Lead a Horse to Murder (7 page)

“Of course, Inez. Don’t let me keep you.”

My interest in the emotional entanglements here at Heatherfield aside, I once again found myself with no one to talk to. I decided to find Mr. MacKinnon, report on Braveheart’s improvement, and get on my way.

I studied the crowd in the spacious living room more carefully, then eased into the dining room to continue my search. I didn’t see Andrew MacKinnon anywhere. After depositing my half-drunk iced tea on a tray of empties, I wandered down a short hallway that was lined with oil paintings of men and women with severe expressions and hardened eyes. At the end was the kitchen, an enormous room that was easily as large as most restaurant kitchens I’d seen. The walls were painted a pale yellow, while the curtains and cushions were covered in a deep rust-colored fabric printed with small sprigs of flowers, capturing the look of Provence—or at least an interior designer’s interpretation of it. Huge cabinets, painted white, hung from the ceiling, the glass panels revealing so many bowls, plates, and glasses that I wondered if the catering service had bothered to bring its own. There were several sinks, interspersed among colossal refrigerators, industrial-looking stainless steel stoves, and more counter space than most diners.

I expected that the crowd would have spilled into this room, like most of the parties I go to. Instead, I saw only one person. Her back was to me, but I could see she was bent over a large tray of cookies, grabbing handfuls and stuffing them into her mouth so quickly that I suspected even my dogs would have been impressed.

I was about to sneak back out when I heard the loud clicking of high heels against the ceramic tile floor right behind me.

“Callie, what is
wrong
with you?” the woman teetering on top of them demanded shrilly. She was tall and excruciatingly thin, dressed in a clingy black dress that anyone who’d ever eaten even a single French fry would find impossible to wear. Her smooth black hair, cut perfectly blunt, just skimmed her shoulders. Her features were delicate, complemented by a great deal of makeup that had been applied with an expert hand. I noticed that even with her life-endangering shoes, she was doing an excellent job of balancing a very large glass of something clear and brown. “Honestly, sometimes I think you
want
to be fat—that it’s your selfish, malicious way of making me miserable!”

The cookie snatcher whirled around, still clutching some of her booty in her fists. She was a teenager, I saw, a chubby girl of fourteen or fifteen whose face was twisted into an angry snarl. The coarse, dark blond hair that streamed down her back looked as if it could use a good brushing, a strange contrast to the well-made but unflattering dark blue skirt and top she’d been stuffed into.

“It’s always about you, Mother, isn’t it?” the teenager returned angrily. “Everything in the entire universe is—”

She stopped, having just noticed that an interloper— me—had barged in on what was clearly meant to be a private mother-daughter moment.

“Don’t you
knock
before you enter a room?” Callie barked, turning her fury on me.

“I’m sorry,” I replied sincerely, my cheeks burning. “I—I was looking for Mr. MacKinnon.”

“Figures Dad would just disappear, even on a day like this,” Callie complained.

“Funny, him doing his usual disappearing act doesn’t bother me at all,” the girl’s mother mused. “But I suppose I have the magical powers of bourbon to thank for that.” She held up her glass and peered into it admiringly. “But we haven’t met, have we? I’m Jillian MacKinnon. The so-called lady of the house.”

“I’m Jessica Popper,” I told her, relieved that, at least for the moment, we were all back to addressing each other civilly. “I’m a veterinarian. I came to look at one of your horses.”

“You mean one of
Andrew’s
horses,” she corrected me acidly. “And this is my lovely daughter Callie, who’ll do anything in her power to break her mother’s heart.”

The withering look she cast her daughter was thrown right back at her.

“I can see you two are in the middle of something,” I said, “so I’ll just—”

“You’re more than welcome to stay,” Jillian countered. “In fact, I’d welcome your opinion, as an objective observer. If you were a fourteen-year-old girl who had grown up in total luxury, surrounded by every possible advantage and opportunity, yet you insisted on becoming your own worst enemy by stuffing every morsel of food you came across into your face—”

“Moth-er!” Callie screamed. “I hate you!” She flounced across the room, stopping only to grab a large dish of dainty, pastel-colored cakes the size of postage stamps and carry it out through the door with her.

Jillian turned to me and shrugged. “My advice to you? Have your tubes tied—
now,
before it’s too late.”

She turned away, picking up a bottle off the kitchen counter and refilling her glass. “If you really are interested in finding my husband—and frankly, I can’t imagine why you would be—he’s probably hiding in one of two places, his study or the stable. As I’m always telling my friends, if it’s not related to either money or a horse, don’t expect Andrew to have the slightest interest in it.” She laughed, a raw, unpleasant sound, then gulped down a large portion of her drink.

“Thanks. I’ll check the study.” I slunk out of there as quickly as I could, my cheeks still burning. From what I’d seen so far, Andrew MacKinnon’s wife was drinking herself silly and his daughter was eating herself into oblivion. And to think that, at least from the outside, the members of this family looked as if they had everything anyone could possibly want.

I headed down the hallway I remembered led to the study. But as I neared the open door, I froze. Loud voices, coming from inside, warned me that this might not be the best time to poke my head in.

“Damn it, Winston!” I heard Andrew MacKinnon shout. “Just stay out of this. None of it has anything to do with you!”

“Nothing to do with me?” a voice I didn’t recognize shot back indignantly. The man it belonged to had a distinct British accent. “Andrew, my good man, we’re talking about a
great
deal of money!”

Goodness,
I thought, startled.
Can’t
anybody
in this
household get along?

“Keep your voice down!” MacKinnon hissed back. “All we need is for the wrong person to overhear—”

“I certainly agree with you there,” the stranger replied. “Perhaps this is something that’s best left to the legal system to sort out.”

“No!” MacKinnon barked. “That’s the last thing we want. But we can’t have this discussion now, Winston. Eduardo is
dead,
for God’s sake. Please, let’s talk about this some other time.”

I blinked, intrigued by their words but reluctant to get caught eavesdropping. And it sounded as if their little argument was over, at least for the moment. I turned and began to creep away, anxious to disappear into the crowd in the living room.

But before I could make it that far, the British-accented voice called after me, “Excuse me, miss. Is there something I can help you with?”

Chapter 4

“He who said he made a small fortune in the horse business probably started out with a large fortune!”

—Unknown

turned, trying to look as if I hadn’t overheard any of the unpleasantness that had just transpired between the two men. The one whose voice I hadn’t recognized, a tall, slender gentleman—Winston, MacKinnon had called him—stood in the hallway, peering at me. His white hair and slightly stooped posture placed him somewhere in his seventies. Yet I got the feeling he had yet to let any of his standards slip, as indicated by his jaunty paisley-patterned burgundy bow tie and the matching silk handkerchief protruding from the breast pocket of his jacket.

“I was looking for Mr. MacKinnon,” I said. “But if this is a bad time—”

“You might as well let him decide,” Winston replied, glancing at the doorway wearily. He sighed, patting his jacket as if he was trying to smooth out more than just the wrinkles in the gabardine.

“Is that you, Dr. Popper?” MacKinnon called from inside the study. “Come in, come in. I’m anxious to talk to you.”

Winston hurried past me, muttering to himself, as I strode into the study.

The dark mood lingering in the air stood in strange contrast to the room’s peaceful décor.

Andrew MacKinnon was dressed better than the last time I’d seen him, sporting a coat and tie that he didn’t look particularly comfortable in but which was certainly appropriate to the occasion. But his ruddy face had a flushed look. Probably the result of both the argument he’d just had and the large, nearly empty tumbler in his hand. I wondered if perhaps Jillian wasn’t the only member of the MacKinnon clan who belonged to the Frequent Drinker Club.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. MacKinnon,” I told him. “I know this is a bad time—”

“I’m anxious to hear how Braveheart is doing,” he replied. Speaking more to himself than to me, he added, “Frankly, I could use some good news.”

“Braveheart is doing wonderfully, but I’d like him to take it easy for another week or so. I’ll check back then and see how he’s feeling. In the meantime, Johnny Ray knows what to do.”

“Excellent,” he mumbled. “He’s quite a horse.”

“Yes, he is,” I said sincerely. “I’ll be on my way now. I’m sure you—”

“Don’t go,” he insisted. “Actually, it would be rather refreshing to spend some time with someone who’s not part of the usual crowd. What can I get you to drink?” He headed toward a wooden armoire that was crowded with bottles and glasses.

I struggled to come up with an excuse, then realized that MacKinnon really did seem to want some company. “Thank you, but I’m fine.”

“Nonsense. At least let me make you a G-and-T.” Silently I accepted the gin and tonic I didn’t really want. I held it politely, hoping he wouldn’t notice I wasn’t actually drinking it.

Fortunately, he seemed to have forgotten I was in the room. “This is a terrible, terrible thing,” he said, lowering himself into a chair and staring off into the distance. “Imagine, Eduardo
murdered
. I can’t understand it. The man was one of a kind. A true prince.”

I followed his gaze to a group of photographs artfully arranged on an end table. Most were shots of Andrew MacKinnon and the other three members of his polo team. With both hands he proudly held a large silver trophy. All four were dressed in the uniform of the game: white stretch pants, high black boots, and baggy polo shirts in the same shade of dark blue. A few of the other photographs captured the men on horseback, their expressions earnest as they leaned forward to take a whack at the ball.

But one of the pictures was larger than the rest. It was a framed photograph of an astonishingly handsome man I surmised was Eduardo. This was the first good look at his face I’d gotten. He had an irresistibly rugged look: the well-proportioned facial features of a movie star, set off by tanned skin and a roguish five o’clock shadow and framed by thick, wavy black hair. Intense dark brown eyes, lit up by a teasing glint, stared out at the camera. I also noticed a few tiny scars, no doubt souvenirs of all the time he spent on the polo field.

“He was also one hell of an athlete,” MacKinnon went on. “I suppose you’re aware he was a ten-goal player.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. I know horses, but I don’t know polo.”

“Then let me give you a crash course.” His face relaxed into a smile for the first time since I’d come into the room. “Being ranked a ten-goal player means you’ve been given the highest possible rating. At the beginning of every year, the United States Polo Association rates every polo player with a handicap from minus two to ten. The scores are supposedly based on a number of factors, like horsemanship and sportsmanship and even the quality of his horses. But when you come right down to it, the bottom line is how well someone actually plays.

“Often, especially in higher-goal games, a polo team is formed by someone like me who’s enthralled with the game and has the means to hire three other players. They’re usually Argies—Argentines—because they happen to be the best polo players in the world. There are exceptions, of course, a few Americans and the occasional South African who sneaks into the ranks of the ten-goal players. I have an American playing for me right now. Scott Mooney. Helluva guy—and a seven-goal player. To rank the team, you add up rankings of all four players.

“The patrons,” he continued, “those men of means I mentioned, pay their teammates an annual salary, just like any employee. I suppose you’ve already heard the rumor that I paid Eduardo a million dollars a year.”

I gasped, then immediately tried to hide my astonishment. “No, I hadn’t heard that.”

“It’s one of the few rumors floating around that happens to be true. That wasn’t always the case, of course. When I first brought him up here from Argentina, he was still pretty green.”

“So you’re the one who discovered him.”

“Exactly right.” MacKinnon paused to take a sip of whiskey. The sip turned into four or five. “I still remember the first time I laid eyes on him. In fact, it seems like yesterday.” His voice had become soft, and his eyes had a faraway look. I couldn’t tell if he was reacting to the memory—or the whiskey in his glass.

“It was a cool morning in April, so early that the sun was barely up. I was visiting a horse farm outside of Buenos Aires, trying to decide whether or not to buy a particular horse. The Argies are the best horse breeders in the world, as far as I’m concerned. The best horse trainers, too. Eduardo was still a kid—fifteen, sixteen. But I saw him out in a field, riding the horse I was interested in. He was just playing around, stick-and-balling with some of his buddies. But what a sight!” He chuckled. “To this day, the guy who ran the farm swears he didn’t set the whole thing up. And to this day I don’t believe him.

“I bought the horse, of course. I wasn’t about to let Eduardo go, either. I could see he was a natural. His power in handling that animal, the graceful way he moved, that rare combination of strength and coordination that makes the whole thing look so easy . . .”