Loud voices at the paddock grabbed their attention.
"You're behind this—" Chark's voice rose.
He shut up when Mickey's fist jammed into his mouth.
Within seconds the two men were knocking the stuffing out of each other.
Fair, Cynthia, and Rick rushed over. Tucker lunged to help but Harry held on to the leash.
"I'll kill you, you dumb son of a bitch," Mickey cursed, then landed a right to the breadbasket. "You're too stupid to know who's on your side and who isn't."
"With you as a friend I don't need enemies." Chark gasped, then caught Mickey on the side of the head with a glancing blow. He reeled back, going down on one knee. The St. Christopher's medal fell out of his pocket, face down on the grass.
Rick and Cynthia deftly stepped between the two men. Rick grabbed Mickey as Cynthia pulled Chark's left arm up behind his back and put a hammer lock around his throat.
"Easy, Chark. Let's end this before it gets a whole lot worse." Cynthia's regulation size .357 Magnum flashed as her blazer opened up. Chark couldn't see it, but as she pressed against him he could feel it. He immediately stopped struggling.
Mickey, however, didn't. Fair stepped in and he and Rick took Mickey down together.
"Goddammit, man." Fair shook his head. "Things are bad enough."
Mickey tried to shake them off. "Bad ain't the word. Let me go." He saw the medal and reached over to pick it up. Fair held him. Rick picked up the medal and handed it to Mickey.
Chark noticed but the object didn't fully register at that moment.
Two uniformed police officers arrived at the scene and brusquely told Cynthia, Rick, and Fair to step back. Then the skinny one noticed her gun.
"You got a license to carry that, ma'am?"
"Deputy Cynthia Cooper, Albemarle County Sheriffs department. I'd shake your hand but I'm occupied. Until you all can talk sense into Mickey Townsend there, I'll remain occupied. We can be formally introduced later."
"Want some help with the perp?" the cop asked Cynthia using the shorthand for perpetrator.
"I'll take care of him. Thanks."
"Coop, I'm okay. I lost my temper." Chark sighed. "Why go out of my way to piss on a skunk?"
"Can't comment on that. Come on, I'll walk you back to the weigh-in. Okay?"
"Yeah. On the way you can tell me what you're doing here."
"A first-class chickenshit!" Mickey, oblivious to the crowd around him, spat out the words as Chark walked away.
Fair whispered, "Mickey, shut up."
"Huh?" Fair's words filtered through the hammer pounding in Mickey's brain.
"Two jockeys who owed you money are dead. No one believes you were playing Old Maid. Chill out," Fair warned.
Mickey shut up.
Rick turned to the two uniformed cops. "This man lives in my county. Nothing to worry about." The two cops nodded and watched Rick and Fair walk away, Mickey between them, the crowd bubbling about what they'd just witnessed.
"You're bullshitting me," Mickey said under his breath to Rick. "You don't know one end of a horse from the other."
"Mickey, you are your own worst enemy." Fair shook his head.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Mickey spoke to the vet he used and trusted. "Rick Shaw's here to spy on me. Everyone thinks I killed Nigel and Coty. Dammit! Why the hell would I kill my own jockey?"
"You tell me," Rick said.
"I didn't! That's the long and short of it." Mickey's handsome face sagged, and he suddenly appeared old.
"Lying takes so much energy. Just tell the truth," Rick said nonchalantly. "You knew Nigel didn't have a green card. Let's start there."
"Ah, man, give me a break." Mickey squared his shoulders, looking his forty-five years again. "I don't give a shit if the guy had a polka-dot card. He knew how to ride a horse. And don't give me this crap about protecting American workers or protecting abused immigrants. I didn't abuse anyone, and if an American worker can do the job as well as the limey, hey, he's hired. Screw the government."
He was so incorrigible, Rick and Fair had to laugh.
"Mickey, if you'd just give it to me straight I wouldn't have to see you as a prime suspect."
Mickey looked up at Fair imploringly. "Suspect for what?"
"Just talk to the man," Fair said in an even tone.
Mickey gazed over the tops of their heads, over the tops of the trees, all the way up to a robin's-egg-blue sky. "All right."
With a half hour to the first race, Mickey Townsend asked if he might give directions to his jockey, obviously new to the job.
Fair had returned to the paddocks.
Cynthia and Rick walked along with Mickey, Cynthia flipping open her notebook as they headed back to his horses.
"I will tell you everything, but I've got to see the races."
"That's fine," Rick said. "You're not under arrest—yet. You've got enough time to start talking before the first race."
Mickey exhaled deeply, shut his eyes, and then opened them. "Nigel Danforth owed me two thousand dollars, give or take, on a gambling debt—not horses, poker. Coty Lamont owed me over seven thousand from last season. I owe Harvey Throgmorton five and a half grand. His wife had her first child, he's had a bad-luck year with the horses, and he needs the money. I want to pay him off. I didn't kill Nigel and I didn't kill Coty Lamont." He took another deep breath, involuntarily clasping and unclasping his hands. "I got a little crazy. I thought about beating them up, and Coty really pissed me off. He promised to pay me, and—that was on the night he was killed or early that morning. I'd heard one lie too many. I don't know . . . when he didn't show up at my barn at ten that night as agreed, I roared on over to his house. To make a long story short, I threatened him, pulled a gun, told him he'd better pay me by morning or he would be history." He walked over to the cooler and plucked a soft drink out for himself. "Want some?"
"No, thanks."
"All this talking makes me thirsty." Mickey popped the top and drank. "I left. What he didn't figure on was that I'd wait for him. I waited at the end of the driveway behind a big bush, had my lights off. When he drove out of there about half an hour later, I tailed him. Guess I've seen too many cop shows. Anyway, I followed him to Mim Sanburne's stable. He didn't drive in, though, which was the weird thing. He left his truck behind the old Amoco station about half a mile from her main gate. But here's what really made me wonder—he covered his license plate with a rag or something. Josh at the Amoco is always fixing cars, I mean the lot is always full of stuff, but Coty covered up that license plate.
"He didn't hear me because I stayed way far behind, far enough to muffle my motor, and then I cut it. About twenty minutes later I ran out of patience, so I walked into Mim's myself. Had my gun. I found him in the stable. He had her hunter in the crossties. I walked over to the stall, scared the shit out of him. He'd been digging in the corner of the stall. I asked him what the hell was he doing and he said getting my money. I asked him what was down there and he said pirate's treasure, real smartass, you know. I was so mad, I said, 'Cover the hole back up, you're jerking me around—if there was anything of value down there you'd have claimed it by now.' Coty always thought people were stupid, that he could stay one step ahead. He was about to tell me something but then he shut up and we both got scared for a minute because we heard a noise. Turned out it was nothing but mice in the hayloft. You know, when it's real quiet at night you hear things like their feet, those little claws. Damnedest thing.
"Well, he filled the hole back in. He hadn't gotten very deep anyway. Put the horse back in the stall. I walked him out to my car by the road, then drove him back to his truck and told him he had until five o'clock before I took his truck as collateral.
"That was the last I saw of Coty Lamont." Pale, he finished his soda, then said as an afterthought, "Doesn't look too good for me, does it?"