“You think you’re so smart. I suppose you happen to have a list of his favorite canines?”
Tucker sheepishly hung her head. “Well, no—but Thomas Jefferson liked big bay horses.”
“Fine, tell that to Tomahawk and Gin Fizz back home. They’ll be overwhelmed with pride.” Mrs. Murphy referred to Harry’s horses, whom the tiger cat liked very much. She stoutly maintained that cats and horses had an affinity for one another.
“Do you think from time to time we might check out the dig?” Harry leaned over the counter.
“I don’t see why not,” Mim replied. “I’ll call Oliver Zeve to make sure it’s all right. You young people need to get involved.”
“What I wouldn’t give to be your age again, Harry.” Miranda grew wistful. “My George would have still had hair.”
“George had hair?” Harry giggled.
“Don’t be smart,” Miranda warned, but her voice carried affection.
“Want a man with a head full of hair? Take my husband.” Mim drummed her fingers on the table. “Everyone else has.”
“Now, Mim.”
“Oh, Miranda, I don’t even care anymore. All those years that I put a good face on my marriage—I just plain don’t care. Takes too much effort. I’ve decided that I am living for me. Monticello!” With that she waved and left.
“I declare, I do declare.” Miranda shook her head. “What got into her?”
“Who got into her?”
“Harry, that’s rude.”
“I know.” Harry tried to keep her lip buttoned around Mrs. Hogendobber, but sometimes things slipped out. “Something’s happened. Or maybe she was like this when she was a child.”
“She was never a child.” Miranda’s voice dropped. “Her mother made her attend the public schools and Mim wanted to go away to Miss Porter’s. She wore outfits every day that would have bankrupted an average man, and this was at the end of the Depression and the beginning of World War Two, remember. By the time we got to Crozet High, there were two classes of students. Marilyn, and the rest of us.”
“Well—any ideas?”
“Not a one. Not a single one.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Tucker barked. The humans looked at her. “Spring fever.”
3
Fair Haristeen, a blond giant, studied the image on the small TV screen. He was taking an ultrasound of an unborn foal in the broodmare barn at Wesley Randolph’s estate, Eagle’s Rest. Using sound waves to scan the position and health of the fetus was becoming increasingly valuable to veterinarian and breeder alike. This practice, relatively new in human medicine, was even more recent in the equine world. Fair centered the image he wanted, pressed a small button, and the machine spat out the picture of the incubating foal.
“Here he is, Wesley.” Fair handed the printout to the breeder.
Wesley Randolph, his son Warren, and Warren’s diminutive but gorgeous wife, Ansley, hung on the veterinarian’s every word.
“Well, this colt’s healthy in the womb. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
Wesley handed the picture to Warren and folded his arms across his thin chest. “This mare’s in foal to Mr. Prospector. I want this baby!”
“You can’t do much better than to breed to Claiborne Farm’s stock. It’s hard to make a mistake when you work with such good people.”
Warren, ever eager to please his domineering father, said, “Dad wants blinding speed married to endurance. I think this might be our best foal yet.”
“Dark Windows—she was a great one,” Wesley reminisced. “Damn filly put her leg over a divider when we were hauling her to Churchill Downs. Got a big knee and never raced after that. She was a special filly—like Ruffian.”
“I’ll never forget that day. When Ruffian took that moment’s hesitation in her stride—it was a bird or something on the track that made her pause—and shattered the sesamoid bones in her fetlock. God, it was awful.” Warren recalled the fateful day when Thoroughbred racing lost one of its greatest fillies to date, and perhaps one of the greatest runners ever seen, during her match race with Kentucky Derby—winner Foolish Pleasure at Belmont Park.
“Too game to stay down after her leg was set. Broke it a second time coming out of the anesthesia and only would have done it a third time if they’d tried to set the break again. It was the best thing to do, to save her any more pain, putting her down.” Fair added his veterinary expertise to their memory of the black filly’s trauma.
Wesley shook his head. “Damn shame. Damn shame. Would’ve made one hell of a brood mare. Her owners might even have tried to breed her to that colt she was racing against when it happened. Foolish Pleasure. Better racehorse than sire, though, now that we’ve seen his get.”
“I’ll never forget how the general public reacted to Ruffian’s death. The beautiful black filly with the giant heart—she gave two hundred percent, every time. When they put her down, the whole country mourned, even people who had never paid attention to racing. It was a sad, sad day.” Ansley was visibly moved by this recollection. She changed the subject.
“You got some wonderful stakes winners out of Dark Windows. She was a remarkable filly too.” Ansley praised her father-in-law. He needed attention like a fish needs water.
“A few, a few.” He smiled.
“I’ll be back around next week. Call me if anything comes up.” Fair headed for his truck and his next call.
Wesley followed him out of the barn while his son and daughter-in-law stayed inside. Behind the track, over a small knoll, was a lake. Wesley thought he’d go sit there later with his binoculars and bird-watch. Eased his mind, bird-watching. “Want some unsolicited advice?”
“Looks like I’m going to get it whether I want it or not.” Fair opened the back of his customized truck-bed, which housed his veterinary supplies.
“Win back Mary Minor Haristeen.”
Fair placed his equipment in the truck. “Since when are you playing Cupid?”
Wesley, gruff, bellowed, “Cupid? That little fat fellow with the quiver, bow, and arrows, and the little wings on his shoulders? Him? Give me some time and I’ll be a real angel—unless I’m going downtown in the afterlife.”
“Wesley, only the good die young. You’ll be here forever.” Fair liked teasing him.
“Ha! I believe you’re right.” Wesley appreciated references to his wild youth. “I’m old. I can say what I want when I want.” He breathed in. “’Course, I always did. The advantage of being stinking rich. So I’m telling you, go get that little girl you so foolishly, and I emphasize foolishly, cast aside. She’s the winning ticket.”
“Do I look that bad?” Fair wondered, the teasing fading out of him.
“You look like a ship without a rudder’s what you look like. And running around with BoomBoom Craycroft . . . big tits and not an easy keeper.” Wesley likened BoomBoom to a horse that was expensive to feed, hard to put weight on, and often the victim of a breakdown of one sort or another. This couldn’t have been a truer comparison, except in BoomBoom’s case the weight referred to carats. She could gobble up more precious stones than a pasha. “Women like BoomBoom love to drive a man crazy. Harry’s got some fire and some brains.”
Fair rubbed the blond stubble on his cheek. He’d known Wesley all his life and liked the man. For all his arrogance and bluntness, Wesley was loyal, called it like he saw it, and was truly generous, a trait he passed on to Warren. “I think about it sometimes—and I think she’d have to be crazy to take me back.”
Wesley put his arm around Fair’s broad shoulders. “Listen to me. There’s not a man out there who hasn’t strayed off the reservation. And most of us feel rotten about it. Diana looked the other way when I did it. We were a team. The team came first, and once I grew up some I didn’t need those—ah, adventures. I came clean. I told her what I’d done. I asked her to forgive me. Screwing around hurts a woman in ways we don’t understand. Diana was in my corner two hundred percent. Heart like Ruffian. Always giving. Sometimes I wonder how a little poontang could get me off the track, make me hurt the person I loved most in this world.” He paused. “Women are more forgiving than we are. Kinder too. Maybe we need them to civilize us, son. You think about what I’m saying.”