"Uh-huh," he weakly replied.
She passed her hand in front of her eyes. "Follow my hand."
His eyes followed the motion of her hand as everyone in the coffee shop talked at once.
"Come on, Hy, let's put you in a booth." Kyle searched for an empty booth.
As there wasn't one, he was about to ask people to move, when Hy stood up unsteadily.
"I'm okay. Hurts, but I'm okay."
"Let me look at your tongue." Karen reached to hold open his jaw as if he were a horse.
Hy saved her the trouble by sticking out his tongue.
"Not too bad," Susan remarked, and Karen concurred.
"Are you dizzy?" Coop inquired. She wanted to make sure he hadn't suffered a concussion.
"No."
"Headache?" she asked.
"No. What I am," he dabbed his bleeding tongue, "is mad."
"Would you like to press charges?" Coop never assumed anything.
"Yes. Throw the book at the bastard." Hy's face flamed crimson.
"Why don't we go outside in the fresh air and you can sit in the car with me, windows down. We'll go over everything." Coop then told Harry, Susan, Karen, and Kyle she'd take statements from them in time. But they didn't have to stick around. She'd find them.
As she put her hand under Hy's elbow, he said, louder than he realized, "He's been furious at me ever since I won the best new entry at the wine-tasting last year. He can't stand it."
Coop walked to the door with Hy. "Sure you don't want some ice in a towel?"
"No," Hy growled. "Toby is dangerous. I want him locked up."
"Hy, that's easier said than done, but come out in the fresh air. I'll do what I can."
"Why is it difficult? Assault and battery. Straightforward."
"Toby is clever." Coop left it at that as she opened the door.
Harry hoped to hear more of the conversation, but the door closed.
Karen Osborne shrugged. "Certifiable." She didn't say whether she thought Toby was nuts or Hy or both.
15
"Warm winters." BoomBoom leaned over the paddock where Keepsake nursed Burly.
"1990 to 1995 were especially warm. Had the drought years in there, too." Fair, having come from Big Mim's to Boom-Boom's farm, rubbed his stubble.
His thick beard irritated him because it grew so quickly. He kept an electric razor in his truck to try and keep up with it. If he had time, he shaved in the morning with a safety razor and then again when he came home from work. He felt his wife was entitled to a smooth face at night.
"It really hasn't been that cold since 2000 either. We've had a lot of snow and ice but not long periods of cold. Strange."
"Guess there really is global warming. I don't know if I read it inThe Wall Street Journal orThe London Financial Times, but there was an article about hybrid vehicles. Said those emissions would be just as hot as gasoline."
"Since you get more miles to the gallon, maybe it would slow global warming," BoomBoom, a true gearhead, replied.
Fair smiled as Burly left Keepsake to run a few circles, buck, then stop to stare at the two humans, only to repeat the process. "Personality."
"To burn." She laughed. "I've fallen in love with the little guy and I don't care if he does have big ears."
"So did Clark Gable." Fair laughed, then said, "Driving so much gives me time to think. I think we don't have any choice but to be done with the internal combustion engine."
"God, all those beautiful engines." BoomBoom's hand involuntarily flew to her breast. It didn't have to fly far. "I do love engines." She sighed. "But we can't very well destroy the planet because of it."
"It's kind of like if President Rutherford B. Hayes had declared the future of America was the whale industry because of whale-oil lamps. I expect some technology will replace the internal combustion engine, but I can't imagine what or if it will happen in my time. You know, Boom, I think the proliferation of some of the equine disease we see is the result of the warming."
"You mean West Nile?" She named a disease, often fatal, that infected horses and humans.
"That. What gives us some wiggle room there is that the virus has to go from the crow to the possum—usually a possum— and then the horse. People can get it directly from crows but not from horses. Fortunately, the fragility in the transfer of the virus means if we break the cycle in just one jump between species, we ought to knock it. But there's something coming down the pike every day, it seems." He shook his head.
"It's odd, too, that so many of these new diseases—or what seem to be new to our hemisphere, anyway—evolve so quickly." BoomBoom, a highly intelligent woman, read widely and often.
He nodded in agreement. "AIDS wins the prize there. But the old standbys are making a comeback: tuberculosis, syphilis, even measles. They return more resistant to treatment."
"No one can blame those diseases on animals. Human-to-human transmission."
"Actually, there's not much that can be pinned to animals, because so few humans in the developed nations live close to them. 'Course it's different in Asia, Africa, and parts of South America. Every time a new disease appears on the horizon, I have to laugh, because the medical profession is in such a hurry to trace it to a monkey or a snail or a lemur. It's as though humans still can't face the fact that we are perfectly capable of being agents of disease." He checked his watch. "Didn't mean to take up so much of your time."
"I've never spent a minute with you that I didn't enjoy."
He smiled. "I don't know about that, but you're kind to say it."
"How's Mim's crop this year?"
"Beauties. She bred to Polish Navy, Mineshaft, Yankee Victor, and Buddha."
"Mim has a head for breeding. Alicia says that because Mim and Mary Pat were so competitive with each other, each pushed the other higher." BoomBoom mentioned Mary Pat Reines, now deceased, an excellent horsewoman.
"She had a good year last year. She came within a hair of taking the Colonial Cup." Fair cited a famous steeplechase race. "The Polish Navy colt is a beauty, great shoulder on that guy. She says he's going to be her old-age hunter."
"Did she happen to say when old age would begin?"
"Next Thursday." He burst out laughing.
Once BoomBoom stopped laughing, she said, "This global-warming thing—I was wondering if it will speed up all kinds of infections, in animals and plants. I was reading a book on the Black Death, and the ideal temperature for the bacillus to thrive in is between fifty and seventy degrees Fahrenheit."
"Pretty much the same as the ideal temperature for humans."
"Now there's thought that not only can the rat flea carry the plague, but the human flea can, too. Something like thirty-two different flea varieties can carry the plague. Hope I got that right."
"Warming might hasten disease spread, but I think more than anything you need the right kind of host and the speed of air travel."
"What do you mean, 'the right kind of host'?"
"A large population, living in filth, bad water supply, inadequate nutrition—they become the perfect host. All it takes is one visitor from a developed nation who is physically compromised to pick up the pest, be it virus or bacillus, get on a plane, and disembark in Berlin, Paris, London, New York, take your pick."
"It's a terrifying prospect." She paused. "The panel with Professor Jenkins and Professor Forland got me to thinking—could an enemy reintroduce the plague?"
"They don't have to reintroduce it, Boom, it's here. Fortunately our hygiene is good, but given some disaster like the great San Francisco earthquake, the rats will come out of their holes. Some of those rats will carry the plague. At least, that's what I believe."
"Any word about Professor Forland?" BoomBoom asked since she'd just spoken of him.
"No. No one knows what to think."
"He's dead. That's obvious to me, anyway."
"God, I hope not." He inhaled, then exhaled. "Why? Sure, it crossed my mind, but I can't think why someone would kill him."
A light breeze ruffled BoomBoom's long blonde hair. "There are always reasons to kill someone, Fair. Greed. Jealousy. Revenge. Profit. Religion. Politics. Sex. Even sheer carelessness. You kill someone by accident, don't want to pay the consequences, so you remove the body."