Cutter (Gail McCarthy Mystery series) (2 page)

Melissa walked up as I was standing outside the barn with Casey. Her face was pale, with red rims around the eyes, but composed. I looked at her, then back at Casey. "So what happened here, you guys? You have any idea?"

Casey's brown eyes were hard, all the changeable, light-hearted laughter that was his trademark gone for the moment. "I got up a little late this morning, went down to feed, and found everything like this. Two horses dead and a bunch of them sick."

I had to believe him. For all his quirky playfulness, Casey was a successful professional horse trainer. He knew the risks inherent in bad hay.

"Your water system okay?" I asked him.

"First thing I checked. They all had water."

Lack of water or bad hay were the only things I could think of that could cause a whole barn full of horses to colic. I shook my head. "It doesn't make sense."

"I know it doesn't. I've been thinking about it." Casey's glance shifted to Melissa. Her eyes were on the ground and she didn't respond. He turned back to me. "Somebody gave them something."

"You mean they were poisoned?" I must have sounded as incredulous as I felt.

Casey's chameleon-like face was angrier than I'd ever seen it. His mouth tightened. "By Will George," he said grimly.

Chapter TWO

Melissa's eyes flashed up at that. She was a short girl, and Casey was a rangy six-foot-something, but she looked a match for him as she stared fiercely up into his face. I felt like I had a front-row seat for some intense psychological drama. Unfortunately I didn't know what the play was about.

"Who's Will George?" I asked. That was the name Casey had used the day I met him, I remembered. It had a familiar ring, and they both seemed to expect me to recognize it, but I didn't.

It was Melissa who finally answered. "Will George is the most famous cowhorse trainer in California. He's won all the big events, made lots of money, has the most clients. He's dominated the business for years."

"Why would he want to poison Casey's horses?"

There was some more silence. When Melissa spoke, she seemed to pick her words carefully. "Casey doesn't get along with Will. Will expects the younger trainers to respect him ..."

"Will expects everybody to kiss his ass," Casey broke in. He gave a short unamused laugh. "I don't kiss anybody's ass. I don't need to. I can beat the sons of bitches."

Melissa shrugged. "He can, a lot of the time. Will resents it that Casey won't play the game. The cowhorse business is pretty political, you know. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Will's used to other people playing ball with him."

"That doesn't sound like a reason to poison ten horses," I said mildly. "There's more to it than that." Melissa glanced at Casey, but he was looking away, his face stony. "There was Gus."

"Who's Gus?" I asked, feeling lost again.

"Gus is a horse. The best horse Casey's ever had. Ken bought him last year as a two-year-old, and he was really great. Casey thought he was a sure shot to win the West Coast Futurity. Then Ken sold him to some client of Will's; we never really knew why. Maybe they just offered more money than Ken could turn down. They came and got him ... it must be a year ago now."

Casey looked at me. "They came to get him the first day I met you. I thought you were from Will."

Melissa picked up the story. "Casey got in a fight with the guy who did come for the horse ..."

"And I told him to tell Will to go to hell," Casey interrupted. His face was flushed. "And they didn't like it."

Casey and Melissa were staring at each other again like two cats about to fight.

"All this still doesn't sound like a reason to poison ten horses," I told them.

"Will wouldn't poison horses, anyway," Melissa said angrily, her eyes still locked on Casey's. "I know he wouldn't." She sounded completely sure of herself.

"How do you know?" I asked. There was a long pause.

Melissa looked down, then back at me. "I used to work for him," she said finally.

I got the impression there was a lot being left unsaid. I also got the impression that there might be some question as to whether her loyalties lay with her current boyfriend or former boss. Casey seemed to be thinking the same thing. He was watching her and his eyes were hard and angry.

"And I guess it's just a coincidence that that horse Gail just had to kill was my last shot at going to Reno?"

"God dammit, Casey, of course it is." Melissa looked at me. "We called the horse Reno because he's the other horse we had for the Futurity. He wasn't nearly as good as Gus, but he was entered up there." Melissa's eyes filled with tears.

Mostly to distract her, I asked, "What's the West Coast Futurity?"

Melissa bit her lip and glanced at Casey, but he was staring away from her, obviously unwilling to say anything. She blinked her eyes once and answered steadily enough. "It's the big event for three-year-old cutting horses, like the Kentucky Derby's the big event for Thoroughbred racehorses. They have it in Reno, every September. If a trainer can win the Futurity, his reputation is made."

I nodded understandingly. "So losing the Gus horse was a big blow. It doesn't sound like this Will George has any reason to hurt you, though. He's got the horse. Why would he poison your other horses?"

Casey lashed out at that. "Because he's a dirty son of a bitch and he hates my guts. I beat him the last time he showed against me. He probably thinks every colt I've got is as good as Gus."

Casey sounded determined to believe in Will George's guilt. Arguing with him looked like a losing battle, but I gave it one more try. "How could anybody poison the horses with you right here?"

"Melissa and I went out last night and Ken's been gone. Nobody was here at all from seven to midnight. It would have been easy."

"Okay, okay," I waved my hand, "I give up. I'll get some blood samples from the three horses that are dead and send them to the lab. It'll take me a minute."

Turning, I went back into the barn. I drew blood from all three horses, thinking while I did it that this was probably a waste of time. If we knew what poison to look for, that would be one thing, but there was an infinite variety of possibilities, and no one test would cover them all. I decided to have the samples tested for arsenic, oleander and strychnine, which seemed the likeliest candidates to me, then added cantharidin, on the very off chance the hay could be contaminated with a type of poison beetle which is still unknown in California, though not uncommon in the Midwest. While I was at it I examined the hay stack in the three-sided storage barn that adjoined the horse barn, but every bale I saw looked clean-bright green, sweet-smelling alfalfa without a noxious weed in sight.

Back outside, I said good-bye to Casey and Melissa, who were still standing in the driveway. "I'll come back this afternoon. Don't feed those horses any hay, just wheat bran, and call me if any of them looks worse."

Casey nodded. "Sure. Thanks, Gail."

I touched his arm. "I'm sorry, Casey, Melissa."

Melissa gave me a small smile, but she wouldn't look at Casey. I had a feeling the fireworks were going to erupt as soon as I drove out. Getting back in my pickup, I waved quickly at them over my shoulder. Melissa's stance, hands on hips, chin tilted back and up, looked combative to me. Oh well. Not my problem. I pointed the truck down the driveway and my mind skipped back to my own life, which had receded into the background while I was dealing with Casey's horses. My day off, though interrupted, was still at least partly mine. What did I want to do?

The answer was boringly mundane. Clean the house. Do

the grocery shopping and the laundry. Visit my horse. Relax.

Boring to some, not to me. Life as a veterinarian kept me frantically busy; I'd learned to treasure the rare intervals of unscheduled peace, didn't feel the need to be entertained. Though I didn't regret the choice which had set me on the road to veterinary school, I did occasionally long for a little more space and quiet in my life, something I was unlikely to achieve as long as I worked for Jim Leonard.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, I caught my own eye-blue-green iris, black lashes, some faint lines raying out from the corners, brilliantly illuminated by the clear morning sunshine. Damn, I had a lot of wrinkles for thirty-one.

Well, you haven't had such an easy life, I defended myself. What do you expect? Easy enough until my eighteenth year, when both my parents had been killed in a car wreck. Since then it had been a long struggle to turn my childhood dreams of becoming a horse vet into a new security. Between school and the job, I'd earned the lines around my eyes.

Wrinkles add character, anyway. I smiled at the vista of the Monterey Bay spread out before me and felt, on the whole, lucky. I liked my job and I liked being back in my hometown-a stroke of good fortune that had been, getting a job in Santa Cruz. If I could just squeeze everything I needed to do into the days, I wouldn't complain.

As I took the Soquel exit off the freeway and headed home, I reflected that I'd expected to have the whole morning free to do chores. Now I had several hours at best before I needed to go back to Casey's. Zipping up Old San Jose Road toward the distant blue ridgeline of the Santa Cruz Mountains, I admired the sheltered, sunny Soquel Valley, cottonwoods in the creekbed just starting to turn yellow, the shops of the little town particularly pleasing in the gold-tinged fall air. My house was a mile or two outside of town, a redwood-sided cabin in a steep shadowy canyon. Coming around the corner at a good clip, I swung across the road, prepared to pull into my driveway, and almost hit the beat-up pickup that was parked there. I swore, swerved, and parked my truck on the side of the road, giving the faded red Ford in my spot a dirty look.

The owner of the truck was sitting on my porch, obviously waiting for me. He gave me his best guaranteed-to-charm smile as I marched toward my front door and, despite myself, I could feel my annoyance start to evaporate. Bret Boncantini was a piece of my past.

We'd grown up together not too far from this spot on neighboring small farms that were now covered with uniform cheek-by-jowl stucco houses. My parents had raised apples-Bret's, eggs-and he and I had played together during our childhood years. We'd grown apart after my folks had died and I'd changed from a typically rebellious teenager into a suddenly serious adult, but we'd never quite lost track of each other and when I returned to Santa Cruz to work for Jim Leonard I'd discovered Bret working as a horseshoer, and our friendship had sprung back up.

I regarded him now with some apprehension. Handsome in an extravagant Italian way, with olive skin and sun-streaked brown hair, Bret had evolved a lifestyle based on charm and freedom. His unexpected appearance on my doorstep was likely to mean he wanted something.

"Hey, Doc," he grinned at me.

I smiled back, a little unwillingly. That was the thing about Bret. The grin that was in his eyes more than on his mouth always seemed to promise that the world was a fine and entertaining place and that you were the perfect person to appreciate it with him.

"So what's up? I haven't seen you in a month. Deb throw you out?" Deb was Bret's latest girlfriend, and a great improvement on all his previous efforts, in my opinion. Bret tended toward pretty blondes with empty heads; Deb was a redhead with plenty of brains and a temper. Bret had moved in with her a month ago and I hadn't seen much of him since.

Widening his eyes, he assumed a rueful expression. "Yeah, she ran into me down at Margaritaville last night while I was chatting up a little girl from San Jose. Deb didn't like it. Told me to move out. So I came to ask you if I could stay with you."

Half exasperated, half amused, I looked at him and shook my head. He gave me his little-boy-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar grin. "Come on, Gail. I've got my sleeping bag. I'll sleep on the couch. I'll help you clean the house, even."

"You got a job right now?" That was always an open question. Bret shod horses occasionally, trained colts from time to time, did spells of work at various places. He left town for long periods, and from what I understood he'd been a blackjack dealer in Tahoe, a cowboy on a high desert ranch in Nevada, and a logger up near Yosemite, among other things.

"I'm working for Dan Atkins at his cider warehouse. Regular paycheck."

"Okay. You can sleep on the couch for a couple of days. You've got to buy your own beer, too. No drinking everything in the house and then leaving."

"Would I do that?"

"Yes."

We grinned at each other and I unlocked the door, hearing my dog snuffling on the other side. He bounced stiffly around us in greeting, looking like a geriatric blue-gray coyote with a bobbed tail, and Bret stopped to rub him. "How's the old man? You're a good old dog, aren't you, Bluey?"

Blue flattened his ears and grunted as happily as if he were a big dumb Labrador instead of a cantankerous Australian Cattle Dog. The coyote appearance was appropriate; Blue was as smart, stubborn, and independent as the dingoes he was descended from. It always surprised me that he acted so friendly with Bret; in general Blue was apt to regard human beings with tolerant contempt, as if they were an inferior race in which he was not much interested. He moved away when people tried to pet him; when he was younger he hadn't been quite so tolerant and had been as likely to nip as get out of the way. For whatever reason, though, Blue liked Bret. Maybe he recognized a similar spirit.