Lead a Horse to Murder

by Cynthia Baxter

  With the housekeeper gone, Peyton focused her attention on me. “Your timing is excellent. The rest of my luggage just arrived from Europe. Would you be a dear and help me carry these suitcases into my bedroom? You must be as strong as a bull, working around horses and all that. The stupid FedEx people just left them at the front door. You’d think they’d have the decency to deliver them to the room they’re headed for, wouldn’t you?”

  If not wash and press everything inside, I thought, decrying the low standards we’d all settled for.

  However, the chance to do a little snooping was irresistible.

  “Sure,” I told her. “I’d be happy to help.”

  Without so much as a thank-you, Peyton picked up the smallest piece of luggage—pretty much a cell phone carrier with a handle—and headed back upstairs, leaving the two humongous valises for me. I gritted my teeth, telling myself that the possibility of learning something interesting about Eduardo was worth a few pulled muscles.

  I followed her up the stairs and down a long hallway, lugging the two suitcases. Finally, we reached a large bedroom that was decorated in soft shades of peach and mint green. French doors that led out onto a balcony had been left open, sending the sheer white curtains that covered them billowing in the breeze.

  “Put them down anywhere,” Peyton instructed me.

  I was about to ask her if I should expect a bigger tip than the one she’d given the taxi driver when she let out a long, loud sigh.

  “I absolutely despise unpacking,” she grumbled, flicking a strand of hair over her shoulder. “I’d have Inez do it, but she always puts things in the wrong place. I swear, I don’t know why Daddy keeps her around.”

  “She seemed really upset when she learned Eduardo was dead,” I interjected. I held my breath, hoping Peyton wouldn’t notice how quickly I’d changed the subject from the cruel hand fate had dealt her—that is, having to unpack all by herself after her difficult summer of clubbing and sunbathing all over Europe—to the dead polo player.

  “You know, I’m not stupid,” Peyton said calmly. “I know exactly what you’re doing.” In response to my blank look, she added, “You’re trying to figure out who killed Eduardo.”

  “Well, no, I was just—”

  “I’m not judging you,” she insisted. “It’s a natural thing to wonder. Except you don’t have to work at it this hard. All you have to do is ask me.”

  “Ask . . . you?”

  “Right. Ask me who killed Eduardo.” She shrugged. “I’m not going to lie.”

  “Okay, then. Who killed him?”

  She frowned, then placed her hands on her nearly nonexistent hips and glanced around the room. “Where are my cigarettes? I can’t imagine . . .” She spotted her pocketbook lying on the bed, grabbed it, and spilled the contents out. In addition to the Chanel wallet, Tiffany keychain, Gucci credit card holder, MAC lipstick, Mont Blanc pen, and all the other items that came pouring out, was a packet of Silk Cuts. British, I thought, pleased that I’d learned something useful from reading Bridget Jones’s Diary. She wasted no time lighting up with—what else?—a gold Cartier lighter, then turned her attention back to me.

  “My father.”

  I didn’t even try to hide my astonishment.

  “It was almost inevitable,” she went on, pausing to take a puff. “You see, he’s very possessive.”

  “Possessive of what?” I asked.

  “Of me.” Her matter-of-fact tone was chilling. “He knew Eduardo and I were lovers. Even more importantly, that we were madly, passionately in love. And Daddy had no intention of ever letting us do anything as extreme as get married.”

  I studied her, thinking that I had yet to see any indication that Peyton had had even fond feelings for Eduardo, much less that she’d been “madly, passionately in love” with him. In fact, it was difficult to imagine someone so wrapped up in herself feeling that way about anyone besides the reflection she saw in the mirror.

  “My impression is that your father adored Eduardo,” I told her.

  “Oh, he did. At least, on the polo field. Eduardo was a great player, but he was still an Argie. Believe me, my father wasn’t about to let his precious daughter marry one of them.

  “You see, my father isn’t quite what he seems,” Peyton went on. “The Argies are good enough to ride his horses and share his table and make him look good on the polo field. But letting one of them marry his daughter—and gain serious access to his money—well, that’s something else entirely.”

  She paused, smoking her cigarette and thinking. “Of course,” she finally said, “it could have been me who murdered Eduardo, too.”

  “You?” Her remark caught me entirely off guard. “Why would you have done something like that?”

  She shrugged. “Jealousy, most likely. I know perfectly well that Eduardo had other lovers. That vile Chase woman, for example, who’s had so much fat pumped out and so much collagen and Botox and Lord knows what else pumped in that it’s amazing she doesn’t float into the air like a badly dressed helium balloon.” She took a few more puffs, then mused, “I have to change. What should I put on?”

  She strolled over to her closet and studied a row of white blouses. From where I stood, they all looked pretty much the same. Finally, she pulled out one that was hanging neatly on a padded satin hanger. “There is one small problem with that theory, of course. I have an airtight alibi. I was out of the country until Sunday, five days after he died. Even I’m not clever enough to murder someone from three thousand miles away. Which, of course, brings us back to Daddy.” She focused on the blouse, sticking out her lower lip in her usual childish pout. “For heaven’s sake, will you look at what Inez did to this blouse? You’d think someone who claims to be such a skilled housekeeper could manage to get a simple caviar stain out of linen, wouldn’t you? Honestly, if this happens one more time . . . Inez? Inez, where are you?”

  She stalked off, her high heels clicking angrily against the wooden floor in the hallway as she went to chastise her servant. It was a very Marie Antoinette moment. Maybe there really is something to this reincarnation business, I thought.

  I was about to leave her bedroom when I noticed that all the items from her pocketbook were still lying in a heap on the bed. One in particular caught my eye. An oversized envelope, the kind the airlines give out with a boarding pass. I glanced at the doorway. There was no one in sight. I could hear Peyton downstairs, berating poor Inez, shrilly lecturing her on the importance of maintaining high standards in the workplace—a topic on which she obviously considered herself an expert.

  I stepped over to the bed, trying to get a better look at the boarding pass. The printing was facedown. Glancing around one more time to make sure I was alone, I picked it up. Paris to New York on Air France, just as I’d expected. This was the ticket Peyton had used to come back to the United States.

  But my stomach lurched when I focused on the date: September 2, five days before Eduardo’s death.

  She lied, I thought, my head spinning as I maneuvered the curves of Turkey Hollow Road and headed back to what I’d come to think of as my real life. Not that it was the least bit difficult to believe that someone who was that spoiled—and that full of herself—was capable of dishonesty. But she’d gone out of her way to tell me her alibi, then either carelessly or craftily laid out the evidence that it was completely invalid.

  Is Peyton MacKinnon so out of touch with reality that she thinks she’s above suspicion—and perhaps even above the law? I wondered. Or is she playing some other game—a game that for some reason has something to do with me?

  Thanks to the full day of appointments I had scheduled, I quickly forgot all about Peyton and Eduardo. In fact, it wasn’t until I got home that evening that I remembered that I had something much more personal than the polo player’s murder to deal with.

  The sight of Nick’s black Maxima, parked in what I considered the van’s unofficial parking space, reminded me.

  Of course. Today was the d
ay Nick had moved in. Temporarily, I reminded myself, taking a few deep breaths before opening the front door.

  The dogs were instantly all over me, ecstatic that the leader of their pack was home. Prometheus also squawked his hello. And there was a new addition to the household: Leilani, the Jackson’s chameleon Nick and I had brought home from Hawaii, blinking at me from her glass tank on the coffee table.

  But Nick was nowhere in sight. And here I’d expected to find him relaxing in the comfortable upholstered chair in a velvet smoking jacket, reading the paper and sipping brandy from a snifter.

  “Nick?” I called. “I’m, uh, home.”

  He poked his head out of the kitchen, looking unusually frazzled. “I’m so glad you’re here! The leader of my study group called an emergency meeting. And it’s my turn to host. Don’t we own an ice bucket?”

  I let his use of the word “we” breeze by me. “They’re meeting here?” I demanded. “But this place is so tiny! Can’t they meet at your place?”

  “It’s too chaotic, Jess. I stopped in before to pick up some stuff I forgot to bring over this morning. There are drop cloths all over the furniture, the entire place smells so strongly of paint that I practically gagged . . .”

  “Exactly how many people are in this study group?” I asked.

  “Just four, besides me.”

  “All right,” I agreed. The last thing I wanted was to be a bad sport. Even if I suspected that having that many people inside my tiny cottage at one time violated the fire code.

  “Great,” Nick said, sounding relieved. “Jess, you’re the best. No wonder I’m so crazy about you.” He hesitated. “Would it be pushing my luck to ask you to hold down the fort while I take a quick shower? The members of the group should be here in a couple of minutes. If you’d just let everybody in—”

  “Of course. In fact, I’d be happy to.”

  “And I stopped at the supermarket and picked up some stuff for everybody to eat. But I didn’t have time to do the Martha Stewart thing and make it look all nice and presentable. . . .”

  “I’ll take care of that, too,” I assured him. I just hoped he didn’t have any illusions about me coming even close to Martha’s standards.

  As I pulled bottles of soda and wine out of the refrigerator, I actually found myself looking forward to the evening ahead. Meeting some of Nick’s fellow law school students will be fun, I thought. I pictured all of us relaxing together after the group’s intense night of debating the fascinating intricacies of the law, sipping wine and intelligently discussing world events. In fact, this whole law school thing was starting to sound better and better. Nick’s involvement in a brand-new sphere was bound to open up an entire world of clever people with a burning commitment to maintaining justice in an increasingly chaotic and confusing world.

  I was even inspired enough to hunt down six matching glasses. Then I dumped a box of crackers into a crystal bowl that had somehow found itself in my possession, first wiping it out to remove the dust. Next I set out some cheese—a slab of Jarlsberg and a wheel of Brie—on a wooden cutting board. All right, so I wasn’t exactly ready for my own televison show. But it would do.

  When the doorbell rang, I almost wished I owned a long velvet skirt or some other garment that was the female equivalent of a smoking jacket. I scooped up Max before answering, figuring a cute, fluffy white dog was a nice touch. After all, I wanted to convey the image of a sophisticated woman who felt at home among both intelligent humans and our animal friends.

  By that point, I was expecting to find Cary Grant and Diane Sawyer standing on my doorstep. My enthusiasm was dampened by a quick dose of reality.

  “Am I in the right place?” A tall, scrawny guy—at least six foot four and maybe one hundred fifty pounds—leaned forward and peered at me through the thick lenses in his tortoiseshell eyeglasses. The heavy frames were completely out of proportion, given his gaunt face and small, beady eyes. He was dressed in jeans that looked as if they’d been dry-cleaned. His light blue shirt was obviously brand-new, since the creases that demonstrated precisely how it had been folded in the package created a grid across his sunken chest. I just hoped he’d remembered to take the pins out.

  But it was the bow tie that really got me. He didn’t come close to carrying it off the way Winston Farnsworth did.

  “Are you looking for the study group?” I asked politely. “Nick Burby?”

  “That’s right. We’re looking for Nick.” A short woman who bordered on rotund stepped out from behind him. She was dressed in a batiked skirt that reached almost to her Chinese canvas shoes. A shawl made of coarse, undyed fabric was wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Even so, I could see she’d draped half a dozen strands of colorful beads around her neck. Her long red hair, shooting out from her head like an aura, was just as coarse. My first impression of her face was that she reminded me of a pug. But while a flat, squishy nose and small dark eyes looked unbelievably cute on a canine, on her those features didn’t have quite the same effect. “Is Nick here?”

  I forced myself to smile. “You’ve come to the right place.”

  “Good,” the geeky guy said, pouting. “I was sure we were lost.”

  The woman looked me up and down critically. Narrowing her eyes suspiciously, she demanded, “Who are you?”

  “Jessica Popper. Nick’s girlfriend.”

  “Nick didn’t say anything about a girlfriend.”

  “He told us we were meeting at his friend’s house,” the man insisted.

  “Yes, but he didn’t say it was a girlfriend’s house,” the woman hissed back.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your names,” I said as politely as I could through gritted teeth.

  “I’m Wendy Harnik. And this is Jerome Sidlanski.”

  And here I’d been so sure they were going to introduce themselves as Cary and Diane.

  As I was ushering them inside, I saw that another member of Nick’s study group had arrived. A remarkably thin woman who’d pulled her shiny black BMW up onto the grass, taking out a few of Betty’s flower beds in the process, slammed the car door. Then she headed toward the cottage, teetering on a pair of high heels that didn’t quite mesh with the badly paved piece of road that served as my driveway. She wore a black pantsuit and several pieces of large jewelry and was clasping a cell phone tightly against her ear.

  “I don’t give a damn what they told you,” she shrieked into the phone. “A deal is a deal. You tell those bastards—look, I can’t talk now. I’ll have to get back to you on this.” Her thickly lipsticked mouth was frowning as she slammed her cell phone closed, then stuck it into the tremendous leather purse that dangled from her shoulder. She strode toward me, arranging her mouth into a smile when she realized someone was watching.

  “Nick Burby’s place?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “And you are—?”

  “Nick’s girlfriend. Jessica Popper.”

  “Oh, that’s right. The vet. He told us all about you.” She sighed tiredly, as if she’d already heard quite enough. “So can we call you Jessica? Or are we supposed to call you Dr. Pepper?”

  I ignored the reference to soft drinks, accidental or otherwise. “Jessie is fine. And what should I call you?” I’d already come up with a few ideas of my own.

  “Stephanie Walcott. God, is there someplace I can get a glass of wine around here? Oh, damn!” The last comment was in response to her cell phone, which had begun to bleat out an annoying melody. Rolling her eyes, she jammed her hand deep into the mailbag in search of it, muttering to herself when it failed to materialize.

  I was actually glad when the fourth and final member of Nick’s study group came up behind her and I had an excuse to turn my focus elsewhere.

  “I got so lost!” whined the pudgy young man with a remarkably pasty complexion. “Nobody told me you couldn’t see the house from the road! Why didn’t anybody say anything? I’m not familiar with this area at all. How were we supposed to find this place?”
>
  “Well, you’re here now!” I told him brightly. “I’m Jessie, Nick’s girlfriend.”

  “Ollie Sturges. Actually, Oliver J. Sturges the third. Oh, my God. That’s not a cat, is it? Nick didn’t say anything about any cats. I’m so allergic. You’ve got to put that animal outside. Oh, my God, did I bring my inhaler?”

  By this point, Nick had emerged from the bedroom, his skin still flushed from his shower. Buttoning the cuff of his shirt, he said, “Hey, everybody. Glad you found us.”

  I picked up Cat and shut her inside the bedroom, then grabbed the dogs’ leashes.

  “You’re not leaving, are you?” He frowned, pushing the damp strand of dark brown hair out of his eyes. “I don’t want you to feel you have to leave your own house.”

  “I don’t mind.” In fact, I was tempted to tell him I could hardly wait to get out of there. “Come on, Max. Let’s go, Lou.”

  As I hurried out the door with my two canine pals, I could hear Ollie Sturges III whining, “This Brie is cold! It’s supposed to be served at room temperature!”

  But before anyone could respond, he was cut off by the singsong chirping of Stephanie’s cell phone.

  I sat in my VW for a few minutes, thinking. My dogs couldn’t understand what we were waiting for. Max kept jumping up on the window, and Lou wouldn’t take his nose away from the glass—their way of saying, “Are we there yet?” Even their extraordinary cuteness wasn’t enough to pull me out of my dark mood. I was too busy feeling rejected by Nick—or at least left out in the cold by his decision to reinvent his life and himself.

  I whipped out my own cell phone and dialed. “Hey, Forrester. How’s it going?”

  “Hey, Popper,” he replied breezily. “What’s up?”

  “I have a new theory,” I told him. “What do you think about Peyton being the murderer?”

  “MacKinnon’s older daughter, right?”

  “Yup. She told me she and Eduardo were lovers. And she claimed she had an alibi, but—”

  “Sounds like you’ve come up with some great stuff,” he interrupted. “But I’m about to head into a town board meeting I’m covering. Some big blowup over a proposed zoning change. Can I catch up with you later?”