All in One Piece (21 page)

Mike hesitates and blinks, but we set off, the far fields glowing dark gold in the light. The horse feels like a set of upholstered
bones, and I’m up high without a helmet. Mike is too. Perhaps this is a custom at Flint Ridge Trace.

A chat with Mike, that’s the goal, as soon as we’re out of earshot of the barn. I’ll casually bring up Steven and Drew. Down
a dirt road, I ask whether the distant stubble fields are the property of Flint Ridge Trace. He says yes, Ms. Comber raises
corn for feed, then he asks how I’m doing.

“Fine.”

“Saddle feel all right?”

“Great.” I’ll be sore tomorrow. The dirt road becomes a path, and the trees thicken. We’re single file, with Mike ahead. The
chaps are awkward. It’s time to talk. My opener is, “How old is Aztec?”

“Eight years.” Mike gives his horse soft clicking sounds, but human conversation is awkward, impossible, in single file. We
approach a fork in the trail. Mike calls, “Creek ahead,” and the horses move down an embankment toward a streambed.

“You okay back there?”

“Okay.”

The two horses walk in shallow water, hooves plashing in a creek bed paved with fallen leaves. We round a bend. Maybe the
creek will widen so we can ride side by side. No such luck.

“Stirrups feel good?”

“Good so far.” Equipment problems, is that my best shot? If I can get just a few minutes face-to-face with this man. Suppose
I complain about my saddle or reins. Too tight? Loose? But he’ll check, and we’ll be back on the trail in the blink of an
eye.

In the flick of a horse’s tail.

“Mike?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“My leg… I think I’m getting a cramp in my left calf. Yes, a cramp. Could we stop for just a minute?”

His “Whoa, boy” is music to my ears. At the edge of the creek, he dismounts, holds his horse and mine, and helps me down.
I make a show of massaging my left calf. “Ooh, ooh.”

“You want to go back?”

“Oh no, what a relief. Just give me a few minutes, can you?”

“No problem.”

“The horses won’t mind?”

“They’re used to it.”

“Ooh…” I knead my calf, my feet half sinking in cold creekside mud, my loafers ruined. “Gentle Aztec,” I say. “I suppose
a horse like Aztec is too tame for Drew Vogler.”

“Mostly. But Azzie has his ways, don’t you, boy? But not today. Today you’re sweet as sugar.”

“And too sweet for Steven… may he rest in peace.” Mike nods. “You were here at Flint Ridge when they were boys?”

“Oh yes.” He tugs Aztec’s saddle, a quick test.

I pump my calf. “Boys can be so mischievous. Were Drew and Steven?”

“Can’t say about that. Can’t say either way.”

“Diablo looks so wild. Did Steven and Drew like the risk of a wild horse?”

“I wouldn’t know as you’d say risk.”

“Two owners of one horse, is that common?”

“Common for them.”

“Maybe they competed, each trying to be the best on Diablo?”

“Nobody’s business but theirs.”

“I understand Steven was starting a business. He mentioned it to me.” Silence from Mike. “I haven’t met Drew yet. I bet he’s
very competitive.”

Mike gives me a long flat look. “What’s good about a horse, lady, is they don’t ask a bunch of questions. Work around horses,
you get to like them better than people, if you get my drift. How’s that leg, better?”

“I think so, yes.” My cheeks flush despite the early November chill. Strikeout.

Wordless, he laces and cups his fingers to make a stirrup. “Let’s get you back on. Give him his head in the water. Don’t pull
the reins. He’ll find his footing by himself.”

I do. We go a few hundred yards. By an overhanging tree, however, Aztec stops—to chew yellowed leaves at the end of a branch.
I nudge his sides lightly and say, “Giddyup, Aztec.” He turns his head around, takes a step forward, and chews some more.

Suppose the leaves make him sick. Up ahead, Mike’s horse moves along the stream. I kick a little harder and then flick the
reins against Aztec’s hide. No action. More chewing. I call out to Mike, who turns, circles back, and gives the horse a smart
smack against his rump.

As if motorized, as if ignited, the horse tenses and leaps forward, dashing in the stream. “Pull him up,” Mike calls. “Not
too hard—” I grab at the reins. “Not so hard! Pull up!” But there is nothing to get my hands around, no grip. The horse is
running in the water. My ankles are wet. I try to hold the saddle, a little ridge at the front. Come on, Mike, help me out.

But Aztec plunges, then runs at the bank as if to rear, his body going vertical. Keep your head, Reggie. Lean forward against
the mane. Brace in the stirrups. Do not slide backward. The horse gains higher ground and runs. I crouch on the saddle. He’s
pointed homeward toward the barn, but way too fast.

“Mike!”

I call to the wind but hear the hoofbeats of Mike’s Red coming from behind, closing in. Mike calls orders I can’t hear. I
grab Aztec’s mane.

He runs, full gallop, his ears flat.

“Mike! Mike!”

Trees are coming, bare branches dead ahead. I duck. My cheek is whipped, so near my eye. Then a huge branch, my head—I’m facedown
against the mane and neck. How did my foot get out of the stirrup? I have no right footing. The whole stirrup flops.

“Mike!”

My body leans, tilts left as I paw my right foot at the loose stirrup, try to connect, miss again. Another big branch, and
the bark just grazes my scalp.

And then, just as suddenly, Aztec slows, breaks his run, walks, finally stops. His sides heave. I am panting. Mike now approaches
from behind.

But here’s a new feeling—as if sinking. Literally sinking. Aztec, he is sinking under me. Collapsing.

“Aztec, no!” Mike’s voice is alarmed.

Dear God, heart attack, the horse dying right under me. Nearly killing me… and then dying.

“No, Aztec!”

It is all slow motion now, the horse down and down, Mike dismounting and running, calling, “No!” as I try to get off.

But my left foot is stuck in the stirrup, stuck as the horse sinks—and then begins to roll left. Roll onto me. Not collapsing,
not at all. It’s a deliberate move, to roll.

One thought: if I do not clear my foot, the horse will roll over me. Crush me. It whinnies, neighs. What does a breaking bone
sound like? Pelvis? I thrash, jerk my left foot—

And break free, free my leg and jump aside just as Aztec completes his rollover, stands, flicks his tail, and trots barnward.
A bird cries, a plane flies overhead. Mike is at my side holding Red’s reins. He breathes hard, puts his hand on my shoulder
as I pant, wheeze, feel the upsurge deep inside my gut, turn sideways, and throw up.

S
till nauseated, I ransack Jo’s medicine chest this same evening for antidotes to the runaway and rollover horse. The raging
question: was I set up, or did I set myself up?

Like a tape loop, the post-Aztec moment in the barn obsessively replays in my mind: “Naughty Aztec,” chided Eleanor Comber
as I stumbled in, wiped my mouth, and asked for water. She handed me two of Steven’s prize ribbons and a photo. “Naughty,
naughty boy!”—this as I dropped the chaps while a horse thundered in a stall deep inside the barn. Diablo?

“Walk Azzie and cool him down, Mike,” said Eleanor. “He’s lathered.”

“Ms. Comber—Eleanor,” I asked her, “is Drew expected here this evening? I’d like to talk with him… about the memorial
service.”

“If he comes, he’ll want to ride, not reminisce.”

“It’ll only take a little while.”

“My son needs relaxation, Regina, not grief.”

“I can wait.” Though sweat-soaked and close to retching, I held my ground, threatening a sit-in. The push-pull with Eleanor
Comber got me this: an appointment to speak with Andrew Vogler at Corsair Financial tomorrow afternoon. That’s how Eleanor
got rid of me—for now.

What was she thinking?

Jo’s medicine chest has a box of Epsom salts for a tub soak, a chance to think and plan. With the tap open, hot water thunders
into the deep old tub, and I get out the fluffiest, biggest bath towel and a new bar of lavender soap, test the temperature,
and ease in and down to my chin. The blissful spa feeling comes over me, and for moments I am weightless in the salts bath
and released from thought itself.

When reflection presses in, it’s rueful. The horse show ribbons that Eleanor has lent me are not Steven’s first-place blues,
but yellow and green. Even in death, he’s an honorable mention, a stablemate but not a winner. Both Leonard and Eleanor disdained
a man who was gay—and ethnic. Steven’s hardscrabble family on Croker Street is the surface, but Eleanor’s scorn goes deeper,
to the “Slovaks.” Does she know Steven’s family name was once Damelinski? From his boyhood, did she give her son the message
that Steven Damelin’s life was second-rate?

Or dispensable?

The phone rouses me from the tub. Perhaps it’s Maglia to say that Alex Ribideau has been found? No, it’s Molly. What am I
up to? she asks.

“A nice bath.”

“Mom, you’re a shower girl. Why the tub?”

“I’m trying some bath salts, dear. What’s new?” She tells me that sculptor Tom Chou is still unsure about the blood marks
on my door and wants to consult pals from the Chinese mainland. It’s beyond exasperation. “Since when does it take Beijing
and Shanghai?”

“Mom, I’m just telling you what he said. I’m just the messenger, okay?”

Okay. “Molly, tell me, does the term ‘helping hand’ have any special meaning in your generation?”

“No.”

“Maybe from a song lyric?”

“Not from the indie bands that I listen to, Mom. Maybe commercial pop, but I doubt it.”

“I thought maybe it’s new slang among younger people.” I do not admit to having googled it at the first minute back at Barlow
Square—“Steven Damelin + Helping Hand.” Nothing came up.

“So how about that hot lunch date, Mom? Is the guy taking you dancing?”

“Actually, Mol, dancing is on my mind.” Fact: the Web site of the Jeremiah Steele Dance Company shows Alex Ribideau in a gazelle
midleap and proclaims him an acclaimed dancer. An AWOL dancer? A killer?

“Message me, Mom. Bye.”

“Bye, dear. Take care.”

I towel dry and pull on a sweat suit. Can I relax, walk the dog, and settle in with a book, a little TV? Walk Biscuit, yes,
but there’s unfinished business here in my house: Steven’s bottle, the whiskey bottle he gave Jo, the bottle that Crystal
sneered at.

The pale green bottle that brought on those voices, the shouts of anger, the hard crack on the head. There it sits—QUART—with
bric-a-brac atop the shelf. But Jo felt its power, and I, too, before the crack on the head… can I hold it once again
and perhaps learn something more about Steven? Can it teach me, offer a clue to help track a killer even if it deals me a
blow?

In minutes, it’s in my hands: Blanchard & Farrar, Dock Square, Boston. Biscuit watches with mild interest. So far, nothing
psychic is happening. I walk the bottle from the front room to the kitchen. The dog follows. Still nothing. I hold it closer
against me. The glass clinks against a zipper tab. Am I resisting? Blocking a vision? I hug it tighter, then outstretched
in my hands like an offering. A moment passes, two, three. Wait, Reggie. Let the moment be.

Then the kitchen light flickers, and Biscuit whines. Now it starts, a low rumble, voices, the utterances I can’t make out.
They’re guttural, dissonant, heavy on consonants. They gather at the mouth of the bottle and come through a mist like frosty
breath on a cold day. I sense men’s whiskers, women’s cloaks, and again the babushkas. The volume intensifies, and arguments
erupt, loud and heated, and shouting, the feeling of a crowd. The voices shout at one another in a mix of fears. Yes, it’s
fear, but along with it a surge of… of energy. An updraft of energy. Something wants to fly, to soar amid this fear.

Then an aroma… like cabbage, like a soup broth. But now comes whiskey, as if the bottle were uncorked, surely self-suggestion
on my part. I must be carried away with the object in my hands, my sixth sense prompting the tang of distilled spirits. And
now another scent… bread. Yes, a fresh-baked loaf, yeasty and warm. There’s no loaf here in my kitchen. Am I hungry?
Am I somehow intervening in this vision?

Now an image… it’s floral, a bright red. There are no cut flowers in my house. A few mums out front, but this is different.
It’s a rose, roses. I’m smelling cabbage and whiskey and fresh bread. I see a bouquet of roses as the voices rise to a near
roar. The odors sharpen, each distinct, a loaf of bread, and cabbage and whiskey. And the roses. Biscuit is yelping and rolling
on her back on the kitchen floor in a frenzy. I’m dazed, intoxicated by the sights and sounds and spirit.

And then
bang,
the crack on my head. Sudden as before, it’s hard glass against my skull. This time I brace my legs, release the bottle,
and grab the countertop. I manage to remain standing. Biscuit is crouched down, growling low. The scents now fade, evaporate.
The quarrelsome crowd is going, gone. QUART lies on the counter, inert and benign.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.” It’s 10:01 a.m., as A. Arthur Graver, specialist in antique glass, opens its door for business here on Charles
Street at the foot of Beacon Hill. Holding a polishing cloth, a short, round, aproned man says, “Forgive the butlery. I’m
giving a few fruit compote bowls a quick lick. I’m Arthur Graver. How might I help you?”

“I’m Regina Cutter, Mr. Graver. I have a bottle in this bag. Perhaps I should’ve phoned. This isn’t fine glassware. I have
an old whiskey bottle, and I’m hoping for—”

“An appraisal?”

“Not for monetary value. I’d like information on its history.”

His eyes and eyeglasses form one bright twinkle. “Let’s have a look.”

QUART is shrouded in a towel, and I hold my breath as he pulls it from the canvas Bean tote and grips it in both hands. “It’s
not a bottle.”

“What?”

“It’s a flask, because of the flattened sides.” He turns it, holds it to the light. I’m uneasy. Suppose this man begins to
hear the voices… or smell the odors.”