“But then E. D. just never showed up one day. Never even picked up his last check, Angelo said. And that was real strange, because E. D. was as tight as they come. Not cheap, mind you; he’d always chip in for guys down on their luck, or something like that. But tight, is what I’m saying. I guarantee you, E. D. knew where his every dollar was, and why it was there.
“Say,” Maggie said, frowning at Doyle. “Wasn’t it just about the same time you left the stable that E. D. did?”
“Right about the same time, I guess. I’m not positive,” Doyle shrugged.
Maggie’s big black eyes burrowed into Doyle. “Jack, there’s something here you’re not telling me about, something funny. Am I right?”
Doyle stood up, smiling. “You’d know a lot more about me if you would have accepted my kind-no, make that heartfelt-invitation to dinner back when I first met you. But now,” he said, hands raised apologetically, “I’ve got to leave the state and head to my new job. I just don’t have the time to exchange any confidences with you now. Come on, I’ll walk you back to the barn.”
As they headed toward the track kitchen door, Maggie said, “Somehow, Jack, I get the feeling I did the right thing. Don’t get me wrong,” she added, “it’s not that I don’t like you. But you remind me of a story an old boyfriend of mine told me.”
Maggie waved hello at a trainer coming their way, then resumed talking as they walked.
“This fella, this one-time boyfriend, grew up in Detroit and went to school with the son of one of those Mafia dons, or whatever they call them. Anyway, Jimmy, my friend, stayed in touch with this guy, his name was Mario, over the years. Jimmy wound up as a horse trainer, Mario went into the family business. And about five years ago, Mario got nabbed in a big crackdown in Detroit, and he got sent to prison.
“My friend Jimmy kept in touch with Mario. And Mario wrote him back these long letters. He was a real good letter writer. Jimmy said Mario had been the editor of their high school newspaper.
“Anyway, Mario is in prison for about three years, and near the end of his sentence, he gets to know a new arrival-a congressman from near his home back in the Detroit area. They get to be good buddies.
“The congressman reads one of Mario’s letters one day, and he tells Mario, ‘You’re a terrific writer. I’d like to write a book-about my experiences in politics, and my bad luck that brought me here, and so forth.’ And then he says to Mario, ‘Would you help me write this?’
“According to Jimmy, Mario tells the congressman, ‘No, I can’t do that, as much as I’d like to. The reason is, there’s not enough time. I’d like to help you, Congressman, but I’m getting paroled out of here in two weeks.’
“I guess the congressman was pretty disappointed at this. He says to Mario, ‘Well, that’s too bad. I wish I would have gotten to know you sooner.’
“And Mario takes a long look at this guy, this congressman, and he says to him: ‘Believe me, if you would have known me longer, you would have been here sooner.’’’
Maggie stopped walking. They had nearly reached the south end of Angelo Zocchi’s barn by now, where her car was parked. She looked up at Doyle.
“Jack, I can’t hardly help but think that there’s something about that story that brings you to mind. I don’t know what you were up to when you were here before. And I don’t know what you’re up to taking this farm job in Kentucky. Tell you the truth, I’d rather not know.
“You’re a cool guy, Jack. But I do believe that getting into your life could be a risky thing.”
Maggie Howard extended her strong, brown, right hand, and Doyle gripped it briefly. He couldn’t argue with her. Maggie seemed like a very nice, straight-ahead young woman, equipped with one of those built-in bullshit detectors like the kind that Jack Doyle carried through life.
Chapter 12
Once he’d identified himself over the intercom at the huge stone gates, Doyle pointed his car up a long, winding driveway that led through Harvey Rexroth’s Willowdale Farm.
Doyle had driven the eleven miles out from Lexington on a blacktop county road that was flanked on each side by miles of rolling green pasture divided by expensive white fencing. Many of those miles had nineteenth-century stone walls still in place nearer the road.
In contrast to the boom times of the nineteen-eighties, not all of the pastures were replete with thoroughbred horses; many of the fields were empty, others contained grazing beef cattle. While the city of Lexington had experienced a tremendous growth of business in recent years, Fayette County’s most visible and famous industry, horse production, had tailed off sharply.
Still, the scenery was striking. Spring sunlight glistened on dew-laden grass, on which lay, lazed, or romped a variety of thoroughbred horses-from mares in foal, to those with foals at their sides, to the stallions isolated in the imperious splendor of their own paddocks. The white fences bordering the lush acreage of the Willowdale property extended for miles.
When Doyle’s car had curved around the white-gravel driveway and up to the columned portico of the farm’s red-brick mansion, the front door of the enormous structure opened and a small, dark-haired, dark-suited man wearing gold-rimmed glasses motioned Doyle to park in a spot beside the steps. “Good morning,” the man said after Doyle had stepped out of the car.
“I am Byron Stoner, Mr. Rexroth’s executive assistant. If you will please follow me, Mr. Rexroth is almost ready to see you.”
Doyle removed his sunglasses, placing them in a pocket of his tan sport coat. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt, khaki trousers, and Western boots. The complete assistant farm manager’s look, he hoped. He followed Stoner down a long hallway where walls of dark wood were covered with paintings of horses. The hall led to the rear of the mansion.
Glass doors, like those in airports and hotels, slid open as Doyle and Stoner approached. Then they were at the entrance to an enormous tinted-glass structure covered by a retractable dome. The building housed a huge swimming pool, its border dotted with some comfortable-looking beach furniture.
Circling the area that bordered the pool was a beige-colored, slightly banked track around which sped a gorgeous, long-legged, young redhead on inline skates. Doyle did a double take. All she was wearing was blue knee pads, blue elbow pads, and a red headband.
“Well, good morning America, how are ya?” Doyle muttered to himself as the nearly nude figure flashed past him.
He said to Stoner, “Isn’t that kind of dangerous? Without a helmet?”
“She’s a real daredevil, that one,” Stoner said. “She’s one of Mr. Rexroth’s secretaries and companions. As you may have read in the popular press, Mr. Rexroth is a bachelor who loves women.”
“Likes them active, eh?” Doyle said as the redhead zipped through the far turn of the track and headed toward them up the left straightaway. As she swung her arms from side to side, her breasts shifted sideways like cantaloupes in motion.
“Active they must be,” responded Stoner without a trace of irony on his serious face. “Their assignments are considerably more physical than clerical, but Mr. Rexroth demands devotion to duty in all his employees, no matter what those duties may be. Mr. Rexroth is over there,” Stoner said, gesturing toward the far end of the pool.
Doyle saw a thick-bodied man, five feet nine or ten and over 200 pounds, somewhere in his late thirties. He looked to Doyle to have been one of those naturally pudgy children who grew up packing on firm layers of blubber each year into adulthood, where they topped out in the portly section of their tailor’s files. Rexroth was talking on a cellular phone. His resonant baritone voice was angry and loud. The sun, shining through the open dome, bounced off Rexroth’s large, hairless head. Daddy Warbucks in the Blue Grass, Doyle thought.