The Tell-Tale Horse

CHAPTER 2

Marion called on her cell phone, and the two women waited for the sheriff in front of the store. The door was still locked.

“That’s one good thing. At least nothing is stolen.” Sister wrapped her arms around herself and kicked snow off her shoes.

“I hope not. There’s a downstairs door that the public doesn’t use but we do. It’s storage.”

Without another word, the two women carefully negotiated the steep steps down to the lower level. Despite being plowed two days ago, the area was packed hard again, thanks to the recent snowfall. The February sky glittered with stars so bright some shone blue-white.

Marion fetched her car keys from her pocket, pressing the tiny LED light on the chain. A narrow bright-white beam illuminated the doorknob.

Relief filled Sister’s voice. “Nothing is smashed.”

Marion placed the key in the lock, but the door swung open without a click. “That’s odd.”

Sister knelt down. “It’s cut clean through. The tongue of the lock is in the door.”

Marion, face ashen now, grabbed Sister’s forearm. “Maybe he’s still in the store.”

“Do you have a gun in there?”

“No.”

Sister spied a box of twitches, a device used on the lip to make horses stand still for things they might not like, such as getting their mane pulled. A small loop of chain was embedded in a three-foot heavy wooden dowel. She grabbed one. “I’ll go first. If he’s in there, I want to get him.”

“It’s my store. I should go first.” Marion plucked a twitch out of the box too.

“I’m six feet tall and a master. I’m used to physical…” Sister’s voice trailed off as her foot touched the first stair. She flicked on the light, feeling incredibly alive. Danger was her element.

Marion recognized the truth in Sister’s words. Sister Jane Arnold was tough as nails and surprisingly quick on her feet. Marion figured if Sister did whack someone, she could then help bring him down. Prudent and wise, not a woman to take an unnecessary chance, Marion was no coward. She thought Sister was reckless, heedless, but then most foxhunters are.

Sister hesitated at the top of the stairs that emerged into the tack and equipment room. The only sound was the slight whir of the heating system, set at sixty at night to keep pipes from freezing. Marion reached up behind her to click on the lights for the first floor. Nothing seemed disturbed at first glance, but if the killer was also a savvy thief, he or she would head for the saddles, some of them $4,000 a pop.

They stepped into the next room, which contained liniments and other odds and ends crucial to horse people. In the distance Marion heard a siren. “Thank God,” she whispered.

Sister nodded.

They moved to the north wall, where the gorgeous English leather bridles hung, the saddles on racks before them. Not one had been moved. Carefully, they inspected every inch of the store, including the two dressing rooms and the smaller storage room next door. Everything was in order, except that the phone lines had been sliced through.

Marion checked the locked case where antique jewelry, Essex crystals, and foxhunting china was kept. Again, untouched. So were the cases by the cash register, which housed specially cast hunting horns, the size of whose bells helped to determine the tone. They could cost $300, give or take; a specially ordered silver one was truly expensive. All was in order here as well.

Red lights reflected through the windows at the front door.

“Why would someone go to all the trouble to cut that lock and leave this place intact?” Marion sank to the front counter.

“I don’t know.”

Both women instinctively scanned the long shelves right above the cash register, where items of extraordinary value were often displayed. These shelves ran at a right angle to each other, the longer of the two terminating not far from the front door. The bronze sculpture of a fox above the register stood, gorgeous as ever, awaiting a buyer with very deep pockets. Just as the sheriff reached the front door, Marion and Sister gasped.

“It’s gone!”

The John Barton Payne silver bowl, weighing thirty-five pounds with a two-foot diameter and engraved with past winners of the Warrenton Horse Show, had vanished along with the companion thirty-pound silver tray and the close to two-pound silver ladle. Its value was unmeasurable. The Warrenton Horse Show, owner of this impressive perpetual memorial trophy, would be disconsolate. Donated to the show in 1935, the sentimental value exceeded its monetary value.

It was two-thirty in the morning before Sister and Marion, finally in pajamas, collapsed in the living room, a fire roaring near their warmed feet. Though exhausted, neither could sleep.

During the ordeal, Sister had noted that Marion did not cry, whine, or complain about how awful this was. The younger woman had kept to the facts and answered the sheriff’s questions clearly. She showed him the cut lock and even had the presence of mind to hand him a detailed photograph pulled off the computer showing all sides of the punch bowl.

Given the hour, no one from the local paper was monitoring the sheriff’s calls, so they were spared the press, at least for now. No one recognized the slain beauty. The forensic crew and the ambulance struggled to remove her, tearing some skin in the process. Using warm water from the store bathroom, they carefully soaked the leftover patches until they could put the unstuck flesh into little plastic bags. Somehow, this process upset the two friends as much as discovering the body in the first place. The initial shock had been wearing off, but now the terrible event was becoming more real.

“Odd that a woman so stunning is a cipher. Beautiful women are generally noticed,” Sister mused.

“She could have been murdered somewhere else and then brought here by whoever killed her and cleaned her up,” Marion replied.

“But why would the murderer want to steal a punch bowl? You know there’s a photograph of me in the punch bowl, age two, along with a foxhound puppy?”

“All the more reason to find it.” Marion stared into the fire, every fiber of her body tired, her mind overwhelmed but still functioning. “Why my store?”

“Your store is central in town. Most everyone goes past it.”

“What if this is meant for me in some way?”

“Unfortunately, Marion, we can only wait and see.”

“I need to warn Wendy. This will blast her right out of bed, but she’ll forgive me.” Wendy Saunders had worked in the store with Marion for years. “I suppose I should call my brother too, even though it’s closing in on the hour of the wolf.” She meant between three and four in the morning.

“The Romans had a saying, ‘Man is wolf to man.’”

“In this case, woman.” Marion punched in the numbers, then listened with a flash of disgust. “Damn these things. They never work when you need them.” She hurled the cell phone into the fire, where it began popping within seconds.

It was the one outburst of emotion she had allowed herself.

Sister nodded approvingly. “God, I wish I’d done that. Half the time my damn cell phone doesn’t work either.”

A bit of tension ebbed away as the plastic cell phone melted, taking all the information Marion had encoded there into the fire.