A Three Day Event (45 page)

Feeling nothing in particular apart from the waning rage that had fuelled his action, Polo stared, puzzled, at his tingling palm. He heard the stallion whinnying. Then he heard swearing. He felt Roch push by him. He watched with dull attention as his friend knelt to assess the damage to the girl. Jocelyne was holding a hand to her face and keening harshly like a big, stricken bird. He looked around to find Guy physically shrinking back toward the end wall, his face a mask of uncomprehending shock. Still he felt nothing approaching regret. So he drew a deep, rib–punishing breath to stimulate his conscience, and waited patiently for the obligatory wave of shame and remorse. Strangely, though, all he could identify in the slow wash of returning consciousness was a weird sense of relief.

So this is what it took. But I finally did it. I hit a woman. I knew someday…but funny, I was sure it would be Nath… Jocelyne shouldn’t have lied about me putting the horse away wet. If she’d said I’d murdered Liam…or was gay…or was stupid… I could have handled…but to say that…in front of people…that I would do that to a horse…deliberately endanger a horse…I wanted to really hurt her…even a woman…now I know for sure where the line is…

Roch was helping her up. She was whimpering and when she took her hand away from her face, Polo could see the angry red imprint of his hand. Roch tilted his head toward Polo, then back toward Jocelyne, and his eyes plainly signaled Polo to apologize. Polo nodded and cleared his throat. But the words, even a simple ‘I’m sorry’ stuck in his throat. The interesting thing was that he still wasn’t the least bit sorry. In fact, what came out of his mouth was, “Joc, you owe me an apology. I shouldn’t have hit you, but you deserved it, and if you were a man…”

“Polo!
Tabernouche
. Don’t make things worse. Hey, it’s not right, what you did,
hein
? This isn’t a good time for splitting hairs. We got a dying horse here…” Roch passed a nervous hand over his scalp and swore. Cuffing Polo’s arm, he murmured, “C’mon, fix it up,
vieux
. If this gets out…” his eyes darted reflexively around the barn, and finally Polo’s dawdling conscience drew level with events.

Okay, then. A reconciliation gift for Roch. Fair was fair. Roch had already tendered his own olive branch hours before. “I’m sorry I hit you, Joc,” Polo said coolly, making no attempt to hide his contempt. “It won’t happen again.” And it wouldn’t. Not her, or any other woman. That he knew for a certainty.

As Roch, reassured, turned with finality back to the desperate struggle in the gelding’s stall, Jocelyne shrugged sullenly and started down the long aisle towards the round barn and her pie–slice room. Polo followed her until he was out of Guy’s and Roch’s hearing range, and stopped.

“Hey!”

“What?” she muttered, halting too, but faced away from him.

“Who’s the guy at 931–4236 in Montreal?”

Jocelyne turned and stared at him in amazement. The fading red blotch on her cheek suddenly blazed scarlet against the white of her face.

“How did you”–

“Why don’t we just cut to the chase, Joc? What’s legal here that isn’t in the States? What kind of scam have you got going? How much did Liam know? Enough for you to kill him? Should I just take a wild guess and go to Michel with my suspicions? Or should I”–

“No! Stop! Don’t go to Michel!”

“Okay, I won’t. Yet. If you tell me about it. You know I could go to Michel with the lie you just told and that alone would be enough to”–

“Don’t. Don’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? When you told Michel you knew he’d never–you know–with me, I was just so–so”–

Indignation, contempt, impatience–a boiling emotional stew twisted Polo’s gut like a sympathetic colic. Too bad horses can’t talk, he thought, and get out what’s bugging them. But I can, and I’ve had it with that victim shtick. I’ve had it with the lot of them.

“You know, Joc, under normal circumstances, I’d feel sorry for you. I used to, in fact. But I don’t any more. People who work with horses–they may be stupid, or obsessed, like you are, or corrupt, or blind to the corruption around them, or so desperate to win they can’t have a civil relationship with other competitors– or any number of awful things. Above all, they may be cowards. Yeah, especially that. And you tend not to judge too harshly. You try not to, because we all know we’re guilty of some rotten tendency ourselves, and we try to understand what’s going on in the other person’s life that makes him do lousy things.

“There’re only two things that you can’t, or shouldn’t, forgive. That I can’t forgive, anyway. One is horse abuse. The other is the kind of betrayal you just did back there. Blaming a professional horseman for deliberately putting a horse at risk. Something you know for a fact I would never do. And for what? To make your pathetic little ego feel better. I’ll never forgive you for that.”

Jocelyne covered her face with her hands and sobbed quietly. “Please don’t tell Michel what I did, Polo. I would die if I couldn’t be near him.”

What she had just said aroused no pity in him. Instead, Polo was further repelled. And what he’d just said to her he hoped she understood wasn’t rhetoric. It was a fact. She’d disqualified herself forever from inclusion in his wider sympathies. He’d found the limits of his tolerance, it seemed. He had nothing to say to reassure her. He hoped she understood that he’d go to Michel in a second if she didn’t spill whatever it was she was hiding. And fast. The thought of the horse dying forty feet away was making him wild with frustration.

Jocelyne looked at Polo and quietly wiped away her tears, dragging runnels of mascara across her cheeks. She understood. She said, “It’s not what you think, Polo. It isn’t drugs. Or at least it’s not the drugs you’re thinking of. That guy in Montreal–he’s a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. His girlfriend rides in Hudson. The company he works for–Progentex–they make this allergy pill–Allerprieve. His girlfriend was using it for her allergies to hay–you know how it’s a big problem for riders, allergies. Then she found out there’s something in the pill that takes away your appetite. She started losing weight. So, you know, the word got around, and you know the girl riders on the circuit, they”–

“Bottom line it, Joc. Where do you come in?”

“You can get it without a prescription here, but it hasn’t passed the FDA in the States yet. I get a whole bunch of it here from this guy, wholesale, and I sell it to the girl riders in the States. They pay a lot. I give the guy a kickback. That’s the whole story, Polo, it’s no big deal.”

“Liam thought it was something else. Coke. He said he’d go to Michel with it, didn’t he? That’s a good motive for murder.”

Jocelyne looked at him with what seemed like spontaneous astonishment. “Me? Kill someone over allergy pills?” She laughed mirthlessly. “You must think I’m stupider and crazier than”–she shook her head in wonderment, then continued quietly, “Listen, Polo, I don’t have much going on in my life except Michel. That part’s true, and I–I’ve done some stupid things because of that. But”–she twisted a strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail –“I would never let it go that far.

“Yeah, Liam thought he could blackmail me, but he got it all wrong. Just like he got the part about Michel being gay wrong.” She looked up at him boldly, as the old defiance flashed momentarily before subsiding once more into resigned humility. “If worse came to worse, I’d have told Michel about the pills. But Michel wouldn’t have got rid of me just for that.” She sighed. “I’m glad to get that off my chest, to tell you the truth.”

She looked down and fresh tears spilled down her face in clownish black streaks. “Polo, I know you don’t believe me, and I know you’ll never be my friend again, but I just want to say anyway that I’m really sorry for what I said about you.”

“Good night, Joc.”

“
Salut…salut
…” Joc whispered sadly to the empty space where Polo had been standing.

Thea shuddered and nodded to Guy. The needle plunged and within seconds the racked body relaxed and stilled to immobility. They had all been holding their breath without knowing it, and the air came out of them as a collective sigh. Nobody spoke for a long minute.

Roch tried to frame a consoling sentence, but Thea patted his shoulder and shook her head. “Not necessary, Roch. I’ve had it easy. Only five minutes of this horror. You poor men, you’re exhausted, just look at you all.” She cocked her head, and added, “On top of whatever else you’ve been up to. I know my horse isn’t completely responsible for the wear and tear I’m seeing.”

Roch and Polo exchanged a look of mutual revulsion for Thea’s ironic distance from events. There was no question of either one of them telling her about their fight. Roch mumbled something inaudible about walking into a door, and Polo pretended he hadn’t heard as he gently covered the horse with a turnout sheet. Thea took the rebuff with grace.

“So now what?” she asked, glancing discreetly into the stall and away.

Guy cleared his throat. “In the m–morning. Th–they’ll come for h–himmmm.” He looked at the floor as he spoke. Roch and Polo instinctively looked away from Thea, hoping she wouldn’t ask who ‘they’ was.

“By ‘they’, I assume you mean the people who will take him to St Hyacinthe? To the veterinary hospital?” she inquired sweetly but pointedly.

Roch and Polo turned to her in surprise, but it was Guy she was staring at with inexplicable fierceness. He was agitated, and to Polo seemed even frightened by her question.

“Why the hospital, Thea?” Polo asked quietly. But even as he asked he knew the answer. He just had to hear her say it. Guy knew why too, Polo could see. He was pale and obviously miserable, longing to escape Thea’s gaze. Poor guy, thought Polo. He’s like a pinned butterfly. But why should he care one way or another, unless–

“Because,” Thea said with suave authority, “the vet hospital is where they do autopsies.” Roch took a step toward her and opened his mouth to speak, but Thea’s eyes didn’t move from Guy’s face as she went on, “Roch, please don’t bother to explain to me that it was colic, and there’s no need for an autopsy. I am convinced that there is a need.”

“Thea,” Polo said, “I’ve seen a lot of colics over the years. This was unusually quick, but it was definitely colic. There’s no way Bridget could have planned it.”

“If that’s the case, Polo,” Thea said softly, “then why does Guy look so worried? Why should he care if there’s an autopsy, if you’re all so convinced it was colic?”

Polo turned to Guy and then flicked an uneasy glance at Roch. Both of them could see that Guy was struggling to contain his anxiety. His hand fluttered up to wipe sweat from his forehead.

“What the hell is going on?” demanded Roch, looking from face to face. No one spoke. Thea’s lips set in a hard line, and her light gray eyes blazed with purpose.

Then Guy finally broke eye contact with her, and, as though he had come to some sad but definitive decision, sighed heavily. He knelt swiftly and began packing up his medical bag. In silence they all watched as he dismantled the I–V apparatus. Finally he stood up, equipment in hand, and muttered, “You must d–do as you see f–fit, Thea.” Without a further comment or glance at anyone, he strode quickly down the aisle and out of the barn.

His lids drooped, but Gilles’ glazed eyes were still resolutely fastened on the TV screen when Polo opened the door to the condo. The boy looked up at him with a smile of undisguised relief.

“I didn’t want to go to bed ‘til you came back,” he said. “Is Robin’s Song okay now?”

“The horse died, Gilles.”

“Oh, no,” the boy whispered.

“Yeah.”

“I’m really sorry, Polo.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Polo?” Gilles said softly.

“Yeah?”

“What happened to your–I mean, did you–were you in a fight with–someone?”

“It’s not important now, Gilles.”

“No, I mean–if it was Uncle Roch–I mean, then I think maybe it was my fault, and–and”–

“Gilles, listen. It was with Roch, but it wasn’t your fault. And it’s finished. We’re still friends.”

“Oh. That’s good. Poor Uncle Roch. He has so much on his mind, and now the horse…”

“Yeah. Anyway,”–Polo gestured to the bedroom–“you might as well go to sleep. I came to tell you I have to talk to Thea and then Guy before I turn in. Are you okay on your own?”

He nodded. “But you’re coming back eventually, aren’t you?” Gilles tried to appear nonchalant, and failed.

“Yeah. I promise.”

“Good. Polo?”

“Yeah?”

“You look awfully tired.”

“Yeah. I know.
Salut
, Gilles.”

“Wait!”

“What?”

Gilles had dashed to the refrigerator.

“Here. Take this.” Gilles thrust an Aero bar at him. “In case you get hungry…”

“Thanks, kid.”

Polo knew it was just the fatigue and his nerves and missing Nathalie, but the sweet spontaneity of Gilles’ gesture unmanned him. As the chocolate bar passed from the boy’s hand to his, Polo felt a prickling in his eyes, and his throat closed up. He managed a weak smile and squeezed Gilles’ shoulder. Gilles blushed with pride.

“
Salut
.”

“
Salut
.”

* * *

“I made coffee, Polo.”

“Coffee would be good.”

Thea poured him a full mug and set it down before him.

“Thanks.” He gulped greedily, and grimaced as the hot liquid insulted his cracked lip. Then he said, “Okay, Thea. Why the autopsy?”

Thea sat opposite Polo and pulled some folded pages from her handbag. “This is a letter Stephanie sent me from school two years ago.” She laid it on the table and lovingly smoothed it flat. “Her letters are all I have now. I wish they’d found her journal.”

“They?”

“I mean after the accident. The people at Timberline got her tack box, her riding gear and clothes together for me, as well as her purse and documents and so forth, but they should have found her journal. Stephanie was very disciplined about keeping it–she used it mostly as a log of her training and competing history, and she never travelled without it. She’d keep it in her tack box at the shows because she locked it at night and it was safe there.”