Slow Kill - Michael Mcgarrity [76]
Sometimes she yearned to be inside an enchanted bubble, away from it all. It was pure fantasy. As an alternative, she’d settle for bursting Claudia Spalding’s bubble.
She gazed at Wheeler’s house. White clapboard siding beneath a slanted roof with a single chimney, a porch with a neat front lawn enclosed by a low fence, a detached single-car garage with doors on hinges that swung outward. It was far more lovely and appealing to Ellie than the Spalding mansion.
At the house, Ellie knocked on the screen door and was greeted by a pleasant-looking woman, who identified herself as Lori Wheeler and went to fetch her husband.
When Wheeler arrived, he offered Ellie a seat on the porch and a refreshment.
Ellie accepted both and sat sipping raspberry iced tea from a tall glass, enjoying the scenery and the coolness of the evening. On the enclosed dirt track below, a rider exercised a spirited gray along a quarter-mile straightaway, close to the infield railing. On the rise behind the open-air stalls and barn, a small herd of yearlings, bunched tightly together, wandered up the hill. The smell of wet grass from the afternoon shower still clung in the air.
Wheeler remained silent while Ellie watched a noisy killdeer, clearly recognizable by two black breast bands, circle and dip, piercing the silence with its call.
“What can I do for you?” Wheeler finally asked, after the bird had gained altitude to join a scattered flock. An ex-jockey, he was small and thin, but rail-hard. He exuded the quiet confidence of a competent man comfortable inside his skin.
“You mentioned to Chief Kerney that Claudia Spalding is something of a flirt. Could you be more specific?”
Wheeler swirled his glass, two fingers of Scotch poured neat. “I didn’t put it that way. I guess you could say she acted coquettish at times, especially with the good-looking younger guys who worked at the tracks. Believe me, she wasn’t alone among the other married women in that regard.”
“Do you recall any of those younger men she might have seemed particularly interested in?”
Wheeler drank from the glass and put it on the arm of his chair. “I’ve thought about that some since Chief Kerney asked me about her. It’s more like the other way around. There was this trainer out of Albuquerque, name of Coe Evans, who really had the hots for her. He worked a couple of seasons at the tracks out here, then he went back to New Mexico for a time. Now he trains horses on a TV celebrity’s spread south of Atascadero.”
The mention of Coe Evans made Ellie sit up straight. “Was there any gossip floating around about the two of them?”
“Not that I heard. Evans had a live-in girlfriend who kept a pretty close eye on him, and of course Claudia was married, so if anything was going on they kept it hushed up.”
“What can you tell me about him?” she asked.
“He’s in his late thirties, I’d guess. Good with horses, but not the best trainer around. He’s one of those people who comes and goes. Turns on the charm and personality with the ladies, his bosses, anyone he can curry favor with.”
“Anything else?”
Wheeler sipped his Scotch. “My wife can’t stand him, thinks he’s a real jerk. I can’t say she’s wrong. He’s got a foul mouth when it comes to talking about women. Likes to brag about his conquests.”
“Are you sure he’s still working in Atascadero?”
Wheeler nodded. “I saw him in Paso Robles a couple of days ago. That’s what got me thinking about him.”
The killdeers were back, flying in a swirl above the trees, now pale, soaring shapes wrapped in a light fog that had rolled in from the coast with dusk. One of the few birds that flew at night, they trilled and chattered as though welcoming the impending darkness.
Ellie got the name of the TV personality Coe Evans worked for, thanked Wheeler for his time, and drove