‘I was there the better part of Thursday. Everything was just business as usual. I shoed eight of his horses and took care of one that had white line disease, where bacteria gets inside the hoof wall. Painted it with formaldehyde — something I guess you know all about,’ he said to me.
He lowered the right leg and picked up the left, and the mare jerked a little and swished her tail. Dorr tapped her nose.
‘That’s to give her something to think about,’ he explained to us. ‘She’s having a bad day. They’re nothing more than little children, will test you any way they can. And you think they love you, and all they want is food.’
The mare rolled her eyes and showed her teeth as the farrier yanked out more nails, working with amazing speed that never slowed as he talked.
‘Were you ever there when Sparkes had a young woman visiting?’ I asked. ‘She was tall and very beautiful with long blond hair.’
‘Nope. Usually when I showed up, we spent our time with the horses. He’d help out any way he could, was absolutely nuts about them.’
He picked up the hoof knife again.
‘All these stories about how much he ran around,’ Dorr went on. ‘I never saw it. He’s always seemed like a kind of lonely guy, which surprised me at first because of who he is.’
‘How long have you worked for him?’ Marino asked, shifting his position in a way that signaled he was taking charge.
‘Going on six years,’ Dorr said, grabbing the rasp. ‘A couple times a month.’
‘When you saw him that Thursday, did he mention anything to you about going out of the country?’
‘Oh sure. That’s why I came when I did. He was leaving the next day for London, and since his ranch hand had quit, Sparkes had no one else to be there when I came around.’
‘It appears that the victim was driving an old blue Mercedes. Did you ever see a car like that on his ranch?’
Dorr pushed himself back on his low wooden stool, scooting the shoeing box with him. He picked up a hind leg.
‘I don’t remember ever seeing a car like that.’
He tossed aside another horseshoe.
‘But nope. Can’t say I remember the one you just described. Now whoa.’
He steadied the horse by placing his hand on her rump.
‘She’s got bad feet,’ he let us know.
‘What’s her name?’ I asked.
‘Molly Brown.’
‘You don’t sound as if you’re from around here,’ I said.
‘Born and raised in South Florida.’
‘So was I. Miami,’ I said.
‘Now that’s so far south it’s South America.’
12
A BEAGLE HAD trotted in and was snuffling around the hay-strewn floor, going after hoof shavings. Molly Brown daintily perched her other hind leg on the hoof stand as if about to be treated to a manicure in a salon.
‘Hughey,’ I said, ‘there are circumstances about this fire that raise many, many questions. There’s a body, yet no one was supposed to have been inside Sparkes’s house. The woman who died is my responsibility, and I want to do absolutely everything I can to find out why she was there and why she didn’t get out when the fire started. You may have been the last person to visit the farm before the fire, and I’m asking you to search your memory and see if there’s anything — absolutely anything — that might have struck you as unusual that day.’
‘Right,’ Marino said. ‘For example, did it appear that Sparkes might have been having a private, personal conversation on the phone? You get any idea that he might have been expecting company? You ever heard him mention the name Claire Rawley?’
Dorr got up and patted the mare on her rump again, while my instincts kept me far out of the reach of her powerful hind legs. The beagle bayed at me as if suddenly I were a complete stranger.
‘Come here, little fella.’
I bent down and held out my hand.
‘Dr Scarpetta, I can tell you trust Molly Brown, and she can tell. As for you’ — he nodded at Marino — ‘you’re scared of ’em, and they can sense that. Just letting you know.’