Hot Blooded Murder

by Jacqueline D'Acre

  “Let’s go outside, boy.” I put a halter and a lead shank on him, then using an over-turned bucket as a mounting block, climbed up on his back. I rode him from the barn, his hooves plonking on the concrete aisle, then crunching on the pea gravel outside, then vanishing utterly as he trod over the grass of the pasture. The gate was open and I sat bone-loose on his broad back. There was a creek, almost dried up now, in a cleft between the gentle undulations of my acreage. Wildflowers grew there. I felt Am’s silken sides through the thin flannel of my pj bottoms. My bare ankles gently touched his sides as we moved at a slow walk downhill, the way lit by the moon. My buttocks lifted and fell with his motion. He swished his tail. Yet thoughts raced through my mind. Was Anton the killer? Given that he had once had millions, would he murder for a mere ten thousand? Apparently he bashed his wife around, verbally and in semi-public as at the AA meetings, and he bashed her around physically to the extent that she needed sheltering herself. Why didn’t she leave him? But I knew why. The brainwashing, the toxic abuse was so carefully doled out over time, the torture increasing only as the victim became de-sensitized to each level of hurt. Then the next degree of pain was applied. Eventually the severity was meaningless, the victim had so lost any ability to make a decision, the concept of leaving didn’t exist. Add to that the usual threats of killing her, her children and anything else she cared about, and the victim stayed, to spare others harm.

  If Anton really owned the purple place in the Vieux Carré, why was he so broke? Those gorgeous women going to those posh hotels. Lots of money involved.

  Was Anton a gambler too? Like Cade Pritchard, whose sister, Kitty, offered that piece of information to me before I left. If they were heavy gamblers, millions could be vacuumed up quickly and if they had gambling debts, well, the debt holders were unlikely to be accommodating.

  Am snorted and I saw a bunny leap across my path. Then he stopped and flung up his head, me saying “Whoa!” and a fox snaked fast in front of us, intent on the rabbit. The moonlight made his red coat look silver. I touched my own red head. Or was it silver, underneath the touch-ups that maintained my original red, courtesy of L’Oreal? I nudged the horse forward and he went down to the creek bed. I was admiring the hibiscus-like mallows blooming in the bog, when there was a piercing cry. Horse and I got still. Listened. Another thin sound, eerily human. A snarl. Then silence. The fox had taken its prey.

  10:13 PM

  When I returned, Madame Maigrèt and François were sitting on my patio. Moonlight filtered down through the arbor’s vines and lighted the pair with tangled shadows. I rode right up to them and, recalling more high school French said, “Bon soir, Madame, François.” I slid off Am and smiled at them. “What a nice surprise.” Why was she here?

  “Bon soir, Breen,” said Madame and François echoed her.

  “Just let me put Amethyst out on pasture and I’ll be right with you.”

  “Verrry pretty horse,” said Madame.

  I called thanks over my shoulder and turned Am loose. He could eat grass all night long. I invited the pair into the house and soon they were seated in my living room politely waiting while I made coffee. Madame, I’d noticed, wore a silk pants suit, in a turquoise blue. Her eye makeup was subtle, smoky, sexy. Lips perfectly glossed in a mauve-pink. Very glamorous. I looked down at the sweatshirt and pajama pants I wore. How unglamorous I had trained myself to be.

  As the coffee dripped, I mused about how plainly I dressed now, how I eschewed even the allure of eye shadow. All this to keep my inner glamour-puss down. It was always trying to take over. I decided I was a recovering glamour-puss, something I’d been before my marriage and divorce. The Uptown ladies at Commander’s Palace in their little Saks dresses? That had been me. So now I worked hard to deny it. If I allowed the glamour-puss to surface, I might become attractive and a man might become interested in me, and the thought of that made me feel helpless. The coffee was done. All by myself I carried a tray out to them and set it down.

  François was enthralled with the horse. “Can I go see heem?” he asked.

  “Of course! Let yourself into the pasture. He won’t mind if you sit on his back even, if you can haul yourself up.” Am, at 16:2-1/2 hands, was fairly tall. François scampered out. I smiled at Madame and poured her a cup of coffee.

  “Black, please,” she said and accepted the cup. No mugs for Madame. I was using my mother’s Royal Doulton.

  Madame took a few sips, smiled and set her cup down. She proceeded to tell me that she and François had witnessed the beating of Cade Pritchard beneath an I-10 underpass and that as they drove away, they heard shots.

  I stared at her, barely able to take it in. That earlier, feeling of doom…? I also felt a little cheated. Hopefully he was still alive and whatever crimes he’d committed could be properly tried and he’d go to jail for them! Madame was still talking.

  “…so Breen, I am here to warn you. These are verrry dangerous people.”

  “When you saw this man with Cade did you–call the police?”

  “Non! I had a teep he was going to be taken. I went to check it out. It is what go around come around, you know thees French saying? It is justice. Cade created his own justice.”

  “I’d have rather created some legal justice for him!”

  “Oui. But that weel not happen now.”

  “You believe you heard shots?”

  “Absolutement.”

  “So. Is Cade–dead do you think?”

  “Non. Je ne pense pas. I ‘eard two shots. I theenk only they were shooting him in de knees, savez? Dead, how can they collect? They know he steel have thees big asset; hees farm is worth hundreds of t’ousands of dollar.”

  I repressed a shudder.

  “So, Breen. You stop now. Mme Goodall is gone. You cannot breeng her back. Comprendez? Verrry dangereuse. I like you, Breen.”

  Her blue eyes regarded me steadily. I looked back at her, trying to absorb her meaning. Was she warning me off? She knew things I did not and really, I did not want to know.

  “Your place is verrry nice, Breen.” Her eyes ran over my dozens of books. “You are intelligent woman.” She raised her cup to her lips, sipped and set the cup down. “Listen. I have more information. Anton also is in difficulty.”

  “I figured that out. I found his new shabby office and other financial signs of pending ruin.” I said.

  “Ruin. Yes. He is a petty man who likes to torture women.”

  “I am gathering that. But that house on Chardonnay, all those women…”

  “He was a shareholder. Eet is gambled now away and he owes money to the other partners in that place.”

  “Will they–shoot him as well?”

  “Non. I t’ink different. They may want him to wash de money in his business.” I had a silly but instantaneous picture of all the prostitutes, topless of course, slim arms plunged deep into foamy water in big wooden washtubs. They scrubbed madly at dozens of dollar bills on old-fashioned washboards.

  “Wash the money?” I asked, face straight.

  “Yes, make eet clean, legal money. Is how you say?”

  “Launder.”

  “Launder. Yes.”

  “But, Madame, do you know? Did he kill Marcie Goodall?”

  “Possible. Make sure she don’t talk. Make sure no one find out about crooked deal. He ees de one who told Pritchard about de Takeur’s.”

  I gasped. “So that’s how they found out and cut some deal with Cade and cut Marcie right out of the deal. They committed fraud!” Bastards! I also suddenly remembered. “I was at Anton’s office late one night not so long ago and I found he had made a mysterious deposit to his checking account–made it the same day Marcie gave up the place and the Takeur’s bought it. I wonder now–”

  “A payoff. Oui.”

  “It’s not that much money: fifteen thousand and he gave five to Kitty Abeletti but he was so broke before he couldn’t even pay his electric bill.”

  “Ten t’ousand dollar come in handy som
etime.”

  “It would for me, that’s for sure.” I took a sip of coffee myself, set the cup down carefully. “So how do you know the things you know, Madame?”

  “Many businessmen consult wit’ me, ask me when is best time to do business, make deals, you know. In order to ask me they have to tell me things about the deals, non?”

  I smiled. “Aren’t you afraid of them doing something awful to you?”

  She laughed. “You forget. I am voodoo queen. D’ey scared of me!” She stood, a swish of silk. Came nearer, and gently touched my swollen head. She dropped a small cotton bag onto the table in front of me. “Make thees into tea. You drink. Get well verrry quick.”

  I smiled up at her. “Thank you, Madame–”

  “You mus’ call me Fifi, Breen. My first name. We are becoming good frien’s.” Fifi?

  “Fifi. Thank you. Thanks for coming all this way out here.”

  “I have to warn you. You are impulsive and brave. You need not die foolishly. You have done enough. It is all unraveling now. Your work is finished. The police figure it all out now, cherie.”

  I felt like pouting over that, but I hid it with a smile. “Thank you so much,” I moved to stand but she pressed down on my shoulder.

  “Non,” she said. “I find door. Rest, cherie. Au revoir.”

  I sat and listened to her departure. Then I got up and went to my French doors and looked outside. The car was retreating up the gravel drive. I stared at the moon. Then, a chill. If Cade survived the assault Madame Maigrèt–Fifi–had just described, his tormentors would want him alive, as she had indicated, and they would want no impediment to their access to the over three hundred thousand dollars Cade was to get from the farm’s sale. If Theo made his case that the Takeur’s lied about their ability to purchase, their claim would be null and void, he’d inherit, and Cade lose all. Was Theodore Goodall in danger?

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  May 27, 9:18 PM

  I’m baa-ack, thought the murderer slowly moving through the pasture adjoining the Goodall Farm. Now where in hellation’s that damn thing! If that–that–person hadn’t shown up that…night, I wouldn’t have to be out here now! And just as I put snooty Marcie in her place! Had to throw the damned thing away. Where the hell is it!

  Thigh-high weedy grasses rustled in a night breeze. It was still hot even though the sun had long sunk behind the fringe of trees that bordered the Goodall farm. On the adjoining land the figure stalked carefully through the shrubby, scrub pasture, flashlight beam probing the grasses. The cows were all at the far end which made things easier.

  One good thing–stupid cops missed finding it.

  The murderer had covered the front third of the pasture when someone with a light approached, calling, “Who’s out there?” But just as the perpetrator flicked the flashlight off something glinted. The figure dropped and felt in the grass. And closed a hand around a baseball bat. The approaching footsteps crunched across the gravel at the back of the Goodall barn. Faint light from a tall yardlight in front of the barn silhouetted someone easing through the barbwire fence and coming onto the neighboring cow pasture.

  That dumbass is coming straight at me! thought the murderer and ducked behind a five-foot tall bush tightly clutching the bat.

  “Who are yew?” called the man.

  Theo Goodall! Okay. C’mon, baby, c’mon! I’m ready for you! I can make it a twosome!

  Theo stepped directly in front of the bush and the killer let him take one more step, and two and three. Then leapt up and whacked Theo hard across the side of his head and face. Theo dropped to the ground and the murderer raised the bat to finish him when there was a rumble. A tractor, headlights drilling through the night, lumbered into the pasture. In the farther distance, a car pulled into the Goodall driveway. Terrified, the murderer set off running but the pasture was rough and a foot snagged on a root and the killer fell. The bat flew up and away and bounced out of sight into the darkness…cursing now with fear, the murderer scrambled up and rushed to the fenceline, around the far side of the barn, and through the pastures while Bryn Wiley stood next to an idling car. I’ll have to keep coming back after all! In the pasture, the tractor driver was yelling, “Stop, stop!”

  The murderer picked up speed, made the treeline, the cemetery, and retrieved a truck obscured by trees adjacent to the Word of God Church. Tires squealing, the killer drove away.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  May 27, 9:10 PM

  With Madame gone, I tried three times to call Theo but the phone rang and rang. I was calling him out at Morgan Oaks where by now he should be staying. If he was in the barn it would ring there too. I went into my bedroom and changed the pajama pants for jeans, then strapped on my fanny pack. I got in my car and drove to Marcie’s.

  Gotta stop calling it that, I thought. It’s not Marcie’s anymore. Don’t know whose it is. I kept an eye on the dark road ahead. Finally I drove past the cemetery and onto the farm. It was blacked out. I parked behind the house and went toward the barn. Unclipped my little flashlight and clicked it on. Then I heard furious barking, a woman yelling, “Stop! Stop!” Branches in the distance were cracking and breaking. There was the sound of someone rushing though underbrush. I turned off my flashlight. Anonymity might be safest. The female voice shouted curses now. Movement. On a far pasture, behind the barn, I saw a figure in a baseball cap and a long coat sprinting away across it. The runner ducked through the barbwire fence that bordered the neighbor’s land, ran across a paddock, over the grassy aisle, then vaulted the next fence into the cemetery. I was still too beat up to give chase. More noises ahead. Maybe I should chase the person–Madame’s warnings played in my head: Verrry dangereuse. Was it the murderer? I felt terrified. Then I heard a moan, and knew someone was in serious pain and, definitely worried, I aimed my flashlight and ran toward the sound. Headlights made twin funnels of light through the scrubby pasture in the neighbor’s adjoining property. I reached the fenceline and heard a tractor’s gravelly roar, saw a figure bending over a prone one. I called “Halloo! Need help?”

  “Damn straight I do!” called a harsh female voice.

  I slipped under the fence. “I’m a friend of the Goodall’s.”

  “Well, good,” said the woman. “C’mere and gimme a hand.”

  Now I saw Domino, the dog. He was standing over the person on the ground. To get closer, I had to go around a huge black cow.

  “Watch out for m’bull there, Miss,” said the woman.

  “Bull!“

  “Yep. You’re okay. He’s gentle, but he’s a bull all the same.”

  I widened my semi-circle. “Who’s down?”

  “That Theo fella.”

  “Oh no!” I cried and ran past the bull and fell to my knees beside Theo. “Is he dead?” I’d started to cry, softened in the head no doubt from all those concussions.

  “Put your hand on his chest, there.”

  I did. Felt his warmth through the western shirt he wore. Pearl studs shone dully in the moonlight. Blood had dripped over the light fabric. His chest was moving, he was breathing. He was alive!

  I fumbled in my fanny pack, got my cell phone and speed dialed MacWain’s office. Doubted he’d be there himself this time of night. But someone would be on duty. I shone my light over Theo’s face. He had a bruise with broken skin on his jaw, one eye was swollen shut and blood trickled down his forehead. His eyes were shut.

  “MacWain,” came the droll voice.

  “Sheriff! You’re there! Thank heavens. Send an ambulance. Theo’s been beat up.”

  “Where!”

  “Right behind his barn. But on the neighbor-lady’s property. She’s here with me now. She found him. Can you get the ambulance here fast, he’s alive but unconscious.”

  I heard him call, “Tuan! Get an ambulance over to the Goodall place, now!”

  “You safe?” he asked me.

  “Yes. I saw the assailant run away.”

  “See you in a few minutes.”
>
  I stowed the phone. Gently laid my hand on his arm. “Theo. Theo. It’s Bryn. Can you hear me?” He made no response. The tractor rumbled. Moths flew drunkenly into its headlights. The lady was speaking.

  “I came out to check on my cows. Had two calves born today, and I heard that damn dog barking out here so I got on my tractor, drove out. Dog was going crazy.”

  “Then what?” I looked at her. Rubber boots, old shirt, lined face.

  “Headlights picked up what looked like a fight. All I could see was silhouettes in the light beams. Theo yelled once, t’other one silent. He whacked Theo with a big stick of some kind. Then he musta heard the tractor; anyway Theo was down by then, and t’other fella took off running.” The figure I had seen vaulting fences. “My bull was excited. He came trotting up to me snorting. I got over here fast, didn’t want him getting too close to Theo.”

  “How’d you know it was Theo?”

  “Oh, I know Theo. Marcie too. I’d know Theo’s voice anywheres.”

  I heard a snort behind me. I jumped. The woman chuckled then went around behind me. Twigs snapped as she walked. I looked over my shoulder and was startled to see the woman with her arm around the bull’s neck. She scratched his face. The bull got quiet.

  We stood amongst the curious, polite cows, waiting. The woman continued to pet her bull. Theo lay still. The minutes dragged on. Would they ever get here? Was he dying too, like Marcie? I couldn’t bear it. A breeze rustled tall weedy grasses and riffled the leaves of scraggly bushes all around us. I could smell grass, damp, cow flop and blood. The pasture was mostly scrubland in contrast to Marcie’s neat fields.