"You bitch!" she spat. "You sicced the cops on me! They goddamn came to my goddamn office to question me about goddamn Valerie! What'd you tell them? 'Get Sarah, she hated Valerie more than anyone else'? You damn near cost me my goddamn job! Greg's about to fire my goddamn ass and it's all your goddamn fault! I'm gonna sue your goddamn ass!"
I blinked at her, utterly dumbstruck. She raised both fists, and I jumped back out of reach.
"ARRGGH!" she yowled at me, did an abrupt about-face and fled from my front porch. I stood in the doorway and watched her car peel out down the street, feeling I'd just watched an anime cartoon in the original Japanese of a very noir Hello Kitty.
"Well, god damn. Wonder if the guy in the black Mercedes caught all that." I made my way, somewhat shaky, back to my office via the kitchen.
Two cups of coffee and six chocolate chip cookies later, I easily finished the files for three clients. A touch too easy? Maybe someone, somewhere, was taking pity on me and giving me a breather. As I congratulated myself on my near super-human ability to power accurately through stacks of paper, I came upon a stumbling block. Donna Orr-Block to be precise. Generally meticulous in her record keeping and conservative in her spending and investing, she had a rather large loss about mid year. Sure it must be a mistake, I poured myself another cup of coffee, grabbed another handful of cookies, and telephoned her to check. I expected to leave a message. Instead, Donna's life-partner Peggy answered, and I explained the problem to her. She was a client as well.
"Oh girlfriend, that's not a mistake," Peggy said.
"It's not?" I had the sinking feeling this was going to be complicated.
"Uh huh, and Donna's still mad about it. Darn good thing you got me instead of her. She'd still be on the phone with you tomorrow morning having herself a good rant about Valerie."
"Valerie? What happened?"
"Last year Donna and I had some, um, differences of opinion about how that roll-over from her retirement fund from her last job should be reinvested – you remember? Greg made some suggestions, and while he was waiting for us to reach some kind of decision Valerie came along and just stuck herself right between us, know what I'm saying? Told Donna she shouldn't let me tell her how to invest her money, and ought to make the decision by herself. Only Valerie was right there with this supposed great idea. Some super high-yield investment. I said no, and she told Donna I didn't know what I was talking about, and I was going to cost her money." The laugh that reached my ear was not humorous. "That effin' bitch. You're not going to believe this, since you're familiar with how, uh, fiscally conservative our Donna is, but Valerie actually got her to go along with it. Probably because Donna and I were so mad at each other at the time. She threw the whole amount into that fund. And there's been no return on it. Nothing. Not one stinking penny. Just like I said in the first place."
"Oh, no. I had no idea. That's not good."
"Aren't you the queen of understatement. Donna keeps hoping to see some money come back, but personally, I know it's gone forever."
"I expect you're right."
"Damn straight. But I'm not going to keep shoving it in Donna's face. She feels like a first-class fool as it is. Valerie played her – got between us and messed in something that was none of her business. It was deliberate. Both of us can see it now, and Donna still gets spitting mad about it."
From the tone of her voice it was apparent Peggy was not in a forgiving mood, either. "Isn't she kind of upset with Greg, too, because he let her make the investment?"
"Not really. It was Valerie's fault."
"But I'd think Greg would be looking out for his clients' best interest."
"Greg isn't aggressive, which is why Donna chose to do business with him in the first place. He didn't know Valerie was pitting us against each other, so when Donna insisted, I guess he figured he'd just do what she asked."
I didn't say what I was thinking – that Greg was a financial advisor, and was supposed to be keeping his clients from making mistakes like throwing their entire retirement fund into something that was high risk. I made sympathetic noises and eased Peggy into taking about her plans to go back to school in the fall, and about Donna's softball team. She was her team's power hitter, and was getting ready for an away game in Mount Vernon the next evening. I told her I would finish their taxes and have them submitted electronically by the end of the day.
I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. Valerie wasn't leaving me alone. She was interfering in my work and with my clients. The police were lining up a case against me, her father was poised to wreak his own special havoc, and I was getting visits at home from people who had an ax to grind. Valerie was more distressing to me dead than she'd been alive. To simply defend myself was no longer enough. That was getting me nowhere. Mr. Green suggested I sit back and wait. Wait for what?
I had far better ways to spend my time. I was in a position to look into a part of Valerie's life the police had no expertise in: the habits of a dressage rider. There was a chance I could unearth something to pass along to Thurman. This investigation needed to end. I shut down the computer and went to my bedroom to change out of yesterday's clothes.
I was certain Blackie had been horse-napped by mistake, despite the drive-through holes in my theory. If Valerie had been expecting Nachtfeder to be delivered to her farm, not Blackie, maybe something existed that would prove my hunch. But I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out why Valerie would move her own horse to her farm, much less Blackie. That would mean deliberately putting hoof prints in her perfect pastures, and I'd seen how she reacted to a dog trotting through the field at the dressage club's pasture-management meeting.
It was conceivable the police wouldn't know if the barn was ready to house her horse. But I would. I had plenty of time before my appointment with Detective Thurman. It would be easy to check out Valerie's barn. With luck I'd have something useful to tell him. I grabbed my purse and headed for my car.
I spent the fifteen minutes it took me to get to Carpenter Road to do some heavy thinking. Could she have gotten a last minute invitation to a clinic? Was there some event going on she had decided to attend? There might be information of that sort in the barn or in her house. The most useful course of action would be to look through her mail and e-mail to see if something had come up. Crap. That meant I'd have to search her house. I would probably find a house key in the tack room. Everyone kept a house key in their tack room. Everyone I knew, anyway.
I made my way up the long twisting driveway, past the big Victorian house, and parked at the barn. It wasn't pouring rain like it had been earlier, but it was cold and misting and unpleasant. At least I'd be inside. I hurried to the barn and slid the door open enough to walk through. After groping around I found the light switches and flipped them on. I was most definitely intruding, and the guilt made me cautious, even though no one else was there.
I'd never been inside Valerie's barn. Although the outside was fussy and silly for its purpose, I figured the interior would show more attention to functionality. I was wrong. The six oversized stalls, although nice, had expensive black enamel and brass grill-work on the doors and fronts. The aisle was set with cobblestone, like what you'd find in the driveways of some expensive homes. Pretty, but impractical unless you liked to spend your time sweeping and cleaning. Nachtfeder's name, in flowing script, was on a thick brass plate on a stall door. The stall should have been bedded if Valerie was expecting him, but except for the pristine stall mats, it was empty.
I checked the other stalls. Nothing. I could tell which one Blackie had occupied on Sunday, courtesy of Delores, because dirty hoof prints marred the surface of the otherwise unused black mats. I saw no buckets for grain or water in any of the stalls.