The Opium Equation

by Lisa Wysocky

  We passed Verna Mae’s and he dropped me at the service station.

  “Thanks for the lift,” I said, and got out.

  Deputy Giles nodded and pulled away, a puzzled look on his face. I had been turning several ideas over in my mind during the ride back to town. Apparently the deputy had, too.

  I hadn’t been comfortable with the idea that Bubba had done something awful to Glenda. I thought it much more probable that Glenda’s murderer had done something awful to Bubba. He’d gone from suspect to victim, and between the two, I realized that I liked the second possibility a whole lot less.

  If you are found guilty of murder, at least you have a chance to redeem yourself, to turn your life around. Even if the rest of your life is spent in a jail cell, you have the chance. But if you are found dead, you have no chance. Bubba was still very much a kid. And I was starting to be very much afraid that Bubba was a kid who was very, very dead. That thought made me mad. Every child needs a chance. My grandma had given mine to me. Bubba deserved the same. In addition, if Bubba was dead, I was sure Sheriff Big Jim would try to hang another murder charge on me.

  I walked into the service station to find that my truck’s vital organs lay in pieces on the floor. There had been other damage, in addition to the oil pan, and parts wouldn’t arrive until the next day. Goose Berry was costing me a lot of money. Maybe I should call that lawyer after all. But not now. Torn between calling Jon and a nice hot lunch at Verna Mae’s, the thought of deep-fried chicken, corn bread, and sweet potato pie won hands down.

  23

  I REACHED DARCY ON HER CELL phone and she agreed to rescue me. Jon had gotten the message on his voice mail that I had left last night about the funeral and Darcy needing a lift. He picked her up before her history test, and then brought her back to Verna Mae’s and her car. I guess that half explained her inappropriate attire at the funeral. She’d come directly from school. I hadn’t finished buckling the seat belt when Darcy told me we were making a detour via the cemetery.

  “You’ll never believe what I found,” she exclaimed. “Like, you know, after the funeral. I hung around and, oh man, this is way cool.”

  She declined to tell me more and I resigned myself to the fact that I would never get back to the barn and Jon would hate me forever.

  We parked in the shabby graveyard parking lot, walked toward the back corner, opposite from where Glenda had been laid to rest, and stopped beside a large pillar. Darcy pointed to an elaborate carving of a name on the old stone. Henley.

  Curious, I examined it more closely. Carved below the family name were all sorts of Henleys, including Col. Sam, his young wife Alice, and their children, Alice and Sam, Jr. I noted with interest that the younger Alice had the same name as her mother, Alice Giles Henley. I wondered if she married another Henley, or if she’d never married at all. There weren’t any names of offspring credited to her, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Sam, Jr. on the other hand, had been almost as prolific as the Giles clan, which, via his mother, he was part of.

  I noticed the first Hill Henley was also a Hilton. He was the son of Sam, Jr., and his other sons also followed the “H” theme with Heath, Hampton, Hagan and Houston. The last no doubt was named for the Texas version of our Col. Sam. I wondered what had happened to them all, and if there ever was a Sam, III.

  Darcy said she knew how to find out. We walked toward the front of the graveyard, but stopped short of the parking lot. Here, hidden among a few scrubby pines and lilacs, was a small, whitewashed stone building. The painted wooden sign over the door said Western Hills Cemetery Office and Historical Society.

  The woman inside was cheerful and quick.

  “Here you are,” she said, pulling a large book from the center of a huge stack on the far wall. “Colonel Samuel Henley. Born February 8, 1842. Died March 15, 1937.”

  I looked at the entry she was pointing to. Not that I didn’t believe her. I just have to see things for myself.

  “Col. Sam,” she mused. “We don’t get too many requests for that name anymore. Oh, are you by any chance the lady who called about him a few days ago? The reporter from the historical magazine.”

  I was about to admit that no, I wasn’t the lady in question, when a swift kick to my right shin, courtesy of Darcy, convinced me otherwise. I put an honest expression on my face and nodded in earnest.

  Assured of my legitimacy, she continued. “It’s just the biggest coincidence that you should stop in here today. I just found out that poor movie star, Glenda Dupree, interred here just this morning, was a great-granddaughter of Col. Sam.”

  The luck of the Irish was with me in such force that I had to catch my breath and wait for the world to right itself. After a brief moment, during which I hoped the woman would believe my deep sorrow at poor Glenda’s demise, I gave what I trusted would pass for an encouraging smile.

  “I must say that the family wasn’t too forthcoming with information regarding Miss Dupree’s genealogical background, but we do have to keep our records,” she said. “Let’s see now. The way I understand it, Miss Glenda Dupree’s mother, Mrs. Opal Dupree, is the only daughter of Alice Henley, that’s Alice the younger. There was some hush-hush scandal involved with Alice the younger, but I don’t know if anyone remembers what it was anymore.”

  I acknowledged that I hadn’t been in the county long enough to hear about such a dishonor.

  “Guess it’s died off with the old folk,” said the woman, glancing at her watch.

  She was losing interest and I wasn’t done with her yet.

  “Oh,” I said, slapping my forehead, “Miss––”

  “Watson. Penny Watson.”

  “Of course. Penny. I did hear a rumor. Not about Alice … um … the younger, but about her father, Col. Sam.”

  She nodded for me to continue.

  “Someone mentioned he was a smuggler during the Civil War. Have you heard anything about that?”

  I smiled brilliantly while Penny Watson pretended to rack her brains. A known smuggler was obviously a besmirchment to her fair cemetery and she was reluctant to hand out the sordid details. But she eventually decided I already knew about it and she’d better fess up.

  “Now that you mention it, yes. He was rumored to have brought in illegal goods during the War of Northern Aggression––solely for the benefit of the Confederacy, of course. But what the nature of those goods were, or how he got them in, I don’t know.”

  My Irish instincts told me she was telling all she knew so I asked one final question. As far as Miss Watson could tell, there never was a third Sam Henley. Darcy and I bid our farewells and headed for the car.

  On the way home, I imitated Deputy Giles and Darcy took my role.

  “So Glenda had family connections to Fairbanks,” I exclaimed. “I wonder if she knew that when she bought the place. Surely she did. She must have.”

  Darcy nodded her agreement.

  “Then the two big questions are: Do Opal and Adam know? And what does this new information have to do, if anything, with Bubba’s disappearance and Glenda’s murder?”

  I was willing to wager the farm that the connection had a lot to do with everything. But what? Connections were what I had wanted in the first place and connections were what I got. I guess that old adage, “be careful what you wish for because you just might get it,” is true. The trouble was, the connections didn’t line up. Not that I could see. Not even that Deputy Giles or Sheriff Big Jim could see. The connections didn’t produce any answers, just more questions. And now I had more questions than fleas on a dog and nothing to squash them with.

  When we got back to the stables, Darcy and I both headed for the barn. Jon was evidently taking a late lunch. Either that or he heard me coming and made himself scarce. I could hear him stomping around his apartment overhead and had to admit I was glad for his absence.

  Hank, however, was very glad to see us. Stick firmly in his mouth, he alternated greeting each of us, his tail wagging his body so hard that hi
s stick hit us on the legs with each wag. We both lavished affection on him until a bird mistakenly thought it could hop up and down the aisle looking for grain droppings. Hank dropped his stick to dash off to the all-important task of bird chasing.

  Darcy threw her hunt seat gear on Petey while I put my western saddle on Sally Blue. From Sally’s eager expression, I sensed she hadn’t been out of her stall yet today. Of course Agnes would say Sally was sending me her thoughts telepathically. Who knew, maybe Agnes was right. If nothing else, schooling Sally would take my mind off Bubba and Glenda. Darcy was engrossed in her own thoughts, so I was spared conversation.

  In the horse world, all horses turn a year older on the first day of January. Sally’s actual birthday wasn’t until the end of March, but for show purposes she was already three. There were a lot of trainers who started horses under saddle right at two, mainly for the purpose of competing in the financially lucrative two-year-old western pleasure futurities. These were classes that were judged at a walk, trot, and canter, and were entered months in advance of the competition. Every month or so the horse’s owner or trainer paid an additional fee to keep the horse eligible for the class. By the time the class was held, there was a big pot of cash waiting for the winners.

  I, however, felt that most horses’ leg and bone structures were not yet developed enough to withstand training early in a horse’s two-year-old year and started mine in November, when they were considered “long,” or older, two-year-olds.

  To date, Sally’d had just ninety days under saddle and was thriving on her slow schooling pace. Of course, the term “slow” is subjective. Dressage horses undergo years of training before they are ready to compete. Unfortunately, in the world of stock breeds and western pleasure, the system requires a much speedier return on an owner’s investment.

  At ninety days, Sally walked with a long, loose stride. She could jog trot slowly on a loose rein with her head nicely balanced and her legs underneath her, and she could lope both directions from a walk on the correct lead. Sally was bending nicely on the turns and we were just starting to work on her extended trot. In a few more weeks Sally would be ready for her debut under saddle at a small schooling show and Agnes could barely wait for that day.

  I ground-tied Sally in the center of the arena and set up four cavaletti poles, each about three feet apart, and about eight feet in from the rail. Cavaletti poles look like eight-sided fence poles and are anywhere from eight to twelve feet long. They are placed either flat on the ground, or on low risers, and spaced evenly in a row so the horse can stride over them.

  The object today was to get Sally to trot over them without ticking any with her hooves or breaking her stride. Once she could do it consistently at a slow trot, we’d gradually increase the distance between the poles and the pace.

  It didn’t take long for me to realize that this would not be an ordinary training session. Today, every circuit we made of the arena, Sally came to a dead stop at the gate that led back into the barn, wheeled her butt toward the center of the arena, looked through the open aisle, whinnied in the direction of Fairbanks, then stomped impatiently.

  It was only after much prodding and encouragement on my part that Sally would deign to continue, but as soon as we came by the gate, even though I strongly encouraged her to keep moving, she’d repeat the behavior. This was no ordinary case of being barn sour. Something was going on with her.

  One of the keys to working with horses is to understand the motivation behind the behavior. Another was the idea that the horse was never wrong; the human partner just had to figure out why the horse was acting in a particular manner. Today, I was discouraged that I didn’t have a clue.

  “Maybe Agnes isn’t all wrong when she says Sally is psychic,” observed Darcy, riding by at a posting trot. “Just think, what if Agnes is right?”

  As I looked at Darcy, I noted that her hands and lower leg position were as good as any I’d ever seen, and reminded myself that very soon we’d have to make some decisions regarding the show season for the pair. Darcy and Petey had the potential to win some big classes––but only if Darcy wanted it badly enough to put in some hard work.

  “Well, I’m about ready to agree she is,” I said. “Sally certainly acts as if she knows something is going on over at Fairbanks, don’t you?” I added to the horse who had by now turned her head around to observe me on her back, an exasperated expression on her face.

  I gave her a pat and dismounted, knowing we wouldn’t get anything good done that day. Another good trait of a trainer was knowing when to quit. Heading into the aisle, I was surprised to find it growing dark.

  I brushed Sally down and tucked her away in her stall. But instead of checking her surroundings once, then dozing off as she usually did after a training session, Sally put her nose to the ground and began pawing. And, rather than pawing with one hoof, as she did when Deputy Giles was here, she used both hooves, like Hank would do if he were burying a bone. Then she stopped and looked at me for a minute before digging again. Lucky for me there were durable rubber floor mats in the stalls, so she wasn’t doing much damage.

  Darcy appeared next to me. “What is she doing?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve never seen a horse do that before.”

  “I’m telling you, she’s giving you a message.”

  “What? That she doesn’t like the way the shavings are spread in her stall?”

  Sally raised her head after another bout of digging and stared at me. Darcy offered to run upstairs and ask Jon to keep an eye on Sally, just in case she was beginning to colic. I debated asking Jon myself, but decided there were no olive branches handy.

  After another few minutes puzzling over Sally’s strange behavior, I headed for the house. Once inside, all the worries and problems of the world once again descended upon my shoulders. Some bit of information I picked up during the day didn’t fit. Something was not quite right. But I didn’t know what.

  The next morning I had a blistering headache. But I also had part of an answer.

  Cat’s Horse Tip #12

  “Desensitizing is never about scaring horses. Instead, it is about making horses comfortable in all the unusual situations the human world puts them in.”

  24

  AS SOON AS MY ALARM RANG I tried to call Deputy Giles, but the line was busy. Just after I hung up, the phone rang. Looking back, it would have been infinitely better if I had waited to answer that call until I had talked with the deputy. But then, foresight has never been one of my virtues.

  I quickly did the morning feeding. The nozzle had come off Sally’s automatic waterer so I put a bucket of fresh water in her stall and added a scoop of powdered cherry flavored electrolytes, just in case she was coming down with a bug. Electrolyite were like Gatorade for people, and cherry was a favorite flavor of many horses. Agnes would be devastated if anything happened to the mare, and so, actually, would I.

  I wrote another long, sincere and apologetic note for Jon and checked Sally one more time. Instead of drinking her water, she had buried her nose in the bucket, almost up to her eyeballs, and was blowing bubbles. Then she lifted her head to look at me and repeated the process. Maybe she didn’t like the smell or taste of the electrolytes, I thought, although she never seemed to notice anything different when I had added them to her water in the past. If Sally was, as others had suggested, giving me a message, I had no clue as to what it could be.

  Concern for Sally was added to my already heavy list of worries, but it wasn’t enough to override my growing concern for Bubba. I remembered my early morning phone call, ducked out of the barn, and jumped in Jon’s vintage Toyota Camry. Well, he did always leave the keys hanging in the office, and as my truck was still in the shop… .

  A few thin rays of sun shone on the wet grass along the sides of the road, and when I reached my destination, the low brick building seemed to shimmer in a hazy glow, almost like a mystical vision from the past. But a friendly wisp of smoke curled from the chimney. And beyo
nd the chimney lay a flower garden, which in spite of our cold weather, was beginning to send fragile shoots skyward.

  I wondered who cared for the flowers. I remembered that last summer there were tubs of begonias, impatiens, and marigolds that sent brilliant cascades of color tumbling throughout the paved yard. Climbing roses and peonies planted decades ago thrived under someone’s watchful hand. The memory was similar to a painted garden I had recently seen. The sun gave up its quest and disappeared under a thunderous cloud as I entered the main door and walked down the long hallway.

  “We need to talk,” Opal had said on the phone. It sounded more like a summons than a request, but I had planned to speak with her today anyway. Now was as good a time as any. When I reached Opal’s room there was a nurse with her, assisting her into her wheelchair.

  “I’m sure I don’t know, Miss Sanders,” Opal said as she struggled to sit. “It ought to have made me feel better. You gave me two of the blue pills, and one red capsule. It should have been one blue and two red.”

  She waited while the unfortunate Miss Sanders checked the chart and confirmed that she had indeed given Opal the correct medication. Opal nodded, frowned, said a few more sharp words, then dismissed the young woman.

  It seemed strange to be with Opal again, and I glanced involuntarily at the portrait of Col. Sam. I expected it to look different, but it didn’t. For some reason I thought the painting should reek of death, his death, Glenda’s death, but it didn’t. It looked the same as it had before. I guessed I was just nervous.

  I sincerely hoped Opal wasn’t going to have one of her bad spells. It had been difficult enough with Adam there, and I didn’t know if I could handle such a scene on my own. I peeked out into the hallway and was reassured to see Miss Sanders at a desk that was within shouting distance.

  I sat tentatively on the gold plastic chair. Opal’s eyes were bright, and as I looked closer, I saw that the brightness came from rage. Color dappled her cheeks and her lips were clamped tight with anger.