Something Most Deadly Page 13

  Jane said nothing, and Lucinda came at her from another direction.

  “Canaday says he saw your rattletrap car following him from Boston.”

  Jane stopped brushing and straightened. “Followed him? Where?” She inquired with a fake calm, trying to hide her shock.

  “Brockton—he just moved to a new home on the west side. He said you were driving around his old neighborhood.”

  Jane was stunned. How did he know that? she wondered. But she plunged on with the unfazed act: “Brockton? Must have been a coincidence. I visited my best friend who lives in Brockton after I shopped in Boston. She lives in a townhouse on the west side.” Jane was mentally wincing, hoping they’d buy it because Madeline did live in that same area. She tossed the dandy brush back in the trunk and slammed it shut, her head spinning with the news that she'd been spotted after all. “I knew my car was ugly and hard to miss, but I never thought it would spook anyone.”

  “You’re visiting a lot of friends suddenly. Funny that your friend lives in the same town, funny that your car showed up on almost every security camera on Brendan. And funny that Brian thinks you look familiar.”

  “He...what?” Jane’s attempt to stonewall Lucinda began to unravel. Security cameras! Her bravado was falling apart, and Lucinda stepped in for the kill.

  “He saw you walking around Fanueil Hall and the Marketplace, and he said you followed him to the parking garage.”

  “I didn’t...” she sputtered, startled that he’d noticed her after all.

  “Wait,” she held her hand up, “don’t tell me, it was a coincidence.” Lucinda’s voice was loaded with sarcasm, and Jane glared at her. She could tell the girl was pleased at finally digging out a reaction. Lucinda broke eye contact and began circling Charmante with her arms still folded, occasionally touching the horse’s satin coat like fine statue. Jane was totally blindsided and caught off guard, never a good position when Lucinda was delivering a smackdown.

  Lucinda circled until she was face to face with Jane again, and then narrowed her eyes at Jane’s outfit of obviously expensive blouse and designer jeans. “Why are you all gussied up in the barn instead of wearing sensible breeches?” she inquired critically.

  “Oh just feeling a little festive,” she retorted.

  “You should always be properly attired in the barn,” Lucinda carped, not willing to be deflected, still in the mood to gut her victim.

  “I can’t live in riding clothes, Lucinda, give me a break.”

  Lucinda smirked and flipped hair over her shoulders. “I’ve yet to see you in the breeches we were so nice to give you—free of charge!”

  “Sorry about that. I appreciate the thought, but they were way too big.”

  “How could they be too big for you?” Lucinda demanded, as if Jane were not only tall, but the size of a barn door.

  “I may be tall, but your friend must have been a little on the heavy side. The breeches are baggy. You wouldn’t be caught dead in them.”

  “Well, I’m petite, and I don’t have to watch my pennies like you should be doing. You need to learn to be conservative and not waste time worrying about being glamorous while working in the barn.” Lucinda wagged a chastising finger at her. “I think you need to come to terms with your station in life and stop comparing yourself to me. Besides,” she continued preaching, “the breeches aren’t all that bad—that particular style wasn’t meant to be close-fitting.”

  And beggars can’t be choosers, Jane thought. Out loud she said: “No kidding. I could fit two of me in one pair.”

  Lucinda rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Jeez...” She let out a rush of air between her teeth, then shifted gears. “Anyway, I didn’t come out here to talk about that...I really came out to invite you to my party.”

  “What?” Jane looked at Lucinda incredulously, stunned at the way she changed the subject. The two women were only vaguely aware of Dylan spreading shavings as slowly as if he were frosting a cake.

  “My mother has a closet full of designer gowns she wore when she was much thinner, and I’m sure she’d let you borrow one if we asked her. If they’re still a little big we could get the housekeeper to take the zipper in and let the hem down—she’s handy like that.”

  “Lucinda!” Jane spat, “I’d take all day, and shop for a week to get ready for a monster party like you’re throwing!”

  Lucinda let out another breath of disgust. “Well, you don’t have to go to that much trouble. You’re getting awfully snobby for a person with hardly a dime to their name. People know you work in the barn and no one expects you to show up looking like some kind of fashion queen.”

  “But I certainly won’t go looking like barn help either, Lucinda!”

  “Fine!” Lucinda yelled. “What an ingrate you are. Stay out here and rot for all I care. I have no time for this crap, I have a party to get ready for!” She turned on her heel and stomped furiously away, muttering something about what happens when you try to be nice to people.

  Jane glanced into the stall at Dylan. He was bent over double, smothering laughter until Lucinda pranced out of earshot. He then straightened quickly, whipping his long hair back over his head in a focused arc, and finally laughed out loud. He waltzed out of the stall, tossing his hair and talking in a high falsetto voice, complete with the valley-girl accent: “You...you ingrate! I don’t have time for this crap. I have a party to get ready for!” Dylan waggled a finger at her: “Start watching your pennies and stop trying to be like me, I’m just too damn perfect to copy!”

  The chain creaked as Charmante torqued his head in the crossties, snorting loudly and rolling his eyes, and Jane laughed in spite of herself.

  “Boy,” Dylan said, lowering his voice several octaves, “that woman is like a shark. I’m surprised her eyes don’t roll back in her head before she sinks her sharp little teeth into you. Now—who is this Brian fellow, and why did you follow him?”

  “No one. I wasn’t!”

  “Okay, okay—so he’s no one and you never followed him. Mind my own business, don’t need to be hit with a brick.”

  Charmante suddenly straightened his head and snapped his ears forward, and Jane and Dylan looked in that direction to see Sam approaching. Sam stopped with his hands on his hips and displayed a variety of cuts and scratches crisscrossing his face and arms. He waited patiently for laughter, motioning with his hands as if he were prompting them. They needed little encouragement and Jane exploded with laughter. “Oh my God Sam,” she gasped, “what happened? Mean Chicken?”

  “Go ahead, have a good laugh,” Sam said, gingerly dabbing at the red scratch across his nose.

  Dylan collapsed on the tack trunk, once again wracked with laughter and holding his sides. Tell me...” he choked, “Tell me, ha ha, you at least caught him..?”

  “Dang bird put up quite a fight,” Sam explained, amused at their laughter. “But we caught him all right. He chased a news reporter into an empty stall. Chicken had her up on the hay rack—nylons, heels and all—screaming her lungs out like a wild woman. So I just jump in the stall and pull the door shut and then I tried to grab him. Boy, did he fight like a sonofagun—flapping at the bars, attacking me, flying at my head, feathers all over the place like snow. Guess he knew he was headed for the trailer.”

  “Wow,” Jane exclaimed, still laughing.

  “If Reggie hadn’t heard all my swearing and cursing, and the reporter’s screaming, Chicken would’ve finished me off or I would’ve killed him. Whole stall’s covered in feathers—looks like someone had a pillow fight in there. Reggie just walks in the stall, yanks the thing upside down by the feet, neat as you please, drags him out and stuffs him into the trailer. But Reggie’s a lot taller than me and he wears cardboard overalls.”

  “He...should...be...stuffed all right,” Dylan cracked, between gasps of laughter, wiping his eyes with the hem of his shirt. “How...how’s the reporter?”

  “Madder than a wet hen—so to speak. Swearing, screaming. Broke three nails, g
ot splinters, ran her stockings. She’s sitting in her satellite truck screaming at her cameraman. He filmed it instead of helping.”

  “Didn’t thank you who did help her?” Dylan asked.

  “Nope.”

  “So you won’t get a date out of this?”

  “Not a chance. I don’t think Reggie will either. She thinks she’s in hayseed hell.”

  Jane wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, and when she managed to stop laughing, said to him: “Reggie didn’t finish the pen for Chicken yet?”

  “No—the Whitbeck’s had him up at the house most of the day to help out with the outdoor ovens. He just came back.”

  “Good thing he did. Well, at least everyone is safe for the moment. Who would’ve ever guessed the fluffy little Easter chick someone dumped off here would grow into such a beast?”

  “If Owen hadn’t kicked him around so much when the bird was smaller, and Lucinda too, for that matter—they both liked to torture him—he wouldn’t be such a mental case,” Sam said as he checked a deep gouge on his arm. Dylan agreed, standing up to get the rake out of the stall. “He’s a fry short of a Happy Meal. Good thing for the party guests you nabbed him. Is the trailer real secure?”

  “Unless Chicken took in screwdrivers and a welding kit, he won’t get out.”

  Jane checked the nasty blood-red gash that plowed through tan skin and golden hair on Sam’s arm. “You better wash this off, Sam, and maybe get a tetanus shot—that’s a really deep gouge.”

  “Don’t worry I get tetanus shots regularly, working around this place. And I ran the arm under cold water for five minutes. It’ll stop bleeding eventually.”

  “Yeah. Like August. You could use a few stitches.”

  “So...not to change the subject, but what did her Royal Highness want?” Sam inquired.

  Dylan answered, still laughing: “She wanted her to wear one of chubby Cecily’s old gowns and shuffle on up to the party.”

  “No!” Sam looked askance. “Well, I guess you’d be in no danger of outshining Lucinda if you went in some ill-fitting, dumpy frock and had no time to prepare. Let every polished, snobby friend see what poor taste you have.”

  “Something like that,” Jane agreed.

  Sam shook his head. Then he looked at Dylan. “Did you tell Jane that Elliot was looking for her?”

  “Yes—she knows he was running around here like Mean Chicken with his head cut off, whining about where in hell the...” Dylan cut himself short.

  Sam cringed, and shook his head sharply at Dylan.

  “Where in hell the what!?” Jane demanded of Dylan. “Tell me.”

  “Dumb dame,” he said reluctantly, as Sam glared at him.

  “Dumb dame??” Jane was speechless.

  “Sorry.” Dylan picked up his pitchfork and leaned on it. “I guess we have to take this garbage from them because it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and jobs are hard to find, and we all need our jobs.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Sam confirmed.

  “Thank you. I just need to clear up why I’m working for...”

  “Careful,” Sam cut him off, “this barn has ears.”

  *****

  Jane stood looking out the window in the round observation tower high over the barn roof, in the dark, so that she could see headlights of arriving guests piercing the twilight. The pinpoints of headlights entered the estate in a steady parade, blinking between trees and marching across the front acreage in the distance. The mansion on the hill, two miles distant, was just a glow on the horizon, like a rich-man’s private Disneyworld. There would be fireworks later, at the exact moment that Lucinda turned twenty-six. Faint sounds of bands warming up floated through the two screens that could still be wrestled open in the tower, and she could even smell delicious aromas from huge outdoor ovens as the chefs and caterers worked their magic.

  Jane tried to imagine what Lucinda and Allison Paget would be wearing. She sighed heavily, hating the distinctly left-out feeling as she walked the floorboards in the observation tower. She watched the full-flower moon rising like a sliver pie in the east. It had just reached the height of the tower and its sorrowful old-man face was staring directly through the windows at her, making her feel a little creepy. It seemed very close. The chalky atmosphere between herself and the moon was wavy and shifting, however, giving a hint of the couple of hundred-thousand miles of space that existed from tower to planet.

  The rolling fields were now ghostly shades of gray and Jane was isolated high over the massive roof in the darkness. She thought she was prepared to ignore the whole party thing and laugh it off, but she was growing starkly dreary and in a short time would be feeling sorry for herself. Work was the best remedy, Jane decided, as she left the tower for her room. Rather than sulk in the dark and feel left out, she would keep busy and work some of the younger horses.

  After changing into boots, breeches and a denim work shirt, she quickly descended the metal staircase to ground level, and decided to make her regular “bed check” of the broodmares first. She headed to the old south wing—dubbed the maternity ward—to look in on a couple of pregnant mares who were late foaling, passing Sam’s closed and dark office on the way. She tried to snap on a rocker switch on the right-hand wall of the large doorway to the south wing, but the switch did not illuminate the banks of fluorescent wafers running down the center aisle. The south wing remained dark. She sighed in exasperation and banged the switch a few more times without results.

  “Damnit, for crying out loud,” she complained as she slowly made her way through the darkness down the narrow old aisle to a second light switch, mounted halfway down the row on a partition between stalls. It was almost pitch-black as she moved away from the hall light, her feet carefully treading down the old wooden boards. When she knew she was in just about the right area for the switch, she moved to the right and stretched out her hands and felt carefully along the stall front until she found the metal switch box that illuminated the old incandescent bulbs that had been installed before the more modern lighting.

  “Well, thank heaven!” she commented to the horses. “At least the old-fashioned bulbs work!” She wondered briefly if Sam had disabled the fluorescents, but then thought it unlikely. He never complained about having maximum light around horses.

  Jane went to Winter Smoke’s stall to check on her. The silver-dappled Trakehner mare was her favorite, and scheduled to give birth in the next week or so. She peeked quietly over the door and saw the mare with her huge belly sleeping peacefully in clean shavings. Smoke hardly opened an eye, completely inured to Jane’s nightly visits. All was well with the maternity ward so she returned to the old switch, midway down the aisle. As she did, her eyes swept over everything out of habit, looking for trouble. Murphy’s Law went double for horse owners. Her eyes were drawn to the wooden floor beneath the light switch.

  She stared at a three-foot by three-foot square that was almost completely free of hay dust, and it looked strange to her. The aisle had been swept, but since this original part of the barn had an old lumpy wooden floor, it generally got short shrift and was usually covered in a fine coat of dust. For some reason, the square at her feet stood out as cleaner than the surrounding floor. The alarms went off in her mind, and Jane felt a strange prickling sensation on her arms. She stared at the floor for a moment, unaware of why it seemed so menacing. She could see barely visible footprints where she’d walked across it in the dark. She suddenly realized she was looking at the old trap-door used a over a century ago for tossing the stall scrapings. Underneath, fifteen feet below in the huge foundation—or “cave”—a horse and wagon would haul away old bedding. It was the same area now used for parking Elliot’s fleet of farm equipment, and Mean Chicken’s favorite stalking area.

  Jane bent down and crammed her fingers into a small gap and with some effort managed to pry the hinged wood-plank door slightly out of the floor. A strong musty updraft assailed her nostrils and lifted her hair. The draft carried a sce
nt of mold and old dirt floor that hadn’t seen the light of day for over a century.

  “Ugh!” she gagged, dropping the heavy door back into place. “No wonder they call it a cave.” Jane noticed that when the trap-door slammed shut, it jarred the dust off, making it even cleaner. Someone had opened it recently, and she wondered who. As far as she knew, the door had been nailed shut from underneath for decades.

  She got up off her knees, slapped them free of dust, and looked down at the square. She would have to ask Sam about it in the morning. Maybe he had pried it open for some reason—maybe he was planning to clean the stalls that way again. If that were the case, Elliot would need to get a much larger manure wagon.

  A dump truck at least.

  Jane hit the light switch, throwing the south wing back into a pool of blackness, and carefully made her way to exit the wing near Sam’s empty office. The barn was eerily quiet now, with only a few bulbs glowing in the corridors—and she realized with a jolt that she was most likely the only human in residence. Sam and all the stable boys had gone home for the night, and there were no boarders or students milling about. Even Reggie had gone back up to the mansion to assist again with the outdoor ovens.

  On her way through the east wing, she stopped when she passed a big metal fuse box and opened it to check. One of the two breakers labeled SOUTH WING was popped open, so she snapped it back to ON.

  “What could’ve caused that thing to blow?” She asked herself. She retraced her steps to punch on the lights in the south wing, and the banks of fluorescents lit up nicely down the aisle without blowing a fuse. “Hmmm. Strange. Maybe Sam was using a hair dryer in there or something,” she joked to herself, mostly just to hear a voice.

  Jane turned the lights back off and continued on to the east wing, looking around anxiously as she progressed. Her nerves were growing jumpy and she glanced at every shadowy area that she passed. A barn so large seemed to have a pulse and a heartbeat all its own. A warm evening breeze had developed and little eddies and currents of air mixed about, traveling high through the rafters, seeking out nooks and crannies and huffing and soughing through gutters and decorative woodwork. A giant sleeping beast. It was a monstrously large building to be so empty of humans. She hoped Reggie would be back soon.