Something Most Deadly

by Ann Self

  “Well thanks a lot,” Jane shot back. “Do you laugh at your patients?”

  “No...ha ha, only you! They’re not that funny!” She began arranging her hair behind her head and then tuned to Jane with the barrette clasp hanging from her teeth. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to speaking to him and being in his presence—that whole gaga thing’ll wear off soon.” She snatched the barrette from her mouth and clipped the hair to the nape of her neck.

  Sam and Paul approached from the opposite direction in Sam’s red truck, back from their lunch expedition with a cab filled with pizza and sub sandwiches. Jane pulled the cord to open the gate, and complained to Madeline: “Gaga! You really do have quite the professional jargon!”

  They exchanged waves while Sam and Paul roared past them.

  “Gaga—ancient remnant of high school giddiness,” Madeline joked. “You never had a chance to properly deal with it ten years ago, so now it’s popped up its ugly head.”

  “Oh fine.” Jane complained as Madeline put the Jag in gear and they sped off to the Longhorn Steakhouse, and another date with Flo’s Filet.

  “How about a freestyle musical Kur?” Lars asked Jane the next day, early Wednesday morning, as she rode Charmante back towards the pasture gate.

  “Ride him to music? You think it would work?”

  “I think it would help release his mind from the prison of Lucinda,” Lars said, as he walked beside Jane and Charmante. They were returning to the barn after doing school figures in the outdoor Dressage ring. Charmante was more tractable, but still only occasionally allowing complete contact with the bit.

  “Music to soothe the savage beast?”

  “Something like that.”

  “We don’t have much time to put it together...”

  “It can be done,” Lars said. “The sound system is all in place in the new arena, we just have to select some music quickly and choreograph his movements and tempo to it.”

  “Oh, piece of cake.”

  He smiled at her sarcasm. “Like I said, it can be done.” “I didn’t say it can be easy—just that it can be done.”

  Sam met them at the pasture gate. “How’s it going?” he asked, pulling at the shirt collar sticking to his neck. The humidity was stifling, and Cicadas were screaming at the heat. Every day seemed to be hotter than the next.

  “Hey Sam.” Jane dismounted to speak to him. “Pretty good most of the time—but every so often he explodes and then goes berserk, thinking I’m going to punish him. Half-halts throw him into a tizzy. Lucinda must have yanked viciously at his mouth.”

  “At least he’s standing still,” Lars observed. “No champing or stomping.”

  Sam grasped Charmante’s bridle and pulled his head down so that his face was next to the horse’s eye. “Now,” he said in a conspiratorial tone, “can’t you tell Jane doesn’t look like that nasty old Lucinda? Doesn’t smell like her, talk like her, yell like her?” Small beads of sweat were tickling Charmante’s long gray head, and he scratched himself vigorously on Sam, nearly knocking the man off his feet. Then the horse made a loud sigh, and shook himself, flapping the saddle and reins. Finally he raised his head and looked off into the distance.

  “I think his brain is coming back down to earth,” Sam said.

  “From your mouth to God’s ear,” Jane prayed.

  “Amen,” Lars added.

  “Yep,” Sam announced, “things are getting better all around. The latest hurricane update predicts the storm will only brush our coast, and probably not until Monday.”

  “Thank heavens for that,” Jane exclaimed in relief.

  “Right. I had nightmares of striped tents flying every which-way.” Sam pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. “Well, I’d better take this master stall-list and get the stall cards filled out. Pooh-bah wants them up today.”

  “Catch you later Sam.”

  Lars and Jane led Charmante to the barn’s indoor bathing area to wash him down. Lars handed the horse over to Dylan and left them. Cecily stopped by just as Jane was scraping the suds off Charmante and Dylan was picking out the hoofs.

  “Hi Jane—you got a minute?” Cecily asked. She was wearing a sleeveless denim shirt and dabbing a hanky at a well-browned neck. Her short legs peeking out of serviceable cargo shorts were sturdy and also tanned.

  “Sure Mrs. Whitbeck.” Jane dried her hands, and then walked with Cecily towards the front office.

  “Boy, it’s hot enough to fry eggs on the pavement!” Cecily began, and Jane agreed. “I’m so glad you will be riding Charmante for us on Sunday, Jane. We really appreciate it—you know it means a lot to the family.”

  No point in being cantankerous, Jane thought to herself. “I’m glad to do it. I hope it helps,” she said.

  Cecily nodded and sighed as the two dogs trotted behind the women, panting in the heat. “I feel bad that we’re losing you. It’s a shame you aren’t going to be working here any longer, you’ve done a really wonderful job, but for some reason Gladys...” she shrugged and continued, “well, she is my mother and I can’t just ignore her. There is such animosity between the two of you, and Lucinda also. It just hasn’t worked out.”

  “No it hasn’t—but don’t worry excessively over it, I’m sure I’ll find a new job.”

  Cecily stopped walking. “Have you started looking?”

  “Not yet, but I’ll be leaving right after the show.”

  “You’re leaving after the show?” She looked shocked. “Where will you go? I’m sure my mother and Lucinda can manage to be civil while you’re interviewing for a new job, we don’t want to push you out onto the street.”

  “Well...I’ve already made plans to move in with a friend in Brockton.” Jane didn’t mention that pushing onto the street was exactly what Gladys had in mind.

  “Oh please think it over. You’ll have to give up riding altogether if you move to a house in the city, and lose a lot of contacts. You can probably springboard to a new job much easier from here. Just think it through..?”

  “Ah, yes I will.” She had already made up her mind, but she didn’t want to argue with Cecily, she was already tense about the weekend show.

  “Okay, well tons of good luck on Sunday!” Cecily gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Thanks.” Jane watched her striding briskly away down the aisle. She hadn’t had the heart to even mention that Charmante was on a wing and a prayer. Perhaps Cecily already knew and was counting heavily on her talent to fix the problem. And it seemed Cecily intended to ignore the other problem—the small one about Jane’s life being in danger. Maybe it was just too much for Cecily to comprehend, Jane decided, and she was sticking with the belief that the barn was plagued with “accidents”. She was probably in a cloud of denial about their finances, Lucinda’s lack of progress, the suspicious death of the vet and the danger still lurking. Cecily, Jane thought, sees only what she wants to see.

  Thursday and Friday, Lars and Jane toiled for hours, working out the musical program, with Jane running through it on a school horse so as to not over-work Charmante, who now had little patience to spare. When Jane exchanged the schoolhorse for Charmante, she was pleasantly surprised at the improvement in the stallion when music she had chosen was piped into the ring and she finally rode him to the steps they had mapped out.

  She had searched for a unique sound, something different than the usual show tunes, marching music or classical numbers, and finally settled on the exotic and jazzy tunes of Arthur Lyman’s Hawaiian band. The music had been recorded in the Henry J. Kaiser aluminum Dome in Honolulu years earlier and remastered onto compact discs. The songs she chose, ‘Yellowbird’ and “Love For Sale, were substantial, with enough meat to fill the indoor ring with melodious notes. When she wasn’t riding, Jane was plugged into Dylan’s borrowed iPOD. Since Elliot wouldn’t allow the stable help to wear them, Dylan had no use for it during the day. Jane replayed the music endlessly and mapped the steps out in her head, burning the tracks into her brain.

&nbs
p; Charmante was still far from perfect even with the music, but he was a step up from humiliatingly bad. He could be controlled, but even an amateur could tell the transitions from one gait to another were not smooth, and he did not respond like a polished million-dollar show horse. Jane’s mind was spinning from the effort of trying to match the horse’s movements to the music and then committing it to memory. And she had a very limited amount of practice time—if it came too close to becoming a drill, the horse would start to turn wooden and recalcitrant. It was a very fine line to tread; practice enough, but not too much. If it weren’t for the fact that Charmante acted so much better when the music was on, she would’ve given up on the whole idea.

  “Remember,” Lars said, “most of these people will be impressed with nice music, a pretty girl and a pretty horse. Unless he does a somersault in the ring, you should be okay.”

  “I know—I guess it’s my ego, Lars, I can’t bear to give a poor performance. And some of those people will know the difference.”

  “Okay, I should know there’s no way to take the pressure off a born champion. I am too used to working with Lucinda—a crybaby always looking for a break. Sorry.”

  Jane smiled. “It’s okay Lars, I know the task looks pretty hopeless. Sometimes I’m pretty close to tears myself and we’re running out of time. I hope I have this committed to memory and don’t forget anything.”

  Lars walked over and held the reins and looked at the horse. “Charmante will come through for you when it’s show time, he has the tools and the training to do this easily. It’s a cake-walk for him. You just have to find the magic—find the button to turn the magic back on.”

  “I can try...”

  On Friday evening, as the sun was lowering into a ripple of orange and purple, Jane again strolled around the observation tower perched on the barn’s roof. She wanted to take one last look at her home from a high vantage point. She noticed that the speaker wires snaking in through a raised screen in the window, directly over the roof’s peak, were now connected to a powerful amplifier on the floor. Feeling nostalgic, she climbed another circular iron staircase that led to the smaller clock tower, marveling again at the giant clouded-glass face and enormous hands standing taller than herself. The ornate, old-fashioned numbers were all backwards now, from her position behind the clock’s face. The mysterious little wheels and gears were visible, and she imagined they were very rare and valuable; hoping somehow this slice of antiquity would be preserved and not fall to a wrecking ball. Jane wanted to catalog all this in her mind since she would probably never see it again in her lifetime. She heard another grinding sound, gears spun, and the giant hand moved a tick.

  An odd collection of insects found themselves trapped up in the hot, airless space. She was disgusted when she stepped on several of the deceased, dried shells crunching under her feet like crackers. They littered the floor of the small clock tower. The still-living were buzzing and flailing themselves at anything bright, trying to get out before they joined the pile on the floor.

  Jane stepped more carefully to look out a small oval window at head-height, to see how the grounds were being prepared for the show. Striped tents were all in place on a level three-acre field. Other fields were leveled to perfection by heavy machines and held the sixty by twenty meter Dressage rings—their perimeters marked by low white chains and letters. The vendors had set up little stands in a separate area under shade trees. All was in place for the weekend show.

  She stood on tiptoe for a second—her nose to the glass—and risked a look straight down at the massive roof, pitched sharply away from the tower. Looking down from that height was even more frightening than the view from the round observation room below, and it made her head spin and her stomach do a back-flip. She quickly shifted her vision to watch the constantly arriving trailers and horse vans making their way along the two mile lane to the stables. A state police car was parked far below, its windshield reflecting the spectacular sunset. Outdoor halide lamps were popping on like stars as the day faded into dusk.

  The insect-hum grew louder and began to dance with her nerves. Bugs scrabbled and clicked at the glass, desperately trying for freedom. The sky grew a shade darker as if someone had turned a giant celestial dial. Jane began to feel the crawling sensation on her arms again. She thought it was the bugs—but she brushed at her arms and was horrified to find nothing there but gooseflesh. She heard soft footsteps on the floor below and her nerves started to vibrate like a tuning fork. The clock gears spun again and a giant hand moved with a clunk. Jane ran towards the clock tower’s circular staircase, her feet slapping on tongue-and-groove floor boards, and looked down to the observation room below. She saw a gossamer shadow flit across the floor and then heard a soft flutter of descending footsteps on the hallway staircase.

  “Who’s there!?” She demanded with a quaky voice. She ran down the small spiral staircase into the observation room and then out the door. Standing on the wooden staircase, she looked below into the wide, intersecting hallway and saw no one, not even a shadow, a footstep or rustle of clothing. Her pulse racing, she ran down the rest of the stairs and into her room, slamming the door behind her and shooting the bolt. Jane leaned against her door breathing heavily, thinking what a stupid, foolish thing she had just done. She realized with a jolt to her heart what a convenient accident she had set up for herself. So easy to just slip out the window and drop to her death.

  “I am never going up there again!” she ranted. “If someone wants to kill me, they will have to do the work of getting me up there themselves.” She checked the closet, the bathroom, and the closet under the eaves, and also under the bed, to assure herself she was alone and free of killers and nasty chickens. Then she paced her room for awhile to let her rattled nerves smooth out. She did an admirable job of convincing herself that the footsteps belonged to a sight-seeing exhibitor, who—panicked at being caught—ran for the ground floor.

  Happy with that explanation, her nerves stopped ragging at her. She reminded herself not to mention her foolish excursion to anyone in the barn; she felt stupid enough as it was. To focus on cheery thoughts, Jane mused about how glad she would be when Madeline arrived the next morning. Madeline had the whole weekend off and would be staying in her room on the foldout sofa bed. She smirked at it in distaste and hoped Madeline’s back would survive the night, since she refused to take the newer twin bed.

  Jane spent the next hour emptying her bureau drawers and bathroom cabinet into the lined-up boxes, and filling rubbish bags. As darkness fell, she occasionally looked out her window to monitor the escalating activity and commotion of the coming show—or what she could see of it in the stable lamps. She hoped the visitors would confine themselves to the lower barn, and that no more of them would go exploring. She hung her dress shadbelly coat, white breeches, vest and white shirt on the full-size closet door, zippered inside a protective garment bag. The dresscoat was getting a little worn looking—almost seedy from close-up—and the breeches were not as snappy white as they once had been, but they would look pretty good from a distance. She set her low crowned top-hat on the telephone table. The hat too, was starting to show signs of wear, but a new one would cost at least a hundred dollars. As she walked to her kitchenette, she heard a creak overhead, and discovered her nerves were still singing. Jane jumped nearly a foot off the floor, and then laughed at herself. “For crying out loud, if I’m going to jump at every creak in old barns, I better find a new line of work!”

  Jane again had pizza for a very late dinner in Sam’s office with Lars, Reggie, Sam and Dylan. She found them all gossiping about Ashley—who had shown up with her father to collect her horse and all her belongings.

  “She looked like a raccoon. What a double shiner!” Dylan exclaimed. “And a big ugly Band-Aid over her cheekbone.”

  “Girl sure was in a snit,” Reggie joined in. “Crashing around, banging stall doors, throwing her stuff.”

  “Not to mention yelling at her father and ordering
him around,” Sam added. “Must be taking lessons from Lucinda.”

  Dinner was over quickly since no had time to linger, especially Sam and Dylan. They were out straight seeing that arriving traffic was directed to the proper areas, horses were deposited in the right stalls, the judge’s stands were set up where they were supposed to be—taking care that no judges would be facing the sun—and the correct signage posted. The grounds were still crawling with people, even at that late hour; and these were just the exhibitors. The spectator crowd would be moving in Saturday morning. The Whitbecks were busily entertaining at the mansion, playing hosts to newly arrived judges and other glossy company.

  Jane returned to her room, and was grateful that the intense humidity had finally abated. Her apartment was drying out, she no longer stuck to everything she touched, and there was even a little cool air streaming in the windows. She methodically checked over the show outfit again, smoothing all the clothes inside the plastic bag and wiping a soft cloth over the boots. “All set,” she murmured. Her boxes of personal items were closed, taped, and piled neatly in a corner. When she finally dropped her head on the pillow late that night, after going through the routine of checking her room—the bathroom, the closets, under the bed—and firmly bolting the door, she went out like a light, totally exhausted.

  It seemed like only five minutes had passed before early morning light began playing on her eyelids and the clock tower chimed seven o’clock. Her ears became aware of the sounds of a horse show cranking into gear: strange horses whinnying, people shouting, vehicles moving about, and the clip-clop of metal shoes on pavement. Jane opened her eyes and focused on the clouded plastic wardrobe hanging from her closet door. Pale, early sun illuminated it, and something about the way the material hung inside didn’t look quite right. She sat up and squinted, then padded across the floor; anxiously grabbing the plastic and running the zipper up. Her wide eyes took in the ripped shreds of her coat.