Puss 'N Cahoots (8 page)

“No. I can't stand him, but I'm not going to accuse him of being a dealer.”

“Someone in the barn?”

She waited. “I couldn't say.”

Tucker remarked,
“She can say well enough. She just won't say.”

Harry, either visited by divine inspiration or having a crazy moment, blurted out, “If I find your horse, will you do something for me?”

“Yes,” Renata replied without hesitation.

“Will you advertise my wine? You know, say it's good?”

“If it's fit to pour on a dog. If it's not fit to pour on a dog you'll make a laughingstock out of me. Look, if it's awful, I'll give twenty thousand dollars to you, cashier's check.”

Harry gulped hard. “Renata, I don't want your money for doing something that's right. The horse comes first.”

“Take the money and run.”
Tucker let out a little yelp.

“No, Tucker, Renata as a spokeswoman is worth a hell of a lot more than twenty thousand dollars.”

“I thought you farmed.”

Energized by this exchange, Harry answered, “I put in a quarter of an acre of grapes, Petit Manseng. I won't get a true harvest—a mature one—for three years, so you're off the hook until then. I wish I could do more, but it costs about fourteen thousand dollars an acre to establish a vineyard.”

“Fourteen thousand dollars,” Renata echoed in amazement.

Harry held out her hand. “Is it a deal? You advertise my wine so long as it's fit to pour on a dog.” She smiled.

Renata gave her her hand. “If you find Queen Esther, I will live up to the bargain—as long as you throw in an introduction to Alicia Palmer.”

“Deal.” Harry grinned.

“Deal.” Renata suddenly felt happy, even though it seemed absurd under the circumstances.

They leaned back against Barn Five.

“Sometimes I wonder if our beloved Harry is one brick shy of a load.”
Tucker found this deal amusing.

“Tucker, sometimes I think that about you,”
the tiger teased.

Renata said, almost languidly, “If you find Queen Esther, maybe you'll find whoever killed that poor man in there.”

“Might could.” Harry used the old Southern expression against which English teachers had fought for over a century.

Whatever Harry would find was as cloudy as a night's sky. The one certain thing was that out of the moist, dark soil of fear, rumors would multiply like mushrooms.

M
rs. Murphy and Pewter curled up on the bed pillows. After wiping Tucker's paws, Fair spread an old blanket at the end of the bed, lifting Tucker onto it.

The animals listened as the humans showered, washing for warmth as much as cleanliness, for both were clammy and cold from the night air, the temperature having dropped after the monumental thunderstorm. They could hear Harry and Fair talking as they scrubbed each other's backs.

“Ever notice how all animals like to groom one another?”
Tucker lifted her head off her sparkling paws.

“Cleans those hard-to-reach spots,”
Pewter, fond of her toilette, replied.

“Makes us feel closer.”
Mrs. Murphy felt drowsy.

“You're right,”
Pewter agreed.
“I'd never let anyone I didn't like groom me.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Can you imagine grooming Miss Nasty? Even another monkey wouldn't do it.”

“Booty gives her baths. I heard Joan telling Mother that he lavishes attention on her. Joan says it's a surrogate child or maybe he does it as penance. Don't know for what, but Joan was laughing about it.”
Tucker rolled onto her side, stretched her legs fore and aft.

“Men are descended from apes,”
Pewter declared with authority.
“Booty's grooming a family member, sort of.”

“If men are descended from apes, then what are women descended from?”
Tucker smiled mischievously.

“Angels,”
Mrs. Murphy answered, her eyes half closed.

The three laughed at that, then Tucker thoughtfully wondered,
“Is that why men behave as they do—you know, can't face reality, dream a lot—because they're imperfect monkeys?”

“Apes,”
Pewter corrected her.

“Same difference. Size—”
Tucker didn't finish, because Mrs. Murphy interrupted.

“They're a mess because their senses aren't good, and they are even more eroded because of pollution—noise pollution, too.”

“But so are we.”
Tucker wasn't argumentative as much as curious.

“Yes, but our noses and ears are so much better that even with some damage we remain vastly superior to the human animal.”
Mrs. Murphy did not say this with a conceited air.

“That's a thought.”
The day's excitement and upset caught up with Pewter. She felt tired all at once.
“I do hate to think of Harry and Fair being related to Miss Nasty.”
With that statement she closed her eyes, let out a tiny little puff of air, and was asleep.

“I'm tuckered out, too, forgive the pun,”
Mrs. Murphy said to the dog.

“Me, too. Who would have thought our visit to Kentucky would be so”
—Tucker searched for the right word—
“depleting.”

Mrs. Murphy replied,
“One murder, one stolen pin, and one horrible monkey, all in two days' time. Oh, one stolen horse, too.”

Harry and Fair emerged from the shower, dashed for the bed, and bounced under the covers. They snuggled to keep warm. The bounce disturbed the cats on the pillows but only for a second, as the cats resettled to curl by the humans' heads. Pewter went right back to sleep.

“Chilled to the bone. You don't think about getting chilled in August.” Harry pulled the blanket under her chin. “Good for me you're big. You warm me faster than I warm you.”

“I wouldn't say that.” He sighed with contentment as she rested her head on his shoulder. He looked at the alarm clock. “It's two in the morning.”

“I lost track of time,” Harry murmured. “I feel like we're inside a washing machine on spin cycle.”

“My mind feels like that.”

“What? I mean, what's whirling around?”

“Jorge's body temperature.” He exhaled. “Given that his temperature was pretty close to ninety-eight point six—didn't have a thermometer, but he felt normal to the touch—what keeps going round in my head is, was this a planned execution or a crime of opportunity?”

“The storm and loss of power sure were convenient,” Harry said.

“Help me place everyone. Joan and her folks were with us. Larry, Manuel, and Jorge were getting horses ready, I assume.”

“Larry and Manuel were on the rail when Renata rode Shortro.”

“Right. Where were the other trainers?”

“Don't know. Ward was on the rail. He had someone in the class. Charly wasn't there. Guess he didn't want to see Renata ride, or maybe he had someone in the next class, junior exhibition three-gaited show pleasure. I know Booty had a kid in the class, because we saw him in the practice ring with her when we first came to the show grounds yesterday. If he was there we missed him, but, Fair, the place had so many people it was like ants at a picnic.”

She sounded sleepy. “I'll read my program in the morning to double-check clients, though. Seems to me what matters is the double cross. Noticed Sheriff Howlett questioning the Mexican workers.”

“Sure are a lot of them,” Fair idly commented. “Seems like the number doubled since the first day.”

“Big show. All hands on deck.”

“Big show. Workers shipped in.”
Mrs. Murphy opened one eye.
“Big profit, too, I bet.”

“What are you fussing about, pussycat?” Harry, warm now, pulled her arm from underneath the covers to stroke the cat's silky forehead.

“Doesn't matter.”
Mrs. Murphy closed her eyes again.

“Pretty much everyone was on the rail, except for the grooms and trainers getting horses and clients ready for the next class.” Harry returned to who was where partly because she was losing steam and losing track of the conversation. “Watching Renata and Shortro. Great guy, Shortro.”

“Whoever killed Jorge had ice water in his veins. Cut it close.” He stopped. “Bad pun, sorry.”

“Mmm.”

“You falling asleep?”

“I'm resting my eyes,” she fibbed.

Fair glanced at the animals and his wife. “I'm wide-awake.”

“Drink milk.”
Mrs. Murphy opened her eyes again, offering good advice.

He smiled at the cat. “You're listening to me.”

“I'm trying, but I'm pretty sleepy, too.”

“This is my point: if Queen Esther was stolen in the open, Joan's pin, as well, and Jorge was killed in the blink of an eye—if these things were in the open, what's hidden?”

“Fair, you're starting to think like Harry.”
Mrs. Murphy sighed.

B
loodlines have signatures, right?”

“Right.” Joan made a pot of coffee and a pot of tea while Harry cut into a big coffee cake as they sat in Joan's kitchen.

“Certain animals breed true. You can spot their get.” Harry used the word meaning “offspring.” “In the past the credit usually went to the stallion, but the mare is as important, if not more so.”

“Actually, the latest research is leaning more toward the mare, but who knows? I've bred horses all my life, and if it were a matter of brains,” Joan tapped her head, “I'd be right one hundred percent of the time.”

“Know what you mean. Your foundation sire, Denmark, foaled in 1839, consolidated the look and the action of the Saddlebred, you think?” Harry enjoyed the soft light flooding through the kitchen window.

“Harrison Chief, too; he was foaled in 1872.” Joan listened to the coffeepot burble. “But like the Thoroughbred, there's so much we'll never know. You figure horses started coming over sometime after 1607. Not everyone kept good records.”

“Not everyone could read and write.” Harry paused a moment. “Although I read somewhere that our literacy rate was higher at the time of the American Revolution than it is now. Boy, that's a smack in the face.”

“Doesn't surprise me.” Joan shrugged. “But what we do know is that Thoroughbred blood, Morgan blood, and even Old Narragansett blood is in the Saddlebred.”

Narragansett blood is the blood of pacers, a type of racehorse that pulls a sulky. A pacer's legs, unlike a trotter's, move in parallel, so the right side—fore and hind—will move in unison, as will the left. The movement of the legs for a trotter—in fact, for the trotting gait in any horse—is diagonal.

“Who were the great foundation mares?” Harry asked as she watched a robin swoop down on a wriggling worm.

“Uh, Stevenson mare, Saltram mare, Betsey Harrison, Pekina, Lute Boyd, Lucy Mack, Daisy the Second, Queen Forty-eight, and Annie C.”

“You could teach a class.”

Joan smiled as she poured tea for Harry, coffee for herself. “You know your Thoroughbred lines, I know Saddlebred. The American Saddlebred Association, ASHA, started in 1891, helped concentrate breeding information.” She paused a second. “But when you close the books the problems arise.”

“Meaning you run out of blood?”

“Yes. Horses, dogs, whatever, can become inbred. I linebreed. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but you shouldn't even dream of it if you haven't studied and looked at a lot of horses—a
lot
of horses.”

In linebreeding, one dips back into the same bloodlines, the theory being it reinforces the strong points of that blood. Do it too close and one can breed weak animals or idiotic humans. It takes an incredibly intelligent human to successfully linebreed horses.

“Right.” Harry gratefully drank her tea once Joan sat down. “I shy away from it, but I lack your gift.”

Joan waved off this compliment as they both attacked the coffee cake.

“I should make you a real breakfast, but you know me.” Joan wanly smiled since she never had time nor much inclination to cook.

“I'm the same way. Fair usually brings something home after his last call, and he likes to grill.”

“Don't they all. I mean, have you ever seen anything like men hovering over their barbecue? They're even competitive about the sauces, and if they marinate the meat—” She rolled her eyes heavenward.

“Didn't you say they were just as bad in Australia and even South Africa when you visited there?”

“Honey, they're probably attacking one another with tongs in China. Show a man a grill and a piece of steak and he loses his mind.”

“True, but we get to eat it.” Harry winked.

“Ever notice how we're cooks but they're chefs?”

Both women laughed at that.

“You've got a couple of Thoroughbreds.” Harry noticed how moist the crumbs were on top of the coffee cake.

“I do, but I don't breed them. Paula Cline and I run a couple. My older brother Jimmy's usually got a few on the track, too.”

“If you hear of a good youngster, good mind, a little too slow, and the owners want out, let me know.”

“I will. For you?”

“Make it into a foxhunter for Alicia Palmer.”

Because Joan knew Harry's friends, she needed no biography of Alicia. “Still hot and heavy with BoomBoom?”

“'Tis.”

“I'd never thought that of BoomBoom, not that I care. She just mowed men down like a scythe.”

“Both did. That may be why they found each other. They got bored.” Harry laughed.

“Or maybe it's truly love.” Joan hoped it was, because underneath she was a romantic.

“Funny, isn't it? All those years I hated BoomBoom. Hell, we even fought in grade school, and then when I divorced Fair I could avoid my own failings by being angry at her.”

Fair had had an affair with BoomBoom.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”

“Miranda says that all the time.”

Miranda had worked with Harry for years at Crozet's post office.

Joan looked up at the round kitchen wall clock. “What time do you have?”

“Nine.” Harry checked her wristwatch, which had been her father's.

“Forgot the power was out.” She pulled her chair underneath the clock, stepped on it, and moved the hands forward. “What a storm. I'm surprised there wasn't more damage. We must be okay, because Larry hasn't called on his cell.”

Larry and Fair, both on ATVs, were checking the entire farm. While Manuel could have assigned someone to this task, the men really wanted to drive around on the ATVs, plus Fair would be there if any horse had sustained an injury. Poor Manuel had been devastated by Jorge's murder. The first thing he did this morning was to go to Mass and say a prayer for Jorge's soul.

“That's some good news.”

Joan pulled the chair back, sitting down with a thump, which made Cookie bark. The animals had flopped on the couch in the living room. “Oh, Cookie, it's just me.”

“Never know,”
the Jack Russell called back.

“You know, I'm kind of all right, my mind is clear, and then all this hits me again, and I feel my heart beat faster, I go back over every little thing, and I can't figure it out. Then I get kind of obsessed and I go over and over where we were, what we were doing, and everyone else and who's mad at whom, and I get dizzy.”

“At two last night, Fair and I tried to remember who was on the rail for Renata's class and who wasn't. I finally fell asleep.” Harry put both hands on her teacup. “This morning I read the program to see who had horses in the class and who didn't. I thought anyone not on the rail could be a potential murderer, but the storm put an end to that theory. Folks starting running in all directions at the first thunderclap.”

A car drove into the driveway. The door to the garage, which was under the house, was open.

“Grandma's here,”
Cookie announced.

“Yoo-hoo,” Frances called up.

Paul and Frances lived at the corner of Kalarama Farm in a lovely, unpretentious two-story brick house that went back to the time of the great Kalarama Rex, foaled in 1922.

Harry whispered, “She know?”

“Not yet.” Joan stood up as her mother opened the door into the kitchen.

“Good morning.” Frances kissed Joan on the cheek, then kissed Harry. “How are you girls this morning?”

“All things considered, as good as we can be,” Joan replied.

Like most mother-daughter relationships, this one was mostly good, with a few spots of strain.

“I hope they find who did this terrible thing.” Frances didn't sit down when Joan pointed to a chair. “But he wasn't killed here, and that's a good thing.”

Joan stared at her mother, who was not an unfeeling woman. “Mother.”

“No, no, I didn't mean that the way it sounded, but I was thinking, if Jorge did something or crossed someone, why didn't they kill him here? So I think whatever happened happened because of the show.”

“Or maybe that's where it all came together.” Harry followed Frances's line of thought.

“Well, I'm not a policeman.” Frances flattened her lips together for an instant as she wrinkled her brow. “That coffee does smell good.” She accepted the proffered chair.

Joan walked over to the stove, and Cookie breezed in to sit by the older woman.

“Coffee cake?” Harry had the knife poised over the cake.

“No, thank you. I eat so many sweets at these horse shows. I'm determined to be good.”

“You've kept your figure.” Harry complimented her.

“Why, thank you.” Frances beamed, then turned to Joan as her coffee was poured. “Joan, I don't like to meddle in business. After all, I don't know horses like you, Larry, and Paul do, but,” she picked up her silver spoon as Joan put the pot back on the burner, “Renata will cause trouble.”

“She already has.” Joan sat back down.

“Trouble with men.”

“Oh.” Joan blinked as both she and Harry turned to look at Frances.

“Women like that stir up men. Charly's behavior proves that. I heard how he acted when Renata took her horses from him.”

“Has Charly been vengeful in the past?” Harry asked.

“Well, one time he and Booty got crossways. Booty accused Charly of making a pass at his wife.” Frances lifted her left shoulder, then let it drop. “Why, I don't know. Well, we don't look at women the way men do, but Charly swore he didn't, which then insulted Annie Pollard, who wants to think of herself as universally attractive. Booty got loose with his mouth, Charly didn't take kindly to it, then it seemed like things were patched up. At the next big horse show, Charly stuck ginger up the tails of Booty's horses when he wasn't in the barn.”

Joan laughed. “You should have seen Booty trying to show the horses. 'Course, Charly soaked the ginger in turpentine. Made them wild.”

“He was an explosive guy in the first Iraq war.” Frances nodded.

“Explosions, Mom.”

“And explosive.”

They chatted a bit more, then Frances finished her coffee and carefully placed the cup on the saucer. “Joan, do you think we're safe?”

“I don't know,” Joan honestly answered.

“Well, your father is worried, although he says the double cross means something and it doesn't have anything to do with us or we'd know what it means. Jorge was such a nice man, I can't imagine what he could have done to—well, you know.”

“If we knew that we'd be halfway to the killer.” Harry picked up a square of crystallized brown sugar out of the bowl, placing it on the tip of her tongue.

Frances folded her hands together in her lap. “He didn't gamble, drank a little beer on the weekends, didn't run after women. He always said he was putting his money in the bank so he could buy his own farm. He kept his trailer pretty clean.” She mentioned this because Jorge lived on the farm, behind a palisade to give the workers privacy. A few were married. Occasionally Frances, Paul, Joan, or Larry would visit their living quarters, but they respected their need to be away from the bosses. “He did have a girlfriend for a while.”

“What happened?”

“She got a scholarship to go to William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri, part of an equine program. I don't know the details, but anyway, she left Kentucky and I think the romance just faded away,” Joan told Harry.

“No bad blood?” Harry inquired.

“Don't think so,” Joan replied.

“All the no-counts in the world and Jorge gets murdered.” Joan, exasperated, put her chin on her fist, elbow on the table.

“Well, girls, I've got errands to run. I went to Mass this morning and lit a candle for Jorge, came here, and now I'm off to the dry cleaner's, the supermarket, and who knows what I'll find along the way.” Frances turned to Joan. “If you give me your beige linen jacket I'll take it to the cleaner. Remember to take off my mother's pin. And Joan, didn't I raise you not to put your elbows on the table?”

Joan gulped. “Give me a minute.”

Harry made small talk with Frances. Joan returned with her jacket.

Frances stood up, draped the jacket over her arm. “Remember, we need luck tonight, three-year-old fine harness class. It's pin night.” She smiled.

“I was going to rest it tonight and save it for the five-gaited.” Joan really was a bad liar, but Frances didn't notice at that moment.

“Luck won't run out as long as the points of the horseshoe are up.” Frances opened the door to the basement and descended, each wooden step reverberating until she reached bottom.

Neither Harry nor Joan spoke until they heard the motor turn over.

“I'm cooked. I'm such a coward. I can't tell her.”

“There's still time. I don't think you're a coward. We might find it.”