Dead Blow by Lisa Preston

Author:Lisa Preston
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510749122
Publisher: Arcade Crimewise
Published: 2019-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

THAT WEEKEND, THE BUTTE COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS had a reining competition, or, as the locals call it, a slide-in. I was mindful as I set my anvil on its stand that it might be the last weekend Abby and I would work together.

For two days, I kept my forge and tools at the ready in case I got a little piece of business. I wouldn’t ever want to contemplate what hourly wage was earned by standing there from just after sunrise until four in the afternoon for the half shoeing and two quick fixes I was asked to do. In the idle time, I heated old shoes, cut them in half and twisted the metal, shaping it into hoof picks.

“You ready to give this a try?” I asked Abby on day two. She’d quit regular store-bought picks the first time I gave her one made from an old horseshoe. And the first time she made one herself, she was excited to act big by giving it away to one of her little 4-H buddies. Homemade hoof picks do make great give-aways and absolutely every one of my clients has one by now. Even Sheriff Magoutsen.

Abby nodded and I made her wear goggles when she pounded on the hot steel. I liked telling her she’d done well when she fashioned a couple hoof picks all by herself. Those, I let her keep.

After the Sunday slide-in, as riders were loading their horses into trailers, Abby and I wandered past the food carts offering the steam and smoke of barbecued corn cobs and fry bread and cinnamon churros. At the far end of the parking lot lay craft booths. An older couple had houseplants in homemade clay pots for sale. Another gal had soaps and candles. A whole gaggle of women sat knitting or crocheting or something like that, with their scarves and dyed yarns for sale. A gal with flowing print skirts twisted copper wire into earrings and the like.

Abby held a butterfly-shaped wire pendant up to her neck.

The gal behind the display said, “Every piece is one of a kind.”

I found myself staring at the weird-shaped rings, similar to the one I’d seen on Arielle Blake’s thumb in the photo from the old flyer at the Country Store.

Abby gave me a smile a set the pendant back down. The smile I returned was fake, distracted. I bet Arielle bought the ring from the gal who ran this booth. Where had I put that flyer?

Deputy Paulden had told Guy and me that they were waiting on DNA results, that the ring was the way they identified the body. Was I the first person to wonder if maybe the body Slowpoke unearthed on the federal land in back of the Buckeye ranch wasn’t Arielle Blake after all? And if it wasn’t her, where was she, and who was the dead person who’d been wearing a ring like Arielle’s?

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