Death by Equine by Annette Dashofy (booksvooks txt) 📕

“Really? Who?”

“I do not know.” He crossed the shedrow to the wood railing and set his phone on it. “I am sure I put it right here. Like this.”

“You should’ve put it in your pocket,” Zelda said.

He snatched the new phone from the rail and followed her suggestion. “Sí. I know that now. But I was going to bathe a horse and did not want to get it wet. When I come back, the phone is gone. I look and I look, but I cannot find it. Someone must have stolen it.”

Jessie looked at Zelda. “Any idea who else was in your barn that day?”

She gave a frustrated shrug. “You know how it is around here. People come and go. Grooms walking horses. Exercise boys. Owners and other trainers drop by. Anyone could’ve picked it up.”

Miguel snapped his fingers. “I remember something. Someone who was here that day.”

“Who?” Jessie asked.

“Doc Lewis’s daughter.”

Daughter? Doc only had one daughter and she lived in North Carolina. Miguel’s grasp on English must be shakier than she realized. “Daughter, Miguel? Hija?”

“Sí.” Miguel nodded enthusiastically. “Hija.”

Jessie searched Zelda’s face for an answer, but she seemed as perplexed as Jessie.

Miguel looked back and forth between them, his dark eyes eager. When neither of them responded, he frowned. Rubbed his head and appeared to be searching for another word. Finally, he snapped his fingers again. “Assistant. Doc’s assistant.”

“Sherry Malone?”

His face brightened. “Sí. Sherry Malone. Doc’s daughter. Assistant. She was here the day I lost my phone.”

Miguel’s confusion of English was giving Jessie a headache. “Sherry was Doc’s assistant, yes. But she’s not his daughter.”

Miguel gave Jessie a blank stare. “Sí. She is. She told me.” Then his eyes widened. “Oh. She told me it was a secret.” He slapped his forehead and burst into a stream of Spanish that was well beyond Jessie’s rusty foreign language skills.

Besides, her focus had shifted from understanding his words to understanding their ramifications.

A LIGHT LOAD OF AFTERNOON farm calls allowed Jessie to make it back to the clinic by two o’clock. She wanted to talk to Sherry and find out for herself what kind of fantasy world the young woman lived in. And today, Sherry had an appointment to swim one of Emerick’s horses right there at the clinic’s swimming pool.

Jessie had a plan. Rather than give Sherry a chance to make up a lie, Jessie intended to blindside her. Sherry’s reaction might be more revealing than her words.

Jessie glanced down the darkened hallway. No lights at the pool told her Sherry hadn’t arrived yet, so Jessie nestled into her office chair and opened her laptop. She’d made it through two clinic reports when she heard the rusty screech and rumble of the back door quaking open. Note to self: replace the back door as well as the front one.

Jessie abandoned her office and moved down the dimly lit hall into the spa. The odor of chlorine and liniment hung in the air. As much as Doc had taken pride in the indoor equine pool, she’d avoided this part of the building. Until now.

The massive back door, a duplicate of the one on the clinic side of the building, stood wide open. Just inside, Sherry unbuckled a stable sheet from a sleek Thoroughbred who stood tall and proud, ears flicking forward and back.

“Hello,” Jessie said.

Sherry glanced up, but dismissed Jessie’s presence and returned her attention to the horse.

Jessie assessed the pair as she approached them. Sherry, wiry and tough. The horse’s well-groomed dappled chestnut coat told her Emerick was at least doing something right. The Thoroughbred’s hip and back legs looked like something straight out of a book on perfect conformation, but both front legs were wrapped from the knee down.

Whispers around the backside spoke to this horse’s potential. He’d won handily in the cheaper $5,000 claiming races and moved up the ranks to the higher priced claimers. Recently, he’d shown flashes of brilliance in the pair of allowance races he’d run. Then he’d come up lame.

Jessie positioned herself in front of the horse and crossed her arms. “So this is the mighty Sullivan.”

“He used to be before he bowed a tendon.” Sherry hung the stable sheet on a nearby rack. Squatting beside the horse, she unwound the bandages from one front leg. “Hopefully, he will be again.”

“I’m sure he will.” As long as Emerick didn’t rush his rehab.

Sherry tossed the leg wraps into a pile and reached across to the other leg. “I didn’t realize I’d have an audience.”

“Do you mind?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really.”

“That’s what I figured.” Sherry added the second set of bandages to the heap.

She stood and led Sullivan to the ramp that descended into the pool. The horse moved with a barely discernable limp and balked at the top of the slope. Muscles at the base of his tail twitched and tightened, and the tail lifted and cocked to one side. The whisper of gas was quickly followed by the soft plop, plop of manure hitting the rubber-matted floor. When the horse continued to balk, Sherry made a kissing noise at him. He responded, stepping gingerly down the ramp and into the water. Once in the twelve-foot-deep pool, he swam away on the end of his lead rope. Sherry strode after him on the catwalk. “Get the gate,” she called to Jessie and nodded at the plank that was hinged open over the entrance to the pool.

Now it was Jessie’s turn to balk, but the last thing she wanted was for Sherry to see her fear. Summoning her courage, Jessie approached the edge of the water. She reached up to release the gate, which was more of a bridge, closing the gap in the catwalk while also blocking the horse’s exit from the pool.

Her task completed, Jessie retreated to safety outside the rail surrounding the walkway. Sullivan doggy paddled around the pool, only his head above the waterline.

Sherry lengthened her stride to keep pace. “What are you doing over here? I remember Doc