He looked out his window that gave a view of the ambulance bay, which was, thankfully, empty.
“The horse did plenty of damage to Kemper, no one can doubt that. The fatal blow was delivered to the head by some type of metal instrument.”
“The horse was shod!”
“Avenger was wearing shoes on his front feet. I’ve already checked into that.”
“Then you think the horse did it?” Of all the suspects I’d hoped to line up for Lee, I’d never thought to pin the murder on a horse.
“He’s capable of it. He attacked Kemper in November. Bit him seriously. I know because I treated the wound. Lee said Kemper brought the injury on himself, and I don’t doubt it. Kemper reaped what he sowed.”
“I haven’t met a single person who doesn’t agree that Kemper needed to die. Unfortunately, that isn’t a very good defense for Lee. If we could prove that it was accidental, that Lee and Kemper fought, maybe even that she struck him, but that the actual deathblow was delivered by the horse . . .” My mind was churning with possibilities. “Avenger has a reputation as a dangerous animal, doesn’t he?”
Doc shrugged. “Lillian Sparks would be the woman to ask about that.” He said this with some reservation.
“You recommend Lillian, not Lee. Why?”
“She’s not personally invested in the horse. Lee is. Avenger is the horse Lee’s been looking for all of her life. She can’t see how dangerous he is. Every time there’s an injury, she blames everyone but the horse.”
Doc stood up. “I’ll have more forensic answers when my tests come back from the state lab. I have to determine what type of metal instrument struck Kemper in the head.”
“But you’re positive that blow to the head was the cause of death.”
He nodded.
“Do you know the time of death?”
“I’ll know more when the tests come back.”
“When might that be?”
“This afternoon. Tomorrow.” His head gave a quick tilt to the right, a gesture of impatience or evasiveness.
“Doc, you treated Kemper for the horse bite. What about Lee? Did you ever treat her for injuries?” He knew where I was headed.
“Yes.”
“For accidents?”
“Yes. And I can’t say more than that. Doctor-patient privileges.” His tone was terse.
He’d delivered Lee. She was one of his. I took a gamble. “What about Kip? Did you treat her?”
“No. Not for physical injuries.” He stood up and walked to the door. “I heard Kip was staying with you. That’s good for her. She needs someone now. Someone who can hold the line.” He stood in the open doorway, looking beyond me. “Be careful, Sarah Booth. Kindness can be both generous and foolhardy.” There was more to this than he was going to say. “Lee has better answers for you than I have.”
“I’ll check back with you,” I said.
Doc’s smile was tired and sad. “I’m sure you will, Sarah Booth.”
A confrontation with Lee was inevitable, but I managed to delay it a bit by stopping at Lillian Sparks’s home. I’d been there during the last holiday season to deliver one of Lawrence Ambrose’s orphaned cats. I was delighted to see Apollo perched in the front window when I pulled up.
Lillian answered the door and ushered me back into the kitchen, where she was making tomato aspic for a dinner party. I settled at her kitchen table while she made tea for both of us.
“Tell me about the horses at Swift Level,” I said.
Using exact movements, Lillian put the tea leaves in a cerulean ceramic teapot. “Avenger is one of the most magnificent performance horses of the century,” she said. “Lee really has something with him.”
“Doc says he may have killed Kemper.”
Lillian snorted. “No wonder Lee confessed. She’d sell her soul to save that stallion. Without him, there is no Swift Level.” She poured the boiling water over the leaves. “But Lee’s story doesn’t make sense. Kemper was an idiot, but he’d never have gone into that horse’s stall, not even in a fit of rage to hurt Lee. Avenger hated him. People think of horses as big, dumb animals. They aren’t stupid. They’re fully capable of recognizing someone who hurts them. Avenger was gentle as a kitten, unless Kemper was around. Avenger saw into Kemper’s soul. He saw the blackness, and he hated him.”
“Tell me about Kip,” I asked.
Lillian was settling the teapot lid. The lid flipped from the pot, landing with a clatter on the stovetop. Her hand shaking, she ignored the implication of my question. “Kip’s the most accomplished rider I’ve ever seen.”
“I need to know the truth, Lillian.” She knew far more than she was saying.
“Whose truth?” she asked, and I felt the vague uneasiness of the night before.
“The plain truth.”
Lillian poured the tea into thick mugs painted with horses that looked like cave drawings. “Ask yourself why Lee confessed,” she said. “What would make her risk her future and her dream? When you know that, you’ll know the truth.”
Kip was in my bedroom on the computer when I got home. I’d bought groceries and I made dinner and waited, setting the table in the kitchen. She came down the stairs at a gallop with Sweetie Pie right behind her.
She asked no questions of my day or about her mother, and I let the silence fall over the meal, until she looked up at me.
“Kip, where were you the night your father died?” She was putting the last bite of her sloppy joe into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed. “What did Mother say?”
“It doesn’t matter. I need the truth.”
“I was in my room,” she answered, getting up and putting her plate in the sink. “May I be excused?”
“No, you may not. What were you doing in your room that night?”
Kip stared at her fork. “I was doing my homework. Biology.”
“Alone?”
She finally looked up. “Yes. Alone. Now may I be excused?”
I had to press harder. “This afternoon, I went in your room looking for you. I saw a syringe in your makeup bag. Why do you have it?”
Anger touched her eyes and the corners of her mouth. One hand slipped to the back of her chair for support. “I thought you were snooping around.”
“I wasn’t snooping.” My own anger rose. “Why do you have a syringe?”
“For the horses,” she said with a look that held pity and contempt. “If you knew anything about a horse farm you’d know that syringes are all over the house, in the barn, in the horse trailers, all the vehicles. We all have them, because in an emergency you don’t have time to go out and find a drugstore that’s open.”
One side of her mouth lifted. “You think I’m doing drugs?” She laughed. “They drug test the horses, but not the riders.”
“Kip, are you taking anything?”
She was openly amused at me, and terribly angry. “Other than the prescribed drugs, you mean?”
“Prescribed?”
“The Prozac and the Paxil. The stuff Dr. Vance gave me. To keep me calm. To keep me in school and on the circuit. To keep the pressure from getting to be too much when my parents screamed and fought.”
I knew Dr. Vance. He was a child psychiatrist in Memphis, the preferred magician for the youth of the Sunflower County wealthy.
“You’re seeing Dr. Vance?” Lee hadn’t mentioned this minor detail.
“Since the school incident. I had to agree to counseling before they’d let me back in school.”
“And Dr. Vance prescribed those drugs?”
“You didn’t know? Mother didn’t tell you? She didn’t warn you that I was highly unstable? The diagnosis was severe depression and extreme anxiety.” Her smile was bitter. “I’m crazy, Sarah Booth, but not too crazy to ride in the show ring for Swift Level. Now may I be excused?”
I nodded. Kip was no longer the focus of my thoughts. They had shifted to Lee, and the many things she’d failed to tell me.
By the time the dishes were put aw
ay, I was exhausted. I wanted nothing more than quiet and the luxury of a good book. The technicalities and hairpin curves of murder trial tactics were too much for me. I picked up my new copy of Kinky Friedman’s latest mystery and climbed the stairs like a woman twice my age. Emotion is frequently worse than aerobics as far as wear and tear goes.
Settling beneath the comforter, I opened the book and allowed myself to be a silent participant in the New York City loft where Kinky cogitated and, above us, the lesbian dance class tapped their way to bliss. I read Kinky for fun, but there was also the hope that I might learn a few tricks of the P.I. trade from the eccentric sleuth.
My last thought was that Kinky would have a lot more success with women if he got rid of his cigars. Or maybe I would have more success with men if I smoked a good Cuban stogy.
8
It was still early on Wednesday morning when the ringing telephone pulled me out of a foggy dream about a golden-eyed cat batting a puppet head around the floor of a New York apartment. Both red telephones on the desk of Private Investigator Kinky Friedman were ringing.
And so was mine. It was a long flight home from Kinky-land to my bedroom.
I fumbled the phone to my ear and heard Cece talking a mile a minute. “—and bring Danish. Hurry!” Click. She’d hung up.
It was time to get up, so I dressed. On my way out, I tapped lightly at Kip’s door. There was no answer, so I cracked it open. She was flung across the bed, one hand dangling on the floor, her back lifting softly and rhythmically with her breathing.
Who and what was this child? Lee owed me some answers.
I hurried out of the house and to the bakery, per Cece’s specific order. With a white bag of cheese Danish in hand, I entered the newspaper office.
“Bribing Cece again?” Garvel LaMott asked with a sneer.
Garvel had been the high-school tattletale. He was the police beat reporter for the paper, and he had shoes that ate his white socks, exposing pasty ankles with scattered black hairs.
I ignored him and entered Cece’s private office without knocking. Only when I closed the door did she look up to see who’d arrived. She was so eager to tell her news she ignored the bag of Danish. “I tracked down an old girlfriend of Kemper’s, circa 1970’s, over in Louisiana.”
“And?” I put the bag on top of a pile of papers on her desk.
“She wasn’t surprised to discover someone had killed him. She said the reason Kemper made such stupid decisions was because he thought with his penis and there wasn’t a lot there to work with.”
“Aye-yi-yi-yi,” I said, laughing. “I hope you print that. Remember, you can’t slander the dead.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Cece’s teeth were large, even, and dazzlingly white. She was showing a lot of them.
“Anything else from the Bayou State?” No one had ever met Kemper’s family. Lee had brought him home from Lafayette, Louisiana, an unknown entity.
Cece snagged a Danish, took a large bite, and then daintily wiped the corners of her mouth with one elegant finger. “Odd that you should ask. Leshia and Henri Fuquar live in St. Martinsville, about thirty minutes from Lafayette. According to his ex-girlfriend, they disowned Kemper when he was sixteen. They had him emancipated and cut him loose. Prior to that, they’d petitioned the Church for an exorcism.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” She was, but not completely.
“The exorcism was my personal touch, but Kemper made quite an impression on his hometown. His ex-girlfriend said he set a teacher’s car on fire at the high school. He ran with a tough crowd, displaying all the traits of a true sociopath. She said he showed no remorse for any of his acts. The phrase she used was ‘bad seed.’ ”
The term “bad seed” was like a tumbler of ice water down my spine. I knew from my studies that some mental disorders were genetically transmitted. Or at least the tendencies for them. “Did you speak with his parents?”
“I called twice. They won’t talk to me.” She pushed a sheet of paper across her desk to me. “They said their son died years ago, and the man using his name has no relationship to them. You might have better luck.”
I went around the desk and gave Cece a big hug. “You go, girl,” I said. “This is the kind of stuff that may actually help Lee if she insists on the defense that Kemper just needed to be killed.”
“There is one other small thing.” Cece extricated herself from my hug, licked some white icing off her fingertip, then looked me dead in the eye. “Your date for the ball. Tinkie went to a lot of trouble to get you invited. The Chesterfield Hunt Ball is very formal. It would be better if it were someone who could ride, but that’s asking the impossible.”
“Cece!” I was shocked at her lack of faith in me.
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that there aren’t any suitable men around. Except Harold, and he’s going with that witch Carol Beth.” She leaned forward, perfect eyebrows arched in animation. “Can you believe her, showing up to take Lee’s horses before Kemper is cold in the ground? She should be at the top of your list of suspects.”
“If Kemper got in her way, she’d hammer him,” I agreed. “She always believed that whatever she wanted was there to be plucked.” I didn’t have a single good memory of Carol Beth. “Men, money, jobs, cars, whatever. She pointed and her daddy had it delivered to her door.”
This was not an exaggeration. Our senior year, Mr. Farley had a hunter-green Jaguar XKE driven through the marble hallway of their home, Magnolia Lane, and parked in front of Carol Beth’s bedroom door.
“She’s got enough money to buy any horse she wants. Why is she determined to take Lee’s horses?” Cece asked.
It was a brilliant question. Even if what Lillian and everyone else said about Avenger was one-hundred-percent true, there were still other fine horses. Some of which were for sale.
“If I find out anything new, you’ll be the first to know,” I promised Cece.
“Where are you headed today?” she asked.
“To see Lee.” I studied the slip of paper Cece had given me. It was just a phone number.
“Better wait until after lunch. Coleman or someone has arranged for her to speak with a psychiatrist.”
My gaze snapped up to hers. “Lee?”
She nodded. “Insanity, of the temporary sort, might not be a bad plea for her.”
“Lee’s not crazy. She’s just stubborn.”
“Sometimes, Sarah Booth, stubborn just slides right into crazy. You should know.”
On my last drive out to Swift Level, I’d failed to notice the beauty of the land. The cotton fields were freshly planted, the brown earth furrowed in long rows that merged in the distance. The smell of the newly turned soil was distinctive. Fertile. The men who farmed it said it smelled like money.
I drove the fifteen miles without passing another car. County Road 11 was narrow and straight, like so many of the Delta roads. Swift Level came up on the horizon like a diorama.
As I turned down the lane, a herd of magnificent horses came running toward the fence. There were at least a dozen of them, and they ran with the grace and spirit of young athletes. As they neared the fence they turned, a choreographed movement of such startling beauty that I stopped the car and watched them continue in the other direction, weaving a pattern that looked deliberately designed, yet was a perfect expression of freedom. Horse dancing. Whatever else Lee had done, she had bred something of beauty.
I parked in front of the house. The plants on the front porch still bloomed perkily, but they hadn’t been headed or watered. I made a mental note to do that before I left. There was no one in the house, so I went down to the barn, alert for Bud Lynch. The man could move like a shadow, and I didn’t want him sneaking up on me again.
The black truck with four rear tires was still parked at the barn. As soon as I entered the main barn where the office was located, I recognized Carol Beth’s demanding tones. She was back at Swift Level and engaged in a shouting match with the trainer.
“You’re hired help,” Carol Beth fumed.
“That’s right. You hired me, and I delivered. At the time, you weren’t complaining about my services. In fact, you were mighty complimentary.” That little statement was followed by a purely male chuckle, smug and amused.
“You goddamn son of a bitch.”
“That’s not what you were calling me—”
“You are a dead man. Do you hear me? I’ll see to it that you never work again. You won’t be able to get a job riding ponies at a fair by the time I finish with you. My husband—”
“Now, Mrs. Bishop, I wouldn’t do anything rash. There’re a lot of angles to consider here. I can give as good as I get, as you well know. I don’t think your husband would enjoy the details of our . . . partnership.”
I walked into the office doorway and saw them faced off at each other. Carol Beth had aged well, which meant she hadn’t really aged at all. With her hair pulled back in a ponytail and her body encased in skintight riding breeches, a sleeveless white shirt and the de rigueur black boots, she looked as if she might still be the haughty seventeen-year-old who’d refused to date a single Zinnia High School boy. Not only did she refuse to date them, she told them why. She had her sights set higher than Sunflower County. She wanted out of Mississippi, and she managed it, too. She graduated with honors from Ole Miss, and two days later married a Virginia lawyer. From all tales, she was the crème de la crème of Richmond society and the darling of the Bridgeport Hunt there.
Neither of them saw me, so I had a chance to examine the tableau that presented itself. Lynch lounged in the office chair at the desk, and Carol Beth stood two feet away from him, her chest moving rapidly with anger. Her mahogany hair caught window light, and it seemed to glow like the finest old furniture. Her dark gaze was focused on Lynch, and I expected his bones to melt at any moment.
“You bastard. You can’t threaten me.”
“Oh, I can.”
She took a step forward. She was close enough to kiss him. “I will ruin you.”
“You can try,” he said with a slow drawl and an easy smile.
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