How long it was before she fell asleep she had no idea, but she woke with a start to see a security man standing at the door. He was doing a routine check of the offices and apologized for disturbing her. Annie asked him what time it was and was shocked to hear it was past eleven.
She called for a car and slouched dismally in the back as it took her all the way up Central Park West. The apartment building's green door-canopy looked colorless in the sodium glow of the streetlamps.
Robert and Grace had both gone to bed. Annie stood in the doorway of Grace's room and let her eyes get used to the dark. The false leg stood in the corner like a toy sentry. Grace shifted in her sleep and murmured something. And the thought suddenly occurred to Annie that perhaps this need she felt to keep Pilgrim alive, to find someone who could calm his troubled heart, wasn't about Grace at all. Perhaps it was about herself.
Annie softly pulled the covers up over Grace's shoulder and walked back along the corridor to the kitchen. Robert had left a note on the yellow pad on the table. Liz Hammond had called, it said. She had the name of someone who might be able to help.
Chapter Seven
Tom Booker woke at six and listened to the local news on the TV while he shaved. A guy from Oakland had parked in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge, shot his wife and two kids and then jumped off. Traffic both ways was at a standstill. In the eastern suburbs a woman out jogging in the hills behind her home had been killed by a mountain lion.
The light above the mirror made his sunburnt face look green against the shaving foam. The bathroom was dingy and cramped and Tom had to stoop to stand under the shower rigged in the bathtub. It always seemed motels like this were built for some miniature race you never came across, people with tiny, nimble fingers who actually preferred soap the size of credit cards and wrapped for their convenience.
He dressed and sat on the bed to pull his boots on, looking out over the little parking lot that was crammed with the pickups and four-wheeler trucks of those coming to the clinic. As of last night there were going to be twenty in the colt class and about the same in the horsemanship class. It was too many but he never liked turning folk away. For their horses' sake more than theirs. He put on his green wool jacket, picked up his hat and let himself out into the narrow concrete corridor that led to reception.
The young Chinese manager was putting out a tray of evil-looking doughnuts by the coffee machine. He beamed at Tom.
'Morning Mr Booker! How you doing?'
'Good thanks,' Tom said. He put his key down on the desk. 'How are you?'
Fine. Complimentary doughnut?'
'No thanks.'
'All set for the clinic?'
'Oh, reckon we'll muddle through. See you later.'
'Bye Mr Booker.'
The dawn air felt damp and chilly as he walked toward his pickup, but the cloud was high and Tom knew it would burn off by midmorning. Back home in Montana the ranch was still under two foot of snow, but when they drove into Marin County here last night it felt like spring. California, he thought. They sure had it all worked out down here, even the weather. He couldn't wait to get home.
He pointed the red Chevy out onto the highway and looped back over 101. The riding center nestled in a gently sloping wooded valley a couple of miles out of town. He had brought the trailer up here last night before checking into the motel and turned Rimrock out into the meadow. Tom saw someone had already been out putting arrow signs up along the route saying BOOKER HORSE CLINIC and wished whoever it was hadn't. If the place was harder to find maybe some of the dumber ones wouldn't show up.
He drove through the gate and parked on the grass near the big arena where the sand had been watered and neatly combed. There was no one about. Rimrock saw him from the far side of the meadow and by the time Tom got over to the fence he was there waiting. He was an eight-year-old brown quarter horse with a white blaze on his face and four neat white socks that gave him the dapper look of someone dressed up for a tennis party. Tom had bred and reared him himself. He rubbed the horse's neck and let him nuzzle the side of his face.
'You got your work cut out today, old son,' Tom said. Normally he liked to have two horses at a clinic so they could share the load. But his mare, Bronty, was about to foal and he'd had to leave her back in Montana. That was another reason he wanted to get home.
Tom turned and leaned against the fence and the two of them silently surveyed the empty space that for the next five days would be buzzing with nervous horses and their more nervous owners. After he and Rimrock had worked with them, most would go home a little less nervous and that made it worth doing. But this was the fourth clinic in about as many weeks and seeing the same damn fool problems cropping up time and time again got kind of wearing.
For the first time in twenty years he was going to take the spring and summer off. No clinics, no traveling. Just stay put on the ranch, get some of his own colts going, help his brother some. That was it. Maybe he was getting too old. He was forty-five, hell, nearly forty-six. When he'd started out doing clinics he could do one a week all year round and love every minute. If only the people could be as smart as the horses.
Rona Williams, the woman who owned the center and hosted this clinic every year, had seen him and was coming down from the stables. She was a small, wiry woman with the eyes of a zealot and though pushing forty, wore her hair in two long plaits. The girlishness of this was contradicted by the manly way she walked. It was the walk of someone used to being obeyed. Tom liked her. She worked hard to make a success of the clinic. He touched his hat to her and she smiled then looked up at the sky.
'Gonna be a good one,' she said.
'I reckon.' Tom nodded toward the road. 'I see you got yourself some nice new signs out there. In case any of these forty crazy horses get themselves lost.'
'Thirty-nine.'
'Oh? Someone drop out?'
'Nope. Thirty-nine horses, one donkey.' She grinned. 'Guy who owns it's an actor or something. Coming up from L.A.'
He sighed and gave her a look.
'You're a ruthless woman, Rona. You'll have me wrestling grizzly bears before you're through.'
'It's an idea.'
They walked down to the arena together and talked the schedule through. He would kick off this morning with the colts, working with them one by one. With twenty of them, that was going to take pretty much the whole day. Tomorrow would be the horsemanship class, with some cattle work later, if there was time, for those who wanted it.
Tom had bought some new speakers and wanted to do a sound test, so Rona helped him get them out of the Chevy and they set them up near the bleachers where the spectators would sit. The speakers squealed with feedback when they were switched on, then settled into a menacing, anticipatory hum as Tom walked out across the virgin sand of the arena and spoke into the radio mike of his headset.
'Hi folks.' His voice boomed among the trees that stood unstirring in the still air of the valley. 'This is the Rona Williams show and I'm Tom Booker, donkey tamer to the stars.'
When they'd checked everything through, they drove down into town to the place they always had breakfast. Smoky and T.J., the two young guys Tom had brought from Montana to help with this run of four clinics, were already eating. Rona ordered granola and Tom some scrambled eggs, wheat toast and a large orange juice.