My white cotton top stuck to my sweating front in a V-shape. My arms dripped perspiration. I stepped into the stable. Whinnies erupted like car alarms. I yelled, “Hush!” The cries ceased. I walked down the shavings-covered aisle between stalls. Overhead fans cooled me. A reek of ammonia shouted that stall mucking had been overlooked.
Why? Help didn’t show?
I saw the mare and foal Marcie was so proud of in February. I’d paid Marcie my first visit then, to gather information for the story. The bay mare put her head over the stall door and nickered at me. An appeal for food. A smaller head stuck up and gazed at me with huge brown eyes. I looked into their stall–filthy. Feed, water buckets, empty. I wanted to water and feed every horse right now.
“One minute, gang, “I called out. “First I have to find your mistress.” If she wasn’t in here, I’d start trekking the pastures. I heard a doleful whinny, a snort, and rustling from the far end. My chest tightened.
My sneakers shushed through pine-scented shavings. A prickle ran over my damp skin when I stopped at the last stall. A brass plaque read: “Lightning Strikes Once.” Marcie’s stallion. I peered through the bars on the door. It was so dark inside, I couldn’t make out what, or who, was behind them. More shuffling.
Had I seen a flash of white?
“Marcie?” My throat was dry.
My anxious breathing picked up another smell, different from decaying fruit or urine-soaked bedding. Like rotten eggs, but sweeter, with an undertone of blood. My abdomen lurched unpleasantly.
“Marcie?” Dread beat up from my belly.
“Marcie!”
A husky ‘her, herr,’ came from the stall. Horse, not human.
“Marcie, you in there?”
All the horses listened with me.
Well.
I slid open the door, moved forward. Then halted, foot raised. If I set it down, I’d step on a body.
Chapter Two
May 21, 9:36 AM
The smell.
Rotten eggs but sweeter. I pinched my nostrils closed against the stench and cupped a palm over my mouth. A retch rose up but I choked it down. I peered into the darkness of the stall. The stallion’s zigzag blaze stood out: a silhouette of lightning. Plus, his coffee-black eyes showed the white of an anxious or angry horse. His muscles, under his mahogany-red coat, were pebbled with sweat and bunched as if to spring.
At me?
I tried to stifle my unease. After all, I was supposed to be a horse person and horse people as a group despise fear in horse or human. But I was scared all the time and now I knew it was Marcie’s body between the stallion and me.
Outside light filtered into the barn. A breeze moved gray-bearded branches and fretfully shadowed the corpse in the straw. Holding my mouth with one hand and my shaky right hand outstretched to ward off the horse, I did a deep knee bend, wobbled and then got my balance. When I saw the horse wasn’t pouncing, I studied the remains of Marcie from my squatting position.
Her face was hidden in a tangle of dark brown hair, now auburn with blood. Her hands were flung back, fists uncurled. Her soft arms bloody. I leaned closer and saw curved indentations in the flesh. My eyes moved to Marcie’s chest where her white shirt was wildly red as if tie-dyed by a maniac. Her right breast was exposed. Somehow it had escaped the carnage. It was pure white, a moon-shaped mound with a rose-brown nipple. Under the shirt her left heart-breast was pulped, again by the curious half-circle depressions. Her entire abdomen and her jeans-clad thighs also were covered with them. My eyes zoomed up and met the oily black eye of the stallion. The marks were shaped like horseshoes.
Did he do this to Marcie?
My hand went to my own breast. I felt like I was in danger–but then I often did, so I couldn’t always trust my own perceptions. I stared up at the horse. Despite his disheveled appearance, it was still obvious he was a classic hot-blooded Morgan beauty: slender head, large eyes, arched neck, abundant mane and forelock to the tip of his nose. He was descended from one New England stallion, Justin Morgan, but nevertheless also carried the “hot” blood of horses that evolved in hot climates–as opposed to cold blooded horses which evolved in northern climes and were heavy work horses. There are also warmbloods, but never mind that.
He stood over Marcie and me, black tail tucked, rump touching the back wall. Occasionally he shifted, rustling straw, but mainly he held this position at a right angle to Marcie’s body. When I met his eye he dipped his head, knifed his nose down to the body, but stopped short of touching it. His muscles looked hard as sculpted rock tautly covered with satin. Abruptly he raised his head, eyes on me. I felt panic.
Was Lightning Strikes Once a killer?
I rose, hands up to ward off the horse and backed from the body, the horse and the stall. In the aisle, I reached around my belt and unclipped my cell phone. I slammed the wooden stall door shut then punched out Sheriff MacWain’s direct line. Uninvited, and pretty much unwelcomed, I’d worked on three cases over the past couple of years. The Sheriff and I had developed a relationship of mutually melancholic tolerance. One ring.
“MacWain.”
“Sheriff? Bryn Wiley. I am out on Word of God Church Road at the Morgan Oaks Farm. Marcie Goodall’s place? Can you come out here–fast?” I heard his sigh and then his characteristic, “Yup. Okay, Bryndis.”
“It’s…the worst. I’ll wait.”
“I’m sure you will.”
Then we each clicked off.
A white car lurched to a stop on the pea gravel outside the barn. Two cowboy hats were silhouetted inside the car. In unison, two men got out of the car, slammed two doors. A tall, handsome Asian, Deputy Sheriff Tuan Scott, attended the slight, fiftyish Sheriff, John MacWain. Scott was the youngest son of a Vietnam vet; one who’d successfully brought his Vietnamese wife back to America. He had the smooth fine features of his mother and the hulk of his father. Easily, he stood six-four, and dwarfed the five-seven–in his high-heeled cowboy boots–Sheriff. MacWain’s face was reddened from too many Southern sunburns, but the red made his blue eyes jolt from his face. Somehow these eyes made up for his small stature.
I watched the mismatched duo approach. Foolishly, I speculated. When barefoot, was the Sheriff any taller than my own five four and a half? I brushed this inane thought away. They stopped in front of me.
“Hey there, Bryn,” said MacWain, laconic. Tuan, towering behind the sheriff’s right shoulder, nodded at me, his black eyes alert.
“Hi guys. She’s down there.” I pointed down the aisle and saw I was still wearing latex gloves. Embarrassed, I waggled my rubbery fingers. “Didn’t want to mess anything up.”
MacWain sighed. His eyes acquired a weary look. Behind the Sheriff, Tuan winked conspiratorially at me.
“Of course, Bryn. I suppose that’s a good move,” said the sheriff. “Now, Bryndis. Let me understand this. You found a body.”
“Yes sir, I did.”
“Whose is it this time?”
“Marcie Goodall. I dropped by here on some business–”
“Yup. And you happened to find a body. Funny how all these bodies just seem to find you.”
“Well. Maybe they do find me.” I had a sudden, horrible notion. What if somehow my thoughts, my reluctant but pointed interest, evoked some aspect of these murders–? Hastily I put the idea away.
Explore that one later with the morning coffee and a self-help book in my hands.
Tuan spoke. “Were you and Marcie Goodall close friends, Bryn?”
“Oh no, Tuan. I only talked with her once. Back in February. I interviewed her for a story in the
Morgan Horse Journal
.”
“Okay, okay,” said MacWain. “Where is she?”
“This way,” I said.
I led the way down the pine shavings-covered aisle. All our footsteps were muffled, but a neighing chorus of hungry horses clanged after us.
“As soon as you look things over, Sheriff,” I said formally, “I’d like your permission to feed and water these horses. It’s dangerous for them to go too long without water, especially in this heat.”
The horses continued to whinny.
“Yup, yup, we’ll see. Can’t you make them shut up?” He waved a hand in mild annoyance.
“Sure. If I water and–”
The sigh. “Okay, okay.”
“–I can water them?”
“Not yet, Bryn. Let’s have a looksee first.”
We’d reached the last stall. The horses quieted as if they felt the tension.
Tuan grasped the hard edge of the wooden door with his bare hands and I yelled, “Tuan! Prints!” Embarrassed, he stopped. Wiped his hands on his khaki trousers, as if this would remove his prints from the door. Meticulous in my gloves, I swallowed a smirk and opened the door. Sheriff MacWain took one step into the stall. He stopped abruptly. A silence. The stallion rustled straw beneath his hooves.
“Whew. Poor thing. Ripe, ain’t she?” He knelt, shaking his head. Then peered up at the stallion, still on guard over the body.
“Bryn! You wanna come hold this animal? He looks kinda crazy–”
“He’s fine. I was in there. He doesn’t seem to want to move away from Marcie.”
The Sheriff put out an involuntary warding-off hand but gazed over the body. “Well. Look at this. Tuan! What’s your take on these funny-lookin’ marks here?”
Tuan stepped in, winced at the smell, and near Marcie’s head, squatted as well. “Hmm. Looks like hoof prints to me.”
“Yup. Me too.” MacWain craned his head up at me. “How ‘bout you?”
“I hate to agree. But it sure looks like
something
, shaped like a hoof, perhaps a steel-shod hoof, made those marks.” I had a sinking feeling. I didn’t want the stallion to be guilty. As I watched MacWain nod his head, I suddenly wondered,
Where’s Marcie’s dog?
The Dalmatian I’d seen when I’d visited here in the winter? I looked around the barn. Nothing.
Strange
.
The Sheriff straightened, Tuan with him.
“Tuan, you go on now. Radio the coroner. Call Teddy. Tell him get that horse pound trailer hitched up. Pretty simple this time, Bryn.” He pointed at the horse, whose nervous shiftings had increased. His nostrils had widened. His black mane stuck to new sweat running down his mahogany-red, arched neck. Was he more nervous with additional people around, I wondered? Or cranking up for another crazed attack?
“Yup. Simple,” stated MacWain. Now he lifted his felt hat, wiped his brow on his shirt cuff. Set it back carefully into the deep red ridge the hat had made in the flesh of his brow. He tried to smile at me. His blue eyes startled me as always.
“No big case for you to solve, young lady. It’s plain the horse stomped her to death. We’ll take him in. Hold him till we get the autopsy. The Court will order him put down.”
I pressed my lips tightly together so I wouldn’t shout a protest. My fingers rose to my lips. My eyes went to the stallion. Tears jumped into my eyes. The horse’s coat glowed as if Rembrandt had painted him.
This gorgeous creature put to death?
Once more he dipped his head to Marcie, then up. His eye held mine. Hard. Anger? Or a supplication for help with his deathly still mistress? Most horse people–hey! most
people
!–would sneer at me for thinking horses could have such perception, but I had seen and experienced things in my past, when I’d been a horse breeder, events and reactions that had expanded my mind. This horse, I suddenly felt, would choose Marcie’s resurrection, if he could.
Tuan had gone. I heard the crackle of a police radio outside. My hand fell from my mouth. It was wet with sweat inside the latex glove. The barn smells seemed worse. Horses neighed for food and water. Confusion, dirt, stink and dread hung in the air. The Sheriff exited the stall. He motioned for me to close it with my still-protected hands. I did, then scurried to catch up with him. He strode down the aisle, bandy-legged, like a tiny cowboy but I knew he only rode a horse once a year in the annual Covetown Mardi Gras parade. He felt he had to because the largest industry in St. Tremaine Parish was horses. Many of his constituents were very familiar with a manure fork.
“Go on and feed these animals, Bryn,” he said over his shoulder. “Just don’t touch anything unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Sheriff. Wait. I’d like to say something. Will you walk with me while I water them?” Another odd thing,
why didn’t Marcie have automatic waterers?
There must be twenty stalls in the barn. That’s a lot of hose-dragging twice each day.
He sighed, lifted his khaki Western hat, and once again smoothed sweat from his brow and his steel-grey hair. “What?”
“Just gimme a sec, eh?” Reluctantly he followed as I set off down the aisle. I found a black rubber hose, kinked it to stop the flow, turned on the faucet and walked to the first stall. Feeding the hose through iron grillwork, I let it spring open into the bucket. The horse’s nose was in the bucket sucking furiously even as the water gushed. I spoke over the sound.
“Okay. Sheriff. The only reason I’m here is because a Morgan horse magazine editor called me to check some facts. And then I saw Lila, at the diner. She’d told me Marcie couldn’t make her feed bill. That worried me. So I ran out here. Did you know Marcie bought this farm from Cade Pritchard a few years ago?”
“Yup.”
“Wasn’t he the one whose wife–”?
Sheriff MacWain walked alongside, now interested in my story despite himself. I felt a moderate amount of satisfaction. Ahead, impatient horses heard the water and kicked with gunshot sounds against stall walls. Their movements fanned more ammonia odor into the thick air.
“Yup. Spent a few days out here on that one, I guarantee.”
“This very farm?”
“Yup.”
“She kill herself or–”
“Beautiful girl. Drove her car through a fence, ‘cross a pasture, killed a million-dollar racehorse on the way. She wound up, car and all, in the swimmin’ pool. New Lexus. She drowned. Shame. Coroner found the inflated airbag held her under the water. Horse was better insured than she was.”