A Three Day Event (26 page)

“The dog!” she cried. “It was the dog!”

Puzzled, Polo followed her hypnotized stare into the courtyard, where Fleur was capering at Jocelyne’s feet, wagging her tail in yet another futile bid for her mistress’s attention.

“Fleur?” he asked. “What about her?”

“Whose is she?”

Polo nodded out to Jocelyne. “Hers. Why?”

“I saw her. Not Jocelyne. I mean I saw the dog. Yesterday morning. When I was out jogging. It was the bandanna made me remember.”

“
Et alors?”

“In a
truck
, Polo. I saw her in a truck.
Leaving
Saint Armand. Early, early in the morning.
Too early for anyone to be working.”

They stared at each other in wild conjecture.

“Who was driving?” Polo urged. “What make of truck?”

“Oh, Polo,” Ruthie wailed, “I’m such a crummy detective. I didn’t
see
. I haven’t got a
clue
…”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

S
ue waited patiently for her chance to speak to Michel
alone.
She wandered up and down the long aisle where tacking, untacking and grooming procedures were in full progress amongst the diehard boarders willing to ride in the rain. They worked and chatted to the accompaniment of oldies music blaring out of an ancient radio slung from a nail over the bulletin board.

…
it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, and Gawd, I know I’m one…

Sue was prepared to wait until after his first or second ride or until he took a bathroom break, whichever came first. But she was determined to speak to him. Right now Jocelyne was finishing tacking up his first mount of the day, one of the warmbloods. Michel had shed his poncho in favour of a white nylon windbreaker that sported a bold red maple leaf and the Canadian Team logo.

Then Sue got a lucky break. Just as Michel was about to swing aboard, Jocelyne handed him the wrong whip, it seemed, a short, thick one. He shook his head at it and, when Joc turned toward the tack room, he stopped her and handed her the reins. Sue followed him.

Another lucky break. The tack room was empty. Sue slipped inside and quietly shut the door, eyes admiringly fixed on Michel’s tapered muscular back and taut, defined buttocks as he rummaged through his tack box. She leaned noiselessly against the door and planted both feet solidly in front of her. Would he lay hands on her to force his way out? Sue doubted it, but felt a little faint as he straightened up and turned, a long, thin dressage–type whip in hand.

Surprised by the sight of her, Michel uttered a wordless sound of exasperation, and swished the whip against his tall boots in eloquent, elegant reproach. Sue’s heart began to pound.

“Let me pass, please,” he said neutrally.

“I have to speak to you, Michel,” Sue said quickly, cursing the tremor in her voice.

“I’m busy,” he answered curtly. It was a flat rejection with a hint of warning.

Sue was nervous and afraid, but weirdly, a part of her mind was coolly and independently working up a riff for her friends at school.

Okay, so picture it. It’s Harlequin Romance time. And trust me, Fabio is road kill next to this guy. Okay, here’s me pressed up against the wall. A windowless room. Two feet away is this gorgeous stud, gleaming cat’s eyes, dark Byronic curls tumbling over his forehead, full, sensual lips–got the picture?–in these, like, skintight britches, black leather riding boots and–ooh–a long, long whip. Everywhere you look there’s leather straps, hooks, chains. He’s coming toward me. I’m panting, terrified, trembling with emotion…

Michel’s emerald eyes and thick black lashes were stunningly near to her. She could smell his breakfast coffee. She felt sweat trickling down her stomach.
Oh, that’s very attractive, Sue. Sweaty bodices are quite the rage this year, I hear.

“Please, Michel, I have to know what went down in Palm Beach. I know you were there. You can even tell me off the record. I just have to know.
Please!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Anger was creeping into his tone. She didn’t have much time.

“Yes, you do. Your horses were stabled right next to hers. To the Panaiotti girl the FBI are after. Your friend–your girlfriend–”

“She was never my girlfriend!”

“That’s not her story, Michel. The buzz in Palm Beach was that you two were just a step away from being engaged. That her father wanted to sponsor you. People here at the barn are saying you’re going to New York.”

He was furious, but scared too, Sue could see. He glanced quickly around the small room, as if another exit might magically appear.

“My private life is my own business,” he said tightly. “I don’t know how that story started.”

“It doesn’t matter how it started, Michel. The more they investigate, the more your name will be associated with hers,” Sue pressed, leaning harder against the door.

Michel said nothing to this, but his face darkened. “Let me pass,” he growled softly. He reached out with the handle end of the whip and nudged her arm with it. But it was a half–hearted gesture. He looked unsure of what to do. His eyes shifted away and down. “Move, Sue,” he almost pleaded. “Jocelyne will come looking for me in a minute. You’ll be embarrassed.”

He’s the one that’s embarrassed, Sue thought. He’s tough on his horses, but he won’t beat up on a woman. That’s nice at least. It was now or never. She shivered and plunged.

“
Mr.
Lullabye
! What do you know about Mr. Lullabye, Michel?”

Bingo!

Fear has a smell, kind of like smoldering wet wool, Sue thought wildly. Michel stood transfixed, his olive skin draining to a sickly khaki. Sue’s mouth rounded in an O of fascinated empowerment.
I did this to him
! Wow!

There was a discreet knock at the door. Jocelyne! “Michel?”

“Listen, Michel,” Sue burst out in low, but rapid–fire delivery, “you’re better off talking to me. I’m sympathetic. I’m Canadian. I have a shred of respect left for human dignity. When the American journalists get hold of you, they’ll tear you apart like a pack of dogs.”

She saw him waver. His eyes flicked to the door and Jocelyne’s repeated, puzzled query. One last pitch and he was hers.

“I know you didn’t do anything wrong, Michel. But you know stuff. Believe me, you’ll feel better when you’ve told someone. No priest can help you with this one. But maybe I can. Let me try at least.”

He passed his tongue across dry lips. Another knock, more insistent. He swallowed hard and nodded. Immediately Sue moved away from the door and let Jocelyne in. The girl’s eyes flew back and forth between them. Michel spoke low and rapidly to her. Sue blasted her decision to drop French in high school.

Through the open door the wail of the radio could be heard.

Let the sun shine, let the sun shine in, the su–un shine in…

* * *

Polo passed Michel and Sue in the corridor as they headed for the restaurant. Michel didn’t meet his eye. He was clearly tense. And the girl had the look of a jungle cat returning to her lair with fresh kill. She was on to something.
Maudite merde.
There were too many people involved in this thing.

He found Jocelyne removing the ankle boots from a clean horse, with no sweat marks, and a dry, unused mouth.

“Why isn’t Michel riding?”

Jocelyne should have been irritated at the breach of Michel’s routine, Polo thought, but she was in a surprisingly sunny mood.

“Oh,” she shrugged, smiling indulgently, “he said he promised that journalist an interview about his glory days as a Young Rider, and he wanted to get it over with so she wouldn’t bug him all day.”

From the look he had seen on Sue’s face, Polo knew there was no goddam way she was interviewing him for the show. “Look,” he said, “I wanted to talk to you for a few minutes. I guess you have some free time right now, eh?”

“Yep. About an hour”, she said. “Just let me put this beast away.” She was positively
chirping,
Polo noted suspiciously.

She invited him into her new bedroom, Liam’s vacated cubicle. She had added a battered stool to the room for use as a night table and she offered this to Polo while she plopped on the bed, one leg tucked up beneath her. She looked at him expectantly, an air of eager candour to the fore. Polo placed the stool opposite her where he could see her face and its reactions plainly.

“Where does Fleur stay at night?” he asked.

Jocelyne blinked in surprise. It was not the question she was expecting. “Fleur? Fleur lives here, at the barn. Why?”

“Is she locked up somewhere? Who lets her out in the morning?”

Jocelyne shrugged dismissively. “I don’t lock her up. Fleur is supposed to be the watchdog. At night I think she’s in the office on a blanket,” she indicated with a slight sideways jerk of her head. “And whoever gets here first lets her out, I guess.”

“What would she do if a stranger came in?”

“Not much except bark, really. I mean, she wouldn’t attack anyone or anything. And she wouldn’t do anything if it was one of the regulars.”

“Would she go anywhere with someone? In a car? In a truck?”

Jocelyne became wary and her eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at?”

“She was seen in a truck early yesterday morning. Around 5:30.” He watched her closely. She looked tense, and her merry air had fallen away.

“Well, it wasn’t with me, that’s for sure,” she said firmly. She added promptly, “Fleur’s pretty friendly. She’d go with anybody she knew.” Her eyes held his without wavering. “It wasn’t me.” Then she seemed to remember something and her earlier sunny mood surfaced again as she added, “And it wasn’t Michel either.”
Ask me, ask me
, her eyes said.

“Okay, now I have to ask you about where you were and what you did Thursday night, Joc,” he said, then adding after a deliberate pause, “and early yesterday morning, too.” He watched her face intently.

This had been what she was expecting and hoping for. She was delighted with this line of inquiry, there was no mistaking the glow of triumph he had evoked. “Well, let’s see,” she said, trying very hard to appear as if the question were unexpected, something she needed to reflect upon.

It was no use. The words came tumbling out, pre–sealed, stamped and addressed. “Thursday. Okay, I left the stable at the usual time, after the horses were fed and rugged for the night. I got home about 5:30. I was going to make some hot dogs and beans. Then Michel called. He wanted to talk about something, but he didn’t say what. So I invited him over.”

“Hadn’t you just left him at the barn?” Polo asked.

“Yeah, but there were people around. This was something he wanted to talk about in private.” Her eyes were dancing. She was thrilled to have this story to tell, Polo could see. Couldn’t wait to get on with it.

“Okay, so Michel comes over at–six, say?”

“Yeah, about like that. And we had dinner. And talked a bit, and–” at this point she half lay down on the bed, propped up on one elbow, and cocked her head coquettishly at Polo. She smiled meaningfully and cast her eyes prudishly floorward in an unconscious parody of a happily deflowered virgin.

“And–” for a scarifying second Polo thought her vampy smile and half–closed eyes were for his benefit, an
invitation,
and he felt his face freeze in astonished recoil, then realized that she was only enacting an explanation too delicious for mere words.

“And–you’re saying–Michel stayed? Stayed the night with you?” He hoped she hadn’t noticed the accent on the ‘you’. He really couldn’t help it. It was just inconceivable to him.

“Yes!” Jocelyne crowed. “The whole night. We were together the whole night. We had breakfast together and went to the barn separately, in two cars. Me at my usual time, and he came later like always. So no one would know!” A proud smile and an excited flush lit up her insipid features. She was, for this moment, pretty. Polo remembered the sweet, eager girl she had been at fifteen when she started grooming for Michel. She was almost that same girl again. Could it possibly be true, what she said?

As if reading his thought, and humiliated by his skepticism, Jocelyne took up the challenge against him. And like most well–intentioned, but bad liars, she went one step too far. Jutting out her chin, smugly sure of herself, she cried, “Ask Michel! Go ask him! He’ll tell you exactly the same thing. Exactly!”

Oh, you poor little fool. Of course he’ll confirm it, since he invented it and gave it to you. What a sweet set–up. He gets an alibi for whatever it was he was doing both Thursday night and Friday morning, and you not only get an alibi for the whole night and the time when Ruthie saw the truck, you get to tell the world Michel is sleeping with you. I guess it’s the next best thing to actually doing it, but girl, when are you going to get a life?

He stood up to leave. There was nothing else to learn here. She had her story and she would cling to it. Replacing the little stool he turned and felt his paddock boot touch something under the bed. He looked down and saw the edge of a cardboard box peeking out from under the rough gray blanket. He looked inquiringly at Jocelyne, who shrugged to indicate ignorance. “Do you mind?” he asked and reached to drag it out without waiting for an answer.

“It’s not mine,” she said with surprise but without apprehension. They both looked at the scattering of comic books, stamped ‘
Le Centre Equestre de L’Estrie’
. “Must be Liam’s. They’re stamped. Looks like they came from the Client’s Lounge. Everyone brings in their old magazines and comics.”

“Everyone? The boarders and the students too?”

“Yeah. Even the staff. Like for example Bridget brings in these gossip magazines back from her trips to England all the time, ‘Hello’ and ‘Majesty’. They’re a scream.”

“And you’re sure these’re Liam’s? Not someone else’s?”

She shrugged. “Liam’s the only one who used this room for all these months.”

Polo peered down to find the date of one of the Jughead comics. Two months ago.

“And I don’t read comics,” Jocelyne said scornfully. “But I’m not surprised he did. He was a retard.”

But Polo was puzzled. Then it came to him why. Slowly he asked, “Do you know whether Liam could actually read? I mean, did you ever see him reading anything?”

Jocelyne frowned, concentrating. “Yeah, sure he could read. He used to have to sign for deliveries from the grain merchant. He must have read them before signing them.”

“Not necessarily,” Polo said thoughtfully, remembering the thousands of subterfuges he had accumulated to fool people into thinking he could read when he was young. “What about newspapers and magazines? Things without pictures.”

“Um, let’s see.” She took a good minute to think. “Oh yes, I’m sure he could, Polo. I remember he was laughing at one of the signs Roch put up on the bulletin board to announce a clinic for the boarders, with a sign–up sheet. Liam said the English translation was full of spelling mistakes, and he even corrected them.”

“The translation? Yeah, that’s right. Bridget said he didn’t speak any French. Is that for sure?”