“Stalker theory! Where does she come up with this stuff?” Market scratched his balding head.
“The newspapers,” Susan answered. “You’ve got to hand it to her. She turned the issue of slavery on its head. She controlled the interviewer instead of vice versa. Until the real story surfaces, if it ever does, she’s got the media chasing their tails.”
“The real story will surface.” Miranda spoke with conviction. “It always does.”
Pewter flicked her whiskers fore and aft.“Does anyone have a glazed doughnut? I’m hungry.”
“No,” Tucker replied.“Pewter, you have no sense of mystery.”
“That’s not true,” she defended herself.“But I see Mim on a daily basis. Watching her on television is no big deal.” Pewter, waiting for a comeback from Mrs. Murphy, was disappointed when none was forthcoming.“What planet are you on?”
The gorgeous eyes widened, the tiger cat hunched forward and whispered,“I’ve got a funny feeling about this. I can’t put my paw on it.”
“Oh, you’re hungry, that’s all.” Pewter dismissed Mrs. Murphy’s premonition.
17
Harry and Warren Randolph grunted as they picked up the York rake and put it on the back of her truck.
“Either this thing is getting heavier or I’m getting weaker,” Warren joked.
“It’s getting heavier.”
“Hey, come on for a minute. I want to show you something.”
Harry opened the door to the truck so Tucker and Mrs. Murphy could leap out to freedom. They followed Harry to the Randolphs’ beautiful racing barn, built in 1892. Behind the white frame structure with the green standing-seam tin roof lay the mile-long oval track. Warren bred Thoroughbreds. That, too, like this property, had been in the family since the eighteenth century. The Randolphs loved blooded horses. The impressive walnut-paneled foyer at the manor house, hung with equine paintings spanning the centuries, attested to that fact.
The generous twelve-by-twelve-foot stalls were back to back in the center line of the barn. The tack room, wash stalls, and feed room were located in the center of the stall block. Circling the outside of the stalls was a large covered aisle that doubled as an exercise track during inclement weather. Since many windows circled the outside wall, enough light shone on the track so that even on a blizzardy day a rider could work a horse.
Kentucky possessed more of these glorified shed-row barns than Virginia, so Warren naturally prized his barn, built by his paternal grandfather. Colonel Randolph had put his money in the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway as well as the Union Pacific.
“What do you think?” His hazel eyes danced.
“Beautiful!” Harry exclaimed.
“What do you think?” Mrs. Murphy asked Tucker.
Tucker tentatively put one paw on the Pavesafe rubber bricks. The dull reddish surface of interlocking bricks could expand and contract within itself, so no matter what the weather or temperature, the surface remained nonskid. The bricks were also specially treated to resist bacteria.
The tailless dog took a few gingery steps, then raced to the other curved end of the massive barn.“Yahoo! This is like running on cushions.”
“Hey, hey, wait for me!” The cat bolted after her companion.
“Your cat and dog approve.” Warren jammed his hands into his pockets like a proud father.
Harry knelt down and touched the surface.“This stuff is right out of paradise.”
“No, right out of Lexington, Kentucky.” He led her down the row of stalls. “Honey, they’re so far ahead of us in Kentucky that it hurts my pride sometimes.”
“I guess we have to expect that. It is the center of the Thoroughbred industry.” Harry’s toes tingled with the velvety feel underneath.
“Well, you know me, I think Virginia should lead the nation in every respect. We’ve provided more presidents than any other state. We provided the leadership to form this nation—”
Warren sang out the paean of Virginia’s greatness, practicing perhaps for many speeches to follow. Harry, a native of the Old Dominion, didn’t disagree, but she thought the other twelve colonies had assisted in the break from the mother country. Only New York approximated the original Virginia in size before the break from West Virginia, and it was natural that a territory that big would throw up something or someone important. Then, too, the perfect location of Virginia, in the center of the coastline, and its topography, created by three great rivers, formed an environment hospitable to agriculture and the civilizing arts.Good ports and the Chesapeake Bay completed the rich natural aspects of the state. Prideful as Harry felt, she thought bragging on it was a little shy of good manners or good sense. People not fortunate enough to have been born in Virginia nor wise enough to remove themselves to the Old Dominion hardly needed this dolorous truth pointed out to them. It made outsiders surly.
When Warren finished, Harry returned to the flooring.“Mind if I ask how much this stuff costs?”
“Eight dollars a square foot and nine fifty for the antistumble edge.”
Harry calculated, roughly, the square footage before her and arrived at the staggering sum of forty-five thousand dollars. She gulped.“Oh” squeaked out of her.
“That’s what I said, but I tell you, Harry, I haven’t any worries about big knees or injuries of any sort of this stuff. Before, I used cedar shavings. Well, what a whistling bitch to keep hauling shavings in with the dump truck, plus there’s the man-hours to fetch it, replenish the supply in the aisle, rake it out, and clean it three times a day. I about wore out myself and my boys. And the dust when we had to work the horses inside—not good for the horses in their stalls or the ones being exercised, so then you spend time sprinkling it down. Still use the cedar for the stalls though. I grind it up a bit, mix it in with regular shavings. I like a sweet-smelling barn.”
“Most beautiful barn in Virginia.” Harry admired the place.
“Mouse alert!” Mrs. Murphy screeched to a stop, fishtailed into the feed room, and pounced at a hole in the corner to which the offending rodent had repaired.
Tucker stuck her nose in the feed room.“Where?”
“Here,” called Mrs. Murphy from the corner.
Tucker crouched down, putting her head between her paws. She whispered,“Should I stay motionless like you?”
“Nah, the little bugger knows we’re here. He’ll wait until we’re gone. You know a mouse can eat a quart of grain a week? You’d think that Warren would have barn cats.”
“Probably does. They smelled you coming and took off.” Tucker laughed as the tiger grumbled.“Let’s find Mom.”
“Not yet.” Mrs. Murphy stuck her paw in the mouse hole and fished around. She withdrew a wad of fuzzy fabric, the result of eating a hole in a shirt hanging in the stable, no doubt.“Ah, I feel something else.”
A piece of paper stuck to Mrs. Murphy’s left forefinger claw as she slid it out of the hole.“Damn, if I could just grab him.”
Tucker peered down at the high-quality vellum scrap.“Goes through the garbage too.”
“So do you.”
“Not often.” The dog sat down.“Hey, there’s a little bit of writing here.”
Mrs. Murphy withdrew her paw from her third attempt at the mouse hole.“So there is. ‘Dearest darling.’ Ugh. Love letters make me ill.” The cat studied it again.“Too chewed up. Looks like a man’s writing, doesn’t it?”
Tucker looked closely at the shred.“Well, it’s not very pretty. Guess there are lovers at the barn. Come on.”
“Okay.”
They joined Harry as she inspected a young mare Warren and his father had purchased at the January sale at Keeneland. Since this was an auction for Thoroughbreds of any age, unlike the sales specifically for yearlings or two-year-olds, one could sometimes find a bargain. The yearling auctions were the ones where the gavel fell and people’s pockets suddenly became lighter than air.
“I’m trying to breed in staying power. She’s got the bloodlines.” He thought for a moment, then continued. “Do you ever wonder, Harry, what it’s like to be a person who has no blood? A person who shuffled through Ellis Island—one’s ancestors, I mean. Would you ever feel that you belong, or would there be some vague romantic attachment, perhaps, to the old country? I mean, it must be dislocating to be a new American.”