Breakaway (A Gail McCarthy Mystery)

by Laura Crum

  "Anything specific you can think of regarding this particular act?"

  "No, not really. Except that it seems as though there may be some inherent potential for violence there."

  "This person has already hit a little girl over the head and knocked her out," I said.

  "Then I would say that there is definitely potential for violent behavior. In all probability the act with a horse reflects some sort of rage and frustration with women."

  "That makes sense," I said.

  We looked at each other. "Just how are you involved with this?" Dr. Alan Todd asked me.

  "Two of my friends have horses that have been, uh, abused," I said, meeting his eyes briefly.

  Even knowing the man as slightly as I did, I could read the concern on his face.

  "I'd be very careful if I were you," he said. "Very careful. I think this person could be dangerous."

  TWENTY-TWO

  I couldn't get Dr. Todd's words out of my mind. They stuck there, providing an edginess that needled me throughout the following day as I dealt with an ongoing roster of equine problems.

  And the edginess was still present when I finally sat down on my porch to wait for Nico.

  I'd taken a couple of hours off, to Jim's consternation, in order to ready my house for Nico's visit. Once again it was polished and tidy, with a vase of roses on the table, a plate of fruit and cheese and a bottle of my favorite Sauvignon Blanc in the refrigerator; I'd even made some bread.

  Now I sat on the porch with a book in my lap, looking out over the garden and thinking.

  It was a fine fog-free evening for once, the air soft and warm, the sun slanting gently in from the west to light the blues and apricot shades in the perennial border and the Tea roses nodding along the grape stake fence. Nearer at hand, the rambling rose, Paul's Himalayan Musk, twined dainty blue-green tendrils around the pillars of the porch; the blush-pink blossoms released a sweet and yet spicy fragrance into the air. A pair of house finches had nested in the vine; the vividly red male sat nearby, watching me and singing his territorial song.

  The garden was at its best. I looked forward to having Nico see it and the house. I just wished I could shake the omnipresent sense of sadness and worry.

  Still, the air was soft on my skin and full of the scent of roses. A family of quail-the babies no bigger than walnuts-trooped through the vegetable garden, the parents clucking protectively. A dove perched quietly on the birdbath, looking like a plaster decoration. Life went on all around me, full of sweetness.

  I stared at the rambling rose blossoms silhouetted against the evening sky. This young vine sang a song of joy, unclouded by my sorrow. In a sense, this could be a comfort, this knowledge that beauty went on, despite my grief and cares. But at other times, what seemed like the profound indifference of the natural world to my particular troubles was yet another source of despondency.

  Who knew? I had no answers, only questions. Would I some day feel all right again? How to survive in the interim? And what, if anything, should I say to Nico?

  The sight of a white van coming slowly up the hill told me that I'd better figure out the answer to that last question pretty damn soon.

  I waited for Nico to park the van and get out, surprised at the eager expectancy arising in me. I was glad to be getting the painting, but it was more than that. It was Nico herself I was looking forward to.

  I waved to her from the porch and she waved back, then came toward me. She was dressed much as usual-jeans, a linen blouse, her dark hair twined in a knot on the back of her neck. She smiled as she greeted me, that fine-boned face as purely and simply radiant as I remembered it.

  "Hi, Nico," I said.

  "Hello."

  "Would you like a tour first, or shall we hang the painting?" I asked.

  "Whichever you would like. I would love a tour," she said.

  "Let's do the tour first, then, and then hang the painting and have a glass of wine."

  Nico smiled an assent; I led her out to the garden, and then down to the barn. We stopped many times along the way for her to ask me about plants she didn't know and the names of roses that she liked. She came to a halt in the barnyard with a delighted smile at the sight of Jack and Red.

  "You have chickens!"

  "Yes. Just barely. What with all the varmints that live out here, I have a hard time keeping them."

  "I had chickens when I lived in France," she said wistfully.

  She greeted the horses and the cow and admired my vegetable plot; I offered her cuttings of any plant that took her fancy. Like me, I could tell that she was chiefly drawn to the roses, admiring each in turn and finally requesting a cutting from the classic Tea rose Jaune Desprez-a soft peachy-pink blend with a creamy gold tint.

  "Doesn't 'jaune' mean yellow in French?" I asked her.

  "Yes, that is right."

  "This rose is hardly yellow," I said, holding a blossom up to smell it. "But I guess when it came into commerce, over a hundred years ago, there weren't any yellow roses to speak of in the trade."

  "I think that is so." Nico smiled again. "Roses are interesting, are they not?"

  "Yes," I said, "they're so romantic. Such a long history with humans who have been passionate about them."

  I clipped some cuttings from a long cane and we proceeded back up the hill to the house, Nico stopping at her van to unload the painting.

  It was carefully wrapped in a sleeve of brown paper; I felt a keen sense of anticipation as she carried it through the doorway.

  To my pleasure, Nico stopped when she stepped into the house and gazed around.

  "But this is beautiful."

  "Thank you," I said.

  After a careful look, she carried the painting to my empty wall. "And this will go here?"

  "That's right." I had a hammer and nail ready.

  Nico gently removed the paper sleeve and held the painting up in the center of the wall. We both sighed. The golden tones in the painting echoed the tawny gold of the pine walls; the cobalt blue pool stood out intensely. The painting looked dramatic, harmonious, right. It gave the room focus. With some fiddling, I drove a nail into the essential spot and Nico set the painting in place. We both stepped back to admire it.

  "It is perfect here," Nico said at last.

  "Shall we toast it?" I asked.

  "Of course." Her smile was as wide as my own.

  I produced the wine, fruit, cheese, and bread and set them on the table. We both seated ourselves where we could watch the painting as I poured the wine.

  "To life," Nico said.

  "And to you, and your art," I added.

  We both sipped; I was torn between looking at my new possession and looking at Nico. This surprised me. I simply wasn't used to feeling this degree of attraction to a woman. Of course, it wasn't sexual, I reassured myself.

  Or was it?

  This thought was even more startling. Was I perhaps going through a change of sexual orientation? About to become a lesbian at forty? I'd known other women who went this way.

  I took another swallow of wine and asked Nico how her work was going. Seeming to sense my preoccupation, she talked easily of her painting. I watched her in relative silence, trying to gauge my own reactions.

  The beauty and clarity of her face and words, the grace in her slim hands, the light in her eyes-these all appealed to me mightily, and yet the appeal wasn't sexual, I didn't think. I had no urge to reach out and caress her, no curiosity as to what it would feel like if she caressed me. That intense physical awareness that I felt when I was with Blue Winter was missing here.

  What was here was a deep attraction of another kind. I delighted in her, in her way of being, in her appearance and her personality. I wanted to know her better. Though I felt no need to touch her, the thought of touching her was not unappealing. It was intimacy with her that drew me, a wish to feel close and connected, as the shrink had said.

  I had no idea what she felt about me. As in all new relationships, I was uncertain
where I was permitted to tread; I didn't know whether my attraction to her as a person was welcome or unwelcome.

  "Do you enjoy being a veterinarian?" Nico asked me.

  "A lot of the time I do. Not so much lately. To tell you the truth, I've been depressed, so I haven't been enjoying anything much lately." I found I had the impulse to be absolutely honest with Nico.

  "I have been depressed once," she said. "I know how this can be."

  "What happened with you?" I asked her.

  "The depression came many years ago, when I lived in Spain. I do not know why it came. I could not eat, or read; I cried all the time. Nothing anyone said was any help."

  "And what happened?"

  "It passed, eventually. It took about a year. It left as it came; I did not know why. But I did come to believe it had a purpose."

  "What was that?" I asked.

  "It changed me. It softened me. I became more grounded in myself; I needed to struggle less." Nico spread her hands eloquently. "I cannot really explain it, but in the end, for me, it was a gift."

  Now this was a different point of view.

  "A gift?" I asked.

  "Yes, a gift. It taught me to see things differently; I feel I am more aware. For me, it was like, how do they call it, the saint's dark night of the soul."

  "Oh," I said.

  "It is a common theme in spiritual writing," Nico went on. ''This dark time routinely comes to those who are ready to grow. It is the, what is the word, prelude to a time of great growth and fulfillment. The dark night before the dawn. Or so I have found."

  Well, this was a new way of seeing things. Though at the moment I felt unable to regard my depression as anything other than a curse. Still, Nico's words were having a curious effect on me. I could feel myself opening up-a little-to the notion that depression might lead somewhere, that it might be something other than a complete negative.

  "Did you do anything to help it go away?" I asked.

  "Not really." She smiled. "Except that I accepted it. I accepted myself, and how I felt. I quit resisting the sadness. I allowed myself to be sad and to think that feeling sad was okay. And then it left of its own accord. Not all at once. Slowly. But it left."

  An echo here of what the shrink had said. Accepting one's feelings seemed to be key. I simply had no idea how to accept feeling shitty as the status quo. It went against all my instincts.

  Nico seemed to read my thoughts. "It sounds wrong, but it is true. It goes away much quicker when you stop fighting it."

  I nodded, not knowing what to say.

  She smiled understandingly. "And how do you like it?" she asked, indicating the painting. "Does it look as you had hoped?"

  "Yes, it's perfect."

  And the conversation drifted on to painting and houses, gardens and horses. I poured more wine; between us we polished off the food. I felt a deep sense of peace.

  When she rose to leave I realized that I'd never brought up the subject of the horse rapist; it had never even come into my mind. And I couldn't bring myself to say anything about it now.

  Instead I said, "Would you like to go out for a drink sometime? You said once that you missed going out to the cafes in the evening."

  "Yes, I would like that," Nico said.

  "How about Friday?" I asked, eager to see her again.

  She seemed to consult an inner calendar. "That would be fine," she said.

  "I have to work," I told her, "so perhaps we'd better meet there." I gave her directions to Clouds, thinking she might enjoy Caroline, and we agreed to meet there at seven for drinks and dinner. I was being surprised by how elated I felt about it.

  "I will see you then," Nico said, turning to say good-bye.

  "Yes," I said. "And thank you." Impulsively I reached out to hug her.

  She hugged me back with good grace; I had no sense of resistance or resentment. Her smile was as clear and pure as water, with something of its translucency, when she turned away.

  As for me, I was surprised at myself. Everything about the way I related to Nico was unlike the Gail McCarthy I was used to. Maybe Nico was right. Maybe depression was a path to change.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Friday evening I had an emergency. I got the call just as I was leaving the office. "My mare foaled while I was gone," the unknown female voice said. "The foal's down and I think it's dying. Can you come?"

  "Of course." I took directions and hung up, feeling frustrated. So much for my evening out.

  I called Nico and told her what was going on.

  "Shall we meet later?" she asked.

  "If you want, I'd love to."

  "Let us say nine o'clock then," she said. "Will that be late enough?"

  "Almost for sure," I said. "I'll call you if I can be earlier. See you then." Hanging up the phone with a renewed sense of expectancy, I headed out of the clinic and climbed in my truck.

  This call was up in Zayante-an odd little hollow in the coastal mountains. Thick with redwoods, Zayante had been a major hangout for acid-dropping hippies in the wild old days of the sixties and early seventies. A legacy of shack-like houses (known to no building inspector or tax collector) and many long-haired and bearded denizens had resulted-a legacy that persisted, despite the steady urbanization of the county. These days Zayante was a somewhat unsettled mixture of old hippies and young yuppies, the latter drawn by the low housing prices in the area.

  Driving up into the mountains, I followed winding narrow roads toward Lompico, the backwoods heart of steep, shadowy Zayante. My client lived near Lompico.

  The place, when I found it, was disheartening. Unadulterated redwood forest, by the look of it, it had been cluttered up by a collection of junk. The classic rusting car bodies were augmented by several sagging shacks-roofs patched with plastic tarps-and piles of rotting lumber and other debris. Nowhere could I see anything that looked like a barn or a horse.

  A woman emerged from the largest building, a somewhat derelict cabin, and walked to meet me. She wore a dress of some faded material and had long graying hair and oddly serene eyes.

  I introduced myself as Dr. McCarthy; she gave me her name and assured me I was in the right place.

  "Where's the horse?" I asked.

  She gestured toward the tree-covered slope in front of us. "Up there."

  I could see nothing but forest.

  "Have you caught her?" I asked.

  "I can't catch her," the woman said simply. "And she tries to attack me if I go near the foal."

  Great.

  "I can take you to where she is," the woman said. "One of the boys is up there with her."

  "All right," I said.

  I collected the things I thought I'd need, including a tranquilizer for the attack-prone mare, and requested that the woman bring a halter and a bucket of grain. These objects assembled, we moved off into the forest, the woman in the lead, and two shaggy pony-tailed and bearded men, who had emerged from the cabin in the meantime, in our wake.

  We walked perhaps a quarter of a mile; on the way I elicited the information that the woman had no idea when the mare was due to foal, thus no idea if the foal was premature or not. The mare, it seemed, ran loose in this piece of forest in the company of two other mares and a stallion, all doing just as they saw fit. "She usually has a foal about this time of the year," the woman said.

  It was rapidly dawning on me that I was-not for the first time-in the less than desirable situation of dealing with non-horsemen who had horses. Horses that were in all probability never caught or handled, thus never taught any respect for or confidence in humans. Such horses could be almost as difficult and dangerous to work on as their undomesticated brethren.

  "She's down there," the woman pointed down into a gully; at the bottom I could see the red back of a sorrel mare, standing near the bank of a small creek. About fifty feet from the mare, a man with a long gray ponytail and black cowboy hat rose from a crouch to stand and waved us over.

  I made my way down the slope, keeping an ey
e on the mare, my companions trailing behind me.

  "Where's the foal?" I asked.

  "He's down in the creek bed," the black-hatted man said.

  I looked, but could still see no sign of the foal. The mare, however, stood over the creek-a series of potholes connected by trickles, this time of year-her ears pointed sharply forward, nickering anxiously from time to time.

  "Can you catch and handle the mare normally, when she doesn't have a foal?" I asked the company at large.

  "Yes," the woman said doubtfully. "She's friendly. She likes to be petted. I don't catch her very often though."

  "Is she broke?"

  "Broke?"

  "Broke to ride," I said.

  "Oh, no." The woman sounded sincerely shocked. "She lives free."

  Great. Just great. I had no doubt that the "free" mare never had her feet trimmed, either. Or got her shots. Or got wormed. Probably this woman meant well, but it was not doing her horse a favor to neglect those services that a civilized society can provide for its creatures, including its animals. More or less like raising your child without benefit of a balanced diet or health or dental care, in the interests of having him or her grow up naturally.

  However, this wasn't the time or place for a lecture. Not that it would have helped, anyway. It's been my experience that people do what they want and/or need to do; telling them they ought to do otherwise rarely has any effect.

  "I need to examine the foal," I said. "You say the mare attacks anyone who goes near it?"