The Opium Equation

by Lisa Wysocky

  All one had to do is attach a long rope––or longe line––to the horse’s halter, then just stand there as the horse moves around him or her in a large circle. The human controls the horse’s speed by positioning his or her body either toward the horse’s neck or the tail, and this positioning also helps the horse understand that the person, and the not horse, is in charge.

  Using body language to teach a horse trust and respect for the human partner is a basic concept, but not one that is easily mastered. It is best done is a circular enclosure called a round pen, where the horse can be “free longed,” or longed without the halter or longe line. But, I didn’t have a round pen. Most of the show grounds we went to didn’t have one either, or if they did, there was often a long line waiting to use it, so we longed a lot. Besides, longeing was a great training tool to help a horse become supple; and for teaching voice commands such as walk, trot, canter, and the all-important whoa.

  The name of the filly Jon was working with was Glamour Girl G, and it was an appropriate name, I thought, as I watched her taut muscles ripple through her glistening chestnut coat. As far as I’m concerned there isn’t a bad color as long as there’s a horse attached, but Gigi was exceptional. Her breeding was impeccable. Her legs moved fluently, gracefully; her head tapered to a small muzzle and large nostrils, and her neck arched with the knowledge that she was perfection itself.

  I might also add that the gorgeous Gigi was nuts. She was, simply put, scatter-brained, which was unusual in the Appaloosa breed. I thought of the coming horse shows with a mixture of pride and trepidation. On one hand, I knew there wasn’t a filly in the country that could compare to her breeding, conformation, and beauty. On the other hand, the thought of hauling that silly youngster miles on end, show after show, week after week, was enough to make me think seriously about leaving her home. But Darcy’s dad, Mason Whitcomb, owned the filly. He’d been a good client throughout the years and I knew he had a real shot at a national or world championship with her.

  No question, I sighed to myself, the filly was going on the road. We’d been using a lot of natural horsemanship techniques on Gigi––plus relaxation exercises, music, massage, acupuncture, and chiropractic––but so far it had only calmed her down a little. I’d also consulted with an equine nutritionist, and had recently changed her rations. It was too soon to see if that would help or not.

  After calling a greeting to Jon, I checked the cinch on the well-used western saddle I preferred to use at home because it fit almost every horse I rode, and climbed aboard an old friend called Hillbilly Bob. My very first client, an orthopedic surgeon, owned Bob and the good doctor had set more than a few of my broken bones over the years. I never said training horses was free of risk.

  Never one to be flashy, Bob was a steady western pleasure horse who excelled in consistency. A large, dark bay with a small “blanket” of white lace over his hips, Bob won as often as he did mostly by default. He wasn’t the kind of horse that judges and spectators oohed and aahed over, but sooner or later the other top contenders in the class would bobble here or there and Bob, by virtue of his easy, plodding regularity, would come out the winner.

  As my mind was still overloaded from yesterday’s events, Bob was a good choice for me. Teaching horses new skills demanded a lot of concentration, and concentration was something I had little of at the moment. I didn’t have to think much when I rode Bob. He rarely needed schooling and he didn’t have any bad habits, so this was more of an exercise period for both of us than a skills-sharpening lesson.

  Hank was not allowed in the arena, as it was dangerous for a little dog to be around all those big, moving hooves. But early on Hank had claimed a spot right at the gate that was not really in the arena, but not completely out of it either. He knew better than to think about chasing, or playing, with a horse, so now he lay in his usual spot chewing on one of the big sticks he always seemed to find.

  Bob and I had settled into a nice, slow jog along the rail when Jon spoke up. “I ran into Jim Ed at the Ashland City Coop this morning,” he said after a warning glance at Hank, who had crept a fraction of an inch farther into the arena.

  Jim Ed was a talkative, older member of the Giles clan who’d had a five-way heart bypass a few months ago. The fact that he was out and about at the co-op was a good sign. “Jim Ed asked about Bubba and somehow we got talking about Colonel Samuel Henley, the man who originally built Fairbanks in the 1850s.”

  I didn’t ask how Jon knew about Bubba. The police had probably questioned him last night. I should have talked about it with him, but with all that had gone on, I’d forgotten.

  “Apparently Jim Ed’s grandpa, or maybe his great-grandpa, was a cousin of Col. Sam’s. Jim Ed said his grandpa told him that Col. Sam made his fortune buying things that soldiers needed, smuggling them in and then selling the items to whichever army could afford what he had.”

  I smiled as I made an automatic adjustment to the set of Bob’s head by raising my hands and squeezing my pinky fingers a fraction of an inch. I also sat a little deeper in the saddle and squeezed my lower legs. Once in a while Bob over-flexed at the poll, which made him pull from his front end, rather than push from his hindquarters. “That sounds just like the kind of ancestor I’d have expected of Hill––a true blue, loyal Southern patriot. So Jon … just what kinds of things did Col. Sam smuggle in?”

  “Don’t know. Jim Ed didn’t say and I didn’t think to ask,” he said, slowly reeling the filly in and setting her off very carefully in the opposite direction. To help her stay calm, Jon always kept his body posture and facial expressions relaxed but businesslike when working with Gigi. It sometimes affected the tone of our conversation, but never the words. “He did say that whatever was smuggled in was rumored to have been kept in a secret hiding place somewhere in the house. What do you think, Cat? Does that house next door have any secrets?”

  “Oh boy, if that house could only talk,” I laughed, circling Bob at a slightly faster trot, using my seat, legs and hands to make sure he didn’t get lazy and drop his inside shoulder. “But I’m sure a lot of the older houses around here have stories to tell. What’s that house south of here in Franklin with the bullet holes still in it––the one with the cemetery next to it?”

  “Carnton,” supplied Jon.

  “That’s it. The Carnton Plantation. Now that house played a big role in the Civil War.”

  “Well, maybe our Fairbanks did, too, only it was all secret and no one knows about it.”

  “Could be,” I agreed, “but unless Col. Sam’s ghost comes back to tell us about it, we’ll never know.”

  Bob and I loped the arena in a slow, rhythmic three-beat gait a few times in each direction. He seemed as bored with it all as I did, so we called it quits. Besides, my scraped hand was throbbing to beat the band. I had just finished brushing Bob and had snapped the last buckle on his blanket when Sally Blue began banging her hoof against the stall door. Sally did that when she thought she wasn’t getting enough attention, or maybe when she was channeling Seabiscuit.

  I slid open Sally’s stall door and went inside to spend a few minutes with Agnes’s intuitive marvel. Sally lifted her head and put her chin on my shoulder, a sign she wanted her cheeks rubbed. This actually was an excellent poll release, the poll being the tiny bump horses have at the top of their head just behind the ears. Think of human fingers massaging the hollowed out point at the base of your neck and you get the idea. I obliged and Sally sank into the moment, closing her eyes and groaning. I wish people could be so easily pleased.

  After a few minutes, Sally declared she’d had her fill of poll stretching and cheek-rubbing and set her nose to inspecting my clothing. As inquisitive as Sally was, she should have been a dog, I thought, not for the first time. Sally bumped my left hip, a signal that she thought I had a carrot in my pocket. I knew I didn’t, but Sally bumped my hip again.

  “Look,” I said reaching in to turn my pocket inside out. “No carrots.”

  But
my pocket wasn’t completely empty. I pulled out a small leather notebook. I knew I had never seen it before. Turning it over I gasped to see gold letters embossed on the other side. GLENDA DUPREE.

  How in the world, I thought, did that notebook get into my pocket? Better yet, could Sally have known it was there? Nah, I thought. Now I’m starting to sound like Agnes. I flashed back to the scene in the barn. Glenda must have put it on my desk along with her gloves and scarf, and forgotten it when she had stormed out of the room. Somehow, without thinking, I had picked it up and put it into my pocket. I hate it when I zone out and do stuff I don’t remember doing, but how else could it have gotten there?

  Jon finished with Gigi and brought her, prancing, to the barn to put her blankets back on. Gigi pranced even when she was in her stall. Thank goodness she also liked to eat or it would be difficult to keep weight on her.

  Before I could ask Jon about the notebook, the phone rang. Jon was still with Gigi at the other end of the aisle so I closed Sally’s stall door and jogged down the aisle to answer it.

  “Cat Enright Stables,” I said, stretching the long cord over to Bob’s stall door to double-check the latch.

  “Yes, hello. Is Cat there?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Oh hi, Cat. This is Buffy Thorndyke at the Ashland City Times. I wondered if I could ask you a few questions?”

  Buffy was a snooty young reporter from the local weekly paper who had interviewed me after I’d returned from the world championships last fall. Her parents lived in the Belle Meade area of Nashville, one of the ten richest neighborhoods in the nation. We’re talking old, old money, so I had no doubt that Buffy would soon move on to bigger and better things, thank God. Even though the Times was owned by a major newspaper conglomerate, they were similar to Ashland City’s police department in that they didn’t keep their staff very long.

  “Questions? Sure. Fire away.”

  “Okay. I got a phone call yesterday morning from Glenda Dupree, the film star?” Buffy was one of these people who talked in question marks. She probably thought it was cute. I just found it irritating. “She said she was severing her ties with your stable and had chosen Hill Henley as her new trainer? I wondered if you had any comment?”

  A phone call to the press! This was carrying things too far. Just announce to the world that Glenda Dupree thinks Cat Enright is incompetent. If Hill thinks Bubba’s disappearance is going to hurt business, wait until his star client announces he’s a has-been. That’ll shake him up some. The more I thought about it, the madder I got. I fought to keep my Irish temper battened down, but it took longer than I would have liked.

  Buffy mistook my silence to mean I didn’t want to comment. “Well, it’s just that Glenda Dupree is an international film star? Anything she has to say is news around here. Anything. If you don’t––”

  “Of course I have a comment, Buffy,” I said, recovering my composure. “I was just checking on Sally Blue.” Agnes’s young mare was a favorite of Buffy’s. I thought if I reminded her of a positive thing, she wouldn’t totally trash me in her story. Well, one can always hope.

  “Let’s see … okay. ‘Glenda and I both decided that her talents lay more in the direction, style, and glamour of the Walking Horse industry rather than in the direction of stock breeds such as the Appaloosa. I applaud her decision and wish both her and Hill the best of luck.’”

  When I have to I can b.s. with the best.

  “Oh that’s great, Cat. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  Anytime, Buffy. Just any old time at all.

  The call from the Times made me angry enough to confront Glenda and finally have it out with her. I was so frustrated and mad at the woman I decided I would put her in her place once and for all. Before I had time to think about it, I stuffed Glenda’s little notebook back into the pocket of my jacket, strode across my pasture, and swung under the post and rail fence that divided our properties. We’ll just see who has the upper hand here.

  10

  THE MORNING’S CLOUDY SKIES FULFILLED THEIR promise. It began to rain as I raced up Glenda’s front steps and across the porch. Exactly how I was going to confront Glenda and what I was going to say, I wasn’t sure. I had no time for thought, though. I knew Glenda took suggestions about as well as a mud fence. However, I was determined to give it my best try. With a deep breath, I tucked my resolve close to my heart and knocked on her impressive front door. Several times. With no luck.

  The rain was coming down harder every second. Maybe, I thought, if she was in the back of the house she couldn’t hear, so I trotted around to the back, to the door that led into the kitchen. Here there was only a small overhang above the door and I quickly became soaked. Maybe she wasn’t home. But I thought it was more likely that she was avoiding me.

  Glenda wasn’t going to like my coming over unannounced. Unannounced guests denied Glenda the satisfaction of letting people know that she created time for them only under extreme hardship on her part. And when she came to the door––if she came to the door––Glenda was sure to tell me she was too busy to see me now, that I’d have to schedule an appointment with her at a later date.

  Considering Glenda’s “manners,” I wouldn’t put it past her to comment unfavorably on my now soaking wet attire and muddy boots. Anything to make me feel inferior.

  But I wasn’t going to feel inferior, no matter how she treated me. This time I was going to give as good as I got. In the meantime, I was getting wetter and she still wasn’t answering. I banged harder on the back door––a little too hard maybe because it slipped open. Apparently no one but me locked their doors around here. Oh well, guess who’s here.

  “Glenda,” I called. “It’s me, Cat. Sorry to barge in, but I’ve got to talk to you.” There was no response.

  The door opened onto a large, square kitchen that featured a real brick floor and textured lemon-yellow paneling. The appliances were dated, but fit perfectly with the room. I wondered if Glenda brought them in, or if Hill had left them when he sold the house. Mindful of my muddy boots, I moved drippingly ahead toward the front of the house, to the fully restored dining room, calling Glenda’s name.

  By antebellum standards, Fairbanks was not a large home. It was originally built in an L-shape in 1857, with each room approximately fifteen feet square. The kitchen that I’d just come through was not part of the initial structure, having been added in the early 1900s when some Henley ancestor discovered the luxury of indoor plumbing. The attached laundry, bath, and storage room had been the pantry and was almost the size of the kitchen. The remains of the original kitchen, which had been detached from the house, now served as the floor of the patio, just outside the back door.

  The dining room ahead of me featured a perfect reproduction of the original red wallpaper, flocked with a profusion of leafy gold flowers. The large dining room table was made of a polished gold wood, possibly a match to the yellow poplar that had lain on the floor for the last one hundred fifty years. Glenda was very proud of her one-hundred-fifty-year-old floor, so proud, in fact, that she had chosen to cover most of it with a thick red-and-gold Oriental rug. For protection, she’d once told me. Polished wooden chairs with red brocade seats matched the curtains in the floor-to-ceiling windows and surrounded the table. Architectural Digest had praised the room as a masterpiece, but altogether it was a bit too intense for me.

  Still calling her name, I figured Glenda either was not home or she was hiding. The way I screech no one could miss the fact that I was here.

  To the right of the dining room was the entrance hall. Here, the polished floor was bare for all to admire. A narrow but beautifully curved staircase rose from the right of the entry hall to a balcony on the second floor. From the one time I’d been up there, during the party Glenda threw when she opened the house, I knew there were three bedrooms, two of which shared a full bath, along with one plush master suite with oodles of closet space and a Jacuzzi tub in the adjoining bath.

  I thought that if G
lenda was home, she was probably upstairs, but I felt uneasy about invading her privacy that deeply. What the hell. I was this far. I may as well see this through. Better finish the downstairs first, though.

  The living room was across the hall to my left and was dominated by photos of Glenda. Small, candid shots in silver frames sat on dark and ornate antique tables, while larger, poster sized publicity shots graced the white lacquered walls. The sitting down kind of furniture was bright and soft and modern, the antique floor once again uncovered. It was an unusual contrast, but it worked well with the high, molded ceilings and the large marble fireplace.

  There was something strange about the fireplace but I couldn’t figure it out at first. It was a two sided affair, located to the right of the room, next to the wide, open passageway that led to a den. I knew if I went into the den that the fireplace would look exactly the same in there as it did from here. Well, not exactly. I looked at the hearth carefully from across the room, looked away, then back again. Then the bottom dropped out of my stomach and my mind twisted with horror as I realized a hand was reaching out from the front of a sofa near the fireplace. A very still hand. What the hand meant didn’t register right away.

  My heart thumped for all it was worth but I stepped closer, struggling to force order into my brain. I tried to understand exactly what it was that I was seeing. Long moments passed before I realized that the intricate marbling of the fireplace was, in fact, dried blood. Long moments passed while I stared at the mutilated body that lay on the stone hearth. Glenda’s body. Longer moments passed before I realized that Glenda Dupree had been brutally murdered.

  I staggered back into the entrance hall and collapsed on the magnificent curving staircase. The room spun uncontrollably as I puked violently all over Glenda’s one-hundred-fifty-year-old floor.