A Taste of Blood and Ashes Read online

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  “A top stallion might bring a million if you sold him, but the stud fees can earn you that in a year. Big Lick, of course. That’s where the money is. For now.”

  “For now?”

  “It’s going south. There’s a lot of pressure to get rid of the Big Lick classes altogether, and people like Trehorne are scared to death of it. They think if the Big Lick goes, the whole industry goes, which means pretty much the whole economy in this part of the state collapses.”

  “Which means their individual economies collapse too.”

  She gave a thin smile. “Like the Dust Bowl. You wouldn’t believe the hate mail I get.”

  Gerardo said, “All of them, all the Big Lick trainers and breeders and owners, they hate Señora Carlin and Señor Zane. It could be anyone. But Señor Trehorne is the richest and the most ruthless. He has the most to lose.”

  “Gerardo would know,” Carlin said. “He was a groom for Trehorne before he came to work for us.”

  “These Trehornes,” I said. “What are they like?”

  With a grim smile, Carlin said, “You’re about to find out. Our venerable sheriff is Samuel Trehorne’s baby brother.”

  Sheriff Hap Trehorne was a meaty, balding man in gold-rimmed glasses and a tan sheriff’s uniform. His shoulders were broad, his farm-labor muscles just beginning to turn to suet. He stationed himself by the mantel, where he could see all the exits, and fingered his sidearm.

  He said to Carlin, “You want to introduce me to your friend?”

  “He’s not my friend,” she said. “He’s the insurance investigator. Jared McKean.”

  “McKean.” He gave me a curt nod. “The guy who found the bones. You got ID on you?”

  I reached slowly for my wallet and handed it to him. “Driver’s license, PI license, carry permit.”

  “Carry permit.” He looked at me through squinted eyes. “You packing?”

  “Glock .40 caliber. Waistband.”

  He seemed to consider this, then handed back my wallet. “That’s not going to cause me a problem, is it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good.” He took my statement, then looked back at Carlin. “So, Carlin . . . Mrs. Underwood. These bones in your barn. Whose were they?”

  Carlin picked at a fingernail. “I have no idea.”

  “Just some stranger?”

  “I assume so.”

  He tried a smile, but it didn’t sit comfortably on his face. “Listen, I get it. Crippling medical bills, big unwieldy farm to run, the kind of business the economy hits hard. You’re in a financial bind. You get to feeling like you’re drowning. So you’re not thinking clearly, on account of being desperate and all, and you decide, hey, if something happened to this old barn, the insurance company might pay me enough to get back on my feet. You don’t mean anybody to get hurt. Maybe you don’t even know there’s anybody there. Some transient, you know, who sneaked up into your loft to catch a few z’s.”

  “An accident,” she said.

  He jabbed a forefinger in her direction. “Exactly. Easy to understand how a thing like that could happen.”

  “Except it didn’t,” she said. “Because I didn’t set that fire. Because A, it would be wrong, and B, the insurance money wouldn’t even come close to getting us back on our feet. Do you know how much a new barn costs? I’ll give you a hint. Not as much as six operations and a year of physical therapy.”

  He leaned back, appraising her over the rims of his glasses.

  I said, “Besides, those bones were skeletonized before the fire started. So the bit about transients and her not meaning to hurt anybody . . . you knew better. You were just trying to get her to cop to setting the fire.”

  He shrugged, unrepentant. That was how the game was played. “Ma’am, is it possible that Mr. Gonzales or your husband, before his accident, might have hidden those bones there?”

  Zane made a guttural sound, an unformed protest.

  “No,” Carlin said. “It isn’t possible.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You think Carlin set the fire for the insurance money, not knowing someone else had hidden human bones in the loft?”

  “I think that’s one possibility.”

  I said, “Her whole reputation’s built on sound horse politics. It comes out she had soring chemicals in her barn, she’s finished. If she’d set the fire, she would have used a different accelerant.”

  “Maybe that’s what she wants us to think,” he said. “Or maybe she just wasn’t thinking straight. She’s under a lot of pressure.”

  Carlin sank deeper into the sofa, hands curling into fists. “If that’s what you think, why haven’t you arrested me already?”

  “Thinking’s not proving,” he said. “And I don’t like to rush to conclusions. I like to take my time, make sure all my ducks are in a row.”

  “She didn’t do it,” I said, though I had no way of knowing that for certain. “And Zane couldn’t have.”

  The sheriff said, “Unless he’s faking. I saw a movie once. Guy in a wheelchair would get up at night and commit murders. They figured it out because the bottoms of his shoes were scuffed. You check his shoes?” He grinned, but it looked more like a gas pain.

  “His shoes are fine,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he isn’t faking.”

  Carlin said, “Seriously, Hap? If you don’t have any other theories, maybe you should get out of my house.”

  “I have other theories,” he said. “Maybe nobody set that fire at all. It’s just as likely something, maybe a short in an electric wire, sparked those chemicals.”

  Carlin thumped a fist against the arm of the sofa. “No. Those chemicals weren’t there to spark.”

  “So you say. However it started, I still have to wonder how those bones got there.”

  “Are you arresting anybody here?” she asked. “Because if you’re not, then we’re finished.”

  “Not very hospitable of you,” he said. “But no, I’m not arresting anyone today. I happen to know you’re signed up for the show tomorrow, so if I need you, I know where you’ll be.” He looked at me, took a card out of his pocket, and handed it over. “Mr. McKean, you can leave whenever you’re finished here. If you think of anything else I need to know, you can call me at this number. The rest of you, hang tight. I’ll call some people in to bag these bones, see what we’ve got.”

  She closed the door behind him, watched him walk out to his car and drive up to the barn, presumably to call in his forensic team. Or possibly the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. The TBI had a state-of-the-art forensic lab in Nashville. This was a small county, and the smaller counties, lacking the means and equipment to conduct complex investigations on their own, often called on the TBI for help.

  With the sheriff gone, Carlin leaned her forehead against the wood. A shiver began in her shoulders and spread through the rest of her, and she pressed her hands hard against the doorframe to stop their trembling. Gerardo went to her and laid a hand across her back, silent as a shadow. They stood like that until the shivering stopped. Then Carlin turned and rested her back against the door.

  I said, “When’s the next time all the major players come together?”

  She looked at me with tired eyes. “There’s a show at Hidden Hollow, just a few miles away. The one Hap was just mentioning. It runs through the weekend. Opening ceremonies start tomorrow.” She gave a little laugh. “Unfortunately, it’s in this county, so we’re still in his jurisdiction.”

  “Why do you stay?” I said. “There’s obviously bad blood between you.”

  “Zane’s grandmother left this land to him before we met. Even without the sentimental value, we could never afford a spread like this someplace else.”

  Zane lifted a hand and tapped something into his DynaVox. “CARLIN I WOULD LIKE SOME ICE TEA. MAYBE OUR GUEST WOULD TOO.”

  Her frown made a little line between her brows, a line I’d once heard called an I want line. “
Is that what we’re calling him now? A guest?”

  “CARLIN.”

  She raised her hands in surrender and said, “I’ll go make some. Gerardo, could you come and help with the lemons, please?”

  Gerardo pushed away from the wall. “Of course, Señora.”

  Zane watched them go, a shadow of resentment in his eyes. Pretty wife, handsome groom, both hale and whole and off to turn making lemonade into a two-man job. What wasn’t there to resent?

  He pulled his gaze away from the door and laboriously typed with one finger, “SHE’S SCARED. WE PUT EVERYTHING INTO THIS PLACE. THEN MEDICAL EXPENSES.” His bitter gaze swept down his chest and to his withered legs. “AND NOW THIS. I’M USELESS TO HER.”

  “No—”

  “YES.” He caught my gaze and held it. A proud man, swallowing that pride to ask a favor of a stranger. “CAN YOU FIND OUT WHO SET THE FIRE?”

  “Probably. Eventually.”

  “SOMEONE IS TARGETING US. TARGETING HER. SHE DID NOT DO THIS. PLEASE. HELP HER.”

  3.

  The tea was sweet and cold, the conversation stilted. I asked a few more questions for form’s sake, then finished my drink and took my leave, feeling drained by tension and the weight of their expectations.

  On the drive back to the office, I used my new hands-free phone to call my client, Terry Pritchard, an insurance claims officer who gave me work from time to time. He was easy to work for, and he paid well and on time, which put him high on my list of favorite clients. He picked up on the second ring and said, “Good news or bad news?”

  “Depends on your perspective. I don’t think they did it, if that’s what you’re asking. He couldn’t have, and my sense is she wouldn’t.”

  “What about the groom? This Gonzales?”

  “Damn near burned himself up trying to save the horses. I can’t see it.”

  “Damn,” he said. “They’re covered for arson, which means we gotta pay. You’re sure?”

  “The only way to be sure is to find out who did it.”

  “Which means we pay you until you catch the son of a bitch?” He gave a good-natured chuckle. “Way to upsell.”

  I said, “Once you pay out, whoever did it owes you big money. Maybe you can collect enough to pay my fee.”

  “I should be so lucky.”

  “Something else you oughta know,” I said.

  I filled him in about the bones and the sheriff’s theories, and he sighed and said, “No offense, but I hope the wife did it. It would make my job a lot easier. Work fast, McKean.”

  My office was near Vanderbilt University in a renovated boarding house turned office building. Three floors, each with two office suites facing each other across a narrow hall. The marigolds along the walk were wilting, and the plastic American flags someone had strung along the porch railing were beginning to fade, but it was still a handsome building. When I opened the door, the smell of well-spiced chicken soup rolled out.

  I followed it up two flights to my office, where my half-sister, Khanh, sat behind my desk. We looked nothing alike, she small and wiry, with her scarred face and Vietnamese features, me tall and rangy with my father’s gray eyes and buckskin-colored hair, but we were slowly beginning to think of each other as family.

  The desk was a massive oak relic from the Old West, given to me by a grateful client whose family failed to see the beauty in the bullet holes and the scorch marks on one side. The first time she’d seen it, Khanh had said, “You need new desk,” but I was pretty sure she was learning to love it, along with the wildlife prints on the walls and the Horse & Rider magazines on the side table. She looked up when I came in, gave me a wave of her stump. “You solve case?” she asked.

  “Not quite.”

  “You need to solve.” She held up a Post-it with a name and number on it, framed by the space left by her missing finger. “I get new case. Skip trace. Easy money.”

  “You realize I can work more than one case at a time.”

  She shook her head. “You American, always everything same time. More better focus on one thing.”

  “Yes, Obi-Wan.” I took the Post-it and shooed her out from behind the desk, where a game of Solitaire filled the computer screen. “This is what I pay you for?”

  She nodded toward the Post-it. “This what you pay me for. But business slow sometime. Smart woman like me, need keep mind busy.”

  I hadn’t wanted a sister, and I hadn’t needed a receptionist. I’d hired her because she needed a job, a visa, and a place to stay, and because she was my father’s responsibility and he, being dead, was in no position to honor it. But a funny thing had happened. Running a coffee shop in Vietnam turned out to be the perfect training ground for running a private detective business in Tennessee. People often underestimated her because of her thick accent and fractured English, but in the past three months, she’d doubled my business and tripled my income. Even with three more mouths to feed, I was taking home more money than I ever had.

  The door to the back room opened, and two more Vietnamese women, one old and one young, converged on me. The young one, Tuyet, was Khanh’s nineteen-year-old daughter. I didn’t know how old Phen was. Late sixties, early seventies. Her battle with cancer had given her skin an ashen cast. She fluttered to the desk and patted my shoulder. “You having fine day today, yes?” she said. Pat, pat. “I fix you good soup.”

  “Smells delicious.”

  She beamed and gestured to Tuyet, who disappeared into the back and returned with a steaming bowl brimming with chicken broth, pho noodles, and an assortment of vegetables, some of which I recognized.

  Three months ago, that room had been filled with surveillance equipment and other accoutrements of my trade. Now, the king-sized bed where all three women slept took up most of the room, and in the bathroom where I used to shower on occasion, women’s underclothes hung from the rod. The kitchenette was filled with foods and spices I’d never heard of.

  If anyone had told me then that three Asian women would be living in the back room of my office, I would have laughed. If they’d said one would be my half-sister and another the woman my father had cheated with during the Vietnam War, I’d have signed commitment papers. But you know what they say: Man plans, and God laughs.

  I took a bite of the soup. The infusion of dried chilies and other spices cleared my sinuses and seared the roof of my mouth. “Magnificent.”

  Phen smiled and patted me again—pat, pat—then watched as I pulled up the background check software and typed in Samuel Trehorne’s name. Might as well start at the top of the industry food chain.

  Khanh, peering over my shoulder, said, “This case. You can work it from here?”

  “Part of it. Then I have to go to a horse show.”

  “I never go horse show. Sound interesting.”

  “You know I work alone.” I grinned at her. Our private joke.

  “I know.” She put on her inscrutable face, but her eyes were smiling. “You work alone. I come with you.”

  4.

  Khanh looked over my shoulder while I did the initial background check. According to Google and my special supersecret PI databases, Samuel Trehorne was worth upward of $20 million, which didn’t sound all that desperate until you took into account that, a few years ago, that amount had been almost double. Married forty-three years, he and his wife, Rebecca, had a grown son, Samuel Jr., and an eight-year-old daughter, Esmerelda. Trehorne was a deacon in his church and a long-time board member of the Tennessee Walking Horse Performance Association. In the past three years, he’d had seven soring violations. That might have seemed more notable if the other board members hadn’t had as many or more.

  It took us the better part of an hour and a half to get there. He lived in Hidden Hollow, a small but affluent town a few miles from the Braydon County showground and five miles from the invisible line that separated them from Bedford County. This was convenient, since Bedford County’s claim to fame was the annual Celebration in Shelbyville.

  T
he Trehorne mansion was a sprawling stucco monstrosity with Spanish architecture and an ornate wrought iron fence with Trehorne’s initials soldered into the gate. A sign beside the gate said, “Trehorne Stables. Visitors Welcome 24/7.”

  About a hundred yards beyond, the driveway forked, house to the left, stables to the right. I took the right-hand fork and parked in front of a hacienda-style barn that could have housed the whole Spanish riding academy. A Hispanic-looking girl of about eight, in purple jodhpurs and a rhinestoned Hello Kitty T-shirt, came out as Khanh and I were heading in. She was a pretty thing, small-boned and brownskinned, with long black hair and eyes so dark you could hardly see the pupils.

  She gave us each a long, slow look and said to Khanh, “What happened to your face?”

  Khanh said, “I little bigger than you, I have bad accident.”

  “It’s ugly,” the child said without rancor. “You should get it fixed.”

  Khanh shook her head. If the comment hurt, she didn’t show it. “Some things never be fix.”

  The girl held up her wrist and shook it so the sparkling watchband on it flashed in the light. “This is a Cartier. My mama had it specially made for me, with my name on the back.” She flipped it over so we could see: Esmerelda. “These are real diamonds. You like it?”

  “Very shiny,” I said.

  She looked at my watch. Scooby Doo, the greatest detective who ever lived. A gift from my son on my last birthday. The look on her face said she didn’t know whether to be charmed by Scooby or repulsed by my obvious lack of taste. “Are you here to see my papa?”

  I said, “I’m here to see Samuel Trehorne.”

  With a solemn nod, she pointed toward the house. “That’s my papa. He’s inside. Do you want me to get him for you?”

  “Please.”

  She skipped away, waving her hand as if directing invisible music and watching her watchband shimmer and flash in the light.