Just Horsing Around

Chapter 6

The man was just as disgusting today as yesterday, only this time he looked like he hadn’t slept a wink. There was a veritable bucket of coffee sitting in front of his desk, every inch of which was covered in papers strewn about any which way. A fly buzzed around an old box of donuts that had been discarded on top of a filing cabinet. The walls of Hawthorne’s office were covered with pictures of him with various guns, posing with deer he’d shot. I felt like I wanted to throw up.

I sat in the chair and waited for Hawthorne to start asking me questions. Instead, he just sat there, leering at me. I knew what he was doing; he was trying to get me to start talking first. Well, it wasn’t going to work.

The stand-off must have gone on for about three minutes before Hawthorne finally gave up.

“Alright, missy,” he said, grabbing a notebook off the desk with his grubby little fingers. “I just gotta go over what you told me yesterday.”

He flipped back through the pages.

“So you say you were hired to work as a vet, and you arrived yesterday afternoon, around 4?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“And you’d never met Caroline Gibson before then?”

“No.”

He scribbled something down in the notebook. “What do you think about the others who were at the house?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m not sure I know the whole list.”

Hawthorne grunted his annoyance, and flipped the pages once more before rattling off the list of names.

“Susan, the maid or whatever. Ellie, the daughter. Polly, the friend. Corey, the stable manager. Philippe, the French trainer. Damn foreigners taking American jobs. Tony, the jockey.”

“Well, to be honest, I don’t really know any of them. I didn’t meet Polly at all until today, I didn’t even know she was there.”

“What did you notice?”

I thought back. “If anyone stood out, it was Tony. He didn’t seem to be sad at all that Caroline had been killed. In fact, he seemed to openly think she deserved it.”

Hawthorne scribbled down what I said in the book.

“What about the others?”

I shrugged. “Susan seemed to me to be the prim and proper type. The kind who doesn’t take offense to much, and is efficient at her job. Corey seems nice, and so does Ellie. She was definitely under her mother’s wing all the time. I couldn’t say about the others, I didn’t meet them for long enough.”

“Did anyone strike you as acting strangely?”

“I couldn’t say, I don’t know what any of them were like otherwise.”

Hawthorne harrumphed his disapproval. Apparently my answers weren’t what he was after.

“And you’re sticking to the story that you didn’t know Caroline Gibson and had nothing against her?”

I felt a wave of anger coming up, but I quelled it down. “It’s not a story, it’s the truth,” I said, bringing my shoulders up. How dare he insinuate that I was lying?

“Whatever. Don’t leave the state, remember? You can go.”

I left the office muttering angrily to myself, wondering if I could get away with a curse to set the whole building on fire. I was so pissed off I almost forgot that I was supposed to drive Ellie Gibson back home, until I saw her sitting quietly in the waiting room, like a little mouse trying not to be noticed.

“Well, that was a giant waste of my time,” I muttered to myself as I smiled at Ellie. I imagined Hawthorne didn’t actually need any of the information I gave him today, he probably just wanted to rile me up and hope I’d confess, or something. What a terrible cop.

“Hey, Ellie,” I told her. “Polly asked me to take you home, are you ready to go?”

“Yeah,” Ellie replied, and I noticed her eyes were tinged with red.

“Are you ok?” I asked softly, taking a tissue out of my purse and handing it to her. She nodded as we left the police station.

“I just feel like that man, he’s making me sound like such an awful person,” Ellie said as we walked towards my car. “I feel like he thinks I killed mom!”

I made soft noises as I ushered her into the car.

“I’m sure he doesn’t really think that Ellie,” I tried to reassure her. “It’s just his job to be suspicious of people, so he probably doesn’t really know how to be tactful about things.” At least that last part might have been true, Hawthorne didn’t seem like he had a single tactful bone in his whole body.

I didn’t know what Hawthorne was thinking, but surely he didn’t actually suspect Ellie of the crime. I mean, I knew she was on the grounds and was one of the people who could have killed Caroline Gibson, but she was so sweet, and so subservient to her mother. No, there was no way I could see her doing anything like that.

“Polly seems like a nice woman,” I said to Ellie as I pulled onto the road leading back to Ellie’ farm.

“She is, she really is,” Ellie said, getting a little bit of animation back into her. “I’ve known her my whole life. She was mom’s best friend since they were kids. Mom was so nice to her, when she had to move her horses from the old stable mom let her use one of the old stables on our property to keep her horses, and she only asked for all the stud payments in return.”

“That was really nice of her,” I said, thinking that surely stud payments would have been a lot.

“It was; Polly was really thankful. Polly isn’t as famous as my mom, of course, but she says she doesn’t need to be. She just needs her horses. And of course, now she has her own farm, and she’s really happy there. Her horses do alright, but they’re just not the same level as mom’s. I guess mom’s horses are mine now, though.”

“I guess they are. Have you thought about what you’re going to do with the farm at all?”

“I always figured I’d just keep it going. After all, I’ve been around horses my whole life, and I really love the ones we have. Touch of Frost is a stud now, so he’s bringing in a lot of money still, too. Actually, the mare he impregnated just had her first foal about a month ago,” Ellie said proudly, and I smiled.

“Awww, foals are adorable,” I said.

“Yeah, Touch of Midnight is adorable,” Ellie told me. “I saw him right when he was born. His owner is Friedrich Suter.”

“Ah,” I said, not knowing who Friedrich Suter was.

“Oh, sorry,” Ellie said, noting my lack of knowledge. “I’m so used to spending all my time around horse racing people that I forget that you might not know who he is. Suter is a businessman, he owns some giant bank in Switzerland, and some race cars, but his true passion is horses. He’s super reclusive though. His horses are amazing, but I’ve never met him. He’s one of those eccentric billionaire types. The kind who never gets his photo taken, never appears in public. As soon as Touch of Frost retired he gave my mom half a million dollars to stud Touch of Frost to one of his mares.”

I almost drove the car off the road at that comment. “A half a million dollars?” I practically squealed. “Seriously?” I knew there was a lot of money in horse racing but boy, that was some valuable sperm!

For the first time since I’d known her, Ellie actually giggled.

“Yes, half a million. The foal can be worth a lot more than that, so it’s a worthy gamble.”

“You know, if I could get paid half a million bucks for impregnating a horse, I think I’d definitely keep the farm too,” I said to Ellie as we pulled up to the driveway.

“Can you come in for a minute?” Ellie asked. “I know Susan was going to make some coffee.”

I checked my phone quickly and saw a text from Sophie. Rescheduled everything until 1. It was only 9:30; I had plenty of time.

“Sure,” I said with a smile. “That sounds great.”

As soon as I entered the house Ellie motioned for me to leave my purse and sunglasses on a table by the entrance. Already she seemed to be coming into her own a little bit; I wouldn’t have been surprised if Caroline Gibson had left explicit instructions for me to not be let into her home the day I came. Susan came out a minute later, like magic, with a couple cups of coffee. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her face seemed strained; the effect magnified by the tightness of her bun and her general demeanour. It seemed Susan hadn’t had a good evening, perhaps she was more sensitive than her professional demeanour made her seem.

“Why don’t you join us, Susan,” Ellie asked, and Susan looked like she’d never had such a shock in her life.

“Oh thank you,” she said in her high class British accent, “but I really have quite a lot of work to do today. There is a lot to deal with after your mother’s passing. The lawyers will be here at noon, if you will see them in the study then,” she added.

“Of course, thanks Susan,” Ellie replied, and the housekeeper turned on her heel and left as efficiently as she entered.

“I’m trying to make her feel more at home,” Ellie told me. “Mom was always so firm about not being friendly with the help, but I think that’s just a little bit rude. I don’t think Susan knows what to do about it, though.”

I smiled at Ellie. The more I got to know her, the more I liked her. “Has Susan worked here for long?”

“A little over a year. Her parents decided to retire to Portland; I think they had enough of England, and while America was different enough the Northwest has enough rainy weather to make them feel at home. So she decided to follow them, and got the job here. Mom thought her accent made her sound more distinguished, and it wasn’t her first job as a caretaker.”

I took a sip of coffee, slowly. I wondered why Susan seemed so haggard. Was it really just that this was her first experience with death? That it had happened so near? Perhaps. The fact that she had worked at the Gibson Farm for a little while seemed to work in her favour; from the little I had seen of Caroline Gibson I imagined anyone who would have wanted to strangle her to death after meeting her wouldn’t have had the patience to wait over a year to do it. Plus, as the housekeeper, there were probably a million other ways Susan could have gotten rid of her boss, none of which would have involved having to strangle a woman who weighed well over two hundred pounds. I suspected Susan didn’t weigh a lot more than half that.

“Are you sure you’re doing alright?” I asked Ellie as we finished off the coffee.

“I am, thanks. Thanks for spending time with me, too,” Ellie told me.

“No problem,” I replied. To be honest, I felt a bit bad for her. Ellie didn’t really seem to be the type of person to have a lot of friends, and I wondered if maybe she suddenly felt incredibly lonely without her mom, who I imagined was the major focal point of her life.

“Good luck at the vet today!” Ellie told me as she led me back towards the front of the house. I saw Corey walking through the entrance and he said a quick hi as I grabbed my purse. “Feel free to come by whenever,” Ellie told me. “I can show you how to ride horses.”

“Thanks, I’d like that,” I told her. I liked Ellie, she was very sweet. I hoped that over time, despite the tragedy of her mother’s death, she’d really come into her own.

It wasn’t until I was sitting in the front seat of my car that I realized I’d forgotten my sunglasses on the table inside.

“Shoot,” I muttered to myself. Thinking that I didn’t want to bother anyone, I went back up to the front door and carefully tried the handle; it was locked. Of course; this was Gibson Farms. Everything was always going to be locked.

I looked around carefully. There was a security camera, so I was going to have to do this on the sly. I pretended to look confused for a second while I whispered “recludaroa,” while focusing on the lock. I heard the latch turn, and I quickly tried the handle again, making a show of looking confused when it worked.

Darting inside I saw my sunglasses sitting on the table. I grabbed them and was about to make my way back out when I heard Corey talking to Ellie in the room next door.

“Look, what’s done is done. We can’t do anything about it now.” Corey’s voice was hushed, like he wanted to avoid being overheard.

“But what if she - ” Ellie started, but Corey cut her off.

“Do you think she’s going to haunt us from beyond the grave? No, Ellie. This is our chance. This is our time.”

I didn’t have a chance to hear what Ellie was going to reply, as suddenly I heard the click of Susan’s efficient high-heels coming towards me. I couldn’t be seen here, Corey and Ellie would know that I’d overheard their conversation. I grabbed the sunglasses and quickly stepped back outside, closing the door soundlessly behind me. I didn’t dare re-lock the door, I figured Susan would eventually see it and think she’d forgotten to lock it.

When I was finally back safely in my car and heading back away from the farm I realized just how strongly my heart was beating. I replayed the conversation over in my mind.

“What’s done is done. We can’t do anything about it now.” Was Corey talking about the murder? Was he talking about him having committed the murder? Did he and Ellie get together and plot to kill her mother so they could be together? Surely not. Ellie was way too sweet for that. But did Corey do it on his own, and then tell Ellie what he’d done?

There were just so many possibilities. My mind wound its way through the myriad of facts I’d discovered so far, trying to make sense of it all. Everything anyone who was at the house now seemed suspicious to me; any one of them could have killed Caroline Gibson, and despite all this new information, it felt like I was no closer to figuring out who it was.