Why? Why was she so adamant that the selenium poisoning was accidental? Was it really to protect Eddie? Sleeping with one man was a strange way to manifest love for another, though there were precedents.
But there was something else nagging at the back of his mind. Earlier that afternoon — it seemed like days ago — he had been unable to imagine a financial motive for poisoning the horses. Well, what about — insurance? What if Glenda was only covered for accidental death or injury to her animals? His insistence that they had been deliberately killed would prevent her from collecting.
Was he suggesting, then, that she had killed her own horses?
No. Impossible.
But she certainly might have grasped the opportunity to collect insurance after someone else had killed them; sentiment might not prevent that, and it would explain why she was bent on damping, by any means at her command, Sam’s scientific zeal.
It made sense. Still — who had killed the horses, and why? And did Glenda know? Lord help the killer if she did, because money or no, she wouldn’t let their murder pass. Somehow she would take revenge.
At nine-thirty on Saturday night Sam started for Glenda’s, then paused on the front porch. He turned back into the living room. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, pulled out his .45 revolver, and loaded it. He stuck it in the pocket of his jacket, where it swung awkwardly with every step, like a bowling ball in a pillowcase. Then he took Claire’s keys from the mantel, walked out to the Toyota, and drove to EastWind.
There was light coming from the tack room window when he pulled up to EastWind, but inside the stables it was dark and the smell was overpowering; he could feel his mucous membranes swell and itch as he walked down the row of stalls.
“Peggy?” he called, rapping softly at the tack room door. No answer. He pushed open the door a few inches.
A tiny television in the corner flickered and crackled to itself. Peggy was asleep on the cot, right arm doubled under her, left arm dangling towards the floor; it was a posture of such profound exhaustion that Sam felt uneasy. Could someone sleep with her head twisted like that? Should he wake her? He would scare the hell out of her — not to mention the fact that she might deck him. This was a tough little girl.
Nevertheless, he moved to the cot. “Peggy!” he said again, bending and nudging her lightly. Then he lifted her left arm and let it fall limply. She was completely out.
No smell of alcohol; a sleeping pill, maybe? But she was supposed to be on guard, more or less, and somehow he knew she would take her promise to Glenda very seriously. Abstractedly he leaned across her to switch off the TV.
It was then he saw the red, swollen mark on her jaw.
Cursing under his breath, he strode to the door and flipped off the light. Then he stood nervously listening to the sounds around him: the horses nickering and stamping restlessly, a dog barking somewhere, his own heart pounding. He stifled a sneeze, and in the midst of that intercranial explosion thought he heard a footstep. It wasn’t repeated. After five minutes, he fished his revolver from his pocket and slowly opened the door.
Some vestigial sense detected movement his conscious mind didn’t — otherwise there would have been one highly coveted office vacant at the Citrus Cove Agricultural Research Station. He lurched violently backwards and to his left and the blow landed on his right forearm instead of his head. But it was bad enough: the gun flew from his hand, he cried out in pain and fell to his knees.
His hindbrain was in complete control now. He rolled to his left and staggered to his feet as if coming up with a long drive to center field, and heard the vicious thwack of a shovel or rake hitting the floor where he had just been. With the horses neighing in alarm behind him, he lunged towards the open door at the end of the barn, agonizingly aware that he was silhouetted against the diffuse light of the night sky, expecting every second the crack of a shot and the searing pain between his shoulder blades. Somehow he reached the doorway, tore around the comer, and collapsed against the rough wood siding, gasping for breath.
Picking up a rock to defend himself, however feebly — his right arm was still completely useless — he waited. But no attack came. Presently he realized with a little shock that he now held the strategic advantage: for all the man in the barn knew, he was still armed and fully functional and lying in wait for an incautious move.
He smiled sardonically. Yeah, he was one dangerous dude all right, and now he was going to scuttle to his car and get the hell out of here. No horse, not even Glenda Cannon’s horse — not even Glenda Cannon’s gratitude — was worth this throbbing in his arm. This guy could split or go on with his work, depending on his zeal; it was all the same to Sam. He would just drive away and bring back Tom, and somebody to have a look at Peggy—
Peggy. Damnation.
Maybe she was just knocked out; maybe she was drugged; in any case, she was completely helpless. Could he leave her here?
He began to jog down the drive towards the Toyota and nearly fainted from the impact. Holding his arm against his side, he slowed to an ungainly lope, reached the car, opened the door, slammed it vehemently, gunned the motor, and took off, spinning out in the loose gravel. He wanted this fellow to know exactly what he was doing.
And “this fellow,” he felt sure, was Eddie Froelich.
Once out on the road, he tried rotating his wrist and drew in his breath sharply, as unnerved by the sound, a faint creaking, like trees rubbing together in the wind, as by the pain. Something was definitely broken, and under the circumstances it was tempting to just keep on going to the county sheriff’s office. After a half-mile he pulled off beside the Parkerville Water District sign.
He stared at its luminous letters as if one of the Commandments had just appeared, written in rivets on a bullet-riddled road sign. He looked at it for a long time, forgetting his pain.
Then he eased himself out of the car and rummaged through the trunk, coming up with the top to Claire’s bathing suit, which made a serviceable sling, a flashlight, and a jack handle. He started back towards Glenda’s.
The horses were quiet when he crept up to the bam door, as though the intruding biped had left. But when Sam cautiously poked his head around the comer there he was, smack in the center of the aisle, a black shape coalesced around a beam of light. After a moment Sam could see that the light was a flashlight he held in his teeth and directed towards his hands, which were assembling some sort of apparatus.
Sam retreated hastily and crouched behind the door again, thinking about his next move. Not planning it — he knew what he had to do — but thinking about it, summoning his nerve. From somewhere close came a sharp, fresh odor, and his outstretched hand brushed a burlap sack, half-filled. He brought up a fistful of sweet-smelling grass. Alfalfa. That’s why the horses were quiet; they had been bribed. Something else dangled between his fingers: a long, tough vine with — he squinted in the dim light — compound leaves and, no doubt, irregular flowers and bladder-shaped, two-celled pods. Spotted Loco.
He thought he knew what the man in the bam was fumbling with.
Picking up a piece of gravel from the driveway, he hefted it experimentally. Then he tossed it at the second stall, praying that long hours of practicing left-handed hook shots into the wastebasket at work were finally going to pay off. The pebble landed with a thunk, right on target, and immediately the stallion, what was his name — Barney’s Pride — neighed with alarm and began plunging and kicking.