“Or get raped!” her friend exclaimed. “That’s what happens in jail!”
“Ewww! He’s too old for that!”
“My daddy says no way can the government tell us what we can and can’t do with our horses.”
Billie wondered who the girl’s daddy was but decided not to ask.
“They’re our property and we have rights!” the friend said. “We own them.”
“Anyway, they don’t feel pain. Not like we do. Animals don’t have the same kind of nervous system as us. They’re an-i-mals. Gee-duh, get it?”
The conversation veered to country music and musicians, and one of the girls sang a few bars of a current hit in an astonishingly lovely voice.
“You’ve got to audition for American Idol,” her friend said as Billie’s phone buzzed. “Or The Voice.”
“Hey, Billie, you up?” Richard asked. He sounded relaxed and friendly, as if they hadn’t had their previous conversation assigning blame for Alice Dean’s injury.
“I am.” She heard the grin in her voice.
“I saw that you called.”
So this wasn’t anything more than that.
“Can you help me out with some names of people to talk to for the article? I’m here in Shelbyville.”
“I’ll text you.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Read the paper.”
“I have.”
“Well then,” he said. “We’ll catch up later, okay?”
She tried to keep disappointment and anger from her voice.
“No problem.” She had hoped he would guide her to the right people to interview, people who were knowledgeable about soring, involved with it, whistle-blowers who might give her an insider’s view. If nothing else, at least he could tell her what farms to visit. But he was gone, the connection ended. He acted as if Dale’s problems were his own. Or was that just an excuse to distance himself from her? Maybe he was back with his wife.
She laid the phone on the table and glanced around. The girls had left without her noticing. She sat with her cold coffee and wrinkled newspaper, the day stretched sourly ahead of her.
Back in her motel room, sprawled on the bed, goose-bumped from the chilled air, Billie reached into her bag for her knitting. Just a few minutes, she promised herself, some stitches to soothe her, a few rows. The counting always helped, so did the repetition with her hands, the little stabs of the needles, the deft looping of yarn, the way the fabric grew into her lap like a cat.
It wasn’t until she’d sorted out the body of the sock from the ball of yarn that she remembered her metal needles had been confiscated by airport security back in Tucson. The stitches lay unanchored and in danger of unraveling without the needle to hold them in place. Carefully, she folded the sock over and returned it to her bag. She Googled knitting Shelbyville and found just one shop. When she went out today, she’d find it and buy another set of needles.
Then she typed in walking horse barns Shelbyville and made a list, checking each farm against the Google map in her iPhone, selecting first those closest to the motel, then the ones that were farther away. Frank always wanted the elite, the rulers of every underworld. Billie looked up each farm’s website and Googled the owners’ names. Some she found. Many she didn’t. It was as if they didn’t exist.
CHAPTER 21
BILLIE PARKED IN the first space she found in the town square and peered out the windshield, searching for the yarn shop where she could replace her knitting needles. An ice cream parlor with LUCILLE’S stenciled in blue and pink paint occupied the address she was looking for. She decided to get an ice cream cone at Lucille’s and ask for directions.
She locked the rental car then noticed that she’d left her unfinished sock lying on the front passenger seat. She unlocked the door and retrieved it.
On the sidewalk in front of each business, identical folding signs featured the silhouette of a Big Lick horse on a bright green background:
PROUD SUPPORTER OF THE
TENNESSEE WALKING HORSE BIG SHOW
We love our breed!
The sign in front of the ice cream parlor had been set down haphazardly, so it practically blocked the entrance. Billie sidled past it and pulled open the screen door. A bell jangled overhead as she stepped inside. She glanced at herself in a mirror that covered the entire wall—trying to double the width of the narrow room, she figured—and wished she had combed her hair and chosen something to wear other than a faded blue and red University of Arizona Wildcats T-shirt.
“Can I help you?”
The voice of the woman who appeared through swinging saloon doors at the back of the shop was soft, Southern, welcoming. Her hair was mounded on top of her head like the burl of a gnarled oak tree, and Billie wondered how much hair spray it took to keep it there. The woman wore turquoise eye shadow, thick black liner, and pink lipstick. She smoothed a pink and white striped apron over her dress, Lucille embroidered on its breast.
“Get for you?” Lucille asked.
Billie sat at the counter. “Decaf, please. No! Wait! Regular.”
Lucille slid a cup and saucer into place in front of her, followed by a pink china bowl stacked with creamers. “You take sugar, honey?”
Billie shook her head as the older woman poured her coffee. “But I am hungry. I don’t suppose you’ve got any breakfast ice cream?”
Lucille laughed. “Now that’s a first. Scrambled eggs in a waffle cone. I should add it to the menu. I do serve food besides ice cream. Specials are there.” She pointed behind her to a whiteboard leaning against the mirror, the menu written in blue cursive handwriting.
Billie looked at the list. “Macaroni and cheese, please, with sweet potato fries. Ranch on the side.”
“You sure are hungry.” Lucille smiled, tucked her order pad into the apron’s frilly pocket, and disappeared through the swinging doors.
While Billie waited, she looked around at dolls in ruffled Gone with the Wind style
