Lead a Horse to Murder

by Cynthia Baxter

  As soon as he’d lost consciousness, I intubated him with a trachial tube, then carefully inserted a hose into his esophagus. Once it was in place, I began pumping in water, pressing on King’s stomach gently and watching to see if the tube would untwist his esophagus and the force of gravity would bring out the food trapped inside.

  “Come on, boy,” I muttered, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. “You can do this, King. Work with us.”

  Suddenly water and food began pouring out, a sign that the procedure was working. I let out a loud sigh of relief.

  Kathy glanced at me hopefully. “Does this mean he’s going to be okay?”

  “He’s going to be fine.” This time, I made that statement with confidence.

  After pumping out his stomach, I followed up with an X ray, just to be certain we were out of the woods. Sure enough, the positioning of King’s stomach was back to normal.

  “He’s in great shape,” I told Kathy.

  “Thank goodness!” She clutched her hands to her heart like the heroine in an old-fashioned melodrama. “Dr. Popper, I’ve got to ask you. Did I do something wrong? Am I responsible for what happened to King?”

  I assured her that she’d done nothing wrong—that by calling for help as promptly as she had, she’d done the best thing possible. Then I gave her a short lecture on ways of preventing bloat, simple things like feeding King two smaller meals a day instead of one large one and keeping him from exercising right after eating. I also assured her that I’d call the Weinsteins and pass along the same information to them.

  “The only thing you can do,” I told her, “is to restrict food and water until Lindsay—Mrs. Weinstein—gets home. I’ll explain to her that she’ll need to do the same for the next few days to prevent a recurrence.”

  “Can King play with us now?” either Jason or Justin asked as Kathy and I brought the pointer back into the house on our makeshift stretcher.

  “Not yet, honey,” I told him. “But soon. You know, you two guys were great. You really helped King by letting him rest. Now I’m going to ask you to do the same thing for the next couple of days, okay? And before you know it, King will be as good as new.”

  As I headed back to my van, I took a few deep breaths, needing to recover from the adrenaline rush that had carried me through the last half hour. I had to admit that I felt pretty good, knowing I’d made a real difference. Maybe the Weinsteins’ dog wasn’t as glamorous or impressive as some exhorbitantly priced polo pony. But he was probably even more important to Justin and Jason and their parents than Braveheart was to Andrew MacKinnon.

  The same went for my own two canines. Before turning the key in the ignition, I gave Max and Lou a special hug, just to let them know how much I loved them and how glad I was they were healthy. And then I headed out to my next appointment.

  By the time I pulled up in front of my cottage six hours later, I was looking forward to a relaxing evening—one that included my long-lost boyfriend, Nick. At the moment, however, I was just as pleased to see the other two members of my menagerie, the ones who didn’t accompany me as I went traipsing around Norfolk County, making house calls.

  “Hey, Cat!” I greeted Catherine the Great, my beautiful gray cat. She was curled up in her favorite spot, a tattered rag rug I keep in front of the refrigerator. Even though it still felt like summer, her arthritis invariably led her to the warmest spot in the house.

  She stood up to greet me, walking over stiffly and meowing her hello. I scooped her up gently and petted her, taking care to avoid the nick in her left ear. A leftover from her previous life, it had remained sensitive even after it healed.

  “How’s my favorite pussycat, huh?” I murmured. She purred her response, which I suspected didn’t mean “Fine” as much as it meant “Better, now that you’re here.”

  Prometheus, my chatty Blue and Gold Macaw, wasn’t about to be forgotten. “Awk! Welcome home, Jessie! Awk!”

  I returned Cat to her special spot, grabbed a slice of apple from the refrigerator, and went over to greet my bird. “Hey, Prometheus, how’s the pretty birdy?”

  “Prometheus is the pretty birdy,” he told me proudly, as if I didn’t already know.

  “That’s how’s the pretty birdy, not who’s the pretty birdy.” I laughed.

  I put out my hand and he hopped on, making ecstatic chortling sounds that indicated how thrilled he was to be reunited with the individual he believed was his mother. Frankly, I felt honored. I offered him a piece of the apple, which he tasted daintily. “Apple,” he announced. “Prometheus loves apple. Awk!”

  As for my canines, they weren’t exactly grabbing the remote and hunkering down on the couch for an evening of spectator sports. Instead, Max and Lou assumed that coming home meant it was time for a few rounds of their favorite game: Slimytoy. This highly demanding game, which brings them both never-ending joy, consists of tossing and retrieving whichever saliva-coated rubber toy is the most favored at the moment. That happened to be a carefully coiffed hot-pink poodle that looked as if he’d practically lived at a doggy beauty parlor—at least before his head had been half ripped off, leaving a gaping hole that would have called for emergency surgery if he hadn’t been made of rubber.

  According to the rules of this sophisticated game, I threw Slimytoy and one of my dogs retrieved it. Of course, whenever the poodle landed behind a piece of furniture, it became my job to stretch and contort in an attempt at wresting it away from the hoards of dust bunnies that lurked beneath the couch and chairs. This particular job, which I considered the downside of being the only human being in the room, was made even more stressful by Max and Lou’s insistence upon urging me on by making sharp barking sounds until the pink poodle finally resurfaced, sticky with saliva and covered in fuzzy gray material but nevertheless eager for another toss.

  After my long day, I was too tired to send Slimytoy sailing across the room more than ten or twelve times. I left the dogs to their own devices, wondering why I’d never taken the time to teach them to read. Then I headed into the kitchen, where I spent another minute or two stroking Cat’s soft fur and murmuring endearments before focusing on dinner.

  I washed my hands well, not wanting to include any special ingredients in the meal I was about to throw together. Then I took a couple of chicken breasts out of the freezer, figuring I’d make the one passable dish I’ve mastered. Chances were they’d be just as frozen an hour from now, after I’d taken a shower and put on clothes that were not embroidered with the words “Jessica Popper, D.V.M.” But thawing the chicken was less important than thawing Nick, who I hadn’t seen since the weekend before.

  “This schedule is absolutely insane,” I mumbled, checking inside the refrigerator to make sure a bottle of white wine was chilling. I was relieved to spot a Ziploc bag of salad greens, the third critical ingredient required for assembling a collection of food items that could pass for dinner.

  As for dessert, I knew for a fact there were two pints of ice cream in the freezer. Even so, I had a few ideas of my own that had nothing to do with anything that could be found in a supermarket.

  I’d just come out of the shower with my wet head wrapped in a towel and was starting to feel like a member of the human species again when the phone rang. Nick, I hoped, telling me he was on his way.

  Sure enough, caller ID informed me that I was at least right about the first part.

  “Hey, Nick!” I towel-dried my head more enthusiastically. “What’s up?”

  “Torts,” he replied gloomily. “That’s what’s up.”

  “I don’t follow,” I told him, even though the tone of his voice—and the sinking feeling in my stomach—told me exactly what he meant.

  “I’m not going to make it over tonight,” Nick said apologetically. “I’m really sorry, Jess, but I’ve just got too much to do. You wouldn’t believe what my Torts professor dumped on us today.” He sighed. “Everything they say about the first year of law school is true.”

  “Are you positive
you can’t come by—even for a little while?” I asked. Doing my best to sound seductive, I added, “You’ve got to eat, right? Besides, there’s a back rub in it for you...and maybe something even more relaxing.”

  “Believe me, it sounds tempting,” he said with a sigh. “But right now, I’m looking at a textbook that’s about four inches thick. Can I take a rain check?”

  So much for my feminine wiles, I thought. “Sure, Nick. Go study.”

  Great, I thought glumly as I hung up. I stuck the chicken back in the freezer and retrieved the unopened pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk stashed inside. Here I’d been looking forward to a hot night with Nick. Instead, it looked like I was in for a really cold night— with Ben and Jerry.

  Chapter 3

  “God forbid that I should go to any heaven where there are no horses.”

  —R.B. Cunningham-Graham

  hree days later, on Friday morning, as my van bounced along the driveway leading into Heatherfield, I expected to find the same serene setting I’d encountered during my first visit to Andrew MacKinnon’s estate. Instead, dozens of shiny, expensive cars were crammed onto the property, their chrome trim glinting in the early morning sun like drops of dew. Most of them were Mercedeses and BMW’s—so many, in fact, that I wondered if the German Trade Board was holding a convention there. But the overpriced cars of all nations seemed to be represented, including enough Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bentleys, and Rolls-Royces to reassure me that the entire European economy was doing just fine.

  I spotted Johnny Ray hovering outside a shed that stood halfway between the house and the stable. As usual, he was engaging in his healthful habit of sucking in nicotine. I rolled my window all the way down and leaned out. Max leaped onto my lap from the passenger side, not about to miss out on an opportunity to stick his nose out an open car window. That seems to be an obsession with dogs, as verified by my leggy Dalmatian’s look of envy.

  “What’s all this?” I asked Johnny Ray.

  He paused to exhale, then peered at me with his pale, snakelike eyes. “It’s for Eduardo.” As usual, he uttered his words as if he found the act of speaking an extremely demanding task, something along the lines of hauling cinder blocks. “There was a funeral Mass this morning. Now everybody’s over at the house for this big reception thing.”

  “I’d like to stop in later,” I told him. “Pay my respects.”

  Johnny Ray gave a little shrug, making it clear that my plans were of absolutely no interest to him. “You better park over there,” he said, pointing to a narrow dirt driveway that wound back around the barn. “Leave room for Mr. Mac’s guests.”

  I waved, then placed Max back on his side of the van before veering off in the direction Mr. MacKinnon’s ever-charming barn manager had indicated. The road was rougher than I’d anticipated, and my van rocked and rolled across the uneven terrain. I worried about how my equipment was faring. My dogs, too.

  “Are you guys all right?” I asked, glancing over at Max and Lou, who were being jostled around the front seat.

  I should have known they’d react with glee. For them, this was the canine version of bumper cars.

  Chuckling at their unwavering joie de vivre, I turned my head back in the direction I was traveling—and immediately jammed on the brakes.

  “What the—?”

  Someone had darted right in front of my van. I’d come this close to hitting him.

  My heart was pounding like the drummer in one of the classic rock bands Nick was so crazy about. I knew the near-miss was my fault, that I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off the road. But it had never occurred to me that I’d encounter a jaywalker on Andrew MacKinnon’s vast estate. Especially since my huge white van was pretty hard to miss.

  Aside from looking surprised, the young man I’d come horribly close to hitting seemed fine. I put the van into park and opened the door. This time, both Max and Lou sprinted across my lap, pounding my poor thighs with eight muscular paws. As soon as they hit the ground, they both went into a sniffing tizzy, drunk with excitement over all the new smells.

  I leaped out of the van after them, confronting the foolhardy pedestrian face-to-face.

  “Don’t you know better than to step in front of a moving car?” I demanded.

  “Don’t you know better than to take your eyes off the road?”

  “Okay, I admit it was a bad idea, even though it was only for two seconds. But why on earth would you step right in front of me like that?”

  “Because it never occurred to me that you’d come charging at me. I’m glad your reflexes are more highly developed than your common sense.”

  He looked as if he was in his mid-thirties, with gray-blue eyes and thick blond hair that softened into a mass of curls at the back of his neck. He wasn’t exactly stocky; his frame was more along the lines of sturdy, with wide shoulders and muscular arms. Under his nubby brown sports jacket, he was wearing a pale blue cotton button-down shirt, so completely free of wrinkles it had to have been professionally cleaned and pressed. He looked so much like the classic preppy that I couldn’t resist checking his feet to see if he was wearing Top-Siders without socks. Maybe because of the seriousness of the occasion, he was wearing black loafers— with socks. I also couldn’t help noticing he stood amidst a cloud of cologne. Something musky and masculine, probably advertised as a surefire way of getting the babes into bed.

  Before I had a chance to come up with a snappy reply to his last obnoxious comment, he glanced at the side of my van. “What is this thing, anyway? A traveling circus?”

  “No,” I replied indignantly. At that moment, I happened to notice that both my wild beasts had gotten busy lifting their legs on as many tires as possible, leaving their mark on hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of vehicles in an impressively short time. The fact that my operation was beginning to look very much like P.T. Barnum’s road show only increased my frustration.

  “I’m a veterinarian,” I continued. “This is a mobile services unit. I make house calls, treating people’s animals at their homes. I’m here today to check on one of Andrew MacKinnon’s geldings.”

  He turned his eyes toward my van. I did the same, studying my twenty-six-foot-long white van and the blue letters stenciled on the door:

  REIGNING CATS & DOGS

  Mobile Veterinary Services

  Large and Small Animal

  631-555-PETS

  “Interesting,” he said. But his tone of voice made it clear that he found my operation more peculiar than interesting.

  “What about you?” I countered. “Who are you—and what are you doing here?” Not that it was any of my business, of course—and not that I cared. I was just so put off by his attitude that I didn’t want him thinking he was the only one who had a right to ask annoying questions.

  Instead of responding to my question, he reached into his jacket pocket and whipped out a laminated ID card. In addition to a decent photograph and his name, Forrester Sloan, it was printed with the word, “Media.”

  “I write for Newsday,” he informed me.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said dryly. “You’re doing an exposé on the hidden dangers of hitting balls with sticks while riding fast horses.”

  His mouth twisted into a deep frown. “I guess you haven’t heard.”

  “Heard what?”

  “The cops think Eduardo Garcia was murdered.”

  “But he fell off his horse!” I cried.

  “True. But the medical examiner’s office performed an autopsy, and apparently there were no signs of a trauma that would have led to his death. In other words, it wasn’t the fall that killed him.”

  “Then what did?”

  “The medical cause of death was determined to be an arrhythmia. That’s an irregular heartbeat, either too fast or too slow—”

  “I know what an arrhythmia is,” I interrupted.

  “Okay, but here’s the thing: Eduardo was twenty-three, he was in perfect health, and he had no history of heart problems. So
the forensic investigators have labeled his death suspicious. In other words, they’re convinced there was more to it than the guy simply dropping dead for no good reason.”

  “Like . . . ?” I prompted.

  He paused. “They think he was poisoned.”

  “Eduardo—poisoned?” I repeated, my voice reduced to a whisper.

  “That’s the focus of the investigation at this point,” Forrester replied, sounding strangely matter-of-fact. “The medical examiner’s office sent specimens to the State Crime Laboratory for testing.”

  My head was spinning. I felt as if I’d suddenly been transported from Andrew MacKinnon’s luxurious estate to the pages of a mystery novel.

  “But who—why—?” I sputtered.

  “Precisely the questions I’m trying to answer,” he said coolly. “That’s what we folks in the newspaper biz do.”

  “Funny. I always thought that was what the folks in the homicide biz do.”

  “True, but they’re not the only ones who are capable of asking questions and putting two and two together.”

  “In that case,” I told him, my head still spinning but for some reason not wanting him to know it, “why don’t you go play Magnum, P.I., and I’ll get to work.”

  I pushed past him, my shoulder accidentally brushing against his. He snickered—which for some reason made me furious.

  “Pretty tough, aren’t you?” he commented.

  I glared at him. “Does Mr. MacKinnon know you’re here? Or Johnny Ray?”

  “Johnny Ray and I made a deal.” He mused, “Y’know, it’s amazing how much you can still buy with a twenty-dollar bill.”

  “Look, none of this is even close to my concern,” I shot back. “If you’ll excuse me, there’s a horse waiting for me.” I gave my head a little toss to emphasize that I meant business.

  I stalked off toward the stable, deeply inhaling the distinctive scent of hay, manure, and horse sweat. Highly preferable to overpriced men’s cologne, I thought angrily.