These Sorrows We See

by Schultz, Tamsen

  But the look Dash gave her told her he was thinking along the same lines.

  “What can I do?” Matty asked.

  “I brought a tranquilizer in with my stuff,” he said, nodding to the box and bucket of supplies he’d unpacked from his truck. “But I’m going to need some wire cutters to get this off.”

  She turned to head back to his truck but was surprised when Dash stopped her. “Actually, Kristen, can you run up to my truck and get the cutters? They are in the back, on right hand side, fourth drawer down. Matty can stay here with Bogey. She’s good with animals and probably doesn’t know her way around a vet truck as well as you do.”

  Not sure what Dash was thinking, she stilled while Kristen, who looked about to protest, finally turned her eyes to Matty.

  “Come over here,” Kristen said, motioning Matty to her place at Bogey’s head. “Talk to him. He’s a cuddler and will like resting his nose on your chest.”

  Matty did as she was asked and as soon as Kristen looked convinced that Bogey was going to be okay, she turned and started to run up the hill, being careful not to startle her horse.

  “Dash?” Matty made a silent inquiry.

  “I don’t want to freak Kristen out, but this looks intentional. I want to get some pictures to give to Ian and Vivi. If they agree, I think someone needs to have a talk with Kristen’s dad.”

  “Once you’ve taken them, I think you should send them straight over,” she suggested. “If Ian agrees and thinks it looks suspicious, he’ll want to come over and have a look around.”

  Dash inclined his head even as he took several pictures with his phone. “That’s a good point. When Kristen gets back, why don’t you take my phone up to the truck, e-mail them to Ian, and then give him a call. That way we’ll know what he thinks before we’re done here,” he added as he made his way to the other side of Bogey and took a few more photos.

  “Do you think this could be related to what happened to Bob?” she asked.

  Dash’s head came around, and judging by the look on his face, he hadn’t considered that.

  “Shit.”

  “It was just a thought,” Matty said. “I don’t know much about what kind of crime happens up here, but it would just seem weird that there would be two animal-related incidences in such a short period of time, that is, if something was done to Bogey.”

  Dash swore again. “Kristen’s coming back. I’ll tranquilize Bogey and once he’s down, I’ll cut him free. Take this,” he said, handing her his phone. “Once she’s here, go on up and get the photos to Ian.”

  Matty nodded and slipped the phone into her pocket. A few minutes later she was walking up the hill to the truck, phone in hand, e-mailing the pictures. When she was done, she dialed Ian’s number and told him what was going on. After taking a look at the images, Ian wasn’t any happier with the situation than they were and was on his way over to have a look for himself.

  As Dash made his way back up the hill, Matty was pondering a grumpy-looking sheep in one of Kristen’s pastures. Bogey was up and moving slowly behind his owner as they made their way to the small barn. The horse’s back leg was bandaged, but at least he was walking with only a minimal limp.

  When Dash reached her side, she nodded toward the sheep. “He always look like that?”

  The poor thing, covered in wooly dreadlocks sticking out at all angles, looked like it hadn’t been sheared in ages. But what was most noticeable was his expression. Matty hadn’t known sheep could have expressions, but this one sure looked to be telling them to fuck off.

  Dash chuckled. “Yeah. That’s Bad-Hair-Sheep. He’s too mean to shear so Kristen just lets him be. What did Ian say?” he asked, turning serious.

  She paused then gestured toward the road where they could see Ian’s truck making its way toward them. “He didn’t like what he saw any more than you did. He says he doesn’t know much about horses, but having grown up with cattle, that kind of tangle would have caught his attention, too. Not to mention it happening on the heels of what happened to Bob.”

  As Ian drove the rest of the way over to them, Matty went silent and contemplated the past two weeks. Despite the events earlier in the summer, Windsor didn’t strike her as an area prone to violence—but there had been two deaths and two animal mutilations in her short time there. As a city girl, and one from DC at that, it didn’t necessarily scare her, but it did make her wonder just what was going on. Were they all related? Were they all a coincidence? It all just seemed too, well, odd was the only word she could come up with, to be unrelated. But then she knew how much Brad loved animals, so how or why he could be tied to someone who could do what was done to Bob and Bogey, didn’t make sense.

  As if reading her mind, Dash wrapped an arm around her waist, pulled her to his side, and dropped a kiss on her temple. “Ian will figure it out. You have other things to think about right now. Let’s just get through this day, through Brad’s parents’ arrival.”

  For a moment she’d forgotten—not about Brad, but about the situation. It was much easier to try to solve the puzzle of just what was happening in Windsor than think about the emotional quagmire that awaited her when Sandra and Douglas showed up. Matty nodded.

  “How is Bogey?” she asked as they watched Ian climb from his truck.

  “Thankfully, not as bad as it could have been. He didn’t need stitches, but we cleaned him up good. Kristen will have to keep an eye on him for the next couple of weeks.”

  That was good news, she thought. At least he hadn’t lost any pieces of his anatomy, like Bob, or been permanently injured.

  “Dash, Matty,” Ian called as he walked toward them.

  “Ian,” Dash responded and, with a gesture of his head, he began to lead Ian down the hill.

  “Hey, Dash,” she said, stopping the two men. “I’m going to go be with Kristen. She’ll probably wonder why the sheriff is here and I don’t want her to worry too much.”

  “Thanks, that would be great,” Ian said, then he and Dash continued down.

  Walking into the barn, she spied the young girl leaning against a stall door, arms resting on the top of the lower half, her chin on her hands, staring into the box.

  “Kristen?” Matty said, coming closer. The girl turned her head but didn’t raise it. “I hear he’s going to be okay,” she continued as she approached the stall. Bogey was standing but looked a little groggy. His head hung low and he wasn’t moving much.

  “Yeah, that’s what Dr. Kent said, I just don’t know how it happened in the first place,” she answered. “I mean I’m super careful about that kind of stuff. I turn him out at night because it’s cooler and there are less flies, but I’m always checking the fence ‘cause I don’t want anything to happen to him.” Kristen paused for a moment, then a look of guilt crossed over her face. “I guess I just didn’t check good enough yesterday and now look at him,” she added with a gesture to Bogey, who made a half-hearted attempt to perk his ears at his owner.

  Matty sighed internally. On one hand, telling Kristen what was going on in her pasture, that Dash and Ian thought what had happened to Bogey was intentional, would erase her guilt. On the other, it might terrify her.

  “Is your dad around?” she asked.

  Kristen shook her head. “No, but he gets back today. Flying back from Singapore or someplace like that.”

  “What time is he supposed to get home?”

  Kristen shrugged like it didn’t matter. Based on what Dash had told her, it probably didn’t, since he would most likely turn around and be off somewhere else in the next day or so.

  “I don’t know, two or something like that.”

  “Do you have anyone else who comes to stay with you?”

  Kristen wagged her head. “I did, but not after I turned fourteen. Now he says I’m old enough to be on my own. I catch the bus to school and he has someone who comes in and helps with shopping and cleaning and things like that, but mostly I’m on my own.”

  Matty couldn’t tell from Kr
isten’s tone whether she thought this was a good thing or not. In fact, it sounded a bit to her like the girl just didn’t care because caring about it, one way or the other, wasn’t going to change anything. Matty knew a thing or two about what that felt like.

  “Look, Kristen, you should know that whatever happened to Bogey isn’t your fault.”

  That got the girl’s attention and Kristen straightened and looked at her. Matty continued. “Ian MacAllister, the sheriff, is here right now, down in your field with Dash. Dash didn’t like the way it looked when he arrived, how the wire was wrapped around Bogey’s leg, so he took a few pictures and we sent them to Ian. Ian agreed that it didn’t look right, so they’re down in the field right now, looking into it.”

  Kristen stared at her for a long moment, her huge eyes blinking as the information sank in. “You mean you think someone was here in the field and did this to Bogey on purpose?”

  Matty pursed her lips and gave a tight nod.

  Kristen’s eyes widened and went back to her horse. “But who would do that? Who would hurt an animal like that?”

  “We don’t know, Kristen, and that’s why Dash wanted to call Ian out. Look,” she paused, looking for the right words to say to a fourteen-year-old who was, for all intents and purposes, living as an adult. “I don’t think you should stay here alone. Not until Dash and Ian sort this out. I know you’re not going to want to leave Bogey, but I don’t like the idea of you being here alone.”

  It was clear from the look on Kristen’s face that, until that point, she’d been more concerned about Bogey than herself; that it hadn’t occurred to her just how creepy it was to have someone coming onto her property.

  “But I don’t want to leave Bogey,” she said.

  “I understand that,” Matty said. “Maybe we can find a compromise,” she added, not wanting to make things worse for the girl.

  “We have a compromise,” came Dash’s voice at the barn door as he and Ian walked in. “Kristen, none of us like the idea of you being alone. I hope you don’t mind, but I called my parents and they’re going to come hang out with you until your dad gets home. That way you can keep an eye on Bogey but aren’t alone. How is that?”

  Matty thought Kristen would have done just about anything Dash said, not because she had a crush on him, but because he’d saved her horse. The young girl nodded.

  “I’ll call your dad this afternoon and fill him in,” Ian added.

  Matty held her tongue, opting to wait until she was alone with Dash to ask him about what he and Ian had found. She figured they would have already said everything they were comfortable saying in front of Kristen and anything else could wait.

  On the way back to Brad’s house, the quiet of the truck had an eerie, creepy feel to it, given what had just happened. But even so, Matty’s mind wasn’t so much on the deed but on trying to sort out why. And so she asked Dash his opinion on the matter.

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure why someone would do that. Same way it’s not really in my realm of comprehension as to why someone would have cut off Bob’s toe. The easy answer, as disgusting as it is, is someone just gets a kick out of hurting animals.”

  “I know that’s the most obvious, but it just seems strange to me. Two animals, in the same small town. Has anything like this ever happened here before?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Not to my knowledge.”

  She was silent for the remainder of the trip but gave the dogs a little extra love when they arrived at the house. Deciding that she needed to cook a big lunch, just to give herself something to do, she left Dash in the kitchen and went into the office to look up some egg-based recipes online. She’d dropped off dozens of eggs to Dash’s mom the day before but had many more just from that morning. Scanning the office for her computer, she frowned. She was pretty sure she’d left it on the desk but it was nowhere to be seen. Acknowledging that she could have brought it upstairs, she turned to head to the bedroom but was stopped by an eruption of barking.

  When she and Dash got to the door, they discovered an older man standing beside a white van in the driveway petting the dogs. He was tall and robust but the hunch of his shoulders and the slowness of his movement spoke of his age.

  Straightening, he came toward them. “I’m Casper Collins, I heard about Brad this morning and I wanted to come give my condolences. You must be Matty?” he said, coming toward her, hand outstretched.

  She took it in hers, nodded, and introduced him to Dash; she wasn’t sure what to make of a friend of Brad’s knowing about her.

  “He told me about you—just a little, mind you,” Casper said, returning to the rear of his truck. “He was proud of what you’ve done with your life, the writing and all,” he continued, his voice muffled as he reached into the rear of his van. Coming out with a big box, he ambled back to stand in front of her.

  “He said he didn’t think he would have survived what you had, let alone succeeded at the level you have. Anyway,” Casper said with a vague gesture of his shoulders. “He was a good man and I wanted to bring you some of this,” he added, lifting the box just a little.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Wine. My wine, or wine from the family winery,” Casper answered. Dash must have realized how much weight the man was bearing at the same time she did and he stepped forward to relieve Casper of the box.

  “Wine?” Matty asked.

  “Hmm,” Casper nodded. “It was a favorite of Brad’s, it’s actually how we met him all those years ago.”

  Matty thought about the situation for all of two seconds before making a decision. “Come in for a drink, Mr. Collins. It’s a bit early for wine, but I do have some iced tea and, well, to be honest, I didn’t know Brad all that well and wouldn’t mind hearing a little bit more about his life from one of his friends. That is if you have the time?”

  Casper nodded his head in agreement and the three of them made their way into the cool of the house. Dash set the wine down on the table and they headed to the kitchen island. Casper and Dash pulled up stools as she poured the tea.

  “I know you and he weren’t close,” Casper said as she handed him a glass. “Brad regretted it. Understood your hesitance, but regretted it.”

  “So, tell me about him,” she prompted, not wanting to wade into the mess of her familial relationships. “Tell me how you met.”

  Casper’s expression changed and a faraway look, a look tinged with sadness, stole across his face before he spoke. “He came into the winery one day, said he’d had some of our wine at one of the local farm-to-table restaurants. Hard to say why, but he struck up a conversation with my son—it’s my son who really runs the place—and next thing I know, Brad is back the next week, and then the next, just helping out with odd chores, things like that. I don’t think he wanted to be in the business, but I think he liked the physical work he did for us; it was a lot different than the banking he did to make his money. It also came at a good time. My son’s wife had just died and left us with a hole that couldn’t be filled. My grandson, Robby, was twelve at the time and he and Brad spent a lot of time just walking around talking about the winery. I think it did Robby good to be able to teach an adult something. Maybe Brad knew that, maybe he didn’t, but after that first summer and the next fall, he was kind of a regular fixture at the winery, and often at our dinner table, too.”

  Matty stroked her fingers along the condensation of her glass. She hadn’t known any of this about Brad, and while that didn’t surprise her, the sadness creeping into her mind, the sadness she hadn’t felt since finding the body, did.

  “How old is your grandson now?” she asked.

  Casper smiled. “He’s twenty, just getting ready to enter his junior year at the University of California in Davis. Brad helped with that, too.”

  “That’s a long way away,” Dash commented.

  Casper inclined his head. “It is that, but given the school’s location next to wine country and the viticulture program they have, R
obby didn’t want to go anywhere else. He loves the business and didn’t want to go to college at all, but when he figured out that wasn’t an option, he picked Davis.”

  “And Brad?”

  “Brad helped him get a scholarship. My son, Steve, was called up from the reserves and deployed to Afghanistan last year. He’s proud to serve his country, we’re all proud of him, but his absence meant hiring yet another person to help out at the winery. With both Robby and my son gone, we’ve had to bring on more than two extra people, since no one works like family does. Anyway, we were able to afford the out-of-state tuition at first, but then with Steve gone, it was going to be tough to find the money for housing, books, a stipend, travel—all those extra things that college costs.”

  “It doesn’t sound like Robby was averse to working, though?” Matty said.

  Casper gave a strong shake of his head. “Not at all. In fact he convinced his department to create a job for him and that was enough to cover his housing costs. He wanted to get a weekend job but we decided he should focus on his studies. He reluctantly agreed with us, though I wouldn’t put it past him to be out there working with one of the other wineries on the weekends.”

  Matty smiled at the tone of bemused pride in Casper’s voice. He was proud of Robby, and from what she heard, he had every right to be.

  “But the scholarship?” she asked.

  “Brad knew someone from his college days who runs a huge winery, one of the ones that’s ten times the size we are. The family is loaded—not from the winery, but from other investments. Turns out they have a foundation to support people in the study of viticulture. I don’t think it’s really one of those things that a lot of kids go into so a lot of their “scholars” are probably people entering a second career; but Brad talked to them about Robby and, next thing we knew, his tuition was covered. Of course, Brad wouldn’t let us thank him or anything, but that was just Brad. He just did things for people.”

  “And, with housing and tuition covered . . .” Matty said.

  “Picking up the rest of the costs, including the costs for us to go visit him, was something we could manage.”