High in Trial - By Donna Ball Page 0,51
in a strip mall that advertises for credit score repair and foreclosure protection, removing DUIs from your record, that kind of thing. Not to say that can’t be a lucrative specialty, but it’s also the kind of business that’s usually done on a cash basis, and where it can be a good idea to have some physical backup when the usual methods of collection aren’t effective. So I’m guessing that’s how she got involved with these guys and was ready to listen when they came to her with an idea to increase her earnings. I mean, her dogs, with Neil handling them—think of him as the jockey—had been winning for a few years, right? Don’t believe for one minute that whatever racket they had going on doesn’t go back a decade or so, and they’d been tracking the winners. They didn’t want her money. They never do. What they wanted was her assets—the dogs, the handler, the ability to call the shots.”
My throat was dry. “But—that’s crazy. Why would anybody do that? An agility trial is never a sure thing. A thousand things can distract a dog and change the outcome. That’s what makes it a trial. You can’t call an agility trial any more than you can call a—”
“Horse race?” he suggested, and I felt sick.
I grabbed the orange juice and took a swallow. “So what you’re saying is that this—this mob person or persons—”
“Organized crime,” he corrected.
“Had big money on the outcome of the Standard Cup—”
“It doesn’t have to be just the Standard Cup,” he pointed out. “If I know the way these things work, and I do, there has to be more than one commercially sponsored contest, am I right?”
He was right. I tried to stop the big-screen unfurling before my eyes of the names of pet supply companies and big-box pet stores that sponsored competitions. I cleared my throat tightly. “Had big money on the Standard Cup,” I repeated, “but they were betting against Neil and Flame. All was well until Neil hedged his bets, so to speak, with Bryte.”
Miles nodded soberly. “It’s never the horse,” he said. “It’s the jockey. Or, to be precise, it’s the combination. They figured Neil for a no-show because of the palimony thing with Marcie. They didn’t count on him going all out with his own dog. So, in the end, they made sure he didn’t.”
Suddenly I was intensely homesick. All I’d ever wanted was a little playtime, a chance to get away, a respite from the challenges of the past year. This was turning into a nightmare, and I wanted to go home. Things were so much simpler in Hansonville. Miles must have seen it in my face because he reached across the table and took my hand.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” he said.
I said forlornly, “I really kind of liked Marcie. She raised such great dogs.”
Our food arrived, and I asked the waitress to bring my take-out orders now so the food would have a chance to cool before I gave it to the dogs. Miles dug into his plate with gusto, and I picked apart my grilled cheese, nibbling on the French fries.
“What doesn’t make sense,” Miles said after a time, “is why they would go after Marcie. Breaking Neil’s knee is one thing. It’s practical and efficient and it solves the problem.”
I stared at him, the sandwich motionless a few inches from my mouth. “Who are you?”
He brushed the comment aside absently. “But what they did to Marcie… That’s not only killing the golden goose. It’s sloppy.”
“She must have double-crossed them somehow.”
“I don’t see how. There wasn’t time.”
I took a bite of my sandwich, chewing thoughtfully, thinking back over the timeline of events since the trial yesterday. I swallowed hard and reached for my orange juice. I looked at Miles, and slowly it all came together.
“Oh my God, of course,” I said. I put my glass down with a thump. “I think I know who did it.”
~*~
FIFTEEN
Two hours, ten minutes before the shooting
Jeremiah Allen Berman loved the twenty-first century. Everything was so easy these days. He’d been out less than a month and already he’d met three different guys that were living high, hardly lifting a finger. One of them was selling credit card numbers he collected by pointing his cell phone at a gas pump—whoever would’ve thought of a thing like that?—and another lifted complete IDs from hospital records. The third fellow probably worked the hardest, but he was making a killing backing up his truck