Colts Crossing...Unsolved - Episode 3

Secret of Life

Murder, Mystery & Mom Season 4

Mama didn’t wait for anyone to argue with her suggestion to move inside. She stepped forward with that calm, unhurried confidence that usually meant resistance was pointless, and Susannah followed without question, leading us through the wide front doors and into a house that felt less like a home and more like a carefully preserved legacy.

The air shifted the second we crossed the threshold. Outside had been all sun and dust and the lingering adrenaline of almost getting trampled by a mustang with a personal vendetta.

Inside was quiet. Controlled. The kind of quiet that didn’t happen by accident. Every surface gleamed, suggesting maintenance without effort, and every piece of furniture looked like it had been chosen by someone who understood both horses and money, which, in Kentucky, probably meant the same thing.

This wasn’t trendy. No glass tables or abstract art trying to convince you it meant something. This was dark wood, polished leather, oil paintings of horses that looked vaguely judgmental, and a sense that if you leaned against the wrong thing, you might owe someone several thousand dollars.

Susannah guided us into a parlor off the entryway, smaller than the main rooms but no less deliberate. The wood was darker, the light softer, filtered through half-lowered blinds that cast long golden stripes across the floor and furniture. It felt like a room designed for conversations that required discretion, or at the very least, good posture.

“Please sit,” Susannah swept a vague hand as she flicked on a table lamp.

Mama and her favorite took the leather couch, leaving me with fewer options. I chose a chair that gave me a clear view of everyone while also keeping Goldilocks within leash range.

She settled at my feet with surprising dignity for a dog who had, not ten minutes earlier, attempted to befriend a thousand-pound animal mid-crisis. Her eyes clocked the tray floating into the room, carried in by a woman who moved with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this job long enough to anticipate needs before they were spoken.

A pitcher of ice-cold sweet tea, shortbread cookies, and glasses, placed with a soft clink that echoed, reminding us how quiet the room really was.

“Thank you, Sylvia,” Susannah said, her voice polite but distant, like she was remembering to perform normalcy rather than actually experiencing it.

Sylvia didn’t linger. She poured, adjusted the blinds to let in more light, and disappeared again without waiting for acknowledgment, leaving behind the faint scent of lemon polish and something floral I couldn’t quite place.

Goldilocks’s tongue slowly slid out to one side.

I nudged her with my boot. “We are guests,” I whispered. “Act like it.”

She blinked up at me, deeply unconvinced.

Agent Thomas West remained standing, which felt intentional, like he was anchoring the room before anyone else could drift too far into their own version of events. He flipped open his notepad and began in the way people in his position always did—calm, methodical, building a timeline brick by brick.

“Mrs. Darrow, when did you last see your husband?” he asked.

Susannah folded her hands neatly in her lap. “The morning he went missing. We had breakfast like usual, then went our separate ways. We have a foal due any day now, so I needed to meet with the vet.”

“And where did your husband go?”

“To the racetrack, as far as I know. Our horse Double Jeopardy is preparing for a big spring race, and Freddy wanted to make sure everything was in order.”

“Did anyone at the track see him?”

“I don’t know.” Her expressive blue eyes narrowed. “But isn’t that your job to check his story?”

I leaned forward before I could stop myself, because apparently, near-death experiences did nothing to curb my curiosity. “You didn’t go looking for him at the track when he didn’t come home?”

Susannah turned her gaze to me, and there was nothing uncertain about it. “I didn’t have a chance to miss him. When I finished with the vet, I found this slid into the mail slot.”

She rose and retrieved an envelope from a nearby desk, handing it to West with steady hands that betrayed only the tension in the slight tightening of her grip.

The note made its way around the room, and by the time it reached me, I already knew what I was going to see. Magazine clippings, glued into place with careful precision. Instructions. Threats. A deadline that felt too short and too final.

And then my brain caught on something.

“Wait,” I said, looking up. “The kidnappers also took the horse? Double Jeopardy?”

Susannah’s expression sharpened. “I told all of that to the local police yesterday. You’re the FBI, shouldn’t you be up to speed?”

“We are, ma’am,” Loretta said, stepping in with that polished, professional tone she could switch on like a light. “But everything’s happening so fast that our…consultants are a little behind the eight ball. I assure you, we have everything under control. We are doing all we can to bring your husband back safely.”

I nodded like I had been briefed and not blindsided by the addition of a missing racehorse to an already complicated situation. Still, my mind had already moved on to the timeline.

Freddy leaves around eight.

By noon, the note is in the house.

Freddy and Double Jeopardy are both gone.

Which meant someone either moved very quickly, or had help, or had access, or all three, because you don’t just wander off with a trained racehorse like it’s a purse you forgot on a chair.

Those places had cameras. Staff. Systems. You couldn’t just steal a prized racehorse. Unless you knew how.

Or had access.

Goldilocks’s tongue crept closer to the tray.

I didn’t bother looking down this time. “Don’t,” I murmured.

West continued his line of questioning, shifting the focus. “Run us through everything that happened with the payment. That might help us understand where this thing went south.”

Susannah didn’t hesitate. “I took the money out of the corporate account to pay the ransom. And it was exactly as they asked—unmarked, non-sequential bills. No dye pack. No tracker.”

“Wait.” I shook away my random thoughts, the incongruity drawing me back to reality. “You said you took the money from the corporate account. Is that different from your personal account?”

“Certainly.”

“Is that standard practice?” I asked. “To pay ransom through your business funds?”

“Standard?” Loretta shook her head. “Honestly, Patsy, it’s not like she’s been through this before.”

For just a fraction of a second, something shifted in Susannah’s expression. It wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t dramatic. It was the smallest hesitation, like her mind had tripped over something it didn’t want to acknowledge.

Had she been through this before?

West continued asking questions, but I only caught pieces of it because my brain had latched onto one word and refused to let go.

Corporate.

“I’m sorry,” I said, cutting back in. “I’ve got to go back to the bank account thing. Who else has access to this corporate account?”

“It’s for our thoroughbred business.” Susannah took a small sip of her sweet tea. “We have partners.”

“And Freddy was one of the partners?”

“He’s a vital member of the business. Therefore, the ransom was a business expense. We all agreed to pay,” she said.

No one calls a ransom a business expense unless they have specific contingency plans and kidnapping clauses in the bylines.

West glanced at his notes. “And by ‘we,’ you mean yourself, Ray Holt, and your trainer… whose name is…?”

“Addison O’Duggan-MacQuillan.” Susannah twisted her head. “Is this all somehow relevant to why my husband was kidnapped?”

“It’s important we explore every angle.” Mattie’s voice was steady and surprisingly supportive of my meandering. “Even the ones that appear to be random.”

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “You and your husband have separate personal bank accounts?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“It’s a little unusual—”

Mattie shook her head. “Actually, it’s rather smart. My husband and I argued often over money and the hobbies we liked to spend it on. Having separate funds would have been a good idea.”

Susannah’s mouth curled into a hesitant smile. “A while back, Freddy had a spending problem. He was a shopaholic and a hoarder.” She rolled her eyes as if it was now nothing more than a silly antidote she shared at parties. “That’s when we split our accounts. It was a recommendation by our marriage counselor. It helped. The arguments stopped, and we stayed married.”

My gaze drifted around the room again, taking in the spotless surfaces, the carefully arranged décor, the complete absence of anything that looked remotely out of place.

No stacks of mail. No cluttered corners. No forgotten objects.

If Freddy Darrow had ever been a hoarder, someone had erased the evidence with surgical precision.

“You said he used to have a problem,” I said. “Has he been cured?”

“Yes, in fact, he has.” Susannah crossed her legs. “How are these questions relevant to his kidnapping?”

“They aren’t,” Loretta said, stepping in. “Excuse us.”

She took my arm and guided me out into the hallway before I could follow up, which I absolutely would have.

“What are you doing?” she demanded once we were out of earshot. “You’re being weird.”

“Me?” I pulled my arm free. “You’ve not asked a single question. How do you expect to solve the kidnapping if you don’t investigate?”

“I’m building a profile.”

I rolled my eyes. “All right, so what does your profile say about Freddy Darrow? Can you really be a reformed shopaholic and hoarder, or has he gotten much better at hiding his problem from his wife?”

Loretta crossed her arms, and her entire demeanor shifted. Not sister. Not competitor. Something sharper. More focused.

“Compulsive acquisition disorders—what most people call hoarding or compulsive shopping—don’t resolve cleanly. They evolve.”

She glanced back toward the parlor before continuing, her tone slipping into something clinical, like she was presenting a case instead of arguing with me.

“In cases like Freddy’s, the behavior is rarely about the objects themselves. It’s about control. Identity reinforcement. The act of acquisition creates a temporary stabilization of anxiety or inadequacy.”

She began pacing, her hands loosely clasped behind her back.

“When individuals appear ‘recovered,’ what we’re usually seeing is behavioral suppression, not resolution. The underlying compulsion doesn’t disappear. It redirects.”

“Redirects where?”

“Private spaces. Hidden collections. Off-site storage. Financial channels that aren’t easily monitored. The behavior becomes more strategic.”

“And more secretive.”

She met my eyes. “Which means if Freddy Darrow relapsed—and statistically, that’s likely—he didn’t do it in a way his wife could see.”

I tilted my head. “So you’re saying he’s got a secret stash somewhere.”

“I’m saying he likely maintained a secondary environment where he could continue the behavior without interference.”

“A secret lair.”

Loretta refused to crack a smile. “…That is not the terminology I would use. I’ll relent that he likely has a stash somewhere where he continues his obsession. But once again, that’s unrelated to his kidnapping.”

“Not necessarily,” I said, my mind already moving three steps ahead. “We don’t know where the kidnappers picked him up, or where they’re holding him. Maybe he’s being kept at his secret lair with all of his late-night TV purchases.”

Loretta exhaled slowly. “That’s actually not bad.”

That stopped me in my tracks. Because Loretta never admitted I was right unless there was no room to argue otherwise.

I glanced back toward the parlor, where Susannah sat patiently answering Agent West’s questions, and then down the hallway branching off toward the rest of the house.

“Okay,” I whispered. “Cover me.”

“Cover you?” Loretta narrowed her eyes. “Patsy…come back here.”

But I was already moving. Because if Freddy Darrow had a secret, I had every intention of finding it first.

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