Forged (Gail McCarthy Mystery)

by Laura Crum

  I said nothing. I could think of nothing whatsoever to say. My gut was clenched so tightly it was hard to get any words out, anyway.

  "I am a man who has nothing to do with the police." The voice was soft and even. "I must ask you not to repeat this conversation to them, and not to mention my name. I am a truly dangerous man, Dr. McCarthy. You should heed this warning."

  "I believe that, too. I won't talk to the police." I was having a hard time speaking; any attempt at bravado was over.

  "Do not mention this place, either," Carlos went on. "It belongs to a friend of mine who also does not care for police."

  "Not a problem," I said weakly.

  "I have no wish to harm you," he said after a moment. "You may go." One hand tossed the cell phone in my direction.

  I caught it. Without a backward glance, I climbed into the cab of my truck, not too slow but not too fast either. Carlos Castillo got back in his car. I started my truck and drove out, the black BMW a sedate distance behind me.

  I watched him in my rearview mirror all the way back to the freeway entrance, where his car took the turnoff toward downtown Watsonville. Without thinking about it, I pointed the truck's nose for home, taking the freeway on-ramp, running, as a frightened animal will do, for my den.

  I believed that Carlos Castillo was a truly dangerous man, just as he'd said. His veiled threat was far more intimidating than any amount of bombast. I recognized the professional criminal under the smooth veneer; he would shoot me if I threatened him, without mercy or much thought.

  My guts twisted and rolled; I realized my hands were clenching the steering wheel so tightly they were getting numb. I loosened them, stretched my fingers, unlocked my jaw. Faced the fact. I was scared shitless.

  NINETEEN

  I told Blue. What else could I do? I could hardly hide my fear from him; one look at my face as I got out of the truck and he was by my side.

  "What happened, Gail?"

  So I told him. "And I am not, I am absolutely not, going to tell the police anything," I said. "Don't try to convince me."

  "All right. I won't." Blue squeezed my shoulders reassuringly. "This man has no reason to harm you. You haven't done him any harm."

  "Do you think he killed Dominic? Or his so-called business partners did?"

  "Hard to say," Blue answered. "It's clear you believe he was capable of it."

  "Yes," I said emphatically. "Definitely yes. And I believe he could have been involved with the sort of people who might have done it without a second thought. But why kill Tracy?"

  "Maybe they were two separate crimes, with different killers."

  "Oh," I said. "Carlos or his friends killed Dominic and Sam killed Tracy. Is that what you think?"

  "Stormy, I'm not sure I think anything, except that you're getting way too involved in this."

  "Blue, what the hell can I do? Do you think I wanted to be right there when those two people were killed? Do you think I arranged for Carlos to threaten me?"

  "No, of course not. I'm sorry. I just want you to stay safe."

  "I'm sorry, too." I hugged him. "I'm just upset."

  "Who wouldn't be?"

  We both heard the phone ring at the same time. "Oh no," I said.

  But it wasn't the answering service. It was Jeri Ward. "Thought you'd like to know, Gail. Matt Johnson found the gun that killed Tracy in Sam's tack room under a pile of old saddle blankets."

  "With Sam's fingerprints?"

  "No prints at all. Wiped clean. Same as the gun that killed Dominic. Pretty much every idiot knows enough to do that these days."

  "Has Sam been arrested?" I asked.

  "Not yet," Jeri said crisply. "The evidence is just circumstantial. But I think Matt's close."

  "Has Barbara King been found?"

  "No. No one's seen her since she disappeared on Thursday. You've got to wonder."

  "Yeah," I said, "you do."

  "How many horses did she have? Do you know?" Jeri asked.

  "Two or three, I think. One of them's a real flashy black-and-white paint. It's been a while since she called me out to do any work. I can't really remember the others."

  "It just seems odd that all her horses disappeared, too."

  "Yeah," I said. I was feeling overwhelmed. I simply could not reconcile all the things I knew. I thanked Jeri for informing me, hung up the phone, and turned to Blue. "They found the gun that killed Tracy," I said, and repeated what Jeri had just told me.

  "So how does Carlos Castillo fit in?" Blue said ruminatively, once I was done. "Why did he want to know what Dominic said?"

  "Maybe he was wondering if Dominic accused him? Blue, this guy was creepy. So young and so polished. I had the gut feeling he's probably killed several people in his short life."

  "He struck you as a professional criminal?"

  "Oh yeah. I'd guess some kind of drug baron. Something that makes money. I believed him when he said he didn't need money."

  "In these parts, it could be fighting chickens," Blue said.

  "Fighting chickens? I thought that was a poor man's sport." "Not any more. The police raided a place near where I work, confiscated thirty thousand dollars."

  "Wow."

  "So, yes, your friend Carlos could be making good money on fighting chickens. But why would he kill Dominic?"

  "I really have no idea. Revenge for the way his father treated him, maybe. Or maybe Carlos does need a big sum of money right now to payoff his partners in crime. Maybe that part of his story was true. If it was Carlos, it would explain why Dominic covered up for him-his own son and all. Maybe Carlos was the unknown person who called Barbara to find out where Dominic was. It was a young man's voice, the detective said."

  "Yeah," Blue said slowly. "Or a woman with a deep voice. Which rather accurately describes your new horseshoer."

  "Tommie," I said. "I forgot all about Tommie. And Lee's son, Dom, is a young man, too. It could have been any of them."

  "Or someone whose horse threw a shoe," Blue reminded me.

  "Maybe. But Dominic died. Someone drove out here and shot him. And now Tracy's dead, and Barbara may be dead, too."

  "Do you still think Barbara rode into Lorene Roberts and shot herself?" Blue asked.

  "I don't know what to think anymore. The fact that there were two horses makes me wonder if someone rode in there with her. I wish Mountain Dave would call and tell us where they went."

  "Maybe the horses didn't come from Barbara's place," Blue said. "We didn't track them out of her barnyard. Maybe she's got neighbors who ride across that orchard and into the park, too."

  "She very well may have," I agreed. "Oh Blue, I'm really confused."

  Blue put a comforting arm around my shoulders and hugged me. "It isn't up to you to solve this, Stormy. Maybe our friend the detective already has."

  "So Sam killed Dominic because of Tracy, and then he killed Tracy, and finally he killed Barbara because she knew something that would incriminate him, and hauled her body away in the horse trailer. Or," I said, "maybe Sam killed Dominic and Tracy, and Barbara killed herself. Or lost herself."

  "Lost herself? What do you mean?" Blue looked down into my face.

  "Lorene Roberts is huge," I said slowly, "and nobody gets back in there much. People get lost. I was driving down Eureka Canyon one morning on the way to my first call of the day when I saw a girl walking down the road. She looked lost, so I stopped and asked if I could help her.

  "Turns out she'd gone hiking in Lorene Roberts the day before; she started in Aptos. She'd walked and walked and when night fell, she was lost. She kept walking, wandered around in there all night. Early in the morning she struck Rider Road, probably came out right through that apple orchard. She walked down Rider to Eureka Canyon, which was where I found her."

  "So, are you suggesting that Barbara could be lost in the park? For three days?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I just don't know. Lost on purpose, maybe. Two sets of hoofprints could mean she was leading a pack animal
. Maybe she's living in the park, sort of like Mountain Dave, with horses instead of a bike."

  Blue considered this awhile. "Why?" he asked.

  "To get away. Rethink her life. It's something I could see myself doing."

  Blue hugged me again. "After all, we met on a pack trip."

  "That's right, we did."

  I stared straight ahead, feeling the comforting warmth of Blue's arm around my shoulders, seeing sunlight break through the clouds outside the window. But my mind was somewhere else. "I wish Mountain Dave would call," I said. "I want to know where those horses went."

  Blue opened his mouth to say something else and the phone interrupted us once again. This time it was the answering service, with "a severely lame horse at Lee Castillo's place."

  "Oh shit," I said, as I hung up the phone. "Another person with a reason to have killed Dominic calling me out."

  "Let me go with you, Gail." Blue took my hand in his.

  "It's really not necessary. Lee can hardly page me to come out to her place with an emergency and then shoot me. It's like signing her own death warrant. I'll be fine. And there's plenty to do around here."

  "That's true enough, and I do need to go by work today and check on some plants." Blue squeezed my hand. "But I'll keep my cell phone with me. Call me if anything looks odd."

  "I will. I promise."

  And back into the truck I went.

  TWENTY

  Lee Castillo's place, when I reached it, looked deserted. A brisk wind had blown the rain clouds away, and sunlight spattered the old barn and farmhouse. Chickens pecked in the manure pile, horses grazed in the pasture, but no humans were in sight.

  Here we go again, I thought. Despite my confident words to Blue, I was nervous. The encounter with Carlos Castillo had shaken me right down to my core. Clutching my cell phone in my hand, I climbed slowly out of the truck.

  "Lee?" I called tentatively.

  No answer.

  At a guess, she was in the barn. Straightening my spine, I walked in that direction. "Lee?"

  Still no answer. After a moment, I stepped inside the doorway.

  It was an old building, perhaps of the same vintage as the barn on Elkhorn Slough, where Blue and I had camped. Like most barns of that era, the central space was open and high-roofed, meant to store hay. Lee's barn, I saw, housed a hefty stack of alfalfa. A row of box stalls ran down the two facing walls.

  Horses peered out at me over the lower halves of their stall doors. Arabian faces-elegant, chiseled, black and gray and bay.

  "Lee!" I called again.

  Nothing.

  The horses watched me; pigeons cooed in the rafters. Somewhere outside, I heard the plaintive descending call of a mourning dove.

  For a long second I stared. The interior of the barn was dim and shadowy; barely perceived motion in the depths resolved itself into a black cat, leaping down from the haystack. I turned away.

  Back outside, I took a deep breath of the clean air. The little spring rain was gone as if it had never been. A bright, sunny breeze tossed the eucalyptus trees behind the barn.

  Lee must be in the house, I decided. Clients did sometimes wait by the phone, veterinarians being prone to calling in a warning of lateness. Resolutely, I marched toward the back porch.

  The house was as old as the barn. The sagging wooden steps creaked and complained at my footfalls. I rapped on the doorframe as loudly as I could; the door itself stood ajar.

  "Lee!" I shouted.

  No response. The open door led to what was plainly the kitchen, which was obviously empty.

  "Lee!" I yelled.

  Nothing. Hesitantly, I stepped into the room. What could possibly have happened to Lee?

  I crossed the kitchen and stuck my head through the open doorway on the far side. The living room, apparently. Couch, two armchairs by a fireplace, a piano. No people.

  Holding my breath, I listened. I could hear the old house murmur, the tiniest of creaks and groans, a soft subtext to the silence. As in a redwood grove, the quiet felt palpable, even personal, as though somewhere there were eyes, watching me. I shivered, and turned to go.

  "Jesus!" I yelped. There he stood in the doorway, eyes watching me intently. Dom.

  I grabbed the back of the couch to steady myself, felt the great thumping whoosh as my heart took off in overdrive. Desperately I searched this hulking teenager's face for his intent.

  I couldn't tell much. Dom's face was expressionless, the remains of his pudgy adolescence visible in the heavy, pasty features, puffy cheeks, sagging jawline. But the overall impression was of a meaty muscularity, a dormant power coiled sullenly in a torpid shell.

  "Where's Lee?" I got the words out, finally.

  "Mom's gone."

  The tone was flat, but at least he'd replied in a relatively normal way to my question. There was no gun in his hand. Maybe my run-in with Carlos had made me overly nervy. Dom was just, I reassured myself, a normally sulky young male.

  "I was called out here to see a lame horse," I said.

  "I called you."

  "All right. Can we see the horse? I couldn't find anyone out at the barn."

  "I was out back. Working." Dom's impassive face told me nothing. Those odd light brown eyes, so like his mother's, were as unreadable as two marbles. I had no idea what was going on inside his head.

  "I'll show you the horse." Dom turned and left the room.

  I followed him with an audible sigh of relief. Perhaps there was nothing strange happening here after all. Just a lame horse and a morose teen.

  Dom led me steadily towards the barn without a backward look; I trailed in his wake, trying to gather my professional composure back together. A lame horse. I was here to deal with a lame horse.

  A very lame horse, it turned out. Dom brought a hobbling chestnut mare out of her box stall and said, "She was like this when I went out to the pasture to check the water. I brought her in and called your office."

  I studied the mare, who was standing with just the toe of her right front hoof resting on the ground. Her leg didn't appear to be swollen anywhere. Don't forget the obvious, Gail, I reminded myself.

  Stepping up to the horse, I ran a hand down her right foreleg and lifted the foot up. Using the hoofpick tool on the pocketknife I always carried, I cleaned the dirt out of the hoof. Bingo.

  "She stepped on a nail," I told Dom. "See the nail head."

  Dom peered where I pointed and said nothing.

  "I'll pull it out, open up the puncture so it will drain, and wrap her foot. You'll need to give her antibiotics night and morning for ten days and rewrap the foot every other day."

  "All right."

  Getting the things I needed out of my truck, I returned to the mare and got started. Dom watched me work in unnerving silence. I had the idea there was something going on beneath that apparently wooden demeanor, but I still couldn't figure out what.

  When the words came, they were completely unexpected. "They don't suspect Mom, do they?"

  Involved as I was in my work, it took me a moment to process this. "You mean is she a suspect in Dominic's-your father's-murder?"

  Dom nodded, the merest affirmative jerk of his chin.

  I packed gauze soaked with weak iodine into the mare's hoof and said, "I'm really not the one to ask."

  "That detective keeps questioning her. He says she called Dad's girlfriend that morning to find out where Dad was going to be. I never thought ..." The words tumbled out and trickled to a stop.

  "You never thought what?" I wrapped the mare's foot with elasticized gauze and began on a layer of duct tape.

  "That Mom would be suspected."

  For a second I glimpsed what I thought was mute misery beneath the stoic exterior, and then all was frozen again. Dom met my stare, his own glance impervious.

  "Lots of us were or are suspects," I said, as I smoothed the last strip of duct tape in place.

  "Besides Mom?"

  This time I was sure of the briefly revealed emoti
on on Dom's face. Pure, unadulterated relief. Banished almost as soon as it appeared; nonetheless, it was there. Handing him antibiotics and instructions, I said, "Yes, besides your mom."

  After another minute to make sure Dom knew what to do to take care of the mare, I turned away and made my escape, my mind churning. What was going on here?

  I climbed into my truck with certain phrases bouncing around in my head like pinballs. A young man had called Barbara that day, asking Dominic's whereabouts. Who else would Dominic want to shield more than his own son? Had Dom known that his father was leaving him money? And, "I never thought they'd suspect Morn." Dom's words. Had he imagined he could kill his father without Lee coming under investigation?

  I bounced down yet another rutted driveway full of potholes with my mind in as high a gear as the truck was in low. Too much information-I couldn't seem to organize it in any useful way.

  Once again I pointed the truck for home, and Blue, seeking advice and comfort, not necessarily in that order.

  TWENTY-ONE

  When I got home, Blue was gone. There was a note on the table in his neat printing.

  I'm at work. Call me if you need me. Mountain Dave called. The two horses came out of the park at Summit Road. Dave hasn't talked to the cyclist named John yet, but he says he'll keep looking. And Dave absolutely will not talk to the police. Love to you-Blue

  Slowly I set the piece of paper down on the table. The horses, and possibly Barbara, had exited Lorene Roberts at Summit Road. I knew exactly where-a dirt road I'd hiked down myself, many years ago. What if... if?

  What was it Barbara had said? She had a sister named Paula who lived on Summit Road. What if Barbara had merely chosen an unconventional way to go stay with her sister? And how in the world could I find her, armed simply with the knowledge of a woman named Paula who lived on Summit Road.

  I tried getting a Paula King's phone number out of the information operator. No luck. What now? Drumming my fingers on the table, I stared out the big windows into the garden.