Death by Equine by Annette Dashofy (booksvooks txt) 📕

“Look,” Catherine went on as Jessie set up the next angle. “The whole thing was silliness on my part. None of it meant anything. But if Milt ever found out about it, it would destroy him, don’t you see?”

Not to mention what it would do to their marriage.

“So?” Catherine’s voice sounded like a taut rubber band, stretched to its limit. “Are you going to tell Milt?”

“Why should I?” Jessie repositioned the sensor panel. “It’s none of my business. Besides, I like Milt. I would never do anything to hurt him. Knowing his wife slept with his best friend would tear him apart.”

“You’ll forget we ever had that talk?”

“I promise, I’ll never tell another soul.” Forgetting might be asking too much.

Catherine seemed satisfied. “Thanks. You don’t know how much that means to me.”

Jessie snapped a second picture. She set up and captured several additional angles without further comment from Catherine. “That does it.” Jessie shut down the machine.

Catherine patted the gray’s neck. “When should we know anything?”

Jessie hadn’t liked what she saw in the digital previews but wasn’t about to comment until she had a closer look. “I’ll view these as soon as I get a chance and call you later with the results.”

Catherine started to lead Blue into the stable but paused and looked back. “Thanks, Jessie. For everything.” Then she turned and clucked to the stallion.

Jessie watched the gray’s muscular rump as it disappeared into his stall. No sign of a limp, but that wasn’t unusual for the kind of break she remembered from the previous radiographs. She had no trouble understanding how Catherine had fallen in love with Mexicali Blue and dreamed of great things with him in her stable. Funny, Jessie thought, how the truth could lie just under the surface, unseen. Unless you knew where to look.

Sunday night had been anything but restful. An emergency farm call from an old client awakened Jessie at three in the morning. Rather than bothering Meryl, Jessie left her makeshift bed in the clinic’s office to drive through the pre-dawn fog and pull a mare through a rough foaling. Mother and baby survived.

Two hours later, Jessie was tired, but too wide-awake to sleep on that ratty old sofa. With the office supply website pulled up on her phone, she sat at her desk and began adding items to her virtual shopping cart. It’d been over a week since her laptop had fallen victim to the scuffle with Frank Hamilton, and five nights of fitful sleep on the too small, too uncomfortable sofa were plenty. Long before she began her morning routine, she’d placed an order for two new laptops, a printer, a router, and a futon.

At seven o’clock, she climbed into the Chevy and started her rounds. Paranoia had spread through the backside. Assorted owners, trainers, and grooms flocked toward her truck, waving her down with a non-stop parade of patients. One horse seemed sluggish over the weekend. Another didn’t finish his morning ration of grain. Did Jessie think yet another one looked a little on the thin side? When she wasn’t holding hands, soothing nerves, or taking temperatures, she was repeating her answer to the question of the day. No, she hadn’t received any test results yet.

Jessie intentionally avoided Barn K, certain Emerick was ready to spontaneously combust.

At noon, she stopped at the rec hall for an order of fries. While she waited for it to be filled, her phone rang. The screen showed the call was from the lab. The Coggins tests results were complete. She canceled the order and gave the lab the number for Doc’s fax machine, grateful it hadn’t suffered the same fate as her laptop. By the time she returned to her office, the old dinosaur was spitting out paper.

Jessie collected the stack and picked up one that had fallen to the floor. Her gaze shot to the bottom of each. The section marked For Laboratory Use Only. The box marked Test Results. Negative. Negative. Negative.

Then she came to the sixth sheet. The report on the sickly gray. Jessie looked at it. Wiped a hand across her eyes to clear the fog, willing the results to change.

Positive.

JESSIE CHEWED HER LIP as she stood outside Daniel’s door. Time to suck it up. She raised a fist and knocked.

“Come in.”

Clutching the stack of papers to her chest, she entered his office.

His smile faded. “You don’t look like someone with good news.”

“It could be worse, I suppose.” She crossed to where he sat behind his desk and set the pile in front of him.

He pushed them away. “Just tell me.”

“The gray tested positive for the EIA virus. All the others tested negative.”

“That’s good. Isn’t it? It means the disease hasn’t spread, right?”

“Not definitively.”

He studied her, a question in his eyes.

“We can be cautiously optimistic. More than the one positive would have been bad. Very bad. As is, we need to keep Barns K and F quarantined. The infected horse will need to be euthanized.” She hated that word almost as much as she hated following through with it. “Then we need to test those horses again until they all continue to show negative—”

“For two months,” he interrupted. “I remember. What about the rest of it?”

She looked down at the stack of papers. At the pen and paper on the desk. Anywhere but at Daniel’s piercing blue eyes. “I have to call the USDA. They’ll consider the situation. Between them and the track stewards, a decision will be made.”

“Bullshit.”

She flinched. “Excuse me?”

“You’re the attending veterinarian. They’ll follow your recommendation. Bottom line, this is your decision. I know you’d rather push it off on the bureaucrats, but this is just you and me here.” He leaned down, placing his palms on the desk. “Tell me. What happens now?”

“You’re wrong. I have nothing to say about it. Nothing.”

The look in his eyes clearly stated he didn’t believe her. “They’ll shut me down. Over one horse.”

“Not necessarily. Yes, I do think the only possible