Occam called, “Mind us looking around?”
“Maybe ask a few questions,” the voice in the dark said. “I know the drill. Some reason you folks can’t do this tomorrow? It’s after midnight.”
“We could,” Occam agreed, moving slightly toward the voice in the darkness. “But you’re awake enough to aim a weapon at us. Now seems convenient.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to fire. Obviously I’m not sleeping tonight, since I’m here instead of home, so you may as well ask your questions.” The voice was Tennessee, but there was something in the inflection that suggested other influences.
I stepped off the grass to the paddock. Without laying the blanket or sitting down, I bent and touched the earth to feel the fine dust of a well-used paddock. Nodeath and decay. “That was easy,” I said.
“What was?”
“Now that I know exactly what I’m looking for, I can do asurface scan without sitting. Interesting.” If I could do this with other surface reads, and save the deep reads for truly difficult scans, that might also keep me from becoming a tree again so fast, and it surely would keep the land from sending roots into my flesh. I pressed my middle with the back of a hand and didn’t feel an increase in the hard, rooty stuff in my belly. This could be useful.
Occam said, “Good to know. Let’s go talk with the shotgun holder.”
We entered from a side door directly into a small L-shaped office. I couldn’t see into the barn, but I smelled horse, warm and earthy, hay, the sweetness of apples and feed, manure. Hooves thumped in one of the stalls in the dark.
According to Credence Pacillo’s social media presence, he was half Italian, half Tennessean, his photos showing a dark-haired, blue-eyed man with a narrow beard and a well-sculpted mustache. I hadn’t seen him today, and so far as I could tell, no one had interviewed him yet, which was interesting for someone with such an important job on the farm. Pacillo was fully dressed in unwrinkled clothes and shoes that were clean of the paddock dust covering our field boots. Odd.
After introductions, Occam pulled out two chairs and we sat across a small table from Pacillo. He looked at the potted plant and the blanket, as if asking why they were with me. I didn’t volunteer an answer and he shook his head slightly as if at the vagaries of womenfolk or cops. Or both.
“I’m Melody Horse Farm’s breeder and trainer. Or I was. None of us are sure what will happen to the stock or the farm now that Stella’s gone. Coffee? Tea? Beer?” He flipped a hand at the cabinets to his left. A single-cup coffee/tea maker and a microwave were on the counter, and a small fridge was below. The shotgun was nowhere in sight.
The office had a high ceiling, the rafters casting shadows, a minuscule coffee/eating area where we sat, a sagging plaid sofa against one wall, a dusty desk with a clean center, as if missing a computer or laptop, and a dilapidated desk chair, as well as a wide-screen TV hanging on the wall at a slight angle. The L of the office was created by the position of the small bathroom I had used several times today. It opened from both outside and here, but I hadn’t looked into the barn until now. Occam hadspent a lot of time out here today, and I was surprised he hadn’t yet interviewed Pacillo, but it was clear the men hadn’t met.
“We’re good,” Occam said. “And thank you for talking to us so late.”
“At least you’re more polite than that FBI agent. He was an ass.”
“Mmmm,” Occam said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “What can you tell us about today?”
“It sucked.” Pacillo’s face crumpled. I realized now that he had been crying, his blue eyes red rimmed. He rubbed his face with one hand, the other on the table, open and somehow helpless looking. “My friend and employer is dead, her sisters have been sniffing around the horses like they plan to sell them for dog food, and all Tondra can do is cry. And I had to suck it up all day long, dealing with the delivery of a slightly out-of-season foal on a finicky mare with a first-time pregnancy.”
“How are they?” Occam asked, sounding interested.
“They ended up being transported to the vet hospital for an overnight stay, but things seemed fine when I left them.”
“Walk us through the day?” Occam asked.
And tell us what you can about the sisters.I didn’t say it. But anyone wanting to sell one of the amazing horses for dog food—if they even did that these days, and his comment wasn’t just hyperbole—was on my personal hit list.
Pacillo walked us through his day from the moment he woke to now. He’d watered and checked on each horse for signs of lameness, injury, or illness, as he did every morning before sunrise. He’d given the ailing two their meds in a special mash and wrapped one’s leg with liniment. He had released the horses into the proper pastures, separating geldings from mares with foals. Then he had joined Stella Mae on the back deck for seven a.m. coffee. She had been tired and happy and glad to be home.
“Seven a.m. seems early for a musician who’s been on the road,” Occam said.
Pacillo’s face softened. “Stella was a country girl at heart. Music was her livelihood and she loved it, but horses were her passion. After being on the road for weeks, all she wanted was to be with the horses, and they start early. And Stella had a gift for resetting her internal clock overnight.”
“What did you talk about?” Occam asked.
“We made plans to work Adrian’s Hell together that afternoon. He needs a lot of time on the trails. He’s too energetic, he hates being kept in pasture, and it takes a good fifteen miles three times a week, all on new trails, to keep him interested. And he’s too much for the younger riders to handle. He shies at shadows until you wear him out. We planned to take him and a mare out for fifteen and then work him in paddock.”
“Adrian’s Hell?” Occam asked.
“A nine-year-old Anglo-Arab stud, French registry.” Seeing our blank looks he added, “A Thoroughbred Arabian cross. Stella breeds, trains, and races endurance horses—” He stopped, rubbed his face again, pressing into his temples as if he had a headache, hiding his red eyes. “Bred, trained, and raced. Because Stella’s gone.” He inhaled on a sob and breathed, obviously searching for control. When he dropped his hands, his face was wet and red, but he was in control. “Previously Stella and I imported semen from a stud farm in France. But she was in Bahrain for a show some years back, and from the moment she saw Adrian’s Hell, she had to have him, even half-wild and untrained. She and Monica, her assistant, turned over heaven and hell to get him to the States and paid too much for a young stallion with no titles or wins.
“We had to put up a breeding shed and reinforce a stall just for a stallion, because most of them are good for nothing but eatin’, breedin’, destroyin’ stalls, and shittin’.” He looked up. “Excuse my language, ma’am.” He nodded at me. “But Stella was right. Adrian’s Hell settled right down and within six months became the best-behaved stallion I’ve ever seen. His disposition—when he gets enough exercise—is superb. Endurance horses want to move, want to run. It’s their default state.” He smiled as if the last words were part of happier memories. “Stella’s term.”
“Are the horses insured?” Occam asked.
