Dead Man Docking - Mary Daheim [119]
Paul remained silent, his dark features a mask of pain. He could do nothing except take Connie in his arms and try to comfort her. Rhoda went to the bar, poured out some brandy, and glided across the room.
“Drink this, my dear,” she urged. “It can’t hurt and it may help. Though,” she added in an aside to Paul, “I doubt it.”
“So far,” Judith said under her breath, “Rick’s on the mark.”
“And the sauce,” said Renie, devouring liver pâté and crackers.
“It’s sad,” Rick remarked, motioning at Rhoda to bring him yet another martini, “but Guillermo de Fuentes lost his fortune years ago, only a short time after you married Mags. Your husband got no help from the de Fuentes family fortune. By then it had evaporated. Your father not only used dirty tricks to win races, but he bribed judges and stewards. These matters were well publicized at the time. One incident crippled Émile Grenier, who was de Fuentes’s jockey.”
Still holding Connie, Paul finally spoke up. “Mags gave Émile a good job. Señor de Fuentes saw to it that Émile could study accounting and other courses to prepare him for his career as a ship’s steward.”
Rick nodded. “Very kind. Yet it wasn’t the accident that spurred—excuse the expression—Émile and Dixie to blackmail poor Connie. Somehow, her father wiggled out of that jam. But he wasn’t content to use time-honored—if disreputable—methods to win races. In Dubai, he had the electronic starting gate rigged to shock his own horse—a notoriously slow starter named Nieves—into a quick sprint at the beginning of the race. There was a tragic miscalculation, however. All the horses were electrocuted, and several of the riders were badly injured. That sort of thing might not make the hometown gazette, but it certainly offended the local emirs and other horse-loving pooh-bahs. De Fuentes was forced to pay damages, and it ruined him financially and emotionally. His wife, Elena, committed suicide.” Rick paused to glance at Connie, whose slim figure lay convulsed in Paul’s arms. “I’m sorry, my dear,” Rick said softly. “The scandal destroyed her, too. And your father isn’t living the high life in Buenos Aires. He’s confined to a nursing home in Lodi, California.”
“Lodi!” Anemone squealed. “That’s like…nowhere!”
“It’s somewhere, all right,” Ambrose said in a sour voice. “They have terrible groundwater problems, despite their best efforts to clean it up.”
“Oh, damn your environmental concerns!” Horace shouted. “Your kind would have stopped progress in 1602!”
Ambrose shook his fist. “And your stupid museum would add pollution in the bay! You plan to build it on the water!”
“Boys!” Rick raised his voice, even though his stance was growing slightly unsteady. “Let’s all get along, shall we?” He looked again at Connie, whose sobs had subsided while she received attention from Dr. Selig. “I’m sorry, Connie, to have brought up painful memories. Believe me, it’s better in the long run to get this all out in the open. You weren’t to blame for what your father did years ago. But you shouldn’t have kept it a secret from Mags.”
Connie looked over the doctor’s shoulder. “But I didn’t,” she protested. “Mags knew about…the racing accidents.”
“But he didn’t know the details about how your father lost his money or that your mother killed herself,” Rick said, allowing Rhoda to fill his glass to the top. “No one did until Flakey did some solid investigative reporting in the past few days.”
“Ah.” Judith’s voice was barely audible.
“Flakey’s smarter than he looks,” Renie whispered.
“Now,” Rick said, growing solemn though certainly not sober, “we come to the murders. The terrible part is that there was no real motive for the first murder—it was, in fact, an accident. The killer’s intended victims were Dixie and Émile, not Magglio Cruz. The entire evening was staged—not just to suit the ship’s theme and decor, but also for murder. The killer knew the plans for the event, including the pheasant ice sculpture that adorned the buffet table.”
“Do we have to listen to