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Authors: Jacqueline D'Acre

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Hot Blooded Murder

BOOK: Hot Blooded Murder
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Table of Contents
Copyright 2016 by Jacqueline D’Acre
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
Hot Blooded Murder is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons and/or events is strictly coincidental. References to actual places and/or historic events are meant to enhance the story and provide a realistic setting for the novel.
Requests for permission to quote from or make copies of any part of the work should be requested from:
Jacqueline D’Acre
norleans
@tbaytel.net
ISBN: 978-1-4835785-7-6
Dedication
In memory of my daughter
Catherine Lehmberg
who taught me the meaning of unconditional love.
Quote:
While I see many hoof marks going in, I see none coming out. It is easier to get into the enemies toils than out again. –Aesop
Contents
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my sister Jane Cryderman Ely for her help in choosing a title. Also thanks to Mindy Tart and Rebekah Courtney for reading each chapter as I finished it. Thanks also go to my sister Jennifer Cryderman for bearing with me as I wrote. More thanks to my other sister Della Cryderman who aided in conformational description. I must also thank my wonderful LUNA group of writers: Sue Blott, Glenn Ponka, Jane Crossman, Nancy Bjorgo and Joan Baril for their scintillating insights and vociferous encouragement. Others who offered support include Lori Kauzlarick , Dorothy Irwin and my daughter Catherine Lehmberg…thanks to all.
Chapter One
May 21, 2005, 8:46 AM
If you want to know anything about horses in the New Orleans area, Lila’s Creole Diner in St. Tremaine Parish is the place to go. I’m Bryn Wiley and I had a writing assignment about a local breeder of Morgan horses. On the way to her place I drove up Highway 38 and stopped at Lila’s.
Inside, I walked past restaurant-style booths, tables and racks of groceries to the rear coolers. It was no surprise that words from horse people seated at the tables floated over boxes of Zatarain’s jambalaya mix to me: “…so that Morgan gal’s having some troubles…” came from a man’s high-pitched voice.
The subject of my article. I paused in the act of grasping a Diet Coke from a cooler. Resisting my usual embarrassment about eavesdropping, I listened closely.
“Yeah,” said another, deeper voice, “got twenty head or thereabouts. How’s she gonna feed ‘em all?”
Embarrassment won. I grabbed the Coke and carried it to the counter at the front. As I paid, Lila, owner and Queen of the Horse Information Highway at this diner-convenience store-gas station, said, “Hey, girl, how’re you?”
“Good, Lila. Business looks excellent today.”
The place was noisy, the coffee smell rich and strong. I decided to dangle some bait. “I’m going over to visit Marcie Goodall. I’m doing a story on her breeding program.”
Lila’s thick eyebrows shot upward, creating generous folds in her forehead. She rang up the register, made change, then leaned forward and whispered, “Tommy Grayson was in here earlier. Upset. Marcie Goodall owes a big bill over at his place, Grayson’s Feeds.”
Poor Marcie.
Once, long ago I’d faced similar problems. Tight money, many hungry horses, big unpaid feed bill.
Besides having luxuriant eyebrows, Lila was short, stout and dark with a mole near her mouth that could be interpreted as a wart or a beauty mark. She put change in my hand and I shoved it into my faded jeans pocket.
I said, “I’m sorry to hear that, Lila. It’s a tough spot for Tommy.”
Lila looked over my shoulder at the crowd of horsepeople overflowing the tables and booths. Their workday finished at nine a.m., all the hundreds of stalls cleaned, all the dozens of thoroughbreds galloped and hosed down, now they laughed, talked, and ate Lila’s ham, biscuits, eggs and grits. The owners were overweight, the riders under. The fragrance of fresh fried fat was in the air, along with the chicory coffee. Sun poured through the big front windows.
“Grayson’s holdin’ up her next feed delivery,” said Lila. I frowned. A serious difficulty for Marcie. And I selfishly worried–could this cancel my article? I lived frugally. I needed that check. I said ‘bye to Lila, and waved at Arthur Svenquist, a farrier and a friend. He sat squeezed between a huge owner and a diminutive exercise rider. Exercise riders often were jockeys who grew too tall to race, but still were small enough not to burden a fragile racehorse during its early training. I went outside and drove my bottle-green ‘92 Tempo to Morgan Oaks Farm, situated on Word of God Church Road within St. Tremaine Parish, where I lived, scant miles from New Orleans.
Now I mounted the steps to the rear verandah of Marcie Goodall’s
Gone-With-the-Wind
house and saw the kitchen door was wide open. Immediately, I felt nervous.
“Hey, Marcie, you home?” I called in a polite voice while wondering:
Why was the door open?
There was no response.
“Hellooo.” Louder. “Anybody? It’s Bryndis–Bryn–Wiley. Remember me?” The house was three stories tall with many rooms. Maybe she needed time to get to the kitchen.
I shifted from foot to foot and wiped sweat from my upper lip. TV weather reports called for more hurricanes and higher temperatures than 2004. That’d had the hottest summer of my two decades in Louisiana, and it was supposed to get warmer. Global warming? Who knew! But in this premature heat, my SPF-45 sunscreen slid around on my redhead’s skin.
I’d grown up in Canada, in a northern town called Thunder Bay, so this climate was a constant test. Here, I wore UV sunglasses over my green eyes, even during winter. And despite my years here, I still spoke Canadian, eh? Often Deep Southerners confused me with Yankees, which got me trouble. Beneath my façade of calm, I was getting impatient on the verandah of this ante-bellum house that belonged to a woman who bred Yankee horses: Morgans from Vermont.
I tried to hook my hair behind my ears, but the left side was boy-short, so it couldn’t go behind my ear. The right side stayed put because it was jaw-length. Sometimes I thought my off-kilter hairstyle reflected my personality.
Perhaps Marcie had dashed out to her stable?
I was here only because an editor of the
Morgan Horse of America
magazine had phoned earlier. The editor had interrupted my mug of French Market coffee and my enlightenment-seeking from the
Tao Te Ching
. She needed me to fact-check an article I’d written last February about Marcie’s breeding program. Now I stood outside Marcie’s open kitchen door listening to a refrigerator hum. My curiosity grew, overtaking some of my earlier nervousness. I leaned in to look. I saw part of a kitchen table. Two cups and saucers, pink rosebuds on white china. Burnt coffee smell. And something rotten. I stepped in. Flies buzzed over a cantaloupe on a chopping block, halves fallen apart, chef’s knife beside it. The seeds, left in the fruit, sagged wetly sideways.
Legal-sized documents, dense with words, were fanned over the table. I walked closer, twisted my head and saw a Xerox copy of a check for thirty-five thousand dollars, made out to Marcie Goodall. My heart thumped.
She hadn’t sold her stallion, had she?
Other documents looked like they might have come from the St. Tremaine Clerk of Court’s office and others carried the logo of an Anton Delon, Mortgage Broker.
The burgeoning detective in me wanted to read them, but a building disquiet made me check out the kitchen. It was stark–old white metal cabinets like a World War II British hospital. But something in this room was off. A trembling in the air, like the fading echo of an old…scream?
“Hey!” I yelled. “Marcie! Where are you?” I considered going deeper into the house, but my natural timidity and Canadian good manners, stopped me. I was a reporter and an amateur detective who hated to pry.
The air conditioning wasn’t on. But the coffeemaker’s red light was, and the coffee a brown crust in the pot’s bottom. Without thinking, I flicked it off. Then I wondered:
should I treat this as a crime scene?
I unzipped the fanny pack I wore low, and I thought, rather sexily, on my hip: this being about the sexist thing I would allow on my person. I removed latex gloves and snapped them on.
Was I overreacting?
Since I’d stumbled into the solving of three murders over the past two years, I’d gotten in the habit of carrying the gloves.
Everyone forgets to turn off coffeemakers. People rush out leaving doors open. Most likely this is not a crime scene.
My God!
I bolted from the kitchen, across the verandah and outside, down the broad steps. I skirted a pool. Spanish moss, drooping from an oak limb, slapped my face. I brushed it aside and kept on. Pea gravel crunched under my sneakers. At the barn entrance I stopped.
Where’s the dog?
There’d been a dog before. A Dalmatian.
BOOK: Hot Blooded Murder
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