Someone sat down next to me. The wooden slats moved under my butt. I glanced to my right and was surprised to see that that someone was George Irons.
"Hey there, Mr. Irons. How ya doin'?"
"Not bad. Be a lot better if I was out on the bay, kickin' back a few, instead of watchin' a bunch of fancy horses trot round in circles." He gestured toward the dressage arena. "Got half my barn here today."
I turned the Coke can in my hands and pulled back on the tab.
Mr. Irons waved at a large gray that was being walked along the rail on a loose rein. The gelding's nose almost touched the ground, and his back looked supple and relaxed. "My daughter's up next. That's her new horse. Got an overstep you wouldn't believe."
"Nice looking animal," I said.
Irons nodded as a bay horse walked in front of us. "Paid too much for him of course, but…" His attention drifted from the bay to its rider, and he seemed to lose his train of thought. "Well, lookit that. Ol' Vic's gone from bad to worse. I know they don't care what jumpers look like, but really, that one's got a knot between its eyes, makes you think somebody'd hauled off and whacked it with a ball bat."
"You know Mr. Sanders, do you?"
"Yeah, I know 'im, all right. I'll tell you one thing, though. He sure as shit wishes he'd never heard of me. When those bastards stole my horses, they took his, too."
Mr. Irons continued speaking, oblivious to the fact that I'd become still or that my breathing had slowed even though my heart was pounding faster than a freight train, the blood swooshing past my eardrums.
"He'd hauled in his gelding," Irons continued, "looking for someplace temporary to keep it while he was waitin' to get in somewheres else. Then it goes and gets stolen. Only had a week to go before he was plannin' on movin' it, too."
I cleared my throat. "What was the gelding's name?"
"Portage something or other. Don't remember now. Some big ol' gray. Part draft, part thoroughbred. Ugly head, but not as bad as that." He gestured after Sanders' bay gelding.
"Light gray?" I said.
Irons shook his head. "Dark gray with dapples."
Sanders guided his horse between a pair of jump standards and circled toward us. Steel had been a dark gray, heavily dappled. A draft cross of some sort. His theft from Foxdale had netted Sanders twenty grand.
Sanders looked down his nose at us as he rode past. My face felt stiff.
"Was the horse insured?" I asked, though I expected I already knew the answer.
"You bet he was." Irons scowled. "Better'n I can say for myself."
"By chance," I said, "do you recall which insurance company?"
"Sure do. Same company that handles my liability coverage. Liberty South. He told me he was thinking 'bout gettin' his horse insured and asked me who I used and was I happy with 'em. I introduced him to my agent. Lucky timing for him, huh?"
I asked Irons if the gelding had any distinguishing marks or blemishes, but his description was vague and could have matched a thousand horses in any given county.
"Did the horse have any unusual behaviors," I said, "any quirks, weird habits?"
Irons squinted at me. "What you wantin' to know for?"
"Did he?" I said.
"Well, now. Let me think." He rubbed the bristles on his chin. "He was tense for his breedin'. Mouthy, too. Couldn't leave nothin' alone."
"What about when you handled him? Did he do anything out of the ordinary?"
"Now you mention it, he wasn't happy unless he had part of his lead in his mouth. Always had to have something to chew on."
A steel gray draft cross with a fetish for lead ropes, who just so happened to belong to Victor Sanders, gets stolen from George Irons' dressage barn only to show up at Foxdale two years later where he's stolen again. Even when Steel had been in the trailer that night, he had fooled with the chains the entire time. They had to be one and the same.
I wondered if he was still alive. If any of the others were. Were they being masqueraded somewhere else under different names, waiting for their turn to be "stolen?" I didn't know what Sanders did for a living, but it took a hunk of change to board a horse at a facility like Foxdale and keep it active on the show circuit. Sanders never wore anything that wasn't top-of-the-line, and the Mitsubishi 3000GT he owned had to have cost him a bundle, not to mention the money he shelled out entertaining the string of young women he brought to the farm. Then again, maybe they didn't cost him much.
"So, what you wantin' to know all this for?" Irons said.
I looked at the tightness around his eyes and the heavy lines crinkling his face. "I'll tell you when I know more."
"Tell me now."
I shook my head. "When I know more."
I checked that everything was running smoothly in the barns, then drove home. Greg's vetmobile was parked at the barn entrance with the compartment doors popped open. As I headed for the steps, he walked out of the barn and set a stainless steel bucket on the gravel.
He flipped a towel off his shoulder and wiped his hands. "Cuttin' out early?"
"Nah. I'm heading back in a couple minutes." I crossed the lot and stood alongside the back bumper. "Remember Victor Sanders' horse? That steel gray draft cross that got stolen?"
Greg frowned as he uncapped a green bottle and squirted some sharp-smelling disinfectant into the bucket. He stretched the hose out of the back of the truck and lifted a dental float out of the sudsy water. "Vaguely."
I told him my theory while he hosed off and dried the floats and stowed them in a bin.
He shook his head. "I don't know Steve. Lots of horses have quirks like that, and now that the horse isn't around anymore, there's no way to prove it was the same one that was stolen from Ironsie's place."
Ironsie? "Well," I said, "I'll let the insurance company know, and they can take it from there."
I took the steps two at a time. When I reached the deck, I glanced over my shoulder. Greg had let the hose recoil back into the storage area under the compartment, and as he closed the lid, he looked up at me, his expression thoughtful.
I flipped through the clutter in the junk drawer until I found the packet Marilyn had sent me. I unfolded the copy of Sanders' insurance policy and smoothed out the pages on the countertop. On the first page of the mortality insurance application, question number fourteen asked: "Have you filed an insurance claim in the past three years for any of the proposed horses?" Sanders had answered no.
I got Marilyn's number from her brother and told her what I'd learned.
"And you said the company's name was…?"
"Liberty South." I gave her the agent's name. "What will happen now?"
"We'll contact them," she said. "Start an investigation. If we can't prove it was the same horse, or that he was involved in the thefts… I don't know. Maybe we can get him for intent to defraud." She signed. "Depends on what we find."
Around five-thirty, I went into the lounge, snagged three sodas from the caterer, and walked over to the main dressage arena. Most of the auditors were clustered around the clinician who, according to Rachel, was short-listed for the Olympics.
Michael Burke was his name, and he was younger than I'd expected, somewhere in his late-twenties, early-thirties, and soft-spoken. He was slouched in his chair with his feet propped on an arena marker, his fingers laced together over his stomach. He'd tipped his cowboy hat low on his forehead and looked half asleep as he watched a rider guide her big chestnut across the diagonal in a leg yield.
When I scooted an empty chair up close behind Rachel's and sat down, she smiled slightly, and I knew she'd seen me. I passed the Coke over to Michael, then handed her a root beer.