Soon, she feared, Jimmy was bound to start to suspect something. Only a few nights ago he’d caught her crying after a surreptitious phone call to LA. (She was missing Todd so much on this trip, it was agony.) Anyway, she managed to think on her feet and told him she was missing the boys, which he seemed to buy. Unfortunately his response had been to “comfort” her—the same way all men had wanted to comfort her since her breasts started growing at fourteen. But she’d found his attentions so unbearable she had to feign a migraine and push him off.
It was almost getting to the point where she hoped he would find out and put them all out of their misery. Almost, but not quite. Losing her Learjet lifestyle and all the perks of being Mrs. Price was a huge price to pay. She had to be sure, a hundred, a thousand percent sure, that Todd would go the distance if she gave it all up for him. And right now, she wasn’t.
In the meantime, she lived in constant fear of Milly spilling the beans to Amy or Jimmy or anyone at Palos Verdes. So far though, for reasons Candy couldn’t fathom, Milly hadn’t said a word. Maybe she was enjoying making her sweat? Or maybe, as Todd suspected, she had some sort of misplaced sense of honor or loyalty to Jimmy that held her back. Either way, having the ax hanging over her day after day was more than even Candy’s nerves of steel could easily take. The sooner Jimmy dropped Milly and picked some other project to focus on—perhaps this girl Rachel?—the better.
“And it’s still Best of Friends leading from Mommy’s Boy,” the commentator announced, “followed by Thunderbird, Guts and Glory, and Never Better coming up on the outside.”
“Would you look at that!” Jimmy screamed, mistaking his wife for someone who cared. “That’s Kravitz’s horse in fifth, and he’s fucking closing too. That British broad is riding the pants off Garth. I swear to God, I gotta fire that guy.”
“Well, why don’t you, then?” said Candy, bored stiff by the whole thing. “Sack him, and Milly, and hire Kravitz’s girl instead. She can obviously ride, and she’s more than pretty enough to promote.”
“You know what?” Jimmy beamed at her. “You’re right, as usual.”
The best thing about Candy was that she wasn’t just a pretty face. She got him, really got him, in a way that his first wife never had. He’d been thinking exactly the same thing himself, about hiring Rachel. Uncanny.
“Holy crap!” Along with the rest of the crowd, he leaped to his feet as Best of Friends, the favorite, inexplicably pulled up short within fifty yards of the finish line. Within the space of a few seconds, he was passed by no fewer than four horses. Suddenly it was a wide open race again.
“And it’s Mommy’s Boy,” shrieked the announcer, whipping the crowd into a deafening frenzy of cheers. “Mommy’s Boy from Never Better with Thunderbird closing, Mommy’s Boy from Never Better . . . My goodness it’s close between these three! And it’s Mommy’s Boy! Thurston Morton on Mommy’s Boy takes the Belmont.”
“Goddamn it!” said Jimmy, petulantly hurling his race card onto the floor. Garth Mavers had ridden like an amateur from the start.
“And surely it must be a photo finish for second place,” the voice went on, “between Never Better, ridden by Miss Rachel Delaney, and the surprise star of this season, Thunderbird. What a brilliant performance from Damian Farley this afternoon on the little gray.”
Jimmy clenched his teeth. He was tired of being disappointed. Be it quarter horses or Thoroughbreds, he raced to win. And his horses hadn’t been winning, not for a good long time.
For months he’d been willing Milly to come good. But every time she suffered a setback in her personal life—first it was Demon dying, now the breakup with Cranborn—it seemed to knock all the competitive stuffing out of her. Real stars were made of sterner, steelier stuff. Like Rachel.
“I tell you.” He turned to his wife. “If Milly doesn’t pull off something pretty fucking spectacular at the All American, she’s out.”
“None too soon, if you ask me,” said Candy. “You’re much too soft, you know, Jimmy. You shouldn’t let people take advantage of you.”
He smiled. Garth may have just lost him the biggest race of the season. But he still had the most beautiful, loving, supportive wife in the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Linda Lockwood Groves flashed her member’s badge at the steward and was waved forward, her natty new Range Rover Vogue directed toward the members-only parking spots directly behind the grandstand.
She’d driven up to York last night, to watch Jasper ride in the two thirty. It was July, but nobody seemed to have told the weather. The thin, gray drizzle that had settled over central Yorkshire late last night had at last stopped, but it remained gloomy overhead and dank underfoot, and the car park was still half empty as a result.
Cecil had always rather liked this sort of weather, Linda remembered sadly. It used to make him go all gooey and romantic. How many times had she heard him wax lyrical about the rain-drenched gloss on the landscape or the smell of the dry stone walls that reminded him of his childhood?
She’d never shared his love of the rain. But she had loved him with all her heart, and she still missed him terribly. So much had gone wrong in the last year, she was more in need of his advice and comfort than ever. Milly doing those awful Playboy pictures and turning her back on her family, Jasper never coming home and behaving more and more erratically. Even Rachel, who’d seemed like such a tower of strength and support in the beginning, had let her down, disappearing off to America without so much as a postcard and then saying all those hurtful things about Milly in the papers. It was all very strange, especially when one considered that she was still supposedly Jasper’s girlfriend—although how the two of them kept things going at such a distance, Linda had no idea.
The final shock had come a couple of weeks ago. Bored one afternoon, she’d taken a stroll into town. (She often found herself at a loose end since her move into Newmarket. At the time she’d been thrilled at the prospect of leaving all the hassle of Newells behind and moving to a town house. No more early-morning starts to turn out ponies or check on grain deliveries, no blasted cockerel shrieking outside her bedroom window at all hours of the night. It was supposed to have been bliss. But the truth was, with Cecil gone and both the children away, she actually missed the old routines and found her new life in town crushingly lonely.)
Wandering aimlessly down the high street, she’d suddenly stopped in her tracks. A huge, full-color photograph of Newells was plastered all over the window of Jackson Stops & Staff. The little minx had gone and put it up for sale—and for a whacking great profit, mark you—without so much as a phone call to warn her! It was all most upsetting.
When she’d tackled Jasper about it on his last trip home, he’d claimed to be as in the dark as she was.
“There’s no point asking me, Ma.” He pouted, holding up a purple silk tie next to his new pale blue Thomas Pink shirt, trying to decide whether it worked or was a bit too news-readery. “If Rach condescends to call me at all these days I consider myself lucky. She’s far too high and mighty to ask for my advice, let alone my permission.”
Linda didn’t understand it at all. Rachel had been so considerate, such a treasure when Cecil died. She couldn’t imagine what had happened.
Still, she mustn’t dwell on it. Making her way precariously across the muddy ground toward the clubhouse, she fixed a smile to her face and tried not to think about her ruined Patrick Cox mules, or how out of place she felt at the races without Cecil. Today was Jasper’s day. That was the important thing. Even if all the other women in his life let him down, she, his mother, would be there for him.
Down in the jockeys’ changing room, Jasper made sure nobody was looking before taking another furtive peek inside the envelope. Few things gave him more satisfaction than the feel of note after note of ready cash brushing against his fingertips, and this time Ali had been more than usually generous. Twenty thousand pounds—all in fifties. It was more than he’d ever been bunged on a single rac
e before.
He needed it, too. He still owed money for his share in the yacht he’d chartered with some mates last month in Sardinia, not to mention five grand to his coke dealer.
What a great fucking party Sardinia had been. For all his moaning about Rachel leaving him in the lurch and his pathological, obsessional envy of both her and Milly’s ever-growing fame in America, being left girlfriendless in Europe for the summer had its advantages. Not only was he free to screw his way from Les Caves to the Billionaires’ Club without looking over his shoulder, but as a bit player in the Milly-Rachel feud, he also got to enjoy the novelty of being snapped by gossip-mag photographers wherever he went, which didn’t do him any harm in the pulling stakes. But still, his new hedonistic lifestyle wasn’t cheap. His current target, a stunning three-day eventer called Leonora with an aristocratic lineage that pissed all over the Delaneys and tits that could be seen from space, was maddeningly refusing to give it up without some token of commitment on his part. Last night she’d kissed him for two solid hours before buggering off home, leaving him with a hard-on the size of Brazil and a level of sexual frustration he couldn’t remember experiencing since his early teens.
With today’s cashish, he’d be able to get her a little something from Cartier and still have enough left over for the honeymoon suite at Claridge’s. If that didn’t charm the uptight bitch out of her knickers, nothing would.
All he had to do now was get out there and plow the race. Then he could focus on plowing Leonora.
Linda emerged onto the clubhouse balcony, pink gin in hand, and sat herself down next to Martha Tooley, a racing wife she knew slightly from Cambridgeshire. Against all the odds the clouds had lifted and a few hopeful rays of sunlight were filtering down onto the racetrack, making all the jockeys in their bright silks stand out like bejeweled jesters in the paddock below.
“Have you spotted Jasper yet?” asked Martha, handing Linda her binoculars.
“Not yet. Ooo, yes, look,” she said excitedly. “There he is!”
Wearing the blue and green colors of the Dhaktoubs, Jasper turned and waved to her before guiding his horse, an enormous bay called Babylon that looked more like a shire horse than a racehorse, toward the starting stall. As always before a big race, he was nervous and could have done without his mother’s eager, hopeful, overbearing presence in the stands. But in his current financial position, he couldn’t afford to be churlish. Keeping his good standing at the Bank of Linda was more essential now than ever.
“Lovely looking horse,” said Martha truthfully. “Is he the favorite?”
“I’m not sure,” said Linda, who knew he was but felt bad putting the pressure of even more expectation on Jasper. His results this season had not been great, and she was worried that he might soon lose his place riding for Ali—although Jasper himself seemed remarkably unconcerned by his string of lackluster performances this summer.
Once the race got under way, Linda was embarrassed to discover that she was actually clasping Martha’s hand with nerves.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, blushing when she realized what she was doing.
“Don’t worry,” said Martha kindly. Linda wasn’t a particular friend, but like all the Newmarket wives Martha felt sorry for her, being widowed so young and then having all that ghastly business with Milly to deal with. Cecil Lockwood Groves had been such a lovely man. He’d be turning in his grave if he could see the way his children were behaving, not to mention what had happened to the business he’d spent his whole life building. It was tragic. “I used to be exactly the same when my son was racing. Terrifying, isn’t it?”
Linda nodded gratefully. “It is,” she said. “And I so want him to do well. Recently . . . well, I feel a bit disloyal saying it. But his results haven’t been as good as I’d have hoped.”
Admittedly, she didn’t understand much about the mechanics of racing. But even Linda couldn’t fail to notice the way that Jasper continually seemed to lose momentum in the last crucial moments of his races, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as it were. She groaned with disappointment now, along with much of the crowd, as once again he did the same exact thing, mistiming his sprint finish and pushing Babylon forward just two or three seconds too late. This time he was second by no more than a neck.
“Damn and blast!” she said, springing to her feet, maternal concern written all over her face. “I’d better get down to the paddock. He’ll be awfully upset with that.”
“Good luck,” Martha called after her.
Down below, all was bright and wet, with the newly rediscovered sun bouncing off the glistening grass and dripping trees. The ground, however, was still treacherous, and Linda had to tread slowly and carefully as once again her heels sank like daggers into the ooze.
“Blast,” she muttered to herself. “Where is he?” Craning her neck, she tried to make out the Dhaktoub colors through the crowds. Eventually, she spotted him on the far side of the paddock.
“Darling,” she called, shrilly. “Yoo-hoo! Jasper!”
Still mounted, Jasper was chatting animatedly to Ali Dhaktoub and his trainer and obviously couldn’t hear her. Oddly, as she drew closer, Linda could see that all three of them were smiling. Surely they ought to be looking miserable, after missing out on yet another supposedly surefire win?
Moments later, their smiles evaporated, however. For there, advancing purposefully toward them through the surrounding crowd, were a group of uniformed policemen. Seven of them, by Linda’s count.
What on earth was going on?
Shocked silence fell across spectators and press alike as the senior officer, distinguishable by his multistriped cap, strode directly up to Jasper.
“Mr. Lockwood Groves? And Mr. . . .” he glanced down at his note- pad, “Ali Mishari Dhaktoub?”
“Yes?” said Ali.
Jasper, who’d turned a violent shade of green, said nothing.
“What seems to be the problem, officer?” Ali smiled thinly.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come with me, sir. You too, sir.” The policeman nodded toward the trainer, who was trying surreptitiously to step back from the group, like St. Peter when the first cock crowed.
“May I ask why?” said Ali. Whatever he might be feeling inside, externally at least he remained calm and unperturbed.
“I’ll explain everything at the station. Sir.”
The policeman was in his fifties and, though Ali was no expert on ranking within the force, had enough white stripes on his shoulder to indicate that he was not a man to be trifled with. This, combined with his polite but extremely firm manner and the fact that he had evidently deemed it necessary to bring reinforcements, persuaded him that cooperation was, at this point, almost certainly the best option.
“Very well,” he said curtly. To his amazement, handcuffs were produced. Before he had time to protest, he found himself being grabbed by two men, cuffed, and frog-marched toward the waiting squad cars.
Jasper, who’d remained still as a statue on Babylon up to this point, as though by not moving he could somehow make himself invisible, now whimpered audibly.
Up till now Linda had remained frozen, like everybody else, watching with horror as the drama unfolded. But as Jasper was forced reluctantly to dismount and the press, jolted out of their coma, surged forward to photograph him being handcuffed, flashbulbs erupting everywhere, she battled her way to the front.
“Jasper!” she yelled hysterically. “Let me through! I’m his mother. Jasper!”
He looked up briefly, but her voice was soon drowned out by hundreds of others as microphones and cameras were thrust unceremoniously into his face.
“Don’t say anything,” yelled Ali over his shoulder. Flanked by an officer at either side, he had finally lost his cool and could be heard loudly demanding to be allowed to call his solicitor.
It was unnecessary advice anyway. Jasper was far too scared to open his mouth.
His last view before he was bundl
ed inside the squad car was of Linda, mouthing something at him that he couldn’t make out, her face a study in panic.
“Wait, that’s my mother,” he said, struggling between his two burly escorts. “I need to speak to her.”
“Right now, son,” said the larger one, ignoring his protests and manhandling him firmly into the car, “I’d say your mum was the least of your worries. Wouldn’t you?”
To Jasper’s horror, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the cash-filled envelope with Ali’s distinctive, looped handwriting on the outside.
“Recognize this?”
Jasper went from green to white.
“No,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t. But I’m not saying another word till I speak to my brief.”
Outside the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, Bobby was having some legal problems of his own.
“It’s not over yet.” Jeff Buccola, the four-hundred-bucks-an-hour attorney he’d hired to fight his case against Comarco, made an effort to sound upbeat. “We can keep stalling on those soil samples for another few months at least. Every specimen they bring in, every piece of evidence they put forward, we can challenge.”
“Oh yeah?” said Bobby caustically. He was tired of being given false hope by this bozo. “And what am I gonna pay you with, Jeff? Beans?”
His training tour had been a great success financially, and Thunderbird getting placed at the Belmont had been the icing on the cake of an exceptional season. Overnight, the horse’s value had more than quintupled. But that wasn’t much use to Bobby if he couldn’t sell him, something that Barty, unsurprisingly, refused to countenance.
“Look, Bobby, I’m sorry about Highwood, really I am,” he said, over celebratory beers on the night of the race. “But you can’t seriously expect me to part with him now? This is just the beginning of his career. You know that. Besides, even if we sold him, your share’d get swallowed up in that case faster than you can say ‘lost cause.’ All you’re doing is delaying the inevitable.”