Barnstorming (Gail Mccarthy Mysteries) (12 page)

Juli, the barn owner, was a tall, slim woman in perhaps her forties with very long black hair, usually, as now, worn loose. She seemed to regard her hair as her signature piece, and certainly the sweep of wavy black mane was very striking. Her face was strong-featured, with heavy brows and a look of confidence. I did not know if she had inherited money or acquired it some other way, but she was wealthy enough to have bought this boarding stable and its three homes several years ago, and seemed to be quite free of financial problems in general. Her problems had more been confined to trainers, a not unusual situation in the horse business. Trainers had come and gone at Lazy Valley with great regularity. Currently she had the young, very good-looking Jonah Wakefield, who could not train his way out of a paper bag, in most local horsemen’s opinion. By all accounts Jonah was not merely Juli’s trainer, but also her live-in lover. Perhaps his status as trainer was directly related to this.

Juli and Jonah approached us at a strolling gait. Both looked very relaxed, very in charge, barn owner and trainer surveying the grounds. Jonah wore the black Stetson hat, a white shirt, tight blue jeans, and leather chaps with fringe. I suppressed my smile at the thought that Jonah had donned his chaps for a stroll around the barn. After all, they made him look so trainerly. Remembering the black duster he had worn for a ride on the ridge, I waved my hand at the pair of them.

Putting on the most naïve expression I could manage, I smiled sweetly and said to Jonah, “Didn’t I meet you out riding Saturday?”

Jonah’s dark eyes shifted alertly to my face. I couldn’t really see his mouth under the thick black mustache he sported, but I had the idea it tensed up. Jonah’s reaction to my question seemed remarkably similar to Ross Hart’s. Apparently nobody wanted to admit they’d been out riding when Jane Kelly was shot.

After a moment’s study of my features, Jonah apparently recalled that he had, indeed, seen me. “You were riding a palomino gelding?”

“That’s right. And you were riding a buckskin colt.” A poorly behaved buckskin colt, I thought but didn’t say. The last thing I wanted was to get into a discussion about horse training with Jonah Wakefield or Juli Barnes. I knew perfectly well I’d be treated to a lecture on the principles of natural horsemanship and I didn’t think I had the patience to listen to that.

Like many traditional horsemen, I thought that the natural horsemanship movement featured a little bit of real knowledge that most competent horsemen already understood. The rest of it was gimmicks and games that seemed to me to be mostly a way to put money in the horse guru’s pockets, and to duck the actual process of getting on the horse and riding it. And, as Jane Kelly had pointed out Saturday, many horses that were a product of this system seemed both cranky and not very well trained—at least to those of us who were not fans of natural horsemanship.

Jonah was watching me closely, and I tried very hard to put an admiring expression on my face. Jonah was used to middle-aged women who admired him; I didn’t figure I’d have much trouble convincing him I was one of the herd.

“Did that shot spook your colt?”

“Shot?”

“I heard a shot right before I saw you. I think it was the shot that killed Jane Kelly.”

Juli, Sheryl, and Jonah were all staring at me. I batted my eyes at Jonah, remembering perfectly well that he’d denied hearing the shot when I’d met him on the trail.

“I went and got Jane’s horse Saturday night,” Jonah said slowly. “I didn’t know she’d been shot until I read it in the paper Sunday morning. And no, I didn’t hear a shot. I was loping up the hill; I might not have noticed.”

“Did you see Jane?” I asked.

“No,” Jonah said.

“But you did tell me you saw Ross Hart.”

“Yeah. He was galloping across the meadow where the dirt bike trails are.”

I thought about that a minute. The location would fit with my seeing him a little later loping up the swingset trail.

“Was he riding a sorrel horse?” I asked.

“Yeah. Why?” Jonah was plainly wondering what business this was of mine.

“I saw someone on a sorrel horse later,” I said. “Looked like they were riding in this direction. I wonder why Ross Hart would be riding here?”

“I never saw Ross,” Juli Barnes interjected quickly. “And I was out in the arena, working a horse that afternoon. I saw Jonah ride in. I saw Sheryl. I would have noticed if Ross Hart had come down the trail.”

Juli’s tone sounded defensive, I thought. All three of them looked at me as if they wished the ground would open up and swallow me.

Sheryl flipped her blond braid over her shoulder and spoke to Juli and Jonah. “Gail found Jane’s body,” she said. “The cops have been talking to her, asking her who she saw out riding.”

All eyes zipped back to me.

“Yes,” I said sweetly. “Of course, I had to tell the truth. I suggest you all do the same.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Lucy emerging from the barn. She glanced in my direction, as if wondering if she should join me. Quickly I turned and moved toward her, saying over my shoulder. “Got to go.”

But as I walked toward the pickup, I could feel three sets of eyes boring into my back. And it seemed to me that this little visit to Lazy Valley had raised more questions than it had answered.

At five o’clock that evening I was home and sitting on my porch. Lucy had dropped me off on her way to an after-hours emergency near Watsonville. I’d apologized and told her that I’d had enough for one day. But that wasn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking I’d had enough for one life.

I wasn’t used to being so frantically busy all day, so bombarded by people and their needs and demands. Ten years of not working as a horse vet had rendered the average veterinarian’s day both uncannily familiar and disturbingly strange. This was my life…once. Not anymore. I wasn’t sure what my life was supposed to be now.

I stared off across my garden, seeing Sunny’s bright gold shape dozing under an oak tree in his corral further down the slope. Taking a deep breath, I consciously relaxed my shoulders, and noticed that the busy chatter in my mind began to still. Could a life be about this?

I put my feet up on the bench and allowed my gaze to drift around. I could hear the bittersweet descending song of a goldfinch in the brush. Flaming red leaves clambering into a nearby elderberry bush were no doubt poison oak, always brilliant in the fall. A long, liquid, golden light slanted onto the ridgeline across the road, lighting it up like a romantic Maxfield Parrish landscape. I sat and watched and thought.

To the western eye there is no particular merit in sitting on the porch, idly gazing at the garden. To such a perspective there might be merit in tending the garden, but merely contemplating it? No. And yet, despite my very western background, and the steady, straight-ahead performance that had characterised my working life, it was this seemingly pointless contemplation that drew me.

I didn’t call it meditation; I didn’t think of it as a spiritual practice, or want to give it fancy names or forms. I just wanted to hold still and be, watch the world around me. Somehow, without really knowing how I got here, I found myself wanting to be less busy, less focused on doing. Impossible as it was to explain to others, I just wanted to sit on the porch, doing nothing much at all. Watching the sun set; watching the light change on the ridge. That this was the polar opposite of a return to life as a practicing vet, I was now being forced to acknowledge.

Damn. I took another deep breath, waiting for the rush of adrenaline that the thought of being a working vet had precipitated to ebb. I wondered what exactly it was that drew me now.

The answer came in a rush, with no hesitation. It was the endless engaging play of nature that spoke to me. Storms blowing in, chickadees harvesting sunflower seeds from the big drooping heads in the vegetable garden, a buck drinking from our pond, the leaves of the wild grape slowly turning crimson. Sitting on the porch or wandering through the increasingly wild tangles of my brushy garden, seeing what roses were in bloom, feeding the horses and the chickens and then just watching them eat—these were the things that drew me. Not accomplishing goals, not interacting in the busy outside world. Unfortunate as it sounded to a western ear, I wanted to be rather than do.

I still liked to ride, but I no longer had any interest in competing or training. I liked to wander the trails along the ridge, watching the black oak leaves light up in brilliant autumn gold. The familiar trails fascinated me in all seasons. The trails… Sitting up straighter, I focused my gaze on the landmark tree. The long series of vet calls this afternoon had driven Jane’s murder and my recent visit to Lazy Valley out of my mind. Surely I had learned some things I ought to tell Jeri Ward.

Blue and Mac were off playing miniature golf, a recent obsession of Mac’s. I’d begged off on the grounds of being exhausted. I ought to have at least an hour before they got back. I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Jeri.

She answered on the first ring, her voice brisk. “Jeri Ward here.”

“Hi Jeri. This is Gail McCarthy.” I hesitated. Suddenly calling Jeri didn’t seem like such a bright idea. She was heading up a murder investigation; what had made me think my information was so important?

“I heard a few things today I thought you might be interested in,” I said diffidently.

“I’m almost next door,” Jeri said. “I’ll come around and talk to you. Be there in ten minutes.”

I hung up and heaved a sigh of relief. Jeri had sounded interested and friendly. At any rate she hadn’t sounded as if I was out of place to call her.

It wasn’t even ten minutes before her car pulled up my driveway. As if on cue, we met on the porch of the little house and took our familiar positions on the couch and rocking chair inside.

“Is the young poacher guy still under arrest?” I asked her.

“No. The bullets from his rifle were rim-fired. The bullet from the body is a center-fire. Not the same gun,” Jeri said. “We let him go.”

“Oh,” I said. I thought a minute. “Are you treating this as if it was a murder?”

“At this point we don’t know if it was a deliberate murder or an accidental death. Either way, it’s a homicide. Somebody pulled that trigger. Somebody killed her. What things did you hear that I might be interested in?”

I explained about riding around with Lucy and visiting the Red Barn and Lazy Valley. I tried to recount the conversations I’d had as well as I could remember them. Jeri listened carefully.

“You’re right,” she said. “That’s very interesting. I arrived to question these people this afternoon, but I couldn’t manage to track all of them down. Doug Martin, Juli Barnes, and Sheryl Silverman were nowhere to be found. I did manage to talk to Jonah Wakefield and Ross Hart. Both admitted to being out riding that afternoon. Both said they’d seen the other. Neither admitted to hearing the shot or seeing Jane.”

“I wonder where Ross Hart was riding to,” I said. “He was loping up the swingset trail when I saw him. That leads to Lazy Valley. But he never showed up there, or so I gathered from what Juli said.”

Jeri looked down at her notepad. “All he said was that he was exercising a colt who had too much go. So he was loping him through the hills.”

“I guess he could have loped up the hill and come right back down. I wonder if he saw that dirt bike rider. Did you question him?”

“I’m not sure,” Jeri said.

“I’ll bet dollars to donuts he lives in that big fancy subdivision,” I said.

“I talked to a young guy with a beard who said he sometimes went out on the trails,” Jeri said. “He didn’t mention a dirt bike. He lives with his parents in a big gray house that’s about the third one up the street. Name’s Leonard Harris. Calls himself Len.”

“I bet that’s the guy I saw,” I said. “It was right after I heard the shot. After I saw Jonah Wakefield,” I amended.

“The thing that interests me,” Jeri said quietly, “is that Sheryl Silverman was making nice with Doug Martin. I find that very interesting. And Ms Silverman was neither at the barn or at her home when I went looking for her this afternoon. Nobody knew where she was.”

“Doug basically said he was living at Jane’s house,” I offered. “Said he was taking care of the house and animals. But I have a feeling he was living at Jane’s house before she was killed. Doug always seems to be living with some girlfriend or another. I noticed he tended to pick women who had a home. And I’ve never heard of him having a place of his own. I hate to say it, but I’ve wondered if he didn’t take up with Jane again because of that. Jane was a solid citizen and owned a nice home in Rio del Mar. Sheryl rents a condo—or so I heard. Maybe Jane looked like a better deal.”

“I wonder who inherits the house?” Jeri said meditatively. “In any case, Doug Martin and Sheryl Silverman are at the top of my need-to-question list, and I’d better get out there and look for them. Can we go on a trail ride tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I said. “When?

“I’ll be here about eleven.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be ready.”

And Jeri headed off down my driveway, just as Blue and Mac drove in.

When the beige pickup pulling an aluminum horse trailer arrived in my barnyard the next day, I was already saddling Sunny. I watched out of the corner of my eye as Jeri unloaded a tallish flea-bitten gray gelding. Sunny pricked his ears at the newcomer; Henry nickered a greeting. Jeri’s horse looked around calmly; I noticed that she’d hauled him saddled.