Roughstock (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (17 page)

We discussed Rebby's odd condition for a while. Jim agreed that EPM seemed as likely a diagnosis as any, given the circumstances, but like me, had had little experience diagnosing and treating it. "Let me know how it goes," he said.

Turning back to the schedule, which he had been finishing as we spoke, he ran one square, stubby finger down the page, pointing out several calls he'd set up for me, explaining the ongoing problems he was dealing with. He never looked at me as he talked; his eyes stayed on the page, his square, stocky body shouldered me out of his space unconsciously. I had to virtually peer around him to see what he was pointing at.

One thing about Jim: sexual harassment was not a factor. I wasn't sure he was aware I was a woman; he certainly wasn't interested in me in that sense. He had a wife and four kids, but
it was more than good, old-fashioned monogamy. Jim didn't really see me as a person, merely a tool.

I'd gotten used to this, in a way I even liked it. I did my job as well as I could, which he expected and demanded, and that was that. We weren't friends. I accepted that he wouldn't pay a penny more than he had to. End of story.

It didn't surprise me, though, that he'd gone through a junior vet a year before I came along, and that the office and barn staff came and went with unceasing regularity. Jim was not an easy man to work for, by most folks' standards.

"You heard about what happened up at the seminar?" I asked him.

"Jack Hollister got killed. Yeah, I heard."

Jim was never talkative, but this was oddly brusque, even for him.

"Did you know Jack?" I ventured.

"Yeah, I knew him." Jim stared at the list on his desk, eyes cast firmly down, mouth a straight, expressionless line.

"I take it you weren't friends."

Jim shrugged. "He tried to put me out of business when I moved here-it must be twenty years ago now."

I was shocked. "Why?"

"He didn't want me poaching on his territory. He told everybody he knew, which was everybody in the county who owned a horse, pretty much, that I was no good as a veterinarian."

This didn't sound like Jack to me. And yet, I reminded myself, how well had I really known the man?

"Eventually people figured out I wasn't so bad and I got a few clients, and Jack got so rich buying and selling ranches he retired. But no, we weren't friends. Of course, I'm sorry he was murdered." Jim didn't sound terribly sorry. "Now about this mare you need to preg check up in Felton ..." He launched into the reproductive history of the horse in question, but I wasn't really listening.

Easygoing, handsome, wealthy, flirtatious Jack Hollister-everybody's friend-that was how I had seen Jack. The sort of vindictive, petty behavior Jim was describing didn't fit my picture at all. And yet, Jim had no reason to lie.

"There's a gelding in Aptos who needs his teeth floated ..." Jim was still talking. I tried to focus on what he was saying when we both heard the noisy rattle of a truck and trailer pulling into the back parking lot.

"Damn." Jim said it with feeling and I knew what he was thinking. An unscheduled emergency-the client had simply hauled the horse down without calling, assuming we'd be here. Not a good start to the day.

Before either of us could get up and start out the door, a figure burst through it, talking volubly in my direction as he came. "I need you to come with me right now. That goddamn Tara stole Willy and I need a witness."

It was Bronc, as agitated as I'd ever seen him. "Come on," he said, grabbing my elbow and propelling me toward the door.

"What are you talking about, Bronc," I said firmly, digging my heels in. "And why do you need me?"

"Because I need a witness, goddammit, when I take the son-of-a-bitch away from her. Someone who knows Willy and knows he's my horse. The closest goddamned brand inspector is in Salinas and I don't have time for that. Now, come on."

I looked at Jim and was amused, even under the circumstances, to see that his usual rocklike composure had deserted him; his face looked startled and aghast. "You'd better go," he said.

I made one last-ditch effort. "Bronc, what you need is the police."

"I do not need any goddamn cops. Now are you going or not, 'cause if you're not I'm going without you and if I kill that bitch it's on your head."

"I'm going, I'm going." Following him out the door, I gave a moment's thought to the wisdom of this course, but dismissed it with a mental shrug. Oh well. Looked like I was on board.

Five minutes later I wished I'd thought harder. Bronc was driving eighty miles an hour plus down the freeway, the stock trailer rattling wildly behind us. I wedged myself into the corner of the seat, searching for a seatbelt; either the old one-ton pickup didn't have them or they were buried out of reach.

"Slow down, Bronc," I commanded. No result except he stepped on the accelerator. "That bitch is not gonna steal that horse and get away with it," he muttered.

Closing my eyes as the speedometer crept up toward ninety, I said, "Bronc, if you don't slow down, I am jumping out of this truck at the first stop sign and finding my own way back to the clinic. "

I could hear him smile, that quick wolfish smile, as he said, "I ain't gonna kill you, honey."

"I don't care. Slow down or I'm getting out as soon as I can."

"This okay?"

I opened my eyes to find the speedometer at seventy; we were already halfway to Watsonville and, thankfully, the freeway was reasonably empty.

"Okay, but no faster," I said firmly.

"Deal."

Shit. Some deal. I stared out the window at the Monterey Bay, vividly blue in the winter sunshine, the towers of the power plant standing out sharp and tall at Moss Landing, many miles away. Santa Cruz County was at its best in the winter, I sometimes thought; the scenery outside the window was markedly lovely-too bad it was passing so damn fast.

"Bronc," I warned. The speedometer had risen to eighty while I looked away. His foot lifted ever so slightly off the gas pedal and I asked him peevishly, "What in the hell is the point of going so fast?"

"I don't want that bitch to have time to move the horse."

"How do you know it was Tara who stole him? How do you know he was even stolen? Maybe he got out."

Bronc looked at me and looked back at the road, appearing by his expression to be pondering the stupidity of women in general.

"Wire was cut," he said curtly. "Down by the road where I can't see the fence from the house. There were tire tracks outside the fence in the wet ground. A few of Willy's hoofprints. Someone cut the fence and led him out and loaded him in a trailer."

"How do you know it was Tara?"

"I know, all right," was all he would say.

"So, where exactly is it we're going?" I asked him as he took the Elkhorn Slough exit.

"Right smack up to the bitch's front door." Bronc's face had a hard set to it and his voice held a quality I'd never quite heard from him before. Another question occurred to me.

"You don't have a gun, do you?" For a second he looked startled; it appeared if he was contemplating mayhem it wasn't of that sort.

"Naw, I don't have a gun. If I kill her it'll be with my bare hands." The humorous tone had returned to his voice, but the other quality was still there. I began to worry in earnest.

Bronc was pulling the trailer down a long dirt driveway-a pair of muddy ruts barely encrusted with gravel. Crooked board corrals lined the drive, which led to a house I would be inclined to call a shack. It
wasn't that my own abode was any bigger or more intrinsically glamorous, it was just that this place was so palpably uncared for. The paint was faded and peeling, the rough patch of lawn unmowed, pieces of rusting junk everywhere. Behind the house stood a big, old barn, and it was on this building that Bronc's eyes were fixed as he climbed out of the truck. Without a word he began to walk toward it.

Not having any better ideas, I followed him.

Tara's truck, with a trailer hitched to it, was parked in front of the barn. Tara herself came out of the open barn doorway and planted her body in front of Bronc as he strode toward her.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"I came to get my horse." Bronc faced her without an atom of give; I had the sense he would have just tossed her out of the way and gone on if I hadn't been there.

"What horse?"

"My buckskin gelding."

"I don't have him."

"I'm gonna walk through your barn and see."

"You damn well are not."

Tara stepped inside the doorway of the barn and reappeared almost instantly. To my absolute disbelief she was holding a gun. Moreover, she was pointing it straight at us. In sick fascination my eyes fixed themselves on the round black hole at the end of the barrel.
Oh my
God
were the only words that came to mind.

"You all better stop right there," Tara ordered.

Her voice sounded shrill with strain, and my eyes flew up to her face. Tense and jittery, her expression gave me no confidence that she knew better than to shoot us.

Stopping obediently, I raised both hands placatingly in the air. Bronc, however, kept walking.

"You stop, you son-of-a-bitch, or you're dead. This is my property and you're trespassing." Tara pointed the gun right at the center of Bronc's body.

He kept walking toward her as if he hadn't heard; my heart thudded a steady, frightened tattoo. Tara sighted down the barrel; I could see her finger tighten on the trigger.

"For God's sake!" The words burst out of my mouth.

They startled Tara and her eyes leapt to me. In that split second, Bronc lunged forward and grabbed at her. With a loud crack, the gun went off. I was already flinging myself to the ground, face down, heart pounding fit to jump out of my chest. Oh shit. Oh my God.

I had no idea where the bullet went, no idea, really, if I'd been hit. For a moment, I just lay there in the dirt, shocked out of my wits.

Scuffling and shouting came from Tara's direction, but no more shots. I
lifted my head cautiously.

Bronc held the gun in one hand and Tara with the other. His arm was wrapped around her neck, her throat in the crook of his elbow, her feet almost off the ground. He held the gun away from her, pointing it up into space. I
got slowly to my feet.

"Come get this thing," he said, sounding a little out of breath, but completely unflustered. Walking over to him, I
gingerly took the pistol from his hand, noticing that my own hand was shaking.

"Now hold that gun on her while I
go check the barn."

Oh great. What was I
supposed to do, shoot her if she went after him?

"And you," he gave Tara a shake, causing her to emit a choked shriek, "you stay here."

He let go of her and she slumped to her knees, her hands going immediately to her throat, rubbing it protectively. I
had an idea Bronc had squeezed pretty hard.

Staring at the gun in my hand, not really believing the position
I
was in, I
pointed it up in the air as Bronc had done. It
was a long-barreled, old-fashioned-looking twenty-two revolver, I
saw, similar to the gun that had shot Jack, according to what Jeri Ward told me. Had Tara owned a pair perhaps? Of course,
I
reminded myself, it was hardly an uncommon gun.

Tara was getting to her feet. She cast a glance at me and I
wondered if I
should train the gun on her, but rejected the idea instantly. The whole situation was ridiculous-a frightening farce. I
was certainly not going to shoot Tara.

Seeing that I
had no apparent intention of pointing the gun her way, Tara headed into the barn, looking back over her shoulder at me as she went. I
could hear her voice raised at Bronc, sounding angry, but frightened, too.

"That's not him. That's my new boarder. Get your hands off of him."

"Go to hell. I'd know this horse anywhere."

In another minute Bronc emerged, leading a muddy brown gelding with a roached mane and bobbed tail. It took me a minute, but I finally recognized Willy. Tara had obviously been hard at work with hair dye, scissors, and clippers.

She was gesticulating wildly at Bronc as he led the horse away from the barn, but everything-gestures, words, facial expression-lacked force. Tara was beaten and she knew it.

Bronc loaded Willy in the trailer over her objections. Turning to face her, he spoke with a kind of level hardness, that same expression I'd glimpsed in the pickup. "Shut your mouth. This is my horse and you know it and I know it. I don't want to hear any more bullshit about it. You know damn well Jack left the horse to me, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered to steal him. Now I'm telling you something. I'm not going to say a word about this. It's up to you." And with that, he gestured at me to get in the truck.

I wasn't quite ready. I still held the twenty-two in my hand and it gave me a certain sense of power. Not to mention Tara looked shaken; for the first time in our acquaintance her rough-edged, hostile attitude had been replaced by a slightly hangdog expression. Now, I figured, was the right time for some questions.