Back | Next
Contents

Seven

Dico miller stared after Rose and the silvery woman with amazement, then looked down into the whiskery face of the gray tabby cat in his lap. It seemed to be waiting for him to pet it, feed it, say something to it.

"What in the hell does that woman think I'm gonna do wit' you, pussycat?" he asked it.

The cat switched its tail a little and dug its claws into his bare knee where it peeked out of the fabric of his jeans, shredded by age rather than fashion.

"Ow! Shit, cat. I guess I could maybe sell you to Trinh Tran's Restaurant over there. You look like you been eatin' reg'lar, which is more than I can say for me."

The cat nudged his fingers with its head. It definitely wanted to be petted. Oh, well, its fur was warm. "Maybe I'll just sell 'em the inside of your fur and I'll keep it for mittens. Huh? You want to be mittens?"

"My fur is much warmer to you and me both with me inside it, genius," the cat said. "Besides, your hungry and cold days are coming to an end. You've got me now."

"And what might you be exactly, cat? Other than another mouth."

"Don't think of me as another mouth," the cat said, rubbing his hand some more. "Think of me as your mouthpiece. Stick with me, sonny, and I'll change your life."

About that time, it dawned on Dico that the cat was actually talking to him, or at least that he thought the cat was actually talking to him, which meant one of several things, all of them being that everything he'd gone through, the deaths of his parents, the loss of his home, being put on the street to be beaten by toughs, pressured to sell or use drugs, all of it had combined to drive him nuts. The cat just looked at him like, of course, you're nuts, sucker, whaddyathink? Who ever heard of a real talking cat?

He started to cry in earnest, right there on the street, his head down in his folded arms, which were hugging his knees. The cat jumped up on his shoulders, draped itself across his neck and purred in his ear.

"Come on," it said. "Pull yourself together. You got to find a grocer someplace and get us some chow and get me a flea comb and a proper collar."

"Kitty, you got any idea how much that stuff costs and how little I got?"

"And have you got any idea how much cats in cat-food commercials make for faking half of what I can do? Move your butt, mister."

 

* * *

 

When Felicity Fortune and Rose drove up to the stable, Cindy was totally surrounded by young girls who were looking on curiously while Cindy inspected the corn on a horse's foot and lectured her class on what might make a horse limp or walk badly and how proper shoeing could treat the problem. The stable was small, set in two tinroofed buildings with a shed for hay, and Rose saw only four of the horses, but they looked quite well cared for. There was a sign above the barn door that read, "Lucky Shoe Stables, Horses Boarded and Rented by the Hour. Riding Classes, Beginners and Advanced. Inquire Within."

"So what will you do for Punkin's corn then, Cindy?" one of the girls wanted to know.

Cindy set down the horse's hoof and pushed back her wild mane of curly black hair with one wrist. Her hand had gotten rather mucky at some point. "As you can see, I've pulled off the shoe so it doesn't put pressure on the corn. The last farrier didn't see the problem developing and so gave her a standard shoe. Now we have to wait for a specialty farrier—one who not only recognizes foot problems but knows how to make the shoes to fit—to come and replace the shoe with one that will have a piece cut out where the corn is. Other kinds of shoes may include lifts on one side to compensate for turned-in feet, like orthopedic shoes. Relieving the pressure on Punkin's foot and not working her until she's properly reshod is about all we can do for now. Rose! You did come!" she cried, and waved across the heads of the girls. "Okay, gang. Class dismissed. See you Thursday."

She gave Rose a hug. Her arms were very strong, and her hands rather hard and callused. She shook Felicity's hand with a firm grip and shot Rose an inquiring glance while Felicity's own was inspecting the premises.

"What a lovely place!" Felicity said.

Cindy grinned. "Isn't it? The boss leases the bridle trails from the park but he has plans to buy real grounds for the trails some day. If I get my inheritance, I could buy in as a partner."

Felicity seemed to be having a conversation with the horse. "The horses are happy here. They are very well cared for."

"You bet they are," Cindy said, her voice full of pride, a tone Rose wouldn't have believed Cindy capable of when she first came to Family Services, half starved, dirty and neglected. She was still skinny, dusty, smudged with straw and horse sweat, but she had made a place for herself, however tenuous. "The first thing the kids learn is feeding, grooming and mucking out. Taking care of their tack, that sort of thing."

"Very sensible. Why expect the horse to do anything for you, after all, if you've done nothing for her, right, girl?" she asked, addressing the mare.

Just then another car drove up, a BMW with three giggling young women in it, olad in jodhpurs and hacking jackets.

"You there, girl," one of them shouted rudely. "Miss Carlson would like her horse saddled and bridled and two of your best mounts for ourselves. We will ride now."

"I don't believe this," Cindy said, staring at the girls pouring out of the car and sashaying toward the stable while making brittle little jokes among themselves. "It's Pam and Perdita."

"Your stepsisters?" Rose asked. "What are they doing here?"

"Trying to get me canned," Cindy said. "That's Kimmie Carlson, the parks commissioner's daughter, with them."

"Didn't you hear me, girl? I said to prepare our horses," the oldest girl snapped again. She had big, expensively coiffed but patently unnatural blonde hair, heavy lips and hard eyebrows. Addressing the small, mousy teenager giggling nervously in the middle, she said,"Really, she's just standing there. What a silly little bitch. I mean, I've heard of hiring the handicapped, but give me a break . . ."

"Hello, Perdita," Cindy said with fire in her eye. Rose saw her hand tremble against the neck of the horse she was stroking. "Hello, Pam. Kimmie, I had no idea you knew my stepsisters."

"Such familiarity from the hired help!" Perdita continued. "Are you just going to stand there all day, or will you get our horses?"

"Otter is in his stall where he usually is and he'll be glad to see you, Kimmie, but no horse in my care gets subjected to these two."

"I beg your pardon, Queen of the Stalls, Miss Horse Manure 1996," Perdita said. "We have Mr. Carlson's express invitation to ride his horses and no stablegirl is going to stop us."

"That's right," the other blonde, who was mercifully quieter, agreed. "So get out of our way."

The Carlson girl, so often bullied herself, saw an opportunity to bully someone else. "Please do as you're told, Cindy. I'll saddle Otter, but Daddy said Perdita and Pam could ride Jelly and Salamander."

"Fine," Cindy said. "Then they can saddle them." She started to turn away, then headed for the stables. "No, I won't do that to Jelly and Salamander. Excuse me, Rose, Felicity."

Pam and Perdita followed her, making snide suggestions the whole way. After a bit Kimmie Carlson led a pretty chocolate-brown gelding out of the stable, and Cindy led a palomino and a pinto, saddled and bridled, behind her.

"Kneel down and help me mount," Perdita commanded.

Wordlessly, her lips tight, cheeks flaming, Cindy knelt and cupped her hands. Perdita kicked them out of the way and stood on first her thigh, then her head, kicking her in the eye on the way up, and the moment she was on the horse, kicked it too so that it ran away, almost trampling Cindy.

"Really, Cindy, what have you been teaching Jelly?" Kimmie Carlson asked.

Cindy was nursing her eye. When Pam started to open her mouth, Rose grabbed a short wooden footstool, plopped it down beside Salamander, and pointed at it. Pam mounted more carefully than her sister and trotted alongside Kimmie up the hill.

"That bitch. That effing bitch," Cindy moaned, holding her eye and trying to saddle an Appaloosa gelding at the same time.

"What are you doing?"

"I have to follow them. Those horses are my responsibility, even if Carlson is crazy enough to loan them to those barracudas."

"Here, dear, allow me," Felicity said, ably saddling and bridling the horse in, if not the twinkling of an eye, at least a good deal quicker than Cindy could have done it with one hand or Rose could have done it at all. "We may as well come with. Whom may we ride?"

"Floss and Andy, there," Cindy said, jerking her head toward two of the horses remaining. The only one not taken was the one with the malformed hoof. Felicity began saddling them, but before she could do so, Cindy was cantering up the trail, behind the other three riders.

Rose and Felicity were just mounting when Perdita, flopping all over the back of her horse, her feet out of the stirrups, hanging on for dear life, came galloping back to the stable, her sister and Kim right behind her and Cindy hot on their trail.

"Oh, help, stop, this beast has gone nuts!" Perdita bellowed. Jelly screeched to a halt when he saw the barn, reared once, and rid himself of his rider, who flopped ingloriously into a pile recently evacuated by either Floss or Andy, Rose wasn't sure which.

"Poor Dita!" Pam said, trying hard not to laugh as she pulled her sister out of the horseshit and wisely refrained from brushing her off.

"Kimmie, there was something wrong with that horse of yours," Perdita said. "You don't know this—this stablegirl the way we do. Our mother put a roof over her head and fed and clothed her for years after her father died, and she has always been just as ungrateful, spiteful and malicious as she can be. Why, I'll bet she did something to the horse to make it throw me."

"I wouldn't do anything to one of the horses even if I thought he might kill you!" Cindy growled, jumping down and running to soothe Jelly, whose head Felicity now held. "Kimmie, I tried to tell you. My sisters not only don't know how to ride, they haven't the faintest idea how to treat animals properly. Poor Jelly, quiet now. Are you hurt? Perdita, you're lucky the park has so few trees. If I were Jelly, I'd have rubbed you off on one of the gasworks."

"Oh, you are so cruel," Pam said.

Jelly continued to fuss and Kimmie started to unsaddle him. "Why, look at this! There's a thorn under Jelly's saddle."

Perdita let out a squeal. "This is it, Cindy. I knew you were jealous of me, but I had no idea you'd stoop to hurting one of the horses to hurt me. Kimmie, you have to call your father right now and demand that this girl be fired, or the stable can no longer use the park. She is a menace and an attempted murderess and—and—should be reported to the Humane Society!"

"Oh, that's what you wanted all along, isn't it?" Cindy cried. "This was all just to get me fired. Kimmie, I'll bet you anything Perdita put the thorn under her own saddle just to have something to accuse me of."

"And be nearly killed for my trouble? As if!" Perdita countered.

Felicity clapped her hands three times. "Ladies. The horses are quite upset enough as it is without you screaming at each other. Kimberly Carlson, you and Cindy and I will return the horses to their stalls and groom them while you, miss," she said to Perdita, "and you," to Pam, "return to your auto and wait. Meanwhile, Rosalie will enjoy her ride as scheduled. Do I make myself clear?"

"Who the hell do you think you are, Mary Poppins?" Perdita snarled, but returned to the car.

 

* * *

 

"You can't go home again!" The hit man, who had read the phrase in a book somewhere and thought it fit the situation, yelled after Sno as she sprinted off into the woods. He tried to rise to chase her, but as the stunning effect of his fall wore off, he felt a sharp burning pain in his side and when he reached to touch it, his hand came away bloody. He had fallen on the damned blade himself. Who'd think the little bitch had it in her? He wound her red-and-black-checked muffler around his middle to stanch the blood, righted the bike and roared back out of the woods.

He barely managed to stay upright on the bike until he came to Bellingham, where he checked into a clinic, telling the receptionist that the wound was accidental. Even if she had called the cops, which she didn't, he still had the dagger, the wound was clearly self-inflicted, and nobody could nail him for that.

He'd lost a lot of blood but he wasn't about to risk a transfusion, so after they bandaged up the wound, he swung down from the examining table and stalked out again, snagging the blood-soaked black-and-red-checked scarf from the trash can on the way.

The next day he would mail the scarf, complete with dried blood, to Svenny's "niece," whose address was on the permissions letterhead he had shown the school. The scarf would reassure the "niece" that the kill had been made and get him paid. It would also establish evidence to connect to her in case she wanted to contradict him. Maybe she'd have second thoughts before hiring someone to kill her kids for her. Let her do it herself if she wanted the girl dead. She shouldn't have given the kid judo lessons.

Back | Next
Framed