Dark Horse

by J. Carson Black

  “You gonna eat that or just look at it?” Lynette asked.

  Trish barely heard Lynette, just saw her lips move.

  “You’re dripping.”

  Trish looked blankly at the cone and her fingers. “Oh.”

  She heard the squeak of a sneaker on linoleum behind her and heard a long, drawn-out masculine sigh.

  “Come on, Trish. The man wants to order.”

  The man. Feeling like a prisoner on death row, Trish allowed Billy to lead her away.

  Once outside, adrenaline hit her. Galvanized by fear, she started around the side of the building in a run-walk. Billy caught up with her. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “That was him.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy. The guy who ran Mr. McAllister off the road.”

  Billy shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “I know it’s him!”

  “Neither one of us got a good look at him. It could be anybody.”

  “I saw his truck a couple of weeks ago.”

  “What kind was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then how do you know it was the right one?”

  “The shape.”

  He snorted. “The shape?”

  “Yes! The shape. What’s so funny about that? If you know so much, why don’t you tell me what kind of truck it was?”

  “It was a Ford. One of those older ones, late sixties, early seventies. With a tire strapped on the front.”

  The realization hit Trish hard. “You said you didn’t know. You said there wasn’t any point going to the sheriff because we didn’t have any information. But you knew all along, didn’t you? Just what kind of truck it was.”

  He waved his arm wildly. “Take a look around! They’re all over the place. Hundreds of ‘em. It was so dark I couldn’t even tell the color.”

  “How many trucks like that have a tire in front?” She started toward the front of the mall again, her anger with Billy pushing panic aside. “I’ll bet it’s out in the parking lot right now.”

  “Jeez, Trish, you’re full of shit.”

  “You scared to look?” she challenged him.

  “No way.”

  “Well?” She stood there, her arms crossed. “Go ahead.”

  “I will.” He marched around the side of the building.

  Trish followed, her heart beating like a jungle drum. She paused at the corner and peered into the lot. She almost jumped out of her skin.

  The truck stood all by itself, close to the road.

  From here, she could feel its malevolence, as if it had a soul of its own. It radiated out toward her, unspeakably evil in the flat, oven-like heat.

  Sunlight glinted off the chrome strip above the windshield and gleamed opaquely on the metallic cucumber-green finish, which had been scoured dull by the elements in places and oxidized in others.

  Billy skirted it gingerly, trying to look casual, then came back. He looked scared.

  “I told you.”

  “Then where’s the tire?”

  “Maybe he took it off,” she said.

  “Maybe it was never there to begin with. It’s just an old truck.” But she could tell from his expression that he was nervous, too.

  Trish felt suddenly cold, although it had to be ninety degrees. “He could come out any minute.”

  “So? We’re not doing anything.”

  “He’ll recognize us—”

  “Trish, he didn’t see us!” Billy stepped out into the parking lot again.

  “What are you doing?”

  “If it had a tire on it, there might be something to show for it, like bolts or something.”

  “Be careful.”

  Hands in his jean pockets, Billy strolled over to the truck, glanced down. He looked around, then hunkered down near the front grill. He stood up again, his gaze darting right and left, then trotted back to Trish. “There was something on the front. Holes, kind of. Could have been made for bolts.”

  “It’s the one,” Trish said.

  “Hey, not so fast—”

  “I’m going to the sheriff.”

  “You can’t! If our parents find out, we’re up shit creek.”

  She started walking. The sheriff’s department was just around the corner, and this time, she wasn’t about to chicken out. She couldn’t live like this anymore, always worried that the guy would recognize her and kill her, too. At last Billy caught up with her, kicking at rocks and cursing a blue streak. But at least he came along.

  Dakota was packing when Alice entered her room. “Dan wants to see you. He says it’s urgent.”

  Dan stood in the foyer. His face was pinched and there were dark shadows under his eyes. “I have to go,” he said. “Marie’s taken a turn for the worse. They think she’s rejecting the heart.”

  “Can I help in any way?”

  He nodded. “Three owners are coming for their mares today; could you make sure they get them okay?”

  “No problem.”

  ‘Two of the grooms are new this week, so they won’t have a clue.”

  “I’ll see to them. You’d better go. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  He looked relieved. He opened the door, lost control of it so that it nearly slammed back into his face, and was gone.

  Dakota’s heart went out to him. What hell it must be to live from moment to moment like that. He had an hour’s drive to Tucson, and at the end of it, who knew what he would find?

  She sent up a fervent prayer for Marie Bolin.

  “You sure that’s the truck you saw?” Derek Blue asked, driving past the dark-green Ford.

  “It was dark, and there was a board across it—”

  “It’s got holes where someone bolted it to the front,” interrupted Billy.

  Derek noticed a sticker in the rear window—a temporary license. He wrote down the number and radioed it in.

  “What about the man? You sure he was the driver?”

  Trish looked doubtful. “I couldn’t tell.”

  “He wears the same kind of cap,” Billy said.

  “What kind is that?”

  “You know. A gimme cap.”

  That described half the men—and some of the women—in the county. As a matter of fact, there were probably a thousand trucks like this one in Santa Cruz County alone. The Ford F-100 through F-350 was a popular truck. They lasted forever and were great for farm work. He could name three racehorse trainers who had trucks just like it. His own brother-in-law had one, as a matter of fact. It looked like hell, but it could run on fumes. Better than that fancy new vet’s van Jared held such great store by, which had been in the shop three times since he bought it new last year. They didn’t make things like they used to, that was for sure. “What makes you think this is the one?”

  “It’s just a feeling,” Trish said.

  “Why don’t you two come back and give me a statement.”

  Billy slumped in the seat of the Bronco. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

  After the kids had gone, he had Communications run the license number through Motor Vehicles.

  The truck belonged to Blane Andrew Griffith, but the title had been transferred within the last month.

  The previous owner was Jerry Tanner.

  It was no secret that Tanner hated Coke McAllister.

  Derek tapped his teeth with his pencil eraser. He’d had a feeling about Coke’s death from the beginning. There was a certain vindication in all this, he thought, as he walked to the evidence locker.

  He took the evidence envelope of tire scraps down from the cupboard. If what Billy and Trish said was true—and he had no reason to doubt them—then the tire scraps finally made sense. They hadn’t come off a tire on the ground; they’d come off the tire in the front.

  Derek knew a lot of people who put tires on their trucks to protect the grill when they had to push things around. Judging from the pile of junk in Tanner’s stable yard, he had a lot of call for a rig like that
.

  He laughed, remembering Tanner’s other truck, the one with the faulty starter. Why go to a junkyard and pay money for a rebuilt starter when you can just push it to get it going? Tanner had always been a lazy son of a bitch, but that took the cake.

  The board and the tire were probably long gone. If Jerry had shredded the tire in the course of running Coke off the road, he wouldn’t keep it around to incriminate him. He’d sold his truck pretty damn quick.

  Derek sat in his swivel chair, too excited to think about anything else. At last he picked up the phone and dialed the number for the impound lot in Tucson. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department had a contract with Santa Cruz County to store their vehicles there.

  Investigators had gone over Coke’s truck when it first came in, but the results were inconclusive. Now, Derek knew what to look for.

  Although the pickup was pretty beat up, most of the surface scrapes had happened before the accident. Even so, he found new dents and one broken taillight.

  The tailgate, which had been thrown into the truck bed, had buckled in. The metal was flattened over a wide area, as if it had been pressed, not rammed. There were also a few isolated dents on each end, which Derek thought might be glancing blows, but he had little doubt most of the contact had been made dead center.

  Coke must have wired the tailgate shut at one time. The end of the wire was sharp enough to cut a tire, because bits of black rubber still clung to it.

  Dakota made sure the mares went off with their respective owners. Two of the owners had paid her on the spot, which was great news for Black Oak. That, plus the money from the Rainbow Futurity, would make life one heck of a lot easier.

  She walked toward the house, detouring by Dan’s office at the sound of the phone. It was a Mr. R.J. Price from New Mexico, who had bought one of the mares at the dispersal sale. Apparently, Dan had neglected to send him the medical records.

  “Mr. Bolin’s been called out of town on an emergency,” Dakota told him. “I have no idea where to put my hands on them.”

  The owner said he could wait for the records, but he wanted to know if the mare had always had difficulty foaling.

  Dakota realized that Dan had all the files up at his house and was about to say she couldn’t be of help. Abruptly, she remembered the ledgers in the bookcase, labeled by year. She’d looked through them before. The ledgers were really for financial record-keeping, but Dan used them to keep track of each mare: a day-to-day record of their progress. If Mr. Price’s new mare had had problems foaling before, there was a good chance that Dan had written it down in the ledger. “Let me check and I’ll call you back,” she said.

  She looked through the current year, but the mare was still in foal at the time of the dispersal sale. Dakota pulled down the ledger from last year. Last March, the mare had bled internally, but both she and the foal had survived under Dr. Ames’s care. Dakota called the owner back and gave him the information, her gaze wandering down the page as she did so.

  The owner thanked her. As her gaze trailed down the page, she told him that Dan would send him the medical records as soon as he got back.

  Her gaze lingered on a familiar name. Shawnes Soliloquy, Alydar’s love interest. Dakota smiled as she remembered the way the dog had cavorted around the patient, sweet-faced mare.

  She was about to close the ledger when the words jumped out at her. “Shawnes Soliloquy did not take.”

  Did not take. That meant that last year, Shawnes Soliloquy did not conceive.

  Dakota stared at the entry, her mind going ninety miles a minute. Shawnes Soliloquy had conceived. She’d foaled not long after Alydar had played with her in the pasture.

  It had to be a typo. Intrigued by the mystery, Dakota jotted down the tattoo number and walked out to the pasture. Shawnes Soliloquy’s tattoo matched the one in the book.

  That was funny. Dan would have to look at the tattoo before writing it in his book. He’d have to know he had the wrong horse. Of course, he’d been distracted lately.

  Dakota knew Dan didn’t like her. He didn’t want her here. But she’d always thought it was because he liked doing things his own way. Could he have made other errors besides this one? Perhaps that was why he didn’t want her to see the broodmare files—-to cover up his mistakes. Maybe there was more behind his dislike for her than she’d thought. Maybe he was afraid that if he couldn’t handle things anymore, she would fire him. He couldn’t let that happen, not in his situation where every penny counted.

  Alice called to her that she’d made some lunch. Dakota walked back to the house, wondering if her broodmare handler was falling apart, and what she could do about it if he had a nervous breakdown.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “Where the hell is he?” Derek Blue couldn’t stifle his frustration. Tanner’s trailer was gone and the corrals were empty.

  “He’s not in Prescott,” Ray Garcia, Derek’s partner, said. “I checked with them this morning. He left there two weeks ago, after he was suspended.”

  “Shit!” Derek kicked at a dirt-crusted can of baked beans. “Are there any other race meets going on right now?”

  Ray shook his head. “Flagstaff was the only other one, and it lasted just a few days over July Fourth.”

  “So where is he?”

  “New Mexico would be my guess.”

  “Might as well look around. Don’t want to put the search warrant to waste.”

  Ten minutes later, Ray called out, “I found something.”

  Derek walked over. Ray stood over a two-by-four lying in a ditch. One quarter of the way up was a dark substance, gluing red-brown hairs to the wood.

  “Blood,” Derek said.

  “That looks like animal hair.”

  “Looks like old Jerry’s still up to his old tricks.”

  “You think he killed that horse at Black Oak?”

  Derek nodded. “Stands to reason. He hated the father, and he hates the daughter. If we could just find that son of a bitching tire . . .”

  “What kind of truck does he drive?”

  “Old Chevy. Why?”

  “Is that him?” Ray motioned to the dirt road, where an aqua-colored truck pulling a dilapidated horse trailer slowed to turn into the yard.

  “Right this way, sir,” the hostess said, leading Clay, Rita, and Lucy to a table near the window at the Inn at the Mountain Gods resort. As they threaded between tables, Rita clung to him, the outline of her breast rubbing seductively against his arm under the light summer suit she wore. Her perfume was overwhelming.

  To the people in the restaurant, they must look like a family—an idea that made him uncomfortable.

  Rita had chosen to ignore the embarrassing scene in Sonoita, when she had yelled at him for leading her on. Since Dakota left, she called him constantly, trying to get him to do things with her. Today she’d used good old-fashioned guilt.

  “It’s Lucy’s birthday, and she doesn’t have a soul here to celebrate with. Her father hasn’t called her in a month. She had to hear from a stranger that he was warned off at Prescott.”

  So here they were. Clay felt like a boy dressed up to go at a function that bored him. He resolved to get through it the best he could and, after Lucy was gone, tell Rita again that there was no future to their relationship. At this rate, he’d have to tell her over and over again. Until she got it.

  Being here didn’t help his case. He stared dismally out the window at the lake sparkling in the sunshine, and thought how good it would be if it was Dakota across from him instead of Rita.

  It didn’t help that Rita was a beautiful, alluring woman. It didn’t help that he felt a sexual stirring as he watched her remove her jacket. What did he expect? He wasn’t a eunuch.

  When Lucy excused herself to look around, Rita leaned forward, her lips glossy and her voice low. “You’d think her dad would call her on her birthday. I know he’s got his troubles, but he is her father.”

  Clay leaned back to keep Rita’s perfume at bay. “Do you know i
f he left Prescott?”

  “I have no idea.” Rita shook out her linen napkin and placed it on her knee. Every movement was calculated to entice. “Thank God Jack had an opening at his stable. I shudder to think of her living in that squalid little trailer, not to mention the humiliation! I hope this lunch cheers her up. She’s been let down so many times, it’s important for her to know we’re not going to dump her.”

  Her message was clear. Dakota had dropped Lucy like a hot potato, consigning her to a horrific existence with a man like Jerry Tanner. In comparison, Rita looked unselfish and loving. It was a pity, he thought, that her seductive clothing precluded her from also appearing maternal.

  “I bought her a little something—a necklace from The Ghost Shaman. A running horse—all gold.”

  “She should like that.” The Ghost Shaman was one of the most expensive boutiques in Ruidoso.

  “The poor kid. She just needs a little guidance, and she could become anything she wanted. I think coming to Ruidoso has made all the difference in the world to her.”

  He had to admit that Lucy looked happier than he had ever seen her. There did seem to be real affection between the beautiful, wealthy widow and the lonely child. They’d come a long way from their shaky start at the Mountain Oyster Club.

  But Rita had to get it through her head that he was not the third component in this happy little family. Throughout lunch, he maintained his distance, physically and emotionally. Lucy opened her present and read her card aloud, then the three of them explored the resort and walked along the lakeshore after lunch, and all the time, he wished he were somewhere else. At least he had the excuse of evening feeding.

  He dropped Lucy off at the apartment she shared with two other grooms and then drove Rita to the Champions Run condominiums.

  “Would you like to come in? I’ve got some new coffee that is out of this world.”

  He wanted to refuse, but realized that this was his opportunity to end this charade. He followed her in.

  “Just let me check my messages,” Rita said, brushing past him. She moved like a panther, svelte in her tailored suit, which was more about sex than business. The skirt fell about mid-thigh and molded to her hips like a second skin. She walked to the answering machine and bent forward at the waist, exaggerating the long, fluid line of her body and displaying an enticing rear view. Her skirt rode up, revealing a smooth expanse of thigh and the creamy lace of her half slip. “This’ll only take a sec—”