Hot Blooded Murder (10 page)

“–Mz Bryn, the back of yore head is caked with blood. Mixin’ in with yore red hair. You got some blood on yore forehead. Drips. Not a pretty sight. I know Sheriff MacWain would want me to git you into the hospital pronto!” He might also want you to git me in a cold lonely cell. After all, I’d been ducking under police tape then breaking and entering. Maybe Teddy didn’t realize the tack room door was even kept locked.

“But some coffee will–” I said. I realized so far he hadn’t asked what I was doing here. Fortunately, the blood on my head was distracting him.

He stared at me. “I’m not sure coffee’s such a good idea.” I glared at him as fiercely I could. There was no time to lie around recovering from a bump on the head. Teddy interpreted my look and said, “Don’t move. I’ll make coffee.” I heaved myself more upright so I wouldn’t look so disabled to him. The inside of my head whirled like a runaway Ferris wheel. I suppressed a groan. Teddy opened something and I smelled coffee and felt nausea. I clutched the arm of the couch. Other hand on my belly. Oops. Better remove these latex gloves. I shucked them, stuffed them into my jeans. Breathed. Teddy was saying, “…but maybe you shouldn’t have caffeine. Not if yore concussed and I think you are.”

“Just make some damn coffee. Please, Teddy.”

“Okay. Yore funeral…Mz Bryn, I take that back. Somebody clobbered you pretty good. You don’t want it to be yore funeral alongside Mz Goodall’s, do you?” Sounds of water pouring. “Why does a nice horse lady, a nice calm writer, involve herself in these murder things? Now yore real hurt and–”

“I dunno, Teddy. I just have to do it.” The Ferris wheel was a swirl of lights and sounds. “Help–”

“You need help. Right now. I am takin’ you to Emergency.”

He was walking back to me. I noticed I seemed to be slumping right off the sofa. “But Teddy, I found the murder weapon! At least evidence that points to the murder weapon.”

“Murder weapon? It ain’t that horse? What is it? Where is it?”

My knees were bending, my legs folding up like a puppet falling to the floor. My back slid down over the slick cold leather. There were little shrieking skin-sticking sounds as my t-shirt rucked up. Suddenly Teddy’s jowelled face loomed above me. He was fashionably unshaved. Didn’t do much for him.

“I lost it, Teddy. Damn mugger hit me–”

“Yore assailant got it from you?”

“Think so. Yep–” My head toppled forward. The Ferris wheel settled down into a nice comforting blackness. Faintly I heard Teddy’s voice calling, “Mz Bryn…”

“No hospital…” I murmured….

The next thing I was conscious of was my feet stumbling along the ground. I smelled the oil of Teddy’s hair and I was eye-level with his hairy ear. Lotta hair. My arm was around his shoulder, his arm around my waist and he was dragging me out of the barn. I stiffened my body. “Teddy. Stop.”

“Just tryin’ to get you-all to the vee-hick-ul, Mz Bryn. Gotta get you to Emergency.”

I pulled away from him, almost fell, then grabbed his shoulder and steadied myself. My head pounded but it was an improvement over the Ferris wheel. I could smell the coffee he’d assembled even outside the barn. My nausea had passed.

“Let’s go back into the tack room, Teddy. Let me sip some coffee and we’ll see.”

He was an arm’s length from me. Worriedly, he spat, hitched up his khaki pants, then shook his head. “You-all are one stubborn fee-male.”

I smiled, no doubt a ghastly sight, and draped my arm back around his shoulders. The starch in his khaki shirt felt comforting. “Just steady me a bit, please, Teddy.”

We hobbled back into the tack room. I resumed my seat on the sofa and made suggestions on how much to feed. Teddy got me a coffee, black, and then went to feed and water the horses, a task that could take well over half an hour. Domino came and leaned against my knees. “Teddy,” I called, “this dog needs water and feed too.”

“Sure thing, Mz Bryn.”

“I am working you to death, Teddy.”

“S’okay,” he called back. “I jus’ want to take you to the hospital.”

“I am feeling better every single second. Your coffee is delicious.” Thick and dark enough to pass for bayou water, it was working. Adrenaline began its progress through my arteries.

Swaying like a junkie, I rose to my feet. Grasped the armrest for support. Breathed and took a step. I lurched over to the TV, held onto it, then using a progression of shelves and other objects, I made my way to the door behind the leathery-fragrant saddles to the welcome sign: ‘Restroom.’

I took care of that necessity, then dabbed at the rivulets of dried blood on my forehead with a wet, crumpled hunk of brown paper towel. The blood had run forward, I supposed, when I fell. The actual bump was on the crown of my head. Just dabbing though, reignited pain. I left some pink spots in place and departed the washroom. The world was still blurred. I seized upon suitable handholds and made it out into the barn aisle, Domino following anxiously, whether concern for me or for some food, I wasn’t sure. Teddy was at the far end of the barn. I waved like a shipwreck survivor. “Hey. Look at me! Getting better, Teddy.”

He stopped, arms loaded with hay, and stared. “You’re crazy.”

“Probably. No worry though. I’ve had a concussion before. It’s just rest and don’t go to sleep. Then you’re fine. You just keep feeding those critters, Teddy.”

He nodded at the dog. “What’s the dog’s name?”

“Domino.”

“Domino!” Then Teddy whistled, and the dog looked at me as if for permission. I said, “Go on now, Dom.” He jumped up and trotted to him.

“Stay by me, boy, I’ll feed you right now,” said Teddy. This activity engaged Teddy even more, freeing me to go back to Marcie’s house and check around. Make sure I hadn’t missed anything yesterday. I
had
planned to scout the house last night.

I let go of the barn wall and turning, began my long lurch toward the house. I made it past the pool without falling in, and inside the house, I took a serious look around the kitchen. It might be the actual murder scene–the deathblow delivered here?–or was Marcie knocked out here, then carried or dragged to her horse’s stall, and finished off there? Dragged–those brownish, long stains I’d noticed on the concrete barn aisle? The cups I’d seen yesterday still sat on the table. Every surface was dark with fingerprint powder. Why hadn’t Asprey taken the cups with him to his lab? Not to put MacWain down, but were they all so confident the horse was the killer they weren’t bothering with a thorough investigation?

The heat in the house was already oppressive. Grabbing walls as I moved, I went through the house. Saw again room after room stripped of furnishings. At the end of a hallway, I came to the office I’d faxed from. There was the window which overlooked the drive, where Once’s near-death experience in the Sheriff’s horse trailer had occurred. Beyond, I saw the hugely pregnant mare. Her coat shone copper red in the sun. Her back was swayed, but still, I thought, she was a handsome old girl. Who would sit mare-watch for her when her time came? Being so old, she might need a hand.

With the stallion falling in the trailer, and having just found Marcie’s body, had I been so stressed I’d missed things? And what about Asprey, head forensics man? He was usually meticulous, but maybe not if MacWain was whispering ‘Don’t bother,’ at him.

Then I saw the blinking red light of the answer machine. A call had come in since I was in here yesterday morning, and most likely after Simon had left, or he surely would have listened to it. I hit Play. Despite the continuing buzz in my head, I listened intently. The beep, then, “Mz Goodall? Anton Delon. Cade asked me to manage the property forah him while you vacate. You have twenty-nine days. I just want to make sure you’ll be leavin’ in a timely fashion. You know the number.” Beep. Roll of tape. Another message. “Marcie. Cade. Good of you to sign the place back without any fussin’. A course ah hepped you–let you stay on all those months when you couldn’t pay your mortgage. Need to know you’re packin’ girl. Call my cell.” Beep. A third! I had gotten lucky! “Uh, hi Mz Goodall, Fil here. Sorry the deal fell through. But Tammi’s real innerested in buyin’ that Twice colt a’ yours. Give us a call. Might help you out financially. Even if we can’t get the place now.”

So this ‘Fil’ must be Mr. Filmore Takeur! If he couldn’t buy the farm, and had annulled his Agreement to Purchase, how can he afford a horse? Marcie had sobbed to Arthur that Fil wasn’t buying because he’d lost his job. I wasn’t familiar with Morgan pricing, but I expected the son of a World Champion Park Horse, even a weanling, would be somewhere in the five figure range. Of course, a champion show horse never commanded near the exalted price of a promising racehorse. Besides, it’s helpful to have a country place when you have a horse, especially a young stallion.

There were no more messages. Asprey had missed all this. I wanted to pop the lid and extract the tiny cassette from Marcie’s antiquated machine. Slide it into my pocket. But, I couldn’t make myself. I hit Play, found a pencil and a pad of Post-it notes and carefully wrote down names and phone numbers. I felt sorry Cade Pritchard hadn’t left a number. Caller I.D. indicated nothing. Feeling noble for not swiping the tape–faxing the paperwork and my B&E had been criminal enough–I staggered back down the hall, wondering if any of the three voices was the murderer. I paused at a staircase. Gazed up its dusty length with longing. The grand lives that once been lived here! I made my way into the other side of the house, a part I had not gotten to yesterday. I also reminded myself Teddy was in the barn, feeding the animals would not take forever, and he might become suspicious of someone like me wandering around in the house of a recent murder victim. I decided I would alert him to the messages. I moved up to closed ornate doors. I opened them and saw I was at the threshold of a ballroom. A shadow of the old South. Dusty chandeliers overhead. Gilded mirrors on formerly ivory walls, grayed with grime. The ancient pine floor had long lost its luster, but not the workout equipment arrayed before me.
There’s a whole gym here,
I thought. From a set of costly chrome dumbbells, to a huge weight machine. Expensive stuff. I’d thought the husband got all this in the divorce! Correction: Property Settlement.

After a moment, I retraced my steps and explored the rest of the main floor of the house. Nothing else remarkable. I returned to the kitchen, then went out on the gracious verandah. The world still had a foggy look to it, but I was certain I’d be okay in a few hours. I looked out over the quiet farm. The heat was like a low hum emanating from the soil, the structures, the sky. The graying fences, the swaying grasses, even the distant grazing mare, looked forlorn. The pool in the backyard was developing verdigris from algae, the place of Aimée’s demise.
Was the place hexed?
I shivered in the stagnant heat. Then holding tight to the rail, I eased down the steps. I hoped Teddy would drive me to my hidden car without too much comment.

Chapter Eleven

Loud knocking. Inside a musty motel room, an air conditioner roared, but didn’t block the sound of the pounding. Cade Pritchard lifted his head from a sweat-soaked pillow. He was wound up in bedcovers in the room, which remained humid despite the air conditioning.

“What the fu–?” He threw off the covers–a thin, overwashed sheet, a faded navy comforter. His potbelly was a hard mound beneath his grayed muscle shirt. His scrawny arms and hands, thick with black hairs, came to rest upon the mound. The knocking continued.

Cade began to feel uneasy. No maid would pound this hard.

He yelled, “Do not disturb, hear?”

“Open the door before I kick it down,” came the answer. It wasn’t the maid. Slowly he got up, took khaki pants from a chair, pulled them on. “I’m comin’.”

Two sharp bangs. “Make it before Mardi Gras!” came the voice.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cade muttered, too low for the knocker to hear. He pulled on a short-sleeved madras shirt, buttoned it, tucked it into his pants, and then fastened his belt.
Bang! Bang!
He shoved his wallet into his pants pocket. With enormous reluctance, he walked to the door, undid the chain and opened it. He was rushed, as he expected, backwards into the room. The rusher was a man shorter than himself. A man almost wider than his height in muscle mass. A huge hand held the madras shirtfront, propelled Cade past the bed and then flung him onto the floor. Going down, Cade whacked his head on the edge of the vanity counter. “Je-sus!” he yelled. “What yew want, Bean?”

Bean stepped back and glanced around the cheap motel room. “Mr. Pritchard. You know what you owe, sir. You missed two payments. My superior is not pleased.”

Cade whined. He started to rise but Bean placed a foot, clad in fine English leather, upon Cade’s chest and exerted pressure. Cade oofed.

“I’ll put this foot right through your ribcage, Mr. Pritchard, if you do not come up with that four grand.”

“I’ll have it–” press, press, “Oof. Have it–Friday.” Greater pressure. He choked, and moved his hairy arms toward the foot but he dared not touch it. Bean, he knew, was being gentle.

Bean smirked. The door stood open and hot outside air invaded the man-smelly room. “Stinks in here, Cade.” He laughed. “How the mighty have fallen!” Bean disregarded the tiny beads of sweat that had gathered on his brow ridges and twinkled on his huge bald head.

“How do we know you will have it by Friday, Mr. Pritchard?”

“S’when–” gasp, “paperwork is goin’ through.” Bean’s foot pumped Cade Pritchard’s chest. Cade continued.

“That’s when–lawyer’s gonna–have the–check ready.”

“What check is that, sir?”

“Sold the place.
Uh.
Oof.”

“You sold that farm of yours?” Bean gave Cade’s chest one more thrust then removed his foot. Cade nodded a yes up at him. Bean offered a hand to Cade. Cade looked at it for a moment then took it. Bean hauled him to his feet and when Cade was nearly upright, he deftly inserted a hard punch into the inverted V of his ribs, smack into the solar plexus. Cade doubled up but didn’t go back down. Instead he leaned against the counter and murmured, chant-like, numerous colorful words.