On Farm Deadly — M.G. Lewis

It was pitch black but they found the barn doors open and swaying in the wind. Hugh said, What is going on? He ran down the line of stalls to the one where Bucephalus, his prize stallion, resided and stopped. Mrs. Prentice said, What is it, Mr. Poirier? He joined her in looking around Hugh. There was no horse; that much was obvious. But there was something on the stall floor. The light was bad, and he couldn't make it out. And then his brain put the blobs of color and shadow together into a coherent whole. Shit! He looked away. Is he dead? Which was stupid. It was hard to go on living without a face. He took another glance. The blood had splattered the walls of the stall. But maybe there was a face under all that blood? It wasn't likely. Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? He pulled out his phone and dialed 911. He told the lady that he needed an ambulance, and the police should come too. Hugh shook himself. Where is Bucephalus? Which wasn't the most urgent matter, but Hugh was probably in shock. He turned away from the bloody stall and went outside calling for his horse. He hadn't wanted to spend his vacation on the Poirier farm with Cory's parents or to get sucked into the conflict stirred up by Cory's malevolent grandmother, Josephine Loncke, over the fate of the family business, Holcomb, Inc. Josephine was demanding that Cory become CEO of this mid-sized conglomerate. The fact that Special Agent Cory Poirier already had a job he loved with the FBI mattered not at all to Josephine. Even less, that the current CEO, Craig Shaw, was resistant to the idea of being booted out. But he had told himself to smile and endure until he could persuade Cory to leave the farm located in the heart of Virginia's horse country. But that was before he started discovering bodies. Unidentified bodies...for the most part...killed in various and sundry ways. And then the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office focused its steely gaze upon Hugh and Laura and even Cory, but particularly upon Diane Poirier, Cory's baby sister. Since each of them had a most excellent motive for at least one of the murders.