Carolina Crimes

by Karen Pullen

  “How can I help?”

  “The vet’s on her way,” she says. “I’d appreciate another pair of eyes.”

  She steps out of the stall into the brightly lit aisle. Her long straight dark brown hair has rich auburn highlights that are no match for the hair I found caught in the zipper of my husband’s breeches.

  * * * *

  The vet, a tiny, pretty, young, clinically competent redhead—I can’t stop ruling women out—finds nothing wrong with Heidi other than a little irritation from a minor bout of diarrhea. Horses get diarrhea when grass greens in the spring, if we change their feed too fast, or often under stress. The pretty young vet recommends petroleum jelly to soothe the irritation and a couple of days of psyllium for the runs.

  She’s off my suspect list but first-call on my cell.

  As she drives off to her next farm call, I realize I should have asked her to take a look at Molly.

  * * * *

  Relieved on Giada’s account and Heidi’s, I round up Tatum, change her bandage in the tack room, lead her upstairs to our apartment and tuck afghans around her on our couch, grinding my teeth on her behalf. I’m sure her mom, her nurse, the maid—everybody—will be back tomorrow. Someday, she’ll understand she was abandoned, but not by me.

  Tonight with the TV on low, she falls fast asleep, and I sign off on Jen’s homework and Scott’s. They go to their rooms to sleep or text their friends or…whatever they do when I’m not looking.

  Two or three nights a week Nigel works under lights, coaching students with day jobs who drive in, some from a couple of hours away. So I have time alone. I help myself to a small bowl of my favorite splurge, double chocolate Extreme Moose Tracks, sure the calcium will help me sleep, and go to bed. Falling asleep’s not easy after such a day—Tatum’s injury, Molly’s freak out, Giada’s surprising confidence in me, the tell-tale hair.

  My husband has a lover and I can’t find out who she is.

  But Jen and Scott and Tatum, Molly too, matter far more to me so I check off everything I did all day for each, all good, and drift off.

  * * * *

  I wake and reach for Nigel. I miss his lean hot body. I loved him once, thought he loved me. My body still wants sex, but I can’t turn off my brain. Is he comparing me to her? Did he learn this new move from her, or is he just that creative?

  And tonight, this night, he’s not home, where he faithfully is by midnight. I check my watch. It’s almost one. I panic. He spends his life with horses, all accidents waiting to happen.

  Where is he tonight? I throw on dirty jeans, a ratty hoody, sneakers, grab a flashlight. He could have been kicked. He could be dead.

  I ratchet down our apartment’s narrow stairs to the ground floor—the boarders’ stalls—then walk up and down the clean swept aisle as quietly as I can. Horses whuffle for feed they must know they won’t get and I know they don’t need. No Nigel.

  I spin out into a moon-drenched night to check the broodmares’ barn. The ones who foaled are in paddocks with their babies, the big mares’ outlines and their matching foals safe in the silver light. In the barn, the three remaining pregnant girls whicker for more food. Sorry, darlings.

  Nigel is nowhere to be seen, nor should he be. The broodmares have their own groom and manager, a horse midwife, British ex-pat with long gray hair, great gal.

  I’m hating Nigel now for putting me through this, but have to keep on looking. He wouldn’t be out at some local bar. He’s dead, I know he’s dead, horses are so dangerous. A sinking fear I never ever had before grips me. The third barn houses Molly, Archer, Sloan’s other foxhunters, and the McRaes’ sales and competition horses.

  I never go there at this hour and feel like a trespasser.

  No sound but boy frogs croaking for their lovers and male crickets scraping their wings to attract a mate. I creep along the dark wide aisle, peering into shadows, all senses on alert.

  Then I hear grunts and groans, unh, and unh, and unh, a rhythm I know all too well from years of being fucked by him, and know I’ve found him with her. I’m shaking now with anger, flashes hot and cold, heart pounding, mouth dry, the works. I creep closer to the sound of his voice, disgusted.

  He’s fucking her in some horse’s stall, door closed, like he always shuts our bedroom’s.

  “Hold still, bitch,” he growls, then smacks her hard, once, twice, again. She squeals, not a woman’s squeal but a horse’s squeal, resentful but scared.

  Not a horse, a pony.

  Molly. I fly to her stall, shock and revulsion pumping through me, the full moon’s light showing more than I can bear to see, Tatum’s darling pony mare, her head hitched up tight to the stall’s iron bars that ought to keep her safe. Tonight they look like prison bars, and my husband, my children’s father, stands on a red plastic two-step mounting block behind the little mare, his eyes riveted on her alone, fly open, cock out, her tail switching, her chestnut tail—a rich mix, I know, of black and brunette hairs from short to long.

  He doesn’t notice me. I gag and choke and suck for breath, shaking suddenly all over, a hard chill in mid-summer. I hear the slap of a whip, and Molly squeals again, pain now in her high whinny.

  Then I see the slipknot of her leadline tying her to the bars.

  With both hands, I grab its knotted end and jerk to set her free.

  She lurches back, knocking Nigel off the mounting block into the back stall wall. He howls in pain but leaps to his feet and grabs the silver-handled dressage whip I gave him years ago. Then his eyes meet mine.

  He knows I know, after years of secrecy and shadows, exactly what he is. Worms of disgust and hatred crawl through me.

  “Don’t stand there, you stupid bitch,” he barks, not one scintilla of doubt or shame. “Open the goddam door.”

  I would, I should, I think, even now, but Molly bolts across the stall. He grabs her leadline—must have sustained a stinger to his shoulder—and slashes her face with that damn whip.

  Panicked, she ricochets around the stall, slamming him against the side wall, his head cracking the hard oak boards. He crumples into the crisp pine shavings, whip clutched in his hand. Cursing, weaving, he draws himself up and strikes once more at her sensitive velvet muzzle. With a squeal of terror, she rears and paws and strikes his head.

  He slides limply down the wall.

  Help, he cries weakly, then in Swedish, weaker still, Hjälp mig, Inge. Hjälp mig.

  I find I cannot raise my knotted fists to open that stall door.

  Molly senses the danger has passed and slowly settles, and once more all I hear is frogs and crickets.

  * * * *

  I don’t pass out. I’m not a girly girl. But I stagger outside retching, revulsion coursing through me. A quarter, half an hour—I don’t know how long—I come back and shine my light on Nigel’s broken body. He’s staring blankly nowhere, his chest stalled on his final breath. His fly is open, and his limp member sports a wrinkled condom, odd hygiene for a pervert. Molly huddles in her farthest corner, head sunk to the bedding, tail switching at the welts on her hindquarters.

  I want to ice them, comfort her, but I leave the scene exactly as it is.

  Ropes don’t show fingerprints and mares can’t be charged with murder.

  I’ll let the morning groom find Nigel’s body and call the sheriff.

  When she comes to question me, I’ll say I told Nigel Molly was acting strange and could he please check on her before he comes to bed?

  * * * *

  I will always know I could have saved him. How I’ll live with what I did—murder by proxy, me now more corrupt than him—I have no idea.

  And how to explain to Tatum that Nigel died in Molly’s stall?

  With horses, I’ll remind her, anything can happen. It’s why we have all those safety rules, sweet pea—the buddy system, never wrap a leadline around your hand, and never close yourself in a horse’s stall, no matter how much faith you have in it.

  We can teach Molly to trust again, carrots
and baby steps, hand-walking her, easy lazy sessions on the longe line, I’ll say. She’ll tell us when she’s ready to be ridden again. Tatum will cry, but I’ll tell her we’ll be fine. We’re all big girls now.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  BRITNI PATTERSON has been a mystery fiction fan since 1986 when she first read Nemesis by Agatha Christie. A native Texan who landed in North Carolina through a series of poor decisions that somehow worked out for the best, she’s happily married with a daughter, a son, and a permanent belief in serendipity. She loves to write about strong female protagonists with sharp senses of humor and subtle love interests.

  MARJORIE ANN MITCHELL is a freelance writer and business project manager for a personal computer company in North Carolina. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Write On!, and The Raleigh Write to Publish writing groups. She graduated with a B.S. in Accounting from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She has an interest in the science fiction and fantasy genres as well as essays that reflect social commentary.

  TAMARA WARD is a Barnes & Noble top ten bestseller and an Amazon top 100 bestselling mystery and romantic suspense author with storylines and characters that combine for fun, fast-paced, can’t-put-it-down reads. Her published mystery novels include Private Deception, Hidden Betrayal, Storm Surge, and Silver Flashing. In her mysteries, you’ll find characters who keep readers hooked, strong-willed sleuths, and a sprinkling of humor.

  TONI GOODYEAR is a former journalist and freelance writer, winner of the North Carolina Press Association Award for feature writing. Other past careers include market research, public relations, ghostbusting (yes, really), managing data for clinical trials, and teaching university psychology. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from UNC Chapel Hill. Her short story, “Stuffed”, appears in the Thanksgiving anthology The Killer Wore Cranberry: Room for Thirds. She has just completed her first cozy mystery, Trouble Brewing in Tanawha Falls, set in a craft brewery in Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

  RF WILSON lives and writes in Asheville, North Carolina, using the backdrop of the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains and his thirty years’ experience in the addictions field to inform his writing. His current novel, Killer Weed, is available on Amazon Kindle and will soon be available in paperback from Pisgah Press.

  BONNIE WISLER is a member of Sisters in Crime and Romance Writers of America, and has participated in numerous writing groups. Her love of animals, nature, travel, and mystery is vividly reflected in her writing. Her first novel, Count a Hundred Stars, received five-star ratings from both Foreward Clarion and Midwest Book Reviews. Bonnie is retired from the federal government, works part-time for a major airline, and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her family.

  DONNA CAMPBELL is a member of the Greenville, South Carolina chapter of Sisters in Crime. Her stories and poems have been published in the South Carolina Writers’ Workshop literary journals—Catfish Stew and The Petigru Review—since 2005. Pushcart Prize nominations have been given to two of her stories, “Under a Good Hat” in 2009 and “Shooting Stars” in 2013. She graduated with a degree in English from Clemson University and received her Master’s in Education from Rutgers University. After many years of teaching English in New Jersey, she and her husband retired to South Carolina where she grew up.

  KAREN PULLEN left a perfectly good engineering job to make her fortune - er, maybe not - as a B&B innkeeper and fiction writer. Her stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Spinetingler, Sixfold, bosque (the magazine), Every Day Fiction, and anthologies. Her debut mystery novel, Cold Feet, was published by Five Star Cengage in January 2013. She has an MFA in Popular Fiction from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine, and lives in Pittsboro, North Carolina where she occasionally teaches in Central Carolina Community College’s creative writing program. Visit www.karenpullen.com for updates and her blog.

  JOANIE CONWELL lives in Cary, North Carolina.

  LINDA JOHNSON is originally from Chicago where her first career was in advertising. When the cold and gray got to be too much, she and her husband packed up their dogs and horses and relocated to warm and sunny North Carolina. After working for several years as the owner and manager of a hunter/jumper equestrian facility, she decided to trade riding for writing. Linda writes suspense novels and short stories and particularly enjoys creating smart, psychopathic villains. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and the North Carolina Writers Network. She has published two novels and several short stories as e-books. Find her online at LindaJohnson.us

  RUTH MOOSE taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for fifteen years. She has published three collections of short stories and six collections of poetry. Individual stories and poems were published in Atlantic, Yankee, The Nation, Christian Science Monitor and other places. Moose won the 2013 Malice Domestic competition for her novel, Doing it at the Dixie Dew, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2014. She is on the web at ruthmoose.com.

  SARAH SHABER is the author of the Louise Pearlie World War II mysteries published by Severn House. The third in the series, Louise’s Dilemma, came out in November 2013, and the fourth, Louise’s Blunder, is due in the Fall of 2014. Shaber is also the author of an earlier series, the Professor Simon Shaw mysteries, and editor of Tar Heel Dead, a collection of mystery short stories by North Carolina authors. Friend her at facebook.com/sarahrshaber. If you must tweet, her handle is @SShaber.

  CALVIN L. HALL is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at Appalachian State University in Boone, where he teaches journalism and serves as assistant chair. His creative work has been published in the journals The Rectangle, Writer to Writer and A Thousand Faces. He is the author of the book African American Journalists: Autobiography as Memoir and Manifesto published by The Scarecrow Press. Born and raised in Asheville, he earned a doctorate in mass communication from UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He also holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from N.C. State University.

  JAMIE CATCHER writes from her home in Aiken, South Carolina. She has a B.S. in English and a background in pediatric registered nursing. Her short stories have appeared in regional publications, and she is currently seeking publication of her novel, SYN 11, a psychological thriller and love story. She believes in fairies and coffee, and writes because it’s the only thing that keeps the persuasive characters in her head quiet. Contact her at jamiecatcherbooks@gmail.com and follow her on Twitter @jamiecatcherbks.

  MEG LEADER’s first published fiction was in the romance genre, so her stories range from the romantic to the mysterious. Nearly all of her stories have a thread of the paranormal running through them. Her characters are a little funky, a little off-center, and their perspectives on the world might make you laugh—or cry. Most of all, the stories set out to provide a wonderful reading experience that entertains, amuses, and touches the heart. You can contact Meg at her

  websites, megleader.com and mhleader.com, email her at megleader@megleader.com, or follow her on Facebook at MegLeaderWriter.

  ANTOINETTE BROWN loves writing and reading mysteries, especially cozies. She lives in Apex, North Carolina with two rescue Chihuahuas.

  Most writers mention the dozens of stories they’ve written from the time they first held a pencil. Not POLLY IYER. She drew pictures. That led to art school and a degree in art. She spent the next few decades working in art-related fields in Rome, Italy, Boston, and Atlanta, finally settling in the beautiful Piedmont region of South Carolina. Then one day, an idea got her to the computer. That was thirteen years ago, and she been parked there writing ever since. She’s written six mystery/suspense/romance novels under her own name and three romances under a pen name. There’s usually an artistic element incorporated in her novels. The characters who fill her pages and her mind have been, respectively, an ex-con artisan and a female author in Murder Déjà Vu; a psychic performer in Mind Games and Goddess of the Moon; a docent at the Metropolita
n Museum of Art in Hooked—oh, and she’s also an ex-call girl; a blind psychologist and a deaf cop in InSight; and another author in Threads.

  She’ll swipe one reviewer’s comment as a log line to describe her books: “Iyer’s specialty is making heroes out of broken people.” She challenges her characters to overcome insurmountable odds, and of course they do. Maybe she’ll do that herself one day when she makes the bestsellers’ list. She’s on the web at PollyIyer.com

  Author of seven novels, a RITA finalist, poet and scholar, JUDITH STANTON first imagined equestrian triumphs on her granddaddy’s persnickety black Shetland pony and balky donkey, her daddy’s mule, even the milk cows. At nine, riding bareback with only a halter, she taught her pinto Blaze to jump hay bales. During a career as a scholar, professor, technical writer and fiction editor, she kept fit riding three-day eventers. Her first contemporary suspense, A Stallion to Die For (2012) has top reviews on Amazon. In 2014, her two Regency romances—The Mad Marquis and The Kissing Gate—are being reissued by Amazon Publishing Montlake. And Under a Prairie Moon, a western historical romance, is being published by Cat Crossing Press. Judith lives on a farm in the country near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she and her husband tend to their elderly equine friends and a steady stream of rescued cats.