Free At Risk by Kit Ehrman

still hadn't come
back.
    "Nick," I said. "Do you know anyone who owns
a white dualie and an old, dark-colored, six-horse? A
gooseneck."
    He straightened and stretched the kinks out
of his back. "Not offhand. Why?"
    "Here you go, boss," Marty said in my ear. He
handed me a slip of paper. "Anything else?"
    I shook my head, and Marty spun around and
headed back to barn B.
    I worked out the sums. The tonnage was off.
Somehow, Harrison was altering the figures from the weigh station.
In the past, all I'd had were suspicions. Now I had proof.
Unfortunately, bringing this to Harrison's attention would not to
be pleasant. He was irritated with me anyway, because I didn't
hesitate to return moldy or poor-quality hay and demand
credit--services he touted, but when it came to the actual case in
point, he did so grudgingly.
    "What about that trailer, Steve?" Nick said
as he clinched a nail flush against the hoof wall.
    "Oh. A rig like that was used by whoever
stole the horses."
    "From Foxdale?" he said.
    "Yep."
    "I didn't think the police had any
leads."
    "They don't. Not if they can't figure out who
owns the trailer." I watched Boris, Foxdale's lone barn cat, make
his way down the aisle. When he saw me, he trotted over and leaned
against my leg. I pushed him away with my foot, but he came right
back, not getting the hint. "Damn it."
    Gene paused with the rasp in his hand.
"What's that?"
    "Oh, nothing," I said. "Just that this stupid
cat won't leave me alone. Have you heard of any other horse thefts
or--" I glanced over my shoulder.
    Mr. Harrison had squeezed between Nick's
truck and the barn door and was walking down the aisle toward us. A
tall, plain-faced man, he kept his thinning blond hair combed
across his scalp in a misplaced effort to hide the fact that he was
balding prematurely.
    He nodded to Nick, then handed me his
clipboard. "Any return bales?"
    "No." I hesitated. "There's a problem,
though."
    "What?"
    I looked from the paperwork to his face. He
had narrowed his eyes, and I had a sudden impression that the
muscles in his face had settled into an arrangement they were
accustomed to. Deep wrinkles creased his forehead, and his eyebrows
had bunched together into a straight line that shadowed his gray
eyes.
    I cleared my throat. "There's a discrepancy
between the tonnage stated on the invoice and what we actually
received."
    "What are you talking about?" His face was
turning red, and he'd clenched his hands.
    "By my calculations, we're about
twelve-hundred pounds short, give or take a bale or two. And that's
just this one delivery," I said and saw he knew exactly what I
meant.
    He looked so angry; I thought he might hit
me. Instead, he grabbed the clipboard, scratched out his figure,
wrote in a new one, and shoved it back into my hand.
    I looked at the invoice. He'd pressed so
hard, the pen's tip had ripped through the top sheet. I checked it,
signed it, gave it back to him.
    He stood there for a couple of seconds,
staring at me with eyes that had become oddly vacant. The muscles
along his jaw were bunched with tension, and I still thought he
might slug me.
    He turned abruptly and headed down the aisle.
His shoulders were hunched forward under his stained coveralls as
he walked out of the barn and into the flood of sunlight.
    Behind me, Nick chuckled. "You sure know how
to make friends."
    "I wouldn't want him for a friend," I said
quietly.
    "No. He's a creepy bastard. Mean too, what
with that incident a while back."
    "What incident?"
    "You didn't hear about that?"
    I shook my head.
    He slid the hoof knife into its slot on his
leather apron and picked up a rasp. "Well, about a year ago, there
was a stink about him beating a horse—"
    "He has horses?"
    "Yep. Owns a farm west of here. Can't
remember the name right now. Anyway, some horse did somethin' that
pissed 'im off, so he tied it to a post and beat it with a whip.
Cut the animal up good, so they say. Blood everywhere. Somebody
reported him to the Humane Society. Course, by