Saddle Up for Murder

Book 2: Carson Stables Mystery

by Leigh Hearon

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

At first, horse trainer and Carson Stables owner Annie Carson blames the random losses of local livestock on feral animals stalking Olympic Peninsula county’s farms and ranches. But when one of her own flock is found savagely slaughtered, it gets personal. Then it turns dangerous, when Annie discovers the body of a young woman hanging in her new hay barn. Suddenly, she’s up to her neck in complicated mysteries—one involving her private life. But her sleuthing skills aren’t exactly welcome by the sheriff. And as she uncovers a clue to the killer’s identity, Annie fears she’s leading a deadly trail straight to her door. Praise for Leigh Hearon: "Here's a new heroine after my own heart. Plan to stay up all night with this one because this mystery is a winner right out of the gate!" —Fern Michaels, #1 New York Times bestselling author on Reining in Murder "This strikingly polished first mystery is, quite simply, remarkable. Reining in Murder has it all: rounded characters, likeable protagonist, thrilling, perfectly paced plot and impeccable narrative style . . . Leigh Hearon masterfully maintains the suspense to the very finish line." — Mystery Scene Magazine on Reining in Murder “Leigh Hearon seems destined for high marks with what is shaping up to be a delightful new series in the mystery genre.” — Colorado Daily News on Reining in Murder “This murder mystery will be enjoyed by anyone who likes chewing hay and wearing riding boots.” —Fresh Fiction on Reining in Murder “The action-packed scenes are stellar, as well as the descriptions of the gorgeous and dangerous Washington wilderness. This third in the series presents a unique heroine, one whose devotion to horses is as admirable as her wit and intelligence.” — Kings River Life Magazine on Unbridled Murder

Release date: October 25, 2016

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Apiercing shriek brought Annie Carson out of her reverie. Not to mention her rear firmly back down on her saddle.

She’d been standing in her stirrups to get the maximum view of her sheep pasture. It was a panoramic view—her mount was a 16-hand thoroughbred, which already put her more than five feet off the ground. The sight of seventy-five ewes and as many lambs in the grassy lea reminded Annie of a Constable painting she’d once seen in a museum. Even the billowing clouds overhead looked painted.

Now she wheeled Trooper around and nudged him forward. The horse took off at a hard canter, turning abruptly in response to Annie’s rein onto the trailhead of an old logging road. She pulled the horse up short a few seconds later.

“Hannah! Thank god you’re safe!”

“Shhhh!”

If Annie thought it odd that an eight-year-old who’d just issued an earsplitting scream was now telling her to be quiet, she didn’t say so. Instead, she calmly walked her horse closer to Hannah’s. Bess, fortunately, was not making any noise. She was munching grass, very quietly.

“What’s going on?” Annie kept her voice neutral.

“I saw someone in the woods! A man! I think he had a gun.”

Annie scanned the thick trees in front of her. It was early May, and the Pacific Northwest was in the full flower of spring. She saw nothing but a suffusion of ferns and undergrowth forming a luxuriant pillow against densely packed Douglas fir.

“What was the man doing?”

“Hiding! He was behind a tree. Then I saw him run to another one. I didn’t scream until I saw his weapon.”

Hannah’s father ran a security business that included transporting Loomis trucks filled with cash from local businesses. She was well acquainted with different caliber handguns and shotguns.

“What kind of weapon?”

“I’m not sure. I think it was a pistol. But I screamed, and then he ran away back there.” Hannah pointed with her left arm into the woods.

“Why did you scream? Were you afraid?”

“Just a little. But I thought if I screamed, he’d go away. If he started to shoot at me, I figured I’d just gallop away. Maybe.”

Annie was sure Hannah had every intention of galloping away. The problem was Bess, Annie’s twenty-five-year-old Morgan who thought indulging in anything beyond a stately walk did not befit her dignified age.

“What did Bess do when you screamed?”

“Grazed.”

So much for Hannah’s fast getaway from the bad guy. But Annie was more concerned about Hannah’s near encounter than she let on to her little companion.

The sound of shifting leaves caught both riders unawares. They started and whipped around in their saddles. Hannah clapped her hands over her mouth to make sure another scream wasn’t forthcoming. From the dark forest floor, a fawn emerged, almost perfectly camouflaged against the lush, green backdrop. Walking carefully on its long and spindly legs, it wended its way through the thicket and out of sight. Hannah and Annie remained motionless on their saddles.

“A fawn!” breathed Hannah. “A baby deer! I thought I was going to jump out of my saddle, Annie, but I didn’t! Even Bess jumped. A little.”

“That’s because you’re nice and relaxed in your seat, Hannah,” Annie replied. “So when something like this happens, it’s easy to stay balanced.”

Annie was a stickler who told all of her riding students not to grip the horse’s ribs with their knees. It didn’t help their equilibrium, and it impacted their horse’s ability to move freely.

Hannah looked thoughtfully at Annie and nodded. “Do you think the fawn will find its mother?”

“I’m sure it will. The fawn isn’t going to move far just because a couple of horses are passing through. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a deer clearing in the next hundred feet.”

“Let’s go find it!”

“Nice try, kiddo. Fawns only want to be found by their mommies. Besides, hot chocolate awaits us.”

This was the traditional ending to Hannah’s riding lesson, and afterward Annie had driven the little girl to her doorstep. Usually, she let Hannah walk back to her home through a well-worn path; after all, the Clare household was only a quarter mile away. But now Annie recalled recent news stories of young children who’d been abducted just a short distance from their own homes, and she had no intention of taking unnecessary chances.

Taking care of her own safety was just as important. When Annie had opened Carson Stables, her training facility for equines, every man she’d encountered had flat out told her that a single woman who weighed a mere 125 pounds would never be able to handle the workload, let alone adequately protect herself from things that went bump in the night, both animal and human.

“Don’t expect me to come to your rescue every time you hear a scary noise in the woods,” Suwana County Sheriff Dan Stetson had grumbled after she’d dismissed his advice for the tenth time.

Annie had merely laughed. “I won’t,” was her breezy reply.

That conversation had occurred fifteen years ago. In the intervening time, she’d proven Dan and everyone else wrong. Not one of her detractors knew how hard she worked to make sure no harm came to her or her animals. She’d learned that the best way to keep danger from coming to her doorstep was to meet it head-on.

After dropping off Hannah, she parked her F-250 near the stables and called for Trooper, now contently munching on a flake of orchard grass in the paddock. It was time to find out exactly who had been lurking off the old logging road. If the man Hannah had seen was simply taking a shortcut through her property, he’d be long gone by now. She certainly hoped so.

As usual, the thoroughbred was up for another trail ride. She slipped a hackamore over his nose and, using a rail post, hopped on his back, deciding to eschew his saddle on this trip. At forty-three, Annie was less enthused about playing leapfrog over a horse’s back to mount as she’d been in her twenties, but the joy of riding on a horse, sans saddle, still held a certain thrill. The connection with the animal was undeniable. After whistling for Wolf, her Blue Heeler, she cantered the short mile back to the sheep pasture and entered the now-familiar logging trail.

What she found in the interior brush was not a deer clearing, but rather one made by a human, or humans. True, the rough campsite was on the edge of Annie’s property, but it looked as if it had been recently used, and for all she knew would be occupied again that evening. The folded army bedroll and cigarette butts littering a small fire pit were enough to confirm that no one had broken camp yet. The only item that was incongruous to the site was a small stuffed animal scrunched partway under a blanket. Annie slid off Trooper to take a closer look, and discovered it to be a very worn, and therefore presumably very much loved, toy lamb. Annie looked it over carefully, then back at the campsite. There was nothing else to intimate a child had been sleeping or living here—just a person who enjoyed inhaling carbon monoxide. She positioned the lamb in the vee of a nearby tree. She figured it wouldn’t hurt for whomever was staying here to know that their secluded home had been busted. And for some unknown reason, she felt like keeping the inanimate toy safe. Maybe it was the remnant of a homeless person’s former life that he or she carried with them.

Maybe Dan knows who might be living here. Annie snorted as soon as the thought came into her head. Fat chance. The county abounded with homeless people, and the only transients the sheriff knew were the ones who landed in the county jail. However, there was no sign of a man in the vicinity, armed or otherwise.

Annie clambered onto Trooper’s back, turned her reins toward the horse trail paralleling the sheep pasture, and headed for home. She waved to Trotter, her donkey of indeterminate age, still fully capable of keeping any would-be predator out of the electrified barriers that encased him, her ewes, and their offspring. When summer ended and the sheep returned to Johan Thompson’s farm where they wintered, Trotter would rejoin the rest of Annie’s horses. The rotation would begin again in the spring, just before birthing season. Annie kept her sheep for their prized wool, not their taste. She had nothing against meat but preferred that anything she ingested had not first been fed and sheltered by her. It was a specious rationale, but Annie didn’t spend too much time worrying about it.

When the barn and tack room loomed ahead and her four horses nickered to her from across the pasture, Annie put the makeshift campsite out of her mind. She leaned forward slightly, Trooper’s cue to canter. Normally, Annie wouldn’t let anyone canter a horse back to the barn—it was a bad habit and hard to break—but Trooper, bless his equine soul, was a perfect gentleman and knew exactly how far he could go and when to stop.

Annie quickly ushered the horses into the paddock, which adjoined the row of stalls inside the stable. Everyone was ready for dinner and a warm stall, and each horse knew his or her place, although Rover, a once-starved horse Annie had rescued, predictably veered toward Trooper’s stall, which held a flake more of Timothy hay than his own. It took one quick sideways look from the thoroughbred to convince Rover he’d made a mistake.

Watching each equine politely enter its stall, she thought smugly, My horses behave better than most children. Annie was more than satisfied with playing big sister to Hannah and other youngsters who loved horses. She was less than thrilled at playing the same role to her real half sister, Lavender, who’d trekked out from Florida earlier this year and temporarily found refuge in Annie’s home. Lavender had left their father’s home after learning he intended to marry a woman younger than she was. Annie couldn’t have cared less about her father’s marital exploits; he’d divorced her own mother more than twenty years before, and she hadn’t had contact with him in years. But Lavender, despite being a full-fledged adult—at least in age, if not maturity—had always relied upon their father’s financial support. Annie had discovered that her half sister now expected her to provide the same level of care and feeding she’d enjoyed in Florida. There were so many things in her own universe to explore, she explained to Annie, she simply didn’t have time for a paying job. Annie noticed that Lavender still had plenty of time to criticize the way she lived, however. Fortunately, the situation had remedied itself, and Lavender now lived a safe three miles away. Annie had made sure Lavender returned her extra house key.

Before turning off the stable light, she stepped inside each stall and quickly ran her hands down each horse to make sure all was well. Normally, she would have lingered by them, inhaling and loving the smell of their manes and quietly grooming them as they munched their dinners.

But tonight she had a phone date with Marcus Colbert, the man who had given her Trooper. A few months earlier he’d mysteriously disappeared after his wife, Hilda, was murdered, and he resurfaced—by way of a cryptic postcard—only after the case was solved. The entire world had been convinced that Marcus was on the run from the crime of killing his wife, but Annie’s faith in Marcus’s innocence had never wavered and she’d been proven right when the real killer was apprehended. Tonight, she would speak to him for the first time in almost two months. His personal assistant in San Jose had set up the phone appointment last week and had promised that Marcus would answer all her questions. And she had a bucketful.

Walking toward her farmhouse, Annie saw a white van slowly round the curve in her driveway. It wasn’t UPS, and she couldn’t remember ordering anything from State Line Tack. She quickened her step, and Wolf, who’d been by her side, raced toward the vehicle.

“Wolf! Stay!”

The dog knew better than to rush into oncoming cars. But he loved surprise visitors. Maybe he thought it was a delivery from the makers of gourmet pet food.

Instead it was the delivery van from Port Chester’s most chichi grocery, the one that sold French cheeses that cost more than a T-bone. Annie assumed the driver was lost and wondered how she could convince him that he’d really come to the right address.

As it turned out, he had, and after confirming that she was, indeed, Annie Carson, she watched in astonishment as the driver unloaded three cartons of food, carried them into her kitchen, and then gave detailed instructions on how to heat and serve the meal.

“The tomato and pepper gazpacho soup with sherry doesn’t need any help,” he explained to Annie, who was now sitting down, her mouth unattractively open. “It’s served chilled, and should still be the right temperature now—it’s been refrigerated the entire way over. But the rib roast with Madeira sauce will need to be gently heated.”

He saw Annie glance at her microwave. “And not in that,” he said severely. “Put the dish in your oven at 300 degrees for about twenty-five minutes. And keep the foil tent on.”

Annie gave him a quizzical look. “Really?”

“Really. The sauce is to die for. You don’t want it to evaporate in that machine. Besides, microwaves zap all the nutrition out of your food and create carcinogens while they’re doing it.”

He and Lavender would get on like a house on fire, Annie thought. Her half sister loved to regale total strangers about the unhealthful attributes of the food they loved most. It was highly annoying. But Annie decided not to argue with her server. There was too much good food being unloaded, and she didn’t want it to stop.

Kenneth, as Annie now knew him, went on to discuss which cheese was to be eaten now and which after dinner.

“Although you must have a sweet tooth, because your client doubled up on dessert.”

“My client?”

“Marcus Colbert. He said you had an important phone conversation to be discussed over dinner.”

What a guy. “And, ah, what dessert did my client decide to pair with the cheese?”

“Well, it doesn’t really fit, but who cares. Double-dark chocolate cake with bourbon-whipped crème fraîche.”

Annie couldn’t help her hedonistic groan.

Kenneth took his time about leaving. He carefully placed the roast into Annie’s antiquated electric oven, clearly distrustful of her ability to follow through on his orders. He placed the cheeses on one of Annie’s few china plates and tossed the arugula salad for her. In fact, he was the epitome of a perfect waiter until he saw the label on the wine Marcus had selected.

“Saint-Émilion Grand Cru! My god, look at the year! And the château!” Kenneth looked over at Annie with undisguised envy. “What kind of business do the two of you have together, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Thoroughbred horses.” This was technically true. Annie was in charge of finding homes for Marcus’s dead wife’s twenty-three horses.

Kenneth seemed impressed, and finally took his leave.

Annie was sprawled in a living room chair, a glass of wine in one hand while she stuffed gloriously runny cheese into her mouth. The reason behind Marcus’s extravagant dinner had finally come to her. On the back of the mysterious postcard she’d received over a month ago, he’d written, “I’ll tell you everything over dinner. And this time, I promise not to be a no-show.” Well, Marcus had certainly fulfilled that promise in consummate style. Annie knew the entire message by heart.

Her cell phone suddenly lit up, flashing the time and a California number on caller ID. Eight o’clock—Marcus was right on schedule. She hurriedly swallowed and took a large bolt from her wineglass, probably not in a way that Kenneth would approve of, she realized. She picked up the phone.

“Annie Carson.”

“Marcus Colbert.”

There was a long silence. Then Annie remembered her manners. “Your dinner arrived, and it’s wonderful. Delicious.” She paused. “Thank you.”

A low chuckle followed. Marcus’s voice was so sexy that even his quiet laughter made her body tingle.

“I wish you were here to enjoy it with me.” This was two glasses of wine speaking, but Annie didn’t care.

“I do, too.”

Another long pause followed.

Then Annie blurted out the question she’d asked herself nearly every day since late February. “Where have you been?”

This time, the response on the other end was a long sigh.

“Annie, if you only knew how much I’ve wanted to confide in you all this time.”

“And how much I’ve wanted you to. Marcus, I need to know everything. Where were you the day you disappeared?”

“Straight to the point, as usual, Annie. I love that about you.” She could feel Marcus readjust himself in whatever he was sitting. “I was with my wife’s killer.”

Annie shuddered, recalling the traumatic events of just a few months before. Until now, she’d avoided thinking about them or even saying the killer’s name. Their encounter was just too painful to relive. She took a deep breath.

“I thought as much. You know we never got to question him. He’s dead.”

“Yes, I know. And I learned that you were almost one of his victims, as well.”

Annie gave an impatient tsk-tsk. “That never would have happened.”

“Well, it almost happened to me. In fact, I was just damn lucky that he thought he’d finished me off and left me for dead.”

“Marcus. Please—why did you disappear?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Marcus replied drily. “I’d been developing my own suspicions and decided to confront him myself. Bad move. Apparently I’m no longer the heavyweight boxing champion I was in my youth. He went after me with a sharp little horse tool—”

“It’s called a hoof pick,” Annie interjected. “For cleaning horses’ hooves.”

“Or killing meddling widowers,” Marcus replied. “He nicked me pretty good. The blood flow from my neck was horrendous. But that’s not what did me in. It was when I tried to take him down. I twisted my back something awful and something snapped. I think I passed out from the pain of that injury rather than from my neck wound.”

Annie felt faint. She took a deep breath and then a deep swallow of very good wine.

“What happened next?”

“I woke up in a forest. The Olympic National Forest, I learned later. At the time, all I knew was that I was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by ferns and tall trees, and was wetter, colder, and hungrier than I’d ever been in my life. Plus I hurt all over. My head ached. And my guess is that I looked very much the part of a serial killer, which is what I realized I was still accused of being.

“I wanted to just lie down and go to sleep, but I knew that would literally be the death of me. So I tried to clean myself up as best I could and crawl out and find some semblance of civilization. My back was still killing me. I doubt I managed more than a few miles a day.”

“What did you eat?”

“I didn’t. I was in the forest for what seemed to be forever. All I could do was drink from a few random creeks I came across. If I hadn’t had water, I wouldn’t have survived.”

What ultimately had saved Marcus was his stumbling onto a Native American reservation on the outskirts of the national park.

“I wandered into a village with half a dozen huts and collapsed on the doorstep of the first one I saw,” he said with a rueful laugh. “It was not one of my finer entrances, but frankly at that point I didn’t care if I lived or died, or who knew about my past. Of course, my identification had been confiscated when I was dumped, as well as my cash, so I figured making friends wasn’t going to be easy.”

But Marcus discovered that it was considerably easier than he’d envisioned. He was taken to the home of a Native woman, who, he said, tended to him as professionally as a doctor in any hospital. And once he’d told his finders that he did not want to be found, they immediately agreed. No one, it seemed, wanted an unnecessary visit from either the tribal police or federal agents.

“I stayed in the elder’s home for almost a month,” Marcus went on. “When my neck and back had healed and I’d put on weight again, I figured my new friends had been hospitable long enough. So I made a collect phone call to my attorney, Jim Fenton, and learned you’d already single-handedly solved the case and exonerated me.”

“Well, Wolf helped.”

“Yes, and I heard Dan Stetson also played a minor role.”

“True enough.” It was still hard to think of her old friend the sheriff as the one who shot Hilda’s killer and saved her life.

“Believe me, I thanked Dan plenty when Jim and I met with him the next day.”

“You WHAT?”

“Well, I was grateful to him, Annie. He did come to your rescue.”

“You’ve talked with Dan?”

“Well, of course I have, Annie. Several times. And he’s been tolerably nice toward the guy he once thought was responsible for every recent homicide on his turf.”

Annie was so angry that she barely took in what Marcus was now telling her.

“So after he officially had all charges dismissed against me and the court file sealed, Dan said I was free to contact you. That was about a week ago. The media are going to learn that I’m alive pretty soon. Annie? Are you there?”

Annie counted to ten. She inhaled and exhaled through her toes. It wasn’t helping.

“Marcus, I’m thrilled to talk to you and get the whole story. I just wish that that jackass Dan would have thought to tell me that you were all right as soon as he knew.”

“I guess he had his reasons. But listen, Annie, let’s not argue over something that really doesn’t matter now. Let’s talk about the future, and when we’re going to see each other.”

This was far more pleasurable territory. By the time she clicked off her cell, Annie and Marcus had agreed that he would fly up to the Olympic Peninsula as soon as his crushing work load permitted to go over, as Marcus put it, “everything.” That encompassed a great number of possibilities.

Annie went to bed feeling happier than she had in a very long time. She would soon see Marcus. And, if she had her way, she’d soon have Dan Stetson’s rear in a sling.

The next morning, Annie cleaned her stalls with such vigor that half the “horse apples” tossed toward her wheelbarrow flew high overhead, landing on fresh cedar shavings already laid down in the next stall. Cursing, she jabbed the errant items back onto her fork and tried to calm down. She’d been thinking of the perfect verbal zinger for Dan Stetson and still hadn’t come up with one that was lethal enough. Sweat was trickling down her back, and her face was red. Twelve hours after her conversation with Marcus, she was still steaming, in more ways than one.

She was returning the mucking wheelbarrow to its reserved place on the tack room wall when her landline phone rang with an old-fashioned trill. She knew only people who couldn’t reach her an. . .