“He looks good, Lila,” Madeline said. “He looks really good.”
“Um-hm. Kids Victor sent over to help while I was laid up kept him going pretty well.” She dug a currycomb and brush out of her vest pocket and handed them to Allegra. She shook her head at Allegra’s saddle. “That’s not going to be wide enough for him. I’ve got a wide body in the truck. Get him brushed out and we’ll saddle him up.”
“Okay.” Allegra bit her lip. “And thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet, kiddo. We have to see how he goes for you.”
Conversation stalled for a bit while the women fussed about getting Hugo tacked up. When he was saddled, bridled, and gleaming enough to suit the three of them, Lila led him back to our arena. I opened the gate. Our arena is 180 feet long, standard for dressage, and we have two jump standards in the middle. Allegra pivoted the toe of her boot into the deep sand and smiled tentatively at Lila. “Great footing, at least.”
Lila didn’t smile back. “Okay. Mount up.” She gave Allegra a leg up. Hugo stood there a second, his ears flicking backward and forward. Ally settled neatly into the saddle and gathered the reins.
Hugo yawned. His head drooped. If he’d been a person, he would have scratched his belly in boredom. Allegra gave him a nudge. He took a couple of steps forward, then stopped and swung his head sideways like the pendulum on a clock. Work? Forget it.
Lila was smiling now. More of a smirk, really. Then Allegra straightened up, drove her butt into the saddle, dug her spurs lightly into his flank, and shortened the reins, all at once. The horse rolled his eye in pleased surprise. Then he shaped up, moved out, and settled into work. It was a marvelous thing to see. It always is.
“Hmph,” Lila said, pleased.
Allegra went around half the arena at a collected walk, moved into a trot, a collected trot, and by the time she’d worked him up to a collected canter, Lila had relaxed and so had the rest of us.
“You look happy about this, Madeline,” Lila said.
“Well, I am. Both of them look terrific. I have to say, Lila, I’m amazed at how set up he is. He’s fit enough to go the whole three days at Earlsdown and then some. Someone’s been giving him a lot more than just exercise. He’s been working.”
Lila had her attention on the pair in the ring. Hugo was taking the jumps in easy, efficient strides. “Yeah, well. I was planning on selling him this year, so I made a point of getting him fit for show. He’s twelve. Got a lot of good years in him, yet, but you know what’ll happen if I wait too long to put him out there.”
We did. People have uninformed ideas about a horse’s age—especially a performer like Hugo. He’d be worth a great deal less if Lila waited until he was thirteen.
“Already had an offer.”
“Do tell,” Madeline said, interested. “Anybody we know?”
“That guy I was with last night. Phillip Sullivan.” She interrupted herself and shrieked like a steam whistle at Ally. It was a mercy the horse didn’t bolt. “I’d like to see a couple of dressage moves, please. Settle him down and take him through some second-level work.”
Allegra kept her eyes focused just between Hugo’s ears. She nodded without turning her head and slowed Hugo to a trot. She brought him to a complete standstill and asked if she should change saddles.
“Won’t make all that much difference to him,” Lila shrugged. “He’s about as sensitive as a slab of granite.”
Allegra lengthened her stirrups to get more leg, sat back so that the cantle almost pressed into her backside, and shortened the reins. Hugo tucked his chin in and got to work. He was in the middle of a truly well-executed half pass across the arena when Madeline said, “I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to him last night. Is he from around here?”
Lila frowned. “New York City. Lawyer. With an interest. You know.”
All horse professionals are aware of these types. Often the first thing new millionaires do is buy themselves expensive horses. It seems to be a rite of passage.
“He saw Hugo on my website. Gave me a call and I checked him out. Gave me his bank references, the whole bit. We talked back and forth on the phone. Stephy McClellan had ridden him for me at Devon and a couple of other places, so he checked Hugo’s performance out. He said he’d pay for a prepurchase exam, so I got that done. Then he came down to take a look.” She flashed her dimples. “Said he wanted to take a look at me in the flesh as much as Hugo.”
“You say that Stephanie has ridden Hugo for you?” I interjected.
Lila’s eyes darkened, momentarily diverted. “That kid. What a mess. On top of all her other troubles, she lost her dog. Showed up at my place the other day in a huge temper. Claimed somebody stole it. Insisted on searching through my barns. I would have felt sorrier for her if I liked her better.”
“Someone stole her dog?” Madeline said.
Lila shrugged, “Guess so. She was in a state, that’s for sure.”
Madeline, Allegra, and I exchanged glances. Perhaps we could strike the girl from our suspect list. Perhaps not. It would have to be verified.
“But you didn’t take to Sullivan?” Madeline asked. “You seemed pretty friendly last night.”
“You know that I have a pretty good eye for men, Maddy.” She looked woeful. I saw Madeline bite her lip. “But I guess I was wrong, again. I thought I really liked this guy, Maddy. We’d had such a great time chatting each other up on the phone. And he’d gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that seeing Hugo work was worth the trip down. Of course,” she added, “he was coming to see me as much as the horse. Anyway. He came down late on a Friday. He booked a suite over at the Inn at Hemlock Falls. We had a terrific meal there, and things were going along just fine. You know.” She rolled her eyes a bit. “Anyhow. Saturday I got Stephy to come over to ride Hugo for him. The kid’s a real snot, no question, but she’s a good little rider. Anyhow, Hugo did great. Just great. And then Phillip offered me a quarter million for Hugo.”
Madeline clapped her hand over her mouth. I was not as amazed, of course, since Nora Longworth’s information had already prepared me for such a sum. “Dollars?” Madeline said, faintly.
Lila shifted uncomfortably. “Uh-huh. Said he was in the market for a winner. That he’d lost a few horses over the years and was ready to try again.”
I felt my face would betray me if I looked at Madeline, so I did not. Lost a few, eh? There were far too many ways to kill a horse undetected. I bit my mustache in disgust.
Lila went on, oblivious to the undercurrents. “Now, I was thinking asking maybe seventy, eighty thousand for him. If that girl of yours does justice to him at Earlsdown . . .”
So she would let Allegra ride Hugo at Earlsdown. I breathed a silent “thank you!” to whatever horse gods were looking out for the two of them.
“... We might even get a bit more than that. But two-fifty?” She looked at me and shook her head. “Something really funny there, Austin.”
Madeline dragged Lila’s attention back. “So you said no?”
Lila hitched her shoulders and said irritably. “Are you crazy? Guy wants to drop that kind of cash, you bet I’m going to catch it. I said I was thinking more about three hundred, but I’d consider two-fifty. So we dickered a bit and settled on two-seventy-five. That’s one of the reasons I was in such a good mood at that party last night.”
We waited for the denouement.
“And then he got a phone call this morning and he up and left, just like that. And I haven’t heard from him since.”
“Without buying Hugo,” Madeline said.
“That’s right. Like I said,” she added with an airy wave of her hand, “there’s something funny there.”
I exchanged meaningful glances with Madeline. My first thought had been that poor Lila had been talked into bed for the price of an elaborate dinner at the Inn at Hemlock Falls and then dumped, as had happened all too frequently in the past. Perhaps Sullivan was merely a cad, and not a crook. But why go to all the trouble of vetti
ng the horse out? Why call and ask about Hugo’s show career? Madeline’s mind is always congruent with my own, for she said, after a moment, “Now, Lila. Do you think maybe he left for some reason other than not wanting to buy Hugo? I mean, sweetie, you know how . . . umm . . . enthusiastic you can be over a new man in your life.”
Lila was not one to pull her punches. She said, with that devastating honesty that endeared her to one and all, “You mean, you think he took off ’cause I talked about marriage?”
Lila was the veteran of perhaps three marriages; no one was precisely certain.
“Well, Lila, dear . . .” Madeline said.
“I know, I know. I’m a total idiot about men. I always have been. Maybe.” She brightened. “So maybe he’ll be back if he really wants Hugo? Do you think? I could really use that money.”
Now, like a lot of people who’d been through a failed deal, Lila wasn’t above skimping a bit in relating the whole picture. But I’d never known her to lie outright. So it appeared that Sullivan had indeed offered Lila Gernsback $275,000 for an $80,000 horse. And if she had been truthful about that, she surely had been truthful about his comment that he had “lost a few” horses along the way.
I had a great deal to mull over as Ally finished her ride and began to cool Hugo out.
“Well, she’ll do, I suppose,” Lila said.
“Allegra?” I put my mind back to the job at hand. “Of course she’ll do. I had no doubts at all.”
Then we had a short discussion about the finances. Lila was unusually practical about money, so it became a trifle spirited. But in sum, she agreed to pay the entry fees, and to give Allegra 5 percent of the purchase price if anybody made a reasonable offer to buy Hugo. By the time Allegra had brushed Hugo down and turned him out with Pony and Andrew in the paddock, Lila had pulled a copy of an agreement to ride from a file in her pickup and handed it over to her to sign. Allegra read it, signed it, shook hands with Lila, and threw her arms around Madeline. I then invited Lila to lunch with us at the Monrovian Embassy.
“Lunch sounds great,” Lila said. “But I’ve got a pile of work to get through at home.” She shook Allegra’s hand. “You’ll give me a call pretty often, let me know how he’s going on?”
“I will,” Allegra said. She wrung Lila’s hand fervently. “And thank you, Mrs. Gernsback. Thank you.”
I recalled Joe from his duties in the clinic. We decided to take two vehicles to lunch. Madeline and Allegra wanted to change out of riding gear. I had made an appointment to see Jerry Coughlin at two that afternoon, and I didn’t want to rush through the hamburgers. “We’ve done extremely well,” I said as we prepared to depart. “Phillip Sullivan made a ludicrously high offer for the horse. And did you catch what Lila said? He’d ‘lost a few.’ A few indeed. I wonder how much blood money the man has collected over the years.”
“It’s awful,” Allegra agreed.
“Yeah, but I don’t get it,” Joe said stubbornly. “If he was going to buy Hugo, why did he beat it out of town this morning?”
“My guess is, he’ll be back. But it will be at a safe distance from Lila,” Madeline said a little ruefully. “That poor woman just falls into the dumbest traps when a man’s involved. If Sullivan is behind an insurance scam, she’s going to feel terrible.” But she smiled at me. “All the same, this detecting business is fascinating, Austin. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before.”
“It’s proving quite a challenge,” I admitted.
“Well the next challenge is going to be your lunch at the Embassy, Austin. You are not, I repeat, not to have that artery-clogging hamburger special. You stick to the tuna salad plate.”
“Of course, my dear.”
Twelve
“THERE are two items of information I wish to take away from this fact-finding mission,” I said to Joe as we approached Summersville’s finest diner. “As well as the finest hamburger plate in central New York. The first concerns the sniper letter. I believe it to be bogus. A red herring. The second concerns McClellan himself. We need to know more about the man. Our source for this information is the Sentinel reporter, Nigel Fish.”
“You think McClellan’s behind all of this?” Joe asked.
“I do indeed. And if Nigel is unaware of McClellan’s significance to the sniper story, we shall soon make him aware of the fact.”
I like eating lunch at the Monrovian Embassy. It is a large square space with high ceilings. Battered wooden booths line one side, and an equally battered mahogany bar lines the other. Rickety tables with a job lot assortment of metal, wooden, and plastic chairs march down the middle. Three beaten-up doors are set into the back wall: the center leads to the kitchen, the left and the right to the facilities. Admittedly, it is shabby. Madeline generally refuses to accompany me there, primarily, I think, because of the cholesterol-laden menu. She also says it smells like horse pee, which doesn’t augur well for the cleanliness of the kitchen. It certainly smells. But a combination of beer fumes, the scent of old French fries, and the odor of unwashed student is not at all bad once you get used to it.
“There is a great deal to be said in favor of a good local bar in a town like Summersville,” I remarked to Joe as we settled into a corner booth. “It is a place where the denizens feel at ease, where lips may be loosened by both the familiarity of the surroundings and inexpensive alcoholic beverages. It is also the place for the best hamburger in three counties. The Monrovian Embassy Special. Ah! My quarry is in view. Quick! Hide yourself behind the menu.”
“Do what?” Joe seemed at little slow on the uptake. Perhaps it was the difference between the cold air outside and the warm air inside that gave him that somnolent expression. I saw that my instructions required clarification. “I do not,” I said, in lowered tones, “wish Nigel Fish to see us just yet.” I had raised my plastic menu in front of my face; behind its concealing shape, I nodded toward the front door.
“That guy?” Joe said, pointing.
Nigel Fish headed toward a table in the center of the room and dropped into a chair. I doubted that he was more than thirty, but he was already bald on top, with a fringe of baby-fine brown hair around the area of the medulla oblongata. He had a pudgy face and an equally pudgy little belly. He raised a finger in the direction of Colleen the waitress. She nodded and headed toward the bar.
“Nigel is Rita’s star reporter,” I elucidated, “with ambitions to move to the upper reaches of journalism and a byline with the New York Times. The only story big enough to do that for him is the Grazley shooting and the Summersville sniper story. However, the two of us do not get along well. He has on occasion resented any support I’ve offered to clean up his prose style. As a result, he is prone to quick exits when he sees me, unless approached at the right moment. You see? He has ordered his beer and burger. He’s committed to staying now.” I lowered the menu and drew breath, in order to be heard over the babble of diners. “Nigel!”
He jumped and looked around in wild surmise. Then he saw me. It may have been my imagination, but I believe he blanched.
“Join us for lunch, Fish,” I said. I smiled widely. “It’s on me.”
That did it, of course. Rita does not throw money around on employee salaries. Nigel gave me a reluctant nod.
I thumped my menu on the table, thus drawing Colleen’s attention. “Two burgers and two beers over here, my dear. And Nigel is going to join us. Put his lunch on my tab.” I waved the reporter over. He stared at the door for a long moment, perhaps contemplating escape, but cupidity overcame caution. He shoved his chair back and slouched over to our booth. “Hey, Dr. McKenzie.”
“Hey, yourself,” I replied genially. “May I introduce my assistant, Joseph Turnblad? Joe, this is Nigel Fish. A reporter of some aptitude.” Nigel looked surprised, as well he might. Among Nigel’s many literary sins was inattentiveness to his participles. I had castigated Nigel for sloppy grammar on more than one occasion. The two young men nodded to one another. I rose and pushed Nigel firmly onto the ben
ch. “I’m delighted to see you, Nigel.”
He looked even more surprised. “You are?”
“Although I do have a small bone to pick with you regarding last week’s feature on the mayor.”
“Uhn.” Nigel grabbed the beer Colleen placed in front of him and drained half of it.
“Diction, Nigel, diction. ‘In between’ is a tautology. ‘Except for’ is another. But by and large”—I sipped my own beer, which was quite cold and refreshing—“the piece was well done.”
“It was?”
“I thought so. I can see why Rita assigned the sniper story too you.”
“Who told you I was on the sniper story?”
“An assumption, merely,” I said, casually. “You’re the most tenacious reporter Rita has. I can’t think of a man better suited to take on the killings. And Brewster McClellan’s a significant part of the story on the sniper shooting, isn’t he?”
“Ah, yeah,” Nigel said uncertainly.
“I know you know he should be.” I took another swig of beer. “Or perhaps she is saving that part of the feature for herself. It’s bound to be hot.”
Colleen set three plates in front of us. The burgers were large, juicy, and smothered with Gorgonzola cheese and bacon. The French fries were thin, crisp, and seasoned with a concoction of spices known only to Manfred Schmitt, the chef. The look and smell of the meal was almost irresistible. Nigel resisted it. The man was a perfect bloodhound when it came to news, and bloodhounds will drop from hunger before they abandon a scent.
“You know something you want to tell me, doc?”
“Perhaps. But we want to eat our lunch before it gets cold.”
“Now, look, doc. You got a hot lead, I’d sure like to hear about it.”
I held up my hand. “All in good time, Nigel.”
The consumption of the meal occupied the three of us for some moments. Eventually, Joe sat back and said, “So, Nigel, McClellan a big noise around here?”
Nigel snorted through a mouthful of bacon. “Likes to think he is. You ever met him?”
The Case of the Roasted Onion Page 16
