Outside, we ran into Dex and Renee.
“Leaving so soon?” Dex asked.
“Vi caused a scene,” Malcolm said.
“Sorry I missed it,” Renee said.
“Norman’s mother asked me to leave.”
“I’ll bet,” Dex said.
When did they become such masters of understatement? We stood there for a minute.
“Anybody know where Sandy lives, or her phone number?”
“Not far from here, I don’t think,” Renee said.
“I don’t have her number with me,” Malcolm said.
We were silent again, then Renee asked, “You want to go over there?”
“Don’t you think it’s odd she’s not here?”
“Maybe she’s coming later.”
“Vi’s right,” Malcolm said. “Sandy would have been here early and stayed until the end. We can swing by, knock on her door. I don’t think she has anyone else to check on her, now that Norman’s gone.”
The return of St. Malcolm.
Dex said they’d go inside for a visit, and catch up with us later. We agreed to meet at The Brick in an hour, and Malcolm and I walked to the Jag.
He started it, put it in drive, and then shoved the gear shifter back to park. The engine hummed eagerly beneath the hood.
“You sure do make life interesting,” he said.
I didn’t take that as a compliment. “Guess I’m the keep-you-on-your-toes-and-guessing side of the equation. Anyway, I didn’t ask for any of this.”
He gave my knee a squeeze, as good at communicating with touch as with words. Small wonder the horses liked him so well. Small wonder I did, too.
“She doesn’t really hold me responsible for Norman’s death, does she?”
“Probably, but no one else does.”
“Do the police have any leads?”
“They’ve questioned a few persons of interest.”
“Who wants to hurt you?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “I think I have a right to know what’s going on.”
“You know just about as much as I do. JJ’s the only person I know of who has a grudge against me.”
Brooke clutched no small amount of resentment toward him. I thought I’d decline bringing that up right then.
“What does the sheriff make of JJ’s history?” I asked.
“He’s disappeared for the moment.”
“Guess he took your advice.”
He grunted. “That would be a first.”
“What about the drug Norman took? Any ideas about that?”
“I don’t believe he took it,” he said with a shake of his head.
“Dex said—”
“I know Norman’s history. He was a fuck-up in a lot of ways, but I still don’t believe he took that stuff. Not that much of it, anyway.”
“Look I’m best friends with denial, too, but—”
He gave me a sharp look and pulled away from the curb.
“Sorry about your SUV,” I said.
“Don’t mention it.”
I got the feeling he really meant that, so I shut up until we reached Sandy’s. She lived in a small frame house about two miles outside of town down a dead-end gravel road.
The setting sun soaked the white-shingled cottage in pink, but it didn’t hide the peeling paint, sagging gutters, or rotten porch steps. It was hard to tell whether anyone was home, but her car sat in the driveway. Clouds had begun to bunch along the western horizon during the afternoon. They converged at that moment like a shade being pulled shut, and it was obvious there were no lights on inside.
Malcolm knocked. I called her name. No response. We frowned at each other. He pounded and yelled, “Sandy! It’s Malcolm and Vi. Are you in there?”
I walked to the side and hopped like a bunny to peer in the windows. Couldn’t see much. The condition of the back porch was worse than the front, but the door was open a crack, so I took my chances and went up the three steps. They creaked but held. I shouted to Malcolm, and he came around.
He put one hand on the railing. It swayed. “Go in,” he said. “I don’t trust this to support both of us.”
Crap. Why did I have to be the first one in? Did I look like a brave person? Let me answer that. No.
My stomach clenched, and little beads of cold sweat broke out on my upper lip. The last time I’d seen Sandy, she’d been in tears over Norman’s death. I’d talked to her Saturday. I wondered if anyone else had seen her since then.
At my hesitation, he said, “Just step in far enough to get off the steps. I’ll be right behind you.”
That’s what they always say.
- 33 -
I took a bracing breath and did as he said. The door swung in to the kitchen. It smelled like rotten fruit, but in the dim shadows, I saw nothing more than the usual appliances, cabinets and sink. A few drawers hung open.
Malcolm came in and poked me in the back to prod me forward.
“This doesn’t feel right,” I said.
“We’re not breaking and entering. The door was open.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
He moved in front of me, looked around, sniffed. “I think I know what you mean.” He took my hand. “Come on.”
The kitchen opened to a living room. A worn sofa faced a television. The coffee table in between had several empty soda cans on it. Newspapers and magazines scattered across the floor, and a set of bookshelves had been emptied of its paperbacks, but I didn’t get the impression Sandy was a slob.
“He was here,” I said. “Whatever he was looking for in the apartment, he came here to look for, too.”
“You don’t know that.”
He didn’t sound convinced of his assertion. The place was isolated. No nearby neighbors. JJ could have ripped the sheetrock off the framing and no one would have noticed.
Malcolm nodded toward a doorway in one wall. “You better go in first.”
“What? Why me?” But I knew why—in case Sandy was in there and she wasn’t decent. The man had boundaries. Respect. Had to admire that. And I would. Some other time. At the moment, I’d prefer he toss his deference out the nearest window.
I stood as far as I could from the closed door and touched it with my fingertips. It creaked open enough for me to poke my head in.
The room on the other side of it barely contained the full-sized bed, dresser, and side table. The closet door was open as well as the drawers in the dresser, and clothes littered the floor. It smelled like the breath of a hangover laced with sex.
Sandy sprawled across the bed, naked, arms flung to the sides, legs and mouth spread wide. Fear jolted through me, and my breath hitched in my chest. Then, I realized she was snoring slightly. Not dead. Jesus. Thank you.
I was met with a view no one but a gynecologist should have. “Hang on,” I said to Malcolm. “She’s in here, but…” I moved all the way into the room. Evidence be damned. I pulled a sheet up to her chin, then said, “Coast is clear.”
He came in. “Is she all right?”
She was pale and sweaty, drooling slightly and taking shallow breaths, not the deep inhalations of someone in a normal sleep. A new bruise spread across her left cheekbone. Her eye looked swollen. I nudged her shoulder.
“Sandy?” I pushed harder and raised my voice. “Sandy!” She didn’t move. “Out cold.”
Malcolm laid the back of his hand on her forehead, then gently slapped her cheek. “Sandy?”
He used her phone to dial 911. As soon as he hung up, he speed-dialed a number on his cell, probably Dex One.
I looked around the room. Crammed on the tiny table next to the bed were a lamp, an alarm clock, a paperback, a glass with about a half inch of brown liquid in the bottom, and an empty tissue box, all partly buried in used tissues. They overflowed a wicker wastebasket on the floor, too. The trash also held an empty rum bottle.
I sniffed the glass.
“What is it?” Malcolm asked from the other side of the bed.
“If I had to
guess, I’d say it was rum and Coke.”
“You have experience identifying liquor by smell?”
That was a halfway loaded question. “Some.”
I picked up the book. Wadded tissues tumbled to the floor.
“Don’t touch anything.” He planted his hands on his hips and glanced around. The walls were as bare as Sandy. “Was she covered with this sheet when you came in?”
“No.”
“Don’t touch anything else.”
I gave him a look. The book was a Romance—the kind Penny read. This one featured a fierce-looking, bare-chested highlander holding a sword with one hand and a buxom, red-haired lass with the other. They were framed by a forbidding sky. Wind blew his kilt up and her hair across his chest. Her buxomness looked about to spill out of her thin, lacey chemise. What she was doing running around the highlands dressed like that, I just don’t know.
I put it back on the table, and more tissues fell to the floor, exposing what looked like a prescription bottle.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Look at this.” I picked it up thinking that in her despair over Norman, Sandy must have overdosed on something.
Malcolm came around the bed. “Didn’t I just say—”
“Holy shit. It’s ketamine—that stuff Dex said they found in Norman.” The small—empty—vial was the kind you use a syringe to extract liquid from. I’d used them plenty with horses. “You think she took it?”
“Put it down. It might have fingerprints on it.” He shook out his handkerchief and used it to take the bottle and put it on the table. “Let the sheriff figure out what happened, okay?”
“Don’t you wonder why this stuff is here, or if she and Norman were using it, or where it came from, or if JJ—?”
“Vi.” He squeezed my hand. “No. I don’t.” He sighed. “Okay. I do, but there’s no point. Until she’s okay enough to answer some questions—”
“She will be okay?”
“From what I understand, she should be fine once she comes out of it.”
Not for the first time since arriving in Missouri, I felt the rise of panic—the roiling of my innards, the inability to take a full breath, the tickle of sweat tripping down my spine.
“If you don’t think Norman took the drug, do you think Sandy gave it to him?” I paced around the bed, stopped by the front window and looked out, trying to calm myself. “That bruise—I know JJ was here. Probably raped her, too.” I pressed my fist against my lips. “Oh, God.”
I turned to face Malcolm, but he’d come up behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders. “This is my fault,” I said. “If I’d pressed charges like you wanted me to, he’d be in jail, right? I should have listened. I could have stopped this.”
He looked at me, his blue eyes soft and clear as a tidal pool reflecting a cloud-free sky. Very slowly, he folded me against his chest, wrapped his arms around me, laid his cheek against the top of my head, and breathed into my hair. I was reminded of how soothing it is to feel the warm exhalation of a horse slide over me like the caress of an angel’s wing. I put my arms around his neck, closed my eyes, and rested against the rhythm of his heartbeat and the steady rise and fall of his chest.
“Remember last night when you told me everything isn’t my fault?”
I nodded.
“I’ll concede that everything isn’t my responsibility, if you’ll do the same.”
“By everything, I’m guessing you mean, like, global warming?”
He laughed. “Yeah, like that.”
“Don’t be so sure. My truck—when it runs—emits more greenhouse gas than a coal-driven factory.”
“I mean all of this. Even if you had pressed charges, he would’ve made bail. He would’ve found a way to do this, if that’s what he wanted.”
Dex and Renee arrived a few minutes later. Renee and I ended up in Sandy’s room, while Malcolm and Dex went outside.
“How come we get the fun part?” I asked.
Renee sighed. “Because we’re women, and this is what women do.”
“I guess I skipped that chapter of the rule book.”
“Sometimes, I wish I’d skipped the rule book altogether.”
She sat next to Sandy on one side of the bed, and I sat on the other. We wiped the spit off her cheek, watched her, and took turns saying her name. She began to moan, and never moved, but she kept breathing.
It took half an hour for the ambulance to arrive. A deputy got there first. Joe, if I remembered correctly. He had to clear the scene before the emergency medical folks could go in.
“Figured you’d be here,” he said, but in a friendly way.
Not two weeks in the state, and I was on a first-name basis with local law enforcement. Malcolm and Dex thought it was funny. I didn’t see the humor in it at all.
One of the emergency techs nodded hello when they went past with the gurney. This was the downside of living in such a sparsely populated area. Or, maybe an upside, I don’t know. The concept was so foreign to me, I had to let it sink in for a while before I could decide.
They intubated Sandy, put her on oxygen, and started an IV before loading her in the ambulance. I was still worried but began to relax knowing she was getting medical attention. I felt sad too, because it made me think how no one had been there for Norman.
And then, I got mad. Because I was sure the events of the past week were all tied together. But how? I needed answers.
I only wished I didn’t have to ask a dead horse to get them.
- 34 -
Dex took Renee home then went to Winterlight. Malcolm and I followed the ambulance to the hospital. Sandy had no family locally, he said. She was an only child, and both her parents had died a few years back. They’d moved to the area when she was a kid, so no extended family nearby, either. The next closest person to her was the veterinarian she worked for. Malcolm said he’d call him later when we knew more.
Shortly after arriving at the hospital and seeing Sandy wheeled into the emergency room, we sat on a waiting-room couch together. A television hung from the ceiling, the volume low. The Cardinals were playing at Houston. It was the bottom of the eighth.
Malcolm watched the screen until the score popped up. St. Louis was ahead by one, but Houston had a man on second. “You want something to eat?” he asked without looking away from the game.
“Yeah,” I said, “a bag of peanuts and a beer.”
“Very funny.” He stood. “Why don’t you come with me, and we’ll see what they have?”
“No thanks. Just get me whatever looks good.”
He grinned. “Jell-O, perhaps?”
“Only if it’s topped with whipped cream.”
“I’d like to talk about your addiction to that stuff.”
I’ll bet. Most men have something else in mind when it comes to whipped cream. “Go away,” I said.
The moment he rounded the corner, I lay on the hard couch. Just a short snooze for Wastrel to show me something useful. I was ready to pay attention. Maybe with the pieces I had, I could make enough sense out of a dream to see part of the big picture.
The couch was not made for reclining, but it didn’t matter. I could sleep in a mud puddle. In a few moments, I drifted off, the sounds of the crack of a bat and a cheering crowd fading quickly. My last thoughts were of Wastrel.
Wastrel must have been digging for clues in someone else’s head. I found myself in the loft at Winterlight, dust floating in the air. I’d been sweeping, getting ready for the new hay crop. Light slanted through high windows, and a big door stood open at one end, letting fresh air blow out last season’s mustiness. It was hot. I wore shorts and a tank top. I pulled the top away from my damp skin to allow a little air to cool it, and took a long drink from a water bottle.
Someone came up the ladder. At first, I was afraid because I thought it might be JJ. But Malcolm’s head appeared through the opening, then the rest of him. He wore his kilt and work boots. Nothing else.
His body was strong and well formed,
but I already knew that. Sweat streaked his torso and dirt smudged his arms from whatever work he’d been doing. He stood for a moment in a shadow, filling the space with masculine intensity. He looked at me, and his eyes darkened.
He walked toward me slowly, the front of the kilt tented with his erection. Desire pooled in my lower body. He took the bottle from me, drank, and poured water over his shoulders, then over mine. My breath caught in my chest, and moisture seeped into my shorts.
He tossed the empty bottle away and circled, looking me up and down. I started to run my hands over his chest to follow the soft trail of hair down his belly, and farther, but he took them, put them behind my back and held them there. His warm mouth covered one breast, sucking through the thin cotton of my shirt. I arched toward him, my hips flexing to reach his.
He moved to the other breast. I moaned and kissed the top of his head, struggling to free myself, to touch him, to bring him closer, but he held me, drawing my nipple deeper into his mouth.
I got one hand loose, shoved it under his kilt, and groped for his penis. It was long and hard and thick. I stroked it from base to tip. He groaned and pinned my arm behind me again holding my wrists in one hand and used the other to loosen my shorts. He pushed them to my thighs and slipped the thin tee-shirt above my breasts. They ached with need.
He kissed and licked my belly and knelt before me. I couldn’t separate my legs with my shorts tight around them. I needed to spread them, needed him inside me, but he kept me stretched taut and exposed only what he wanted.
Sizzling need coursed through me, zinging straight from my breasts down to my personal volcano. Heat and pressure built inside me.
His tongue flicked lower, slipped between my legs. I opened my legs as wide as I could. He slid a finger inside me. Muscles contracted; my whole body rocked and bucked.
“Vi?”
Malcolm shook me awake.
“Wha—?” I sat up too fast and hit him with my forehead.
“Ow.” He stood and felt the bridge of his nose. “Good thing we’re at the hospital.”
“Sorry.” I swung my feet to the floor, not fully awake, desperately wishing I were still asleep. I rubbed my eyes, trying to calm my breathing.
Candace Carrabus - Dreamhorse 01 - On the Buckle Page 22