Stalking Ground Page 13

  He drew the blood sample from the IV that was taped to the horse’s neck and injected the insulin. He’d finished discussing dosages for the other medications when his fatherly instinct made him notice that the kids were no longer watching at the doorway.

  “Excuse me a minute,” he said, stepping to the door.

  He saw that the two girls had made their way down the alleyway, evidently wanting to see other horses, and they were looking into a stall at the far end. The groom that Cole had spoken to during his previous visit was rushing toward them, making shooing gestures with his hands and saying, “Go. Escapado.”

  Cole hurried down the alley. “What’s wrong?” he asked the man.

  He answered with a string of Spanish that Cole couldn’t comprehend, but he could tell the man looked concerned. He must be telling the kids to leave.

  “Come away from the stall, girls,” Cole told his daughters, turning his attention back to the man. His eyes were hooded and downcast. He wore jeans, a worn denim jacket, and cowboy boots; and here in the closeness of the barn, he smelled of stale cigarettes.

  Carmen came up from behind. “Juan!” she said, following up the man’s name with a sentence in Spanish that sounded like a question.

  “It’s okay, Carmen,” Cole said. “I think he was just warning the kids to stay away from the horse in the box stall.”

  “This horse is dangerous.” She and the groom exchanged a few words before she dismissed him and turned back to Cole. “Yes, that’s what he says he was doing.”

  “Gracias,” Cole said to the man’s retreating back. Juan hurried away, not acknowledging the expression of appreciation. It appeared that he couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Sophie was looking worried, so Cole placed a hand on her shoulder and exchanged glances with Angela while they followed Carmen back to Diablo. Angela merely shrugged, apparently unconcerned.

  Outside Diablo’s stall, Carmen stopped and studied each of his daughters, offering them a smile that softened her aristocratic features and crinkled the small lines at the corners of her eyes. Cole noticed her deep brown irises were edged with long, thick lashes. He couldn’t help but think that she was truly a beautiful woman.

  “I hope Juan didn’t frighten you,” Carmen said, giving Sophie’s hand a squeeze.

  “I’m okay,” Sophie said, looking up at the woman with an expression that resembled adoration.

  Cole glanced at Angela, who was watching Carmen with narrowed eyes. When Angela caught him looking, she quickly adjusted her features into a neutral mask. He decided to finish up so they could get back in the truck and debrief. He’d like to know what his eldest was thinking.

  “Carmen, I’ll call you with the results of this blood work as soon as it comes in, but I’ll need to come back to check Diablo tomorrow. Do you have any questions about what to do until then?”

  “No, I understand his care.”

  He gathered his supplies, and Carmen went with them out to the truck, past the barking Bruno. She shouted at the dog to be quiet, but he paused for only a few seconds and then started up again. Belle had moved to the front seat and stood watching them eagerly out the windshield. Cole moved to the back of the truck to put away his things but could still hear Carmen conversing with his daughters.

  “I see you have a lovely dog there.”

  “She’s Belle,” Sophie piped up, grabbing Carmen’s hand to lead her close. “She’s friendly.”

  Angela opened the truck door, telling Belle to get into the backseat.

  “Let Miss Carmen pet her,” Sophie said in a plaintive tone.

  “I can pet her in the backseat, Sophie,” Carmen said.

  Cole appreciated a quick glance as the woman leaned forward into the back of the truck to pet the dog. A little embarrassed by his interest in the woman’s backside, he averted his eyes, finished up, and went to open his own door. From across the front seats, Carmen smiled at him as she helped Sophie climb into the truck and then stepped aside to let Angela get in.

  “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Sophie and Angela,” Carmen said. “I hope you’ll all come back and have dinner with me some evening.”

  While Sophie expressed her delight, Cole said their good-byes and drove out of the barnyard. Sophie bounced around in the back seat to wave at Carmen, making Cole tell her to sit still and put on her seatbelt.

  “She’s nice,” Sophie proclaimed.

  When Cole glanced back to toss her a smile of agreement, he saw Angela roll her eyes.

  “What?” he said.

  “She’s a little too eager, Dad.”

  No further need to debrief; those few words said it all. He decided not to get into it and remained silent while he steered the truck down the lane.

  When they passed by the racetrack, Angela asked, “Are these high quality horses?”

  “I’d say yes, based on the few I’ve seen so far,” he said.

  “Did you see that one down on the end?”

  “I’m not sure. I saw a bay and a big, red chestnut out on the racetrack last time I was here. The chestnut looked like a handful.”

  “That one on the end is big, and he’s a chestnut,” Angie said. “He was sweating and pacing around in circles. I wondered if he was getting sick like Diablo.”

  “Diablo’s illness isn’t contagious.”

  “Well, this horse didn’t look right.”

  Cole slipped her a teasing grin. “Maybe you’ll grow up to be a vet,” he said. “Follow in your dad’s footsteps.”

  She ignored him and turned to Sophie. “Did that horse act dangerous to you? Did he try to bite at you or anything?”

  “No, he just acted nervous.”

  “Any horse can be dangerous,” Cole said. “I don’t want you guys walking away from where I’m working when you go on calls with me. I’ve told you this before, and I want you to listen this time. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “We hear you,” Angela said. “You can end the lecture.”

  “I’m just saying, Angie. It’s not good to approach a strange animal by yourself.”

  “That horse didn’t look mean. He looked sick.”

  “He was probably overheated after his workout. Besides, you can’t tell if a horse is mean or not by looking at him, Angela. The one I saw the other day was trying to strike his handler. You never know. That’s why you have to be careful.”

  Cole looked in the rearview mirror to check on Sophie who huddled in her seat, shoulders hitched, looking under siege. He’d noticed that she often zoned out when he and Angie bickered. He needed to try to put a stop to it and change the subject. “What did you think of Bruno, Sophie?”

  “I think he’s nice.”

  “We don’t know that, Sophie,” Cole said, almost going off about safety issues again but catching himself in time. “Carmen said she imported Bruno from Germany, but she’s disappointed in his obedience.”

  “Maybe he talks German,” Sophie said.

  Cole paused, realizing the child could be right. “That might be the problem, squirt. I think she’s been giving him commands in Spanish.”

  “I wonder what dog commands sound like in German,” Angela said.

  “I took German in high school,” Cole said. “Some of the words sound a lot like English. Like sitz.”

  “That’s ‘sit’!” Sophie said, delighted with the new game.

  Cole caught her eye in the rearview. “What do you think you’d say for down?”

  Her brow gathered in concentration. “Downz?”

  Cole grinned. “That’s close. It’s platz.”

  Sophie giggled. “Platz down. Sounds like plops down.”

  “You ought to take German, Angel,” Cole said. “I don’t remember much of it, but I do remember how to say ‘you are a dumbhead.’”

  Sophie’s laughter pealed, filling the truck and Cole’s heart with joy.

  “Tell us how to say it, Dad,” Angela said.

  Finally—a topic they could all enjoy.

&nb
sp; Chapter 16

  Mattie steered around the last curve above Hightower and headed down into the valley where the small town nestled. She’d turned up the heater at the top of the pass, and Robo appeared to be cozy and warm, curled up asleep in his compartment. She’d once thought Stella’s silence meant she was dozing too, but a quick check revealed her to be deep in thought. Stella was like that—a thinker.

  Armed with Velda Howard’s address programmed into her GPS, Mattie drove right to her destination. She parked in front of the small clapboard house, gray boards exposed beneath peeling white paint, yard turned to weeds overgrown to midcalf. Robo stood up, yawned, and stretched, shoulders down and haunches raised.

  “You’re going to stay here,” she told him.

  His expectant expression turned to one of resignation as he plopped down into a sit.

  “You ruined his day,” Stella observed, picking up her briefcase from the floorboard.

  Mattie reached through the heavy steel mesh at the front of his cage to give him a pat. She picked up her notebook, and the two of them headed up the cracked sidewalk that led to the front door.

  Ringing the bell, Mattie heard an obnoxious buzz on the other side rather than the pleasant dingdong she’d expected. They waited.

  The door caught, screeched, and then burst open as the woman behind it tugged. Average height, she wore a thin flannel robe wrapped around her skinny frame. She had mousy blonde hair turned mostly gray, worn loose and frizzy around her face. Wrinkles lined her mouth and her red-rimmed eyes; smoke wafted from the cigarette she held between two fingers, the nails painted with chipped red polish. “Who are you?”

  Mattie introduced herself and then Stella. “Are you Velda Howard, ma’am?”

  “Yeah. I suppose you’re here about Adrienne.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’re sorry for your loss,” Mattie said. “Could we come in and have a word with you?”

  Velda looked past her to where Robo sat in the patrol vehicle.

  “You’re not going to bring that dog in, are you?”

  “No, ma’am. He’ll wait in the car.”

  The woman gave a heavy sigh and turned away, leaving the door open for them to enter. “That dog looks like a monster with those great big teeth,” she muttered, her back turned.

  And here Robo was giving you his best smile.

  Mattie tried to reserve judgment and stifled her instant dislike. After last summer’s murder case, she’d promised herself to not jump to conclusions, especially about families. She struggled to close the sticky door after Stella entered the room, but she had to settle on leaving it slightly cracked open.

  She took in her surroundings. Shabby avocado-green carpet, brown recliner and sofa with worn upholstery, cheap-looking end table by the recliner, and coffee table in front of the sofa, everything covered in a layer of grime. The place and the woman both shouted “run-down.”

  Sinking into the recliner, Velda raised a jelly jar half-filled with amber liquid as if offering a toast while she eyed them both. “Care for a drink?”

  “No, thank you,” Stella said.

  “I didn’t suppose you would,” Velda said, taking a sip that ended with another long sigh, this one sounding satisfied rather than put out. “What can I do ya for?”

  Mattie caught the whiff of whiskey that rode on the sigh. She wondered if it was the alcohol that left the mother so detached about her daughter’s death or something else.

  “We’re working your daughter’s homicide,” Stella said. “We hope we can get some information from you that can help us solve her case.”

  “I told that fella that called me, I don’t know anything about Adrienne these days.”

  “When was the last time you heard from her?”

  “You make it sound so . . . homey. Like she might think of her mother once in a while. Like she might actually pick up the phone and call.” She sniffed, and with a cigarette posed between two fingers, she used the back of her wrist to wipe an indiscernible tear from her eye. Smoke settled around her head.

  Mattie followed Stella’s lead and waited.

  Velda peered at them, adjusted the flap of robe at her neck. “Adrienne left the summer after she graduated from high school. Five, six years ago. I haven’t heard from her since.”

  “We’ve found her high school boyfriend, Kevin Conrad. Do you know him?” Stella asked.

  Velda gave a derisive snort. “That’s why she left. The no good SOB made her go.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He poisoned her against us.”

  “Who is ‘us’? You and . . .”

  “Me and her father. Her family.”

  “Is her father available for us to talk to?”

  “He died a few years ago. Adrienne broke his heart.”

  “Does Adrienne have siblings?”

  Velda narrowed her eyes, looked at her dwindling cigarette, took a puff. “One brother.”

  “I’d like to contact him,” Stella said.

  “Good luck. If you find him, tell him his poor old mother says hello.” Velda stubbed out her cigarette with a vengeance in an overfilled ashtray, took out another, and lit up. “He left home before Adrienne.”

  “What’s his name?” Mattie asked.

  “Roger.”

  “Same last name . . . Howard?”

  “Um-hum.” Velda lifted her glass, swirled the whiskey, and took a sip.

  “Why do you say Kevin Conrad poisoned Adrienne against you?” Mattie asked.

  “He made her turn her back on us when we needed her most.”

  Another pause. “What do you mean?”

  Velda brushed at the nap on her robe. “She graduated high school. Had a good job. We could have used some help.”

  “Financial help?” Mattie asked.

  “Help around the house, help paying the bills.”

  “Were you and your husband unemployed at that time?”

  A trace of belligerence came into the woman’s face. “What? You think we didn’t work hard? David hurt his back, couldn’t work for a while. But what does that have to do with anything?”

  “We’re trying to get a picture of the circumstances surrounding Adrienne’s departure, see if it ties into anything involving her death,” Mattie said. “We need to know more about her.”

  Velda’s lips puckered and turned downward. “She ran. She ran away when things didn’t go her way. She was a spoiled brat. That’s what she was.”

  The venom behind her words shocked Mattie. She looked at Stella, turning the lead back over to her.

  “We found a photo album in Adrienne’s room,” Stella said, taking it out of her briefcase. “Could you look at these pictures and see if you recognize anyone?”

  Velda perked up, looking like she actually might take an interest. Stella rose from the sofa and moved over to stand beside Velda’s chair, offering her the album. Taking it readily, she flipped open the front cover. Mattie had looked through the photos several times and knew that many of them were snapshots of tourist spots and landscapes, but several of them also contained people. She watched as Velda flipped through pages, stopping here and there to search faces.

  “Here’s Kevin, right here,” she said, using the pinkie on the hand that held her cigarette to tap the page. “Smug son of a bitch.”

  Mattie decided to move over beside Velda’s chair where she could see which person the woman was tapping. Posing by the mound of mineral deposit beside the Pagosa Springs, Colorado, sign, Kevin grimaced, pinching his nose with thumb and index finger. Mattie had been there before, and she knew the odiferous water from the hot springs tainted the air throughout the town. He looked young, probably in his late teens at the time of the photo. Sandy hair, ruddy complexion, good-looking. He wore that devil-may-care, bad-boy persona that mothers dread.

  Velda turned the page and tapped the photo that showed Adrienne posing with the mystery man. “This looks like Bubba.”

  “Bubba?” Mattie asked.

  Velda
’s eyes turned bleary as she peered up at Mattie. “Roger.”

  Adrienne’s brother? From the way the twosome cuddled together in the photo, she’d thought they were lovers. “Can you tell where that picture was taken?”

  “How the hell should I know? You’ve seen one forest, you’ve seen them all.”

  Pine trees surrounded the couple as they posed with arms around each other and smiles on their faces. Adrienne and the handsome man with the dark features both looked happy. She reunited with her brother. Mattie grew uneasy as she studied the photo. Had the happy reunion turned into a bad thing? Something that ended in Adrienne’s death?

  “It looks like the two of them were reunited recently. Do you have any idea where Roger might be?” Mattie asked.

  Velda shook her head slowly, looking down at the photos. She turned the last page and reached the end. “Like I told you, that horse done left the barn.” She handed the album to Stella, her face taking on a wistful expression. “Looks like the two of them couldn’t be more pleased with themselves.”

  “They do look happy,” Mattie said, going back to sit on the couch where she could observe Velda more easily.

  “They have no right.”

  “No right?”

  “To be happy. The two of them, leaving me here alone. Adrienne, right over there in Timber Creek, and she didn’t come check on her mama.”

  Mattie wondered about that, too. “Why do you think Adrienne didn’t come see you?”

  Anger flared in Velda’s bloodshot eyes. “She always blamed me.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything. She was a very unhappy child.”

  From what Mattie knew of her, she’d turned into a happy woman. From all appearances, she seemed like a person who’d built a satisfying life and career. “Why do you say she was unhappy?”

  Velda stared at Mattie for a moment, as if sensing a trap. She glanced furtively toward the front door. “Who knows? Some children are just born unhappy. I’m getting tired now. I need to ask you to leave so I can rest.”

  Mattie sensed the interview was almost over.

  “We appreciate your time, Mrs. Howard. I have only a couple more questions,” Stella said, settling back into the couch.