They laughed, then Booty smiled. “Gotta beat me first.”
“I’ll put up a fight,” Ward added.
“That’s the trouble with you making money.” Charly shook his head. “You’ll buy better horses, get better clients. Steer clear of Renata.”
“She’s at Kalarama,” Ward replied, dabbing his mouth with the paper napkin.
“She’ll come to you after a suitable interval.”
Booty raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
As there was no point in denying it, Ward kept his mouth shut. They had taught him a lesson—a couple. If Charly and Booty had figured out that he “removed” Queen Esther at Renata’s bidding, presumably being well paid with promises of a future with a celebrity or other well-heeled clients, they were smart enough. But it also meant each of them was capable of doing it. He trusted his two senior partners as far as he could see them.
“I don’t fault any man for getting ahead. Horse was unharmed. Renata got her publicity fix.” Booty looked at Ward. “You’ll come out ahead.”
“I know you two don’t think Larry is stirring the pot,” Charly said, “but tell me how it was that those friends of theirs, the Haristeens, wound up at Ward’s? I don’t like it.”
“Nothing we can do about it. And for all we know, Charly, it was a lucky shot on the part of the Virginia folks.”
“Virginians are so damned snotty.” Ward wrinkled his nose. “Those two seem all right, though.”
“Yeah, well, those two are sticking their noses in other people’s business. The wife—not bad-looking, actually—asked me if I’d seen Joan’s pin.” Booty was incredulous. “What the hell do I know about Joan’s pin? She’s nosy.”
“Nosy is one thing,” Charly lowered his voice again, “but even a blind pig can find an acorn sometimes. We don’t want her snooping around.”
“Well, what do you propose, we bind and gag her?” Ward laughed; he couldn’t help it.
“No.” Charly wasn’t finding it funny. “I propose we keep an eye on that woman and we keep our mouths shut.”
Easier said than done.
“By the by, fifteen undocumented workers at my farm,” Ward whispered. “They were in the van when Benny and I drove out.”
“Inchworm there?” Charly asked, his voice even quieter than Ward’s.
“Yep. Some are yours.”
“Keep ’em until after the show.” Charly sat up taller.
“Great. If the feds come by, I’m holding the bag.” Ward’s eyes hardened for a moment.
Booty soothingly said, “Won’t happen. What you’ll be holding is a bag of money.” He leaned back, hands on his stomach. “Hey, I bought a coral snake yesterday. You guys should come see her. She’s beautiful.”
Charly flinched slightly. “I saw you milk a rattlesnake once. That was enough.”
“Chicken.” Booty laughed. “You know snake venom has a lot of medical uses. That’s why I did that.”
“How do you do it?” Ward asked.
“Catch them with a thin pole, kind of like an old-fashioned buttonhook. Then you grab them by the neck; they can’t twist. A rattlesnake’s fangs are hinged. He’s mad now, so he flips those fangs out and you put him over a little cup with plastic wrap over it, stick his fangs in it, and the venom just drips out. Easy.” The other two men listened with no comment. “What’s interesting about a coral snake is the fangs don’t retract. You should see her.”
“I see Miss Nasty. That’s enough,” Charly said.
B efore Ward reached the entrance to I-64 to head east, his cell rang.
Charly, on the other end, growled, “Ward, do you know where Renata was last night?”
“No.”
“She rode back with you in the van.”
Ward replied, “She left her truck at my place. When we got back, she drove off.”
“She tell you where she was going?”
“No. Why would she?”
“You tell me.” Charly, peeved, disconnected the call.
His call did convince Ward that Charly’s relationship with Renata went deeper than being her trainer. Ward kicked himself for being blind, or maybe he just didn’t want Renata to have had an affair with the likes of Charly.
Within ten minutes Charly turned down the long, winding, tree-lined drive to his immaculately manicured establishment.
His house, with the white Ionic pillars standing out from the weathered red brick, the boxwoods and magnolias dotted about, the freshly painted barns, fence lines trimmed neatly, looked like David Selznick’s version of Tara.
As someone who sold at the high end of the market, Charly understood that rich folks might not know too much about horses, but they wanted the dream, “the look.”
Some folks with big bucks did know horses, but they, too, succumbed to being doted upon in Charly’s vast front room in the main barn. Sofas, chairs, a fireplace, a kitchen, and a huge plasma TV flat on the wall shouted money, money, money. The indoor arena, larger than the one at Kalarama, had two viewing areas, one enclosed with glass in case the client didn’t wish to inhale the dust. There were small refrigerators in the viewing areas should a body desire to drink but not wish to walk the few steps back to the sumptuous lounge.
Charly, vain about his dress, proved equally vain concerning his surroundings. No surprise then that the women in his life fit into the perfect picture. The affairs were ornamental. He did love his ex-wife, but she, too, had to meet a standard of beauty reflected in fashion magazines, television, and film. One day she’d had enough of being eye candy, walked out, matriculated at the University of Kentucky to study physical therapy, and she never looked back. She didn’t tell tales out of school, which Charly appreciated, especially after witnessing Booty’s sulfurous divorce.
Charly tired of affairs and one-night stands. They took too much energy. Chasing women distracted him from his main purpose: making and selling spectacular Saddlebreds. He wanted, needed, a wife who could be spectacular herself but who could ride, too. His first wife, whom he had married when he returned from the first Gulf War—a first lieutenant glad to be home—possessed all the necessary graces, but she wasn’t a horsewoman. It seems superficial to non-horse people, since many couples enjoy differing sports, pastimes, but it just doesn’t work that way too readily with horse people.
Charly made money. He made even more bringing in the undocumented workers. The profit for each worker was two thousand dollars in cash, no checks. Still, he was forever scrambling. A rich wife would help. If he had to pick between money and beauty, money would win. A man could find beauty on the side.
Standing in front of his main barn, hands on hips, pouted a woman who radiated both beauty and money. Renata DeCarlo, fresh at nine-thirty in the morning, wore white Bermuda shorts and a magenta belt; a pair of white espadrilles on her size-8 feet completed the ensemble.
Curious how sometimes friends, lovers, husbands, and wives will select the same colors to wear that day without consulting each other. Charly wore white jeans and an aqua shirt.
He parked by his house and walked the two hundred yards to the barn.
“Where have you been?” she asked, then smiled irresistibly.
“Breakfast with the boys. I could ask the same of you. Why weren’t you at the show last night?”
“I wasn’t riding in a class and I had a script to read.”
“Renata, how fortuitous.” He was in front of her now.
“Heard. I’m very glad I missed it.”
“When I find out who called, I’ll break their neck.” He checked himself, because no one except his two partners knew of his lucrative sideline supplying workers to horse farms. “Disrupted the show. I wasn’t riding that well anyway, but this,” he shrugged, “a bolt out of the blue.”
“I can’t believe you’re admitting you had an off night.”
“Once a decade.” He smiled down at her, intoxicated by her beauty, her closeness, her scent—Creed’s Green Irish Tweed, also once favored by Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich.