Fletcher Campbell leaned across the table toward Emma. “I hear you took a job with Artemis. You watch out for the young guys she has working for her.”
“One of those ‘young guys’ is Stanley,” said Artemis. “He’s been with for me for thirty years. The other’s a man I hired this fall, but he seems to take no interest in anything but horses. He’s certainly not chatty, but he’s strong and hardworking.”
Campbell began talking about the difficulty in getting qualified stable help. “The lazy beggars like to work in places where it’s warm or near a city.”
One of the other men at the table, a middle-aged doctor named Buchanan, said, “Maybe you don’t treat them well enough.”
Charlie glanced at the man, who seemed to be suggesting more than he was saying. Besides being a doctor, Buchanan owned a couple of horses.
“Ridiculous. I treat them as they should be treated. Charlie just remembered one he caught stealing years ago. He was selling my tack to buy drugs. Charlie had to act like a stable hand and do real work. That’s probably why he caught him so fast. I suspected the guy from the start. He just didn’t look right.”
“You mean Matthew Durkin?” asked Artemis. “He was quite nice apart from his addiction, and a good worker. I was sorry when he was sent to prison.”
“I didn’t know he’d worked for you,” said Campbell.
“It was only for a month. Things started to disappear. It wasn’t difficult to realize he was the culprit, since I had only one other employee. I had to fire him, though I offered to help with his addiction and send him to one of those rehab places. Unfortunately, he didn’t want my help.”
“What did he take?” asked Dr. Buchanan.
“A saddle, some tack, and some jewelry. I also once found him in my living room. We were both embarrassed.”
“Why didn’t you tell me he was a crook?” said Campbell, growing red.
“I didn’t realize you had hired him until I read that he’d been arrested. After that I saw no reason to mention it. Charlie said he’d died of cancer.”
“I heard it was a heart attack,” said Campbell.
Charlie studied his empty plate as Victor and Janey shot him quick looks.
“Perhaps it was both,” said Dr. Buchanan, glancing at Charlie. “I’ve known it to happen. The chemo can get them. By the way, Campbell, how did Bengal Lancer act after he’d been returned?”
“A little skittish, maybe, but he’s fine now. He looked a wreck when I got him back: knots in his tail and mane, the hair matted on his fetlocks. And he was hungry. Those shits hardly fed him.” Campbell glanced at Artemis. “Pardon my French.”
More wine was drunk; guests took seconds and some took thirds; the doctor’s wife asked the caterer for his recipe for the spinach soufflé. The salad had avocados that Victor pushed to the edge of his plate. Shaking her head, Rosemary scooped them up. Eventually, the dishes were cleared; then came a variety of desserts: several pies, vanilla ice cream and a flourless chocolate cake.
Through dinner a steady drone-like noise resonated low down in Charlie’s ears, which was his memory of the murders and threat to his life. This wasn’t fear, exactly, but recognition tinged with dread, and he regretted the shotgun being foolishly tucked away in his bedroom closet. No way could he depend on the police to protect his safety and the safety of his family. He also kept thinking of Matthew Durkin and the coincidence that he’d worked for both Artemis and Campbell.
“What about the movie And God Created Woman?” said Victor to the table at large. “I’m sure I remember horses. You know, Brigitte Bardot, sitting up on a horse with her bosom pushed out.”
“So you like bosoms, do you, Vic?” Campbell pronounced it BahZOOMS.
“The name’s Victor. I stopped being Vic when I got into my sixties. It adds a bit of gravitas. Speaking of bosoms, I’d a friend who made up his own American flag, but instead of fifty stars it had fifty little tits. It’s the only time I’ve felt patriotic.”
“Did you salute?” asked Campbell. When Campbell made what he thought was a little joke, he looked around at the others at the table and bobbed his head.
“Only where it didn’t show,” said Victor.
It was about five minutes later, as Charlie was lifting his first forkful of apple pie to his lips, that his cell phone began to vibrate. He meant to ignore it, but saw the call came from Lieutenant Hutchins. He excused himself, got up from the table and walked to the living room slowly enough to attract no attention.
“Sorry to bother you,” said Hutchins, sounding as if he didn’t care one way or the other, “but Shawn Smith said I should call you.”
“Oh?” Charlie’s interior drone grew louder.
“They found the guy you asked about, Rodger Toombs, down in Albany.”
“Dead?”
“That’s right. He was in an Econo Lodge. His throat was cut, just like the others.” Hutchins paused.
“What else?”
“His cock and balls were stuck in his jacket pocket. Shawn Smith said the guy who’d killed Mickey must’ve been looking for him all this time. The maid found him in the morning when she came to make up the room. It didn’t make her happy.”
“So you’ll give me back my pistol permit?”
“Can’t do it, Charlie. But we’ll keep an eye on you. Just like before.”
—
At two o’clock the next morning, Charlie flopped over for the twentieth time, resituated his pillow and kicked one foot free of the down comforter. Beside him, Janey slept so peacefully that Charlie had an urge to give her a poke. By the light of the streetlight, he saw the bare branches of the maple in the front yard heave and twist. That’s what I feel like, he thought.
Beneath his side of the bed lay his fully loaded Benelli M4 Super 90, 12-gauge shotgun. Half a dozen times he’d timed himself in reaching for it and swinging it up. The first time he’d nearly fallen out of bed, but now he could do it smoothly, almost.
Earlier, as he’d practiced grabbing the shotgun, Janey had watched from her side of the bed. She hadn’t been happy. “Let’s go visit my sister in Denver. I can take time off and Emma needs a break from school. There’s skiing.”
But Charlie felt that skiing would be more dangerous than facing a killer with a knife. And it wouldn’t do any good. The man would be waiting when they got back. Charlie might be terrified, but he wasn’t a coward, at least that’s what he told himself. He’d stay in Saratoga with his Benelli. But he couldn’t sleep.
When Rodger Toombs was found, no evidence suggested who his killer might be. On the other hand, Toombs had opened the door for him, which suggested he might have known him. Forensics showed that Toombs died early in the evening. The Albany police tracked down the guests in the surrounding rooms, but if Toombs had made any noise, no one had heard it.
In the drawer on the bedside night table had been a 9mm Kahr with a three-inch barrel and a laser sight.
“Right on top of the Gideon Bible,” said Hutchins. “He never touched it.”
Charlie had asked if Toombs had looked like any of the cardboard figures.
“I guess so. There’s one with little ears. We didn’t even realize they were ears. I mean, they’re just tiny circles.”
“And the remaining figures?”
“Well, there’s the one with the porkpie hat and we know who that is, don’t we? Then there’s a man with a plaid vest and a woman in a white dancer’s skirt.”
“Fletcher Campbell and Artemis.”
“Most likely. So there seems to be a horsey connection here. At least that’s what the sheriff’s deputies think. I just called Campbell, but he’s not home.”
Charlie explained where he was, and that Campbell and Artemis were in the next room. “Call them later tonight or in the morning. Telling them now would upset people. Campbell would probably start shouting.”<
br />
“Okay, Charlie, I’ll do it first thing,” said Hutchins. “But the sheriff’s sending deputies out to their places right now.”
When Charlie had gotten back to the dinner table, Janey had whispered, “What’s wrong. You look awful.”
Charlie tried to shake it off. “Just a little cramp in my leg.” He bent over to massage his calf; then he sat down.
“Maybe it’s giardia,” said Victor. “I had that once. Beaver fever. Fucked up my insides for months. You don’t want to hear about it.”
The only virtue in Victor’s remarks was that it drew attention away from Charlie. Then Fletcher Campbell said he’d had giardia twice. It impressed Charlie to see that Campbell was competitive even about his ailments. When attention returned to Charlie, he’d composed himself. But he didn’t eat any pie.
Later, when they left Artemis’s house, Janey again asked what was wrong.
“We can talk about it when we get home.” Emma watched with concern and interest from the backseat, but Charlie didn’t want her to know about Rodger Toombs. If the killer had indeed been delayed by his inability to find Toombs, then he could be back in Saratoga by now.
It wasn’t until they were alone in the bedroom that Charlie told Janey about the phone call. But she’d had a general idea of what was wrong when Charlie fetched the Benelli from the closet directly after closing the bedroom door.
“So he could be anywhere.”
Charlie heard the fear in her voice. “That’s what Hutchins said.”
“What are you going to do?”
Charlie sat on the bed, sliding shells into the shotgun. Janey hardly glanced at the Benelli. This, too, scared him: the fact that Janey didn’t complain about the gun, that she accepted its presence. It showed what she was thinking.
“Wait,” said Charlie. “Just wait.”
“That’s all? I don’t want to wait!” Her words seemed to rush from her mouth.
“I’ll hire a security guy to spend the night downstairs on the couch.”
This was when Janey said they should go visit her sister in Denver.
Seventeen
Charlie climbed out of bed the next morning when the night sky began to lighten. It was six o’clock. He’d slept only two hours and spent the last hour staring at the ceiling, telling himself he was just about to fall back to sleep. But it hadn’t been true.
He washed, brushed his teeth, took his various old-fart pills and went downstairs for coffee, bringing the Benelli with him. He had come to hate it, even though he still admired it. But he admired it as someone might admire a three-hundred-pound slave driver. Instead of it belonging to him, he belonged to it. And he was chained to it till the end, whatever that might be. Then, in a moment of bravado, he considered sticking it up in the attic or even selling it. The thought unsettled him to the degree that his coffee sloshed over the rim of his cup. It wasn’t that he thought “Uh-oh” or “Better not”; rather, he’d a sudden image of Mickey lying on the sidewalk with his throat cut. Next he saw Parlucci’s bloody body with the python sliding across his belly. Then he imagined Mickey again.
At seven, he backed his Golf out the driveway and headed east to Fletcher Campbell’s horse farm. Was he worried about waking him? Not a bit. Horse guys made a point of getting up around four, and if that didn’t include Campbell, then it should. By the time the sun crested the farther hills, Charlie was crossing the Hudson. The shotgun lay on the passenger’s seat, riding shotgun, as it were.
Charlie found Campbell in the barn with Bengal Lancer tethered outside of his stall. A stable hand was using a hoof pick to go over the horse’s rear left hoof, which he held between his legs.
“General maintenance?” said Charlie.
Campbell hadn’t heard Charlie approach and turned quickly. His surprise faded as his face settled itself into its customary look of smug certainty. But for a nanosecond Charlie had seen fear in his eyes.
“You’re up early, Bradshaw.” Campbell smoothed his white moustache with his thumb and forefinger.
“You’ve got a deputy parked out front. The police call you?” Charlie glanced at the stable hand, who was focused on the hoof. He wore a green work shirt with the name of Campbell’s farm—Tartan Stables—embroidered in gold on the pocket.
Campbell seemed to shrink a little as his fear returned. “Not yet. What’s going on?” He took Charlie’s arm and they walked toward the sliding barn door. The concrete floor had been swept clean, not clean enough to eat off of, but almost. Three horses poked their necks over their stall doors with “What’s up?” expressions. There was the slightly sweet smell of manure.
“What do you know about Rodger Toombs?” asked Charlie.
“I know that he was one of the scumbags who stole Bengal Lancer and that he worked with Mickey Martin.”
“The police found him yesterday in a motel room by the turnpike, south of Albany. His throat had been cut and his genitals were shoved into his jacket pocket. Lieutenant Hutchins called me last night at Artemis’s. He said he’d call you this morning.”
“I’ve heard nothing,” Campbell said softly. “They catch who did it?”
“No. The maid found Toombs yesterday morning. There was no sign of the killer, except he must have been the guy who killed Mickey. Toombs had been in prison with Mickey.” Charlie hesitated. “What do you know about these murders?”
The fear stayed in Campbell’s eyes, a narrowing of the lids as if he faced a bright light. “I know three guys got their throats cut. And with Toombs getting the same treatment, it has to be connected to these horses being stolen.”
“You know the police have you down as one of the suspects.” This wasn’t true, as far as Charlie knew, but he wanted to see how Campbell would respond. And maybe there was a touch of malice in Charlie’s remark.
“You must be joking!” barked Campbell.
“Not at all. You might have known the people who had their horses taken and arranged to have Bengal Lancer stolen to take attention away from you. Then Mickey might have tried blackmailing you. He was good at blackmail. The other murders were just cleaning up. As for Toombs, he was working with Mickey and also knew about the blackmail. I’m surprised the police haven’t questioned you.” All this was conjecture, though Charlie guessed the police might have wondered something like this and dismissed it.
“That’s ridiculous!” A horse stamped nervously in its stall.
“Hey, Campbell, it’s nothing I think myself. But the police must look into every possibility.”
It annoyed Charlie that he took pleasure in saying this, as if it were more important that Campbell was frightened than in danger. And Charlie knew that his pleasure was the pleasure of getting even with a bully. But, of course, Campbell was in danger. This time, however, Charlie saw no fear in the other man’s eyes: just indignation and the startled look of imperiled honor. They stood in the doorway of the barn. It was cold, and bits of hay corkscrewed across the gravel drive. There was no one in sight apart from the sheriff’s deputy’s white-and-red Impala parked farther down the drive. The rising sun lit up the house so the windows turned golden.
“You know about these little cardboard figures?”
“Only what Hutchins told me. I gather one’s supposed to be me. That’s why I’ve got this.” Campbell pulled back his coat to reveal a revolver in a small holster. “I’ve also got three security guys doing eight-hour shifts.”
Charlie nodded. “That makes sense. Anyway, Toombs was also one of them. The police know that now. That leaves three: you, me and Artemis. The police think the killer was waiting till he killed Toombs before he moved on to the rest of us, but they don’t know why.”
Charlie was impressed by his own composure, as if Campbell’s fear had sucked up his as well. But of course the Benelli was just twenty feet away, near enough for Charlie to imagine that he was safe.
Inst
ead of responding, Campbell looked back over his shoulder. Charlie heard a crunching in the gravel. Lieutenant Hutchins was coming up the drive in a black unmarked Chevy from the detectives unit. Charlie’s first thought was that he didn’t want Hutchins to see the shotgun on the front seat of his Golf.
Hutchins stopped to say a few words to the sheriff’s deputy; then he got out of his car and walked toward Charlie and Campbell. A police radio squawked in the background.
“Doing our work again for us, Bradshaw, or is this a social visit?”
“I was telling him what you told me last night. And I wanted to see how you were going to protect Campbell and Artemis.”
“Well, despite those little figures, the sheriff wasn’t sure that Campbell and Artemis were involved until Toombs was killed. That was positive evidence that the murders were linked to the horse-nappings. But we don’t know how Artemis fits into this, unless one of her horses would’ve been taken next.”
“You’re sure it’s connected to the horse-nappings?”
Hutchins looked critically at Charlie. “What else can it be?”
“I think there’re other possibilities. And you’ll ‘keep an eye’ on Campbell and Artemis like you keep an eye on me?”
Hutchins’s confident manner turned to irritation and he spoke in a clipped voice. “The sheriff’s department and the troopers are taking care of that. But, Charlie, as I’ve said often, you’re butting into police business. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Mr. Campbell in private.”
—
The morning sun was still low in the sky when Charlie turned up the long driveway to Artemis’s house and parked in front of a metal structure large enough to contain a full-sized dressage arena. Climbing out of his Golf, he walked toward the wide sliding door behind which he heard voices and the faint galloping sounds of horses’ hooves. He’d left the shotgun on the front seat and already missed it.
The first person Charlie saw was Emma wearing riding pants and boots. In her left hand dangled a riding helmet covered with black velveteen.
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