Pas De Death

By Barbara Bretana

Born to a traveling Show Jumping parents riding the circuit, Sam was just a tween when both of them were killed in a tractor trailer accident leaving him alone and stranded. Rather than let Social Services place him in a foster care system, he steals his Dad's truck and heads for Florida where he is hired as a stable hand for a small Show jumping Trainer. Both Sam and his boss, Poppy Kellam drive to a Seizure Sale and return the proud owner of the mare the show jumping world calls the 'Death Mare'. Caught between his boss, Poppy Kellam, and her abusive husband in a fight over the sale, Sam leaps in to stop the latest beating only to receive it in her place. Sent to the ER with a concussion, he wakes up to find the cops questioning his motives as they search for Poppy's husband. The only trace of him is his blood in the abandoned car at the airport. The only witness to what might have been Kellam's murder is the mare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Bretana
• Release date: Feb 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311441966

Barbara Bretana

I've been writing and reading since the age of three. Anyone who knows me knows I'm nuts about horses, reading, dogs and painting. Went to school in Vermont, Castleton State and Pratt/Phoenix School of Design and found out college wasn't for me. Worked with Developmentally Disabled and loved it. Went back to school for my CNA license and decided to try writing for a career as I keep breaking things like my rotator cuff, discs and whatnot. Getting bucked off your horse, well, I don't bounce like I used to. I'm the one in the brown coat.

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Pas De Death or Murder in Four Beats

Barbara Bretana

Copyright 2014 Barbara Bretana

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Dedication

To my very good friend and mentor, Peg Halpin. I couldn’t have done this without you. As you’re so fond of saying, ‘You make your own Reality.’

Chapter 1

Iwas up at six and sat on the edge of the pull-out cot dangling my feet above the cold tile floors and rubbing my hands through my hair so that it stood on end like a wild rat’s nest. Who is still cold enough to make my skin rise and bumps, kill enough so that I didn’t want to get out of bed at all but twenty-two horses were waiting for me to feed hay and water them. Plus, stallions to put out, geldings to groom and horses to ride.

Hay to unload, grain to pick up, not to mention the assorted dogs to feed and kennel. I sighed. Once I was up, I could keep rolling, but the start of each day was a bitch, not so, my nights. When it came time to drop into bed, I was frequently asleep before I hit the mattress.

Slipping my feet into muckers. I pulled on jeans, T-shirt, sweatshirt and walked into my tiny kitchen. I popped a scrambled egg into the microwave until it cooked, sucked down a Pepsi and hobbled out into the sunrise.

JC met me at the barn door, her stub of a tail wagging and her Jack Russell ears pointing with eagerness to go hunting rats. She scooted between my legs and disappeared into the hay room and I heard her barking at either the barn cats or a herd of rats.

The lights flickered on and bright eyes peered over the tops of the Dutch doors. I searched in my pockets and found my knife, cutting open a bale of grass hay and separating it into flakes for the seven horses in the shed row.

The four studs had eaten all their hay and left major piles of droppings, polishing off their night grain. The two buckets of water in each stall needed replenishing but I would do all watering at the end of feeding. We’d unloaded sixteen sacks of feed, 11% pellets only yesterday. I scooped out enough for all seven horses and went down the row to dump a gallon in each bucket. In minutes, all I heard was the sound of horses busily chewing contentedly. Although the big blood bay Belek was stomping the side of the stall; he was always in a bad mood until his stomach was full. Sometimes he would attack his grain bucket, twirling it until it fell off the wall.

When I finished feeding the upper barn, I went to the lower, took care of the three aged broodmares and then walked to the other three pastures to throw hay and grain to the outside animals.

One pasture held the broodmares, another across the creek were the geldings and riding animals, a third held three boarders. Whickers greeted me as I scooped grain into various piles. I checked the volume in the creek and the troughs and went back to fill water buckets.

KC emerged from the hay with a fat rat and dropped it at my feet. I looked at her, she looked at me.

Don’t give me that look, I snarled. I’m not touching that. Clean up your own mess. She flipped it in the air and proceeded to chew it up. Gross. Now, go catch a hundred more and you’ve made a good start. She gave me that look that only a Jack Russell Terrier was capable of and stalked away on her own business.

I puttered, swept the aisle, did a few things until several horses had finished up their grain and eaten through their hay, put the studs out and watched as they cavorted, and added to the manure pile, rolled and ran around like they were two-year-olds. When all four were out, I started on the stalls, mucking out, refilling with fresh shavings, topping off water buckets and before I knew it, the morning was gone.

Noon hay, feed, swapped out horses and finished the rest of the stalls and then I went to work on the geldings. There were four of them, 5-year-olds, still green broken and in the process of riding. I lunged them for fifteen minutes, brushed and settled them in the cross ties, trimmed whiskers, bridle paths and fetlock hair so that they were presentable in case any perspective buyers arrived. It was 2 PM and I stopped for lunch and an iced tea. Sat on a picnic table in the yard behind the trailer and sighed.

From the main house, I could hear the escalating voices of the farm’s owner – he was a top insurance salesman, District Manager, and she was a British Riding School Instructor. As usual, they were arguing over the financial aspects of the farm and his language to her was crude, offensive and demeaning. I didn’t know how she took it; I wanted to take a pickax and bury it in his skull several times a day.

Being called a stupid bitch did wonders for a fragile ego until you started to believe it. That and the fact that no matter what went wrong was never his fault but always someone else’s, usually the one he was talking to and made life around him miserable.

I finished my lunch and went to hide in the hay shed on the pretext of counting the number of bales. Looked like we had enough for a week, but I would have to order of load of bulk shavings delivered. By the time I exited the hay shed, he’d gotten into his car and driven off. I sighed in relief, I had no need to be told how many wheelbarrow loads into each stall or how many flakes to feed or scoops of feed. He had opinions on everything and they were backed up not by genuine knowledge but fostered only by monetary values. He made no concessions to an older horse who needed more grain or a stall pig that constantly needed their stalls stripped and re-bedded.

Since I’d been employed in the horse business since I was born, I sort of knew what I was doing and I didn’t need to be told what or how to do it. My parents had been trainers on the show circuit back in the day when you could make a decent living, but they’d spent all their earnings on good horses and not savings accounts so when their rig had been rear-ended by a drunken eighteen wheel driver, their net worth went up with eight horses, truck and trailer. They’d let their insurance lapse, the farm and stables were mortgaged and I was left with an aged pickup truck, a thousand bucks and no place to live or relatives to live with.

The foster care system kicked in and tried to put me in a foster home. I ran. All the way from Virginia to Florida and found work at the track and then at the farm that raised show jumpers. Since the market for illegal aliens had dried up, no one was too curious about papers and Social Security cards, and when asked how old I was, I’d lied and said eighteen. Since I was small and light and could ride, no one asked too many questions.

I kept my hair short, although it had a nasty tendency to curl in sandy brown locks which lightened to gold in the Florida sunshine, my eyes were a green so deep that people often stared at them and commented that only emeralds were darker.

I was born Tor Francis Fitzpatrick, but I had changed my name to Sam Holt and had answered to that for four years with fake ID in that name. I’d bought an ID from some dudes I’d found in downtown Tampa, then I had found the farm and been hired. No one had ever questioned my ID in four years. It had been good enough to get me a Florida driver’s license.

KC came in and sat with me as I rubbed her head, stroking the bony knob and long, beaky nose. Her coat was wiry not soft and she was solid muscle under my palms. Jumping into my lap, she stared at me and then gave me a rough caress with her tongue.

Hey, run out of rats to chase? I murmured. Jack Russell’s were intelligent, ornery and opinionated dogs, yet they could sense your moods and she decided I needed comforting.

Sam? I heard the boss calling, and JC jumped off my lap going in search of her owner. She came around the corner of the barn as I exited the hay room. I dusted off wisps of straw and waited.

Her green hazel streaked eyes ran over my jeans, T-shirt and barn coat as KC yapped at her feet, doing the Toyota jump thing and she opened her arms so that the Jack Russell leaped into them.

KC girl. How is my Devil Dog? she murmured and made much of her until KC wiggled and jumped free.

Ma’am? I said and waited. Her name was Poppy Kellam and her husband’s Anthony, he was called Tony.

There’s an auction coming up this weekend, some warmbloods are going at a seizure sale. I thought we’d go and look.

That explain the fight I’d heard. Even at a seizure sale, warmbloods of any breeding would go from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

What day, time? Do you want the trailer hooked up? The slant or the two horse? I asked.

Saturday. Starts at 2 PM in Ocala at the Sotheby Farm. Bring the two horse.

That meant she was looking and not serious. If she was seriously interested in buying jumpers, she would’ve told me to hook up the eight-horse slant.

We’ll leave at 6 AM? I asked.

She nodded, a tall woman, pretty with dark hair and a Florida tan, wrinkles from the sun and smile lines around her eyes and mouth. Wake me at 5 AM if I’m not up and out by then. I knew she was an early riser and nodded. Ready for a coffee break?

She made a daily habit of driving into town to the Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee and time away. I went for the doughnuts and the munchkins.

Okay. I grabbed KC and locked her up in her kennel, so she couldn’t get herself in trouble while we were gone. Town was only 4 miles away, off the main interstate and had a bank, a DD, insurance shop, four churches, auto parts, three gas stations, a diner, bar and a small grocery store. Plus a town hall, police station and a library. The feed mill was a mile out of town near the Farmers Market.

I climbed into her little car, put on my seatbelt and went into daydream mode where I didn’t have to think or talk or do anything but drift in my head.

Chapter 2

The rest of the week flew by with monotonous regularity, so I was looking forward to the break in routine by Saturday. Friday night I hooked up the two-horse thoroughbred trailer, checked the floor, mats and doors, the hitch and the lights. Packed the back with shavings and made sure we had two sets of shipping boots, hay, grain, first aid kit, halters with head bumpers, extra lead ropes and anything else we might need including a shot of Rompum should we need to tranquilize a horse. I packed a cooler with ice, water, and Pepsi’s, snacks, carrots and apples throwing them in the back of the extended cab. At six, I was loaded, ready to go and pulled up under her window so that the headlights shone in at an oblique angle. KC barked from inside the house, one short sharp yap and then was hushed.

By six thirty, Ms. Kellam came stumbling out, dressed, but still half asleep. She grumbled and climbed into the cab and promptly went to sleep after handing me directions. I’d already looked up the farm on the Internet and aimed the truck for the interstate, the tires hummed on the road and I didn’t turn on the radio. I preferred the quiet until I had time to mellow out myself.

The trailer pulled sweetly; the gas gauge moved with deliberate speed. We would need to refuel at least once before we got there and again on the way home. Her truck got only about 12 miles to the gallon and I winced every time she filled it.

You don’t say much, do you, Sam? You just hang around and listen. Don’t you have any family to worry about or worry about you?

I’d never told her about my history, just that I was part of a horse world from out West and she'd never been curious enough to investigate. You know you have an accent? she said abruptly, and I stared over at her. Don’t raise an eyebrow at me, she returned. I hear it. Old South. Not North or South Carolina, Tennessee. I’d say Virginia.

I’m from West Texas, I lied. Town called Alpina.

You don’t sound like Texas.

I reached into the back seat, dug out a cold Pepsi, unscrewed the top and took a long swig. She turned around and found the water and drank a few sips. Neither of us made conversation.

Miles hummed under our feet, we passed rest stops, stopping twice for pee breaks and once for breakfast whereas lunch was on the side of the road at a picnic area. We dined on egg salad and tuna sandwiches, potato chips, pickles and black olives.

Let me know when you want a break, she offered. And I’ll drive.

I nodded