Dark Horse

by J. Carson Black

It would be tight, but depending on the filly’s ability to bounce back—

  Suddenly, Dakota realized what she was doing, planning the filly’s regimen way too far in advance, as if she were training the horse herself, instead of looking for someone else to do the work.

  How quickly she’d worked herself back into the fabric of Sonoita. Every day this week she’d flung the covers away at five in the morning, eager to check on her All American horse, not realizing how seductive this world was, how it could pull you in . . .

  Just what Coke had counted on.

  She’d better widen her search for a trainer, if she wanted to get out of here before it was too late.

  The next day, she drew up a chart and wrote in “gallop” for each day of the week. She would have to condition the filly slowly, letting her stretch out in a long, lazy gallop, building the distance up first to a mile, then a mile and a half, until by the end of the month, Shameless would be able to gallop two miles without effort. She hoped.

  She felt a rush of pride as she watched the filly come back from her first gallop, still eager and dancing a little jig. Lori, Clay’s regular exercise rider, had agreed to ride Shameless today. As Dakota took Shameless’s bridle and led them slowly back to the gap, Dakota asked, “How’d she go?”

  Lori patted the smooth neck. “She’s something special. I can’t explain it, but when you get on a horse like this, well, you just know they’re winners. I could feel it the minute I got on her. She’s full of run.”

  Lori’s words stayed with Dakota the rest of the day. After spending so much time with Shameless, grooming and walking and bathing and bandaging her, she knew the filly pretty well. After her initial aloofness, Shameless had proven to be an overgrown baby like most two-year-olds. But today, when Dakota had put Lori on her back before the gallop, the dark filly didn’t butt her head playfully against her or look around at the other horses and riders. Today she had walked straight ahead, her massive shoulders and hindquarters moving with purpose. There was something about her that seemed bigger, more impressive—as if she had grown overnight. Maybe it was the strong way she pulled at the bit or the look in her eye.

  Full of run.

  After putting Shameless up in the stall she’d rented from the track, Dakota put a line through the word “gallop,” and tried not to gloat.

  Later that day, she finally got to the broodmare files Dan had left for her. She was almost positive they’d kept three of the best mares sired by Something Wicked, and yet she saw no file on them. All their names began with the word “wicked,” so they were hard to miss. Obviously, Dan had been sloppy in gathering up the files. She knew he’d resent her bringing it up, but curiosity had gotten the better of her. She’d better gird her loins for another battle.

  She opened the manila folder marked PEACOCK LADY. Her eye ran down the list of foals Peacock Lady had produced over the last eight years, automatically lingering on two entries which marked the foals as deceased.

  The phone rang. “Dakota? Are you there? Please pick up if you’re there.”

  Dutifully, Dakota did. “Hello, Mom.” She closed Peacock Lady’s file and set it on the stack, her mind lingering on the poor dead foals. They’d been around long enough to have names. No doubt, each of them had a story that would break her heart.

  “How’d the audition go?”

  “I haven’t heard anything.”

  “Do you want me to call your agent? See if he’s heard?”

  Abruptly, Dakota was visited by a clear image of her mother in a black swimsuit sitting up on the chaise beside the pool, cordless phone clutched against her ear, her face smooth as a river rock. Dakota’s career had always been the most important thing in the world to Eileen Wood, since her own had never gotten off the ground.

  “Well?” Eileen demanded.

  “No. I’m sure if they wanted me for the callback, they would have gotten in touch by now.”

  “You shouldn’t take any chances. Maybe they got your number wrong. I’ll call the agency—”

  “They’re busy,” Dakota said. “They represent other people besides me, Mother. Big stars.” She felt the noose tighten around her neck, as it always did when her mother tried to take over.

  “If you worked harder, you’d be a big star, too. When are you coming home?”

  “I don’t know.”

  ‘The sale was last Saturday. I don’t see what you’re waiting around there for. Norm can take care of anything that comes up.”

  Dakota looked at the mantel clock, racking her brain for an excuse to get off the phone. None came to her. “I have some things to do.”

  “I knew it.”

  It’s none of her business, Dakota reminded herself. I don’t have to explain a thing.

  “Your father’s tied up the will in some way, right? He’s found some way to make you keep Black Oak. I knew you shouldn’t have gone out there.”

  “He didn’t do a thing,” Dakota lied.

  “What about the audition next month? You’ll be back by then, won’t you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? This is your career we’re talking about! Whatever you’re doing in that backwater can’t compare to landing a regular role on Catalina Island!”

  Suddenly, all this religious striving to make it to the pinnacle of her art—to become a continuing character on a prime-time show—struck Dakota as absurdly funny. She compressed her lips to keep from laughing.

  “How did the sale go?”

  “Pretty good.” She tried to keep from laughing aloud, almost choked.

  “What are you laughing at? Dakota?”

  “I’m just fine, Mother. But I have some news you might not like. I bought a horse.”

  “What? Why would you do a thing like that? David has two show jumpers that aren’t doing anything while you’re gone—”

  “A racehorse. And you know the real kicker? It was my own horse! I bought my own horse, Mother.”

  A long pause. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “I guess so. Anyway, I don’t have a trainer yet, and I’ve got to get her started, so it might be awhile before I can come home.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Damn your father anyway! I know he had something to do with this!”

  “He’s dead. Mother. Neither one of us can blame him for our troubles—not now.”

  “Oh, you’re impossible!” And Eileen did something she’d never once entertained doing in all her well-bred life. She hung up the phone.

  After dinner, Dakota drove out to the track to check on Shameless, unable to keep away. She felt oddly triumphant, bearding her mother in her lion’s den. Driving through the gate, she met Clay coming out. He waved. She hadn’t seen him since Friday night, except at the track in the morning, when they were both too busy to talk. That was the way she wanted it. The man might be kind to animals, but he was hell on women. She had to remember that.

  Shameless looked pleased with herself. No doubt her ears were still ringing from Lori’s praise.

  As Dakota cruised back down the highway toward Black Oak, her headlights picked up a truck parked on the verge. She realized it was Jerry Tanner’s turquoise nightmare. Beside it, Lucy Tanner waved her arms. Dakota pulled up, hoping Jerry wasn’t around.

  “Thanks for stopping,” Lucy said, her breath coming in gasps. Dakota sensed she was frustrated to the point of anger, but hid it well. “The truck stalled, and we couldn’t get it going again.”

  “Do you want me to call a tow truck?”

  “No. All we need’s a push.”

  Dakota glanced at her 4Runner. It wasn’t anywhere near as heavy as the truck, and she knew from experience (two fender benders in LA) how easy it was to crumple Japanese sheet metal.

  Lucy seemed to read her mind. “I wouldn’t ask you to use your truck.” She looked wistful. “It sure is beautiful. I always wanted a truck like that.”

  “It has its limitati
ons,” Dakota replied.

  “All I need’s for you to drop me and my dad back home. We can get the truck started in the morning.”

  “You want to leave it here?”

  The girl shrugged. “Look at it.”

  Lucy had a point. Dakota couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to steal it. “Hop in.”

  An expression of extreme embarrassment crossed Lucy’s features. “I need some . . . do you think you could help me with my dad?”

  Dakota glanced at the truck and saw Tanner leaning against the passenger door, head in his hands.

  “He’s real tired.”

  Or real drunk. Anger streaked through Dakota, followed by pity so strong that it bordered on grief.

  Lucy’s expression was vaguely defiant. Dakota didn’t blame her. It must be difficult to defend her father, to spend her childhood making excuses for him.

  Dakota helped Tanner into her 4Runner, trying not to show her distaste. He reeked of tequila. She asked Lucy how he’d managed to drive this far.

  “He wasn’t driving. I was. I’ll be sixteen in June, and I’ve got my learner’s permit,” she added. “I’ve been driving for years.”

  Dakota wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t unusual for ranch kids to start driving early. She herself had been driving her dad’s truck since she was twelve.

  The girl looked straight ahead. “I’m a good driver. You add it all up, I’ve driven thousands of miles, mostly on the freeway. Mountains don’t even bother me—I’m better at them than my dad. You turn around and go back up this road.” She motioned to the dirt road where Tanner’s truck had died. “It’s not far.”

  They drove in silence. The girl hugged herself against the cold, leaning against the passenger door. At last she said, “You can pull over there.”

  They had gone about a half mile up the dirt road. A corrugated shed attached to corrals loomed up on the right, and beyond it, an old silver trailer gleamed like a beetle carapace in the sweep of Dakota’s headlights. The corrals were made of railroad ties strung with wire, here and there reinforced with warped tin. Dakota saw several dark equine shapes, one to each corral. Tanner’s racing string?

  Poor souls.

  Dakota pulled into the yard, which was populated by undistinguishable hunks of machinery reduced by darkness to tortured shapes. An ancient Ford pickup with a “4-sale” sign in the window brooded near a nest of rolled chicken wire, a stack of old tires, bales of hay, and an arthritic-looking hot walker. The water trough in the corral closest was a clawfoot tub whose innards were scabbed with black rust.

  This was pretty much what she’d expected Tanner’s place would look like.

  Lucy clambered down. “Thanks a lot.”

  “You want me to help you—”

  “No, he’s wakin’ up.”

  Dakota didn’t relish talking to the man; she’d preferred his drunken stupor. She needn’t have worried. He lurched against the door, climbed out, and staggered across the littered yard to the trailer, mumbling something she couldn’t understand. Maybe it was “thank you,” but she doubted that if he knew who she was he’d have anything to thank her for.

  Lucy hung on the passenger door. “Can I ask you a favor?”

  The girl looked like a plump pixie in that ridiculous haircut. Dakota’s heart went out to her. “Sure.”

  “You need any help around your barn?”

  “Well, I—”

  She turned away dejectedly. “I didn’t think so. Just thought I’d ask.”

  Dakota remembered that Judy, her father’s groom, had just taken a waitressing job at the Steak Out. Black Oak, after all, was a dead end now.

  “You have a groom’s license?”

  “Yup. But I’m really a trainer.”

  Dakota thought of the parallel, which seemed both incongruous and sad. Her father had been a racehorse trainer, and she had been his assistant. There the resemblance ended. Coke might have been stubborn and opinionated, but Dakota had always known, deep down, she could count on him.

  There were no such reassurances for Lucy.

  “I’m a groom, too. I’d do a real good job, honest.”

  Something inside Dakota made her quail at the thought of getting involved. She didn’t want to be associated with Jerry Tanner in any way, even through his daughter. Perhaps that was selfish, but she couldn’t help it.

  Inside the trailer, a clatter and a yell; Tanner banging around.

  Lucy darted a glance over her shoulder. “He wants his dinner. I’d better go.” She looked down, dug her booted toe into the dirt. “I understand if you don’t want to hire me, what with the way Dad is and all. You don’t have to say anything.”

  Dakota was assailed by guilt. How could she be so damn petty? “Come by next Monday, and we’ll see how it goes.”

  Lucy Tanner smiled, and her face was transformed. Despite her weight problem, she could be a pretty girl.

  As Dakota drove out of the cluttered yard, her thoughts remained with Lucy. It was a crime that someone could be born into such a horrible life, while she’d had all the advantages.

  Life was patently unfair. But maybe she could even the odds a little.

  TWELVE

  Derek Blue hopped down from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department Bronco and motioned Dakota to follow him.

  The oak tree stooped over the road, its dark, tangled leaves reflecting the late afternoon sun like bits of twisted metal.

  Dakota closed her eyes, thought briefly of the impact, and asked herself for the hundredth time what must have been going through Coke’s mind as he hurtled to his death. “Thanks for taking the time to show me what you saw,” she said.

  “Hey, I don’t mind.” The deputy wore his hair short and sported a mustache that would have done Wyatt Earp proud. His hair and mustache were the same brown as his uniform, which was the color of an old manure pile in the sun. He was tall and lanky; Dakota wondered if he ever played basketball, but didn’t ask. Probably everybody else had. “There are a few things about this case that don’t add up.”

  Dakota perked up. “Like what?”

  Deputy Blue hitched his loaded belt up onto his hips, withdrew his big, black flashlight, and slapped it against his open palm. “For one thing, there were skid marks.”

  “On a dirt road?” Dakota looked doubtfully at the hard caliche of Washboard Road.

  “Think about it. You’re going fifty miles an hour in a one-ton pickup, you’re tryin’ to stop—you just better believe you’re gonna leave skid marks, even on a road as hard as this. He didn’t hit the tree straight either. People who are gonna kill themselves hit an object dead center.”

  Was he saying it wasn’t suicide?

  “Of course, he could’ve decided at the last minute that he didn’t want to die after all, but it was too late. That’s what the insurance investigator thinks.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  He kept slapping the flashlight against his palm like a pitcher slapping the ball into his glove before the windup. “We’re going on the assumption that he’d had too much to drink, got going too fast, and wiped out. I can tell you right now that Coke wasn’t a speed demon. He drove real careful, the whole time I knew him. Especially on Saturday night after a couple of drinks.”

  He shifted flashlight hands. Smack, smack. “And there were all the retread fragments at the scene.”

  Dakota remembered the few black threads of rubber she’d seen earlier.

  “It looked like somebody blew a tire, but Coke’s tires were intact. Had about six months of wear on them, and they weren’t retreads.” He started down the road, which was blemished at intervals with spray paint.

  “The paint marks places where I found pieces of retread. I didn’t know if they were important or not, but I had to preserve the chain of evidence.” He spoke the last words with obvious reverence. Whatever the chain of evidence was, it meant a lot to the deputy.

  He must have noticed her puzzled expression. “Anything found at a crime scene—
or accident—that wouldn’t normally be there,” he explained, “is picked up and bagged, and then the place is marked.”

  “And you think the retread has something to do with the accident?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. There are a lot of people who use this road; ranchers, off-roaders, kids looking for a place to neck. The retread could’ve been blown anytime, but I thought I should pick it up. I had to preserve the scene, even if no one else thought the scraps were important.”

  Dakota couldn’t help smiling. Obviously, “no one else” had to be the sheriff, Jimmie G. Arnette, who had been sheriff since she was a child.

  “Now the thing of it is, the weird thing, is that I found scraps of retread all up this road for miles. A tire blows all at once,” he told her. “The retread might be scattered over a few hundred feet, but that’s it. And this retread looked like it had been sliced by something sharp.”

  “What does this all mean?”

  For the first time, the eager-beaver look on his face diminished a little. “I don’t know. But it’s just weird. That’s what I told the investigator the insurance company sent out. Most people, they want to kill themselves, they find a foolproof way. Like sticking a gun barrel in their mouth.”

  Dakota choked back her revulsion. She’d warned herself ahead of time to face the possibility that Coke might have committed suicide, but Blue’s grisly word picture brought it home again that this was her father they were talking about. Her flesh-and-blood father.

  Abruptly, she pictured him patiently fashioning a salmon egg around her fishhook. This time try to keep it on a while, okay, hon?

  Deputy Blue broke into her thoughts. “He wore a seat belt. Of course that could have been just habit.”

  Dakota drew on her memories of all the television cop shows she’d seen. “Did you have the retread scraps analyzed?”

  “They’re marked and stored in the evidence locker, so if anything comes up we can ship ‘em off to the lab in Tucson. For now, we’re calling it accidental death, but the investigation can be reopened at any time.”

  “What about the insurance company? If you’re calling it an accident, won’t they have to abide by the official ruling?”