At Risk (29 page)

Her eyes were so dark, they were almost
black.

"Would you like something to eat?" I
said.

She hesitated. "Dinner only."

"I promise."

"Who colicked?"

I told her about the pony while we ate
grilled cheese sandwiches--the only thing I had left suitable for
human consumption--and some stale pretzels. I didn't spend all that
much time in the loft and rarely had company. The place would feel
empty when she was gone, and I hoped her presence would become
routine. But it wouldn't happen if I kept behaving like a
sex-crazed lunatic.

I turned sideways on my stool and watched
her. She took a bite of her sandwich and looked up at me. A smile
shone in her eyes, and I couldn't help but wonder what her past
experiences had been like. I swallowed some Coke and realized that
I really didn't know all that much about her.

* * *

Despite what Marty had said, we decided to go
back to the barn at ten-thirty. As I followed Rachel's Camry down
Foxdale's lane, barn A's lights flicked out. Barn B was already
dark. I pulled into a parking space as three of the four vehicles
still in the lot started up and headed toward the exit. Only
Karen's car was left. As Rachel and I walked around the corner of
the indoor, Karen was locking the office door.

"Getting everybody out of here's a pain in
the ass," Karen said when we met on the sidewalk. "Especially on
weekends. They wanna hang out and socialize, they oughta go
somewhere else to do it." Karen's gaze flicked over us, and she
took in the fact that we were holding hands. "I have a life, too,
but they never think of that."

"You gonna catch any of the clinic?" I
said.

"You kidding? I have a weekend off, the last
place I wanna be's here."

"Well, goodnight," I said.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Karen said. "Marty got
all the stalls done except the eight that were in the last lesson,
so you lucked out."

"Great."

With my blessing, Rachel bent Foxdale's rules
(Karen would've had a fit) and worked her horse in barn B's arena
while I started on the stalls. I was mucking out the second to last
stall when she joined me.

"How much longer will you be?" Rachel
said.

"At the pace I'm going, another twenty
minutes."

"I'll keep you company."

"You don't have to do that."

"I know." She leaned against the doorjamb.
"But I want to. Anyway, I don't have anything better to do."

"I might be longer. You're distracting
me."

"Oh . . . I'll leave then." She backed into
the aisle.

I hopped out of the stall, took her in my
arms, and kissed her. There was passion on her part, I was happy to
see, and less poised control.

In actuality, it took me half an hour to
finish up. Afterwards, we walked out to the parking lot. As we
stood by her car, a police cruiser out on the road slowed and
turned into the lane. The tires crunched across the gravel,
sounding loud in the quiet darkness. He pulled alongside Rachel's
car and left the engine running.

Officer Dorsett climbed out of his cruiser.
"Jesus. You live here?"

"Just about." I made introductions.

Dorsett flicked his gaze over Rachel,
pausing, I noticed, at the more compelling parts of her anatomy.
Even with a jacket to ward off the chill, she couldn't disguise her
figure. I wondered if she'd noticed, but if she had, nothing showed
in her face.

"Were you leaving?" he asked us.

"Yes."

He looked directly at me and said, "Have you
walked around yet?"

"No."

"I'll go with you. Nothing much going on
right now."

Rachel and I said goodnight. Not the
goodnight I'd envisioned, however, thanks to Officer Dorsett
watching our every move. After she'd driven away, I started toward
the barns. I'd taken several steps before I realized Dorsett hadn't
moved.

I turned around and looked at his face.
"What's wrong?"

"I've heard something that might be connected
with your case."

A muscle twinged in my gut.

"Last weekend, just off Route 30 across the
Maryland-PA line, some horses were stolen from a hunter barn. The
woman who owns the place heard something and went outside to
investigate. No one's seen her since."

I groaned. "Did anyone see the rig?"

Dorsett shook his head. "So far there aren't
any leads, and her live-in boyfriend didn't hear a damn thing."

I swallowed.

"The farm's secluded. You can't see it from
the road, and the barn's not close to the house." His portable
radio clattered. Dorsett listened, then dismissed a broadcast that
was mostly unintelligible to my ears. "They probably thought they
wouldn't be interrupted."

"What about the boyfriend?"

"He remembers that she went out. After that,
nothing. They'd been drinking, and he was pretty much wasted."

"What's Ralston think?"

Dorsett shrugged. "He's up there now."

We checked the farm, but afterward, I
couldn't remember one damn thing I'd seen or done.

* * *

I lay awake for hours. When the clock radio
switched on at four o'clock. Saturday morning, my skull felt as if
it had been squeezed in a vise. I walked over to the window and
rubbed my eyes. Light had already begun to seep into the eastern
horizon.

Despite a lack of enthusiasm on my part, the
clinic started without a hitch, and by lunch time, both barns had
been mucked out. I walked behind barn B and stood by the pasture
gate. The school horses were exiled to the field for the duration
of the clinic, and any change that interfered with a horse's normal
routine could wreak havoc with its digestive system. In the past
two years, though, the practice hadn't caused any problems.
Unexplained colics, like last night's, were the norm.

Two years. It was hard to believe I'd been at
Foxdale that long. I rested my forearms on the fence. I ought to
stop feeling sorry for myself. Waste of time.

The sun felt warm on my shoulders. The
clatter of Mrs. Hill's voice over the P.A. system was an indistinct
murmur. I looked over the horses. They were content, relaxed, happy
to be outside. Farther down the hill, a bay pony pawed the ground
in front of the automatic waterer. I hopped the fence and walked
down the slope. She turned her big, old head and watched my
approach with a calm eye.

"Hey there, girl. What's wrong?" I patted her
neck, and she nuzzled my arm.

Her coat hadn't completely shed out, and I
could smell the sharp odor of sweat and damp horse hair. I looked
at the waterer and frowned. The lid was closed. I flipped it back
onto the main housing. It wasn't easy to move, but if she'd been
fooling with it, I supposed she could have managed it. She pursed
her lips and drank greedily from the bowl.

I turned to leave. Movement in the implement
building caught my eye. As far as I knew, Dave hadn't come in, and
no one else should have been down there. I cut across the
pasture.

Brian was sitting in the chair alongside
Dave's workbench, his head bowed, elbows propped on his knees. A
crumpled paper bag and an empty Miller's can lay on the ground by
his feet. A second can dangled from his right hand. When I stepped
into the shade of the roof overhang, he looked up and squinted at
me through a haze of cigarette smoke.

"Well, if it ain't Sherlock Holmes." Brian
gestured to a six-pack on the lower level of the mow. "Want
some?"

When I didn't respond, he said, "Oh yeah.
That's right. I forgot. You don't drink, don't smoke." He gulped
some beer. "Let's see. You don't cuss. Not much anyway. You're
polite as hell. Work like a dog."

He peered at me and rolled the cigarette
filter between his lips. "Just what is it you do for fun?"

I gritted my teeth. "Get up."

"'Get up.'" He chuckled. "Get it up, you
mean?" He took the cigarette from between his lips and spit, like
he'd gotten a piece of tobacco on his tongue. "You do do that,
don't you? Get it up with Mrs. Elsa 'if it moves, fuck it'
Timbrook."

I lunged forward, twisted my fingers in his
shirt, and hauled him to his feet. His chair toppled backward, and
beer sloshed down the front of my jeans. His eyes were bloodshot,
and he was having trouble focusing on my face.

Brian smirked. "So, I guess you're not so
special after all."

I spun him around and leaned into him so that
my mouth was close to his ear. "Fuck you." I shoved him
outside.

He stumbled when his shoes hit the gravel in
the lane.

"Pick up your check in the office," I said.
"And don't come back."

"You gotta be kidding? Who'd want this job
anyway, working for a self-righteous bastard like you? Slingin'
shit all day long 'til you smell like it." His gaze drifted from my
face to what was left of his six-pack. He looked back at me, his
pale eyes wide and unblinking, and flicked his cigarette into the
building. It landed on the ground behind me.

The skin on the back of my head
contracted.

He gestured to the west wall where the
graffiti had been. "Maybe they'll fix you."

I watched him start toward the office, then I
spun around and searched for the cigarette. It was smoldering under
the hay elevator. A couple more feet, and it would have landed in
the chaff that littered the floor at the base of the mow.

I ground out the butt with the toe of my boot
and exhaled breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

Brian hadn't wasted any time. By the time I
got to the office, he'd already left.

The room was crowded. A thin woman with
tanned, wiry arms and mousy brown hair held back with a bandanna
was leaning on Mrs. Hill's desk with her fingers splayed across the
bare metal. ". . . couldn't come, so one of my other girls wanted
to take her place, and . . ."

A young girl had borrowed the office phone.
She covered her ear with the palm of her hand and hunched forward
while, behind her, three riders debated whether the times posted
for their rides were running to schedule.

Mrs. Hill frowned at me, then waved me off.
Though I knew she'd be irritated because we were short an employee
on such a busy weekend, she wouldn't want to talk about Brian then.
I cut through the lounge and bought a Coke, then went outside and
sat on one of the benches that were positioned down the length of
the arena. Several clinic participants and a handful of boarders
were working their horses in the sandy footing. On the far side of
the judges' stand, a group of spectators were watching the clinic
up close.

Someone sat down next to me. The wooden slats
moved under my butt. I glanced to my right and was surprised to see
that that someone was George Irons.

"Hey there, Mr. Irons. How ya doin'?"

"Not bad. Be a lot better if I was out on the
bay, kickin' back a few, instead of watchin' a bunch of fancy
horses trot round in circles." He gestured toward the dressage
arena. "Got half my barn here today."

I turned the Coke can in my hands and pulled
back on the tab.

Mr. Irons waved at a large gray that was
being walked along the rail on a loose rein. The gelding's nose
almost touched the ground, and his back looked supple and relaxed.
"My daughter's up next. That's her new horse. Got an overstep you
wouldn't believe."

"Nice looking animal," I said.

Irons nodded as a bay horse walked in front
of us. "Paid too much for him of course, but . . ." His attention
drifted from the bay to its rider, and he seemed to lose his train
of thought. "Well, lookit that. Ol' Vic's gone from bad to worse. I
know they don't care what jumpers look like, but really, that one's
got a knot between its eyes, makes you think somebody'd hauled off
and whacked it with a ball bat."

"You know Mr. Sanders, do you?"

"Yeah, I know 'im, all right. I'll tell you
one thing, though. He sure as shit wishes he'd never heard of me.
When those bastards stole my horses, they took his, too."

Mr. Irons continued speaking, oblivious to
the fact that I'd become still or that my breathing had slowed even
though my heart was pounding faster than a freight train, the blood
swooshing past my eardrums.

"He'd hauled in his gelding," Irons
continued, "looking for someplace temporary to keep it while he was
waitin' to get in somewheres else. Then it goes and gets stolen.
Only had a week to go before he was plannin' on movin' it,
too."

I cleared my throat. "What was the gelding's
name?"

"Portage something or other. Don't remember
now. Some big ol' gray. Part draft, part thoroughbred. Ugly head,
but not as bad as that." He gestured after Sanders' bay
gelding.

"Light gray?" I said.

Irons shook his head. "Dark gray with
dapples."

Sanders guided his horse between a pair of
jump standards and circled toward us. Steel had been a dark gray,
heavily dappled. A draft cross of some sort. His theft from Foxdale
had netted Sanders twenty grand.

Sanders looked down his nose at us as he rode
past. My face felt stiff.

"Was the horse insured?" I asked, though I
expected I already knew the answer.

"You bet he was." Irons scowled. "Better'n I
can say for myself."

"By chance," I said, "do you recall which
insurance company?"

"Sure do. Same company that handles my
liability coverage. Liberty South. He told me he was thinking 'bout
gettin' his horse insured and asked me who I used and was I happy
with 'em. I introduced him to my agent. Lucky timing for him,
huh?"

I asked Irons if the gelding had any
distinguishing marks or blemishes, but his description was vague
and could have matched a thousand horses in any given county.

"Did the horse have any unusual behaviors," I
said, "any quirks, weird habits?"

Irons squinted at me. "What you wantin' to
know for?"