Samshot his brother a glare.
"No,' Carol replied, her tone a little pissy. "Those horseshoes are ones I've never seen before. The nail holes are spaced unevenly. They almost look handmade. Certainly no horse in my stable would wear that."
"Cold spots?" Dean asked, all business.
"What?"
"Any cold spots? Temperature fluctuations?"
"It's a barn. In New York. In the fall. The entire structure is a fluctuating cold spot."
"Okay...so..." Sam stepped over to Dean and grabbed his arm. "We're just going to take a look around. Won't be long. Thanks for your time."
Carol shot one last dark glance at Dean and left, leaving behind an air of hurt indignance.
"God Dean, could you be more of a dick? The people here are obviously mourning... Tact. It's a skill you should learn someday."
"Just tryin' to get to the bottom of this. Besides, I want to go back to the motel and take a shower. This place smells like horse."
Sam's eyebrows knitted together. "Hello? ...stable."
"Whatever." Dean wandered over to the tack room and flipped on a light. He glanced around surreptitiously and pulled out the EMF meter. "Keep watch for me."
Sam posted himself by the door, half listening to the quiet beeps of Dean's handheld meter. He emerged several minutes later. "Clean. The place is clean. Just got a lot of saddles and bridles and black leather boots..." He pitched his voice lower... "and riding crops and spurs..."
"Dean?"
"Yeah?" Dean yanked himself out of whatever fantasy he had fallen into.
"We need to get a move on before someone comes in."
The second stable turned out to be as unremarkable as the first, except in comparison to Carol Fendwick's place, it was a dump. It wasn't bad really, Sam thought, it was simply an older facility that hadn't been that fancy in the first place. Instead of doors, the horses had stall guards. Dean tested one of the plastic gates with his hand. "Horse could easily push through this," he said to Sam. "This is like a baby gate for horses. They could just jump over it too."
Sam snorted "And what... like kill someone here and then gallop over to Oakwood stables on the next full moon kill someone else and then run back here and jump his stall guard and settle in for the night?"
Dean raised an eyebrow plaintively. "It's possible?"
Sam shook his head.
"Can I help you gentlemen?" A voice made them whirl around.
An older woman with a severe haircut was coming down the aisle. Sam flashed his fake FBI badge. "We just need to ask a few questions about Janet Louden's death."
She looked shocked. "FBI. I thought it was a farm accident?"
Sam looked to Dean. "Well with the three deaths in such a small radius we have to look into the pattern...Ms...?"
"Ms. Channing."
"Channing. Did Janet have any enemies? Anyone who might want to hurt her?"
"Well, I mean she was in a highly competitive sport. There was certainly resentment from some of the girls in other Stables that she did so well in competitions."
"Any reason in particular that they would single her out?"
"Janet was definitely at a disadvantage because the other girls came from- shall we say more affluent backgrounds. It's almost an insult that a largely self-trained woman with an off-the-track thoroughbred that she trained herself could compete at their level. And win."
"May we ask where the body was found?"
"Near the wash stall."
The boys shared a significant look. Dean wandered over to the wash stall and glanced around.
"Could any of your horses have done it? Gotten out by accident?" Sam knitted his eyebrows together.
She shrugged. "It's happened before but none of them were missing when we came in the next day. They were all in their stalls. Plus Janet was not just trampled, she was nearly mangled. That's very odd because horses tend not to like to step on people. Most deaths are accidents. An accidental kick. An accidental fall. Not something this...violent."
Sam noticed this women was markedly less emotional than Carol had been. "Were you close to the victim?"
"I was her trainer. I certainly knew her well. She was a nice woman."
"Have you noticed anything strange about the barn lately?"
"Like what?"
"Strange smells? Cold spots?"
"It's fall in New York. It's always cold." She looked at Sam as if he were slow. "What sort of smells?"
"Anything that smells like rotten eggs or a gas leak?"
"No."
"Have the horses been acting strange at all?"
"Not really. Although last week they were a little antsy for a few days. Extra ramped up for some reason but cool weather does that to them."
Dean finished his sweep of the crime area. He'd found nothing but a scrap of fabric that he pocketed and a rusty flat head nail that he dismissed.
"Thank you for your time," Sam said "We're going to stick around and look at a few things before we leave."
She nodded. "I have a lesson scheduled. I'll be in the ring if you need me."
Dean waited a moment and then pulled out his EMF meter and began to methodically sweep it over each stall. He only found one fluctuation and it was near an exposed set of wires. "Wow," he commented. "This place is a fire trap waiting to happen. One spark from this stupid fuse box and it lands in a pile of hay and poof! No more barn. " Dean gathered his thoughts. "Other than this place being a piece of crap I don't see anything wrong with it. Also, next time let's not wear our suits to some place that we know is going to make them smell like we've been rolling in manure for 3 hours."
"I think that's just your cologne."
"Sam shut up."Dean paused, his eyes casting one last searching look at the dusty aisles and cobwebby stalls. "I think we're at a dead end here, Sammy. I don't see anything."
"C'mon." Sam waved to him and they stepped outside into the crisp afternoon sun. "We still have one more barn to hit. Boy, I hope they don't compare notes and notice that it's been the two of US who keep showing up with different identities. They're much too close for comfort. I wish they were across town or something."
"They're entirely different facilities. So unless someone rides at both places, how would they know the FBI and insurance adjusters are the same dudes?" Dean moved across the field at an easy pace. The field on top of the hill was bordered by trees, giving it a sense of lonely privacy.
"Dean. Duh. These are women."
"Yeah? I noticed."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Women do this weird thing...they actually communicate."
Dean stopped. "I'm not following you."
"I just mean that one woman runs into another and they talk about their day. Who they ran into and what they did. The two tall guys asking weird questions at the barn. That stuff. We just need to be extra careful is all."
"So how do we approach barn #3? The FBI should work again. Makes sense to have the same agents. Why the hell didn't we go in as FBI on the first one?"
Sam ducked his head, grinned sheepishly with a flash of dimples. "Ummm...I kinda didn't think it through."
Dean glared at his stupid brother. "You didn't think it through? We're on a hunt. I trust you to come up with a plan and you didn't think it through? What freakin' ivy league school did I just pull your ass out of not too long ago?"
Sam shrugged. "Well I have a different approach to the third stable in mind."
Dean blinked slowly. "Oh good. Let me have it. I'm sure it's been thoroughly thought out."
"I saw that they were looking for help. I figured we could try to pick up a job there."
"Looking for help because their last help was trampled violently?"
"Yeah probably. I figured it would, you know, give us a chance to snoop around more and get to know people and the dynamics." He bit his lower lip, looking plaintive.
"It had better be a nice stable with hot chicks like that Oakwood place." Dean was sussing out where the other two stables must be located as he talked. Pine Farm was in the middle of the two other properties and they all must be bordered by a few acres of woods. He held up a finger. "And you get to shovel the shit because I ain't doin' it."
"I don't get it. Why are the only people at these stables women?" Dean took a swig of his beer. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you."
Sam shrugged, his face buried in his laptop again. Dean understood that his brother's forte was research but sometimes he wanted to slap him in the face with the keyboard. He didn't even know why. "Think we can fake knowing a thing or two about horses?" Sam asked.
"I can fake knowing a thing or two about anything."
"Yeah I noticed." Sam's ability to multi-task pissed him off too. He was totally capable of poking away at his computer and carrying on a conversation. Bitch wouldn't notice that Dean was busy tangling paperclips together again though. It was like a bizarre therapy.
"Chicks and horses. Never met a girl that didn't want a pony."
"Yeah," Sam replied. "I don't know why but it's mostly women until you get to the really elite show jumping circles. Even then there's a pretty good split between them. Only sport I can think of where men and women compete together at the Olympic level."
"Sport?" Dean scoffed. "More like pointing the horse toward a jump and hanging on."
"Yeah..." Sam said, catching his eye. "I think that's a huge oversimplification, Dean."
"Oh really? You a horse expert or something, suddenly?"
"No." There was something in Sam's eyes that closed off suddenly. Dean caught it. Sam shut down the laptop. "I'm grabbing some sleep before we have to get up at dawn and try to weasel our way into a job. I sent a text message and she seemed pretty eager. So I think we'll be employed by tomorrow."
"Oh goody," Dean said, surreptitiously grabbing a hold of Sam's discarded Carhartt jacket.
