Reining in Murder (7 page)

She decided not to try. She tied her handkerchief in an old-fashioned rustler fashion knot and crawled on all fours to the bed. The river of blood that had begun at Hilda's neck continued across her eight-hundred-thread-count Egyptian sheets.

Annie slowly got to her feet and steeled herself to look at Hilda's body. There was too much blood to see the wound, but Annie knew that whoever had killed her had done a savage job. And Hilda, it appeared, did not see it coming. Her eyes were wide open. Her face held a surprised expression. Looking down, Annie saw that her fists were clenched. One held a shred of paper.

Gingerly, Annie reached for it, knowing that she shouldn't. But rigor mortis was either just coming on or fast receding, and Hilda willingly ceded the paper, something she probably never would have done when she was alive.

It was nothing—just the ragged edge of a sheaf of what obviously had been fine stationery at one time. There were no words scrawled on it, no treasure map—no clue that gave Annie any idea as to
who
had killed Hilda or
why
she had held the scrap so fiercely at the moment of her death.

Or did it? Slowly, Annie reached into her jeans pocket where she'd stuffed the tattered piece of paper she'd wrested from the pup's mouth just a few minutes before.

She awkwardly pieced them together. Despite the inroads made by the puppy, enough of the document remained to ensure its fit.

It was the bay's foal registration papers, with proof of filing with the Jockey Club. Annie's eyes swept through the complicated pedigree that had led to the gelding's birth until she found what she'd been looking for: “Trooping the Colour.” The bay's name.

“I always thought you were a trooper,” she said quietly. Then she dug out her cell to call 9-1-1.

W
EDNESDAY
A
FTERNOON
, F
EBRUARY
24
^TH

“One more time, Annie. Tell me what you saw, from start to finish.”

Dan Stetson and Annie stood by the swimming pool, away from the medics and technicians who were in the process of transporting a black body bag into a nearby ambulance.

“I've already told you, Dan, from start to finish, about a jillion times. What else do you need to know? Am I a suspect? Should I be calling a lawyer?”

The events of the day had put Annie in understandably a sour mood. As soon as Dan and his gang arrived with their sirens blaring and swirling police lights going full tilt, she'd been shooed out of the house. She'd sat idly by for what seemed hours.

At first, she'd played with the puppies and considered transferring them to a fenced area in back of the pool, where they'd have room to play. But Dan probably would have considered that evidence tampering.

By now she'd fully recovered from the shock of finding the body. Her self-confidence also had returned after she saw two of Dan's deputies run stumbling out of the house to puke. At least she had better guts than that.

“Look, Annie, I know you've been through a lot.” Dan said. “I just need to know exactly why you came up here, and all your movements from the time you entered the property.”

“Jeez, Dan! Why did I come up here? I had a twelve-hundred-pound horse on my hands who doesn't belong to me and costs me more in two days than my mortgage is each month! I was taking him back to his owner, because he didn't

. . . belong . . . to . . . me.” Annie drew out the last words for emphasis. “Besides, I told Esther all this. Why don't you ask her?”

“You told Esther you were coming up here?”

Annie glared at him.

“Okay, calm down, Annie. I don't suspect you of anything but trying to do a good deed. But when I go back to my office tonight and have to write up a report, I want to make sure I've got my facts straight. That's two murders in Suwana County in three days—more serious crime than we've seen in two decades. I don't want the county commissioners to feel compelled to bring in outside help.”

Annie caught the undercurrent of Dan's words. If the county commissioners felt Dan Stetson's law-enforcement team wasn't up to the job, they'd call in the neighboring force from Harrison County. Jim Bruscheau, the Harrison County sheriff, was everything Dan was not—overbearing, bombastic, and derisive of anyone who worked under him. If Dan had to play second fiddle to Bruscheau, his life would be a living hell, and his professional reputation would suffer.

“Why don't I just walk you through it, step by step?” Annie said.

Dan smiled. “Great idea. Just start from the time you came up to Hilda's place.”

Annie walked around to the front door, Dan in tow. She felt slightly appeased. She also had the feeling she'd played right into Dan's hands.

“When I saw the Land Rover, I assumed Hilda was home. So I banged on the door, but that only got the attention of the pups around the corner. Wolf raced off. I followed him and saw the poor things. My first concern was getting water into their pitiful kennel. I don't mind saying I was ready to kill Hilda myself at that point.”

Dan looked at her sharply.

“Okay, scratch that,” Annie continued. “How about ‘Ms. Colbert's apparent animal neglect affected my mood greatly'?”

Now, Annie was standing by the empty kennel. With Dan's permission, she had eventually moved them to the fenced-in yard, where they now sprawled over Wolf, fast asleep.

“Then the worker, who, by the way, I am sure is paid peanuts under the table, came racing up, all in a dither over my even being on Hilda's estate. I told him to get over it and knocked on the sliding glass door in back.”

Annie was about to demonstrate when Dan caught her arm.

“We've just taken fingerprints of the entire plate, Annie. I believe you.”

“I think I yelled out to Hilda to open the door. It was about that time that the farmhand took off, scared to death that Hilda would see him up here. Then I went inside. And yes, the latch was off. I didn't break and enter. I just entered.”

“Remind me someday to acquaint you with the finer details of the revised code of Washington regarding burglary,” Dan said. “I'm sure you were just concerned about the state of Ms. Colbert's health at this point.”

“As I matter of fact, I was,” Annie replied. “Here was all this ruckus, and yet Hilda didn't poke her head out to tell me to go away. It seemed strange.”

Dan handed her a pair of disposable shoe covers and latex gloves.

“Put these on. What happened next?”

Annie struggled into her gloves and thought carefully.

“Well, I remember I only used one finger to try the patio latch and was surprised when it gave way. Then I tiptoed up the stairs, over there. I think I touched the banister. I probably was still calling for Hilda to come out and play.”

Annie and Dan silently went up the stairwell.

“When I got up to the landing, that's when I smelled the odor. I also remember thinking what a fabulous view she had.”

Annie walked up to the massive windows again. The Olympic Mountains looked so close, she thought, it was as if you could walk right up to them from the back door. She glanced around at the living room and couldn't help feeling a tad envious at Hilda's bank account, if not her taste in furniture.

“Ah. Look. Hilda's landline. It probably has all the nasty messages I left for her over the past two days.”

Dan strode over and delicately picked up the phone with one of his gloved hands, then put it down.

“We'll have to get the password,” he said. Leaning toward his squawk box on his shoulder, Dan bellowed, “Esther!”

From the other side came Esther's voice. “Yes, Sheriff?”

“We need to get the password to Hilda Colbert's voice mail. Write up a search warrant for me and get Judge Casper to okay it over the phone. We'll want all the messages, current and saved. I need the disk on my desk pronto.”

“You got it, Sheriff.” Another squawk signified the end of the call.

“You pay Esther to do that kind of work?” asked Annie.

Dan grinned. “She loves being asked to do things she usually only sees on
Law & Order.
”

“You sure about that?”

“Why, Annie. You're a good judge of character. Couldn't you feel the love in her voice?”

Annie decided not to dignify his question with an answer. “So anyway, then I just followed the odor.” Annie glanced down the hallway, but neither she nor Dan made a step toward it. Bright yellow tape, labeled
CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS,
barred their way.

“What did you do when you saw Mrs. Colbert?”

Annie fell silent. She hadn't yet told Dan that she'd pulled one scrap of registration papers out of Hilda's dead hands and the other out of a puppy's mouth. She just wanted the chance to first read them over in private. Then she'd turn them over. Somehow, she knew that this would not be considered good police form.

Fortunately, the good and bad angels flitting beside Annie's head got the chance to flee.

“Sheriff.” The voice was metallic, coming from Dan's radio, but Annie recognized it as Deputy Williams's. There weren't that many female officers on the force, and Kim Williams's voice was eminently distinctive: low, husky, authoritative, and Annie suspected, extremely seductive in the right setting.

“Adolpho Todos has arrived at the scene. Should I send him up?”

Dan shifted his considerable weight and cocked his head.

“Nah, keep him at the stables. I'll be there in a jiffy. How's he seem?”

“Cranky. Busy unloading a truckload of hay.”

“Said anything yet?”

“Nope. He's busy bossing the help around right now.”

“Good. I'd hate to have him say anything without having his rights read to him first.”

Annie stared at Dan.

“Todos? You think Todos did it?”

“How in the heck should I know, Annie? But you know as well as I do that everyone's a suspect until proven innocent.”

Annie was bemused that now that Hilda was dead, Dan accorded her the courtesy of her surname, something he'd never done before.

“Gee, Dan, that's not how I remember Mr. Berber talking about Con Law in high school. But then, you never were a good student in that class, were you? Too busy trying to look up Dory Mason's skirt, as I recall.”

Dan grinned but said, “Everyone's a suspect, Annie. Remember that.”

* * *

Todos was angrily unloading bales of hay from the back of one of Hilda's two-ton pickups when Dan and Annie pulled up at the stables. The farmworker Annie had met earlier was the unfortunate recipient of Todos's aggression. He literally had to dodge the flying bales, set free by a wicked-looking hayfork, as he tried to assemble them onto a loading cart.

“Señor Todos.”

Dan strode up to the barn manager and stuck out his hand. Todos took it with about as much enthusiasm as he'd taken Annie's a few days earlier.

“This must be quite a shock for you,” Dan said.

Todos let a long stream of spit out of the side of his mouth and said nothing.

“Mind if we talk somewhere where it's quieter?”

Todos barked out a rapid-fire stream of orders in Spanish to the nearby worker, then turned back to Dan.

“We can meet in the tack room.”

Annie trailed in behind Dan and Todos, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. The two men sat down at a round table, scattered with dressage magazines, while Annie feigned interest in the blue ribbons and photos on the wall. Dan gave her a pointed look and nodded toward the door. Annie meekly went out just in time to hear the door shut firmly behind her.

Next to the tack room was a bathroom twice the size of Annie's at home. She discovered that if she opened a small bathroom window and crouched on the toilet seat beneath it, she could hear most of what was being said.

“Let's start with a few basic questions, shall we?”

Over the next twenty minutes, Annie learned that Todos had come from Mexico City to the Olympic Peninsula about six months ago. He'd heard that Señora Colbert was looking for a new manager and was hired on the spot. Todos had worked at racetracks since he was eight years old, first as a groom, then as a jockey. When he grew too tall for that role, he decided it was time to ply his skills in a country where he could make decent money in the horse trade. He was now twenty-four. He had come with superlative professional references. In fact, he was the best in the business when it came to training and riding thoroughbreds. It was common knowledge.

Annie noticed that Dan pointedly had not asked about Todos's green card status. Nice of him.
Too nice,
she thought. Todos continued.

Señora Colbert was very demanding, but then, so was he. Within a month, he and Señora Colbert had fired the entire work crew and hired new personnel—although, Todos implied, even this crew was barely functional and probably wouldn't have lasted much longer. When Todos wasn't bossing the crew, he was exercising the horses and managing Señora Colbert's eventing schedule. He often accompanied her on exhibition trips. She was a good rider, yes, but had a lot to learn. Todos implied that if she had used him, instead of her expensive trainers, she would have many more ribbons adorning her tack room and arena walls.

Señora Colbert was a very private woman. No one was allowed up at her house, even if one of the horses had fallen lame or ill. All communication had to be done by phone. Even Todos had never been as far as the front door. The one time that a worker had gone to Señora Colbert's home, he had been immediately sacked. This was before Todos's time. Workers from other ranches still talked about it.

It was not uncommon for Señora Colbert to visit her horses often. On the other hand, it was not uncommon for her to stay away for days at a time. No, Todos did not know what she did outside of the horse business. She seldom left the premises, and when she did, she took her Land Rover.

Every Monday morning, he and Señora Colbert met in Señora Colbert's office in the stables and decided what needed to be done in the week ahead. Unless Señora Colbert came to the stables to watch him exercise, or ask for one of the horses to be saddled for her own use, he had no reason to talk to her.

The last time he saw Señora Colbert was two days ago, after he'd returned from Annie's. He'd reported that the horse seemed to be sound although he suggested having Señora Colbert's sports-medicine vet evaluate the work done on the bay's mouth. He did not trust the job that “the woman” had done.

Señora Colbert said that she would contact Annie herself and let him know when the bay would be transported to her stables. She implied that it would be soon. When he didn't hear from her, he was surprised but not alarmed. Señora Colbert was a fine businesswoman, but, after all, she was a woman. She might have changed her mind about when she wanted the bay moved for no reason at all.

He had met Señor Colbert only once, and judging by Todos's tone of voice, he was not impressed with what he'd seen. Marcus Colbert worked in California and only came home a few weekends a month. He never talked to the man—what would he have to say to him? He knew nothing about horses. Nothing. And he disliked his wife living apart from him very much. He had heard loud arguments before in the arena.

“Arguments, you say? Did you witness these arguments? Hear any sounds of violence?” asked Dan.