Kept Animals Read online

  “Northerly? We? That’s what we know? I’ve known all of that for a week,” Everett said, downing his drink. “You’re fucking useless.” He picked the L.A. Times up off the counter and threw it at Gregg, who stumbled backward off his stool. “I’m paying you to find where she is now. Don’t you understand?”

  Gregg adjusted his suit and rearranged himself back on the stool.

  “I’m sorry,” Everett said to the detective. “I’m upset.”

  “It’s part of the job,” Gregg said, growing calm. He stole a look at Vivian.

  “You’ve had other things thrown at you before?” She leaned over, letting her breasts touch the counter.

  “I can’t wait around here forever,” Everett said, uncapping the vodka.

  “It’s your turn now,” Vivian said to Gregg. “Did you forget your line?”

  “I can find out more,” Gregg said, his Labrador eyes back on the ball.

  “Well done,” Vivian said. Everett was looking at her sideways.

  “I have work, damn it. She’s supposed to be here.” Everett brought the bottle of vodka down too hard against the counter. Gregg flinched. Vivian slid her empty water glass toward Everett, and he mindlessly poured her a drink as she knew he would.

  “Yes,” Vivian said, nodding. “Mommy disappearing is so inconvenient.” Gregg’s eyes followed her glass as Vivian reeled it in, raised it and drank. “But Detective Gregg is on it,” she said, wiping the vodka from her mouth with the back of her hand before winking, just to give him a little scare.

  * * *

  AT THE END of the day, Robin Sharpe called a meeting on Gus’s behalf, asking the men to gather in the office. Only Manuel and Tomás had spoken to him since his return to the ranch, and gruffly at that, while Sancho and Adriano refused to greet him, let alone take work orders.

  Sancho came in first, flicked on the air conditioner—a secondhand box that kicked on and rattled—then sat down, dropping his head back as if to take a nap. Manuel and Tomás came in together. Tomás removed his hat and sat down on the arm of the couch, leaving Manuel the seat. Manuel crossed one leg over the other and began pulling at a nail stuck in the sole of his boot.

  “Adriano’s not coming,” Tomás said.

  Was there any way to win them over? He’d put this question to Sonja on the drive in that morning and she’d said, “Let them kick you.” He’d have preferred it.

  “Okay, then,” Gus said. Robin was at the desk behind him. She’d offered him that chair, but he explained to her that that might not look right, that he’d been going about this all wrong. That he should sit with them, but now that meant leaning against the desk, his cane hooked beside him. His eyes drifted to the clock.

  “We don’t want to be here either,” Manuel said.

  “I’m sorry,” Gus said.

  “Good,” Sancho said, his eyes still closed. “Can we go now?”

  Gus wanted to say that Sonja and Tomás, even Jorge, had forgiven him, but that wasn’t the road in; their forgiveness wasn’t a bargaining chip. He didn’t know where to look. He suspected Sancho, reliably dispassionate, was the one who’d cleaned up the back room, disposing of the fox, clearing the bucket of brine. He was who they called whenever the vet came, when there was blood or bone involved. But Gus wasn’t going to ask, knowing the reminder of it would only validate the extent of his idiocy that night.

  “Gus?” Robin. “You were going to speak, yes?”

  “Yes, I am.” He took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair. “I’ve made a mess of things, I know. And I’m not asking for your forgiveness, though some of you”—he looked to Tomás on reflex—“you’ve offered it. But we all need to be back to work. I know you’ve been doing that without me just fine, but—well, I can’t do it without you.”

  Manuel said something under his breath, about Tomás.

  “I’m sorry?” Gus said.

  “Basta!” Tomás said to Manuel.

  “No,” Gus said. “I want to know.” He looked at Manuel, still fighting the nail. “I want to come clean here.”

  Manuel laughed. Sancho was smiling, too, his head back, eyes closed.

  “What’s so funny?” Gus asked, the thinnest effervescence of hope rising in him.

  Sancho lifted his head. “He said you can’t come clean without Tomás.” He was looking at the door to the back room of the office. “Because Tomás is the one who cleaned up after you.”

  Tomás was adjusting his baseball cap with both hands, his eyes pinched in annoyance.

  “He wasn’t alone,” Sancho said.

  “You helped?” Gus asked. “I figured you—”

  “Not me,” Sancho said. “Rory. Tomás and Rory cleaned up in there. She—”

  “No más,” Tomás said, standing up. “Stop.” He turned to face Sancho. “Papi wants us to move on. If you won’t listen to me or him”—he threw his arm toward Gus—“then will you listen to Papi? Can we please get back to work now?”

  He said this last to Gus, supplication in his voice. Gus imagined Tomás coming at him, fists flying. He wished for it.

  “Okay, then,” Manuel said. He had dislodged the nail from his boot, a farrier’s nail, and he dropped it to the floor, standing up to go.

  “I am sorry,” Gus said. “I understand—” Manuel stood up and Sancho got up, too, following him out. Tomás hesitated at the door.

  “Is it true?” Gus asked. “Rory was with you?”

  “She came here on her own.” Tomás said. “Yes. I followed her in here. She was upset.”

  “Tomás,” Gus said, shaking his head. “I was dumb. You’re too young to have regrets, but if they come, I hope—”

  “I asked Mami to let me go,” he interrupted. “To let me take the car and follow—”

  “Thank you, Tomás,” Robin said.

  Gus had lost track of her. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “I should go,” Tomás said.

  Gus watched him leave, the thin drawn line of him disappearing into the big barn. Since Fresno, Tomás had taken on extra hours, acting as personal groom for the Fisk twins, work and money that Gus assumed had to please Sonja.

  “That wasn’t what I expected; that was—” Gus paused, easing himself down to the couch.

  “That was a step in the right direction.” Robin put her hands behind her head, revealing the yellow stains in the underarms of her shirt. Gus still wasn’t sure what to make of Robin, but he was trying not to be so suspicious of everyone, to give people the benefit of the doubt. Even Mona, especially Mona. “How’ve the hot lights been working on Chap?” she asked.

  “Not sure,” Gus said. “Hard to know.” Robin knew Carlotta had offered him some help with a stud fee, but it wasn’t much, and finding a sire that complemented Chap and that he could afford was proving difficult. The hot lights were an attempt to trick the mare’s natural cycle, to make her body believe that the days were as long as they were in spring, when the internal clock of her still-wild system told her to breed so she could rear her young in the most temperate months. Here it was September and the days were still hot as a lizard’s back, but the nights were coming in cooler, stretching longer. “This is all feeling like a helluva crapshoot.” He scratched beneath his hat.

  “I must admit I’m fascinated,” Robin said. “I’d like to help, if you’re game, that is.”

  So she understood he wasn’t her biggest fan. “Well, there is a stallion in Canoga Park. He’s long in the tooth, but the price is right. And he’s close—”

  “You want a live cover, then?”

  “Always preferable to insemination if you ask me, but desperate times—”

  “Did Rory not mention Mark Adler? The stallion he had in Fresno?”

  “No,” Gus said. “I don’t think she did.”

  “But you know who he is, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Rory,” Robin said, some admonishment to her tone. “I’m sure she was still feeling bad about what happened �
��” Robin described the dustup Chap had caused outside the dressage ring and as she went on, Gus watched Rory walking down the driveway on Mrs. Keating’s big sorrel sport horse, her camera strapped to her, as always. “Of course I took the blame with Preston,” Robin was saying. “I should’ve known, should’ve considered the possibility at least. But man, how Preston handled Mark Adler. I learned a thing or two there.”

  Preston Fisk. Preston Fisk had a personalized license plate that said GR8FACE and a plate frame that gave the number to his plastic surgery office. “What are you getting at, Robin?”

  “Well, I don’t know about the timing with Chap, but the clinic’s the first two weeks of October and Journey’s going to need a haul out there and—”

  “And what?” Gus laughed. “I don’t think you’re understanding; I haven’t got Mark Adler money—not that much. I have to be real here. The horse in Canoga—”

  “You have to spend money to make it in the breeding game, do you not?”

  Do you not? Who the hell was she? What kinda game was she playing at? She’d started sifting papers on the desk, where innumerable stacks had accumulated. He would tell Carlotta just how disorganized new management was. Robin stood up, nodding to herself, some thinking finalized. “The thing is, Gus, Mr. and Mrs. Fisk have taken a greater interest in the ranch lately. Not the horses exactly, but the investment that they can be. They see how good it is for the twins.” She had an envelope in her hand, the thing she’d apparently been hunting, and was tapping it against the desk now.

  “So?”

  “So I know you didn’t get to say everything you wanted to say to the men—”

  “Is that right?” Gus crossed his arms.

  “That’s right. I think you wanted to tell them that you know things will never be the same again, but that you don’t only want to get back to work, you want to make Leaning Rock a better place to work. You want to improve it. And so do I. Any association with Adler is an opportunity for us. I can’t make any promises, but having a foal out of Heritage, starting off like that, well, I’d be willing to talk to Preston—”

  “Where is Adler in Colorado?”

  “Craig. Craig, Colorado.”

  Gus knew it. Just over the border, maybe forty-five minutes from his sister’s place in Wyoming. “How much would Preston pay?”

  “I can’t say, I was just thinking out loud, really.” She extended the envelope in her hand. “This came for you,” she said. Yet another bill, Gus was sure. “If you decide you’re interested, you’ll let me know.”

  She left the Dutch doors open, the AC still spitting out what cold air it could. He looked down at the envelope. It wasn’t a bill. It was a letter, hand addressed. From the barn came the chatter of girls between lessons. He knew this handwriting, the long, high arc of each letter. He’d seen it once before. I do not blame you … He heard the rattling slide of a barn door opening. And then he heard her voice, the whisper of it as if at his bedside in the hospital. The voices in the breezeway of the barn became the voices in the hallway, the nurses at their station, and Sarah Price was sitting in that off-white room with him. The paper of the envelope as pale and crisp as her hospital gown. She had sat with him. He knew this with a sudden clarity. She had spoken to him the night of the accident. They had met.

  September 3, 1993

  Dear Mr. Scott, Have you ever slept in a car? It is oddly invigorating …

  * * *

  THERE. STANDING BACK up, Vivian saw the window again—a perfect rectangular shimmer, deep within the trees, catching the sun, but the sun was setting, her chance fading.

  “I have to go,” she said into the phone, pulling her shorts over her still-damp suit.

  “Go where?” McLeod asked.

  “I’m not actually sure,” she said. She was drifting around the pool on an inflated raft when she first saw the window and had been sipping vodka by the pool ever since, waiting, as if it might pop out again (à la Whac-A-Mole). Calling McLeod had been the end result of giving up, but now there it was, undeniably so.

  “You just called me, you know?”

  “A convenience,” she said, the whip of her words slicing the air (hiya!). The window was winking at her through the trees; there was no time for playing footsie over the telephone. She hung up.

  The lines of their property made a shape like a large wedge of cake. The curved edge followed Old Canyon Road, the angled northern line was carved into the hillside and shored up by a concrete wall, twenty feet high, while the third line was defined only by a short, hip-high wall. Back here, this was where she’d played tag with Charlie, shuffle running, letting him catch her on the back of the leg—“Ah, you got me”—turning around to his squealing laughter. You got me.

  The hip-high wall and the hillside of obscuring scrub oak beyond didn’t seem any real deterrent, but her nerves were slippery with vodka. She hoisted herself up onto the wall (in swimmer form) and looked down at the dry creek bed. It was a steeper drop down the other side, onto the witch-fingered roots of the trees scratching into the red clay ground. Her house almost looked inviting from here, through the whiskery blur of overgrown grass. If it weren’t for the mess inside—it was a beautiful house.

  A lizard dashed beneath the carpet of fallen leaves and Vivian dropped over the wall. She wrapped a hand around a low, lichen-cloaked branch, wedged her foot against the trunk of the tree, and considered the incline, realizing if she was going to gain any ground it was going to have to be on her hands and knees.

  * * *

  “YOU OKAY?” TOMáS asked. “Sit down. I’ll bring water.”

  Gus had read the letter in the office, then again in the barn, like touching a hot pan twice, plain dumb. Tomás had him sit on a tack trunk, then jogged off toward the office. Gus touched his back pocket, the letter there, folded and tucked away.

  Tomás returned with a nearly frozen bottle of water. “Was it your leg?” he asked.

  “No, no,” Gus said. He was considering telling him. Surely Tomás knew about the letter Sarah Price had written to Jorge, but in this letter, there was no mention of forgiveness. He took the bottle of water down in breathy gulps, until the plastic contracted in his hand, empty. “A bit of heatstroke maybe,” he said. The humidity of the summer months was gone, replaced by a dry static charge that left the pollen of the jacaranda trees clinging to the walls of the barn. “Maybe allergies, but I’ll be fine.”

  Tomás spotted Rory coming down the hill on Chap and waved for her to hurry. The sky was rolling over into dusk. He’d given her a hard time earlier, telling her to put the camera away and ride her list; take your damn time with Mrs. Keating’s horse, he’d said, because the likes of Mrs. Keating mattered, and she should be riding Chap only after her work was done. And she’d listened. For what inexplicable reason did she still listen to him?

  “He was sick,” Tomás was saying above Chap’s clip-clopping across the asphalt. “I found him, white as a sheet.”

  “What’s wrong?” Rory asked, pulling Chap up.

  “No, no, I’m like new again,” Gus said, raising the empty water. “Heatstroke.”

  Rory dismounted with a hand to the straps of her camera, an aptitude to the way she did this, a suggestion of the woman she might become: methodical, quietly bold. Why hadn’t she told him about the fox? Why had he had to hear it from Tomás? They were both eyeing him with a mix of suspicion and concern. When he’d come home from the hospital, he’d found every store of whiskey had been poured out.

  “Quit looking at me like that. I said, I’m fine.” He stood up as if to prove them wrong.

  “All right,” Rory said, handing him Chap’s reins, a sign she was satisfied he was okay.

  He ran his hand down Chap’s neck, admiring the liquid shine of her coat. She was as fit as she’d ever been, and Rory had done that while he was wearing a groove in the end of their couch. The mare leaned her head into him, as if propping him up. He heard Rory click off a photo. “Please, don’t,” he said.

&nb
sp; In the upper ring, the floodlights blinked on. Robin had added a seven o’clock class, geared toward adult novices, one of her more lucrative changes. The PA system crackled alive, Robin’s voice echoing against the hillside. “Maybe I’ll stick around a little while,” Gus said.

  “I want to get home,” Rory said, irritated.

  “I have things to discuss with Robin, when she’s done.” He didn’t want to tell Rory about the possibility of going to Colorado. Not until it was a sure thing.

  “I can take you,” Tomás said to Rory.

  “You got your car up and running?” Gus asked.

  Tomás shook his head. “No. But—” He looked at Rory. “June asked me to grab her something to eat, from the market and—” He pulled the keys to the Mercedes from his pocket. “She’s riding with Ema.”

  “Of course she is,” Rory said.

  Gus heard some poison in her voice. He answered for her. “That’s very nice of you, Tomás.”

  * * *

  VIVIAN’S PALMS WERE scored with scratches, her knees caked in dirt, but she could see the house above, the lip of the roof anyway. She dug her toes into the shifting ground, her hands grasping the ivy, the grass, all of it coming up by the roots, but moving her along. She was twenty feet from the crest of the hillside and then she’d be there and—and then what? Exactly what was she going to do? And how was she going to get back down? The climb in reverse was impossible, comical even; she’d be turned into a rock bouncing down the hillside. Then, as if this thought had propelled her, she started to fall (son of a bitch). She threw her arm back, hoping for a branch, but as soon as she had a hold on one it came away in her hand and she spun sideways, only one hand free to break her fall. She heard a tearing sound and her breath was knocked free of her body. She landed in a fetal ball, curled as a new fern against the forest floor (but drunk and pissed off). The tearing sound had been her shorts and the skin of her thigh was also open, weeping blood.

  She was still closer to the house above than to her own.