Small Town Filly (Sandbar Stables Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Bethanie Cushman

  Small Town Filly

  a Sandbar Stables Cozy Mystery 1

  by Bethanie Cushman

  Copyright © 2015

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  Alexandra Byrne galloped her golden palomino mare along the sugar-white sands of the beach, just at the edge of the foamy white surf rolling in from the clear, emerald-green water of the Gulf of Mexico.

  The warm sun shone down from the clear sky, and the breeze was cool off the water. Behind her, on a great black horse, rode a very handsome dark haired man. His horse began overtaking her own, and then pulling up alongside her. Then the man reached out for her arm.

  "Alex!" called a female voice.

  His fingers brushed the skin of her arm, and then his hand closed around her wrist, forcing her to stop the golden mare.

  "Hey, Alex!"

  Alexandra opened her eyes. The beach vanished. She was sitting at her desk on the eighteenth floor of a skyscraper in Columbus, Ohio, and the view out of the window was that of a very gray, cold and slushy winter day.

  She turned towards the voice, blinking. Instead of a handsome dark haired man, she looked up to see the department secretary, Linda, standing over her desk. "There's a man out here with something you have to sign for," said Linda. "I think he might be a process server or something."

  Alex stood up. "Process server?" she said, and felt a sudden touch of panic. "What are you talking about?"

  "I don't know. He didn't say."

  "I can't imagine what I'd be getting served for! I'm not in trouble anywhere. Nobody's suing me—or anything else—that I know of."

  She looked at Linda again. "Oh," she said, and felt very much relieved. "Hey, I know what it is! It's my birthday today."

  "Yeah, I know. That's why we're all doing lunch later on."

  "I'm thirty-three, much as I hate to admit that. But anyway, I'm sure it's just flowers or a singing telegram or something."

  Linda shook her head. "He's out here in the hallway. I think you'd better come and talk to him."

  "Well, you know, tomorrow is Valentine's Day."

  "Trust me. This guy doesn't have any flowers with him, and he doesn't look like much of a singer. This is something very different."

  Alex stepped out into the hallway and found an aged, gray-haired man standing there waiting for her. He wore a plain tan suit and a faded, threadbare tie, and held a large manila envelope. Linda was right; this had nothing to do with flowers or singing telegrams or anything else like that.

  "Alexandra Byrne?" he asked.

  "Yes. That's me," she answered as cheerfully as she could.

  "I have a delivery for you. Is there a place where we could talk for a few minutes? I will need to explain this to you."

  "Um, sure. Right this way." Alex led the man to one of the conference rooms. They walked in and she closed the door behind them.

  "Okay," she said, sitting down across the large table from the man and trying to keep as calm as possible. "What do you have for me?"

  "Well, Ms. Byrne," he said, sliding the papers from the envelope, "you have just inherited some property from a deceased relative. I'm here to notify you of that fact."

  "A relative?" Alex shook her head. "I'm sorry—maybe you've got the wrong person. I was adopted as a newborn. I have no known relatives."

  "Well, let me see," he said, sliding the papers towards her. "Full name is Alexandra Diana Byrne, here is your social security number, and, well, your birthday is today."

  Alex sat back. "Yes. That's all correct. But who–"

  "It does not say exactly who willed you this property. This name is all I have—the Norman family. But I can assure you that this is all quite legal, and the deed to your inheritance is right here in this stack." He shuffled through the papers a bit and then showed it to her.

  Alex reached out and moved the deed towards her with one finger. "Norman family," she murmured. "I don't know anyone by that name. And this is–a–a riding stable? In Florida?"

  "Yes, it is. You are now the owner of Sandbar Stables, a beach riding concession on the Gulf Coast in the Florida Panhandle. Four acres in all, with a barn and a house and a few outbuildings. And sixteen horses."

  "Horses?" she said. "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure," he answered. "You can show these papers to any of the other attorneys here in this office."

  "I think I might. I'm just a paralegal myself." She looked at the deed once again. "Florida?"

  "That's right. Florida. Oh, and you'd better get down there as soon as possible. The man who's been taking care of the place just turned up dead in the barn."

  ***

  Two weeks later, Alex had arranged for a leave of absence from her job and was on a plane flying down to the Florida Panhandle. Her ultimate destination was a little town she'd never heard of: Argentina Shores.

  She'd been given a few more sets of papers from the estate planners, and she read them as the plane cruised from Columbus to Atlanta. There was still no information as to who had left her this inheritance—which also included a sizeable bank account to be used for maintaining the horses and the buildings—but everyone was in agreement that it was quite legal and she was, indeed, now the owner of Sandbar Stables in Argentina Shores, Florida.

  "The Norman Family" was all that the papers said when it came to identifying who had left her this property. She had tried some years ago to find her birth family, but nothing had ever been uncovered.

  Her first thought, of course, was that these "Normans" were indeed her birth family, appearing in her life at long last. Why else would complete strangers leave her a piece of property?

  This was all the information that was available. She had no way of knowing if one of her biological parents had been named Norman. If these people were her birth family, why wouldn't they say so? And if they weren't, why would they leave her their stable?

  Those thoughts went round and round in her head, and she finally had to make herself stop thinking about it. She owned this piece of beachfront property free and clear, and it had sixteen horses on it and those were all hers, too!

  The immediate concern, as the man in her office had told her, was the fact that Fred Lucas, the caretaker for the stables, had been found dead of a gunshot in the middle of the barn aisle.

  He'd been hired about three months before when the former owners left for parts unknown without saying a word to anyone. Lucas was to care for the horses and watch the place. He didn't stay on the property, but simply drove back and forth in his old truck each day from the small trailer home where he lived. Lucas was actually from the next town down the road, which was St. James Harbor.

  Nobody had seen or heard anything. Nobody knew about the cri
me until the horses started whinnying and carrying on for hours, wanting to be fed. Somebody finally went to check—and found Lucas dead.

  No one seemed to have any idea why the caretaker would have been targeted. Lucas had lived in St. James Harbor for most of his life, but kept to himself and nobody in Argentina Shores knew him too well.

  Apparently, this was not a high-crime area—especially when it came to murder—so the violent death was already quite a mystery to the local police department and the neighbors.

  On the last leg of her journey, onboard the small propeller plane taking her from Atlanta to Panama City, Alex read through the last of the papers she'd been given.

  There was a fairly detailed description of the place known as Sandbar Stables. It had been there a long time; the four-acre piece of land, right at the edge of the beach, had been owned by the Norman family since at least the 1930s.

  The last owner, the eldest member of the family, was reported to have passed away suddenly just before the previous Halloween. He'd kept the place running right up to the end, along with his wife and his sister, and all three had lived in the small house on the property.

  When that eldest Norman died, the two women stepped in and took over. They hired the caretaker, left the state of Florida, and instructed the estate planner to leave the place to Alexandra Diana Byrne if she could be found and sell it if she could not.

  There were a few photographs of the property, too. A couple of the pictures seemed to be from the 1940s or so. There was a large concrete-block barn with a white-painted riding ring in front of it, and in one photo a couple of teenage girls rode show horses in the ring.

  The other photos were of guests riding along the beach on beautiful sunny days, and ranged from old black-and-white photos to recent color shots.

  The place seemed to have quite a history.

  As her little plane made its final approach into Northwest Florida Beaches Airport, Alex looked out of the window and was a little surprised to see nothing at all except miles and miles of tall slash pine forests. No towns, no roads, no beaches.

  Just trees.

  It turned out that the small local airport was a good hour and a half from Argentina Shores. The airport had been built out in the middle of vast forests that were being farmed for use as paper. Alex picked up her rental car—a comfortable little blue Nissan—and programmed the GPS easily enough, but it was quite late and dark by the time she finally arrived at her motel in the little town of Argentina Shores.

  The motel had been there for at least forty to fifty years, Alex figured. It sat very close to the narrow two-lane road that was the main highway through the town, and the beach itself was right out back.

  Partly because she was new to the place—and partly because a dead guy had just happened to be found there a couple of weeks ago—Alex decided that she would wait until morning to go visit her newly inherited property.

  But once she was checked in, Alex could not resist walking outside and looking at the beach. A half moon hung low in the west, though by its faint light, little could be seen—just the white edges of the surf where it rolled onto the beach and then slid back out again. Yet she could hear the soft sounds of the endless waves and smell the seaweed and the heavy dampness in the air.

  Alex could hardly wait for tomorrow.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Early the next morning, after a long hot shower and then a stop at Paula's Diner for a good breakfast, Alex felt much better and was ready to go and take a look at the piece of land—the piece of local history—that a mysterious family had willed to her.

  Sandbar Stables turned to be only about a mile and a half down the narrow two-lane highway from her motel. In just a moment, she was approaching its driveway. There was no sign, but after looking at the photographs, she recognized the place right away.

  The whole four acres was a long rectangle, surrounded by a board-and-wire fence. It sat parallel to the road on a small rise just above the beach. The driveway was right in the center of one long side, and as Alex turned in she saw the white board fence of the riding ring to her right and the long concrete block barn, painted pale aqua, right alongside it.

  Directly in front of her was a paddock with a shed and four horses in it. Alex pulled the car up to it and parked.

  Getting out, she saw that to the left was a small but neatly maintained concrete block house, painted in pale aqua like the barn. Towards the road were a couple of large sheds, one filled with hay and another resembling a big garage.

  Somewhere a dog was barking. Well, that would not be unusual out here in the country.

  As she walked around behind the car, there was a man standing in the driveway pointing a pistol at her.

  Alex stopped and stood very still. He was quite a handsome man, she saw. He was at least six feet tall, with dark hair and bright blue eyes. He was dressed in jeans that were covered with dirt and bits of hay, and an equally dirty off-white, western-style work shirt.

  She could not help but notice that he looked like he'd been sleeping outside for days, without access to soap and water. It was also hard to miss the enormous hunting knife in a carved leather scabbard at his belt.

  A beautiful tricolor border collie stood beside him, with one brown eye and one clear blue eye. The dog growled low and occasionally barked, watching Alex closely.

  "Hello?" Alex began cautiously. "Is this Sandbar Stables?"

  "It is," answered the man, still standing motionless.

  "In that case," she said, keeping her voice very steady, "you're holding that pistol on your boss."

  He remained still, but Alex saw his eyes flick to her car and then back to her face. "You got ID?"

  "Sure." Alex dug in her purse for her wallet, and pulled out her driver's license. "Alexandra Byrne, from Ohio. I've just inherited this place."

  She handed her license to the man. He looked at it in silence, and then his eyes flicked up to her face again.

  "I have the deed with me, if you want to see that, too."

  "No. That's all right." He handed the license back to Alex. "I guess this is your place."

  "Yes. It is." She stood waiting for a moment, but the man just stood watching again. The dog quieted and sat down.

  "Um, do you mind telling me your name?" Alex asked as politely as she could.

  "I'm Lance. Lance Donovan. And this is Fanny."

  Alex smiled. "I'm glad to meet you, Lance," she said, and then crouched down. "Hey, Fanny," she called, and to her delight, the dog walked right over with head down and tail wagging.

  "Beautiful dog. You say her name is Fanny?"

  "That's what I call her. There's another name on her collar, but it's something I've never heard of."

  Alex found the stitched leather collar around the dog's neck and slid it around until she could read the engraved metal plate. "Very fancy collar you've got there, Fanny," she murmured. "Okay—this says 'Faneuil.'"

  "Is that how you say it?" asked Lance. "I'd never seen that name before."

  "Yes. Faneuil, which rhymes with Daniel. And it's not so much a name, as a place," said Alex, standing up again. "At least, that's how I know it. It's a famous historic building in downtown Boston. Faneuil Hall."

  Lance shrugged. "I'm from Southern California, so I guess that explains why I didn't recognize that name. Still gonna call her Fanny, though." The dog looked up at him and seemed quite happy.

  "So, I guess you didn't name her?"

  "No. A couple of months ago, I was working maintenance for a couple of the motels out here. I saw Fanny wandering on the beach and trying to get into the hotel trash cans."

  "Oh, so you kept her."

  "Yes. Nobody ever claimed her. She's sweet-tempered, but a good watchdog. Always barks if anybody she doesn't know comes around."

  "Well, that's a good trait for a country dog." She smiled at Lance. "Would you and Fanny mind showing me around?"

  He stepped back, and waved one hand towards the barn. "Right this way," he said, and A
lex followed him inside the cool darkness of the concrete barn.

  "Wow," she said, looking all around. "I guess I really wasn't expecting this."

  The aisle was long and wide, and the interior cool and fresh. There were fifteen large square stalls with sliding doors on them, and the stalls were open to the high ceiling above.

  Near the front was a large covered room with a padlock on the door. "I guess that's the tack room," said Alex. "You keep it locked?"

  "I sure do, whenever I'm not in here," said Lance. "People will steal saddles just like they'll steal bicycles, and for the same reason, fast cash. Sell them at flea markets or at an auction."

  He took a key ring from his belt and opened the lock. Alex saw neatly placed saddles resting on wooden stands along the walls, with bridles hanging from pegs above the saddles.

  She couldn't help but notice that there were a couple of bales of hay shoved up against the wall near the tack room door, with blankets and an old beach chair cushion thrown over them. If she didn't know better, she would have thought someone had been sleeping there, but she didn't mention it.

  "This is one of the finest barns ever built in this part of the country," Lance said. "The concrete block keeps it cool in the summer, and it's fireproof."

  "I have to tell you," said Alex, "that I know this really isn't horse country. I guess I was expecting sagging wire fences and rusty old sheds. But this is as nice a barn as any in Kentucky, isn't it?"

  "It is. It was built back in the 1920s for a beach riding concession that was already here and doing pretty well. They decided they needed something more permanent—something where they could keep and train a few show horses for their daughters, as well as shelter their rental horses. So they built this. And it's still here."

  "I saw some old photos," Alex said as they walked down the barn aisle. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dim light, she could see that there was a horse in almost every stall.

  A halter and lead rope hung on each stall door, and even though the nylon halters were of all different colors and the lead ropes were all mismatched and of all different materials, they had been neatly put away.