you'd of done it.'
'Marty… be quiet.'
'Why don't you put your coat on, Steve?'
'Shut up,' I said. And amazingly, he did.
We walked past the restrooms, and I dropped the apple into a trash can. I was no longer hungry, not for food anyway, and the hunger I felt, I could do nothing about.
Too bad I hadn't brought a banana for dessert. Now, that would have been… interesting. I gritted my teeth. 'Which horse?' I said.
'Horse?'
I looked at him. He was grinning wildly, his imagination running away with him, too. 'Yeah, Marty, you know the one. Four legs, mane, tail, whinnies. Which horse is colicky?'
'Oh, Sandstone.' He walked into the barn ahead of me. 'She'll get you yet. Why you just don't give in and get it over with, I'll never know.'
'She's not my type.'
He whirled around. 'Looked like she was 'your type' just a second ago.' When I didn't say anything, he said, 'Loosen up, for Christ's sake. Have some fun.'
'Marty.'
His eyebrows rose. 'Yes-s-s?'
'When a boarder's around and there's a problem, wait until we're out of hearing range before you tell me what's wrong.'
'What're you talkin' about? She don't care 'bout no horses. She only cares about fuckin' your ass. Only reason she's got a horse in the first place is so she can expand her territory. Though when I think about it, it was a bad move on her part, 'cause mostly it's girls 'round here, and the guys, well, some of 'em are more than a little questionable, if you know what I mean. My cousin works at that new health club by Wilde Lake, and he knows Elsa. She's a member, and he told me-'
'Marty. I don't want to hear about it.' I sighed. 'It's general operating procedure I'm talking about. And you need to watch your mouth.'
'Yes, sir.' He rolled his eyes and pulled the stall door open with exaggerated subservience.
I stepped into the gelding's stall. 'Your mom never use soap in your mouth, or what?'
'My momma dishes out slop at a truck stop sixty hours a week. Compared to her,' he grinned, 'I'm a fucking angel.'
'Then heaven help us.'
Sandstone, a washy palomino, stood at the back of the stall with his head lowered. His eyes were a dead giveaway. He was so preoccupied with his pain, he hadn't even bothered to look at us when we entered his stall.
I checked his vitals. Capillary refill time was normal. Pulse and respiration right on the mark. His gut sounds were slightly louder on the left. I pinched the skin on his neck, and it snapped back fast enough. He wasn't dehydrated.
'Who noticed he wasn't feeling well?'
'I did,' Marty said.
'Good work. I'm impressed. You were on top of it to have noticed that anything was wrong at all.'
'Yeah.' He grinned wickedly. 'You oughta get on top of it.'
'Damn. I stepped right into that, didn't I?' I turned away from him to keep from cracking up. 'I'll give him some Banamine and monitor his vitals. Do me a favor and check on him whenever you're over here, and let me know if he gets worse?'
'Sure. You need help with the shot?'
I shook my head.
'I'm gonna go switch the horses, then.'
I got what I needed from the feed room, prepared the syringe, and injected the gelding in the neck. He began eating his hay almost immediately. I looked at the syringe and rolled it between my fingertips. He couldn't have felt better that fast, not from the drug, anyway. Given intramuscularly, it takes twenty minutes before it kicks in. He knew what the injection was about. He felt better in his mind, if not his body.
'You junkie, you,' I said, softly.
He stopped in mid-chew, with wisps of hay sticking out the side of his mouth, and looked at me with inquisitive brown eyes. When I said nothing further, he lost interest and turned his attention back to lunch.
Satisfied that he was okay for the time being, I spent the rest of the afternoon dragging and hosing down the indoor arenas. In truth, what I really wanted to do was take a nap, but with Mrs. Timbrook on the premises, who knew what would happen if she found me in a prone position? I smiled to myself and spent some minutes thinking about that. It did nothing to satisfy but helped pass the time.
Thursday morning, I woke around four and couldn't go back to sleep. Hanging around the loft didn't appeal to me, and lying awake in bed was worse still. For the past two years, it had been my routine to go in early and ride one of the school horses, and it would have been nice to think the only reason I hadn't done so in the last twelve days was because I was too sore. I got dressed and headed to Foxdale.
It was pitch black when I turned the corner and eased the pickup down the lane toward the indoor. I backed into a spot under one of the security lights, turned off the engine, and cracked open the window. I sat there unmoving and tried to ignore the tension in my shoulders. After several minutes, I got out and shut the door.
The mournful hoot of an owl carried clearly in the still air. After a moment, the call was returned by its mate, or an enemy. I didn't know which. I walked down to the barns.
No trailer was parked where it shouldn't have been. No one was lurking in the dark with a mask over his face. I was being childish. It wouldn't happen again. They wouldn't be back.
I slipped through the space between the partially-opened barn doors and turned on the lights. Some of the horses were lying down. Others were standing, dozing. They all squinted at the light. I strolled down the aisles. Soon the barns would be noisy with the activity that went along with caring for two-hundred-plus horses-raised voices, the bass throb of a radio, the clatter of horseshoes on asphalt. But for now, the barns were quiet, the air filled with pungent odors of sawdust, hay, and horse. My favorite time of day.
I stopped in front of stall 36. An elegant gray mare pricked her ears and watched me with wide-spaced, blue-brown eyes. She was a replacement for one of the stolen horses, and she'd settled quickly into the farm's routine. I cut through the wash rack, headed back to the lounge, and got the coffee machine going.
By mid-morning, after the horses had been grained and hayed and the first batch was unenthusiastically plodding across pastures thick with frost, I took the rest of the day off. Mrs. Hill didn't question it, and I didn't offer an explanation. But the previous evening, with Mr. Sander's insurance windfall in mind, I'd given Nick a call. He'd conferred with his sister, and thanks in part to Nick's guarantee that I could be trusted to keep what I learned to myself, she'd agreed to meet with me.
Traffic was light on I-95, and I made it downtown with an hour to spare. I drove past Camden Yards, where I'd watched my share of Orioles games, and found a parking space a block from the Inner Harbor. I strolled down the wide cobblestone steps to the water's edge. Exhaust fumes mingled with an underlying odor of stagnant water, while above my head, seagulls swooped and cried, ever watchful for a handout. I squinted at a distant sailboat as it skimmed silently over water that sparkled under the winter sun and thought how appearances could be deceiving. Up close, where the waves lapped against the bulkhead, the greasy white body of a fish floated between rotting pieces of lumber and the plastic rings from a six-pack. The water was coated with an oily film, and I wondered how anything could live down there.
I walked past one of the pavilions that had been boarded up for the season. Tacked alongside the entrance, its faded corners curling back onto itself, was a poster announcing a performance by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The event itself had long since come and gone, and if my sister hadn't up and moved to California, her attendance would have been a sure bet. I had spent countless hours listening to her music filter through the bedroom wall as she worked her way through a piece, her brow furrowed with concentration, the smooth wood of the violin tucked under her chin.
