Bluegrass Peril

by Virginia Smith

  A chill crept down Becky’s spine. He had a right to be worried, and she should be, too.

  Whoever killed Neal was still out there.

  FOUR

  Becky, leaning against her car, hefted herself upright at Detective Foster’s approach. Jeff strode beside him carrying a black bag. Though she’d seen him in uniform a time or two, she’d had to readjust her thinking about him today. Here, he wasn’t simply Amber’s boyfriend or even just a guy at church. He was all business, his face almost as closed as Detective Foster’s while he went about his murder investigation.

  Murder. Becky shook her head. She still couldn’t believe it. Someone she knew personally had been murdered. And her boys knew him, too. She closed her eyes. How would she explain to Jamie and Tyler what happened to Mr. Neal? Was five too young to attend a funeral? She’d have to call Daddy tonight and ask his opinion.

  “Mrs. Dennison,” said the detective, “how are you holding up?”

  Being called Mrs. Dennison irritated her, but whenever she insisted on Ms. she felt like a radical feminist. So most of the time she ignored it, like now. “Honestly? I wish I could go inside. I’ve got work to do.” She glanced toward the back door of the farmhouse where yet another man carrying a canvas bag with the state police emblem on it entered. The door slammed behind him with a bang.

  Detective Foster shook his head, and Jeff said, “It might be several days before you’re allowed back inside. They’ve got to process everything.”

  “Several days?” Becky looked away so they wouldn’t see the worry in her eyes. Several days without work meant several days without pay. She couldn’t afford that right now, not with summer approaching. Her day care costs would double when school let out next month.

  When she looked back at them, she found Foster watching her carefully. He didn’t look as though he missed much. “Maybe tomorrow. The inside looks pretty clean so far. No sign of a struggle like in the barn.”

  Becky rubbed her hands on her arms. The sun had done its job warming the cool morning air, but she could not stop shivering. Every time she pictured Neal’s body sprawled in the dirt, a chill shot down her spine.

  Jeff scanned the paddocks where the horses grazed quietly. “Where’s Lewis?”

  “He went over to Shady Acres to check on a few things. He’ll be right back.”

  Jeff slapped the bag against his thigh. “Look, Becky, I hate to do this but I’m going to need your shoes.”

  Startled, she searched his face. He returned her gaze apologetically. “My shoes? Why?”

  Foster answered. “We need to match them to some prints we found in the barn.”

  Okay, that made sense. But she felt strange having her shoes confiscated, almost as though they thought she had something to do with the murder. Her face grew warm as she leaned against the car to lift her foot.

  Jeff pulled on a blue rubber glove before taking the shoe. He immediately turned it over and showed the sole to Foster. There wasn’t much tread on the bottom of her pumps, but dirt encrusted what little was there. The two men exchanged a glance.

  “I’ve already told you I was in the barn this morning.” She struggled to keep her voice even. Detective Foster would certainly notice if she acted defensively and might interpret that as guilt.

  “Are you in the barn regularly?” Foster watched her closely.

  Becky shook her head. “I’ve been in there a couple of times, like when I need to take something to Neal. Mostly I stay in the office.” She shifted her weight from her bare foot to the other. Why were they staring at her like that? “That’s my job. I’m an office assistant, not a farmhand.”

  “Were you in the barn yesterday?” asked Jeff.

  Becky went over the day in her mind. They were working on the next issue of the newsletter, and she’d been focused on that most of the day. “No. The last time was on Friday.”

  “Do you wear other shoes to work, Mrs. Dennison?” Detective Foster’s eyelids narrowed. “Ones with narrower heels, perhaps?”

  Narrower heels? Becky glanced at the wide one-inch heel on the pump in Jeff’s hand. “No, I don’t.”

  The men exchanged another glance, and Foster nodded.

  “Do you know of any women who might have been in the barn recently?” Jeff asked as he put her shoe into a big plastic bag.

  Becky slipped her other pump off and handed it to him. They must have found prints in the barn from a narrow heel. She couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone except Neal go in there. He gave tours several times a week, but the visitors came into the office to watch videos of the stallions’ championship races, and then followed Neal around the paddocks, listening to each horse’s life story.

  Still, it wasn’t impossible for one of them to step inside the barn. “I suppose someone on a tour might have.” Doubt sounded in her voice.

  Foster pursed his lips. “Was there a tour yesterday?”

  “No. The last one was Monday.”

  Foster looked disappointed, and Jeff shook his head as he zipped the bag shut. The prints they found must be fresh.

  Tours! The conversation sparked Becky’s memory. “Speaking of tours, we have one scheduled at eleven.” She glanced at her watch. “No time to call them to reschedule. They’ll be here any minute.”

  “When they show up,” said Jeff, “we’ll let them know their tour’s been canceled.”

  At that moment Scott’s pickup pulled to a stop in front of the house. They watched him back carefully into the grass, avoiding the overcrowded driveway, and pull around to the rear of the house. He parked close to the edge of the driveway and opened the door. Sam followed him out, leaping from inside the cab to the ground.

  Her new boss crossed the grass toward them, the dog at his side, and fixed a direct gaze on Detective Foster. “I need to get to the feed bin in the barn. The horses have to eat.”

  The detective frowned. “Can’t you borrow some horse food from Mr. Courtney’s place until we clear the scene?”

  Scott looked incredulous for a moment, then his expression became patient as he explained. “Horses have extremely fragile digestive systems. A sudden change in feed can cause serious problems. Something like colic can actually put an animal down. These horses are fed a compound specially designed for older horses, and we don’t keep anything like that over at Shady Acres.” He cocked his head. “If I knew what brand to get, I suppose we could go buy some.”

  Foster and Jeff exchanged a glance. “That would probably be best.”

  “We have an account at Simpson’s,” Becky volunteered. “They’ll have records on the brand and all that.”

  As though reminded of her presence, Scott gave her a startled look. His gaze dropped to her shoes in Jeff’s plastic bag. “What’s going on?”

  Heat crept up her neck. She seemed to be doing a lot of blushing this morning. “They just need to compare my footprints to some they found in the barn.”

  Why did he have to be so handsome? Her pulse quickened as she stood under the weight of his stare. Working with the guy wouldn’t be easy if she couldn’t control her reactions any better than this. She drew in a deep breath and returned his gaze with a calm smile. “Do you need any help feeding the horses?”

  He looked down at her nylon-clad feet, and his lips twisted into a lopsided grin. “You’re going to help barefoot?”

  Her cheeks blazed. “Of course not. I’ll, uh, I’ll go home and get some more shoes.”

  A knowing smile lurked behind Jeff’s eyes. Amber’s boyfriend had returned. Becky ignored him.

  “Actually,” said Foster, “you might as well stay at home. You won’t be able to get into the office today, and the fewer people we have hanging around here the better. We’ve got your statement, and we know where to find you if we need anything else.”

  Escaping for home sounded like an excellent idea. She looked at Scott, her eyebrows arched in a silent request for permission. He returned her gaze for a moment, confusion creasing his brow, before his forehead clear
ed. Apparently, he had just realized that running the Pasture meant he was her boss.

  “Oh, yeah, sure.” He flashed a smile. “No sense hanging around here today. I can handle the horses. We’ll start fresh tomorrow, right?”

  He looked toward Jeff and Foster for verification, but Foster wasn’t ready to commit. “If we’re finished in there.”

  Becky didn’t waste another minute. Time to get out of here, pay or no pay. “Okay, I’ll see you in the morning.” She whirled and slipped into her car. The engine turned over a couple of times before it started, but when it did the men stepped away. She backed up as far as she could, then pulled onto the grass and followed the trail through the yard and onto the road toward home.

  Scott emptied a scoop of feed into Fortune’s feed bucket. The horse stood a short distance away and eyed him warily.

  “It’s okay, fella. You’ll get used to me in a day or two.”

  Fortune didn’t appear convinced. Scott had seen the way this horse responded to Haldeman, running to the fence to be close to the man whenever he was outside. The same stallion was keeping a cautious distance from Scott, even though he was delivering food.

  Or maybe it wasn’t the change in servers that made Fortune distrustful; maybe it was the smaller portion. Since Scott had no idea how much Haldeman generally gave the retirees, they’d have to make do with pasture grass and a couple of scoops of the Triple Crown Senior he’d picked up at Simpson’s until he could get to the records. Hopefully by tomorrow the cops would let them into the office. He was sure Haldeman kept a file on each of the horses, their eating habits and preferences and any medications they might be on. He’d ask Becky to pull the files for him.

  Becky. He poured a second scoop of feed into the bucket. He didn’t know what to make of her. She looked a little flustered when she left, barefoot and covered in dirt. But throughout the morning she’d handled herself well, after the initial shock of finding Haldeman’s body wore off. From her phone call, he’d have pegged her for the hysterical type, not the kind to keep her composure under police questioning. Megan would have…

  He stabbed the scoop into the feed bag and climbed behind the wheel of the golf cart to head for the next paddock. Why did he keep comparing her to Megan? She didn’t look a thing like his former girlfriend, except for the eyes. He steeled himself against the wave of regret that thoughts of Megan always brought. He had to stop thinking about the past and focus on the task at hand. And that meant working with Becky to hold things together. Hopefully, she was happily married and totally in love with her husband. Theirs would be a business relationship, period. And he was the boss.

  A smile tugged at his mouth. He’d never officially been the boss of anyone before. This temporary job at the Pasture was going to give him some great experience. If he handled it well, he might be able to land a job as general manager with the next breeder he worked for. Having someone like Mr. Courtney put in a good word for him when he was ready to move on would be worth a lot.

  He pulled on the hand brake as he approached the feed bucket for Samson’s Secret. Zach’s comment about having more experience with stallions than Scott wasn’t really accurate. He and Mr. Courtney seemed to have forgotten that Scott’s last job had been at a stud farm. But out of respect for his boss, Scott had kept his mouth shut. Though he could be a bit crusty, Zach had been nothing but kind to Scott since his arrival. In some ways, he reminded Scott of his dad.

  Unlike Fortune, Samson ran toward Scott eagerly when he realized food was being scooped into his feed bucket. He shoved his head in after the first scoop as though starving.

  “Take it easy, fella.” Scott laughed as he gently pushed the horse’s head back so he could add another scoop. “You can’t fool me into thinking you’re that hungry. I’ve watched you graze all morning.”

  As he left Samson’s paddock, Detective Foster and Trooper Whitley came through the back door of the farmhouse. Foster’s gaze swept the paddocks and stopped when he caught sight of Scott. Both men started toward him. Scott hopped into the golf cart and met them at the edge of the black plank fencing.

  “Lewis,” said Foster, “any idea what this is?”

  Trooper Whitley held a scrap of paper in his blue-gloved hand. When Scott reached for it, he jerked it away.

  “Fingerprints,” he explained.

  Scott nodded and shoved his hand into his pocket. The square of paper looked like newsprint and had two ripped edges, as though torn from the corner of a larger piece. Scrawled in blue ink across the white space were two sentences.

  I need to see you. I’ll come by tonight.

  The handwriting was pretty, the even, rounded letters flowing across the paper. The i in tonight was dotted with a little circle.

  Scott shrugged. “I’m not an expert, but to me it looks like a note written by a woman.”

  Detective Foster’s lips pursed. “We know that. I’m asking about the paper it’s written on.”

  Scott looked again. The scrap was torn from the page of a racing form. Bold print beside the blue scrawl listed statistics that might look like gibberish to someone with no knowledge of the industry, but were a horse’s lifetime stats.

  “It’s probably torn from a page of the Daily Racing Form.” He grasped Whitley’s rubber-encased wrist and turned it over. On the back the large bold heading was torn, the last part missing, but enough of the name remained that Scott recognized it. “Lemon Sugar. She’s a filly from Harwood Farm over in Lexington. She ran at Keeneland this week.”

  Foster’s face remained impassive. The man was a master at hiding his reactions. “What day?”

  Scott shrugged. “I’m not sure. I don’t go to the races much.”

  “But you’re a horse guy.” Whitley gave him a surprised look. “You work for a breeder.”

  “And you think everyone who has anything to do with Thoroughbreds is a racing enthusiast.” Scott laughed. “Would you believe I’ve never even been to the Derby?”

  “Yet you recognize the name of a horse and even know the week it’s scheduled to race.” Foster’s statement held a question.

  “Professional interest.” Scott shrugged. “I might not bet on the races, but I can tell you something about the record of every horse we’ve bred since I came to Shady Acres, and their lineage.” He nodded toward the paper. “In this case, I know the manager over at Harwood. He was bragging about that filly last week.”

  Whitley flipped the note over again and studied the handwriting. “Did the victim ever go to the races?”

  “Haldeman?” Scott threw back his head and laughed. “He never missed. The man loved the sport. He was as close to a fanatic as anyone I’ve ever known.”

  “So he would have been at Keeneland this week when this horse—” Foster gestured at the note “—raced?”

  “I’m sure he was.”

  Foster nodded while Whitley took out a plastic bag and sealed the scrap of paper inside.

  “What else can you tell us about the victim?” asked Foster.

  Scott looked away, considering his answer. He should be honest with the police, of course, but he hated to say anything bad about a guy who could no longer defend himself. “I didn’t know him well.” Foster watched his face, waiting for him to continue. “We talked some. I met him last year when I came to work for Mr. Courtney, and we ran into each other around the farm fairly often. He loved the industry, everything about it. And he loved these horses.” Scott nodded over Foster’s shoulder, toward Samson. “He was passionate about saving them. You didn’t want to get him started talking about Ferdinand or Alydar.”

  “Who is Alydar?” asked Whitley.

  Scott waved a hand. “Another champion who died. Doesn’t matter. The point is, Haldeman seemed determined to save every stallion he could. He had a list of horses he was watching, mostly in Japan, and he was relentless about raising the money to go get them the minute the Japanese were finished with them.”

  “Relentless?” One of Foster’s eyebrows arched.<
br />
  Scott shook his head. “I don’t mean that negatively. Haldeman was smooth, a real talker. Remember that he was a salesman before he founded this place. He could get a donation from anyone, and if it meant he could save another stallion, he’d try.”

  Foster examined Scott from between narrowed eyelids. “What are you not saying, Mr. Lewis?”

  Scott looked at the grass between their feet. “Well, I don’t know this for a fact, but the talk around town says Haldeman had an eye for the ladies. Especially rich ones. I’ve heard it didn’t matter how young or how old a woman was, if Haldeman thought he could get money out of her for the Pasture, she was fair game.”

  “I see.”

  Scott raised his chin and looked the detective in the eye. “That’s really just farm talk. I don’t have any personal knowledge to base it on. Haldeman and I didn’t run in the same circles.”

  “And what circles would those be?” asked Whitley.

  Scott shifted his gaze to the younger man. “I have no idea who Haldeman ran with. I’m active in my church, and that’s where I spend most of my free time.”

  Both men nodded, and Detective Foster looked toward the farmhouse. “I think we’re going to finish up in there this afternoon. You and Mrs. Dennison should be able to get back to work tomorrow.”

  A man came out of the barn and gestured to Foster. He tossed his head in answer. “If you think of anything else that might be helpful, you’ll give us a call?” He didn’t wait for a response, but headed toward the barn.

  Whitley fished a card case out of his black bag and slipped a business card out of it. Scott took it, saw that it had contact information for Trooper Jeffrey Whitley, and shoved it in his jeans pocket. He glanced at the trooper. “So you go to church with Becky and her husband?”

  Whitley shook his head. “Just Becky. Her husband took off when her twins were babies, I guess. She was already divorced when I met her a year ago.”