My God, how could I have lost you?
Jack covered his face with his hands.
5
Portia loaded her brush with ochre and touched it delicately to a piece of paper towel to disperse some of the color. She studied the sky on her paper, waiting for the azure-blue to dry just a bit more before adding the yellow. Too much too soon would spoil it all. Finally, she added the brush stroke of dull yellow and watched the colors mingle and meld in the winter sky. She snatched up a clean brush and held it, poised, over the paper in case corrections were needed. But no, the colors were getting along just fine. A smile came to her lips as she watched her painting.
“Ms. Stephens?”
Portia held her smile and looked up. Her maid stood in the doorway to the sun room, a load of pressed shirts in her arms.
“Yes, Juanita?”
“There’s a policeman to see you.”
6
Margo hung up the phone. She looked around her office, her eyes resting on the group photograph, picking out Tess from the crowd. She stared at it for a few seconds, then hoisted herself to her feet and hobbled to the door.
“Jessie?” she called.
“Yes ma’am?” The reply was cheery, nearby.
“Stop calling me that, you little shit, and go get Best-Boy tacked up. Western saddle, long stirrups. He’s going for a ride.”
7
An hour later, Jack stood in the darkened, late- afternoon barn. The sun filtered in through the wooden slats overhead, making brief oblongs of bright light dance and jiggle on the sawdust floor. The mourning doves cooed and waddled the ground outside.
He walked down the center aisle of stalls until he came to the stall of Tess’s appaloosa. He paused, noticing the plaque that read “Wizard. T. Andersen.” The horse moved from the back of his stall and jutted his face out over the gate. Jack put his hand up and instantly the horse nuzzled it, nickering softly.
“He’ll miss her, too,” Margo said as she walked down the aisle behind her. “I saw you drive up. Just takes me awhile to do the meet-and-greet these days.”
“You needn’t have bothered,” Jack said, without turning around.
“He’s a real sweetie,” Margo said, patting the appaloosa’s neck. “One of the best in the barn. You could ride him, if you’d rather.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“He’s real gentle--”
“Is Best-Boy ready?” Jack turned away from the stall and faced Margo.
“Yeah, sure. He’s up at the upper barn.”
“Look,” Jack said, running his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I know you loved her. I’m sorry...”
“It’s okay,” Margo said. “You loved her, too.”
For a moment, the two stood in the quiet barn, listening to the sounds of the sparrows in the rafters and the mice in the tack trunks.
“Come on,” Jack said, finally, walking away. “Let’s do it.”
8
Jessie stood quietly, holding the mammoth horse’s reins in one fist, watching Margo and Burton approach.
“Okay, boy,” she said quietly to the horse. “Just a little bit longer now.” She nodded to the pair as they got closer.
“Hey, Detective,” she said. “He’s all ready for you.”
“Thanks, Jessie,” Jack said, eyeing the huge animal.
“Bill said a part of the fence is down along the western pasture,” she said to Margo.
“Bill?” Jack patted Best-Boy’s neck and checked the girth to make sure it was tight. The horse seemed wired. Very alert and energetic. Burton hoped he could handle him after all.
“Bill Lint,” Margo said, patting the horse’s rump. “He’s an idiot but helpful. He’s the groundsman for the polo field,” she added.
“Yeah, and he stinks, too,” Jessie giggled. “He eats garlic all the time and you can smell him over the dung and the horses from about a mile away.”
“Anyway,” Margo said to Burton. “Just be mindful that there’s a gap there, and take it slowly. There’s some spots on the trail that take concentration.”
“Tess said she and Portia and Jilly took the whole ride at a trot,” he said.
“I’m sure she did,” Margo said, shaking her head. “Told you that. Anyway, who knows? Maybe they did. Jilly and Tess are...were great riders, and Portia has no sense. Maybe they did. Just watch what you’re doing.”
“And this baby, here, doesn’t like water,” Jessie added. “You’ll need to push him over the creek.”
Burton imagined himself, on the ground -- hands on the monster’s large rump -- pushing him across a creek bed.
As if reading his mind, Margo leaned forward and pulled out a small crop from Best-Boy’s saddle.
“Just give him a couple taps with his behind the girth.” She placed her hand on the animal’s lower flank. “And let him feel your heels at the same time. He’ll cross the water. No problem.”
“Why the Western saddle?” Jack asked.
“Safer. You don’t mind? It won’t affect the ride or what you see along the way.”
Jack gathered the horse’s reins in one hand, positioned his foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle.
“Once you get past the first fork after the polo field, just follow the trail,” Margo said. “You’ll be fine.”
Jack touched his hand to an imaginary cap in salute, and turned the horse away from them.
“He’ll be fine,” Margo repeated as she watched him go.
Jessie turned and gave her an odd look.
9
Burton walked Best-Boy out the open gate to the pasture and slowly, down the fence line of the pasture. He felt his legs alongside the huge animal’s sides and tried to relax, blowing air out through his mouth. Best-Boy felt bouncy and energetic under him, and Burton found himself wondering when he had last been exercised. Maybe Margo was right and Wizard had been the more sensible choice? He gripped the reins tightly, then reminded himself to relax. Maybe Dancer?
Before long, the pasture brought him to the choice of two paths and he turned down the one to his right. Immediately the trail began to narrow, with foliage and bushes crowding in closer.
Burton urged Best-Boy down the narrow trail, cringing in spite of himself at the leering branches of the bordering poplars and sycamores. They raked his jacket and jeans as he passed.
Had the three women really chosen this path for a pleasure ride? It looked, if not impassable, at the very least, unpleasant. Further to his right, the trail plunged down into an ugly ravine of rocks and trail garbage--trash bags, a discarded washing machine, and a few soft drink cups, their straws still jutting out of the lids like tiny exclamation points. He kept his eyes directed between his horse's ears, afraid to influence the beast's sense of balance by leaning over. A misplaced foot in this shiny mud would bring them both down the twenty foot drop. An image of the two thousand-pound animal landing on him came unhappily to mind.
It was annoying to Burton, rather than reassuring, that his horse seemed unaware that this trail was something less comfortable or safe than any other. Best-Boy responded to Burton's riding commands--a light thigh squeeze, a tentative touch of heel to flank--with begrudging but resigned obedience. Nonetheless, the detective felt grateful for the security of the big western saddle. It straddled the Clydesdale’s back like an awkward yet comfy easy chair.
The limbs of the shrubs and saplings reached out from both sides of the trail, at varying heights, to inhibit his progress. As he trudged through the congestion of limbs, Burton gripped the reins tightly in one hand and pushed the more aggressive branches back with the other.
Suddenly, the tunnel of branches ended and he came upon the bank of a small, muddy creek, which separated him from a glowing opening of sunlight and space: the clearing where the murder had occurred. The gelding shook his head and slowed to a stop as Burton sank his spine stiffly into the saddle.
He thought of the nerve-wracking trail he'd just escaped. He had walked it at a
slow gait. Tess and Portia had reported that they and Travers had taken it at a brisk trot. After the argument, the two had left a furious and unrepentant Jilly to return to the stable. One by one--first Portia and then Tess--they had retraced their steps back to the home barn. An hour later, Best-boy had returned, riderless, to the barn.
Jack squeezed with his thighs, pushing the horse forward into the water. He forced himself to stay relaxed. Best-Boy picked his way daintily across the little stream without any hesitation. He seemed eager to reach the other side, however, and scrambled up the small, sloping far bank, surprising Jack and nearly unseating him. They left the creek behind and stepped into the clearing.
He had been here many times before, of course, but had never seen it from this height. He walked its perimeter on Best-Boy, looking through the trees. He spotted a bald eagle and moments later, an indigo bunting. He didn’t bother studying the ground--so far below him. It had been thoroughly searched and examined by his men.
He sat in the middle of the clearing, recreating the murder in his mind, trying to fix where Jilly and Tess had stood arguing on horseback. As the afternoon waned, so did the warmth from the sun. He pulled his blue-jean jacket close around his throat and pointed the horse back to the creek.
A feeling began to niggle in the back of his mind when he turned Best-Boy around for the return trip to the barn. He let the feeling alone, neither shaking it away or attempting to drag it front and center. It would explain itself in due course. Instead, he turned around in the saddle and imagined, yet again, Jilly and Best-Boy standing in the clearing next to Zanzibar and Portia, Wizard and Tess. Jilly would’ve been higher than the other two, of course. Himself, he felt agitated, yet relieved, after the harrowing pleasure trail, but the three experienced riders would be feeling...what? Exhilarated? Bored? Nothing?
They were arguing among themselves, he reminded himself. Or at least Jilly and Tess were. He developed a picture of Portia sitting primly on her gelding, staring happily at the Georgia pines rimming the clearing while her companions exchanged insults.
Tess...
Burton felt his stomach clench. He saw her in his mind’s eye, her golden hair streaming out from under her black velvet rider’s hat. Another part of him, the Detective, knew she would’ve had it pinned up or tied back, but he insisted on the other image. He saw her face frowning at Jilly while she kept Wizard on a short rein, perhaps prancing in agitation around Best-Boy while the two riders argued.
Doesn’t her own murder absolve her? he found himself wondering.
She couldn’t have done it. She fought with Jilly, yes. She lied to me out of fear and insecurity. But then someone killed her...the same someone who...
Burton shook his head in an attempt to banish the thoughts. It was no good. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He wasn’t trying to learn something new here. He was trying to set up evidence for a theory he already believed, a theory he had to believe. If Tess knew something...knew the murderer... and hadn’t told Burton...
This was stupid, he thought, struggling to push down the emotions that seemed determined to bring him weeping to his knees.
Why didn’t you talk to me, Tess? Why didn’t you tell me what you saw? I would’ve saved you. Why didn’t you trust me?
He pushed thoughts of her away, and instead concentrated on the feeling of the sun on his shirt back, the cold breeze playing with his hair. He tried to feel how the three women must have felt that afternoon. To have made that treacherous thirty-minute, conversation-inhibiting, trail ride---single file, butt to nose--only to arrive at a nonpicturesque clearing that they must have seen many times before, and then to argue bitterly among themselves.
A faint scent of rotting earth wafted across the breeze. From where he sat, towering above the bushes and clumps of trampled grass, he could easily see the beginning of the trail that marked the circular route back to the barn. It seemed less traveled--if that was possible--than the one he had taken to arrive at the clearing. Although it was a more logical trail for the three to have returned to the barn by, both Tess and Portia had insisted that they hadn’t taken it, but had turned back and followed the trail they’d come by. Now, faced with the prospect of returning to the barn by the way he’d come, Burton again experienced the niggling in his mind. This time it rushed to the forefront in a dramatic display of instinct.
The women hadn’t returned to the barn the way they said they had.
He suddenly knew this as clearly as if he’d just watched a videotape of them entering the mouth of the circular trail.
It wasn’t a logical or natural option, to return via the way he’d come. It was an ugly trail and--if the map they’d been given earlier was correct-- was a less direct way back to the barn. Burton moved toward the new trail.
Why had he and Kazmaroff simply accepted their word that they hadn’t taken this trail? Because it looked, at first glance, to be impassable or difficult? He twisted in the saddle and looked at the opening of the trail he’d just ridden on. It flowed into the clearing with few trees or branches flanking its sides, giving the impression that the whole of the trail was like that, open and spacious, green and pretty. Burton knew differently.
He turned back to the new trail. Perhaps this was just as deceiving in looks, he thought. He gave Best-Boy a squeeze with his knees and the horse entered the trail without hesitation. Narrow at first, the trail soon widened comfortably. There was room now for a canter or even a gallop if one had a little riding skill, Burton thought.
He re-ran his memory tapes to find the reason the women gave for not taking this trail. He put Best-Boy into a trot and rode the bounces and jolts comfortably in the big saddle, without bothering to try to post. The trail widened further and the red clay and grass soon turned into hard-packed dirt. Burton slowed when he saw tire marks join the trail.
Of course! This is where the groundskeeper lives, Lint. Burton rode further down the trail until it emptied into another clearing, much smaller this time. Parked under the pine and spruce trees was a dilapidated, but clearly inhabited trailer.
Burton stopped his horse.
And we dismissed this bit of information as being unimportant.
Why? he wondered as he dismounted. First, because Lint had an alibi, provided by Margo who swore she was in conference with the man during the time of the murder. And, second, because his footprint hadn’t matched the one they’d found at the murder scene.
Burton kept his horse’s reins tightly in one hand as he approached the trailer. So Lint had been eliminated as a suspect, and the two women believed because, after all, they were women and their expressing distaste at having to ride near where an odious old retard lived seemed perfectly legitimate to a couple of male chauvinist dunderheads like him and Kaz.
Yet Burton knew, without doubt, that this was the way Portia and Tess had come.
He tied Best-Boy’s reins to a bush, ignoring Margo’s earlier warning that these horses were not Western ponies and the rules of Bonanza did not apply. He crept silently up to the trailer.
As he neared, he could hear muffled voices rising and falling naturally in conversation. He peered through the dirty window of the trailer and immediately saw Bill Lint, his back to Burton, working at a small hot plate. The man was short and stocky. His shoulders seemed muscular through his thin plaid shirt as he stirred a frying pan on the coil. Quickly, Burton looked around the trailer interior for Lint’s companion. She sat quietly on the couch, across from the window. Burton caught his breath. Not only was the woman completely naked, she was staring directly at him. One hand supported her head in a casual display of insouciance -- a head covered in long blonde hair and coated in large, brown splotches of dried blood. She didn’t move, her long eyelashes didn’t blink or flutter.
Lint continued to converse brightly as he cooked. Burton stood up slowly from his crouching position and stared in horror and mounting nausea at the woman seated on the couch.
It was Jilly.
CHAPTER TEN
1
Burton kicked in the aluminum door to the trailer. He held his gun in front of him with both hands, the nose of it pointed slightly downward.
“Freeze!” He barked. “Put your hands where I can see them.” Right away, the odor from the body--visibly decomposing even at ten feet away--began to overpower Burton.
Lint jumped violently, dropping the frying pan on the floor. Onions and garlic and green peppers spilled across the chipped and peeled linoleum.
The combined smell of frying foods and the rotting corpse assaulted Burton like a weapon. Gagging, and resisting the urge to cover his nose, he grabbed Lint by the shirt and yanked him out of the trailer.
Immediately, Burton gasped in great draughts of fresh air, his gun poised on Lint.
The groundskeeper glared at Burton from under a slightly bowed head and thick eyebrows. He kept his hands in the air.
“I ain’t done nothing,” he said. “Margo said I could cook. She done give me that hot plate--”
The man reeked of garlic. Under the scent lay a more pervasive, and considerably nastier aroma.
Burton read the man his rights.
“You can say anything you want,” Lint said, lowering his hands. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”
“Move away from the trailer.” Burton wagged his gun in the direction toward the main barn. “Put your hands on top of your head. Where’s your car?”
“Don’t got no car.”
“You’re lying. I see tire tracks.”
“Don’t got no car!”
“What’s the matter, Lint? Was Jilly mean to you? Jilly call you bad names? That why you killed her?”
Lint lowered his hands.
“I didn’t kill Jilly,” he said.
“Put your hands back up and turn around. So, she just drop in for lunch...naked and dead?”
“I didn’t kill Jilly,” Lint repeated. “She’s my girlfriend. I wouldn’t hurt her none.”
Walk. Trot. Die Page 14
