After Harry and Blair exchanged ideas about Carmen’s disappearance, the strange events going on, Amy Wade’s settling in at the post office, and other sundry things, Harry thought she might as well get to it.
“More tea?” Blair offered.
“No, thank you. I’ve overstayed my welcome as it is. I know you’ve got a lot to do.”
“Not as much as you.” He smiled.
“The shed is wonderful. I can’t thank you enough for your help, and the fence posts are a godsend.”
“Harry, you’ve bailed me out of so many things. If it weren’t for you, I don’t think my cattle would be looking as good as they do.”
“Oh, Blair, you would have learned sooner or later.”
Harry had built him a cattle chute, which made worming, giving shots, and tagging so much easier. Blair had been trying to catch his cattle one by one in the field.
“I hope you will forgive me for being direct.”
He leaned forward, his sensitive eyes welcoming. “You know I think it saves time.” Saving time is quite a virtue among Northerners.
“That it does. As you know, this is the old Jones place, and you’ve done a beautiful job restoring the cemetery. Herb can’t keep up with that and his duties, too.”
“Thank you.”
“Actually, I should tell you that he and I have spoken and he’s asked me to broach this subject.” She took a deep breath. “Blair, should you sell this place for any reason, Herbie and I would like to buy it together. We’d work with you any way we can because, as you know, neither one of us is exactly cash heavy.”
A broad smile crossed Blair’s face, a face instantly recognizable to anyone who read magazines or looked through clothing catalogs. “No kidding.”
“We celebrate his thirty years at St. Luke’s next month on the seventeenth. I reckon he’ll retire sometime in the next ten years, maybe even the next five. He’d like to live in the farmhouse. And I’d like to farm the bottomland.”
“I see. Is the next question about my intentions regarding Little Mim?” Blair, in his sweet way, tried to be Southern by saying intentions.
“Actually, no.” Harry exhaled, relieved that she had spoken about the land. “I don’t think that’s my business.”
“Harry, you really are different, you know that?”
“No.”
“Trust me. You are. You are the strangest combination of curiosity and rectitude. You can’t resist being a detective, but you don’t want to pry into someone’s personal life.”
She flashed her crooked smile. “If I thought you were a murderer, I’d pry.”
“Oh, Harry.” He tapped the table with his knife. “I didn’t want to fall in love with Little Mim. I thought she was just another spoiled, empty, rich snob, but I was wrong. She’s not. And becoming vice-mayor has brought her out of herself and out from under her mother’s shadow. She’s a remarkable lady.”
“She is.” Harry, while not feeling especially close to Little Mim, could appreciate her good qualities.
“Aunt Tally is for me. Jim and I get along great, but the mother—oh, she’s not thrilled about my line of work, and she thinks I’ll fall prey to temptation. All those female models. Since most of them are anorexic or bulimic, I’m not attracted one bit!” He laughed.
“Big Mim’s much better about you than she used to be.”
“I guess. I do wonder how much longer I can model. I think I’m about due for a big life change.”
“Me, too.”
“Well, you’ve already started on yours. It’s weird to go into the post office and not see you.”
“Weird for me, too. I don’t know what comes next. I have to sift through dreams and reality.”
“Your dream?”
“To farm.”
“The reality?” His eyebrows raised.
“You can’t make a thin dime.”
“Bet if you found the right crop or crops you could.”
“That’s one of the things I have to think about. Like ginseng—it’s a good cash crop. Soybeans can be, too. All kinds of things are going through my head, although I’m caught up in what’s been happening around here.”
“I guess we all are in one way or another.” He laid his knife across his plate. “Harry, I promise you I will give you and Herb first option, should I sell. And I will be as fair as I can.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you want to tell Herb or should I?”
“I will, since he spoke to me in confidence. Which means we should keep this between ourselves,” she said warmly. “If you do sell this wonderful old place, I hope you don’t leave Crozet. I’ve grown to like you very much. We all have.”
“Thank you. I feel the same way about you. If I move from here it will be to Dalmally or—and this is my hope—over to Rose Hill. Aunt Tally could use us over there, and Little Mim would be a tiny bit farther away from her mother.”
“I hope you don’t expect Aunt Tally not to meddle.” Harry laughed.
“No, but she’s not as bad.”
As Harry walked out the back door to leave, she and Blair shook hands on the first-option deal. A piece of paper was only as good as the person who signed it. A handshake staked your reputation on it.
46
Using the Jockey Club software, Fair spent all night checking every registered offspring of Ziggy Flame, those horses born between 1971 and 1974. Then he checked their offspring. He did the same for Ziggy’s full brother standing in Maryland. Ziggy Dark Star had a great career at stud. The printout of his offspring was almost book-length.
This only covered horses registered with the Jockey Club. During Ziggy Flame’s brief career, he’d also produced hunters and foxhunters from non-black-type mares. Mary Pat generously allowed good horsemen who were not in the race game to breed to her rising star. Big Mim benefited from this generosity and was riding a third-generation hunter with Ziggy Flame blood, as was Harry. Her Tomahawk had Ziggy blood, since his grandfather, Flaming Tomahawk, came from one of Big Mim’s best mares.
As hunters and foxhunters have no central registry such as the Jockey Club, there was no way Fair could get statistics on those horses. While Ziggy’s brother may have been bred to non-black-type mares in the beginning of his stud career, he proved a powerful sire so early that the chances of him covering a less than stellar mare were thin. His stud fee had been seventy-five thousand dollars, payable when the foal stood and nursed, as is the custom. Show-ring people and foxhunters were shut off from that blood.
As Fair feverishly worked, he thought about the limitations of equine breeding. In America, it’s every man (or woman) for himself. There is, as yet, no sense of genetic capital, no commitment to improving bloodstock nationwide. This translates into money and brains or both. Those with the big bucks have access to the best thoroughbred blood. Those without have to be highly intelligent and figure out a way to tap into those bloodlines through a sister, brother, or offspring of a great horse. These horses might never have raced or they retired early with an injury, therefore their get—the term for offspring—would bring little at the yearling sales. But it’s the get of these horses that make the great eventers, jumpers, hunters, and foxhunters. The people who own them, if professional horsemen, have spent their lives combing the back pastures of the large breeding farms, haunting the smaller sales, traveling from Maryland to Oklahoma to Ocala to New York, always searching. Others would select a few well-made mares and start a small broodmare band, as Barry Monteith and Sugar Thierry had done. They would then find that half-brother to Lord At War or Pleasant Colony, breed their mare, and pray.
Fair had intended to have dinner with Harry but was so caught up in his research, he canceled. She understood, as he told her what he was looking for and why. Since he had been so attentive of late, she knew he had to be totally wrapped up in his research. Rather than be put out, she was excited he was working late. She wanted to see the results.