Breakaway (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (10 page)

Lushmeadows had been built for horse people; these little bridle paths crisscrossed the whole housing tract. It wasn't a bad idea, and very convenient to me now, but I still found the place repulsive.

It was the basic sameness of everything that revolted me, I thought, looking at the houses. These houses had all been built by one man-the developer. They had no doubt been designed by an architectural firm, and though there was some variation, that in itself was repetitive. Here was a fake Tudor, here one with Greek pillars, here the ubiquitous Mediterranean-type with a tiled roof. Then a smaller, plainer ranch-style house (Mike O'Hara's), for those with less dollars, and back to the fake Tudor again. Yuck.

Even though many of the houses were so large and expensive that they qualified as mansions in my book, even though the parcels were a couple of acres at minimum (often much larger), and the land itself was beautiful, I thought the whole place was tacky.

What I wished for was a law that said a person could only build one house at a time-for him or herself. No more characterless spec houses, created only to make a profit. Sure, some houses would still be generic, others would be downright ugly. People have different tastes. But at least each house would reflect the views of an individual, if only in which particular architect he or she selected. It was the lack of quirkiness in these big, dull, ostentatious houses that was so alarming. Houses like libraries, a friend of mine had once called them.

Mike O'Hara did not appear to be home. No car in the driveway; no sign of life. His bay gelding grazed in the pasture; Sonny looked fine. That was a good thing.

I rode on. Up ahead the street forked; I aimed for the big gate that was across the road from the Bishop Ranch. The houses were larger and more palatial along here, if such details as inappropriate colonnades and porticoes can make a spec house look palatial. This was prime territory. And just ahead was the extremely large and downright gaudy dwelling of Warren White, the developer-contractor who had created the Lushmeadows project.

I knew Warren; like everybody else out here he had horses, and I'd been called out to treat his Arabians once or twice. Kris had dated him for a while a few months ago as well, but that seemed to be over now. Still, as I passed his driveway I saw Warren and two other people out at the barn, talking, and one of them was Kris. They all looked my way.

I pulled Plumber up and waved, and Warren motioned me in. It was like him, I thought, to use an arrogantly curt hand gesture that seemed to leave no options other than to do as he asked. Though I had no doubt that Warren meant to be friendly, even his hospitality had didactic overtones.

Warren was rich. Not that being rich turns every man into a bossy little prince, but it sure seemed to have had that effect on this one. He was also blond, handsome in a superficial way, and single, and as one might expect, he considered himself God's gift to women. I couldn't imagine what Kris had ever seen in him.

Now, now, Gail, I chided myself as I walked my horse up the verge of the long concrete driveway, don't be so nasty. So you and Kris have different taste in men-so what? I hadn't liked Kris's ex-husband, Rick, either-another good-looking, wealthy, pompous ass, in my humble opinion. Well, maybe not so humble.

I passed the house-immense, rococo Mediterranean, painted an orangey pink with many palm trees around many porticos and colonnades, perhaps my least favorite house in the whole subdivision-and approached the little group standing by a white-board-fenced corral out at the barn. Kris, Warren, and a dark man I didn't know.

He was the type to make you glance. Of medium height and strongly built, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist, he had dark olive skin and dark hair and eyes. He wore the hair fairly long, and he had good bones and a sort of young, healthy animal vitality that contrasted pleasantly with a face so classic it looked as though it might have been etched on an old coin. He was younger than I was-I'd guess late twenties or early thirties-and I suspected, of southern European origin. Italian, Greek, Spanish maybe.

Warren White followed my gaze and said, "George Corfios, Gail McCarthy. George works for me; Gail's my vet." Having placed both of us neatly in relationship to himself, he looked away.

"George just moved out here." Kris said this with a look at George that was quite plainly interested, or so I thought. So this was her latest boy toy. Or potential boy toy, anyway.

George himself said nothing, though his eyes went to me and he smiled briefly. It wasn't apparent whether he was aloof or merely shy.

"Where are you living?" I asked him.

"In Warren's barn." He looked directly at me as he spoke; I had a sense of strength reined in.

"George is one of my carpenters," Warren said. "He has a horse and needed a place to live, and I had this apartment over the barn and could use a caretaker."

Kris smiled at George again. "That's George's horse." She pointed to a gray gelding, plainly mostly Arab, trotting along the back fence, tail held high.

George looked back at me. "Perhaps we will be getting to know each other, since you are a vet." His voice had just the slightest trace of accent; from his name I imagined that he was probably Greek.

Warren and George absorbed this exchange without comment and I smiled back at Kris. "I will. Have fun." I turned Plumber and started back down the driveway.

Five minutes more and I was across Harkins Valley Road and riding up the Bishop Ranch entry drive. Horses were everywhere, in wooden pens alongside the old barns, in portable metal corrals set up wherever there was space, in stalls with their heads hanging out over the bottom halves of Dutch doors. Clay had once told me that the Bishop Ranch boarded over a hundred horses.

The place was popular, I believed, partly because it was relatively cheap. Unlike some of the fancier boarding and training stables in the area, the Bishop Ranch boasted no covered arenas or mechanical horse walkers or extra warm-up pens. One large central arena, and access to the network of trails that ran through Harkins Valley-that was it. And, a more subtle distinction, the place had no particular orientation.

Many of the stables in the area were run by a trainer who had achieved a certain amount of recognition in a given field. There were dressage stables and jumping horse stables and cutting horse stables; there were stables that catered to the owners of Arabians who were into endurance riding. In contrast, the Bishop Ranch Boarding Stable was more generic, providing basic pens, stalls, and feeding at a reasonable rate to a motley collection of animals. Although Bart, the proprietor, did train horses, he had never competed much in any particular event; his expertise lay in breaking colts and retraining problem horses.

That is, if he had much expertise, of which I was not entirely sure. Horse trainer is a self-proclaimed title. Those who have tested themselves in the show ring can be said to have proved their abilities to the world; trainers like Bart, on the other hand, have merely hung out a shingle, and some of them, I had reason to know, caused as many equine problems as they solved.

I had no idea if Bart was in this category; I saw him occasionally when I was called out here to treat horses, and he always appeared reasonably competent; that was about all I knew. I had heard both good and bad about him through the client grapevine, but this was typical. No horse trainer can please everyone all the time, and as much bad-mouthing goes on in the horse business as in any other-some legitimate, some not.

Riding up the gravel road, I kept an eye out for Bart or Clay, but didn't see either. A blond woman came walking toward me, leading a paint horse.

I smiled and asked her, "Are Bart and Clay around?"

She gestured over her shoulder. "They're up at the big barn, mending a stall."

"Thanks," I said. She smiled and kept walking. Pretty girl, I thought, probably in her twenties. The majority of the people who kept horses out here were women, ranging from teenage girls to grandmothers, and these provided a seemingly inexhaustible pool of dating material for brother Bart. Hard to blame him, I supposed.

I'd reached the big barn, the largest structure on the ranch. Clay had told me it had once housed the dairy cattle. Since then the interior had been chopped up into several rows of box stalls. I dismounted and led Plumber inside.

Clay and Bart were about halfway down the main aisle; it looked as though Clay was rebuilding the door of one of the stalls. Bart stood there talking to him.

The two brothers didn't look much alike, I observed to myself. Clay was fairly tall and slim, of medium coloring; his brother Bart, on the other hand, was more short and stocky, with very dark hair, clear blue eyes, fair skin. Bart's chin was square and his nose was straight; he carried himself with his shoulders back and his spine a little rigid, whether because he wanted to look taller or had a bad back, I didn't know.

They were both handsome man, but to me Bart had that faint and indefinable air of arrogance that is an instant turn-off. Not so Clay.

"I saw one not a month ago, riding through these hills," Clay said. "Jumped into the trail ahead of me and stood there for a minute. At first I thought it was a big yellow dog and then it dawned on me what I was seeing. Pretty spooky, when you're alone."

"That's for sure," I agreed. "I turned around and went the other way, I can tell you."

"Are you planning to ride back?" Clay asked. "I'll saddle Freddy and go with you."

"Well," I looked at Plumber, who was snuffling his muzzle along the barn aisle, picking up bits of alfalfa hay, "I think my horse is pretty tired. I was wondering if I could beg a ride home in the stock trailer."

"Of course." Clay glanced over at Bart. "It's all hitched up, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Bart wasn't looking at Clay, he was looking at Plumber. "I wouldn't let him do that if I were you," he said to me.

I stared at the man in surprise. Granted that many horsemen prefer their horses not to nibble on things when they're on the lead line, it still struck me as an odd thing for Bart to say.

"I don't mind," I told him. "This horse is pretty well-mannered. I treat him like this because I like him to be relaxed." I tugged Plumber's head up; he complied willingly enough. "He doesn't need to eat your hay if you don't want him to."

"Great, I appreciate it." I turned my back to the two men and started to lead Plumber off. "I'll wait for you outside," I said.

Jeez, what an asshole, was what I thought. Brother Bart, that is. To make the assumption that I was ignorant enough not to know the conventional rules of horse etiquette and the further assumption that I needed to be enlightened by the mighty trainer, argued a degree of arrogance that bordered on insolence, in my opinion. I was beginning to be sure I didn't care for Bart.

I led Plumber out of the barn, tied him to the hitching rail, and leaned against it. It was late afternoon and the sun was resting on top of the western ridge. In another fifteen minutes it would be out of sight, and I could feel the chill of incipient fog in the air. I was glad I'd asked Clay to drive us home.

Watching as the two brothers checked out the dually pickup and stock trailer, it struck me that Bart was constantly posturing dominance in his body language and speech, always trying to be in charge. Clay seemed inured to this, or at least he didn't react to it. Yet I didn't have the impression he was submissive, merely indifferent.