Betty Foster was out to greet us before we had gotten out of the car. She was somewhere in her fifties with sharp regal features and skin deeply creased by the sun. Her long white hair was tucked in a bun. But she walked with the athletic spring of someone half her age, and her hand was hard and strong when she shook mine and looked at me with pained hazel eyes.
‘I’m Betty,’ she said. ‘And you must be Dr Scarpetta. And you must be Captain Marino.’
She shook his hand too, her movements quick and confident. Betty Foster wore jeans and a sleeveless denim shirt, her brown boots scarred and crusted with mud around the heels. Beneath her hospitality other emotions smoldered, and she seemed slightly dazed by us, as if she did not know where to begin.
‘Kenneth is in the riding ring,’ she told us. ‘He’s been waiting for you, and I’ll go on and tell you now that he’s terribly upset. He loved those horses, everyone of them, and of course, he’s devastated that someone died inside his house.’
‘What exactly is your relationship to him?’ Marino asked as we started walking up the dusty road toward the stables.
‘I’ve bred and trained his horses for years,’ she said. ‘Ever since he left office and moved back to Warrenton. He had the finest Morgans in the Commonwealth. And quarter horses and thoroughbreds.’
‘He would bring his horses to you?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes he did that. Sometimes it was yearlings he would buy from me and just leave them here to be trained for two years. Then he’d add them to his stable. Or he’d breed racehorses and sell them when they were old enough to be trained for the track. And I also went up there to his farm, sometimes two or three times a week. Basically, I supervised.’
‘And he has no stable hand?’ I asked.
‘The last one quit several months ago. Since then Kenny has been doing most of the work himself. It’s not like he can hire just anyone. He has to be careful.’
‘I’d like to know more about the stable hand,’ Marino said, taking notes.
‘A lovely old guy with a very bad heart,’ she said.
‘It may be that one horse survived the fire,’ I told her.
She didn’t comment at first, and we drew nearer to a big red barn and a Beware of Dog sign on a fence post.
‘It’s a foal, I guess. Black,’ I went on.
‘A filly or a colt?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t tell the gender.’
‘What about a star-strip-snip?’ she asked, referring to the white stripe on the horse’s forehead.
‘I wasn’t that close,’ I told her.
‘Well, Kenny had a foal named Windsong,’ Foster said. ‘The mother, Wind, ran the Derby and came in last, but just being in it was enough. Plus the father had won a few big stake races. So Windsong was probably the most valuable horse in Kenny’s stables.’
‘Well, Windsong may have gotten out somehow,’ I said again. ‘And was spared.’
‘I hope he’s not still out there running around.’
‘If he is, I doubt he will be for long. The police know about him.’
Marino was not particularly interested in the surviving horse, and as we entered the indoor ring, we were greeted by the sound of hooves and the clucking of bantam roosters and guinea hens that wandered about freely. Marino coughed and squinted because red dust was thick in the air, kicked up by the cantering of a chestnut Morgan mare. Horses in their stalls neighed and whinnied as horse and rider went by, and although I recognized Kenneth Sparkes in his English saddle, I had never seen him in dirty denim and boots. He was an excellent equestrian, and when he met my eyes as he went by, .he showed no sign of recognition or relief. I knew right then he did not want us here.
‘Is there someplace we can talk to him?’ I asked Foster.
‘There are chairs outside.’ She pointed. ‘Or you can use my office.’
Sparkes picked up speed and thundered toward us, and the guinea hens lifted up their feathery skirts to hurry out of the way.