“Then we’ll have to make your farewell special. We haven’t really finished celebrating Matador’s victory, you know.” Longarm had to grin. He was all for celebrating.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time for a proper celebration tonight. When they reached the Cassidy sisters’ room, Longarm had to content himself with a long, hot kiss from Julie, who wrapped her arms around his neck and clung tightly to him. Her breasts flattened against his chest and he felt himself responding, especially when her tongue slipped into his mouth and began exploring wetly. Not wanting either of them to get too worked up to stop, Longarm gently disengaged himself from her embrace.
“What’s wrong?” Julie asked with a frown. “I thought we were going to have a good time.”
“Well, Janice isn’t here,” Longarm said.
“She won’t mind if we start without her,” Julie said with a wicked smile.
The prospect was appealing to Longarm. Although sharing a bed with both of the twins at the same time had been mighty pleasurable, there was a part of him that still found it odd and a mite uncomfortable. Deep down, he preferred the arrangement of one man and one woman, doing their damnedest to love each other to death. He was just an old stickin-the-mud, he told himself.
But more importantly, he had other things to do tonight. This case wasn’t finished yet, but it was sure closing in. Before the night was over, he hoped to discover everything else he needed to know.
“I’ve got to run an errand, Julie,” he said, trying not to wince at the mixture of anger and disappointment that appeared on her face.
“What sort of errand?” she demanded.
“Law business,” he answered vaguely.
“And it won’t wait?”
“Afraid not.”
“Well, will it take very long?”
“Don’t know,” Longarm replied honestly. “Might not. Then again, it could take most of the night.”
“Most of the night!” she practically yelped. “Custis, I … I don’t believe this.”
Longarm stepped over to her and brushed his lips across her forehead. “Then believe how sorry I am,” he said, and he meant every word of it—in more ways than one.
He slipped out of the room before Julie could protest anymore, but he carried the image of her face with him. It haunted him as he left the hotel and headed on foot for the racetrack.
Carson City, despite being the capital of Nevada, was a small town. The walk out to the racetrack was a fairly easy one on this cool, clear, high country evening.
The place was dark when Longarm got there, just as he had expected. He made his way directly to the stables. There was a watchman on duty, but he was an old man, probably had been a cowhand until the years had crippled him too much for that job, and he was dozing on a chair leaned back against the wall of the paddock. Longarm left him there sleeping and moved on into the wide aisle between the stalls.
Several of the horses whinnied when they caught his scent. Longarm said, “Shhh,” and softly sang a fragment of one of the many songs he had learned back in his cowboying days. The melodies were meant to soothe a restless herd of cattle on a long, lonesome trail, but they worked pretty well with horses too. Some of the thoroughbreds still stamped and snuffled in their stalls, but for the most part they quieted down.
Enough moonlight and starlight came in through the big, open doors of the building for Longarm to see fairly well as he made his way along the aisle toward the smaller door at the far end. That door, he knew, led into the jockeys’ dressing room and the storage room. All the riders’ gear was still there, even though the race was over, because the horses would be put through another workout in the morning before boarding the train for the run up to Reno. Longarm reached the door and tried the knob.
Locked.
He grimaced. That would slow him down a little, but it wouldn’t stop him. He took a ring of keys from his coat pocket and began trying them. The fourth one he slipped into the lock worked well enough to turn the tumblers, though it grated a bit as he did so. With a little pressure judiciously applied to the knob, it turned and the door opened.
Longarm eased it shut behind him after gliding into the storage room. He found himself in utter blackness, because this chamber underneath the grandstands was windowless. His fingers delved into his pocket and found a match. He scratched the lucifer into life, squinting his eyes against its sulfurous glare. Moving quickly before the match burned out, he located a lantern and lit it. A yellow, flickering glow filled the room as he lowered the lantern’s chimney.
The light showed him exactly what he expected to find: saddles perched on sawhorses, harnesses and bridles hanging from hooks on the walls, saddle blankets, extra stirrups, trunks full of assorted gear.
All of these things had traveled on the train in the cars where the horses had ridden. They had not been carried in the normal baggage car. Longarm had searched the regular baggage and found nothing except the counterfeit money hidden in Senator Padgett’s valise. If those printing plates were still anywhere in the vicinity, they had to be here somewhere. Of course, the ringleader could have passed them on to a confederate by now, but Longarm doubted that had happened. For one thing, knowing how valuable those plates were, the boss would not have wanted to let them very far out of his sight. He would want them somewhere close by, so that he could check on them often and make sure they were still all right.
Longarm started looking. He concentrated on the trunks full of equipment, since there were no hiding places on the stripped-down racing saddles. His frustration grew as a quarter of an hour, then a half hour, passed with him finding no sign of the plates. Surely his theory had not been wrong. The phony bills hidden in Padgett’s valise proved that the ringleader was part of the racing circuit. Longarm had eliminated all the other hiding places.
There were several personal bags belonging to the jockeys. Longarm started in on them next. He paid particular attention to Cy’s bag. Though he had written off the young man as a possible member of the gang, something could have been hidden in Cy’s gear without the jockey being aware of it. But there was nothing unusual to be found there, and Longarm had to bite back a curse as he tossed Cy’s bag onto the floor near Caesar’s saddle.
