Something Most Deadly

by Ann Self

  Good boy Charmante I love you!

  After several seconds he sprang forward into the passage again, knees snapping and massive body floating as weightless as if he were trotting on the moon. Horse and rider turned at left at C, and then at H moved across the diagonal of the ring in a powerful extended trot. Charmante was now reaching and throwing his shoulders in a ground eating stride; a slipstream of silver sailing from corner to corner as if to say “how’s this?”

  The crowd answered with another round of oohs and ahhs.

  The fact that an equine ancestor, heavy with foal, could run faster than breaking ice on a frozen sea and dodge fire from Russian aircraft, was the reason Charmante was there to perform for them.

  Brian watched, stunned into silence. As his eyes tracked the breathtakingly beautiful sight of the horse and woman gliding across the arena below him, his mind suddenly presented him with an image of the thin destitute orphan with ragged hair and shoes, who used to watch him for a hobby. A beautiful stalker. The tattered-classmate memory flooded into the arena, superimposed on the present scene, as his complete high school experience spooled out of his subconscious like an old newsreel. She materialized as a flickering ghost on the shadowy edges of his view; never front and center, never looking directly at him. No eyes.

  He was fascinated at the number of partial images of her stored in his memory, fleeting glimpses that had been toying at the fringes of his mind for months, waiting for a trigger. The mental movie passed in lightening speed, fast-forwarding to Boston and the Quincy Market. She followed him through the crowds, through the alley and into the parking garage. He saw the junky outrageous car, plastered in mud, rocketing down the highway after him in a cloud of smoke.

  The music suddenly changed to the super smooth and sophisticated “Love For Sale”, snapping him out of his reverie.

  As the lively back-beat of bongos and cymbals filled the building with Latin percussion, Charmante executed stunning left and right half-passes at the trot, sweeping from side to side down the arena, his legs crossing fluidly as the diagonal pairs moved in perfect unison. He transitioned to a medium trot, the passage, a piaffe, and back to the passage in a spectacular display of cadence and elasticity. Next came a collected canter, and Charmante fired off several exuberant pirouettes all over the arena with the floating grace of a ballroom dancer.

  To ask is to receive...

  Jane maneuvered Charmante to the top of the ring and then cantered down towards the judge; this time making changes of lead every stride. Charmante looked like a child skipping down a sidewalk, and he did it effortlessly as if the impetus to create these moves came from him. Jane was encouraged to drop one of her hands, controlling him one-handed and therefore raising the degree of difficulty and probably her score. She knew without looking, that Lars was smiling and nodding.

  The horse was actually timing himself to the music, making less work for Jane. She ticked off the general impressions that were important to the judges, one of whom was observing and scoring from a platform under the spectator gallery: Rhythm and energy, harmony between rider and horse, choreography and interpretation of music. Done that, been there, she thought to herself, well pleased that Charmante had thrown off the trauma of Lucinda and returned to his former brilliance. And right under Lucinda’s nose, too.

  Just in time fella, she thanked the horse.

  When Jane finished her six-minute program and again saluted the judge, she walked Charmante out of the ring to the sound of a standing ovation and cheers so exuberant that the horse was startled.

  Gladys, Lucinda and Ashley remained rooted to their seats, ground up with a hatred so fierce it made them tremble.

  TWELVE

  Elliot stood in the east wing corridor by the entrance to the indoor arena, waiting for Jane and Charmante to exit. He had darted out of the audience halfway through her performance and raced to be in place to intercept her. The applause was deafening. To Elliot it was the sound of money. A gallery chock full of his specially selected, gold-plated pigeons. “Show me the money,” he joked to himself while agitatedly jangling pocket change.

  Travis stood nervously waiting on the opposite side of the large arena entrance. Elliot nodded at him. The plans were in place. Travis had been instructed to prevent Jane from attending the reception; his job depended on it. He was told he needed to do anything required—even minor accidents if necessary or maybe a little something spilled on the clothes—to keep Jane from the skybox. If she showed up at the party, Travis’s butt was in a sling. Elliot had also called some higher-ups at the State Police barracks to inform them that one of their detectives was making a nuisance of himself on his day off and he would appreciate it if they would rein him in and get him off the estate. It was only a matter of time before Westerlund’s radio or cell phone would be summoning him.

  Elliot smiled to himself as he observed the manic Travis fidgeting and pacing. He had him wired up like a powder keg. If Travis went overboard in his duties, he thought, so be it. He would later claim Travis was only told to monitor a fired, disgruntled employee, and just got a little carried away.

  Elliot began pacing the barn floor himself, in a little corner next to the entrance, just out of sight of the spectator gallery. He was eager now to separate Jane from the horse and remove her from the glow of success; he wanted only his horse and his daughter basking in the limelight. When Jane and Charmante emerged from the indoor arena into the east wing, Elliot stepped forward and grasped the reins, startling them both. Westy, following behind, frowned. The audience was on its feet applauding. “Okay Jane,” Elliot snarled as he grappled with Charmante, “I’ll take the horse now. I’ll meet you back at his stall in exactly twenty minutes.”

  Elliot then looked around the horse and addressed Westerlund: “I think some of your superiors would like a word with you!”

  Jane dismounted and Elliot unceremoniously brushed her aside, actually banging her in the shoulder with his elbow as he rushed to take over the horse. He was done with Jane, she had accomplished what he wanted and he had no further need for the irritating stablegirl. Everything was now falling into place. His plan to introduce his stable to a super-star audience and wedge Springhill into the upper echelons of politics, business and Hollywood was shaping up nicely. The loaners and investors were impressed, and he’d soon be up to his hips in a fresh flow of cash. The only fly in the ointment was that Lucinda hadn’t been the one to show her horse off to the sparkling, blue-ribbon crowd, and he’d been forced to allow a rag-tag waif he practically pulled off the streets to catch a few rays of glory. But he was putting an end to that now.

  Elliot turned Charmante back on his heels to re-enter the ring. He wanted to march in like a gladiator with the triumphant horse and reinforce his connection to success in people’s minds, and sever the connection with Jane. Charmante, off balance, nearly swept his hindquarters into Jane and she had to jump to the side, as did Westy when Elliot and his horse blew by him.

  Westy was outraged, and glared at the departing Elliot running into the arena to thundering applause with his prize stallion. “Did that man have one syllable of praise for you? That ungrateful idiot...that self-centered jackass...that, that...”

  Jane straightened her jacket and responded, “I know, I know—I’ve put up with it for two years. He never changes. What did he mean...about your superiors?”

  “I have no idea,” Westerlund answered, his eyes still following Whitbeck. “No one has contacted me, it was just an empty threat. My ‘superiors’ won’t respond to nutjobs like him, they know how to handle pretentious windbags. They also know I’m good at my job.”

  They fell in step together to walk down the east wing towards Sam’s office. Before they got ten feet, Travis scurried up to Jane as if he’d appeared from under a rock, his beady eyes over-bright with malice.

  “Mr. Whitbeck wants you to help arrange the flowerpots in the ring, then go directly to Charmante’s stall when you’re finished and meet him back there,”
he announced importantly.

  Westy scowled at Travis and in his dreams he drew his firearm and shot him on the spot. Not giving in to temptation he said: “She’s not going anywhere you moron. Tell your Mr. Whitbeck to put his flowerpots where the sun don’t shine.”

  They continued to walk away but Travis ran after them and wildly clutched at Jane’s arm, nearly pulling her backwards. “Wait! You have to...”

  Westy was ready to reach for the cuffs, but Sam materialized out of the shadows and spun Travis around. The roundhouse right that connected with Travis’s jaw dropped him like a sack of potatoes and left him out cold on the aisle floor, arms and legs akimbo.

  “Well,” Westy said, looking down at the unconscious Travis and poking him with the toe of his shoe. “Nice job. Saves me from shooting him and filling out paperwork.”

  Jane stood with her hand over her mouth. “Wow Sam, you knocked him out!” She snapped a look back to the distant arena to see if anyone noticed. Fortunately the crowd was busy watching Elliot doing a fancy trot around the ring with Charmante, to the sound of their cheers, hoots, whistles and enthusiastic clapping.

  “Yes I definitely knocked him out,” Sam answered, shaking the pain out of his right fist. “I saw Elliot skulking around in the spectator’s gallery snarling at Travis to follow him—just before you finished your ride—so I scurried out too. I’ve been sneaking around eavesdropping on them for a change. I figured they were up to no good, and I was right. Travis was supposed to make it impossible for you to get to the party—lock you in a tackroom or spill a little something on your clothes.”

  “You’re kidding!” Jane cried.

  “Nope. Elliot didn’t want to share any of the glory with you.”

  Westy shook his head in disgust and growled, “This fruitcake wanted her to arrange goddamn flowerpots in the ring.”

  “I heard,” Sam grunted as he began dragging away a floppy Travis. “Elliot is such a stupid oaf—I’m sick of the sight of him. And this guy is as dumb as a bag of hammers.”

  “The manure pile, is it?” Westy questioned, to which Sam replied: “Probably where he should be, but I’m going to be kind and stuff him in the feed room.” He stopped to look back at Jane. “Outstanding ride on Charmante, by the way.”

  “Oh, thanks...” Jane looked bemused at the sight of a floppy, unconscious Travis being hauled away.

  Sam dragged the man off, dumped him on a bale of hay and covered him with a horse blanket. “Nighty-night!” he joked. He then ran to catch up with everyone at his office. He found the group standing around congratulating Jane on her amazing performance on Charmante.

  “Charmante came through for you after all,” Lars stated happily. “You and the horse looked like a beautiful vision down there floating over the arena.”

  “You knocked ‘em dead, kiddo,” Madeline exclaimed, “just like I knew you would.”

  “Speaking of knocking them dead...” Westy chortled, as Sam came through the door. They all looked at Sam as he dusted his hands off and smiled.

  “Travis is catching a few winks under a horse blanket,” he announced.

  “Hopefully it’s a long nap,” Westy said.

  “Oh it will be,” Sam stated, rubbing his sore knuckles and walking behind his desk to check the latest weather update. At this hour in the evening, the old knotty-pine office was dark and shadowy. Everyone knew better than to turn on the fluorescents. Sam jumped into his chair to access the weather site on the computer, and they all crowded around his beat-up desk to lean in and gaze at the monitor. The phosphorus glow of the screen splashed an eerie light on the faces of Reggie, Madeline, Westy, Lars and Jane, as Sam read the information off the computer screen out loud:

  “Hurricane accelerating towards northeast, moving north-northeast at twenty-three miles an hour. Further increase in forward speed expected on Monday. Maximum sustained winds one-hundred miles per hour...”

  “It’s going to hit us by tomorrow evening,” Jane speculated, and outside the barn the wind howled softly in agreement.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Sam answered. “But we’ll at least suffer tropical force winds by tomorrow afternoon. And this thing is carrying some nasty imbedded thunderstorm cells.”

  “I got a feeling it could mow a path right through us,” Reggie said.

  “There’s already heavy surf advisories from the Carolinas to Maine,” Sam continued to read. “It’s not rolling back into the Atlantic like they first predicted.”

  “Great,” Westy sighed, as he left the computer and paced around the office. “My mother lives in a cottage on the Cape. It’s situated well away from the shore, but it sounds like things still could get dangerous down there.”

  Reggie agreed. “Hurricanes are damn fickle, and even with all the new electronics and satellites they’re still hard to predict. I think she better head for cover.”

  “I’ll probably have to go down there at dawn tomorrow morning and pry her out of that cottage.”

  Jane straightened up from looking at the monitor and stretched her back. Muffled cheers from the awards ceremony in the arena floated thinly in the background, mingled with noisy gusts of wind. She stepped away from the group, removed her top hat and slipped out of the heavy dress jacket. “Well then...we should get to the party. Get it over with.” She placed her hat in its box, hung the jacket in the plastic bag hanging from a wooden peg in Sam’s tiny washroom, and removed the bib-front and tie. The hat and jacket would be under the care of Reggie, since he had no interest in attending the party. His only request was that Sam bring him back some food.

  Jane scrubbed her face to get the dust off, carefully re-applied lipstick and blush, then spritzed a little hairspray on wisps of hair that had escaped the shiny knot of hair on the nape of her neck. She brushed and fluffed a fringe of dark bangs that spiked down to accent the sea-blue of her eyes, and smoothed the tailored shirt with its choker collar. The shirt and sleek white breeches gave her a snow-white glow.

  “Say, Sam, where’s Dylan?” Jane asked as she leaned backwards out of the tiny washroom. “Is he feeling any better?”

  “Nope. Went home. Said he still wasn’t feeling well. He was starting to look better though—he’s a strong healthy kid. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Jane, Madeline, Sam, Lars and Westerlund walked as a group to the party in the glass skybox. The five of them walked the long east-wing corridor towards the indoor arena as the party sounds floated to their ears, escalating with every step.

  The skybox was exploding with people, half of them dressed in riding costumes, and others in business suits or evening dress. The decor of the observation room was meant to resemble an English pub, with oak panels, a brass railed bar, studded leather stools and club chairs. Dozens of round tables cascaded down the red carpeted, terraced floor. The terraces descended towards the slanted window-wall and overlooked a darkened arena. The flowers were all in place, so it looked like the stableboys somehow handled it without Jane’s help. Spotlights aimed at the flowers in the otherwise dark arena made the guests feel as if they were floating in space in a glass room. When they finished filling their faces, Jane knew Elliot planned to bring the lights up slightly and turn Charmante loose, to be followed by a stage spotlight operated from just above the top row of the spectator’s gallery. She wondered if Elliot was going to try to pry her from the party and get her out of sight by demoting her to groom again. Fat chance this time. She now knew he did not want her anywhere near his exclusive top-drawer guests; but unless he picked her up and carried her out, she wasn’t leaving. And her bodyguard might have something to say about it.

  A gaggle of wait-people scurried everywhere in the room with drink trays, while a catering service prepared huge warming-trays of food in an elaborate buffet. Most of the people were sitting at tables or standing in little groups, sipping drinks and talking animatedly. The noise level was high in the jam-packed observation room and confusion reigned. Madeline commandeered one of the few vacant tables on the se
cond tier, while Jane, Sam, Lars and Westerlund lined up for food. Before Jane knew it, she was cut from the line and swamped by people wanting to congratulate her and shake her hand. Businessmen shoved their cards in her face, other riders pressed to talk to her, women she’d never seen before wanted to know if they could sign up for lessons.

  Jane’s head was spinning and feeling light and she had no chance to round up food. She hadn’t eaten for hours, and the aroma of Bourbon Ham, baked lasagna and several standing rib roasts—turning juicily in the rotisseries—had her almost drooling on her fancy white shirt. She also noticed there was lobster available and a stone-crab macaroni salad, not to mention a fully stocked bar and bartenders. She wondered where Elliot was going to get the money to pay for all of it. The man always had to have first-class. Forty-watt lightbulbs for them, but never any budget limits for the Whitbecks.

  At one point Jane gradually realized the hand she was shaking belonged to the Governor. While the Governor and his wife lavished praise on her, she saw beyond people’s shoulders to the round table seating Elliot, Cecily, Gladys, Lucinda, and Ashley.

  Ashley! she gasped inwardly. Ashley Parker was actually sitting with the Whitbecks, her face heavily layered in pancake makeup. Fences were mended, Jane guessed, not to mention cheek bones. The whole group at the Whitbeck table looked aghast, with their heads swiveled towards Jane and their mouths hanging open. Elliot’s face was nearly purple as he watched the members of his carefully selected A-list crowd flock to what he considered a worthless stablegirl. Jane observed that Gladys looked like she’d chomped into a lemon, her body ridged with fury.