Reining in Murder

by Leigh Hearon

  “So why do horses get this thrush?”

  “Mud. Still water. Dirty stalls. I can clean the stalls, but there’s not much I can do about the rain and the muck. That’s why I need to check the horses’ hooves and make sure no one’s in trouble.”

  “But, Sister, I don’t know anything about taking care of horses. Daddy always called the vet when Flicka was sick.”

  Flicka was the pony Annie never had.

  “Well, there’s a first time for everything. The horses should still be in their stalls munching hay, but put on boots and a slicker, anyway. One of them might decide to duck into the paddock before we have time to close the stall doors.”

  “I don’t have a slicker. Or boots.”

  “Of course you don’t. Well, grab what you can off the coatrack. Oh, and Lavender,” Annie said, glancing at her sister’s Birkenstocks, “don’t forget to put on a pair of socks. I don’t have a remedy for thrush that works on people.”

  * * *

  As Annie anticipated, Lavender was more hindrance than help, and in truth, she hardly needed a second pair of hands. All of Annie’s horses, including Trooper, showed no intention of venturing outside until the last blade of hay in their feeders was consumed, so confining the horses to their individual stalls, as Annie had expected, was a nonissue.

  By the time Annie had examined Trotter and the bay, Lavender had succeeded in putting a string halter on Rover and had learned how to hold the halter rope so that she had control yet didn’t apply undue pressure to the horse and thereby irritate him. Haltering the horses wasn’t at all necessary; every horse, Baby included, knew to stand still and obediently comply when Annie asked for one of its hooves. But Annie decided it was high time that Lavender learned a few rudimentary skills when it came to equine care. How to halter and safely lead a horse was the first lesson in Horse Ed 101.

  She was surprised at how reticent Lavender had first behaved around her large animals. Her half sister, Annie sourly reminded herself, had owned a pony for several years as a small child, yet she seemed totally intimidated by the horses she met today. Proud mother notwithstanding, Annie knew her horses were among the most gentle and forgiving animals in Western Washington. She’d trained them to trust any human being that Annie trusted to be around them, and to assume that any human’s intent was good.

  Old-timers referred to Annie’s training as “sacking-out,” an exercise in which owners whooshed plastic bags on a stick around horses’ bodies until the animals learned that they had nothing to fear from the strange noise or movements. But Annie’s training had gone much further than that. She could mount each horse from either side and dismount in every direction except over the horse’s head. She could walk underneath and around them without the least fear of a sudden skittish movement or, worse, a kick. The John Deere tractors that occasionally drove through Annie’s pasture drew no more interest from them than a flick of an ear. The only thing that aroused the horses’ concern and could still set them into instant flight mode was the scent or sight of a predator. For that, Annie had her .30-.30 Winchester.

  Lavender, Annie noticed, did not suffer from lack of pride about her meager accomplishments. Once she’d mastered haltering and leading, she relaxed considerably and began to stroke the horses while Annie worked, whispering to them what “darling little horses they were” until Annie secretly wanted to throw up. Lavender had about one-fifth the horse sense of eight-year-old Hannah, Annie thought, but give her another decade, and she might catch up.

  Fortunately, all the horses’ hooves showed no sign of thrush, but for good measure, Annie scrubbed each hoof with disinfectant and applied an iodine mix that would help thwart any unwanted germs. She was relieved that none of the horses required anything but maintenance care, because Lavender’s incessant chatter would have made it difficult to concentrate on anything except the mundane task she’d set out to do.

  It had started out innocently enough.

  “So how do you like our Northwest weather, Lavender? Must be a big change from Florida.”

  “Florida! I couldn’t wait to leave that place. Boca Raton is the absolute pits. Most of the people who live there look like they’re ready to die, and the ones who are still breathing are absolute phonies.”

  Annie bit her tongue.

  “I mean, no one, not even at my high school, had the slightest interest in anything except boys, cars, and waiting to tap into their trust funds. What’s wrong, Sister?”

  Annie was coughing violently.

  “Nothing, Lavender. Must have got some hay up my nose.”

  “Anyway, I told Daddy that I was simply not going to come out, and that was that. Boy, did that cause a big stink.”

  Come out? Was Lavender a lesbian?

  “Ah, what do you mean, come out’? Come out of where?”

  “Come out as a deb, silly.”

  Annie stared at her, clueless.

  “A deb-u-tante, Sister.” Lavender looked at Annie as if she were the village idiot. “It’s the big deal at our school. The senior prom is just practice. The real event is the coming-out ball. The closest is the one in St. Petersburg. It’s held in December. Daddy said he didn’t spend six years sending me to cotillion not to see me come out.”

  “Wow. What did you learn in cotillion?”

  “Oh, just a lot of outdated dances. You know, how to waltz, foxtrot, tango. We even learned a totally antique dance called the Lindy. At least that was kind of fun.”

  “Well, it actually sounds like a pretty useless waste of time.”

  “Believe me, it was. And then I had to spend two whole summers during high school at finishing and charm schools to prepare for the great event.”

  The only thing Annie had finished during her high-school summers off was putting maraschino cherries on DQ banana splits.

  “It wasn’t all bad. I did learn how to drink Jell-O shots and not throw up. That was after class, of course. And our cotillion society had to do volunteer work at a local nonprofit. It was part of our credo. Naturally, all the sisters decided to volunteer at the local art museum. The art museum, for God’s sake! Where all you see are your friends and neighbors, anyway. I mean, we could have been feeding the homeless or walking dogs in shelters.”

  Annie’s respect for her half sister went up one barely discernible notch.

  “So why didn’t you want to go through it? It sounds like the rite of passage in Boca Raton.”

  “Well, as it turns out, I couldn’t have come out if I wanted to. When Daddy put his foot down, I went and talked to Mummy about it. And what she told me made it like so clear there was no way I’d be invited to any debutante ball in my lifetime.”

  Annie had forgotten about Lavender’s mother—her father’s secretary, who’d broken up Annie’s own parents’ marriage. She couldn’t even remember what the woman had looked like. She’d been either too young or too traumatized to register such things. What she mostly remembered was her own mother, crying late into the night. Well, that was hardly Lavender’s fault.

  “How is your mom, anyway?”

  “Fine. I guess. She and Daddy divorced when I was four, you know.”

  “I’d forgotten about that.”

  “All they did was fight, anyway. I was really young, but it was obvious that my parents hated each other.”

  That, Annie mused, was a comforting thought.

  “Mummy remarried pretty soon afterward. She and Don moved to Gainesville. Don’s a big corporate lawyer up there.”

  “So what was the big secret? Why were you all of a sudden not debutante material?”

  “Because Mummy was pregnant with me when she married Daddy. And even back then, that was a big no-no.”

  Annie let go of Rover’s hoof with a tad less care than normal, then instantly rubbed his pastern as if to say, “I’m sorry.”

  She’d had no idea that Lavender’s mother was pregnant before they wed. True, it made her father’s rapid flight from his marriage to her mother more understandable
, if not respectable. But still.

  “So what did you do?”

  “I went back to Boca and told Daddy. He tried to talk the debutante advisory board into letting me in, but it didn’t work. Then I got arrested for shoplifting, and that put the end to that.”

  Lavender said this lightly, as if she were describing her recent shopping exploits at the Gap.

  “I guess so.” Annie scooped up her tack box and gave Rover a treat from her pocket. “Okay, on to Baby. You can untie him now.”

  Lavender obediently unloosed the halter and followed Annie into the next stall.

  “Anyway, Daddy wanted me to go to a school in Switzerland, where no one would know the big bad secret of my birth, so that’s where I headed next.”

  “Well, at least you got to learn French.”

  “Yeah. Kind of. Only, everyone made fun of my accent. I think the Swiss were snootier than the girls back home.”

  “Halter, please.”

  Annie waited patiently while Lavender figured out which way was up. Baby wasn’t going anyplace with fresh Timothy in front of her.

  “So what happened after Switzerland?”

  “I came home, but everything had changed. Daddy had always had a lot of girlfriends, but now, I guess because I was so grown-up, I was cramping his style. I don’t think he knew what to do with me.”

  He and I both, thought Annie.

  “I think I’d become an embarrassment to him. And it wasn’t even my fault! I mean, I didn’t ask to be born.”

  Oh, for God’s sake, thought Annie. I thought kids stopped saying that in junior high. Only, in Lavender’s case, her complaint actually made a modicum of sense.

  “So I moved out and tried to get a job . . . but my temperament really doesn’t fit into the nine-to-five scene. That’s what my therapist said, and she was right. Daddy didn’t mind supporting me. I think it was easier for him to write a check than have me move back home.”

  “How about your mom? Couldn’t you have stayed with her?”

  “Mummy might have said okay, but Don wouldn’t let her. He said they already had two teenagers, and he didn’t want to take care of a third.”

  That must have hurt, Annie thought. She remembered what it was like being pushed aside in favor of a new sibling. It amused her that Lavender and she actually had one thing in common.

  “So I just started hanging out in Boca. I got into the Goth thing for a while, but it got old wearing black all the time and really, that era like really was done. So I started to get tattoos but when Daddy found out he made me go in and have them all taken off. That hurt more than getting them in the first place. Then, last summer, I hitchhiked with a friend to Sedona and got in touch with my spiritual side. It was a turning point in my life. That’s when I knew I’d found my true calling.”

  Here we go again, Annie thought.

  Fortunately, at that moment, a reprieve arrived in the form of an eight-year-old child who, despite the torrent of rain outside, had not forgotten that this was her day to ride.

  “Hannah!” Annie had never been so happy to see the child.

  “Annie! Mom says we can take the puppy home today! If that’s okay with you, that is.”

  “That’s fine, Hannah. He’s ready to go to his new home. Hannah, meet my half sister, Lavender. Lavender, meet Hannah.”

  Hannah looked at Lavender with a mixture of awe and incredulity.

  “Is that your real hair?”

  * * *

  Annie didn’t know who was happier: Lavender, who got to escape to the farmhouse and prepare for her smudging ceremony, or Hannah, who got to help Annie examine Trooper’s hooves and anoint them with medicine. Trooper, Annie was relieved to see, was doing much better. His eyes were clear, and only a few residual water lines from his tear ducts remained on his handsome face.

  And if it was raining buckets outside, Hannah didn’t seem to notice. Annie decided to turn today’s lesson into a “walking through puddles day.” It was clear that Hannah would much rather let Sam hop over the puddles. She gave a squeal of delight every time he did so, but Annie insisted that she make the pinto calmly and deliberately walk through the water instead.

  “It won’t hurt him, Hannah,” she reminded her. “Remember, horses used to swim across rivers to bring pioneers out west. This is just a baby lake.”

  When Hannah successfully persuaded Sam to walk through five puddles without pause, Annie agreed to let the child trot Sam around the round pen. Annie hooked Sam’s halter to the lunge line again, just in case the horse decided to break into a canter, but it was a safeguard that proved unneeded. Hannah had absorbed all she’d learned from the first time on Sam’s back and easily found her seat as Sam quickly paced around the pen. They practiced going from a walk to a trot and back to a walk again with hardly a hitch.

  “I know exactly when he’s going to trot, Annie! I can hear his heart begin to beat!”

  Annie couldn’t have been prouder.

  * * *

  After scraping the water off Sam and layering him with Annie’s one fleece cooler, the two walked back to the farmhouse for hot cocoa. They found Lavender in the living room, adorned in a flowing caftan, about to light a sheaf of cedar branches with a match. A trail of cornmeal already lined the four corners of the room. If the house didn’t have any mice, Annie thought morosely, it would tonight. She hoped Max would emerge in time for the feast.

  “What’s she doing?” whispered Hannah, holding on to Annie’s hand.

  Lavender turned and beamed. “You’re just in time, Sister! I didn’t want to start the ceremony without you. Come over here so I can smudge you.”

  Annie rolled her eyes, then bent down to talk to Hannah at her height.

  “Why don’t you go into the kitchen and play with your puppy? I’ll be there in just a minute.”

  Hannah solemnly nodded and fled the room. Annie suspected the child thought her half sister was as loony as she did.

  She reluctantly walked up to Lavender, who fumbled with the matches until the sharp smell of smoldering cedar filled the room. Gazing deeply into Annie’s eyes, Lavender raised the branch and began to fan the cedar around Annie’s face.

  “Stop coughing! I’m trying to smudge you.”

  “I can’t help it! I feel as if I’m in a burning house!”

  Throwing her a dirty look, Lavender raised the cedar above her head and began to recite: “We welcome the energy of the rising sun at the beginning of the day and the light of illumination. Welcome Eagle, flying nearest the heavens, with the clearest of vision. I welcome the energies and spirits of the East. HO!”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Annie could see Hannah peering around the kitchen door.

  “Are we done yet?”

  “No. That was the prayer to the East. There are three more.”

  “You’re facing west. I have to go. You’re on your own.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Annie and Hannah tiptoed out of the house with Barkus, the name the Clares had chosen for their new puppy, in his new dog carrier. By now, Lavender had migrated to Annie’s bedroom, where they could hear her chanting in a high-pitched voice that Annie only could hope appealed to the Native spirit world.

  Annie had insisted upon tiptoeing, and not just to avoid further contact with Lavender. They’d left the remaining pup asleep, wrapped around Wolf’s front paws, and Annie wanted to make the separation of the canine siblings as easy as possible.

  “Ummm! Your house smells good, Annie! Just like Christmas!” said Hannah.

  “Right. It’s been Christmas every day ever since Lavender arrived.”

  Hannah gave Annie a quizzical glance.

  “That’s a joke, Hannah. A bad one. Actually, the house does smell good, doesn’t it?”

  The reception of Barkus at the Clare household was predictably joyful, chaotic, and enthusiastic. Annie observed the Clares’ two cats slink away in disgust, but she had no doubt they would return in good time, ready to teach the new kid on the
block how to show proper respect to his superiors. Annie delayed her departure as long as she could, hoping to avoid seeing the rest of Lavender’s work-in-progress. The last thing she shouted to the Clares, as she drove off in the now gloaming darkness, was “Remember! Barkus likes to eat MEAT!”

  CHAPTER 16

  MONDAY, MARCH 7TH

  “Well, if that don’t beat all.”

  Dan absentmindedly scratched his receding hairline and handed the manila folder back to Annie.

  “Don’t know how we missed this in the search,” he went on. “It’s important evidence, Annie, and I appreciative your bringing it to our attention so promptly.”

  Annie gave Dan a halfhearted smile. She still felt immensely guilty over the way she’d covered her second sleight of hand with Hilda’s murder case file. At 8:00 A.M. on Monday, she’d arrived at the ranch and, after a few words with Dan, had slipped into Hilda’s office, this time alone.

  “I can’t spare a single deputy to babysit you, Annie,” the sheriff told her. “Deputy Lindquist is en route to the King County jail as we speak. Couple of miscreants got into a brawl at the Roadside last night. Someone called nine-one-one, and wouldn’t you know, when Lindquist came calling, he found out they both had outstanding warrants on the mainland. I figured since he’d made the collar, he deserved the pleasure of bringing them in.”

  The rest of the “excavating crew,” as Dan called them, were busy cranking up the machines that had been left out in the rain since Saturday.

  “So you’re working on your own recognizance,” Dan told her sternly. “Don’t take this personally, but don’t let me down.”

  Annie nodded meekly and sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the unnamed brawlers, whose perfect timing had put them in the pokey but placed her in the position to remedy her own crime.

  At least the downpour had finally ceased. The bone-chilling dampness that had permeated Annie’s skin the past three days was gone, along with most of the overcast sky. The sun was starting to play around the edges of the clouds, and although the temperature wasn’t much above forty, Annie felt that the weather was positively balmy compared to the last few days’ onslaught. That, and being able to hand over the original Latham/Colbert correspondence to Dan made her feel fairly buoyant.