Reining in Murder (22 page)

Paper trail
. Now that was fraught with possibilities. Most likely, it referred to the Latham/Colbert correspondence since the note was found in the file. But it could refer to the so-called changes to Hilda's estate that Dan kept alluding to as the key to finding Hilda's murderer. Or it might have something to do with the sale of Trooper to Hilda. Annie was thankful that she'd used the ruse of making copies of all the horses' files to return to the ranch, so she could now peruse Trooper's file at leisure.

It was altogether frustrating. Annie felt as if Marcus was giving her obvious clues, but, as her ignorance of thoroughbred sales with Todos had revealed, she was just not smart enough to put them together and ferret out what he was trying to tell her. Annie didn't like to feel frustrated. But she felt an inordinate pull to do something that connected her with Marcus. And the only thing she could think of was to spend time with Trooper. As much as she hated to admit it, Todos was right. The horse did need to be exercised. His tooth problem had fully resolved a week ago, and there was nothing to stop her from working with him.

She arrived home and went straight to the tack room. What could Trooper possibly use for a saddle? He was two hands higher than her biggest mount, Rover, and no doubt was accustomed to being under English saddle. Annie had none. Well, she would have to ride bareback, that was all. If she decided to ride at all, she reminded herself. A lot had to happen on the ground before she would ever ask Trooper to allow her on his back.

One of the most satisfying moments of Annie's summer days was calling for her horses at the end of the long twilights the Northwest is famous for. During these heavenly months, the sun seldom set before 9:00
P.M.
and Annie, who liked to be an indulgent mother when she could, allowed her horses to stay outside as long as possible. On long summer evenings, it took just one ear-piercing whistle to bring the whole herd galloping up to the fence. Now, during the winter months, the vocal cue was hardly necessary. At 5:00
P.M.
sharp, she could count on seeing all the horses lined up along the fence line, waiting for their suppers in their clean, warm stalls. But now it was just a little past two, hours before they would appear. So Annie stood by the gate and gave her world-famous whistle to bring them in. Sure enough, they cantered in together, ears forward, eager to see what their favorite human had in store.

Stepping into the pasture, she quickly caressed each horse's mane in turn before quickly slipping a string halter on Trooper. She led him into the round pen, where he stood docilely in front of her, obviously waiting for her instruction. This was clearly a horse that knew he had been born for a specific purpose. He was so unlike the other young horses that had come under Annie's care, which thought behaving like a horse was their only job, and a fine one, too. It was only through Annie's patient, gentle guidance that each learned that he or she still could be a horse with a human by its side or on its back.

Annie put Trooper through her usual warm-up phases, starting with rubbing his body over and under until he lowered his head and gave a big sigh. Annie knew this was Trooper's way of telling the world he was relaxed and ready for whatever came next. She then spent a half hour practicing his ability to move in all directions. She was curious to know how he'd been trained to yield.

For a horse, yielding to a human is counterintuitive. Put a constraint on a horse, and it will want to pull against it. Annie's job, as is the job of all good horse trainers, was to convince the horse to give in to the pressure. Hannah knew this as well as Annie. She knew that if she pressed her left heel against Bess's rib cage, the horse would move to the right. If Bess was in one of her stodgy moods and refused to move, Hannah would increase the pressure until Bess grudgingly gave in. There was a silver lining to cooperating, which Bess knew full well, because as soon as she moved to the right, Hannah stopped bugging her.

Similarly, if Hannah arced the reins to the left and Bess resisted moving in that direction, Hannah simply would continue to keep the pressure on and wait for the horse to accede to her request. Bess and all of Annie's horses knew that when they gave in to pressure, they would be rewarded by its removal. What was essential was the rider's ability to instantly acknowledge when the horse had given in to the “ask,” and just as instantly release the pressure. It was a nuanced game that took all of the rider's attention to perform well, and the game rules varied according to each horse's temperament. Annie was curious to see how Trooper would respond to her own cues.

Within an hour, she declared him a prince, an absolute prince. Trooper might not have been taught to respond precisely to the same stimuli that Annie routinely used, but his desire to please was evident, and Annie was soon able to ask Trooper to move forward, backward, and sideways with a mere flick of her hand. When she was able to move his hindquarters and forequarters with a gentle laying on of hands, she knew she was ready for the next test.

Annie was fully aware of Trooper's lunging capabilities; his performance the night she'd met him proved that he could move at a full gallop around a circle without seeming to tire. But she was curious to know how he moved at different paces.

She attached a long lunge line to the string halter and stood in the center of the round pen. Trooper wanted to follow her and nuzzle her neck, but Annie asked him with her open arm to go back to his seat, and Trooper politely complied. As she expected, when she first asked him to circle, he broke into an all-out gallop. Annie could hardly blame him. After all, this is what Trooper had been bred and trained to do.

She gently jiggled the lunge line to get the bay's attention. Trooper ignored her; he obviously was programmed to think that when asked to move, he had one gait: run, and as fast as possible. But Annie's constant, rhythmic jiggling did not escape Trooper's notice. So he stopped. Annie went up to him and praised him. Then she asked him to circle again but did so with a languid movement with her left arm. The bay looked at Annie and walked off instead of running. Annie let him walk around the circle twice before jiggling him to stop and face her. To his utter surprise, she walked up to him and showered him with praise.

“No one's ever asked me to walk before!”
Annie could almost hear the bay whinny the words.

By the time the sun began to sink over the Olympics, Annie had successfully gotten Trooper to walk and slow trot in a circle several times in a row. Anytime he'd started to break into a canter or a gallop, she'd immediately asked him to stop. When Annie asked him to stop for the last time, Trooper turned and licked his lips. Annie knew this was the bay's way of telling her that he was thinking about what he'd just learned and would remember it. Her lessons were sinking in.

Won't Hannah be surprised,
was Annie's amused thought.
Getting Bess out of a walk is practically an act of God. With Trooper, teaching him
just
to walk is a whole new education.

She glanced over to the house and realized that it was high time to let the pup out for its constitutional. Even the most well-trained puppy could only hold its bladder for so long. But even as she was thinking that, her brain was telling her to register another fact.

Her truck was gone.

It had been there, just an hour or so before, parked right in front of the house, where it always was. Had she left the keys in the ignition? Of course, she had; she usually did unless she needed them to get into her farmhouse. Annie groaned. Car thefts weren't unheard of in Suwana County, but in broad daylight? On her own property?

Unless the person who took the car happened to think that this was
her
property, too. In which case, Annie's truck probably was being driven by an uninsured, unlicensed driver who happened to be related—remotely, but related, nonetheless, to her.

Trying to restrain her anger, knowing that the horses would sense her emotions, she quickly rubbed down Trooper and sent him out to play with his mates in the pasture. Then she strode up to the house. It was locked. And her house key was on her chain of keys that had rested in the ignition.

Fortunately, Annie's spare was within easy reach, and once inside her home, she found precisely what she'd expected: no Lavender, and a very wet Belgian pup. At least the pup looked guilty.

“It's okay, buddy,” Annie said, scooping up the warm ball of fur. “It's not your fault you have a babysitter with an underdeveloped brain. She probably was dropped on her head when she was young. Let's go for a walk.”

Annie hitched the puppy to its leash, which it had now known for a total of forty-eight hours, and it enthusiastically followed Annie and Wolf out to the tack room, where Annie started prepping the horses' dinners.

She'd just settled down to a solitary dinner of one large, very rare rib-eye steak, when a set of familiar police lights came floating down her driveway. She watched from the kitchen window as Dan got out of the driver's side, then politely opened the door to the rear seat. He tipped his hat as Lavender emerged, looking as hangdog as Annie had ever seen her. Annie sighed and walked out to greet them.

“I believe this belongs to you?”

“For a brief moment in time.”

“Well, I found her going fifty-five in a school zone. I would have ticketed her on the spot, but she didn't have any identification. So we went back to the station, where we had a nice little discussion. Turns out little missy here doesn't have a license. Or insurance.”

“I'm aware of that,” Annie answered drily. “That's why I gave her a bus schedule.”

“They weren't running when I needed them,” came Lavender's muffled response.

Dan and Annie looked at each other.

“Well, I'd like to let her off with a warning, seeing how she's your relation and all, but you know how the state feels about school-zone violations.”

Lavender looked pleadingly at Dan, who ignored her.

“And, of course she's got a couple of other criminal traffic charges in Florida to deal with, as well.”

“Thanks for not letting her spend the night in jail,” Annie said tonelessly. In her opinion, a night in jail was precisely what Lavender needed.

“Don't mention it. Your help on the case today was, shall we say, a mitigating factor. Well, Betty Sue's got all the paperwork. She can tell you when her first court date is. Oh, and she might think about getting a lawyer. Unless she wants to throw herself on the mercy of the court.”

“Betty Sue? Who's she?”

“Why, your sister, of course. Elizabeth Susan Carson, according to the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles. But everyone calls her Betty Sue, isn't that right?”

Betty Sue Lavender fled into the house.

Annie laughed so hard and for so long that she began to hiccup. Dan shifted from one foot to the other, and finally began to awkwardly pat her on the back.

“Glad to see you're feeling better, Annie.”

“Betty Sue! You've just made my day!”

“Well, I'm afraid I'm going to about unmake it. You'll be glad to know that we didn't find a trace of anybody on Hilda's ranch. Marcus is still AWOL, though, so we're not closing the case on him. In fact, it just got a bit stronger. We got the report back from the crime lab digital expert this afternoon. He's compared the phone calls Marcus made from the jail with what's on Hilda's voice mail. It's a match, Annie. Marcus left that message.”

Annie didn't remember saying good-bye to Dan. She only knew that somehow she managed to say good night and close the door. The only thing she remembered that evening was walking into the kitchen and seeing her half sister devouring the rest of her steak.

Apparently, Betty Sue ate red meat after all.

T
UESDAY
, M
ARCH
8
^TH

Not for the first time, Annie thought about how she and her half sister were polar opposites. The first and most obvious difference was the time each of them chose to rise and greet the day. Annie kicked off the covers by six each morning, no matter what the season. Daylight savings time, Christmas, Thanksgiving, federal holidays, and Sundays when humans wanted to sleep in weren't part of an equine's knowledge set. Getting breakfast at reasonably the same time every morning was.

Betty Sue Lavender (as Annie now secretly called her) had no perception of horses' dietary requirements and thought she either needed or deserved as much beauty sleep as she could get. Also, she snored. Annie was sure that she, herself, did not.

What's more,
Annie thought gleefully as she sailed down the highway,
she could drive, and Betty Sue Lavender was grounded for a very, very long time
. A few minutes before Dan had departed last evening, Tony had driven in with her truck and silently handed her the keys without saying a word. Annie had nodded her thanks. She'd checked the truck for damage this morning but fortunately found only a nearly empty tank, which was soon remedied.

Betty Sue Lavender had stumbled out of the bedroom just as Annie was leaving. She'd decided she needed to get out of the house and take Wolf with her, even if she had no particular destination.

“Please make sure the puppy gets out again before noon,” was Annie's parting remark. “He needs to go outside every four hours, and he was last let out at eight.”

Betty Sue Lavender scowled at her, shaking her pink hair out of her face. Annie noticed the pink strands were now growing out at the roots, revealing mousy brown hair underneath.

“Coffee's still on. And there are cinnamon rolls on the counter.”

Lavender stomped off to the bathroom and slammed the door.

Annie quietly slipped out of the house, Wolf discretely walking by her side. It appeared that Wolf needed a break from the puppy as much as Annie needed a break from Lavender. It took all her self-control not to suggest to her half sister that perhaps what she needed was a good smudging.

* * *

Now, on the road, Annie allowed her thoughts to drift back to the previous night's conversation . . .

“Why did you take the truck, Betty Sue?”

“Don't call me that!”

“Well, it is your name, isn't it?”

“I haven't been called that since I was six. Mummy and Daddy respected my decision to change it.”

“Well, why didn't you get it legally changed?”

“I didn't know I could. I didn't think I needed to.”

“Jeez, Lavender. Who did
Daddy
make the checks out to all those years he supported you?”

Lavender looked down and clutched the Belgian puppy she'd been holding ever since Annie strode into the house after saying good night to Dan. “That was different.”

“Different? In what way? The distinction somehow eludes me.”

“Elizabeth Susan is just my legal name. But I've been Lavender as long as I can remember.”

Annie sighed. The conversation was getting off track, something, she noticed, Betty Sue Lavender seemed particularly adroit at bringing about. In fact, it was one of her better skills.

“Okay,
Lavender
. So why did you take the truck?”

“I needed it.”

“For what?”

“To see a friend.”

“A friend? You have
friends?
”

Betty Sue Lavender burst into tears.

“Yes, I do! More than you think.”

“Ah. So since you have all these friends, why did you decide to grace my home with your presence?”

“They're new friends. I didn't know them when I came here.”

Annie sighed again. Should she ask who these new friends were? They probably were a bunch of space cadets, the kind who came to the Peninsula to find enlightenment. Whether they found it or not, they seemed to never leave. She decided not to delve into the topic.

“So what are you going to do about this legal mess you're in?”

“I don't know. Call Daddy, I guess.”

“Good idea. Don't forget to tell him what happened to the Aston Martin.”

Lavender wailed anew into the Belgian puppy's neck, who squirmed to get down, but Lavender only drew her tighter to her.

Annie critically surveyed her sister. Her hair was in disarray, her face a blotchy mess, and her peasant clothes looked as if they hadn't been washed for a week.
It was a good thing my own life is in such apple-pie order,
she reflected, heading out the door.

* * *

Annie had no place to go and a dog that wanted to go anywhere. Back in her truck, she pulled out her frayed county map and perused the possibilities. Well, there was always the long-put-off conversation with Johan Thompson about when to bring the Rambouillets home. Annie perused the map. A mere twenty-two miles beyond the Thompson farm was a short trail to a year-round waterfall, one that Annie hadn't visited since she was in her thirties. Surely she had time to take a quick break and be back at the Thompsons before dark.

“Do you want to go on a hike?” she asked her companion.

The responding bark was in the affirmative.

* * *

Shoshona Falls was at the end of the cutoff road to Forks, a town Annie had visited once, long ago, and despite the fame that teenage vampire tales had brought to the place, she had no desire to return to it—even less, in fact. She was quite content to take the road less traveled, without the fear of encountering fangs.

And she'd forgotten how much snow still existed at even this slightly higher elevation. The majestic prominence of the white-covered mountains formed a stunning backdrop to the valley that led up to the trailhead. While there was no snow on the road, Annie could feel the nip in the air even before she set foot on the ground. After parking at the ranger station, she pulled out a wool hat and mittens from her glove compartment and zipped up her parka. Wolf hurtled himself out of the truck in a near frenzy, and the two headed up the path to the waterfall. It was an exhilarating day for a short hike, and the cold only sparked Annie's enthusiasm. As she watched Wolf bound up the trail, her thought was the same one she always had upon entering the local library:
Why don't I do this more often?

Old-growth firs flanked the trail, and Annie could hear Wolf crashing through the underbrush as she continued her slow and definitely more contiguous climb up to the summit. She wished her decade-old cell phone had a camera; at every turn, she saw a photo in the making. A half hour later, stepping over the stones in the creek that had transported thousands of visitors to the waterfall site, she whistled for Wolf. But, as usual, he'd preceded her arrival. She jumped onto the bank that afforded an up-close and personal view of the waterfall and found him standing on full alert, tail out and ears forward.

“What's up, Wolfie?” Annie picked up a stick and threw it into the small pool in front of the dog. Wolf didn't move a muscle.

“C'mon, boy! Let's play!” Annie grabbed another stick and dangled it in front of his face, a guaranteed method of getting Wolf to snatch it from her hands and play tug-of-war. But today, Wolf was more interested in watching the waterfall.
Well, I always knew he had a strong aesthetic sense,
Annie thought. She sat down beside him and watched the water tumble over the rocks above.

Annie had never been up here at the tail end of winter; before, she'd always visited in summer months, when the creek was small and placid and the waterfall pool an ideal place to swim. But today, she witnessed the full strength of the cascade, brought on by months of rain and the slow but inexorable trickle of melting snow. She was amazed at the sheer and unrelenting power of the white sheets that surged down to the pool, which then quickly spread to the thousand-year-old rivulets bordering the sandy bank on which she sat.
This is a force to be reckoned with,
she thought.
Wolf must recognize it, too.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of red. Damn! She'd left her binoculars in the car. Perhaps it was a purple finch, although weren't they uncommon in wooded areas? She scrambled to her feet, dusting the detritus of the bank from her pants. Taking a few steps forward, she peered again. The bird was sitting still on a branch halfway up the waterfall. And it appeared to be fluttering its wings. Was it injured? The only birds that held still and fluttered their wings were hummingbirds, and Annie knew enough about Northwest birds to realize there wasn't even a remote possibility that a hummingbird would nest here.

“Stay,” she ordered Wolf, then leapt over rocks in the stream. When she'd gone as far as she felt safe, she looked again. No, this wasn't an injured bird. It was simply a piece of fabric. How had it ended up there? She looked over at Wolf and gave him the nod that told him he could join her. Wolf responded with such alacrity that she realized that this was what he'd been watching so intently when she arrived. Nature lover that he was, Wolf obviously was an even better champion spotter of things. And he was inordinately anxious to get to whatever he'd seen.

She gave him his cue. Wolf bounded up the wall of rock with amazing ease and, with a single yank, retrieved the red fabric. Turning carefully, he slithered back down the jagged scarp to Annie, where he obediently laid the object at her feet.

It was Marcus's necktie, the red Armani tie she'd seen him wear the first time she met him, and the second time, too, when he'd emerged from the county jail.

* * *

There was no cell phone reception at the falls, and later, Annie realized it wouldn't have mattered if there had been. She doubted she would have been able to hear herself talk over the roar of the water. When she'd been able to compose herself, she'd tenderly folded the tie and tucked it into an inner pocket of her parka. Wolf had been at his most compassionate. He whimpered and put his paw on her hand as tears ran down her face. She'd praised him for his braveness and hugged him because she loved him. Then the two set off for the ranger station.

Dan and Tony had met her there. Tony had carefully extracted the tie from Annie's pocket and placed it in an evidence bag. Both of their faces were grim.

“We'll talk later, Annie,” were Dan's only words.

“You okay?” Tony added.

“I'm fine,” was her steady reply.

It had taken the detective and deputy more than an hour to get to the ranger station, plenty of time for Annie to recover her usual demeanor. She'd gratefully accepted the use of the women's restroom to wash her face as well as the cup of hot cocoa the resident ranger had offered her.

“You're practically the first person I've seen this year,” the ranger said by way of conversation.

“Oh? Who else has been here?” Annie realized she'd appeared too eager and tried to regroup. “Well, you know us rugged Northwesterners. Even if it's raining, we have to get our exercise.”

The ranger laughed. “That's the truth.”

“Is that your guest book over there?”

“It is, and you're free to take a look although it's hardly accurate. A lot of people don't bother signing in even though they're supposed to.”

Annie realized with a pang that she was one of those people. Sure enough, the latest entry in the book was for Maggie and Bill Hammerstein, both from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, dated November 3 from the year before.

* * *

She drove home slowly with Wolf by her side, once more passing Johan Thompson's place, now without a shred of desire to stop by and check in. But the thought of facing Lavender's sullen face back at home was also anathema to her. She decided to kill time in the local minimart, snatching up six items she knew would appall her half sister. Without pausing to put them in the refrigerator, she headed straight to the barn to set up the horses' evening meals. When the herd was contently chomping away, she reluctantly dragged herself out of the tack room chair and called for Wolf to follow.

The house was swathed in darkness.
What, was Lavender now holding a wake for herself?
Annie broke into a jog, twisting the knob on the back door and turning on the kitchen light in a single fluid motion. She glanced wildly around her. No bodies in sight. She tiptoed to Lavender's room, knocked hesitantly once, then firmly grasped the doorknob and twisted it.

Lavender was gone—this time seemingly for good. All of her clothes, normally scattered on the floor and on bureau tops, had disappeared. The incense, candles, and New Age posters that had once adorned the walls were nowhere in sight. The bed was stripped of its sheets, now lying neatly in a pile by the closet. Annie stared for a long minute before finally, gently, closing the bedroom door. She went to the kitchen to pour herself a drink, one that, of all those in recent days, she felt she richly deserved. But before she could take down the single malt from the shelf, she saw an envelope addressed to her tipped next to it. The handwriting was childish and in purple ink.

“Oh, Lavender. Was it something I said?”

You know darn well it was,
Annie's Good Angel said.

Annie sighed, poured herself a double, and sat down at the kitchen table to read the letter's contents.