Night Mares in the Hamptons (6 page)

“Para horses, huh? Great, then Grant will be coming, and you'll be in a better mood.”

Mumble mumble, while I drank my tea.

“Huh?”

I was never so glad to hear the phone ring, even if a call before eight usually meant trouble. This one did.

Uncle Henry Haversmith, who wasn't a real uncle but was really the police chief, sounded frazzled. He'd been up all night, too, with the nightmare Paumanok Harbor had turned into. A kid had pulled a Vincent. They Medivac-ed him to Stony Brook to reattach his ear. Another kid, a girl, tried to OD on her parents' prescription drugs. The Viagra hadn't done much harm, but no one was sure about the mother's arthritis meds. Mrs. Danvers ran over her husband, twice. The Patchen girl and her new husband fought over the wedding pictures, with scissors. And on and on. Uncle Henry wanted to know when the effing mares were leaving town or if he had to call in the county cops or the state troopers.

“Wait a minute. Tell Susan what you just told me. She doesn't think we have a problem.”

I handed her the phone and watched as the color left her face, except for a dab of strawberry jam she'd missed. Without a word, she handed the phone back and stared at the poster of the white foal.

I explained about the baby—quickly inserting that I knew the difference between a colt and a filly before he could tell me. Then I had one of my better ideas.

“Hey, Uncle Henry, you can find keys and lost wallets. Maybe you can put your skill to use and find the foal for us. Then the mares will be happy and get on their way out of the Harbor.”

He couldn't, to his regret. His talent only worked for inanimate objects, small ones at that, which still had an aura of the person who owned it. I should have realized his limitations, or he would have located the kidnapped boy we searched for last spring.

“But I'm making posters to ask for help finding the missing horse.”

Uncle Henry didn't have a whole lot of confidence in my posters. He wanted to know when Grant was coming.

“Lord Grantham is not coming. I can handle this.”

I turned off the phone while Uncle Henry was still cursing. Susan was staring at me through narrowed eyes and lowered brow. I guess she finally noticed that my face was blotchy and my eyes were red and swollen from crying.

“Willow Tate, what have you done now?”

Damn Susan and her sensitivity to my sins. I took the offensive. “Me? Why is everything my fault, my responsibility? I didn't steal any supernatural horse. For your information—and the entire town's, I suppose—Agent Grant is rushing off to do battle with some other exotic creature, in a more exciting locale than Paumanok Harbor. I get to suffer nightmares until I can solve the horse rustling, or whatever you call it.”

“I bet you two had a fight over that, and that's why you were banging around like a blind bear in an outhouse. You didn't want him to go.”

“Of course I did not want him to fly into horrible danger, but there was nothing to fight about. He has his duties. I would respect him less if he did not honor them.”

“You argued. I know you.”

“I did not argue.” I may have pleaded, but that was between me and Grant. I poured myself another cup of tea. “And I am going to tell my mother myself that the wedding is off, as soon as it's a decent hour to call. So you don't have to run for your cell phone to tell her or your mother, who'll call her the next minute. And if you tell Grandma Eve before I can, I'll throw your mattress out in the dog run. It most likely has bedbugs by now anyway.”

“The wedding is off?”

“The wedding was never on, technically, but yes, our relationship is over, except as friends, I hope.” I really did hope for that. I busied myself making more tea so she wouldn't see my eyes filling with tears again. I added too much sugar, but drank it anyway.

“He broke up with you?” She leaned forward, eager for details.

“He did not break up with me. We decided we, uh, we do not suit.”

“That's straight out of one of those books you read. He got tired of waiting, didn't he? I warned you no guy likes to be kept dangling. Or being celibate while his bride dithers. He didn't cheat on you, did he?”

“Grant would never go back on a promise. And he did not break the engagement. Not that we were formally engaged anyway.”

“After you practically had sex in front of the whole town? I'd say that was as good as a notice in the paper.”

“I never got a ring. We never made that announcement.”

She stuck her spoon back in the jam jar.

“I bet he found someone else. Some gorgeous telepath or a clairvoyant heiress. Maybe someone with mixed blood so he can practice those ancient languages.”

I shoved the lid on the jar. “Damn it, I broke up with him.”

The spoon hung in the air inches away from Susan's open mouth. “You really are as crazy as everyone says. Even by Paumanok Harbor standards, and that's saying a lot. Maybe you should see a shrink.”

I brushed at my damp cheeks with my napkin, leaving jam smears on my face. “I know.”

Then, because she's Susan and because she loves me, my cousin said, “If you don't want him, can I have him?”

I cleaned the kitchen and went back to printing out flyers for every store window and bulletin board in town. Conversation over.

I set the computer to printing the posters to hang on trees. These pictured three white horses on a black background, with a small one prancing between them. It was as happy and hopeful as I could make it, with no words. I was going to get them laminated so they'd stay okay through any weather.

“You can help me put them up as soon as you get dressed. Then I'll need you to tell me where someone is most likely to stash a stolen horse. Backyard barns, abandoned cottages, that kind of thing. I'll check old maps at the library, and see if Uncle Henry has any ideas, but you might know better, from all your years sneaking around. Besides, I only spent summers here, but you grew up in Paumanok Harbor. You'll know every deer path and hiking trail where we can tack up a poster.”

“It's really that important?”

“You heard Uncle Henry. It's going to get worse. A bunch of our upstanding citizens have illegal handguns, or legal hunting rifles. I hate to think what another week of nightmares will unleash.”

“Yeah, I had two parties send their meals back last night at the restaurant. First time ever. Business is bad enough without that.”

“Change the menu. Make happy meals.”

“What, turn the Breakaway into Micky D's and churn out kiddy burgers and French fries?”

“No, you know what I mean. Don't think I don't know how you can affect people's moods, between your cooking and Grandma's ingredients.”

“Maybe, but I never know how. It just happens.”

“I don't care how. Do it. Or this place is going to explode.”

“You're serious, aren't you?”

“Dead serious. Do you think I'd be calling my mother otherwise?”

“I'll find the number of that shrink.”

I
ALMOST TOLD MY MOTHER THAT I—no, that Susan—had lost one of her rescue dogs. That way I'd get the screaming part over and she'd be relieved enough to listen when I explained what really happened. As long as her dogs were safe, she wouldn't care that I was breaking my almost-engagement and her chance of getting grandchildren. And that the town was under siege.

Or else I could chicken out and tell my father first, so he'd have to suffer her high-decibel dramatics. He'd just had open heart surgery, though, so I couldn't jeopardize his health that way. I wasn't even sure Mom was still staying with him in Florida since the reconciliation didn't seem to be working. When I spoke to my mother last week, she was going undercover at the greyhound track. If she found evidence of mistreatment, she could shut it down. Or get arrested.

Wherever she was, I needed to talk to her. I might be thirty-five years old, but I needed my mother. Not like the little horse, but badly enough. I wasn't proud of the fact either.

She was thrilled to hear from me. Before I could launch into my prepared speech, she said, “You are just the person I was thinking of, Willow. Maybe you are clairvoyant after all.”

No, I only saw things other people didn't, and dreamed in the minds of magical beasts. That was plenty for me.

“Is Dad okay?”

“He won't take in any of the greyhounds, the toad. Condo rules, he says. Why anyone would choose to live in a place with no dogs is beyond me. It's not natural or healthy. I bet he wouldn't have had a heart attack if he had a pet. Research is starting to understand the health benefits to having a dog. Even a cat would be better than nothing. These retirees down here think they're adding years to their lives in their tidy town houses. Hah! Not without a dog, they aren't.”

I'd heard it all before. Ad nauseam. “Mom, I called because—”

“Anyway, how many of your friends do you think can foster a couple of retired racers?”

“In the city? In an apartment? Not many.”

“What about in the Harbor?”

“You've already placed dogs with everyone who ever wanted one. Or never wanted one, but couldn't say no.”

“I was right about each one of them. Nobody would give up their beloved foundlings. No one but your father, that worthless piece of—”

I guess my parents wouldn't be retaking their vows any time soon. “Mom, I really need to tell you about what's going on here.”

“Of course, dear. Then we can discuss holding a fundraiser to earn enough money to board the dogs until we find homes for them.”

“Did you steal them?” I really didn't have time to hire lawyers or organize a charity raffle, pancake breakfast, or the fancy cocktail party she'd talk me into. I had to go hang posters.

Mother grew indignant that I'd suspect her of acting illegally, when we both recalled the time she broke into a house to rescue a mistreated husky, or climbed the fence at a research lab, and a hundred other scrapes with the law.

“Of course I did not steal the dogs. The racetrack people agreed to surrender a few, to better the conditions for the rest. That was all the concession I could get out of them, for now.”

“How many is a few?”

“We'll work something out, I'm sure.”

Which meant at least a dozen: a dozen very large dogs not raised as household pets, not housebroken if they've lived in cages their whole lives, maybe not in good health if the racetrack was ready to discard them. “Mom, someone else down there will have to deal with the greyhounds. We need you here.”

Her voice got shrill again. “Are you okay? Your grandmother? Susan? What about the Pomeranian?”

“We're all as well as can be expected, under the circumstances. We're being plagued by—”

“Well, whatever it is, I cannot leave now. It's impossible.”

“So are vanishing horses that cause nightmares. I need you to talk to them, to calm them down the way you do with stray dogs.” There wasn't a dog alive that wouldn't eat out of my mother's hand in five minutes, snuggle up to her in ten. She'd have the mares dozing placidly in the sunshine—or moonlight—while the rest of us tracked down their missing offspring.

“I don't speak horse, dear. They're not half as trusting as dogs, or as genetically inclined to please people. Equines are a different specialty. You say they vanish? And cause nightmares?”

“All through town. The situation is getting nasty.”

“Then they aren't normal horses. Get your Grant to come. This sounds like a job for that hush-hush group the dear man works for.”

“He's off on a different mission, to Asia. Mom, I need you to come home.”

“Why, are you getting married before he leaves next week?”

I took a deep breath and held the phone farther away from my ear. “I'm not getting married.”

She didn't shatter any glasses, but Little Red ran under the sofa. “You're not getting married? Ever?”

“Maybe someday, but not to Grant.”

I could hear her sniff. She did that a lot, either from dog hair allergies or aggravation. It was always hard to tell with my mother. This time I kind of had it figured out.

My mother loved me. Sometimes she even acted like it. This wasn't one of those times.

“How did I raise such a stupid, bubble-headed daughter?” Sniff. “The man is rich and smart and handsome and decent.” Sniff. “He loves you, he's not gay, and did I mention he's rich? What are you waiting for? You already found Prince Charming. They don't grow on trees, you know.”