Barnstorming (Gail Mccarthy Mysteries)

by Laura Crum

  “Whatcha thinking, Gail? Are you ready to go back to work?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I’ve got a lot of mixed emotions.”

  I stared at Lucy, whose eyes had gone back to the road. She was much younger than me, in her mid-thirties, and had been working for Santa Cruz Equine Practice for ten years now. A strikingly attractive woman, she had remained single, and as far as I knew, focused on her job.

  “How’s it working for you?” I asked. “Do you enjoy it?’

  Lucy sighed. “Yes and no. Well, you know. I get sick of being called out in the middle of the night. I can get tired of the people. But I love horses and the job’s never boring. And I need to make a living. If I were in your shoes and could choose if I wanted to work, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m really conflicted.” I sighed. “Let’s just see what today brings.” I wondered whether I should tell Lucy about my finding Jane Kelly up in the woods. I had noticed a short article in the paper about the shooting, but there was no mention of my finding the body, though there was a statement that a man had been arrested on probable cause. Apparently Jeri had chosen to keep my name away from the press.

  In any case, we were already nearing the Red Barn; there wasn’t time to tell her now.

  “What sort of horse are you vet checking?” I asked. “Do you know?”

  “Oh yeah. The worst sort. An older gelding, said to be a babysitter. This woman wants him for a husband horse. I think the horse is twenty. How likely is it he’ll pass a soundness exam?”

  I shrugged. We both knew the score. Older horses could be great mounts for beginners, but it was very rare to find one that was completely without soundness issues. Prospective buyers wanted the horse to “pass” a vet check, which few older horses could honestly do. In the end, a vet had to pronounce on a gray area—was this horse sound enough to do the job the buyer needed—and how long was he likely to stay sound. This was actually an impossible question to answer, and I, like Lucy, had hated doing vet checks.

  “Ross is not gonna be happy with me if I flunk his horse,” Lucy said, with a head shake. “And Ross can be a real butthead.”

  “Is that right?” I’d only spoken to Ross Hart a few times; mostly as I was riding past the boarding stable. I really didn’t know him at all. But he had always struck me as a pretty tough customer. Now, remembering his indoor gardening project, I wondered just exactly how tough he might actually be. Hardened-criminal tough? Willing-to-murder-someone tough?

  Lucy turned into the drive of the Red Barn boarding stable. I could see Ross at the hitching rail in front of the big barn with a middle-aged woman at his side. Tied to the rail was a tallish bay gelding.

  “Here we go,” Lucy said.

  I watched her climb out of the truck while putting a friendly, relaxed smile on her face.

  Yes, indeed, I remembered that reaction. I found I was pasting just the same sort of smile on my own face. Here I am, your pleasant veterinarian. Inwardly, I shook my head. Did I really want this life back again?

  Lucy greeted Ross and the woman and introduced me. Ross and I made cordial mouth noises at each other. I shook the woman’s hand. The whole time I tried to watch Ross, wondering if I was facing a killer.

  Ross’s face didn’t reveal much. In his mid-twenties, he was strongly built, with a thick chest. He sported a goatee and his hair was cut very short, in what I took to be a popular style, since I saw it so often. I didn’t actually think that it flattered anyone.

  Certainly not Ross Hart. His somewhat heavy, fleshy face was not improved by the little goat beard and almost shaved head. His small eyes had a closed, guarded expression, and his mouth was hard. He looked me over without interest and turned to the middle-aged woman beside him, smiling as he untied the bay gelding from the rail.

  “Ace, here, is just what you need for your husband,” he said in a genial tone. “This horse has been packing beginners for years and he can sure pack one more. I’ve taken people all over these hills on this horse.” And he waved his hand at the ridge behind us.

  I glanced at Ace and thought that the fairly high-withered, swaybacked animal looked as if he might be near the end of his working life, but Ross’s comment opened the door for a question I wanted to ask.

  “Do you ride these trails much?” I asked innocently.

  “Sure, when I have time,” Ross said. ‘Why do you ask?” And for the first time his eyes met mine with a certain keeness in them.

  “I was riding back there Saturday,” I said, “and I thought I saw you.”

  A long silence greeted this remark. Ross appeared to be studying me carefully. I had the impression he was weighing things up in his mind, uncertain how best to answer. “Did you?” he said at last.

  “Well, I thought so,” I said. “Jonah Wakefield said he’d seen you, so I guessed it was you I saw. Riding a sorrel horse, loping along up the swingset trail, in the late afternoon,” I added.

  Ross Hart very clearly looked as if he’d like to ask me what the hell business it was of mine, but was unsure of the wisdom of this course.

  “Might have been me,” he said finally. “I was up there not too long ago on a sorrel colt.”

  “This would be day before yesterday,” I said. “The day Jane Kelly was shot back there,” I added, and watched his face.

  The eyes narrowed and the lips tightened, that was for sure. The middle-aged lady launched off on “how awful” it was and how she’d read about it in the paper and of course she knew Jane on account of Jane used to board here. Ross Hart said nothing. His eyes watched me in a very wary way.

  The horse-buying woman was concluding that Jane had probably been shot by accident by someone who was after deer. I nodded and watched Ross. Ross watched me. Stalemate.

  Finally Lucy interrupted, saying that she had several more calls this morning. Ross immediately began leading the bay gelding down to the dirt parking lot where Lucy liked to do soundness exams—the same place I’d always done them many years ago. I trailed after the little group, soundness the last thing on my mind.

  Ross Hart had clearly been unwilling to admit he was out riding on the trails Saturday, and yet I thought he had been. Why would Jonah Wakefield lie? And Jane herself had said that she had seen Ross, and “if looks could kill, I’d be dead.” And less than an hour later she had been dead.

  Just as I was contemplating this, a somewhat harsh voice behind me brought me back to the present.

  “That’s a damn good old horse.”

  I turned to find myself face to face with Tammi Martinez, the current manager of the Red Barn. I blinked. I simply wasn’t used to tattooed women in halter tops at nine in the morning on an October day. Now that I thought about it, I had never seen Tammi when she wasn’t wearing some sort of skimpy top that bared either her shoulders or her midriff or both. In this case it was both. The top, or lack thereof, revealed several tattoos, which I guessed was the point, more or less. Why have the tattoos if no one could see them?

  On the other hand, Tammi was not a particularly young woman—I guessed her age to be somewhere around forty. Certainly she was slender enough that the tight jeans and minimal top did not look totally incongruous, but they weren’t entirely flattering, either. The phrase “mutton dressed up as lamb” came to mind.

  Of course, I reminded myself, this was really sour grapes on my part. I was big-framed, with wide shoulders and hips, and the older I got the more pounds seemed to want to attach themselves to my sturdy framework. On top of this, I felt no need to flaunt myself as an object of desire to any males in the vicinity. Thus my sturdy cotton cargo pants, comfortable but not fashionable, and a loose linen T-shirt.

  “Hey Gail,” Tammi greeted me. “Are you back at work?”

  I’d known Tammi in the peripheral way one knows veterinary clients and other local horse folk for many years. “Not yet,” I said. “I’m just thinking about it. I’m riding with Lucy today, that’s all.”

&nb
sp; Tammi narrowed her eyes at Lucy, who was watching Ace trot in a small circle. Even from a hundred feet away, I could see the slight bob of his head that indicated the horse was not entirely sound. I knew Tammi could see it, too.

  “I damn sure hope Lucy does not talk Estelle out of buying that horse,” Tammi said, in a low, fierce whisper. “Ross needs the money bad. We need the money.”

  “We?” I said on a questioning note.

  Tammi seemed disposed to confide in me, why I didn’t know. “Ross and I are renting that A-frame house up the road,” she said. “Rent’s due tomorrow and the landlord wants twenty-five hundred a month. Neither Ross or I make all that much money running this place and training horses. He needs to sell this horse to Estelle. That damn Lucy better not queer the pitch. That horse is perfect for what Estelle wants to do with him.” I had the impression Tammi was hoping I might influence Lucy towards passing the horse.

  My mind was running on a different track. Tammi and Ross were renting that house together. This was news to me. I had heard they were an item, but not that they were living together. Maybe the indoor gardening was a joint project—a way to supplement their income. I tried another question.

  “Running a boarding stable must be tough in this economy. I heard you lost a client Saturday.”

  Tammi’s eyes shot to mine. “You mean Jane?” she said, and I did not miss the suddenly wary tone in her voice. It reminded me of the look in Ross’s eyes when I’d brought the subject up.

  “Didn’t Jane used to board here?” I asked innocently.

  “Used to,” Tammi said sharply. “Used to is right. She hauled her horse out of here last week. Took the mare to Lazy Valley is what I heard. She still owed us a month’s board.”

  “Really?” I said, on a questioning note.

  Tammi was quite apparently bubbling over with pent-up emotion. “That damn Jane was a pain in the butt. Don’t tell anyone I said so now that she’s dead. Always complaining about something. She thought she should be the trainer here, instead of Ross. She was always hassling him, too. She was nothing but a troublemaker.” Tammi took a quick breath. “Of course, I’m sorry somebody shot her.”

  Tammi did not sound sorry at all. On the other hand, I reflected, it would be hard to collect a month’s board from a dead woman. Tammi and/or Ross had no real motive to kill Jane. Unless, of course, Jane had discovered their agricultural project and threatened to blow the whistle on them. That might constitute a motive. And Ross had apparently been riding back there when Jane was shot.

  Tammi seemed to realize she’d said too much. “I need to go turn horses out,” she announced abruptly, and wheeled around and went back to the barn.

  I meandered down the hill toward Lucy, Ross, and the potential horse buyer, who were grouped in a half circle, looking at the bay gelding. Ace stood with his head down, calm and quiet, waiting for his fate to be decided.

  I felt sad as I watched the old horse. This was something I had grown to hate about the horse business. The way older horses who had done a good job their whole lives were treated as disposable sporting equipment, dumped when their working life was done, often ending up at the local auction yard, to be sold to kill buyers who shipped them to slaughter in Mexico and Canada, under horrific conditions. It just didn’t bear thinking of. My own horse, Sunny, had been saved from just such a fate. But there were countless other horses out there, just as sweet, who went to a miserable end. I couldn’t rescue them all. I hated it.

  Did I even want to be around this anymore? I watched Lucy explain to the woman that Ace could probably pack her husband at the walk and trot; he had some arthritic issues, but most older horses did have some of these. There was no way to know how long he’d stay sound enough to ride. The woman looked doubtful. Ross offered to lower the price.

  And no one, I reflected, was talking about what would happen when the horse wasn’t ridable. Ross, I felt sure, would simply send poor Ace to the sale. Would this woman care enough for a horse she would have owned a few years at most to bear the expense of retiring him? Pretty doubtful.

  I closed my eyes for a minute, not wanting to see the kind, quiet, stoic expression in the eyes of the bay horse. You can’t, Gail, I told myself.

  I currently supported three horses who were retired and turned out to pasture in the Sierra foothills, besides the three horses I kept at home. I simply could not afford any more old horses. How in the world, I wondered for the first time, could I go back to this job? I would bring home a horse a week.

  The horse-buying woman said she needed to think about it. Lucy shook hands and turned away. I could hear Ross talking, saying he could arrange cheaper board if the woman wanted the horse as I followed Lucy back up the hill to the truck.

  “Yuck,” I said, once we were back in the cab and headed out the driveway.

  “Yep,” Lucy agreed. “I hate doing vet checks on old horses. Almost as much as I hate euthing horses.”

  Lucy’s words brought yet another picture to my mind. Virtually the last call I’d made as a practicing vet. Shortly after midnight on New Year’s Eve, a woman I knew pretty well; her yearling warmblood colt had gotten scared by fireworks and tried to jump out of his corral. He didn’t make it. The woman had found him on the ground, having half impaled himself on a post. He was breathing but unresponsive. I still remembered the frantic phone call. I was pregnant at the time and staggering out of bed at one in the morning to head out to a dire emergency seemed almost more than my increasingly fragile emotional system and increasingly bulky physical self could stand.

  I’d reached the colt within twenty minutes, when a brief exam had made it clear that he was checking out. The woman had not hesitated, asking me to put him out of his suffering. Both our eyes had filled with tears as I administered the kill shot. I knew very well that she had no children and had saved for two years to buy the expensive young warmblood; he was her baby. And now, due to a freak chance, she was losing him at what should have been the beginning of his life. Even though I knew better than to take vet calls personally, in my interesting condition, it was all too much. The next morning I’d announced to Jim, my boss, that I needed to take a break.

  “Yeah,” I said slowly, still lost in my train of thought. “Euthing horses is always sad. Even when it needs to happen.”

  “I always hope I’m doing some good by reducing the amount of suffering they go through,” Lucy said.

  “And you are,” I said automatically. This was what I had told myself, too, while I was doing the job. And, often, it was true.

  “So where are we off to now?” I asked.

  “Lazy Valley,” Lucy said. “Doug Martin has a horse that’s come up lame.”

  “Doug Martin?” I knew I sounded surprised. “He was Jane Kelly’s boyfriend.”

  “Was he? She was the woman who got shot, out trail riding, right?” Lucy asked. “I assume that was some kind of accident?”

  “Nobody knows,” I said. I decided not to mention that I had found the body. Somehow I just didn’t want to chat about it. I did, however, want to talk to Doug Martin.

  I watched the landscape move by outside the truck windows, and wondered just how Doug Martin would be taking Jane’s death. They’d only recently reunited, apparently. And what about Sheryl Silverman? My shoulders twitched a little at the thought of her. I could not get the picture of Sheryl’s furious face out of my mind.

  Rolling hills, dotted with oaks and pines, slid by outside the pickup; part of my mind registered that this was my familiar ridge, that I rode and hiked all year long. Today, though, my thoughts were elsewhere. As Lucy made the turn into Lazy Valley’s long driveway, I hardly looked at the dirt trail that came down the hill to join the pavement, even though I’d ridden that path many times. This was where the swingset trail emerged.

  My eyes scanned the numerous barns and corrals that made up the Lazy Valley setup. This was a much bigger boarding stable than the Red Barn. They had perhaps a hundred horses.

  Lucy drove w
ithout pausing through the various barns and shedrows and arenas and parked near the last sizable barn. I could see Doug Martin sitting on a bench in front of it. Two women were talking to him. Sheryl Silverman and another woman I knew slightly named Trish O’Hara. Trish was holding a black horse by the bridle reins. Lucy and I got out of the truck and went to join them.

  I have to admit I stared at Doug Martin and Sheryl Silverman with outright curiosity. Doug was talking, his handsome, fine-featured face quite animated. From what I could hear it sounded as if he were assuring Sheryl and Trish that Jane’s death was an accident, that the police had arrested “some guy who was trying to poach a deer.”

  Lucy greeted the group; I smiled and nodded and watched faces. Doug, I thought, must be at least ten years younger than Jane had been. I put Jane’s age at roughly fifty, the same as me. Doug might be forty, or even younger. He was an attractive guy, who always seemed to have a different woman with him. His charm lay perhaps as much in his boyish, unaffected manners, as his regular, even features. At the moment he was giving the group of us a sad, but still charming smile.

  Lucy had just expressed her sympathy about Jane. Doug shook his head. “I still can’t believe it happened,” he said. “She was my good gal; I depended on her. She was always there for me.”

  I noticed that Sheryl’s mouth thinned to a hard line when Doug said this, but her lips instantly relaxed into a gentle pout when he looked her way. Hmm. Now this was interesting. It looked like Sheryl might be trying to get Doug back, now that Jane was out of the picture.

  Sheryl wasn’t looking at me; she barely seemed aware that I was there. Her gaze was fixed on Doug, her big eyes, carefully darkened with product, held a sympathetic, friendly expression, as Doug described how he was looking after Jane’s horse, dogs, and home. I couldn’t hold back a tiny one-shoulder twitch as I remembered the black anger in this same woman’s face Saturday afternoon when I’d mentioned seeing Jane.