Saddle Up for Murder

by Leigh Hearon

  Then the other woman, who had not yet said anything, stepped back angrily.

  “No way! I’m not your mule. Find someone else. I’m done.” She spat out the last words angrily.

  Annie saw Pete grab her arm. “Clarissa, don’t be an ass. You owe me. You know you do. It’s just this one time.”

  Clarissa jerked her arm away and took another step back. “No! Maybe you could get Ashley to do your dirty work, but I’m not interested.”

  “I don’t care if you’re not interested.” Pete’s voice had taken on a menacing tone. “And I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

  Clarissa turned and ran down the street. Pete and the rest of the group watched her go; no one made a move to stop her. When she’d turned the corner, she continued to run. Annie wanted to see where she was headed but was afraid to take the binoculars off the main event below.

  Then Pete laughed. “She’ll be back. I’ve got it covered.”

  One of the men spoke up. “Yeah, Pete. You’ve got such a way with women. That’s the reason Ashley took off with—”

  Pete’s arm shot out and he slugged the speaker, who staggered back a few feet. Regaining his balance, he lunged at Pete’s neck. The remaining woman screamed and ran into the house.

  Annie glued her eyes on the fight below. Everything happened so quickly that later Annie wasn’t sure that her memory had everything in the correct order. She mostly remembered seeing the guy who’d been slugged kicking Pete on the ground and the man with the blue Toyota running out the back door, getting into his car, and racing away.

  It was then that Annie decided that for once, maybe she’d take Dan Stetson’s advice. Turning to her puppy, she said, “Well, Sasha, I think this is about the time when concerned citizens dial 911.”

  CHAPTER 19

  TUESDAY, MAY 17

  By mid-morning, Annie had rethought her idea of hiring help for her stables. She was so tired of people intruding into her life that all she wanted to do was go back to bed and pull up the covers. Whatever needed doing on the ranch, she’d do it by herself and be perfectly happy, thankyouverymuch.

  The onslaught had started at six o’clock that morning with a phone call from Dan, who, as usual, was irate about Annie’s latest escapade.

  “You just happened to be walking your dog in the prime meth zone of Suwana County?” he asked sarcastically.

  “You know I’m training Sasha as a companion animal,” Annie explained in an exaggeratedly patient voice. “She needs exposure to different kinds of people and environments. It’s good to try new neighborhoods.”

  “Huh! Guess you found a new neighborhood, all right. I can’t believe you fooled those officers in Port Chester. Had you been in my jurisdiction, anyone on the force would have known you were up to no good.”

  “What, there’s an APB out on me now? Isn’t that a little unfair, Dan, considering that every time I extend myself on your behalf, I turn up good intel?”

  “Intel. You’ve been watching too much television. Wait, you don’t watch television. Oh, forget it, Annie. I’ve got the police report in front of me, so don’t think you can squirm your way out of telling me what happened. Unless you were fudging a bit to the Port Chester boys last night.”

  That was a low blow. Annie considered hanging up the phone, something Dan did regularly whenever he was on the losing side of a verbal battle with her, but she thought better of it. She really wanted to know what Pete had been up to, and she suspected that between Tony’s and her own legwork yesterday, Suwana County deputies had been kept busy most of the night.

  “It’s just like I told the nice officer,” she said sweetly. “I was walking my dog when I heard sounds of a domestic altercation. I saw two guys slugging it out in an alleyway. I called the cops. Period.”

  “And the fact that Pete Corbett happened to be one of the combatants is just one giant coincidence?”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Cough it up, Annie. I already know the truth.”

  Of course, thought Annie. He’s talked with Tony.

  “Well, it was a coincidence that I ran into Tony at the county transit center. And if you don’t believe me, check my truck—my recyclables and trash are still in the bed. Tony told me what was up, and I watched from the safety of my truck. It looked to me like everyone was pretty cozy during the drop-off. Since Tony was concentrating on getting the bags, I thought I’d see what Pete was up to. I wanted to see if his friend at the dump would tip him off about the bags being confiscated.”

  “Well, of course he didn’t. Tony took him into custody the same time he took the bags into inventory.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know he’d be arrested, too.”

  “That’s because you’re not a cop. Even though you’re doing your best to pretend you are.”

  “That’s not so, Dan! A woman died on my property! You and I know it’s murder, not a suicide, and I think I’m entitled to find out what happened just as much as you are!”

  Annie was shouting by now, and she realized, with some amazement, that she had yet to consume a single cup of coffee. She plugged in the machine. Whenever she talked with Dan about the case, she couldn’t have too much ammo.

  * * *

  The conversation ended on a more civilized note. Annie agreed not to investigate any further without clearing it with Dan first, although the odds of the sheriff okaying anything she wanted to do were about a jillion to one. In return, Dan agreed to keep her informed of any new information on the case that might impact Annie’s safety. When she shamelessly whined for more information now, Dan grudgingly told her that the bags Pete had dropped off at the transit center had, indeed, contained meth—a rather large quantity, in fact. The man who had received the bags hadn’t talked yet, but it would be in his best interests to do so. Dan told her the case needed a fall guy who might cop a decent plea in return for naming all the players in Pete’s local drug ring.

  “There’s just one problem,” Dan said at the end of their hour-long conversation. “Pete’s AWOL. According to your statement, everyone hussled inside while you were calling 911. By the time the officers showed up, Pete was gone. His truck was still parked in the back, but he and the two people you described being with him at the dump had taken off. Nearly all our manpower is looking for them now.”

  Annie hadn’t known that. After she’d seen the black-and-whites from Port Chester pull into the alleyway, effectively blocking the truck’s exit, she’d clambered off the rise to meet them. For a good two hours, she and Sasha had been parked with a nice female officer who chatted with her about the weather, admired Sasha, and let her go after she’d provided a statement. Unlike Dan, this officer hadn’t divulged a thing about what was happening inside the house. Annie had assumed Pete was in handcuffs, along with the rest of his gang.

  On the top of the kitchen hutch, Annie’s Seth Thomas clock gonged the hour. It was seven o’clock—far past the horses’ normal morning feed time.

  “Gotta go, Dan,” she said wearily. Her early morning adrenaline rush had left her feeling enervated, and she still had six horses to feed. “But if I see him or anyone else on my property, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  “Be careful, Annie. I don’t think Pete knows you’re involved, but act as if he does, you hear me?”

  As usual, Dan hung up without waiting for her reply.

  * * *

  The next call was the one Annie had been wondering about for several days. She was in the middle of mucking her stalls when the landline in the stables gave its signature shrill ring. Annie picked it up with her left hand while she continued to desultorily toss used shavings into her wheelbarrow.

  “Annie Carson speaking.”

  “Annie, it’s Mary Trueblood.”

  “Hi, Mary. How are you?” Annie’s greeting was less than inspired, but Mary didn’t seem to notice.

  “Ian said he dropped off a load of chips for you the other day and told you to expect my call.”

 
Annie perked up. “He did. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your generosity. The chips are great, and they really save on my horse budget.” All of this was perfectly true. Annie wondered if the point of Mary’s call simply was to discuss the merits of cedar versus pine chips.

  “You’re doing us a favor by taking them off our hands. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, Annie. It’s something I’d prefer to do in person. Will you be at home today? Could I stop by late afternoon for a chat?”

  Annie had hours of ranch chores ahead of her and wished she could say she had a root canal scheduled this afternoon. But she didn’t.

  “Sure, Mary, I’ll be here, and probably will be down at the stables or working in the round pen. What time do you think you might stop by?”

  “Shall we say four o’clock?”

  “Fine. I’ll see you then.”

  “See you then, Annie.”

  She hung up the phone feeling thoroughly puzzled. Obviously, Mary had something on her mind, but for the life of her Annie couldn’t figure out what it might be.

  * * *

  The third disruption occurred just as Annie stepped out of the shower. Her cell phone buzzed insistently on her dresser, and she picked it up, her hair dripping over her wood floor and, to her cat Max’s disgust, him.

  “Annie? It’s Patricia Winters. From Running Track Farms.”

  Normally, Annie would have been delighted to talk to Patricia, a fellow horsewoman, but she still hadn’t figured out how she could arrange care for her horses so that she could spend several glorious days learning all about the merits of pedigreed horses. By the time she’d finished talking to the Port Chester police and finally returned home yesterday, it had been high time to feed her own horses and check on the ewes. The contemplative evening she had envisioned gave way to a long nap on the couch after a makeshift dinner. At ten o’clock, she woke up, dumped the rest of her largely untouched glass of Glenlivet in the sink, and fell into bed.

  “Patricia,” Annie now said. “How nice to hear from you—at least, I hope so. Is everything okay with the horses?”

  Patricia laughed. “Spoken like a true horse owner. First confirm that every horse is safe and healthy, and then ask me how I’m doing.”

  Annie laughed back. “Sorry, it’s just an ingrained habit. Horses first, you know.”

  “Well, the horses are absolutely fine. Even Cinder is doing better. We may have her scar tissue issue licked.”

  Cinder, Annie knew, was the Appaloosa who had suffered the most smoke inhalation. She was relieved that like Cinderella, for whom the horse was named, Cinder was going to have a happily-ever-after life.

  Patricia went on. “Have you given any thought to when you might come up? And does my idea of spending several days at once make sense to you?”

  “It does make sense,” Annie admitted. “And I’d love to do it. The difficulty is finding someone who can take care of my horses while I’m gone.”

  “Oh, I do understand.” Patricia’s voice reflected her empathy. “No one’s quite good enough to take care of our little darlings, are they? Well, keep me posted. I’ll hold the dates I e-mailed you as long as I can. Just let me know how you fare with getting help.”

  The rest of the morning Annie scoured her address book and her brain in her attempt to find someone who had the flexibility to take care of both sheep and horse herds during her prolonged absence. For the life of her, Annie couldn’t think of a single person.

  She worked with Layla while she waited for the expected visit from Mary Trueblood. It was amazing how much progress she’d made with the Walker after remembering one crucial fact. Annie had always known that horses’ two-sided brains absorbed information differently. It wasn’t all black and white, of course, but generally speaking horse people considered the right side the flight-or-fight side and the left side the one that absorbed and remembered new information. Many well-known horse gurus insisted that only when a horse was taught to perform a task on both sides of its body did the lesson fully sink in. Annie was a proponent of this way of teaching, but she had forgotten just how important it was with the horse at hand.

  Under “the bully’s” rein, Layla’s right brain was continually fired up on all cylinders; she was afraid most of the time, so instinct took over whenever someone was on her back. It made learning new things extremely difficult, because right-brain behaviors simply took over. When Annie worked with her, Layla was far calmer and wanted to please, but remnants of her former training still crowded into her memory bank. Annie had discovered that if she took the time to teach both sides of Layla’s body, she seemed to integrate Annie’s “asks” much faster and with greater accuracy. In fact, Annie was marveling at the lightness with which Layla now sidestepped across the round pen in both directions when Mary Trueblood’s Lexus pulled into her driveway.

  “Over here!” she shouted as Mary got out of her car. The lesson was over, anyway, and Annie was glad she had something to do with her hands while Mary made whatever pronouncement was coming.

  “What a day!” Mary exclaimed as she walked up to the round pen. “If this sun keeps up, we’re going to have one of our best summers in recent memory.”

  “It’s been great,” Annie agreed as she loosened the cinch on Layla’s saddle. “You never know what May will be like on the Peninsula, but this weather is enough to make me think about planting a garden.”

  “Oh, you really should, Annie. You’ve got the room, the right southern exposure, and I suspect your compost pile would make anything grow.”

  Mary’s own gardens attested to her green thumb. The Trueblood property was exquisitely landscaped with shrubs and flowers that began at the end of the driveway and enveloped the manicured yard in front of their home. And Annie had once glimpsed Mary’s extensive organic garden in back of the house, which, thanks to a large greenhouse, produced vegetables almost year-round.

  “Sure, in my spare time,” Annie joked, as she pulled off Layla’s saddle and slung it over the round pen fence.

  “Gardens really don’t take that much effort, or skill, despite what most people think,” Mary said. “It’s just planting the seeds and watching them grow. I’d be happy to give you some starts, if you’d like.”

  “Really? That’s awfully nice of you. Maybe I should give gardening a try.” The thought of picking ripe tomatoes and strawberries had a certain appeal. Plus, she could choose precisely what she wanted to plant. Kale, for example, would not be seen in her garden. Nor would many root vegetables.

  Annie picked up a brush and started grooming Layla, who was quietly standing in the middle of the pen. “I hope you don’t mind my doing this. I’ll turn her out in a few minutes and then we can talk.”

  “Not at all. What a lovely horse. Is she one of yours?”

  “No, Layla is being rehabilitated after having what I call a ‘jerk-and-spur’ on her back. A friend of mine had to stable her while she underwent chemo. When she was ready to bring Layla home, she found out the extent of the damage he’d done.”

  “How infuriating,” Mary said. “There’s nothing I hate more than a bully.” Annie silently agreed as she brushed out Layla’s tail.

  After a moment, Mary spoke again, more tentatively. “You know, Eddie also was a bully.”

  Annie stopped brushing for a moment, then resumed the task. She was silent only because she didn’t know what to say. She knew that Eddie Trueblood was meant to have taken over the family business but instead was a source of heartache and disappointment to his parents, his reckless behavior eventually involving drugs and crime.

  “It was just a matter of time before Eddie did something that would land him in real trouble,” Mary continued. “We never knew where he was staying or what he was doing—or who his friends were. The truth is, we really didn’t want to know. The only time we could count on seeing Eddie was when he wanted money for one of his hare-brained business schemes.”

  Mary spoke resolutely now, with none of the quiet despair s
he’d voiced before. “We couldn’t save our son, but we would be very happy if we knew we could help other boys who are on the cusp of going in the same direction as Eddie. Cal and I have discussed it, and we would like to contribute to that new center you’re planning with Travis Latham. We can contribute money and construction materials, and would be happy to help with fund-raising, as well. I’m on the board of several local organizations and have experience prying checks out of residents who can well afford to make charitable donations. And I know just who they are.”

  Annie had no doubt that she did—the Truebloods were one of the “first families” of Suwana County; their local roots extended further than nearly anyone else who now lived here. Nonetheless, she was stunned by Mary’s magnanimous offer.

  “Mary,” she began, intending to tell her just how much her generosity would mean to Travis and the rest of the board. But as she began to speak, the sound of pounding hooves filled the air, and she turned toward the pasture to see her five horses galloping straight to the gate, the white in their eyes exemplifying their fear.

  Not another predator. Her mind immediately flashed to her ewes.

  “Stand back, Mary!” she called out. “I’m going to let them into the paddock.” She strode to the pasture gate, flung it open, and stood aside. The horses merged as a blur into the pen without bickering over who went first. Relieved, Annie stepped into the paddock with them and began calming them with her voice and hands. They clustered around her, which meant they considered her their leader right now. Once she was sure no one was unduly traumatized or physically hurt, she opened the paddock gate to the stables to give the horses access to their stalls. She then turned to her guest, who was standing silent by the barn, her own eyes wide.

  “Mary, something out there scared the bejeezus out of them, and I have to investigate. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone—do you want to finish our talk later?”

  “I’d like to come with you, if I might. If there’s a predator out there, I’d like to know about it, too.”