“Thank you, dear,” Polly told me. “That’s nice of you to say. Listen, I imagine you don’t know very much about horse racing?”
I shook my head no.
“Well why don’t you come by my farm and I’ll show you around? I don’t have any horses as famous as Touch of Frost, obviously, but I can tell you all about it myself. I just love the sport, and the animals, so much. I’m sure as a vet you can understand the love for the animals, of course.”
I smiled. “I’d love to, thank you for the invitation,” I told Polly. It was true; I didn’t really know very much about horse racing at all. I knew about Touch of Frost, of course, but that was only really because everyone in the country had heard of the famous horse. And while to be honest, the idea of horse racing wasn’t my favourite (I was all too aware that a lot of horses in the industry were abused and mistreated), I thought that perhaps accepting the invitation might allow me to get a better insight into Caroline Gibson’s life, and help me discover who might have wanted her dead.
Just then, the receptionist called for Ellie to go in and see the police chief. Polly gave her hand another squeeze. “It’ll be fine, Ellie. Just tell the truth.” Ellie gave us both a small smile and went in. As soon as she left, Polly sighed.
“That poor girl. It’s so hard for her right now! She was never an independent spirit, and her mother’s sudden death has been so hard on her. I think Ellie just doesn’t know what she’s doing right now,” Polly said, shaking her head.
“Well, I’m sure she’ll figure it out,” I said encouragingly. “I can only imagine what she’s going through right now, but I’m sure she’ll get there.”
“Oh yes, absolutely,” Polly replied. “Especially with Corey around. He’ll take good care of her.”
“Was there something between the two of them?” I asked, remembering suddenly the way Ellie blushed whenever Corey looked at her when we were at the farm and putting that up to shyness.
Polly gave me a small smile. “Well, I think they would have liked for there to have been. Unfortunately, Caroline didn’t think Corey was good enough for her daughter, so it never developed into anything.”
“But Ellie’s a full grown woman!” I protested.
“You saw Caroline and Ellie together, right? Ellie would have never gone against her mother’s wishes, no matter how much she liked Corey. But I suppose if there’s one good thing to come of this it’s that now the two of them can be together.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said, my mind whirring to life as it tried to absorb all this new information. While my brain was processing all of this, Polly got a text, her brow furrowing as she read it.
“Listen,” she asked me a moment later. “Something’s come up and I have to be back at my farm as soon as possible. Would it be alright if you drove Ellie home? I could order a taxi for her if you can’t, but I think right now someone she knows, even if she only met you once, would be better than a total stranger.”
“Sure, no problem,” I replied. After all, the more time I spent with Ellie, the more opportunity I had to learn about her and Corey.
“Thank you so much,” Polly replied, getting up. “I just came here today with Ellie, they didn’t want to talk to me.” She handed me a card. “Call me sometime, I’ll make sure to organize a tour for you around my stables.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“No, thank you,” she replied, and with another sweet smile, Polly was gone.
I barely had a chance to think over what I’d just learned before I was called in to see Hawthorne. I told the receptionist to ask Ellie to stay there when she came out as I was driving her home, and then followed her into Hawthorne’s office.
Chapter 6
The man was just as disgusting today as yesterday, only this time he looked like he hadn’t slept a wink. There was a veritable bucket of coffee sitting in front of his desk, every inch of which was covered in papers strewn about any which way. A fly buzzed around an old box of donuts that had been discarded on top of a filing cabinet. The walls of Hawthorne’s office were covered with pictures of him with various guns, posing with deer he’d shot. I felt like I wanted to throw up.
I sat in the chair and waited for Hawthorne to start asking me questions. Instead, he just sat there, leering at me. I knew what he was doing; he was trying to get me to start talking first. Well, it wasn’t going to work.
The stand-off must have gone on for about three minutes before Hawthorne finally gave up.
“Alright, missy,” he said, grabbing a notebook off the desk with his grubby little fingers. “I just gotta go over what you told me yesterday.”
He flipped back through the pages.
“So you say you were hired to work as a vet, and you arrived yesterday afternoon, around 4?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“And you’d never met Caroline Gibson before then?”
“No.”
He scribbled something down in the notebook. “What do you think about the others who were at the house?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m not sure I know the whole list.”
Hawthorne grunted his annoyance, and flipped the pages once more before rattling off the list of names.
“Susan, the maid or whatever. Ellie, the daughter. Polly, the friend. Corey, the stable manager. Philippe, the French trainer. Damn foreigners taking American jobs. Tony, the jockey.”
“Well, to be honest, I don’t really know any of them. I didn’t meet Polly at all until today, I didn’t even know she was there.”
“What did you notice?”
I thought back. “If anyone stood out, it was Tony. He didn’t seem to be sad at all that Caroline had been killed. In fact, he seemed to openly think she deserved it.”
Hawthorne scribbled down what I said in the book.
“What about the others?”
I shrugged. “Susan seemed to me to be the prim and proper type. The kind who doesn’t take offense to much, and is efficient at her job. Corey seems nice, and so does Ellie. She was definitely under her mother’s wing all the time. I couldn’t say about the others, I didn’t meet them for long enough.”
“Did anyone strike you as acting strangely?”
“I couldn’t say, I don’t know what any of them were like otherwise.”
Hawthorne harrumphed his disapproval. Apparently my answers weren’t what he was after.
“And you’re sticking to the story that you didn’t know Caroline Gibson and had nothing against her?”
I felt a wave of anger coming up, but I quelled it down. “It’s not a story, it’s the truth,” I said, bringing my shoulders up. How dare he insinuate that I was lying?
“Whatever. Don’t leave the state, remember? You can go.”
I left the office muttering angrily to myself, wondering if I could get away with a curse to set the whole building on fire. I was so pissed off I almost forgot that I was supposed to drive Ellie Gibson back home, until I saw her sitting quietly in the waiting room, like a little mouse trying not to be noticed.
“Well, that was a giant waste of my time,” I muttered to myself as I smiled at Ellie. I imagined Hawthorne didn’t actually need any of the information I gave him today, he probably just wanted to rile me up and hope I’d confess, or something. What a terrible cop.
“Hey, Ellie,” I told her. “Polly asked me to take you home, are you ready to go?”
“Yeah,” Ellie replied, and I noticed her eyes were tinged with red.
“Are you ok?” I asked softly, taking a tissue out of my purse and handing it to her. She nodded as we left the police station.
“I just feel like that man, he’s making me sound like such an awful person,” Ellie said as we walked towards my car. “I feel like he thinks I killed mom!”
I made soft noises as I ushered her into the car.