“Out there?”
“The track. Are you game?”
Susan took a deep breath. “Sure, why not?” If he had other things in mind, she was probably as safe out there as in his hotel room. Safer, maybe. “I still have to stop at that drugstore, remember.”
They decided to try dinner at the new Gateway casino hotel next to the track. It was an almost lavish place, with much of the glitter of Vegas and Atlantic City casinos, but done on the cheap. The fancy Roman columns at the entrance had a hollow sound to them, and gold wallpaper in the gaming room was already beginning to peel in one or two spots. The dining room food was passable, not great, and the drinks were on the watery side. Still, the place was crowded with folks obviously enjoying themselves. The ringing of slot-machine wins seemed almost constant.
“You folks need help?” a handsome man in a tux asked them. “I’m Ron Meyer, the room manager. This your first visit to the Gateway?”
“It is,” Susan told him. “We just ate in the dining room. When does the track open?”
“Not till next month. We wanted to have it running for the holiday, but we couldn’t quite make it.”
“Well, we’ll be back,” Mike told him.
It had grown dark while they ate and as they left the hotel they headed for the parking lot, then cut across toward the gate to the racetrack. “How do we get in?” she asked him.
“I’ve got a key. Lam Kow gave me one when he hired me to promote the track.” He had the padlock open in seconds and they walked out in front of the darkened grandstand. “The clubhouse is on this end, with its own dining room and betting windows. The track is arranged so the finish line is opposite the clubhouse. The track is one mile around, and that’s the length of most major races, so the starting gate is at the finish line. For a shorter race of seven furlongs or less, the gate is moved to the other side of the track. For the occasional race a mile and one-sixteenth or longer, it’s moved back a bit.”
“So Lam Kow’s scheme could only fix mile-long races.”
“Correct, but that’s most of the important ones.” He used a penlight to guide her onto the track itself. “We should look for evidence of digging, but the system may have been in place since construction started last summer. Take my flashlight and—”
He was interrupted by the crack of a gunshot as a clot of dirt kicked up at their feet. “Someone’s shooting at us!” Susan shouted, dropping flat on the ground.
“Damn!” Mike doused the light and was beside her in an instant as a second shot cracked in the night air. “It’s Lam Kow’s partner, the one who killed him!”
She grabbed the penlight from him and turned it back on, covering the bulb with the palm of her hand. Then she hurled it as far as she could, close to the ground. Two more shots were fired at the light. The second one nicked it, sending it spinning off course. “He’s a good shot,” Susan whispered.
“We’ve got to get out of here.”
“How?”
“They have a watchman here day and night. He must have heard the shots.”
“Unless he’s dead, too.”
They stayed there hugging the dirt for a quarter of an hour, until Mike started a slow crawl back the way they had come. Susan reluctantly followed. They reached the gate without incident and found a burly watchman at the opening. He was a Native American, the first they’d seen at this supposed Indian casino site. “Was that you fired those shots?” he asked.
“No indeed,” Mike told him. “Someone was shooting at us.”
“This here’s private property.”
“My name is Mike Brentnor. I’m handling promotions for the track. I have a key.”
“Your name’s not on my list.”
“I’m working with Lam Kow Loon, the track designer. We’re staying at the Big Bear.”
“I just heard on the news he got killed. You’d better come into my office so I can check you out.”
They followed him into a construction trailer parked nearby. “My name’s Fred Chatow,” he told them. “Now let’s see some ID.”
“Right here,” Mike said. “How late are you on duty?”
“Noon to midnight, then the other guy comes on. Long hours, but easy work.”
He seemed satisfied by what they showed him and he allowed them to go on their way. Susan stopped at the drugstore for some toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a T-shirt. When they got back to the Big Bear it was almost midnight.
“That starting gate could be a gateway to heaven for some of those horses,” Mike remarked. “We were shot at because they feared we’d find out that device was really there.”
“Or else because we’d find out it wasn’t there.”
They stopped in the hotel bar for a late-night drink, talking over what had transpired that day. “All I know is that someone tried to kill us tonight,” she told him. “I’m heading back in the morning. You can do what you want.”
“Susan, I shouldn’t have involved you in all this.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
“I’m beginning to think that Lam Kow Loon was nothing but a clever con man. He took those newspaper clippings and a few sketches of the track and built them into a major swindle.”
She wasn’t about to argue with him. “In the future, choose your business acquaintances more carefully,” she advised.
They paid their tab and got up to go. “Who do you think was shooting at us?” he asked. “Who was Lam Kow’s partner in this?”
They were walking along the hall to their rooms when it began to come clear to Susan. “I think I know the answer to that, but it doesn’t explain—”
He’d slipped his key card into the slot and was opening the door as she spoke. As he started into the room, three quick shots lit up the darkness. He gasped and fell back, pulling Susan to the floor with him.
“Mike!” she screamed.
The gunman leaped over their fallen bodies and into the hall. She saw Corporal DeGeorgio appear from somewhere and bring him down with a quick chop to the neck. It was the track watchman, Fred Chatow, of course, but that didn’t matter just then. “Get an ambulance!” she cried out. “Mike’s still alive.”
She insisted on riding with him in the ambulance, holding off the intern with his needle. “Just a minute,” she pleaded. “I have to tell him something.”
Mike Brentnor opened his eyes and stared at her, perhaps unseeing. “Who was it?” he managed to whisper, his mouth filling with blood.
“Chatow, the watchman. He had to be in on it, or how could they ever have dug that trench and buried the device? It had to be after dark, before he went off duty at midnight. The troopers got him. DeGeorgio had been following us after a report of gunshots at the track.”
“It hurts, Susan,” he managed to say.
“I know. We’re almost to the hospital.”
“Chatow must have killed Lam Kow so he’d have the whole thing for himself.” More blood, and she knew she’d have to speak faster.
“No, Mike. Chatow couldn’t have killed Lam Kow this afternoon because he told us he worked from noon to midnight. It had to be you.”
His lids were starting to close. “What? What are you saying?” he asked, his words slurring.
“You said Lam Kow handcuffed you and took your cell phone as soon as you finished talking to me. If that were true, how could you have phoned the Big Bear and told Rita I was coming for the portfolio?”
“I—”
“You killed him, Mike. There was never anyone else at that house. You wanted this racetrack scheme for yourself, crazy as it was. You killed him, dragged his body to the basement, and dumped the gun in the rubbish barrel. You’d brought the handcuffs along yourself, and you planted the key in the dead man’s pocket, then went back upstairs and cuffed yourself to the radiator. You had to leave the front door unlocked for me, of course, something Lam Kow would never have done. You knew I’d come, relying on my reputation for never breaking my promises. But he did have a partner, the track watchman, Fred Chatow. When he heard Lam Kow was dead, he knew you’d done it to get the track plans for yourself. He shot at us at the track, then after midnight he got into your hotel room and waited to kill you.”