Saddle Up for Murder

by Leigh Hearon

  “Wolf! Stay!”

  The dog knew better than to rush into oncoming cars. But he loved surprise visitors. Maybe he thought it was a delivery from the makers of gourmet pet food.

  Instead it was the delivery van from Port Chester’s most chichi grocery, the one that sold French cheeses that cost more than a T-bone. Annie assumed the driver was lost and wondered how she could convince him that he’d really come to the right address.

  As it turned out, he had, and after confirming that she was, indeed, Annie Carson, she watched in astonishment as the driver unloaded three cartons of food, carried them into her kitchen, and then gave detailed instructions on how to heat and serve the meal.

  “The tomato and pepper gazpacho soup with sherry doesn’t need any help,” he explained to Annie, who was now sitting down, her mouth unattractively open. “It’s served chilled, and should still be the right temperature now—it’s been refrigerated the entire way over. But the rib roast with Madeira sauce will need to be gently heated.”

  He saw Annie glance at her microwave. “And not in that,” he said severely. “Put the dish in your oven at 300 degrees for about twenty-five minutes. And keep the foil tent on.”

  Annie gave him a quizzical look. “Really?”

  “Really. The sauce is to die for. You don’t want it to evaporate in that machine. Besides, microwaves zap all the nutrition out of your food and create carcinogens while they’re doing it.”

  He and Lavender would get on like a house on fire, Annie thought. Her half sister loved to regale total strangers about the unhealthful attributes of the food they loved most. It was highly annoying. But Annie decided not to argue with her server. There was too much good food being unloaded, and she didn’t want it to stop.

  Kenneth, as Annie now knew him, went on to discuss which cheese was to be eaten now and which after dinner.

  “Although you must have a sweet tooth, because your client doubled up on dessert.”

  “My client?”

  “Marcus Colbert. He said you had an important phone conversation to be discussed over dinner.”

  What a guy. “And, ah, what dessert did my client decide to pair with the cheese?”

  “Well, it doesn’t really fit, but who cares. Double-dark chocolate cake with bourbon-whipped crème fraîche.”

  Annie couldn’t help her hedonistic groan.

  Kenneth took his time about leaving. He carefully placed the roast into Annie’s antiquated electric oven, clearly distrustful of her ability to follow through on his orders. He placed the cheeses on one of Annie’s few china plates and tossed the arugula salad for her. In fact, he was the epitome of a perfect waiter until he saw the label on the wine Marcus had selected.

  “Saint-Émilion Grand Cru! My god, look at the year! And the château!” Kenneth looked over at Annie with undisguised envy. “What kind of business do the two of you have together, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Thoroughbred horses.” This was technically true. Annie was in charge of finding homes for Marcus’s dead wife’s twenty-three horses.

  Kenneth seemed impressed, and finally took his leave.

  * * *

  Annie was sprawled in a living room chair, a glass of wine in one hand while she stuffed gloriously runny cheese into her mouth. The reason behind Marcus’s extravagant dinner had finally come to her. On the back of the mysterious postcard she’d received over a month ago, he’d written, “I’ll tell you everything over dinner. And this time, I promise not to be a no-show.” Well, Marcus had certainly fulfilled that promise in consummate style. Annie knew the entire message by heart.

  Her cell phone suddenly lit up, flashing the time and a California number on caller ID. Eight o’clock—Marcus was right on schedule. She hurriedly swallowed and took a large bolt from her wineglass, probably not in a way that Kenneth would approve of, she realized. She picked up the phone.

  “Annie Carson.”

  “Marcus Colbert.”

  There was a long silence. Then Annie remembered her manners. “Your dinner arrived, and it’s wonderful. Delicious.” She paused. “Thank you.”

  A low chuckle followed. Marcus’s voice was so sexy that even his quiet laughter made her body tingle.

  “I wish you were here to enjoy it with me.” This was two glasses of wine speaking, but Annie didn’t care.

  “I do, too.”

  Another long pause followed.

  Then Annie blurted out the question she’d asked herself nearly every day since late February. “Where have you been?”

  This time, the response on the other end was a long sigh.

  “Annie, if you only knew how much I’ve wanted to confide in you all this time.”

  “And how much I’ve wanted you to. Marcus, I need to know everything. Where were you the day you disappeared?”

  “Straight to the point, as usual, Annie. I love that about you.” She could feel Marcus readjust himself in whatever he was sitting. “I was with my wife’s killer.”

  Annie shuddered, recalling the traumatic events of just a few months before. Until now, she’d avoided thinking about them or even saying the killer’s name. Their encounter was just too painful to relive. She took a deep breath.

  “I thought as much. You know we never got to question him. He’s dead.”

  “Yes, I know. And I learned that you were almost one of his victims, as well.”

  Annie gave an impatient tsk-tsk. “That never would have happened.”

  “Well, it almost happened to me. In fact, I was just damn lucky that he thought he’d finished me off and left me for dead.”

  “Marcus. Please—why did you disappear?”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Marcus replied drily. “I’d been developing my own suspicions and decided to confront him myself. Bad move. Apparently I’m no longer the heavyweight boxing champion I was in my youth. He went after me with a sharp little horse tool—”

  “It’s called a hoof pick,” Annie interjected. “For cleaning horses’ hooves.”

  “Or killing meddling widowers,” Marcus replied. “He nicked me pretty good. The blood flow from my neck was horrendous. But that’s not what did me in. It was when I tried to take him down. I twisted my back something awful and something snapped. I think I passed out from the pain of that injury rather than from my neck wound.”

  Annie felt faint. She took a deep breath and then a deep swallow of very good wine.

  “What happened next?”

  “I woke up in a forest. The Olympic National Forest, I learned later. At the time, all I knew was that I was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by ferns and tall trees, and was wetter, colder, and hungrier than I’d ever been in my life. Plus I hurt all over. My head ached. And my guess is that I looked very much the part of a serial killer, which is what I realized I was still accused of being.

  “I wanted to just lie down and go to sleep, but I knew that would literally be the death of me. So I tried to clean myself up as best I could and crawl out and find some semblance of civilization. My back was still killing me. I doubt I managed more than a few miles a day.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “I didn’t. I was in the forest for what seemed to be forever. All I could do was drink from a few random creeks I came across. If I hadn’t had water, I wouldn’t have survived.”

  What ultimately had saved Marcus was his stumbling onto a Native American reservation on the outskirts of the national park.

  “I wandered into a village with half a dozen huts and collapsed on the doorstep of the first one I saw,” he said with a rueful laugh. “It was not one of my finer entrances, but frankly at that point I didn’t care if I lived or died, or who knew about my past. Of course, my identification had been confiscated when I was dumped, as well as my cash, so I figured making friends wasn’t going to be easy.”

  But Marcus discovered that it was considerably easier than he’d envisioned. He was taken to the home of a Native woman, who, he said, tended to him as profess
ionally as a doctor in any hospital. And once he’d told his finders that he did not want to be found, they immediately agreed. No one, it seemed, wanted an unnecessary visit from either the tribal police or federal agents.

  “I stayed in the elder’s home for almost a month,” Marcus went on. “When my neck and back had healed and I’d put on weight again, I figured my new friends had been hospitable long enough. So I made a collect phone call to my attorney, Jim Fenton, and learned you’d already single-handedly solved the case and exonerated me.”

  “Well, Wolf helped.”

  “Yes, and I heard Dan Stetson also played a minor role.”

  “True enough.” It was still hard to think of her old friend the sheriff as the one who shot Hilda’s killer and saved her life.

  “Believe me, I thanked Dan plenty when Jim and I met with him the next day.”

  “You WHAT?”

  “Well, I was grateful to him, Annie. He did come to your rescue.”

  “You’ve talked with Dan?”

  “Well, of course I have, Annie. Several times. And he’s been tolerably nice toward the guy he once thought was responsible for every recent homicide on his turf.”

  Annie was so angry that she barely took in what Marcus was now telling her.

  “So after he officially had all charges dismissed against me and the court file sealed, Dan said I was free to contact you. That was about a week ago. The media are going to learn that I’m alive pretty soon. Annie? Are you there?”

  Annie counted to ten. She inhaled and exhaled through her toes. It wasn’t helping.

  “Marcus, I’m thrilled to talk to you and get the whole story. I just wish that that jackass Dan would have thought to tell me that you were all right as soon as he knew.”

  “I guess he had his reasons. But listen, Annie, let’s not argue over something that really doesn’t matter now. Let’s talk about the future, and when we’re going to see each other.”

  This was far more pleasurable territory. By the time she clicked off her cell, Annie and Marcus had agreed that he would fly up to the Olympic Peninsula as soon as his crushing work load permitted to go over, as Marcus put it, “everything.” That encompassed a great number of possibilities.

  Annie went to bed feeling happier than she had in a very long time. She would soon see Marcus. And, if she had her way, she’d soon have Dan Stetson’s rear in a sling.

  CHAPTER 3

  TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 3

  The next morning, Annie cleaned her stalls with such vigor that half the “horse apples” tossed toward her wheelbarrow flew high overhead, landing on fresh cedar shavings already laid down in the next stall. Cursing, she jabbed the errant items back onto her fork and tried to calm down. She’d been thinking of the perfect verbal zinger for Dan Stetson and still hadn’t come up with one that was lethal enough. Sweat was trickling down her back, and her face was red. Twelve hours after her conversation with Marcus, she was still steaming, in more ways than one.

  She was returning the mucking wheelbarrow to its reserved place on the tack room wall when her landline phone rang with an old-fashioned trill. She knew only people who couldn’t reach her any other way resorted to this number. Cell reception was fairly intermittent in the horse barn; sometimes calls came through, but often they did not. Annie liked it that way. She grabbed the phone and barked out her greeting.

  “Annie speaking.”

  “Annie, it’s Dan. I need you on an animal rescue today. I’ll swing by in about twenty minutes. Have that gooseneck hitched and ready to go.”

  “Where are we going?” The knowledge that an animal needed her help had brushed aside every other thought from her mind.

  “Across the bridge and far away. Apparently, we’re the rescue team of last resort.”

  “I’ll be ready.” Annie already was hunting for her truck keys in her jacket pocket.

  “Oh, and Marcus is back. Thought you might like to know.”

  A zinger came flying out of her mouth.

  “Old news, Dan. We had our first dinner date last night.” It was only a slight exaggeration, her Bad Angel assured her.

  But Dan had already hung up the phone. She was playing to an empty hall.

  * * *

  Annie fumed as she set up the three-stall gooseneck trailer to her F-250. She’d kept her emotions in check while feeding the horses. But now that the herd had left the paddock for the great outdoors, she gave full vent to her fury at Sheriff Dan Stetson. How dare he keep Marcus’s rescue from her? He, of all people, knew just how much Marcus’s disappearance had disturbed her, and as much as she tried, she could not think of a single reason why he would be compelled to keep this information from her. Well, any single reason that made sense. The only explanation she could think for his failure to notify her the second Marcus had surfaced was he wanted her to think that Marcus was dead. He certainly couldn’t pin Hilda Colbert’s death on the man anymore.

  Then she recalled a recent conversation with Tony Elizalde, Dan’s right-hand deputy, and was glad Dan hadn’t heard her sarcastic remark.

  “He’s about as down in the dumps as I’ve seen him,” Tony had told her when she’d run into him at the local post office. “You’d think he’d be riding high after solving three homicides inside of a month. But Dory’s playing hardball. She’s asking for half of his pension, the house, and, if you can believe it, maintenance. What’s the matter, can’t Wally afford to take care of her now?”

  Wally was an old high school classmate who now owned beachfront property in San Diego. Dan’s wife, Dory, had discovered him on Facebook last winter, and the ensuing affair grew hotter than a California wildfire. She’d texted Dan with the news that she wanted a divorce while boarding a plane to join her new paramour. Annie had hoped that the fling would soon blow over, but it appeared that Dory was standing firm in her resolve to get on with her new life. She’d hired the one barracuda divorce attorney in Port Chester while Dan was still reeling from the idea of divorce after twenty-five years of marriage. He still hadn’t hired his own counsel, despite everyone’s urging to do so.

  Annie checked the brake lights on the trailer once more and sighed. Poor Dan. No wonder he didn’t want anyone else to be happy. She’d give him a break, she decided. No snide remarks about keeping Marcus’s reappearance a secret. After all, her Good Angel reminded her, she hadn’t told Dan about the postcard she’d received a month ago. She trudged up to her farmhouse, poured coffee into the tallest traveling carafe she could find, and called for Wolf. He came bounding in the open kitchen door, looking exceptionally pleased with himself. Annie sniffed the air. No doubt about it—Wolf had been rolling in something that had recently died. Well, Wolf could ride with Dan. He needed the company.

  * * *

  Dan’s reaction to the pungent odor Wolf had donned that morning was much more vocal.

  “What in the Sam Hill has that mutt been rolling in?” he bellowed at Annie, holding one massive hand across his nose and beating the air with his other equally beefy arm. The odor was so strong that he’d forgotten to tip his hat to her, she noticed. This attempt at male chivalry was his trademark hello to every female who crossed his path.

  “Haven’t the foggiest. Maybe he put on the fragrance just for you.”

  Some local residents might have thought twice about poking fun at the head law enforcement officer of Suwana County. Annie was not one of them; she’d simply known Dan too long. They’d grown up together, gone to school together, and in one ill-fated moment decided to attend the senior prom together. Dan had been dating Dory even then, but as Annie recalled, Dory had given Dan the bum’s rush at the eleventh hour. It seemed now she was showing her stripes early. If only Dan had taken notice then.

  While they’d each created their own professional pathway—Annie was a horse trainer, Dan was a cop—they were occasionally thrown together by one common interest: keeping animals out of the hands of stupid and neglectful humans. Twenty years earlier, they’d formed the Suwana County R
escue Brigade and now were the go-to agency for animal control, animal shelters, and any other entity that learned of an endangered animal that needed saving.

  To Annie’s regret, Dan parked and locked his patrol vehicle and announced that she was driving. Wolf was relegated to his crate in the truck bed, where Annie hoped the fumes would dissipate by the journey’s end.

  “What’s the scoop?” Annie asked once they were on the highway leading to Worden Canal Bridge, the span that linked the Olympic Peninsula with the adjoining county. She was willing herself not to bring up Marcus.

  “We’re buying a mule.”

  “Say what?”

  “You heard me right.”

  “I thought we were in the animal rescue business.”

  “We are. We’re doing this as a favor to Bruscheau.”

  Now this would be a first, Annie thought. Jim Bruscheau was the sheriff of Harrison County, where they currently were heading. He and Dan had maintained a simmering feud for years. Harrison County was far more populated and hence had more taxpayers’ dollars at its disposal. It also had more crime, but, as Sheriff Bruscheau once publicly pointed out to Dan, more cases were solved on his watch because his operation “had equipment that was purchased later than the 1950s.” If Deputy Elizalde hadn’t grabbed Dan’s arm at that point, Annie was certain Dan would have landed a punch, and she had no doubt it would have hurt.

  “Since when did you owe Jim Bruscheau anything?”

  “Never. But he called me up this morning and asked for my help, and you never know when I’ll want a favor in return.”

  “Seems to me you’d have been happy to tell him where to shove it.”

  “Now, Annie, we all have to get along in law enforcement. You know that.”

  She gave a mocking laugh. “What does he have that you want, Dan? Let’s cut to the chase.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, then, let’s talk about the mule.”

  * * *

  The mule, Dan explained, belonged to a family that lived in a double-wide on a five-acre lot in rural Harrison County. The double-wide was about to be repossessed. The parents were under investigation by CPS. Chances were good that the kids would enter foster care sometime soon. The father, Dan intimated, was about to be charged with numerous felony counts of domestic violence. The wife already had been ordered into inpatient rehab.