High in Trial

FOURTEEN

Three hours, forty-six minutes before the shooting





Neil said, “Who the hell are you?” His voice was thick and somewhat slurred, and he swayed a little on his feet. I noticed for the first time that he was propped up by a crutch and the right leg of his jeans was neatly split from thigh to ankle, revealing a heavy white cast at the knee.

I said, completely disoriented, “Um… maybe we’ve come at a bad time…”

“I’m Miles Young and this is my friend Raine Stockton,” Miles said, speaking over me. “We met yesterday at the dog trial, but you probably don’t remember. We’ll just come in for a minute. Here, let me give you a hand there. Looks like you had a rough night.”

Miles urged me forward with a firm hand on my back, and I couldn’t help staring at him as I stepped over the threshold. Sometimes the guy can really surprise me.

All Miles murmured in response was, “We came this far. You weren’t really planning to leave, were you?” Then he turned to Neil, assisting him with the crutch. “These things can be tricky. There you go.”

We entered a living room that was dark and sparsely furnished: a couch, a flat screen, a bean bag chair, and a small plastic, outdoor-type table that held a laptop, a stack of Clean Run magazines, and some empty beer cans. It smelled, as most bachelor apartments do, of dirty laundry and stale pizza. Neil, with Miles’s help, collapsed on the brown-striped sofa, and I glanced around until I located the kitchen. I rinsed out a glass from the pile of dishes in the sink, and filled it with water. I heard Neil saying, “Who are you again? Damn painkillers.”

I brought him the water and sat gingerly on the far end of the couch, leaning forward to remain in his line of sight. Miles sat on the arm of the sofa beside me. “What happened to you?” I asked, and my concern was genuine. “Are you going to be okay?”

He focused on me with the effort of a swimmer pushing his way to the surface. “I know you,” he said at last. “You’re the one who caught Bryte yesterday. I didn’t thank you. I’m sorry. Yesterday… was a hell of a day.”

“That’s okay,” I assured him. “Is this…”—I gestured to his knee—“because of the fall you took yesterday?”

He looked at me for a moment, slow to comprehend, and then gave a short bark of laughter. “In a way.” He took a thirsty gulp of the water. “Look, I just spent twelve hours in the emergency room. I already told the police everything I know. You said something about my dogs. Are they okay?” A sudden alarm brought cognizance to his eyes, and he pushed himself forward, wincing at the pain. “He didn’t try to hurt them, did he? She didn’t let him get to them?”

I said quickly, “Flame and Bryte are fine.” He sank back against the sofa, and I added, “Who? Who would try to hurt them?’

“The same guy that did this to me.” He closed his eyes. “Big fellow, blond hair, gray shirt. I told the police. God, my head is spinning. I can’t keep them here. He might come back. I’ve got to talk to Marcie.”

I glanced at Miles. Sometimes I can read his mind, too. I let him say it. “So the police have already been here…”

He dragged a hand over his face, as though trying to reestablish circulation. “Yeah. Last night. Yesterday. Some time, I don’t know. I told them I’d never seen the guy before. I opened the door and he pushed his way in here, swinging a lead pipe. Broke my hand, then my knee. Then he said something like, ‘That ought to do it,’ and walked out of here as calm as you please while I lay there screaming on the floor. Son of a bitch.”

“What about Bryte?” I said. “You said you were taking her home with you yesterday. Was she still here?”

He shook his head and fumbled for the water glass. “I never got her out of the fairgrounds. Marcie promised we’d work out a deal after the trial. I guess…” He took another gulp of water. “This is it.”

I looked at Miles in confusion. He gave me a silent shrug.

I said, “What time was all this?”

“I don’t know. Four o’clock, maybe. It was almost dark by the time the ambulance got here. I kept passing out trying to get to the phone.”

I was really hurting for the poor guy, but Miles was more practical. “And you just got out of the hospital this morning?”

He nodded and took another drink of water. “They wanted to keep me a few days, but I don’t have insurance, and…” He shrugged. “The dog training business doesn’t exactly make you rich.”

“Tell me about it,” I murmured sympathetically.

“That’s why I couldn’t really blame Marcie for what she did.” He went on, talking now almost as though to himself. “But to borrow money from people like that… Her problem is that just because she’s got a law degree, she thinks she knows everything. The main thing she knows is how to wiggle in and out of the law without getting caught, if you ask me. I always knew there was something a little off about the way she did business and who she did it with, but I never thought she’d risk the dogs.” His voice fell a bit. “I don’t think she meant to, not really. That doesn’t make it right, what she did, but even she has limits. She couldn’t have known it would come to this.”

I was completely lost, but Miles seemed relatively unsurprised. “So Marcie got in over her head, borrowed money from these, er, business associates…”

“She helped them put together some kind of deal. They said if she ever needed a favor… She said she didn’t know it would get so complicated, but how stupid could she be? She knew what kind of animals they were.”

“And you think that’s somehow related to what happened to you last night?”

“Think?” He gave a dry snort of disgust. “I know. She as much as told me so yesterday. These dudes are into some seriously sleazy stuff. Video gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, all kinds of racketeering… They killed one guy that tried to narc on them over in Surreytown.”

I twisted around to stare at Miles. His face was unreadable. “So let me guess,” he said. “They kept raising the interest, she couldn’t pay…”

“Nah, it wasn’t the money they wanted. It was the win. The dogs. I was the trainer. She was in charge of everything else. She ran this game like a business. For her, I guess it was. She said that’s the way to win. Maybe she was right.”

“So,” I said carefully, trying to understand, “these people, these bad people, they wanted your winnings from the Standard Cup?”

“Not just that,” Miles answered for him, and Neil didn’t object. “They were manipulating the odds on all the dogs, all the competitions. That’s the way racketeering works.”

“I didn’t know what she was into, just that nothing good was going to come of it for me. We have a contract on Flame about sharing the profits, but not on Bryte. So I figured if I blew the run with Flame, I’d be out of our agreement, and whatever I won with Bryte would be mine. Like I said, I didn’t know what kind of people she was mixed up with. She broke down and told me everything yesterday afternoon, and I was furious, of course. I just wanted to take Bryte and get out of there, but I’d never seen her so scared. After she almost lost Bryte, after you caught her, she begged me to help her, to hang on for just a little while longer. She promised she had a plan, and it would all be over in a matter of days if I’d just cooperate. We’d been together for a long time. I didn’t know what else to do. I said I’d go through with the rest of the trial and we’d figure something out. Guess somebody else figured something out first.”

I felt as though I was on a speeding train, with pieces of the puzzle flashing past like scraps of scenery through a window. “But,” I managed, “you left the dogs with her. How could you do that?”

“The dogs are assets,” Miles assured me. “They wouldn’t hurt the dogs.”

It seemed to me that Neil had been an asset, too, but that hadn’t protected him. I didn’t know what to think, much less say. It all sounded like something out of a B-grade movie, and none of it made sense. None of it. Gangsters, loan sharks, thugs breaking people’s kneecaps. Was he hallucinating? Was I? Was it all some kind of very bizarre and not-at-all funny joke?

There was absolutely no sign of mirth on Neil’s slightly gray face, and when I glanced at Miles, all I saw in his eyes was dark concern. One thing was certain. If Neil had been in the emergency room all night, he could have had nothing to do with what happened to Marcie. And if any part of what he said was true, the police were by now pursuing a very different tack indeed. While I was sure they would be around to talk to Neil again sometime today, they clearly hadn’t been here since taking the report on Marcie’s assault. Neil didn’t even know his former girlfriend was now lying on a slab in the morgue in what was very likely the same hospital he’d just left.

I took a breath and said, “Listen, Neil, the reason we came here was to tell you that… well, Marcie was in an accident last night.”

His eyes opened and he stared at me blearily. Comprehension was vague in his eyes, if present at all. “Accident? Is she okay?”

Oh, I hated this. I shouldn’t have to do this. I didn’t want to do this. And for once I felt nothing but profound gratitude that a man was there to step in for me and take over.

“She’s dead,” Miles said gently. “I’m sorry.”

Neil swallowed hard, staring at him. “I don’t understand.”

I really, really didn’t see the point in going over the details. I could hardly stand to think about them, and it wasn’t my place. I said, “The police are investigating. I’m sure they’ll send somebody to talk to you.”

“Dead?” he repeated. His hand was shaking as he wiped it over his face, as though trying to clear the fog that clouded his comprehension. “How can she be dead?”

I said, “I’m really so sorry. So sorry you have to hear it like this.” Miles placed his hand briefly upon the small of my back in a bracing gesture. I took a breath and plunged on. “What we’re trying to find out,” I said, “is who is responsible for taking care of the dogs. Since you can’t,” I added quickly. “Aggie and Ginny from the agility club said they’d drive them back home and keep them until… until someone can come get them, but since you’re the co-owner, they need to know if you have another agreement.”

He stared at me as though I had spoken Greek. “Marcie’s dead?”

I dug into my jeans’ pocket, pulled out a couple of pick-up bags, a breath mint, the crumpled remnants of a dog treat, and a wrinkled business card. I looked around until I found a pen, consulted my phone for Aggie’s number, and wrote the information on the back of my card. I handed the business card to Neil. “Aggie and Ginny from the agility club,” I repeated. “You know them, right?”

He nodded.

“They’re going to take care of Bryte and Flame until you feel better.”

He stared at the card. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

I glanced up at Miles, and he simply nodded. We’d done all we could do.

“We’re leaving now,” I said, standing. “Don’t worry about the dogs.”

He didn’t look up from the card. “I was going to fix everything. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Miles and I let ourselves out.

“That was rough,” Miles said quietly as we went down the walk.

I drew in a steadying breath. “Yeah.” Then I glanced at him. “You were pretty quick to go through that door for someone who was just lecturing me about being reckless.”

“Oh, come on, the guy was on crutches. And covered with blood. There was no way I was leaving without finding out how he got that way.”

He glanced at me with an expression that couldn’t be interpreted as anything but smug as we reached the car. “And by the way, did you notice? I was right.”

“You weren’t right. It’s crazy. Everything he said was crazy.”

He opened the car door for me. Cisco sat up in the back seat, grinning to see us, and the two border collies peeked over the barrier. “Where there’s money and sports,” he said, “there’s corruption. It’s a rule.”

I sank into the seat and tugged on my seat belt. I waited until he was behind the wheel to point out, “Well, even if it is true, it’s the Standard Cup that’s corrupted, not the AKC.”

He started the engine. “That makes a difference?”

I scowled and sank down into my seat. “You bet it does.”

I was lost in dark thought until he pulled into the parking lot of a pancake house. By then it was almost lunchtime, and I walked the dogs along the grassy area of the parking lot before we went inside. Miles ordered steak and eggs, and I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich with three orders of steak and eggs to go, hold the salt, hold the gravy, hold the hash browns.

Miles lifted an eyebrow at me. “Sirloin?”

I frowned at him. “The dogs have had a hard day.”

He shrugged. “You’re paying.”

I said, “It doesn’t make sense. Assuming, just assuming, there was some kind of mob activity involved—”

He raised a cautionary finger. “Politically incorrect. They prefer ‘organized crime.’”

“Why break Neil’s knee?” I persisted, ignoring him. “He was the one who could’ve won the Standard Cup for them. It makes no sense.”

“Unless you’re betting against him,” Miles pointed out.

The waitress brought coffee for him and orange juice for me. I stared at it, wondering why I’d ordered it.

“Look, sweetie,” Miles explained, taking out his phone. “In the world of professional sports gambling, there are two ways to win: bet on the winner or bet on the loser. My guess is these guys, whoever they are, figured out Neil wasn’t going to play ball a long time ago and put their money on his competitors. His only mistake was planning to run the other dog—Bryte, is it?—for the win.”

I stared at him, jaw slackening. “How do you know these things?”

He didn’t even glance up from the message he was texting. “Remember I told you about my dad, the town drunk? He also played the ponies, among other things. You pick it up here and there.”

“Who are you texting?” I demanded in sudden alarm. “You can’t—”

He held up a hand for calm. “Mel. She sent a message earlier and I don’t want her to worry. Smile, sweetheart.”

He pointed the phone at me and I quickly managed a smile and a wave as he snapped the picture. He said, “Check your messages. She copied us both on a group photo in front of the hotel.”

I found the photo and texted back a series of hearts and smiley faces. It was the best I could do.

Miles tapped out a few more commands, scrolled a screen or two, and said, “Just like I figured. Bail bonds and DUIs.”

I rubbed my forehead, trying to focus. This was an awful lot to take in for someone who only had a couple hours’ sleep. “What?”

Miles pocketed his phone and explained. “Most people think all lawyers are automatically rich, but lawyers are a dime a dozen these days, and unless you’re in a big city with a big firm, it can be hard to make a living—particularly if you’re not very good at it and you have expensive hobbies and high-class tastes. I don’t know if you noticed that van she was driving, but it had to be forty, fifty grand.”

“Aggie said Marcie has a huge training facility and the property sounds gorgeous,” I admitted. “She said their whole club has events there.”

“She has a storefront practice in a strip mall that advertises for credit score repair and foreclosure protection, removing DUIs from your record, that kind of thing. Not to say that can’t be a lucrative specialty, but it’s also the kind of business that’s usually done on a cash basis, and where it can be a good idea to have some physical backup when the usual methods of collection aren’t effective. So I’m guessing that’s how she got involved with these guys and was ready to listen when they came to her with an idea to increase her earnings. I mean, her dogs, with Neil handling them—think of him as the jockey—had been winning for a few years, right? Don’t believe for one minute that whatever racket they had going on doesn’t go back a decade or so, and they’d been tracking the winners. They didn’t want her money. They never do. What they wanted was her assets—the dogs, the handler, the ability to call the shots.”

My throat was dry. “But—that’s crazy. Why would anybody do that? An agility trial is never a sure thing. A thousand things can distract a dog and change the outcome. That’s what makes it a trial. You can’t call an agility trial any more than you can call a—”

“Horse race?” he suggested, and I felt sick.

I grabbed the orange juice and took a swallow. “So what you’re saying is that this—this mob person or persons—”

“Organized crime,” he corrected.

“Had big money on the outcome of the Standard Cup—”

“It doesn’t have to be just the Standard Cup,” he pointed out. “If I know the way these things work, and I do, there has to be more than one commercially sponsored contest, am I right?”

He was right. I tried to stop the big-screen unfurling before my eyes of the names of pet supply companies and big-box pet stores that sponsored competitions. I cleared my throat tightly. “Had big money on the Standard Cup,” I repeated, “but they were betting against Neil and Flame. All was well until Neil hedged his bets, so to speak, with Bryte.”

Miles nodded soberly. “It’s never the horse,” he said. “It’s the jockey. Or, to be precise, it’s the combination. They figured Neil for a no-show because of the palimony thing with Marcie. They didn’t count on him going all out with his own dog. So, in the end, they made sure he didn’t.”

Suddenly I was intensely homesick. All I’d ever wanted was a little playtime, a chance to get away, a respite from the challenges of the past year. This was turning into a nightmare, and I wanted to go home. Things were so much simpler in Hansonville. Miles must have seen it in my face because he reached across the table and took my hand.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” he said.

I said forlornly, “I really kind of liked Marcie. She raised such great dogs.”

Our food arrived, and I asked the waitress to bring my take-out orders now so the food would have a chance to cool before I gave it to the dogs. Miles dug into his plate with gusto, and I picked apart my grilled cheese, nibbling on the French fries.

“What doesn’t make sense,” Miles said after a time, “is why they would go after Marcie. Breaking Neil’s knee is one thing. It’s practical and efficient and it solves the problem.”

I stared at him, the sandwich motionless a few inches from my mouth. “Who are you?”

He brushed the comment aside absently. “But what they did to Marcie… That’s not only killing the golden goose. It’s sloppy.”

“She must have double-crossed them somehow.”

“I don’t see how. There wasn’t time.”

I took a bite of my sandwich, chewing thoughtfully, thinking back over the timeline of events since the trial yesterday. I swallowed hard and reached for my orange juice. I looked at Miles, and slowly it all came together.

“Oh my God, of course,” I said. I put my glass down with a thump. “I think I know who did it.”



~*~