A Three Day Event (32 page)

“But Polo,” Ruthie suddenly blurted out, “there’s one possibility that covers
all
your objections, and I know you don’t want to hear it, but you were the one that said we have to look at everybody objectively–”

Oh why do you have to be so clever, Ruthie. Give me some time to prove it couldn’t be–

As if she were reading his mind, Ruthie continued, “I’m sorry, Polo, I know how fond you are of him, and I’m sorry the thought occurred to me, but listen, if it
were
Michel, he had the strength, the skills, the knowledge, and the opportunity to have done everything: killed Liam, cut up the horse, vandalized the office, sprayed the French words, sent the fax as a false lead, and–
and,
let’s not forget–a perfect right to be anywhere on the grounds, so he could have taken the paper whenever he liked. Oh, and the truck–with the dog in it. Would a stranger have taken the dog with him? If it was in fact the killer in the truck I saw yesterday morning? No, it would have to be someone the dog knew.

“And let’s face it, there are plenty of possible motives. He could be protecting a fellow rider in this wire fraud business, he could be protecting
himself.
And Liam may have known. And he was looking to get at Michel. Remember Jocelyne told you that Liam hated Michel because he was rough on the Irish horses. There’s a very tough and determined streak in Michel. Everyone says he’s obsessed with winning. So the psychological profile fits. And you just told me this morning that Michel is a complete professional with his competition horses, that he’s not sentimental about them. Competing is expensive. He may have been desperate for money. There could be any number of–” her heart suddenly twisted in remorse at the misery in Polo’s expression–“I’m sorry,
mazzik,
but it has to be said…” she ended softly.

Polo felt whipped. Ruthie’s words had been landing like blows. He was aware that all three of them were looking at him. With contempt and disillusion, he imagined, for their mistaken confidence in his judgment. He had made quite a show of the need for impartiality. But now that a crude, but plausible hypothesis was emerging, one that he didn’t like, he couldn’t cope with it.

Hy began to speak, and with such obvious compassion that Polo felt the urge to get up and rush out of the house. He had to force himself to sit quietly in his chair. “Polo, it’s just one possibility. We don’t have all the information in yet. And we haven’t even asked ourselves all the pertinent questions. For example–” he drew Roch’s duffel bag over to look at it more closely–“this isn’t Liam’s, is it?”

Polo breathed deeply, glad of the diversion. “No, it’s Roch’s. I borrowed it from the tack room. And I wondered the same thing. How did Liam get the stuff here in the first place? Where is the bag he used to carry it here?”

“Because all his clothes were gone from his room, right?” Hy asked.

“Yeah,” Polo said. “So it made me think that if he knew he was leaving the place for good, if he was leaving because someone threatened him, ‘gave him the push’, he would have packed this stuff up. I mean, he would need it, and he certainly wouldn’t have wanted it to be found after he left. He’d want to just disappear with everything he owned, without leaving a trace.”

Ruthie abruptly set down her coke, swallowed hard, and added excitedly, “But then we can definitely eliminate one of the possibilities. See, it
couldn’t
have been a Heritage Front mate who murdered him, because he would know to look for that stuff before taking off. And he would know where Liam’s room was and the set–up at the barn. So he would have found it, it would have been important to him to find it and get rid of it, right?”

She beamed guilelessly at everyone in turn, as though she’d just got the highest mark on a school exam, and Polo suddenly wanted to hug her, not for this twist of cleverness, which only turned the spotlight brighter onto Michel, but because she looked in this moment of minor triumph like her twelve–year old sucky schoolgirl self, and because she was the living wick to the bright and eager flame of his youthful dreams, to all that was pure and uncompromised in him.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

P
olo jogged over to the barn, mentally running through
the schooling tests he would use for Thea’s gelding. He decided to come in through the office end to see if Roch had come back. He hadn’t. It was odd that Roch had just taken off like that without mentioning where he was going. Polo had put himself down to speak with Michel, Bridget and Thea. Thea was slotted in for that drink later on, but realistically he wondered if he’d have time to speak to all three in one afternoon. The ‘team’ had agreed to meet for dinner at the
resto
to compare notes.

Roch was supposed to pursue the Benoit and Gilles line, but he hadn’t spoken to Polo about the best way to do it. Benoit had disappeared, and Gilles was still holed up at home in Montreal. Was Roch playing a lone hand with some theory of his own? Had he gone to Montreal to confront Gilles? Maybe he had told Michel. Polo would ask him. But now it occurred to Polo that Michel might be the last person Roch would confide his theories to. In fact, though normally in the day’s routine Polo was used to seeing Roch and Michel connect a dozen times a day, sometimes just for a few seconds in the corridor, sometimes for a coffee or meal, he hadn’t seen the two of them together for maybe a week, since well before the stallion got cut.

There had been tension between them already when Michel stepped into the vandalized office yesterday morning to announce he wasn’t going to New York. Then there had been his unexpected withdrawal from the Cedar Meadows show in Calgary, forfeiting his place on the Nation’s Cup Team. That was pretty huge. Everyone was talking about it. He’d been keen to ask Michel about it himself, but Michel seemed to shrink from all but superficial contact every time they met.

Now, knowing what he did about Michel and this–
Claude
–and putting it together with the news about Palm Beach, he wondered how much Roch already knew or suspected on both fronts, even while he was still pressuring Michel about marrying the New York girl. And if he did suspect–either about Claude or the Panaiotti girl’s involvement in the insurance killings–then could even Roch, driven as he was to see Michel stay at the top of the sport, ignore this sure recipe for his son’s unhappiness? Was Roch that single–minded underneath the bonhomie and unfailing optimism? What kind of father was he, anyway? Well, whatever Roch knew or didn’t know, he was clearly freezing Michel out lately–maybe because he knew his sometimes volatile temper might make him say or do something he would regret later.

Polo glanced at his watch as he walked down the corridor. Too bad he didn’t have his own groom here. He’d have to prep the horse himself, a waste of valuable time. Ordinarily when riding a new horse he liked to do the first grooming, to check out sore spots and conformation quirks from the ground. These were not ordinary times, though. He stopped at his locker, hung up his coat, buckled on his spurs, and threw his chaps over his shoulder.

Walking down the long barn corridor, ducking under a cross–tie
where a horse stood having his hoofs picked out by its owner, he noted that not more than eight horses were out of their stalls. Roch had cancelled lessons for the weekend. Only the boarders were around, hacking out singly or in pairs–the weather was sunny and fine now after the storm–or hanging out in the
resto
, completely oblivious to the life of the barn beyond their own horses and their needs.

Polo had almost reached the tack room when Michel, changed from britches and tall boots into jeans and paddock boots, suddenly appeared in its doorway. “Can I speak to you, Polo? I’ve been waiting here for you,” he said gravely. He seemed tense, but he was looking him full in the eye, Polo noted.

“I was going to ride the Irish gelding, but I wanted to speak to you too, and if this is when you’re free”–

“The horse is one of the things I’d like to talk to you about–before you ride him. But–not only that”–

“Well then, yeah, sure.” Polo came to a quick decision. Before he let Michel ask or tell him anything, he had to let the kid know he’d been overheard on the telephone that morning. Polo didn’t want to hear more lies and have to refute them later. Besides, the secret had been weighing on him. Revealing what he knew was going to be one of the most unpleasant things he’d ever done. Best get it over.

“Do you want to go to the
resto
?” Michel asked.

“No,” Polo said. “I want to show you something.” Motioning Michel to follow him, Polo walked around the circle to Liam’s bedroom. The door was closed. He knocked. Jocelyn opened it, yawning.

“Sorry, I must have dozed off. Hi Polo. Michel, did you want to school Amadeus already? I’ll start on him.”

Michel shook his head. “Just turn him out. I’m finished riding for today.”

Polo said, “Actually, we need this room to chat in private for a little while. If you wouldn’t mind…”

Jocelyn looked swiftly from one to the other. Their bland expressions told her nothing, and nobody seemed angry at her. So her alibi for Michel was holding up, and that was good. Polo deserved a reward for validating her story. She smiled sweetly. “Polo, do you want me to prep Robin’s Song for you? Oh, and Fran said to just call him when you want him at home. It’ll just take him five minutes to get here.”

“I’d really appreciate it, Joc. I can use the extra time.”

“All–purpose or jumper saddle?”

“All–purpose. It’s the”–

“The Steuben? Third rack up on the right?”

“You know every saddle in the barn?” Polo was impressed. As a groom she really was peerless. Joc pinkened at the praise. Michel rarely expressed admiration or overt gratitude. Not that he didn’t feel it, she knew. Still, it was nice when someone actually said something…

“Bell boots?” she continued enthusiastically.

“Couldn’t hurt.”

“Leg wraps?”

“No, just ankle boots.”

“Martingale?”

“No.”

“What kind of bit? D–ring, twisted wire, pelham?”

“I like a snaffle first time out.”

“Sure? He can be a bugger.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“A snaffle it is, then.” Jocelyne slipped past them and took herself off to the tack room.

“Michel, what bit did the owner’s daughter use?”

“Pelham, I’m pretty sure.”

An amateur using a
pelham
. A pelham could be extremely punishing in a thoroughbred’s sensitive mouth. Polo looked inquiringly at Michel who shrugged and said, “I know, but Bridget was her coach, not me. I told her, you need perfect balance and a velvet hand for a pelham, you don’t even get that with professionals sometimes, but you can’t talk to her. She likes her riders to have a crazy amount of speed control. Me, I use a D–ring on him, sometimes a twisted wire. He can get a little… nappy, and it’s better than fighting with him.”

“Nappy?” Polo was instantly alert to the professional rider’s tendency to understatement. “Nappy as in doesn’t like to go forward heading away from the barn, or nappy as in rears, flings himself backward and deliberately rolls on you to crush you to death?”

Michel just smiled. “He’s never actually reared on me. But you can see he’s thinking about it sometimes. He’s smarter than you want a horse to be. Don’t worry. You can handle him.”

“Yeah, but could that girl?”

Michel’s mouth pursed Gallicly, while his shoulders and eyebrows rose in unison.

“Is that what you wanted to tell me about the horse?”

“Just to watch him. He’s very athletic, but he isn’t…”

“Honest?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks. I’ll be careful.”

Polo then moved to the mirror, took it off and laid it on the night table, and beckoned to Michel. With his Swiss army knife blade he worked the hoof packing out of the hole. “I plugged this up yesterday, but Liam had the use of it the whole time he was here. Look through here, Michel.”

Michel brought his eye close to the hole, and a second later Polo heard him suck in his breath. Seeing the telephone two inches away, he had understood instantly. He sat down on the bed and stared hard at the floor. Polo dragged the stool out to face him and sat down and waited a moment for it to sink in.

“Michel,” he finally said, “this is going to be a little tough for me to say, so hear me out before you say anything back. First of all, as you’ve probably figured out, this hole is how Liam knew so much about everyone in the barn. And it’s what makes it so hard to pin the murder on anyone. It seems a lot of people might have had a motive for shutting him up. Joc told me in March what Liam was threatening to tell about you, for example.”

Michel was listening quietly, but he didn’t seem particularly tense or upset, just attentive, which was unexpected, disconcerting even. Polo took a deep breath. “Now I have to tell you that I found something out when I was here this morning after the meeting, and after you met with Sue, when you were on the phone. I didn’t come here to spy on you, but I also didn’t do anything to warn you once you started talking. I heard every word of your conversation with–ah–Claude, you know?”

“You did?” Michel asked, his mink–lashed eyes focused wonderingly at Polo. Polo’s whole body was tensed for action in case Michel blew up at him or threw a wild punch, or stormed out of the room. So the last thing in the world he had expected was the sweet smile and hopeful eyes that now illuminated Michel’s face. Polo felt broadsided somehow, and less sure than ever that he could pull this off.

“Ah, yeah, I did,” Polo confessed nervously, nodding stupidly over and over and rubbing both sweaty palms on his knees. He had tried to prepare himself for this moment by asking himself what Nathalie would have said to the kid. She would have been in her element, that’s for sure. He imagined her marshalling all those reassuring bromides about equality, dignity, diversity, lifestyle choice, rights, finding your voice, empowerment–they were like a new dialect of a language he sort of understood but couldn’t speak–and he wished with all his heart that he could have handed this off to her.

Meanwhile Michel was grinning happily at him, and in the pause before Polo delivered his little speech, the words just tumbled out of him. “But Polo, Claude is what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m glad you found out. You’ve always been a good friend. It’s been hell keeping this secret, you have no idea…”

“Well, Michel,”–and Polo could hear the unnatural stiffness in his voice–“I’m glad you’re not pissed off about my eavesdropping. That’s a good start. So to go on, ah, I feel actually quite…
honoured
that you feel
comfortable
about…
sharing
this so openly, and–
merde
, it’s hot in here, isn’t it–and…if you want to tell me more about this–
Claude
”–

“What did you just say, Polo?”

“About what?”

“ Did you just say ‘
ce
Claude’
?”

“Ah, yeah…why?”

“Why?
Why
? But you told me you heard everything I said!”

“But I did…”

“And you thought… Polo, are you
nuts
? Would I be talking like that to a freaking
guy
!
Merde
, Polo, it’s ‘
cette
Claude’
,
cette cette cette
, not
ce
.
Claude is
ma blonde
, my girlfriend. We’re in love. And you thought…”

Tabarnouche.

It was as though he had slipped his hand into his pocket and felt his fingers close around the unfamiliar bulk and shape of someone else’s wallet. Claude!
Claude
! Well of course it was both…but almost always a man… with girls it was normally Marie–Claude or something, not usually by itself… but of course it
could
be, why hadn’t he…because Roch had just finished speaking to Claude, the grain merchant…and from Joc he had gathered that Liam had been so sure…and because you never saw Michel with a girl, and because he was so beautiful, and so meticulous…and because, because…

Polo passed a hand through his hair, bit his lip and shook his head in wonder at this spectacular failure in the detection business. “
Jésu
, Michel, I feel like such a
putz
,” he said.

“A what?”

“
Un vrai poisson
…
”

Michel punched Polo affectionately on the knee. “Don’t take it so hard. I see what happened with Liam. He doesn’t speak French, he thinks Claude is only a man’s name, he hears my lovesick voice every night, and he’s completely convinced he’s got me by the balls. He tells Joc, Joc tells you…seriously, I’m not as insulted as you think. It’s kind of funny.” He clapped him on the arm. “Hey, cheer up, Polo. I can see why you believed it.”

“You can?” Polo felt ridiculously grateful for the way Michel was taking this.

“Polo, look at me.” Polo looked at him. “I know what I look like,” Michel said with candour and not a trace of his usual shyness. “I get hit on every other day by guys in this business. You kind of…get used to it, and shrug it off.”

“I never did.”

“I bet you used to slug them.”

“I hurt someone. Then I made sure it never got as far as the ‘hitting on’ stage.”

“It’s different now, Polo. You can’t…act like that anymore, no matter what you’re thinking. It’s like being a racist or something. The sponsors–they watch how you are in public more, you can’t get away with things, even kidding around. Gays in sport are starting to become trendy.”

He took note of Polo’s expression. “I know. It sort of amazes me too. But I have to say,” Michel shook his head a little in bemusement, “some of the guys who are right out of the closet, the ones who have relationships–they’re pretty happy, it gets to seem normal, it’s easy to be with them…”

Polo found himself nodding and smiling sympathetically. At this moment he fervently hoped homosexuals all over the world would be happy. He was definitely okay with that concept, which he would have resisted five minutes ago. But five minutes ago he had thought Michel was gay, and now he knew Michel wasn’t, and the lightening of his mood and the new benevolence in his attitude to gays was nothing short of remarkable.