Blood and Roses (Holly Jennings Thriller) Read Online Free Page B

photos of different horses either in racing mode on the track, or in the winner’s circle.
    Staleness and the smell of copper and death wafted throughout. It was all too familiar. A cross between burned rubber, melting iron, and decay. The kind of smell that came with violent death.
    The family room where they wound up looked out over an infinity pool and the canyon. Houses were sporadically fanned out along the hillside, and depending on what time of the day the killer had come into the home, it was doubtful anyone would have been able to see what had taken place.
    The first image to catch Holly’s eye inside the large living space was a massive flat screen mounted onto a wall. Amar began speaking almost as quickly as he walked. “Marvin Tieg. Hollywood producer, lived alone after a divorce three years ago, liked lots of women and parties. No kids. Forty-three years of age. Made a lot of money in the entertainment industry. He also liked the ponies and owned a half a dozen, from what I can figure out at this point, but I will be digging deeper into that. I present Mr. Tieg to you.”Amar took a new pair of latex gloves out from a case he carried and slid them on. Placing his hand on the leather revolving recliner, he turned the chair around.
    There sat the dead Marvin Tieg with a carrot in his mouth. His pants were rolled up past his knees. Dried blood had caked on his legs over what appeared to be pinholes, as if made from a needle. Around the blood, his legs were badly bruised. Rigor mortis had set in, and the stiffened body looked more like something at one of those creepy haunted mansions on Halloween that Holly refused to take Chloe to, than what was once, probably less than twelve hours earlier, a living human being.
    Holly stood speechless for a few seconds as she tried to make sense of the sight in front of her. She crossed her arms and cocked her head. “What in hell are we looking at, Detective? What was done to his legs?”

CHAPTER
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    4
    The first time Elena Purdue uttered the name “Karma’s Revenge,” the words carried just a tad of bitter sweetness. Elena loved the filly in a way she hadn’t loved many horses. She’d always loved horses, always had them from the time she was a little girl, but she didn’t love them all equally, and Karma was the horse she loved above all.
    For more than one reason.
    Elena had nine horses in training at Purdue & Co. Stables out in her own quiet corner of the world: Ramona, California. The “Co.” had at one time been her longtime lover, Carter, but then Carter decided that he
was not
the marrying kind. So he left and married someone else—the ex-wife of one of the owners with a horse in Elena’s stable. Elena in turn screwed the owner, as if that was going to make anything better. The owner—a guy named Raymond Scarborough—decided that mixing sex and business was a bad plan. Elena agreed. Bedsides, the guy sucked in bed, and all he wanted to do was talk about how his wife, Patty, had run off with Carter.
    The thing that hurt the most for Elena was that Carter had a little girl—Sophia. Elena adored the child, whom Carter, of course, had out of wedlock—because he
was not
the marrying kind. Six years spent with Sophia and Carter because Mom was in and out of the picture. And then, Carter left and took Sophia, who at the time had been seven. Elena’s heart had nearly broken.
    The filly had saved her from total despair.
    Karma had been born on one of the colder nights in January three years ago to one of Elena’s favorite mares—a daughter of the ever-controversial Big Brown. The night of the filly’s birth something went very wrong, and the mare died. Karma had not had an easy beginning, to say the least. Because the filly had been orphaned, Elena had to work quickly and diligently to supply the foal with the mare’s colostrum. Born without any antibodies—and without that vital colostrum to provide the necessary antibodies—her chances for survival