Sun Kissed (26 page)

Tears filled Samantha’s eyes. As she watched Jerome put the backhoe into reverse and approach the grave with her beautiful Cilantro’s dead body draped over the steel tines, she found herself wondering how she could feel such grief and bittersweet joy both at once. “Thank you for explaining, Dad.” She brushed at her cheeks. “It helps me understand. From now on, I won’t mind your checking up on me so much. I’ve always thought you did it because you felt I was incapable of taking care of myself.”

“Why the hell did you think that?” he asked with honest surprise.

“Look at the mess I made of things the one time in my life I made a decision on my own.”

Frank frowned. “You’ve made hundreds of decisions on your own.” He swung his arm. “Just look at the success you’ve made of this ranch. I’m so proud of you, I could bust.”

“I haven’t done it alone.” She nodded at Jerome. “You cut him free so he could be over here, monitoring my every move and advising me in your place.”

“The hell I did,” Frank protested. “I cut Jerome free because he’s the best damned horseman I’ve ever known. Do you think I got my start in this business with no help? No, sir. Jerome Hudson taught me half of all I know about quarter horses. I wanted you to have the same advantage.”

“Jerome didn’t go with any of the boys,” she pointed out.

“No, but other horse-smart employees did. Clint got
Hooter, Parker got Toby, Quincy got Pauline, and Zachary got Cookie. There wasn’t a one of you kids who started up your ranch alone. I made sure each of you had a good adviser and friend to show you the ropes.”

Samantha had always known that her brothers had each acquired one of their father’s most trusted employees when they started up their own ranches, but for some reason, she’d never put that on the same plane as her acquiring Jerome. She watched the ranch hand operate the backhoe, his every movement expert. “I got the best of the lot, then. Jerome wasn’t just an employee, but your foreman, and he’d been with you for twenty-two years.”

Frank nodded. “No argument. You did get the best of the lot.” He joined her in watching Jerome work. “You’re my only girl. I’ll always watch out for you more than I do the boys. Jerome loves you like a daughter. He’s known you all your life. Helped me raise you, truth told. I knew he’d watch after you and lay down his life to protect you, if it ever came down to it.”

Through breaks between the outbuildings, Samantha glimpsed a dark green sedan pulling up in front of her house. “Great. Who is that, do you suppose?” Two men in gray suits emerged from the vehicle. She sent a bewildered look at her father and drew in a bracing breath. “Do you think they’re plainclothesmen?”

Frank drew off his Stetson and slapped it against his leg. “Cops, you mean?” He signaled Jerome with a slashing motion across his throat. “We got company,” he shouted. When Jerome cut the diesel engine, Frank added at a lower pitch, “Cops, by the looks of them.”

Turning to look backward, Jerome straightened on the seat to study the newcomers. “What now? I thought we answered all their questions this morning.”

Samantha stared with an aching heart at the mare she’d loved so dearly, hanging like an oversize rag doll from the cruel metal prongs of the lift. There was something so awful about the angle of Cilantro’s beautiful neck that she couldn’t bear it. She sprang forward to cradle the horse’s head in her arms.

“We did answer their questions. Now is Cilantro’s time.” Samantha sent her father an imploring look. “No more right now, Dad. I can’t leave her hanging here like this. They can either wait or come back later.”

“I know it’s a bad time, honey, but—”

Samantha was shaking. The smell of death rolled off the mare in heavy waves. “No buts. I’m going to bury my horses.”

Frank nodded, settled the hat back on his head, and set off to meet the two men. Samantha watched for only a moment, then sought the gaze of her foreman, who hadn’t yet abandoned the backhoe seat.

“We’ll finish it,” she told him.

Rimmed with red, Jerome’s eyes held the dry, aching look that came only with deep grief. He restarted the equipment and motioned for Samantha to stand aside. Gaze fixed on her horse, hands folded around her rosary, she whispered Hail Marys as the tines bucked low and dropped the massive weight of her longtime friend into the hole. At the sound of cold flesh hitting bottom, Samantha jerked and felt as if she might vomit. No more tears. Like Jerome, she’d already cried herself empty. But
the pain was still there, an awful, horrible torment, perhaps worse now in the light of day than it had been last night.

She collected Cilantro’s blanket and jumped down into the hole. After tenderly covering the mare, she said a heartfelt prayer. Then she pushed wearily to her feet, thrust up an arm, and allowed Jerome to pull her up to ground level again. Even as he crawled back onto the backhoe, she felt his questioning gaze on her.

“We’ll finish,” she said again. “If they insist on talking to me today, they’re going to have to wait.”

Jerome shifted into forward, expertly wheeled the large piece of equipment around, and headed back to the stable. Samantha watched him for a moment, and then she returned her gaze to the horse.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she heard her father say as he retraced his steps to her side. “These gents are detectives. Seems they’re here to ask a few more questions, and their schedule’s tight. They don’t have time to wait.”

“Then they’ll have to come back,” she said, the firmness in her voice edged with an awful trembling she couldn’t control.

She felt rather than saw her father return to the men, who stood a few feet away. In only a few moments Jerome arrived with Cilantro’s baby, who hadn’t lived long enough to be officially christened. As Samantha watched the foal being lowered into the grave with his mother, she remembered him as he’d been such a short time ago, a little guy with unbridled enthusiasm and limitless energy. Seeing his limp form now nearly broke her heart.

She refused to allow the presence of two strangers to interfere with the ceremony she’d planned. Back into the hole she went to cover Hickory with a blanket. Maybe it was silly, but she couldn’t bear the thought of them being cold.

Once topside again, she resolutely ignored the watchful eyes of the two strangers. Her father and Jerome flanked her and bowed their heads as she said a prayer aloud and then recited a heartfelt eulogy. When she’d finished praising Cilantro for a lifetime of loyal service and unfailing devotion, she spoke briefly of Hickory Smoke, who would surely have become a champion if only he had lived. At the last, the tears she’d believed she didn’t have left to cry sprang to the surface, and she shed them with jerking sobs, unable to finish her speech.

Her father clamped a hard arm around her waist and finished for her. “God, our Father, we commend these two wonderful horses into your loving hands. They were very special friends of ours and deserve a special place in your heavenly kingdom.”

“Amen,” Jerome said. “If there’s no place for them, I’m canceling my reservation.”

“There’s a place for them,” Frank countered. “You’ve only to look in a horse’s eyes to know that. Any creature that loves like they do has to have some kind of soul.”

Samantha bent to gather two handfuls of dirt and tossed them into the grave. Then she nodded to Jerome that it was okay to cover the remains. Her father stayed at her side while Jerome manned the backhoe.

When it was finished, and Jerome was driving back to the equipment shed, Samantha stood at the grave for sev
eral seconds, groping for her composure. It didn’t come easily, but with determination she finally found that zone where she could set her feelings aside, compose her face, and turn to confront the detectives.

Walking toward them, she said, “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

The older man, a surly-looking individual with sharp features and a steel gray crew cut the same color as his jacket, drew back his sleeve to check his watch. “Almost evening, actually.”

“I’m sorry for the delay. As you can see, you came at a bad time.”

The younger man was blond, looked to be around thirty, and possessed a kindly face. His stance was relaxed compared to the rigid posture of his partner.

“Our timing is never good,” he said.

Samantha introduced herself to the older man first.

“Detective Galloway,” he replied as he shook hands with her. “This is my partner, Detective James.”

“Sorry we’re here under such unpleasant circumstances,” the younger fellow said, motioning toward the grave. “Our condolences.”

“There are a few loose ends we need to clear up, Ms. Harrigan,” the senior detective said. “Is there someplace a bit more comfortable where we can chat?”

Even though it was now early September, the waning afternoon sunlight was still warm, and Samantha imagined the detectives were sweating in their suits and ties. “Certainly,” she assured them. “Come over to the house. I’ll get you something cool to drink.”

The cops grunted their assent, and accompanied by her
father, Samantha led the way to her home. Once in the kitchen she played hostess, providing coffee for the blond, ice water for the stern older man, and then sitting beside her dad at the table.

“We answered a lot of questions this morning,” she began. “Did the officers forget something?”

“No, no.” The older man took a sip of water, relaxed on the chair, and actually smiled slightly. “Some more information came to light after they spoke with you, and the case has been assigned to us.”

Samantha decided to take this as positive news. Detectives were surely better trained to investigate crimes. Perhaps with their involvement, everything would be resolved more quickly and her horses would be safe again.

The elder detective pushed forward on the chair and withdrew a notepad from an inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I’ll apologize in advance if we cover the same ground twice. I’ve got notes from the officers who talked to you earlier, but I need clarification on a few things.” He depressed the button of his ballpoint pen and jotted something on the tablet, underlining it with a bold slash. “As I understand it, you have reason to believe your ex-husband, Steve Fisher, may be responsible for the deaths of your horses?”

Samantha thought carefully before she replied. “It would be more accurate to say that my ex-husband is the only person I’m aware of who might want to hurt me. I’ve no proof of his involvement, only strong suspicions.”

“Can you explain why you have those suspicions?”

Haltingly, Samantha recounted the details of her di
vorce settlement and Steve’s rage over the fact that the judge hadn’t ordered a liquidation of all her stable inventory and granted him half of the proceeds. “After the hearing, he waited outside on the courthouse steps. He was very angry and threatened to make me regret cheating him out of what he felt was rightfully his.”

The detective nodded. “And that was it, just a vague threat to make you sorry?”

“It was more than a vague threat. Steve is very”—Samantha searched for a word—“volatile.”

Her father broke in with, “The man’s a violent alcoholic, Detective. During the last weeks of the marriage, he physically abused my daughter.”

“How badly?” Galloway asked.

Beneath the table, Frank grasped Samantha’s hand. “My daughter has kept the details about those incidents pretty close to her chest. I can’t say how far it went, only that I saw evidence of the abuse several different times. Samantha was still tryin’ to save the marriage, so she made excuses, sayin’ she’d fallen or been bumped by a horse.”

Galloway cut Samantha a hard, relentless look. “The time for keeping the details ‘close to your chest’ is over. Did Fisher seriously harm you?”

“No,” Samantha answered. “Never any broken bones or anything like that. I ended the marriage before it got that bad.”

“Did you ever fear for your life?”

Samantha’s response became lodged in her throat like a large piece of meat she’d tried to swallow without
chewing. She clenched her father’s hard fingers, wishing with all her heart that he weren’t present to hear this.

“The last night my ex-husband spent under this roof, he got crazy drunk and almost killed me,” she said thinly. She quickly recited the sequence of events as she recalled them. She felt her dad stiffen beside her, but to his credit, he didn’t interrupt. “Somehow I got away from him before he choked me to death. I grabbed a chair, hit him, and he went down.” Samantha chose to skip the part about how she’d continued to hit Steve. That was something she’d never shared with anyone but Tucker and Jerome. “When I felt sure he was unconscious, I dragged him out in the yard, then ran back inside and locked all the doors.”

The detective gave her a measuring look. “You’re not a very large woman, Ms. Harrigan. Are you saying you hit the man once with a chair and knocked him out cold?”

“He was drunk,” she reminded him. “He was already well on his way to passing out.”

“So you struck him only once?”

Samantha struggled to swallow again and seriously considered lying. But in the end, the tenets of her faith, which had been drilled into her head since childhood, forestalled her. “No, not only once. I hit him several times, so many times, in fact, that I lost count. I was scared, and my adrenaline was high. I went a little crazy.” Remembering something Tucker had said, she added, “I’m not proud of what I did that night, but to my credit, I aimed most of the blows at his body, not his head. I wanted to keep him down, not kill him.”