"Eli, go help the others. They're not as bad off. I'm thinking Pepto might be the best thing. Massive doses. They've had everything else. Patsy? You're sure you want to watch?"
"Go, Eli. "
I reached for my vet bag. Behind me I heard a massive groan. Shod hooves scrabbled for purchase on the wet concrete.
Then came the crash. "I couldn't hold him up, Patsy," Mike said.
Patsy dropped to her knees beside the colt. "Maggie, put him down, please, please!"
I put my hand on Patsy's shoulder and said quietly, "No need, Patsy, honey. It's over."
"No." Patsy bent over the black head and sobbed. The others stood around helplessly. After what seemed like an aeon, I watched Patsy square her shoulders, rub her fingers over her eyes and sniff. "Mike, help me up."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Go get the tractor and pull him out back where the others can't see us." She turned to me. "Maggie, you've got do the necropsy right this minute. I'll help."
"Oh, Miss Patsy, no," Mike said. "Let me."
"It's my job, Mike. You have live horses to help. Maggie and I have to find out what's causing this before we lose any more of them. Now, you go get that tractor."
"Find out how Eli's doing," I said. "You have a right to assist at the necropsy, but I'll be damned if I let you watch us tie him up and drag him out of here like a side of beef."
Patsy's jaw tightened and the loose skin under her neck quivered.
"Don't argue. Go. Mike will call you when I'm ready." I gave Patsy a shove toward the main part of the bam, then nodded at Mike. "Let's get to it."
"Right. Poor Miss Patsy."
"We better make sure there aren't any other'poor s' tonight."
Lashing the colt's legs together, attaching the ropes to the tractor and pulling the corpse out to the area behind the shavings pile where it would be hidden from the barn was hellish. Eli would keep everyone else away, but the others knew Marko had died. That would raise the panic level.
Before we had the ropes off the colt's legs in the paddock behind the bam, Patsy trotted out with her head high and her chin stuck out in front of her. "What are you waiting for?"
I was already gloved, and I held the heavy scalpel I would need to cut through the horse's abdomen and lay the vital organs out where I could see them and take samples.
"Wait," Patsy said. She sank onto the ground beside the colt, cradled his big black head in her arms and rocked back and forth. I had never actually heard a woman keen before. I wanted to kneel beside her and add my voice to hers. Grief upon grief. If only I'd been able to keen like that for Morgan instead of holding all my grief locked away...
After a couple of minutes, Patsy sniffed, laid down the youngster's shining head, stood up and took her place beside me. "Now."
Necropsies were dirty and stank, but Patsy didn't bail out. She stood beside me as I opened the horse's abdomen. A moment later I was on my knees, my hands carefully lifting the horse's caecum. "Sweet Lord. Look at this. I've never seen anything like it."
"It's all red and swollen. Shouldn't it be puffy and white?" Patsy asked.
I sliced into the caecum. A mess of mineral oil, oats, and hay lay wadded inside. I ran my fingers over the inside walls. "It's covered with ulcers. Some of them must have been bleeding for hours."
I picked up a handful of the contents and rubbed them between my palms, while I narrowed my eyes and stared at the mess. I caught my breath. "Patsy, run back to the barn this minute. Tell them not to feed-not one scrap, nothing, not until I get there."
Patsy looked startled.
"For the love of God, Patsy, run."
Patsy ran on her stubby, pudgy middle-aged legs as though she were closing in on first at the Boston Marathon.
I pulled specimen bottles from my kit and began to take samples of the mess I had uncovered, and then slices of liver, heart, lung and intestines.
I was concentrating so hard, I didn't hear Patsy behind me until I heard Paul's voice. "What is it?" He sounded winded. Patsy was gasping.
"What?" Eli came up and dropped beside Maggie. "Lordy, what in the Sam Hill?"
"This is alfalfa, isn't it, Paul?" I asked as I showed him a pulp of wet hay.
"Right. We only feed alfalfa hay. Need to get as much nourishment into these guys as we can. Puts a bloom on them like nothing else."
"Did you recently buy some from a new source?"
He and Patsy stared at one another open-mouthed. "Yeah. We were running low until first cutting this year. Dan and Patsy don't grow alfalfa, so we buy it. Our usual guy was out, so we bought a load of last year's cutting from a guy from up the other side of Jackson just to tide us over."
"Have you been feeding it long?"
"Mike?" Paul shouted. "Didn't we start feeding that new alfalfa this morning?"
"We been using the last of that second-cutting from the fall. Ran out after supper last night, so yeah, I guess so."
"Maggie?"
"Look at this," I held my gloved hand out for Eli.
"I don't see any-Lordy, yes I do."
"What, for God's sake?" Patsy asked.
"Blister beetles."
"Blister beetles? What are Blister beetles?"
Paul bent over the mess in my hand. "I've heard of them out in Oklahoma and Colorado."
"Patsy," I said. "Blister beetles look like little grey and black lightning bugs. Ever hear of Spanish fly?"
"Sure. Isn't that supposed to be an aphrodisiac?"
"It's really a massive and deadly genito-urinary tract irritant. If you got a grain of it, you might not die-although you could-but you'd pray to God to take you."
"And horses have much more primitive genito-urinary tracts than people," Eli said.
"Patsy, you and Paul can't blame yourself for Marko's death. Eating one whole beetle would be enough to kill him. His fate was sealed at breakfast this morning."
"The others? Are they going to die too?"
"At this point and with a gallon of Pepto in them, maybe not. They were lucky. They're all mature horses. They probably ate a wing or a feeler."
"It's that deadly?"
"It's that deadly. Blister beetles seem to prefer alfalfa. If it's cut properly, there's little chance they'll get baled up with the hay. Any man who grows the stuff should know that."
I glanced up at a rumble from the back of the group. Big Mike looked as though he were swelling. His dark face was suffused with blood, and the whites of his eyes seemed dangerously swollen. "Where's he live, Paul?"
"The man who sold us the stuff? Why?"
"I'm gonna go kill him is why."
"Not right this minute," I said. "We need you here."
"Maggie, I asked the guy about blister beetles," Paul said. "I've never heard of a single instance around here except for alfalfa imported from out west, but I did ask the question as a matter of course. Mike heard me, didn't you? The guy swore to me he'd cut his hay with a sickle bar and not a straight baler. Said there couldn't possibly be any blister beetles in the bales."
"Let's see if he was telling the truth. Mike, would you put a tarpaulin over Marko? Weight it down so the coyotes don't get it until y'all can bury him in the morning."
Jack nodded.
Every human head in the barn turned toward us as we came in, although nobody stopped walking or cooling down his charge. Paul climbed into the hay loft and tossed down a bale. I cut the wire holding the bale together and separated the flakes of hay carefully. "Somebody get me a bucket and a strong flashlight."
Even with the flashlight, the bugs blended in so well with the alfalfa that it took all our eyes to spot the first one. Once we did, we found dozens. Some were in pieces-a wing here, a thorax there. Many, however, were intact.
"That son of a bitch." Paul said. "I'll help Mike kill him."
"What good will that do? You'll both be in jail. The main thing is to get him down here to pick up his hay. Tell him you found mold or ranunculus, anything but blister beetles."
; "Then what?"
"Call your lawyer. He's probably insured. So sue his ass."
The whisper of "poison" and "blister beetles" ran through the stable.
Eli and I checked the other horses. All seemed to have passed through the worst. I called everyone together and showed them the beetle carcasses. "Call us if anyone looks like they're getting worse," I said. "We'll be back first thing tomorrow morning. I want to be here when that bastard comes to pick up his hay."
Eli and I pulled into Patsy's parking lot before seven the following morning, and left our trucks where the logos didn't show. Better the nitwit didn't see there were vets on the premises.
Behind the barn, Mike was using the backhoe to dig Marko's grave.
From the looks of them, neither Patsy nor Paul had slept last night. For the first time since I had known her, Patsy looked her age and more. The stubble on Paul's cheeks was gray.
"Well?" I asked.
"The others are better."
"Thank God. What about the guy who sold you the alfalfa?"
"He's due any minute. I gave him Hail Columbia."
"But not about the blister beetles?"
"No. Ranunculus and mold. You can handle the blister beetles thing."
"We gave all the horses a small bran mash this morning with some Pepto swished around in it," Patsy said. "I never thought they'd touch it, but they ate it right up."
"How are you?" I asked.
"Mad as a hornet. My Dan says he'll sell a thousand acres to pay the lawyers if that's what it takes to get this devil."
The crunch of gravel heralded the open-sided truck. The truck looked respectable, although the engine was noisy. The logo on the side read, "Top Class Alfalfa."
"Hey, y'all," said the man who climbed down from the truck. "Don't see how none of my alfalfa could'a had no mold."
He had little piggy eyes set too close to the bridge of his nose, a beer belly, too many brown teeth for his mouth, and an ominous circle in his breast pocket that denoted a tin of chewing tobacco. He didn't seem to have any in his mouth, but if he should attempt to spit, I'd deck him. His truck, however, was clean and swept free of leftover bits of hay. Truth to tell, he probably didn't look any different from most of the hay farmers. There would have been no overt reason for Paul not to trust him. I was reading into his face what I knew about his business.
A pair of helpers climbed down from the bed of the track and slouched over to the barn. "Can I drive on around and down the aisle like I did when I brung y'all the hay?"
Paul nodded. I suspected he didn't trust himself to say anything.
As soon as the truck was positioned, the men began to toss the bales down from the hayloft and stack them in the back of the track.
"Did you bring the money I gave you?" Paul asked. His voice sounded strangled. I could see that he'd bunched his hands into tight fists.
"How many bales y'all done used?"
I laid a hand on Paul's arm. The muscle jumped under my fingers.
"We used two and we'll be keeping three," I said.
"Lets see, five bales at five dollars a bale is twenty-five less I owe you."
I held out my hand. The man carefully counted out bills from a roll he carried in his hip pocket. His men were through loading and stacking in about ten minutes. As the man got ready to climb into his track, I said casually, "Those three bales are evidence."
"Evidence?"
"Evidence of the infestation of blister beetles that killed a valuable stallion yesterday and sickened five other horses to the point of death."
"Wha?"
"You lied to me, you s.o.b.," Paul snarled. "Those bales were full of blister beetles." He advanced on the man with his fist raised. I grabbed his arm.
"Naw. Ain't no way. Not my hay."
"Remember, you use those little red metal tags on your hay wire? It's your hay, all right. You'll be hearing from my lawyer. I suggest you contact your insurance company about settling."
For a moment, I thought the man would turn truculent. Then, he decided to ran instead. He jumped into his track and backed out so fast he nearly ran over Mike and Eli.
I turned to Patsy. "I just had a thought. That idiot is not above selling that load to another horse barn. Get on the phone. Call everybody you can think of in the area. Warn them. Fast."
Patsy's eyes grew round. She raced into the office.
Later that afternoon, I got a call from Patsy. "You'll never believe this. That horrible man took that load of hay down to the sale barn and sold it for a dollar a bale."
"Blister beetles won't kill cows. They have all those stomachs."
"That not the awful part. When he was leaving, he asked Dave, 'what in hell are blister beetles?'"
Chapter 38
In which Vickie dumps Herb
Eli and I were always deeply saddened whenever we lost a patient, but losing Marko, another of Patsy's prize youngsters, brought the loss of Sarah's Pride to the forefront of my mind. For a moment I thought of calling and telling Sarah about Marko's death, then I thought better of it.
Besides, she was somewhere in the Far East. She called me at least once a week, but said she was on the move and never knew for certain where she'd be. I had a number to call in case of emergency. Someone at the Los Angeles end would track her down if I really needed her.
I finally made an excursion to the grocery Sunday afternoon and came in about four in time to catch my ringing phone before the answering machine picked up. It was Vickie Anderson, and she sounded panicked.
"Herb's just been served with a restraining order and divorce papers," she said. "Oh, God, Maggie, it never occurred to me the sheriffs deputies would work on weekends. I expected him to be served at work on Monday."
"Calm down," I said. "Is he still there?"
I heard her draw a ragged breath. "He roared off in his precious Jaguar. The deputies stayed until I got a locksmith to change the locks. It cost a fortune on Sunday."
"Have you called your boys?"
Vickie's two sons were currently at LSU, one in pre-med and the other just starting undergraduate school.
"We talked when they were home for spring vacation last month."
"Listen to me," I said. I had visions of Herb driving that Jaguar into the side of the house or blowing Vickie away. "Can you tell the people at your subdivision gate that Herb is not to be allowed in?"
She caught her breath. "I guess I can show them the restraining order. But, he's got a card that opens the back gate, and there's no guard on duty there. His card will have to be cancelled, and they can't do that until Monday." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I never thought I'd say this, but I'm scared."
"Of course you are. Pack a bag as fast as you can, get in your van and drive over here. You can tell the boys where you are after you're safe. "
"Maggie, I couldn't..."
"Of course you can. Do it."
The moment I got off the phone, I dialed Eli's answering machine, told her the bare bones of the situation and asked her to come to my house as soon as she could.
Eli and I have always done our best to keep our personal lives separate. We don't just drop in on one another and expect to be fed or included in parties or evenings out. Eli is Sarah and Nathan's godmother, but she was never required to attend Nathan's soccer matches or Sarah's piano recitals.
She usually went anyway.
Since Morgan's death, we shared our evening meal together a couple of times a week, but I didn't go to her house without being invited, and she didn't come to mine. She and Shep kept asking me to join them for the theater or their jazz evenings, but I didn't want them to feel either guilty or obligated now that I didn't have Morgan to squire me. Besides, without Morgan to share the experience, going out was pure purgatory.
But when it came to the needs of our mutual friends, we could always count on one another a hundred per cent.
Vickie had never discussed her rocky marriage with any of the Militia, but she had kicked Herb out half a do
zen times. She'd never before gone so far as to serve him divorce papers.
Eli arrived five minutes after Vickie.
Vickie's hands shook. She'd obviously been crying. I packed her off to the downstairs guestroom to settle in and call her sons. When she came back ten minutes later, I handed her a glass of iced tea.
"You want a drink? You could use one."
She shook her head. "Alcohol's done enough damage to this fam ily. Thank God neither Jason or Adam drinks so much as a beer."
She sank onto the couch in the den and leaned her head back. She looked as though she'd been dragged backward through a knothole.
"You want to talk about it?" I asked.
She sat up, sighed, and set her iced tea on the side table. "I swore the last time Herb got himself a girlfriend that if it ever happened again, he was out of my life." She avoided our eyes. "She wasn't the first."
We knew that. Shoot, everybody in west Tennessee knew.
"He'd always say he was going golfing on Saturday afternoon. Since Jason and Adam were old enough to understand about sex, they've called it'golfing"' She managed a smile. "Not where Herb could hear them, of course.
"I was planning to wait until Adam finished his first year at LSU. Nobody should have to deal with freshman year and a nasty divorce at the same time. Jason went along. As a senior, he can look after his brother." She sighed and reached for her drink. "I swear, I feel as though I'd swallowed the Sahara desert.
"The night before they went back to school, they told me to divorce him and find somebody decent, that they didn't want him in their lives any longer." She shook her head. "He'll blame me, but he's the one who drove them away. They see the drunken rages and the women." She sighed and squared her shoulders. "So I've spent the last month getting my financial ducks in a row in case Herb reneged on his agreement about dumping his current woman. Both the boys are on full scholarships, and they inherited some money from my father and mother, so they're all right whatever happens in any divorce settlement. I've changed my will to cut out Herb and benefit them, made them the beneficiaries on my insurance, made them custodians of my limited power of attorney and my living will, and set up a living trust for them that excludes Herb in the event of my death. The house, the cars, the practice-everything we own is already in my name for what Herb always called 'tax reasons' Then Friday morning I cancelled all the credit cards and put every cent in our joint accounts into new accounts in my name only. And got a new lock box for all the papers, also in my name only."
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