Loose Rein

By Nancy Castaneda

Susan Soble Mystery #3: When a girl is found dead at the bottom of a gorge and the police rule it a suicide, Susan suddenly finds herself caught up in a swirl of births and deaths that threaten to leave her family in turmoil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Castaneda
• Release date: Dec 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310783364

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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LOOSE REIN

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

Chapter Thirty

About Nancy Castaneda

Other books by Nancy Castaneda

Chapter One

It was New Year's Day and snow had been coming down hard for four, long, frustrating days. Everyone's nerves were frazzled. When the long storm had first been predicted, we had done the prudent New England thing and stocked up on non-perishables, candles and flashlight batteries. We had made sure that we had plenty of blankets to snuggle under and had waited for the power to go off.

It never did. But after the second day of being completely snowbound we were ready for the storm to stop. It had gone on for two more days and had deposited almost three feet of snow that then had to be removed by the residents of Foxton. The lucky ones, like us, had snow blowers that gamely struggled through the mountains of white stuff, but many homeowners were still trying to dig their way out with just snow shovels. As usual, the emergency rooms would be full of men in their fifties who hadn't had that much exercise in years and should have known better than to tackle all of that snow themselves.

I had argued about that last night with my big, loving husband, Carlos. He had grown up in a Colombian household where the man did the heavy work and the woman ran the house. I had pointed out that such a strict division of labor was fine when the woman was petite and the man was used to heavy snow but, at five foot ten, I was far from petite and Carlos had lived in apartments since he moved to New England and, therefore, had never even shoveled a driveway until we had married two years ago. Then, after he had moved into the big Colonial I had inherited from my mother, we had enjoyed only very mild winters. During that time, I had been delighted to have my macho husband clear each light snowfall for me.

But three feet of snow was a totally different kettle of fish. We were both in our fifties and prime candidates for heart attacks if either of us tried to clear all of that snow alone. Carlos didn't like it, but I insisted on spelling him last night as he struggled with the snow blower. Even with our big, oversized machine, it was hard work. In the end, I was the one who gave up about midnight, when the town plow made a new pass down our street just as I had cleared out the driveway. The wall of snow the plow dredged up was higher than the one I had just removed. When I came inside in tears, Carlos met me with a New Year's cup of cocoa spiced with love, and my anger dissipated.

Carlos could always comfort me. He was my rock. I often wondered how I had survived before I met him. Of course, I had been married for more than half of my life to Peter. I had raised two of Peter's children and had inherited one more of his after Peter's suicide a few years ago. But that life seemed a long way back now and Peter, who I had angrily divorced long before I met Carlos, had never been a comforting man.

Carlos was my lover and my best friend. If it hadn't been for Peter's three, wonderful sons, I would have regretted my first marriage and wished that I had waited for a Carlos. But my sons were worth surviving Peter's cruelty. They were my constant joy.

All three of them lived in Foxton on a property they owned in common just outside of town. Stephen, my eldest in his late twenties, and his very pregnant wife, Risa, lived on the back of that property in an old studio they had fixed up. Edward, a year younger than Stephen, lived with his twenty-one year old half-brother, John, in the old Greek revival that stood proudly fronting the road. They all were regularly in and out of our house, making me feel needed and loved. I was a very lucky woman and I knew it.

This morning we had finally cleared out the plow's contributions to our driveway and had returned to some semblance of our normal lives. After lunch, Carlos went to the police station, where he worked as a detective, and I prepared to go out to Midway Stables to ride my horse.

As usual, things didn't go quite as planned. Just as I was about to leave, my golden retriever threw up the Christmas cookies he'd stolen from the counter last night. He managed to spew his regurgitated treasure all over the oriental rug in the hall and then run though it, leaving big, puke prints all the way into the kitchen.

I loved Titus but he was a handful right now. At a year old he was still very much a puppy in behavior but already weighed almost eighty pounds. He was obedient when it suited him, and absolutely rebellious when our agendas clashed. This morning I wanted him to go outside into his run so I could clean up his mess, and he wanted to play. His first idea was to run up the stairs with his ball so he could watch it bounce down them when he dropped it. That didn't work very well when I caught the ball half way down as I climbed up to corral him. Undaunted, he grabbed a washcloth from the bathroom basket and proceeded to initiate a game of keep-away. Fortunately, he made the mistake of letting himself be cornered. When he saw there was no way out, he bounced up to me and pretended that he was going to obey my wishes all along. I rewarded his obedience, late as it was, by kneeling down and patting him while I held firmly onto his collar.

An hour later, Titus and I got into my old Caravan to make the snowy drive to Midway. Titus immediately lay down and went to sleep behind my seat where one of the captain's chairs had been removed. He had no interest in car rides themselves, no matter how long they were. He just insisted on going with me anytime I drove anywhere and exploded out of the car to explore what ever new world awaited him when the engine shut off.

I had thought I would be frustrated by the slow driving necessitated by the slippery roads and had turned on the radio before I had left our house. I had been wrong. I did have to drive very slowly but the scenery, as I drove out into the country, was so fascinating that I didn't mind the lack of speed. Everything, everywhere, was white. I had never seen this much snow in Foxton, and I had lived here all of my life. The roads were lined with snowdrifts so high that I couldn't see over them. Periodically, I would see the top of a road sign or be able to peek down a long driveway but, for the most part, I was just driving between two white walls with dark evergreen, and bare black trees enhancing the feeling of my entrapment by looming regularly up over the road.

... found the body of a young woman in the south gorge. My attention was suddenly drawn to the radio and I quickly switched it off. I didn't want to hear any more. I knew the drill. Students from the college regularly threw themselves into one or the other of Foxton's deep gorges. There had been at least one suicide a year since I had been aware of the problem. The town had tried to prevent these sad rituals by fencing the bridges and the college had offered free counseling and a hotline for suicidal students. But the insanity continued year after year.

My mood rapidly deteriorated. My black and white surroundings began to feel more and more threatening. I didn't fear for myself, as I was the least suicidal person around. I feared for the great body of young students away from the comfort of their families and under the terrible pressures of an Ivy league college. Too many had died. Too many mothers in all parts of the country had lost the children they had so proudly sent to Foxton.

This scenario was so familiar here, that we hardly paid attention anymore. It occurred to me, as I turned down the drive to Midway, that if someone wanted to kill a particular student, all that person would have to do, would be to push that student into one of our gorges and everyone would just assume that it was another suicide.

Chapter Two

I got out of the car in a foul mood but Titus quickly cured that when he bolted to freedom and began flying from drift to drift at breakneck speed. He didn't even pause in his golden, slingshot performance when he miscalculated and summersaulted from the top of the highest drift down to the parking lot. He got me laughing so hard that I could barely say hello the stable owner who had come out to greet me.

I'm sorry, Rod, I managed, as I tried to regain my composure, Titus is just such an idiot today! He's been cooped up so long, he's going nuts out here."

The minute Titus heard me say Rod's name he dashed over and curled up against him for a patting. I wish I could say that he did this because Rod was special to him but he did this to anyone who came into his world. He loved all people and assumed that all people loved him. He nearly knocked Rod over in his enthusiasm. He was used to large people like Carlos and me. Rod, although tightly athletic, was a small man and had to brace himself against Titus' whirling presence.

Come, Titus, I called hopefully to my crazy puppy. To my amazement, he came. I praised him and gave him a treat from my pocket as I snapped on his lead. Thus restricted, Titus turned into a well-mannered dog and I was able to converse with Rod in peace.

"I'm sorry, Rod. He's still very much a puppy.

No problem, Susan, I'm used to Tiger. Mary tries to keep him under a tight rein but his enthusiasm can't be contained either.

Mary was Rod's eleven-year-old daughter and Tiger was her puppy from the same litter as Titus.

Rod, I had known since our childhood and he was a good friend. He was the reason I had started riding again in my fifties. Today, however, he had come out to greet me for a reason and he quickly came to the point.

Susan, could you ride out with Mary today? The horses have been turned out in the indoor ring every day during the storm and are bored to death with it's four walls so Mary is insisting on riding Saranta out on the plowed trail.

This was not what I had been looking forward to. I loved Mary and trusted Saranta explicitly, but a trail ride with Rod's angry fifth grade daughter on her father's competition horse was going to be a lot more stressful than the peaceful ride