by Lisa Wysocky
I was dimly aware of the front door flying open at the same time the rasp whizzed by, a centimeter from my left ear. Deputy Giles filled the doorway, saw us, and the world stopped.
“You know, Miz Cat,” he said as I somehow scrambled upright, “after you hung up I just got an awful feeling. Like maybe I should have listened between the lines. Like maybe you’d head over here and this is the one time I’d get here too late. I’m telling you, I––”
Then the world jump-started with an explosion. The figure swung simultaneously at the Deputy and at me. Ducking too late, Deputy Giles grabbed his ear and melted into the floor. I distinctly heard the solid thunk of his head hitting one-hundred-fifty-year-old wood.
Then the monster smacked me twice from behind, knocking me through the police tape and into the living room.
I lay on the floor with no particular interest in getting up. I had, in fact, no particular interest in anything at all. Everything around me was pulsing and throbbing in a way that was sickeningly psychedelic. I thought it very unfair that my dying moments should be so blank. My life should be flashing before my eyes; my loved ones should be gathered around me. I felt nothing. There was only the smell of blood and a warm stickiness along the upper left side of my body.
I was sure there was something I ought to do. Something important. My body paid no attention to my brain. My brain seemed to feel I had gotten us into this mess and I damned sure had better get us out. I kept trying to focus, to stop the world from throbbing, but it kept on, getting bigger and louder until I was consumed with it.
Then, after an eon, the throbbing slowed and eventually stopped. In fact, everything was stopping. I couldn’t hear. My vision was getting spotty, like I was looking through a heavy, dark veil. And it was getting hard to breathe. I considered this development with great interest. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe I was already dead. Maybe I didn’t care. Then I got the giggles, but that was too painful for belief, so I tried to find something else to focus on.
Glenda’s portable phone was under a table, just inches from my fingertips. I stretched for it and giggled again at the hilarious distance between it and my hand. I stretched my right shoulder and brushed the phone with my fingers. The floor screamed with my pain. I paused as the scream eventually died.
I brushed the phone a little closer and could now see the keypad out of the corner of my eye. It made no sense, but there was a pretty red sticker by one of the buttons so that’s the button I touched. The pretty one. While I was trying to figure out what to do next, I heard a voice from inside the phone. Now wasn’t that interesting? I giggled, but I don’t believe the voice in the phone could hear me over the screaming of the floor.
26
I WOKE UP IN A HIGH, narrow bed. Gray walls and a window with matching gray blinds completed the faux-designer decor. Even noting the industrial gray tile floors, it took me a while to realize I was in a hospital.
“Well, you’re finally awake,” said the handsome man in the chair by the window. He was garbed in green medical scrubs and provided the only color in the room. “You were lucky, you know.”
I could have argued the point, but didn’t want to waste the energy. My left shoulder seemed to be immobilized under mounds of bandages, and it hurt like the dickens every time I drew a breath.
He noticed my confusion. “Your upper arm is broken, along with a few ribs, and you got a bash on the head for good measure. If that creep had hit you much harder, you wouldn’t be here now.”
I refrained from snapping that being here wasn’t tops on my list of places to be, only because the alternative was unthinkable. Instead, I asked, “The deputy?”
The man in the chair leaned back and closed his eyes. He looked just as good with his eyes closed as he did with them open.
“Martin is checking alibis for everyone in the county and for half of Nashville,” he said. “He will find whoever did this and he will get a conviction if it’s the last thing he does. He said to tell you that. For some reason, he thought it would make you feel better.”
It did. A lot. Water started running from my eyes. “So he’s not dead?”
The man opened his eyes and grinned. For the first time I had an inkling of whom he might be. He was taller and leaner and darker, and his chin wasn’t quite as prominent, but otherwise the resemblance was striking. “Oh, no way,” he said. “My baby brother is tough. A little bash on the head’s not going to slow him down. At least not for very long. By the way, I’m Brent. Brent Giles.”
I sniffed a few times and he handed me a Kleenex. I took it with the hand I could still use.
“I heard that before you passed out you had sense enough to dial 911,” said the deputy’s brother. I vaguely recalled a red button and a voice. “Martin came around just before the ambulance pulled up. I had the day off so I came down to fix a window on Mama’s house. Martin called me to come over and sit with you while he went off to find that hooded scumbag. I wish he’d gotten a doc to look him over––he’s got a nasty lump on the side of his head––but he was stubborn as all get out about it. Just grabbed an ice pack from the ER and left.”
I heaved a sigh of relief that I wasn’t the target Deputy Giles was looking for.
Brent said his brother had not gotten any better look at the hooded person than I had. We both, apparently, were in agreement that whoever it was, was probably male, stocky of build, and right-handed. Because of the strength and agility, the person was most likely less than fifty years old, and very possibly much younger. The description fit a thousand people in Cheatham County alone.
Where we differed was in the opinion of the attacker’s height. Since I had spent most of my time on the floor looking up, I guessed he was about seven-foot-three. Allowing for my somewhat concussed state, I agreed to somewhere in the neighborhood of six-feet to six-foot-two. The deputy, on the other hand, thought more in the neighborhood of five-foot-ten. Neither of us was in a position to be a good judge.
I told Brent about my conversation with my attacker, and my belief that he was speaking through some kind of voice synthesizer. I almost forgot to add the part about the basement medicine and Keith Carson’s safety measures for his kids. Brent said he’d fill his brother in, as soon as Martin came in from questioning everyone he could think of to question.
“So what did you do,” I asked finally, “bring out the horse sutures and sew me up?”
He grinned widely. “Oh, no. I’m a small animal vet. I would have used canine clamps. Actually, by the time I got here an ortho specialist by the name of Williams had already been in to see you. He said it’s a clean break there in your upper arm. Apparently the doc owns one of the horses in your barn. And, he said to tell you he had a lawyer friend of his lined up for you should the need arise.”
I wasn’t sure if the lawyer was to defend me or to sue the person who smacked me. Either way, Doc Williams had a vested interest in keeping me sound and out of jail if he wanted Hillbilly Bob to go the nationals this summer.
“You have a lot of surface cuts and bruises. Nothing serious there. Most of the blood was from the rough edges of the rasp,” Brent continued. “Martin showed the thing to me. Nasty piece of metal. You’ll be right as rain in a month or two.”
“A month or two! Nope. I’m right enough to go home right now.” I eased myself into a sitting position and the room suddenly turned upside down.
“Uh, I think maybe you should wait.” Brent jumped up in alarm. “You’ve suffered a concussion, a pretty severe shock, and you’re barely out of anesthesia. You need to stay in bed here for a few days.”
“Can’t. I’ve got a lunch appointment with a client tomorrow,” I said. “She’s coming down from Louisville.”
“I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but I don’t think you’re going to be up to having lunch with anyone tomorrow.”
I considered the statement and realized that it quite possibly was true. “Well then, if I can’t eat, I’ll watch her eat. I really do have to meet with
her. We’re going over the new ad campaign for the show season. Deadlines are coming up and we need to make some decisions.”
“She can come here and you can make decisions.”
“Oh no, not Agnes. You don’t know Agnes. She’s … well, she’s Agnes. If she showed up here she’d have the nurses so confused they’d probably kill someone by mistake. No. Really, Agnes doesn’t need to come here.”
Okay, so I exaggerated. I was taught that the difference between exaggeration and a lie was that a lie was done for selfish reasons and exaggeration was done for the good of all. It really was in everyone’s best interests to keep Agnes away from the hospital––and come to think of it, me. Trust me on this.
“Well, maybe you can go home tomorrow,” said Brent.
I hoped he didn’t think I was always this difficult. On the other hand, what did I care what he thought? Well, he was kind of cute.
“Promise me,” he said, “that you’ll get someone to stay with you at your house and I’ll see if they’ll consider letting you go tomorrow.”
I hadn’t asked exactly where I was. But the few times I’d been to the Cheatham Medical Center in Ashland City to visit a patient led me to believe I was now one of their guests. Even though I desperately wanted to get out of there, I knew deep down that I was better off staying put. But there was a vague idea that kept nagging at the back of my mind. Something important. Something I couldn’t quite catch. If I could just get into my own bed in my own house, I knew I could figure out what it was.
“You know,” I joked, easing myself back into the flat lump they called a pillow, “this is one hell of a first date.”
Brent laughed. It was a good laugh––one that held a lot of promise. “We’ll make up for it later. I make great lasagna. Maybe you’ll be up for it sometime next week.”
Well gee, anyone who makes great lasagna was okay in my book. We made a date.
“Martin has told me a lot about you,” he said.
I didn’t know if that was good or bad. Or if saying bad things about me would be good, or if saying good things would be bad. It must be the medication.
“When you’re up to it, I’d like to see your place. We have one other vet at the clinic where I work who treats large animals. Sometimes I get called in to assist. I’ve got a few questions on working with horses that you could help me with.”
I supposed aloud that I probably could.
“Good,” was all he said.
“Do you really think I can leave tomorrow?”
He looked at me appraisingly. “Well, it’s not my decision. I’m sure there’s a doctor around here somewhere who can answer that for you. But if you’re bound and determined to leave and if you aren’t running a fever, if you’re taking fluids well, and if you can walk out of here on your own two legs, I think they’ll probably let you go.”
This last requirement made me think. At the moment, a trip to the bathroom seemed equivalent to going on an African safari. And speaking of the bathroom, it was time to go.
By the next morning I could stagger woozily down to the end of the hallway and back, and I only fell into the wall once. The thought I couldn’t put my finger on kept coming into the outer reaches of my brain, only to whisk itself away like a leprechaun who didn’t want to be caught.
Doc Williams reluctantly released me only after I promised to go directly home to eat, sleep and do nothing. I agreed to it all just to get out of there, then I finally made the call I had been dreading for days.
Jon picked me up in the middle of an early afternoon rain, and had enough sense to remain gracious about recent events. I know he was furious with me for leaving him to take care of the barn and also for getting so involved in events over at Fairbanks. I also knew that his fury originated in concern and that, when it came right down to it, he was just glad that I was all right. Of course, he’d never admit all that, but I knew it anyway.
I counted my steps as Jon carefully led me from the car to my bedroom. Twenty-eight. All so very painful. I lay on my bed with a feeling of intense relief. I’d recently splurged and redecorated the room in shades of pale yellow and deep plum, and I loved it. I had every intention of calling Deputy Giles the minute I got settled in bed to find out what was going on, but before I knew it, I was sound asleep.
Cat’s Horse Tip #14
“Horses put their ears back not to show aggression, but to protect the ears in what they perceive as a potentially dangerous situation.”
27
WHEN I WOKE UP I CALLED the deputy, but he wasn’t in. Then I took one of the nice pain pills the hospital had sent home with me and settled back in a pile of pillows.
I tried not to mind very much that the barn was strictly off limits for a few days, not only because Sally Blue had been acting so strangely, but because my absence would serve to drive another wedge between Jon and me. I knew Jon and I would have to talk soon but I so hated confrontations––especially when I was the one who was wrong.
In the horse business, the horses always come first. Or should. It was a rule I had not followed this week. However, I reasoned, if one of the horses were missing, or God forbid, murdered, I would be just as focused on that situation as I was with the events that surrounded Glenda and Bubba.
Hmmmm. Maybe that was an argument I could use when talking to Jon. Technically, I was employer to his employee so I could do as I liked. But with such a small operation, Jon and I were both integral parts of this team, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that one half of the team was a little miffed at the other.
In addition to carrying both his and my share of the barn duties the past few days, yesterday Jon had taken care of Agnes for me, telling her I’d been unavoidably detained in the course of my investigation, and would call her the first of the week. I’m sure there was a lot more to the conversation than that. With Agnes there always is, but Jon spared me the details and for that I was thankful.
Her package, I saw, had arrived safely and a glossy, black, lined trench coat now hung from my closet door. I couldn’t wait for my arm to heal so I could wear it.
Although the short trip home from the hospital had been brutal, I figured I was lucky to have been released at all. And I knew they never would have let me go if they realized there wouldn’t be someone fussing over me all day. But I had it all figured out. After Jon helped me settle in at home, he made sure the security system was turned on and that my phone was within reach. Although Jon wasn’t staying in the house, he was on the property and easily accessible.
I figured if the medical staff at the hospital knew the situation, they wouldn’t be happy. But, oh well. I was safe, and lots of people were available if I needed them. I hate to be fussed over.
Before he went back to the barn, Jon made sure I had water and a stack of magazines and books. On top of the pile was my friend Lisa Wysocky’s book, My Horse, My Partner: Teamwork on the Ground. I wanted to look through the book again to see if I could find any ideas that might help Gigi. But not today. Today, printed words did a conga dance in front of my eyes, which were once again becoming hard to keep open.
While I tried not to doze, word got around that I was out of the hospital. Cran Berry, widely thought to be the only “normal” Berry in the bunch, brought the mail up to the house instead of leaving it in the box, as he usually did. With it, he brought a to-die-for double chocolate layer cake that his wife had baked.
Carole sent over some organic liquid vitamins via her oldest, who asked me if getting bashed hurt very much. I said that it did and we talked for a while about how she should avoid it, if at all possible. She agreed that she would try. I found it increasingly hard to believe that either Carole or her hunky husband was behind all this, although I guessed at this point just about any right-handed adult who didn’t have an alibi was still a suspect.
As she was leaving, another, more unexpected, visitor came in the door. Robert Griggs. He turned into two people as he moved across the room, which I thought was
a bit odd, but then as the pain in my arm simultaneously subsided, I realized the wonder drugs were kicking in. Robert looked uncomfortably around the room and, not finding any place to sit, perched uneasily at the foot of the bed. He said he came to mend fences, that he was sorry about the tone of our discussion the other day and he hoped I realized he had just been concerned. He realized I was not a druggie.
I glanced at the small cache of pill bottles the hospital had sent home with me and giggled as they paired up and began to tango across the table. Damn those pills. In the midst of the awkward pause that came next, I asked Robert about his drunken brawl.
He blushed. “I, uh … I’m not much of a drinker, but then I’ve never known anyone who was murdered before,” he said. “I’d had a few, thought I’d better eat. You understand I was pretty upset.”
I nodded. And waited.
“All right, I told the police, so you might as well know. I have a close friend who assisted on the autopsy, on Glenda’s … Cheatham County doesn’t do autopsies so they sent the body to a private firm in Nashville. I was there when they were starting the … at first I didn’t realize it was her. Glenda. And when it finally dawned on me who it was, I was so shocked I didn’t say anything. I should have. I should have left. But it was so compelling, once they started to, uh, examine her. Later, it was … awful. I got drunk.”
“So that’s how you knew before anyone else that Glenda had suffocated, that she didn’t die from the beating.” The drugs might have impaired my vision, but I could still think.
“I … I didn’t kill her,” he said.