Cutter (Gail McCarthy Mystery series)

by Laura Crum

  As I said good-bye and stepped out the door, I wondered how long it would be before Casey told Melissa he'd taken a rugged fall this afternoon-hours, days, maybe never? What was going on between them-some kind of a power game in which guilt trips were a weapon?

  None of your business, Gail, I reminded myself, as I shut the door behind me. Keep your mind on your own life. My own life, my own horse. Shiloh might be wonderful, but she wasn't mine. I drove back to Soquel, up Old San Jose Road, and turned in Kris Griffith's white-board-lined driveway.

  Kris lived about a mile from me as the crow flies, but our two places were a long way further apart than that, economically speaking. Her five-acre parcel was all wide, sunny meadowland, and the big house and barn which sat on a knoll overlooking the creek were brand new-natural wood with a gray stone chimney for the house, white-board-fenced pastures surrounding the barn.

  It was the barn I pulled up to, and waving at a glimpsed motion through a house window-Kris or her daughter Jo, no doubt-I headed toward the small corral where Gunner lived, Blue stumping stiffly along behind me, stopping to water trees where necessary.

  Gunner's head was over the fence, ears pointed toward me, big white blaze prominent in the late afternoon light, and I smiled when I saw him. "Hey, big horse, how you doing?"

  He nickered and stretched his nose out ... "Pet me, pay attention to me, I'm bored."

  "I know, I know," I told him, "it's rough being penned up like this with nothing to do, but it's just the way it has to be for a while." Rubbing his forehead and then the underside of his neck, I explained to him at length that he'd severed both the deep and superficial flexor tendons in his front leg and if he were ever to be sound again, he needed a year of forced rest and inactivity.

  He bumped me with his nose impatiently and I held my hand out, showing it was empty. "No apples, no beer, sorry."

  Gunner licked my palm hopefully; his favorite treat was beer and I often poured a little in my cupped hand for him, but I hadn't brought any today.

  Frustrated, he swung his head in an impatient shake that flipped his thick black mane from one side of his neck to the other. "Well, what good are you then?"-I could almost hear the words.

  Smoothing his mane back where it belonged, I regarded him affectionately. Gunner was three years old, a bright bay (red with black mane and tail) with three high white socks, a big blaze and one blue eye and one brown one. Bred to be a champion cowhorse, he'd belonged to one of Casey Brooks' millionaire clients, this guy a dude who'd known nothing about horses. The man had taken his green colt for a ride through the hills one day and Gunner had spooked at a rabbit, dumping the owner on the ground. Frightened, the colt had galloped for the barn and somewhere in his mad scramble for home had overreached with one driving back hoof and severed the suspensory tendons of his left front leg. That was six months ago now, and I could remember the emergency call perfectly.

  Yellow light had streamed out of Casey's barn into the soft March evening as I'd walked toward the big bay colt standing on three legs in the aisle. Casey was holding the leadrope, and pain and distress were plain in the horse's eyes.

  No trouble with the diagnosis; I'd explained to the middle-aged, overweight man with the pouting mouth that his horse would have to have the leg wrapped and be kept in a stall for three months, then confined in a small pen for six more, and be gradually legged up a full year later, if he was to have any chance at all.

  Whether it was chagrin at being thrown, or natural bad temper, or the non-horseman's unrealistic expectations of what owning a horse would be like, the man had simply shrugged and said, "Put him down." I could still hear the crunch of his expensive Tony Llama cowboy boots on the gravel as he'd marched to his Mercedes and driven away.

  Casey'd turned to me, anger on his face. "Dammit, this is a good colt, Gail, one of the best ones I've had. He'll be a hell of a horse someday; that dumb son of a bitch wouldn't know a good one if it bit him."

  I was staring at the three-year-old, seeing the quality: legs with good strong bone; long, flat muscles; alert eyes, their contrasting colors combined with his big white blaze giving him a friendly, clownish look, even in the state he was in. And then Gunner, standing on his three good legs, had reached out and bumped my chest with his nose. I rubbed the nose.

  Casey's voice had droned on in the background in the timeless litany of horsemen everywhere, "And he's by Mr. Gunsmoke out of a King Fritz mare-bred in the purple, Gail-and he's got a real good mind."

  "I'll take him." The words just came out of my mouth as I stroked the bay gelding, and I already knew I wouldn't put him down. Putting down a healthy animal that can be restored to wholeness goes against all my instincts. Besides, I wanted this horse.

  "I'll take him," I said again. "Can you make it right with the owner?"

  "Sure I can." And Casey grinned. "Hoo-aw, buddy, you got yourself a horse."

  Six months later I still had him, and he was recovering nicely. I'd arranged to board him at Kristin Griffith's-both for the convenience and for the fact that Kris was one of my favorite clients and a woman I felt I could be friends with. That was the upside. The downside was that Kris was expensive. Expensive by my standards, anyway. One hundred and twenty-five extra dollars a month was a lot for an underpaid vet to afford.

  "Hi, Gail."

  I turned to smile a hello at Kris, genuinely pleased as I always was when she found the time to socialize with me for a moment.

  A slim, spare woman in her late thirties, Kristin Griffith had the taut body and fine-boned face of a racing greyhound. This, combined with short, no-nonsense blonde hair and her slightly tinted glasses, gave her a stern, school-teacherish look that both was and wasn't representative of her personality.

  Kris was a world-class endurance rider; the genuine toughness that showed in every line of her face and body was reflective of a toughness of spirit that had taken her on to win the hundred-mile Tevis Cup, a legendary race. But the part of her that didn't show on first acquaintance was her playful streak, an essential lightheartedness that separated her from the driven fanaticism of some of her competitors.

  "How's your baby doing?" Kris leaned on the fence next to me for a minute and rubbed Gunner under his chin.

  "You should know. You see him a lot more often than I do." I sighed-lack of time to spend with Gunner wasn't much of a problem now but it would be in six months, when he was ready for light exercise. "How's Rebel?" I added.

  "Great." Kris flashed a wide smile. "Took him out for a little spin this afternoon. Just twenty miles. He's doing great. "

  I whistled. "Better you than me."

  Twenty miles, a major day in the saddle for most experienced horsemen, was a regular exercise ride for an endurance rider like Kris. Where she found the stamina I couldn't imagine.

  Giving Gunner a final pat, I wandered back outside with Kris and we surveyed her horse Rebel Cause, ambling up to greet us with a long easy stride-for all the world as though he'd been resting all day instead of trotting and loping twenty miles.

  Among endurance horses, Rebby was the exception that proved the rule. Endurance horses are mostly Arabians and half-bred Arabians, with a few mustangs thrown in. Rebby was a registered Quarter Horse, bred for the track, which means mostly Thoroughbred, as far as his background went. A leggy I5.2 hands, and about eleven hundred pounds, he was too tall, too heavy, and of the wrong ethnic group, so to speak, to be a long-distance champion. But he was.

  As if she could read my thoughts, Kris said, "It's all heart. This horse has more try than any horse I've had. He wants to go. And he has no quit. It's that, and his ability to recover. He's got the quickest recovery rate of any horse I've ever seen."

  Rebel thrust his face over the fence at us and I rubbed the white star on his forehead. Like Gunner, Rebby was a friendly horse who always wanted attention.

  "You sure wouldn't pick him out of a crowd on his looks," Kris mused.

  "Oh, I don't know," I told her, "he's pretty well made."
>
  "But look at that mouth. And his color doesn't take your eye. And he's light-boned."

  I shrugged; those things were all true. Rebby had a parrot mouth, an overbite, that was a serious confirmation flaw, his solid dark brown color was both common and not eye-catching, and his slender leg bones were an invitation to unsoundness.

  "He's got a nice eye, though," I offered, "and I'll bet he cinches real deep."

  "He does." Kris grinned. Depth through the heart girth was a good indicator of a horse's capacity. "Don't worry, you don't need to defend him to me. He knows I love him." She patted the gelding's shoulder. "Rebby's got a home."

  I smiled and my eye caught the motion of a little gold Porsche as it turned in the driveway. Rick Griffith, Kristin's husband, was home-no doubt from work.

  An engineer for some high-tech munitions firm in San Jose's Silicon Valley, Rick worked long hours and got paid big bucks. Thus this property, the house and barn, and the fact that Kris could stay home and ride her horses and take care of her daughter, instead of work. On the other hand ...

  "I'd better be going," I told Kris as I turned toward my pickup. "Got a hot date," I added.

  "Who with?"

  "Lonny Peterson, you know him?"

  Kris shook her head. I wasn't surprised. Team ropers and endurance riders operated in very separate spheres-they weren't likely to have run into each other.

  "Don't want to be late," I grinned as I waved good-bye. I waved to Rick, too, as I passed him on the driveway, and he waved back, with a friendly smile.

  But it wasn't really potential lateness that had urged me to leave, it was Rick. Or my feelings about him. I wrinkled my nose. Not so much about him. About them.

  Rick Griffith was a handsome, confident man with an easy smile-and an underlying arrogance, I added to myself. Usually in a suit and tie and with a briefcase in his hand, he exuded a polite, civilized essence of power. It wasn't anything he said or did particularly-to do him credit, his manners were impeccable-just the sense that he always expected to dominate any situation. I tended to avoid him.

  As I drove down the driveway with its white-board-fence-lined meadows, I pondered my reaction to Rick. I knew plenty of men like him and I could deal with them; it was the element of Rick and Kris that bothered me here. I both liked and admired Kris as a person, but I didn't admire the way she seemed to kowtow to Rick.

  Kowtow? Come on, Gail, I told myself, why shouldn't she be nice to Rick? He's her husband; she probably likes him. But I couldn't rid myself of the impression that she deferred to him, an attitude I thought profoundly unnecessary, given Kris's obvious strength and intelligence.

  For all that I envied her the house, barn, and land, as well as the freedom she had to pursue her sport-a freedom composed of both time and money-I wouldn't trade places with her. I was pretty sure I wouldn't, anyway.

  Chapter FIVE

  I was less sure ten minutes later when I walked through my own front door. Bret and Deb were arguing at the kitchen table and Blue yipped and snapped grumpily at my calf when I accidentally stepped on his toe.

  Bret's laugh, Blue's yip and Deb's angry "Goddammit, Bret" seemed to blend in a hectic cacophony; my little house, usually a peaceful sanctuary, felt like a zoo.

  Soothing Blue down first, I rubbed his ears and told him I hadn't done it on purpose.

  Bret was still chuckling. "Did he draw blood?"

  I shook my head. "He never does."

  Deb was staring at me in astonishment. "Why in the world would you want to own a dog that would bite you?"

  Still rubbing Blue's head, I answered the question as honestly as I could. "I like his personality. He's ornery and stubborn and independent and smart as a whip. It's sort of like having a pet coyote. He's interesting."

  Deb obviously didn't see anything appealing in an ornery, stubborn, smart dog, so I quit trying to explain. "He's my friend. Hi, Deb," I added.

  A tall girl with short, spiky dark red hair that she wore in wildly tousled styles, big green eyes, a slight dusting of freckles, and a figure that could have graced the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, Deb was normally an outspoken, friendly extrovert. At the moment, she looked mad as hell.

  "Hi, Gail." She gave me a stormy smile and turned back to Bret with the air of someone writing off a bad investment. "And if you think you can walk back in any old time and keep living rent-free with me while you go out in the evening picking up women, you can think again."

  Having fired that off, she sent another apologetic smile and a "see you later" my way and headed for the door without another word or look at Bret.

  He watched her go, looking relieved, I noted, not distressed. My heart sank a little. It was a good bet he was going to want to stay for a while.

  Settling myself at the table where Deb had been, I counted the bottles in front of him. Four-that would be every beer I had. Bret grinned, guessing what I was thinking. "I'll buy more," he reassured me.

  "I won't hold my breath."

  "Sure I will. Where've you been?"

  "Checking Casey Brooks' horses. A bunch of them colicked this morning. Three of them died."

  Bret whistled. "Whew. Three. What happened?"

  "We still don't know. Casey thinks they were poisoned."

  "Are you kidding?"

  "Nope. I've got no idea if he's right, or just paranoid. He got in a pretty bad wreck this afternoon, too, and he thinks someone cut his cinch." Briefly I filled Bret in on the day and finished up, "and he seems to believe some trainer named Will George did it all."

  Bret whistled again and shook his head. "Will George? That's hard to believe." "Do you know him?"

  "Not exactly. I know of him. Everybody in the cutting horse business knows Will George."

  Remembering that one of Bret's longer-running jobs had been a year spent working for a cutting horse trainer in Salinas, I asked him, "So how unlikely is this idea of Casey's?"

  "Pretty unlikely, I'd say. From what I know of Will George, that's not something he'd do. And why?"

  "Casey seemed to think Will was jealous of him. Afraid that Casey would beat him at some big event ... the West Coast Futurity, I think."

  Bret laughed. "Fat chance. Casey's never placed at the Futurity and Will's won it four out of the last eight times. Will doesn't need to worry about Casey."

  "Melissa seemed sure about that, too."

  "Melissa knows Will a lot better than I do." Bret grinned.

  "How's that?"

  "About the time I was working for Jay Holley, she was Will's girlfriend, not Casey's."

  "I kind of wondered. What she said was that she used to work for Will."

  "She did. She also used to sleep with him, if you can believe the rumors. It was pretty well accepted, though; she was Will's girlfriend of the year."

  "Girlfriend of the year?"

  "Sure. He tends to come up with a new one every spring, or he did." Bret flashed his grin at me again. "He's married, of course. Has been for thirty years. But it doesn't seem to get in his way any."

  "I wonder why his wife puts up with it."

  "I wouldn't know. But it sort of goes with the territory. Most trainers are that way; there's exceptions, of course."

  I nodded sagely. In my experience, Bret was right. Horse training, though usually ill paid, was in some senses a glamorous profession. Trainers were often surrounded by crowds of admiring young women, horse lovers all, each of whom would be honored to be the trainer's current fling. Not a role I'd relish, myself.

  "You know all these people, don't you?" I asked Bret, an idea dawning in my head.

  "Sort of. I used to haul Jay's horses to the shows. I pretty much know who all the big guns are or were. My gossip's a little out of date, though; it must be two years since I quit."

  "I know what you can do for me," I said slowly, with a meaningful look at the empty beer bottles and the sleeping bag unrolled on my couch, "in lieu of rent. Go to a cutting with me tomorrow."

  Bret looked wary, but no
t terribly resistant. "Where?" he asked cautiously.

  "In Los Borregos. Don't worry, I'll drive," I added, knowing that he was calculating the price of gas. "I'm not sure that truck of yours would make it over Pacheco Pass. I just want you to go along and tell me about the people and the cutting. Casey's showing a horse-a horse I rode this afternoon." I explained about Casey and Shiloh.

  When I was done, Bret shrugged one shoulder. "Okay I'll go point out the sights."

  I smiled. "You just bought yourself a week of free rent, buddy. After that, we'll see. And you still need to buy your own beer," I amended quickly, seeing the thought pass through his mind before he opened his mouth.

  He grinned and got up. "I better get to buying, then. Can't sit here all evening without beer. I'll be back," he added, as he walked toward the front door.

  That was debatable. Bret was more than likely to wind up at some bar or succession of bars and be back around 3:00 A.M., if he didn't find a girl to go home with.

  "Don't hurry," I called after him as the door closed. "I'm going out."

  And soon, I realized; it was time to get moving if I didn't want to be late. I was meeting Lonny at the Bohemian Cafe at six-thirty and it was already five-forty-five.

  Choosing one of my few dresses in honor of the warm fall weather, I pulled on a lightweight, pale blue denim affair, sleeveless and scoop-necked, worn over bare legs and woven leather sandals. The dress was younger in style than I was, or felt, but it flattered my figure and my coloring and seemed appropriate to the lovely soft Indian-summer evening, so unusual for the coast. Besides, I thought, pulling my hair high with a couple of combs, judging by the anticipatory flutters I was feeling, my heart was closer to twenty-one than thirty-one.

  Arriving at the Bohemian Cafe five minutes early, I was pleased and amused to see that Lonny was even earlier; his Bronco was in the parking lot.