The Magnum Equation

by Lisa Wysocky

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  I must have used my “outdoor” voice, as some of the other diners turned to stare. I dropped my voice to a stage whisper.

  “No. Tony and Annie may not be at the top of this game. They may have a barn that is in about the same shape as mine, but listen to me. They. Did. Not. Do. This.”

  “Cat, ease up. You’re preaching to the choir. I’m just telling you what information the police have.”

  I put down my fork and pinched the bridge of my nose. Nothing made sense, and I just wanted to go home.

  “There is one other person,” Noah said, signaling for the check.

  “I’ll get it Noah. It’s my turn.”

  Noah and I were only able to get together for dinner about once a year, even though we saw each other regularly at shows.

  “You can get the next two,” he said. “The police also know that Cam has blown through his trust fund.”

  I shared Annie’s thoughts about Cam with Noah, that Cam was dishonorable, but weak.

  “She’s right,” said Noah. “But those traits on their own don’t mean someone is or is not capable of killing.”

  Noah held the door for me as we left. I didn’t even have a doggie bag, something I almost always leave a restaurant with. Noah drove me to the hotel. Since my truck was out of commission, I’d have to arrange an early morning ride to the event with Darcy.

  “Thanks for sharing,” I said. “From the perspective of the police, it really could be any one of us, couldn’t it?”

  As I watched Noah drove away I wondered two things. Why had Noah not been included in the long list of people the police suspected? And, why had I not shared with Noah my strong suspicions about Hill Henley?

  I took a hot bath to soothe my nerves and called Brent before I went to sleep. We talked about his day and mine, except I omitted the part about almost being killed.

  Was it because I didn’t want Honeycakes to worry? Or, was it because I was losing trust in the people around me? I thought about that after we’d said goodnight. I was even beginning to suspect Noah, my friend, my confidant, my pal. Noah couldn’t be involved. Could he?

  Even though I was exhausted, I tossed and turned for several hours before I fell into an uneasy sleep. I almost wished I had stayed awake, for I had a terrible nightmare. In my dream, Sally and I were on a beautiful forested trail. We were headed downhill and there were trees and woods to our left. To the right was a cliff edge that fell hundreds of feet to an arid desert.

  As we rode, Debra Dudley jumped out of a tree and pushed me off Sally and I fell, terrified, all the way down to the desert floor. Or at least that’s where I would have landed if I hadn’t half roused myself before I went splat. When I fell back to sleep, the same dream began again. Only this time it was Jon who pushed me out of the saddle.

  The dream repeated itself over and over. The only difference was that each time I fell, a new person pushed me over the edge. By morning, each of my friends, and most of my acquaintances, had taken a turn. When I finally woke, my heart was pounding and I was cold with sweat.

  Cat’s Horse Tip #18

  “What might be irritating behavior to you, could be your horse’s way of letting you know of her concern or enthusiasm. Once you acknowledge what she is trying to tell you, the behavior should stop.”

  26

  THE NEXT MORNING MY BACK was stiffer than an old board, so Darcy and I took Reddi and Gigi to the spa. If we were stiff from the lack of truck brakes, they must be, too. Plus, I had not yet fully recovered from my fall off Sally. We each stayed on the vibration plates for a full fifteen minutes. Whatever the price, being able to move my neck and shoulders was well worth it.

  Despite my dream from the night before, I was looking forward to today. Amanda and Darcy both had western equitation classes, Bob had his trail class, and tonight I’d get to see that hunky Keith Carson.

  Darcy went to get us some breakfast, and I began my morning inspection of the other horses. I had learned long ago that the number of ways a twelve hundred pound horse could find to injure him-or herself was astounding. Constant vigilance did not prevent injuries, but quick discovery sure made the healing process quicker.

  My good spirits were dashed, however, at nine A.M. when a mechanic from Sadler Car Care called. I had left a message the night before and had hoped the fix would be simple enough that I could get my truck back today.

  Turned out that the timing of the repair wasn’t the issue. It was the cause.

  “You’ve got a couple of holes in your braking system,” said Dee. Dee was actually Delores, a trim Hispanic woman who was maybe in her late thirties. She had worked on my truck before and seemed to know her stuff.

  “What do you mean, holes?” I asked.

  “You’ve got two holes, one each in both your front and rear brake lines. Have you been driving in your pasture? Drive over some heavy brush?”

  “No.” My heart was starting to pound and I felt the blood rush from my head. I needed to sit down.

  “Then the only other possibility, in my opinion, is that the holes were intentionally put there. Got any enemies?”

  Apparently I did.

  Jon found me sitting, stunned, on a trunk in the tack room and took charge.

  He called Noah, who called the campus cops, who called cops in Nashville, who sent a team to look at my truck. That chain of events could have taken several days, but today it was accomplished in less than ninety minutes. That might be because Nashville’s West Station precinct was two blocks away from the service station. Or, it could be that the campus guys put some pressure on Nashville. In either case, it looked as if my brakes were part of a murder investigation.

  I had been worried, too, about my transmission. When Dee called to say the police had taken numerous pictures, dusted everything they needed to, and cleared the truck for repair, I asked her to give the truck a thorough going over. All the downshifting at high speeds might, I thought, have damaged something, and if the brakes had been sabotaged, then something else might have been, too.

  “Will do,” she said.

  As soon as I hung up, Noah and Jon came into the tack room with grim faces.

  “Is Darcy back yet?” Jon asked.

  When I shook my head, Jon made eye contact with Noah.

  “I just spoke with the lead investigator,” Noah said. “He wants to keep the brake thing between the three of us, not tell anyone else at the show.”

  “Not tell them my truck lost its brakes, or not tell them someone did it?” I asked. “Because just about everyone here knows about our wild ride yesterday.”

  “That it was intentional,” said Noah. “He doesn’t want anyone to know.”

  “Who doesn’t want anyone to know what?” said Darcy, lugging in a huge bag of breakfast burritos from a local restaurant, along with two large containers of orange juice from Walmart.

  “Ah … Mike Lansing doesn’t want anyone to know how much pain he’s really in,” said Noah. “It’s a guy thing. Macho man and all that.”

  I wondered about the fact that Noah had lied so easily, and hated that recent events caused me to question the integrity and motives of one of my closest friends.

  Amanda showed up in time to help get Wheeler ready. Normally all of my show students would be fully integrated into the preparation process, but Amanda’s mom always ran late, and when Mom and Amanda arrived the twins were always in tow. So, I cut Amanda a little slack.

  Amanda was nervous about her equitation class because the class was judged on the rider––the rider’s form and position, and how well he or she rode the horse. Amanda, in fact, became so nervous in the warm-up arena that she began to cry.

  “Deep breaths, kiddo,” I said, patting her knee. “Big deep breaths. You don’t want Wheeler to get nervous, too, do you?”

  She shook her head and snuffed her nose. I dug into our gate bag and pulled out a Kleenex.

  “You want to scratch?” I asked. “You don’t have to compe
te.”

  I held my breath as I hoped Amanda would not call my bluff. I’d never force her to ride, as some other trainers might, but I knew I’d be disappointed if she bailed out of the class.

  “I’m good,” Amanda said nodding her head. “I’m okay. I want to do this.”

  I listened as she talked herself back into the competition. The “psychologist” part of being a riding instructor was knowing how far to push students in the name of personal growth, and when to know the student was too overwhelmed to have any possible chance of success. Amanda just had a case of pre-show jitters. I came from the school of thought that if a competitor didn’t get at least a little bit nervous, she would not have enough edge to be at her best. Since she had begun to breathe again, Amanda was right in the zone.

  I left Amanda with Jon, and Darcy caught up with me in the seating area. She was boldly dressed almost entirely in red, but her slinky top had strategically placed black side panels that were slimming to the eye. I knew that when she got on Petey, she’d also be wearing red suede chaps that featured a black leather strip along the back of the leg that made her thighs look narrower.

  The horses and riders in Amanda’s class entered counterclockwise at the walk. The judges were looking for things such as a vertical rider alignment of the rider’s shoulder, hip and heel, and evenness from left to right. Amanda tended to hunch her weaker left shoulder and had to consciously work to keep it level with her right one.

  Presentation and turnout was also a factor, and every entry here looked like a superstar. There would be a short pattern that had to be ridden individually and Amanda and I had gone over it in detail. With a horse as experienced as Wheeler, I knew she had the potential to do well. Whether she actually would or not was up to her.

  Amanda looked good, but so did a young lady on a small bay Tennessee Walking Horse gelding. She had the form and the riding skills down pat, and it also looked as if she had a ton of confidence to go with it. The girl on the Haflinger stalled behind us also looked formidable.

  I wanted to concentrate on Amanda and her ride, but my mind could only think of the fact that someone had tried to kill Annie, Darcy, and me. In fact, thoughts were flopping so fast in inside my head that I couldn’t grasp onto any of them.

  When Darcy got up to get Petey ready for her class, I gave her a hug.

  “You look beautiful,” I said.

  At first Darcy looked embarrassed, then she grinned and hugged me before she bolted for the barn.

  Amanda and Wheeler did well on the pattern, but I was not surprised when the rider on the Tennessee Walker came out with the blue ribbon. A cute little girl with red hair who was riding a red and white Paint was second, and I was thrilled with Amanda’s third. She was, too, and seeing her smile was the biggest reward I’d had in days. The girl on the Haflinger placed fourth.

  In the next class, Darcy and Petey were impressive, if I do say so myself. Petey’s build was a bit too tall and thin for western events and he had to collect and balance himself, and shorten his stride, to be competitive. Because equitation classes are all about the rider (in theory) maybe Petey’s build worked to Darcy’s advantage. She had to work harder to get Peter’s Pride looking and moving like a western horse. The judges may have recognized that because she won her class. I was so proud of both of them that I didn’t even realize I was crying.

  “Hey, congrats!” Zach Avery crossed the holding pen near the photographer’s backdrop at the win picture area to join us.

  “Thanks.” I debated whether or not to bring up his boss, and decided on a generic, “How’s Debra?”

  “Good. You know she had nothing to do with anything that has gone on here,” he said firmly, “don’t you?”

  I had never seen Zach as defensive as he was now. But before I could comment, the photographer’s assistant pulled me toward Darcy, Petey, and the backdrop. I had to go.

  “Tell Debra … tell her I said hi,” I said.

  Then I took my place, looked into the camera, and smiled.

  My cell phone chimed just when I started to walk back to our stalls.

  “Transmission’s fine,” said Dee, “as is everything else on your truck. I wish our other customers would take as good care of their older vehicles as you do this one. We’re just finishing up, you can pick it up in an hour.

  I looked at my watch. Holy Toledo. It was two o’clock. “You still open until six?” I asked.

  Dee said that she was.

  “If I can’t get there, I’ll send someone.”

  I gave Dee my credit card number and tried to figure out how I’d pick up my truck. Bob’s trail class should begin a little after three and might go until five. I didn’t have to have my truck that evening, but I did not like to rely on others for rides to and from the hotel and show grounds.

  I would have pondered my problem longer, but when I rounded the corner to our stalls, I found two uniformed police officers from Rutherford County standing in front of my tack room. I should have known they’d show up eventually. I wanted to help them, but now was not the ideal time.

  “What can I do for you gentlemen?” I asked.

  This was a different set of cops than the ones I had spoken to previously. Jon had helped Amanda untack Wheeler and put him into his stall, and she and her family were waiting for a debrief from me. “I know we need to chat, but I’m kind of busy right now. Can you come back this evening?”

  “Now would be better, ma’am,” the older, shorter officer said. He was also pudgy. I couldn’t read his nametag, but it might have read OFFICER D. O. NUT.

  “Then I’ll have to talk as I work. I have to be on a horse in less than an hour.”

  The older cop looked around nervously. He obviously was not a “county mountie,” although Rutherford County did have a very good mounted patrol unit.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  At horse shows I sometimes kept the stall doors open and used web stall fronts. These were simply a set of nylon straps that were sewn together and secured by snaps to the open stall at about the height of the horse’s chest. This allowed the horse, in this case Sally, to stick her head and neck out into the aisle. The now open stall front allowed her to feel less confined and more part of the herd that was our stable unit.

  Sally had taken a keen interest in the older officer and angled her body so it was almost parallel to the stall aisle, then she edged her head into the aisle along the officer’s back and rested her chin on the officer’s far shoulder. He jumped about a foot and moved to the center of the aisle.

  I tried to hide my smile, but don’t think I quite managed it. Before I talked with any police officer, however, I hugged and congratulated Amanda as quickly as I could. Not because the cops were waiting, but because Amanda’s brothers had started to play spaceman in the aisle. We were all getting bombarded with the dancing red light and staccato gun noise of two toy lasers, accompanied by shrieks of delight when an invisible target had been assassinated.

  To top it off, Hank began to howl one long “aarrrrroooo” of sorrow after another. I looked to Amanda’s mother for help, but she was deep into a phone conversation and seemed oblivious to the commotion. Ambrose had covered his ears with his hands.

  “Those boys,” the younger cop asked, a glint in his eye. “Want me to arrest ’em?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I watched as he cop-walked up to the boys. Even I was intimidated, although I hadn’t done anything wrong. The boys looked up at the young officer with matching pairs of round, blue eyes. At first it looked as if the junior cop had everything under control, but then the boys looked at each other and opened fire on him. The yelling that ensued from all three, along with a series of ear-splitting growling, howling, barks from Hank, was not pretty.

  The pudgy cop and I watched for a few seconds, then he said, “Guess I’d better go in and hep my boy there.”

  I have to say, all it took to get the twins’ attention was one piercing blow of the officer’s whistle, a
stern look, and then it was over. The boys were sitting cross-legged on the floor of the aisle facing a stall wall, and their mother was getting a long overdue lecture on parenting.

  Whew. The sudden silence made my ears ring. The horses shuffled in their stalls, then Darcy, Petey, and Jon arrived. Too bad they had missed all the fun.

  “I got hung up doing a Horses in the Morning interview,” said Darcy looking at the boys and giving the cops a thumbs up. “I never know what to say during interviews. So, where did you go?”

  I told her that Dee had called and I had to make arrangements about the truck. The truck! I had forgotten about it.

  Jon must have seen the panic on my face. “If you and Darcy can handle Bob’s trail class, I’ll find a ride into Nashville and get the truck,” he said.

  Relief washed over me. Jon always had my back and I don’t think I was ever appreciative enough. I nodded my head in agreement. It was all I could manage at the moment.

  Jon put the bags of hamburgers and fries that he had gotten for our lunch on a tack trunk and Hank raised his head and sniffed appreciatively.

  “I can’t eat a thing,” I told him. “You can have mine.”

  Hank instantly was transformed into the happiest dog in the world. If only people could appreciate the little things, as dogs did.

  I gathered Bob’s tack and began to hang it on a portable saddle rack that Jon placed in the aisle. Amanda and her family had left, thank goodness, and the police had also departed after an emergency call. I was sure their departure was temporary, though the timing was good. I could better deal with them later on.

  I checked the stalls and all of the horses seemed to be dozing. Yep, a nap is just what I would have chosen after a visit from the twins. But, I did not have that luxury. Bob and a trail course were on my agenda instead.

  I don’t know where Bob and I placed, but it wasn’t in the top six. I felt bad for Bob, and for Doc Williams too, because 100 percent of the fault in our not placing was mine. I judged the poles wrong and encouraged Bob to stretch his stride in walking through a series of them when he should have shortened it. Poor guy, he always wanted to do the right thing and I sensed his confusion. He was right and I was wrong, and he did not know what to do. In the end he decided to do just as I asked, and we ticked two of them.