by Lisa Preston
When I landed that account, Guy made up new words to an old song and tried to get me to sing, “I Shod the Sheriff.” It went on and on, eventually allowing as to how I shod the sheriff’s horses, not the actual sheriff.
I felt a surly coming on, but this Suit Fellow was one of those rare men that can see a surly settling ’round my shoulders and make nice before I soak in it.
He now looked all pleasant and interested and good stuff, bringing both his hands to clasp friendly-like on the tabletop. “Miss Dale—”
“Rainy.”
He made a gentle little wave with his hands. “Sure. Rainy. I don’t want to upset you and I sure appreciate you helping us out—”
“No problem,” I cut in, even while warning myself it wasn’t nice to interrupt. My heart’s new goal is to be nice. My mind chose that moment to remind me I was supposed to have bought my mama a Mother’s Day card when I was in town earlier.
Suit Fellow nodded, pretending I was being as nice as he all the sudden was, letting me get away with a snitty bit of folding my arms across my chest.
“The thing is,” he said, “we’re wondering why this rasp of yours might have been at the Harpers’ place.”
“Well, first of all, why do you think it’s necessarily my rasp?” I asked. “And B, exactly where was the rasp?”
More little calming motions. “Now hang on. How about you tell me precisely where you were at the Harper residence. Can we start with that? I’d like to know about your visit there, in detail. Tell me everything you noticed, everything you did.”
I gave an accounting of my afternoon at the Flying Cross, drowning the man in such detail that my talk could have been used as a lecture for beginning shoeing students, including how sharp freshly rasped—perfectly level to receive a shoe—hoof walls are. I flashed my scraped arm. “. . . And then Spartacus was a real pill for that fourth foot, swaying and aggressive. I was fixing to whack him again but I didn’t . . .”
While the detective’s eyes glazed over, I gave an excruciating recital of doing those last clinches. Gorgeous clinches if I did say so myself. I needed to wash my whistler after my speech, and downed half the soda in a few good swallows.
This detective was a methodical note-taker. When I finished drinking my soda, he said some quick words about it being the end of an interview and clicked off a tape recorder that had been holding down the table. He pushed papers like so, and checked some forms on a clipboard, then stepped out to murmur with a couple men in uniform and came back in to purse his lips before he said he didn’t have any more questions at that moment.
He was, I decided, like a warmblood. One of the good, big European breeds like a Trakehner or an Oldenburg or a Hanoverian. Warmbloods have the size and strength of a Thoroughbred but are less flighty. Guy is athletic and rangy-muscled like a race horse, but of course, looking at him, palomino is what springs to mind, because he’s such a light blond and has that skin that’s barely tan.
Faking a friendly, Suit Fellow, my own personal plainclothes deputy who spent the last half hour of my life, said, “So you weren’t inside the Harper house at all?”
I shook my head. I thought of Patsy-Lynn’s unlikely invitation for coffee that I’d turned down.
“Great, it’ll be easy to eliminate you then. Would you care to give us a set of your fingerprints?”
My knee-jerk reaction was feeling not at all sure I cared to give him any such thing. “Do I have to?”
“No, you do not have to give up your prints at this point. I am asking for your consent.”
“But I don’t have to.” I meant to ask, but it came out a relieved statement, ’cause I just wanted to go home.
“No, indeed.” He reached for the soda can, gripping it lightly by the rim again and whipped it away. “I can just lift them off of this.”
Jeez Louise, I thought, unable to come up with a more brainy notion.
Next they wanted to photograph my arm, which was a first. They shot it plain, then with a ruler held against the abrasion Spartacus had blessed me with.
Golden Boy was waiting for me in the station lobby and I drove us home, which felt like it would be the last of my anything for the night. I wasn’t ready to talk about any of this police stuff.
Guy let it go. All the way home he told me about some stuffed onions he was going to try out on me. He’d done what he calls prep earlier, so in about fifteen minutes, the little house smelled like scent heaven. He chopped cheese for Charley’s dinner bowl, then finished our grub. Wild rice and walnuts and apples and squash, barely cooked, added to black beans and corn, then roasted together in the onions’ shells with cheese broiled on top. It is a thing to behold with the nose and eyes and mouth, an onion like this.
Red onions, of course, because Guy likes color in food. He lectures on it if given a chance, but I’m pretty stingy doling out those kinds of chances. I guess the cooking school where Guy got his training harped on using local produce as some kind of gotcha. Anyways, he goes on a bit more than a body can stand about fresh, local bounty and color and flavors. And he blabs about the intrinsic value and protein potential of combining squash and corn and beans. The man makes pumpkin soup, for goodness sake. I mean, it’s good, real good, and sticks to the ribs fair enough, and, in truth, I’d never eaten so good in my life.
But, no matter how healthy a person tries to be or eat, bad news could always be lurking. Look at Patsy-Lynn Harper. Did she know that afternoon was going to be her last? She was alive and thinking about paneling for the tack room, holding a cold soda pop, able to feel it all.
Actually, when I thought back, Patsy-Lynn seemed edgy-clingy, like she really wanted me to hang out with her at the Flying Cross. I frowned. The man serving me dinner noticed.
“We can talk about anything,” was his first try. “Anything and everything.”
That was too silly to merit me making my lips move in response. Charley and I passed a look that let me know my dog’s the only one who understands. Guy will never get it like Charley does. Charley and I know there’s chunks of everyone that stay apart from the world and that’s the way it has to be. Guy thinks people can talk about anything. Just the idea ticked me off and I had half a mind to light into him for a diversion.
“They don’t actually say she killed herself,” I blurted. “They’re investigating.”
“Isn’t that just routine though? I mean, that they ask all kinds of people for statements and things like that. Really, what is there to investigate?”
“I s’pose . . .” I thought about them wanting my fingerprints, wanting to know if I’d been inside the house.
“If she didn’t kill herself,” Guy asked, “who would kill her? Who do they think did it?”
“I wonder,” I said, creeping myself out with what seemed logical.
“What do you wonder?”
“I wonder if they’re wondering if I killed her.” They did suspect me, didn’t they?
He laughed. “You’re a gentle soul. You’re not capable of murder.”
Of all the stupid things to say. I’m part-Texican. Of course, I can kill. Does he check his noodle at the door?
“You don’t know me,” I told him. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
He looked edgy, like he always does when I go black on him, but honestly, he brings this on with his dumb talking. If he knew the truth about me, he’d likely run screaming right out of the county. So, of course, I’ve never told him and, of course, that’s a lump between us that’ll be ugly always. Starting with a scar, so to speak, so where can we go from here? I try not to think about it because the headache gets so bad so quick it can make my eyes wet.
* * *
Later, reaching for my hand and rubbing his thumbs over my palm, Guy asked in that entreating way he has, “Come to bed with me tonight?”
A blur of fast fur hopped up onto the back of the sofa. Made me flinch. Spooky, Guy’s cat, hisses and scratches, and throws up on people’s shoes a lot. If he didn’t, he
would be kind of pretty to look at with his chocolate coat. I don’t take trash off cats. I’ve called him Pukey, but Guy isn’t having that.
I know, I know, what kind of a guy has a cat anyways?
Still, when I don’t sleep on my cot in the garage, Spooky the Pukey doesn’t get to sleep in Guy’s bedroom, even though that’s where the cat lives when I’m not there.
Other than not seeing eye to eye on the Guy issue and the shoe-vomiting thing, Spooky and I do okay, I guess, and Guy tries to be a good sport about having hooked up with a dog and horse gal who doesn’t get cats.
When I nodded my agreement to going to his bedroom, Guy started shedding his clothes as he headed down the little hallway.
I followed Guy to Spooky’s sanctuary.
The double bed is pushed against the wall, so there’s more floor space for the exercises he does on the rug, but it means one person’s sort of trapped in the bed. Guy watched me pop open the snaps on my shirt. He’d rather do it himself. He looks like a kid at Christmastime and says he’d like to be the one to undress me, like unwrapping a present, but it makes me tighten up, so he’s learned to hold off. That man can undress himself quicker than anyone else in the world. It’s amazing. He pulls his button-down shirts right over his head and his jeans drop like he’s standing over an intense pocket of gravity.
Yep, lean, rangy Thoroughbred, if they came in palomino. He has defined, flat muscles in his arms, chest, and belly. Then I saw he had a rough mark across his side, bruised, red, and decorated with little bits of fresh scab.
“Yowie,” I said. “How’d you get that?”
“What?”
I pointed. He glanced, then shrugged.
“But don’t you remem—”
“Shh,” he whispered. “Come here, will you? Couldn’t you use a back rub?”
Chapter 7
COME SUNUP WHEN THE FIRST MORNING rays kissed the seedheads of the brome growing wild, I dumped a handful of oats, top-dressed with the vitamin and mineral supplement I favor, in a bucket for Red. He was doing those muted whinnies where the nostrils wiggle out throaty little nickers. His rump showed a fresh scrape, maybe from a rough rock when he rolled. Like any healthy horse with a minor injury, he needed no doctoring. The wound was dry and half-healed already. Still, Red nuzzled me, appreciating my inspection and returning the attention. He’s a doll in the mornings.
The ache of having lost my horse, taking years to get him back, and the rest of it—of how I could pick one thing and not another—all boiled up. I brushed it away by currying Red, loving his strong horse scent.
We’d been several days without rain, so I used my aquarium net to strain the water trough clean of gunk. After sturdying up this old lean-to at Guy’s place, I’d added a gutter and made it run into the trough, so rainwater is what keeps Red’s palate from parching. Guy thought I was almighty clever and—being’s he’s way into conservation-type things, all but lip-locks trees—he praised my water collection system no end.
To me, it was just a quickie, inexpensive improvement to Red’s living situation. I wanted my horse to have a good home. The worst thing about it now is that he lives alone and horses really shouldn’t. They’re social, herd animals and they need their own kind for company. No, I didn’t like Red living alone.
Charley trotted up and wanted to know if I’d be riding.
“You bet.” I slipped Red’s hackamore on, hauled myself onto his back, and gathered the mecate reins.
It’s a work of art, my mecate is, a whole twenty-two feet long when not doubled up to be reins, made of hand-braided horsehair. The fiador steadying the braided rawhide bosal to the latigo headstall is horsehair, too. The works had been a gift from the people who’d owned Red’s mother. The mecate and the foal I named Red were the best presents any ten-year-old girl could ever receive. I’d ground-worked Red for all my tween years, swore I wouldn’t start him ’til he was four. But by then, I’d lost him.
Getting Red back honored the kindness of the folks who gave the colt and the mecate to me, but I really reclaimed my horse to mend myself. And it was only patching, because in one big way, what I did by getting my horse back—in light of what I could have been trying to do instead—was the most unworthy thing in the world.
Still, riding out is when I’m happiest. Horseback, followed by my dog, I’m as happy as I get.
Charley is invisible when I ride, because he positions himself right on the horse’s heels. Red has had to learn to live with Charley’s heeling. A herding dog is either a header or a heeler, and there’s no arguing the point with the dog—it’s hard-wired. Charley heels, getting right on the end of the livestock he’s moving. Early on, Red tried to solve the annoyance by creaming Charley’s corn, but herding dogs are the most agile beings on earth. Red never managed to do any good taking shots at the panting little Australian shadow. My gelding learned to live with it. Maybe aging is all about getting used to things or trying to fix them. I’d woken up that morning burning to make right, to pay condolences, remembering that I had Turned Over a New Leaf.
Through pastures, state land, and undeveloped tracts, there’s a way to ride dirt almost to the grocery store at the edge of Cowdry. Landscaping trees in the parking lot are mighty handy since there’s no hitching posts.
“Wait here,” I told my pretty good horse.
Charley wavered, deciding whether to watch my horse or follow me, but he planted his stub tail when I told him to wait. He would wait forever.
Inside the grocery store, I found the sympathy cards and wiped my wet eyes. Well, isn’t one of the saddest things about a person’s passing that someone else grieves? That wasn’t quite right, but the thought of Patsy-Lynn dying ate on me. I felt for Mr. Harper.
The first card seemed okay—condolences for your bereavement on the cover and all about treasured time and memories inside—so I got it and a matching envelope, then a card for my mama. Walking past the Milk Duds with determination, I got in line. Then who do I see but Cherry Edelman.
Cherry will probably always be someone who reminds girls like me why we never got picked for cheerleading. She must braid her hair every night to get that crimped look. Wasn’t that a thing a generation back? I’ve been in schools in LA and it kind of cracks me up how you can drive a thousand miles away and it’s like going back in time. Country folk are not up to speed with how people are dressing in fancy places, but some of them, like Cherry, think they are, yet they’re decked out like the Californians were forever ago.
Her nails are always long and polished and her clothes are always coordinated-looking, with colors and everything going on. And always, always, she’s clean. For mercy’s sake.
But her displaying the hots for the man I keep company with was the best reason for me to give Cherry little time.
She looked up from her little bag of goods she’d just bought. “Rainy!” She’s a gusher. I just eyed her and she prattled on, commenting on my card—ooh, someone got a birthday or did someone die?—like she had to get a word quota in for the encounter. When I allowed who the card was for, her eyes got wide. I had the unkind thought that she’d just realized there was an opening for the job of rich widower’s new wife.
“So, hey, how arrrree you doin’?” Cherry asked.
She sort of coos and trills. She’d have made an excellent pigeon.
I allowed, “Fine,” before stopping because she clutched her hands to the base of her neck.
Cherry looked out the store window to where Red was tied. “You prefer that thing to Guy’s motorcycle, huh?”
“He has a scooter,” I told her. “Guy couldn’t ride a motorcycle to save his soup.”
She fell in step with me as I walked out. “Scooter, motorcycle, what’s the difference?” Cherry waved her hand and rolled her eyes then started rummaging in her purse. There’s purse-women and then there’s gals like me. That’s assuming there’s other gals like me though. Maybe I’m alone.
Not that she was really asking, but I’m for educa
ting where it’s needed, so I said, “A scooter doesn’t have a clutch in your hand and a gear shift under your toe. It’s more like a plastic bike with an automatic transmission. All you do is twist the thingy and it goes.” I’m pretty sure that’s how it works, anyways.
“Twist the thingy?” Cherry looked coy, like we were talking about our sex lives. She found what she was looking for in her purse and made the lipstick rise up out of its case in a way that about made me blush.
I cleared things up for her. “The throttle.”
Okay, I ride neither scooter nor motorcycle myself. Fell over the one time I tried Guy’s scooter-thingy and swore off for life, but that’s not really the point. The point is—
“Well, I wouldn’t pass up too many rides on it if I were you.” Cherry blabbered on even as she wiped lipstick, whorehouse red, on her mouth and a bit beyond.
Guy taking me for any kind of ride is about none of her business. I got out of there pointing across the parking lot with, “Say, Cherry, looky. There’s a man yonder must need a woman all over himself.” And I tried not to mind her scowl. Anyways, she looked where I’d pointed and I just loved that. Nothing but asphalt and a few cars between us and the next building.
It’s the only brick building in town, the vet’s office, stately-like and nice looking with plants in curvy paths around the edge. Vass, the old vet, retired not long after I started getting known ’round here as a shoer. I liked the old vet a lot and he’d still see my critters if I had need.
A new vet, Nichol, came to town not long after me and took over Doc Vass’s office and clients, again a large animal vet who did a mixed practice, seeing dogs and cats as well. New Vet and I first butted heads when he left me bristling over orders for a shoeing job on a foundered horse. And I was right, did it my way and the horse was better off. The thing is, I know New Vet realized I was right later on, but he wasn’t a big enough man to say so.
