Cutter (Gail McCarthy Mystery series) (10 page)

"Wait a minute," I interrupted again. "Did anybody explain that the horse that came in without Casey was Shiloh?"

"Shiloh?" Detective Ward looked blank.

"The horse. Shiloh was a broke horse-a very well-trained horse-and Casey was a tremendous hand. A very good rider," I added. "It's unlikely in the extreme that she would have thrown him. Possible, but very, very unlikely."

Detective Ward stared at me. "Are you suggesting someone pushed him off the horse, or lassoed him?" Sarcasm was just a shade away.

I was getting more annoyed. "I'm suggesting this death looks very strange to me. Just a week ago Casey almost got in another bad wreck and he thought someone had cut his cinch."

"His cinch?" The detective clearly didn't want to ask what a cinch was and hurried on. "It seems extremely unlikely to me that this death was anything but accidental, Dr. McCarthy. If we do have any further questions, we'll call you."

I shut my mouth firmly. Detective Ward was obviously uninterested in cut cinches, poisoned horses, hostile trainers and any other weird horsey allegations complicating a nice, simple accidental death. This time I acquiesced in the farewell noises she was making, seething quietly under the surface.

As I got up to go, I let my temper get the better of me, something I'm a little too prone to do. Turning in the doorway, I addressed a parting shot. "I think somebody killed Casey Brooks, Detective. And if you're not interested in who, I am."

Chapter TEN

That was dumb, I chastised myself as I shut the door behind me. You have no idea if Casey was murdered or not; you just said that to provoke her, which makes you as big a jerk as she is.

I felt even dumber when Detective Ward followed me out the door and down the hall and requested at the desk that Bob drive me back to my truck. I'd forgotten I had no transportation.

The same baby-faced sheriff drove me back to Indian Gulch Ranch; on the way I thought of Casey. Hardheaded, wild-hearted Casey Brooks, who had never seemed to fit the modern age he was born in, was dead. Casey, who had loved cowhorses solely and completely, who had seemed wholly alive on Shiloh's back, so vital he sparkled. His sometimes abrasive, often entertaining, always unexpected personality was a memorable one, and my life would be dimmer without him.

Casey hadn't wanted to die; I knew that. He'd wanted to show Shiloh, train more horses, maybe find a colt that could be a futurity winner, like the Gus horse he'd lost. Gus ... my mind snapped sharply back into focus. What was it Melissa had said-"all that stuff about Gus"? Was it something about Gus that had caused Casey to call "about a million people"? And was it one of those people who had poisoned the horses and (possibly) cut the cinch? And what did all that have to do with the fact that Casey was dead?

Casey was dead. I shivered a little. That was indisputable. And the horses had been poisoned; I had the evidence. It created a strange equation. Those things didn't necessarily connect, but ... My mind leaped to the picture of a stranger sneaking around the dark barn, catching the horses one by one, injecting them with atropine. There was something deeply evil in the image. Only a horseman could have done it; it would have taken some familiarity with horses to catch ten of them and give them all a shot. The thought of a horse person deliberately causing horses to suffer and possibly die in great pain-it boggled my mind. Surely such malice, such indifference, went hand in hand with a human being who could murder.

These thoughts brought others back to mind; by the time the young sheriff dropped me off at Indian Gulch Ranch my brain was bubbling with questions. Relieved to see that Casey's pickup was parked in front of the mobile, I trudged up the hill to talk to Melissa.

She'd dressed herself in black, I found-black jeans, black T-shirt-but the effect was somehow not that of mourning. The T-shirt clung to her prominent curves, her golden hair was gaudier than usual against the dark color, and her eyes were made up with typical fanfare. Though I'd prepared myself to be comforting, it appeared unnecessary. Melissa didn't look grief-stricken; she looked stony.

When we were seated in the living room, I broke the uncomfortable silence. "What did you mean when you said Casey had been up to some 'weird stuff? All that 'stuff about Gus'?"

Melissa watched me warily. "Oh, just what you know. About the cinch and those horses colicking, and that bullshit about it being Will George. Casey was determined to get Will into trouble."

"How was he planning to do that?"

She thought about it a while; finally her long eyelashes lifted and I could see she'd decided to tell me. "The West Coast Futurity was run this week. Will won."

"I didn't know."

"Most people don't. It's just the cutting horse people who think it's a big deal. Anyway, Will won on Gus, who you know about." She looked at me questioningly and I nodded.

"A friend of Casey's brought him a tape of the futurity yesterday. Casey watched it and started screaming around about the horse on the tape not being Gus. He said it was a ringer."

It took a long moment for those words to sink in. "A ringer?" I repeated stupidly.

Melissa seemed to think I didn't know what a ringer was. "Yes," she explained impatiently. "Some older horse, a well-broke horse that looked like Gus, being run as Gus, as a three-year-old. The West Coast Futurity is for three-year-olds only."

"I couldn't tell about the horse; I didn't know Gus as well as Casey did. But I can tell you one thing; no way would Will George have ridden a ringer."

"How can you be so sure?"

Melissa stared me straight in the eyes. "Listen, Gail. I'm not going to say this twice, and I'm probably not going to say it to anybody else. I'm not really sure why I'm saying it to you. I didn't love Casey. I did love Will-once upon a time. And I knew Will. And Will wouldn't do that."

I stared at her, sitting there in her black T-shirt and jeans on Casey's beige corduroy couch, and wondered what to make of her. The shock of Casey's death seemed to have popped the cork on all that frustrated hostility she'd only been showing in bits and pieces before. Rather than grieving over Casey she appeared openly angry at him.

She must have read my expression, because she hurried on. "Look, I don't expect you to understand, and I'll ask you not to repeat it, but I wasn't with Casey because I loved him."

"Why, then?"

"Because I love the cowhorse business. You might not understand that, either, but my father was a cutting horse trainer-Bill Waters. He raised me; my mother died when I was three. I grew up in this business and I love it. I don't have any talent; when you're raised in a business you know talent when you see it, but I love being around the horses. My dad died when I was sixteen-it was really hard."

I nodded. I understood that-more than she might realize.

"I wanted to stay in the cutting horse business, so I went to work for Will-and to bed with Will. I was in love with him, but I figured out soon enough he wasn't planning to leave his wife for me.

"Casey wanted me. He didn't have a wife and he was offering me a home and a life in the world I love. I took him up on it. I guess I was a little infatuated with him at first, but it wore off, believe me."

"Why'd you stay?"

"Because he was good with a horse." Melissa laughed-a short, unamused, unfeminine laugh. "That's funny, isn't it? But he was. He was one of the best hands I ever saw, and I've seen some good ones. I thought he could make it to the top, if I could just rub some of the raw edges off of him, teach him you have to play the game a little. Fat chance. He never learned." Melissa sounded bitter.

"Do you think someone killed him?"

Her face shut down at that. "I don't know and I'm not guessing. Will didn't, I know that, and Will's the one Casey was so dead set against. I don't know who else it would be."

"Not really. Two of the ones that died were Ken's. The one you put down was Martha's. The others belonged to various people."

There went one idea. "Was Ken upset about his horses?" I asked her.

"A little. Ken doesn't show upset much." Automatically her eyes looked to the window, to his house, and she stiffened. "Oh, shit."

I followed her glance and saw that Ken's white Cadillac sat in his driveway; it hadn't been there when I arrived. He must have driven in while we were absorbed in talking.

There was a note of panic in Melissa's voice as she turned to me. "Will you go tell him, Gail, please? I can't handle it. Not now."

She did seem genuinely upset. Don't be churlish, Gail, I told myself. You could do this for her.

"Sure." I hid my reluctance as well as I could. "I'm sorry, Melissa," I added as I got up, though given what she had said, it seemed out of place. "I liked Casey."

Pulling into Ken's driveway a moment later, I parked behind the Cadillac and got out of my truck slowly. I wasn't sure how difficult breaking this news was going to be; searching my mind, I tried to come up with the appropriate words.

Still feeling unsure how to put it, but thinking I'd opt for the slow and careful rather than the blunt, I knocked on the big wooden front door and after a moment it was opened; Ken looked at me questioningly. He was wearing his executive persona, tie and all, I noticed; no immediate kick-off-the-shoes, roll-up-the-shirtsleeves, and flop-on-the-couch routine for Mr. Resavich.

His face showing not alarm, but recognizable apprehension, Ken held the door open politely. "Would you like to come in?"

"Thank you." His formality was catching.

Preceding him into his ranch-style living room and declining his offer of a drink, I took a seat in a leather-covered armchair and looked around curiously. It was all open beams, dark wood, western oil paintings, and wagon-wheel chandeliers, complete with trophy heads hung over the mantelpiece, and several brown leather chairs and couches. All of it looked expensive and had quality, of a sort. It was exactly the house a ranch owner was supposed to have; it might have belonged to any wealthy man with western pretensions.

I removed my gaze from Ken's furniture and brought it back to his face. He had settled himself in a chair that was slightly more than a comfortable conversational distance away and was regarding me almost nervously, as though a youngish woman in his living room was an unusual and uncomfortable event. Had he ever been married, I wondered. Was he divorced, a widower, gay?

"I'm really sorry to have to tell you this," I said awkwardly, "but Casey Brooks was killed today."

Ken's expression didn't change, but it seemed to me he looked grayer. Somberly he stared at me and waited.

"Shiloh came back without Casey and I went looking for him and found him in a ravine. He'd hit his head on a rock, apparently, and it killed him."

Ken was still staring at me; I had no idea what thoughts were going on behind that wooden face and no idea what to say next, either. I stared back at him thinking distractedly that he would be a handsome man, with those high cheekbones and that square chin, if his face had held even a little animation.

"I'm sorry," I said finally, "I know this must be a shock."

What was he thinking? Somehow I was sure he was upset, but whether it was genuine grief, worry that Melissa would sue him-Shiloh was his horse-or annoyance at the loss of his trainer, I couldn't tell. Grief seemed unlikely; I just didn't see Ken as being all that attached to Casey.

He cleared his throat after a minute; his voice, when it came, sounded hesitant. "It was an accident, then? Shiloh bucked him off?"

That was interesting. Ken seemed diffident, as though he were willing to accept that explanation, but I wondered if he, like me, considered it unlikely.

"That's what the sheriffs think," I told him. "I called them and they took my statement, as I found his body. They seem pretty sure it was an accident."

His eyes moved quickly to my face, suddenly sharp instead of blank, and I saw, for a second, the keen business mind behind the stiff exterior. "What do you think?" he asked.

"I don't know. I have a hard time believing Shiloh bucked Casey off, but I don't know what else could have happened. Those horses that colicked, you remember?" Ken jerked his chin shortly. "They turned out to have been poisoned, just like Casey thought. With atropine. It makes me wonder."

Another long silence-Ken regarding me with shuttered eyes. Once again I found myself wondering what he was thinking. When the silence had lengthened to an awkward degree and it was apparent he wasn't going to break it, I stood up.