Silent Signals

By Nancy Castaneda

Susan Soble Mystery #2: When Susan witnesses a fatal fall on a cross-country course, she's not sure it's an accident. As she begins to ask questions of those who were there, she finds motives for murder abound but she can't see how it could have been done. Newly married and still emotionally supporting three grown sons, Susan has little time for her obsession with this imagined murder and grows increasingly frustrated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Castaneda
• Release date: Jan 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310658112

Nancy Castaneda

Nancy Castaneda spent most of her athletic years around horses. She now lives a quiet, horseless life in Connecticut with her Colombian husband and their golden retriever, but memories of her horse years are never far from the surface of her thoughts and enrich the fabric of her books.

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Silent Signals

Copyright 2015 Nancy Castaneda

Published by Nancy Castaneda at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

About Nancy Castaneda

Other books by Nancy Castaneda

Chapter One

The very smell of a stable is exciting to an equestrian. It’s the warm smell of sweating horses, clean leather and sweet hay. There is another odor of course, a less pleasant odor, the relative lack of which denotes the quality of the stable’s management.

Midway was well managed. It was the best stable here in Foxton. I drank in the intoxicating scent as I stood in the center of the indoor ring watching my small line of beginners bouncing to the sitting trot provided safely by Rod’s incredibly patient school horses. The happy riders had no control, and very little balance, and yet the horses stayed against the grey wooden wall of the ring, nose to tail, rhythmically training their charges in the basics of horsemanship.

I thought again of how much I had missed all this as I asked my students to return to a walk. The horses heard my command, and obeyed while their riders were still gathering reins. As I directed the class through the various balance exercises that I remembered from my childhood lessons, I wondered, again, why I had stayed away from horses for so long. It had taken Rod’s encouragement, and his invitation to teach again for riding privileges, to bring me back after over thirty horseless years.

Door! an entering horseman yelled as he flipped the switch to raise the heavy gate to the ring. He had timed his entrance carefully to avoid my class but I called a halt anyway, just in case. The school horses obeyed immediately and the students stared in awe at the lovely mare that Rod’s brother, Aaron, led into the ring. Even beginners know a good horse when they see one.

She was a big grey, about seventeen hands, straight and well made, with a stunningly beautiful head chiseled by her excellent breeding. I'd never seen her before. But there were a lot of horses in Rod’s stable that I didn’t know yet. Another man, very handsome with red hair, also came into the ring, trailed by a short, over made-up woman dressed to represent herself as twenty-five. As Aaron helped the man mount the big mare, and as I restarted my class, the woman stepped carefully in her ridiculous heels toward the gallery full of my students’ anxious parents. Aaron caught up to her as she reached for the entry door. As I watched him open it for her, I saw another man, blond and tall, come into the back of the gallery through the door from outside.

Our class time was almost up, so I had my riders come to the center and line up in front of me. Since the horses couldn’t do this by themselves, it became a major task for my riders. I was so busy with managing the tangled mess of ineffective riders and confused horses approaching me that I forgot all about the mare working smoothly out on the rail.

I sensed the problem first. Perhaps the steady rhythm changed slightly, or maybe someone in the gallery made a startled sound, but I looked up quickly and saw the mare snake her head down and kick out behind in obvious anger. Her rider, surprised, planted his left hand on her neck and brought his right hand up in a half-halt to stop her disobedience. But the disobedience was already over before he even reacted. The mare quietly continued around the ring as if nothing had happened. She’s got a screw lose somewhere, I thought, as I asked my oblivious riders to dismount.

The stable dog, normally a sack-of potatoes-in-the-corner type of lab, decided to pick this particular day to insist on entering the ring just as I led my tiny people out with their towering horses in tow. I sent a word of thanks silently upward for those amazing school horses. They just stepped around the insistent dog as it wound its way through their legs and we safely reached the stable girls waiting by the crossties to help the children untack.

After I had spent the obligatory time answering parents’ silly questions about the talents of their children, I went looking for Rod. I found him at the barn door saying good-bye to the man I had seen enter the gallery earlier. It was strange to be back at this stable, where I had spent every free moment of my teenage years, and not see any of my old friends around any more. All of these people were new to me except Rod, and he had been just a boy back then, much younger than I. I laughed to myself as I stood to the side, waiting for Rod to be free. The apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree in that family. Rod looked exactly like his father, Turk, who had run the stable when I was riding. And Aaron looked exactly like Rod, even though they were only half-brothers. Three very short, dark haired, smiling Marlon Brandos.

How’d it go, Susan? Rod turned to look up at me when the other man left.

I loved it! I answered. But, where in the world did you get those fantastic school horses? They're unbelievable!

Aren’t they though? I put all of my money into that string when I took over the stable. No one wanted to part with good school horses so I just made it worth their while. They came from all over.

I have to tell you, Rod, I've seen you teaching beginner classes and I thought it was you who kept such perfect order. Now I know your secret. Thanks for letting me teach a class. I was getting a little bored with teaching only start-up privates.

I could see that. You were ready to move up.

As we started walking toward Rod’s office, I asked him about the man who had just left. I still didn't know all the people at Midway.

Oh, that’s Gary Sallo. He owns Delaba Stables just over the border in New Jersey. He wasn’t in business when you rode here. He's a good trainer. Kandid, that mare Tom was riding in the ring with your class, came from him. I bought her for Tom.

"Has she always been erratic?’ I asked, remembering what I had seen of her temper.

Rod stopped and turned toward me. "Kandid? Never! She’s steady as they come or I’d never have bought her for Tom. He’s a promising, but pretty green, rider. Did you see something in there?

Actually, I hadn’t seen much. It was probably nothing, maybe a mixed signal between them. She seemed ticked off for a second, that’s all. And I don’t know her.

Just then, Aaron, and the woman he was still escorting, came out of the tack room ahead of us and Rod called them over.

Susan, this is Patsy, Tom’s wife, Rod indicated the mascara queen. She looked up at me with an obligatory meeting-smile and turned immediately to Rod.

Aaron was explaining eventing to me but I still don’t understand. Why do the horses have to enter all three classes? If Kandid is such a good jumper and all, shouldn’t we just enter her in the cross-country and stadium? Tom isn’t very good at dressage. It seems dumb to waste our money on that class.

Kandid’s entered in Novice tomorrow, Rod clarified quickly for me and then patiently explained to the stupid woman that an event didn't have classes like in a horse show but that every horse was tested three ways: First, the dressage, a precision test, judged on the accuracy, fluidity and overall impression of the ride; second, the cross country, a timed test over natural, but sometimes scary-looking obstacles; and third, the stadium jumping, judged only on getting over the fences cleanly in an allotted time.

All of the horses are talented and well trained, Rod clarified further. Often, the winner is the horse that‘s focused enough to listen to its rider in the dressage, brave enough to take all the cross country fences without hesitating, and still energetic enough to pick up his feet over the stadium fences at the end of the day.

Patsy wasn’t happy with Rod’s explanation. She wanted to have her own way, no matter what the facts were, but Rod had shut her down effectively and she left it there. Aaron, usually very friendly to me, seemed so enthralled by Patsy that he didn’t even bother to acknowledge me before she angrily led him away.

Rod sighed. That woman is trouble. He shook his head and turned again to me. Speaking of eventing, Tat told me that you're going to be there tomorrow.

Tat was his tiny, very southern wife. Yeah, she bribed me with fried chicken out on the cross-country course. How could I refuse?

Chapter Two

I had showered and changed my clothes at the stable so that when I got home I would be ready to get down to the business of cooking for my extended family that was expected to arrive, hungry, at six. But my romantic new husband, Carlos, had other ideas. Just as I reached the front door of my old colonial, he opened it, with a huge smile on his creased face and a rose in his big, outstretched hand.

Mi amor, he greeted me in his deep bass, Colombian voice and I quickly recalculated the time I needed to prepare dinner. I could use instant stuff instead.

Needless to say, Carlos and I were in the kitchen, still madly finishing the dinner preparations, when the boys arrived. Boys, was a relative term here. Stephen, my oldest, and his one-year-younger brother, Edward, were well into their twenties and John had just had his twentieth birthday making him officially no longer a teenager.

We heard them arrive in the driveway, with slamming doors and a lot of laughter. Always remarkably good friends, they lived together in a typical, upstate New York Greek revival just outside of town but still spent a lot of time at my house.

They burst through the door together. As they greeted Carlos and me with warm hugs, I laughed to myself at what the rest of us must look like to John. All of us were very tall and, except for my Hispanic Carlos, very Scandinavian-blond. John, who was not my biological child, was barely five six with long, dark hair gathered at the nape of his neck in a ponytail. We must look like a race of giants to him.

Once the boys had greeted us, they turned their attention to the food. Since a lot of it was still in the kitchen, they helped put it on the table. Not all of it actually got there. Conspicuous portions were missing by the time we sat down to eat.

Conversation was rapid fire and half-said with a lot of nods and grunts of agreement until the boys had eaten enough to slow down. I was used to this. Appetite had never been a problem in our family.

"Mom. How was