“I heard about that. Strange,” Dorr answered.

Now he was using a rasp as the mare irritably drew her lips back.

“Don’t know why anybody should have been in his house,” he said.

“As I understand it, you had just been on his farm several days earlier?” Marino went on, scribbling in a notepad.

“The fire was Saturday night,” Dorr said.

He began cleaning the bottom of the hoof with a wire brush.

“I was there the better part of Thursday. Everything was just business as usual. I shoed eight of his horses and took care of one that had white line disease, where bacteria gets inside the hoof wall. Painted it with formaldehyde—something I guess you know all about,” he said to me.

He lowered the right leg and picked up the left, and the mare jerked a little and swished her tail. Dorr tapped her nose.

“That’s to give her something to think about,” he explained to us. “She’s having a bad day. They’re nothing more than little children, will test you any way they can. And you think they love you, and all they want is food.”

The mare rolled her eyes and showed her teeth as the farrier yanked out more nails, working with amazing speed that never slowed as he talked.

“Were you ever there when Sparkes had a young woman visiting?” I asked. “She was tall and very beautiful with long blond hair.”

“Nope. Usually when I showed up, we spent our time with the horses. He’d help out any way he could, was absolutely nuts about them.”

He picked up the hoof knife again.

“All these stories about how much he ran around,” Dorr went on. “I never saw it. He’s always seemed like a kind of lonely guy, which surprised me at first because of who he is.”

“How long have you worked for him?” Marino asked, shifting his position in a way that signaled he was taking charge.

“Going on six years,” Dorr said, grabbing the rasp. “A couple times a month.”

“When you saw him that Thursday, did he mention anything to you about going out of the country?”

“Oh sure. That’s why I came when I did. He was leaving the next day for London, and since his ranch hand had quit, Sparkes had no one else to be there when I came around.”

“It appears that the victim was driving an old blue Mercedes. Did you ever see a car like that on his ranch?”

Dorr pushed himself back on his low wooden stool, scooting the shoeing box with him. He picked up a hind leg.

“I don’t remember ever seeing a car like that.”

He tossed aside another horseshoe.

“But nope. Can’t say I remember the one you just described. Now whoa.”

He steadied the horse by placing his hand on her rump.

“She’s got bad feet,” he let us know.