Barnstorming (Gail Mccarthy Mysteries) (7 page)

“Did you see anyone?”

“Not while I was there. But when I rode back down the trail, headed for home, I heard a shot. I’m pretty sure it had to be the shot that killed Jane.”

“Could you tell where it came from?”

“Not really. I was in a deep, wooded spot; I couldn’t see much. The sound seemed to come from all around me, if you know what I mean. I had the sense it wasn’t far away. It spooked me a little, but I do hear gunshots in the woods from time to time, especially in the fall. I assume it’s poachers, hunting deer. I did wonder if the shot came from the old hunter’s blind that’s in an oak tree just off the trail to the Lookout.”

Jeri nodded. “Then what?”

“I rode on. And in less than five minutes I ran into Jonah Wakefield, the trainer from Lazy Valley, riding a buckskin colt.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Very briefly. I asked him if he heard the shot and he said no, which I find hard to believe. He said that he’d seen Ross Hart riding fast, or something to that effect.”

“Did you see Ross Hart?”

“No. I did see someone galloping up the hill that leads to the swingset trail, but I couldn’t see who it was. A sorrel horse, that’s all I know. That was after I ran into the bearded guy on the dirt bike, or after he almost ran into me.”

I described this encounter to Jeri and said that the dirt bike rider had not paused.

“Then I rode on until I got to the meadow where I found Jane. First I saw her horse and then I found her. I rolled her over, like I told you, and saw she was dead.” I swallowed, the memory of Jane’s blank eyes still difficult for me to face. “My cell phone wouldn’t work there,” I went on firmly, “so I rode to the Lookout and called you. On the way I saw a middle-aged man walking a yellow Lab with a machete in one hand. I didn’t speak to him or him to me.”

I took a breath. “I rode down the logging road to meet you. On the way I saw an old camper parked out of sight at the edge of a log deck. I didn’t see any people about. After that I met you down by the road.” I took another breath and folded my hands in my lap. “I think that about covers it.”

Jeri was silent a moment: I had the sense she was trying to assimilate everything I had just said. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, her cell phone rang.

“Jeri Ward here,” she answered crisply.

She listened to the staccato rattle of a voice and said, “Where?”

She listened some more and then said, “I’ll be right there.”

Even as she turned to me, she shoved the cell phone and recorder into her pockets. “Got to go,” she said. “My guys have picked up a young guy with a twenty-two rifle, hiking down the logging road. Young guy didn’t want to say what he was doing there, nor did he have any registration for the gun, so they took him in for questioning. I’ve got to go down to the office. I’ll be in touch.”

And before I could say much of anything else, Jeri Ward had let herself out the door and was gone.

I watched Jeri’s headlights retreat down my driveway and sighed. Now I had to go face Blue and Mac. I really, really did not want to go over this story again. What I wanted was to sit down and have a quiet, peaceful drink and try to relax. Flicking off the lights in the little house, I walked across the porch, finding my way by the glow of the lamps in the house across the yard. As I stepped towards the lit-up windows, a plaintive meow by my feet made me jump.

“Tigger!” I said, a bit sharply, as the fluffy shape dodged between my legs. “Watch out.”

Tigger meowed again, unrepentantly, and followed me to the house, where he once again slipped between my feet as I walked in the door. I watched his furry tiger-striped form waddle down the hall (Tigger was not a slender cat) and had to grin.

A small dark shadow leaped upon Tigger from the darkness of the bedroom doorway and suddenly both cats were wrestling on the floor. I stepped over them, reflecting that little black Shadow had been aptly named, and walked into the main room, where Blue and Mac had spaghetti sauce and meatballs simmering on the stove. Blue took one look at my face and turned to the counter to pour lemonade-colored liquid into a tumbler filled with ice.

“Would you like a drink?” he said.

“Thank you, thank you.” I smiled at him. “And it’s a margarita, my favorite. How did you know?”

“I just guessed.” Blue grinned back at me.

I sank into the moss-colored armchair with a sigh. Mac was sitting on the couch, playing his electric-keyboard piano. Blue leaned on the counter and took a swallow of his drink, his eyes on me. “How did it go?” he asked.

“Okay,” I said. “Would it be all right if I just sipped this drink for a while? I’m exhausted. I really don’t want to go over it again right away.”

“No problem.” Blue smiled again and his eyes went to Mac. “It can wait.”

I knew we were both thinking that firsthand descriptions of a murder victim were not what our sensitive eleven-year-old son needed to hear. At the moment Mac was so absorbed in his music that I sincerely doubted he knew I was in the room.

I sipped my drink and watched Mac play. Watched Blue watch us both. Slowly my mind detached. I felt as if I were removed, a disembodied presence observing a scene: boy making music.

Mac’s long slender fingers move over the keyboard; his expression is intent. His left hand extemporizes chords while his right hand picks out a melody. He creates phrases and repeats them, invents variations and returns to his ground. The music he is playing is sonorous and pleasing and though I know he is making it up as he goes along, it sounds as if it is a piece he has practiced and played many times.

I watch Mac’s face and his fingers; he occasionally meets my eyes and seems pleased to find that I am listening; mostly he is caught up in what he is doing. He looks focused and happy. I know from experience that he can and will play the piano for long periods of time, whether anyone is listening or not. Mac is an entirely self-taught musician.

Sipping my drink, I note Mac’s curiously adult expression and his broadening shoulders. He has begun that steady progression that leads to young manhood, and I feel a stab of nostalgia for the days when he was truly a child. But this passes quickly in a burst of pure pride.

Once again I focus on my son’s music, as he sits playing the piano. Lamplight falls around him, laying a pool of warmth on the faded Oriental rug at his feet, kindling a yellow-gold glow on the rough-sawn knotty plank walls behind him. Mac’s hair is a cap of ruffled fawn-colored waves; his big long-lashed eyes still hold the magical innocence of a fairy changeling. He has not yet acquired the rigid patina of approaching adolescence.

Mac is making music, his own music, and I am here. I take another swallow of margarita and smile at Blue as I feel the tension melt slowly out of my body. Blue smiles back and I know we are thinking the same thing.

Mac is growing up and we are all here together. What more is there to ask? Tragedy may stalk the hills, as it prowls the world at large, but for the moment we are here together and safe.

——

It was later, much later, that I awoke from a deep sleep with my heart pounding. I could not remember the dream, only that it had had something to do with a body, sightless eyes staring upward. I shuddered, rolled over, tried to go back to sleep, realized I needed to go to the bathroom.

Climbing out of bed, I tottered down the hall as I so often did in the middle of the night these days. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was two-thirty. Par for the course. I looked idly out the window and froze.

There it was again. That light. My hall windows looked out at the ridge; the same ridge I had traversed so many times on Sunny. I knew every inch of that view. I had stared at it from my house and covered it on my horse many, many times. Until a month ago, I had never seen this light.

As far as I knew there was no dwelling where the light glowed, flickering. If I moved a few steps to the left or right it vanished. But from this one spot, for the last month, the light sparkled every night, hanging on the ridge in a place that I thought was populated only by trees and brush.

It wasn’t a fire, the color was wrong for that, and though it flickered, it was too consistent. What in the world was a light doing out in the brush? Whose light was it? What was the point of it?

I stared and stared, my nose pressed to the glass, trying to determine exactly where it was in relation to landmarks that I recognized. Halfway up the ridge trail, it looked like…but there simply wasn’t anything there. I had ridden up the ridge trail many times.

That thought brought another thought to mind. Could the mysterious light have anything to do with the murder? It was quite a ways from the spot where I had found Jane’s body, of that I was sure, but maybe not so far from the place where I had chatted with her on the trail. It was hard to see what the connection might be, but one thing I knew. I had never seen this light before a month ago. Whatever it was, it represented a change.

An owl hooted softly, far away in the darkness. I could smell the damp loamy scent of autumn, breathing in through the open window. The strange light shone silently on the ridge. I shifted from foot to foot.

I gave the light one last look and headed for the bathroom. Tomorrow, I told myself, I’ll work on it tomorrow.

At seven o’clock the next morning the light was still there. It sparkled in the trees, dimmed by dawn’s gray light, but still visible. It struck me that I had never looked for the mystery light by day before. I had puzzled over it by night, but forgotten it during the day.

Not this time. Today I was going to solve this little mystery, if nothing else. I would find the source of the mysterious light on the ridge.

Hustling into my clothes, I made a cup of tea and trudged down the hill to the barn. The October air was fine and clear, goldfinches sang their plaintive descending melody in the brush, Cinders the barn cat ran to meet me. Henry, Plumber, and Sunny all nickered eagerly. I smiled, fed the cat, and grabbed flakes of hay for each horse and dumped them in the feeders, checking to be sure the water troughs were full. Then I fed the banty chickens and let them out of the coop.

Another lovely autumn day. Just right for a hike in the woods.

Mac was instantly enthusiastic at my plan; Blue not so much.

“Can we go see where you found the body?” my son asked.

I was prepared for this; I’d known Mac would need to investigate this turn of events in his own way.

Ignoring Blue’s look, I said, “Yes, we can go sort of near there. I don’t think the cops will want us to go too close. But I can explain to you how it was.”

“Good,” Mac said, and I saw that though he hadn’t mentioned it, the body in the woods had been on his mind. Best we face it directly.

“And I want to find the mystery light,” I added.

“Can you see it now?” Blue asked.

I went to my spot by the hall window and peered. In full daylight it was hard to see but if you knew where to look it was still there.

“Yep,” I said. “Come see.”

Blue and Mac observed and concurred. We all agreed that it looked like it was on the ridge trail and yet there was nothing on that trail to cause it.

“We’ll find out, Mama.” Mac was obviously ready for this new adventure.

In an hour, after breakfast, we strolled down our driveway, Freckles on her leash. The autumn sunlight cast crisp, cool shadows and the air smelled sweet. Despite yesterday’s events, I felt my spirits rising at the thought of a walk in the woods.

We crossed the busy road at the foot of our driveway, taking our time. Then we were plunging into the tangled woods, pushing through scattered strands of poison oak that reached out to grab us, seeing the openness and light of the first small meadow glowing through the oak tree trunks and rambling vines. Mac led the way; I followed; Blue and the dog brought up the rear.

The earth was damp and soft; Sunny’s hoofprints were fresh and unmistakable—this was the way I’d ridden home yesterday evening. Now that I was so much nearer the ground, I could also see the prints of deer and what looked like a coyote, judging by both prints and scat.

Sure enough, as we entered the small meadow, motion at the far side of the clearing drew my eye. Mac had already halted. “Look, Mama,” he said softly.

A slender young coyote glanced back at us as he melted into the forest. Just a moment of grayish-brown dog shape, long pointed muzzle, pricked ears, turning and leaving. By the time Blue reached us, the creature had vanished. Freckles, grown increasingly deaf and short-sighted with age, did not seem to be aware that the coyote was nearby. I wondered if it was the pup I’d seen last summer, and silently wished him luck. Life could be very hard on yearling coyotes.

We trudged on up the hill, into the oak trees, shadows barring and dappling the trail. My mind wandered, thinking of the coyote, how he had simply appeared in the clearing. That was the thing about wild animals. These hills were full of them—deer, coyotes, bobcats, even cougars. And yet one went along and saw nothing. And then, in a moment, sitting on the porch, walking down the drive, hiking across a meadow, a shape appeared, and suddenly one was face to face with the wild. It was endlessly magical, constantly engrossing. And despite how often it happened, always unexpected.