by Lisa Wysocky
Cam had moved the gun into his left hand. His right arm was now wound tightly across my shoulders, bending at the elbow to bring his fist into my throat. He pushed into my neck just tightly enough to allow some passage of air, as long as I did not move. He also had the colt’s leather lead looped around his right hand, and that dug uncomfortably into my neck. My vision was, for the most part, blocked by the gun he held to my forehead with his left hand. All in all, it was a most uncomfortable situation.
Maybe I could get the colt to move, to pull Cam off balance. But then the gun might go off, too. I didn’t know what to do. Out of the corner of my right eye I could see the two remaining colts and their handlers standing about thirty feet from the out-gate, as close together as one can with yearling colts. The stands above them, and, I assumed, throughout the arena, had emptied, save for a few morbid spectators perched cautiously in the far top seats. Vision to my left was entirely blocked by Cam’s massive chest. I could smell his sweat, and my fear.
“Cam,” I pleaded.
“Don’t say a word, or you’ll die right here and now.”
I started to gag as he pushed harder into my throat. There was sweat now too, his warm, mine cold, and the muscles of his body were as tight as piano wires. I knew before this was over that he would kill me.
Finally realizing that the judges were missing his big show, he jerked us a quarter turn back to the right, again facing the gate. Peripheral vision came into use as I caught Noah approaching us diagonally from the rear. I knew better than to let Cam know he was coming, but my relief at help so close at hand made me relax enough that he couldn’t help but notice. Cam turned his head toward me, and spotted Noah.
Before any of us had time to think, Noah hit the arena floor, grabbed handfuls of the footing, and threw them at the colt. Noah had the fortitude to do what I couldn’t. Already nervous, the unexpected sting of the dirt clods hitting his body made the colt jump forward, knocking loose Cam’s grip on my throat. I, too, made a beeline for the ground, and rolled under the colt knowing that his sharp, dancing hooves posed much less danger to me than the gun in Cam’s hand. There was a series of pops, however, and the heated sting of something grazing my left shoulder. I heard Noah cry out behind me and sensed his movements had stilled.
Fury welled inside me and my Irish temper raised its ugly head. How dare Cam shoot Noah! Glancing through the colt’s prancing legs, I saw Cam turning wildly this way and that, pointing the gun at the stands only to whirl around and aim yet again in another direction. Rising quickly on the colt’s right side, I willed my trembling fingers to obey, and somehow unsnapped the chain end of the colt’s lead where it fastened to the halter. Using the halter to position the colt, I pushed him between Cam and myself. Cam was so concerned about his colt winning, that I felt the chances of Cam hurting the colt were slim to none. Besides, if my plan worked, the colt wouldn’t be between us for long.
There was blood. Mine, I guessed as I saw a few drops splatter on the colt’s right front stocking.
To my left I caught the movement of one of Noah’s legs, and relief flooded through me. Noah was alive! Just then one of the colts near the gate, a stunning Andalusian, backed away from his handler and reared. Cam’s frightened colt took that opportunity to run toward the gate, and as the snap from the lead to the halter had been released, there was nothing to stop him.
As I watched the colt bolt toward the other horses, I glimpsed movement in the stands and saw several armed men take positions.
“How did you know it was me,” Cam said finally, pointing the gun at my head.
“I didn’t. Not until a few minutes ago.” My words were surprisingly steady, considering I was about to be blown to bits. “Then I figured out how you knew Mike Lansing’s cinch had been cut long before anyone else did. According to Melanie and Judy, everyone was so concerned about Mike and Rabbit that they just pulled the saddle off and put it in the tack room. No one looked at it until later in the day. You couldn’t have known it was cut that early in the game unless you were the one who did it. You also knew Mike would rather scratch his entries than let someone else show them.
“In fact, I think it was you who told me that, once upon a time. By the morning of Mike’s accident everyone had security near their stalls. You couldn’t have gotten to another colt if your life depended on it. So to keep Mike’s yearling out of competition you simply removed Mike. How am I doing?”
“Pretty good, Cat. But then you always were.”
I ignored his words. “But you couldn’t have known that Judy would take the decision out of Mike’s hands and let Tony show the colt.”
I had run out of words and there was nothing left between us. No love, no conversation, no colt to physically block the way. I looked down the barrel of the gun and began to shake. This was it. This was all there was. I felt I should be praying, but could only think of all the things I’d wanted to do, and never got around to. Brent and I had talked about spending a week in New England, except we hadn’t found the time. Now we never would.
“I didn’t want it to end like this, Cat. Really, I didn’t.” Cam was sobbing now, and so was I. “And I want you to know that you are, by far, the best horsewoman I ever had the privilege to know.”
That said, Cam slowly turned the gun from me. He brought his hand up and pressed the gun to his temple. And with tears running down his face, he pulled the trigger.
Epilogue
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY I SAT on my front porch early in the morning nursing a large glass of Sprite, orange juice, and ice as I tried to make sense of all that had happened.
After Cam … fired the gun (those are the only words I can use) the arena was filled with silence. No one breathed. No one moved. I stood there, silent and frozen along with what seemed like the entire world.
I tried to move my feet, to start walking to the gate, to run, but there was a disconnection between my brain and my muscles, and all I could do was stand there. Then it seemed as if the universe jump-started itself and everyone nearby poured onto the floor of the arena.
There must have been at least two-dozen police, security, and show staff directing the movement of people and trying to secure the area. Then Jon was there, wrapping his arms around me.
“Breathe, Cat,” he said. “Try to breathe.”
And little by little, I did.
The arena, of course, was declared a crime scene. I don’t think anyone wanted to compete in there anyway, so the classes for the rest of the show were split between the outdoor and warm-up arenas.
Yes, the show did go on. Noah called another meeting and everyone felt that to shut down the competition would be to let Cam win. For it was Cam all along. In his mind, everything he had been given in life, all the money and privilege, had been taken away. His business was not doing well and the only way he could see to revive it was for his yearling colt to win at this prestigious all-breed event. A win like that could set him up with stud fees for the next two decades.
For Cam, competition was not about improving his performance, or the performance of his horse. For Cam, it was all about the win.
Cam did everything he could to ensure that his colt would be named champion. First, he scoped out the toughest contenders. Then he mixed a dried concentrate of persimmon, which is exceedingly caustic to a horse’s stomach, with sugar and water and dumped the mix into buckets that he placed in the stalls of Starmaker and Temptation in the middle of the night. By morning, he had retrieved the buckets.
He also slipped the colts lots of fresh persimmon the first two nights they were on the grounds. The colts ate the sweet fruit, seeds and all, which mashed together in their intestines tight enough to cause blockages.
Persimmon contains a lot of tannic acid. Tannic acid lowers blood pressure, and it was enough to cause Temptation to die and for Dr. Carruthers to think, momentarily, that Starmaker was dead.
Cam also added a smaller amount of persimmon powder and sugar to Annie’s tea after she began to qu
estion him the morning that she fainted. Her questions were innocent. She was only concerned about Star and the other colts, but Cam could not take any chances. As we had all attended the same regional, national, and world championship Appaloosa shows for years, he knew that Annie took medication for high blood pressure. Enough tannic acid combined with her meds could have killed her. Fortunately, Annie only drank a little of the tea.
I don’t think murder was on his mind when Cam frayed Mike Lansing’s cinch. But, Cam knew that Mike was a threat in any halter class. He was the best at presentation, set up, and in showing a horse perfectly to a judge. Cam felt he had to get Mike out of the way––and he did.
I’ll never know if Cam sliced partway through the billets on my Steuben at the same time, or if it was later, or why he felt he had to do that. Was it because I had rejected his offer of dinner? Or, did he think I had seen or heard something that might point to him? Speculation was pointless, but my mind kept turning it around anyway.
There were a lot of things we’d never know. How Cam got to my truck brakes, for instance. The holes in my brake system had been small. Did he do it there in Murfreesboro and it took until the return trip for the brakes to fail? Or, did he follow us to Ashland City and wait until we were asleep?
Cam took a huge risk the night of the exhibitor party when he drugged my drink. What if he did not have the opportunity to get me alone? What if someone saw us together? Maybe he hoped I’d just go into a coma and my breathing would stop.
No one will also ever know if Cam planned to shoot himself if his colt did not win, or if it was a spur of the moment decision. Noah said the police thought Cam planned to shoot all of the colts that placed ahead of his, making his colt the winner by gruesome default. It all came down to the balance between how badly Cam wanted to win and what he would do to make sure that happened. It was the ultimate magnum equation.
Fortunately, the bullet that grazed my shoulder was just that, a graze. The area was still covered by a little cotton and tape, but it was healing nicely. Noah had not fared as well, however. The bullet that struck him broke a rib, but the rib also deflected the bullet, which exited Noah’s side without hitting any major organs or arteries. He was patched up and hospitalized overnight, and will soon be fine.
I sighed, and took a swig of my juice mix wishing that I had an apple doughnut to go with it. Out in the field in front of me, Sally and Gigi trotted to the gate as Jon came to bring them up to their stalls for the day. It was going to be a scorcher and they would handle the heat much better inside the barn with fans blowing in front of their stalls, than outside in the sun.
Gigi jigged as Jon led her toward the barn. I was glad that Mason and I had decided to pull the filly out of competition for the rest of the year so she could learn to be a horse. The mare halter championships had been rescheduled for Saturday, and Gigi, as champion yearling, looked beautiful. It is tough for younger horses to compete in championship classes against older horses, and a six-year-old Arabian mare of Debra Dudley’s won. I was thrilled for her and for Zach, yet still heartbroken for them over the loss of Temptation. Mason and I both felt that Gigi had done enough winning for a while. She was like a giggly eleven-year-old girl. Now she needed to grow up.
Sally was also getting a little break. Agnes and I had not yet decided if we would enter her at the world championships this fall. Agnes wanted Sally to “tell” us whether or not she was supposed to go. So far the mare had stayed mum on the topic.
Agnes was anything but mum, however, about the many “clues” Sally had given us all week. Agnes bragged to anyone who listened that Sally balked every time she entered the arena because she knew something bad was going to happen there. Then there was the time Sally stood in halter pose in her stall. Agnes claimed the mare was telling us that something would happen in a halter class. The sharp kicks to the stall, in Agnes’s mind, were warnings from Sally about gunshots. And the round balls of dirt that Sally spit out? Bullets.
I still was not convinced of Sally Blue’s psychic abilities, but I was thrilled, however, that she had been named reserve champion junior performance horse at the all-breed event. It was a huge honor. The grand championship and the bonus money that went with it had been earned by Reed Northbrook’s Bavarian Warmblood gelding, Kaspar. While I had been dodging bullets, both figuratively and metaphorically, Reed and Kaspar had quietly cleaned up on all of the competition’s big jumping and Dressage events. Reed had also scarfed up the top trainer award.
I was, oddly enough, heartbroken over Cam’s death. I no longer cared for him in “that way,” but he was someone I had once loved. It had only been three days so the shock was still very new, but I had a feeling I would be processing his death for a long time.
I was also still processing my relationship with Brent. I really cared about Honeycakes. He was comfortable, warm, kind, handsome, and fun. But did I love him? Maybe. I realized I had trust issues, but Brent’s jealousy was unsettling. I was glad that Brent was one thing I did not have to deal with right now.
Instead, I got to spend the day with my dear friends. Tony and Annie were staying a few days with me––and with Jon. Starmaker was improving rapidly and the two men were going to pick him up this afternoon, then bring him here for a few days of R&R before Tony and Annie headed home to Oklahoma.
The screen door slammed and Darcy wandered onto the porch in shorts and a tank top. During her Youth Watch search for clues at the show, Darcy had spoken several times to kids who did student security at MTSU, and had even talked with one of the horse science professors.
The good news was that Darcy had decided that, after graduation from her exclusive private high school, she wanted to study horses at our local state school.
She hadn’t approached her decision with Mason yet, but it would be a battle when she did. I knew he hoped for Yale or Vassar, or another ivy-league college for her, but the reality was her that grades weren’t good enough. Darcy was a bright but uninterested student. What interested her was the subject of horses.
I looked at my young friend and knew I’d go to bat for her, whatever she chose. If I could convince her to tell her dad that she’d reach for a graduate degree, it might make the choice easier on them both.
The most exciting thing on my horizon, though, was that my hot, hunky neighbor Keith Carson had just hired me to teach him to ride. He was doing a duet with a country music starlet and they were going to shoot a video that involved horses for their single this fall. I had a sneaking suspicion that Keith was going to need a lot of lessons. Hot dawg!
THE END
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
1. Do you agree with Agnes and think that Sally Blue is psychic?
2. How do you think the relationship between Jon and Tony will progress now that their secret is out in the open?
3. Why do you think Cat feels so close to Annie?
4. Is Agnes someone you think you’d like, or do you think she would be an annoying person to know?
5. Will Cat and Brent’s relationship stand the test of time? Why or why not?
6. Which horse is your favorite and why?
7. Do you think having Ambrose around deterred any attacks against Cat or her horses?
8. Murder and sabotage aside, would you like to attend an all-breed event such as this? Why or why not?
9. Does Cat have feelings for Keith Carson, or is it just as she says––a schoolgirl crush?
10. What did The Magnum Equation teach you about horses that you did not already know? About people?
11. Do you think Cat does well in emergencies, or not?
12. If you could give Cat one piece of advice about life, what would it be?
13. Will Darcy really go to college? If so, to a state school, or to a prestigious university as her father wants?
14. Despite the problems, do you feel this national all-breed show will continue, and be held again in following years?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Wyso
cky is an award-winning author, clinician, riding instructor, and horsewoman who helps humans grow through horses. She is a PATH International instructor who trains horses for therapeutic riding and other equine assisted activities and therapies. In addition, Lisa is the executive director of the nonprofit organization Colby’s Army (ColbysArmy.org) formed in memory of her son. Colby’s Army helps people, animals, and the environment. Lisa splits her time between Tennessee and Minnesota, and you can find her online at:
Facebook.com/ThePowerofaWhisper
on Twitter @LisaWysocky, or at:
LisaWysocky.com or CatEnrightStables.blogspot.com.
Author photo by Monica Powell, wardrobe by Wrangler/VF Jeanswear, hair by Bill Vandiver at The Edge Salon.
GLOSSARY
At halter: A class where horses are led, and judged on conformation and movement.
Cinch: A broad strap attached to a Western saddle. It goes around the horse’s belly to secure the saddle.
Droppings: A polite word for horse poop.
Elimination round: First phase of a class with many entries, where some are eliminated due to low scores.
First call: An announcement that lets exhibitors know to head to the warm-up arena or holding pen for their class.
Flying lead change: At the canter, a horse leads with either the left or the right front leg. In a flying change, the horse changes leads without breaking stride.
Girth: A broad strap attached to an English saddle. It goes around the horse’s belly to secure the saddle.
Half-pass: An advanced move where a horse travels sideways and forward at the same time; a lateral movement.
Horn: The knob on the front of a western saddle. It is used to hang things from, or as a place to wrap a rope around. Inexperienced riders use it to hold on, which only serves to give them even less control over their horse.
Hunter: A horse or class that is judged on how well the horse gets over a fence.
Impulsion: The forward movement of a horse; also helps a horse utilize the power in its hindquarters.
