Racing the Devil (13 page)

“Everybody has some good points. Must’ve been some reason Amy married him.”

“Honey,” Birdie said, “love chooses who it chooses. I think she was looking for a daddy, if you want to know the truth. I don’t think those girls had much of a father figure, and I think Amy was just wanting somebody like Cal to come along and tell her what to do.”

“I reckon she found that.”

Ms. Birdie’s marmoset face grew still and sad. “I reckon she did. And it must have been a harsh blow for both of them when she realized she’d grown up and didn’t want to be told what to do anymore.”

I wondered if that was what had gotten her killed.

“Ms. Birdie,” I said. “Do you know if Cal was at home the night she died?”

She tapped at her front teeth with a fingernail and frowned. “Actually, he worked late that night. I know, because Amy sent the girls over here after supper. She’d gotten a phone call, and she had to go out and meet someone. So she sent them over here with a note asking if I’d keep them until she or Cal got home. I wish . . .”

I knew what she wished. That she’d somehow known, that she could have warned Amy to stay home with her daughters that night instead of rushing out to meet Death.

“Did she say who she was going to meet?”

“If she’d said, I would’ve told you.”

“And she never came home.”

“No,” Ms. Birdie said, softly. “She never did.”

THE NEXT MORNING
, when I went out to the barn, I found Tex on his back, cast against the wall of his stall, his eyes half closed and his sides heaving from exertion. He lifted his head and whickered when I said his name.

“Easy, boy.” I knelt beside him, stroked his neck. “What have you gotten yourself into?” I’d banked his bedding along the walls to keep this very thing from happening, but somehow he’d managed it anyway. His position and the scattered bedding meant he’d been thrashing, trying to push himself to his feet. One foreleg looked swollen. Injured tendon, maybe. Or something worse.

Damn.

I was six when Mom bought the palomino quarter horse for my brother and me. We climbed over him like lemurs, scrambled under his belly, rode him bareback, practiced trick riding, ran poles and barrels, and roped each other from his back. He never put a foot wrong, never bucked, never kicked, never so much as laid his ears back. He was as close to bombproof as a horse could get, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t crush my skull by accident.

A steady stream of soothing nonsense kept him calm as I reached across him, grasped his far legs, and gently rolled him toward me onto his side. There were safer ways to do it, and I should probably have used one of them, but I didn’t want to leave him there any longer than I had to. Besides, we’d trusted each other for a long time.

He gave me time to get out of his way before struggling to his feet. Then, breathing hard, he hobbled forward on three legs and rested his head on my shoulder.

I stroked his neck, led him to the wash bay, and hosed his leg with cold water. Then, while I was waiting for the vet, I called Information and got a number for Asa Majors.

His answering machine picked up, and I left my number and a message saying I was interested in a horse he’d worked with and wanted his opinion on it.

I knew the morning was a wash.

At one o’clock, after the vet had come and gone and the injured leg had been iced and bandaged, Jay brought out a couple of sandwiches and a pitcher of tea. We sat in the tack room and ate while Tex stood munching hay in his stall.

“How is he?” Jay asked.

“He’s damaged two tendons and the suspensory ligament in his right foreleg.”

“Will he be okay?”

“Maybe. But it’ll take time.” Time and work. Icing and bandaging twice a day. A couple of months of stall rest with hand-walking. Months more of limited turnout and gradually increasing exercise. And still no guarantees. “He may never be completely sound.”

Jay nodded, nibbled at the edge of his sandwich. After awhile, he said, “I’ve put out a few feelers on that insurance thing. Something should shake loose soon.”

“Good. Because I have a new assignment for you.”

He looked interested, so I went on.

“Hartwell’s first wife did a vanishing act. It’d be interesting to know if she’s alive and well somewhere or if she’s in an unmarked grave.”

“You do have a mind for the morbid.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s a gift.”

In his stall, Tex snorted, rattled his feed bucket.

“He’ll be all right,” Jay said, reading my mind. “Just give him time.”

Time. I hoped I had time. If I went to prison, who would hose down Tex’s leg and change his bandages? Who would hand-walk him twice a day? Who would keep Crockett trim and fit? Jay would be willing, but he was in and out of the hospital himself. Some days he was fine; others, he was weak as a kitten.

If I went to prison, who would take care of Jay?

And Paul. I wanted to teach him to hit a baseball, shoot a basketball, catch a fish. Instead, D.W. would do those things, and I would fade from my son’s memory like a summer fog.

I couldn’t go to prison.

Thinking dark thoughts, I dressed as Ian Callahan and drove to ValeSong Stables. I hadn’t found an opportunity to ask Valerie about Hartwell’s first wife, but I was sure she’d know the tale; it was the kind of story families whispered over the Thanksgiving dishes. I told myself that was my reason for going back. It had nothing to do with the little bay colt.

And nothing at all to do with the taste of Valerie Shepherd’s tongue.

Her red Chevy was pulling out as I neared the driveway. I passed by as if that had been my intent all along, rounded a bend that took me out of view, and hooked a U-turn in front of the tack shop.

I didn’t think Valerie had seen my car the last time I’d been there, but I kept my distance anyway, just in case. I almost lost her as she cut across two lanes to the Demonbreun exit. Holding my breath, I jerked the wheel to the right, darted into a space between two semis, bounced onto the ramp, and took a sharp left onto a small access road that curved onto Music Square.

By the time I started breathing again, the red Chevy had cruised to a stop in front of a glass-fronted building with sleek silver letters on the glass.
AudioStyle Recording Studio
, they said.

I cruised by and glanced into the rearview mirror as the door to
AudioStyle Recording
opened and a man with limp, shoulder-length blond hair jaunted out, hands jammed into the pockets of artfully frayed jeans. He looked to be somewhere in his thirties, rangy but muscular, and about six feet tall.

My height. My build. About my age.

I looked back at the road. Slowed for a right-hand turn. When I glanced back again, he was climbing into the Chevy’s passenger side, and she was leaning across the seat toward him. Their lips met, and the blare of a horn told me it was time to turn.

When I looped around again, they were gone.

T
HE DAY OF AMY HARTWELL
’
S
funeral, I darkened my hair again, applied my Ian Callahan mustache, and put on a dark gray Canali suit with a white cotton shirt and a blood-red tie Maria had given me one father’s day. The shoulder holster made a slight bulge beneath the jacket. Someone who knew what to look for might realize I was packing, but no one at Windrider Travel was likely to notice.

I pulled into the parking lot of the travel agency, noting the single Toyota in the parking lot with some satisfaction. As I’d expected, most of the office workers had gone to the funeral, leaving someone behind to man the phones and handle walk-ins.

I pushed the door open, and the young woman behind the desk looked up from her computer monitor, gave me a distracted smile, and held up one index finger:
Just a minute
.

“And thank you for booking with Windrider Travel,” she said into the cordless phone receiver clamped between her cheek and shoulder. Her frosted pink nails extended so far beyond her fingertips that she had to use her pen to punch the hang-up button. With a cheery smile, she swiveled her chair toward me, tucked her hair behind her ear, and said, “May I help you?”

Her nametag said
Felicity
, a name so old-fashioned it had gone around the corner and come back into style.

“I’m Ian Callahan. I’m working on a book about Amy Hart-well and wondered if you might have a few minutes to talk.”

“A book,” she said. “One of those true crime books?”

She looked more intrigued than disgusted, so I nodded and said, “Nothing lurid, though. I really want to do her justice.”

I assuaged my guilt with the knowledge that this much, at least, was true.

“Seems really soon,” she said. “It’s been what, a week?”

“Just about. I read about it in the paper and thought since it happened right here in town, I might have a unique perspective on it.”

“Will my name be in the book?”

“Unless you tell me you want it changed. Then I just indicate that with an asterisk the first time the name comes up. That way, everybody knows which names aren’t real.”

She frowned, although it couldn’t have been easy with her eyebrows penciled into startled arches. “I’ve never been in a book before. I don’t think I’d want my name changed.”

She looked so hopeful, I felt bad about the lie that had gotten me in.

Felicity was, in some ways, a P.I.’s dream. Young enough to be excited by the thought of being interviewed and smart enough to observe what was going on around her.

She wasn’t too hard on the eyes, either, although she went a little heavy on the makeup for my taste. Her pouty lips were slathered with a waxy layer of coral lipstick, and her eyes were painted with pine green eye shadow and a thick outline of kohl, Cleopatra style. If you took her in your arms, you might end up with an image of her face imprinted on your shirt.

Still, she had a nice figure and long, shapely legs that looked even longer beneath her short skirt. They were a pleasant distraction.

“Do you mind if I tape your interview?” I asked Felicity, holding up my Sony pocket recorder. “For accuracy only. Of course, you’ll have a chance to review the book before it goes to press to make sure you’ve been correctly quoted.”

“Oh.” She looked at the recorder. “I guess I don’t mind.”

“What can you tell me about Amy?”

Felicity fidgeted with her pen, then slowly twirled it between her fingers. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “What do you want to know?”

I gave her an encouraging smile. “Well . . . what kind of person was she? Did people like her? How did you feel about her? Was she a good worker? Did she ever talk about her marriage? Or her kids? And what about this boyfriend—this Jared McKean?”

“Huh.” She gave a nervous laugh. “You really have to think of a lot to be a writer, don’t you? Let me see.” She turned the pen over and began to doodle, covering the margins with sweeping curves and spirals. “She was a real good worker. Always on time. Me, I’d be late to my own funeral.” She caught herself, put a hand to her mouth. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s okay. Just a figure of speech. What else?”

“What else? She was, like, real private. Wore long, flowing skirts, like gypsy skirts, prairie skirts, down to her knees. Bulky sweaters. I think she was self-conscious about her weight.”

“She didn’t look that heavy in the pictures.”

“No . . . Not really.” Unconsciously, she sucked in her stomach, slipped a thumb into the waistband of her skirt and tugged. “But she wasn’t petite. And she just . . . well, you could tell by her posture. She wasn’t comfortable in her body.”

“But you liked her?”

“Everybody did, I guess. I mean, it wasn’t like we were friends or anything, but we got along. She seemed like kind of a prude. But then, I guess you never know about that. Her lovers and all.”

“Her lovers?”

“You know.”

“Not really.”

She gnawed at her lip, then flicked her tongue across it and answered. “This Jared McKean, for one. She never talked about him here. Nobody knew she was seeing someone else.”

“Someone besides her husband?”

“Well, him, sure. But I meant Ben Carrington.”

“Ben . . .” I wrote the name on my yellow legal pad. “That’s C-A-R-R-I-N-G-T-O-N?”

“That’s right.”

“Who’s he?”

“Oh.” She giggled. “Ben’s her boyfriend. They had lunch together every day. Stayed late ‘talking.’ ” She made quotation marks with her fingers.

“Did he know she was seeing somebody else?”

“I don’t think so. It just broke his heart when he found out. I mean, he knew she was married and all, but he thought she was this sweet, innocent thing whose husband treated her like dirt. He thought he was the only one she was involved with. At least, until this other guy killed her. He was so torn up about it. He thought the guy might have found out about him and killed her because of it.”

“Did he tell you he was having sexual relations with her?”

She bit her lower lip. “N-o-o-o. Not in so many words. He’s a real gentleman. He’d never brag or anything like that.”

“Did she ever talk about her husband?”

“She told us once he didn’t want her working. I don’t think it was a very happy marriage.”