Chestnut Mare, Beware

It's Christmas, but at the Charlotte Commercial Appeal two disturbing events nip Nattie's holiday in the bud. One is a chilling anonymous letter that threatens bigwig Carolinians - many of them known to Nattie from the show horse circuit - with horrible death. Then she's approached by a woman with a strange tale about her beautiful dead daughter. The official version of how former beauty queen Josane Ashmore died is that she was trampled by her unruly chestnut mare. Her mother declares that it was murder. Can Nattie go to Virginia and prove it?
Nattie and her friend Henry Goode, the paper's chief investigative reporter, light out for the beautiful green hills of northern Virginia, where great estates shelter the world's finest horses and their wealthy owners. It is the place where Josane rode to her death. Unfortunately, all that Josane's old buddies will say is that she chose to ride a crazy horse and paid the price...and, well, she may have had a little coke habit. But who set Josane up in her charming Middleburg shop and paid for her horse and her designer gear? What about her abusive boyfriend? Why were her personal belongings disposed of with such unseemly haste? And most urgently, who keeps trying to kill Nattie and Henry?