Barnstorming (Gail Mccarthy Mysteries)

by Laura Crum

  The click of the light switch lit a rough glass sconce shaped like a half moon above the door, and a hidden light in the alcove across the room. Jeri’s mouth parted slightly as she gazed about. I grinned.

  “This is great,” she said. “Did you build it yourselves?”

  “Mostly. Blue had a contractor friend who helped.”

  The room we stood in was twenty by twenty with a high open-beam ceiling lined with willow twigs. Windowed like a screen porch, with a floor of rough-planked hand-scraped hickory boards and walls plastered with orangey-gold clay, the room was both small and simple and yet oddly spacious and stark. In one corner was a raised alcove, defined by the deep red trunk of a madrone, which provided the corner pillar. A hanging scroll in the alcove showed grass blowing in the wind. There was little furniture—a wicker rocking chair and a simple futon couch which folded out to make a bed. A small burgundy-toned prayer rug lay in front of the couch and a cedar chest in the corner supported Blue’s bagpipes.

  “We call this the music room,” I said. “It’s where Blue plays his bagpipes. They’re loud. It’s a good thing we’ve got a separate house. Would you like a tour of the whole place before we start? It won’t take long.”

  “Sure,” Jeri said, still gazing about in apparent fascination.

  I led the way to Mac’s room, through the beaded curtain, and watched Jeri peer at the antique desk in front of the turquoise-blue wall, a special request of Mac’s and his favorite color. Mac’s bed had a rust-colored quilt and a wool blanket with a Native American design of galloping horses.

  “The bathroom is the best part,” I said. “Blue wanted a big shower.”

  The small bathroom boasted a handmade concrete counter with a beaten copper sink and a five-by-five walk-in shower, tiled in stone, with a glass-block exterior wall that filled the space with light.

  “I love glass block,” said Jeri, gazing at the wall somewhat wistfully. “This is great,” she added.

  “We had fun with it,” I said, and led the way back to the main room.

  Settling into the rocker, I watched Jeri take the end of the couch and bring out her small recorder. Her smooth blond head, sporting a neat, short cut and showing no gray, I noticed, was bent over for a minute as she fiddled with the dials. I felt a sudden rush of fondness, remembering all of our previous interactions. I liked Jeri Ward. We’d known each other in an off-again on-again way for twenty years. Somehow we had never become intimate friends, perhaps because neither she nor I was the type to make many close friendships. Nonetheless, I liked her very much, and sensed that the feeling was mutual.

  “Did you find anything interesting in the woods?” I asked her.

  “Not really. Not yet,” she muttered, not looking up. “The scene-of-crime guys are still there.” And then, “I just got back from Lazy Valley Stable. I had a guy from there come pick up the horse.”

  “Was it the trainer, Jonah Wakefield?”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said his name was. Young, dark, clearly thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”

  “That would be Jonah,” I agreed. “Does he know Jane’s dead?”

  “It was pretty much impossible not to tell him,” Jeri said. “Given that I had to put someone in charge of the horse. He doesn’t know the woman’s been shot or where she was found, though. I led the horse down to that spot where you met us and had him pick her up there.”

  “I saw Jonah riding in the woods this afternoon,” I said. “Not five minutes after I heard the shot.”

  “Oh really.” Jeri clicked a button. “Okay, this thing’s on now. Go ahead and tell me what you saw.”

  I took a deep breath. “I was riding up the ridge trail this afternoon when I met Jane Kelly, riding her mare, Dolly. Probably about three o’clock, though I can’t be sure.”

  “You knew her, right?”

  “Yeah, I knew her. She was one of my veterinary clients when I was a practicing vet and I would sometimes see her when I was out riding. We stopped and talked awhile.”

  “Where were you, exactly?”

  “That’s hard to describe, unless you know the trails. I could draw you a map, maybe.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Jeri said. “But for now, let’s just get your story.”

  I recounted Jane’s and my conversation as faithfully as I could remember it. “She was upset about problems with trail access,” I said, and I described the guy who sicced his dog on riders, the dirt bike rider, and the unknown folks who kept trying to block the trails. “She was pretty angry about all that. She said that she’d just moved her horse to Lazy Valley Stable because of the trail access issues—also she couldn’t get along with the new manager of the Red Barn, or the resident trainer there.”

  “And that is?”

  “Tammi Martinez is the manager and the trainer is a young guy named Ross Hart.”

  “Do you know these people?”

  “Sort of. I know people who board at that barn and they talked about them. I’ve met them both out riding. Neither of them has been there long. Less than a year. The old owner is a real nice gal, but she moved away and hired this much younger woman to run the place. Tammi’s tough.” I decided to leave it at that.

  “What about the trainer?”

  “Ross Hart. There’s talk about him, I guess; but there always seems to be talk about trainers. Ross rented a house just behind the boarding stable about six months ago, and started training and giving lessons at the barn. Rumor has it, he’s sleeping with Tammi. Jane said that he’d been up to some stuff that he shouldn’t—whatever that means. She also said that some of his former clients were now taking lessons from her and that she knew quite a bit more about training than Ross.”

  “Nice,” Jeri commented.

  I shook my head. “Jane was not exactly nice,” I said. “She was very direct; a lot of people didn’t like her. She and I always got along well, though I knew her very slightly.”

  “So, go on with the story,” Jeri prompted. “Try to tell it in order, as it happened.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Jane and I talked for a while, maybe ten minutes. She told me she had just moved her mare to Lazy Valley Stable, partly because they had better trail access and partly because of her issues with Tammi and Ross. I asked why she had moved her horse to the Red Barn to begin with, and she said because Sheryl Silverman, who boards at Lazy Valley, had stolen Jane’s boyfriend, Doug Martin.” I rolled my eyes. “I know Sheryl a little—stealing boyfriends and husbands is sort of business as usual for her. Anyway, Jane said that at this point she and Doug were back together and she didn’t mind seeing Sheryl. She sort of smirked about it; I got the impression she felt kind of smug.”

  I thought a minute. “I can’t recall that we talked of much else. Her horse was getting restless; we both rode on.”

  “Which way did she go?” Jeri asked.

  “She rode down the ridge. From there she could take a turn that leads back to Lazy Valley, or she could ride down to the Red Barn. Judging by where I found her, though, she must have doubled back up the ridge,” I added doubtfully.

  “What did you do next?”

  “I rode on towards the Lookout, where I was headed. I didn’t see anyone until I ran into Sheryl Silverman, who was also riding down the ridge trail in the same direction Jane was going.”

  “Did you talk to Sheryl?”

  “Briefly. I kind of teased her; I guess it was evil of me. I mentioned seeing Jane and Sheryl looked furious. Then we went our ways. I didn’t think anything of it.” I wondered whether to mention that Sheryl had been packing saddlebags that would have accommodated a pistol and decided not. Not yet, anyway.

  “What then?”

  “I rode to the Lookout, spent some time staring over Monterey Bay. Have you been there?”

  “Yep.” Jeri grinned. “It’s amazing.”

  “One of my favorite places, “ I agreed. “I ride there a lot.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “Not while I was there.
But when I rode back down the trail, headed for home, I heard a shot. I’m pretty sure it had to be the shot that killed Jane.”

  “Could you tell where it came from?”

  “Not really. I was in a deep, wooded spot; I couldn’t see much. The sound seemed to come from all around me, if you know what I mean. I had the sense it wasn’t far away. It spooked me a little, but I do hear gunshots in the woods from time to time, especially in the fall. I assume it’s poachers, hunting deer. I did wonder if the shot came from the old hunter’s blind that’s in an oak tree just off the trail to the Lookout.”

  Jeri nodded. “Then what?”

  “I rode on. And in less than five minutes I ran into Jonah Wakefield, the trainer from Lazy Valley, riding a buckskin colt.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Very briefly. I asked him if he heard the shot and he said no, which I find hard to believe. He said that he’d seen Ross Hart riding fast, or something to that effect.”

  “Did you see Ross Hart?”

  “No. I did see someone galloping up the hill that leads to the swingset trail, but I couldn’t see who it was. A sorrel horse, that’s all I know. That was after I ran into the bearded guy on the dirt bike, or after he almost ran into me.”

  I described this encounter to Jeri and said that the dirt bike rider had not paused.

  “Then I rode on until I got to the meadow where I found Jane. First I saw her horse and then I found her. I rolled her over, like I told you, and saw she was dead.” I swallowed, the memory of Jane’s blank eyes still difficult for me to face. “My cell phone wouldn’t work there,” I went on firmly, “so I rode to the Lookout and called you. On the way I saw a middle-aged man walking a yellow Lab with a machete in one hand. I didn’t speak to him or him to me.”

  I took a breath. “I rode down the logging road to meet you. On the way I saw an old camper parked out of sight at the edge of a log deck. I didn’t see any people about. After that I met you down by the road.” I took another breath and folded my hands in my lap. “I think that about covers it.”

  Jeri was silent a moment: I had the sense she was trying to assimilate everything I had just said. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, her cell phone rang.

  “Jeri Ward here,” she answered crisply.

  She listened to the staccato rattle of a voice and said, “Where?”

  She listened some more and then said, “I’ll be right there.”

  Even as she turned to me, she shoved the cell phone and recorder into her pockets. “Got to go,” she said. “My guys have picked up a young guy with a twenty-two rifle, hiking down the logging road. Young guy didn’t want to say what he was doing there, nor did he have any registration for the gun, so they took him in for questioning. I’ve got to go down to the office. I’ll be in touch.”

  And before I could say much of anything else, Jeri Ward had let herself out the door and was gone.

  Chapter 6

  I watched Jeri’s headlights retreat down my driveway and sighed. Now I had to go face Blue and Mac. I really, really did not want to go over this story again. What I wanted was to sit down and have a quiet, peaceful drink and try to relax. Flicking off the lights in the little house, I walked across the porch, finding my way by the glow of the lamps in the house across the yard. As I stepped towards the lit-up windows, a plaintive meow by my feet made me jump.

  “Tigger!” I said, a bit sharply, as the fluffy shape dodged between my legs. “Watch out.”

  Tigger meowed again, unrepentantly, and followed me to the house, where he once again slipped between my feet as I walked in the door. I watched his furry tiger-striped form waddle down the hall (Tigger was not a slender cat) and had to grin.

  A small dark shadow leaped upon Tigger from the darkness of the bedroom doorway and suddenly both cats were wrestling on the floor. I stepped over them, reflecting that little black Shadow had been aptly named, and walked into the main room, where Blue and Mac had spaghetti sauce and meatballs simmering on the stove. Blue took one look at my face and turned to the counter to pour lemonade-colored liquid into a tumbler filled with ice.

  “Would you like a drink?” he said.

  “Thank you, thank you.” I smiled at him. “And it’s a margarita, my favorite. How did you know?”

  “I just guessed.” Blue grinned back at me.

  I sank into the moss-colored armchair with a sigh. Mac was sitting on the couch, playing his electric-keyboard piano. Blue leaned on the counter and took a swallow of his drink, his eyes on me. “How did it go?” he asked.

  “Okay,” I said. “Would it be all right if I just sipped this drink for a while? I’m exhausted. I really don’t want to go over it again right away.”

  “No problem.” Blue smiled again and his eyes went to Mac. “It can wait.”

  I knew we were both thinking that firsthand descriptions of a murder victim were not what our sensitive eleven-year-old son needed to hear. At the moment Mac was so absorbed in his music that I sincerely doubted he knew I was in the room.

  I sipped my drink and watched Mac play. Watched Blue watch us both. Slowly my mind detached. I felt as if I were removed, a disembodied presence observing a scene: boy making music.

  Mac’s long slender fingers move over the keyboard; his expression is intent. His left hand extemporizes chords while his right hand picks out a melody. He creates phrases and repeats them, invents variations and returns to his ground. The music he is playing is sonorous and pleasing and though I know he is making it up as he goes along, it sounds as if it is a piece he has practiced and played many times.

  I watch Mac’s face and his fingers; he occasionally meets my eyes and seems pleased to find that I am listening; mostly he is caught up in what he is doing. He looks focused and happy. I know from experience that he can and will play the piano for long periods of time, whether anyone is listening or not. Mac is an entirely self-taught musician.

  Sipping my drink, I note Mac’s curiously adult expression and his broadening shoulders. He has begun that steady progression that leads to young manhood, and I feel a stab of nostalgia for the days when he was truly a child. But this passes quickly in a burst of pure pride.

  Once again I focus on my son’s music, as he sits playing the piano. Lamplight falls around him, laying a pool of warmth on the faded Oriental rug at his feet, kindling a yellow-gold glow on the rough-sawn knotty plank walls behind him. Mac’s hair is a cap of ruffled fawn-colored waves; his big long-lashed eyes still hold the magical innocence of a fairy changeling. He has not yet acquired the rigid patina of approaching adolescence.

  Mac is making music, his own music, and I am here. I take another swallow of margarita and smile at Blue as I feel the tension melt slowly out of my body. Blue smiles back and I know we are thinking the same thing.

  Mac is growing up and we are all here together. What more is there to ask? Tragedy may stalk the hills, as it prowls the world at large, but for the moment we are here together and safe.

  ——

  It was later, much later, that I awoke from a deep sleep with my heart pounding. I could not remember the dream, only that it had had something to do with a body, sightless eyes staring upward. I shuddered, rolled over, tried to go back to sleep, realized I needed to go to the bathroom.

  Climbing out of bed, I tottered down the hall as I so often did in the middle of the night these days. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was two-thirty. Par for the course. I looked idly out the window and froze.

  There it was again. That light. My hall windows looked out at the ridge; the same ridge I had traversed so many times on Sunny. I knew every inch of that view. I had stared at it from my house and covered it on my horse many, many times. Until a month ago, I had never seen this light.

  As far as I knew there was no dwelling where the light glowed, flickering. If I moved a few steps to the left or right it vanished. But from this one spot, for the last month, the light sparkled every night, hanging on the ridge in a place that I thought
was populated only by trees and brush.

  It wasn’t a fire, the color was wrong for that, and though it flickered, it was too consistent. What in the world was a light doing out in the brush? Whose light was it? What was the point of it?

  I stared and stared, my nose pressed to the glass, trying to determine exactly where it was in relation to landmarks that I recognized. Halfway up the ridge trail, it looked like…but there simply wasn’t anything there. I had ridden up the ridge trail many times.

  That thought brought another thought to mind. Could the mysterious light have anything to do with the murder? It was quite a ways from the spot where I had found Jane’s body, of that I was sure, but maybe not so far from the place where I had chatted with her on the trail. It was hard to see what the connection might be, but one thing I knew. I had never seen this light before a month ago. Whatever it was, it represented a change.

  An owl hooted softly, far away in the darkness. I could smell the damp loamy scent of autumn, breathing in through the open window. The strange light shone silently on the ridge. I shifted from foot to foot.

  I gave the light one last look and headed for the bathroom. Tomorrow, I told myself, I’ll work on it tomorrow.

  Chapter 7

  At seven o’clock the next morning the light was still there. It sparkled in the trees, dimmed by dawn’s gray light, but still visible. It struck me that I had never looked for the mystery light by day before. I had puzzled over it by night, but forgotten it during the day.

  Not this time. Today I was going to solve this little mystery, if nothing else. I would find the source of the mysterious light on the ridge.

  Hustling into my clothes, I made a cup of tea and trudged down the hill to the barn. The October air was fine and clear, goldfinches sang their plaintive descending melody in the brush, Cinders the barn cat ran to meet me. Henry, Plumber, and Sunny all nickered eagerly. I smiled, fed the cat, and grabbed flakes of hay for each horse and dumped them in the feeders, checking to be sure the water troughs were full. Then I fed the banty chickens and let them out of the coop.