I came to a fork in the road. My horse kept going as if she knew exactly where her buddies had gone.
I let Nellie lead me, trusting her animal instincts and painfully aware of my own penchant for getting lost. However, just a few yards down the road, I realized that the hoof-prints we’d been following were gone.
I turned Nellie around and headed back.
Though I soon corrected for my mistake and found that they had indeed turned the other way down the fork in the road, their decision to ride by themselves, as well as to invite me in the first place, struck me as fishy.
Maybe they knew about my atrocious sense of direction. Maybe they’d deliberately given me a horse with an equally bad inner compass and were trying to give me the slip. They’d chosen Nellie because they knew she was a tired old nag, which is exactly what I was feeling like myself.
Just then, I heard a woman scream.
“Michelle?” I called at the top of my lungs.
“Sugar! Whoa!” Kent cried to Michelle’s horse.
I whacked Nellie with both reins, and to my surprise, she responded. We tore off in the direction of the sound, which took us up an incline. We reached the top. In the distance, I saw Sugar in full gallop, tearing down the hillside, Michelle holding on for dear life.
Chapter 9
If Wishes Were Horses…
Instead of continuing her canter, Nellie broke into a full gallop, all four of her legs pumping hard. Just getting her to canter had a significant accomplishment, but having her gallop downhill was frightening. At this angle, it was far too conceivable that Nellie might buck and send me up over her head and then trample me. Darned ironic if, while trying to assist Michelle, I wound up being the one to be badly injured.
To spare my tailbone further trauma, I stood in the stirrups while leaning low against the horse, as close to a jockey’s form as I could emulate. However, I doubted that jockeys’ teeth chattered like this, or that tears ran down their cheeks while they raced.
Kent was still way ahead of me, chasing after Michelle and trying to pull alongside her horse, but Nellie was no longer losing ground.
Michelle let out a second scream as Sugar raced toward a narrow path in the forest. She would never be able to stay in her saddle at this speed while being whipped by branches.
Just as she reached the trees, her horse reared and then bucked, sending Michelle flying. I pulled Nellie’s reins, and, thankfully, she slowed to her usual lumbering trot.
Meanwhile, Kent had stopped his horse and dismounted in one rapid, athletic motion. He raced to Michelle’s side and knelt beside her. From my jostling-and-rattling vantage point, I could tell that he was speaking to her and that she seemed to be answering. I’m sure he was asking if she was all right, but I couldn’t hear their words over the sound of Nellie’s hoof beats and my bouncing body parts.
Michelle had done something of a somersault on her landing and was now sitting upright, facing away from me. “I think so,” I heard her say as I reached them.
With Kent closely supervising, Michelle was slowly tilting her head to one shoulder then the other, as if checking herself for serious injury. She seemed to be fine, though, looking almost unruffled despite her fall.
Kent said to her, “Good thing you’re in such good physical condition. You managed to control your fall. Otherwise, you could have gotten badly hurt.”
Kent helped her to her feet, and I turned my attention to her horse. Sugar was still in the immediate area, with her reins dangling, and seemed traumatized—snorting, whipping her head around, pawing at the ground.
I wished I had some treat to offer her so that I wouldn’t frighten her. I’d forgotten my sugar cubes, so I held out my empty palm as if it carried an invisible horsey treat and said soothingly, “Hey, Sugar. That’s a good girl,” as I approached.
Sugar was still shaking her head and pawing nervously, watching me with the whites of her eyes showing. She started to move away, making it clear that she didn’t know me and didn’t trust me. I stood my ground, but gasped at what I saw when she turned sideways.
“Look! Sugar’s bleeding from underneath the stirrup on her left side!”
Though it was a preposterous thought, I immediately looked back at Michelle’s boots to see if she was wearing spurs.
“Oh, my God,” Michelle said. “My poor baby.” With only a slight limp, she strode toward her horse. Michelle collected her horse’s reins and then hugged Sugar’s large neck, while Kent and I rounded the animal to inspect the injuries. Her right side was fine, but her left side was bleeding substantially.
Kent lifted the stirrup, then snorted in disgust. “There’s a small nail in the leather of the stirrup straps. Sugar must’ve been in agony the whole time we were riding.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see that while I was saddling…”
She let her voice fade, then turned an accusing glare onto Kent. “You were the one who put the saddle on Sugar for me, while I was getting Nellie ready to ride.”
“The nail must have already been there, but I didn’t see it,” Kent retorted. “Sorry.”
“How could you have missed something like that? And who else but you could have done this?”
Kent crossed his sturdy arms across his chest. “Come on, Michelle. You know me better than that! I’d never hurt a horse. I swear to you on bended knee, I did not put the nail in Sugar’s stirrup strap!”
Kent looked at both of us, though not from “bended knee.”
“Ladies, I ask you. If I were trying to set Michelle up to take a fall like this, would I be so stupid to do so in front of a witness?” He pointed at me.
“Probably not,” I answered, “unless you put the nail there yesterday, before you found out that I was joining the two of you.”
“That’s a crappy thing to say!” Kent said, the muscles in his jaws tight with anger.
“You posed the question.”
He glared at me, then focused on Michelle, who was stroking her horse’s nose and soothing her. “Again, Michelle, I did not put that tack in your horse’s saddle. Come on. We’ve known each other for years. I’d never do something like this to you!”
“I…” She paused and sighed. “You’re right. I was just so upset at seeing my poor Sugar.” She clicked her tongue. “I can’t believe anyone would do something like this! Who was it?” Michelle demanded again.
“I don’t know. It could have been anyone who knows where you keep your horse and saddle. Maybe it’s been there for days now.”
She shook her head vigorously. “I went riding by myself just this past Sunday. It was not there then. I’m certain of that much.”
“Maybe it was Molly,” Kent said, indicating me with a jerk of his head. “She could have pushed the nail into your saddle while she was supposedly inspecting the three horses when she first arrived.”
Michelle whirled around to focus on me.
“Oh, please. I haven’t gone anywhere near Sugar’s saddle this whole trip. I never had the opportunity to shove a nail into the stirrup, let alone the motive.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Kent grumbled. “One thing we can all be sure about is that I’m the one who risked his neck rescuing you. Just keep that much in mind, all right?”
“Thank you for helping me,” Michelle replied, but without much feeling.
“You’re welcome.” Kent managed to pull out the nail, then took a white handkerchief from his pocket and helped Michelle to wedge it between the pieces of leather in Sugar’s saddle, providing a little makeshift padding over the wound. In the meantime, Nellie lay down, and I decided to join her, knowing that a third pair of hands working on Sugar’s saddle would not be helpful.
After a while, Kent boosted Michelle into the saddle. Sugar seemed fine, and Kent got back onto his horse.
“This experience has all been shot to hell,” he said. “Let’s just get the horses back to the stables and call it a day. All right?”
“Fine,” Michelle said. S
he was still in very low spirits. She gave me a long look. “Somebody booby-traps my saddle so that I’ll get thrown, right after Sylvia gets murdered. Maybe I’m next on the killer’s hit list.”
I was too busy trying to coax Nellie back onto all fours to offer a comment. By standing directly in front of her and pulling on her reins, I finally got her off her side.
At length, I realized that they were both watching me. Apparently it was either my turn to deny that I’d done it, or they’d never seen a rider trying to get her horse to stand up before. I climbed into Nellie’s saddle quickly—though not effortlessly—before she could change her mind.
“Michelle, would anyone else on the school board know enough about your horse as to be able to identify your saddle?”
She raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure. I mean, virtually everybody who knows me knows that I own a horse. I mention her often enough. And I’ve probably even mentioned the name of the stables where she’s boarded.” She looked over at Kent.
Kent paused and furrowed his brow. “Maybe. I can’t swear to it either way.”
I could ask my father, I thought, whether or not the riding stable that Michelle used was common knowledge among board members.
We trotted toward our original meeting place. The joy that I’d once experienced from horseback riding had definitely been lost for me somewhere during the space of the last couple of decades. My stomach muscles and, in fact, the entire lower half of my body were aching like mad. All I could think of under the circumstances was a distortion of the old saying: If wishes were horses, beggars would really be out of luck.
I went home and took two aspirin plus two ibuprofen tablets. Betty Cocker was going nuts sniffing at me, trying to identify my new Eau de Horse. My rear end and thighs seemed to have become swollen in the past couple of hours.
While whimpering louder than Betty ever did at her very worst stage of doggie desperation, I eventually managed to peel my jeans off. I got into the shower and drained the hot-water tank in my efforts to de-horsify myself.
During my shower and while I gingerly dressed afterward, I couldn’t get past the thought that, if Michelle changed her vote, Dad’s cause could be annihilated. Sylvia had been murdered. Michelle had narrowly averted serious injury. Put in this light, it seemed prudent to heed that warning about the danger that Dad and my family were in.
Could someone on the pro-arts contingent be so obsessed with winning that he or she was wiping out the competition? With Michelle switching sides, the only pro-arts supporters, other than my dad, were Stuart Ackleman and Carol Barr.
I mulled over the events at the murder scene once again and limped into the kitchen, my muscles aching as though I’d recently given birth. I decided that it was quite possible that the poison Sylvia had ingested had been in her otherwise-empty water glass right from the start. Sylvia could easily have poured water into her glass, not noticing a small quantity of poisonous liquid already present.
This theory meant that I needed to track down the elderly woman who’d carried Sylvia’s coat and set up the glasses at the start of the meeting.
I called Lauren, who’d worked as a secretary in the school long enough to know many of the employees at the Ed Center. When she answered, I immediately said, “Lauren, what can you tell me about the woman who was setting up the dais Monday night?”
“Agnes Rockman,” Lauren said quietly. Her coworkers must have been in the vicinity. “She used to be the superintendent’s personal secretary, but now she works for the school board. She’s retiring at the end of this year. I’m sure that working for the board was less demanding an assignment for her.”
“So that means that this Agnes worked directly for Sylvia?”
“For the school board, yes.”
“Here’s my theory, Lauren. Sylvia might have treated her employee as badly as she did those who disagreed with her. Maybe Sylvia was making her life miserable, and Agnes seized the opportunity to get rid of her.”
After a pause, Lauren said, “You’ve…never met Agnes, have you?”
From the sound of Lauren’s voice, it was obvious that she doubted my scenario. “No, why? Are you certain she’s innocent, or something?”
“Let’s just say it would be highly unlikely that she’d…do what you’re suggesting. Unless something truly extraordinary occurred, very recently. I have her number in my employee handbook. Hang on a moment.”
While I was waiting, I remembered that the secretary had become so completely overwrought when Sylvia collapsed that the superintendent had been forced to take her out of the room. This must be what Lauren was referring to when she’d been so skeptical about my theory.
Lauren came back on the line with the information and gave me Agnes’s work and home phone numbers. I thanked her, disconnected, then immediately dialed Agnes’s office number. The woman who answered told me that she was filling in because Agnes had “suffered a personal loss recently” and was not going to be in the office until tomorrow. I asked if this “personal loss” was Sylvia Greene, and the woman said, “Yes, she and Agnes were close friends.”
The moment I called Agnes at home and introduced myself as Charlie Peterson’s daughter, she launched into an emotion-laden speech about how misunderstood and wonderful Sylvia had been. When I asked if I could speak to her about Sylvia’s death, Agnes immediately invited me to her home and even gave me directions. That was surprising, but I’d gotten the impression that she desperately wanted someone to reminisce with about Sylvia. Though I was hardly a Sylvia fan, I was horrified and angered by her murder and decided it was reasonably honest of me to accept the invitation.
Agnes lived in an old restored farmhouse, set back from the main road. The siding was painted red with white trim. Each of the rooms had faded wallpaper. The interior featured wide floorboards, which were uneven but neatly varnished. The house was furnished in antiques that struck me as being nice enough but more valuable in terms of memories than in monetary worth.
She was an elderly and, frankly, physically unattractive woman with wide, almost mongoloid features. My first impression, though, was that she was a sweet, caring person. We sat in rather uncomfortable Shaker-style chairs in her dining room, and I listened and nodded as she told me what a wonderful person Sylvia Greene had been in private, despite her more ornery public persona.
“How could anyone have done this to her?” she sobbed to me for at least the fifth time. “She was a little…intimidating, the way she’d be so in-your-face and using the Latin all of the time. But that was just because she was secretly holding such a low opinion of herself. Ms. Greene was like a daughter to me. Or a younger sister, anyway. But a beloved younger sister. I would have done anything for that woman. Anything. Absolutely.”
With such a strong bond between the two women, it was strange that Agnes kept referring to her as “Ms. Greene,” and never Sylvia. “I’m curious about the water glasses. Do you usually pour the water itself, or do you just set out the glasses for them to fill?”
She sniffled a little, then answered, “I’m always too busy before meetings to fill their glasses. I just set them out.”
“Do you carry the glasses in from some other location and set them down at random? I mean, the board members don’t each have their own labeled water glasses or anything, do they?”
“We keep the glasses in a small kitchenette within the building, and all of the glasses are exactly the same.” She dabbed at her bloodshot eyes. “I’ve heard that she was poisoned, but I don’t see how, unless someone slipped something into her glass of water and then handed it to her. Which reminds me. Can I get you anything to drink?”
“No, thanks,” I said, a bit too quickly, perhaps. I was not going to be eating or drinking anything handled by one of the board members or by Agnes.
“It’s all over the radio talk shows that someone on the board must have done it. Poisoned her.”
“Do you believe that theory?”
“Why, yes. I don’t believe al
l the callers, of course. There have been several who’ve accused Mr. Peterson of being the one. That I don’t believe.”
“I’m glad to hear that you realize my father is innocent.”
“Of murder,” she said pointedly.
“You knew what Sylvia was about to divulge, then, I take it?”
“I do. And, I suppose, now that it has hit the front page of the newspaper, so does everyone else. But don’t worry, dear. I don’t think the less of you for being his offspring. You don’t blame the acorns for the tree, I always say.”
Bristling, I said pointedly, “I happen to really respect and admire my tree. Speaking as an acorn, I mean.”
The phone rang, and Agnes went to answer. After saying hello, she launched into a series of questions: “Are you serious? But doesn’t he realize that this is too soon? He did? But why?” None of the answers were meeting with her approval, and she was clearly distressed when she hung up.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Molly, I’m afraid I’ve got to get myself together and go to the Ed Center.”
I promptly got to my feet. “What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do?”
“No. It’s just that,” she grimaced and said through clenched teeth, “Stuart Ackleman. As vice president of the school board, he has called a meeting of the board to announce their decision on who is going to take Ms. Greene’s place.”
“Their decision? Won’t they hold a new election?”
She shook her head. “It takes far too much time and resources to schedule a new general election. This chosen replacement will merely serve on the board until the next regularly scheduled election. Which is next fall.”
“Okay. I guess I can see that. But why are they doing this so soon? Out of respect to Sylvia if nothing else, they should have waited at least a week. This is outrageous!”
Death on a School Board (Book 5 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 10