares for your children?”

“We take them to day care,” I said, giving the answer I thought would bother him most.

“Day care.” His velvet voice resonated with the rhythms of a Southern fire-and-brimstone preacher. It was a strange dichotomy. It reminded me of—

Before I could remember, he went on. “Son, I’m glad you came to me today, because your family is in peril. Your children are growing up without their mother, without a strong moral foundation.”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“There are children killing children every day in this country. Why? Because they aren’t being taught values at home. Their mamas are out working, and there’s no one there to guide them to the Lord.”