“Haha!” I teased, “Sophie’s a big fatty.”
“Oh shut up, at least I don’t sound like an angry elephant whenever I open my mouth,” Sophie retorted, and Charlotte flapped her wings a couple times.
“Come on, guys, we don’t have time for this. We need to get as much information as we can.”
“Ok,” I said. “The house is over that way, you can see it there. The stables where Touch of Frost is kept is that big wooden building to my left. I don’t think Sophie will be able to get in there, the door at the front is super secure, and the windows up top seem pretty narrow. So it’d have to be me or Charlotte that go in there. Behind the stables, that big paddock, is where most of the training happens.”
“I want to go check out the house, anyway. I’m going to go pretend to hunt rich people from my perch on their roof,” Sophie announced.
“Maybe remember the reason we’re here is to eavesdrop and spy, not to terrorize the rich,” I reminded Sophie.
“I’ll go see if that Corey is in the stables,” Charlotte said.
“So I guess that leaves me to hang around the paddock,” I replied. “Don’t forget to move around from time to time, it’ll look suspicious if we just hang around the one place for like ninety minutes.”
“Fine, enough with the lesson, I’m out of here,” Sophie said, flying off towards the house.
“We meet back home before the two hours are up, remember that,” Charlotte told me before soaring off towards the stable. I followed her, flying over the paddock behind the stable and getting a bit of the lay of the land.
There were two horses out, with two different jockeys. I could tell from up here that one of them was Tony, although I didn’t recognize the other one. Philippe was walking along the edge of the paddock, obviously giving out instructions from time to time.
I circled up above, watching the horses as they went through their daily training routines. Finally, I circled slowly down and aimed for the fence right next to where Philippe was.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t quite mastered the art of landing properly yet. Maybe making it into that tree the first time was a fluke; either way, I flew a little bit too low towards the fence and flew directly into it, landing with an awkward thud on the ground below.
I groaned to myself as I hoisted myself up and shook my feathers. I flew up once more and tried again, this time managing to land gingerly on the fence where I’d originally been aiming. Luckily, it didn’t seem that anyone noticed anything. That was one advantage to being a bird: most people just ignored you completely.
Hopping along the fence carefully, I made my way a little bit closer to Philippe.
At the far end of the paddock was a steeplechase setup, a fence for the horses to practice jumping over, with a bit of a pool on the other side that the horse had to miss as well.
For a couple of minutes, I watched as Philippe barked out orders. Eventually Tony ran and attempted to jump over the steeple, but the horse’s rear legs clipped the bar and it fell down into the water below.
“Bah!” Philippe spat, obviously disgusted. Tony came over with his horse, while the other jockey continued to do laps down the other end of the large paddock.
“You call dat jumpeeng?” Philippe asked in his strong French accent.
“Damn it, man, I’m a frigging murder suspect, give a dude a break, will you? The last guy was so much nicer,” Tony said, taking off his helmet and shaking the sweat off his hair.
“We are all suspects,” Philippe replied. “But dere is nothing we can do about eet now.”
“Yeah, well, forgive me if I’m a little bit distracted.”
Philippe just shrugged. “You are one of the world’s top jockeys. You are not paid to be distracted. You are riding one of dee finest horses ever. Figure it out.”
“Aren’t you just a little bit worried? Like, at all?”
“I am not the one who cursed the dead over the body in front of other people, like some kind of idiot.”
A flash of anger passed past Tony’s eyes.
“Well how the hell do I know it wasn’t you? You French are shifty to begin with, and you said you were going down to the house to get some water. You could have easily done it then.”
“As easily as you could have, while I was gone,” Philippe replied, his tone icy. It seemed that perhaps Tony’s words were beginning to affect him. “Besides, everyone knows you hated the woman. Whereas to me, she was a boss. I have had worse. Much, much worse. As a young man, in Genf, I was beaten if I didn’t do the work properly. You tell me, did Caroline Gibson ever beat me? No. Did she ever beat you? No. She should have. I would have, if she had let me, with your impertinent mouth. You are lucky dat you are such a good jockey.”
“Yeah, well, this is America,” Tony replied arrogantly. “We have worker’s rights here. And just because she didn’t beat you didn’t make her a good boss.”
“Who do you think did it, den?” Philippe asked. “You think it was me? You tell big, fat policeman de foreigner did it?”
Tony laughed, a hollow, empty laugh. “No. I wouldn’t tell that fat moron anything even if I knew. Everyone in town knows Hawthorne has the IQ of a slug. Can’t trust the man with a simple robbery without him bungling it. Plus, I don’t know who did it. You ask me though, I say Corey did it, so he can finally bang that chick without Caroline getting all pissy about it.”
It sounded like Corey and Ellie wanting to be together was the worst kept secret on the farm.
“Perhaps. Nothing makes a man so crazy as the love of a woman.”
“Especially when that woman is the only heir to a multi-million dollar empire,” Tony added, putting his helmet back on and leading his horse back out to the paddock.
Tony went back to his work and a few minutes later, realizing I wasn’t going to be getting any more information about the murder from the two of them, I flew up and landed on top of the stables – making extra certain that I stuck the landing on the first try, this time.
I replayed the conversation over in my mind, trying to think. There really wasn’t that much information here, other than the fact that Philippe didn’t really seem to have much motive to kill Caroline, Tony openly hated her, and both men had been left alone around the time of the murder. Either one of them could have done it.
Great. If only Philippe hadn’t gotten thirsty – although that could have just been an excuse, I reminded myself – then Philippe and Tony could have been each other’s alibi, and that would have eliminated two people from the pool of suspects.
I decided to fly out towards the house and see if there was anything I could discover there. Landing on the roof, I hopped from window to window, peeking my head inside. I passed a bedroom that surely had to be Ellie’s – every inch of it was pink, covered in stuffed pink bears – and a matching bathroom. I passed another bedroom that looked unlived in, which must have been a guest room, and another room that was obviously used for storage. When I hopped past the next window, however, I stopped. Susan was rummaging through a desk, obviously looking for something. I definitely hadn’t been dreaming this morning, she looked haggard and worried. I couldn’t help but wonder what she was looking for in the room that was obviously Caroline Gibson’s office.
It was done up in a modern style, with white walls and furniture, and pictures of Caroline lined all the walls, including a giant oil painting of Caroline on top of a horse in a giant frame behind the desk. The painter had been very generous when it came to Caroline’s proportions, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of the portrait of Ben Stiller’s character in the movie Dodgeball, one of my favourite comedies of all time.