Something Most Deadly

by Ann Self

  Jane left Elliot to his phone business and relocated to the coffee table and chairs. Cecily waved one hand in the air. “I’ve got judges flying in from all over Europe—my hospitality committee better be up to snuff on the care and feeding of judges!” She looked at Jane. “The Technical Delegate is coming in from California next week and I need to get everything set for her. I think my announcer is going to bug out on me and I’ll need to replace him. Good Lord, I may lose my mind.” She clasped a hand to her tanned forehead as if to keep her brains from spilling out.

  Jane nodded in sympathy. “Boy, you are one busy woman!”

  Cecily shook her head in agreement, then readjusted sunglasses perched on the top of her silver hair. A few strands of hair were uncharacteristically hanging loose from the glistening knot at the nape of her sunburned neck. “Busy doesn’t even begin to describe it,” she said. “I haven’t even secured a competition videographer and photographer. Completely forgot about it. But I think I have that solved—a friend of a friend thing.”

  She hesitated again. “Oh damnit—excuse me—wristbands! We have to have wristband IDs.” Cecily began quickly stuffing some of the booklets into a side zipper of the briefcase, including a copy of SHOW BIZ, and the USEF rulebook. She held one pamphlet up for Jane entitled FOOTING. “I’ve got a soil engineer coming and a company that’s going to put down a shredded rubber footing in the indoor ring. Commercially prepared rubber is supposed to be the best thing going.”

  “I’ve heard that, yes. A lot of European riders swear by it,” Jane said. “Will the VIP observation lounge...or, ah, skybox be done in time for the show?” she asked Cecily.

  “Oh my dear it certainly will be! It’s gotten short-shrift lately, because Elliot’s had so many projects going; but he wants it to be ready for all the bigwigs he’s invited to the show. Some of the heads of the biggest corporations in the country! He wants to wine and dine them in style. And he especially wants them to have a bird’s-eye view of Lucinda showing Charmante—some of these businessmen or movie industry execs may be interested in investing in our Trakehner breeding program, and in sponsoring shows or riders.”

  Jane looked hopeful at that last remark, but Cecily did not meet her eyes. It was not Jane that she was trying to promote. Jane felt a pang of pity for the woman, trying so hard to do the best for a daughter who might not be up to the task.

  Cecily suddenly looked back at Jane and smiled. “Well dear, how are you coming along on General? Is he going to be ready for this weekend’s show?”

  Jane smiled back. It was important to her that Cecily saw her as a person in her own right and not just a cog in the Whitbeck wheel of plans. The fact that Cecily could even recognize Jane’s ambitions, when the woman was desperately struggling to promote Lucinda, made her enormously grateful.

  “He’s coming along quite nicely. I think he’ll do well this weekend.”

  “That’s good—I’ve seen you working very hard out there and I’m sure your efforts will be rewarded.”

  “Thank you. I have worked hard.” Relief spread through Jane like warm syrup, convinced now that Elliot wasn’t planning on dumping her. Maybe just a reprimand, as soon as he got his phone business out of the way.

  Cecily sighed as she zipped and snapped her briefcase. “I hope Lucinda can get past her nerves and be in the ribbons this weekend. She’s so high strung—just like my mother—and people like that tend to have an extra burden in life.” She looked earnestly at Jane and smiled again. “I so want her to have some success on Charmante. How do you think she’s doing? I hope we haven’t wasted a fortune on that horse...”

  “Lars has been working night and day with her, and I help when I can. She has good days and bad days.” Jane was trying hard not to lie and still keep some shred of optimism. People could sometimes surprise you. Lars was turning himself inside out trying to improve Lucinda’s riding skills.

  Cecily nodded agreeingly. “I hope helping Lucinda is not taking too much of your time? I know we rely on you a lot to help her—I wouldn’t want it to interfere in your other work?”

  “Oh...no,” Jane murmured lamely. “I’ll manage.”

  “Yes, you are very capable.” Cecily smiled, and rose to brush and straighten her loden-green designer sweatsuit that draped around her sturdy body. Jane couldn’t help thinking how little she resembled her beauty conscious mother and daughter. Cecily gathered up her purse and briefcase.

  “If you need any help with the show...” Jane offered.

  “Oh—thank you Jane, you just take care of training the horses and Lucinda, that’s enough work in itself.” She gave a slight roll of the eyes for emphasis, then continued: “I think my half-dozen sub committees and volunteers can get a handle on things. Hopefully! Being a show manager without them would be impossible. We’re all meeting up at the mansion in about a half hour...” Cecily glanced at her watch, “and later on I have to see about hiring a detail of State Police for show security. Charmante won’t be the only ghastly expensive horse on the grounds during the show.”

  She stopped in her tracks for a second and pulled out her notebook. “That reminds me...I have to call the Jamaica Tent Company to double check the temporary stabling, and the caterer for the exhibitor’s party after the show.” She scribbled something down, packed away the notebook, slid on her dark glasses and darted out the door grappling keys, briefcase and purse.

  “Ciao,” she yelled to Jane, and the dogs followed in her wake.

  “See you,” Jane called as she reseated herself in front of Elliot’s desk. He was still standing behind his chair, still looking out the window and arguing on his hard-wired phone about problems with leases for offices in a building he owned near the construction mess in Boston. She knew Elliot would not talk business on a cell phone.

  “I am not,” he yelled into the phone, “renegotiating any leases just because there’s a little upheaval around the entrances. It won’t go on forever, they can live with it. What? That’s crap, they can find parking if they look hard enough. Don’t call me again about this sniveling!” He slammed down the phone and sat in his chair, squaring it around to face Jane. She winced inwardly, thinking she was next in line for excoriation. He stared at her as if forgetting what she was there for.

  “Ahhh...Jane,” he began, rearranging and compiling his thoughts. He took up his Blackberry—which he used only as a notebook and navigation system—and poked in a few notes to himself, letting time and silence bring her nerves up to speed. Finally he put it down and leaned back in the giant, black-leather chair that curled up around him like the hand of King Kong. He peered at her with pale blue eyes as he took up a pencil and twiddled it.

  “Now then...” Elliot leaned forward and began tapping the pencil end over end on his desk-blotter, sliding his fingers down the length of it and rotating the pencil between his thumb and index finger as he assessed her. Point, eraser, point, eraser... Jane felt the soft thump of her heart, as she watched the pencil.

  “First of all, I seem to be missing a show schedule that Sam says he thinks you have?”

  “Oh...” Jane was startled. A mental snapshot of it reposing on the floor in the corner of her room popped into her mind. “Yes—I do have it, and I got sidetracked. But I’ll be sure and get it here.” She hoped it was still there, and not too badly mangled from her fit of temper.

  “Just as long as Lucinda gets it today.”

  “No problem.”

  Elliot looked at her appraisingly again. “I have a request from Mr. Canaday.” His eyebrows rose and he watched for a reaction, but Jane remained rigidly cool and controlled. The pencil continued tapping and rotating, end over end, tap tap. Point, eraser. Point, eraser.

  “He would like you to personally give his daughter Olivia riding lessons.”

  “Olivia? Yes...I’d be happy to. How old is she?”

  “Six. She’s named after her mother, Olivia Duval Canaday, the newspaper heiress who was killed in a car accident out in California two years a
go. I guess she was driving her mother-in-law to pick up Olivia at summer camp and she over-corrected her sports car on a mountain road and flew off a curve into a ravine. Killed them both instantly.”

  “How awful,” Jane gasped, as she thought to herself, both his wife and mother.

  Elliot looked hard at Jane again, he seemed to be trying to make up his mind. He stabbed the pencil point into his blotter and halted it there. “I don’t need to tell you, Mr. Canaday is very important...a very important player in my business plans. He’s going to be the Title Sponsor of our show here, and donate a silver cup.”

  “I understand.”

  “Does he know you from somewhere?” he asked her.

  “Mr. Canaday?”

  “Yes, Mr. Canaday,” he repeated sarcastically, again digging the point harshly into the desk blotter. She felt it between her shoulder blades.

  “I don’t think so.” Her heart continued thumping again.

  “He seems to think so.”

  “I...ah, I can’t imagine why,” she lied through her teeth.

  Elliot leaned forward. “So you weren’t following him from Boston? You weren’t casing his neighborhood? They have you on tape...”

  “No—that’s ridiculous. I was visiting a friend who also lives in Brockton, in the same neighborhood. My best friend. We just happened to be parked in the same garage in Boston, and left at the same time for the same town. My car stands out easily.”

  Elliot gave a short snort. “This is true. That damn car. I meant to ask you to please not ever park that junk in the front lot again. I mean not ever, not for any excuse under the sun. Especially not the horrible way you drive.”

  She was stunned for a second, then said: “I understand. I won’t.”

  “Okay, now we have that out of the way. I just don’t want things screwed up by some kind of wacky feminine undercurrents. Lucinda seems to think there’s something else going on that we don’t know about—but I really don’t care, as long as we take care of business. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “No sneaking around in the bushes and flirting with the men that are my business partners!”

  Jane gasped, “I don’t intend to flirt with anyone!”

  He nodded in approval. “Good. I want Brian Canaday’s daughter to be ecstatically happy and delighted.”

  “She will be...”

  “Okay then.” He tossed the pencil and shot out a wrist to check his watch. “I have to fly to New York in an hour. I’ll be there on business for at least a week. Brian will be here next Tuesday afternoon after he picks Olivia up from school. Since Mrs. Canaday was killed in that accident in California, he likes to spend a lot of time with the kid.”

  “I see.” Jane felt chilled at the off-hand way Elliot threw in the facts—not out of concern or sympathy—but just to be sure she had all pertinent information at her fingertips, so that she could produce the goods and take care of business.

  Elliot rose as she did, pocketing his Blackberry. He snatched his suit jacket and briefcase from the chair next to her, then marched across the office. He stopped and turned back as he held the door open for her. “Try to give Lucinda a lot of support this weekend. I know you’re showing too, but Lucinda is really uptight about her first show on Charmante. I have conflicts this weekend, so I can’t be there.”

  Jane experienced a mental cringe as she exited the door. Help Lucinda. God himself couldn’t help Lucinda.

  “I’ll do my best,” she heard herself say, as Elliot shut and locked the heavy paneled door.

  Jane walked slowly back toward the south wing. She passed the red-haired twin Bergstrom girls, Laura and Lindsey, taking their horses out for schooling. They waved and said hello and Jane responded like a robot; her mind a million miles away. Brian would be bringing Olivia. He was a widower. Careful. She mustn’t be tempted—she had reinvented herself, and only Brian could turn her coach into a pumpkin.

  Ashley Parker strolled by in a riding helmet carrying a saddle, looking elegant even with her white sleeves rolled up. Jane struggled to nod and smile civilly as she passed. Mustn’t let Gladys taint her demeanor.

  Ashley smiled faintly in response, tucking a ribbon of wheat-blonde hair back under her helmet. “Oh hello Jane. I love your hair braided on the sides like that, it’s really flattering.”

  “Thanks,” Jane murmured, “it keeps it out of my face.”

  “Yes, you have really thick hair—maybe you should have it cut and layered? It might be a little more sensible not to have so much hair while you’re working in the barn.”

  “I have been considering a crew cut,” Jane replied pleasantly, as she walked away.

  “Must have been on her to-do list,” Jane grumbled to herself as she continued on to the south wing. “School my horse, clean my tack, and oh yes—get rid of Jane’s hair...” Maybe Ashley was possessed, she thought, and Aunt Edith was speaking through her: You need to let me cut that damn hair! It’s way too long! Cut that damn hair...Cut that damn hair...

  Jane shook the memory of Edith’s ranting out of her head and smoothed her “heavy” hair. It was a lot of work, keeping it washed and tidy around a barn, but she would never cut it. She’d already spent years of her life shorn like a sheep.

  “Hello! Anyone in there?” Dylan had caught up with her.

  “Oh, hello Dylan. I’m sorry, my mind’s on the show.”

  “It must be. You were talking to yourself. Don’t see that too often.”

  “I, ah...guess I’m stressed.”

  “What did they do to you—pistol whipping, flogging..? Was old man Whitbeck mad about Toady, or mad about you blowing his mother-in-law off her pedestal?”

  She laughed. “I can’t believe it, Dylan. Neither Elliot nor Cecily even mentioned the little dust-up with Travis and Gladys. It’s as if it was a non-event. Elliot’s leaving for New York, and he wanted to be sure that I helped Lucinda at the show, and that I make sure she gets the show schedule. They were both very pleasant...well, as pleasant as Elliot gets.”

  “That’s it? That was all?”

  “That’s it.” Jane deliberately left out mention of Brian.

  “Whew, no sweat then.”

  “No sweat—I guess I’m off the hook. Maybe Gladys ranted and raved and it fell on deaf ears again, because it didn’t suit Elliot’s purpose to listen—or maybe she just said nothing and is lying low and plotting against me.”

  “Better watch your back then.”

  “No kidding,” she agreed.

  “I’m sure Toady kept his mouth shut,” Dylan decided. “He’s way too afraid of Sam to complain. He should be! I saw a guy that Sam beat up once—real tall guy too. You really don’t want to make Sam mad.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Wie ein Elefant im Porzellanladen...” Jane heard Lars mutter in frustration, as Lucinda rode Charmante around the indoor ring on a sultry Friday morning. The permanent heat of summer had arrived on a platter.

  “Don’t fight with him, Lucinda...” Lars bellowed, “find a line of communication before you make demands!”

  Jane frowned at the sloppy riding as she watched from outside the half-wall. The ring echoed with Lucinda’s angry moans and tearful gasps; she was only one step from full-blown bawling.

  “Oh God,” Jane mumbled to herself, “this is going to be a disaster. I hope Cecily isn’t out here.”

  Abruptly, Lucinda turned the horse into the center of the ring and stopped where Lars stood with his arms folded over his belly. She sprang to the ground, her fairy hair draping against the saddle. Sweat was beading over her pale forehead. “Let Jane work him for awhile, I need a swim!” She flung the reins at Lars and stalked away across the ring.

  Lars bowed to Jane, and indicated the saddle. “Well, Fraulein Jane?” He did not attempt to hide his delight at the change of riders. Jane ran across the ring with an idiot-grin and patted the horse with delight. She had expected to wait a lot longer before Lucinda tired of him. This was an incr
edible surprise.

  Lars gave her an easy leg up. “Don’t think she’s being nice to you,” he spoke into her boot to keep his voice from traveling and catching up with Lucinda as she stomped across the indoor arena. “She knows full well you’ll polish him for tomorrow’s show.”

  “I’m so happy, I don’t care,” Jane whispered. And besides, she thought, schooling the horse to help Lucinda do better in the show was one way she could help Cecily. It was much more pleasant to think of helping Cecily.

  Jane soothed the agitated horse with her hand and voice, speaking calmly until he stopped grinding at his bit. Charmante, for all his fire and spirit, was by nature a gentle animal, and Jane began to reason with his better side. She recalled the words of the ancient Greek statesman and General, Xenophon, who said Anything forced and misunderstood can never be beautiful. If only Lucinda would realize that, Jane mused, as she adjusted the stirrups and rode Charmante around the ring a few times on a loose rein to erase the effects of poor riding.

  “First, we must ride forward and straight,” Jane crooned pleasantly to the horse, knowing how sensitive the animal was to the sound and tone of the human voice. Charmante relaxed his back into a natural swinging rhythm and lowered his head onto the bit. Jane was delighted at the return of his free forward movement and the purity of his paces; better than any horse she’d ever ridden. But then any horse she’d ever ridden didn’t have this one’s price tag.

  Jane established a delicate connection with the soft bars of Charmante’s mouth; a gift he gave to her for trusting in the gentleness of her hands. It allowed her a sensitive area to telegraph her wishes to Charmante’s brain. Messages he now awaited with attentiveness. Lost in the work, Jane suddenly realized Lars had not spoken a word; he merely stood in the center of the ring, arms still folded, watching her with interest and nodding slowly like a bobble-head doll. She decided to take it as a compliment.

  God, what a relief, Lars thought. One more minute of Lucinda and he would tear the hair right off his head...