Barnstorming (Gail Mccarthy Mysteries) (6 page)

The kettle hissed its readiness and I turned and made my tea, adding a little milk and sugar. Carrying the steaming blue willow cup, I made my way out on the porch and sat down, my eyes on the skyline.

Sitting in the chair, looking out at the opposite ridge, my horizon, my gaze rests on the landmark tree, lit up like a golden antler against the shadowed green of the ridgeline behind it. For a moment all my whirling thoughts subside and I remember riding along the ridge this afternoon, gazing at the landmark tree from the far side, seeing it outlined against the sky, knowing my porch lay beyond that, on a distant ridgeline.

In that second, peace wraps itself around me. For a brief moment I forget about the horror of Jane’s body and the frantic maelstrom of events which is bound to follow soon. I stare at the familiar sight of the landmark tree on the ridge, sip my steaming tea, and let my thoughts wander in their usual paths.

I sit here often in the evening, fascinated by the notion that once, not so long ago, I stood on the opposite ridgeline, adrift in the wild, green world, looking back at my home on this ridge. Why this fascinates me I don’t know.

Staring at the well-known landscape of the ridge, I pick out the tossing heads of the eucalyptus forest, the route of the ridge trail, the lofty pines behind the landmark tree, the silhouetted redwood grove that marks the site of the Lookout. I know virtually every inch of this scenery that I see from my porch. I have ridden and hiked the trails that trace the opposite ridge for many years, in all seasons. My fascination with it has never ended.

And now…I take another sip of tea while my mind swings inevitably back to Jane’s body, lying by the side of the trail in the warm meadow. My eyes search out the particular oak tree crowns that I know rise over that meadow. Jeri and her crew are there now, investigating the scene of the crime. Soon Jeri will be here, ready to take my statement. Soon Blue and Mac will be home and I will need to tell them what has happened.

I take another sip of tea and feel a tide of protest rising inside of me. I don’t want this. I want to contemplate the ridge in peace. I do not want this dark shadow of murder hanging over the peaceful landscape that I love. I want Jane alive and well and riding back to Lazy Valley Stable in the evening light. This blight, this evil, seems to pollute the beauty of the view, and my life, in an almost visible way. I can feel it in my bones, fear and anger mixing, in a way that makes my jaw clench.

For a second I stare hard at the ridgeline, aware of the sound of Blue’s pickup truck coming up the driveway. Then I set my teacup down and stand up, a sense of resolution growing. I’m not sure where it will lead, but I know one thing. I’m not standing still for this evil. I’m fighting.

The sight of the dark green pickup parking in its place indicated Blue and Mac’s imminent return. I had barely rinsed my teacup and turned toward the back door when they came barreling into the house, Freckles at their heels, all loud, friendly voices and wagging tails. I greeted my son and husband and patted the dog and wondered how to begin.

“What’s wrong, Mama?” Mac, always intuitive, had spotted my strained expression.

“How was your ride?” asked Blue.

“Not good,” I said.

“Is Sunny all right?” Mac asked quickly. Henry’s colic and resulting surgery had made a deep impression. Mac’s eyes went instantly to the cantaloupe-sized, round gray stone on the mantel, the enterolith that had been removed from Henry’s large intestine. The ten thousand dollar rock, Blue and I called it.

“Sunny’s fine,” I said reassuringly. “But I found a woman by the trail.” I swallowed. There was just no good way to put this. “She’d been shot. She was dead.”

“Oh no.” Blue’s face got very still.

Mac’s eyes were wide, with excitement as much as shock, I judged. At eleven years of age the tragedies of unknown others were not personal to him.

“Who shot her?” he asked. “Did you know her?”

“I knew her slightly. Her name was Jane Kelly.” I didn’t mention I’d been chatting with her less than an hour before she died. “She had a horse. No one knows who shot her. But since I found her, I called the sheriffs. And Jeri Ward is going to be here soon to take my statement.”

“What’s that?” Mac asked.

“I just need to tell Jeri everything that happened. She’ll record it,” I answered. I could see headlights coming up the driveway as I spoke. Daylight was ebbing fast. “There she is now.”

“Why don’t you take her over to the other house,” Blue suggested. “Mac and I will make spaghetti for dinner.”

“I’ll make the meatballs,” Mac said instantly. He liked cooking—especially things he enjoyed eating.

“Fine,” I said, relieved that Mac hadn’t demanded to join Jeri and me. Slipping out the door before he could think of doing this, I met Jeri on the driveway. “Come on over to my new little shack,” I greeted her. “We can be private there.”

As I led Jeri across the porch of the new house and through the glass door and flipped on the lights, I was conscious of a sense of pride all out of proportion to the situation. Our new cabin was tiny, about five hundred square feet, and featured one small but airy main room, surrounded by windows, a half kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom for Mac. We had built it in anticipation of the time, soon to come, when sleeping on a futon on the floor of our bedroom would not be enough private space for our son, and already he spent much of his time in his new bedroom, though he wasn’t quite ready to sleep there yet.

The click of the light switch lit a rough glass sconce shaped like a half moon above the door, and a hidden light in the alcove across the room. Jeri’s mouth parted slightly as she gazed about. I grinned.

“This is great,” she said. “Did you build it yourselves?”

“Mostly. Blue had a contractor friend who helped.”

The room we stood in was twenty by twenty with a high open-beam ceiling lined with willow twigs. Windowed like a screen porch, with a floor of rough-planked hand-scraped hickory boards and walls plastered with orangey-gold clay, the room was both small and simple and yet oddly spacious and stark. In one corner was a raised alcove, defined by the deep red trunk of a madrone, which provided the corner pillar. A hanging scroll in the alcove showed grass blowing in the wind. There was little furniture—a wicker rocking chair and a simple futon couch which folded out to make a bed. A small burgundy-toned prayer rug lay in front of the couch and a cedar chest in the corner supported Blue’s bagpipes.

“We call this the music room,” I said. “It’s where Blue plays his bagpipes. They’re loud. It’s a good thing we’ve got a separate house. Would you like a tour of the whole place before we start? It won’t take long.”

“Sure,” Jeri said, still gazing about in apparent fascination.

I led the way to Mac’s room, through the beaded curtain, and watched Jeri peer at the antique desk in front of the turquoise-blue wall, a special request of Mac’s and his favorite color. Mac’s bed had a rust-colored quilt and a wool blanket with a Native American design of galloping horses.

“The bathroom is the best part,” I said. “Blue wanted a big shower.”

The small bathroom boasted a handmade concrete counter with a beaten copper sink and a five-by-five walk-in shower, tiled in stone, with a glass-block exterior wall that filled the space with light.

“I love glass block,” said Jeri, gazing at the wall somewhat wistfully. “This is great,” she added.

“We had fun with it,” I said, and led the way back to the main room.

Settling into the rocker, I watched Jeri take the end of the couch and bring out her small recorder. Her smooth blond head, sporting a neat, short cut and showing no gray, I noticed, was bent over for a minute as she fiddled with the dials. I felt a sudden rush of fondness, remembering all of our previous interactions. I liked Jeri Ward. We’d known each other in an off-again on-again way for twenty years. Somehow we had never become intimate friends, perhaps because neither she nor I was the type to make many close friendships. Nonetheless, I liked her very much, and sensed that the feeling was mutual.

“Did you find anything interesting in the woods?” I asked her.

“Not really. Not yet,” she muttered, not looking up. “The scene-of-crime guys are still there.” And then, “I just got back from Lazy Valley Stable. I had a guy from there come pick up the horse.”

“Was it the trainer, Jonah Wakefield?”

“Yeah, that’s what he said his name was. Young, dark, clearly thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”

“That would be Jonah,” I agreed. “Does he know Jane’s dead?”

“It was pretty much impossible not to tell him,” Jeri said. “Given that I had to put someone in charge of the horse. He doesn’t know the woman’s been shot or where she was found, though. I led the horse down to that spot where you met us and had him pick her up there.”

“I saw Jonah riding in the woods this afternoon,” I said. “Not five minutes after I heard the shot.”

“Oh really.” Jeri clicked a button. “Okay, this thing’s on now. Go ahead and tell me what you saw.”

I took a deep breath. “I was riding up the ridge trail this afternoon when I met Jane Kelly, riding her mare, Dolly. Probably about three o’clock, though I can’t be sure.”

“You knew her, right?”

“Yeah, I knew her. She was one of my veterinary clients when I was a practicing vet and I would sometimes see her when I was out riding. We stopped and talked awhile.”

“Where were you, exactly?”

“That’s hard to describe, unless you know the trails. I could draw you a map, maybe.”

“That’s a good idea,” Jeri said. “But for now, let’s just get your story.”

I recounted Jane’s and my conversation as faithfully as I could remember it. “She was upset about problems with trail access,” I said, and I described the guy who sicced his dog on riders, the dirt bike rider, and the unknown folks who kept trying to block the trails. “She was pretty angry about all that. She said that she’d just moved her horse to Lazy Valley Stable because of the trail access issues—also she couldn’t get along with the new manager of the Red Barn, or the resident trainer there.”

“And that is?”

“Tammi Martinez is the manager and the trainer is a young guy named Ross Hart.”

“Do you know these people?”

“Sort of. I know people who board at that barn and they talked about them. I’ve met them both out riding. Neither of them has been there long. Less than a year. The old owner is a real nice gal, but she moved away and hired this much younger woman to run the place. Tammi’s tough.” I decided to leave it at that.

“What about the trainer?”

“Ross Hart. There’s talk about him, I guess; but there always seems to be talk about trainers. Ross rented a house just behind the boarding stable about six months ago, and started training and giving lessons at the barn. Rumor has it, he’s sleeping with Tammi. Jane said that he’d been up to some stuff that he shouldn’t—whatever that means. She also said that some of his former clients were now taking lessons from her and that she knew quite a bit more about training than Ross.”

“Nice,” Jeri commented.

I shook my head. “Jane was not exactly nice,” I said. “She was very direct; a lot of people didn’t like her. She and I always got along well, though I knew her very slightly.”

“So, go on with the story,” Jeri prompted. “Try to tell it in order, as it happened.”

“Okay,” I said. “Jane and I talked for a while, maybe ten minutes. She told me she had just moved her mare to Lazy Valley Stable, partly because they had better trail access and partly because of her issues with Tammi and Ross. I asked why she had moved her horse to the Red Barn to begin with, and she said because Sheryl Silverman, who boards at Lazy Valley, had stolen Jane’s boyfriend, Doug Martin.” I rolled my eyes. “I know Sheryl a little—stealing boyfriends and husbands is sort of business as usual for her. Anyway, Jane said that at this point she and Doug were back together and she didn’t mind seeing Sheryl. She sort of smirked about it; I got the impression she felt kind of smug.”

I thought a minute. “I can’t recall that we talked of much else. Her horse was getting restless; we both rode on.”

“Which way did she go?” Jeri asked.

“She rode down the ridge. From there she could take a turn that leads back to Lazy Valley, or she could ride down to the Red Barn. Judging by where I found her, though, she must have doubled back up the ridge,” I added doubtfully.

“What did you do next?”

“I rode on towards the Lookout, where I was headed. I didn’t see anyone until I ran into Sheryl Silverman, who was also riding down the ridge trail in the same direction Jane was going.”

“Did you talk to Sheryl?”

“Briefly. I kind of teased her; I guess it was evil of me. I mentioned seeing Jane and Sheryl looked furious. Then we went our ways. I didn’t think anything of it.” I wondered whether to mention that Sheryl had been packing saddlebags that would have accommodated a pistol and decided not. Not yet, anyway.

“What then?”

“I rode to the Lookout, spent some time staring over Monterey Bay. Have you been there?”

“Yep.” Jeri grinned. “It’s amazing.”

“One of my favorite places, “ I agreed. “I ride there a lot.”