“Everything going okay?” Carly asked as she and Marcus followed.
Trudy turned her head and flashed a sardonic smile, her long brown ponytail swinging with the motion. “Ever try to wrangle nine thoroughbred yearlings into a trailer? They are pretty well mannered, considering, but a few of them have egos and take exception to being told what to do.”
Carly smiled, she was well acquainted with the egos of horses. “Not thoroughbreds, but I do know what you’re talking about.”
They stopped at a stall and Trudy pulled a blanket off a rack on the door. “I didn’t realize you were a horse person,” she said, sounding more curious about why she hadn’t known than surprised at the fact itself.
“It was a long time ago,” Carly said, reaching into her pocket for the piece of paper on which she’d written the numbers Wyatt had given her. “So long ago that I can’t recognize this string of numbers. I was hoping maybe you could.”
Trudy stopped folding the blanket and reached for the piece of paper Carly held. “A tattoo number?” she asked, referring to the tattoos given to racehorses before their first race.
Carly shook her head. “I think it has something to do with the hunter-jumper world.”
Trudy glanced down at the numbers then promptly handed them back. “You’re right. Well, they aren’t racing numbers, and are not limited to the hunter-jumper world either. It’s an FEI passport number.”
Of course. Now that Trudy had identified it, Carly was stunned that she hadn’t seen it sooner. The FEI was the international body that governed the higher levels of competition. Not only that, it also issued equine passports. Every horse she and her mother had imported or exported had had one—people needed passports, so did horses.
“Do you recognize it?” Marcus asked.
“Is that from a horse of yours?” Trudy pulled another blanket off a stall door.
Carly shook her head. “I don’t recognize it, but it could have come from one of our horses.”
Trudy stopped folding the blanket and looked at her. “You used to ride? Not just ride, but compete too?”
“It was a long time ago,” Carly said again, pulling out her phone in a rush to call Naomi and Wyatt so they could run the number through the FEI database.
“Well, if you ever want to ride again. Stop by. Not this week, but things should quiet down after next week,” Trudy offered. “We have all these race horses, of course, but I have a few jumpers that are retired or recovering from various injuries up here with us too.”
“Thanks, I may take you up on that,” Carly replied, surprising herself. “Would you excuse me? I need to make a call.” She held up her phone.
“Please,” Trudy said, “go ahead. Would you mind giving me a hand?” she asked, turning to Marcus.
“Of course not,” he replied, after a brief hesitation. Trudy promptly handed him a stack of blankets. She pulled three more down from three different doors then led Marcus out of the barn, leaving Carly alone to make her call.
As she waited for Naomi to pick up, she breathed in deeply. The scents of leather, hay, and horse filled her senses. It had been so long, too long, since she’d had the pleasure of experiencing those comingling smells.
Naomi answered on the third ring and Carly filled her in quickly. Through a stall door that had a window onto the yard, she watched Trudy and Marcus making their way toward the trailer. Naomi assured her they’d get right on it and, even though Carly wanted Naomi to look the number up right away, she knew Marcus would want to listen in as well, so they agreed to touch base again once Carly and Marcus had returned to the station. It was the right decision, but one that left her feeling anxious.
Until a big bay horse stuck its head out of a stall door and gave her a nudge, drawing a soft laugh from her. Carly slipped the phone into her pocket, and reached out to rub the horse’s nose. Obviously a cuddler, the bay’s brown head dropped into better reach and she gave it a good scratch between its ears before its head came up and rubbed against her side. Carly laughed again as she braced herself against the push of the horse then wrapped her arm around its nose and dropped a kiss on its muzzle. The feeling of regret that washed through her when she realized she had to leave, that she couldn’t hang out with Trudy, this horse, and all the other horses, was a strong one.
With one more rub between the bay’s eyes, she stepped away and kept walking, a bit worried that if she stopped to notice any of the other horses she might not get out of there for several hours. As she rounded the barn toward the car, she found Marcus and Trudy walking down the ramp of the trailer empty handed. After thanking Trudy again, she and Marcus climbed into their car and headed back to the police station.
When they arrived, Sharon, the station’s receptionist, handed Carly a stack of messages, old school style, then she and Marcus headed into her office. Thumbing through the messages as she removed her coat, she noticed a call from Josie and made a mental note to call their new recruit back, hoping she would be able to start sooner rather than later.
“Did you meet her?” she asked, holding the slip of paper up for Marcus to read as he sat down in the chair across her desk.
“Yeah, she seems like she’ll work out. It’ll be nice to have a little more help around here. Not that I’m the one taking the brunt of the heavy lifting.”
Carly glanced at his face as she sat down and noted his narrowed eyes. But rather than probe into the reason for the sarcasm she’d just heard, she placed the slip of paper aside and began dialing Naomi’s number on her desk phone. When the line picked up, Carly hit the speaker button and Naomi’s voice filled her office.
“We found her,” Naomi said.
“Who?” Marcus asked.
“The horse the number was referring to.”
“Who is it?” Carly felt the adrenaline kick in. This could be the lead they so desperately needed.
“A mare you and your mom imported from Holland. Her name on the passport is Seraphina KM.”
Carly sat back as an image of a three-year-old chestnut mare filled her mind. She remembered Sera well. All the horses they’d imported had good minds, some were quirky to be sure, but Sera stuck out for her unusual temperament. She had been a young horse with the soul of a kindly, wise old woman. They’d had her for a year before the murders, and in that year she’d come a long way. Carly had been getting ready to take her to her first show when she’d left for Los Angeles and never seen any of the horses again.
“She went on to have a very successful career,” Carly said. “She won several big grand prix events and represented the US in the World Cup and the World Games.” When she felt Marcus’s eyes on her she looked up. And realized what she’d revealed—to the extent that she could, she had secretly followed the careers of all the horses that had ever come through their family barn. She may not have been able to ride any longer, but obviously her heart hadn’t let her give it up so easily.
She glanced away, out the window with a view onto the alley behind the station. The day, cloudy to begin with, was starting to darken, and the look of winter hovered in the air.
Naomi cleared her throat. “Well, yes. We know she’s living in Florida now. She was bred for a few years, but now she appears to be retired.”
“At eighteen, that makes sense,” Carly murmured.
“But here’s the interesting thing. The day after you two were sent to Los Angeles, your mom called your family vet out to the farm. I pulled those records and your mom had a microchip implanted into Seraphina.”
“But that’s a common practice,” Marcus interjected. “All the horses were chipped, even I knew that. It prevents fraud and such.”
Carly frowned in thought. “That’s true, but Sera was chipped before she was imported. Unless there was a problem with the original, there would have been no reason for Mom to have had another one implanted in her.”
“And since you weren’t showing her, you wouldn’t have had any reason to even know if there’d been a problem with the origina
l.” Marcus picked up her line of thought.
“So whatever Mom had implanted in Sera, it wasn’t likely anything Sera would have needed. It would have been something different,” she said.
“But would Mom have known how to get data onto a chip?” Marcus asked, looking at Carly.
She shrugged.
“Bob Weston,” Joe Franks’ voice answered.
“Bob who?” Carly asked.
Marcus sat back. “You’re right. It wasn’t Bob so much as his son. Bob Weston was married to Sue Karol Weston,” he said, directing his comment to her. “Sue and Uncle Tony used to play tennis together. Tony was starting to do some business with Bob when he and Mom were killed. Bob was helping their son start a microchip company.”
“Kenneth Weston’s company is a huge manufacturer of GPS chips now,” Naomi said picking up the narrative. “They are based out of the Boston area. Drew just left to talk to him to see if he ever did any work with your mom.”
At the sound of Drew’s name Carly couldn’t help but glance up at her brother. A quick look of disapproval crossed his face, but he said nothing.
“We thought it might be better to have someone talk with him in person. Drew has some business acquaintances in common with Kenneth, so he volunteered to go. He’s also going to stop by Lorraine Silva’s house on his way back, to check in on her,” Vivi added.
“I’ve cleared him to tell her a bit about the investigation,” Mikaela said. “We felt that, as Marguerite’s last of kin, she deserves to know what we can tell her.”
At the thought of Lorraine, a shard of panic lanced through Carly. “Do you think Repetto knows about Lorraine? Do we need to be worried about her?”
Vivi chuckled. “Turns out Drew’s had people keeping an eye on her since we first identified Marguerite and figured out Lorraine’s role in raising you and Marcus. He has a friend who owns a private security company.”
For the moment, Carly opted not to ponder the strategic but thoughtful action Drew had taken. “Do we know anything else?” she asked.
“What about the guy on the boat?” Marcus prompted.
“Ah yes, that guy,” Brian said.
“He’s a pain in the arse,” Naomi interjected.
Brian murmured his agreement then elaborated. “So we tracked the utilities like Drew suggested and, sure enough, there is a disproportionate amount of electricity flowing to the boat Repetto rented. We took a look at the security footage at the marina and saw one of our favorite hackers boarding the boat one night.”
“A hacker?”
“Yep,” Naomi answered. “A particularly gross one too. In every sense of the word. He’s not the good kind. Not like us. But he hasn’t ever done anything straight up illegal, either.”
“Does he have the skills to erase Marguerite from the system?” Carly asked.
“Most definitely,” Brian answered.
“Isn’t that illegal?” she wondered aloud.
“Hacking into the federal system is illegal. But it’s possible he didn’t hack into it.”
“So you’re saying Repetto somehow got him legal access into the system?” Carly had no idea how that was even possible.
“I know,” Naomi said, responding to Carly’s disbelief. “It sounds crazy and we agree that it sounds crazy. But we’re looking into it. We’re looking into secret injunctions, search warrants—those kinds of things—that Repetto might have gotten, or might have forged, that would make Jason Moran’s—that’s the hacker’s name—access at least appear legal.”
“If it’s fake, wouldn’t Moran notice?” Marcus asked.
“Yes,” Brian answered. “But if the forged or fraudulent document that granted the access looked real enough, he’d have a solid defense if it were ever called into question.”
“Which is why you guys are keeping an eye on him—it’s possible that he doesn’t care whether or not something is illegal, just whether or not he can get busted for doing it,” Carly said.
“Like I said, he’s never done anything illegal, but with loyalties like his, it would be easy to slip over to the other side with the right incentives and protections in place,” Naomi responded.
“Okay, so that’s the hacker. Anything else? What about Repetto himself?” Carly asked.
“He flew up to Boston this morning on an investigation,” Joe weighed in. “We’ve been monitoring his calls and he’s reached out to some interesting people.”
“Such as?” Marcus prompted.
“He seems to be picking up where he left off. He’s placed calls to two people who were involved in investigations conducted by his team that ultimately yielded no charges,” Joe said.
“And you think he’s going to try to do to them what he did to Uncle Tony,” Marcus suggested.
“We think he’s testing them out,” Vivi answered. “And before you ask, yes, we’re following up on this as well.”
“What about the bullet?” Marcus probed. “Any leads there?”
“That’s been interesting,” Sam cut in. “I was able to clean up the image and we got two hits. The same gun was used in a robbery/homicide in Los Angeles about four years after your mother and uncle were killed, and then again in a homicide in a small town on one of the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound.”
“But no leads on who is using it?” Carly asked.
“No,” Sam said. “Neither case resulted in an arrest, but we’ve requested the files from both police departments and they should be here sometime today. We’ll see what we can find once we have those.”
Carly had started to ask Vivi what they hoped to find in the police reports when there was a knock at her office door.
Without waiting for Carly to respond, Sharon popped her head in and said, “Josie Webb is here.”
Carly gave her a blank look.
“Her first day is today,” Sharon went on in answer to the unasked question. “She left a message saying she’d be in right after she picked up her uniform and got her paperwork done.”
“I’ll be right there,” Carly said, her eyes flicking to Marcus in question. Clearly he’d also missed the memo about today being Josie’s first day. Sharon nodded and shut the door again.
“It sounds like you need to go?” Vivi said over the speakerphone.
“Yeah, I guess we do,” Carly answered. “You’ll keep us updated?”
“Of course,” Vivi replied. “And you can call anytime.”
They disconnected and Carly looked up at her brother, recognizing the wary look in his eyes.
“I don’t want to train a new recruit,” he said flat out. “And besides, I still need to talk to you about something.”
Whatever he needed to talk about could wait—if it had been urgent, he would have already brought it up. “That’s too bad,” she answered. “I need to stay here and go through files, the budget, scheduling, and all.”
“Carly, I’m not so good with people right now,” he managed to say.
“Yeah, I noticed. And while I’d like to be sympathetic—I am sympathetic—the fact is, I can’t do anything with her today. Nothing I’m doing is anything she needs to train on. We need her out on patrol as soon as possible. We need her to be comfortable enough to eventually lead patrols. And I don’t have the time to do that with her, so, whether you want it or not, the job is yours.”
Her words had been practical, but she needed him to do this, and she needed him to do it without complaining.
His lips tightened but he gave a curt nod. “I’ll take her around today, then maybe one of the part-timers can take her tomorrow?”
Carly let out a breath and agreed to the compromise.
“If you hear anything today, you’ll let me know?” he asked.
“Of course.”
She watched as he stood and grabbed his coat from the back of the chair. When the situation with Marguerite and Vince Repetto was over, she and her brother were going to sit down and have a long chat.
“Thanks, Marcus,” she said as he moved out the
door. He didn’t answer but raised his arm in response. When the door closed behind him, she looked down at her desk and computer. Paperwork and budgets would make up most of her day. While her friends were out trying to find out who had murdered her mother, she would be reviewing budgets. While Drew checked on Lorraine and talked to Kenneth Weston, she would be scheduling.
Never in her adult life had she felt so frustratingly futile.
Chapter Nineteen
Drew leaned against the porch railing waiting for Carly to come home. He’d talked to her a few times throughout the day—on his way to Boston, after leaving Ken Weston’s office, and during his visit with Lorraine—and he’d found himself wanting to hear her voice more and more as the day had gone on.
But as he stood in the cold, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, he recognized that if the kiss they’d shared was anything to go by, getting involved with Carly would be like diving into a churning sea where forces stronger than he could fight or control would take over. And while there was something awe inspiring about such power, the thought of yielding to it did not rest easy with him, yet.
However, when her car pulled into her drive and her headlights swept over him, he realized that when he saw her most of his hesitancies fled. When he saw her, as he did now, what he wanted most was to feel her lips on his, her legs wrapped around him, and her hands, well, anywhere.
When her door opened, though, and Carly climbed out, Drew knew that the memory of their kiss hadn’t been foremost in her mind. Her body jerked like a poorly controlled marionette as she exited her car. Her hand shook as she wrapped it around the door handle. Pausing, she turned to look at him over her shoulder. Her mouth was tight and she gave a little shake of her head before reaching for something inside her car.
“Carly?” he asked as she straightened up.
“It’s been a long day, Drew, I need to be alone tonight,” she answered, holding her coat in front of her.
Her words echoed what she’d said a few nights earlier. The night he’d left and regretted it. The night he’d left and she’d regretted it. He wasn’t going to let it happen again.
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