Gargantuan_ A Ruby Murphy Mystery - Maggie Estep [50]
RUBY MURPHY
15.
Symptoms
Within five minutes of meeting me, Violet Kravitz grabbed my elbow, steered me away from the rail of the track, and brought me to her shedrow. Right now, she’s installed me in a remarkably uncomfortable chair in the barn office and she’s furiously digging through the desk drawers, searching for I’m not sure what. With her tiny spectacles, long graying hair, and layers of flowing clothing, she looks more like the poster woman for some genteel English soap than a racetracker. But horse people are born of contradictions.
“I’m sorry, Ruby,” she says after a few moments of diabolical foraging. “There’s something I must find at once.”
I don’t know what it is she so fiercely needs to find, and she’s not volunteering this information so I try to get comfortable and just soak in the soothing sounds of the stable area.
After a few moments, Violet finally locates some tattered Thoro-Graph sheets and becomes engrossed in reading over some statistics.
“I’m just trying to figure out what Jack Valentine will face in this race on Friday,” Violet says when she looks up and sees me watching her.
Eventually, she sets the sheets down, wipes a strand of hair from her eyes, and levels a firm blue gaze at me. “So,” she says. “You are involved with Attila.”
I’m taken aback. Though at least she didn’t call him the jockey.
“Yes,” I say, suddenly wondering if Violet is a close friend of Attila’s ex.
“His taste is improving,” she states, smiling. “I was never a fan of the wife.”
“What’s she like?” I ask, maybe too eagerly.
“Oh… difficult…” Violet lets out.
“Oh.”
“But so is he. You realize that?”
“Sure.”
“No, obviously you have no idea.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve dated racetrackers before?”
“Sort of,” I say, figuring Ed Burke counts since, although he’s technically an FBI guy, he was—and still is—posing as a race-tracker.
“‘Sort of.’ Well, dear girl, you realize that a life of horses is not something you choose. It chooses you. It demands you.”
“Yes,” I say, nodding, “I do know that.”
Violet smiles faintly. “I never expected to be here, doing this.” She motions around us at the dour little room. “I grew up in a very rural part of England. There were horses everywhere and I liked them immensely. But it certainly didn’t occur to me that they’d one day be my life’s work. In fact, I never knew what my life’s work was. I married my first husband at a young age, and for a few years I was a housewife. But the husband was an idiot and I left.” Violet shrugs, looks at me over the tops of her glasses, sees that that I’m interested, and continues.
“I worked as a secretary in an accounting firm in London for a number of years, then took up with a magician, of all things. He was American. Not a terribly successful magician. But he did earn his living from magic. I worked as his assistant. We traveled around the United States, attempting to enchant people. It was a strange life. One night, we were driving through a thunderstorm in Missouri when there was a terrible accident. He was killed and I had my skull crushed.” Violet pauses and absentmindedly rubs her face.
“I was saved, obviously, but my face had to be reconstructed,” she says, pushing her hair aside to reveal a large dent at the top of her forehead.
“I was in hospital for several months. I came to terms with losing Theo, my magician, but I had no idea what to do with myself. I was lost. I took a job as a secretary in Kansas City but it was a hateful job and I wasn’t terribly fond of the city either. Eventually, I met a man many years my senior. He was terribly