A Killing At The Track by Janet Dawson

Author:Janet Dawson [Dawson, Janet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780983403180
Publisher: Janet Dawson
Published: 2011-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

THE CROWD OF RACETRACKERS BROKE UP AND headed back toward their own shedrows. Molly walked out of the tack room then, her face dazed and bewildered. She saw David and me and headed for us as though swimming for a life raft. She threw her arms around David.

“Oh, my God,” she said, burying her face in his shoulder. “Poor Benita. It was almost as bad as seeing Dad have that heart attack. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget...” She shuddered. I sympathized. Unbidden, the sight of Benita Pascal’s corpse appeared in my mind’s eye. I banished it with a quick shake of my head.

“That detective wanted to know where I was last night,” Molly said. “And where Deakin was. I told him I didn’t know about Deakin, but I was home in bed. Alone, unless you count the cat.”

“Deakin didn’t call? He said he was going to.” She peered at me over David’s arm, then shook her head. “Do you know where he is now?”

“No, I don’t. You can’t think that he had anything to do with this.”

“That’s what the police think,” I told her. “He was seen with Benita last night. You said yourself it wasn’t like him not to show up after he’d promised to exercise the horse this morning.”

Molly pulled away from David. “No. I won’t believe he’s involved in Benita’s death. I can’t. Any more than I could believe he killed Junior Barnstable.”

I pushed aside my own questions about Deakin Kelley — and Zeke Ramos — for now, and turned my attention to something else, the murder weapon. The silk scarf that had choked the life out of Benita was exactly like the ones I’d seen Molly and Deakin wearing this weekend. Molly said the scarves had been made by her friend Tina Lakey. But how many scarves had Tina made?

“I don’t know how many,” Molly said when I asked her. “Tina had several trial runs before she got the shape and color of the chameleon just right. She gave me four. One each for me, Dad, David, and the jockey.”

“But at the time Tina made the scarves, who was the jockey on Chameleon?”

“Benita,” Molly said. “And I never got the scarf back. She still had it, as far as I know.”

“So where did Deakin get his?”

“Tina gave it to him,” Molly said slowly. “She’d kept one for herself, so that’s five. It was right after Deakin got here. We were having dinner at my place, and Tina and I were both wearing the scarves. Deakin was teasing Tina about not having a scarf. Dad offered to give him his, but Tina said no. Then she took hers off and draped it around Deakin’s neck.”

“So Benita could have been strangled with her own scarf,” David said.

She could have been strangled with anyone’s scarf. I didn’t voice the thought. But I was sure that if I was considering the possibility, Detective Maltesta had considered it as well. Molly didn’t have much of an alibi for last night, unless the cat could talk.

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