Hoofprints (Gail McCarthy series) (10 page)

I brushed the ground where we had walked with the branch. When I was done the footprints were gone and the dirt showed the same tracing of thin wavy lines.

Jeri didn't say anything. I walked back to the doorway.

"This is where I was standing when I bent to pick up a nail. Whoever shot at me stood over in that comer, behind the stack of wood, while I was standing here, lit up by my own flashlight. It was a sure shot, if he could shoot at all. Except that I bent over to pick up a nail." I shook my head. "Chance." It was deeply disturbing to think that without his or her bad luck, my body could be lying in the dirt where we were standing.

Jeri watched me quietly. When the silence grew, she nodded and gave a final assessing look at the barn. "We'll check for spent shells," she said, "but anyone who'd brush away the footprints would probably pick those up. I'll have a couple of the crime-scene boys come up here this afternoon, dust for fingerprints, and look around, but I don't have much hope."

We both turned and started back through the redwood grove. Under the trees, she stopped, staring upward to their distant green crowns. Then she turned her head to me. "Your story looks a little odd, you know."

I'd been thinking the same thing. "I know. I know. There isn't much here to support it. I could easily have made it all up. And you don't have to tell me-I already thought of a few good reasons why I might have."

"On the other hand," she said, "there's nothing here to make me think it couldn't have happened as you described it. Why? That's the question."

I didn't have an answer.

We spent a few minutes peering through the cabin windows. It was obviously deserted, with dustcovers draping the furniture and the look of a place that hadn't been disturbed in a long time. Jeri checked the door to make sure it was locked and studied the nail on the door. I mentioned that it was one thing in support of my story. Jeri didn't comment.

We made the drive back along the coast without talking, and I felt a trace of that tension you feel when you go out for the first time and wonder, at the end of the evening, if he does or doesn't want to kiss you. When we were back at the county building, Jeri met my eyes. "Thanks, Gail," she said awkwardly. "If you think of anything else that could help, let me know."

Still wondering what had prompted this new current of friendliness, I nodded. "I will."

She hesitated, seemed about to say something more, and then raised her eyebrows briefly. "I'd like to solve this case."

EIGHT

When I got back to the office, Gina Gianelli was waiting for me in the parking lot. She had a gray horse tied to her trailer and an anxious look on her face; in a flash I remembered our odd conversation of the night before-subsequent events had driven it out of my mind.

"He's a bridle horse, a good one. Tony found him for me; he belongs to some friends of his and they're selling him to me cheap. I just want to get him vetted."

I winced inwardly. Vet checks were not my favorite activity, especially not on performance horses that would be used hard and needed to stay sound. I had the impulse to flunk the horse without even looking at him.

Stifling the chickenhearted thought, I walked over to the animal in question. He was standing quietly by the trailer, a gray gelding with a compact appearance and a plain head. Gina untied him and I got down to the business of feeling his legs, looking in his mouth and eyes, and listening to his heart. All routine.

His legs had plenty of knots and bumps and showed the signs of a hard life. That wasn't surprising. Bridle horses take a pounding, physically, particularly their legs and feet. I couldn't find anything that definitely looked like it might cripple him.

His teeth showed him to be eleven years old, as he was supposed to be, and it appeared he could see out of both his eyes. His heart rate was strong and even, his lungs clean. No problems there. I sighed.

"Okay, let's jog him in some circles," I told Gina.

This was the difficult part. What clients really wanted to know when they paid for a pre-purchase exam was-will this horse stay sound for a reasonable period of time? Say two years. The trouble was there was no way to answer that question. I could tell, most of the time, if the horse was sound today, and I could tell, some of the time, if the horse was liable to go lame in the near future. But tell if he'd stay sound for a few years? There were no guarantees.

The worse aspect of this was a veterinarian's nightmare. Pass a horse with no obvious problem, have him come up dead lame in a week with something incurable like navicular disease-a degeneration of a small bone in the foot-and face a furious client who's convinced you should have seen it. Sometimes you should have. Other times it's something nobody could have seen. Either way, you look like a fool. The only safe way to handle pre-purchase exams was to flunk every horse that came along. That way you'd never be blamed. On the other hand, people might catch on after awhile.

Gina trotted the gray gelding in circles to the right and the left and my heart lifted a little. The horse looked sound. I flexed all his joints, did the spavin test, jogged him some more, and he still looked sound.

I shot the X rays, put them in the developer, and went back outside. Gina was standing there holding the horse's lead rope and looking uncomfortable. I patted the gelding's shoulder.

"What's the real difference between a bridle horse, like this guy, and a cutting horse, like my friend Casey Brooks used to train?" I asked her.

Gina's face relaxed instantly. "A bridle horse is a reined cowhorse; it's a style of working cattle that was developed here in California by the vaqueros. We train them to be real 'broke in the face'-it's like having power steering. It takes years; we start them out in the snaffle bit, then move on to the hackamore, then at six years old or so, a horse is put in a full-on bridle with a bit. A good bridle horse will spin a hole in the ground or slide a mile at the lightest touch of the reins."

"So how are cutting horses different?"

"Cutting comes from Texas-cowboys back there didn't get their horses broke this way at all; they just put a bit in their mouth and started them working cattle. Cutting horses work the cow on their own; you don't steer them. Reined cow horses-bridle horses, hackamore horses-work a cow under your direction. That's the main difference."

Gina's face was animated as she talked and she looked a lot more like the Gina I was used to. Her lined and weathered skin, faded blue eyes, and graying hair showed all the signs of a life spent out in the sun and wind on the back of a horse, but normally, she had a vitality-a life force, if you will-that made her, to my eyes anyway, very appealing.

Oh ho, I thought, so it was Tony who was the problem. Gina seemed unwilling or unable to tell me what was on her mind; she pushed a few strands of improbable corkscrew curls off her forehead and stared at the gray gelding as if he might hold the answer. The newly hectic curls, brilliant blue eye shadow on her lids, and tightly fitted and ruffled lavender blouse all gave silent testimony to Tony's current influence on her life. Why, I wondered again, had she gotten involved with that jerk.

Now, Gail, I answered myself, maybe she was lonely. Weren't you lonely before you got involved with Lonny? A little sometimes, I had to admit. But never so much that I would have traded my independence for the company of just any man. And absolutely never for a coyote like Tony.

Gina finally turned her eyes back to me. "Can I tell you this in confidence?"

Now it was my turn to ponder. "Within reason," I said at last. "I mean, if you know who killed Cindy and Ed Whitney and you want me to keep it a secret, I won't." Particularly if it was Tony, I added to myself.

"No, no, it's nothing like that," Gina reassured me, but she still looked unhappy. "It's just that Cindy called me, the day before ... the day before she was killed, I guess."

My instincts were prickling. "What did she say?"

"Not very much, really. But she was upset. She said she might not be able to make it to the show at Salinas, and she asked me if I'd be willing to show Plumber in the non-pro hackamore class for her."

"And?"

"I said I would, since I'll be over there to show my mare in the bridle-horse class, anyway." Gina looked down. "But I had to call her back and tell her I couldn't."

"Why was that?"

She still wouldn't meet my eyes. "Tony didn't want me to. He's showing a hackamore horse this year and his horse and Cindy's horse are running neck and neck for the year-end championship. He didn't want me to help Cindy."

Sounded like Tony Ramiro-true to form. "Is Tony living around here now?" I asked curiously.

"He's living with me," Gina said, almost defensively, though with a kind of shy pride, too. "He moved his horse training operation to my place a month ago."

"Oh." I tried not to look as nonplussed as I felt. After all, maybe Tony and Gina were simply in love; it happens to the best and the worst of us. But somehow I couldn't shake the notion that Tony was always looking out for number one, and Gina was neither glamorously beautiful nor fabulously rich. Her place, an old dairy she'd inherited from her Swiss Italian father, was an adequate spot for a person to train a few horses as a hobby, but it certainly wasn't fixed up as a fancy training barn. Gina herself made a living driving a school bus; she was hardly in a position to support Tony in luxury. Still, Gina's small ranch was probably paid for; if Tony had fallen on hard times this might be the best deal he could arrange.

Gina was talking slowly, her eyes still averted from my face. "I know I ought to tell the sheriff's department about that phone call, Gail, but Tony doesn't want me to. He didn't want me to tell even you; we fought about it last night, after we ran into you."

"Why?"

"He's got this crazy idea the cops will suspect him," Gina admitted miserably, "because of the year-end awards competition between the horse he's showing and Cindy's horse."

My mind was clicking like a laser printer. If Tony truly had fallen on hard times as a trainer, maybe he really needed this year-end award to reestablish his reputation. Maybe that was a motive, who could say? But, and this was the interesting part, Tony had known Gina wanted to talk to me, had known it before I got shot at. Tony had a motive, of sorts, for shooting at me.

"Was Tony home last night?" I asked Gina, idly, I hoped.

"No. Like I told you, we got in a big fight, never made it to the movie, and I took a cab home. I haven't seen him since."

"He didn't come home at all, then?"

"No." Gina looked completely miserable now, her bright makeup garish on her anxious face. "Gail, I don't know what to do. I know Tony didn't kill the Whitneys, but I ought to go down and talk to the sheriffs, and I'm afraid he'll leave me if I do. Maybe he already has."

"Do you want me to tell the sheriffs for you?"

Gina looked half-panic-stricken, half-relieved. "I don't know. Can it wait one day? Let me see if he comes home; let me talk to him."

The X rays, when I got them out, proved inconclusive. I showed them to Gina and explained. "His navicular bones have a lot of changes; see these little shadows on them. Those are signs of bone deterioration. A horse with changes in his bones like this could easily be lame. Every horse is different, though. Since this one is sound now, it's a hard call to make. Some horses have X rays that look a lot worse than this and yet they stay sound. Others look a lot better and go lame."

Gina sighed. "It figures. Now I don't know what to do about this, either. What do you think?"

I shook my head. "There's no way I can make a guess on whether he'll stay sound unless you can show me some X rays from a year or so ago. Then we could see if the disease was progressing."

"Under the circumstances, I don't really like to ask. His owners are friends of Tony's; they told me he was sound. They don't even know I'm vetting him."

"Okay. Well, maybe I'll talk to Jim. He's had a lot more experience than I have. I'll show him these X rays and tell him about the horse when he gets in."

"Thanks, Gail. We'll talk about that other deal tomorrow, I promise."