Auggie said nothing and I heard the line go dead. Good girl, I thought. I can count on you.
I waited around another hour or so while the coroner’s van removed Father’s body from the house. The detectives finished up their work and left and suddenly, the house and grounds were quiet. It was an eerie feeling. One I never thought I’d witness. The reign of Worthington LaViere, II was over and now I was in charge. This would come with added responsibilities and at the moment, I wasn’t too sure I wanted them. There was nothing to be done about it for the time being, however.
“Pete, can you look after the horses and the place until I can figure out what we’re going to do?”
“Yes, sir, Dr. LaViere. Won’t be no problem at all.”
“Thank you, Pete. I’m going to lock up the house now, but I’ll leave you a key under the doormat and if anything looks suspicious, I want you to go in and check things out. Here is my number at the clinic and at home. You’re not to talk to my mother or my wife, though. Only leave a message and ask me to return the call. Can I trust you on this, Pete?”
“Yes, sir, you can always trust me. I’ve been with the family most all of my life. I won’t leave you short-handed right now.”
“I appreciate that. I won’t forget you, I promise. Whatever happens to the farm, you’ll be taken care of. Okay, I’m going now. When I leave, I want you to take a chain and put a No Trespassing sign across the end of the drive by the road. You keep an eye out and don’t let anyone on the property.”
“Yes, sir,” he said and I took one last look at the house before getting in the Escalade and driving away.
I don’t know whether shock or relief were the strongest emotions I was feeling on the ride back to town. There may have even been a bit of guilt built in, but I have no clear recollection of it now.
I remembered the story that Bill Daughtery had briefly told me and the packet of documentation, pictures, letters and even news clippings he’d given me. It had been the primary evidence as I verbally assaulted my father that last night. I tried to tell myself that this wasn’t my fault, but I was feeling strong guilt all the same.
My father had been wild when he was a young man. In many ways, my mother often compared me to him, telling me how like my father I was. I hated it when she said it because he embodied everything in my world that generated hatred. I even resembled him physically, and when I left for college, I’d vowed I would never do anything that would remind others I was his son.
When he had finished college, he took off with a couple of his friends, young men from good families in the area. They had headed west to buy breeding stock and to enjoy the life of young, rich bucks in the meantime. They ended up in California horse country, a storied land with a reputation almost as hallowed as these bluegrass hills that surrounded me as I drove.
Father had begun drinking heavily and taken up hanging out at the horse track at Santa Anita. His losses were piling up and he had exhausted his own spending money and borrowed heavily from the other guys he was with. Finally, they were all broke and there was nothing else to do but to call home for money. Although I never met him, I’d heard enough stories to know that the apple had not fallen far from the tree. Worthington LaViere I was someone to be reckoned with and ruled with an iron fist. It was he who had built the farm and its holdings from nothing.
My grandfather had been very angry and refused to give my father any more money, thinking it would teach him a lesson and force him to mend his ways. Therefore, my father turned to less legal ways of making money.
He had gotten involved with a group of men from the syndicate in Chicago. They needed someone young and who looked like he belonged in the stables at the back of the track. They needed someone like Father.
In return for financing his gambling, he was to keep tabs on the horses and jockeys and to fix certain races so the syndicate fellows would clean up. In essence, he did their dirty work. At the same time, Father continued to gamble, betting on the races that he fixed for the syndicate, and a few for himself. That was, until they found out.
He had made a deal with a jockey named Johnny Torez, a young rider out of Mexico, who was in the U.S. illegally but no one cared enough to check. He was built for the job and handled the horses like a magician. Father made a deal with Johnny to come in second in a stakes race and then he laid ten thousand at the window on the fixed odds. Johnny came through but my father refused to pay him his cut and the jockey got back at him by letting the syndicate know that Father had gone behind their backs.
They sent one of their men to kill him, but he’d gotten word just in time and when the hit men came, there was only Johnny to take the blame. They decided not to hit Johnny, but to leave him as bait. They knew Father’s gambling was a sickness and that sooner or later, he would return to try it a second time.
That’s exactly what he did. This time, he made the deal with Johnny and promised him a bigger share than before to make up for the hassle. Johnny came through and when the syndicate heard he was back they went in for the kill. All they found, however, was Johnny Torez, crumpled in a pile of hay in one of the stalls, a knife lodged in his heart. There was little doubt who had done it and little doubt who stood to benefit by silencing Johnny.
The word went out on Father and he hightailed it back for Kentucky and fell on his knees to my grandfather. The original Worth LaViere was not a man to be trifled with and he used his influence to call off the contract and paid the syndicate any monies they calculated they’d lost by Father’s betrayal. There was still the little matter of a dead jockey and there was little Grandfather could do about it at that late date.
So, my father had lived in the shadow of a crime he was afraid might resurface at any point. My guess was that his guilt made him all the meaner and more careless and that’s why he’d had the affair with Auggie’s mother. He cared little for anyone or anything because he could feel the leather straps of an electric chair on his footsteps every day of his life.
He had known I was smart and that I ran with the same set of people he’d been with. I presented a huge risk to him. I could find out and have him arrested at a moment’s notice. The risk was more than he could stomach and his fear became a sort of hatred, but it was directed at me. He saw in me the reckless, wanton behavior of his own youth, the same behavior that had gotten him into so much trouble. He didn’t want to beat it out of me. He wanted to beat me to cleanse himself of his own sins.