“Well what?” Mrs. Murphy, on the other hand, loved sightseeing.
“Did she see a horse for Alicia?” Pewter turned a circle on Harry’s lap.
“No. Great horses in those pastures. Great prices.” Mrs. Murphy, paws on the dash, noticed a redwing blackbird as they passed a low creek bed. She even spied a tanager in a bush by the same creek bed.
“Then why are we doing this if the horses are so expensive? Why can’t she find one in Virginia?”
“Oh, she likes looking around.” Tucker did, too.
“And you never know.” Mrs. Murphy sounded hopeful.
“Got behind on this project.” Harry stroked Pewter with her right hand; her left rested on Tucker’s silky head as the corgi wedged between her and Fair.
Mrs. Murphy, hind paws on Harry’s knees, intently watched everything.
“Extraordinary events.” Fair headed west out of Paris.
“Sure have been, but it’s starting to make sense, vaguely—I emphasize vaguely.”
“What?” He turned a moment to stare at his wife.
“Renata succeeded. Publicity up the wazoo, and when she rides tonight, her class will be covered by news channels, entertainment channels, you name it. No fool, that one. But, no, that’s not what I’m thinking about. It’s Jorge.”
“Ah.” He, too, had fretted over the murder.
“I think it’s connected to the raid, but I don’t know why.”
“How do you come up with that?”
“So far nothing has turned up—the usual causes of murder, you know, thwarted love, greed. The only thing I can think of is that he was somehow connected to the illegal workers.” She bit her tongue, because she wanted to tell him about the diesel motor she’d heard in the middle of the night when she slipped out to the fairgrounds. The next day when Joan questioned Jorge he said he hadn’t heard it. However, Fair still didn’t know she’d gone out, and she thought it better to keep that to herself. The problem was, she still didn’t know what cargo the truck had carried. She could only guess.
“What else? No women. No booze. No drugs. I mean, he might have visited prostitutes, but that wasn’t going to get him killed. What could he do that would create that kind of danger?”
“That’s a big jump, Harry.”
“I know it is, but I believe his death is connected. I can’t prove it, that’s all.”
Fair turned onto one of the north–south roads that would head back toward Lexington, which was now about forty minutes south. “Let’s go by Payson Stud. They’re real horse people. They understand bloodlines and stand some stallions that retired sound after years of racing. Then we can drive west to Paula’s.”
“Funny, isn’t it, how the business has changed?”
“True everywhere. Saddlebreds have changed; the necks seem to get longer and longer. Thoroughbreds—well, we’ve discussed this ad infinitum—are bred for five to seven furlongs. I can’t bear it.” His voice carried more emotion than usual. “Even the black-and-tan coonhound. Now that the AKC recognizes them, they’re being bred racier. Well, that may be pretty to a lot of people, but pretty is as pretty does. Whenever Americans start fiddling with breeds, they lighten them, lighten the bone most times. Look at the difference between a German shepherd from Germany and one from here.”
“Kind of shocking.” She agreed wholeheartedly with her husband.
“The fanciers ruin a breed, and then thirty or forty years later someone tries to revive it along proper lines. The worst thing that can happen to any dog is to become popular, and I tell you, it’s not so good for horses, either, although, thank God, it’s a lot more expensive to breed horses than dogs, so there aren’t as many people mucking it up. You never, ever remove an animal from its purpose.”
Delighted by his outburst, since he was usually buttoned up, she said, “Honey, you should go on television. You can make complicated matters easy to understand.”
“Really?” He was flattered.
“You can.” She paused. “That’s what worries me about Ned a little bit. He does the reverse.”
“He’s a lawyer.”
Ned, Susan Tucker’s husband, had been elected to the Virginia assembly. As this was his first year, it meant many adjustments for him and for Susan, Harry’s friend from cradle days.
“It’s good that Alicia’s given you this project.”
“She’ll even pay me a commission for finding the horse and then training it.” Harry beamed. “I like earning my way.”
“I know. Hey, that willow tree may be the largest I’ve ever seen.” He pointed to a willow down near an old springhouse, with a creek running through it.
“Probably bodies buried underneath it.”
“Harry.” Fair shook his head.
“Well—” She couldn’t explain why murders, crimes riveted her. “Joan told me all about the murder of Verna Garr Taylor, allegedly by General Denhardt, and then when he got off, how her three brothers gunned him down.”
“No more murders in Shelbyville.” He sighed. “Jorge was enough.”
“You never know.” Harry actually sounded hopeful.
“Harry.” He reached over with his long arm to punch her left shoulder.
“I’m resting.” Pewter opened her eyes when Harry rocked slightly to the right.
“I didn’t say I was hoping for another murder. I’m hoping to find Joan’s pin. I hope someone finds Jorge’s murderer. I’m just saying,” she slowed her words, “you never know.”
She was right.
B ecause stall rents bit into Ward’s slender budget, a horse finishing his or her class at the end of the evening would be driven back to the farm, unless a client was riding the animal the next night. Ward would sit down to figure out if the extra trips cost more than the stall rent for that day, given the horrendous increase in gas. He solved this problem by vanning other people’s horses to the various stables when he took one of his own horses back to the farm. His van could carry six horses. Since clients paid by the mile the savings came out to be about thirteen dollars a day—pin money, but pin money was better than no money.
Prudently, Ward placed the cash from smuggling illegal workers in a half-size fireproof vault. He marked down these funds according to each transaction as profits from hauling mulch to landscape sites. Not that he expected anyone to break into his vault or authorities to sweep his records, but he thought ahead. His motto could well have been “Plan for the worst, hope for the best.”
Ward intended to buy one young stallion and perhaps three exceptional broodmares when the sum reached four hundred thousand dollars. He wanted to play safe, so he was looking for just the right stallion from the Rex Denmark line. Since Supreme Sultan, foaled in 1966, led the list of sires of Hall of Fame broodmares, he wanted mares from that line. Whether or not he had the breeding gift would be apparent in a few years. One stallion would lead to more if he enjoyed any kind of success, and those stud fees would prove a nice augmentation to his training fees and board income.
He’d figured out the cost to put up six-board fencing for the first stallion’s paddock, the cost of a clean but small breeding shed, and the costs for shipping semen.
Ward left nothing to chance save for the Russian roulette of breeding. It wasn’t as easy as Mendel’s peas. He envied Joan Hamilton her extraordinary success. Some people had the gift, just as Donna Moore of Versailles had the gift of finding incredible prospects and making them better.
He and Benny parked by the practice arena at ten-thirty in the morning to take home a gelding for an amateur owner in Barn Three and to take one of his clients’ horses back to his barn. He’d already driven back to his farm in his pickup after breakfast, checked on everything, turned everyone out, then hopped in the van with Benny, who regaled him with stories of a busted date last night. She had a bust, all right, but the rest of her screamed nonstop neurosis. Benny could make Ward laugh, and the two of them had laughed all the way to Ward’s rented stalls at Shelbyville. Ward had two horses going tonight. It should be an easy day, more or less.