Free The Stars Shine Bright by Sibella Giorello Page A

the counter, the vet wrote something on a small pad.
    Ashley turned to Brent. “Tell me what happened!”
    â€œWho knows.” He shrugged. “Maybe he hit something. When he fell on the turf.”
    â€œHe’s bleeding .”
    â€œGet a grip on yourself,” Brent said. “He’s dead. You need to move on.”
    Her lips closed, but a keening sound was leaking through her mouth. I turned away, unwilling to watch all that agony and confusion distort her pretty face. Instead I stared at the horse. Stiff and immobile on the exam table, he looked perfect and dead, like the taxidermist had already come.
    â€œI’ll send the swabs to the lab.” The vet waited for my eyes to move from the horse. “If Eleanor wants, I’ll do X-rays.”
    X-rays. On a dead horse.
    â€œSomething looks suspicious to you?” I asked.
    He glanced at the girl. She came forward again, grabbing the horse by its neck, burying her face in his mane. She cried into the bristly coat.
    â€œNot SunTzu,” she said. “Not SunTzu.”
    She repeated his name over and over again, until it sounded to me like she was saying, Not you too, not you too . . .

Chapter Ten
    A fter Ashley bolted, sobbing, I left the clinic. I had taken a long, hard look at the wound on SunTzu’s chest, and my years visiting crime scenes gave me some basic knowledge about blood evidence and injuries. The mark on the horse’s chest looked like some kind of shallow puncture wound. But it was difficult to tell what sort of object had struck him because of the thick coat of hair.
    I felt almost numb, walking across the backstretch toward the barns. Over the loudspeaker the announcer’s voice sounded tinny. It ran rapid-fire without pauses. The races had resumed. The show must go on. But the rain had stopped, and the sun was peeking from behind the clouds, leaving misty tendrils in the humid air. The moist warmth was almost cloying, like summer air back home in Virginia.
    And just like that, I felt homesick. Lonely. Alone.
    I heard Eleanor before I’d even reached the corner of Hot Tin’s barn. Bill Cooper’s office door was open. I stood for a moment, listening, just out of view.
    â€œYou’re wrong,” she said.
    â€œEleanor, I get it. She’s your niece. But she’s not helping.”
    â€œShe’s learning.”
    â€œLearning how to mess us up? I don’t want to give you an ultimatum, but at some point you’re going to have to choose. Her or me.”
    There was a considerable silence. When I stepped into the doorway, Cooper had his dusty boots kicked up on a steel desk. The bulldog heels rested beside an open bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Eleanor, to his right, perched on a worn loveseat, holding a shot glass like a teacup.
    â€œWe heard the news.” She lifted her chin. “The grim reaper has put up his tent on our doorstep.”
    I nodded.
    â€œBlanche.” She threw back the whiskey in her glass and shivered. “Scene ten.”
    â€œAnother way to say that, Eleanor, is we’re cursed with bad luck.” Cooper kicked his boots off the desk. “Bad, bad luck. And I won’t stick around for much more.”
    He pushed past me in the doorway and strode down the gallery. The stabled horses watched him pass, swiveling their long heads, following his exit. I watched him too, but thought of another playwright. The one who said that a man doth protest too much. All the bluster from Cooper, all the finger-pointing at me. But the barn’s trouble began long before I arrived at Emerald Meadows. Was he really blaming me—or shifting blame?
    Eleanor said, “You have a question that hangs in the air.”
    I did. But I offered her a different one. “Do you want Doc Madison to take X-rays?”
    â€œI want a full autopsy.” She plunked the glass on the desk, stood up, then wavered a moment. Tipsy. “Did he suffer?”
    â€œI