Chapter 12

 

Maddie sat sideways on a hay bale with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms clamped around her shins. Her right shoulder and hip leaned into the stall front, and she'd rested her head on her knees. As I walked down barn three's aisle toward her, at five past midnight Saturday morning, I wondered if she had any idea just how titillating her pose was. To begin with, she wore jeans snug enough to cut off her circulation, but drawing her legs up as she'd done, tightened the denim even more.

I sighed. Then again, maybe it was the mood I was in. I'd always found that lack of sleep triggered some primal need to copulate, and the party had completely messed up my schedule, not to mention the sensory input overload.

I smiled as I remembered Elaine's reaction to Hadley's invite and guessed she hadn't wanted to lose her ride to an orgy of sex and alcohol. She'd been anxious on the drive home, but I'd been thankful for her interjection and told her so. I liked my sex private.

Pulling my gaze away from Maddie, I glanced toward the dark storage area in the back and thought, as private as a horse barn, anyway. "What's going on?" I asked.

Maddie jerked her head toward the stall as I realized the mare wasn't standing in plain view. "I think she'll go tonight. She hasn't heated up yet, but I bet you'll have a foal before daybreak."

"Cool."

"Yeah, well it's not so cool for me if they're all gonna start waiting for your shift."

I grinned and stepped closer so I could see over the bottom half of the stall. As I looked over the edge, the bay mare rolled onto her sternum, touched her muzzle to her belly, and whinnied. "What's she doing?"

Maddie slipped off the hay bale and stood beside me, her right arm brushing mine. She whispered, "She's talking to her unborn foal."

"You're shitting me, right?"

"Uh-uh. She's had four or five foals already. She knows exactly what's going on, and she loves her babies. She's such a devoted mother, one of the best mares I've ever worked with. I've foaled her out two years in a row, now, and she's always talked to them."

I raised my eyebrows. "But before they're born?"

"Uh-huh." Maddie turned toward me and licked her lips. "And now, it looks like you're gonna have the honor."

"Hmm."

She slipped her hand under my coat and rested it on my waist. "Steve, don't you like me?"

"Well, yeah. Sure I do."

"So, aren't you attracted to me?" She moved closer, and her pelvic bone touched my thigh. "Just a little?"

I placed my hands on her shoulders and swallowed. "Yes, Maddie. Like you wouldn't believe." A soft smile touched her lips. "But, I have a girlfriend."

"Of course you do. You're too cute not to." She exhaled and slowly lowered her gaze to my chest. "If you ever need a . . . diversion, I've got nothing else to do at night."

I clamped my mouth shut as I pictured a little diversion in the haymow. Every guy's fantasy.

"Well," someone behind Maddie said, causing her eyes to widen, "ain't this touching?"

I jerked my head up as Maddie spun around and faced Paul.

"Thought you wasn't interested, Cline?" He strolled down the aisle, and his face was like stone. "Ain't that what you told me just two days ago?"

He paused in front of Maddie and smoothed his fingers through her hair. "You still coming over tonight, darlin'?" he said as he fixed his gaze on me.

Maddie didn't answer.

Paul leaned closer, moved his mouth alongside her ear, and watched my expression as he reached around and cupped his hand over her ass. He slid his fingers into her crack, then inched them lower and wedged his hand between her legs. He fingered her crotch.

Maddie tried to wriggle away, but he grabbed her arm and kissed the side of her face. "You head on home," Paul said. "I'll be there shortly."

When she started down the aisle, it bothered me that I couldn't see her face. "Maddie!"

She turned around.

"Don't go unless you want to," I said.

She looked from me to Paul. "Oh, I'm going home, all right. But I'm going alone," she said to Paul before she turned and marched down the aisle.

Paul watched her leave, and his lack of emotion was more disturbing than an outburst would have been. He turned back to me when the farm truck cranked to life. "She'll change her mind. She always does. She thinks you're so sweet," he mocked, "covering for her when she didn't answer her phone the other night like she was supposed to. But you and I both know the real reason you kept her out of trouble, ain't that right?"

I crossed my arms but resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

"She thinks you're so special when all you wanna do is get in her pants."

Well, I guess he had me there.

"But she'll let me in." He smirked.

"Oh, wow, Paul. Clever play on words. Wish I could've thought of that."

Paul's face darkened. He stuck his finger under my nose. "Stay away from her, you hear?" When I didn't respond, he added, "'Cause I swear to God, I find out you touched her, I'll rip your fucking head off." He lowered his hand and glanced at the horses standing in their stalls behind me. "Working a job like this at night, by yourself, no telling what might happen. Shit. A horse could cave your head in with one swift kick, and nobody'd be the wiser 'til morning."

Even though I'd expected a threat of some sort, I seriously considered laying into him. But Paul had his own brand of punishment to endure, because any man who cared for Maddie was in deep shit.

Apparently, he didn't know how to take my lack of reaction, so he started backwards, mildly confused and greatly annoyed that I hadn't jumped all over him. When he was halfway to the door, he yelled a departing "I mean it."

I looked in on Maddie's mare. She'd risen to her feet and was nibbling her hay. "Humans," I said half under my breath.

Her chewing ceased as she turned her head toward me. When I didn't say anything else, she lowered her head and flapped her big old lips among the wisps of hay, searching for a choice timothy seed head or alfalfa sprig.

During my one o'clock round, I checked barns seven and eight and the training barns, then headed back to the main part of the farm. As I drove past the burnt down barn on Cannonball Gate, I glanced to my left and was surprised that I couldn't see the rows of light coming from the barn windows. Now that the aisle lights were kept on all night, I should have been able to see them. I put my foot down on the accelerator. The Ford's tires hummed on the roadway as I zipped past the mansion and cleared the high bank along the lake. From the entrance to Stone Manor, the dusk-to-dawn lights on each barn were visible, but all the aisle lights had been switched off.

"What the hell?"

I coasted the truck down barn one's drive, pulled all the way past the barn, and circled the back lot. It was empty, just as it should have been. I drove back to the barn's entrance, spun the Ford onto the grass, and centered the headlights on the wide barn doors. I'd left them open about two feet, and the high beams cut all the way down the aisle and puddled against the doors at the far end of the storage bay. I slipped my flashlight off the bench seat and eased out of the cab. One of the day crew had left a busted pitchfork handle in the Ford's bed. I picked it up and hefted it in my hand.

I spun around as I slipped through the gap between the doors and felt slightly foolish when no one was there. I hit all the light switches at once and peered down the aisle, listening. A hoof thumped against a stall wall as a horse clambered to her feet; otherwise, the barn was quiet. I paused when I reached the storage area, then flipped on the lights. Nothing. I crossed over to the back door and stepped outside, walked around the corner and stared down the lane that runs along the length of the barn and joins with the drive. Nothing. Not a goddamned thing.

I repeated the process in barns two through six. Someone had driven onto the farm, switched off all the lights, then left, and it didn't take a genius to guess who that someone was. Paul knew my routine as well as anyone, and he also knew it would freak me out, knowing that someone was sneaking around the farm. I rubbed my face.

Unless the arsonist had turned his attention to Stone Manor and was warming up to the job.

I drove over to barn three to check on Maddie's mare, carried the pitchfork handle into the barn just in case.

She was down, flat on her side. Patches of sweat had spread along her flank and neck. I checked that her water hadn't broken, then headed to the clinic. As I pulled into the drive, I realized the clinic lights were still on. If Paul was the culprit, it made sense, because he wouldn't have wanted Frank to catch him.

I was halfway down the lot when I realized something was seriously wrong with my old Chevy. I slammed on the farm truck's brakes and looked over my shoulder as I ratcheted the gearshift into reverse. I backed up and stared at my pickup in disbelief. The tires were flat. I jumped out and stalked around the truck. All four wheels sat on the rims.

"Fuck." I scanned the lot as I pulled the Ford down to the clinic doors. This was just great. There was no way I could afford new tires. Not four of them at once.

I decided to wait for morning before I called the cops because I sure as hell didn't have time to fool with a bunch of questions.

As I filled the buckets, I considered the possibility that the lights and my truck's tires weren't necessarily the work of the same person. I'd bet the cost of a new set of tires, that Paul had slashed them to get back at me, but switching off the lights almost seemed too subtle.

If I wanted to play a mind game on Dr. Nash and knew her history, I'd do just what the arsonist was doing. I'd start out by setting a ring of fires that surrounded her farm. Then, when I planned to move in for the kill, what better way to set her on edge than to have her nightshift employees reporting that someone had been messing with the lights?

* * *

I quit thinking about Paul or my truck or the arsonist when the mare bore down and delivered a beautiful colt onto the straw. I was crouched in the stall doorway, watching her lick his ears, when something fell in the back of the barn.

I slid her door closed, hefted the pitchfork handle in my hand, and approached the storage area. As I neared the end of the aisle, I pressed against the wall. I flipped on the lights. A pitchfork lay on the ground under the tool rack. I walked into the center of the open area and checked that no one was hiding behind the haymow, or on top of it, or around the grain shoot, or behind the grain wheelbarrow or the stocks. I glanced at the back door. It was closed just as I'd left it. I hung the fork on the tool rack and got back to work.

At three o'clock, I stepped outside and stretched. Contrails crisscrossed the sky, illuminated by a half moon that had reached its zenith. Some nights, the jets' exhaust seemed to dissipate as soon as it hit the atmosphere, but on nights like tonight, they hung across the sky like strips of gauze.

I pivoted to see what the mountains looked like and realized the lights were on in the hay barn on Bear Wallow. And barns one and six, the barns at the mouth of Stone Manor, were dark.

I called the cops as I cleared barn six. Unlike Maddie, I hadn't seen one cruiser. The dispatcher told me they'd get out as soon as possible, and there was something about her tone that prompted me to ask how long she expected before they showed.

"I'm not certain, sir. We're short-staffed tonight, and there's an accident on I-66 that we're dealing with." She paused. "You're certain that the person has left the area?"

"As far as I can tell."

"A deputy will be out as soon as possible, but call back if you feel you're in danger."

"Yes, ma'am."

After she disconnected, I checked one, then drove over to the hay barn. The barn wasn't a barn, per se, but a three-sided storage shed that resembled Foxdale's implement building. It sheltered an assortment of farm equipment and a major supply of hay, and it would make one hell of a bonfire. I drove all the way around the building, spotlighting the interior with my flashlight and checking for vehicles that didn't belong. Once I'd ascertained that no one was hiding anywhere near the building, I climbed out of the Ford and checked the interior. Whoever had switched on the lights was long gone.

By six-thirty, I was dead on my feet. I gazed mournfully at my truck as I coasted down the lot, but when I nosed the Ford into a parking space, I saw I wasn't the only one up and about. Dr. Nash's Spyder was in the lot, and Jenny was standing in the narrow opening between the wide clinic doors, wearing a heavy-duty parka and riding breeches instead of her usual school clothes.

"Hey, kiddo," I said as I squeezed past her. "Why are you here so early on a Saturday morning?"

"You had a f-o-a-l?" she said in her high-pitched singsong voice.

"Yes, I did," and before she could ask, I added, "barn three."

"Are you going back over?"

"Maybe later. First, I've got to talk to your mom." When I put my hand on the office doorknob, I paused. "Jenny, why don't you see what the stallions are doing."

She frowned. "You want to talk in private?"

I smiled. "If you don't mind."

"Okay." She skipped down the aisle.

Dr. Nash looked up as I opened the door. She was perched in Elaine's chair, poring over a huge calendar and stacks of charts and lists spread across the desktop like an avalanche. Her eyebrows rose and disappeared beneath her bangs. "Is there a problem?"

"The horses are fine." I cleared my throat, and her face paled as I told her about the barn lights and my truck's tires.

"Did you call the police?"

"Yes. Around three-fifteen."

"You should have called me," she snapped. "Did they find anything?"

"Sorry, and no. They haven't been out."

"What?"

"They're shorthanded, and there's an accident on--"

Dr. Nash snapped up Elaine's phone and, from my end of the conversation, it sounded like she'd dialed Sergeant Bodell directly. "Dammit, Emmett, I want you handling it."

Bodell's voice wafted from the receiver.

She glanced at her watch. "Well, all right."

She slammed the phone into its cradle, and for Bodell's sake, I hoped he'd already switched off. "They'll be out soon." Dr. Nash rubbed her face, and when she smoothed her fingers through her bangs, a slight tremor shook her hand. "Since we returned from our trip, I haven't had a chance to talk to you about Sumthingelse." She sat up straighter and rested her forearms on the desk. "You did an extremely professional job, Steve."

"Thank you."

"I'm impressed. Not many experienced staff would have done as well." She rubbed her face again. "Have you called a service for your truck?"

"No, ma'am."

"Good. Emmett will want to look over everything before the tires are replaced. And we'll pay for them. You shouldn't have to suffer that expense."

"But--"

She waved her hand. "No arguments. As soon as Emmett gets here, I'll call my service."

"Thank you."

"Did Maddie have any trouble on her shift?"

"No, but she left at midnight."

"Oh, that's right."

"If that's all?" I said as I backed toward the door.

"Yes. Oh, wait a minute." She rubbed her left temple as she leafed through a stack of papers. "Four mares are coming down from Pennsylvania, maybe tonight. I want them stalled in eight."

"Yes, ma'am."

I hadn't taken a break at three, so I'd decided to take it then, even though I got off at seven. Not that I was going anywhere.

Jenny joined me in the aisle. "Can we go see the foal?"

"If your mom says it's okay, but if you don't mind, I need to eat first."

"Sure. Anyway, you wondered why we're here so early. It's because Mom has to catch up on work after being away."

"I get that, but why are you here?"

"I don't have anything better to do."

Jenny skipped alongside me, but when she seemed prepared to follow me into the clinic, I suggested she ask her mother first.

"But, why?"

"I think it would be a good idea, that's all."

She frowned. "All right." She popped into the clinic a minute later, after I'd snagged a Coke from the fridge and was unwrapping a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "Mom says it's okay."

She described in great detail how she'd had to stay at her cousins' while her mom and dad were away, and I thought, if nothing else, she'd keep me awake.

"All they ever want to do is watch cartoons or play stupid computer games."

"Um-hum."

"I like riding."

"So I've noticed."

She grinned. "As soon as Dad gets a minute, he'll take me over to the training barns." She pushed a chair over to the sink and climbed onto the seat.

Jenny stretched over the faucet and planted her hands on the windowsill so she could peer through the glass. To the right of the stone mansion and bank barn, if you really craned your neck, you could see the roofs of the training barns, and I imagined that's what she was spying.

"I miss having my ponies in the bank barn because I could go see them whenever I wanted, but the training barn's fun, too, because I can gallop around the track every time I ride."

I wondered what the ponies thought of that.

"When they were in the bank barn, Mom or Dad had to get a horse and ride with me if I wanted to work on the track, because I had to ride on the roads to get there, so it was always a hassle. I told them, all they'd have to do was build some coop jumps between fields, then I could ride cross-country to get there."

"Hmm."

Jenny flopped into the chair and spun it around. "Did you know I might get a pony today?"

I shook my head. Okay, maybe she was going to put me to sleep, instead.

"Yep. It's a gray. A Welsh cob, I think. We're going to Culpeper as soon as Mom gets freed up. So, I might have a new pony tonight. I'm going to name it Peppermint after my first pony who died." She frowned. "I wish my ponies were in the bank barn, then I could go out and check on him right up 'til I go to bed and make sure he's happy in his new home. But, at least there's a wash rack in barn ten that I can use, with hot water and heat lamps and everything. And of course, that's really important when you have a gray horse. Now, I'll have two: Tinsel and Pepper. I thought Dad was going to build me a wash rack at the bank barn, but he moved my ponies, instead."

"When was that?"

"Umm . . ." She drew up her feet and gave the chair another twirl. "The Saturday right after we had that big snow. I was so mad because--"

The door opened, and Victor Nash stepped into the room. "What in God's name happened to your truck?"

"Uh . . ." I glanced at Jenny. "An unfortunate incident."

"Jenny, go into the office and wait for me."

"But, Dad--"

Nash placed his hand on his daughter's shoulder. "Go ahead. Tell Mom we'll be heading over to the track soon, okay?"

Jenny slid off the chair, and Nash ruffled her hair. When she put her hand on the doorknob, she said over her shoulder, "I told Mom something was wrong with one of the trucks, but she didn't pay any attention."

After she closed the door, I said, "Observant kid."

Nash looked at the door as if he could see right through it, see her crossing the aisle and going into the office. "She is that. And smart, just like her mother."

I repeated the story of our nocturnal visitor and told him the police would be out in case he wanted to talk to them.

"This is going to throw Deirdre. Does she know?"

"Yes."

"Damn." He fiddled with something in his coat pocket, and the sound of crinkling cellophane and paper triggered an image of Shane Hadley's manicured fingers gripping his pack of Marlboro 100's.

I'd never had much reason to talk to Victor Nash before. He came and went but spent most of his time supervising the training operation which, as far as I could tell, operated under a totally separate staff. None of the breeding farm employees had ever mentioned working in his barns. He seemed a good match for Deirdre, though. Nice-looking with wind-blown dirty blond hair and fair skin. He had unusually wide hands, worn rough and calloused from hard labor and the cold.

"Well . . . Steve, is it?"

"Yes, sir."

"We'll cover the cost of replacing your tires. There's no reason you should pay for them since it happened on our property."

"Thank you, sir. Dr. Nash said the same thing."

"Good." Nash backed toward the door. "Hey, do you need a ride home? I can drop you off and have someone pick you up when your truck's ready."

I pictured him leaving me at Bruce's apartment complex. "No, thank you. I'll wait."

"Well," he glanced at my half-eaten sandwich, "do you need something to eat? Some donuts or something?"

I smiled. "No, thanks."

* * *

After Sergeant Bodell cruised over to the farm and did his thing, and the service switched out my old tires for Michelins that were worth more than the Chevy, I got exactly five hours sleep before I had to clock back in at six.

At a quarter to eleven, a horse van from Pennsylvania eased onto Stone Manor and idled down the road between the barns until he spotted my truck in front of barn two.

"Evenin'," he yelled when I pulled up alongside the cab. "Where's this lot going?"

"Barn eight. Do you know where that is?"

He pointed toward the northwest. "Round that way?"

I nodded, then headed over while he got turned around.

Dr. Nash had told me four mares were coming in, but when I walked down barn eight's aisle, I only counted three empty stalls. I grabbed a couple of flakes of hay and carried them to one of the lots behind the barn. As I pushed through the gate, headlights swept across the far end of the horse pasture as a vehicle on Cannonball entered a gentle curve in the road. I watched the beams sweep slowly across a distant knoll, thinking that the truck driver had turned around awfully fast. But when I didn't hear the rumble of a diesel engine, I studied the road. As the vehicle straightened out of the curve, I realized it wasn't the semi, after all. A car or compact pickup moved slowly past. I watched him until he'd driven well beyond the road that accessed the training barns.

The semi's driver showed up five minutes later and offloaded the mares. He did it himself, probably for insurance reasons, but I was thankful, just the same, as I had a thing about trailers ever since I'd been locked up in one.

I helped him put the last mare in the back lot. "While you were getting turned around, did you see a vehicle drive past kind of slow?"

"Yeah. He started to pull onto the farm road but backed up when he saw me."

"Did you notice the color or make?"

"An old car. Mid-sized. Other than that, I couldn't say."

"Two-door or four?"

"Oh." He paused and rubbed his jaw. "Four-door, I think. I wasn't really paying attention because one of the mares had started kicking her partition. Some of them get antsy after we've been on the highway for awhile, then stop."

"I wouldn't have thought you could hear them."

"Hey, we're high tech, now. I got a video feed in the cab."

"Cool." I gave him a hand lowering the ramp's sidewalls. "Do you ship here much?"

"Fairly regular from now 'til June. Once a month, at least."

We each grabbed a corner of the ramp and slid it into a slot under the trailer floor. "Have you ever unloaded at the bank barn behind the stone mansion?"

He shook his head, then swung the door closed and pulled down the lever that locked it in place. "That's a mighty small driveway to be pulling into."

"Yeah, it is." A thump vibrated against the trailer's shell. "Where you headed next?"

"New York."

"I thought you came down from Pennsylvania."

"Nah." He hawked a wad of chewing tobacco halfway to the fence. "Came up from Florida."

"Shit. They're supposed to be in quarantine."

"Ain't nothing wrong with these mares or I'd've heard about it."

"You're sure?"

"'Course I'm sure."

I followed him all the way around Bear Wallow. Light edged round the curtains in one of the mansion's rooms on the second floor, and a single light burned in the back of the house. I flipped open the farm's cell phone, called my boss, and asked if the horses should have been quarantined.

"No. Not those."

I pulled into the clinic parking lot. "Well, the driver said they came from Florida."

"Oh . . . they did. Just not from the area I'm concerned about." She disconnected.

But why had she said Pennsylvania?

I thought back to her explanation for the need to quarantine horses and couldn't remember if she'd ever named the virus she was guarding against. The more I thought about it, the less it made sense. In the first place, why house Jenny's ponies in a barn used as an isolation facility and risk exposing them to the virus she wanted to avoid? And what made even less sense was that they'd moved the ponies out of the bank barn the day after horses arrived from Florida. The same weekend Bruce disappeared.

At midnight, Maddie sauntered down the aisle as I deposited the last of the hay bales against a stall front so they would be easily at hand. "Hey, thanks for putting them out."

"No, problem." I brushed off my jeans. "Maddie, Jenny's ponies were in the bank barn when horses came up from Florida, weren't they?"

She reached up and fingered the zipper pull on her jacket. "Yeah. So?"

"So, don't you think that's kind of strange?"

She shrugged, then sat on the hay bale I'd just shoved against the wall and crossed her legs. She flexed her foot, then bounced her leg with nervous energy as she watched me pick up my coat and slip it on. "Why aren't you driving a farm truck?"

As I told her, she quit bouncing her leg and became very still.

"So, be careful," I said. "If you see something out of the ordinary, lock yourself in the truck and call the cops."

She nodded.

I zipped up my coat and handed her the cell phone. "Did Paul stay with you last night?"

She focused her gaze on a spot across the aisle. "That's none of your business."

"It is if he slashed my tires. And it is if he's responsible for fooling with the lights. On the other hand, if he's the one who's been doing it, then I won't have to worry about you tonight."

She raised her eyes. Maddie had this way of looking through her lashes that was incredibly sexy. "That's sweet of you, Steve, but honest, I don't know. He could've been over here. He wasn't with me." She stood and stepped closer. "He's awfully jealous of you."

Like I couldn't figure that out. But the girl was wearing me down, so I got out of there before I did something I'd regret.