It was a good thing I’d always been an early riser because apparently feeding and cleaning the horses was the first thing Noah normally did every day. With him gone, those tasks had fallen to me.
Russ and I considered doing three rounds of rock-paper-scissors to see who’d end up with the job, but when we stopped to think for a moment, we realized that I had the knowledge and skillset to muck a stall but not to troubleshoot the things that might come up with the maple syrup production. If only my mom could see me now, she might actually admire my determination to keep my business running.
On second thought, this was one of those times when I was thankful she couldn’t see me. Or smell me.
I tossed the last forkful into the wheelbarrow and rolled it out of the stall, past where I’d cross-tied Key. Cleaning his stall had taken nearly twice as long as cleaning Leaf’s stall because I’d had to scrape out all the shavings matted together with Noah’s blood. Which for me meant stopping regularly for fresh air whenever my stomach got queasy over the thought of exactly what I was doing.
As I moved past, he snuffled my hair, his breath warm and moist. He’d been lackluster today, almost as if he knew something were wrong. Maybe he did. I’d never had a pet before adopting my dogs, but they seemed to have a sixth sense about when I was having a bad day.
Yesterday certainly counted as a bad day, which probably explained why I’d been tripping over a dog every time I turned around last night. They refused to leave me alone.
I’d just dumped the wheelbarrow outside for the final time when my cell phone rang in my pocket. I stripped off my heavy gloves and fished it out.
Mark.
My stomach dropped like an elevator plunge. It felt like years since I’d seen his name on my phone and also like it’d been yesterday. For a single ring, I let myself pretend that everything was right between us and that he was calling just to chat.
Unfortunately, my logical side stomped down on the fantasy much too quickly. He was more likely calling with news about Noah.
I tapped the screen to take the call.
“Sorry to bother you,” he said. “I tried calling Russ, but he didn’t answer.”
Mark’s voice had a hesitant tone to it that I’d never heard before. Almost like he was afraid I’d be angry at him for calling me. I swallowed hard, but the tightness in my throat fought back.
I’d spare him from any attempts to make small talk at least. “No problem. I’m guessing you have news.”
We sounded like acquaintances. It was what I’d wanted, but it felt about as good as accidentally slamming my big toe into a rock.
“Yeah,” Mark said. “I need you to check something for me in the stall where you found Noah.”
I propped the phone between my shoulder and ear, leaned the wheelbarrow against the stable wall, and took my phone back into my hand. If this conversation lasted long, I’d need to swap hands. My fingers were already chapping red.
“Does this mean Noah’s tests came back negative?”
“For everything.” He kept his voice low, which made me think he might be still at the hospital and didn’t want anyone to overhear. “The wound on the back of his head was crescent shaped, almost like a horseshoe, but unless your horses shrunk from the last time I saw them, the wound’s not from one of them. It’s a fraction of the size of a normal horse’s hoof, let alone a Clydesdale’s.”
I paused next to Key and stroked a hand down his cheek. He sighed and drooped his head down into my touch. It was almost like he understood he’d been acquitted.
But should I feel relieved about that or more upset? On one hand, it meant Noah hadn’t brought this on himself accidentally. On the other hand, it meant he’d made someone angry enough that they put him in a coma.
Except Mark still wanted me to look in Key’s stall, and he hadn’t said anything about calling Erik to turn this into an open investigation.
“I’m guessing Dr. Johnson doesn’t want to sign off on Noah’s injury as suspicious?”
“He’s convinced the wound was made by something in the stall when Noah fell. If I’d already been brought in on this case, I could overrule anyone, even the sheriff. As it is, it’d be nice if I had something more concrete before I took it to Erik.”
Having Erik Higgins as the interim police chief should mean we had a better chance of being taken seriously, but Erik was also more by-the-book than the man who wrote the book. Since they’d never declared the stable a crime scene, nothing in it could be used as official evidence in a trial. Hopefully, though, if we could show him that there wasn’t anything in the stall that could have made a wound like Noah’s, he’d consider investigating this as an attempted murder.
I ducked under Key’s neck and went into his stall. “So I’m looking for something horseshoe shaped. Does it need to be near where I found Noah?”
“Look the whole stall over, just in case.”
We stabled Key and Leaf in oversized box stalls, eleven feet by eleven feet. The back walls were completely smooth because they doubled as the back wall of the stable itself. The other three sides were smooth wood on the bottom and vertical bars on the top, with an opening over the door for us to throw in hay and the horses to stick their heads out and a “window” that we could open and close in order to fill the water bucket and feed trough that hung on the front wall of the stall.
The only place Noah could have possibly hit his head was on the feed trough or water bucket hook, but those were on the other side of the door from where I’d found him. But because Mark asked me to, I’d check them anyway.
The feed trough was black rubber, with no round protrusions and no blood smears. The heated bucket did have a horse-shoe shaped part on its handle where it hooked to the stall.
“How big was the wound?” I asked.
“No bigger than your palm. Do you see something?”
I held my palm up to the bucket handle. Conceivably it could be around the right size, but the metal was clean. With how much Noah’s head wound had bled, it should have left some spatter.
And the bucket was at my chest height. Even if Key knocked Noah backward and he hit his head as he fell, I wasn’t sure he could have smashed his head hard enough on the protruding loop of the handle to knock himself unconscious. Plus, he’d still have been on the wrong side of the stall.
“Nicole?”
Right. Mark was waiting for me to tell him what I found.
“I see something that’s a possibility, but the placement makes it unlikely.”
Silence stretched on the line.
“This would be easier if I could take a look,” Mark finally said.
And there was the crux of it. He’d called Russ first. He’d tried to have me simply take a look. But in the end, we weren’t going to get anywhere if Mark didn’t come to Sugarwood, where I was, and look. I was only guessing as to whether something in Key’s stall could fit. Mark had been the one to see the wound.
I glanced down at myself. I’d put on my most ragged clothes and one of Uncle Stan’s old coats. That, coupled with the fact that I smelled like manure and other animal byproducts, should make it safe to be around Mark.
“I have Key out of his stall right now if you want to come.”
“I’ll be there in about five minutes. It shouldn’t take me long to look the stall over.”
We ended the call and I grabbed up one of the brushes. The more dirt and fur—was it fur on horses or hair?—I could get on myself before Mark showed up, the better. I worked my way down Key’s legs since I didn’t want to drag out the footstool I needed to groom their backs and necks.
When I reached his left front, dark brown flecks clung to the white hairs of his sock. I pulled the brush away and leaned in closer.
My gut reaction was that it was blood. If it were blood, that might lend weight to Dr. Johnson’s belief that this had been an accident. How else would Key have ended up with blood on his foreleg?
The more probable explanation, though, was that it was mud or manure. Mark had said the wound was much too small to have come from a kick by Key.
“No dogs today?” Mark’s voice asked from the doorway.
It was a good thing Key’s leg blocked my face or I’m sure Mark would have seen how being around him affected me. Even though I’d seen him only yesterday, it felt like too long. When I was back in Virginia, packing up my life, we hadn’t gone a day without talking, texting, or emailing. It’d been almost like he died in the past weeks.
I straightened and tossed the brush back into the plastic container where we kept the brushes and hoof picks. “Velma hasn’t learned not to walk under the horses’ bellies yet, and I don’t want her to get stepped on, so I left them at home.” I rolled my eyes. “With everything else that’s going wrong this month already, I don’t need a dog with a broken leg on top of it.”
Mark’s dimple popped out, and we stood awkwardly staring at each other. Small talk wasn’t his strength, and I didn’t trust myself to make any.
I motioned toward the stall. “Feel free to poke around.”
Mark nodded and moved past Key and out of sight. I leaned my forehead against Key’s warm, fuzzy neck. I kept thinking these interactions with Mark would get easier and less awkward. When I called Ahanti for our regular Sunday afternoon chat, she’d suggested I sign up for the online dating site where her sister met her fiancé. I’d brushed off the idea, but maybe I should ask her for more details. Maybe what I needed was to start dating again. Of course, that hadn’t worked out well with Erik.
“I don’t think it could be from the bucket handle if that’s what you were looking at,” Mark said from beside me.
I jumped. Key twitched his ears, but otherwise his big body stayed still. How could anyone think he’d knocked down or kicked Noah?
Key pushed his nose into Mark’s cheek, and Mark rubbed Key’s forehead. “I guess that’s his way of thanking me for trying to exonerate him.”
A warm bubble wrapped around my heart, and all my common sense couldn’t seem to pop it. I tucked my hair behind my ears and looked away. There had to be someone like Mark, but not Mark, out there for me. “Does this mean you’re going to call Erik about it?”
Key lipped at Mark’s hair. Mark stepped out of his reach. “Yeah. A lot of the situation is still ambiguous, but I think I can make a good case that the angle of the wound should have been different if Noah hit his head on the bucket handle during a fall. He’d have had to hit it with a lot more force too than I think would reasonably happen during a fall. If Key kicked him into the bucket, he should have had a bruise somewhere showing the impact.”
It was semi-official then. Noah’s injury hadn’t been an accident. Someone had come onto Sugarwood’s ground and hit him hard enough to put him into a coma.
A chill threaded over me despite my warm clothes, and I crossed my hands around my waist. “Thanks for taking the time to come out and check.”
“It’s all part of the job.” Mark shoved his hands into his pockets and nodded his head toward the stall. “I’ll leave you to your work.”
After all he’d done, it felt rude to send him off that way. Or maybe my subconscious was trying to find sneaky ways to spend an extra minute or two with him. “Let me at least walk you to your truck.”
We left the stable, but instead of Mark’s charcoal grey truck, a maroon car sat in the lot. “Did you sell your truck?”
Mark’s dimples peeked out. “It’s at Quantum Mechanics for the brakes. My sister-in-law loaned me hers so I wouldn’t have to sacrifice my nose or ears walking everywhere in the cold.”
“The first person to open a car rental shop here will make a fortune.”
Mark chuckled. He opened the car door, but didn’t climb in. Instead he angled back to face me slightly. “How are things going? With Sugarwood and…everything?”
By everything, he probably meant the relationship he thought I had with Erik. Erik and I had gone on a couple of dates during my first few weeks in Sugarwood, but it hadn’t gone any further than that because Erik figured out I had feelings for Mark. We’d become friends instead and got together every week or two for breakfast at The Burnt Toast.
But when I’d told Mark I couldn’t spend time with him anymore, I took the coward’s way out and let him assume it had something to do with Erik and me being a couple. Guilt ground like sand between my teeth at the memory. I could clear it up now, but that would mean admitting to the truth. I couldn’t spend time with Mark because I was in love with him and he was a married man.
I’d rather clean stalls every day for the rest of my life than admit to that.
“Everything’s mostly good,” I said. “Our sugar season was off to a rocky start even before Noah, so now we’re hoping nothing else goes awry. And you?”
Mark climbed into the car. “Give Russ my best,” he said before closing the door.
And I couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t answered my question at all.