Colts Crossing...Unsolved - Episode 5

The Race is On

Murder, Mystery & Mom Season 4

We were already late.

Not officially late—no one handed us a schedule or told us visiting hours were over. Workers moved faster. Barn doors stayed shut longer. Conversations got shorter.

Which meant if we didn’t hustle, we’d be interviewing empty stalls and people would actively pretend not to see us.

“Pick up the pace,” I muttered, half to Mama and half to myself, as we crossed the packed dirt lane between the barns. “I have a strong feeling these people are not the ‘linger and chat with strangers’ type.”

Mama didn’t even break stride. “Most professionals aren’t.”

Everything at the racetrack moved with purpose.

A man hosed down a stall with the concentration of someone defusing a bomb. Another hauled feed buckets past us without making eye contact, like acknowledging tourists might cost him valuable seconds. Radios crackled. Gates clanged.

And the horses…they were not the type I grew up around.

They weren’t for trail riding or working a ranch, or the kind that tolerated children with too much confidence and not enough balance. These were athletes. Lean. Sharp. Coiled tight with expensive energy.

A chestnut lifted its head as we passed, ears flicking forward, dark eyes locking onto me with enough intensity to make me reconsider my entire personality.

I gave it a polite nod.

The horse stared back like it knew my credit score.

I tightened my grip on Goldilocks’s leash. “Do not make eye contact,” I whispered.

Goldie, naturally, interpreted this as a suggestion to make herself at home. She veered toward a nearby feed bucket, plunged her furry face into it, and immediately started chewing with reckless enthusiasm.

I let it happen for exactly one second. Not to teach her a lesson, but because my reactions were much slower than a big goldendoodle puppy.

Goldilocks gobbled a few bites and tilted her head as if trying to decide if she liked it. She sneezed.

Not a dainty little sneeze.

An explosion.

Oats shot into the air like confetti. Feed dust puffed everywhere. Goldie blinked in stunned betrayal, like the bucket had turned on her without warning.

Mama barely glanced over. “I hope you learned your lesson, sweetheart.”

Goldie sneezed again and looked at me with an accusatory stare. Mama, why didn’t you stop me?

“You found that all on your own,” I informed her. “I had nothing to do with your poor choices.”

She gave the bucket one final suspicious glare before falling back into step beside me.

The barns stretched farther than I expected, rows of polished stall doors with brass nameplates catching the fading evening light. Some horses leaned halfway out to observe us. Others ignored us completely in the way only very expensive animals could.

There was a rhythm to the place. Clomping hooves. The scrape of a shovel. Low voices that never carried because nobody here wasted energy.

Everyone knew what they were doing. Everyone except me.

“I feel like I just joined a group project where everybody already read the assignment,” I muttered.

Mattie tossed a shoulder. “You always do your best work under pressure.”

“Bold of you to assume I have a best. My brand is built entirely on unedited chaos and narrative desperation.”

That earned one of her tiny smiles.

So while I felt like a foreign exchange student weeks behind on the reading in a language I didn’t even speak, Mama had already been mistaken for ownership-level management. By three separate people since we arrived.

One ranch hand actually stepped aside to let her pass.

Knee-high rubber boots. Dark sunglasses. Calm posture. Mama could blend into any environment on earth and leave with a full report plus someone else’s secrets.

I, meanwhile, was one wrong move away from being escorted out by a man named Rusty Higginbotham carrying a pitchfork and generational resentment.

“Remind me why we’re not waiting for Loretta to handle this?” I asked.

“Seriously, Patsy? You insisted.”

I tugged on the sleeve of my jacket. “I hate when I do that.”

Suddenly, I felt the pressure. This wasn’t a cold case where people stopped looking or stopped hunting for answers. The stakes here were more real than they’d ever been.

“Loretta is working the warrant,” Mama said. “We don’t have time to second-guess your whacky schemes.”

Right.

The storage unit. The auction. The clock ticking louder by the hour. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, Freddy Darrow was missing. Possibly dead.

I didn’t love how quickly my brain adjusted to that possibility.

We slowed near the middle barn, joining Ray Holt, our liaison to all stuff racing world.

He didn’t look rushed. Didn’t look dramatic. If anything, the whole barn seemed steadier with him standing in it. “Now remember, you walk in here asking questions like a police officer, folks’ll shut down on you fast.”

“We weren’t planning to lead with a badge,” I said.

Mostly because Mama and I didn’t carry badges. Unless you counted my t-shirt that said: I’m Not a Private Eye, I’m Just Extremely Nosy.

Mama shifted slightly toward him. “We were hoping you might point us in the right direction.”

Ray nodded. “Double Jeopardy’s groom.”

“Why her?” I asked.

“Because she notices things.”

Simple answer.

“She’s with that horse every day,” Ray continued. “Feeds him. Walks him. Watches him. If something felt wrong that morning, she’d know it before anybody else.”

Ray glanced down the aisle. “Back when I was racing, I thought the jockeys were the stars.” He huffed a quiet laugh. “Truth is, operations like this run on the people nobody notices.”

Mama cocked her head to the side. “The ones paying attention while everyone else is performing.”

“Exactly.”

He motioned with his chin. “Come on. She should still be here. Folks are heading home, but Emma Jean stays late.”

There was that clock again. Closing in.

I tightened my grip on Goldilocks’s leash and followed Ray Holt deeper into the barn, hoping we weren’t already too late to ask the right questions.

Ray slowed as we reached the last stall on the right. “She’ll be in there.”

He stopped short of the doorway like there was an invisible line he respected too much to cross without permission.

Inside, a woman in worn boots and a faded Wildcats T-shirt brushed down a bay thoroughbred with the calm precision of someone who’d spent most of her life around creatures capable of kicking through walls.

Sharp eyes. Auburn hair pinned up in a loose clip that had clearly surrendered hours ago. Southern energy, with the patience of a kindergarten teacher who was one inconvenience away from retirement.

“Emma Jean,” Ray said.

Her gaze moved from Ray to me to Mama in one quick sweep that felt more thorough than anything the FBI had managed so far.

“These are the folks asking about Freddy. They’re here to help.” Ray drifted backward, easing out of the conversation without actually leaving.

I stepped closer to the stall door but stayed well out of kicking range because, unlike Goldilocks, I possessed survival instincts.

“I’m Patsy, this is my mother, Mattie. We’re trying to piece together what happened the morning Freddy Darrow disappeared.”

Emma Jean kept brushing. “Everybody is.”

Mattie stepped beside me, warm but direct. “Ray said you were with Double Jeopardy that morning.”

“I’m with him every morning,” Emma Jean said. “Or I was until some scoundrel nabbed him.”

“Walk us through it,” Mattie said.

Emma Jean exhaled slowly, as if deciding whether this conversation was worth extending her workday. “Got here before sunrise. Fed him. Checked his legs. He was sound. No swelling. No heat. Good energy.”

The horse flicked one ear back like the compliment was directed at him.

“You saddled him up?” Mattie asked.

“For a light work.” She shrugged. “With the race coming up, goal is to keep him sharp without overdoing it.”

That matched what we’d heard.

“What time did Freddy show up?” I asked.

“Earlier than usual.”

“Did that strike you as odd?”

“Owner shows up early, late, grumpy, hungover…” She shrugged again. “Not really my business unless it affects the horse.”

“Did you talk to him?” Mama asked.

“Briefly. He asked how D.J. looked. I told him good. That was about it.”

I jotted a note and resisted the urge to pull out my podcast mic. Putting anything on the record would probably send my witness running for the hills. “How did Freddy seem?”

Emma Jean paused for half a second. “He wasn’t in a great mood. But Freddy not being in a great mood isn’t exactly headline news.”

“Did you see anyone with him?” Mattie asked.

“Nah. Nobody specific. It was a busy morning. Lots of folks milling about.”

“When did you realize something was wrong?” I asked.

Emma Jean stopped brushing, breaking the rhythm. “I didn’t.”

That caught my attention. “What do you mean?”

“I handed him off,” she replied. “Freddy took the reins himself. Said he wanted to walk the horse.”

“And that was normal?”

“Happened sometimes. Owners like feeling involved every once in a blue moon.”

“And then?” Mattie asked.

Emma Jean rested a hand lightly against the horse’s neck. “And then they were gone.”

“How?” I frowned. “How does a prized racehorse and an owner vanish?”

Emma Jean’s eyes bore into mine. “If I knew that, we wouldn’t still be talking about it.”

Point taken.

Mama stepped closer. “How long before you noticed?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. I had other horses to check.” Emma Jean leaned a hip against the stall. “I called Addison to see if they may have taken Double Jeopardy back to the ranch.”

“The trainer,” I said.

Emma Jean bobbed her head. “Addison is a worrywart, so Freddy and D.J. gone for ten minutes raised all sorts of alarm bells in her curly little head.”

“She was right to be concerned,” Mattie said.

“Guess so.”

I leaned against the stall frame. “Emma Jean, can I ask something a little outside the box?”

She didn’t answer, which somehow felt like permission.

“You work around these horses every day,” I said. “How hard would it be to steal one?”

That finally stopped her cold. “You don’t steal a horse like Double Jeopardy.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s famous.”

I blinked. “Okay…”

“He’s registered, microchipped, recognizable from fifty yards away. You can’t sell him. You can’t race him somewhere else. You can’t hide him in somebody’s backyard next to a trampoline and hope nobody notices.”

“So…” I frowned. “Terrible kidnapping plan?”

The corner of Emma Jean’s mouth twitched. “Or the horse wasn’t the point.”

That was the clue.

“Thank you,” Mama said.

Emma Jean bobbed her head, already done with us, already back to work.

We stepped away from the stall as the sounds of the barn closed back in around us.

Hooves. Voices. The steady rhythm of a place that kept moving, whether somebody vanished or not.

I exhaled slowly. “Well,” I muttered. “That was somehow comforting and deeply unsettling at the same time.”

Mama glanced toward the far end of the aisle, where Ray leaned against a post pretending not to eavesdrop.

Ray crossed his arms. “Double Jeopardy had a practice race that day. No way Freddy takes him out without Artie.”

My gaze bounced back and forth. “Who’s Artie?”

“Your next introduction.” Ray jutted his chin. “And if I were you, I’d start recording now.”

***

We spotted the jockey before Ray pointed him out. Mostly because Artie made absolutely certain he could be spotted.

“Don’t hold it like that—hold that—no, no, no, sweetheart, if you crease the silks like that I’m gonna have to fake my own death.”

The voice bounced down the barn aisle fast and animated. A man stepped out from behind a stall carrying a riding helmet under one arm and enough personality to power a midsize city.

He was compact and wiry, built like somebody who’d spent his whole life negotiating with gravity and mostly winning. His silks were half-zipped and considerably louder than all the 80s leopard and zebra print in the back of my closet.

He spotted us. Paused. Then visibly switched gears. Smile on. Charm engaged.

“Oh,” he said, smoothing a hand over his hair. “I didn’t realize we had visitors. If this is a fan situation, I’ll need to run back to my car for headshots.”

Ray didn’t budge from the post he leaned against. “Grunwald.”

“Ray.” The young jockey grinned wider. “You bringing me admirers now?”

“Something like that.” Ray nodded toward us. “These are the folks asking about Freddy.”

Grunwald’s eyes flicked to me, then Mattie, then back again, calculating fast. “Well, I’m happy to help if I can. I believe in transparency. And publicity. Mostly publicity.”

Behind him, one of the ranch hands rolled his eyes so hard I thought he might sprain something.

Mattie stepped forward, all business. “Mr. Grunwald—”

“Artie,” he corrected. “Please. Mr. Grunwald sounds like someone who yells at accountants for kicks.”

“Artie,” Mattie placed a hand on his elbow, proving she could outcharm anyone. “We’re trying to establish a timeline for the morning Freddy Darrow disappeared.”

“Then congratulations.” He tapped his chest. “You found the most observant man in Kentucky.” He leaned closer. “That’s me. In case that wasn’t clear.”

Another loud cough echoed from behind him.

Artie ignored it.

I tightened my grip on Goldie’s leash before she investigated another feed bucket. “Did you see Freddy that morning?”

“Sure did,” Artie said. “Super early. Like before he usually crawled out of bed early.”

That matched Emma Jean.

“Was he alone?” I asked.

Artie shifted slightly. “Not for long.”

Mama’s gaze sharpened. “Who was he with?”

Artie glanced toward Ray, then back to us. “Cowboy type. Didn’t catch the start of it, but I caught enough.”

My pulse kicked up. “Enough of what?”

Artie’s hands came alive as he talked, quick and expressive like he physically couldn’t tell a story without choreography. “Freddy was arguing with him near the tack room. Not subtle either. Thought one of ’em might throw a punch.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“What were they arguing about?” Mattie asked.

Artie hesitated. “Couldn’t hear all of it. But Freddy looked furious.”

“Did anyone else see it?” I asked.

“People were around.” He shrugged. “Whether they were minding their business or pretending to is another question.”

“Was Freddy known for losing his temper?” Mattie asked.

Artie barked out a laugh. “Depends on whether you worked for him.”

Interesting answer.

“Let’s just say Freddy enjoyed being right,” Artie added.

Goldilocks, who had been behaving suspiciously well up until now, chose that exact moment to wander toward a nearby tack rack.

Before I could stop her, she grabbed a dangling leather strap and gave it one enthusiastic tug.

The entire rack rattled.

Artie jumped backward. “WHOA—easy—easy—those cost more than your allowance!”

I lunged for the leash before Goldie accidentally escalated us into felony territory. “She’s very curious,” I said, dragging her back.

Goldie released the strap, huffed dramatically in Artie’s direction, and stared at the tack rack like it had insulted her family.

“Did you recognize the man Freddy was arguing with?” Mattie asked, redirecting the conversation.

Artie scratched his chin and cut his eyes to Ray. “That cowboy fella who used to hang around with you guys. I think he’s an owner.”

Ray pushed off the post and marched closer. “That’d be Conley Boatwright.”

I blinked. “The country singer?”

Ray nodded. “Used to be partners with Freddy and the rest of us before things went sour.”

I mentally underlined the name twice. Former business partner. Heated argument. Morning Freddy disappears.

“Did Conley leave with Freddy?” Mattie asked.

“I didn’t see,” Artie said. “But after that argument? Nothing would shock me.”

There was something slippery about the way he said it.

I leaned in. “Wouldn’t have shocked you because they didn’t get along… or because you think Conley’s capable of something?”

Artie blinked fast. “I think…that money makes people weird.”

“Did he have Double Jeopardy with him?” I asked.

“Yeah, he was walking him, which was odd. Freddy didn’t usually do that.” Artie glanced down the aisle toward the empty stall. “But I can tell you one thing, wherever Freddy’s focus was, it wasn’t on the horse.”

Not the horse.

I looked at Mama. She’d caught it, too.

“Thank you, Artie,” she said.

“Anytime.” He flashed us another grin. “And if your podcast needs a charismatic guest with incredible cheekbones, I’m available.”

A ranch hand muttered, “Lord help us.”

Artie pointed triumphantly. “See? The people love me.”

I glanced at Mama, already knowing she was ten steps ahead.

We had tension, money, and a partner with a history. And if there’s one thing I’d learned, people didn’t argue like that over nothing. They argued like that when something was about to break.

---

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