Maybe Sam was right. Maybe these people had killed Joelle Chauncey. She began her mental list with ‘pretentious’.
The woman opened the door slowly. It was, in fact, a beautiful door, oak with a stained-glass window. Sonora had priced one once. Over a thousand. This one had probably cost more, like everything else on this farm.
Sam had his ID at the ready, so Sonora left hers in her purse. ‘We’re Detectives Blair and Delarosa, Cincinnati Police Department.’
The woman looked at them with a mild and unenthusiastic curiosity. She cocked her head to the left, one leg bent, the other toe to the floor, like a ballerina. An odd stance, though she looked comfortable.
‘I’m surprised’ – she dragged the word out – ‘that Mr Hoiken didn’t announce you. Mr Hoiken is our … security guard.’ She cocked her head in the other direction, giving them her full regard. ‘Cliff’s not here. But I’m here. Do you want me?’
Sam was smiling, as if he couldn’t help himself, and Sonora wondered what he thought was so funny.
‘And you are?’ Sonora asked.
The woman looked at her. Languidly. She had, Sonora thought, the largest nostrils she’d ever seen on any living creature who was not also on exhibit at a zoo.
‘It’s such a funny thing, when someone comes to your own doooor, then wants to know who you are.’ She had the kind of Southern accent one rarely heard outside of movies like Gone with the Wind. The drawl was clearly an ingrained habit, and it slowed conversation. One simply had to wait for her to get the words out. ‘But I don’t mind introducing myself. I’m Vivian Bisky.’ She held out a hand for both of them to shake, which they did.
Her hand once more her own, she ran her fingers through hair that was a flat-looking meld of brown and gray. Sonora wondered why Vivian Bisky did not go to a drug-store and pick a number. On the plus side, the hair was cut short, over the top of her neck, full and soft. Her eyes were brown, deep-socketed and made up with brown eye pencil, eyebrows plucked and filled back in. Her skin looked tissue-thin and fragile, likely oiled by something expensive every night, but her wrinkles were deeply etched into a permanent freckled tan that was, oddly, the most attractive part about her.
‘Why don’t the two of you come in, and tell me what it is you’re doing on my doorstep this time of night. It must be important for you to come all this way, and not call first.’ She waved a hand, and opened the door wide. Sonora half expected her to precede them into the room, and was almost disappointed when the woman’s notions of courtesy kept her in the small, well-lit foyer, while the two of them filed inside.
‘Please, sit down, if you want. I was just having a glass of wine before bed. It helps me relax. Can I get you something? I have hot tea, if you don’t drink.’
Sonora caught Sam’s look. A tea drinker.
Vivian Bisky left the front door open to the night. Sonora was annoyed. Doors needed to be closed after dark.
The woman paused in front of the kitchen. She was not one of those hostesses who cared whether you drank or not. She would go through the motions – check, checkmate. None of this ‘try my fried chicken or my feelings will be hurt’ that seemed common to the Southerners Sonora had met in the past.
But in spite of the accent, which sounded more like affectation than anything else, Sonora recognized a true woman of the South. Though clearly intelligent, she might well pretend otherwise, and there was no way in the world that she would be hurried. Sonora gritted her teeth, and prepared to be patient. Vivian Bisky was a Tennessee Williams character come to life – and if she was aware that she was not in the deep South of the forties and fifties, she did not show it.
Perhaps she had not yet noticed.
Sam and Sonora both declined the woman’s hospitality. Sonora chose the couch where the woman had been sitting, and Sam raised an eyebrow at her, but sat beside her, fishing the book up from between the deep cushions and setting it on the coffee table.
The Man Who Listens To Horses, by Monty Roberts.
Vivian Bisky took her glass of wine and settled into the rocking chair. ‘Have you read that?’ she asked, sounding almost human. ‘If you love horses, you have to read this book. Are you just police officers, or are you horse lovers too?’
The question, as Sonora saw it, was are you one of them, or one of us.
‘I have a horse,’ she said. Saw Sam roll his eyes, which made her decide to hit him the moment they were alone together in the car. He pulled out the mini-recorder and set up a tape and Vivian Bisky pretended not to notice.
She leaned forward, causing the rocking chair to tip. ‘What kind of horse do you have?’
‘Arabian.’
The woman leaned back in her chair with a smile that was almost friendly. Waved a hand. ‘My brother and I raise saddlebreds.’
And there it was. The ranking. Just how good is your horse?
‘Do you show him?’ Bisky asked. Trying hard to control the interview.
‘He’s in training,’ Sonora said. It was sort of true. The first thing she was going to do was train him to walk quietly when she led him around the barn, and not bolt his food when he ate. But she made a mental note about that book.
Sam leaned forward. ‘I understand you do business with End Point Farm, with a woman named Donna Delaney?’
Vivian Bisky frowned, sighed deeply, leaned back in the rocking chair. ‘I wouldn’t put it that way. We do try to throw her a little something, from time to time. The horse industry, as you may already know’ – this with a little nod toward Sonora – ‘is a bare-knuckle kind of business. So many people start up with nothing, and end up with nothing. More people than you might think.’
‘I got the impression from Ms Delaney that you do more than just a little business.’ Sonora did not bother to tamp down the hard edges.
Bisky curled her feet up beneath her knees. ‘I have not one doubt in the world that’s the impression she tried to give you.’
‘You mean she was name-dropping?’ Sam asked gently.
Bisky gave him her smile, a rare offering. ‘I don’t want to say we’ve never done any business with the woman. I’m not trying to make a liar out of her. Let’s just say our business is limited. Really, the person you need to talk to is Cliff. He takes care of that end.’ She waved a hand. ‘I’m more the books and accounting stuff, the boring parts. And the entertaining, which one has to do in this business from time to time, that’s more in my line. Clients or associates come into town to check on their horses – it’s nice to have a little thing. But now don’t think I’m totally boring. I imprint all the babies, that’s my particular specialty. It must be the maternal instinct.’
Sonora glanced at Sam, wondering if he knew what she meant by ‘imprint’ the babies. He was nodding, in that knowledgeable way men have, whether they know what you’re talking about or not.
‘What is that, imprinting babies?’
Sam rolled his eyes at her, muttered, ‘You had to ask.’
Sonora ignored him. She had a horse now. These were things she might need to know.
Vivian gave Sonora a smile that was friendly, if indulgent. ‘You just pick them up right after they’re born and pet them, so they’ll respect that people are powerful – they can pick you up – but they’re safe – they pet you. Then they’re much easier to deal with, more trusting, for the rest of their lives.’
Sonora thought of the livestock auction. Wondered if horses ought to be encouraged to trust people more than they naturally did. She thought not.
‘Is your husband home?’ Sam asked.
Vivian Bisky gave him a little smile. ‘I hope not. He’s been dead for fifteen years.’ She sighed, and her sigh was state-of-the-art, welling from deep within the diaphragm, swelling the lungs, then escaping through the nose. She breathed the way Sonora’s junior high chorus teacher had always told them to. Outside of opera singers, Vivian Bisky was the only person Sonora had met who breathed that way. Not counting the junior high chorus teacher, who breathed that way
too.
‘It’s a long time ago, Detective, so don’t feel the need to apologize for bringing it up, although I do miss him terribly. Cliff is my little brother – not so little, but then you’d have to meet him. But he’s not here, he’s in Saratoga.’
‘When’s he due back?’ Sonora asked.
‘Day after tomorrow, if not sooner.’
‘Why sooner?’ Sonora asked.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said why sooner? Is there a chance he’ll be in tomorrow?’
Vivian Bisky smiled but it wasn’t pleasant. ‘It’s possible he might come home early due to family business, Detective. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you are detectives, and one should co-operate with the police, but Cliff’s wife is not what I would call … self-sufficient. Cliff travels a good deal, as you might imagine, and every single time he’s gone more than three hours, she’s on the phone, trying to talk him into coming back home. ’Course, if I had sole charge of those kids of hers, I’d be on the phone too. They ought to get a nanny, or something, and keep her around with danger pay.’
‘What is the exact nature of your business with Ms Delaney?’
Vivian Bisky smiled thinly. She was not intimidated by the question or the tape recorder. It was always difficult to convince wealthy people that they were subject to the rules like everybody else, often because they weren’t.
‘We might sell Donna a horse now and then, if we had something that just didn’t work out. Something we could let go on the cheap. It’s a little expensive out here to keep a lot of paddock pets, and it’s not fair to the horse. If we have an animal that just doesn’t cut it, then we’ll sell it for a very reasonable price just so it goes to a good place.’
‘You consider End Point Farm a good place?’ Sonora asked.
Vivian Bisky sat sideways, one eye on Sonora, like a crow. ‘I hear you, believe me, I hear what you’re saying. Mostly, we’ve sold Donna horses only when she had a buyer, somebody who might want a horse to show or a mare to breed. But like I said, I don’t think Cliff does much business with Donna these days, and if you’ve been out there, I’m sure you can see why.’
‘You don’t, by any chance, send her your overflow? Horses you don’t have room to board?’
It was as if all the air had suddenly gone out of the room. Then the moment passed and Vivian Bisky laughed with the enthusiasm she usually gave her sighs. ‘I tell you what, Detective. I’m going to give you a midnight tour of one of our boarding barns, and then you can see how absolutely ludicrous that question is. Sit tight, while I get my barn shoes.’
Chapter Forty
Vivian Bisky’s barn shoes were a very sturdy pair of knee-high black rubber boots. They looked scuffed, worn, comfortable.
Bisky noticed Sonora looking. ‘Got them right out of the State Line Tack Catalog, dirt cheap. Don’t you just love them? Let me just grab my jacket and we’ll go.’
She shed the hothouse orchid image as she led them down the front steps to the barns and paddocks. She could have passed for a stable hand, albeit a self-confident one. She walked differently in boots, wearing a rough green jacket over a worn sweatshirt. The sweatshirt had a Bisky Farms logo, an F superimposed over a B, joining in a circle. Sonora noticed Sam looking.
Sonora lifted her chin, looked over her shoulders. She could see no horses in the neat, square paddocks.
‘We keep them up at night.’ Bisky waved an arm toward the barns. Her feet made small noises on the asphalt. Sam and Sonora’s leather soles were louder.
‘Why is that?’
Bisky stopped in the comfortably wide drive. ‘These are high-dollar horses, Detective. They’re safer up at night.’
‘What problems do you get at night?’
‘Mosquitoes in the summer, which are not only pesky but they carry disease. Coyotes, sometimes. They’re not as bad as the dogs, neighborhood dogs, would you believe it? We had them going out at night running in a pack two years ago. Maimed a pregnant mare, and one of our stallions went through a fence after them, tore a tendon. We’ve spent a ton on vet bills, and he’s still not right. Which doesn’t keep him from his pleasure.’ She said it in an offhand way, as if she’d used the phrase many times.
Sonora heard a quiet engine. A pickup truck with the Bisky logo pulled up beside them, and a man in the blue and white of a rent-a-cop stuck his head out the window.
‘Everything okay, Miz Bisky?’
‘Fine, John. We’re going to First Barn. Everything all right on the rounds?’
‘Yes, ma’am, everything’s fine.’
‘Did Mahan get that fence board fixed – over by the stallion barn, you know the spot?’
‘Oh, yeah, he took care of that first thing this morning.’
‘Good, then. See you tomorrow.’
He nodded. Drove on. Vivian Bisky talked faster when it came to business. Sonora liked her better that way.
Motion sensors activated floodlights as soon as they were within fifty feet of First Barn, which had been painted a deep hunter green, and trimmed in a burnt sienna – the Bisky Farms colors.
This was clearly the show barn, built to impress. The asphalt drive swept past, toward two other barns, further out, both built conventionally in long dormitory-like rectangles. But this barn, First Barn, was shaped like a horseshoe, the roof rising up in a vaulted arch that peaked in an enormous skylight.
Sonora walked into the barn and looked up. She could see the moon and the stars.
Even from the aisleway it was clear that the stalls would be roomy, solid wood to chest level, then evenly spaced bars the rest of the way up. The doors opened halfway, latching on the side to make Dutch windows so the horses could stick their heads out. Each stall had a brass nameplate on the side, a well-oiled leather halter hanging from a peg, and a thick green cotton lead rope. All of the lead ropes were the Bisky shade of hunter green.
A small chalk board outside each stall had notes and a check-mark for every time the horse had been fed, hayed and watered.
Vivian Bisky smiled at Sam, who was staring up into the skylight. ‘Horses are claustrophobic animals, you know. But I think they’re happy in here.’
‘I know I would be,’ Sam said.
Sonora heard the ring of sincerity in his voice.
‘There’s one horse you just have to meet.’ Bisky led Sam down the clean-swept concrete aisleway.
Sonora stopped to look into a stall.
A mare, crow black, belly swollen and dipping low, stood with her head to the wall, back foot cocked, dozing. Cedar chips had been banked waist high all around the sides of the stall, and were a good foot deep in the center. The water bucket had obviously been scrubbed out that day, and was three-quarters full of clear water. Sonora was impressed. The shavings in Poppin’s stall were not more than an inch thick, with no extra at the edges.
No cobwebs in this mare’s stall. Hunter green inside, like the outside.
Sonora could hear Sam and Bisky as they made their way down the barn aisle. Vivian almost flirty, Sam quietly questioning. She wondered if there were any coolers in this barn.
She moved quietly, breathed in the smell of horses, fresh bedding, leather tack. It was a surprising thing, how content she felt in a barn full of horses. Caught a glimpse of a horse quietly munching hay from a corner rack.
Had the missing chestnut mare gone from a stall like this one, into the chewed-down, overcrowded pasture of End Point Farm? Had she gone from hay and grain three times a day to fighting for food in a herd of hungry, desperate horses? Had she wound up in a stock trailer like Poppin? Was she in some holding pen at a slaughterhouse, or at the bottom of the pond across from the dump site of Joelle Chauncey’s body?
Surely, if they could find the horse, they could find the killer.
The tack room was open a crack, a bar of bright light over the concrete lip. Sonora could hear the faint sound of a radio, playing low. ‘Desperado.’ The Eagles.
She pushed the door gently.
‘Can I help you?’
The girl was college age, with the angular thinness one gets from missing meals rather than dieting. Barns were full of them – young girls trying to juggle school, tight budgets and a passion for horses. She was flipping through a battered biology book propped up on a worktable that held cleaning supplies – leather balm, glycerine soap, Byck’s leather polish, a worn toothbrush with a yellow handle, and stained cotton rags.
‘I’m looking for a cooler,’ Sonora said. Nothing like the truth.
‘Sure, there should be one back here.’ The girl got up, went into the next room, flipped on a light. ‘This okay?’
The blanket was hunter green, worn but clean, folded in a neat square that showed the Bisky Farms logo in what Sonora was sure would be the lower right-hand side when she unfolded it to double-check.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
The girl settled back down with her book. ‘If you need anything else just let me know.’
Sonora headed back out into the barn aisleway. Sometimes all you had to do was ask.
Chapter Forty-One
It was a dark time, a silent time.
All the lights in the house were off, even the porch lights and the ones out back that Sonora usually left on for security. She lay in bed, bundled in a ratty blue blanket that was as familiar as it was soft and worn. She thought of Joelle Chauncey on the autopsy table and felt cold. She had gotten up and put on a pair of thick white cotton socks, brand-new ones. She loved new socks. But she was still cold.
The weather was turning, fall into winter. Tim would be needing a heavier coat, Heather too, probably. Did she need to buy a blanket for her horse?
She had yet to seriously tell the kids about Poppin. They hadn’t listened at dinner and she thought it might be just as well. She might sell him. Best to keep this new horse to herself till she made up her mind.
She had been reading in Joelle’s diary again that night. More of the same. It had been a mistake to go back through those pages. She had struggled to keep her eyes open, but as soon as she’d turned out the lights she could think only of Joelle, her need for a mother, the daily hurts that were the lot of teenagers.
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