Hot Blooded Murder (4 page)

“Whudja think, Bryn? You use’ to be a breeder. ‘Ss he a winner or what?”

“Marcie. He’s fine. Very fine. You picked the right name for him. What a pose!” Despite his wobbliness, the colt stood erect, neck rising straight up from sloping bony shoulders. Born a show horse. “Perfect, straight legs, really long neck! And what an elegant head. Well done, Marcie.”

I leaned closer to the foal and he nuzzled my cheek, baby whiskers tickling. That almost scary flutter came inside me again. I batted my eyes. Next would be tears.

“What big eyes hims has!” I heard myself.
Damn!
Baby talk. I’d thought I was long past such sentimentality.

“‘Twice.’ ‘Snickname. Daddy’s nickname’z ‘Once.’ Lil guyz, ‘Twice.’”

Marcie’s legs gave out. She plopped into the straw and startled me by beginning to bawl. Through sobs she cried out: “He’z beau’ful, ishn’t he? I know it! He’s the besht I’ve ever bred–better than ‘zz daddy! Finally bred a World Champion and I’m too–too–” she belched, but sobbed on, “goddamn broke to give him a show career!”

I sat back in the clean straw and let her cry. It dried up my eyes. The colt, hesitant, stretched his neck and sniffed her hair. Then he tried to eat it. It stopped Marcie’s tears. She smiled, and the heavy bags under her eyes bunched up and glistened.

Stroking the foal, she smiled at me. “Wan’ see somethin’?”

I nodded politely. Rising, she swatted straw from her jeans.

As I rose, I thought,
perhaps attempting to elicit information from drunks was less than productive.

Marcie moved to the end of the barn, feet disturbing shavings on the aisle. Her trail looked like ski marks in snow. Idly, I noticed that the shavings covered concrete. A cushion for young horses? Marcie slid open a stall door. I swallowed a gasp as Lightning Strikes Once plunged into the aisle, bellowing like a wild stallion. It seemed a thousand mares neighed in answer. I moved back snatching the purple bucket with me. Marcie giggled. Her stallion was a bay: mahogany-red with a black mane and tail. This horse was glossy as a patina’d antique, and smartly trimmed with black legs. He tossed his extravagant Morgan mane. His shod hooves blonked a dance on the padded cement. His equally abundant tail swept shavings from the concrete as he moved. Then he quit and stood quietly next to his mistress. He was naked–no halter or other restraints–nothing but Marcie and her cooing voice. Like a dog at heel, as Marcie stepped forward, so did the stallion. His movement was high, controlled, a World Champion Stallion display. I could not believe what I was seeing. This was amazing behavior by a stallion. He trumpeted as they passed mare’s stalls and got flirtatious nickered responses in return. At the new foal’s stall, Marcie stopped. So did Once. Then a tiny gray cat streaked from the stallion’s empty stall and plunked itself down at my feet. I laughed and Marcie looked over her shoulder.

“Oh. Tha’z Gris-Gris,” she pronounced this voodoo term, an amulet for protection against dark forces, ‘Gree-Gree.’ “She’z Once’s pet. Goes everywhere with him.”

I was tickled to see the plain little animal, a gray tabby, sit upright as an Egyptian goddess, and earnestly oversee the proceedings. Marcie had a complex, interesting life with all her animals.

I watched the mare tentatively extend her muzzle and touch noses with the stud. He arched his neck like a spurting fountain, and emitted a screech like a bull elephant.
Stallions
! I thought, jumping despite myself,
such loudmouths!
Unruffled, the mare acted pleased. Her muzzle met his nostrils. Every muscle on his body looked sculpted by Michelangelo. I was seeing the World Champion, how he’d looked in his youth.

The stallion snuffled at the mare, and then raised a hoof as if to enter the stall. Marcie said, “No!” sternly. The hoof returned to its former position.

I admitted to astonishment. My old stallion had been a wonderful guy, but I would never have tried this. And every other breeding stallion I’d seen required restraint, some as severe as chains through their mouths. Unchecked, a few would kill a foal, or savage the mare before breeding. Once’s obedience to Marcie was extraordinary. To think a stallion was safe, face to face with a mare, no halter, and with a newborn…
how drunk was Marcie?
Suddenly afraid I’d be required to prevent disaster, I stepped forward.

But Marcie was focused, cooing again to Once. Meek, he stood on the threshold of the stall. The mare touched his muzzle again. The foal came up, dainty head lifted trustingly.

“Marcie!” I called, thinking,
Are you nuts!
? but heard in answer:

“Hush, Bryn. Watch.”

I watched.

Once lowered his head and gently touched muzzles with his son. The foal stretched back his lips to show pink toothless gums then moved its mouth silently open and shut, over and over, like a mute duck quacking. I’d often seen foals do this with mature horses. Was it a way of showing their lack of threat? The toothless gums announcing, ‘See? I’m unarmed…please don’t hurt me?’ By showing their utter vulnerability, they became invulnerable? I’ve never figured it out.

The stallion’s eye was soft. He nickered to the baby. It continued the silent quacking.

“Okay, Once,” I heard Marcie say, then I saw Marcie’s small arm reach across the stallion’s chest. He backed away from the stall. Astonishing! Marcie closed the door, then said, “Back in your house, Once.” The stallion turned, trotted down the aisle, walked into his stall. The gray cat ran after him. Marcie followed, shut his door then stood with triumph on her face.

“Well,” I said, “Unbelievable! Quite a horse, Marcie. Incredibly bonded with you. Does he see you as the dominant mare? The alpha? Most stallions–”

“–Yup. Know it. Not many stud’z act like Once. ‘M a pretty lucky woman.” Looking down, she spoke to the shavings. “When it comes to horses at least.” Then she went back to the mare’s stall, entered and exclaimed, “Oh you li’l darlin’ cutie-pie you,” and wailed again. “Oh, Bryn, he was born at the worst time! I’m so broke I might lose the farm!”

I walked into the stall. I wanted to put an arm around Marcie, hug her, but my Canadian reserve stopped me. It might seem overly familiar.

The foal nibbled Marcie’s ear. Her crying lessened and her hand went out, stroked the foal’s neck. She looked up at me. I tried to smile kindly but the reporter in me asked:

“Why might you lose the farm, Marcie?”

Sheriff MacWain gave me a sharp look. The horses were watered, except for Once. MacWain did not want him to move until the forensics team arrived. I recoiled the hose onto a wall hook.

“So why was she losin’ the farm?”

I shook my head. “Never got that, other than the obvious. Perhaps she was too drunk and exhausted to tell me. Somehow, her money had dried up. But she never said why, or where it came from in the first place. Of course, horse sales were off. There was a divorce happening. But she had one hope. A woman in Texas was interested in buying several horses. If she sold part of her herd, she could catch up on her mortgage payments. Save the farm. But she also did mention possible buyers were looking at the place. Just in case. She was acting as her own agent. Half-heartedly. Some man, I think she said a mortgage broker, was helping her. She didn’t mention his name. But the tiredness and the champagne were scrambling her senses.”

“Well,” said MacWain, “what’s it all matter now? Poor thang, she’s gone. Guess those buyers might get a real deal on this place now, that is, if her estate’s interested in sellin’. That Texas lady too.” He took off his hat, and this time wiped at his sweating forehead with a white handkerchief that he pulled from a rear pocket. “Where in hell’s Teddy with that horse trailer? Hot in here.”

He put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Sorry you don’t get to do any speculatin’ for us this time, Bryn.” I was thinking,
Already have, MacWain…
He settled his hat back on his head. “The Court’s for sure gonna rule that stud horse is Kibbles’n’Bits.”

I felt a warning chill from my abdomen. I spoke sharply. “Sheriff. Didn’t you hear a word I just said? I told you that story so you’d see it’s maybe unlikely the stallion killed Marcie. I know you aren’t a horse person, and I beg your pardon if that sounds rude–”

“Nope. I don’t know anythin’ about horses. Don’t intend to learn, either, if I can help it.”

“Fine.” He was ignoring, as usual, that St. Tremaine Parish’s number one industry was horses, and that Louisiana ranked fourth in the United States as a producer of Thoroughbred racehorses right behind Kentucky, Florida, California. But I had become nearly indifferent to the boredom the subject of horses evoked in non-horse people. They liked cars better. I spoke on.

“Sheriff. Even though it looks very incriminating for him, I don’t think we should leap to the easy conclusion he murdered his mistress.”

“Why not? You said ‘maybe.’ That tells me even you ain’t sure.”

“Well, no, not absolutely–”

“There you are then.”

I looked at him in frustration. He was right. I wasn’t completely convinced Lightning Strikes Once was not the murderer.
Yet…yet…
doubt gnawed. I wondered what the statistics were on horses killing humans per annum. Did such a study even exist?

Miffed at MacWain, I decided not to mention the papers fanned out over Marcie’s kitchen table. They’d be found, but maybe there was some way to copy them. I needed to read them. But if Once was the murderer, why bother?

Then, what I secretly called my ‘Second Brain’ kicked in with a force that made me pay attention. I had long thought I had a second brain that floated between my lower abdomen and my solar plexus: what some people called gut instinct. When Second Brain spoke, it was forceful, straightforward, and it always made more sense than my convoluted first brain. Now Second Brain said, in a deep Godlike voice,
The horse is not the murderer.
It had to repeat itself because there was a battle, as usual, between its announcement and First Brain, which responded with some “But–but’s–” in its usual wish to be right.

“Absolutely nothing,” said Second Brain, now using a woman’s voice, one with an Australian accent. It did this all the time. To be ecumenical, it said, as if that should be obvious. It also spoke as if doing nothing was an action.

Okay. I’d learned how to do nothing. Doing nothing just meant forget the big problem, do the next small logical thing. Which was, feed these horses. I went toward the door labeled FEED, hoping Sheriff MacWain wouldn’t stop me.

Chapter Five

A rattly sound was off in the distance. Sheriff MacWain spoke behind me.

“Well. Hot dang. Here’s Teddy, finally.”

A white Suburban pulling a horse trailer came up the drive and parked behind the sheriff’s car.

I felt helpless. Would they load Lightning Strikes Once before the coroner, Dr. Bonmot, arrived? How would they get him around the body? Once hadn’t left his sentinel position. Was the Sheriff so eager to rush him to his death that he’d compromise the murder scene?

With all this happening, feeding the horses grain would have to wait. Instead, I dashed into the feed room and grabbed an armload of hay, its herbal smell an antidote to the odor of death. I moved up and down the aisle, tossing it to all of them, except for Once. Hay insinuated itself under my top, pricking my sweaty skin. I ignored it.

I knew I had to try to save Once’s life. The only way to prove him innocent was to find a human murderer. Outside, the men were talking. The trailer door clanged open. I edged out the back door and sprinted for the house. All those papers on Marcie’s kitchen table!

I ducked under the Spanish moss on Marcie’s backyard oak. I kept well away from the pool and made my covert way to the kitchen. From a window over the kitchen sink, I watched Dr. Gregory G. Bonmot’s white coroner’s car arrive. Behind it, the crime lab van, with top man Simon Asprey riding shotgun. I didn’t wait to watch Bonmot heave his gigantic mass from the regulation Chevy, nor the crime lab people spill from the van, each carrying satchels or cameras or other tools of their macabre trade. Instead, I skittered from the kitchen and down a long hallway.

I walked through the house, searching. Simon Asprey and his pack of forensic experts would soon be on my trail. Just last February these rooms had been furnished with antiques, oriental rugs, and paintings by local artists. Marcie must have been desperately selling off items. My Nikes squeaked on the dulled pine floor as I passed through the living room. There was a faint rectangle over the fireplace where a Philippe Cilantro original had hung. He was a local artist famous for his portraits of horses and I wanted one of Count Amethyst, my horse.
Someday.

Down a hall, into the first open door. Bathroom. I backed out. Continued. A bedroom, mattress bare, dresser dusty. From the window I saw Bonmot lumber into the barn, a female forensics photographer snapping pictures of the barn entrance. Teddy and Tuan stood at the rear of the horse trailer. Others unrolled yellow police tape. Dread unrolled in my stomach. If I couldn’t stop them taking Once to the horse pound, no matter what was discovered, he could be a goner.
Hurry! Before they catch you!
I dashed down the long hall and jerked open the last door.

Marcie’s office. I scanned the room and saw exactly what I wanted. I bolted for the kitchen to gather up the documents and rushed back to the office. My footsteps were so loud I was scared they’d be heard outside.

I flung down the papers and yanked open the desk drawer. Things spilled from the drawer, but I found a staple remover. Now probably wrinkled as a corpse too long underwater, my fingers shook and slipped inside the sweat-filled latex gloves. I got the staples out of documents titled ‘Agreement to Purchase.’ I fed one page into an antiquated fax machine. Punched in my home fax number, heard outer-space roaring and twittering. The machines connected. I pressed Send. Slowly the document started through. Now I needed a bathroom, but I couldn’t leave the contraption. I had to hand-feed each paper.