Horse Sense (Dunbarton Mysteries Book 2)

by Valerie Tate

Pat and Sherri nodded in friendly agreement.

  Faith looked wistfully at the horses and riders decked out in their finest, feeling the almost tangible air of excitement and anticipation, the competition and camaraderie. “I’ve really missed all this, too.” She turned to Alex. “I want to ask a favour. I know you have a lot of contacts. Please call me if you hear of a likely youngster.”

  “I will.” Seeing Pippa and Leah heading back to the trailer, Alex added, “I’d better go and help the girls. I’ll be sure and let you know if I hear of a good prospect.”

  After getting their horses settled into their no-expense-spared luxury digs everyone enjoyed watching the Grand Prix. Pippa, Leah and Jenny were spending the night there to be on the spot for their class the following day. Alex was happy to be driving home with Alicia and Chris to sleep in her own bed. There were some benefits to being the coach and not the competitor.

  Later that evening, Ali found Alex in the barn, deep in a murmured conversation with Brin.

  Alex had already apologized to Brin for not taking her with them to Palgrave that day, assuring her that there were a lot more opportunities to come for her to strut her stuff. “There’s Ottawa, Bromont and another Palgrave and hopefully the Royal Winter Fair as well. We could even go back to Europe – bigger shows, more competition. Keep us on our toes.” Life was still good and it wouldn’t do to let the current unpleasantness cast a pall over everything. Brin nuzzled her hair as if to show her agreement.

  Alicia grabbed a handful of carrots from the feed room and gave them to Harley, loving the feel of his velvety lips.

  “Don’t tell Chris, but I’m going to miss all this when we go home,” she confided, caressing his forehead as she gave him the last one.

  “It won’t be long before your own barn is done.”

  “I know. But I’ll miss Harley and my lessons.” The carrots gone, Harley went back to eating his hay.

  “They’re addictive, horses!” It was an addiction that Alex knew well. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that. When you get your horse, if you bought a webcam for your laptop, we could do video lessons, just like a video conference. That way, wherever I might be, I could still coach you!”

  Alicia’s face lit up! “What a great idea! I’ll get the webcam as soon as we go home. The horse might take a little longer, though,” she added forlornly.

  “No problem. You can get a sand ring done while you’re horse-hunting. Since you’re not going to be putting up an arena for a while, is there a barn with one near town where you could board for the winter?”

  “I heard that someone has bought the old riding stable just outside of town. There haven’t been horses there for years. The previous owner was using it as a storage facility. The gossip mill says the new owners are eventers. They’re planning on renovating and then operating it as a training/boarding stable. I can look into it for winter boarding if I find a horse by then.”

  “Sounds perfect! And, I’ve had another brilliant idea. Let’s enter you and Harley in a show here in July or August.”

  Alicia’s eyes glowed at the thought. “Me and Harley?” she queried, ungrammatically. “In a show?”

  “Sure. You could easily do First Level. I know Harley would love to dust off his dancing shoes.”

  The joy was almost too much to bear, but then reality intervened. “How would I practice?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got that figured out, too. Just drive down once a week and stay over, say Friday night to Sunday morning. You could ride three times. The girls and I could keep him tuned up for you in between.”

  Alicia grabbed Harley around the neck and hugged him. “Did you hear that, Harley? We’re going in a show!”

  Harley raised his lip in reply, whether in approval or disapproval he didn’t say, and then went back to the truly important business of eating his hay.

  Chapter 17

  The next afternoon, after spending the morning at the show, Chris and Alicia returned to Avalon and found Alex in the barn. She was dabbing some liquid on a bump on her old pony’s leg.

  “What happened to Fonzi?” Alicia asked, crouching down for a better look. “What’s that funny smell?”

  “It’s DMSO. Brin was feeling marish the other day and kicked him. We’ve been cold hosing but the bump isn’t going down so I’m putting some cortisone on it. It’s close to his knee and I don’t want it to become a problem with the joint.”

  “I thought you said you were putting DMO on it?”

  “DMSO. I am. The cortisone is in it. DMSO is short for Dimethyl Sulfoxide. It’s awesome stuff. On its own it’s an excellent ant-inflammatory but it also has this amazing ability to carry whatever you put in it through the skin to the affected area.” Alex waved the bottle under Alicia’s nose. She made another face. “It does smell funny – sort of garlicky – and if it gets on your skin in an instant you will taste it and you will smell something awful! That’s why I’m wearing gloves. You even have to be careful about the type of gloves you wear because it can break down and carry substances from the gloves into your bloodstream as well.”

  Fonzi clearly didn’t like the treatment. He began stamping the affected leg and lifting his lip in distaste.

  For Alicia it was one of those ‘Aha’ moments. “So you could put anything in it and it would be taken through the skin into the bloodstream?”

  “That’s right. Trans-dermal.”

  Alicia looked at Chris to see if he was thinking the same as she was. She could see a light bulb had gone on for him, too.

  “Does everybody know about this?” he asked.

  Alex nodded as she put the dauber back in the bottle and stood up. “Anybody with horses is going to have come across it at some time or other. It’s standard in most of our medicine cabinets.”

  “Where do you get it? Can you buy it at a store?

  “No, you have to get it from a vet but it’s no problem. They all carry it. As I said, it is pretty standard stuff in horse care.”

  She looked at the two of them. “Why, what are you thinking?” And then the light bulb went on for her, as well. Her eyes widened. “You mean you think that someone put potassium chloride in DMSO and used it to kill Dean?”

  “It would explain a lot of things that haven’t seemed right about Dean’s ‘suicide’.” Alicia agreed.

  A series of thoughts and emotions passed over Alex’s face as she considered the possibility. “It would be easy to do,” she said finally. “Just put the DMSO/Potassium Chloride on something he would be sure to touch. You wouldn’t even have to be there so you could arrange an air-tight alibi.”

  “What I don’t see is how whoever it was could make sure that Dean touched the DMSO,” Alicia said. “Would they put it in something like a glove? Or on something they knew he would use? And wouldn’t it evaporate?”

  Alex knew the answer to the last question. “DMSO has a very slow evaporation rate so they could put it on something and be sure it wouldn’t evaporate too quickly.”

  “But wouldn’t the DMSO have turned up in the post mortem?” Alica asked, still not so sure of their theory. “They do a tox-screen.”

  Now it was Alex’s turn to be excited. “They may not have tested for it. It’s not a poison. Sulphur is a normal part of our bodies so if they weren’t suspicious they might not think anything of it. DMSO is a substance that can be found naturally in our systems.”

  Chris took out his phone. “Time to call Parker.”

  Parker called them back a few hours later with the news. “Your hunch was right. The medical examiner found traces of DMSO in Collins’ body. It’s confirmed. Dean Collins’ death is now considered to be murder. Forensics is going back over everything in the apartment trying to find out how it was administered and the M.E. is going over the body again to try to discover the point of entry. Let me know if you have any other brilliant ideas.” This time the latter wasn’t sarcasm.

  At dinner that night, over her lasagne and salad, Julie said, “What scares me is,
it was almost a perfect murder.”

  “They say there aren’t any perfect murders,” Alex replied.

  “If it was a perfect murder then nobody knows it was murder.” Alicia pointed out the obvious. “There could be hundreds , thousands even. Who would know? And what about the ones that the police are sure are murder but they can’t prove it. Of course there are perfect murders, but this isn’t going to be one if I can do anything about it.”

  Chris did not like the sound of that. “And just how do you plan on doing that?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I have no idea,” she said honestly. Murder mysteries were easier to solve in novels where you can always read the ending if you get stumped. “We’ve gone from everyone having an alibi, to no one having one. The DMSO could have been put wherever it was at any time.”

  “Not any time,” Alex contradicted. “Remember, however slowly, ultimately it would evaporate. I think it would have had to have been put there some time in the morning. If it was inside something then the rate of evaporation would be slower, out in the open, faster.”

  “Well that leaves Jon out. Janey said he was doing farm calls all morning.”

  “That’s what he says he was doing,” Chris pointed out. “It would be interesting to know just where those farms were.”

  Alicia was about to suggest asking Parker, when another thought struck her. “I’ve just remembered something else Janey said. She said Marci had Dean put some cortisone on a mare’s leg the morning he died. It must have been in DMSO. Maybe the potassium chloride was in that!”

  Alex shook her head. “That won’t work,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Dean would have died right then, in the barn, not after lunch in his apartment.”

  “Oh, you’re right.”

  “Also, if the potassium chloride was in a bottle of DMSO there would be no way of controlling how much he got on himself. Also, it would be very dilute. To kill him, it had to be very concentrated and placed where he would get the full amount. No, it had to have been on something he touched in his apartment.”

  “Then we’re right back where we started. It could have been anyone,” Alicia said, feeling frustrated.

  “Not really,” Chris pointed out. “Even if Chelsea had a motive, I doubt she would have access to potassium chloride. And any of his non-horsey friends probably wouldn’t know about DMSO. What it really means is that it must have been someone at King Valley – Jon, Marci, Claire, Brooke or Janey.”

  “Well my money’s on Marci!” Alex affirmed, unnecessarily.

  Alicia just shook her head, then said, “Everything’s going round and round in my brain and I can’t make sense of any of it! You don’t happen to have a whiteboard, do you?” she asked hopefully.

  “We have one on the wall in the barn. I can have it taken down and brought over if you think it would help.”

  And so the ‘murder board’ was set up in the family room beside the flat screen TV. Alex gave Alicia some markers and she set up a chart with all of the information they had relating to Dean’s murder. It didn’t amount to much.

  Seeing the results of all of their ‘detecting’ laid out before them proved to be extremely depressing. Jon, Marci and Claire had the means, access to the DMSO, potassium chloride and the syringe; opportunity, access to the apartment; no alibi for all of the morning although Jon might have been out of the area but they couldn’t prove it one way or the other; and nobody had a motive that they knew about. And they still had no idea of how the DMSO/potassium chloride was administered.

  Alicia shook her head in disgust. “Some detectives we are! All this shows us is that we really know nothing at all.”

  Chris put his arms around her and she leaned back into him. “Let’s just concentrate on finding out what happened to the straw. That’s what we came here for, remember?” She nodded dispiritedly.

  They had cleaned up the coffee mugs and were heading up to bed when Alex pulled Alicia aside, into her office.

  Expecting a prank, Ali grinned conspiratorially and asked, “What’s up?”

  “I was wondering if you’d be interested in another spot of after-hours investigating?”

  Chapter 18

  Alicia slipped quietly out of the front door. The moon in a cloudless sky cast long shadows as she ran down the front steps and jumped into the waiting truck.

  “You’re late,” Alex complained.

  “Sorry. I had to wait until Chris fell asleep,” Alicia explained.

  She jumped when a voice behind her said, “You should have waited a little longer.”

  Stunned, she turned and looked in the back seat where her husband sat, his face grim. “How...?”

  “You need to dress faster. Now tell me what’s going on.”

  Between the two of them, the story came out.

  “Alex got a call this evening about a case of animal abuse at a farm that has a history of this type of charges,” Alicia began.

  “Charges yes,” Alex continued, “but the owners have never been convicted because each time the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has moved in, the evidence and the horses have always mysteriously vanished. When I got the call, I decided that wasn’t going to happen this time.”

  “She asked me to go with her. We’re going to get photographic evidence before contacting the OSPCA.”

  “I’m told there are at least one hundred horses in pretty bad shape,” Alex said. “They’ve been shipped in from the US on their way to an abattoir in Quebec. We haven’t had any luck in the past in stopping this type of thing. This time is going to be different. If you don’t want to go, I’ll go alone,” she finished, her lips set in a determined line.

  Chris looked from one implacable face to the other. “So, where are we going?” he asked.

  Their destination was barely fifteen minutes from Avalon. “A guy named Fred Skinner rents this farm. It’s another case of an absentee owner who is hanging onto the land in hopes of selling it to a developer sometime in the future.”

  They drove past the farm to check out the terrain – paddocks set well back from the road with trees and bushes blocking any view, no lights in the barn or the house. Parking the truck in the shadow of a large Maple tree, they crept back staying in the shadows until they reached the fence line. It was page wire with no top rail.

  “At least it’s not barbed wire,” Alex whispered. “I brought some thick gloves just in case.”

  Using the fence post for stability, they gingerly climbed the wire fence and dropped softly into the paddock. In the light of the moon, a sea of bodies turned towards them.

  “Dear God!” Alicia said, at a scene that filled her with both despair and rage.

  She reached for Chris’s hand as they surveyed the pitiful remains of what had once been noble creatures. Eyes dulled by hunger and thirst gazed back hopelessly. Hips and ribs jutting out grotesquely under coats that were matted and covered with sores and feces, they shuffled away through mounds of manure on hooves grown so long that the toes had begun to turn up.

  “How could anyone let this happen?” Chris asked, horrified.

  Alex could barely hold back the tears. “It happens all too often. And all too often the people responsible get away with it. But not this time.”

  Pulling out a camera and a couple of powerful flashlights, she handed the torches to Chris and Alicia. “Here, you shine the light on them and I’ll take the pictures. We’ll have to be quick. I don’t think anyone is up in the house but you never know.”

  As quickly as they could, they took photos of the most severe cases as well as the empty water troughs and the total lack of any hay. When they were done, they crawled back over the fence.

  Alicia looked back, a terrible weight in her heart. “I hate to leave them like this.”

  “So do I, but we have to get home. I have someone at the OSPCA waiting for these photos. As soon as he gets them, he’ll contact the OPP and set up the raid for dawn. It has to be fast and
quiet. We don’t want them being warned this time.”

  Back at Avalon, while Alex hurried to send the photos, Chris and Alice went back upstairs to bed. Alicia pulled off the jeans and sweatshirt that she had put on over her PJ’s.

  “When did you stop trusting me?” Chris asked suddenly.

  The question shocked her. “Of course I trust you. How could you think that?”

  “Well, for some reason you felt you had to sneak around behind my back. Did you think I wouldn’t want to be a part of this?”

  Alicia felt the weight of betrayal and tried to explain. “No. When Alex asked me, I thought it was a lark. And we thought you had had enough of clandestine operations. It just seemed like a bit of fun.” Remembering the plight of the horses they’d seen that night, she added, “But it wasn’t fun or a lark and I’m sorry. Forgive me?”

  He pulled her to him. “Just don’t leave me out any more. Okay?”

  She nodded thankful, as always, for the warm security of his arms as she tried to blot out the memories of what they had seen that night.

  Chapter 19

  It was barely dawn when Alex knocked on their bedroom door and popped her head in. Two sleepy faces looked hopefully back.

  “Come on. You’ll want to see this.”

  Julie had already made coffee and they settled in front of the TV which was tuned to a local news channel. A pretty young reporter stood in the paddocks they’d visited the previous night, lacking the composure one usually expects in TV news.

  ‘The raid began shortly before dawn. Investigators and vets from the OSPCA along with York Region officers arrived with a warrant to search the King City farm after a tip from an unnamed source alerted them to the appalling condition of at least one hundred horses. We warn you that the pictures you are about to see are extremely shocking.’

  And shocking they were, worse in the early morning rays than they had been by moonlight.

  ‘We have been told that charges are being laid under the Provincial Animal Welfare Act that was passed in 2009. This act covers standards of care and provides penalties if convicted of up to two years in jail, fines up to $60,000 and a potential lifetime ownership ban.