'Was there a divorce?'
'Don't know. Not my department.'
'So what was Clive doing between the hippie and Dolly?'
'Everything he could,' Becker said.
There was a two-wheeled horse-drawn piece of farm machinery inching along in our lane. I didn't know anything about farm machinery, but this looked as if it had something to do with hay. A black man in overalls and a felt hat was sitting up on the rig, though he didn't seem to be paying much attention. The horse appeared to be the one on duty. Becker slowed as we approached it and swerved carefully out to pass.
'Booze, women, that sort of thing?'
'A lot of both,' Becker said.
'Ah, sweet bird of youth,' I said.
Becker grinned without looking at me.
'You hang around those Clive girls, you might get younger yourself,' he said.
'While Clive's living the male fantasy life,' I said, 'who's looking after the girls?'
'Don't know,' Becker said.
'Is there anything in this for me?' I said. 'Clive screw somebody's wife, and somebody wants to get even? He sleep with some woman and ditch her and she wants to get even?'
'I don't pay attention to shit like that,' Becker said. 'Do I look like Ann Landers?'
'You look sort of like Archie Moore,' I said. 'And you sound like a guy who knows things he's not saying.'
'It's a special talent,' Becker said.
'The real talent is sounding like you don't know anything you're not telling,' I said.
'I can do that,' Becker said.
'If you want to,' I said.
Becker watched the road.
'So why don't you want to?'
We passed a sign that read, 'Welcome to Alton.'
'Because you want me to wonder.'
Becker slowed and turned into a narrow dirt road that went under high pines, limbless the first thirty feet or so up. I remembered it from my last visit, eight years ago.
'You want me to look into them, but you don't want it to have come from you, because it could come back and bite you in the ass.'
'Clives the most powerful family in Columbia County,' Becker said, and turned off the dirt road into a wide clearing and parked near a white rail fence near the Canterbury Farms training track.
FOURTEEN
WE DIDN'T LEARN much in Alton. An Alton County Sheriff's detective named Felicia Boudreau was on the case. I knew her from eight years earlier, and Becker and I talked with her sitting in her car at the stable site.
Carolina Moon, she told us, had been a filly of modest promise. Her groom had found her dead in her stall when he went to feed her in the morning. She'd been shot once in the neck with a.22 long bullet, which had punctured her aorta, and the horse had bled to death.
'We have the bullet,' Felicia said. 'Vet took it out of the horse.'
'We'd like to see if we can match it against ours,' Becker said.
Felicia said, 'Sure.'
'Nothing else?' I said.
'Well, it's nice to see you again,' she said.
'You too,' I said. 'Got any clues?'
'None.'
'Lot of that going around,' I said.
'What's it been, eight years?'
'Yep. Still getting your hair done in Batesburg?' I said.
'Yes, I am.'
'Still looks great,' I said.
'Yes, it does.'
We talked with Frank Ferguson, who owned the horse. He didn't have any idea why someone would shoot his horse. I remembered him from the last time I was in Alton, but he didn't remember me. He had been smoking a
