Something Most Deadly

by Ann Self

  “He’s outstanding!” Jane opened the door and petted Charmante’s soft gray nose. Charmante’s ears worked, picking up the familiar sounds of an audience.

  “Time to mount up,” Sam said, reaching to unsnap the crossties. Jane suddenly felt like her nerves would get the best of her, just as Lars walked up to the stall.

  “Jane! You are beautiful! What a magnificent appearance you and Charmante will present.”

  “I’m terrified Lars. I’ve never been terrified before a show.”

  “Then get in the saddle and start riding away the butterflies. Don’t stand here on the ground feeding show nerves.”

  “Goddamnit, not now,” Sam uttered, sotto voice, and they all turned to see Lucinda making her way towards them, thumping determinedly along the aisle in her satin outfit and crutches and cast boot .

  “Just what the doctor ordered for show nerves,” Dylan observed from his seat on the cot.

  Everyone went silent and stayed frozen in place—waiting for the enemy to approach. Lucinda huffed and puffed her way up to the open stall, and then balanced herself to look at them. Her pale eyes narrowed at Jane and for a moment she looked shocked. “My, my, aren’t we fancy tonight. Where in hell did you get enough money for an outfit like that? You can’t even afford two skirts! What bank did you rob?”

  Madeline stepped rudely in front of Lucinda to straighten Jane’s stock tie, and brush away dust from her coat. Lucinda teetered and had to step back awkwardly. “You look great, and you’re going to knock ‘em dead out there tonight,” Madeline complemented Jane.

  “Then she better do a better job then what I’ve been seeing lately!” Lucinda carped.

  Madeline turned and brushed by Lucinda, bumping into a crutch, making Lucinda grapple for her balance like a drunken wino. “Oh, excuse me,” Madeline smiled.

  “Damn you!” Lucinda screeched. “I want you out of here! I want you off this property right now! Why in hell are you always hanging around here? Don’t you have a job?”

  “Madeline is not going anywhere Lucinda,” Jane warned her.

  “And who are you to say? I’m the one who decides who goes and who stays, you have no say over anything as usual.”

  “I’m the one who’s riding Charmante, that’s who,” Jane snapped. “Do you want to explain to your father if I don’t ride? How would he take that?”

  Lucinda’s mouth slammed shut.

  “Now get out of here—get out of my face. If I’m going to do a good job I don’t need you around wrecking my nerves.” Jane’s voice rose several decibels, fueled by tension. “You’ve already done enough damage to the horse with your rotten temper! Get out of the barn and go back to your castle before I change my mind and walk away from this whole mess!”

  Lucinda made a sound that resembled a gagging growl and then turned and slammed into her crutches, furiously rowing herself down the aisle.

  “And don’t come back!” Dylan said from his front row seat. “Boy her panties are in a twist now...”

  Jane looked questioningly at Madeline, who frowned in Lucinda’s direction. “What do you think?”

  “Something’s definitely twisted. But could be she’s just a spoiled brat. Garden variety.”

  “Forget about her,” Lars said as Sam led Charmante out of the stall. “Let’s get Jane on board before anything else happens.” He and Sam began a cursory check over every inch of the saddle and girth before running down the stirrups and checking them carefully. As Lars did his inspection, Detectives Westerlund and Russell approached the group carrying their giant mismatched coffee mugs from Sam’s office. Westy said hello to Madeline, and did a small double-take when he saw Jane. She stood remote and detached, trying to focus energy and rope in her frazzled nerves.

  Removing his gaze from Jane, Westy asked Lars: “Are you checking all that convoluted gear for sabotage?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing, and Sam is checking every little buckle and chain on the bridle.”

  “How’s it look?”

  “Everything is fine,” Sam said. Then he held the horse for Jane to mount. When she was in the stirrups he slapped her boot. “You’re good to go.”

  “Is the gallery full?” she asked, gathering the reins.

  “Everyone is seated and the judges are in place,” Lars told her. “You have a little less than an hour to warm up in the outdoor ring, before your exhibit.”

  “I know. I’m the last ride.”

  “Good luck, Jane!” Madeline tapped her boot also.

  “Thanks, Madeline.” Jane firmed her sleek black top-hat. Her white-clad thighs and long shiny boots melded into Charmante’s silver flanks. The outfit was enchantingly formal, and they all looked up at her as if she were a vision.

  “Good luck!” Sam repeated. We’ll be in the gallery rooting for you.”

  Detective Westerlund gave her a little salute with his coffee mug, and his partner Kenny Russell stared at Jane with a poleaxed expression. Madeline looked questioningly at Westy, but again he answered before she asked. “We’ll be following her outside—we won’t leave her until she enters the indoor ring.”

  Jane urged Charmante forward, as she took a last look over her shoulder at Dylan as he sat quietly on the cot leaning against the stall. It wasn’t like him to be so still, and it disturbed her, but she had to clear her mind for the difficult task ahead.

  At seven-ten the air was warm, juicy and threatening, replacing the earlier chill. Giant trees that dotted the grounds were now swaying and bowing, their leaves turning over and showing the pale side in the updraft. An early twilight had developed and the metal halide floodlights mounted on tall poles were just beginning to be useful. The landscape was grayed, as if a giant ghostly spider had sucked the blood out of the scenery, and heavier clouds on the horizon acted like black-out shades on the setting sun.

  Westerlund and Russell sipped their coffees and watched Jane and several other mounted riders warming up their horses in an outdoor Dressage ring. The squared tails of the detective’s suitcoats snapped up and down in the wind.

  Small dust devils ran away with bits of debris in front of a gray Rolls as it slid up next to the arena and parked near a long line of limousines that had delivered A-list guests to the arena. As she trotted Charmante around the ring on a loose rein, Jane watched Roger escort Gladys into the entrance for the spectator’s gallery, her skirts whipping in the wind. Gladys never so much as glanced in Jane’s direction.

  Every ten minutes or so, an announcement would crackle over the loudspeakers and another rider would leave for the indoor ring. Jane held Charmante still for a moment and slipped on white gloves, waiting until the last moment to keep them clean.

  “I’m just going to just canter him around the paddock lanes once,” she said to the two detectives as she left the ring.

  Westerlund and Russell looked at each other, alarmed. “It’s starting to get dark,” Westy warned.

  “I can see. And don’t worry, no one can catch me on Charmante!” Before they could object, Jane took Charmante off and made a sweep around the paddock lanes in a loose canter and then returned to where the two men were standing, relief evident on their faces.

  “Don’t do that again, please,” Westerlund admonished her.

  “I won’t, I’ll be staying right here until the next rider is done and I’m up.”

  She returned to the practice ring, all by herself now. The last rider.

  Charmante did not change after the canter around the grounds; he was still flat and wooden in her hands, as if he knew he was going to do a routine again and had withdrawn in his mind. But he was unlikely to embarrass her or toss her into a rail. The horse was tractable and obedient...and lifeless.

  “We haven’t quite found the magic, old boy. But if nothing else, we look darn good and the music is pretty.” She stroked and patted Charmante’s neck. The speaker crackled again and Jane guided Charmante out of the practice ring.

  Westerlund approached her and smiled. “Batter
up!”

  Jane smiled back, and nodded. Then she adjusted her reins.

  “Okay Charmante, let’s rock and roll...”

  Brian, Evan and Olivia sat in the steep rows of blue seats that rested over the judge’s platform at the end of the indoor arena. The open gallery was crowded with exhibitors and distinguished guests. Elliot had decided he wanted everyone seated in the gallery for the Grand Prix classes, so they would pay attention to the performances and not food. After the last class—Charmante’s—they could dine to their heart’s content in the skybox.

  Brian glanced around the gallery as a rider below did her freestyle musical Kur to a waltz by Chopin. He recognized a few captains of industry, as well as a Hollywood producer or two, and even the Governor himself was present. Elliot and Cecily sat to Brian’s left, next to Olivia; Cecily was explaining details of the riding test to his daughter. Evan sat to his right and Lars was in the next seat, his attention riveted on the ring.

  Eight rows down, high over the edge of the arena, Lucinda was seated in the front where there would be more room for her crutches. Her entourage included Travis, Gladys and Roger. Ashley was conspicuously absent from the Lucinda group, but she was seated with her father near the governor and his wife. Tempers had cooled, the black-eyes were fading, the scar shrinking, and the lawsuit was put on hold. Nothing would get in the way of heavy-duty networking. And nothing would get in the way of what Ashley hoped to witness: Jane being humiliated or actually thrown from the stallion. That would make her day, and her cheek bone throbbed as she pictured Jane plowing headfirst into the half wall of the arena. Don’t let me down, Charmante, she chanted in her mind.

  Be the all the beast that you can be...

  Gladys chatted with Lucinda as they sat near the front railing. Gladys’s mouth was pursed in permanent distaste because Elliot had been forced to let Jane ride Charmante. There wasn’t much she could do about it, but Elliot assured her that Jane would not be at the party. He had taken steps to prevent her appearance, and the old lady was content, at least, with that. Lucinda would not have to put up with the tattered welfare case presenting herself at the party after all she’d been through. Gladys turned and adjusted some of Lucinda’s curls that were caught in the chair.

  Lucinda smiled at her grandmother. They were both comfortable that this would be the last time they would have to lay eyes on Jane. Lucinda was still in a rage over the outfit that “Plain” Jane had miraculously been dressed in. She hadn’t mentioned it to her grandmother, but she’d see it soon enough. Jane must have scrounged up a fairy godmother, Lucinda grumbled in her mind, or else maxed-out a charge card. She had been hoping to see the usual scruffy coat on the girl and tatty old breeches. Everyone was supposed to be looking at the horse, after all—this was not a showcase for “Busted Husted”. She was on her way out and tonight was just her swan song.

  Lucinda was torn between wanting Jane to be humiliated and dumped on her head, and wanting her father to be successful in getting new investors. It seemed like he was really counting on the money and she found this a little disconcerting. He’d never noticeably chased after money before, that she knew of. She twisted and looked back at her father.

  Elliot looked down at Lucinda and gave her a smile and a wave and a quick thumbs up. Everything’s taken care of, he thought to himself. No worries.

  Lucinda smiled and nodded.

  Brian flicked a glance at Elliot’s thumbs-up sign, and then shot a look down the seats to Lucinda.

  What are these two up to?

  His gaze shifted to a stunning blonde woman to his far right, settling into an outside seat. She had just scurried in with Sam. Again, he had the same irritating feeling that he knew her. He did not usually have such a hard time recalling faces.

  “When does Jane ride, Dad?” Olivia asked.

  Cecily leaned toward her and indicated a place in the program. “She’s next, dear. See the name in your program, right there?”

  “Oh, yes, I see!”

  The next to the last rider left the ring, and there was a heavy silence in the gallery as Jane glided into the arena on the spectacular silver stallion.

  “Wow!” Olivia whispered. A ripple of similar murmurs cascaded throughout the sophisticated crowd. Brian noticed a tall man in a suitcoat slip into the arena below to stand unobtrusively in a corner and he experienced a strange emotion: jealousy. Brian had never been jealous of anyone or anything in his life, and now he was fairly pickled with it.

  “Who’s that?” Cecily leaned forward in her seat and squinted, holding the program up to shield her eyes from the overhead lights so she could look into the shadowy corner far below.

  “It’s Westerlund,” Elliot answered her sourly, “he’s been a nuisance all weekend, but I fixed his wagon. I made a phone call.”

  “Oh.” Cecily sat back.

  Brian looked at Elliot, curious about his last statement. Then he turned his attention back to the ring.

  Jane began a collected canter outside the low moveable fence that marked off the parameters of the Dressage arena. She then entered the in-gate at the far end and cantered down the middle to make a square halt dead-center at X. She saluted the judge by tipping her head and dropping her right hand smartly to her side.

  It was suddenly quiet enough to hear a pin drop on the manicured footing. Jane felt the expanse of air in the massive arena like a crushing weight, as if she was under water standing alone on the sea floor. Alone, except for the audience staring at her from the overhead gallery some thirty feet from where she was poised. Her heart beat at her chest like a closed fist as she lifted only her eyes to stare into rows of faces in the spectator seats. Who was it? she wondered. Who had the gaze so filled with malevolent energy that it crackled through the atmosphere to pluck at her nerves like skeletal fingers on harp strings?

  Brian looked down at Jane and her horse standing at attention in the middle of the Dressage ring. He saw her glance for a brief moment into the gallery and felt her fear. In the unnatural silence of the large arena he sensed an evil so pervasive it almost screamed; like a voice that is suddenly too loud when the music stops. His mind’s eye ran up, down and around the steeply packed rows of seats. The evil was practically throbbing, too big to be contained by silence, and he could feel it right to his bones but could not tell which face hid the curdling cesspool of hatred.

  Jane felt a difference flow through Charmante the minute they entered the indoor arena and he sensed the crowd. The small ripple of appreciative gasps that had erupted when he passed into the doorway seemed to electrify him. The stallion’s state of alertness was now quadrupled as he stood at attention in the center of the ring with his ears pricked sharply forward. He held his beautiful head high to survey the overhead gallery.

  Quiet as the spectators were at the moment, Charmante’s sensitive hearing could even detect their breathing and the rustle of their clothes—his flared nostrils their scent. Luminous brown eyes with soft white lashes studied the crowd of faces intently, as if centuries of his ancestors were also looking through his eyes, searching for an advancing Russian army. A fleeting instinctive memory sensed a desperate gallop across a frozen bay of the Baltic Sea, dodging fire from Soviet planes overhead. Charmante found the crowd of beings seated high in the gallery almost as electrifying as a horizon full of predators; and his heightened animal senses detected a subtle flavor of evil in the air; a strong human scent that was “off” as it floated in the atmosphere.

  “My God old boy, I forgot how you respond to a crowd,” Jane whispered as she retook the reins, not realizing it was also the scent of evil that added to his alertness. At the slightest of signals from her the horse responded instantly and she sensed the return of lightness—the return of magic. He had found the magic himself. Goosebumps prickled her scalp as her fingers felt the subtle pressure of Charmante taking contact at his end, communicating his desire to cooperate.

  Hello!

  As the mellow tune of “Yellow Bird” filled the in
door ring with faraway-island music, Charmante went from a dead stop to a spectacular knee-snapping passage; gliding along on a velvet cushion of Marimba tones as he sprung from the ground in a hesitating, high-kneed, slow-motion trot with more hang time than Michael Jordan. Even over the music Jane could hear the gasps and murmurs from the spectators.

  Air Charmante...

  Music that had been recorded years earlier in the Kaiser Aluminum Dome in Hawaii traveled down the time and space continuum to explode in a thrum of chimes, moon harp, guitar, glockenspiel, bass and piano. The rhythmic singsong notes rebounded off every beam and panel of the indoor ring through a dozen powerful speakers, and seemed to carry the horse and render him weightless as a feather.

  Charmante slipped seamlessly into a slow rocking canter, sweeping down the center line again, performing a graceful pirouette dead center and then moving into flying changes every other stride all around the ring, his tail flashing from side to side in a silken rustle. The horse responded like quicksilver to every twitch of Jane’s hands and she laughed, unable to help herself, and hoped the music would hide her undignified giggling. It could cost her a point. Jane knew by his twitching ears that Charmante could hear her laughter, and he seemed delighted to entertain her by dancing now, instead of racing through pastures.

  She cantered him down the ring in a zigzag pattern, demonstrating the half-pass, moving forwards and sideways at the same time, with counter changes of hand every fourth stride. The stallion’s silver and snow-white tail streamed behind him like a rippling waterfall, reflecting the energy of his movements. Jane sat straight and graceful on Charmante, her white gloved hands suspended over the withers as if they were just decoration. The tails of her coat fanned out from two buttons at her back, mirroring the motion of his voluminous tail, as the Hawaiian music flowed like a breeze through palm fronds.

  “Thank you—thank you Charmante,” she whispered. The horse danced eagerly, expressing his own version of thank you. Just under the gallery, at C, next to the judge and right under the noses of Lucinda and Gladys, Charmante again performed a dazzling pirouette, cantering fluidly around his hindquarters and pivoting in place—quite a sight from the overhead view. Maintaining the collected canter, he moved down the long side to the top the ring, turning at A. He executed another elegant passage to X, where he then performed a gorgeous piaffe to the music of light jazz; gracefully tip-toeing in place as if the ground were too hot to stand on; all his forward energy gathered and restrained to be released upwards.