Hayburner (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (16 page)

"Would that imply a 'bad' mother?" I asked flippantly.

"An overly controlling and/or needy mother is a common factor with men who have problems with women," Dr. Todd agreed. "Of course, I believe most arson is for profit, not for psychological reasons."

"I suppose that's right." I thought of Larry Rogers and his rapt expression. "Do arsonists, those arsonists with psychological motivations, anyway, take delight in the sight of their fires?"

"I believe so. They are commonly part of the watching crowd, and may even take a part in putting the fire out and rescuing people. Going back to your original premise," Dr. Todd went on, "many men who are hostile to women and/or have problems with sexual dysfunction do have difficult relationships with their mothers. Unfortunately, in our society, such difficulties are fairly common."

"So, what should I do, if I'm trying to work with a man like that? Just looking at me seems to make him mad. It must have something to do with the fact that I'm his boss. By all accounts he doesn't act that way with female clients."

"A woman in a position of authority over him would certainly trigger any issues he has with his mother," Dr. Todd said quietly. "He feels comfortably in charge, perhaps, when dealing with women as clients."

"Any suggestions? I tried to straighten things out by being direct, and it didn't work at all."

"My guess would be that anything forceful in your manner would be difficult for him."

I looked at Dr. Todd and sighed. "That's just the problem. I have a fairly direct way of speaking, especially in my role at work. I've cultivated it; clients feel more comfortable with a veterinarian who sounds as if he or she is in charge. Especially if that vet is a young woman." I smiled. "Well, middle-aged, now.

"On top of that, my boss is so blunt as to be downright rude at times, and I may have developed a similar style after working with him for seven years. And I think you're right. I think it gets on this guy John's nerves. I'm just not sure I want to try to modify myself for him."

Dr. Todd nodded.

"It really irks me," I went on, "to deal with men who have to be baby-sat like that. They find a competent, forthright woman completely threatening."

"It must be frustrating."

"It is. And it's one thing to mollycoddle a client who's like that-it's part of my job to get along with clients. But it's entirely another thing when the guy concerned is working for me."

"Can you terminate him?"

"Maybe." I sighed again. "It would be so much easier and better for all of us if John and I could just get along."

"My guess would be you might need to mollycoddle him a little, as you put it. Flatter him." Dr. Todd smiled at me.

I didn't smile back. "It just pisses me off. That's part of the problem. I have just as much anger at the notion that I need to be extra careful and polite to John simply because I'm female as he seems to have at the idea that he has to work for me. It's one of my own issues, I guess. I try to treat people fairly, and I do my best to be a good person, but I do not feel it is part of my role in life to kiss men's asses, simply because I'm a woman."

Dr. Todd nodded.

"Does this make me hostile?" I asked him.

"Not in my opinion. Not as an overall position. You can be hostile, certainly, but I do not see you as a hostile person. You are a fairly blunt person, and that can be difficult for some personality types to deal with."

"I know. I guess I'm just going to have to wait awhile, see what seems right to do. What about my new romance and how to tell Clay?" I added.

"Just follow your instincts," Dr. Todd said.

"That doesn't sound like typical shrink advice to me."

''I'm not a typical shrink." His eyes twinkled as he stood up.

"That's right, you're not." I stood up, also. "Thank you," I said.

"You're very welcome."

I turned to go but his voice stopped me. "These arson fires, do they have a pattern?"

"Well, there've only been two. They were both in the hay barns of stables in Harkins Valley. And according to the fire investigator, the arsonist used the same method both times."

"Any other similarities?"

I thought about it. "They were both on a Friday evening."

"Do you live in Harkins Valley?" he asked.

"No. Not far away, but I don't actually live in the valley. Why?"

"I think," he said slowly, "if I had horses and I lived in Harkins Valley, I'd be watchful this Friday night. Very watchful."

"I see what you mean," I said.

FIFTEEN

Friday turned out to be my day for emergencies. The first call that morning was Jade Hudson. "She's got a horse she needs you to put down," Nancy told me.

"Tell her I'll be right there." Turning, I went back out and climbed into the truck I had just vacated. From what little I knew of Jade Hudson, I was willing to bet she would not make such a phone call unless it were necessary.

Arriving at her place half an hour later, I found her waiting in the yard.

"One of my old boys went down yesterday morning and won't get up," she said. "He doesn't seem to be suffering, but I think twenty-four hours is long enough."

"Do you want to try and find out what's going on with him?" I asked her.

"I don't think so. This horse is thirty-two years old and he's been in a decline for the last month or so. He hasn't seemed too interested in his feed; he's been moving slower and slower and not staying with the others. I think it's time."

"All right," I said. "Let me get the shot ready."

Once the syringe was full, I followed Jade into the pasture.

She marched steadily through the damp brownish tan stubble, headed eastward; as we topped a rise, I saw the gray horse lying on his belly in the hollow ahead of us.

Jade walked up to him and stroked his neck. The horse looked at her calmly.

"Well, Rodney," she said, "I think it's time, don't you?"

She crouched next to him and put a halter on his head. Rubbing his ears, she looked him in the eyes for a long moment. "All right," she said to me.

 
I crouched beside her. Patting the gray's neck, I injected the kill shot into his jugular vein. Jade Hudson continued to stroke him while I did it. "I love you," she said softly to the horse. Tears were running quietly down her face, but she seemed calm.

"Are you all right?" I asked her.

"I'm fine," she said. "I always cry, because it is sad, but I'm fine with it. I know it's time."

After a moment, Rodney lifted his head slightly. There was a brief alarm in his eyes; Jade and I both readied ourselves to get out of the way if he started thrashing. Mercifully, he didn't.

Slowly his head lowered and his eyes seemed to dim. Laying his muzzle down on the ground, he folded over onto his side. His ribs moved once with the last breath. Jade Hudson continued to stroke his neck.

After another minute, I used my stethoscope to listen for a heartbeat.

"All quiet," I told her. "He's gone."

She nodded, the tears still flowing. "Thank you," she said.

"Sure you're okay?"

"I'm sure." Straightening up, she stood beside me. "I've been through this before. I'm accepting of it. Death is part of life."

"True enough," I said.

For a long moment I gazed at her quiet, tear-streaked face. I saw the serenity, the peace. Even as I looked at her, I knew that her tranquility was born, at least in part, from the solitary, monastic simplicity of her life. I knew this, because in some ways my life resembled hers. And now I was giving it up.

Blue's face came into my mind, the memory of his touch, his kisses. Even the thought of him sent a surge of basic, primitive desire through me. I already knew, somewhere deep inside, that I was giving up the solitary life for Blue. There was no doubt in my gut.

Jade and I walked back to my pickup together. "Thank you," she said again, as I climbed in.

"You're welcome."

I could see her in my rearview mirror as I drove out, her head bent slightly, walking back to her house. And then my cell phone rang.

"Gail, Tony Sanchez has a colic," Nancy said.

"I'll be right there."

Tony lived in Harkins Valley, just down the road from Christy George. As I drove the narrow, winding curves of Harkins Valley Road, I passed one horse operation after another. Harkins Valley was ideal horse country and many, if not most, of the folks who moved out here were horse people. The options were endless: On the right a high-class jumper stable with all new facilities, on the left a little old family farm that belonged to Judith Rainier, the barbed-wire-fenced pastures full of rodeo horses. Next came a turn-of-the-century dairy converted to a setup for a woman who raised Shetland ponies, and then the wide, white-board-fenced fields of a local dot-com millionaire. In the distance I could see the plots of horsey Lushmeadows subdivision. Tony Sanchez's place was on the right.

Tony had money. He owned pricey cutting horses-about a dozen of them-and was one of our best clients. His peach-colored Spanish-style house was new, as was the modern metal barn and corral setup behind it. One large pasture was fenced in non-climb wire with an iron-pipe top rail. Everything perfectly tidy. I drove up to the barn. Tony was waiting for me in front of a box stall.

In his early fifties, or so I guessed, of medium height and a Mexican heritage, Tony had the high cheekbones, broad planed face and dark olive complexion of his Indian forefathers. He also had a wide, white smile and tons of ambition. Tony was one of the most successful electrical contractors in Santa Cruz County.

I climbed out of my truck and walked to greet him. "Hi Tony," I said. "How are you?"

Tony held out his hand and I shook it. "I am fine. And you, Gail?"

"Doing well," I said. "How is your mother?"

"She is doing well, also. Thank you for asking."

Tony spoke English perfectly, with only the slightest trace of a Mexican accent. Meticulously polite himself, he appreciated a certain formal politeness in others, something I had learned over the years. No matter how dire the situation, Tony would want to conduct a decorous ritual greeting.

"Well, please give her my regards," I said to him now. "I always enjoy Dona Esther." This last was quite true. Tony's mother lived with him, and I had met her several times. A sprightly, intense woman, some eighty-five years young, she took a lively interest in the horses, and could often be seen out at the barn, gesturing in an imperious way with one small, claw-like hand as she pointed out chores that needed doing.

"I will tell her you said so." Tony smiled. "I am sure she will be very pleased."

Feeling that the forms had been taken care of, I gestured at the stall door Tony was standing in front of. "You have a problem?"

"Yes, this horse has been having little stomach aches for a week. But today, he is worse."

"Uh-oh." Little colics off and on for a week usually meant one of two things: sand or stones. Neither was desirable, though stones were a good deal more lethal than sand.

"Let's have a look at him," I said.

The strawberry roan gelding was cross-tied in his stall. Head hanging down, he pawed the shavings beneath him repetitively. In his eyes was a look of dull misery.

After checking his vital signs, I bent over and had a long listen to his gut. Finally I stood up and faced Tony.

"Sand or a stone?" he asked with a wry smile. Tony was a horseman; he probably knew almost as much about colics as I did.

"I'm not sure," I said. "You can usually hear sand in the gut, and I can't. And, judging by his vital signs, which are pretty good, it's probably not a big stone."

"I hope it is not that." Tony sighed.

We both knew that stones, an odd anomaly that seems to occur only on the West Coast-no one really knows why-could only be cured by expensive, and risky, surgery. "Stones," when removed, looked exactly like stones-round, smooth river rocks-and could be six inches or more in diameter. They were thought to be coagulations of some sort of mineral build-up in a horse's intestines. A given animal could carry one or more stones around for a long time, years even, and then a stone would shift into a spot where it blocked all passage through the intestine. An instant, and severe, colic resulted. Such colics often ended in torsions, or twists, where the intestine behaves like a hose with a kink in it. Only surgery-or a miracle-can save a horse with a twisted gut.

However, stones often gave warning as they moved around inside a horse, and the type of chronic, low-grade, persistent colic Tony had described to me was sometimes a sign of stones.

"I'm not sure," I said again. "I think what we ought to do is give him some painkiller, and pump some mineral oil into him, and then I want to run some blood work on him. Once in a while this sort of chronic colic turns out to be caused by an internal infection."

"I have never heard of that," Tony said. "What do you do?"

"Antibiotics can usually clear it up."

"That is good."