Ferguson nodded and poured himself a virulent-smelling cup of coffee. He put in two tablespoons of sugar and two more of Cremora and stirred it while he was listening to me.
“Yes, certainly. Been in this business forty years, forty-one come next spring. Right here. Helped open the damn training track in Alton. Everybody thought they had to be in Kentucky. But they didn’t and I showed ‘em they didn’t.” He stirred his coffee some more.
“You remember Olivia Nelson?” I said.
“Jack Nelson’s kid,” Ferguson said. He shook his head. “Old Jumper Jack. He was a contrivance, by God, if I ever saw one.”
“Jumper?” I said.
“Jack would jump anything that had no dick,” Ferguson said.
“Nice to have a hobby,” I said. “What can you tell me about Olivia?”
Ferguson shrugged.
“Long time ago,” he said. “She was a nice enough kid, hot walker, exercise rider, just like the kids out there now, had a thing for horses. You know, young girls, like to control some big strong masculine thing between their legs.”
“Nicely put,” I said. “Anything unusual about her?”
“Nope, richer than most… why I took her on. Jack had a lot of money in my horses.”
“Syndication?”
“Yessir. We got over to Keeneland, up to Saratoga to the Yearling Auctions. Buy some that look right and sell shares in them.”
“Know anything about Olivia after she worked here?”
Again Ferguson shrugged and took in some pipe smoke. He was a good pipe smoker. He’d lit it with one match and kept it going without a lot of motion.
“Nope,” he said. “Don’t keep much track of the stable kids. I know she went off to college and her momma died…” He shook his head slowly. “Like to killed Jack when she died. You’d a thought he didn’t care, tomcatting around the way he did, but he must of loved her in his way, a hell of a lot. He went into a real tailspin when she died. Took him couple years to get over it.”
Ferguson drew on the pipe and without taking it from one corner of his mouth exhaled a small stream of smoke from the other. Then he grinned.
“Still wouldn’t want to leave my daughter unattended around Jack.”
I had a sensation in my solar plexus that felt like whoops sounds.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Jack’s nearly seventy, but if he can catch it he’ll jump it,” Ferguson said.
I was silent. Ferguson looked at me speculatively. He knew he’d said something. But he didn’t know what it was. He waited.
“He’s alive,” I said.
“Was last week, anyway,” Ferguson said. “Had a couple drinks with him. You got more recent information?”
I shook my head. “I’d heard he was dead.”
“Well, he ain’t,” Ferguson said.
“I was misinformed,” I said.
chapter fifteen
THE SEASONS HADN’T changed yet in South Carolina. The weather was still summer. But the earth’s orbit was implacable and despite the temperature; the evening came on earlier than it used to. It was already beginning to darken into the cocktail hour when I left Ferguson in the track office and began to stroll toward the Alton Arms. As I came past the parking lot, I saw the blue Buick pull out of the lot and head out the paved road that ran from the stable area to the highway.
Along the dirt road, under the high pines, the evening had already arrived. The locust hum had vanished, and instead there was the sound of crickets, and occasionally the sound of night birds-which probably fed on the crickets. There was no other sound, except my footsteps in the soft earth. No one else was walking on the road. I could feel the weight of the gun on my hip. It felt nice.
Since Olivia Nelson’s father wasn’t dead, someone had lied to the cops. But there was no way to know whether it was Loudon Tripp; or Olivia who had lied to Loudon; or Jumper Jack himself who had deceived his daughter.
At the hotel, I went up to my room and called Farrell.
“You got anything on that license plate?” I said.
“You’re going to love this,” he said. “South Carolina DMV says the plate’s classified. Information about ownership on a need-to-know basis only.”
“You can’t show a need to know?”
“Because it’s following you, or you think it is? No. If it was in a hit and run and three witnesses saw it, that’s need to know.”
“It’s part of a murder investigation,” I said.
