Death by Equine

by Annette Dashofy

  Jessie took her hand. “I know. I wasn’t sure how much you knew, though.”

  There was no joy in Amelia’s smile. “He didn’t think I knew about the girl. But I did. I never agreed with his decision to give her the practice. I think the only reason he planned to do it was to appease his own guilt.”

  “Why’d he change his mind?”

  “I don’t know.” Amelia patted Jessie’s hand. “It’s my hope that you’ll take it over.”

  Jessie wondered if she knew Sherry was dead. Or that Jessie was under suspicion. “I wish I could.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  Jessie looked around the living room, clicking off the reasons in her mind. Starting with the fact that Daniel had barred her from Riverview property. Segueing to the EIA scare that might bankrupt the track. And ending with the most benevolent reason, which was the only one she shared. “I can’t afford to pay you even a fraction of its value.”

  Amelia’s face blossomed into a smile, this one heartfelt. “My dear girl. I want you to have it. What am I going to do with a clinic and all those cabinets full of records? The lease on the building at Riverview is paid through the next two years, so you have plenty of time to deal with that part of it.” Her voice turned hard and determined. “I just don’t want that Malone woman to get it.”

  Obviously, Amelia hadn’t heard. “Sherry’s dead.”

  Amelia’s trembling fingers touched her mouth. “That’s awful. Do you think her death is connected to...?”

  “Doc’s? Yes, I do. That’s why I want his records. I want to go through them and find out what someone wants to keep quiet badly enough to kill for.”

  Amelia’s hand dropped to her lap. “By all means. Take them.”

  Jessie rose and started for the hall.

  “Jessie?”

  She turned back.

  “Keep them. I meant it when I said I want you to have the practice. You’re the only one I want to see have it.”

  Jessie nodded and headed down the hallway to Doc’s office. Now all she had to do was solve two murders, clear her name, and keep Daniel Shumway out of bankruptcy. Provided solving the murders didn’t land him in jail.

  Twenty-Six

  Jessie parked the Chevy in her regular spot between the Cameron Veterinary Hospital and her house and slid down from the driver’s seat. Spring in western Pennsylvania was nothing more than a battlefield for dominance between winter and summer. A week ago, Jessie needed to run the furnace. Today, it wasn’t even nine o’clock and already sweat beaded along her spine, gluing her t-shirt to her skin.

  Boxes of folders filled the truck’s cab, leaving barely enough room for Jessie. More boxes packed the center portion of the storage unit. Loose files had been tucked in anywhere and everywhere. She itched to dig into them, but with Meryl taking over at the track, Jessie had a busy day ahead at her hospital.

  She watched as one of her clients carried a small plastic crate toward the front door. Meryl had warned her that she had a full slate of surgeries lined up for the morning, followed by a packed schedule of appointments. “Welcome back,” Meryl had told her with entirely too much glee.

  Choosing to avoid the clamor her staff would raise if she trailed in behind the client, she headed around to the side door for a less grand entrance. She lifted a white lab coat from the hook on the wall. Let the day begin.

  Meryl hadn’t been exaggerating. The morning was a blur of spays, neuters, and dental cleanings with a couple of biopsies thrown in. With only one vet working, all appointments were jammed into the afternoon hours. There was no time for lunch, even though Jessie’s own kitchen was right next door. She found herself longing for an order of rec hall french fries.

  By the time she finished writing a prescription for her final patient of the day, the clock read 7:25. Later than usual for hospital hours. She was beat but kept thinking about the track. The first race was history. Entries for the second should be at the post. Meryl still had a long evening ahead of her.

  Exhausted or not, Jessie would’ve loved to trade places with her. Milt was right. She’d fallen in love with Riverview.

  Jessie bid her receptionist and both techs goodnight and headed outside for the first time all day. She immediately walked into a wall of humidity charged with electricity. Black clouds boiled in the western sky.

  She opened the passenger door of the Chevy and looked at the mountain of boxes. Meryl wasn’t the only one with a long night ahead.

  Lugging two boxes, one stacked on top of the other, when a single one would’ve been the wiser move, Jessie picked her way down the path to her back porch. She braced the boxes between her shoulder and the doorframe as she unlocked and opened the door.

  A wide-eyed Vanessa met her in the kitchen. “I thought someone was breaking in again. What are you doing here?”

  Jessie staggered past her into the dining room with the boxes. “Burglars generally don’t use keys. And what are you doing here? Where’s Greg?”

  “He’s working. I’m watching the house.”

  Jessie couldn’t see Vanessa’s face, but from the sound of her voice, she apparently took this as a very important job. “Well, I’m here now. You can go.”

  “Um. I can’t. I don’t have my car.”

  Jessie pivoted to catch a glimpse of Vanessa biting her lip. “Fine. Just stay out of my way.”

  When Jessie hit the bottom step, Peanut came bounding down from the second floor, tail wagging and tongue draped out the side of his smiling mouth.

  With no free hand to pet him, she braced herself against his greeting. He bumped into her legs, bouncing as if trying to leap into her arms. “Come on, baby,” Jessie cooed and started up the stairs. The dog followed and then proceeded to escort her on each of her eight trips from the truck to her office.

  On the fourth or fifth trek through the house, Jessie stopped in front of Vanessa, who had snuggled into the overstuffed chair in the dining room with a book. Molly curled in her lap. “Where’s the kitten?” Jessie asked.

  Vanessa lifted her head and gave the room a quick scan. “I don’t know. He’s around here somewhere.” Then she returned to her reading.

  By the time Jessie carted the last stack of folders down the hill from her truck, she was grateful to have beaten the weather. The wind had kicked up, and the black and gray clouds flickered with lightning.

  With the boxes stacked haphazardly around the room, Jessie rolled her office chair out from the desk and found the tabby curled up in the seat. She ran a hand over his pumpkin-colored coat. He awoke with a soft mew and leaned into her hand. She really needed to name him.

  After raiding the refrigerator and throwing together a cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwich, Jessie grabbed a ginger ale and carried her makeshift dinner back to the office. With the tabby in her lap, the sandwich and soda at her elbow, she began to sort through the files, beginning with A.

  The food didn’t last through the Bs. By the end of the Cs, the tabby had relocated to the windowsill to watch Mother Nature’s light show. Jessie hadn’t found anything questionable. She stood up and stretched. Peanut followed her downstairs where she intended to dig up a bag of chips or something equally unhealthy to keep her going. She found Vanessa in the kitchen—her kitchen—sliding a frozen pizza into the oven.

  “Want some?” Vanessa asked without much enthusiasm. Jessie imagined the offer had been made only because she’d been caught.

  “Maybe later.” Jessie grabbed a half-eaten bag of Kettle Korn and a bottle of water and retreated upstairs, accompanied by the rumble of thunder.

  She was two-thirds of the way through the Ds when she came across the file marked “Dodd.” Pushing the Kettle Korn to one side, she spread the papers out on the desk, studying each one.

  Catherine had gone through more than two dozen horses over the last few years in her quest for a champion. Most had come and gone in short order, leaving only a page of notes. One of the thicker packets belonged to the Kentucky Derby aspirant turned l
ame has-been, Mexicali Blue. Curious, Jessie leaned forward to study Doc’s findings.

  The first thing that startled her was the pre-purchase exam report, performed while Emerick still owned the horse. The test findings revealed no sign of lameness. That couldn’t be. Jessie shuffled the papers and located a set of radiographs. The old film kind. She didn’t have a light box in her home office and had to settle for holding the films up to her reading lamp. Hardly ideal conditions for reading x-rays.

  Something about the pictures triggered her internal alarm.

  The radiographs she’d taken of Blue were on the computer back at the clinic. She had, however, backed them up online. She swiveled her chair to face her laptop and tapped the mousepad. As the screen came to life, another flash of lightning lit up the room at the same time a crash of thunder rattled the windows. Peanut whined and cowered under her feet. The tabby bolted from the room.

  And the house fell into darkness.

  Jessie stared at the computer—the only light source remaining. She glanced at her router. The green lights that usually twinkled across its surface were now black. So much for accessing her files from her online backup service.

  She fumbled for the old x-ray and found it. Then she gazed at the light show outside her window. Storm or not, she knew what she had to do.

  ON AN ORDINARY NIGHT, Riverview’s final race went off just before eleven. The parking lot would be vacant by eleven thirty. But the storm must’ve caused a delay. The parking lot didn’t empty out until close to one.

  Jessie left her truck at the darkened amusement park, adjacent to Riverview. She skimmed the edge of the miniature golf course and stepped over the rickety wood fence separating the two properties. She may have been banned from the track, but if she bypassed the guard shack at the stable gate and avoided the front side security guys, who would know? Dressed entirely in black, she skirted the dirt track’s white outside rail.

  The wind was picking up again, scattering dust and debris. Lightning flickered in the clouds overhead. Mother Nature wasn’t done with her pyrotechnics.

  Jessie had spent enough time around the backside to know the strengths and weaknesses of the security measures. An eight-foot Cyclone fence encircled the barn area with the electronically operated arms at the stable entrance. Guards kept a close eye on the padlocked gate next to the rec hall and another that horses and riders passed through on their way between the track and the barns. There were two additional pedestrian gates near the maintenance buildings that security almost always overlooked. Jessie hoped tonight wasn’t an exception.

  As she neared the empty grandstand, she took a furtive look around. Seeing none of Riverview’s rent-a-cops, she darted toward the backside. With the brown envelope containing Mexicali Blue’s x-rays tucked under one arm, she hurried along the Cyclone fence to the first pedestrian gate, hoping to find it unlatched. No such luck.

  She took another cautious check of her surroundings and hurried past the maintenance buildings to the second gate.

  It was locked too. If only she’d thought of a Plan B.

  She curled her fingers around the vertical pipes that made up the gate and gave it a frustrated shake. To her surprise, the padlock hit the pavement with a metallic clank. She snatched it and looked around, afraid she’d drawn unwanted attention. All she saw was the flicker of lightning.

  Jessie opened the gate wide enough to squeeze through and let it drift shut. She hooked the padlock on the wire fencing next to the opening. Now she simply had to work her way across the backside to the clinic without being seen.

  Thunder rumbled to the west. Dawn-to-dusk lights illuminated the backside in patches, leaving long shadows in their wake. Jessie clung to the dark sides of the stables. The soft rumble of a car engine forced her into one of the covered gaps between barns until track security’s battered Chevy Cavalier rolled past.

  The clinic loomed ahead. Jessie’s heart pounded in her ears. Walk, she reminded herself. Running would attract attention, especially with the stable gate’s guard shack nearby. Better to keep her head down and her pace casual.

  She hesitated at the corner of the clinic. The front door was closed. Besides being very much in sight of the guard on duty, she thought of the racket opening it would make. With a slight adjustment in her original plan, she picked her way along the side of the building to the back entrance.

  That door was closed too. Remnants of yellow tape fluttered. Jessie grabbed the handle and heaved. With a moan, the door opened.

  Jessie paused to allow her eyes to adjust to the dark. A flash of lightning cast an eerie gray burst through the windows, illuminating the cavernous spa and emphasizing the liquid black pit that took up a good third of it. Then it was dark again, and she had to rely on her memory to pick her way to the passage. She clung to the side well away from the pool. When she was almost halfway across, lightning again lit the room and revealed the maw of the hall. She scurried the rest of the way.

  Groping the wall, she made her way along the dark passage to the office door. She dug her keys from her jeans’ pocket, fingered them until she found the right one, and probed until it slipped into the lock.

  Force of habit drew her hand to the light switch, but she stopped in time. The nights spent sleeping in the office had given her a familiarity of the space even in the dark. She scooped up the laptop and headed to the exam area.

  The light box cast a pale glow. Jessie snapped the two sheets of film into the clips at the top of it. She opened the laptop, logged in, and browsed through her files until she located what she was looking for. Then she stood back to study the shades of black, gray, and white.

  The films on the light box showed a perfectly normal bone structure. The more recent digital pictures showed the thin line where a break had occurred. She was so engrossed in the variations in the coffin bone that she didn’t immediately catch the more obvious difference—the radiograph of the sound foot also showed a longer pastern than the other.

  The radiographs were from two different horses.

  She snatched one of the films off the light box and squinted in the quasi-darkness to read Doc’s scribble on the piece of white tape attached to the corner. Perhaps the wrong horse’s x-ray had been mistakenly placed into Blue’s records. But the film was clearly labeled “Mexicali Blue” and the date.

  Doc had misrepresented Blue to the Dodds. He surely knew the horse was unsound. Otherwise, why substitute a different horse’s x-ray? Why convince Milt to purchase a lame horse for Catherine?

  Then she thought of Blue’s past owner and the whole Coggins mess.

  Doc was in cahoots with Emerick for more than swapping out blood samples.

  Jessie gathered the films and the laptop and switched off the light box. Back inside the office, she dug out the phone Greg had given her and punched in a familiar number.

  Vanessa’s muffled, sleepy voice answered.

  “Vanessa, this is Jessie. I need your help.”

  “What’s going on? Is Greg all right?”

  “I’m sure he is. Go to my office. I’ll tell you what I need once you get there. Okay?”

  Vanessa sounded tired. Too tired to be argumentative. “Hold on.” A minute or so passed. “Okay. I’m here. What do you want?”

  “Look in the boxes of records I brought home and find the ones for Neil Emerick.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Over the phone, Vanessa relayed page after page of Doc’s notes on Mexicali Blue. Emerick purchased the colt as a yearling. A pre-purchase exam done on the horse showed the youngster had been clean. But following a strenuous training schedule and a couple of impressive wins as a two-year-old, Blue turned up lame, thanks no doubt to the trainer’s high-pressure techniques. At that point, Doc radiographed the colt and diagnosed the fracture of the coffin bone.

  Jessie was about to thank Vanessa for her help and hang up when she gave a startled cry. Something fell out of the Emerick folder, she said. A note in Doc’s distinctive scrawl. As Jessie sat in st
unned silence, Vanessa read it to her.

  Jessie copied Blue’s new radiographs onto a flash drive, which she tucked in the envelope with the old films. Hugging the package under her arm, she made her way back to the gate. The wind stirred a dust devil that swirled up into the halogen light between barns, mirroring the tornadic spiral of Jessie’s thoughts.

  Dazed, Jessie reached the gate, only to realize she hadn’t been paying attention. She was at the wrong one. The one that was padlocked. She swore and turned away. Lightning lit the shadowy side of a nearby barn, revealing a figure ambling toward her. Neil Emerick?

  “Hey, darlin’. What are you doing out on a night like this?” Milt stepped out of the shadows, squinting against the wind.

  Jessie relaxed. “Snooping. I’m not supposed to be here, remember? Why are you still here?”

  He gestured over his shoulder. “Flat tire. Had to wait ’til the rain let up to change the dang thing. Got her done and was fixin’ to leave when I spotted you sneaking around. What’re you snooping into now?”

  She touched the envelope clamped against her side and wondered how much, if any of it, he knew. “I figured out who killed Doc and why.”

  “Oh?”

  “Come on. Walk with me. I don’t want to be caught on Riverview property. At least not until I can clear things up with Daniel.”

  “I gather it ain’t Daniel that you suspect?”

  “No. Neil Emerick.”

  “Neil?” Milt gave a low whistle that was drowned out by the rumble of thunder. “What’d you find?”

  Jessie lowered her head against another gust of wind, shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her hoodie, and revealed what Vanessa had shared minutes earlier. “You know how Neil claimed ignorance about the condition of that gray that started this EIA business? Turns out Neil had Doc do one of his ringer blood tests on the horse before it arrived. But once the gray got here, Doc took one look at it and knew something was wrong. He demanded a real test. Only Neil had Sherry swap out the gray’s blood sample for one from Sullivan. When the test came back negative, Doc was appeased for a while. But apparently Sherry had a change of heart and admitted what she’d done.” A jagged flash split the night sky and a second later, thunder boomed, shaking the ground. Jessie flinched. Getting fried wasn’t high on her list of priorities for the evening. Tracking down Daniel and Greg and getting them to arrest Emerick was.