Now we were getting somewhere. “What was it?” I asked.
“Something rattled her. In the lounge area outside of the women’s locker room.”
“Another rider?” I asked.
“I don’t know, possibly.”
“Did you recognize the person?”
Becka shook her head. She didn’t see who it was, but thought it might have been a new early morning regular. It was unusual for a man to be riding alone at that time, but they’d seen the newcomer from a distance twice and had gotten to the stage of polite nods and waves.
“Something he said troubled her. She wouldn’t tell me what it was. Then we came to the diner, met the others, and she was so happy to see you, I assumed she was fine. When she came out, she was pale as a ghost. She made up some flimsy excuse and left right away.”
And that must have helped fuel the rumor, at least among the Main Street Moms, that I’d been connected to Caroline’s arrest, that I’d said or done something to upset her.
Someone or something was scratching at the door. Finally, Babe pushed it open butt first, balancing a tray with two coffees and a small round of biscotti.
“Pete is outdoing himself,” I said, jumping up and holding the door for her. “Are they twice baked?”
“Yeah, he’s getting good.” Babe bunny-dipped the tray onto the coffee table. “How are you girls doing?” she asked. “Playing nice?”
I didn’t want Becka to regret having confided in me, so I kept mum. She did the same.
“Right. Don’t leave any food in here, okay? The raccoons are killing me. I’m this close to getting a pellet gun. I’ve only got one key to the new lock. Just press the button to lock the door when you leave.
Babe left us, and Becka and I picked at the biscotti and used the coffee mugs to keep our hands warm. She hadn’t given me much to go on, just one or two details about the new rider’s habits and schedule, but I planned to talk to O’Malley about what information could have been gleaned from Caroline’s driver’s license. Then I’d visit the stables to ask Hank Mossdale about his new customer.
I went to Mossdale’s regularly during the gardening season for free horse manure. Hank might open up to me-maybe I’d even get to meet the man who had spoken to Caroline.
“Was there anything or anyone else new in Caroline’s life that you know of?” I asked. “Had she signed up for any new classes?” I remembered her telling me about all the craft projects started, then tucked away on her garage.
Nothing. Apart from the ticket and the brief encounter with the man at the stables, Caroline’s life had been stultifyingly routine, detailed and color-coded in erasable marker on the large whiteboard in her otherwise pristine kitchen. Soccer, dentist, when to pick up this one, when to drop off that one. As far as I knew, there’d been no new entries since she’d been arrested.
When we finished we locked Babe’s office and brought the tray inside. I walked Becka to her car.
“I’m sorry we never talked before,” she said, shaking my hand. “We will, I promise. And I can use some help with my garden next season if you have the time. I know how pleased Caroline is with your work. She was so excited about the venture you two were starting. I confess I was jealous. She might have asked any of us to go in with her, but she asked you. And Chiaramonte’s is a perfect location for a gift shop and small garden design center. I guess that won’t happen now.”
“Grant said me someone else was interested in the property,” I said, “unless Roxy was just trying to push him into making an offer. I wouldn’t put it past her to do that.”
“Oh no, it’s probably true,” Becka said. “I think you met him. Attractive man, around fifty years old? He spent a lot of time at the Paradise Diner the day you worked on the planters. He asked if we happened to know of a nursery for sale. Can you beat that for coincidence? I guess he’s the one.”
Now I had two mysterious strangers on my suspect list, so that’s where I started looking for my tipster.
Fifteen
It was time to whip out the blow-dryer.
There was an unfortunate truism that the better you looked and felt, the more people gave you what you wanted. Ordinarily I raged against this unfair fact of life and would have protested bitterly if anyone had suggested that I’d ever taken advantage of a situation with a flick of the hair or a well-timed laugh. But these were extraordinary times.
I made a lunch date with Mike O’Malley. I rummaged through the bags of Lucy’s cast-off purchases and laid out my clothes more carefully than I had for the wedding we’d attended. Some of my makeup was dried out or clumpy, but there was enough of the old magic left in that neglected basket of tubes and pots to help me look smoky-eyed and full-lipped.
My first stop was Mossdale Stables, located on one of Springfield’s many back roads. A series of swoops and rises past a small stream and over a stone bridge led me to Mossdale’s, where privileged kids worked on their seats and I occasionally went to collect horse manure to spread around flower beds.
When they’ve finished sharing their favorite tips on how to keep the deer at bay (human hair, coyote urine, Irish Spring soap), gardeners frequently debated the value of different kinds of manures, bat guano being the most highly prized and most expensive-think how long it must take to get a full barrel. Gardeners discussing manure was as lively a conversation as die-hard baseball fans arguing about the designated hitter.
Cow manure is right up there, but there aren’t too many farms left in Connecticut. Most of that product is imported, bagged, and shipped from who knows where. On the other hand, in Connecticut, we had no shortage of little girls bobbing up and down in those cute little riding outfits-the velvet hats preparing them for their velvet headbands. There were more than seven million horses in the United States, and I’d have bet a large number of them were here in the Nutmeg State.
I liked The Black Stallion as much as anybody, but I’m not much of a rider. Like most things I did once or twice a year-skiing, riding a bike, baking bread-I was a perennial novice, never doing it often enough to get better. When I rode, the horse never had any doubt who was in charge, and it was never me. For me, it was all about the horse poop. Black gold, plentiful and free.
Hank Mossdale was a quiet, capable guy in his forties whom I’d never seen in anything other than jeans and a chambray work shirt. He had thick brown hair, a year-round tan, and a body that looked rock hard from riding and manual labor.
Hank had gotten into the business late and through an unlikely path. He wasn’t to the saddle born; he’d been an accountant. At some point in the late 1990s the firm he worked for was recommending livestock as a tax shelter. At the time, you could take a large depreciation on the animals for the first few years and thereby shelter income. And it worked until the IRS changed the rules.
One day on a visit to a horse farm in upstate New York where he was breaking the bad news to the owners that their silent partners were soon to be even more silent, Hank had an epiphany. He realized that livestock was alive. Horses weren’t just items on a balance sheet, they were magnificent creatures, and he became obsessed with the idea of owning a stable.
Most people-if they had the horse fantasy at all-saw themselves at the Kentucky Derby sipping mint juleps, wearing outlandish hats they’d never wear in real life, and paying experts to train their horses. Hank’s plan-he was after all an accountant-was more conservative. He would buy one horse and train it himself for the somewhat less elite world of harness racing. No juleps. Less cachet, but an easier field to enter. He’d use the money from purses to buy the stable.
If he’d bothered to ask any professionals what they thought of his idea, they would have told him it was insane. It could take a hundred thousand dollars of care and training to win an eight-thousand-dollar purse. But he didn’t ask-he just went ahead and did it.
His first wife, smelling the horse manure but not the potential roses, left him for a more reliable breadwinner, a cardiologist; but she should have had more faith, because eventually Hank made it work.
He and his partner, Karen, a professional horse trainer, bought a horse that went on to win two of harness racing’s most prestigious races and, ultimately, more than one million dollars. By that time the ex-wife had
