Lead a Horse to Murder by Cynthia Baxter Page A

she was saying.
    “Not that Andrew and Eduardo were lovers,” she went on. “Nothing like that. At least that would be something I could understand. Instead, since the time Eduardo first came into our lives, it was like Andrew had this strange . . . fascination with the man. An obsession, almost.” She paused to gulp down more wine. “Sometimes, I felt like I was invisible. I’m sure Callie felt the same way, even though she’d never admit that her father—or anybody else, for that matter—was capable of hurting her. Peyton, of course . . . well, that’s another story. She and her father have been thick as thieves since the day she was born. Still, you’d think the man would have had something left over for the rest of us.”
    I was about to interject some well-meaning comment about how charismatic Eduardo Garcia seemed to have been when Jillian suddenly sprang from the couch with much more energy than I ever would have thought possible. “Time for a refill!” she cried.
    And time for my departure.
    “I really must get going,” I said forcefully. “If we could just settle up . . .”
    “Of course. You don’t want to hear my life story. You want to get paid.” Jillian grabbed the wine bottle and refilled her glass almost to the brim. She paused to take another few sips before staggering over to the ornately painted desk in the corner. Pulling a checkbook out of a drawer, she muttered, “How mush?”
    Check in hand, I hightailed it out of there, thinking, If this is Jillian MacKinnon at eleven-fifteen, what’s Jillian MacKinnon like by the time cocktail hour rolls around? The image I conjured up was chilling.
    But even more chilling was my discovery that Jillian MacKinnon had actually been jealous of Eduardo Garcia. And given the fact that Eduardo had been murdered, maybe the possibility that jealousy had been his killer’s motive wasn’t that far-fetched.
    A little voice inside my head warned that I was getting carried away. Jillian is probably just a disgruntled polo widow, I mused as I made a beeline for my van, no worse off than a golf widow or a fishing widow. Lots of women find it frustrating to put up with their husbands’ passion for one sport or another. That doesn’t mean they’re driven to murder.
    Then again, I thought, the more I saw of the MacKinnon household, the less I found surprising.
    I was about to climb into my van when I heard someone calling, “Excuse me! If you have a moment—”
    I turned, surprised. An older man dressed in a white suit and a straw hat was hurrying toward me, his face flushed from the effort.
    “Dr. Popper, isn’t it?” he said, a little out of breath as he drew near.
    “That’s right.” I smiled as I struggled to place him. As soon as I did, I felt my smile droop. “Winston, right? I’m afraid I never got your last name.” That’s the downside of eavesdropping on other people’s arguments, I thought. You end up getting only some of the facts.
    “Winston Farnsworth. But Winston is fine.”
    “Then please call me Jessica. Or Jessie.” I eyed him warily, still not sure what I thought of the dignified English gentleman. He was wearing a bow tie again— yellow, this time, his attempt at looking more casual, I supposed. Still, the touch of whimsy the bright shade brought to his look was canceled out by the matching handkerchief carefully folded in the breast pocket of his white jacket.
    But while he looked like an upstanding citizen, the fact that I’d caught him arguing with Andrew MacKinnon on the day of Eduardo’s funeral had left me unable to choose a side—if there was even a side to choose. I decided to wait until I had more information before forming an opinion of Winston Farnsworth.
    “Dr. Popper—Jessica—I wondered if I might trouble you . . . and please, if this is an inappropriate request, don’t hesitate to tell me.”
    I leaned forward, my curiosity piqued.
    “Would it be possible for you to stop over at my house to take a look