Walk, Trot, Die
Susan Kiernan-Lewis
Copyright 2011 by San Marco Press. All rights reserved.
Published by San Marco Press at Smashwords
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Chapter One
1
La Bon Chance Farms was the oldest horse farm still operating in North Georgia.
Tucked away in a private pocket of countryside forty miles north of downtown Atlanta, the riding stable was an oasis of winding trails, peekaboo ponds and rolling pastures along the banks of the Chattahoochee.
Until two years ago, the farm had been the headquarters of the regional fox-hunting brigade, but the encroaching tract-house developments and strip malls had prompted the pony clubs and hunt clubs to relocate fifty miles away, outside of Athens. Bon Chance stood alone now, a relic of the times when Atlanta was known more for its Southern charm than its episodes of road-rage and killer crime rate.
White-slat fences crisscrossed the farm’s five hundred acres of pastures, woods and river front, separating mares from geldings, polo fields from hacking trails, pasture from woods. A thin electrified wire threaded the top of the fences to discourage cribbing from some of the more bored inmates.
Barb-wire fencing, normally never used around horses, was used at Bon Chance on certain spots along the Chattahoochee River where the riding trails wandered too close to the water’s edge. The banks were steep and pitched. A horse or two had fallen over.
"Jilly! Is this yours? I found it in the manure pile in the east pasture."
A tall woman, blonde and tan, strode up to the tie-up pole under a cluster of birch trees, waving a tattered riding crop. The woman, large-bottomed, with a cheerful face, wore expensive, if dirty, cotton riding breeches and a silk blouse open at the throat. She marched in dusty black riding boots to where a small, petite woman with dark hair stood next to a saddled mixed-breed Clydesdale.
"You're kidding,” the smaller woman said, slapping a long-nailed hand to her hip and giving the Clydesdale’s bridle a snappish tug. “Someone threw my crop in the shit-hole?"
Margo Sherman, barn manager at Bon Chance Farm, held out the crop to Jilly.
"Well, I don't know if anyone threw--"
"Don't be stupid, Margo! How do you think the damn thing got there?" Jilly Travers did not reach for the proffered crop. "Someone threw it there."
"Well, look, do you want it or not?"
Behind them, a pair of riders emerged from the main barn leading their mounts. The two approaching women were dressed in boots and breeches with their black velvet riding caps and shoulder-length blonde hair pulled back to reveal ears studded with small pearls.
"Ready, Jilly?" One of them called out. "Hey, Margo! Thanks for feeding Zanzibar for me the other day."
Margo smiled at the woman and wagged the crop in her direction.
"No problem, Portia," she said weakly. Her eyes returned to Jilly Travers' darkening face.
Portia mounted her dark bay gelding and flexed her gloved fingers against the reins.
"Jilly, I asked you if--"
"I heard you, Portia, darling," Jilly spat out, giving her horse’s cavesson another unkind jerk. "I was just getting something straight with Margo here."
"What's the problem?" The other woman, Tess Andersen, spoke as she led her horse to where Margo and Jilly were standing.
"Well," Margo started, "I found this crop out in the eastern pasture--”
"My crop," Jilly hissed, turning her back on them to position her foot in her stirrup.
"Yes, well," Margo smiled hesitantly at Tess and Portia. "It's kind of messed up now."
Jilly swung up into her saddle.
"It's been in the shit-hole for two weeks. I don't suppose you two know anything about it?" She stared at the two women.
Portia looked at the crop in Margo's hand. Tess jerked her head in Jilly's direction.
"What are you saying?” Tess asked. “You think one of us stole your crop?"
Jilly twisted the reins across her horse's neck and the animal turned away from the group. "What? You dear girls? What a thing to think." Jilly scowled at them from her saddle, her hands twitching against the reins.
"Oh, for heaven's sake." Tess swung up on her horse, stamping now in impatience. "What's the stupid thing cost? Twenty bucks?"
Portia twisted in her saddle and glared down at Margo.
"What's she saying? Is she saying we threw her crop in a pile of shit?"
"Forget it, Portia," Tess said. "She doesn't know what she's saying."
"I know more than you'd like me to know, darling Tess." Jilly's color seemed to fade a bit and another smile came to her lips. "I know that much."
"Look," Tess smacked a hand against her thigh. "Do you want to ride today, or not? Because I can do some ring work just as well. In fact, I probably should, so if you don't want--"
"On such a beautiful day? I would be heartbroken.” Jilly smiled nastily then shook her head as Margo tried to hand her the crop. She held up a small child's bat and showed it to the barn manager. "I've got one, don't I, darling? It wouldn't make sense to ride with two, now, would it?"
"Don't be such a bitch, Jilly." Tess touched her horse's sides with her calves and she moved forward, away from the group. "You might end up ruining what should be a very pleasant hack."
2
Kathy Sue squinted at her notes and took a shallow breath and held it. The client had been very rude that morning, ruder even than usual. She flushed to remember the way he looked at her. Undressing her mentally and then casting her aside, untried. She reddened furiously and tried to read her shakily scribbled notes.
Her brief relief at not having to make the visit with Jilly was annihilated by the damage that Jilly had obviously performed on her visit to the man the day before.
Why does the bitch hate me? Kathy Sue wondered in hurt amazement. She reached nervously for her cigarettes and lit one up, watching the tip shake as she did so. No opportunity to humiliate her was left unexplored by Jilly Travers. And, as senior account executive, the opportunities were many.
Kathy Sue had been writing ad copy for Ryan, Davis and Shue for three years. Three years ago, she'd broken out of the in-house public relations department of a local hardware store chain, and made it to the big time: a real advertising agency. At first, the principals had loved her, treated her like family. Her then art director--an old geezer without an ounce of spite or competitiveness in his whole gangly, frail body--had helped train her in the business. The clients respected her, requested her presence at all the fact-finding meetings, and sent her nut and toffee baskets at Christmas. She had loved her job.
And then Jilly Travers came on board.
She came one year ago. With her saber-like painted talons, her waist-length dark hair, swinging provocatively as she moved down the halls, Jilly enticed clients and principals, junior art directors and portly media directors alike. She was beautiful and she was vicious. Her beauty was small and delicate. Her viciousness--considered an unexpected bonus in the business world of advertising--was rotund and deliberate.
Kathy Sue had good reasons to fear Jilly Travers. With Kathy Sue's plump figure, country-girl earnestness and eager smile, she was an irresistible target for derision. It was easy enough for Jilly to make Kathy Sue look incompetent in front of
the principals. All she had to do was "forget" to give all the client information to Kathy Sue for a new ad, or perhaps to indulge in some ugly pillow-talk with any one of the three agency bosses.
Kathy Sue pushed her notes away and stared at her computer terminal. It had been months since anyone in the office had asked her to lunch or even dropped in to talk with her about anything besides work. She shifted in her chair and felt her plump thighs rub together uncomfortably.
Recently, Jilly hadn't been satisfied with merely orchestrating the destruction of Kathy Sue's career in-house. She had expanded her campaign to include the agency’s client roster.
To one client, Jilly hinted that Kathy Sue was wildly promiscuous. Kathy Sue knew about the insinuations but felt powerless to defend herself to the client.
How to address it? And when? While they were all huddled around a new concept pitch? When they were in the boardroom enjoying a celebratory drink together?
Kathy Sue just didn’t have the opportunities that Jilly did to speak privately to their clients. As a result, she sat, mortified and ashamed through meeting after meeting while the client watched her and leered. And while Jilly smiled. To another client--a man who had originally been fond of Kathy Sue as their copywriter--Jilly dropped the notion that Kathy Sue was lesbian and fiercely, if covertly, anti-male.
All in all, Kathy Sue had good reasons to fear Jilly Travers. And to hate her.
3
The sparrows skimmed the rafters, like the Blue Angels doing show-maneuvers, then settled in a flutter of brown and pale fluff around a pile of horse manure near the mouth of the lower barn.
Margo stood in the tacking-up area of the barn, watching the birds and filling in the creases of a leather halter with a lathering of saddle soap, rubbing it into the leather with firm strokes.
The afternoon darkened with threat of rain and she felt annoyed that the ride after her chores would probably not be possible. She found herself resenting the easy schedules most of her boarders enjoyed. If they weren't high-powered professionals with imminently flexible time tables, they were the non-working wives of high-powered professionals--with a limitless supply of beautiful mornings and sunny afternoons for riding or tennis or facials. She looked at the gleaming brass buckle on the halter she held. And most of them didn't clean their own tack either.
"Hey, Margo, check it out!"
Margo looked up from her work and blinked into the brightness as it pierced the stable entrance. She could discern the stark silhouette of someone approaching.
"What is it?" she called, her face frowning in the harsh light.
"Best-Boy just came back at a gallop without Travers."
The figure moved into the barn and suddenly her features developed before Margo's eyes. It was one of the pasture boarders. Elise or Elaine something. She had a mixed breed gelding in the west pasture that she didn't show or hunt but just sort of "pleasure rode." Whatever that was.
"What do you mean...'without Travers'?" Margo worked the soap into the halter a little harder.
The boarder approached and Margo could see that she held a green nylon halter. The girl was probably still in her teens.
"A couple of us are gonna go out and look for her. It'll take her an hour to walk back, at least. And it's gonna rain. Wanna come?"
"Where's Best-Boy now?" Margo knitted her eyebrows in a mask of concern. "Have you checked him out? Scratches or scrapes...?"
"Jessie caught him and threw him in the north paddock, tack and all." The girl shrugged her thin shoulders. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt with scuffed brown paddock boots. "Anyway, you coming? Jessie said we could bring Tucker for Jilly to ride back on."
"Look, I'm not sure this posse is really necessary. Jilly's with Portia Stephens and Tess Andersen. They ought--"
"Man, Margo, I thought Jessie told you. The girl began to retreat into the bright glare of the barn’s entrance. “Portia and Tess came back forty minutes ago--"
"What?" Margo dropped the halter in the sawdust and then stooped to recover it.
"Yeah, Jessie said they told her they'd had a fight or something and left her out there."
"I see." Margo stared past the girl into the quickly dimming light of the afternoon outside. "And where are Portia and Tess now?" she asked.
The girl shrugged.
"I think Jessie said they went home already,” she said. “Yeah, it'd been nice if they could help, huh?" She waved. "I'm tacking up Tucker, okay? We'll leave in five minutes if you want to come." She disappeared.
Margo held the leather halter tightly in her hands and stared after her.
4
The smell of the barn rose up from the straw-strewn floor: a combination of oily leather tack, manure, sweet feed and the sugary muskiness of the horses themselves.
Fulton County Senior Homicide Detective Jack Burton leaned against one of the stalls at the opening of the barn, having carefully avoided one of the ubiquitous brown piles that scattered the pathway, and surveyed the entire length of the barn with his flint-gray eyes. Fifteen box stalls on each side of the barn, most with long, curious noses poking out of them.
The Fulton County Police Department had gotten the call late that afternoon from someone at the Bon Chance Riding Stables in North Fulton County. Woman, presumed thrown from her horse on a ride in the woods, now missing. A search of the trail by the barn manager and a two others showed no sign of the woman but ample signs of a struggle. There was blood everywhere, on trees, rocks, the ground. The victim's blouse was found blood-sodden and rolled up under a rock, as if in a pathetic attempt to hide what could not possibly be hidden: someone had died there. Violently.
Now, hours later, in a gentle but quickly erasing rain, county forensics combed the area--ragged with tall pines, shrub and rocky trails-- while medics waited on-site in the relative warmth of their ambulance.
Burton watched a pair of barn sparrows bathe in a mud puddle by the barn’s entrance. Black face, black bib...buffy breast, brown back stripes. Pine Woods sparrows, he wondered? Aren’t they a little too far south? He listened to the soft nickering of the horses in their stalls as they munched noisily on the remnants of their dinners. As he listened to the horses eat and watched the sparrows, he wondered if he were feeling a little saved or a little mad.
"Noisy little buggers, aren't they?"
Jack's back stiffened. Lately, his partner, David Kazmaroff, had taken to sprinkling English expressions in his usually thickly Southern-accented dialogue. Burton had been convinced he did it solely to annoy him, but it was possible, he supposed, that Kazmaroff had begun the habit as a result of his bizarre attempt to become the last bonafide, living Yuppie of the nineties.
Just when everyone else wants to bury their BMWs and pasta makers and start cleaning up the environment, this moron wants to interrogate child molesters using an English accent.
Dave Kazmaroff had jumped at the chance to work on this case, Burton knew. Bon Chance Farm was the headquarters of the Atlanta Polo Club. Burton knew that if there was anything Kazmaroff, with his Ralph Lauren shirts and Armani jackets, wanted most to be associated with --it was "the sport of Kings."
"Okay, so who's on our list?" Burton sighed heavily, his pleasure in the barn spoiled by his partner's presence.
Kazmaroff shifted his weight and leaned against the stall next to Burton. He flipped open his notebook, his brow puckered in concentration.
"The barn manager lives on the property," he said. "A Margo Sherman. She's the one who called the police and did the first search. Surprised she's not here to meet us."
"Who else?"
"Well, there's the two girls who had the fight and left her out there. They don't live here, of course."
"Of course." Burton turned back toward the dozing horses in their stalls. "Who else lives on the property?" he asked.
Dave checked his small spiral notebook again.
"The manager, Margo, a stable groom, name of Jessie Parker, and a grounds man..."
"Grounds man
?" Burton looked back at Kazmaroff. "You mean, like a gardener?"
Kazmaroff smiled thinly at his partner, showing big, straight teeth.
"I imagine he tends the polo fields," he said pleasantly. "Name's Bill Lint." He snapped the notebook shut with a quick flip of his wrist and the horse in the stall nearest to him started abruptly, its eyes white and wide for a moment before relaxing again. "That's all I know," he said, unaware of the animal's reaction.
Burton turned away again to hide his agitation while taking refuge in the sounds of the big, sleepy beasts tucked into their stalls for the night.
"Well," he said tightly. "Then let's find Miss Sherman, shall we?" He turned to make his way out of the warm barn when a figure emerged from the barn's tack room and storage area.
"That won't be necessary," a husky voice said. "I'm Margo Sherman." The woman was big, Burton noted. And quiet. He wondered how long she had been in the tack room listening.
"Blimey! You startled me," Dave said as he slapped a meaty hand to his heart and grinned at her.
It was all Burton could do not to imbed a stiff right in the man's solar plexus.
Blimey?
Instead, he concentrated on the woman.
"Detective Jack Burton," he said, showing his I.D. "This is my partner, Detective Kazmaroff."
She nodded at both of them and rubbed her hands across the thighs of her no-longer clean riding breeches.
"I've got an office here," she said. "We could talk there."
Burton smiled professionally at her.
"Lead on," he said.
Margo Sherman sat opposite the detectives in her cramped office, crowded by towering horse show trophies, clumps of multi-colored prize ribbons that draped the walls, and a couple of saddles perched on wooden saddle rests. Her desk was an untidy pile of vet bills, farrier notes and equine medical manuals. The place smelled of leather and sweet grain and Burton found himself quite comfortable in the setting.
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