Hoofprints (Gail McCarthy series) (23 page)

She nodded and pulled out of her driveway, headed for the highway, for Davis, two and a half hours away. A long, grim, lonely drive, with possible tragedy at the end of it. Poor Brenda.

I got in my own pickup and headed down Summit Road, going the other way. Summit connected with old San Jose Road several miles ahead, and I thought I'd drive back by my house and change my clothes before I went to Lonny's. I hadn't gone a mile before the pager beeped again. Damn, damn, and damn.

was just dying." The answering service operator sounded young, female, and nervous. I could picture Amber snapping at her questions.

"Okay," I told her, and hung up the phone.

Now what? I stared at my truck, sitting forlornly in the empty parking lot. Amber's place was, fortunately or unfortunately, only three miles from here. I could hardly justify driving down to pick up Lonny and driving back up, a process that would take a full hour. If Amber had a dying horse it would be downright criminally negligent to waste that much time.

On the other hand, Paul Cassidy was out there somewhere in the inky darkness. Was he at Amber's, waiting for me?

I drew my wool coat more closely around my body and hurried out to my pickup, locking the doors once I was inside. Now what? My mind kept repeating the question, over and over, robotically. Now what? Now what?

I didn't know. I started the truck and stared through the windshield at nothing, trying to decide what to do.

My sense of survival told me not to go to Amber's. My sense of responsibility told me I had to. After a long minute of fearful dithering, I climbed back out of the truck and ran to the telephone, looking over my shoulder as I went.

Calling Lonny, I told him I had an emergency stop to make at Amber's. I cut off his protests with a firm "I have to," trying to sound stronger than I felt as I told him, "I'll call you or be at your place in an hour. If I don't, come looking for me."

Back in the truck, I headed down Summit Road again, feeling as if I were locked onto automatic pilot. I made the turnoff to Rancho Robles and drove down the winding entry road with a sense of inevitability.

Rancho Robles, Amber's place, was spectacular in the daytime, when its many irrigated, white-board-fenced pastures stood out lush and green in the arid, brushy hills of the summit ridgeline. The house, a two-story imitation southern mansion, was blindingly white, multi-porched and balconied, and had the look of a place where people drank mint juleps on the veranda. The ranch also boasted a spectacular view-miles and miles of coastal hills rolling and tumbling down to the blue curve of the Monterey Bay in the distance.

As I drove in the well-lighted driveway, it suddenly seemed ludicrous to suppose that Amber had had anything to do with these crimes. Amber St. Claire had lived in this county all of forty years and her level of wealth was right up there with Anne Whitney's. Such people didn't commit murder. Did they?

If they did, I'd find out, I told myself grimly.

I pulled my truck up to Amber's front door, as the barn was dark, grabbed the leather bag, and walked up a wide flight of steps to bang a brass knocker. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but somehow the whole situation seemed so ordinary that the thought of a killer waiting in the hall to blow my brains out was beyond belief.

Amber opened her own front door, wearing a silky, beaded, clinging trousers-and-tunic type thing that I thought was called lounging pajamas. I had to admit the autumn gold color looked good on her, but the red lips and nails and sequined silk slippers were a little much.

Still, Amber was an attractive woman if you liked that type; her figure was short and curvy with just a tiny hint of plumpness, her light olive skin and brown eyes, though obviously foreign to the dark red hair, contrasted strikingly with it, and her heavy makeup was well done. Money could buy some things, it appeared, looks being one of them.

Amber's eyes widened when she saw me, and I realized my dressed-for-dinner appearance was probably a first in her experience. Amber had never seen me out of work clothes.

She didn't look pleased. There was no "Gail, you look nice," or "I must have gotten you away from something." She simply sniffed and said, "Come this way."

Puzzled, but still not afraid, I followed her into a little side room off the main hall, a room whose fake marble floor, chilly gray walls, and stiff Victorian armchairs deceived me for a minute into thinking it was a sitting room. Then I noticed the beautiful old rolltop desk in the comer and a few framed photographs of horses, pictures I could bet had been taken by Amber's father. This was the ranch office, then, a room I suspected Amber had remodeled along her own lines after Reg St. Claire had died.

Amber sat down in an armchair and crossed one silk-clad leg over the other. She seemed to be waiting for me to sit, though she made no polite offers or gestures. What the hell. I sat, crossing my own legs at the ankle, glad for once that I wasn't facing off a dressy woman wearing my usual jeans, boots, and grubby blouse.

Somehow my clothes and demeanor seemed to discomfit Amber; instead of speaking she got out a cigarette and lit it. Oh great. Between the smoke and her perfume I was going to start choking in a minute.

"Amber, I came out here to see a dying horse," I said firmly. "What's the deal?"

"Oh, the horse is fine now." Amber waved her cigarette airily, dismissing that problem. "But I need to talk to you."

"Okay." Mentally I added that it was going to cost her the full sixty-dollar emergency charge to talk to me under these circumstances.

"Gail, I know you don't know this"-Amber seemed to be choosing her words carefully-"but Steve and I are engaged."

"I just thought that you might like to know that we have an understanding. Steve can be very charming; I wouldn't want you to get hurt."

I stared at her and wondered what to think. The woman was obviously pathologically jealous. I felt sure that she was no more engaged to Steve than the man in the moon; this was just an attempt to run off someone she perceived as competition. If I'd had a kind heart, I could have reassured her that I had no real interest in Steve, that in fact I had a steady boyfriend, but Amber didn't make me feel kind.

The question was, Would her jealousy drive her to murder? I had a feeling that it could, that Amber might go to any lengths if she thought she could get away with it. Trouble was, if she'd hired Paul Cassidy to kill Cindy, killing Ed for convenience sake, and then ordered Cassidy to shoot me, too, what were we doing having this conversation? Why hadn't I simply been picked off by a bullet long ago?

I glanced at the leather bag sitting there within easy reach. It was doubtful I could get the pistol out in time to do me much good if Amber pulled a gun on me. She was smoking her cigarette with uncomfortable concentration; I had a feeling she wished I would say something.

I stood up. "If that's all, I'll be going."

Her eyes flashed to my face and she stood up hastily, her sophisticate's pose lost in the clumsy motion. "Did you understand what I said?"

"More or less."

I swung the leather bag over my shoulder and rested my hand gently on the gun, keeping my eyes on Amber as I walked toward the front door. She followed me willy-nilly, looking angry, and halted in the middle of her entry hall.

"Leave Steve alone," she hissed.

I was reminded of a spitting cat. Giving her the phoniest smile I could work up, I exited without a word, looking over my shoulder several times, I must admit.

Nothing happened. No shots whistled past my ears as I walked down her front steps. I heaved a sigh of relief as I got back in the pickup and muttered a heart-felt "bitch" to the quiet night.

I drove down the driveway with my heart thumping noisily the way it does after I've had a confrontation. Back on Summit Road, I grinned, thinking that adrenaline was surely an antidote to fear. I'd forgotten Paul Cassidy completely.

That thought brought another to mind. If Amber was Paul Cassidy's employer, surely she wouldn't have put herself through such a ridiculous scene. Or, I glanced sharply in my rearview mirror, had it all been a ploy, a way to get him on my tail? Had she lured me up to her house so he could pick me up?

No cars behind me on Summit Road-none that I could see, anyway. I kept checking my rearview mirror all the way down Old San Jose Road, but no headlights appeared.

Still, the idea of it made me nervous again and I passed my little house, sitting lightless under the redwood trees, without stopping. The notion of going through the dark doorway into the empty front room made me shiver. I'd go straight to Lonny's, dress clothes and all.

It was only when I saw Riverview Stables that I changed my plan. Lights were on in Steve's house and barn, even though it was 10:30. The place looked bright and welcoming and I suddenly realized that Steve didn't know what had become of Plumber.

Damn. I should have called him. Paul Cassidy had driven Plumber and his problems right out of my mind. Steve was far too polite to page me on an emergency call just to ask me how the horse was, but he must be wondering.

Abruptly I turned the pickup down the driveway. I had well over half an hour before I was due at Lonny's. It would only take a minute to reassure Steve, I reasoned, and maybe, just maybe, I'd congratulate him. On his engagement, naturally.

TWENTY-ONE

Yellow light spilled from Steve's big barn, and his pickup was parked in front of the house, but Steve himself was nowhere in sight. I slung the leather bag over my shoulder and got out of my truck. Deciding Steve was most likely to be in the lit-up barn, I headed in that direction, picking my way carefully. Neatly raked and sprinkled, this stable yard was an improvement over most, but my suede shoes were obviously going to be the worse for wear.

Walking down the barn aisle, I felt incongruously glamorous in black pants and a tweed coat and wished I'd stopped to change into jeans. Steve would probably think the outfit was meant to impress him.

A stall door stood open halfway down the aisle, and I peered in, expecting to find Steve, but the stall was empty. It wasn't bedded like a stall; it was more of a junk room, with broken manure carts, rakes, and odds and ends scattered everywhere. A bench along one wall seemed to be a medicine counter; I could see several bottles of bute.

In fact, I realized that the boxes stacked on the bench were also filled with bottles of bute I picked up a bottle to study the label, an unfamiliar brand to me, and got no rattle of pills.

Curiously, I opened the jar and saw that someone had ground the stuff up. This wasn't uncommon; most people prefer not to give their horses pills; "balling" a horse is an awkward procedure that horses don't like at all. Grinding the pills up with a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder and sprinkling them on some sweet feed is the way it's usually done.

Still, Steve must have an awful lot of horses running on bute in order to justify the bother of grinding the pills up a bottle at a time. I supposed that wasn't surprising. Bridle horses have to work hard; plenty of them had aches and pains and needed a little painkiller in order to perform at their peak.

I called Steve's name out a couple of times and got no response, walking toward the back of the barn as I did so. The huge hay shed that abutted the horse barn was dark-unlikely that Steve would be there. I stepped out a side door to peer down the driveway and my heart seemed to stop in its tracks.

There, parked in the dark behind the barn, out of sight of the casual visitor, was a black Jaguar. Even in the dim light that leaked out of the barn I could read the license plate: 2ZSTlOl.

My God. My God. My God. I was frozen like a mouse in the eye of a snake, trying to decide what it meant, what to do. Had he followed me here, was he waiting for me here, where was he? And which way should I run?

Then I heard voices. They were coming up the driveway behind the barn, still a ways away from me, but approaching, apparently coming from the second, smaller stable a hundred feet away. I could see two figures in the orange-y light from the low-intensity sodium bulbs that lit the driveway. One was Steve.

The other was Paul Cassidy. The big bulky body, the particular carriage of his head, the smooth, quiet way of moving-no energy wasted; I recognized him as instantly as if I'd known him all my life.

At that moment I suddenly understood some things that probably should have been obvious sooner. The white powder in the bute bottles, the bute bottles in Cindy's tack room. Jesus.

And Steve. Shit, Steve! Steve, who had been a part of things from the very beginning, but had no possible motive. Suddenly I could think of a motive. This barn had been neglected and dilapidated when he moved into it; it had taken lots of money to fix it up the way he'd done. So just where had he gotten the money?