by Toni Leland
She ran her hand along his back, talking softly as she moved to his hindquarters. Running her hand down his hock, she pressed gently on the fetlock and Bandit lifted his foot off the ground.
“It’s here. Exactly like the drawing.” She ran her thumb over the deeply-indented mark in the hoof wall, noting that the top of the cross disappeared into the coronary band. “Come take a picture.”
Quaid entered the stall and squatted down. The camera lens hummed as he zoomed in on the disfigured hoof.
“How did he get that?”
“The description doesn’t say, but a bad injury to the coronary band would cause the hoof to grow out this way. Kind of like our fingernails when we damage the quick.”
Quaid stood up. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, this is the horse on the flyer.”
“Fabulous! I’ll call the owners right away.”
“Not so fast. This horse is part of an ongoing investigation, which I might add, now involves a possible homicide.”
Kim’s skin chilled as the blood drained from her face. “Why would you say that? Teri committed suicide.”
“I listened to the police band this morning. They’re not ruling out foul play.” His features softened a bit. “Would you see if you can find out if Teri has any relatives?”
Kim nodded, suddenly hating this man who’d taken over.
~~
At six o’clock, Quaid pulled up next to Jenna’s car in the driveway. She answered the door and gave him a disgusted look.
“Well, nice of you to show up.”
“Knock it off, Jenna. I told you I had an emergency.” He brushed past her. “Where’s Ricky?”
“Out back with a friend. But since when is a work-related emergency more important than a child-related emergency?”
His shoulders dropped. “It’s not, and I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
Quaid walked through the kitchen and stepped out the back door. His nephew was tossing a football to another boy.
“Hey, Rick, nice throw!”
The boy looked up and, again, a brief flash of pleasure, then the curtain came down. Quaid took a deep breath and headed across the lawn.
“Toss it here.”
He caught the ball, then sent a spiraling pass to the other boy.
“Man, you’re good!” said Ricky.
“Lots of practice.”
He jumped to catch a wide pass, lost his balance and crashed into the ground. The boys howled with laughter as Quaid got up and brushed himself off. At least he’d broken the tension.
Jenna stuck her head out the door. “Tommy, your mom says come home for dinner.”
Quaid sat down on the picnic bench and watched Ricky roll the football around with his foot.
“How’s the Wii? Still like it?”
“Yeah, wanna come see how it works?”
They walked into the kitchen as Jenna was pulling a pizza out of the oven. Quaid’s stomach growled.
Ricky said, “Can Uncle Garrett stay for dinner?”
“Of course, go get washed.” She looked at Quaid’s grass-stained jeans. “Both of you.”
A few minutes later, Quaid took a bite of pizza, struggling with the strings of mozzarella that threatened to hang off his chin. Ricky laughed and Quaid made a goofy face. It was good to see the boy smiling.
Jenna passed the pizza plate and gave him a pointed look. “We’re going to take a little ride over to Dayton this weekend. Want to come?”
Ricky’s face lit up. “Mom’s taking me to see the big air museum. They have a Stealth bomber!”
“Gosh, I’d love to, but I’m going to California on Thursday. But darn, that sounds like fun.”
Ricky’s face fell and he set his pizza down. Quaid threw a glance at Jenna and she shook her head. Ricky asked to be excused and left the table.
Why does my work always seem to screw things up?
Jenna pushed her plate away. “Don’t worry about it. He’s just so emotional these days. I know it was short notice for you. I got the appointment for Friday and thought we could drift around and see what Dayton is like. I might be able to get base housing, but I need to fill out an application in person.”
“Listen, when I get back from this trip, I’ll take Ricky and we’ll go someplace special. I promise.”
“Oh, Quaid, don’t make promises. They have a way of disintegrating and then you feel bad.”
He looked her in the eye. “This promise will prevail.”
After helping Jenna with the dishes, Quaid climbed the stairs to Ricky’s room. Had it only been yesterday that he’d stood outside this door, terrified that something awful had happened to the boy? He knocked and pushed the door open.
Ricky sat at his computer, but didn’t look up.
“Rick, I’m really sorry about this weekend, but when I get back, would you like to go on a little trip with me?”
“Like where?”
“How about Washington, DC? We can go to the Smithsonian and see all the nation’s important buildings.”
Ricky’s face brightened. “That would be cool!”
Quaid took a deep breath. “And I thought we might go down to Arlington and visit your dad.”
~~
Kim blocked out the noise of the passengers in the Delta terminal waiting area, reading through all the notes she’d made regarding the Talisman situation. She checked to be sure she’d picked up the maps to both Jasper’s and Victory Farms, then stuffed everything back into her shoulder bag. Rather than chasing this elusive mystery, she should be concentrating on earning a living. But Teri’s death had changed everything and now Kim’s involvement had become serious.
She reached into her bag and pulled out Teri’s client list. Unfolding it, she read the names and phone numbers. She felt a twinge of guilt, then shrugged it off. Quaid didn’t need to know everything. Besides, he was probably withholding information from her, too, as in his discovery of the barn manager. Why wouldn’t that person be a prime suspect in Teri’s death? Disgruntled employees often took drastic measures for revenge. Kim glanced up at the line of passengers forming at the gate, then stuffed the list back into her bag. She’d make those calls during her layover in Denver. Someone must know about Teri’s private life.
Finally settled in the narrow seat jammed against the window, Kim thought about her own personal life. For so long, she’d been smug about being independent, not having all the turmoil and drama that seemed to surround most women. She’d often thought she had the best of the best. Heaviness seeped into her chest as she realized that being alone and isolated hadn’t been her best choice. At fifty, did she have any chance of changing that? Did she want to? Could she deal with it?
The plane leveled off, cruising above white billowy clouds. Kim gazed over the vast whiteness and made a quiet vow to change her life.
~~
Quaid took the elevator up to the seventh floor of United Equine’s building and stepped out into the reception area of the insurance company. At that early hour, most of the employees weren’t at work yet. He moved down the hall toward the small office where he usually handled in-house business. A phone rang somewhere, then stopped. He set his briefcase on the desk and moved to the window to drink in the magnificent view of Lake Erie. He never tired of watching the ships and boats working along the docks or motoring through the channel. To his left, the Cleveland Browns Stadium commanded the view, and off to the right in the distance, planes landed and took off from the Burke Lakefront Airport. The scene was so dramatically different from the landscapes of his youth. Exactly what he’d wanted—to disengage himself from the rural blahs.
Someone knocked on the door behind him and he turned away from the window. The young man who assisted him grinned.
“You’re certainly an early bird.”
“Gotta get those worms. Is the travel girl in yet?”
“I think she has the day off. You can look at the schedule in the break room.”
“Damn, I need to adjust the trip I’m tak
ing tomorrow.”
“You can just do it yourself, then turn in whatever receipts you get, as long as the trip was originated by the travel department.”
“Okay, thanks. I have a bunch of calls to make this morning, so I’ll do that too.”
The young man nodded, then walked away.
Quaid dialed Roberta Dodge.
She answered almost immediately, suspicion coloring her voice. “H’lo?”
“Good morning, Roberta, it’s Garrett Quaid.”
Her tone brightened. “You find me a job?”
He hesitated. Surely she knew about Teri Fortune’s death, but he’d better start at the beginning.
“You heard about Teri Fortune, right?”
“What’d she do now, kill a horse?”
“She’s dead, Roberta.”
“No fuckin’ way! When? Hey, wait a minute! You think I had something to do with it?”
Was her reaction too strong? Hard to tell, over the phone. Quaid tried to temper his next comment.
“You would certainly be on a suspect list, given your unpleasant history with her.”
“Listen, Buster, you think I don’t have enough trouble in my life without making it worse? Why the hell would I do that to myself? Jee-zus Christ!”
“I’m actually calling to see if you know any of her relatives or friends.”
“Oh, yeah, we were bosom buddies. You must think I’m pretty stupid. Fuck off.”
The line went dead and Quaid tossed the phone on the desk. How had that conversation gone sour so quickly? Was he losing his touch?
He picked up the phone again and dialed Kovak. She answered on the second ring, her voice lost against the noise of some public place.
“Hey, it’s Garrett Quaid. I just spoke to the Dodge woman and she wasn’t exactly helpful. Where are you, anyway?”
“I’m on my way to a horse show. I haven’t done anything yet about locating any of Teri’s family, but I will later this morning. I’ll call you when I have something.”
“Okay. Hey, I never thanked you for sending the photographs. They’re a big help, but I do have one question. One of the show photos looks like people are blurred out in the background, but the same picture on your website shows them plain as day. Any comments?”
The noise in the background on Kovak’s phone got louder, then suddenly disappeared. Quaid looked at the screen. Dropped call.
For real? Or intentional. He pressed “redial” and was taken immediately to Kim’s voice mail.
“Miz Kovak, if you’re holding back information that pertains to this case, you’ll regret it. I suggest you call me back.”
Quaid sat back and stared out the window with absolutely no doubt in his mind now that Kim Kovak was working undercover on his case.
Chapter 19
Kim laid the phone in her lap and groaned. Of all the stupid mistakes. I never even thought about the pictures on my website. How would she explain the discrepancy to Quaid without admitting that she was doing a little sleuthing on the side, and that she had kept information from him? Though she’d already considered giving him everything, she still felt proprietary about what she’d discovered. Funny—he’d never asked her how or why she’d found the information on Bandit.
She glanced at the clock on the wall at the gate. Denver time was different from Ohio time and it took her a minute to figure out that it wasn’t too early to call Teri’s client list. She smiled wryly. Another piece of information she’d withheld from Mister Private Investigator.
The list was arranged by client name, followed by the horse’s name, followed by a phone number and town. Of the eight names on the list, only two were in Ohio. The remaining customers lived all over the country. What a shame. Teri had such a good business, a much-needed service for horse owners who wanted a more holistic approach to horse care.
She started with a contact in Iowa. Dialing the number, Kim composed her opening comments. If not handled carefully, the calls would be useless.
“This is Kim Kovak, a friend of Teri Fortune’s. I don’t know if you heard yet, but Teri died yesterday.”
The man’s voice registered shock. “Oh my gosh! How awful! What happened? No, wait, what about my horse?”
“Your horse is just fine, being cared for as usual. I believe you’ll need to arrange to pick up the animal fairly soon. The county is watching over the barn until all the owners have taken responsibility for their horses.”
“I can get out there by tomorrow afternoon. Jeez, what happened to Teri?”
“Ah, it looks like suicide. But I don’t know all the details…Did you know her well?”
“Not really. One of her other clients recommended I send the horse for treatment. Gosh, suicide. That’s awful.”
“Yes, it is. Could you tell me the name of the person who referred you?”
“Bob Fisher. He’s retired now, but he used to have lots of show horses.”
Kim wrote the name and phone number on the list and thanked the man for his help.
She immediately called Bob Fisher. The call went directly to voice mail. She left her name and number, plus a vague message about show horses. She looked up at the clock, then dialed the next client on Teri’s list. A farm in New Dover, Ohio, not far from Marysville.
A woman’s voice answered, a throaty voice with a heavy Spanish accent.
Kim went through the same opening routine, only this time the reaction was lukewarm.
“How’d it happen? Accident? Was she sick?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t seen it on the news. The police believe it was suicide.”
“Can I come get my horses?”
Kim tried to keep astonishment from coloring her voice. “Yes, the sooner the better, I would think…How well did you know Teri?”
The woman barked a nasty laugh. “My husband could give you a better answer.”
“Oh, is he the horseman in the family?”
Venom seeped through the phone. “No, he’s the stud in the family and he couldn’t keep it out of that little slut.”
Kim couldn’t speak. In the space of one second, another possible suspect had surfaced.
~~
Quaid spent the next hour reorganizing his flights so he’d have time to drive to San Bernardino, then catch a flight to Amarillo where Butch Hunt had waited out the ice storm. Again, he pondered the logistics that would have been required to track the horse trailer for over a thousand miles, waiting for the right opportunity. That still didn’t make any sense. The most plausible scenario was corroboration with the layover ranch.
He sat back in the chair and thought about Kim Kovak. She was definitely playing games and he didn’t like that one bit. Giving him that shit about Dixie being gay was just confirmation that the photographer would stoop to just about anything to be in control.
Thinking of Dixie made him smile. No way was she gay.
By mid-afternoon, Quaid had amassed a large volume of notes on the various aspects of both the theft-ring idea and Teri Fortune’s possible involvement. As he sketched out a flow chart using each factor, he became more puzzled. The dots didn’t connect in the right places. Somewhere in the middle of all this lay a missing piece, a common denominator in the equation. Or possibly he was chasing an imaginary plot and none of the events were related.
Teri Fortune, for example. It was hard to believe that she’d had the bad luck to be involved in the loss of two horses within a short period of time. That piece of information had come to him quite unexpectedly when he’d called Teri’s veterinarian. The girl answering the phone had refused to give him any information about Teri’s vet bills, other than the fact she was a regular customer. But sometimes a little charm went a long way and, though he didn’t obtain any financial information, the girl had been eager to share the case of the burgled mare. Quaid had carefully orchestrated his responses so that the girl on the phone continued to babble, offering more and more information about the incident.
Now if he could just figur
e out what horse it was and who owned her, he might have another piece of the puzzle.
Realizing that phone calls weren’t the best way to gain information, he tapped into his network of resources to find out exactly into what kind of financial mire Fortune Farms had sunk. By late afternoon, he had all the information he needed. Teri Fortune was double-mortgaged, three months behind in the payments, on a short list for foreclosure, and thousands of dollars in debt to veterinarians, farriers, and feed stores. With the loss of revenues from the business, there was no way she could catch up. Plenty of reasons to end her life.
But why were the police considering her death a homicide? He reached for the phone.
“Delaware County Sheriff’s Office, how may I direct your call?”
“This is Private Investigator Garrett Quaid with United Equine Assurance in Cleveland. I’d like to talk to the officer who handled the death at Fortune Farms yesterday.”
“Please hold.”
A woman’s velvety voice came on the line. “Deputy Sheriff Dexton, may I help you?”
“I hope so. I’m investigating a theft claim at Fortune Farms and I understand that your department is treating Teri Fortune’s apparent suicide as a homicide. Can you tell me why?”
“I can’t give out information about an ongoing case. You should know that.”
“It might be relevant to the case I’m working on, so anything you can—”
“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t help you.”
Quaid thanked her and hung up. He thought for a minute, then called in a favor.
~~
Kim stared at the sea of taillights stretching ahead of her as she left the Los Angeles airport.
“Oh. My. God. I can’t believe people do this every day.”
A dull throb had formed at the base of her skull and her eyes were beginning to burn. While the Los Angeles commuters were rushing in slow motion toward home and dinner, Kim’s body was aching for her bed. It was nine o’clock at home.
The saving grace was that she’d have a full day to recover before the horse show, a day in which she intended to find out exactly what Jasper Martin was up to. She’d also figure out how to field Quaid’s questions about the photograph. When she could think straight, something would surely come to her.
