Shadow Image

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by Martin J. Smith


  He wouldn’t, couldn’t. What had she said, anyway, during that brief hospital conversation? She’d told one raw joke about men with beards. She’d used a couple of unfamiliar names. “She didn’t say anything, Maura, really. It was just how she said a couple of things that got me thinking about the whole issue of privacy. I just never thought about how much we all rely on judgment with stuff like that. What happens in a family when you can’t trust the people who know your secrets, or when the patient starts sharing his or her own secrets with anybody and everybody? It’s just something I’d never thought about before.”

  A sign flashed past on the right. Pearson steered on, aiming the Special’s bulk into the harsh morning sun. “That might have been our turnoff,” he said. “Ridge Road goes right to Muddyross Ranch, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, hell,” Pearson said. She lifted her foot off the accelerator and the Special slowed, as if she’d cut the engines of an ocean liner.

  For someplace so exclusive, the riding club seemed not much different from the public stables at North Park. The parking lot was just as rutted and dusty, filled with big Chevy Suburbans and Dodge Rams and trailers of every conceivable design. Bales of hay were stacked ten feet high at the lot’s southern edge, protected only by a flimsy sheet of blue plastic draped over the top and staked into the hard dirt. Pearson bounced the Special into an open space between a trailer and an overgrown thicket of weeds and trees, then stomped the brake. Plumes of dust poured into the open windows.

  Christensen looked out across the rolling hills beyond the stables. He consulted his mental catalog of Floss Underhill’s paintings for any landscape that might have been drawn from this view, but nothing seemed familiar. The stables themselves, directly in front of them, were sturdy and substantial, more stone than wood but modern in all the right places—built to honor tradition, but with the top-end market in mind in matters of convenience, cleanliness, and civility. The one thing he did recognize was painted on every stall door—the Muddyross Ranch logo. It was unavoidable, like a pox, on trailers, storage sheds, even depicted in the well-tended garden of marigolds and trimmed shrubbery in front of what surely was the ranch’s administrative offices.

  “Must be the place,” Pearson said.

  He laughed. “Good guess.”

  “Think it’s okay to just wander around?”

  “You’re asking me, Maura? These aren’t my people.”

  They both watched for a few minutes through the Special’s elegantly molded windshield. The ranch population seemed to be a society of women—thin, reedy blondes, mostly, with tight jodhpurs and scuffed black riding boots. As they moved about the grounds, each was trailed by an obedient, muscular mount that moved with the grace of a dancer. The few men on the premises seemed to have been bred for work. One, his black, bald head gleaming in the morning sun, lathered and rinsed a skittish white stallion along one side of the stables. Another moved from stall to stall bent beneath an enormous burlap sack labeled “Sweet Feed.” They seemed to speak politely to the riders as they passed, but they never looked up.

  “What’s our story?” Pearson asked. “We don’t look like we belong, and someone’s bound to ask.”

  “If someone asks, we tell them the truth,” he said. “We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

  “Nice try.”

  “Maura, relax. We’re researchers, doing research. People usually bend over backward to help once you tell them what you’re doing.”

  “Truthseekers.”

  “Exactly.”

  The stable area covered maybe two acres, smaller than Christensen had imagined. The only riding facilities he’d ever seen were the sprawling public stables in the county’s two regional parks. Muddyross Ranch smelled the same, and the dust clung to your clothes and hair the same way, but that’s about all it had in common with the North and South Park stables. Muddyross had the unmistakable feel of a private club.

  Stablehands seemed to outnumber the horses on the grounds. A few eyed Christensen and Pearson as they strolled from building to building, but no one seemed too concerned that they were there. In five minutes, they had walked through and around every building on Muddyross Ranch except the administration building. Nothing except the ranch logo seemed remotely like the images in Floss Underhill’s paintings.

  Christensen propped one of his feet on the low rail outside a stall, stroking the nose of a magnificent chestnut mare. “I don’t know what I expected.”

  “By coming here?” Pearson said.

  “Other than the horse and the logo, her paintings are pretty abstract, surreal almost. I just thought maybe there’d be something that connected.” He shrugged.

  “You said she competed here, or ran some horse show, or something? Why don’t you ask around. If she’s that big a player there’s bound to be people who’ll talk to you about her. Maybe you can pick up some background. Did you bring any of the paintings?”

  Christensen shook his head. Floss’s winged-horse image popped into his head, then disappeared. “Don’t you have a copy of the calendar with the Gray painting in it?”

  She patted her shoulder bag. “Let’s show it around like the cops always do.”

  “Maura, this isn’t America’s Most Wanted.”

  Christensen took a last look around, then looked at Pearson. In his jeans, Nikes and light silk sports coat, he wasn’t exactly dressed to blend in with the town-and-country set. But the longer they hung around, the more likely someone would wonder about Pearson’s odd getup. In her voluminous khaki slacks, Reyn Spooner Hawaiian shirt, and huge, unlaced Air Jordans, she looked like the grandmother superior of some preppy-tropical ghetto gang.

  “Let’s head on back,” he said.

  Pearson was squinting into the dim light of a nearby stable. “Did you see that?” she asked, her eyes fixed on some distant point.

  Christensen swiveled his head and squinted, too. The wide stable doors were about twenty feet away, but inside all he could see were empty stalls and an occasional knot of tack dangling outside the stall doors. “See what?”

  “Second stall on the left side.”

  She walked toward the stall door without another word. He followed, glancing once over his shoulder to see who might be watching them. A young stablehand was rounding the corner of another building, headed in their direction. “Maura?” he called to Pearson’s back. But she walked on.

  He caught up to her at the door, where she stood with both arms dangling into a stall the size of a decent living room. Sunlight streamed through a row of clerestory windows about twenty feet off the floor, and his eyes followed the dusty shafts of light from the windows down, down, resting finally on a horse’s large gray rump. What looked like a length of fire hose dangled between its legs.

  “Stallion,” Christensen said.

  Pearson gave him a look. “Aren’t you the sharp one? Actually, it’s missing some equipment. I think he’s a gelding.” She leaned into the stall. “Tchk, tchk. Pretty horse, come. Tchk, tchk.”

  The horse raised his head from a food trough and appraised them. He was chewing something crunchy, the sound like someone grinding uncooked popcorn kernels into meal. Apparently satisfied that the pair meant him no harm, the horse buried his head in the trough again.

  “You see the marking?” Pearson said.

  “What marking?”

  “Between his eyes.” She pulled the Once-Lost Images calendar from her shoulder bag, fanned the pages to April and stabbed a finger at the winged gray horse in the picture. “The mushroom.”

  Christensen focused on the odd marking between the eyes of the horse in the painting. “Tchk, tchk,” he said.

  The horse kept eating. Christensen took one step back. The names of the boarded horses were posted outside each stall, and he scanned quick
ly for the plastic-coated paper thumbtacked to the wall. “King, L12,” he said. “Tchk, tchk.”

  This time the horse stopped eating and looked back at them. Dead-center between its black eyes was a mushroom of dark hair the size of a man’s hand.

  “C’mere, Gray,” Pearson called. “Tchk, tchk.”

  The horse snorted, then turned its massive body around. In three strides it was at the stall door. Pearson patted its jaw with her palm and rubbed its ear. Christensen lifted a hand and the horse nuzzled it. Except for the coarse whiskers, the nose felt like velvet.

  “Here’s your horse,” Pearson said.

  “Whoa, Maura. We’re not sure it’s the same one.” He tapped on the paper nameplate on the stall wall. “Different name. Besides, they kept it at their stables in Fox Chapel.”

  She looked at the sign. “Buy your breakfast for a week if it’s not.”

  Christensen rubbed the mushroom, and the horse tossed its head. Interesting possibility, he thought, even if he had no idea how it might fit into the memory puzzle he was trying to piece together. From what he knew, Floss Underhill’s Gray was freighted with both triumph and tragedy, a champion show horse, true, but also the horse responsible for the death of Floss’s only grandson.

  “Exile?” he said.

  Pearson shook her head, apparently confused.

  “That riding accident I told you about. The newspaper story I read said the horse Ford and his little boy were riding when it happened was gray. I’m sure that’s why the gray horse turns up in a lot of her paintings.”

  Pearson shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her left hand, her right still moving up and down the horse’s jawline. “So maybe having him around their own stables was too much of a reminder?”

  “Maybe they sold him, or maybe they board him way out here so they don’t have to confront those memories all the time,” he said. “I can think of a thousand reasons why he’d be here.”

  For the first time, Christensen felt as if a puzzle piece had fallen into place. It didn’t ease his more nagging concerns about the Underhills, but it was a start. He needed good information, though. What he had so far was speculation based on second- and thirdhand sources, certainly not enough to draw any conclusions about the images in Floss’s paintings.

  At the sound of approaching footsteps, he whirled around, suddenly aware he was tense. Pearson turned, too.

  “Shit!” said the startled young stablehand he’d seen earlier. She was maybe eighteen, her dark brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail, the knees of her jeans dirty from honest work. She dropped the bucket in her left hand.

  “I didn’t know anyone was in here,” she said, bending down to scoop spilled oats back into the bucket.

  “Sorry to scare you,” Christensen said. He waited for the girl to catch her breath. “I’m Jim, this is Maura. We’re just visiting. You work here, then?”

  “Kathleen,” she said. “Input-output technician.”

  Pearson laughed. The girl smiled. Both correctly interpreted his confused look.

  “First she feeds ’em—” Pearson said.

  Christensen put his hand up. “Got it. Then you clean the stalls.”

  “They call us I-Os for short,” the girl said. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

  Christensen shook his head. “Just visiting. Looks a lot like a horse we once knew, though. Know anything about him?”

  The girl stepped forward and rubbed the horse’s nose. “King’s a sweetheart. Aren’t you, baby?” She reached into a canvas pouch dangling from her western belt and held out a handful of what looked like granola. The horse nibbled obediently from her hand. She waited until her palm was clean before returning her attention to Christensen and Pearson. “You should talk to Mr. Doti. He knows everything.”

  “King’s owner?” Christensen asked.

  “Ranch manager,” she said, picking up her bucket. “I’ve never met his owners. But Mr. Doti’s in the office. Second building down, with the garden out front.” She smiled and walked away, tossing a “Can’t miss it” back over her shoulder. She disappeared into a stall three doors down.

  Pearson looked at her watch. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  As they got closer, what from a distance had looked like a rustic old ranch house more clearly became a new building expertly designed to look like a rustic old ranch house. The outside walls were rough timber, but the windows were the kind of extravagant double-paned Pellas that Brenna wanted for their new house, the kind with the miniblind installed between the two panes. They pushed through the oak front door into a cool gust of air, the product of the central air-conditioning unit humming on the building’s roof.

  A small reception area fronted two offices, both with their doors closed. Each of the three desks in the reception area had a personal computer on top, but no one was around.

  “Hello?” he called.

  Pearson drifted over to a wall map of the ranch property, reading it while shifting from foot to foot with her hands clasped behind her back. “Le Petite Ponderosa,” she said.

  One of the office doors opened, and the Marlboro Man stepped out. He was tall, well over six feet, with the barrel chest of a wrestler and a sprinter’s hips. His belt buckle was the size and shape of a cassette tape, with an intricate pattern of turquoise across it that Christensen couldn’t decipher. He was wearing jeans and a denim shirt, but his boots weren’t the least bit scuffed. If he had to guess the man’s age, he’d say about seventy because of the white hair, lines around the eyes, and the distressed-leather look of his skin. Without those clues, he’d have guessed forty-five. Pearson had turned and was all but leering.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Christensen said, extending his hand. “We were looking for the ranch manager.”

  The man beamed. “Y’all got him,” he said with a soft Texas accent. He grasped Christensen’s hand, his palm as rough as a cheese grater. He wasn’t wearing a hat, but he tipped the brim of an imaginary one at Pearson and said, “Ma’am.”

  “I’m Jim Christensen; this is Maura Pearson.”

  He nodded. “Pleasure. First time to Muddyross?”

  “It surely is,” Pearson said, a trace of the South suddenly in her voice. “You’re Mr. Doti then?”

  He nodded. Christensen followed the man’s eyes as he absorbed the full impact of Maura Pearson. “Some fancy shoes you got there,” he said finally.

  Christensen pushed on. “We’re doing some research and were wondering about one of your horses here.”

  “Now if you’re looking to buy, we don’t sell,” the man said. “You’d have to talk to the owner about that. I could help put you in touch—”

  “No, no,” Christensen said. “It’s a little complicated. Do you have a few minutes?”

  After a pause, the man swept a long arm toward his office door. His stomach was as flat as an Oklahoma state road. “Always. Get you folks some coffee? Coke?”

  “Thanks,” Pearson said, pushing past Christensen and following the man through the door into his office. Christensen brought up the rear. The office looked like some Ronald Reagan cowboy fantasy, complete with a replica of Frederic Remington’s Bronco Buster on the corner of the desk. A black cowboy hat hung from the bronc’s upturned tail.

  The office carpet was plush, and as Christensen closed the door, he couldn’t miss the door’s engraved brass nameplate: Warren Doti.

  Chapter 17

  Christensen smelled something warm and familiar as he closed the door behind him, an inviting blast of exotic jungle blend. A sleek black coffeemaker sat on a low oak bureau behind the matching desk, its warming light on. Beside it stood an electric grinder and a vacuum-sealed jar of fresh beans.

  The shelves immediately to
his right looked like the trophy case of a championship-mad high school, with its stunning collection of silver trays, plaques, and loving cups. They weren’t arranged for maximum exposure, but instead were wedged together in chaotic stacks and disorderly groups. Properly displayed, they would have filled the room. The one nearest the door was engraved with Doti’s name beneath the words “National Trainer of the Year, 1964.”

  Christensen didn’t need more coffee, but accepting a cup might put Doti more at ease. “That coffee does smell good,” he said.

  “You take it with anything, Mr. Christensen?”

  “Black’s fine. And please, it’s Jim.”

  “Two, since it’s already made,” Pearson said.

  Doti plucked two white cups from the stack beside the coffeemaker and turned them right side up on the bureau. “Hope you don’t mind it strong. Grew up making it the western way and never lost the taste for it.”

  Pearson leaned forward, apparently fascinated. “The western way?”

  Doti’s face crinkled into a smile. “Boil the grounds in a pot, like soup. When it gets dark like you want it, you just take an egg, crack it over the top.”

  Christensen blanched, looking at the cups Doti was filling. “An egg?”

  “Settles the grounds to the bottom. Works great, but it gives you a real kick-ass cup of coffee.” He nodded to Pearson. “Pardon my French, ma’am. Got used to it that way, so even with this thing I tend to make it pretty strong.”

  The taste and texture were just this side of wet grounds. Christensen smiled at Doti, who was waiting like an anxious prom date for an appraisal. “Just right,” he said.

  Doti seemed to relax as he circled behind his desk and sank into his leather chair. He seemed out of place in that setting, his skin too dark for office work, his collar open too far for doing business, even horse business. A plated chain around his neck hung down into a thatch of white chest hair, anchored there by a glint of something gold. “Now what can I do for you folks?”

 

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