Death by Equine by Annette Dashofy (booksvooks txt) 📕

across the gulf between them, fingered a loose strand of her hair, and tucked it behind her ear. Turning, he strode across the spa, and ducked under the yellow tape at the back door.

Jessie watched him go, her mind reeling like a roulette wheel. And then the ball dropped. “My God,” she whispered to the empty spa. “He really did kill Sherry. Now he’s barring me from track property so I can’t investigate and prove he’s framing me.”

Gripping the wall, she staggered in the opposite direction, through the hallway to the office. Her office. Except that it wasn’t. And never would be.

OLD MCDONALD HAD NOTHING on Meryl’s farm. Half a dozen beef cattle grazed in the pasture next to the drive. A small herd of horses and ponies in the lower field napped in the shade of a strand of willows. A coonhound and a yellow Lab—slightly less rotund than Peanut—offered her a raucous greeting, leaping at the fence enclosing Meryl’s front yard. Jessie circled to the back deck where a trio of cats lounged in the fading light. The yelps, squeals, and shouts of a house with three boys and one young daughter in residence filtered through the walls. Jessie rapped on the sliding glass door. The din continued with no change in volume or pitch. Nor did anyone come to the door. She knocked again, louder. This time the house fell silent. The slats in the blind parted, revealing a brown eyeball that widened at the sight of Jessie. The latch clicked and the door slid open with a soft whoosh. Meryl stood there in jeans and a gray t-shirt. “Jessie? Are you all right?”

“Other than being homeless, unemployed, and a suspect in a murder investigation?”

Meryl opened her mouth with the obvious intent of making a smartass remark, but the murder suspect comment sank in. Her expression changed to one of puzzlement. Standing aside, she invited Jessie in.

The interior decibel level had cranked back up to rock-concert levels, and it took a few minutes for Meryl to round up her troop and shoo them outside. “Sorry about that. Hal’s in the barn. He can handle them for a while.” She motioned toward the kitchen table, piled with papers. “Have you eaten?”

Jessie tried to remember the last time she’d had a real meal. “Not recently.”

Meryl gave her The Mom Look. “Sit.” She dialed up the flame on the stove and reached for a skillet. “What’s this about being a murder suspect?”

Jessie dropped into a solid oak chair and poured out the events of the last couple of days while Meryl cracked and whisked eggs with the efficiency of a master chef. Jessie skipped over the part about thinking she was falling in love with the man she believed to be the real killer. She already knew what Meryl would have to say about that.

As Jessie reached the end of her sad tale, Meryl slid a mushroom and cheese omelet onto a plate and plunked it in front of her. “You’re being a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?” Jessie shoveled a large forkful into her mouth.

Meryl held up one finger. “You aren’t homeless. Just boot Greg’s ass out of your house and move back in.” She held up a second finger. “You aren’t unemployed either. I have a ton of work waiting for you.” Third finger. “And you didn’t kill anyone, which Trooper Popoholic will soon figure out.”

Jessie snorted and grabbed for a napkin. “Don’t let him hear you call him that.”

Meryl blew a raspberry and withdrew a bottle of white zinfandel from the refrigerator. “Care for a glass?”

Jessie stopped chewing. Ordinarily, she didn’t drink, but only because she was always on call. “Depends.”

“On what?” Meryl had already removed two wine glasses from the cupboard.

“Can I crash here tonight?”

“Just so you won’t have to drink and drive?”

“Just so I don’t have to go home and face Greg.”

Meryl huffed a sarcastic laugh. “Of course, you can stay here.” She sat across the table from Jessie and filled the two glasses. “As for Greg, I already told you what you should do about him. Especially now that the Malone chick is dead.”

Jessie winced. Funny. She’d started to have kinder feelings for Doc’s illegitimate daughter now that she was gone.

“You still believe she’s the one who broke in, don’t you?” Meryl swirled the wine in the glass.

“I’m not sure.” Jessie traded the fork for the glass of wine, sipped, and let the warm tingle seep into the back of her throat while she considered the question. “No, I don’t think she did.”

“Why not? And if not Malone, who?”

Jessie set the glass down and went back to picking apart the cheese and egg. “Whoever broke in destroyed a bunch of Doc’s files.”

“They stole your computer too. Maybe they took it to get the records on it.”

“If that was their intention, they failed miserably.”

Meryl fingered the stem of the wine glass. “You mean because you back up your computer files?”

“Uh-huh.” She’d already retrieved her electronic records. “But Doc backed up his files too.”

Meryl stopped with her glass halfway to her lips. “Wait. He only kept paper records, right?”

Jessie took another bite of the omelet. “And a spare set at his house. I’d retrieved Zelda Peterson’s folder because I couldn’t find Clown’s record at the clinic.” She realized what she’d just said and set her fork down on the plate with a hard clink.

“What?”

“When Clown’s record first went missing, it crossed my mind that Doc’s killer might be responsible, but I dismissed the idea because I assumed Doc had just misfiled it.”

“Was that record with the stuff that got burned at your house?”

“No. I only had the files from A to H. The backups of those should still be at Amelia’s.”

Meryl’s phone rang. She excused herself and crossed the kitchen to retrieve it from the counter.

Jessie forked down the rest of the omelet while forming a plan of attack for the morning. Could the answer to two murders be in Doc’s