Chapter 22

MY MONDAY STARTED EARLY. FIRST THING, I pulled the jeans out from under my garage cot and studied on the vials in the baggie I’d swiped from Patsy-Lynn’s tack room. The drug labels were partly missing. Only the letters sterone enantitate remained.

Before climbing into my clothes, I threw my wool blanket on the cold concrete garage floor and crunched a half-thousand each push-ups and sit-ups. A shoer needs core strength, it’s not all in the arms and thighs. When I was fourteen, my stomach looked like a humongous beach ball. Now it’s ribs and abs.

Guy was gone. Must be an early day at the Cascade if he beat me out of the house. He’d made himself scarce when I got back last evening, still pouting about me going to Corvallis with Nichol.

I pulled a dining chair over to Guy’s kitchen computer. His internet connection was slow as Christmas, but I had to get this drug thing figured out and dealt with, sure enough. I typed in the part of the drug name left on the vial’s ripped labels. Didn’t like the answer that came up, but didn’t have time to keep clicking because someone whipped a diesel rig up and honked outside. I pushed the baggie in my pocket and went to the door, saw Dixon Talbot in the driver’s seat, and was not at all interested in inviting him in. I tugged on my Blundstones and went to kick the day in the teeth.

“Called you the other night,” Talbot said. “Guess you were at Weatherby’s. Talked to your little houseboy.”

Well, here’s an idea to grab hold of, I thought, feeling a surly coming on. Guy’s taller than you by a long shot, don’t call him little. And the Friday night I was at Weatherby’s? Talbot knew where I was and I knew where he wasn’t. “Called the house here, huh? How’d you get my number?” The landline was listed under Guy’s name in the phonebook.

“From one of your . . .” He looked away and shrugged. “One of your cards.”

I eyed him and took a step back, considering the whole picture. Could it have been Talbot’s rig coming to the Flying Cross when I left Patsy-Lynn? I walked right to his driver’s window and peeked.

Definitely stick shift. Talbot raised his eyebrows, calm enough. Maybe he’d thought I was looking to see if he had a bunch of my business cards on the truck seat.

Talbot launched into the next bone he had to pick. “You were sniffing around the Solquist place.”

I parted my lips and paused, needing time before my mouth faucet leaked. “I was, uh . . .” I thought some more, fast as I could. “I was curious about their missing horse. I didn’t even know you were their shoer.”

Was he? Had he been the Harpers’ former shoer, too?

When Patsy-Lynn hired me, I hadn’t given any thought to who was her shoer before me. I should have. But isn’t a year a long time to wait if you’re going to chew someone out for stealing your client? And getting fired isn’t exactly a motive for murder either.

Talbot shook his head. “You just don’t go sniffing around horse owners like that.”

This noise from a man who was probably trying to ruin me. I wondered if he’d deny tearing down my business cards, too. Was that why he was so tetchy about me being around the Solquists’ little piece of land? I was about to point out a few things when he took to accusing me some more.

“You undercut us.”

“Huh?”

Talbot pointed a finger at me, not quite like we were fixing to battle, but near enough. “You came into town, shoeing at a low rate. You undercut us established shoers.”

“I, I . . .” I had. Strictly speaking, I had started on the cheap side, but I’d been new to the area and still fairly new to shoeing and . . . “I didn’t mean to.”

He barked a laugh making that giant Adam’s apple bounce. “How do you not mean to do something like that?”

“I really didn’t mean to undercut. I started where I did because it seemed like the right thing to do. I mean, gosh.”

“Gosh?” he mimicked, as if not cursing somehow made me laughable. Fact is, I can out-mouth a rude trucker, but I like to believe I’ve moved beyond that.

“Last week,” Talbot said, “I happened to give Winston Harper’s boy a lift. He told me he might be looking for a new shoer. Know what I said?”

I shook my head, on account of my crystal ball being broke and all.

“I said shopping shoers wasn’t good for owners, horses, or shoers. I shoe for the Frichtlers now, but I knew when I took the account that they were already shopping around, I wasn’t taking food off another shoer’s table.”

“I never took anything from your table. I never took anything. I’m just trying to make it. And I was never trying to work for the Solquists. I didn’t even know who shod for them. Is it you?”

Talbot glared and still wouldn’t give me an answer. “You know I shod for Weatherby and Schram.”

Schram sort of followed after I’d done the short-notice call-out for Weatherby, not my fault.

“I was new when I came to Cowdry,” I explained, trying to get Talbot back to his other complaint. “That’s why I started a little on the low end when I came here.”

I made it sound like an apology and I did feel humble about it now. Really, I hadn’t meant to step on anyone’s toes, but looking back from where we stood, Dixon Talbot was right. I should not have underpriced my work. I’d been wrong. “I’m sorry.”

Couldn’t this go both ways? Was he sorry for throwing away my business cards? For ripping off my hood ornament? Why couldn’t I ask him? And what really mattered here? I cleared my throat and stood tall. “Did you bust up the vet’s office with a rounding hammer? Leave it there?”

Talbot’s snort was so hard and sudden, spit flew. “That’s ridiculous. My rounding hammer cost over two hundred dollars. My tools are my livelihood.”

“Me, too.” I should have asked Deputy Paulden to let me study the hammer left at the vet’s office. I could have figured out if it was a cheapie, like the kind that comes in a lay kit, or the real deal, like a working shoer would own. The nippers that come in those forty-dollar kits aren’t worth using as a doorstop. My nippers alone cost well over a hundred bucks.

“I got no beef with that guy who replaced Doc Vass,” Talbot said as he got back in his truck. He spun out.

Squeezing time between clients to go and ask Nichol the real question became my priority. I tended to Charley and Red and got gone.

* * *

Looking sharp with my glued-on anvil hood ornament, I parked Ol’Blue at the barn of my first client, one of those book-smarty-pants types who reads lots of little things, but does hardly a handful. I’d shod for him last fall and thought his hoofpick needed to get out of the tack room. He’d not called me out to work on his horse again ’til last week. I suspected he’d pulled the shoes for winter and not had a proper barefoot trim put on. His horse’s feet were struggling, grown out of what I reckon were his first shoes of the year and maybe his first hoof picking, too. The earth side of those feet had black goo and a rude stench. I trimmed away all the necrotic hoof, made gentle mention of cleaning up the horse’s bedroom, and heard some unnecessary advice.

“Paring the frog down too much can make a horse thrushy.”

Someone had been reading his junior 4-H pamphlets. Not enough, obviously, but he’d read the part that would make the thrush my fault. His horse lived in mud and manure up to its eyeballs. Sloppy conditions, that’s the main cause of soft, smelly feet.

And sloppy thinking’s been the cause of every bit of trouble I ever had, so I’d better locate a noodle wrench and tighten up my noodle. I tried to get this owner thinking about cleaning up his horse’s house, then turned my mind back to cleaning up my world as I took the client’s check—he didn’t want to schedule the next appointment—and moved out. There were things to consider.

Spartacus’s laminitis came on so suddenly, putting him in such pain when his front feet started dying right out from under him. Sure, it can happen for no great reason, but generally a body can point a finger at something like overfeeding. I thought about stuff that other people knew, little things. A lot of folks knew a bit about what’s going on in Cowdry, I decided, including me. At my next shoeing appointment, I was quiet and fast and got paid by check.

Instead of an early lunch, I went to the bank and made a deposit, mostly so I could pause at Abby’s daddy’s office door to ask things that were none of my business.

Keith Langston didn’t seem to find it too awful strange, my questions about this restaurant proposal of Guy’s and how that notion got on with the Harpers.

“I think his son has some heartache with the idea,” Langston said. “Maybe feels his father’s spreading himself too thin, so we’ll see what Harper wants to do now.” He confirmed that he and Guy and Harper had been meeting on the restaurant deal at the old pizza place the day Patsy-Lynn died, and they were fixing to meet again.

“Is Abby still sick?” I asked.

“So she says.” Clearly, Keith Langston didn’t believe his little girl.

* * *

On my way to the vet’s office, I passed the blooming apple trees at the edge of town. Our winters aren’t cold enough—the tree planters from fifty years ago came to find out—to force much fruit from an apple tree. All over left-central Oregon are well-intentioned trees that don’t bear well, aren’t productive. It’s sort of sad and sweet at the same time. Plants, both natural and introduced, along with history, tell the tale of a land. The landscaping trees in front of Nichol’s brick office were English hawthorns standing tall against native sword and deer ferns.

The frizzy-headed gal at the vet’s front counter, she was a transplant, introduced, I bet, from California. Too sun-streaked and tan. I thought back on that clerk at the sheriff’s office. With her dark eyes and plain hair, she might be at least part homegrown.

“Do you need to make an appointment to see the veterinarian?” Frizzy asked, seeing I had no critter with me. But Nichol came out, walking a woman and her poodle to the door, and he waved me back to the treatment room.

I thought of Nichol as an introduced plant too, then I realized it’s Guy who’s all interested in plants and horticulture. Seems Guy’s interest had rubbed off on me. I wasn’t even thinking about what kind of horse someone would be.

Nichol raised his eyebrows, while he waited for me to speak, as if my noodle was loose. I got it tightened up and jumped in. “Where would a body, you know, pass off some steroids and such?”

His eyeballs about came out of their sockets.

“You want steroids?”

“No, looking to get shed of some.”

“What are you talking about?’ Nichol folded his arms over his chest, facing me.

“Forget I mentioned it,” I said.

“Do you want me to forget my business was broken into?” He waved an arm around the office. “This office wasn’t just vandalized. Stuff was stolen.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Like drugs.”

“Oh,” I said, “Oh, shit. Oops. I mean, oh—”

“Can you be more articulate?”

Obviously not. What’s the matter with him anyways? Can’t he see this is as articulate as I get when I find out drugs were stolen from the vet’s office and there’s some in my pocket? I reached into my jeans and yanked out the baggie of vials.

“Were these them?”

Nichol leaned forward and took the baggie, eyeing me and it with equal care. “Could be, but the lot number is scraped off.”

“Why would the lot number be scraped off?” Maybe I’m not such a hot horseshoeing detective. “To make it harder to trace?”

Nichol nodded.

“Part of the drug name’s scraped off, too,” I said.

“But there’s enough there for me to know it’s testosterone. And if the person in possession plans to use the contents, there’s no reason to leave part of the name on the vials. It would actually be a liability since these are a controlled substance.”

“So why would someone leave part of the name on?”

“To prove the contents, in case you wanted to sell the drugs.” Nichol cleared his throat hard. “Where’d you get these?”

“From the Harpers’ tack room, the day we were there for Spartacus’s laminitis.”

He whistled. “We saw a little ’roid rage then, I think.”

“Maybe in the horse, too.” I didn’t want to think about how Junior had scared me that day. “That stud’s got problems.”

“That makes sense. Steroids could provoke laminitis.”

“And give fertility problems and make it harder for a minor wound to heal?”

Nichol nodded. “I rechecked the horse this morning. Spartacus never had a change in food, stress, anything like that before Ted noticed the front-end lameness. The horse is doing better now and we’ll need you out in a few weeks to reset those shoes. Same goes for that other emergency horse we did, the old pet. They’ll be needing another visit from their favorite shoer.”

Did he forget I’d been fired from the Flying Cross? For a change, I didn’t want to talk about horses’ feet. To my way of thinking, other itches needed scratching. I pointed to the baggie. “What are these used for except to beef something up?”

Nichol tapped his fingertips together. “A vet would prescribe them to a debilitated horse to increase its vigor and appetite.”

“But people use them too, right?”

“Yes and people abuse them. But other than obtaining them illegally—”

“Stealing them?”

“Or knowing a dealer,” Nichol said. “Other than illegal methods, you’d need a prescription for them. At least, you do here.”

“Here?”

“Anyone can buy them in any farmacia south of the border.”

I pondered. The south border is over a thousand miles away from the heart of Oregon. “Unless the Harpers have a prescription—and I’ve never written them one—they shouldn’t have these. I doubt the police can do much, since it’s third-hand and the bottles are damaged, but I’ll talk to them.” He held out his palm for the drugs.

I handed the evidence over, happy to get rid of the drugs. The police and the Harpers could sort it out with Nichol.

“Did the police ask you to give blood?” I asked, surprising Nichol.

“No. Why would they?”

Why not, I wondered. They’ve tested everyone else’s. “Did you think I’d broken into your office?”

Nichol gave me a good long looking-at and shook his head. “I think you’re a nut. A very cute nut. And I knew that you were at the Rocking B when my office was burglarized. I heard you left late. I heard young Mr. Harper left early.”

“So, if young Mr. Harper were to have his blood tested. . . .” Impressing myself with all I considered, I allowed right out loud that maybe I would turn into a detective, if this shoeing business didn’t work out.

But Nichol shook his head. “The effects of steroids last beyond usage. It’s perfectly possible for a relatively recent user to test clean while still feeling the benefits of the drug.”

I let that bit of news run around my brain cells for a minute.

Nichol’s smirk was at the ready. “They didn’t teach you that in horseshoer detective school?”

Well, no, they didn’t.

His smirk sort of dissolved into a genuine grin. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was flirting with me. Maybe I didn’t know better.

The thing of it is, is I’ve never been a guy shopper. Heckfire, my first two so-called fellas ranked as disasters. I hadn’t wanted or needed a third. Things just sort of fell into place with Guy when I started living in his garage.

Nichol gave my shoulder a squeeze as he opened the treatment room door for me.

The problem with guys is they leave a gal wasting time thinking about them. And I’ve no thinking time to spare. I barely remembered to check that the thrushy horse was current on its tetanus. “There’s all these loose ends. And I’m wondering why anyone would steal the Solquists’ horse.” Then I had to explain, since Nichol hadn’t heard about the missing mare.

He asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”

It was exactly what people should have been asking.

* * *

After my next shoeing, I went to the Langstons’ place and found a fretty-faced Abby playing hooky, noodling around her little back-of-the-house pasture. The kid looked fit to be tied and was none too full of sense when I asked her what was going on.

“Liberty,” she cried, too near tears.

“She looks okay.”

Liberty stood munching hay. The horse was the biggest part of Abby’s life, her thoughts, her reasons, her breath. She had dreams of and for her horse, I knew. I’d dreamed Red, the minute he came sliding out of his mama as I’d watched him, gangly-legged and slick. Glory and future, I reckoned, is all Abby saw when she looked at her horse. Every possible thing she could accomplish, every experience she could notch on her belt, counting coup.

She’s told me all about this fire, and I felt it in my bones, same as just before I was an idiot, fat teenybopper who lost her way and got drunk one stupid night.

I stroked the little gray mare, thinking.

Abby’s told me how she’ll do hundred-mile races someday, do that running and riding combo sport. She wants to try racing and jumping and competitive trail riding and, of course, breed Liberty someday and continue the legacy. She sees herself eighty years from now as an old lady riding Liberty III or IV or V. I know. When I was ten years old, I saw the same dreams for Red and his kids—kids he’ll never have, mind, since he ended up properly gelded as a long yearling.

I smiled, but Abby couldn’t with her chin aquiver.

“What if he comes back?” she cried. “What’ll I do?”

Then Abby bolted.