Reining in Murder

by Leigh Hearon

  Hilda lived in a Spanish-style hacienda with a top story that looked utterly out of place. It was completely out of sight of the stables. Unlike Annie, apparently Hilda didn’t care if she was within earshot or eyesight of her horses. Of course, Todos presumably lived in a caretaker cabin, and the stableman she’d just met seemed to be a fixture on the place. But still. Annie’s dislike of Hilda deepened.

  A late-model Land Rover was in the front driveway. A good sign. Annie gave the doorbell one long buzz. No use in being subtle now, she thought.

  The yelping of agitated dogs cut through the air. It seemed to come from around the back of the house. Wolf charged after the sound.

  “Wolf!” The Blue Heeler knew better than to take off without Annie’s express command. She strode after him, muttering at his misbehavior.

  That emotion subsided when she saw the small kennel in the backyard, filled with two Belgian Tervuren pups, jumping over each other in their enthusiasm. Wolf had his nose stuck through the wire, and the pups were licking him with fierce intensity.

  The kennel was saturated with the smell of urine and the sight of dog poop. The lone water dish hooked to one side was hanging at an angle, bone dry, which one pup licked in vain. The other pup was gnawing on what seemed to be a piece of paper. Annie did not see a scrap of dog food in the pen. The anger she’d felt for Wolf transferred to the pups’ owner.

  “You poor things!” Annie unlocked the kennel latch, snatched the paper from the pup’s mouth and wrestled the water dish from the other pup’s mouth. Glancing around, she noticed an Olympic-sized pool to the left of her. There was no cover on it, and the water inside was steaming, wisps floating over and through the old-growth trees surrounding it.

  Many Northwest natives had hot tubs on their properties; a soak in the tub was a welcome respite from a day out in the cold dank rain. Only the truly foolish and extremely rich installed swimming pools in their backyards for a swimming season that lasted perhaps sixty days. Apparently, Hilda was one of this group. A tennis court probably was over the next knoll.

  Annie found a hose near the pool shed and, after a spurt of icy water rushed out, she was able to get enough flow to fill the water dish to the brim. The pups lapped it up before Annie had time to shut the kennel door. She filled the dish three times before the pups fully slaked their thirst.

  And still no sign of Hilda.

  The sound of pounding feet and ragged breath took Annie’s attention from the pups she now cradled in her arms. She looked up, and saw Hilda’s helper running over the crest of the hill, his chest heaving with exertion. He looked frantic.

  Had something happened to the bay? Annie scrambled to her feet, still holding the pups to her chest.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “No, no, Señora! You don’t come here!”

  Annie stopped, confused. You don’t come here? She WAS here. No one seemed to mind before.

  “No come to Señora Colbert’s casa! Muy malo. Come, come away!”

  So that was it. No one dare set foot on Hilda’s property. Well, to hell with that.

  “The hell with that,” she told him. Carefully placing the pups back in the kennel, she motioned for him to follow her. He seemed rooted to the spot. “Come away, Señora!” he hissed.

  “Nonsense.” Annie walked up to the long sliding glass door facing the backyard and rapped loudly on it.

  “Mrs. Colbert! It’s Annie Carson! Answer the door!”

  She could hear the man whimpering in the background.

  “Mrs. Colbert! I’ve brought your thoroughbred! Please answer the door!”

  More silence. Annie peered inside the window, shading her eyes with one arm. In keeping with the exterior, Hilda obviously liked California-Spanish décor. The red-tiled floor was littered with Navajo rugs, a stark contrast to the white stucco walls, one with a huge mural of a black stallion. Two horseshoe arches shaped the room, which seemed to be divided between entertainment center and wet bar. A wrought-iron staircase banister in back of the arches led upstairs.

  Annie jiggled the sliding-glass door handle. To her surprise, it wasn’t locked.

  Behind her, she heard moaning. “No, no, no, Señora. Please, come away.”

  Annie held her finger up to her lips and whispered, “Shhhh.” The little man’s frightened posture made her more resolved to confront Hilda on her own turf. Giving Wolf the silent command to stay, Annie slid the door open a good foot.

  The stableman took off like a jackrabbit.

  Once inside, Annie realized that this is where Hilda probably spent most of her time. A huge BOSE HDTV framed one side of the room, and the La-Z-Boy chair in front of it looked well used. On the coffee table were scattered various well-known horse magazines, mostly on dressage and jumping. Several issues of People magazine poked out behind the horse fodder. Beside the table lay an unopened UPS package. Annie glanced at the return address. It was from a pharmaceutical company in New York. She wondered if the contents were for Hilda or her horses.

  Glancing over to the wet bar, Annie was amazed to see an espresso machine that took up almost the entire width of the counter. It was a far cry from the Mr. Coffee drip in her own kitchen, so stained by coffee grinds that it would never be pearly white again.

  As much as Annie normally would have liked to snoop, an unnamed fear began to creep over her. She wasn’t afraid of confrontation, or even breaking or entering, which apparently was what she was doing. But Hilda’s silence made no sense. The Land Rover in her driveway made it clear she was home, but the piercing cries of her young dogs and Annie’s own yelling still didn’t evoke a response.

  She crept upstairs, unthinkingly putting her hand on the grilled banister, then jerked it away. No sense in leaving more of her carbon handprint than absolutely necessary.

  “Mrs. Colbert! Anyone home?”

  Annie emerged from the stairwell onto the main level of the home, a massive living room with cathedral windows that overlooked the valley.

  It was very, very still. And there was a bad odor in the air. Maybe Hilda had more neglected dogs in the house. Annie tiptoed on the plush carpet through the living room and down the hallway leading to what she assumed were the bedrooms.

  The smell was getting worse now. Annie’s heart began to hammer in her chest.

  The door at the end of the hallway was open a few inches. Annie fumbled for her handkerchief and put it over her mouth and nose. Using one finger, she gently nudged the door, causing it to slowly open two more inches.

  Hilda Colbert was lying on her back on her king-sized bed, her chin jutting up toward the ceiling at a curious angle. She was dressed in full riding gear, down to her high rider dress boots and full seat breeches. But Hilda wouldn’t be riding today, or any other day. The choker band of her show shirt was fully obscured with a thick, congealed mass of blood. And whatever had caused this bright red ribbon across her neck had left Hilda’s head perilously close to leaving the rest of her body.

  Annie sank to her knees. The stench of death was overwhelming, and she could barely process what she was seeing. Taking deep, gulping breaths under her handkerchief, she tried to think. She was a trained emergency technician. What should she do? Check for a pulse. Oh, God. Was it really necessary? Could she even stand?

  She decided not to try. She tied her handkerchief in an old-fashioned rustler fashion knot and crawled on all fours to the bed. The river of blood that had begun at Hilda’s neck continued across her eight-hundred-thread-count Egyptian sheets.

  Annie slowly got to her feet and steeled herself to look at Hilda’s body. There was too much blood to see the wound, but Annie knew that whoever had killed her had done a savage job. And Hilda, it appeared, did not see it coming. Her eyes were wide open. Her face held a surprised expression. Looking down, Annie saw that her fists were clenched. One held a shred of paper.

  Gingerly, Annie reached for it, knowing that she shouldn’t. But rigor mortis was either just coming on or fast receding, and Hilda willingly ceded
the paper, something she probably never would have done when she was alive.

  It was nothing—just the ragged edge of a sheaf of what obviously had been fine stationery at one time. There were no words scrawled on it, no treasure map—no clue that gave Annie any idea as to who had killed Hilda or why she had held the scrap so fiercely at the moment of her death.

  Or did it? Slowly, Annie reached into her jeans pocket where she’d stuffed the tattered piece of paper she’d wrested from the pup’s mouth just a few minutes before.

  She awkwardly pieced them together. Despite the inroads made by the puppy, enough of the document remained to ensure its fit.

  It was the bay’s foal registration papers, with proof of filing with the Jockey Club. Annie’s eyes swept through the complicated pedigree that had led to the gelding’s birth until she found what she’d been looking for: “Trooping the Colour.” The bay’s name.

  “I always thought you were a trooper,” she said quietly. Then she dug out her cell to call 9-1-1.

  CHAPTER 6

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 24TH

  “One more time, Annie. Tell me what you saw, from start to finish.”

  Dan Stetson and Annie stood by the swimming pool, away from the medics and technicians who were in the process of transporting a black body bag into a nearby ambulance.

  “I’ve already told you, Dan, from start to finish, about a jillion times. What else do you need to know? Am I a suspect? Should I be calling a lawyer?”

  The events of the day had put Annie in understandably a sour mood. As soon as Dan and his gang arrived with their sirens blaring and swirling police lights going full tilt, she’d been shooed out of the house. She’d sat idly by for what seemed hours.

  At first, she’d played with the puppies and considered transferring them to a fenced area in back of the pool, where they’d have room to play. But Dan probably would have considered that evidence tampering.

  By now she’d fully recovered from the shock of finding the body. Her self-confidence also had returned after she saw two of Dan’s deputies run stumbling out of the house to puke. At least she had better guts than that.

  “Look, Annie, I know you’ve been through a lot.” Dan said. “I just need to know exactly why you came up here, and all your movements from the time you entered the property.”

  “Jeez, Dan! Why did I come up here? I had a twelve-hundred-pound horse on my hands who doesn’t belong to me and costs me more in two days than my mortgage is each month! I was taking him back to his owner, because he didn’t

  . . . belong . . . to . . . me.” Annie drew out the last words for emphasis. “Besides, I told Esther all this. Why don’t you ask her?”

  “You told Esther you were coming up here?”

  Annie glared at him.

  “Okay, calm down, Annie. I don’t suspect you of anything but trying to do a good deed. But when I go back to my office tonight and have to write up a report, I want to make sure I’ve got my facts straight. That’s two murders in Suwana County in three days—more serious crime than we’ve seen in two decades. I don’t want the county commissioners to feel compelled to bring in outside help.”

  Annie caught the undercurrent of Dan’s words. If the county commissioners felt Dan Stetson’s law-enforcement team wasn’t up to the job, they’d call in the neighboring force from Harrison County. Jim Bruscheau, the Harrison County sheriff, was everything Dan was not—overbearing, bombastic, and derisive of anyone who worked under him. If Dan had to play second fiddle to Bruscheau, his life would be a living hell, and his professional reputation would suffer.

  “Why don’t I just walk you through it, step by step?” Annie said.

  Dan smiled. “Great idea. Just start from the time you came up to Hilda’s place.”

  Annie walked around to the front door, Dan in tow. She felt slightly appeased. She also had the feeling she’d played right into Dan’s hands.

  “When I saw the Land Rover, I assumed Hilda was home. So I banged on the door, but that only got the attention of the pups around the corner. Wolf raced off. I followed him and saw the poor things. My first concern was getting water into their pitiful kennel. I don’t mind saying I was ready to kill Hilda myself at that point.”

  Dan looked at her sharply.

  “Okay, scratch that,” Annie continued. “How about ‘Ms. Colbert’s apparent animal neglect affected my mood greatly’?”

  Now, Annie was standing by the empty kennel. With Dan’s permission, she had eventually moved them to the fenced-in yard, where they now sprawled over Wolf, fast asleep.

  “Then the worker, who, by the way, I am sure is paid peanuts under the table, came racing up, all in a dither over my even being on Hilda’s estate. I told him to get over it and knocked on the sliding glass door in back.”

  Annie was about to demonstrate when Dan caught her arm.

  “We’ve just taken fingerprints of the entire plate, Annie. I believe you.”

  “I think I yelled out to Hilda to open the door. It was about that time that the farmhand took off, scared to death that Hilda would see him up here. Then I went inside. And yes, the latch was off. I didn’t break and enter. I just entered.”

  “Remind me someday to acquaint you with the finer details of the revised code of Washington regarding burglary,” Dan said. “I’m sure you were just concerned about the state of Ms. Colbert’s health at this point.”

  “As I matter of fact, I was,” Annie replied. “Here was all this ruckus, and yet Hilda didn’t poke her head out to tell me to go away. It seemed strange.”

  Dan handed her a pair of disposable shoe covers and latex gloves.

  “Put these on. What happened next?”

  Annie struggled into her gloves and thought carefully.

  “Well, I remember I only used one finger to try the patio latch and was surprised when it gave way. Then I tiptoed up the stairs, over there. I think I touched the banister. I probably was still calling for Hilda to come out and play.”

  Annie and Dan silently went up the stairwell.

  “When I got up to the landing, that’s when I smelled the odor. I also remember thinking what a fabulous view she had.”

  Annie walked up to the massive windows again. The Olympic Mountains looked so close, she thought, it was as if you could walk right up to them from the back door. She glanced around at the living room and couldn’t help feeling a tad envious at Hilda’s bank account, if not her taste in furniture.

  “Ah. Look. Hilda’s landline. It probably has all the nasty messages I left for her over the past two days.”

  Dan strode over and delicately picked up the phone with one of his gloved hands, then put it down.

  “We’ll have to get the password,” he said. Leaning toward his squawk box on his shoulder, Dan bellowed, “Esther!”

  From the other side came Esther’s voice. “Yes, Sheriff?”

  “We need to get the password to Hilda Colbert’s voice mail. Write up a search warrant for me and get Judge Casper to okay it over the phone. We’ll want all the messages, current and saved. I need the disk on my desk pronto.”

  “You got it, Sheriff.” Another squawk signified the end of the call.

  “You pay Esther to do that kind of work?” asked Annie.

  Dan grinned. “She loves being asked to do things she usually only sees on Law & Order.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Why, Annie. You’re a good judge of character. Couldn’t you feel the love in her voice?”

  Annie decided not to dignify his question with an answer. “So anyway, then I just followed the odor.” Annie glanced down the hallway, but neither she nor Dan made a step toward it. Bright yellow tape, labeled CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS, barred their way.

  “What did you do when you saw Mrs. Colbert?”

  Annie fell silent. She hadn’t yet told Dan that she’d pulled one scrap of registration papers out of Hilda’s dead hands and the other out of a puppy’s mouth. She just wanted the chanc
e to first read them over in private. Then she’d turn them over. Somehow, she knew that this would not be considered good police form.

  Fortunately, the good and bad angels flitting beside Annie’s head got the chance to flee.

  “Sheriff.” The voice was metallic, coming from Dan’s radio, but Annie recognized it as Deputy Williams’s. There weren’t that many female officers on the force, and Kim Williams’s voice was eminently distinctive: low, husky, authoritative, and Annie suspected, extremely seductive in the right setting.

  “Adolpho Todos has arrived at the scene. Should I send him up?”

  Dan shifted his considerable weight and cocked his head.

  “Nah, keep him at the stables. I’ll be there in a jiffy. How’s he seem?”

  “Cranky. Busy unloading a truckload of hay.”

  “Said anything yet?”

  “Nope. He’s busy bossing the help around right now.”

  “Good. I’d hate to have him say anything without having his rights read to him first.”

  Annie stared at Dan.

  “Todos? You think Todos did it?”

  “How in the heck should I know, Annie? But you know as well as I do that everyone’s a suspect until proven innocent.”

  Annie was bemused that now that Hilda was dead, Dan accorded her the courtesy of her surname, something he’d never done before.

  “Gee, Dan, that’s not how I remember Mr. Berber talking about Con Law in high school. But then, you never were a good student in that class, were you? Too busy trying to look up Dory Mason’s skirt, as I recall.”

  Dan grinned but said, “Everyone’s a suspect, Annie. Remember that.”

  * * *

  Todos was angrily unloading bales of hay from the back of one of Hilda’s two-ton pickups when Dan and Annie pulled up at the stables. The farmworker Annie had met earlier was the unfortunate recipient of Todos’s aggression. He literally had to dodge the flying bales, set free by a wicked-looking hayfork, as he tried to assemble them onto a loading cart.