Horse Sense (Dunbarton Mysteries Book 2)

by Valerie Tate

  All of the emotional energy that had kept her going drained out of her and she would have collapsed if Chris hadn’t caught her.

  Alicia took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “My husband is a lawyer. Would you like him to go with you to the police? He can help you explain to them. I’d be happy to stay with Sand-Dollar.”

  Faith nodded and after running her hand one last time down the sleek neck, walked out of the barn with Chris.

  Alicia thought, not for the first time, that there was little justice in life and that if ever anyone deserved real justice, if was Faith Dennis.

  It was a couple of hours before Chris called to say that they were keeping Faith in jail for the night while they decided what charges would be laid. He had phoned Shae O’Neil and arranged for her to take the case. She was already on her way and that small-town police station had no idea of the big wind that was about to blow their way!

  “That’s a brilliant idea! She’s perfect for this.”

  “Yes, I filled her in on the whole story and she’s sure she can get her off on self - defence. Her exact line was, “We’ll have the jury crying in the aisle.” She might even get the charges dropped since it sounds like it really was accidental. In fact, if anyone killed him it was the colt.”

  “That sounds like Shae.” Alicia laughed, remembering the self-confessed fashionista and legal shark who had previously helped them discover a kidnapper and catch a murderer.

  “Faith is worried about the yearling. She says there is no one there to look after him.”

  “I’ve already called Alex and she is on her way with her trailer. She said she’d be happy to keep him at Avalon for as long as needs be. I’ll go back with her and you can meet us there when you are finished. Don’t be too late,” she added. “I want to show you just how brilliant I think you are!”

  Chapter 31

  “So let me get this straight. You deliberately lured her here, thinking she was a killer, hoping she would break in to try to find the evidence you pretended to have.”

  They nodded, thankful that they didn’t have to worry about being arrested this time.

  Parker’s already care-worn face was aging by the minute.

  “And then, when you discovered that she wasn’t the killer, you went to the farm of the woman who probably was, late at night, to ask her if she had killed Jonathon Allardyce.”

  More nodding. More ageing.

  “Faith isn’t a murderer,” Alicia dared to point out but she didn’t need Chris’ warning squeeze to resist making any more comments. The glare Parker sent her would have halted a charging bull elephant.

  After arresting Shawna Talbot the night before, Detective Parker had returned in the morning to learn the full extent of what he called their insane behaviour.

  “Okay, tell me again how you found out about Shawna Talbot and how you figured out that Faith Dennis had killed...” seeing Alicia’s mutinous expression, he amended, “had been involved in Allardyce’s death.”

  They had just reached the part where Alex was telling the story of Faith Dennis when Chris received a call from Shae. Faith had been released for the time being. No charges had been laid and it was Shae’s opinion that they wouldn’t be. There would probably be an inquest, but the general opinion was accidental death.

  The news exploded in the room like a balloon set free, bringing with it an air of joyous relief.

  Alicia took the phone. “Thanks, Shae. We owe you big-time. Tell Faith we’ll bring Sand-Dollar back this afternoon.”

  Parker slipped quietly away.

  Faith’s reunion with Sand-Dollar was both heart-rending and exhilarating. They celebrated with lemonade and cookies. While watching the colt gallop in the grassy paddock they filled Faith in on their discovery.

  “Shawna Talbot?” Faith exclaimed. “Well, I’d never have guessed that! The police must be so grateful to you for solving that.”

  Somehow, grateful was not the word Chris would have used, remembering Parker’s face that morning. “Now that we know the truth about that and about what happened to Jon we can go home happy.”

  “Go home?” Alicia and Alex said in shocked unison.

  “Yes. We came here to find out who defrauded Alex and we’ve done that.”

  “But we still don’t know who killed Dean,” Alicia protested.

  “Face it, honey, we may never know for sure. If Jon was the killer, there’s no way of proving it now, unless Marci gives him up to save her own skin.”

  It was almost dinner time when they returned to Avalon, following Julie up the drive to the house.

  “I thought you might be late so I popped into town to get some steaks to barbeque for dinner,” Julie said as they carried the shopping into the kitchen. “Alex, you and Alicia make a salad and slice the baguette while I run out and start the barbeque. Chris, you and Jake set the table. We’ll have the food on in no time.”

  They had barely begun when a shriek sent them racing to the patio to find Julie pointing a shaking finger at the open barbeque. Peering in they saw what had so shocked her, a rat in the early stages of decomposition.

  “I am never using that barbeque again!” Julie said between clenched teeth. “Put it down at the road with a warning sign about the rat on it. I wouldn’t want anyone picking it up and using it.”

  Chris closed the lid, removing its gruesome contents from sight. “Was it open when you got here?”

  “No. It was closed. I opened the lid and there it was. UGH! Disgusting thing.”

  Examining the seal he said, “I don’t see how it could have gotten in here. There’s no gap.”

  “And it looks like it’s been dead for some time,” Jake added, glancing covertly at Chris to see if he was thinking the same thing.

  Alex saw the look. “You think someone put it there.”

  Jake nodded. “I’m wondering where Shawna Talbot was this afternoon.”

  “Well after what she’s done, I wouldn’t put anything past that one,” Julie said, her composure returning. “We’ll broil the steaks. Get rid of that barbeque. I’ll go to town and get a new one tomorrow.”

  The barbeque had gone from the road by morning. Obviously, there was someone who wasn’t concerned about a dead rat on the grill. Julie took the truck and set off for town to pick up a new one. Alex was walking to the barn when she heard the crash.

  “Mom!” The shriek filled her throat, then broke free and enveloped her.

  She took off, running full out, each step a prayer – ‘Let her be okay’. Through the farmyard, across the lawn, past the patio, ‘Let her be okay!’ Rounding the house, fear clutching at her throat, she could see the truck, the front end crumpled against a tree just before the gates and in one breath-taking moment she understood that life can be changed forever in one heartbeat – that infinitesimal and yet infinite space of time between ‘then’ and ‘now’.

  Alicia, Chris and Jake had raced out the front door and had almost reached the truck when the driver’s door opened and Julie crawled out from under the airbag. It was still ‘then’. The unthinkable hadn’t happened. The dreaded event was still somewhere in the shrouded mists of future time. Alex breathed a heartfelt prayer of thanks as she pushed past Chris and threw trembling arms around her mother.

  “Oh, Mom! I thought I’d lost you!"

  Julie took a deep breath. "Not yet, thankfully."

  “It would have been all my fault.”

  “How could it have been your fault. You didn’t run into the tree.” Julie’s tone was light but she held her daughter fiercely.

  “I started this whole thing,” Alex persisted, fighting to hold back the tears and losing.

  “You didn’t start it. Shawna Talbot and Jon Allardyce started it so stop blaming yourself. Besides, I’m fine. Just a little shaken up, that’s all.” Her pale face and trembling hands testified to just how shaken she was.

  “What happened?” Alex asked, taking a shuddering breath as her mother wiped her tears the way she had done so many
times in her childhood, wanting to make things ‘all better’.

  “I don’t really know. I was going to town to get a new barbeque so I took the truck instead of my car. When I was coming up to the gate, I tried to brake but nothing happened. The gate had opened and I could see cars coming down the road. I didn’t want to cause an accident so I decided to hit the tree. I thought it would be softer than the gateposts!” She had hoped to bring a smile to her daughter’s face and succeeded. “Serves me right for taking the drive too fast.”

  Jake walked over to the truck. “It sounds like someone has tampered with the brakes.” Dropping to the ground, he slid under the front end.

  “You know about cars?” Alex asked, surprised to find something she hadn’t known about him.

  “I’m not just a pretty face. My dad’s hobby is collecting classic cars. He has at least a dozen. I spent a lot of my teen years under the hood of one or the other of them.” He dragged himself out and stood up brushing off the grass and dirt. “The brake line’s been cut. Anybody else wondering where Shawna Talbot is?”

  “Or Tom Perrin?” Alicia added.

  “Or Fred Skinner.” Alex grimaced. Their enemies were really piling up.

  Chris already had his phone out. “Good thing Parker’s on speed-dial. Maybe you’d better check the other cars. There would be no way anyone would know which ones would be used today.”

  As it turned out, only the truck had been damaged.

  Chris finally got through to Parker who had to grit his teeth to prevent the ‘I told you’ from escaping. “Shawna’s still in jail, waiting for a bail hearing, so it wasn’t her. Fred Skinner couldn’t make bail so he’s still in jail, too. They’re checking into Tom Perrin’s whereabouts. Parker’s on his way.”

  Leading her mom to the SUV, Alex said over her shoulder, “You’ll have to deal with him. I’m taking mom to Emergency to get checked out. No, don’t argue, Mom. We’re going.”

  A couple of hours later, with a clean bill of health from the Emergency doctors, and a patrol car with two officers assigned by Parker to guard the farm entrance (No arguments from anyone this time.) they were huddled in the family room.

  Parker had brought news. “Our friend Tom is in the hospital. He was involved in a brawl in a local watering hole and one of the other patrons hit him over the head with a bottle of beer. He has broken ribs and a concussion. It wasn’t him.” He’d left once he learned that Julie was unharmed, admonishing them once again to leave it to the police.

  Chris found it impossible to sit still. The threat to his wife and his friends meant only two things. Either they gave up and left or they had to take a risk to end things once and for all. The former would always pose a threat to Alex and Julie so it wasn’t really an option. There was only one course of action open to him. Find the killer and eliminate him or her one way or another. “What this tells me is Jon didn’t kill Dean.”

  “Why do you say that?” Alicia asked.

  “If Jon had killed Dean, this would have ended with his death. He’s not here to warn us off. No, whoever killed Dean is still very much alive and active. What I don’t understand is why he or she would draw attention to that fact in this way. Wouldn’t you think they’d want us to think that Jon did it?”

  “No one said the killer was smart.”

  “And who do we think this killer is?” Alex asked, knowing full well the ultimate answer.

  Alicia looked at her friend, acknowledging defeat. “There seems to be only one possibility left. It always comes back to her, doesn’t it. Whether they were in on it together or not, with Jon gone it only leaves Marci.”

  “Finally,” Alex said, throwing herself back onto the couch. Vindication at last. “The question is how do we catch her?”

  Looking thoughtful, Alicia said, “I’d say we have to bait a trap.”

  “Using ourselves as bait?” Chris asked without needing a reply. He had known that sooner or later it would come to that.

  “Exactly.”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon discussing the why’s and wherefore’s, building up their arsenal of facts and conjectures and coming up with what they thought was a workable plan that would draw her in without (hopefully) endangering their own lives.

  “OK. Let’s set the trap. Which one of us is going to call Marci?” Chris asked.

  “I will,” Alicia decided. “You are just too above board.” She grinned her cheeky grin.

  “What will you say to her?” When it came right down to it, Alex was unsure of any plan that might put her friends in peril.

  “I’ll say we need to talk to her about something of extreme importance to her.”

  “That sounds just vague enough,” Alex said with approval. “She’s so self-absorbed she won’t be able to resist.”

  Alicia had had enough. “OK, Alex, it’s time to fess up! You’ve wanted it to be Marci from the start. Why? What happened between you two?”

  Alex considered for a moment and then answered truthfully. “It was something that she said.”

  Alicia wondered what Marci had in her verbal arsenal that had so upset her usually unflappable friend. She just looked at Alex and waited.

  Alex sighed, and then finally let it out. “Marci implied that I really don’t have any talent with horses. That the only reason I am where I am is because we have money.”

  “And you’re afraid that she’s right?”

  “It did make me wonder, for about a minute and a half. But then I wondered if other people were thinking that, too. The problem is, she is partly right. This is a hellishly expensive sport at the upper levels. The money does help and perhaps I wouldn’t be at the level I am without it but not because it has bought me a place on the team. It means that I can afford the good horses and to spend the time in training with top people. I’ve worked hard at my sport. I train religiously with the best coaches. I’ve studied and I’ve learned. I worked like a dog at Klaus’ barn. There are no free rides there! The bottom line is, money can’t buy you talent. So Marci is wrong. She’s just jealous and mean-spirited and I would be very happy if it were her! I guess that makes me a bitch, too,” she finished with a self-deprecating grin.

  Alicia looked at her oh so successful friend and thought how fragile the human ego is. No matter how much validation we receive, deep down we’re all afraid that it is all a mistake, that we have no talent, no right to that success and that if other people realized it, our bubble would burst. It isn’t just the Emperor who has no clothes.

  Jake was going to be back-up on the operation. He’d go in his car and park down the road, then make his way to the back door of the barn and stay out of sight unless things went wrong and they were in trouble.

  “You can cut across the cow field,” Alicia told him. “There aren’t any bulls but watch out for the cow patties!”

  Chapter 32

  Chris lifted the latch and pushed open the barn door. There were no lights on and the only sound was the quiet munching of the horses eating their hay and the occasional swoosh of the automatic waterers. He hoped they’d given Jake enough time to get in place at the back door of the barn.

  “Close the door,” he said softly as Alicia followed him in. She closed it behind her.

  There was enough light from the windows for them to see what they needed.

  Part way down the aisle, there were a couple of bales of straw stacked against the wall. Alicia sat down on the straw and watched Chris as he poked around the objects propped against the wall. He found what he was looking for.

  “Here,” he said. “This is a good spot.”

  He took out his phone and pressed a few buttons.

  “I hope there is enough light in here for the video. I’ve turned the sound up as loud as it will go. I hope Jake’s phone will pick up the conversation from the back entrance so that Alex can hear what’s happening.”

  He put the phone on a beam and propped it up with a bottle of fly spray.

  “Good thing it’s a black phone. Y
ou can hardly see it,” Alicia commented.

  “Let’s just hope Marci takes the bait. Otherwise, I don’t see how we can prove she killed Dean.”

  Just then, the door opened and Alicia realized that they had been wrong. Evil had a face but it wasn’t Marci’s. Alex would be disappointed but the puzzle now made sense to Chris.

  “Marci’s not coming,” Claire announced as she turned on the lights. “I was there when she took your call. She’s too upset about Jon. I said I’d come instead. So, what can I do for you?”

  Chris and Alicia looked at each other rapidly reassessing the conclusions they’d drawn. Everything they had attributed to Marci worked just as well for Claire. Or they would just look like fools! Chris came to a rapid decision.

  “It’s not what you can do for us,” he began pleasantly, following the script they’d worked out.

  “It’s what we can do for you,” Alicia finished.

  “And what might that be?” Claire asked suspiciously.

  “We can keep quiet about what we’ve learned about Dean’s death.” Alicia replied.

  “And that is...?”

  And they went through it all. All of the facts, clues and assumptions they’d made about Marci only attributing them to Claire instead.

  “Well haven’t you been the busy little beavers!” Claire said nastily, when they’d finished. “You just couldn’t leave well enough alone! This whole thing is all your faults. If you had minded your own business, none of this would have happened!” Where had they heard that before? “No one was getting hurt. Everyone got a foal.”

  “Faith Dennis didn’t,” Alicia reminded her.

  “It wasn’t our fault the mare died. We bred her once and she didn’t take. She was probably too old. We used one straw ourselves and sold the third.

  “Sandro Hit is hot right now. His semen is like gold and priced accordingly. There are people who will buy it even if they can’t claim his parentage. A good horse it a good horse no matter who it’s by. A stallion certificate only matters if you want to register the foal and that is only necessary if you want breeding stock.