Hoofprints (Gail McCarthy series)

by Laura Crum

  Amber opened her own front door, wearing a silky, beaded, clinging trousers-and-tunic type thing that I thought was called lounging pajamas. I had to admit the autumn gold color looked good on her, but the red lips and nails and sequined silk slippers were a little much.

  Still, Amber was an attractive woman if you liked that type; her figure was short and curvy with just a tiny hint of plumpness, her light olive skin and brown eyes, though obviously foreign to the dark red hair, contrasted strikingly with it, and her heavy makeup was well done. Money could buy some things, it appeared, looks being one of them.

  Amber's eyes widened when she saw me, and I realized my dressed-for-dinner appearance was probably a first in her experience. Amber had never seen me out of work clothes.

  She didn't look pleased. There was no "Gail, you look nice," or "I must have gotten you away from something." She simply sniffed and said, "Come this way."

  Puzzled, but still not afraid, I followed her into a little side room off the main hall, a room whose fake marble floor, chilly gray walls, and stiff Victorian armchairs deceived me for a minute into thinking it was a sitting room. Then I noticed the beautiful old rolltop desk in the comer and a few framed photographs of horses, pictures I could bet had been taken by Amber's father. This was the ranch office, then, a room I suspected Amber had remodeled along her own lines after Reg St. Claire had died.

  Amber sat down in an armchair and crossed one silk-clad leg over the other. She seemed to be waiting for me to sit, though she made no polite offers or gestures. What the hell. I sat, crossing my own legs at the ankle, glad for once that I wasn't facing off a dressy woman wearing my usual jeans, boots, and grubby blouse.

  Somehow my clothes and demeanor seemed to discomfit Amber; instead of speaking she got out a cigarette and lit it. Oh great. Between the smoke and her perfume I was going to start choking in a minute.

  "Amber, I came out here to see a dying horse," I said firmly. "What's the deal?"

  "Oh, the horse is fine now." Amber waved her cigarette airily, dismissing that problem. "But I need to talk to you."

  "Okay." Mentally I added that it was going to cost her the full sixty-dollar emergency charge to talk to me under these circumstances.

  "Gail, I know you don't know this"-Amber seemed to be choosing her words carefully-"but Steve and I are engaged."

  "Is that so?" My eyebrows lifted as I said it, and Amber hurried on.

  "It's a private thing, really. Not official."

  Oh yeah? I wanted to say, but I kept my mouth shut.

  "I just thought that you might like to know that we have an understanding. Steve can be very charming; I wouldn't want you to get hurt."

  Oh my God. I felt like laughing out loud.

  "Amber, did you get me up here on a fake emergency call to tell me this?"

  "I needed to talk to you," she said defensively.

  I stared at her and wondered what to think. The woman was obviously pathologically jealous. I felt sure that she was no more engaged to Steve than the man in the moon; this was just an attempt to run off someone she perceived as competition. If I'd had a kind heart, I could have reassured her that I had no real interest in Steve, that in fact I had a steady boyfriend, but Amber didn't make me feel kind.

  The question was, Would her jealousy drive her to murder? I had a feeling that it could, that Amber might go to any lengths if she thought she could get away with it. Trouble was, if she'd hired Paul Cassidy to kill Cindy, killing Ed for convenience sake, and then ordered Cassidy to shoot me, too, what were we doing having this conversation? Why hadn't I simply been picked off by a bullet long ago?

  I glanced at the leather bag sitting there within easy reach. It was doubtful I could get the pistol out in time to do me much good if Amber pulled a gun on me. She was smoking her cigarette with uncomfortable concentration; I had a feeling she wished I would say something.

  I stood up. "If that's all, I'll be going."

  Her eyes flashed to my face and she stood up hastily, her sophisticate's pose lost in the clumsy motion. "Did you understand what I said?"

  "More or less."

  I swung the leather bag over my shoulder and rested my hand gently on the gun, keeping my eyes on Amber as I walked toward the front door. She followed me willy-nilly, looking angry, and halted in the middle of her entry hall.

  "Leave Steve alone," she hissed.

  I was reminded of a spitting cat. Giving her the phoniest smile I could work up, I exited without a word, looking over my shoulder several times, I must admit.

  Nothing happened. No shots whistled past my ears as I walked down her front steps. I heaved a sigh of relief as I got back in the pickup and muttered a heart-felt "bitch" to the quiet night.

  I drove down the driveway with my heart thumping noisily the way it does after I've had a confrontation. Back on Summit Road, I grinned, thinking that adrenaline was surely an antidote to fear. I'd forgotten Paul Cassidy completely.

  That thought brought another to mind. If Amber was Paul Cassidy's employer, surely she wouldn't have put herself through such a ridiculous scene. Or, I glanced sharply in my rearview mirror, had it all been a ploy, a way to get him on my tail? Had she lured me up to her house so he could pick me up?

  No cars behind me on Summit Road-none that I could see, anyway. I kept checking my rearview mirror all the way down Old San Jose Road, but no headlights appeared.

  Still, the idea of it made me nervous again and I passed my little house, sitting lightless under the redwood trees, without stopping. The notion of going through the dark doorway into the empty front room made me shiver. I'd go straight to Lonny's, dress clothes and all.

  It was only when I saw Riverview Stables that I changed my plan. Lights were on in Steve's house and barn, even though it was 10:30. The place looked bright and welcoming and I suddenly realized that Steve didn't know what had become of Plumber.

  Damn. I should have called him. Paul Cassidy had driven Plumber and his problems right out of my mind. Steve was far too polite to page me on an emergency call just to ask me how the horse was, but he must be wondering.

  Abruptly I turned the pickup down the driveway. I had well over half an hour before I was due at Lonny's. It would only take a minute to reassure Steve, I reasoned, and maybe, just maybe, I'd congratulate him. On his engagement, naturally.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Yellow light spilled from Steve's big barn, and his pickup was parked in front of the house, but Steve himself was nowhere in sight. I slung the leather bag over my shoulder and got out of my truck. Deciding Steve was most likely to be in the lit-up barn, I headed in that direction, picking my way carefully. Neatly raked and sprinkled, this stable yard was an improvement over most, but my suede shoes were obviously going to be the worse for wear.

  Walking down the barn aisle, I felt incongruously glamorous in black pants and a tweed coat and wished I'd stopped to change into jeans. Steve would probably think the outfit was meant to impress him.

  A stall door stood open halfway down the aisle, and I peered in, expecting to find Steve, but the stall was empty. It wasn't bedded like a stall; it was more of a junk room, with broken manure carts, rakes, and odds and ends scattered everywhere. A bench along one wall seemed to be a medicine counter; I could see several bottles of bute.

  In fact, I realized that the boxes stacked on the bench were also filled with bottles of bute I picked up a bottle to study the label, an unfamiliar brand to me, and got no rattle of pills.

  Curiously, I opened the jar and saw that someone had ground the stuff up. This wasn't uncommon; most people prefer not to give their horses pills; "balling" a horse is an awkward procedure that horses don't like at all. Grinding the pills up with a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder and sprinkling them on some sweet feed is the way it's usually done.

  Still, Steve must have an awful lot of horses running on bute in order to justify the bother of grinding the pills up a bottle at a time. I supposed that wasn't surprising. Bridle horses h
ave to work hard; plenty of them had aches and pains and needed a little painkiller in order to perform at their peak.

  I called Steve's name out a couple of times and got no response, walking toward the back of the barn as I did so. The huge hay shed that abutted the horse barn was dark-unlikely that Steve would be there. I stepped out a side door to peer down the driveway and my heart seemed to stop in its tracks.

  There, parked in the dark behind the barn, out of sight of the casual visitor, was a black Jaguar. Even in the dim light that leaked out of the barn I could read the license plate: 2ZSTlOl.

  My God. My God. My God. I was frozen like a mouse in the eye of a snake, trying to decide what it meant, what to do. Had he followed me here, was he waiting for me here, where was he? And which way should I run?

  Then I heard voices. They were coming up the driveway behind the barn, still a ways away from me, but approaching, apparently coming from the second, smaller stable a hundred feet away. I could see two figures in the orange-y light from the low-intensity sodium bulbs that lit the driveway. One was Steve.

  The other was Paul Cassidy. The big bulky body, the particular carriage of his head, the smooth, quiet way of moving-no energy wasted; I recognized him as instantly as if I'd known him all my life.

  At that moment I suddenly understood some things that probably should have been obvious sooner. The white powder in the bute bottles, the bute bottles in Cindy's tack room. Jesus.

  And Steve. Shit, Steve! Steve, who had been a part of things from the very beginning, but had no possible motive. Suddenly I could think of a motive. This barn had been neglected and dilapidated when he moved into it; it had taken lots of money to fix it up the way he'd done. So just where had he gotten the money?

  Horse trainers, in general, do not get rich. I'd never questioned Steve's obvious wealth, but the thought occurred to me now. Too late.

  I stepped silently, slowly backward into the overhang of the big hay barn and squeezed between two blocks of hay, willing myself to be invisible in the blackness. The men were close to me, too close for any sudden movements. If I ran they'd see me.

  I held perfectly still. I could see them from where I stood frozen between the two haystacks, and I could hear them over the pounding of my heart. They were arguing. Steve's voice was raised--easy to hear; Paul Cassidy's replies were low and even, the same tone he'd used with me. I had to strain to make out his words.

  "I need someone else to help distribute this stuff. I can't do it all myself." Steve.

  "Your idea to take Whitney out. You take care of his contacts." Paul Cassidy.

  "Don't you guys understand? We had to do something about Whitney. He threatened to blow the whistle on us if we wouldn't let him quit. He came into the money from that damn trust fund and wanted out. We didn't have a choice." Steve sounded resentful. Paul Cassidy said nothing.

  Steve stopped and stood still, not fifty feet from the spot where I huddled. I willed my breath to stop, closed my eyes to hide their gleam, prayed to be a shadow among other shadows.

  The two men stood out in the lit driveway; I was a dark spot in the dark barn. Their eyes would see only blackness, I told myself fiercely.

  Steve was half-shouting, easy to hear. "Listen, you don't seem to get it. I can sell a little product out of here, and I do. I've got a guy in Watsonville and one up near the University. But I need someone to replace Ed. And I can't go around distributing. I do a lot of business for you. You don't want to jeopardize that."

  Cassidy's cold voice: "Don't get the idea you're not expendable. I brought you Whitney's little book. See that you get his regular clients taken care of. Or we'll replace you with someone who will."

  No answer from Steve. Just the crunch, crunch of footsteps on gravel. Footsteps moving past my hiding place. One set or two? I couldn't tell, was unwilling to risk opening my eyes until they were well past.

  Crunch, crunch, moving away from me. No voices. Two sets, I thought. Slowly I opened my eyes. The men were past me, walking toward the Jaguar, saying nothing to each other. I took a deep breath.

  I needed to get out of here, right now. But they were between me and my truck. My truck. Sweet Jesus, my truck. They'd see my truck and know I was here. That truck was my death warrant.

  Frantically I stared in the other direction. The driveway ran between the hay barn and the smaller horse barn and dead-ended, as I remembered, at the manure pile down by the creek. If I could get down there, I could cross Soquel Creek, only ankle-deep this time of year, and scramble through the cottonwoods and willows on the other bank. Cherryvale Road was over there somewhere; I had a client who lived at the end of the road.

  Calculating desperately, I felt sure that Julie Mobley's place was only ten minutes away from me if I started from here and sprinted. But when to start?

  The men were still in easy view; if I could see them, they could spot me. As I watched, Paul Cassidy stepped up to his Jaguar and suddenly froze. Like an animal scenting danger, his head turned toward the stable yard. The stable yard where my truck sat.

  He said something to Steve that I couldn't hear and Steve walked forward and looked where he was looking. I could hear Steve's comment perfectly. "It's that damn vet."

  Instantly both men were moving away from me, toward my truck. I crouched to run, then hesitated. They were still in full view, but their attention was elsewhere. Should I?

  They stopped, answering my question for me. There was a gun in Paul Cassidy's hand, as if it had magically appeared there. I held my breath and froze some more.

  Steve made a comment to Cassidy I couldn't hear and Cassidy turned to face him, facing in my direction at the same time. I could hear him clearly.

  "You listen and listen good, because I'm not going to say it again. You've been nothing but trouble from the start, you little prick, and I'm getting tired of you. We take this girlie vet out the way I say, because I don't want any loose ends screwing up the damn Whitney thing. That'd make trouble for John, and we don't need that. You"-I could taste the metal in his voice-"we can do without."

  Steve didn't reply. My own mind spun wildly. John? Who was John? None of the players in this deal were named John. One of Carl Whitney's sons? Hadn't it been Pete and Jim? So who was John?

  "So where would the girlie vet go? In the house?"

  Steve hesitated. "No," he said finally. "She might knock on the door, but she wouldn't go in if I didn't answer. She's probably in the barn. I don't know what the hell she's doing here."

  Reassuring you that Plumber is taken care of, I thought bitterly. What a stupid mistake.

  "It doesn't matter what she's doing here," Paul Cassidy said flatly. "If she hasn't seen us, she doesn't know anything's up. But I'm not taking any more chances. You just go on in the barn and call her name out nice and normal, then stand there and talk to her about whatever. I'll get behind her. Then you're out of it."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "She can drive me up the road in her pickup. It won't take long. When they find her and her truck in the bottom of one of those canyons, it'll just be another nasty accident."

  "What if she doesn't die?"

  Cassidy's head moved in a slow shake. I could feel the sense of coiled power that emanated from him. "Jesus Christ. I'll kill her first. I can strangle one and never leave a mark. Then I roll her and the truck off that steep spot a couple of miles up the road. No one will suspect a thing. So get the fuck out of here and find her."

  Steve turned and headed toward the front of the barn without another word.

  Jesus. Now what? Should I bluff? Walk up to Steve normally and then run past him to my truck? No way in the world that would work. Once Paul Cassidy saw me I was dead.

  Hide. I had to hide. Hide until they were both near the front of the barn, and then run. Across the creek, to Julie's. They'd expect me to run for my truck; they'd be watching in that direction. I'd get a chance-I'd have to get a chance-to run out the back.

  Paul Cassidy still stood near his
Jaguar, gun held loosely in one hand. The orange-y sodium lights cast an ominous glow in the air around him, as though the barn was burning. Cassidy's dark suit was black in the odd light. His head was turning toward me.

  Once again I held my breath and shut my eyes. Willed myself a shadow in the shadows of the haystack. Prayed my black pants and dark jacket would disappear in the night.

  He was coming. Walking toward me. I could hear the crunch of his footsteps.

  Do not panic. Do not panic. I held still. He hadn't seen me. He wouldn't see me.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch. More footsteps. Then silence. I held perfectly still.

  Steve's voice from inside the barn: "Gail?"

  I held perfectly still, eyes closed. Where was Cassidy?

  "Gail?" Steve called again, louder. "Gail, are you here?"

  More silence.

  "She must be in the house."

  I nearly jumped a foot. The voice was Cassidy's, not twenty feet from me. My eyes opened automatically.

  Cassidy was standing near the back door of the barn, the door I'd walked out of when I'd seen the Jaguar. He was facing away from me, facing down the breezeway toward Steve, his back to the hay barn. He was so close the hair on the back of my neck lifted.

  "Go check the house," he said to Steve. "I'll stay here."

  Steve walked away in the direction of the house. Paul Cassidy stayed where he was, looking slowly around.

  Move, you bastard. My mind was screaming it. Go away. Look somewhere else. Do not come back here.

  As if my thoughts had pushed him, Paul Cassidy began to walk away from me. Slowly, still looking around. Every sense on the alert. Like a big cat hunting rabbits.