by Faith Hunter
Having left my tablet in the car, I just listened as Theron reluctantly went down a list of names, some of which were on my own list, some I hadn’t heard until now. So many names, including Stella’s band manager, Regenia Apple, her accountant, Genneille Booker, and her attorney in Nashville, Augustina Mattson. All women.
I was exhausted and half-asleep on my feet. Theron was wide awake. He poured another cup of coffee, added ice to it, and began to drink. Barely able to keep my eyes open, I heard footsteps on the hidden kitchen stairs.
“You’re been very helpful,” Occam said. “What can you tell me about Stella’s romantic interests and lovers?”
Theron choked on his iced coffee. The footsteps stopped. Occam gave a cat smile of interest in the response, what he sometimes called a “gotcha moment.” His cat ears had heard the approach, probably much sooner than I had.
When Theron stopped coughing, he said, sounding half-strangled, “Stella didn’t date.”
I frowned at the reply. Occam smiled wider.
Two women clattered noisily down the final stairs and into the kitchen. Both had short, shaggy, metallic-dyed hair, multiple tattoos and piercings, and the frayed jeans worn by some of the riders sitting on the fence today. The girls, looking wide awake for the hour, fell on the sandwich makings. “Bevie and Elisa,” Theron said, pointing to identify the girls.
Neither girl looked up. I knew their names, but I hadn’t talked to either of them today. They hadn’t been on scene when Stella died, or all day long as we worked. But here they were now. Inside Stella’s house.
Theron shifted his eyes to Occam and tilted his head to the door. “I’ll look at that now, if you want,” he said. “I can eat and look too.”
The roadie had things to say to Occam. Things he didn’t want the womenfolk to hear, which brought back churchwoman memories of being outcasts and kept ignorant of important information. The men left. I pulled my cell and glanced at the time. And wished I hadn’t.
The girls were busily putting together sandwiches and studiously not looking at me. And I realized they might have things they would tell me that they wouldn’t tell Occam.
“So,” I said, watching their movements. “Stella’s love life?”
The green-haired girl, Bevie if I got the designations right, glared at me. The purple-haired girl went to the fridge and got out two beers. Popped them and passed her friend one. “Don’t let it get back that we told you,” Elisa said.
“Don’t,” Bevie said.
“It’s going to come out,” Elisa said. “The cops are going to figure it out and then they’re going to accuse us of withholding pertinent information.” That was a level of sophisticated vocabulary I hadn’t expected in a local girl who rode and worked part-time on a farm. I revaluated my perceptions.
“Do. Not,” Bevie said, her tone and her expression fierce.
“Not trying to make you uncomfortable,” I pretty much lied. “You girls ride for the horse farm?”
Bevie frowned and stuffed a chunk of cheese in her mouth.
Elisa didn’t look at her friend. “We go to TTU. Tennessee Tech University, College of Graduate Studies. I’m concentrating on agricultural engineering technology. Bevie is in agribusiness management. Most of the riders come from the college. Stella says older girls make less mistakes and are more dependable than high-schoolers.”
“Why does a farm need so many part-time riders?” I asked. “There must be twenty on the list.”
“Twenty-two,” Bevie said, sounding stern and smearing mayo on bread. She swigged her beer. I didn’t comment. She set the half-empty bottle on the bar top. “But most are seasonal riders. Eight of us work the horses all year.”
“It takes a lot of people to care for, condition, and train long-distance horses,” Elisa said. “Every endurance horse has to be worked and trained at least twice a week in off seasons, and light, but very specific, interval training leading up to a ride for competition. Stella wanted her animals worked under saddle, not so much on the walker.” She nodded out the window in the general direction of the mechanical horse walker. “They get bored. Stella didn’t like bored horses. Out on the trails they perk up. They get walked for long or short distances one day, they gallop short distances another, walk, trot, and canter on the other days. Hill work is especially important, and the trails go all through the hills around here.”
Which meant that the riders knew every trail over the entire acreage. Getting in and out was easy to them. I didn’t indicate that I found anything interesting and, because the girls were horse lovers, Elisa needed little encouragement to keep talking horse. They might not want me to know some things, or realize they were telling me things, but talking about horses fell into its own category. “I keep hearing the word endurance,” I said. “How long is an endurance race?”
“Twenty-five, fifty, or hundred. There’s even one that’s one twenty-five.”
“Miles?” I said, shocked.
“Absolutely, though it isn’t like on a Thoroughbred track, which are one-miles and longer, where the horses run full-out for the distance. Endurance races are about the long haul, so they trot, walk, canter, and—very rarely—gallop, though sometimes it’s hard to hold one back even after a hundred-mile trek. Horses are genetically wired to run,” Elisa informed me. “So basically, Stella’s training program means that every horse here gets lots of walking between hard work, fifteen to twenty-five miles a session. Working twenty-two-plus endurance horses—not counting training the yearlings and the horses too young to compete—means we have to be in the same kind of shape as the horses.”
“How many horses are at the farm?”
“At any given time, up to seventy, but that’s counting the foals, the horses under four years of age, geldings, and mares, but we concentrate on the twenty-two that compete.”
That was a lot of horses, and the scope of the farm and the money involved was coming clear. I nodded encouragingly.
“And we still have to go to school and work real jobs and do papers,” Elisa said, sliding her sandwich into a device that squished and grilled it. It smelled heavenly. “And most of us have families. Carmen has a kid, but she lives with her mom and she takes the kid on weekends so Carmen can study and ride.”
“That makes sense,” I said, wishing I had set my cell to take notes. But I had a feeling Elisa wouldn’t have talked so freely had I been recording or taking notes. Or if Occam had been here. “I’m not trying to pry into anything not pertinent to the case,” I said, “but we don’t know what will be important, what won’t, what will hide the truth, and what will reveal it. That’s why my partner asked about Stella’s romantic life. What we don’t know could allow any potential perpetrator to get away.”
Bevie made a sound that was part growl and all rage. She stabbed her friend with furious eyes. “Fine. Go ahead. Tell her. Tell her everything. My life is ruined anyway.” She stomped from the room, carrying her sandwich and the beer and leaving the mess on the table.
Elisa heaved a sigh and began putting the food back in the fridge while her sandwich grilled. I could tell she was thinking things through, and I held myself still, when I really wanted to shake her and ask why Bevie’s life was over. She shoveled the sandwich onto a plate with a spatula. When the bar top was clean of everything except her plate and her beer, she pulled up a stool, sat, took a bite, and considered me.
“Bevie is from a really strict farm family. Like, she couldn’t date or anything until she was eighteen. Growing up, she had to work the farm, feed chickens, gather eggs, help birth cows. Like that. But she was really smart in high school, like, number one in her class, and she got a full ride at TTU. So when she went away to college she went kinda wild. Dated a lot of guys. Like, a lot of guys. And girls too. And then last year she met Stella and . . . well, Stella’s got this public persona, a paragon of straitlaced propriety, you know? But in reality? Back
before she was a star and got squeaky-clean branding? She spent five years living with several people in a pansexual relationship, and she still has, well, lots of lovers. Bevie was one of them and her family and her church will freak if they find out. And she really loved Stella. We all did. Even the ones of us who didn’t spend time in her bed. Stella was this magical creature, you know?”
Elisa took a bite and chewed and swallowed. “Stella could look at you and tell exactly what you were feeling and exactly what you needed to be whole and happy. Some of her riders came from bad home lives, were really broken, and she paid for meds and counseling. Some of them were practically homeless and she let people stay here or in her RV between tours, until they got on their feet. She was a good person. And anyone who says different can kiss my butt.” Almost viciously, she bit into the sandwich and chewed, her eyes on me. A string of cheese stretched from her mouth to the bread.
I accepted all that without a change of expression, even the butt-kissing part. Elisa turned her attention fully to her sandwich, the stringy cheese, and sipped her beer. I didn’t ask her age or if she was legal to drink.
“You don’t seem upset by all that sex stuff,” she said.
Keeping my voice unemotional, I said, “I come from a polygamous background. My own mother is one of three wives. I was married at fifteen. I understand relationships that are different from society’s norm.”
“Holy shit. Fifteen? Wait. They forced you to get married?”
I had no idea why, but I answered. “No. I married to keep from becoming the preacher’s youngest concubine. One of several, in addition to his several wives.”
She chewed. Frowned. “I saw this show on TV one time. Sister Wives? You know it?”
“I’ve heard of it.” Never watched it. Had no interest in it.
“So it would help to solve Stella’s murder if you knew the people she slept with on a regular basis?”
I pursed my lips, thinking how I wanted to phrase my reply, because we hadn’t released anything about a trigger for death and decay. The term murder was being bandied about by the press, but not by PsyLED, and my boss wouldn’t be happy if I used it now. “This was a very violent way to die,” I said carefully. “If someone set this up to kill Stella, then they wanted to not just kill her, but wipe her and her friends and her musical instruments and even unpublished songs off the face of the earth. If it was murder, it was personal.”
“I could . . . I . . . I know a lot of names. Maybe not all.”
“Anything you can do will help. And I’ll try to keep Bevie’s name out of any media releases. Law enforcement has no desire to bandy about anyone’s personal business.” The media would eventually find out everything. If this went to court they’d discover even more.
Elisa finished her sandwich. Cleaned up the crumbs and wiped down the island’s surface. She stood, silent, her hands flat on the island top, and sighed. She nodded, more at her own thoughts than at me. Opening a drawer, Elisa took out a long narrow pad, the paper printed with cats at the top. She tore off four pages. At the top of one she wrote, Commune. At the top of the next, she wrote, Band. On the third she wrote, Riders. And on the last she wrote, Current Regulars. Then she began to list names on each pad with a star beside Stella’s lovers. Stella Mae had been a very busy woman. And, if anyone was underage, maybe a sexual predator.
I got a bad feeling about all this.
* * *
* * *
Occam woke me with a soft kiss on my forehead. Before Occam entered my life, I had never been kissed with gentleness or tenderness. Not ever. So I knew instantly who it was that touched me in the dark. “Hey, cat-man,” I murmured as cold air filled the car. My door was open and dawn was graying the sky. I had fallen asleep in the car and we were back at the hotel.
“Hey, Nell, sugar,” he cat-growled. “You’re tired, and I’m a big strong were-creature, so I intend to carry you to your room. You got anything negative to say about that?”
“Not a thing.” I raised my arms and he lifted me out of the car, closed the car door with a knee, and carried me through the lobby, where I waved at the man behind the desk to show I wasn’t being abducted. Outside my room, he kissed me again, this one far less platonic, and opened my door with my room card. I was of a mind to go with him to his room, but he pushed me inside, alone.
Moving quietly in the dark, I put the vampire tree on the table by the window, near the tiny plastic bud vase holding the slightly wilted lavender rose. I fell into bed.
* * *
* * *
When I woke, T. Laine was gone and the room smelled of coffee and donuts. It was nearly noon on Saturday. I had three texts telling me that Occam was heading back to Stella Mae’s, that HQ wanted clarification on the names from the lists I had collected last night, and that FireWind was pleased with the night’s work and the lists of names. On the way home from the farm, I had photographed the cat papers and sent them to HQ, keeping the originals in evidence bags. I also had a voice message from Mud that had arrived at five a.m., telling me that we needed chickens. And that Esther made Cherry sleep on the back porch. A second voice mail—a longer one—told me that Esther’s husband formally divorced her in morning devotionals and that Esther was now living permanently on Soulwood.
I either cussed or said a miserable prayer. Being punished by Ernest “Jackie” Jackson Jr., had hurt Esther bad. I remembered her as a happy child, but as an adult, she was neither happy nor pleasant, seeming to want to hurt her family, the ones closest to her. I tried to be understanding, though it had occurred to me that she might possibly use that horrible part of her past to maneuver me to doing what she wanted. Most churchwomen were masters of manipulation.
Esther had been a solo wife with no second wives. She was used to getting her way. Hers had been a love match, not an arranged marriage or a negotiation for safety. She had been given time to grow up before being subjected to Jedidiah Whisnut, before taking care of a man, before running his household like a good churchwoman.
She was a teenager, just eighteen. She was pregnant. Divorced. And she was growing leaves. Any of those things could make her hard to get along with. All of those things gave her the right to be a pain, but none of them meant I had to take it.
I started my first cup of coffee, transcribed all my notes and thoughts from last night, texted the team that I was heading back to HQ, and packed.
I made it to my car when FireWind appeared in the parking lot and called, “I need a token female. Come with me.”
Token female? What’s a token female?
* * *
* * *
“Regional director of PsyLED, FireWind,” he said, introducing himself. “Special Agent Ingram, PsyLED. And Patrick Hooper, attorney at law in the state of Tennessee. We’d like to speak with Catriona Doyle.”
The big boss was speaking to the woman at the front desk. Sergeant Wherry was a grizzled veteran of the Cookeville PD. She had the appearance of someone who had seen it all, done most of it, and lived to tell the tale. Unimpressed by FireWind’s fancy title, she took our IDs, verified that we were who we said we were, signed in and locked our weapons away, and directed us to an interrogation room, where we waited for half an hour before Catriona was escorted in. She was cuffed, wearing ankle chains and jailhouse gray and an expression that said she hadn’t slept. Hadn’t been allowed to sleep.
FireWind instructed the guard to remove the chains. The guard looked FireWind in the eye long enough to prove that he had heard the request, turned, and left the room. FireWind didn’t speak, but his color was heated. He bent over Catriona and unlocked the handcuffs and the ankle chains, tossing them in the corner. He pocketed his universal key, gave Catriona a bottle of water, and took his seat. She drank as if she hadn’t had water since she was taken into custody. I passed her my water bottle too. She opened and drank half of that one.
“My thanks,” she sai
d in little more than a whisper. “Can you tell me? Who has ma daughter?”
“She is safe in a good social services home and will be returned to your sister as soon as possible,” FireWind said softly. “PsyLED has lodged complaints with FBI and put in a good word for Etain to get the child.”
Catriona burst into tears. “It’s grateful I am, for that,” she said, wiping her cheeks with the back of her wrist. “And for the water.” She looked between us when she spoke. “Who are you?”
Far more gently than I thought him capable of, FireWind said, “We work for PsyLED, investigating paranormal crimes.” Catriona’s face crumpled. FireWind identified the three of us, though I don’t think she heard any of it.
Patrick Hooper said, “Ms. Doyle, I’m a defense attorney. Your sister Etain Doyle retained me.” He placed a business card on the table in front of her.
Catriona stared at it as if it was alive. “I didn’t kill Stella.”
“I know,” Patrick said.
“The FBI man said since I wasna citizen I didn’t have rights to a lawyer.”
“Smythe?” Hooper asked.
Catriona nodded, the motion jerky, her hands tight on the bottle. The plastic crinkled.
“He lied. I’m working to get you released,” Hooper said, “and knowing he deprived you of your rights is helpful.”
Catriona fumbled the bottle and nearly dropped it. A fresh tear trickled down her cheek.
My boss slid a small plastic container of tissues across the table. He glanced at me and I slid her the package of pretzels he had tossed me when we left my car.
Patrick said, “With Director FireWind’s assistance, I have contacted the Irish embassy and someone will be flying out to assist you. I’ve also notified our State Department that a foreign national has been held for a crime when there is no evidence against her and clear violations of her civil rights. I’d like to say that you will not be in here for long; however, even with your embassy’s help, it’s Saturday, and I think you will have to spend the weekend in jail. I’m sorry.”