Saddled with Trouble

by Michele Scott

  “Lou didn’t let Bean have anything at all to do with the program for that very reason. He could have easily mixed things up.”

  “Who was the person in charge of sending everything out?”

  “At first it was Brad, then Summer on occasion as business picked up and Lou needed the extra help. I did it as well at times. But Lou was the main handler of all of it. We really should have put better strategies into play. That’s obvious to me now. Because somewhere along the way, something got screwed up. And as far as the contracts and checks go, it could be as easy to explain that with age my husband could have signed them and been having problems with his memory.”

  “He wasn’t old, though. Sixty-one is hardly an age these days where people begin losing it.”

  “Alzheimer’s disease can begin in your fifties.”

  “You know, I wish I’d known he was having health problems. Maybe I could have helped.”

  “Your uncle was a proud man. I’m his wife and he didn’t confide in me until the other night. But I should have paid more attention.” Her eyes welled up with tears again. “I had noticed that there were little things he’d forgotten, like bills that didn’t get paid, and one night when Dwayne was out and Bean had already gone home, he didn’t feed the horses until I reminded him. But nothing too major. I thought maybe he was working too hard. Or, maybe the blowup with Ethan was eating at him.”

  “What do you know about what happened between them?” Michaela asked.

  “All I know is that right before he left on that trip, he and Lou had a huge argument and it tormented Lou afterward.”

  “What was it all about?”

  “I don’t know. I could hear this commotion going on out in the barn. I walked out there and Dwayne was telling Ethan to get the hell off the property.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “Lou followed him, tried to talk to him, but Ethan wouldn’t have anything to do with it. He shrugged him off. Lou nearly lost his balance as Ethan pulled away. Lou wouldn’t tell me what it was about, and ever since then he’s seemed preoccupied, and sad. Something changed; something Ethan told him changed him, but I don’t know what. I even tried to get a hold of Ethan to find out what it was, but he never called me back.” The phone started ringing. “Excuse me, Mick. It might be that detective or the funeral home. I’m trying to make the arrangements.” She started for the family room.

  “Sure. Do you have some aspirin? I’m getting a vicious headache.”

  “In my bathroom upstairs. Oh, your uncle had some Ativan that he was taking for some headaches he was getting. You can try those, if you want. They seemed to help him.”

  “Ativan is not for headaches. At least I don’t think so. I always thought it was for anxiety or panic attacks.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t take that stuff anyway, but the doctor gave it to Lou for the headaches. Sorry, I gotta get the phone.”

  It wasn’t like Michaela was a doctor or anything, but she was sure Ativan was prescribed for agitation. Her doctor had recommended it to her when she was splitting from Brad but she’d decided against it. Like Cynthia, she tried to stay more on the holistic route, if possible. But right now, she needed a Tylenol. Why was her uncle taking Ativan? Well, agitation did cause headaches, so what did she know.

  Michaela climbed up to the second floor. Their bedroom was very Home and Garden. Cynthia had given the place life when she’d married her uncle. She put colors together well and had a knack for making a house feel like a home with earthy warm tones and various floral and equestrian paintings around. It was pretty and inviting. But now the house, too, felt different, just as the ranch had when she’d arrived. She didn’t know how Cynthia could stay here. She knew if it were her, she’d want to get away, but maybe it was a comfort thing. Maybe Cynthia needed to be here at the home she’d shared for the last decade with her husband.

  In the bathroom, she found the bottle of aspirin tucked away inside the medicine cabinet, next to a bottle of Ativan. She picked it up. It was a refill prescribed to Lou only two weeks earlier. He had two more refills available. What in the world? Her uncle was never one to take drugs, especially not something like Ativan. His headaches must’ve been horrendous. What was going on in her uncle’s life that he was so stressed-out about? She picked up the bottle and read it again. It was prescribed to Uncle Lou by a Dr. Verconti. Huh. She’d thought he’d gone to the same family doctor as her parents had—Dr. Sherman. He must have switched docs for some reason. Goodness, what had been going on here? And how had she not sensed until the night before her uncle was murdered that something was deeply troubling him? The lawsuits? His memory loss? Where was the money for the breedings? And, what stallion was used to impregnate those mares? Why hadn’t she seen that her uncle was in crisis? Had she been so wrapped up in her own problems that she hadn’t been available to the one person who had always, always, made himself available to her?

  Starting to tear up again, she reached for a tissue, wiped her face and tossed it away. She missed the wastebasket and bent down to pick it up. Her eyes widened.

  “Oh, my God,” she muttered. There in the trash was a pregnancy test, and Michaela knew from all those she’d taken in the past that this one read positive. Cynthia was pregnant? But how? Uncle Lou . . .

  From a conversation she’d overheard between her parents when Lou and Cynthia wed, she’d learned that Lou had had a vasectomy. Maybe he hadn’t gone ahead with the procedure. Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. She heard the blood rushing through her ears. But, if it was Cynthia—and it had to have been done that morning, because that blue line would have gone away after several hours—and if Uncle Lou had had a vasectomy; that meant . . . Michaela shook her head. No. It couldn’t be, but she knew she would have to find out. Had Cynthia been cheating on her uncle?

  THIRTEEN

  CYNTHIA WAS STILL ON THE PHONE WHEN Michaela came down the stairs. The revelation that Lou’s wife was pregnant, and the strong possibility that the baby was not her uncle’s, continued to stun her. Again she thought, maybe he hadn’t gone through with the vasectomy. That in itself was bad enough. Here Cynthia would be without Lou to help raise a child, though the alternative was worse: the possibility that Cynthia had been cheating. Michaela’s mind wandered even further as another thought struck her—could Cynthia have killed Lou? If she was in love with someone else, maybe that someone else could have done it. No. No way. She would not believe that. She would stick to the hope that Lou had not gone through with the operation. But Michaela knew that to put her mind completely at ease, she would have to check around, and she didn’t really want to ask the two people most likely to know: her parents. What a mess.

  She left a note for Cynthia saying that she’d call her later. She really didn’t want to be there when Cyn got off the phone. This one had to simmer for a while.

  She walked out to the barn and spotted Dwayne down the breezeway, putting Loco back in his stall. He waved her over. “How Cynthia seem to you?”

  “She actually seemed grounded,” Michaela replied. “More so than I would’ve expected.” Or, maybe Cynthia was in as much shock as Michaela was—not only over the murder of Lou, but also about her pregnancy.

  “That’s her. Strong woman. She get through this. She know that be the way your uncle would want it. But, I think she put up a front right now. I think inside her there’s a big piece of her crumbling.”

  “You’re probably right. How about him? How’s he doing?” She pointed at Loco.

  “Oh, he know something up. He skittish today. Missing his man, you know. Horses sense. They know when something is different. He know. Spiritual animal. Remind me of home. Too bad he can’t talk, tell us who did this.”

  “Any ideas?” Michaela asked.

  “Me? No.”

  “Were you here when my uncle had that fight with Ethan?”

  “I was working in the arena. Heard them shouting. I came on down. Man, oh man.” He shook his head. “Ethan real unhappy,
you know. Your uncle trying hard to calm him down, but it not happening for him. Mad. Real mad.” Dwayne’s voice had the melodic lilt that could only come from the islands.

  “Do you know what it was all about?”

  “No. All I hear Ethan say before I told him to leave was that Lou was full of shit. A disgrace, he say. If everyone knew the truth about him, they’d think, so too. Don’t know what that meant. Lou was good man, you know. You’d have to ask Ethan. Lou wouldn’t talk about it with me.”

  The problem was, she had already asked Ethan . . . and he wasn’t talking either. Dammit. “Right. Listen, besides this thing with Ethan, do you know anything about the lawsuits against Uncle Lou? Cynthia told me that she’d spoken to you about it.”

  “You know, that be none of my business. But could be that Lou got things mixed up. I don’t like to say that, but he try to take on too much in the last few years with this program. I tell him to just ride and train. No need for all the science, breeding nonsense. He get real stressed-out lately, ask me or Sam to pick up a prescription for him. I see him taking the medicine for stress and I worry about him. I say, Boss, why you taking this stuff?”

  “Was it Ativan?”

  “Don’t know the name. Sam picked up the stuff at the drugstore for him and ask him why he needs medicine. He tells us for stress, and we tell him he needs a vacation. Then Lou, says to me, maybe me and Sam be right about a vacation, ’cause he forgettin’ all sorts of stuff lately and feeling confused sometimes.”

  Michaela’s headache wasn’t going away at all. Everything Dwayne was telling her was very disturbing. “I wish he had taken a break. I wish I’d known the pressure he was under with this program. You never had anything to do with the AI program, then?”

  Dwayne chuckled. “Nah. Dealing with all that not my thing. Sure, a lot of money in it. A whole lot, but I’m not interested. I think what happened, you want to know, is that the containers got switched somehow. Honest mistake. That’s what I think.”

  “What about the signed contracts and the checks? Do you think Lou really forgot about that money or where he put it? And if he was hiding money, why would he?”

  Dwayne shifted from one foot to the other. Something appeared to be bothering him. After a few seconds he said, “Don’t know. But, I think maybe I should talk to you ’bout something else you should know, before you find it out another way. Me, I don’t plan to say nothing to no one. But someone else might. I have no control in case they go to the police.”

  “What are you talking about?” Michaela asked.

  “Your father.” He fiddled with Loco’s halter. “Like I said, none of my business. Lou told me the other day after your dad been to see him, they didn’t agree on some things. He said they had a falling-out.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of falling out? No one said anything to me.” Michaela crossed her arms. She didn’t care for the tone in Dwayne’s voice or the evasive way he was getting to the point . . . or not getting to it.

  “Your dad, he gambling again. He been borrowing money from Lou to pay off his debt. I’m not sure, but Cynthia say she don’t know where the money is from the checks those people sent for artificial insemination. Maybe your uncle hang on to that money for your dad. Maybe he keep it aside for him. Lou asked me to see into what was going on with your father, how much he owe, and to who. It’s not good.”

  “Oh, no.” Michaela sighed. Her worst fear had been confirmed. For a few seconds she couldn’t say anything else as a gamut of emotions ran through her. “What, the horses again?”

  “Everything. Horse, dog, sport.”

  “How much is he in for?”

  “Over a hundred grand.”

  Michaela’s jaw dropped. “A hundred thousand dollars?”

  Dwayne nodded.

  “Did Lou give him any money?”

  “I don’t know. He told me to find out how deep your dad in first. I told him the other night before I left for Vegas. The night before . . .”

  Michaela held up her hand. “I know.”

  “Anyway, he say that he’d call up Benjamin and have a heart-to-heart with him. He hope to get him over here the next day.”

  Michaela took a step back as it dawned on her why she’d first gotten the runaround from Dwayne. Why he’d told her up front that he wasn’t going to tell anyone but that the word might get out anyway. She knew what it might look like, and obviously so did Dwayne. “My dad didn’t murder Lou because he wouldn’t give him the money to bail him out, if that’s what you were thinking.” She recalled the argument she overheard between her parents when she’d gone to their house yesterday. Her dad had mentioned something about his brother.

  “Whoa, no, no, I know that. I don’t think anything. I know you love your family and with Lou gone, I figure I need to tell you. Then you could go and talk to your dad. See if you can help him.”

  “Sorry.” She swallowed hard. “But even considering the money my dad owes, that doesn’t explain where the money went from the people who filed these lawsuits.”

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  “Hey, Dwayne.” A large man wearing a Hawaiian shirt walked down the breezeway toward them.

  “Yeah, Sammy boy, right here. What you need?”

  Sam wiped the back of his arm along his forehead, then slicked back his thick, dark hair with his palm. “Phew. Hot out there and I’m working hard. Need a break.”

  “You not working hard. You just big,” Dwayne teased.

  “You funny,” Sam replied. “Don’t go listening to him. Always thinking he the big shot.” He smiled, showing a large gap between his teeth. “How you doing, Michaela? Sorry about Lou. Gonna miss him. Thinking I’m going back home. Too sad here, now. When we done at the finals, I’m getting on the plane and going back.”

  “Can’t blame you. I’d go too, if I think I could make a living back home. You know, life much simpler on the islands,” Dwayne said.

  “And food is better, too.” Sam laughed and rubbed his rotund belly, which moved in unison with his laughter. “You come to islands and see some day.”

  Michaela smiled. “I’d like that.”

  Sam nodded. He held up his hands. “Okay, cuz. What you need from me? Soon, I gotta go get some lunch.”

  “Why don’t you take out Ginger.”

  “Ah, good name. Like to cook with it.”

  “You like to cook with anything.”

  Sam shook a finger at his cousin. “You watch your self, little cousin. I take you down.”

  “Get the mare out. She only a few months from popping a new baby. Gonna be a good one out of her and Loco. That mare be of champion lines herself. Girl need some exercise, though. Too fat. Put her on the hot walker and let her work for twenty/thirty minute. Then, let her go in the pasture. Get some strength before that baby drop.”

  “Okay, cuz.”

  “Hey, Sam, where Bean?”

  “Don’t know. Last I see him, he tell me that he needed to get a soda. Shoot, I the one who needs the soda.”

  “Bean been acting strange. I think ’cause of Lou. I’ll find him.”

  “If I see him, I’ll send him to you. Nice to see you, Michaela. My condolences. I better go take care of Ginger and the baby she gonna pop.” He clapped his hands together.

  She nodded.

  Sam ambled away. Michaela turned back to Dwayne. “Speaking of babies, did Lou or Cynthia ever mention to you about wanting kids?”