Horse Sense (Dunbarton Mysteries Book 2)

by Valerie Tate

  Alicia had a vision of that same warm sun shining on their farm and felt a sudden surge of happiness. Summer on the way, a horse to ride and a mystery to solve, could life be any better? She turned and saw Chris smiling at her from their bed. No, it was simply perfect as it was, she thought. Simply perfect!

  They had an appointment with Jon Allardyce, Marci, Claire and the vet tech Dean that afternoon. Marci had explained that her husband had farm visits in the morning but could make time in the afternoon before he needed to perform scheduled ultra-sounds on mares in for breeding. Alex had been vague about the reason for the appointment and hadn’t mentioned bringing Chris and Ali, just as Chris had instructed. Marci sounded annoyed that Alex wasn’t more informative but had to accept it.

  That left several hours before they had to leave and Alicia was happy to spend them in the barn with Alex. They spent a lot of time discussing what Alicia would need in her barn: the types of mats for the stalls, the pros and cons of automatic waterers vs. buckets, the convenience of a wash stall, inter-locking brick or rubber in the aisles, all of the many decisions Alicia would need to make when she returned home.

  They were sitting having a coffee in the viewing room when Alex came to a decision.

  “Ali, I’ve got something to tell you and I don’t know how to say it.”

  Alicia’s heart felt like it moved from her chest to her throat. What could be wrong? Was she sick? “Just say it,” she croaked.

  “I’m...I’ve...I’m seeing somebody!” Her hands covered her eyes.

  Alicia screamed like a teenager. “That’s wonderful!”

  “Yes, it’s wonderful...I suppose...Of course it’s wonderful...” She just kept stammering and wouldn’t look Alicia in the eye.

  “Who is he? Where did you meet him? Come on, girl, tell all!” It was just like being back at university discussing boyfriends, except then they would have been drinking something stronger than coffee.

  “Oh, dear. Well, he’s...he’s...”

  He’s what? Why wouldn’t she say? He’s married? He’s an axe murderer? What could be so bad?

  “He’s a Western rider!”

  “No!” Alicia was stunned. That was the last thing she expected to hear.

  “Yes! And you know me... how I’ve always felt...”

  Oh, she knew all right. All of Alex’s friends knew just what she thought of Western riding.

  Alex was a girl with everything going for her: looks, brains, talent, a respected family and more money than the Queen. She could have been the biggest snob on just about any level you could name. But she wasn’t. Except about riding.

  For Alex, everything horsey was in a hierarchy. On the top was Dressage, closely followed by Eventing and Jumper. Those were the three Olympic disciplines. Following them came Hunter, a purely North American phenomenon, then Field Hunting, Endurance Riding and so on. At the very bottom came Western riding. It was a dark day for her when the Fédération Équestre Internationale (the FEI), the governing body of international equestrian sport, decided to take the Western sport of Reining under its wing in 2000 and a crushing blow that struck to the very heart of her belief system when the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, began to consider making Reining an Olympic sport. Thankfully, that dreaded event had not yet come to pass.

  Alex could see the amazement on Alicia’s face. “I know. I couldn’t believe it either.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “It was at the Olympics last summer. He was doing a Reining demonstration. It was part of their bid to be included in the next summer games.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes, he’s very good at what he does. It’s just that what he does is...”

  “Western,” Alicia finished for her. “Wow!”

  “I know. I’ve heard all the jokes – the Dressage Queen and the Cowboy! My friends in Germany were the worst. You know how they are.” Alicia really didn’t but she nodded in sympathy. “They razz each other about everything. I still can’t live it down that I use a mounting block to get on. It really is better for her back!” This was obviously a sore spot so Alicia turned her back to the topic at hand.

  “What do his friends say?”

  “They’re no better. They think dressage riders are toffee-nosed stuffed shirts in tail-coats who don’t know how to have fun.”

  Alicia let that one pass. Alex was, after all, her best friend.

  “So I guess he wears a...?”

  “Yes. He wears a...cowboy hat!” The look on Alex’s face was comical. “And you know what I’ve always said about people who wear cowboy hats.”

  She did. “Anyone who wears a cowboy hat east of the Alberta border has a bad case of arrested development!”

  Alex nodded, then gulped and said, “But you know what’s worse?”

  What could be worse? “What?”

  “I think he looks hot in it!” Alex covered her face with her hands again.

  Alicia looked at her for one stunned moment and then started to laugh... and laugh... and laugh. “That’s it, girl. You are toast! If you think a man looks hot in a cowboy hat...”

  “And chaps!” Alex added, collapsing back on her chair.

  “And chaps. Then you must really be in love!”

  “I am. And it gets worse.”

  Still worse?

  “We’re getting married!”

  Alicia squealed again. “Married! That’s wonderful! When?”

  “Next summer. Here, at the farm. And I want you to be my Matron-of-Honour.”

  “I’d love to! Wow! The Dressage Queen and the Cowboy!” It sounded just like a romance novel!

  Later that day, Alicia told Chris about Alex’s news.

  He looked bewildered. “I understand the cowboy part but what on earth is a ‘Dressage Queen’?”

  Her answer displayed a knowledge of the sport that still surprised him. “It’s a woman who is devoted to trying to reach the top levels of the sport. She boards at the fanciest barn she can find and obsesses about every minute detail of her horse’s care. Her coach must ride at the Grand Prix level even if she herself rides at First Level and has never competed. And both she and her horse wear only the most expensive equestrian designer apparel. I’m a Dressage Queen wannabe,” she admitted wistfully.

  He looked at her in surprise. This was news to him.

  “What do you need to be a Dressage Queen?” he asked, adroitly side-stepping the yawning pit of questioning why she would want to be one at all.

  She thought for a moment and then said with a twinkle in her eyes, “A big warmblood horse, a pony tail, an expensive pair of breeches, and a rich husband!”

  “Well, at least you’ve got the pony tail!”

  Later that afternoon, they turned in the drive where the sign at the road said King Valley Breeding Centre and stopped at the gate, expecting it to open. When it didn’t, Alex hopped out and unlatched it and then waited to close it again once they had gone through, all the time muttering about what they charged and solar-powered automatic gates and getting into the 21st century. Alicia, wisely, continued to say nothing.

  The drive wound past a two-storey frame farmhouse to a large bank barn. Behind the barn, mares with foals at side grazed in small paddocks and there was another small barn a short distance away.

  From the outside, the main barn was not what Alicia had expected but as they walked through the Dutch doors into the bright interior she realized that this barn, too, had been rebuilt and modernized.

  A pretty young girl who looked to be a groom or stable hand walked quickly towards them. Her elfin face let up when she recognized Alex.

  “Hi, Ms. Craig. Good to see you again.”

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Janey.” She introduced Chris and Alicia. “We have an appointment with Jon and Marci.”

  “Yes, Marci told me to apologize for them. Dr. Allardyce had an emergency and will be a little late. Marci asked me to have you wait in the lounge.”

  “Could you show us ar
ound a bit first? I’ve never seen a breeding centre,” Alicia put in quickly, partly because she was really interested and partly because it was a perfect opportunity for a snoop around.

  “Sure, be happy to.” Janey sounded pleased. She looked quite young, probably no older than sixteen or seventeen.

  “Have you worked here long?” Alicia asked.

  “Just a few months. I want to become a vet tech so it’s good experience. I’m just part-time,” she went on, seeing Alicia’s clear interest. “I work weekends, holidays and some afternoons after school.”

  “This is a big place for just one part-time employee,” Alicia said looking around.

  “Oh, there is a full-time groom as well. She lives in a basement apartment in the farm house. Claire and Dean have the other two apartments. Claire is the barn manager. She and Marci go back a long way. They are, like, BFFs. Dean is the vet tech. It works out well because there’s always someone on the property.”

  “Don’t Dr, and Mrs Allardyce live here?”

  Chris smiled to himself. Ali was becoming an expert at getting information from people without them being aware of it.

  “They live in the bungalow at the other side of the farm. You can just see it beyond those trees.”

  They all looked. In the distance, a modern ranch style bungalow was visible beyond the paddocks. There was also another barn with an attached arena, a sand ring with jumps and more paddocks with horses in them.

  “That barn over there is where Marci keeps her stallion and her own mares and foals. Woody, her stallion, (His real name is Woodstock.) goes jumper and she breeds him for that, too. He’s really nice but he isn’t approved for breeding so she can’t register the babies. It’s too bad because they are gorgeous! A lot of mare owners breed to him, too, even though they can’t register their foals, just because his babies turn out so nice. After all, a good horse is a good horse, registered or not.”

  The last sentence was obviously a quote, probably from Marci, and while true even Alicia knew that registered horses were more valuable.

  “I expect his stud fee is lower because of that so people who can’t afford to pay a couple of thousand dollars can still get a nice foal.”

  “That’s right!” Janey smiled her bright, young smile. “Anyway, I’ll show you around while you wait.” She turned and led the way down the aisle, her light brown pony-tail bobbing in the rhythm of her gait.

  The breeding centre was extremely interesting. Besides the stalls, some of which were equipped with closed circuit television cameras, there was a large, very antiseptic room with ultrasound equipment and what Janey described as double insemination stocks that looked like two metal standing stalls. She explained that sometimes the mares being bred would have a foal at side and so they could put the foal in one stock and the mare in the other. Also, it sometimes happened that two mares had to be inseminated at the same time. Two stocks, no waiting!

  Next to the insemination room was the lab that contained the most up-to-date equipment needed for the collection and freezing of semen as well as the insemination of mares.

  At the far end of the barn was the stallion collection room. It had an entrance from the outside so that stallions wouldn’t have to pass any mares on their way. Inside the room, there were two more stocks, this time used for teasing to get the stallion into the mood without him actually being able to mount the mare. When he was ready, he would be taken to the phantom mare which looked something like a large, round, padded vaulting horse, angled upwards, which the stallion would mount.

  Janey showed them the artificial vagina that he would ejaculate into. It was a large, double skinned rubber cylinder with a cup at the end. Hot water was poured into it between the two skins to mimic the heat of a mare. She explained that it was a pretty violent process. It took at least one person to hold the stallion and one to hold the receptacle with a third to hold the teaser mare in case she became overly excited! Chris was embarrassed to feel himself blushing as the young girl matter-of-factly explained how the handler would grab the stallion’s penis and aim it into the A-V. Once it was collected, it might immediately be inseminated into a waiting mare. An extender would be added to it before that happened. The extender would prolong the viability of the semen to help ensure that the mare would ‘catch’. If it were going to be chilled or frozen, extender would be added and then it would be divided into portions and put in straws which were then refrigerated or frozen. Chilled semen had to be used within one to two days while frozen semen could be kept indefinitely.

  “And that’s all there is to it,” Janey finished in her best tour guide manner.

  “Thanks, Janey! That was fascinating!”

  The tour over, they proceeded to the lounge to wait for Jon Allardyce’s return. Janey told them to help themselves to coffee and then went back to work. They settled down to wait.

  A few minutes later a voice at the door announced peevishly, “Well, there you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I saw your car and since I told Janey to bring you her, I came straight here but you weren’t where you were supposed to be!”

  Alicia could feel a slow burn starting. Now she understood what Alex meant. But before she could reply, Alex stood up.

  “Hello, Marci. Since you weren’t here when we arrived for our appointment, Janey very kindly stepped in and offered to give my friends a tour of the facility. This is all very new to them. I certainly hope that Janey won’t face any negative repercussions for her kindness.”

  Although it was said pleasantly, it was in a tone that Alicia had never heard Alex use before, not even when they were in university and the sales clerk in an up-market boutique had mistaken the college student uniform of jeans and a sweatshirt for lack of funds – a tone that implied wealth and privilege. It was intended to put Marci in her place, and it succeeded.

  Marci recognized just what it meant. Her eyes hardened and her lips narrowed but she said in a conciliatory voice, “Well that’s fine, then. I’m glad Janey took care of you.” That she was clearly not glad was obvious. Round one to Alex in whatever game those two were playing. “Come through to the office. Jon is back.”

  The office was clearly intended to impress prospective clients with its traditional elegance – walnut desk and book shelves, leather chairs and Fred Stone prints on the walls. It was the perfect backdrop for the man who rose to greet them.

  Everything about Jonathon Allardyce was long and lean – his body, his face, even the fingers that grasped theirs in a firm handshake. He had the wiry strength of a man whose work was active and physical. Despite a morning of farm visits, his khaki coverall was still clean and pressed.

  His wife and business partner, Marci, was attractive in a cold, self-aware way. Her hair was blond and pulled back in a tight bun. Alex thought what a mistake it was not to keep up with her roots when her own hair colour was so much darker and then mentally slapped herself. Something about Marci always brought out the worst in her.

  The other woman in the room was introduced to Chris and Alicia as Claire Hamilton, the farm manager. No hard-bitten bleached blond here. She was a vibrant natural beauty. A slim and leggy redhead, she moved with the lithe grace of a dancer or a gymnast. Unruly curls clustered around her head and face and she had the redhead’s pearly white skin and green cat’s eyes.

  Alex introduced Chris and Alicia as her friends from out-of-town, not mentioning her professional relationship with Chris.

  Just as they had finished introductions and were sitting down, a second man joined them. He apologized for being late, explaining that he had been setting up the ultrasound equipment for the afternoon. Dean Collins, the vet tech, was muscular with a shaved head, smooth golden skin and carefully trimmed scruff. He was open and friendly and the only one of the four who seemed unconcerned by the meeting.

  “Well, Alex, what can we do for you? How is the foal coming along?” Jonathon opened.

  “He’s wonderful!” Alex could truthfully reply. “He can be a little d
evil when he wants to but he is healthy and a credit to his sire.”

  “Wonderful!” There was a pause as if he was waiting for a ‘but’.

  She didn’t disappoint. “But he’s grey.”

  They all immediately understood the significance of that statement.

  “That’s impossible!” Marci cried.

  Chris took out his phone and pulled up the photos he’d taken that clearly showed the silver hair beneath the chestnut.

  “It would be impossible if he was by Danzig but I sent his mane sample for DNA testing. He is by a stallion named Par Hasard.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence as the clinic staff digested the information and its implications.

  All eyes turned to Jonathon. “Clearly there’s been a mistake somewhere,” he said calmly.

  “That’s why we’re here. To find out how this happened.”

  “Are you blaming us for this?” Marci demanded, angrily.

  “No one is blaming anyone for anything at this point. What we want to know is exactly what happened from the moment the semen arrived here.” Chris explained.

  Seeing the questioning look on the vet’s face, Alex explained that she had asked her friend to represent her in the investigation of what had taken place. Marci didn’t look pleased but Jonathon said it was a wise move considering the value of the animals involved. He then described the procedure in a clear, concise manner.

  “The semen arrived by FedEx. It was transported in a portable liquid nitrogen tank. I checked that all the paper work was in order, transferred the straw to one of our containers and sent the other container back to the lab in Germany. The straw stayed in the container until it was time to inseminate Brindisi at which time I removed it from the liquid nitrogen and put it in warm water to thaw. The thawed semen was put in a syringe. Alex was present for the insemination. We showed her the name on the top of the cane that holds the straw to verify that it indeed said Danzig. A catheter was then inserted into the mare’s uterus and then the semen was syringed into the catheter. It is a standard procedure.”