I kept the Ghost restrained to second gear, motoring away from Western State at thirty miles per hour. I navigated back roads, skirting the Puget Sound waterfront that faced Fox Island, then cut across Tacoma’s North End neighborhood, all the while resisting the urge to stop at Eleanor’s house. Drop in. Find somebody who was happy to see me. Or somebody just to see me.
But I didn’t trust myself.
There was an edge, just past my feet, so close that one more step might bring the long, descending cry. And never-ending tears. That precipice where self-pity beckoned.
You’re an orphan.
One parent dead, murdered. The other had left for another world, a land so remote nobody issued passports.
And your lies sent her there.
When I reached Thea’s Landing, my condo looked precisely the same. No mess. No family. No life. Staving off the weeps, I walked to the refrigerator and threw a frozen burger into the microwave, sliced the Tillamook cheese, and toasted a bun, slathering the bread with mayonnaise. Freud would diagnose this moment “emotional eating.” And I wouldn’t disagree, but I could guarantee we disagreed on the outcome. A cheeseburger made me feel better. And there was nothing wrong with that. In fact, after polishing off the first, I was trying to decide if a second one would taste even better, but the phone rang. I glanced at the clock on the microwave. Almost 10:00 p.m. The caller was probably a telemarketer. Or DeMott. Or Jack.
And I didn’t feel like talking to any of them.
But the voice that trumpeted through the answering machine sounded like human reveille.
Eleanor.
“Raleigh! If you are not home—you should be!”
I picked up. “Hi, I’m here.”
“No time for chitchat,” she said. “The arson investigator is coming to the barn tomorrow.”
“All right.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! He wants us there at six in the morning!”
“Okay.”
“Okay? I’ll have you know, the last time I opened an eyelid before 8:00 a.m., it was to vote for Eisenhower.”
“I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to be there.”
“Let me warn you, the man did not sound friendly.”
“He’s not selling Amway.”
“Are you being smart?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, don’t attempt it with this gentleman. He’s one of those people.”
“Which people?”
“I haven’t told you—the two kinds of people in this world?”
I tapped my finger on the plate, picking up the crumbs, laying them on my tongue. The playwright was coming, I could feel it. “Tennessee?”
“Are you listening?”
“Promise.”
“The great difference between people in this world is not between rich and poor or good and evil. It’s between the people who’ve had love and those who haven’t, the people who just look at love with envy. Sick envy.”
The words scraped up my throat. “Who said that?”
“Chance Wayne. Act one of Sweet Bird of Youth. My first husband uttered those lines during the show in Kalamazoo, and from that moment on, I knew we were doomed. But that’s another story.”
I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me. “I’ll meet the arson inspector at the barn. Thanks for the warning.”
She wished me sweet dreams and hung up.
In the otherwise empty sink, I rinsed my dish. The stainless metal had a flat gray light and it seemed to accuse me. I turned away, drying my hands on a spotless towel and refusing to look at my reflection in the microwave’s glass door. I walked through the quiet untouched rooms, preparing myself for bed and refusing to admit the feeling that was pressing down on my heart. But it was there.
Eleanor’s description of the arson investigator might just as easily be applied to me.
Friday morning, I wore high-styled armor. The brass buttons on my Chanel jacket looked like military bars. The ironed creases in my silk-blend trousers stood out like battle greaves. And dark sunglasses visored my eyes. Big sunglasses. The waterworks had arrived with last night’s bedside prayers. My eyes were still puffy.
The backstretch was nearly empty as most of the horses were out running on the track or being prepared for it. There was a faint blanket of dew glistening on the sawdust, and I lifted the sunglasses to get a full glimpse of Mount Rainier. In the morning light, the glaciers had the pink and purple hues of fresh bruises. But I dropped my shades when I saw him. It wasn’t hard to pick him out. In the closed circuit of the backstretch, strangers stood out like neon signs. Strangers like me. But when I came up beside him, I realized Eleanor was right.
“You must be the arson inspector,” I said.
Instead of answering, he cataloged my appearance. His eyes were dark gray—a color like smoke, I decided—and his hair was also gray but closer to the hues of fog. The hair grew from the top of his head, the roots lifting straight up before the strands fell to the sides into an ash heap of a hairstyle. A brushy mustache covered his upper lip and inevitably reminded me of a chimney sweep’s broom.
I extended my hand. “Raleigh David.”
“Walter Wertzer.” Rather than shake my hand, he opened a notebook and took out his business card, offering it to me.
I read it carefully. The name and title were in large print. Too large. “Nice to meet you,” I lied.
“I already talked to your trainer, Bill Cooper.”
“Bill’s the one to talk to.” I placed the card in my Coach bag.
“Funny. He said I should talk to you.”
I smiled but the bad feeling crept across my neck, like the whisper of a noose. “Bill’s just being generous. He knows much more about the barns, the horses, everything. I’m still learning.”
“You do that often?”
“Pardon?”
“Sleep in a stall. With a horse.”
“No. In fact, never.”
“So why that night?” He clicked his pen, flipping to a fresh page in the notebook.
I stared at the empty page. My life was overpopulated by note-takers. “I stayed in the stall because the horse was sick. And the vet, or rather the assistant vet, wanted somebody to stay with her. I was available.”
He wrote in the notebook, head down. I stared at the smoky haystack radiating from his scalp and realized two problems. One, Cooper should’ve already told him why I was in the stall that night. And two, Wertzer was writing down my statement without any concern for how the transcription made me feel. He didn’t care. Which meant the trainer was setting me up, and the investigator didn’t intend to play nice.
He looked up. “Trainer says he asked the groom to stay with the horse. But you went behind his back.”
The trap was laid. And the facts were in Cooper’s favor. Backed into the corner, I knew my only defense was total offense. Summoning an attitude of condescending wealth, I pulled myself to full height and thought of the way DeMott’s sister MacKenna treated their hired help.
“We do keep underlings around the barn,” I said, “and Bill Cooper is one of them. But that night our groom seemed unusually tired. I offered to help. Does that surprise you, Mr. Wertzer, that I care about our employees?”
He reached into his jacket and rummaged in the side pocket, wincing slightly as he pulled out a small device. “I’m going to record your statement. You mind?”
I shook my head.
He hit Record and a cold swallow went down my throat.
Holding the machine near his gray mustache, he spoke into it with great care. “Statement from Raleigh David.” He gave the date, time, and place.
And I realized a third problem. In addition to envying love, this guy hated the rich.
“Let’s start at the beginning.” The broomy mustache bumped up and down as he winced again. “You went into the stall to stay with the horse because . . .”
I started to repeat the statement. Word for word.
“Yeah, fine,” Wertzer said, cutting me off. “And when did you realize the place was on fire?”
“When—do you mean what time?”
“Yeah. What time.”
“I’m not sure.” I couldn’t explain why, but something told me that knowing the exact time would only bolster Cooper’s case against me. “I do remember waking up to a train whistle. Maybe you should check the schedules.”
“Maybe I should.” He waved the recorder. “Let’s go in the barn.”
The recorder was in his right hand, the notebook in his left with the pen secured between two fingers. He grunted slightly as we walked across the sawdust to the burned-out stall. I glanced around for Cooper. Or Juan. But it was only horses, sticking their heads out of the stalls, eager for distraction. KichaKoo blew her lips, fluttering her opinion of the whole thing.
“The gun,” he said suddenly. “You got a license?”
“Yes.”
Raleigh David had a concealed gun permit, courtesy of the FBI’s whiz kids. But Wertzer had to know that since the weapon was fired and the police didn’t confiscate it. And I knew this guy must have combed all that paperwork. Standing beside the burnt stall, where the air smelled of soot and water-soaked wood, I felt the bad feeling creeping down my neck. Wertzer’s mustache twitched under his nose as he sniffed the air, tilting his head to catch an exact odor. He reminded me of a ragged hunting hound on the fox’s trail.
He said, “You don’t look like the type to carry.”
Go on offense. Don’t give in. “Are you all right?”
“Huh. Why do you ask?”
“You keep wincing. Is something wrong?”
His gray eyes compressed into slate. “I’ve got a hernia.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Back to the gun,” he said. “You carry it because . . . ?”
“It’s a private matter.”
“Not anymore.”
“Pardon?”
“Miss David, this is an arson investigation. And you managed to get yourself right in the middle of the whole thing.”
“Are you implying I’m somehow responsible for the fire?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why do you say that?”
“Something about your tone.”
“My tone.”
“Yes. You’re making it sound like I lit the fire.”
“Did you?”
“Mr. Wertzer, do I look suicidal?”
He lifted his pen, poking at the stall’s charred wood. “I checked you out, Miss David.”
“I’m sure you did.”
He pushed the pen deeper. The blackened wood snapped. He caught the shard with his notebook, leaving a charcoal smudge on the white paper.
“You’re not a groom,” he said. “And you’re not a trainer. And you’re not really an owner. You just suddenly show up at Emerald Meadows, right after the place gets remodeled and all the smoke detectors are replaced. And suddenly, there’s a fire. In the exact stall where you decide to sleep. Where the sprinklers have been cut off. And somehow, you’ve got a gun, loaded, to shoot your way out.”
“What’s your point, Mr. Wertzer?”
“Like I said. You don’t seem the type to carry. Especially a Glock.”
“It’s for protection.”
“From what, barn cats?”
Juan stepped out of Stella Luna’s stall. He seemed to studiously avoid looking our way, but the black horse tugged against the lead. Her sculpted muscles flickered as she turned her white-blazed face, looking directly at me. She nickered. Juan tugged on the bridle, pulling her forward again.
“What’s the gun for?” Wertzer asked.
I raised my chin, doing my best impression of Eleanor Anderson’s niece. “If you must know, I was once attacked.”
“When was that?” He was writing now.
“The attack?”
“Yeah.”
“Several years ago.”
“Where?”
“Back home.”
“Which is?”
“I thought you looked into me, Mr. Wertzer.”
“Virginia. This happened in Virginia?”
“Yes. I was in college.”
“What college?”
“Ho—” I almost said Holyoke, as in Mount Holyoke College. “Hollins.”
“How do you spell that? H-a-w-”
“No.” I sighed, glanced at my wristwatch, and spelled the name of the women’s college in Roanoke, Virginia, that was Raleigh David’s alma mater. She graduated magna cum laude in art history, versus my magna in geology at Mount Holyoke. “Mr. Wertzer, is this going to take much longer?”
“You need to be somewhere?”
“I lead a busy life.”
“Really,” he said. “From what I heard all you do is hang around the track, sometimes throwing money away.”
My smile felt as cold as the glaciers on Mount Rainier.
He pressed his thumb into the recorder’s Stop button. “Next time carve out an hour.”
Next time?
“Oh.” He pretended to be surprised. “I didn’t mention it?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I need you to take a lie detector test.” He deposited the recorder into his pocket. “Unless you got a problem with that.”
“On the contrary. I look forward to it.”
“Me too.”
“Have a nice day, Mr. Wertzer.”
Pulse pounding, I walked down the gallery. The horses were bobbing their long heads up and down, agreeing with me that the guy was one of those people. When I reached the end of the barn—still no sign of Cooper—I stepped under the eaves. The morning sun felt like a warm hand on my back, but it couldn’t remove the chill sinking into my gut. I passed the shower building, the testing barn, and continued all the way to the gate that led to the turf, making sure the barn was far behind me. Then I turned around.
No sign of Wertzer.
The track was groomed and the big John Deeres were resting beside the maintenance hut. I looked at my watch. Just past 6:30 a.m. But the turf was empty. Right now the first and second training runs were usually ending, and the horses would be walked back to the barns. Whatever the delay this morning, I wasn’t about to question opportunity. Lifting my sunglasses to see the numbers on my phone, I called Jack. He picked up on the first ring.
He said, “I was just thinking of you.”
“Interesting. I just met a highly annoying person who reminded me of yo—”
“Not me,” he said. “Couldn’t be me. And why are you whispering?”
“I need you to backstop another detail for Raleigh David.” I told him about the arson investigator. “Have the whiz kids write up an assault report from the campus police at Hollins College. Link that doc to a local hospital, adding a sealed medical report. And make a note that the attacker was never found, so the case couldn’t proceed any further. But make it look like Raleigh David was pretty shaken up.”
“Okay, got it. Why campus police?”
“Hollins is small, a private college. With students coming back from summer break, this guy might have trouble reaching anybody in campus police right now, especially someone who would remember what happened more than ten years ago. Oh, and tell the whiz kids the attack happened in January,” I added. “Guy wore a ski mask. She never got a good look at him, you know what to say.”
“I got it,” he said. “Stop worrying.”
“You haven’t met the arson inspector.”
“That bad?”
“He has a hernia. I think it’s from throwing people into the wood chipper. Feet first.”
“Just what you need.”
“Right. And he’s figured out something doesn’t add up with Raleigh David. The problem is, he came to the wrong conclusion.”
“Wait a minute—you’re a suspect?”
I gazed at the oval track. The groomed soil looked as patient and ordered as a furrowed field ready for planting. No horses had run yet. Friday morning. Last week of races. It shouldn’t be this quiet right now . . .
“Harmon—”
“I gotta go. Call me if there’s a problem with the backstop.”
I closed the phone and crossed the empty backstretch to Quarterchute. Once again, the Café’s perfume made my knees go weak. Bacon and onions and fried potatoes, luxuriating in peppered oil. And my breakfast sandwiches were waiting under the heat lamp.
Only something felt wrong in here too.
The old guys leaned forward around the gingham tables, huddled in conspiracy. Yet none held a betting sheet. Nobody was smacking the racing form, calling the winner and telling the next guy he was full of it. No, they clutched Styrofoam coffee cups and whispered. When the Polish Prince looked over at me, he twisted the toothpick parked between his lips.
I nodded hello. He didn’t acknowledge it.
At the soda bar, I pulled a jumbo cup from the dispenser and filled it with cubed ice and Coca-Cola. On the other side of the room, the jockeys had formed another huddle next to the betting window. The chin straps that dangled from their helmets were shaking with disagreements. I moved down to the cash register. Birdie was writing today’s word. The black marker’s thick wool tip squeaked on the cardboard.
La Verdad, she wrote.
“You’re early,” she said.
“So how come I feel late, like something’s going on without me?”
“Nice try.” She wrote the translation for La Verdad: The Truth.
I decided it was God’s idea of a joke. Once again, I was telling the truth, but nobody believed me.
“Birdie, I really don’t know what’s going on.”
“Come on. The barn inspection?”
I shook my head. “I don’t even know what a barn inspection is.”
She capped the pen and punched a key on the register, catching the cash drawer before it hit her chest. “You didn’t call it in?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You didn’t come this early to see Mr. Yuck on the war path?”
I shook my head and handed her my money. “Aunt Eleanor asked me to come talk to the arson investigator.”
She straightened the bills, carefully aligning George Washington so that all his profiles faced the same direction before going into the drawer.
“Birdie, I really didn’t know. What happened?”
“Yuck closed down the training runs this morning. The jockeys”—she chucked her chin toward the huddle in back—“they ran in here, scared that he’s gonna do random drug tests. And the geezers”—she nodded at the old guys—“they’re about to start a pool on who Yuck takes out first.” She closed the cash drawer. “My advice is you take that sandwich to go. Your aunt’s barn was near the top of Yuck’s list.”