Splintered Bones (10 page)

"I can find a date. I can find one right here in
Sunflower
County
. I don't have to import a man from cyberspace. Now give up on the whole Internet romance idea." I drew on my clothes. "I'll make some coffee. Kip's on her own for breakfast."

I opened the door and found Kip standing there, eyebrows drawn together in concern. "Were you talking to someone about finding a date for the ball?" she asked, looking around me at the empty room.

"Myself," I said, annoyed and embarrassed. "I live alone. Sometimes I need stimulating conversation."

She examined the corners of the room one more time, then accepted that I was as crazy as a run-over dog. "You really have to have an escort. It's the stupidest rule. You could take a corpse, but it has to be a guy and he has to have on tails."

"I'll find someone."

"Where? All the men around here are married. Even if they don't act it."

My love life wasn't something I wanted to discuss with Kip. "I've got to get busy. Will you be okay?"

"I want to get my hair fixed. The funeral . . . Folks blame Mama because I look different," she said.

I was surprised. Kip's "look" was something she'd worked hard to achieve. "How about this afternoon? We can go to one of the salons--"

"No." Her objection was sharp. "You can do it."

"Me?" I didn't mind; it was just that she would likely turn out bald.

"I don't want to go to town. Everyone will stare."

They would, but Kip was going to have to face them sometime. She couldn't hide away at Dahlia House or Swift Level for the rest of the year.

"Please, Sarah Booth."

Kip had taken two giant steps. She'd put her mother first and she'd used the word
please.
She was trying hard, and I had a sudden inspiration. Tinkie had aspirations of hair design. "What if Tinkie did it?"

Kip nodded. "That would be okay. I like her dog."

"Chablis is hard not to like." The dog and I had a long history. In my desperation to save Dahlia House, I'd dognapped Chablis. Tinkie had been my first client--she'd hired me to find her dog. I was still working that black mark off my karma. "I'll be back soon, and I'll have Tinkie give you a call."

D
oc
Sawyer's office
hadn't changed an iota since the last time I was there--to get the autopsy results on Lawrence Ambrose. It appeared that even the same pot of coffee was brewing. At Doc's offer, I poured some into a Styrofoam cup. When the cup didn't dissolve,

I added five spoons of whitener and enough sugar to sweeten crotchety old Mrs. Hedgepeth.

"You're here to get the results of Kemper's autopsy," Doc said. He swung his feet down off his desk and sat forward in his chair. "Take a seat, this is going to take a bit of time. He was quite a mess."

With his magnificent nimbus of white hair, he looked like Mark Twain, and he had the wonderful mannerisms of an old Southern gentleman. A little eccentric, a lot kind. I noticed his complexion was less ruddy and his eyes were crystal clear. He'd gone on the wagon shortly after
Lawrence
was murdered, and judging from his appearance, he was still riding high.

I sat in the only other chair in the small, cramped space behind the
Sunflower
County
Hospital
emergency room. Doc had given up his general practice and semiretired to standby emergency work. "Doc, I need something solid. I have to talk to Lee, but I need the facts before I go there."

"You want me to tell you who killed him, right?" he said with a deep sadness.

"What I'd like to hear is that the horse killed him."

Doc picked up some papers on his desk. "I could almost say that."

I almost leaped out of my chair. "Can you? Really?"

Doc waved me back into my seat. "It's a little more complicated than that, Sarah Booth." His smile was tired. "But then isn't it always. You know, I delivered Eulalee. I watched that girl fight to carve her own identity. And then I delivered Katrina."

He looked out his window that gave a view of the ambulance bay, which was, thankfully, empty.

"The horse did plenty of damage to Kemper, no one can doubt that. The fatal blow was delivered to the head by some type of metal instrument."

"The horse was shod!"

"Avenger was wearing shoes on his front feet. I've already checked into that."

"Then you think the horse did it?" Of all the suspects I'd hoped to line up for Lee, I'd never thought to pin the murder on a horse.

"He's capable of it. He attacked Kemper in November. Bit him seriously. I know because I treated the wound. Lee said Kemper brought the injury on himself, and I don't doubt it. Kemper reaped what he sowed."

"I haven't met a single person who doesn't agree that Kemper needed to die. Unfortunately, that isn't a very good defense for Lee. If we could prove that it was accidental, that Lee and Kemper fought, maybe even that she struck him, but that the actual deathblow was delivered by the horse . . ." My mind was churning with possibilities. "Avenger has a reputation as a dangerous animal, doesn't he?"

Doc shrugged. "Lillian Sparks would be the woman to ask about that." He said this with some reservation.

"You recommend Lillian, not Lee. Why?"

"She's not personally invested in the horse. Lee is. Avenger is the horse Lee's been looking for all of her life. She can't see how dangerous he is. Every time there's an injury, she blames everyone but the horse."

Doc stood up. "I'll have more forensic answers when my tests come back from the state lab. I have to determine what type of metal instrument struck Kemper in the head."

"But you're positive that blow to the head was the cause of death."

He nodded.

"Do you know the time of death?"

"I'll know more when the tests come back."

"When might that be?"

"This afternoon. Tomorrow." His head gave a quick tilt to the right, a gesture of impatience or evasiveness.

"Doc, you treated Kemper for the horse bite. What about Lee? Did you ever treat her for injuries?" He knew where I was headed.

"Yes."

"For accidents?"

"Yes. And I can't say more than that. Doctor-patient privileges." His tone was terse.

He'd delivered Lee. She was one of his. I took a gamble. "What about Kip? Did you treat her?"

"No. Not for physical injuries." He stood up and walked to the door. "I heard Kip was staying with you. That's good for her. She needs someone now. Someone who can hold the line." He stood in the open doorway, looking beyond me. "Be careful, Sarah Booth. Kindness can be both generous and foolhardy." There was more to this than he was going to say. "Lee has better answers for you than I have."

"I'll check back with you," I said.

Doc's smile was tired and sad. "I'm sure you will, Sarah Booth."

A
confrontation with
Lee was inevitable, but I managed to delay it a bit by stopping at Lillian Sparks's home. I'd been there during the last holiday season to deliver one of Lawrence Ambrose's orphaned cats. I was delighted to see Apollo perched in the front window when I pulled up.

Lillian answered the door and ushered me back into the kitchen, where she was making tomato aspic for a dinner party. I settled at her kitchen table while she made tea for both of us.

"Tell me about the horses at Swift Level," I said.

Using exact movements, Lillian put the tea leaves in a cerulean ceramic teapot. "Avenger is one of the most magnificent performance horses of the century," she said. "Lee really has something with him."

"Doc says he may have killed Kemper."

Lillian snorted. "No wonder Lee confessed. She'd sell her soul to save that stallion. Without him, there is no Swift Level." She poured the boiling water over the leaves. "But Lee's story doesn't make sense. Kemper was an idiot, but he'd never have gone into that horse's stall, not even in a fit of rage to hurt Lee. Avenger hated him.

People think of horses as big, dumb animals. They aren't stupid. They're fully capable of recognizing someone who hurts them. Avenger was gentle as a kitten, unless Kemper was around. Avenger saw into Kemper's soul. He saw the blackness, and he hated him."

"Tell me about Kip," I asked.

Lillian was settling the teapot lid. The lid flipped from the pot, landing with a clatter on the stovetop. Her hand shaking, she ignored the implication of my question. "Kip's the most accomplished rider I've ever seen."

"I need to know the truth, Lillian." She knew far more than she was saying.

"Whose truth?" she asked, and I felt the vague uneasiness of the night before.

"The plain truth."

Lillian poured the tea into thick mugs painted with horses that looked like cave drawings. "Ask yourself why Lee
confessed,"
she said. "What would make her risk her future and her dream? When you know that, you'll know the truth."

K
ip was in
my bedroom on the computer when I got home. I'd bought groceries and I made dinner and waited, setting the table in the kitchen. She came down the stairs at a gallop with Sweetie Pie right behind her.

She asked no questions of my day or about her mother, and I let the silence fall over the meal, until she looked up at me.

"Kip, where were you the night your father died?"

She was putting the last bite of her sloppy joe into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed. "What did Mother say?"

"It doesn't matter. I need the truth."

"I was in my room," she answered, getting up and putting her plate in the sink. "May I be excused?"

"No, you may not. What were you doing in your room that night?"

Kip stared at her fork. "I was doing my homework. Biology."

"Alone?"

She finally looked up. "Yes. Alone. Now may I be excused?"

I had to press harder. "This afternoon, I went in your room looking for you. I saw a syringe in your makeup bag. Why do you have it?"

Anger touched her eyes and the corners of her mouth. One hand slipped to the back of her chair for support. "I
thought
you were snooping around."

"I wasn't snooping." My own anger rose. "Why do you have a syringe?"

"For the horses," she said with a look that held pity and contempt. "If you knew anything about a horse farm you'd know that syringes are all over the house, in the barn, in the horse trailers, all the vehicles. We all have them, because in an emergency you don't have time to go out and find a drugstore that's open."

One side of her mouth lifted. "You think I'm doing drugs?" She laughed. "They drug test the horses, but not the riders."

"Kip, are you taking anything?"

She was openly amused at me, and terribly angry. "Other than the prescribed drugs, you mean?"

"Prescribed?"

"The Prozac and the Paxil. The stuff Dr. Vance gave me. To keep me calm. To keep me in school and on the circuit. To keep the pressure from getting to be too much when my parents screamed and fought."

I knew Dr. Vance. He was a child psychiatrist in
Memphis
, the preferred magician for the youth of the
Sunflower
County
wealthy.

"You're seeing Dr. Vance?" Lee hadn't mentioned this minor detail.

"Since the school incident. I had to agree to counseling before they'd let me back in school."

"And Dr. Vance prescribed those drugs?"

"You didn't know? Mother didn't tell you? She didn't warn you that I was highly unstable? The diagnosis was severe depression and extreme anxiety." Her smile was bitter. "I'm crazy, Sarah Booth, but not too crazy to ride in the show ring for Swift Level. Now may I be excused?"

I nodded. Kip was no longer the focus of my thoughts. They had shifted to Lee, and the many things she'd failed to tell me.

By the time the dishes were put away, I was exhausted. I wanted nothing more than quiet and the luxury of a good book. The technicalities and hairpin curves of murder trial tactics were too much for me. I picked up my new copy of Kinky Friedman's latest mystery and climbed the stairs like a woman twice my age. Emotion is frequently worse than aerobics as far as wear and tear goes.

Settling beneath the comforter, I opened the book and allowed myself to be a silent participant in the
New York City
loft where Kinky cogitated and, above us, the lesbian dance class tapped their way to bliss. I read Kinky for fun, but there was also the hope that I might learn a few tricks of the P.I. trade from the eccentric sleuth.

My last thought was that Kinky would have a lot more success with women if he got rid of his cigars. Or maybe I would have more success with men if I smoked a good Cuban stogy.