A Silver Christmas (Tipperary Carriage Company Mystery Book 4)

by J A Whiting

  "I know, I know, and I'm glad. It's just that…." She stopped speaking, knowing it would be hard to get these two to accept that she merely had a feeling that the bad guys, whoever they might be, were about to make a move on Silver. "I guess you're right. I'm sure it's just my imagination working overtime."

  "Could be," said another voice. "But that doesn't mean you're wrong."

  Stanley Morgan stepped out of the tack room, leaning on the cane he sometimes used. He was at least twenty years older than Ross and was also retired law enforcement. He often filled in to do the feeding whenever Ross was out with Mae on a driving job.

  Stanley lived in quiet contentment in his trailer out near the hay barn. Mae knew it was a good arrangement for both him and Ross.

  "Well, I was never a deputy sheriff like you two gentlemen," Mae said, shrugging and trying to look relaxed. "I guess I'm just seeing a series of events that have started, but are not yet finished. Things always finish, one way or another."

  "Well, Mom," said Brandon, "first you talked about a deputy stopping by here to tell you to watch your horses because somebody around here is stealing them and selling them for meat."

  Mae nodded. "Deputy Blackwood. That's right."

  "And then," Brandon continued, "you find out your new horse has a chip when the auction said he didn't have one, so he's either stolen or his owners actually sent him to slaughter."

  "On that one, I'm convinced he was stolen," asked Mae. "Probably caught up in the theft ring that Deputy Blackwood talked about. But it's also possible, as Ross said, that his owners couldn't afford to keep him any longer and sent him to slaughter to get the meat price today instead of waiting, maybe for months, to find a buyer who wanted a show horse and would pay show horse price."

  "So the jury's still out on whether he was actually stolen or not," said Brandon, and Mae could only nod.

  "It sounds like somebody did give him a piece of poison fruit at the Fair," said Stanley. "The horse didn't find that by himself. Sure, strangers feed horses all the time, even though they shouldn't. But that couldn’t have been an accident, not when the same piece of apple killed a couple of birds right there on the street not five minutes later."

  "We do know for a fact that someone hot-wired my truck and tried to drive off with two horses inside the trailer," said Mae.

  "No question about that," noted Ross.

  "And I have to admit that some of it is just a bad feeling about that young couple I keep seeing at the fair," Mae went on. "At least, I'm pretty sure it's the same two. Always looking at the horses and taking pictures of them. Even showing up out on the side streets of that neighborhood where we drive during the fair."

  "Lots of people will be watching the horses at a street fair though," said Stanley.

  "They will," agreed Mae. "But I could swear I keep seeing those two. It's just plain odd.” She shook her head. "And one other thought I had about them, maybe they're not alone. Maybe they've got friends who are good at hot-wiring cars, or who wouldn't be afraid to follow someone home to their dark, quiet country farm."

  All of them were silent for a few moments.

  Finally, Mae shrugged and turned away. "Of course, all that’s just speculation. I don't have any actual proof for any of it."

  "Well, let's see," said Stanley. "We've got a stolen horse that someone tried to poison. A truck and trailer stolen when a lookalike for that horse happened to be loaded up inside. And then someone may or may not have followed that same trailer out here one night."

  "I can see the first two," said Ross. "Dumping a horse at auction, even a good horse, just to get a little money, and someone feeding an animal poison just to be cruel."

  "I can see that as well," said Stanley.

  "It's the second two that I'm not sure about," Ross continued. "People steal trucks. They steal horses. They'll steal a truck with horses in the trailer."

  "Of course they will," said Mae.

  "And people get lost all the time driving out in the country at night," Ross said, his voice calm. "They didn't try to run you off the road or anything. They could have just been lost and following the first set of taillights they saw, hoping to get back to a main road."

  "And I'm not surprised you saw a couple of oddballs at the fair," said Brandon. "They were probably just having fun watching the horses because they don't have much that’s interesting in their life." He grinned at her. "I mean, come on, Mom. Your horses do look pretty great and they're even better at Christmastime. Of course people want to look at them. That's the idea, isn't it?"

  "Yes, it is," she answered, looking down at the concrete floor of the barn aisle. "I do want people to enjoy seeing them. That's a big part of doing carriage driving. So you're right about that."

  Stanley nodded in agreement. "So, Mae, what do you think we should do that we aren't doing already? I mean the odds are pretty much the same each night that thieves might try to take horses from this place."

  Mae closed her eyes for a few seconds, battling between feeling foolish over her fears and being certain her horse was in danger. "Okay," she began. "All of you are right. None of this is real evidence of anything, not even Silver's microchip and very suspicious presence at that auction to begin with. Everything I've mentioned, the apple, the truck theft, someone following me home, his microchip, all of it, can be reasonably explained by other things. He could've been dumped at auction for any reason. Maybe he accidentally hurt somebody and they just wanted him gone. The apple could've been some crazy person trying to hurt any animal. Stealing the truck? Yes, to steal a couple of already-loaded horses. Very convenient. Following me home? Sure, just someone lost, as you said.”

  Mae took a deep breath and went on. "And Brandon's most likely right about that eccentric young couple who are just trying to take a break from their boring work by watching the pretty horses."

  She paced a few steps. "That means we're left with nothing more than the fact that I've simply got an awful feeling that somebody's after that horse. There must be a really good reason for that, because they've tried four times now to get rid of him without success. But they're going to try again. I'm sure of it. They're running out of time."

  15

  All four of them, Mae, Ross, Stanley, and Brandon, stood in silence in the barn aisle.

  "I understand that, Mae," Stanley finally said. "Whoever's after your horse is most likely getting desperate right about now. They could come for him at any time, but we still don't know why."

  "It doesn't matter why," she insisted. "Does it? If they manage to kill my horse right in his stall like they almost did at the Christmas Fair with that apple, or if they steal him back and get rid of him that way, he's gone either way."

  She looked very steadily at the three men and tried to keep her voice calm and sure. "Seems to me the important thing is to save the horse first and catch these people second. Then figure out their motive. If we do the reverse, I'm afraid it will be too late for Silver and their motive won't matter very much."

  Ross and Stanley looked at each other.

  "Okay," said Ross. "He's your horse. You're right to protect him."

  "Whatever protects him protects all the others here, too," said Stanley. "Horse thieves will take any animal they can get. It's just meat price to them."

  "Yeah, I guess so," said Brandon. "So, Mom, what do you want to do that Ross and Stanley aren't already doing out here?"

  The two older men stood very still and looked closely at Mae, waiting for her to speak.

  She tried to keep from smiling. "I know you two are the experts. Your security precautions are better than most barns would ever have and I greatly appreciate that.” She went on, pacing a few more slow steps, "I think they're after Silver for personal reasons, not just to steal any horse they can find for the slaughter truck. And if we're going to save him, we have to take this very, very personally and catch these thieves the same way."

  Mae stopped and looked at Ross, Stanley, and Brandon. "I guess I'm just aski
ng you to indulge me on this right now. I thought something might happen last night and it didn't, but I've still got a very strong feeling that some attempt is going to happen soon."

  "All right," said Ross, after a moment. "It won't hurt to be prepared, if you feel that strongly about it. And there's no denying that things got strange when that high stepper got here."

  She grinned at him. "High stepper, indeed. Yes, it all started to get strange when poor Silver arrived, but I'm not willing to abandon him to whoever's trying to get him.” She checked her watch. "Brandon and I have to load up and get to that wedding on time. I should be back by about three. As soon as I get back here, I want to get a few things ready for tonight, just in case. Before I leave, let me tell you what I have in mind."

  The small-town wedding was lovely and the bride was thrilled at the sight of Steel pulling the big white Landau carriage. Brandon performed admirably as Mae's assistant and never objected to the long black coat and top hat that he had to wear as a coachman.

  "I only complain in the summer, Mom," he said. "Right now, in this cold, it's fine."

  "I told you, white shirt and black vest are acceptable when it's hot, but yeah, we usually end up freezing out here. It's not too bad today."

  The pleasant afternoon at the wedding and the enjoyment of spending time with Brandon couldn’t take Mae's mind off the worry she had over Silver, or of the very real and convincing fear she had that someone was going to try again to take him from her.

  Once she and Brandon arrived home and got Steel settled back in his stall, Mae asked her son, Ross, and Stanley to come and talk to her again. They had a lot to do and only a couple of hours before sunset.

  It was long after dark. Outside Ross's house there was nothing but the deep blackness of a country night broken only by the occasional passing of a car and the lonely white glare of its headlights.

  In the farmhouse, Mae sat at the kitchen table right beside the small window. The blinds on all the windows were tightly closed, but a few lamps were on and so was the television and their light could be seen from outside.

  “Camouflage,” Ross had said. “Make it look like a normal night.”

  Keeping her company were Mick and Mack. The two border collies would normally be happy to lie down on their stack of old blankets and relax after another long day of patrolling the farm, but right now they were feeling anxious, too.

  Mack, the male, would wander off in one direction inside the house while Mick, the female, would go the other way. Then they would meet somewhere in the middle, touch noses, and do it all again.

  Mae was actually impressed at the routine they had. No doubt they had perfected it over several months of guarding the barns and the house at Goodnight Farm.

  Ross's laptop computer sat on the table in front of her. Its screen showed two separate camera views. One camera was focused on the gravel area between the back of the house, the converted garage off to one side which held the carriages, and the front of the barn.

  At the moment, both her green pickup and Ross's maroon truck were gone. So were the two white stock trailers. Both rigs had been taken to the sheriff's outpost down the road and parked behind the building so they wouldn’t be obvious.

  Deputy Blackwood had not been too impressed. Like Ross and Stanley, he felt they had no more reason to expect trouble that night than at any other time, but he had shrugged and agreed to let them leave the vehicles there.

  The only car in the gravel lot was Brandon's little compact, parked beside the open front door of the barn beneath the small light. It would look as though Ross and Mae had taken some horses to a driving event and would be gone for a while.

  The other view on the laptop was from the newly installed camera at the back of the barn. A small light there showed the gravel outside the open rear door, as well as the long stretch of grassy darkness that led to Stanley's little trailer with its tiny distant lights.

  At the moment, both cameras showed nothing at all.

  Also on the table was Mae's phone. There was a text window open that included Ross, Stanley, Andrew, and Brandon. There was no communication from any of them.

  She’d helped all four get settled in for the watch. Brandon was in the tack room with the door shut. Andrew was in the big garage-turned-carriage house and it was locked up tight.

  Both of them would no doubt pass the time by reading social media accounts, watching videos, and chatting with friends. Mae just hoped they'd remember to watch for texts from their very worried mother, too.

  Ross had elected to hide in one of the empty stalls, in the one near the center of the barn and across from the tack room. He had taken one of Mae's bright plaid Tipperary Carriage Company woolen lap robes with him along with a thermos of hot coffee. When she'd left, Ross had looked to be quite comfortable sitting on a large pile of loose straw in a corner and reading another military action-adventure novel.

  Mae also knew that under his coat he had the Colt .45 in a shoulder holster, his phone was in his pocket and set on vibrate, and nothing, no matter how small, would escape his notice.

  Stanley remained comfortably in his trailer. Right then, he would be sitting in a chair at the window facing the barn with a pair of binoculars handy. Since there were no cameras inside the barn, Stanley would be the one best able to see anyone who tried to walk inside.

  The light over his front door was on, as usual, along with a couple of normal inside lights. They were not hiding the fact that he was there. He was always there.

  Tonight, though, he would be keeping a steady watch out of his window toward the barn, at least, when he wasn't watching old westerns on television. Stanley had a smartphone and could make calls on it, and Brandon had also made sure he knew how to use it for texting.

  Silver had been moved to the last stall at the far end of the barn, right under the small light that was normally on at night. He was blanketed and wearing a leather halter on his head, and a one-foot piece of rope dangled from the halter under his chin. A nice long lead rope was snapped to the heavy wire mesh on the stall door.

  Ross had remarked that the horse looked like a kid with his bags packed for a trip, just waiting for his ride. Mae had grinned, but Ross was right. All of it had been done to make it very easy for anyone to catch Silver in the stall, snap the long lead rope to his halter, lead him out through the back door of the barn, and disappear into the darkness.

  If Silver is what they want, Silver is what they will get – along with a lot more than I think they're ready for.

  The whole farm looked dark, quiet, and deserted. Even the dogs were silent and out of sight. They were all as ready as they would ever be.

  All of these people were putting up with this on a cold winter night when they'd certainly rather be doing almost anything else. And they were doing it all for her, simply trusting a feeling she had that the thieves had missed too many times, but were getting closer with each attempt.

  She could not ask her sons and friends to do this again.

  Yet Mae still felt certain that something would happen tonight. Although, the weather was clear and calm, snow was expected over the upcoming days, and snow not only made it difficult to drive in, but also showed footprints.

  This was a Sunday night with little to no traffic out on the country roads. A bunch of horse thieves who seemed very determined to get one particular horse would have no better time to make their attempt.

  For herself, she just wanted them to get on with it. That way, it would be over and she could go back to knowing that her horses, and the people she cared about most in the world were all safe.

  She often wondered why she was willing to put herself into these situations, and the answer was the same every time.

  I'm not looking for these things. I'm standing up to them. Every time I do, there's that much less cruelty in the world and maybe it'll be a better place for my kids, and for my grandkids someday.

  Right now it's just five humans, two dogs, and seventeen horses standing u
p to who knows how many lowlifes out there who want to do us harm. And as hard as this sometimes is, hiding from it would be far worse.

  I can hear my Grandpa James O'Neill, in that Irish accent of his saying that the world is not a safe place, Mae. But it will not get any safer by letting the bad in it run roughshod over you. Don't ever be afraid to stand up to it when you can.

  The moments ticked by. The quiet and the stillness remained. The dogs finally lay down on their blankets to rest, and there wasn't so much as a bug crawling by on either one of the cameras which were barely showing much anyway in the small outside lights of the barn.

  Then, out on the road, a yellow glow caught her eye.

  16

  Off in the distance, Mae could see a couple of small amber spots moving slowly toward her on the road. It looked like a car creeping along with only its parking lights on.

  Instantly her adrenalin kicked in, but she forced herself to remain very still. In a moment, there was the low rough sound of an old truck engine.

  She looked closer, carefully peering through the blinds as the vehicle moved past. It sure looked like a black pickup truck, conveniently blending in with the night and the black asphalt road. It could have been the same truck that had followed her home from the Christmas Fair.

  As it rolled by, it became clear that this black truck was towing a large stock trailer. In the small parking lights from the truck, the trailer appeared to be battered and dented and painted red. And for a split second Mae felt sure she saw the silhouette of a horse through the slats in the side of the trailer.

  With a shaking hand, Mae reached for the phone. All four of the men were on the same text conversation and she tapped out a message to them.

  A black truck went by. Slow. Parking lights only. Old red stock trailer. Might be a horse in it.

  For what seemed like a very long time, there was no response. Finally, the phone lit up.

  In a text, Ross asked if anything was on the cameras.