The Clincher

by Lisa Preston

  “Maybe in the horse, too.” I didn’t want to think about how Junior had scared me that day. “That stud’s got problems.”

  “That makes sense. Steroids could provoke laminitis.”

  “And give fertility problems and make it harder for a minor wound to heal?”

  Nichol nodded. “I rechecked the horse this morning. Spartacus never had a change in food, stress, anything like that before Ted noticed the front-end lameness. The horse is doing better now and we’ll need you out in a few weeks to reset those shoes. Same goes for that other emergency horse we did, the old pet. They’ll be needing another visit from their favorite shoer.”

  Did he forget I’d been fired from the Flying Cross? For a change, I didn’t want to talk about horses’ feet. To my way of thinking, other itches needed scratching. I pointed to the baggie. “What are these used for except to beef something up?”

  Nichol tapped his fingertips together. “A vet would prescribe them to a debilitated horse to increase its vigor and appetite.”

  “But people use them too, right?”

  “Yes and people abuse them. But other than obtaining them illegally—”

  “Stealing them?”

  “Or knowing a dealer,” Nichol said. “Other than illegal methods, you’d need a prescription for them. At least, you do here.”

  “Here?”

  “Anyone can buy them in any farmacia south of the border.”

  I pondered. The south border is over a thousand miles away from the heart of Oregon. “Unless the Harpers have a prescription—and I’ve never written them one—they shouldn’t have these. I doubt the police can do much, since it’s third-hand and the bottles are damaged, but I’ll talk to them.” He held out his palm for the drugs.

  I handed the evidence over, happy to get rid of the drugs. The police and the Harpers could sort it out with Nichol.

  “Did the police ask you to give blood?” I asked, surprising Nichol.

  “No. Why would they?”

  Why not, I wondered. They’ve tested everyone else’s. “Did you think I’d broken into your office?”

  Nichol gave me a good long looking-at and shook his head. “I think you’re a nut. A very cute nut. And I knew that you were at the Rocking B when my office was burglarized. I heard you left late. I heard young Mr. Harper left early.”

  “So, if young Mr. Harper were to have his blood tested. . . .” Impressing myself with all I considered, I allowed right out loud that maybe I would turn into a detective, if this shoeing business didn’t work out.

  But Nichol shook his head. “The effects of steroids last beyond usage. It’s perfectly possible for a relatively recent user to test clean while still feeling the benefits of the drug.”

  I let that bit of news run around my brain cells for a minute.

  Nichol’s smirk was at the ready. “They didn’t teach you that in horseshoer detective school?”

  Well, no, they didn’t.

  His smirk sort of dissolved into a genuine grin. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was flirting with me. Maybe I didn’t know better.

  The thing of it is, is I’ve never been a guy shopper. Heckfire, my first two so-called fellas ranked as disasters. I hadn’t wanted or needed a third. Things just sort of fell into place with Guy when I started living in his garage.

  Nichol gave my shoulder a squeeze as he opened the treatment room door for me.

  The problem with guys is they leave a gal wasting time thinking about them. And I’ve no thinking time to spare. I barely remembered to check that the thrushy horse was current on its tetanus. “There’s all these loose ends. And I’m wondering why anyone would steal the Solquists’ horse.” Then I had to explain, since Nichol hadn’t heard about the missing mare.

  He asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”

  It was exactly what people should have been asking.

  * * *

  After my next shoeing, I went to the Langstons’ place and found a fretty-faced Abby playing hooky, noodling around her little back-of-the-house pasture. The kid looked fit to be tied and was none too full of sense when I asked her what was going on.

  “Liberty,” she cried, too near tears.

  “She looks okay.”

  Liberty stood munching hay. The horse was the biggest part of Abby’s life, her thoughts, her reasons, her breath. She had dreams of and for her horse, I knew. I’d dreamed Red, the minute he came sliding out of his mama as I’d watched him, gangly-legged and slick. Glory and future, I reckoned, is all Abby saw when she looked at her horse. Every possible thing she could accomplish, every experience she could notch on her belt, counting coup.

  She’s told me all about this fire, and I felt it in my bones, same as just before I was an idiot, fat teenybopper who lost her way and got drunk one stupid night.

  I stroked the little gray mare, thinking.

  Abby’s told me how she’ll do hundred-mile races someday, do that running and riding combo sport. She wants to try racing and jumping and competitive trail riding and, of course, breed Liberty someday and continue the legacy. She sees herself eighty years from now as an old lady riding Liberty III or IV or V. I know. When I was ten years old, I saw the same dreams for Red and his kids—kids he’ll never have, mind, since he ended up properly gelded as a long yearling.

  I smiled, but Abby couldn’t with her chin aquiver.

  “What if he comes back?” she cried. “What’ll I do?”

  Then Abby bolted.

  Chapter 23

  I FOUND ABBY ON HER FEED room floor, squashed between a few bales of sweet-smelling orchard grass and a sack of alfalfa pellets. Her arms wrapped tight around her shins, hugging her legs to her chest, face planted on her kneecaps while she bawled.

  “You’d better start talking, young missy.”

  She howled and covered her head with her hands.

  I wasn’t having any of that and snapped my fingers in her face. “What exactly are you so scared of?”

  Hiccuping sniffles, the kind that keep a girl from talking, seized Abby.

  Thing is, it’s no use glowering at someone who won’t look you in the eye. Waste of a good glower. I stepped to the doorway of her little feed room, looked at her horse, then back at the kid. “Who’s Liberty bred to?”

  Abby clapped her mouth shut so hard, breathing was put away, then she double-sealed the hatch with both hands.

  I was getting nowhere and slowly with this kid. “What’s going on with your neighbors?”

  “Really, I don’t know anything about them. I’m just scared.”

  There was no real reason for the Solquists’ missing horse to scare her. And the missing mare had nothing to do with how Abby’s mare got pregnant. The Solquists had a gelding and a mare, no stud.

  So how did Liberty get in a family way?

  Abby didn’t have much money, worked for what she did have, foots most of the horse bills, except feed. Her daddy isn’t raising a slouch. But I was starting to guess he’d raised up a little thief.

  “You take something didn’t belong to you, kiddo?”

  Her face colored like an instant sunburn, tears leaking out.

  “Speak up,” I said.

  “I rode over to . . .” Sniffle, sniffle.

  “Wherever it was you rode Liberty to, I’m guessing it’s been many months.” I sighed. Pregnancy can sometimes be a bit hard to see in a maiden mare.

  Abby nodded, turned away and looked beat. I let her think I was a little smarter than I am, hoping she’d come clean and not make me keep playing twenty questions. But I do love it when my brain finds its overdrive. Probably the gear’s in such good shape because it’s seen so little use. I could have looked up, I reckon, and seen a light bulb hanging over my bean. With one hand on each of Abby’s shoulders, I turned her to face me and the truth. Then I waited until she tipped her head back and looked up at me before I said it, not really asking because I was pretty sure I guessed right. “You rode her across the highway, ove
r to the Flying Cross.”

  “Yes.” She breathed her answer through a quivering chin.

  “When she was in season,” I said.

  Abby nodded and blinked her wet eyes.

  “And you let her get mounted by Spartacus?”

  She froze.

  “Abby, you stole.”

  Abby looked away, like she considered getting fresh, then thought better of it. I decided her face was too scared for having been caught naughty. I crumpled, took a seat on the hay-covered plank floor. After a bit, the girl sat beside me, our shoulders against each other, feeling every breath.

  “The way it works is,” I said at last, “is you pay before you own.” I folded my arms. “Where’d you get a fool idea like stealing a breeding?”

  “From you,” she said in a tiny, earnest voice.

  “What!”

  “From one of the books you gave me. Thunderhead.”

  “Huh?”

  “Thunderhead is the story that comes after My Friend Flicka,” Abby explained.

  “Oh, for mercy’s sake,” I snapped, “I know which one comes when.”

  It had been a long time since I’d read those novels, but yeah, I guess I remembered now that Ken rode Flicka over to a neighbor’s ranch and got his mare bred to some hotshot stud. And when Thunderhead was born, Ken’s daddy had known right away it wasn’t his stallion’s get, but it all worked out in the end because Ken managed to hang in there and train Thunderhead and—

  What in the name of horse pucky is the matter with me? How can I remember stories I read fifteen years ago and I can’t remember to give Schram the bute for Weatherby or of the name of that daggummed detective? I frowned, and not to waste the grimace, turned it full bore on Abby.

  “You stole.” I wanted her to say it, and she fairly wilted under my words.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Abby studied the dust between her shoes, looking scared.

  More scared than she should have.

  A glimmer of some not-yet-formed question tried to spark in my brain innards. “And what else happened?”

  “He saw me as I rode away. I think he might have guessed.”

  “Mr. Harper?”

  She shook her head.

  I nodded. “Mr. Harper’s son.”

  “I’ve been so scared.” Abby’s chin crumpled again.

  “Because you think the Solquists’ mare may have been taken accidentally by someone who was actually trying for Liberty.”

  “Yes!”

  “By Mr. Harper’s son, Junior.” I wasn’t the only person to think the missing mare was key. I was second. But Abby couldn’t tell anyone her secret. She’d stolen a stud service—a baby to be—and someone wanted the baby back.

  Not that that’s such an awful secret.

  I’ve got worse.

  But I wanted to help this kid, so I sucked it up and went to the Flying Cross to talk to my ex-clients.

  * * *

  As I pulled up to the Harper house, I heard father and son on the far side of the garage, deep in a hollering match. The racket of one of them running a chainsaw died down. The short side of the garage had an extra-long eave for semi-dry storage underneath. The wall was burdened with a stack of plywood on edge, rakes and shovels hung on hooks, then a wheelbarrow scattered with woodchips that had sprayed from the long side. All stuff that had been there before, unnoticed by me.

  Junior was saying he’d get it dealt with. Senior was saying to fix it and move on. The chainsaw had covered the sound of my diesel truck arriving. I stood by Ol’ Blue, trying to decide whether to make noise swinging the door shut or not.

  Junior’s voice got louder. “What do you mean, move on?”

  Don’t yell back, Mr. Harper. Don’t push that mean son of yours. I wondered if the chainsaw was still within reach and which man was closest to the weapon. Junior had sure looked ready to brain me with a horseshoe when I’d last seen him.

  “I mean you have to leave,” Mr. Harper said. The widower sounded like he’d been down irresponsibility roads with his boy before, given how he sighed. “I said you can have the Suzuki. Did you already wreck it?”

  “No! You always think the worst.”

  I bet not. And I held my breath, wondering whether to turn on my boot heel and skedaddle.

  Junior was still snotting off. “I want what’s mine.”

  I pictured one thing leading to another, a pushing match, the weaker one going down. No good. I slammed Ol’ Blue’s driver door hard and stepped toward their side of the garage, wishing I’d grabbed a hammer or something heavy.

  “Tonight,” Harper said, looking up at his son. “Midnight.”

  Seeing me standing behind the old man, Junior gave his daddy a quick glare and stormed off down the long driveway past the house, toward the back cottage. I hoped the cops were wrong and the worst possibility wasn’t true, hoped no one had hurt Patsy-Lynn. That she’d accidentally taken her own life. Such would be the simplest explanation, and the kindest.

  Old Man Harper turned to me. “Can I help you, Rainy?” He seemed so much older since his wife had died. The confrontation with his son had left him a little steamy-eyed, too.

  “I’m here about one of my clients, a kid. She did something stupid and it kind of involves you . . . and him.” I pointed toward the long driveway his son had disappeared down, past the big house.

  Harper motioned me to his front door and I followed him inside to the room with the Colonel Sanders sculpture. I remembered mentioning the statue to Guy, him saying it was a bust of Brahms. Brahms would bust a gut howling if he knew what passes for music with this crowd. Mr. Harper had twangy stuff wafting around the house from a high-end stereo.

  It couldn’t be too comfortable to be Harper, caught between his live son and dead wife. I remembered how sick I’d felt the last time I’d been here, at the funeral reception, half scared the old man might think I’d hurt his wife. I took a breath and started talking.

  Harper took quite a spell to absorb what I told him—that his son scared the daylights out of Abby Langston when she was trespassing at the Flying Cross on Liberty. He took it with a grimace and finally allowed it wasn’t his boy’s first lapse in judgment. He faced the mantle photographs of Junior in his football uniform. I bet Old Man Harper had seen a lot of what my report cards used to call not meeting potential. I thought about Junior wanting what was his, and figured he’d planned from the get-go to take back the baby that Abby tried for. I wondered how much it was just Junior’s nature to be so contrary and how much the old man had made him rotten with spoiling.

  His voice was gravel. “They had a file on him at the college. He was asked to leave and he did. And that’s what’s going to happen now, too. Your young client has nothing to worry about. My son is leaving town, leaving the country. He will not bother the little girl or anyone else.” Harper moved for the front door like he couldn’t look at those photos another breath.

  I shook my head as he held the door for me. “I don’t understand.”

  What I didn’t understand was a long list of things, but I was going to start simple as soon as I got Harper’s attention again. Now, I followed him out past the wood pile where he picked up a chainsaw. Apparently, he still did plenty of his own outdoor work when he wasn’t doing whatever businessman-type work kept him occupied elsewhere.

  More than anything, I wondered where exactly his son was right that minute. It’s not that I was scared, but the willies were moving in on me.

  “Sir, I heard tell that you have some tools missing.”

  “My son should check the old barn, way out back. Calls it his man cave, didn’t want Patsy-Lynn around it. I don’t go there myself.”

  My ears pricked up. “Huh. I thought your wife and son figured that Mexican fellow Manny stole some tools.”

  Old Man Harper smiled. “He’s from Montana. Ted is teasing when he calls him Manny the Mexican.”

  I took a pause, then allowed, “I’m an idiot.”

  The old man went to fiddling
with the chainsaw, slacking the chain, inspecting it, then asking, “Do you, by chance, have a bastard file?”

  “A bast—” I choked a bit.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  My mind screamed for anything else to talk about. “Where, uh, where’s your son going?”

  “He’s going away.”

  It sounded so final, the way he said it. I looked at the old man, trying to understand. He looked away, only offering thin words. “He has to go away for good. I told him.”

  What a bad feeling that scrap of news gave me. “But why, sir?”

  “He’s my son.”

  That about finished things for him. I still didn’t know what else to say about his son or his wife, and I’d talked my piece about Abby, so I said good-bye.

  * * *

  Ol’ Blue and I started crawling down the Flying Cross driveway.

  The old man said his son was going away. He said it like it was his choice, not Junior’s. And the why of it? Because he’s my son.

  The wrong words could make me insane. I gripped the steering wheel hard enough to hurt. Glancing back at Harper’s fancy barn, I reckoned it was more than clear why Spartacus still had that scrape on his leg, a bad attitude, and why he went laminitic. I’d have to go hit my textbooks to get an A on the particulars, but there was another score I could settle sooner. If the person who took the Solquist mare hadn’t been meaning to get her, but instead meant to get another little gray with stolen seed in her womb, well, it could account for a few things. I thought back to that map at the sheriff’s office. And I thought about things coming full circle.

  He’s my son.

  A couple drops of sweat beaded up and ran down my spine, tickling in the most heebie-jeebie way imaginable. My ponytail needed a good twist, so I gave it three or four.

  He’s my son.

  Why did Harper have to go and say a thing like that? Before Patsy-Lynn was in the picture, I guess Harper’s last wife gave him a child and what clinches things for him is that boy.

  He’s. My. Son.

  I wiped sweat and fresh tears away, mad at the world. There wasn’t a whole passel of time. I had a late afternoon shoeing at the Thurmans, but if I hurried, I could fit in a quick hike and satisfy a bit of curiosity that noodled me.