Of course I called Liz. Jill. Dad. No one was answering. Seriously? At a time like this? Where were they? Well, Liz and Jill were interrogating Gretchen, fair enough. But my father? Surely he’d be available.
Yeah. Nope. Sigh.
I found myself in my car, driving toward the center, before I could stop myself from making a terrible decision. But I promised myself, as I climbed out of the driver’s seat and slammed the door, hurrying in through the gates and toward the main building, I would only identify the proof I needed and then skedaddle, doing nothing to alert the murderer to the fact they’d been figured out.
No way was I interested in being a target for another life-threatening attack. But if I didn’t hurry, it was very possible the evidence I needed would disappear forever.
He didn’t have an office of his own anymore, but he did drive a fancy SUV. While it was locked tight, I knew where to find the keys. A glance at the paddock told me I had the time I needed to find the means to break into his vehicle so I took it.
Forensics had searched his room, so I knew he wouldn’t have hidden anything there. But Gretchen’s hiding place? Melina suggested it to her, hadn’t she? Which meant it was a learned behavior. Learned from the very person she’d trained with herself, when she was an Olympic hopeful. The image of them together, in a newspaper article, of her standing next to him, her horse between them, was a fraud, a sham, pretend happier days, though for all I knew Melina had been happy under his tutelage once.
His keys weren’t out in the open but right where I expected to find them, in the pocket of a jacket tucked in his closet. I helped myself, exiting the building and heading back to the parking outside the apartment complex. Funny how the building that housed the riders and coaches looked exactly like the ones where the horses lived. I didn’t bother contemplating the implications of that—who was more important, then?—and instead helped myself to the back of his SUV.
And the evidence I needed to convict him of murder.
Except there was nothing. No fridge box, no USB connection to a clandestine hiding place for ketamine or syringes. Nada, zippo and, in that moment of realization, my heart fell.
I’d been so sure. Alphonse and Melina, their photo from their glory days. They’d been so close. He’d gotten her to the Olympic trials. He her mentor, she the eager young rider who rocketed in an amazing rise. Only to have a falling out, have one of her rides end in disaster, the horse injured, rider error blamed though according to the newspaper article Melina had claimed her gelding had been misbehaving all that day.
Misbehaving as Violet’s horse misbehaved the afternoon we’d met. To which Melina reacted very, very badly. Because she knew, didn’t she? What her former teacher had done, interfering with her student’s big, white horse as he’d taught her to do.
I slammed the back door shut, scowling at the ground. I was wrong. I was sure Alphonse was the killer, that he’d taught his protégé what he knew. But without evidence, was I incorrect? Was the gelding really just a bad boy?
No, I found it too hard to accept, especially considering her reaction in hindsight. She’d been furious with Alphonse, not Violet. If the girl had been the cause of the horse’s bad behavior, it would have been the other way around.
Did that mean he was the reason Melina’s own horse faltered and lost her that run she made for the Olympics? Why sabotage his own rider? Whatever the case, she’d been close enough to SuSu’s stall I made a correlation between Violet’s Jagger and Sarah’s big mare. It made far too much sense to me Melina chose retaliation against Alphonse through the best route she knew how—the most poetic justice of all.
He must have caught her at it. Challenged her. And she came after him with a loaded syringe, only to have him turn it on her. Who knew? Except, apparently, this entire scenario, as obvious as it was to me, was fallacy at this point. Made up in my head, and more likely that, according to evidence and her already partially admitted guilt, Gretchen did it after all.
I locked his room behind me, the master keys we’d used to do our searches heavy in my hands, and I returned the keys to his car back into the pocket I’d nicked them from, slipping out of his room again before he could catch me. No need for Alphonse to think I’d suspected him, after all, my imagined scenario tucked safely away in the back of my mind where it could only do me harm with occasional jabs as a reminder to pay attention to something I couldn’t prove.
Nor could I bring myself to go home, though, returning to the crime scene. The stable had been reopened, a few of the stalls closed over, horses drowsing or munching on hay, the occasional knicker welcoming me as I paced down the walkway to the stall where I’d hidden out, where I’d listened to Robert talk to the woman I believed was Marie Patterson and had a thought.
I glanced in SuSu’s stall, noted she’d been ridden recently, was curious about me but didn’t bother coming to the door to greet me. She was a Patterson horse, wasn’t she? Sarah said she didn’t own her, that she was on loan. So what if it had been a Patterson who killed Melina? If they discovered her injecting the mare…?
Then again, what if this was entirely unconnected to the doping? That would have been nice, right? I fantasized again, suddenly excited over the possibility of pinning it on the family, of finally having what I needed to get permission to dig into them. Delicious, that thought, though it also prompted worry about Pamela all over again.
Sarah was looking for her aunt. Did that mean the threat Robert alluded to, that the newspaperwoman herself suggested, might have been carried out in some nefarious way to punish her for speaking to me?
Time to focus on what really mattered and let Jill and Liz wrap this case up. I had friends to free from the evil spider’s web of the matriarch of the Patterson family.
I didn’t register the stirring of the horses, the displacement of air as the door opened, only noting it in the back of my mind as I stood there and contemplated my next moves. It wasn’t until a heavy footstep sounded behind me, the wash of heated breath on my cheek making me flinch that I realized something was wrong. I felt myself propelled forward, a wide hand between my shoulder blades shoving me hard into the stall door in front of me, a door that bounced open, jerked wide by my assailant who then pushed me again, this time face-first into the space beyond.
The last time I’d been in this stall it was empty but for the straw on the floor and the body of Melina Canty. This time? This time the towering, and suddenly terrified, form of a giant horse who’d been there first, thank you very much, and wasn’t expecting a visitor, loomed over me. I heard the door slam shut in my wake, felt the sting of something against my cheek and watched the vast animal react to whatever it was skimmed by me.
Something shiny and silver and sharp that impacted the shoulder of the large, already unhappy equine. The gelding snorted and squealed before rearing up in front of me, front hooves thrashing, giant head shaking from side to side, teeth bared in rage.
I fell back against the closed stall door, a scream torn from me, arms over my head in a feeble attempt to save me from what would surely be a bloody and painful death at the thrashing, shining shoes of the big horse whose home I’d invaded against my will.
Except, as I lunged to huddle in the corner and make myself as small a target as possible, I heard the sound of running feet, felt the whoosh of air when the stall door swung open and looked up when Sarah, her face tight with worry but her entire body calm and steady, soothed the gelding until he settled.
Still snorting, he backed away from me, a faint line of blood trickling down his neck. Sarah removed the syringe from his skin, turning to stare down at me in shock.
“Fee, what happened?”
I lurched to my feet, the gelding now wavering, clearly in receipt of a dose of what had to be ketamine in that needle. I spun and ran out of the stall, no idea where he’d gone but again certain I had the right attacker, the murderer. And that syringe was my proof.
“Hang onto that!” I exited the barn at a run, heading for the SUV I’d searched, knowing now I’d missed something. Of course, he was old school. I’d been looking for new-fangled. Alphonse probably had a cooler or something unplugged where he kept his supplies.
The same supplies he shared with Melina.
I watched him drive off, ran for the only vehicle I had access to, thankful I still had the keys to Gretchen’s big SUV in my possession. The engine fired up and I pursued the coach, not sure where he thought he could escape to and, if I’m honest about it, too full of adrenaline to think about what I was doing.
Because chasing him down? About as dumb an act as him trying to run.
I caught up with him, maybe because I was used to the roads and he wasn’t, or because I’d chosen to be more reckless. Regardless of the reason, the moment I reached him, barreling down the road in pursuit, I realized I made a huge error.
Sure, I’d caught up with him. But now what?
The answer came in the form of a sign, one I chose to believe was from fate, though it was actually only from the department of transportation. Knowing I only had one shot at it and that if I failed I could easily kill both of us and, if oncoming traffic didn’t get out of the way, someone else, I waited with bated breath until the second sign appeared at my bumper before swinging to his inside, just past his rear end, before jerking on the wheel, hard.
The front end of my SUV took his bumper square and, amid a horrible crash that shook me to the bone, swerved his vehicle to the right and up the runaway ramp created for transport trucks that lost control on the mountain. My plan to simply drive him up the ramp and stop him was overshot when he clearly lost control, swerving and impacting a tree at enough speed it tore the poor evergreen up at the roots, decimating the front of the truck while the explosion of white through the windows told me the airbags had deployed.
I had just enough time to slam on the brakes, jamming the SUV into park, leaping out without shutting off the engine, before the driver’s side door of the opposing car lurched open and Alphonse Brunbaugh fell out.
***