Saddle Up for Murder

by Leigh Hearon

  The principal laughed. “I totally understand. If a student sees me walking through the grocery store in my sweats, I become invisible.” She held out her hand. “Carla Johnson. Very nice to meet you.”

  “Annie Carson. You look like a nice principal. I wish Dan and I had had you around when we were going to high school.”

  Carla gave her a wide, appreciative smile. “Thanks. I’ve been here since 2009, and it’s been quite a learning curve for me. This is my first job in a rural community. It’s a huge difference from the urban environments I came from. The kids are great, of course. They just have different sets of challenges.”

  Challenges—the ubiquitous, euphemistic word for whatever ailed teenagers these days. Annie decided not to let the principal off the hook. After all, she’d been a rural kid a few years ago, too.

  “Such as . . . ?”

  “Well, poverty, really. So many of the kids here come from homes that have edged below the poverty level all of their lives. Not surprisingly, expectations for future growth, including higher education, are pretty low. It’s rare if more than twenty percent of our graduates go on to college. It’s a miracle if they actually get a degree. It’s not because they can’t do the work. It’s just that they’re not particularly motivated at home to go beyond their parents’ educational level.”

  “Well, you’re looking at two success stories now,” Dan said proudly. It was true, Annie realized. It had taken a lot of menial jobs, careful budgeting, not to mention large government loans, but she’d managed to get her B.A. from Central Washington University in Ellensburg in less than the usual four years. Dan had attended the UW in Seattle on a football scholarship before going on to the police academy. He told anyone who’d listen that he still could fit into his old Huskies uniform.

  “You’re both such great role models. In fact, I’d love it if you could come here before school lets out to speak to graduating seniors. They’d get so much from what you could share.”

  Annie trained a discrete glare in Dan’s direction. This is what comes from unnecessary bragging, it said.

  “Why sure, Carla. We’d be happy to speak to the kids, wouldn’t we, Annie?”

  “Sure.” Annie managed to choke out the word.

  “Terrific. Well, I must run.” Carla glanced at the big round clock overhead, put there just to make sure students knew when class started and had no good excuse for being late. “I’m making a few announcements before the kids take over.” She walked off briskly, the epitome of good sense and deportment. Annie wondered how she managed to walk so quickly in a pencil-thin skirt.

  “Nice of Carla to arrange this for Ashley’s friends,” Dan commented. “Her mother didn’t intend to do a thing. As it is, the county’s picking up the cost of burial.”

  Annie was shocked but said nothing.

  “Let me show you the cast of suspects.” Dan took Annie’s arm and led her into the back of the auditorium, where staff was doing last-minute checks on a soundboard. He seemed to know he’d peeved Annie by volunteering her time without asking.

  “That’s Ronald Junior and Jane Carr, over on the left, in front,” he said in a sotto voce tone while pointing with one beefy arm.

  “I know,” Annie whispered back. “I met Ron coming in. Seems nice enough. Why’d he and his wife decide to come?”

  “Told me he wanted to remember the good things about the girl who took care of his mother,” Dan said. “Pretty darn nice of him, under the circumstances.”

  “Dan! Mrs. Carr might have done herself in, you know.”

  “Doubt it. Ronald says he called his mom the night before she died, and she was full of good cheer, looking forward to a visit from one of her grandkids the next day.”

  Then again, maybe not.

  Dan pointed to the opposite side of the auditorium. “That’s Candice Lawton, Ashley’s mother, over there on the aisle.”

  “You mean, the woman who wants to sue me? This I’ve got to see.”

  Annie tiptoed halfway down the far aisle to get a better look. Ashley’s mother probably was close to her in age, but that’s where the similarities stopped. Her polyester pantsuit couldn’t hide a girth that stretched bigger than Dan’s, and even sitting, bags of fat rolled around her knees. Her long hair, all gray, hung limply despite being pulled back, and exposed a solid face that portrayed no emotion. She had small eyes, a small mouth, and, Annie decided, looked just plain mean. She could understand why Ashley might think living with a jacked-up, sometimes violent boyfriend was better than what was back at home; she was certain living with Candice had been no picnic. Annie noticed that none of the students were approaching her to give their condolences.

  She made her way back to Dan, who then identified several of Ashley’s friends who intended to speak. Although Ashley had graduated two years before, many in the crowd appeared to be still high school age. She was sure Ashley’s sudden death was a huge source of gossip right now—the information the Sheriff’s Office had disseminated was pitifully small, barely worth a paragraph in the newspaper’s online Sheriff’s Log. It merely stated that the body of Ashley Lawton, a twenty-year-old female who had graduated from Port Chester High in 2014, had been found on a local ranch, possibly the result of suicide, although the case was still under investigation. No other details were listed.

  To Annie’s surprise, the ceremony itself was surprisingly entertaining. A variety of friends spoke from the stage and related several funny and heartrending stories about the young woman. She learned that Ashley’s favorite person was her paternal grandmother, who had died when Ashley was fifteen, and that Ashley had a special fondness for older people in general. Her favorite poem was by Robert Frost, “A Road Not Taken.” She was a skilled horsewoman, and had adored her 4-H horse, Jumper. Two of Ashley’s favorite songs were played, and Annie was relieved that neither was rap music. Absent from the stories was any mention of Ashley’s home life, past or present. The ceremony ended by all her friends coming up to the podium, placing a small stuffed lamb next to a photo of Ashley, and delivering a final message to their beloved friend. Ashley loved lambs, the audience was told, and had become a vegetarian as a result. As far as Annie could tell, it was her only flaw.

  She glanced at Dan. He nodded back. “Looks like we know the original owner,” he muttered.

  “Yes,” Annie whispered back. “But do you know if Ashley stayed at the campsite or whether someone was just carrying around her stuffed animal?”

  “Dunno yet. But we will.”

  When the lights went on, the auditorium erupted in a hundred conversations, everyone clambering to get to each other or out of the building. Dan excused himself and quickly made his way to the front, near the Carrs. Annie watched him go, but her attention was soon drawn to a heavily tattooed young man jogging down the steps. It must be Pete Corbett, Ashley’s boyfriend, she thought. His flight ended abruptly when he reached Candice Lawton, who was still wedged into a seat. Annie fleetingly wondered if the woman would be able to get out without a crowbar. She watched Pete—if that’s who he truly was—lean over and say something to Ashley’s mother. Annie couldn’t see Candice’s face, but she could see the young man’s, and he looked intensely serious. She then saw both Pete and Candice turn and look directly at Ron Carr and his wife, who now were standing and talking to Dan. They were long, hard looks, and not at all friendly.

  Curious, Annie started the long walk toward the stage, but before she took a dozen steps, she was waylaid by a group of Ashley’s friends, several of whom had just spoken onstage. They were so glad to see her here, they said. Ashley had told them she had visited her ranch and that Annie had offered her a job and a place to stay. Oh, my god, that was so cool of her, they gushed, because Ashley really didn’t have a home and her boyfriend could be so mean, you know? Seriously. But what they really wanted to know was, why did Ashley die, because, like, she wasn’t depressed at all after you gave her the job, and it was just so strange, and, like not like Ashley at all, and is it true sh
e died on your ranch? The cops wouldn’t tell them nothing, but someone thought it was true. Was it?

  Annie was so stunned by this outpouring that she simply shouldered her way past the girls and ran for the nearest exit. It was only when she was driving by Martha Sanderson’s tidy little house that she wondered why Lavender hadn’t been in the audience. Then she saw Kim Williams’s patrol vehicle parked in the driveway, and knew the answer.

  CHAPTER 11

  MONDAY, MAY 9

  It had been a long week for a cowgirl. Annie had awakened at six o’clock on Monday without her alarm clock, and plunged into her routine. Last week had set her off-kilter, she’d decided, what with finding dead bodies and abandoned campsites and spending far too much time talking with Dan Stetson over evidentiary details that didn’t make a bit of difference in her business.

  Then there was Ashley’s memorial service. When Dan had told her about it on Saturday, she’d felt compelled to go, although being among so many strangers filled her with trepidation. She’d compensated by spending the rest of the day on her couch in her sweats, eating junk food and watching old movies. Her horses, of course, received their usual excellent level of service. But she’d felt so discombobulated by the recent series of events that she hadn’t had the energy to do much else. Even when her trail-riding buddies had called and tried to wheedle her to bring Trooper out and play, she’d declined. She needed to hibernate, and hibernate she did, only emerging to take care of the horses and engage in her nightly call with Marcus, who was the epitome of sympathy and concern.

  But now the dreaded memorial service was over and she’d tossed the memory of wearing a constraining dress to the recesses of her mind—just as she’d tossed the dress to the recesses of her closet. It was time to get back on track.

  She started with a long session on Layla, who still needed a lot of TLC from her trainer. The Walker was no longer skittish when Annie brought out her saddle, and she didn’t toss her head when shown her bridle, but she still tended to involuntarily tremble whenever Annie gave a cue to change what she’d just been doing. And then there was the apparent ghost to contend with, who lived in the round pen, somewhere on the northwest side. Every time Layla came to it, she tried to veer inside the circle, sure the unseen bogeyman was about to grab her. She wasn’t the first horse who’d flinched at that particular area, even though there was no underbrush or trees or unlit area within twenty yards of the pen. Annie just accepted that some horses saw things that she didn’t, and walked them through their fears. Most of the time, that is. Many years before on a trail ride, she’d once urged a horse whose hooves apparently were glued to the ground to go forward. When the horse wouldn’t budge, she finally dismounted and tried to lead him on foot. What she found ten feet ahead of her was a precipice with a hundred-foot drop. She’d learned then to trust her horse’s instincts, but drew the line at ghosts.

  “Come on, Layla,” she whispered into the horse’s left ear, her heel resting on the horse’s left side. “You can make it. Walk right through Casper. He’s a friendly ghost, remember?”

  Layla danced a bit on her front legs and then dropped her head and sighed. This is what Annie was waiting for. She gently encouraged the horse again. The Walker delicately stepped through the forbidden area, with only a slight hop at the end. The walk wasn’t worthy of a show cup, but it was a whole lot better than it had been.

  Hannah showed up at two, ready for a lesson, and to continue Layla’s, Annie saddled Trooper and ponied Layla on a short trail ride on the ranch. As usual, Hannah was stuck with Bess, but for once the little girl had more pressing things to talk about than when she could ride a big horse that knew how to gallop.

  “Let’s go find the fawn, Annie!”

  “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s all ride down the road until we get to the ice-cream stand.”

  It was an easy sell. Although the campsite Annie had discovered a week ago was now completely cleaned up by the Sheriff’s Office, Annie didn’t want to answer any more questions about its demise than she had to. And Hannah would be sure to have several. Instead, Hannah learned, to her delight, that Bess liked strawberry ice cream as much as she did.

  After dropping off the little girl at home two hours later, she drove into town to buy supplies at the local Cenex. Then, remembering that she needed stamps, she pulled into the post office. That errand tended to, she turned toward home, but hesitated when she saw a lineup of Suwana County Sheriff’s Office vehicles outside Laurie’s Café just across the road. She couldn’t resist. She pulled into the parking lot, promised Wolf she’d bring him back a treat, and exited the truck without falling on her face. She was back to wearing Levi’s.

  Dan, Tony, Kim, and two other deputies Annie didn’t know were seated at the largest circular table in the place. They were the only guests; it was late in the day, and the dinner crowd hadn’t started to arrive, even those who relied on the senior specials, available only between the hours of five and six PM.

  “What’s up, guys?” Annie said, strolling to the table. “Someone walk out on their bill and the owners had to call you in?”

  “Very funny, Annie,” Tony answered. “We’re in a highly confidential strategic meeting and figured this was the place to hold it.”

  “Where you can get coffee and a slice of pie to help you think.” Dan leaned back in his chair and slapped his considerable belly. Annie saw remnants of two orders in front of him.

  “Good thinking. Public places are always the best spots to talk in private.”

  “Is she getting more sarcastic as she ages?” Kim asked her colleagues. Tony and Dan vigorously nodded yes.

  “I am so maligned.” Annie pulled up a chair and inserted it between the two deputies she hadn’t recognized.

  “Hi, I’m Annie Carson,” she told the deputy seated to the right of her. “I find most of the dead bodies in Suwana County.”

  “Better than a trained K9,” Dan threw in.

  Looking slightly aghast, the deputy swallowed and held out his hand. “Bill Stetson,” he said, a bit uncertainly.

  “Stetson? Did I hear you right? Are you related to that thug over there?”

  “He’s my cousin, twice removed,” said Dan. “My aunt’s daughter’s boy. Or something like that. Joined the force six months ago and is doing real well.” He was practically preening.

  “Nice to meet you, Bill. Hope the sheriff isn’t being too hard on you.”

  “ ’Course I am, Annie. He has to show everyone else that he’s not getting special favors. Right, Bill?”

  “Right, Uncle Dan. I mean, Sheriff.”

  The man to the right of Annie now spoke. “I’m Jack Clauson. I’m not a relative of the sheriff’s, but our mothers go way back. Both were our den mothers in the 1970s. I’ve been with the force since ’92, but usually I’m holed up in the basement. I’m the department’s one computer geek.”

  Annie looked at the slight man, who had wispy, receding hair, and a very nice smile. “You make sure they unlock the chains occasionally so you see the sunlight,” she said seriously.

  “Not a problem. There’s not a lock or a password I can’t break. I’m a regular Houdini.”

  “We were just talking about you, Annie.” Kim leaned forward. “We actually were going to ask for a little help.”

  Annie sat up nearly as erect as Kim. “Really?” She sounded as if she were ten years old and being told she could go on the big roller coaster. The vow she’d taken only that morning to stick to her horse business and let everyone else take care of their own had vanished with Kim’s remark.

  * * *

  The top-secret meeting continued back at the Sheriff’s Office, where the atmosphere turned far more serious. Kim and Dan had taken her into their full confidence, and Annie knew how critical it was that she adhere to her promise to keep what she was about to learn to herself.

  “I won’t even tell Wolf,” she said solemnly.

  As usual, Dan told her, the forensic lab in Olympic was backed
up, and so the DNA samples taken from Eloise Carr’s bedroom and bathroom, Annie’s hay barn, and the campsite still were unidentified.

  “Although I’ll be surprised if Pete Corbett’s DNA isn’t all over the place,” Dan had said, knowingly.

  Annie looked at him with a trace of concern. Dan had a tendency to glom on to the first suspect he encountered as the guilty party—and, as she knew from recent experience, he wasn’t always right. The man Dan had suspected of committing three homicides a few months ago was completely innocent, and now courting Annie on the phone nearly every night. The humiliation of not identifying the real killer until it almost was too late must still rankle him, Annie thought. She hoped he wasn’t making the same mistake again. But she kept quiet. She didn’t have enough information about the case to make an informed judgment on Pete Corbett’s culpability.

  “Meanwhile,” Dan continued, “we can’t let the grass grow under our feet just because the state lab is twiddling their thumbs. We do have Pete’s fingerprints on the empty Sudafed packets so we know he was shacking up on your property, Annie. And making meth, at least enough for his own personal use. ’Course, Pete denied knowing anything about a meth lab or even using the drug, if you can believe it. Although he sure looks the part, if you know what I mean.”

  Annie did. She had occasionally seen the before-and-after photos of meth addicts tacked up in public buildings. The changes to a person’s face and skin after meth use were horrific, and incredibly quick to take hold. Unfortunately, meth was relatively easy and inexpensive to make, which made it wildly popular in poor rural areas such as her own.

  “We haven’t found his fingerprints in the barn—yet.” This was from Kim. “But we did in Eloise Carr’s bathroom, and specifically on the cabinet that held most of her meds.”

  “Do you have enough to arrest him?” Annie dreaded asking the question. She was afraid Dan would say yes. But the sheriff seemed to have learned from the blunders he’d made in Marcus’s case.