Bill Pronzini - Crazybone

The phone rang not long after I sat down. Tamara was still busy, so I picked up. And a small, strong voice said without hesitation. “This is Emily Hunter. Are you the man who came to see my mother yesterday?”

I said yes, I was, managing to keep the surprise out of my voice. “What can I do for you, Emily?”

“Well, I found your business card in her studio. That’s how I knew your phone number. She doesn’t know I’m calling you.”

“I see.”

“She wouldn’t like it if she did.”

“I won’t tell her. All my calls are confidential.”

“Thank you,” she said. Very grave and serious, even more so than yesterday. With something added that I took to be a kind of worried determination. “Could I talk to you? In person, I mean.”

“Of course you can. It must be important.”

“It is.”

“Something about your mother?”

“Yes.”

“What’s making her so afraid?”

Pause. “I can’t talk about it now. She might come in any minute. Tomorrow, okay? After school?”

I glanced at my calendar; the afternoon was free. “Anytime you say. Where would you like to meet?”

“Do you know the Rincon Riding Academy?”

“No, but I’m sure I can find it.”

“It’s on Rincon Road. Not far from where I live. I take riding lessons there every Thursday at three-thirty. We could meet in front at a quarter after.”

“Quarter after three it is.”

Another pause. I could hear the faint raspy sound of her breathing, the underlying tension in it. Then, “I have to talk to somebody. There’s no one else. I don’t know anyone else.”

“I understand. I’ll help if I can.”

“Thank you,” she said again. She started to say something else, broke it off; then, quickly, “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Emily.” But she had already severed the connection.

I put the receiver down, thinking: It cost her a lot to make that call. She isn’t the kind of kid who asks for help easily, particularly not from a stranger. Whatever’s going on there, she’s caught in the middle. Dead father, terrified mother, and neither of them who they’ve pretended to be. Does she know who her parents really are, that she’s been living a lie herself?

All of that, and tomorrow’s her tenth birthday.

Jesus, what some people do to their children!

Back in horse country again. Parked in front of the Rincon Riding Academy, waiting for Emily Hunter, watching the activity in the block-square complex. Horses everywhere — horses on my mind.

Noble steed. Cay use, bronc, bangtail, hayburner, crowbait. Grace and speed on a racetrack; maker and loser, all unknowing, of bettors’ fortunes. Work animals, like cattle and oxen. Companion animals, same pet class as cats and dogs according to the proponents of a victorious proposition on last year’s state ballot to “recognize horses as an important part of California’s heritage that deserve protection from those who would slaughter them for food for human consumption.” Steaks, chops, and roasts to the unfussy palates of Europeans and Japanese, the main markets for horsemeat. Even a taxidermist’s delight — Roy Rogers’ taxidermist anyway.

Horses are a lot of different things to a lot of different people, to some of them passionately so, but I was not one of the multitude. Strictly neutral on the subject, although I’d voted for the proposition because I don’t like to see any animal suffer inhumane treatment for any reason. Horses themselves, though, I can take or leave alone and mostly I prefer the latter. For one very good reason.

The noble steed is a smelly bugger.

Proof of this was borne on the warm afternoon breeze, a pungent combination of manure, urine, sweat, dust, and harness leather from the twenty or so cayuses boarded at the Rincon Riding Academy. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant; the problem with it was pervasiveness. The smell got inside your nose and sinus cavities and stayed there. The horsey set obviously didn’t mind, probably got so used to the aroma after a while they didn’t even notice it. I always noticed it, even at a distance; up close and personal it was twice as potent. I hoped Emily wouldn’t want me to go inside the cavernous riding barn with her. If I had to do that, the scent of horse would not only go home with me but would no doubt linger for some time. Even Kerry would smell like a Kentucky Derby candidate, which would severely inhibit our sex life...

A young girl on a bicycle came along the road from the opposite direction and turned in at the academy’s gate. Emily’s size and age, but not Emily. I glanced at my watch. Almost twenty past three. She was a little late, not that that had to mean anything.

I shifted position and thought about putting the window up. Wouldn’t have done much good; the equine effluvium had taken up residence inside the car. Besides, it was a warm day and I liked the feel of the breeze on my face.

Half a dozen kids and an older woman, all of them in riding togs and mounted on black-and-brown horses, filed out of the barn into an outdoor arena. I watched them ride around in there — walk, trot, walk, trot. Fascinating. Like watching a group of prisoners in an exercise yard, except that this bunch seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Three twenty-five. And still no Emily.

I was beginning to get twitchy. Any number of things could have held her up — if she was coming. She might have changed her mind; kids can be mercurial, even serious-minded kids like Emily Hunter. That wouldn’t be half as bad as her mother having found out about the phone call and the planned meeting. The quick way Emily bad said good-bye yesterday... it could’ve been because her mother walked in on her.

The young equestrians and their instructor kept walking and trotting. And I kept twitching.

Three-thirty.

Three thirty-five.

She wasn’t coming. No doubt of it by then, but I stayed put anyway. It was almost four before I called it quits and started the car. The horse smell went away with me, just as I’d known it would.

This being Thursday, Anita Purcell Fine Arts was open for business. Not that they were doing any when I walked in; the place was empty except for a twentyish russet-haired woman sitting at a desk, paging through a catalogue. Either Anita Purcell was very choosy, or fine arts were currently at a premium: the gallery’s display stock was on the skimpy side, so much so that the big, white-walled room had an incomplete look, as if Ms. Purcell were in the process of moving in or moving out. Half a dozen large oils and watercolors, the same number of smaller paintings, a couple of marble sculptures, a grouping of pottery and another of porcelain figurines — that was all there was. The pottery layout was of Sheila Hunter s distinctive blue- and green-glazed, black-design items, and at that there were less than a dozen of them.

The woman hopped to her feet, smiling and eager, as if I were the first potential customer in a long while. She had sea-green eyes, and when I looked into them I felt a little sad. No there there. Like so many individuals you encounter these days, of all types and dispositions. Genetic pod people capable of superficial thought and basic emotions, existing in personal spaces that were dimly lit and mostly empty. The dumbing down of America not only continues, it seems to be approaching epidemic proportions.

She was not Anita Purcell, of course; her name was Gretchen Kiley, she was Ms. Purcell’s niece, and she was minding the store while her aunt was away at an auction in Los Angeles. She knew Sheila Hunter, oh, yes, but not very well, and wasn’t it a terrible thing about her husband? She guessed Mrs. Hunter and her aunt were friends, and no, she didn’t know any of Mrs. Hunter’s other friends. Why was I asking? I told her I was conducting a routine investigation on behalf of Jack Hunter’s insurance company. Then I took a small dyer because I’d run out of direct questions.