pens. He’s waiting there. I think you’d better go.”
We went, in various stages of irritation and curiosity. Brandon made a few rhetorical comments; Lenore complained; Elliot, more awake now, stuck close to Francesca; John Oliver and Rafferty said absolutely nothing at all.
I was as silent, but it wasn’t for lack of words. I had caught the note of tension in Cass’s voice, particularly when she had mentioned Harper’s name. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt another “accident” had occurred.
Harper stood in front of Preacher’s individual pipe-railed pen adjoining the others. He was fully clothed and rigidly alert, watching all of us with waiting eyes. He didn’t wear his hat, however, and he ignored my searching stare with diligence.
The horse I had heard whinnying was Preacher. He was in his stall, but tied at the far end. He moved restlessly against the halter rope, pawing and tossing his head. I saw a thin line of sweat reaching from ears to shoulder, and more dotting his flanks.
A large belted horse blanket was spread over a long object lying before Harper. A couple of smaller saddle blankets had been added for good measure, but they failed to hide the object completely. Something unmistakeable protruded from the blankets at one end.
A man’s foot.
Realization sank in by degrees. The hissing of indrawn breaths and stiffening of bodies ran through the little group like a plague. No one said a word.
Oliver placed a firm hand on his wife as she took a wavering backward step. “My God—” she whispered.
Francesca stared silently at the covered body, then at Harper, lastly at me. Rafferty clenched his hands into fists but said nothing. Elliot nervously cleaned his glasses on his robe as if the action could eradicate the sight altogether.
Harper’s face, as he looked at us, was a mask. Nothing moved in that firm, browned flesh, not even the moustache. But his eyes, suddenly so eloquent as he looked at each of us, one at a time, had shed their opaque veil entirely. He was angry, very angry, as if he had never planned for his operation to end in death and was irritated someone had bungled it.
“Why have you brought us out here?” Brandon asked.
Harper looked at us, not at the body. “The police will want to talk to everyone. They’ll ask each of you if you knew this man. I thought it best to give you all the chance to see the body before they arrived.”
Francesca looked thoughtful as well as curious. “What an interesting decision.”
Elliot stirred next to her. “Well, it seems perfectly sensible to me. The police will probably thank him for it. Nobody likes dealing with hysterical women, the police probably less than others.”
Francesca’s smile was faint. “But which of us is hysterical, Elliot? Lenore is upset, of course, but neither Kelly nor I are hysterical.”
Harper was, I realized, conducting his own investigation. He wanted to see how we all reacted, as if he expected one of us to know the man.
“Get it over with,” Oliver said grimly.
Harper obliged, bending to flip back the saddle blanket from one end of the huddled form. The man’s face was unmarked, but there was a bloody depression at the back of his head behind the right ear.
Ice water ran through me from head to toe. Instantly. Almost against my will my hand went out to Brandon next to me, and clutched at his shirt. Then I let go and took a stumbling step forward.
“Oh God—” was all I could manage.
“You know him?” It was Harper, his voice conspicuously neutral; odd, I thought, that he could be so controlled when I was not.
“It’s Drew…” I mumbled it. My mouth wasn’t working very well.
“Drew Stanford?” Brandon asked sharply. “What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know—”
“Who is he?” Harper asked quietly, and yet I heard the first edges of the control break away. The anger was showing.
“Drew?” I looked at Harper blankly a moment, but all I saw was the shape of a man. The body drew my eyes again.
“Her manager,” Brandon said, when it appeared I could not answer.
Awkwardly I went down on my knees, then sat heavily on my folded legs. Drew’s face was still bared. Still dead. “No,” I said.
I saw Harper’s hand flip the blanket back again, covering Drew’s face. I nearly stopped him, but I let it go. Even covered, the body was still Drew’s.
“Kelly.” It was Brandon’s voice. “Kelly, come with me. I’ll take you up to the Lodge.”
I just stared at Drew’s