Hoofprints (Gail McCarthy series) (4 page)

I'd known Bret since we were children; we'd grown up together as neighbors, and somehow our friendship, casual, undefined, and unlikely, had stood the test of time. Maybe because I was impervious to his sexual charms. Most women, however, weren't.

Cindy had been no exception. Bret was one of her favorites. She had met him somewhere-everybody had. Bret had become a fixture in the local horse world. He shod horses, rode colts from time to time, did spells of work for various horse trainers, always quitting in the end. He left town for long periods-he'd been gone for the last two months-and then reappeared. From what I understood, he'd been a blackjack dealer in Tahoe, a cowboy on a high desert ranch in Nevada, and a logger up near Yosemite, among other things. Now and then he would drop a quick comment about where he'd been and what he'd done, but in general he was uncommunicative about his other lives. Bret lived in the here and now.

"I didn't know you were in town," I said.

"Got in yesterday," he answered automatically. He didn't volunteer anything more, and I could see his mind was still somewhere else.

It would have been typical of Bret to have gone to Cindy's house right away. He often visited her, and I understood that the kind of free and easy hospitality she delivered had suited him right down to the ground. In the same way, his instant, playful charm had suited her. They had had, I thought, a mutually beneficial relationship. Bret kept Cindy from getting bored, and Cindy provided Bret with lots of free meals and all the beer he wanted. For a drifter like Bret, these were the essentials.

People had speculated about Cindy and Bret-how close they were, whether there was more than flirtation between them, but I thought such speculations were misplaced. Bret's emotions were buried deep, not hanging on his sleeve where people could get a grip on them. At the most, I guessed that Bret had been mildly fond of Cindy; whether he'd slept with her was an open question, but he wouldn't suffer much grief over her-certainly not over Ed. Ed hadn't been crazy about Bret; I expected few husbands were. For his part, Bret had always been unwilling to act very impressed about Ed's money.

In fact, I realized I wasn't sure what Bret felt about the Whitneys; to be honest, I wasn't even sure what he felt about me. Bret was of the same nature as a big tiger tomcat who had come to live with me for six months while I was in college. Aloof and independent, he had charmed me when he felt like it with his big yellow eyes and his purrs, then moved out abruptly and finally; I never knew why. Had he used me; was he fond of me? Such questions seem ridiculous when asked of cats, but they applied to Bret.

"Where'd you stay last night?" I asked him, remembering that his last home in Santa Cruz had been with a long departed girlfriend.

He looked at me intently and I knew I was on the track to that thing his unfocused eyes had been seeing. "No," he said. "But it was kind of strange why I didn't."

He glanced around the back room as if seeing it for the first time. The white counters covered with books, papers, medicines, and machines. The orderly mess. A female tech in a lab coat sat at the other end of a long counter, looking in a microscope. Bret studied her carefully, the speculative look he gave all women, before turning back to me.

"Let's go have lunch. Little Mexico?"

"Sure."

I had already checked out for the day. It was just a question of getting out of the office before someone called in and the receptionist came back and cornered me. "Come on," I told him, "we'd better get if we're going."

Bret drove us to Little Mexico in his truck, the cab crowded with a rolled-up sleeping bag, three or four brown paper bags full of clothes, a couple of coats, and half a dozen empty beer cans. Everything smelled like Skoal-mint green tobacco-and unwashed clothes.

At the restaurant, he moved instantly to sit on the deck. It was sunny and almost hot out there, and we ate tortilla chips with a spicy salsa that had big chunks of peppers in it. Bret thought we ought to drink margaritas.

Leaning back in my chair, I watched his eyes drift around and felt a familiar half-annoyed amusement. They were the eyes of a burglar checking a house for valuables to steal; Bret was looking for women to hustle. He was perfectly capable of spotting one he liked, striking up a conversation with her, and trying to talk me into finding my own way back to the office. At times like that, I wondered what I was doing with him; his carefree irresponsibility often verged into irritating selfishness. To be fair, I supposed my dogged I've-gotta-make-a-living-attitude bored him to death. Common childhood memories probably didn't hurt, or maybe it was just old habits dying hard.

One thing was for sure; Bret never threatened my sense of independence. A secretive, private person himself, he shied away instantly at the merest hint that anyone might cling to him. Evasion of intimacy was his forte.

I took a sip of my margarita-icy, head-tightening cold. Little Mexico made the best margaritas in town, not sweet at all, with a faint background of lime and a kick like a mule. Resting my chin in my hand, I studied Bret's expression. Despite the fact that margaritas in the sunshine were one of his favorite things, his usual half-cocked grin was missing. "I can't prove where I was last night, Gail," he said slowly, not looking at me. "And when the police find out that I was at Cindy's yesterday, they're going to start wondering."

"Were you planning on spending the night at Cindy's?" I asked him, feeling a renewed sense of foreboding.

"I was thinking about it, but Ed threw me out." His eyes met mine across the table. "I don't like to say it, now that he's been killed, but the son of a bitch got in some kind of jealous fit and told me to get out."

He sucked his margarita and stared off into the trees along Soquel Creek, and I knew he wasn't seeing the ducks floating on the water. "It was funny how he did it, though. I could have sworn it was all an act, that he wasn't really mad. He wanted me out of there all right, but I don't think he was really jealous. It doesn't make sense. I've been friends with Cindy for years, and he doesn't say a word. We know we don't like each other, but so what? I don't think anybody really liked that asshole, anyway. I come back to town after two months of being gone and he's suddenly jealous? Give me a break. No, it was something else, some other reason he wanted me out of there, and he made this big scene so I wouldn't stay."

Bret's eyes swung back to me with an uncharacteristic expression in them-worry. "I called you, but you weren't home. I couldn't think of anybody else where I could just drive in and ask to sleep on their floor, not right at the moment, so I pulled Big Red down this road I know. I've stayed there before. I just slept in the cab. It's a good thing I'm short." He grinned. "The question is, Are the police gonna believe all that, or are they gonna think I hung around and shot Ed and Cindy out of 'jealous rage'?" He shook his head. "I still can't believe they're dead."

I told him about finding the bodies and he expressed shock and fascinated interest. I'd gotten, I thought cynically, the audience I'd wanted. It was probably a natural human reaction-to distance the horror, make it less personal and threatening, but it still didn't seem right to me. Ed and Cindy were dead, and Bret and I were ordering enchiladas for lunch.

I told Bret about seeing the Walker in the garage and asked him, "Do you know anything about that guy?"

Bret grinned reflexively, his initial response to most questions. "Yeah," he said after a moment, "he was kind of a project of Cindy's. His name's Terry something. He walks around town---every day. You see him everywhere. Guy must be incredibly fit."

"I've seen him."

"So, anyway, I guess he walked by Cindy's every morning about the same time, when she was usually with the horse. She got the idea of trying to tame him, sort of-the guy." Bret flashed his eyes at me in an aren't-women-crazy look. "It sounds funny, but she told me he reminded her of a wild animal. She'd say hi to him all the time and eventually he'd say hi back and then he got where he'd come pet the horse, and the last morning I was over there before I left town, he actually came in the kitchen for a cup of coffee. He didn't talk much, at least not so's you'd understand, and he looked pretty skittish, but he obviously liked Cindy."

"Would he ever have hurt her, do you think?"

"How would I know? The guy had problems, that's for sure. Cindy told me he was a schizophrenic; lived in some board-and-care place over by the harbor-had a state check, you know. She didn't really know much about him; she just sort of took to him the way you'd take to a stray dog, I think."

A sense of remorse rushed over me at his words. Cindy, whom I had spoken of so lightly to the cops, over whose death I hadn't really grieved, had been kind enough to be sympathetic to the Walker. I'd never even bothered to say hi to him.

The waitress brought out our enchiladas at that point and conversation ceased. When we were done I said, "Now we're going to the sheriff's office."

He looked stubbornly reluctant when we pulled into the parking lot of the county building, an ugly multistoried gray cube of a structure on Ocean Street-a part of Santa Cruz I seldom saw. The street is one long row of fast-food restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations, and cheap motels-a tourist's route to the beach. Jammed with visiting cars in the summer, tawdry and depressing always, it's an area I avoid when I can.

They took Bret to the same room where they'd taken me. Sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a hall that echoed with the tapping feet of sheriff's deputies, I studied the green spotted linoleum, possibly the ugliest linoleum I'd ever seen. The cold white light from the fluorescent bulbs did nothing to improve it.

After awhile I stopped studying the linoleum and started studying the faces of the deputies who walked by. Mostly men, mostly young. One dark-haired and mustached type gave me a hi-pretty-lady smile. I smiled back-friendly but not inviting. That was my intent, anyway.

Time passed-slowly. There was a clock on the wall, put there, no doubt, to infuriate anyone waiting.

A door opened across the hall, and I looked up, eager for any diversion. A woman appeared in the doorway, followed by Detective Ward, who was politely holding the door open. The lady getting this courteous treatment was dressed in a black-and-white glen plaid business suit that was more than a match for Detective Ward's olive green outfit, and her shoulder-length blond-streaked hair fell in expensive looking layers about her face. It was a face that could have been attractive-mid-to late-thirties, pleasant, regular features-if it wasn't for the sharp, autocratic expression it wore. Her voice, which carried easily to where I was sitting, was as icy and authoritative as her face. "Detective Ward, I expect you to conduct this investigation along professional lines, certainly; but you will not pull any police procedure crap on me. My lawyer will be clear on that."

Jeri Ward's face was unperturbed and patient, but her body language was stiff. "Ms. Whitney, I, we, the sheriff's department, are not trying to 'pull' anything. We're trying to find out the facts."

"I'll have my lawyer speak to you."

The woman stalked off with a staccato tapping of high heels on linoleum, watched by me and everyone else in the hall. She didn't seem the least bit disconcerted. Her head was high on a long neck, her carriage confident, her emotions well under control. Everything about her said money, from the smooth waves of her hair down to what were no doubt Italian pumps on her feet. It didn't take a lot of brains to guess who she was. Ms. Whitney. One of Ed Whitney's relatives. One of the Whitneys.

Detective Ward was staring after her, too, her face deceptively quiet. I could guess what five-letter word was in her mind. She noticed me after a minute and walked over to my chair.

"Dr. McCarthy." She greeted me politely but distantly, and she looked, I thought, just a touch bedeviled. Her normally polished appearance seemed marred, ever so slightly, in comparison with the formidable Ms. Whitney, and her always-composed face held a trace of strain.

"Hello, Detective Ward."

"Did John Reeder call you back in?" she asked.

"No, a friend of mine came by to see me and I found out he'd been over at Ed and Cindy's yesterday. We decided he should come by here."

She seemed to withdraw slightly. "Your friend-is he being questioned right now?"

"I don't know. I assume so."

She was silent, and I wondered what to say. I wanted to ask about the woman but wasn't sure it was the thing to do. In the end, I decided to keep my mouth shut. Easier not to stick my foot in it that way.

Detective Ward focused back on me. "I'd like to see your friend before he leaves; I think I'll just check the interview room. If you think of anything about this case I should know, give me a call."

It was the friendliest tone I'd ever heard from her, and I risked a smile. "I'll do that."

"Thanks." She turned away abruptly and marched off down the corridor, leaving me to wonder if she really had ventured a smile in my direction or if it was just my imagination.

I waited almost an hour before Bret came back from the interview room, my stores of patience wearing thinner every minute. Detective Reeder was with him, bloodshot brown eyes as impassive as ever. Bret walked up to me quickly. "Come on, let's get out of here."