Small Town Filly (Sandbar Stables Cozy Mystery Book 1) (8 page)

              In about an hour, an Argentina Shores policeman came out to the stables. Lance led the mare outside for him, and the officer used his phone to take several photographs of poor Sunrise and her awful paint job.

"It's only on the one side?" asked Officer Pitts.

              "Yes," said Lance. "I'm betting she was pretty spooked by the noise of the spray can and the feel of the paint, and kept running around the stall."

              "But they managed to get an actual word painted on her."

              "Yeah, they did.  That meant they must have gotten a halter on her head to hold her still—at least, long enough to get the word." He ran his fingers over Sunrise's green nylon halter. "Look at this. There's a little spray of blue paint right here."

              "Yeah, I can see it." Pitts took a picture of that, too, and then walked towards the mare's tail. "This word, here, written across her rump—what's it say? It looks like
knacker
."

              "Yes.
Knacker's
, to be exact," said Alex.

              "What's that?"

              Alex paused. "It means a slaughterhouse," she said quietly.

              "It does," said Lance. "A slaughterhouse where the horses aren't even fit for meat, but just for rendering down."

              "Oh," said Pitts. "Like a glue factory."

              "Yeah."

              "Okay. So, would somebody be mad at this particular horse? Or just at you, in general?"

              Lance and Alex looked at each other. "Mary Turner fell off of Sunrise on the beach ride," said Lance.

              "She sure did," whispered Alex, and turned to Pitts. "And her mother was furious and threatened to have us shut down."

              "Okay. We'll go have a talk with the mother and see if we can get anything." He started to walk away, and then glanced back at them. "And good luck scrubbing that off."

              Alex sighed. "Yeah. Apparently the best thing to do is rub in a lot of vegetable oil to loosen up the paint, and then give her a bath in some kind of grease-cutting dish soap. Sometimes you have to do all that more than once." She shook her head. "Looks like I'm going to be pretty busy this afternoon."

***

              After a quick trip to the nearest grocery store, Alex spent the next few hours in the gravel driveway soaking Sunrise's side in vegetable oil, massaging it into the blue paint, scrubbing it all off with dish detergent and the garden hose from the house, and then doing it all again.

After the second time, at least half the paint was off. She considered doing it again, but Sunrise had clearly had enough of being scrubbed and kept sidling away. Alex turned her out into the riding ring with the other horses, and had to smile when the first thing the little mare did was lie down and have a good roll in the sand.

"That'll probably take it off of her as well as anything else," said Lance, walking over to the fence. "It'll just take a little time to wear off."

              "Yeah, I know," said Alex. "I just hate looking at it."

              Lance looked out towards the road. "Maybe they've got some news for us," he said.

              Alex turned to see an Argentina Shores police car pulling into the driveway. They walked over to meet Office Pitts.

              "It wasn't Mrs. Jeannie Turner who did this," he said, getting out of the car and walking towards them. "She works nights. Did you know that?"

              "No, I didn't," said Alex.

              "Well, she does. Third shift at a diner down in St. James Harbor. She was there last night. Her story checks out."

              "I guess I'm glad it wasn't her, since she lives right across the street," Alex said.

              "She said that sure, she was upset when her little girl fell off, but that was when it happened. She still wants to bring her kids over here for riding lessons once you start up."

              Alex looked over at Lance. "Okay, then," she said. "If it wasn't her, who was it?"

              Lance raised his head, and looked out past the barn. Alex and Officer Pitts followed his gaze, and she realized they were all looking at Wood Marina next door.

              Alex took a few steps forward so she could see past the barn. "Now, I didn't notice it before, with all the excitement around here this morning," said Alex, "but has he got a new sign over there?"

              "Sure looks like it," said Lance. "A nice, big white sign with huge red letters that say NO PARKING."

              "Wow," she said. "He really doesn't want to take a chance on any of our customers parking on his property."

              "Yes, but he's within his rights to do that," said Pitts. "Do you have any reason to think he's the one who harmed your horse?"

              "Well, he hates us," said Alex, "because he wants this property so he can expand and I won't sell. But other than that, I have no way of knowing whether it was him or not in any of these incidents with the horses."

              "All right." Pitts headed back towards his car. "If we get anything else, we'll let you know. You call us at the first sign of any more trouble. I'm sorry, but that's really about all we can do right now."

              As he drove away, Lance and Alex walked back to the barn. "What can we do?" asked Alex. "Should I see about getting security cameras? Lots of people use them."

              Lance shrugged. "You could. But everybody's going to know where they are. I don't think you can very well cover all four acres of ground and every inch of every stall. Too many hiding places out here."

              "Maybe I should look into a couple more dogs. Whoever's doing all this is getting right past Fanny."

              "Again, you could, and it might help. But it's not that hard to make friends with a dog if you really want to—not if you feed it and throw it treats every time it sees you."

              "Especially if you live right next door," said Alex, looking again at Wood Marina just on the other side of the fence.

              They walked down the barn aisle, and Lance ran his fingers down the wire mesh on the empty stalls. "Maybe we should set a trap ourselves," he said. "Something no one would ever suspect. Something they'd never notice. And something that's sure to catch them."

              "Sounds good to me," said Alex with a grin. "What do you have in mind?"

              "Something very simple," he said. "We need to make a run to the hardware store. Then I'll show you."

              "Ready when you are," Alex said, and together they started towards the car.

***

That night, just after dusk when all the horses were in their stalls and eating their evening hay, Alex and Lance moved silently from stall door to stall door in the darkness. With gloves on their hands, they carefully placed a nice big drop of instant glue on the metal door latch of each door.

"Now, the good thing about this kind of glue," murmured Lance as he worked, "is that it'll sit in the open air for a good while without drying."

"And if somebody tries to open the stall door without gloves, or without knowing it's there and maneuvering the door open without touching the latch–"

"They're going to wind up stuck to that latch, right where we can catch them. Either that or lose some skin off their fingers. And even that would make them pretty easy to spot the next day."

"Okay. We'll just make sure
we
remember it's there. And the horses are safe from it. They won't be able to touch it."

"I'll sleep in the house tonight. Then, in the morning, we'll see if we've caught anything."

***

But for the next four nights, they caught nothing at all. The daily routine went on as usual, and the nights were quiet.

Alex was almost disappointed. Catching something—or someone—would have been scary, but at least they would have known what they were dealing with.

Finding nothing was far more disquieting.

              Then, on the fifth morning after Sunrise had been spray-painted, Alex arrived to see Lance at the hay barn getting out the bales for the morning feed. She got out and started over to him, intending to help out, but as soon as he saw the car he walked out to meet her.

              "What happened?" she said, instantly afraid of what she might hear.

              He raised one hand to stop her. "Didn't find anything. But Fanny did start barking last night around two in the morning."

              "Were you in the house?"

              "No. Since our little glue trap caught nothing, I just felt better staying out in the barn again. So that's where I was when I heard the barking."

              "Was…was somebody in the barn?"

              "No. This time, Fanny was behind the house when she sounded off."

              "The house!" Alex turned to look at it. "Was somebody trying to break in?"

              "I don't think so. I crept over there fast and didn't see a thing. The doors were still locked." He sighed, and she could hear his frustration. "I really thought I'd catch them this time. But I didn't see or hear anything."

              "Nothing disturbed around the barn, either?"

              "No. It could have just been somebody out for a midnight walk on the beach. It happens."

              "Okay. Yeah, I guess it could have been anything. Even another stray dog." But as Lance started back towards the hay barn, Alex looked back at the house again.

              "I'm going to go take a look," she said. "I brought a few things from the store, and I've got to put them away. I'll be back out in a minute."

              "Sure thing," said Lance, and he went back to his work.

              Alex got the bag of groceries out of the car and took them to the house. She went in through the front door, which faced the inside of the property, and walked through the house to the kitchen. After putting away the bread, lunchmeat, chocolate chip cookies and grapes, she decided to make some coffee. They'd certainly be needing it throughout the morning.

              Alex took the carafe to the sink so she could fill it with water—and nearly dropped it as she jumped back.

              The small window over the sink had a hole in it. Shards of glass lay in the sink, along with a fist-sized rock that seemed to be covered in heavily taped paper.

              At first she was afraid to touch anything. Then she set down the carafe and, very gingerly, moved aside a couple of pieces of glass. Then she lifted the rock out of the sink and set it down on the counter.

              She pulled a paper towel from the roll and used it to brush off any bits of glass from the rock. Then she found a small knife and used it to cut through the layers of cellophane tape that held the paper around the rock.

              Finally, her hands shaking, Alex got the paper free. It appeared to have some kind of printing on it. She pressed it down flat on the counter so she could read it.

The words had been spelled out with letters cut from a magazine and taped to the paper, which only made it creepier.

YOU'RE BOOTED

GET OUT

HORSES ARE RUBBISH

              She could not decide whether she was more angry or frightened. In a moment, she was back outside and running to the barn with the awful note still in her hand.

              Lance heard her running and met her at the entrance to the barn aisle. "I found out why Fanny finally barked last night," she said. "Somebody threw a rock through the kitchen window!"

              "Through the window? You mean, the window's broken?"

              "Yes. It sure is. It's a small hole, but it's busted through."

              He sighed. "I swear, I never heard a thing until Fanny woke me up. I looked, checked the doors, and everything seemed fine."

              "It was the kitchen window—the small one over the sink. It would be easy to miss seeing that in the dark."

              "Yeah, I sure missed it, all right." He caught sight of the note in her hand. "What's that?"

              She held it out to him. He took it and studied it closely, running one finger over the awkwardly taped letters, and then looked up and frowned. "'You're booted?' What the hell does that mean?"

              "I guess it means we're kicked out. And they hate horses. But whatever it means, I sure am tired of it."

              She took the note back from him. "I'll call the cops. Again. And they can take the rock and the note and the broken window and add it to their collection of Sunrise's pictures."

              Alex looked down at Fanny, who stood close beside Lance while gazing up at him and wagging her tail. "Well, at least you tried this time," Alex said. "I sure wish you could talk."

***

              The rest of the day passed uneventfully. The horses were doing well during their schooling sessions, and Alex was getting to know them better all the time. And she was getting sorer all the time, too, from all the unaccustomed riding, but it was well worth it.

              The next morning while driving in, Alex told herself to keep her spirits up. There was no reason to believe that anything else would happen to the horses or the property. The police were making extra patrols on the road at night, and Lance was sleeping in the barn aisle at night with Fanny on guard duty—at least, guarding the place against anyone she didn't already know.

              But as she approached the stables in the early light, the first thing she saw was the flashing strobes of police cars and ambulances.

              Alex did not know whether to be furious or scared to death. She was filled with an awful combination of the two.

As she got closer, she saw that there were two ambulances parked at the edge of the road with lights flashing, and two police cars pulled over on the other side of the road.

              Then she realized that the emergency vehicles were not at Sandbar Stables at all. They were pulling into Wood Marina next door.

              Alex threaded her car through the slow traffic and the parked cop cars and finally managed to turn into Sandbar's driveway. She threw the car in park, turned it off, and leaped out, running straight through the barn to the far end.

              Lance was already there, standing at the fence and watching the scene. Alex dashed over and stood beside him. "What's happened now?" she said. "Even though I'm afraid to ask!"

              "Not sure. They seem to have found something in the water, at the end of one of the docks. There's a diver down there."

              "Found something? Found what? Why would they send ambulances and a diver unless somebody…unless maybe somebody fell in?"

              "Yeah, you have to wonder. But they've definitely got something right there." He glanced at her. "At least it wasn't us having trouble this time."

              Alex nodded. "That's the first thing I thought of as I pulled up this morning. But somehow that doesn't make me feel any better."

She took a breath, watching the scene next door with the many police and Florida Highway Patrol officers gathered at the end of the dock along with the emergency medical people. "Has somebody got it out for anyone catering to tourists out here? Is it possible that we're not the only target?"

              "I don't know. But after you found that rock thrown inside the house, I decided I wasn't going to wait for the local cops to figure it out."

              He turned to face her, and she could see the pistol in its holster strapped to his belt. "I haven't worn it since you got here, but I have a permit for it. And I've had plenty of training."

              Lance watched her closely, as though expecting her to object, but she only stared at the weapon for a moment and then slowly nodded her head. "Okay," she said quietly. "Maybe I should do the same."

              "I'll teach you anytime you want."

              "I guess it beats instant glue for dealing with crooks." Then she took hold of the fence and stretched up on her toes, trying to see out to the end of the dock. "It looks like they're bringing something up."

              First, the diver threw something up onto the wooden dock—something long and slim, with a shiny piece of metal at one end of it. "If I didn't know better," said Alex, "I'd say that was a belt."

              "It is. It's a brown belt with a big skull-shaped buckle in the middle of it."

              "In the middle–"

              "Yes. As if the belt had been buckled, but then cut in half up the back."

              Alex felt a chill. That was exactly the belt that Chuck Wood always wore. As she watched, one of the cops took the belt and carried it to his car. Alex and Lance just looked at each other without saying a word.

Several of the medical people and a few of the cops all lined up at the very edge of the dock, looking down at the water.

              The diver had apparently been hard at work down there, because the men on the dock all reached down and took hold of what looked like a black rubber body bag. Working together, they dragged it up onto the end of the dock and then stepped back from it as the water poured off of the bag.

              They seemed to be arguing back and forth with the diver, although Alex could not imagine why. Then she noticed something.

              "Lance," she said, "I recognize that belt just like you do. But if that's him—if that's Chuck Wood in that body bag, then why is it…" She could not get the rest out.

              "Why is it so small?"

              She closed her eyes. "Yes. Yes."

              He only shrugged. "Could be any number of reasons. But there are sharks out there, you know. Bull sharks. Other kinds. If he fell off of one of his boats…"

              Alex looked out over the smooth waters of the gulf. It was so peaceful and beautiful out there. There was no way to tell that just under the glassy blue surface might be terrible danger.