The Leopard's Prey (42 page)

Soon, she reached Harding’s fields and the native workers laboring in them. Several waved, enjoying the show of another rider speeding by. But Jade didn’t ride all the way in. Not when it would alert Harding and give him time to ambush her. When she got close enough, she shut off the engine and pushed the bike around a horse paddock on her way to the barn. Jade stopped behind an outhouse and peered around it. There was Sam, tied with his back to a fence post next to his motorcycle. She leaned her own cycle against the building and slipped the Winchester from its sheath just as Harding went into the barn.

Sam was no more than a hundred yards away. Jade covered the distance in a run, switching her rifle to her left hand and pulling her knife from its boot sheath. With one swipe, she sliced through Sam’s bindings.

“Take this,” she mouthed and handed the knife to Sam. “I’ll slip in the back of the barn and hold Harding until Finch arrives.” She ran along the fence toward the barn. She was halfway there when Harding came out and opened fire.

Jade hit the dirt and rolled behind some barrels. She raised her rifle and returned fire, driving Harding back into the safety of the barn. But it didn’t stop him from shooting again. Eventually, he’d hit her. For the second time that day, her vision blurred and dimmed, only this time the
laibon
appeared before her. She felt, rather than heard, his advice. A bullet hit the ground in front of her, and the vision vanished like morning fog in the sun.

“Sam!” she shouted. “Get me out of here.”

Sam was already on the way. He’d straddled his own cycle and had it running. “Get ready,” he shouted. He sped toward her and braked just long enough for her to jump onto the secondary seat over the rear tire. As Jade cradled her rifle across her chest, Harding broke from the barn astride a large sorrel mare. He turned the mare’s head away from them and urged her into a gallop with several kicks.

“We can’t let him escape,” Jade shouted over the engine’s roar.

“Hang on,” said Sam. He revved the engine and tore off after the fleeing man.

Harding turned in his saddle and fired. Jade needed both hands to hang on as Sam zigzagged. His pattern made him a difficult target, but it kept Jade from returning fire. It wasn’t long before Harding ran out of ammunition and concentrated on eluding Sam and Jade instead.

“Can you get in closer, Sam?” Jade hollered in his ear.

He nodded. Jade slipped her Winchester into Sam’s own empty rifle bag and pulled the lariat over her head. Sam saw the movement and nodded again, understanding. He kept to Harding’s left, giving Jade a free-and-clear throw at the man on her right.

She held most of her rope in her left hand, playing out enough to make a large honda. Then she began to rhythmically swing it overhead, gaining momentum. The disadvantage here was that this time her target was higher than she was. Well, she’d just have to rise a bit and throw a little harder. The horse shied at something and Sam used the opportunity to pull up closer. Jade gauged the distance, gripped the side of the seat with her legs, and lifted herself up just as she let the rope fly. It hovered for a moment over Harding, then settled near his shoulders.

Jade tugged, not so hard as to choke or snap his neck, but enough to yank him off the rear of the horse. He landed hard and struggled to remove the rope, but by this time Sam had circled him once on the cycle, thereby wrapping the rope around his arms. Sam cut the engine as Jade leaped off, rifle in hand.

“Give it up, Mr. Harding. You’re not going anywhere,” she called.

His horse, without a rider to urge it on, slowed to a trot and finally stopped. Harding looked up at her from the ground, his jaundiced eyes burning with fear and anger. “That damn Stokes was blackmailing me!” he shouted. “I wasn’t going to keep Chalmers’ stud for good. It wandered onto my land, and I figured I could at least get a colt from it. Tried to disguise the animal, but that damn Stokes knew the trick. I tried to explain to him, but Stokes wouldn’t listen. He was going to ruin my reputation. My good
name
!”

Jade kept the rifle trained on Harding while Sam did the honors of binding his wrists behind him. She didn’t trust Harding. A man that desperate might try anything. Besides, she noted, she could see murder in his eyes. Just like in the leopard’s.

“Let’s go back,” she said in a calm voice.

They walked silently back to the barn just as Inspector Finch and two officers pulled into the yard and spilled out of a war-vintage Crossley staff car, painted black. Finch, weaponless and wearing the same tired brown suit, strolled over to them as casually as if he was attending a garden party. Jade recognized Constable Miller and the
askari
named Andrew from the night before. Miller held a revolver in his hand. Andrew, the driver, held a thin club. Something about Andrew nagged at Jade. Where had she seen him before last night?

“Looks as if you did my job for me,” said Finch. “We’ll take him now.” Miller and Andrew put Harding in the backseat, Miller joining him and Andrew standing guard on the other side of the vehicle.

“I got your messages, Miss del Cameron,” said Finch. “Very good job. Of course, this last one was probably unnecessary. Once I had his prints from the knife, I was certain we had our man. They matched another set on the coffee drum that we’d just managed to identify early this morning.”

“How did you happen to know they were Harding’s prints?” asked Sam. “Don’t you have to compare them to a known set?”

“Indeed. And I had one. Assuming that our man was local, I had assigned several of my
askari
to act as waiters at the fair’s dance. What with their white gloves, they could take a man’s glass from him without adding their own prints. They wrapped each glass in paper with the drinker’s name on it.” He chuckled. “No one noticed them. But who
ever
notices the staff.”

“That’s why the
askari
looks so familiar,” said Jade. “I saw him at the ball.”

Finch nodded. “Yes, Andrew was there. I collected quite a lot of drinking and champagne glasses. Been up to my ears in fingerprints to analyze since then. But I wouldn’t have had the knife or the motive without all your work, Miss del Cameron. I must say, my confidence in you wasn’t misplaced. You lived up to your reputation.”

Jade stared at him openmouthed before exploding. “What? You son of a … You
deliberately
accused Sam so that
I
would do your dirty work?”

“Well, I knew that if I asked around myself, the killer would lie low. What I needed was someone like you, a reporter, to do the asking. People love to talk to a writer, it seems. And I needed a way to make you want to ask those questions. Accusing your boyfriend here seemed to provide you with good motivation.”

“You low-down, sidewinding, stinking son of a butt-faced warthog! You nearly got us both killed!” She clenched her fist and lunged for the inspector, launching a punch right for his jaw. Sam grabbed her from behind just in time and held her back, as she fumed in his grip.

“Easy, Jade. I don’t want to see you arrested for striking an officer.” She wriggled again and made something akin to a hissing snort. “Settle, settle,” cooed Sam. “Temper on safety, as that idiot Harry Hascombe used to say.”

Jade relaxed her stance and Sam released his grip, slowly at first, then completely when it seemed she no longer intended to punch Finch. She shook herself free of his embrace and folded her arms across her chest. As soon as she stepped aside, Sam launched his own punch and connected with Finch’s left eye.

“Don’t
ever
use Jade like that again!”

CHAPTER 25

In the end, only two things are really valued by the Maasai: cattle and chil-
dren. They greet one another by inquiring after both of these prizes and say
goodbye with a hope that Engai will bless the other with more of each.

—The Traveler

THREE DAYS AFTER Harding’s arrest, Sam and Jade sat in wooden chairs on the Dunburys’ veranda, a lemonade in Sam’s hand and a coffee in Jade’s. Biscuit lounged at her feet, his tongue lolling. Jade wore her usual duck trousers and boots and a short-sleeved white cotton shirt, open at the throat. Sam had dusted off his riding breeches and put on a clean pin-striped shirt, newly purchased from Whiteaway and Laidlaw on Sixth Street. The front door creaked open and they watched as Avery assisted his very pregnant wife to a new rocking chair, purchased just for her.

“Thank you, love,” said Bev as she lowered herself onto the seat. Farhani followed with a silver tray and two more lemonades. “And thank you, Farhani,” she added. Despite her bulging abdomen, she still looked beautiful in a buttercup yellow linen dress with a pleated bodice and white lace at the edge of the short sleeves.

Jade held her now empty coffee cup in her lap and absentmindedly stroked Biscuit’s head. Before her spread the Dunburys’ beautiful lawn, Bev’s roses once again thriving under her direction. Whinnies from the stables indicated the recent arrival of a stallion and two young mares. “How long do you think it will be before Maddy and Neville get here?” Jade asked.

“I should think within the hour,” said Avery. “Signing the papers was merely a formality.”

“They may have stopped to do some shopping,” suggested Beverly. “Clothes, toys, that sort of thing.”

“I haven’t known them as long as you have,” said Sam, “but I’ve never seen either of them so happy. For the past twenty-four hours since they got the news, Neville’s been wandering around completely distracted. And Maddy’s sung every lullaby she’s ever heard.”

Jade chuckled. “Maybe now she’ll be too busy to write any more of those books she claims are about me.”

“Don’t count on it, lovey,” said Beverly. “She’s already sold
Ivory Blood
to her publisher, and I’ve seen part of the manuscript for your Moroccan adventure. She’s calling it
The Hand of the Kahina
. It’s very good, actually. There’s one line in particular I love.” She closed her eyes and recited from memory. “ ‘He’d purchased the lovely hellcat for ten pieces of gold. Now he leaned in close to claim his due.’ ”

Jade snorted. “It was two pieces of gold, and Mother owns me, not Sam.”

Beverly dismissed the contradiction with a wave of her hand. “While we’re waiting for the Thompsons, explain to me just what Harding was doing.”

“Remember that Alwyn Chalmers sold one of those Somali ponies to Harding with the idea that they were salted,” said Jade.

“Right,” said Beverly, “only the animal died of some equine disease anyway, correct?”

“That’s correct,” said Jade. “So Harding felt that Chalmers owed him an animal. As a man with a reputation for being a square dealer, he expected the same from others, especially a friend and former volunteer. Chalmers didn’t give him another. He’d lost one himself, so he counted them both as being swindled by the seller.”

“Only Harding didn’t agree,” said Sam. “So when Chalmers’ stud broke loose and wandered onto his farm, he kept it to service one of his mares. That way, he’d have his animal. At least by his reasoning.”

“Why didn’t he just ask Chalmers to lend him the stud?” asked Avery.

“I suppose that Chalmers wouldn’t agree without Harding paying the usual stud fee,” said Jade. “Or Harding was too proud or too stubborn to ask. Either way, it didn’t end up being an overnight sort of affair. His mare must not have been in heat, so he kept the stallion until she was.”

“But he had to disguise it,” said Avery, “right?”

“Yes,” said Jade. “He used the old trick that they’d used in the Volunteer Mounted Rifles of bootblacking stripes on the white horses and clipping the manes to disguise them as zebra from raiding tribes. It worked from a distance, but anyone coming up
close
would see through it, so he had to keep people off his farm. He stopped speaking to Chalmers, feigning a feud, and—”

“And he shot the leopard mother before your crew could come looking for it on his land,” finished Avery. “By thunder!”

“And that’s why he wanted me out of the picture,” said Sam. “I flew over and saw a zebra mating with his mare. Thought it was odd and even commented on it to him at the fair. If I spread the word around, Chalmers would have figured out that Harding had the pony.”

“He told Finch that he never intended to kill you in a plane crash,” said Jade. “Apparently he thought the dirt ball would disintegrate sooner and just make the Jenny crack up on takeoff. Then you couldn’t fly back over his land in case you wanted to take a closer look at the zebra.”

“But Stokes already knew about the zebra?” asked Avery.

Jade nodded. “It appears he really was in the habit of seeing things and blackmailing people to keep quiet about them. Stokes told Harding to meet him after dark at the rail yards. I don’t know that Harding ever actually intended to kill him, but when he hit him hard enough to knock him into the animal dip, he didn’t bother to pull him out until it was too late.”

“And he lost his pocketknife in the brawl?” asked Beverly. “The one you found?”

“Yes. It must have gotten kicked under the trough where he couldn’t find it,” explained Jade. “I remembered later that he fumbled in his pocket for the knife to poke a hole in the milk bag. He either hadn’t discovered it was gone yet, or possibly just reached out of habit. That’s why he wanted to kill me. I asked too many questions, including about the knife. In fact, by then, he was getting desperate. He paid a native to lure me to the warehouse.”