Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery

by Maggie Estep

  Ruby isn’t here, though. Probably doesn’t know.

  “Bach,” I say now.

  “Bach?” Deedee has sprung to my side. “Which Bach?”

  “D Minor Concerto,” I tell her, and though there are, I think, two in D minor, I know she knows which one I mean.

  The music comes on. Beautiful. I pass out.

  The next thing I see is three women, draped across my futon. I can’t breathe very well. I can’t see all that well either, but these three are recognizable. The honey and mud of their hair. Their smell. I know each woman’s smell very well. My sense of smell is still with me.

  Isabelle has her head right next to mine.

  “Ludwig,” I say, and I see her spring up, knowing at once I mean the Seventh Symphony.

  “Second movement?” I hear her say.

  I manage to nod.

  And then I go.

  Rudy Murphy

  31 / Murderous Whispers

  I’ve put my shirt back on over my T-shirt and I’m sitting crouched in the abandoned stall, obsessing about smoking. I stick a piece of gum in my mouth and decide to turn the cell phone on—the one that I conveniently forgot to give back to Ariel—and call Jane. I might even tell her what I’m about to do. Just in case it all goes wrong and I end up in jail.

  Jane and Harry’s answering machine comes on, reciting the phone number I know so well.

  “It’s me. I guess you’re otherwise engaged.”

  “Ruby,” Jane’s voice suddenly cuts in.

  “You’re there?”

  “Yes.” She sounds serious. “I’ve left you messages at home.”

  “Oh? What’s up?”

  “This isn’t good.”

  “What?” I say, not liking the tone of her voice.

  “Oliver,” Jane says softly.

  “What? He’s worse?” My heart skips a few beats.

  “Ruby, he’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Your friend Kathleen called here. She’s been trying to reach you all day. She finally called me, thinking I’d know how to find you. He died several hours ago.”

  “That’s impossible,” I say. “I saw him yesterday. He was doing karate. He was fine. He can’t be dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jane says. I can hear her crying.

  A horse whinnies in the distance.

  “Kathleen said three of his ex-girlfriends, herself included, were draped across his bed when he died.”

  I let out a sound distantly related to a laugh. My body is impossibly heavy. Tears start streaming down my face.

  “Where are you?” Jane asks softly.

  I’m not sure if she means it literally, but that’s how I answer: “At the track.”

  “What? I thought that was all over with.”

  “I’ve got some things to do out here,” I say in a flat voice. Because part of me has just died—and with it any reservations I might have had about what I’m about to do.

  “Oh, Ruby,” Jane sighs, “what are you getting into now?”

  “I’m breaking into Arnold Gaines’s office,” I say, rushing on before she has time to say anything. “I’m not sure what I’ll find. But something’s very wrong.”

  I tell her about the photo of Ariel with Joe.

  “Ruby, that’s insane. Your friend has died. You’re in no condition to do something like this. We’ll come get you,” she says.

  “No, don’t. I’m sorry. I have to do this. Especially now. It’ll be okay. If someone catches me, I’ll talk my way out of it.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”

  “Why don’t you come over. You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “Not right now. Later,” I say.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Not really. I never thought Oliver would leave me.”

  “He didn’t leave you, he died.”

  “That means he left more completely than anyone ever has.”

  Jane is quiet. Then: “I think you should just come over here now,” she says softly.

  “I can’t. I’ve got to do this.”

  “And you promise you’ll call me the moment you’re done?”

  “I promise.”

  X

  IT’S A PROMISE that’s hard to keep a few hours later when I suddenly find myself with a gun pointed at my head and a fair-haired sociopath whispering murderously in my ear.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Ruby?” Frank is saying, his mouth much closer to my ear than I am comfortable with. Though I’m surprised he knows my name, I can’t say it’s a great shock to find him wielding a weapon.

  After leaving the deserted barn, I checked on Joe, found him in one piece, rubbed his nose, and made my way over to Gaines’s office. I was just trying out my picklocks when Frank came up behind me, cupped his hand over my mouth, and nudged what was unmistakably a gun into the small of my back.

  “Frank,” I say, surprising myself by sounding almost calm in spite of what is clearly not a situation favorable to my well-being. “I’m not doing anything.”

  “You’ve done plenty. Too much, I’d say.”

  He turns me around so I’m face-to-face with him. And his gun.

  “What were you gonna look for in there?” he says, indicating Gaines’s office with his chin.

  “I just don’t want any horses dying,” I say simply.

  He stares at me hard, pale green eyes like ice water. Then: “Neither do I.”

  “Ned?” I venture.

  “Ned?” He says.

  “Is it him?”

  “Him what?”

  “Killing horses?”

  He stares at me again. “We’re going to take a little ride,” he says, ignoring my question. “Come,” he adds, almost solicitously, indicating the office door.

  He pulls a key from his pocket, opens the door, motions for me to go in.

  “Have a seat,” he says.

  I park myself in Gaines’s office chair. Frank puts his gun down on top of the desk, then starts furiously pulling drawers open, scavenging through various forms. I want to ask what the hell he’s doing but I keep my mouth shut. I stare at the green walls. Pictures of horses. An equine anatomy chart. The desk strewn with condition books, candy wrappers, and pencils. I feel curiously blank. I have absolutely no control over anything, and in a weird way, it’s a relief.

  “You’re going to help me,” Frank says, pulling me out of my reverie. I notice he’s scribbling things onto a form, not looking at me. “We’re taking Raging Machete off the track,” he says, still scribbling. “You’ll help me get him in the van and you’ll do exactly as I say when we go through Security.”

  “Where are you taking him?” I ask.

  “A place I know. I’m making a phone call now. Keep your mouth shut,” he says. He picks up a horse’s leg bandage, drapes part of it over the phone receiver, then punches in a number. He then launches into something that might be humorous under different circumstances: a pretty lousy job of impersonating Gaines’s oil slick voice. He tells the security office he’s vanning a horse to the veterinary hospital for emergency surgery. Frank, his hotwalker, will be driving the van through Security shortly, with a copy of the horse’s papers.

  Frank finishes the call and looks at me as he puts the phone down. “Come on,” he says, motioning for me to walk out of the office ahead of him. He picks his gun back up off the desk almost like an afterthought.

  He locks the office behind him and indicates that I should walk in front of him. I can’t feel it, but I know he’s got the gun at my back. We start heading over to the eastern lot, where Gaines’s horse van is parked.

  It’s a dark night, no moon, air thick with notions of rain. Frank keeps glancing around, nervous. We reach the vehicle, a blue six-horse van. Frank produces the keys from an immense ring in his pocket and opens the driver’s side. He grunts at me to get i
n and move over. Quietly pulls the door shut and starts the engine. He stares ahead for a minute, like he’s having some sort of inner monologue. Puts the van in drive. Slowly noses it out of the lot. A guard posted at the parking lot exit just waves us on, leaving the job of checking our business to the guards at the main gate who we’ll have to pass in order to exit the track.

  We park the van and Frank nudges me out. In silence we walk over to Joe’s stall. A few of the other horses grow restless hearing us.

  I find Joe dozing with his head just an inch over his water bucket, like he took a particularly exhausting pull of water and it put him right to sleep.

  “Put his halter on,” Frank says in his tight, low voice.

  I walk in, talking softly to the colt, who blinks his eyes open and points his ears forward. I pat his neck and slip the halter on. Frank stands at the stall door, frowning, watching me as I lead Joe down the aisle and out to the van, where, without turning his back to me, Frank pulls the loading ramp out. I make a soft clicking sound in my throat and lead Joe into the truck’s entrails. The colt loads without a fuss, probably figuring we’re shipping him to another track to race.

  Frank closes the back of the van and motions for me to come get in the cab.

  “Where are we going, Frank?” I venture.

  “It’s best if you keep your mouth shut,” he answers without looking at me.

  I keep my mouth shut.

  He drives the van to the security gate, hops out and hands some forms to the two guys in the little shed. The guards glance over the forms, then nod at Frank, apparently satisfied. Frank comes back to the van. His face is a blank mask.

  I seem to be the furthest thing from his mind, just a sack of bones breathing here in the cab of the van.

  I go deep inside myself, trying to dig a well to hide in. I find Oliver there. I picture his beautiful face and the way he looked the day we came here to the track together. So thin. His old suit pants barely staying up even though he’d punched new holes in his belt. The bones of his broad shoulders were poking out of his striped, button-down shirt. Our shoulders touched as we sat. The calmness of two souls understanding each other, sitting there on a spring day, playing the ponies.

  I come out of my reverie when Frank veers the van off the highway and into a rest area. He parks, then slowly turns and looks at me. “We’re going to handcuff you now,” he says matter-of-factly.

  I’m not sure who “we” is, but my heart is pounding so loudly I can’t believe he doesn’t hear it. He produces a set of handcuffs, reaches behind me, and roughly pulls my hands together. I feel him snap the cuffs on. Tight. I don’t know where he got handcuffs. I suppose I don’t want to speculate.

  He pulls a horse bandage—maybe the same one he draped over the phone when impersonating Gaines—from one of his jacket pockets. He starts wrapping the bandage around the back of my head and over my eyes. I sit mute and limp.

  I feel Frank steering the van back onto the highway. I sink into myself, into a black molasses of adrenaline and sweat. Time stands still. Then passes.

  Eventually, the van slows and comes to a stop.

  “I’m going to unload the horse,” Frank says, speaking for the first time in a long while. “Don’t move.”

  I hear him open the door and jump out. There’s a chorus of barking dogs and then Frank’s voice threatens the animals in a harsh whisper. The dogs quiet down. I hear his footsteps on gravel. A door creaking open. Moments later there’s noise from the back of the van and the sound of Joe’s hooves going down the loading ramp.

  Though I try not to, I keep getting an image of myself mutilated. Hog-tied in the back of the horse van. I try thinking of something else. Of Jane. Of Oliver. Minutes pass. Frank eventually pulls me out of the van and guides me forward.

  There’s a strong smell of manure. Then I feel a closeness. We’re inside. Sounds of horses. Another creaking door.

  He pulls the bandage off my face. I blink a number of times in what seems like impossible brightness, but after my eyes adjust a bit, it turns out to be very dim light. I am in a stall. With Joe. Who pricks his ears forward, looks at me with curiosity, and then gently nuzzles me.

  We’re in a small dank stable with a very low, cobwebbed ceiling. Five other box stalls contain natty-looking horses.

  “Frank,” I say as calmly as possible, “what’s going on? Where are we?”

  “Where no one will find you,” Frank says. “Trust me, what I’m doing is in your best interest.”

  “Why?” I say, searching his hard face.

  “Hello?” a deep voice calls out. A black man in a cowboy hat comes in through the low front door.

  “Coleman, what are you doing here?” Frank asks, frowning.

  “That’s a fine-looking horse,” the cowboy says, feasting his eyes on Joe and ignoring both the question and the situation. “How are you, little lady?” he asks, smiling at me, like it’s the most normal thing in the world to find a strange woman with her hands cuffed behind her and a guy with a gun standing in a horse’s stall.

  “Isn’t it a little early for you, Coleman?” Frank asks as the cowboy comes into the stall and pats Joe on the rump.

  “You get to be my age, sleep don’t last that long,” Coleman says, “so I thought I’d come in and get an early start around here. What with the new guest and whatnot.” He indicates Joe with his chin.

  I start to feel hopeful because, although I don’t know where the hell we are, the place is evidently the province of this Coleman fellow—and he doesn’t seem like the kind to stand around watching a woman get murdered.

  “How long you leaving this guy here?” Coleman asks, still looking at Joe.

  “I don’t know yet. And there’s her too,” Frank says, pointing at me, “but she won’t cause any trouble.”

  “Ladies are trouble no matter which way you look at it,” Coleman decrees. “No offense, miss,” he adds, tipping his hat at me and smiling, revealing a row of big tobacco-stained teeth. He looks like any other cowboy you’d see. Worn-out cowboy hat, leather vest, tired blue jeans, and beat-up boots.

  “I’ve got her restrained,” Frank says, motioning at the handcuffs behind my back.

  “Aw, she don’t look like she’d do no harm, why you got her cuffed, Frank?”

  “It’s better this way,” he tells Coleman. “I’ve got something for you,” he adds, reaching into the pocket of his jacket. He forages around and fails to find what he’s looking for. “Where is it?” he says to no one in particular, patting himself down all over.

  “What’s that, Frank?” Coleman asks politely, though he really doesn’t seem to care.

  “My organizer,” Frank says, looking around, leveling his gaze at me. “You take it out of my pocket?”

  “No.” I shrug. “How could I?” I raise my handcuffed hands.

  “Where the fuck is it?” he spits through clenched teeth, alarming Joe by getting down on all fours and searching through the stall bedding. To no avail.

  As Joe and Coleman and I look on with matching baffled expressions, Frank storms out—presumably to search the van. Moments later he’s back. And not happy.

  “I must have set it down in the tack room. At the track,” he says, looking daggers at me, like I made him do this.

  I say nothing. Frank turns and goes over to talk to Coleman.

  “Well,” I hear Coleman say, “you do what you gotta do, Frank. I got horses to look after.”

  The cowboy shuffles off down the aisle, bangs some buckets around, and goes outside. I hear horses whinnying in an adjacent barn. Joe pricks his ears forward with interest.

  Frank’s looking at me with poison in his eyes: “I’ve got to go back and get my organizer. I’m leaving you here. Don’t try pulling any stunts with Coleman. I’m making it worth his while to make sure you stay where you belong.”

  I just look at him, then watch him walk out through the low barn door.

  I slump against the stall wall and breathe and try to think.
>
  Joe comes over and starts grooming my head, getting a little rough, taking a nip at the back of my skull. I let him.

  As Joe loses interest in my head, I look around at the other horses in the barn. They all have shaggy coats, round bellies, and skinny necks. They’re what you’d call backyard horses—only they don’t have a yard. They’re all four standing with their heads poking over the tops of their stall guards, looking at the barn door and waiting for Coleman to come back and feed them breakfast.

  Eventually, the cowboy appears, clanging buckets and coughing.

  “You need some help?” I call out to him.

  Coleman just chuckles. “Your friend Frank told me you’d be trying some clever tricks to get me to take your cuffs off.”

  “It’s not a trick. I was just asking if you needed help.”

  “That’s mighty nice of you, miss, but I been doing this forty-seven years, I don’t think one more morning’s gonna break me.”

  “These all your horses or you boarding some for people?” I probe, trying to keep things alive between us.

  Coleman moves his hat back on his head and scratches at his hairline. “The bay mare and the chestnut are mine. The gray’s a boarder. And the other bay. Got another six across the way there too.” He motions outside.

  “You own the land here?”

  “Yeah. It’s ours. Me and a few other cowboys. Grandfather land. The city can’t take it from us,” he says, then frowns, like he’s already said too much, which I suppose he has since he’s given me the important though startling information that we’re within city limits. Must be Queens or maybe the far reaches of Brooklyn. Which is somehow immensely reassuring.

  Coleman frowns. “Why don’t you just be quiet in there now. I won’t be but a half hour, then I’m going on home for a spell. You mind your own business, I mind mine, and everything’s gonna be just fine.”

  I say nothing. But Joe pipes in, whinnying at the sound of Coleman rattling feed tubs. The colt starts pacing the stall, narrowly avoiding pinning me to the wall.

  “Can you please feed this horse before he kills me?” I call out to Coleman, who’s got his back to me as he dumps feed in the chestnut horse’s stall.