The Fame Equation (9 page)

Idly, I wondered what story concert goers in Louisville had been told about Melody’s absence. Did they even know? Davis and Scott, Chas, Augie, and Buffy, did they know their artist was gone? And Keith? Did he know? I sighed. I had promised to call or text if I heard anything, but Keith would be about ready to go on stage. It was an hour later in Louisville. Ten PM.

I debated. If I didn’t send a text and Keith found out that I knew something, he’d be disappointed. Sighing, I picked up my phone and opened my message app.

I HAVE NEWS OF MELODY. NOT GOOD. TOUCH BASE WHEN YOU CAN.

Seconds later he texted me back.

DAVIS JUST CALLED. SHOCKED & DEVASTATED. NOT ANNOUNCING NEWS TONIGHT AS PER DAVIS & CHAS (LABEL) REQUEST. GOTTA GO.

I sat in Sally’s stall for another hour. Sally hung her head the entire time.

By the time I got up the next morning, the news had broken. I had texts from Buffy, Davis, and Keith, and Agnes had called three times. I called Agnes back first, knowing that she’d call three more times within the next half hour if I didn’t.

“Cat, darling!” Agnes effervesced. “How are you? Lars and I had such a fabulous time at Keith’s concert last night, and then we wake up to this torturous news. Torturous! And Melody was your friend! I am so sorry, my dearest, dearest Cat.”

I loved Agnes, but maybe not so much this early in the morning. A little of Agnes went a long way, and I wondered how Lars could stay focused around her. Lars was Agnes’s tall, young, dark and very fit, assistant and driver. Some time ago several state troopers in Kentucky had appealed to a certain judge to take Agnes’s drivers license away. The judge readily complied. Now Lars was a fixture in Agnes’s life and was a (somewhat) steadying influence. Although at seventy, I had a feeling that Agnes was who she was, and not much about her could be steadied.

“I still can’t believe that Melody is gone,” I said, sitting on my bed. “I hadn’t known her that long, but it was as if we were long lost sisters . . . Agnes, I don’t know what to do.”

“Now, now, dear. You go on being wonderful you! That’s what she would want, isn’t it?”

Agnes was right. Melody would not want sadness. She would want her friends to celebrate her life. Still, it was hard to lose someone I cared so much about.

“I have an idea!” Agnes’s voice sang through the phone. I’d almost forgotten she was there. “Maybe we can stage a séance. Sally can lead it. Or . . . too many people there at once might confuse Sally. Maybe just a private reading. I bet my big, beautiful Sally Blue can get in touch with Melody on the other side. Hmmm. I wonder if horses can be taught to deal tarot cards. Cat dear? Do you think you can teach Sally to shuffle a deck of cards?”

“Maybe scatter them by blowing on them hard,” I replied. Then I caught myself. Was I really having this conversation? I smiled in spite of myself. Maybe Agnes was having me on.

“Agnes, you’ve really cheered me up. Thanks so much . . . Agnes? Are you still there?”

“Oh yes, dear. I had you on mute, as I was asking Lars to order Sally a deck of tarot cards. Large print I think, don’t you?”

Okay. Maybe Agnes wasn’t having me on. What in the world was I going to do with a deck of large print tarot cards?

After we hung up I spoke with Davis, who had news that he delivered without much emotion. “You’ll hear about it soon,” he said, “but it does look as if Melody was murdered.”

The news hit me like a punch to the stomach. “Murdered?” That was the only word I could manage.

“We don’t know who yet,” he said, “or the where, or the why, or exactly when. The how looks like she drowned, but there are marks on her neck that suggest she was held under water.”

“She was the nicest, sweetest person anyone could ever know.” I felt my Irish temper building up and made an effort to dampen it back down. I have a teensy anger management issue that sometimes gets the best of me. “Who,” I asked after a calming breath, “would want to kill her?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He sounded both distant and distracted.

My phone dinged and I read a text from Buffy that said there was going to be a press conference soon, in front of the Cheatham County Courthouse. Did I want to go? Yes, but I was too much on edge and didn’t trust myself not to make a scene. I felt like throwing up. But I didn’t. Instead, I ended the call with Davis, focused my anger, and started to plan.

B
EFORE
I
DID ANYTHING
I needed to take care of some horse business, so I called my dear friend Annie Zinner. Tomorrow was the day she and her husband Tony were delivering a horse to us.

I had lobbied Gusher Black, the horse’s owner, at the recent world championships and was quite excited that the horse was coming to my barn. I had first met Gusher at a world championship show a few years back. Jon and I were sitting in the stands one morning and made positive comments about a yearling filly. Turned out she just happened to belong to the guy sitting behind us.

Gusher and I talked at each major show from then on. He was a short, stout man who’d made it big in the oil business on his own. He had an ego that he could barely contain under his ten-gallon hat, and was the kind of man who’d settle for nothing less than the best. Despite all that, he was likeable. Agnes flirted with him shamelessly and I think had hopes that Gusher could become husband number four. Even though he was a good fifteen years younger than Agnes, he flirted shamelessly back, so shamelessly that I knew I’d see a screen door on a submarine long before I’d see a marriage between those two.

This particular horse of Gusher’s was a coming five-year-old gelding who had won his halter class at the world championships as a weanling, then won his silver medallion this year in racing. The four areas of competition––performance, halter, distance trail, and racing––made up the Appaloosa Horse Club’s medallion system. Only a handful of horses in history had won a medallion in each category and Gusher planned to make his horse the next one.

As part of his plan, the horse had to win a national or world championship performance class, or be the top horse in the nation in terms of points for a given class. Gusher thought the Southeast was a less intense place to bring his horse along and earn points, than the tough Texas and Oklahoma circuit. I was thrilled to get the new addition, but knew I also had to deliver.

“We’re fixing to get an early start, should be in about five,” Annie said, interrupting my thoughts. “Don’t make dinner now, I’m bringing something special.”

I smiled. Annie was a great cook and I, for one, could use a good meal. We’d all been running on pizza, hot chocolate, and stress since Melody disappeared.

In the barn, Jon and I decided to give Petey a day off to process his lessons from earlier in the week. Besides, it was Saturday, and although Darcy planned to spend the day with her dad, she could pop into the barn at any time. No way was I going to spoil her surprise.

Jon decided to pull Gigi out of her double stall. Gigi belonged to Mason Whitcomb, Darcy’s dad, and had won several national and world championship titles already. “Glamour Girl” was a total space cadet, so we were giving her some time off from the show ring. Jon wanted to teach her to drive. She wasn’t yet two years of age, and even though many young horses did well being driven, I hadn’t been sure Gigi would be one of them.

Gigi, however, had surprised me. Of course, she adored Jon and thought the sun and moon rose and set in him. Me, she more or less tolerated. I was glad that Jon was so interested in driving, as he had no interest in riding. It wasn’t that he couldn’t ride, it just wasn’t his thing.

Today, Jon put a sidepull and a surcingle on Gigi and was trying to get her directional with the long reins. They were doing well, even though I could see that Gigi was bothered by the surcingle. Basically, it was a wide strap that wrapped around her back and belly. It also had large metal rings on it to slide reins through. Wearing a surcingle was also a good way for a horse to get used to the cinch or girth on a saddle.

The session did not last long, mostly because Gigi has the attention span of a flea. Jon may be right, I mused. If Gigi had something to think about, maybe she’d be a little less bouncy in her stall. I always worried that she’d bang into something and hurt herself, even though we had tacked heavy gym mats to her walls.

By ten o’clock I had returned to the house. Darcy and Bubba hadn’t stirred so I bounced them out of bed and got them going. I called a few clients while the two squabbled over what was left of the Alpha-Bits and milk. My breakfast had consisted of the rest of last night’s pizza, so at least I’d saved them from battling over that.

After Darcy left for her dad’s, Jon and Bubba went out to fix a few broken fence boards. Gigi was the culprit, of course. But, by the time I got back out to the barn, Jon was teaching Bubba to ground drive Bob. I smiled. It was good for Bob to be doing something, as his owner recently retired him from the show ring. Bob was a wonderfully consistent western and English pleasure gelding. Walk, trot, and lope around the ring nice and pretty until all the other horses bobbled a step or made some other grievous mistake. Bob was too concerned about his performance to ever commit a bobble, so he won. A lot.

But, Bob had done all he could in the show ring, and Doc Williams didn’t want to campaign him anymore, so the horse’s future was in limbo. Doc didn’t want to sell him, so we had to find a good solution. One just hadn’t popped up in front of my face yet. I loved Bob, but my trainer’s finances didn’t allow me to convert a horse who had been a source of income for me to one I had to pay for.

I had been restless all morning. Without understanding why, I waved at Jon and Bubba, and told them I had errands to run. Then I hopped in the truck and headed for Melody’s as I listened to Garth Brooks sing about “the thang they call rodeo.”

I almost couldn’t get to Melody’s house, though, as the narrow lane was packed with cars. By the time I got to her front gate I could see dozens of fans milling around, along with a few news trucks. WSMV, our NBC affiliate, as was there, as was WKRN, Nashville’s ABC station. Their satellite dishes had been raised high, so they were probably transmitting. I made a mental note to avoid them.

The front of Melody’s fence had been covered with cut flowers, stuffed animals, and posters. The sight brought tears to my eyes but I refused to let them fall. My previous anger simmered back to the surface and I vowed that whoever did this to her would see justice. Melody deserved that. I wiggled my truck into a spot just past Melody’s house and saw Buffy pull into a spot three spaces ahead.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Will you help me pick out burial clothes? Melody’s family is coming in from Arkansas and Davis thought it would be good if we had most of the arrangements in place before they got here. We haven’t seen a copy of her will, but he believes he is her executor.”

We squeezed through the crowd and worked our way to Melody’s front gate, which Davis and I had locked on Thursday when we left. So much had happened since then, it seemed a year ago, rather than just a few days.

I started to pull out my key, but Buffy already had one. “Davis,” was all she said. I nodded. As soon as she started to unlock the gate, fans and media alike realized we must be people who knew something, and they rushed in. The crowd was suffocating and I began to get knocked around. I looked around wildly for an escape. Before full panic set in though, Buffy pushed me through the gate and rammed it closed. A beefy guy with a Duck Dynasty beard and a florid face began to yell at us, and the rest of the crowd joined in. Through the melee, I saw a microphone floating on a long pole held high in the air. Then I spotted a man with a network video camera in the crook of a tree across the little street.

My mouth flapped open, but for once words would not come out.

“Ignore them,” Buffy said, pulling me around the corner of Melody’s house and onto the back porch. “Will this key open the back door, too?” she asked.

I didn’t know. I was still breathing too hard and was too shaken up to know much of anything. I could easily have been trampled.

Buffy stuck the key into the slot, and when she turned it, Melody’s back door eased open. A flood of relief enveloped me and we rushed inside. Buffy locked the door and slid the dead bolt, and we both hurried to close the blinds in all the rooms. Then we collapsed onto the sofa. Actually, I was a little surprised that the sofa was still there. Maybe the movers could not get in last Thursday if Melody was not there to open the door for them.

“That was intense,” she said.

“I didn’t expect all those people to be here,” I said. “I just came over because I didn’t know what else to do.”