Рита Браун - Whisker Of Evil

Miranda sat opposite Harry. “We can hope that won’t happen, but I think you’re right. It seems nothing is particular anymore.” She used the Virginia word for individual, special, distinctive. “New buildings mean new rules, and those rules don’t take into account people’s feelings, traditions, or ways. Americans confuse things with progress. Progress is really of the spirit. Material progress is secondary.”

Harry lifted Mrs. Murphy onto her lap, so Pewter, not to be outdone, jumped up. “What can we do?”

“Keep the old ways.”

“But some of the old ways meant racial oppression, women treated as second-class citizens . . . you know.”

Miranda nodded that, indeed, she did know. “Harry, you’re much younger than I am and you lost your parents in your early twenties, too young for that. Maybe you’ve missed out on their perspective. Perhaps I can supply a little of it. Honey, all your life things will change. You have to decide what is important to you and stick to that. I decided a long time ago, before you were born, that what was important to me was love: love of God, love of friends and family, and, of course, the love of a good man. George was a good man. Now, to someone walking down the street I probably seem like I have a little life, but it’s a full life. I don’t need all that stuff that’s advertised in magazines and on television. I still drive my Falcon and it gets me where I want to go. I have a rich, rich life. You have to decide what is important to you.”

Harry realized she’d held her breath when Miranda was speaking. She exhaled, then inhaled. “My babies!” She meant her cats and dog. “My farm. The whole swing and sway of country life and country values. My horses. The sunrise shining on the mountains and the sunset glowing behind them. My friends. St. Luke’s. Miranda, I’m babbling.”

“But you know what’s important.”

“Our way of life. I guess it does come down to love. I don’t know that I’m as faithful as you are, Miranda. I have so many questions that the church doesn’t answer.”

“Church doctrine is one thing.” Miranda belonged to the Church of the Holy Light, whereas Harry was high church, meaning she followed a liturgy, a catechism, a strict protocol. Miranda, on the other hand, didn’t have much truck with doctrine, for her spiritual experience was emotional, not intellectual. “Follow your heart.”

“The funny thing is, I know that.”

“We all do. We just need to be reminded.”

“Miranda, when the new post office gets built and if Pug jams a bunch of new rules and new people down our throats, what are you going to do?”

“Wish them all well and dig in my garden.” Miranda stood up because Carmen Gamble walked into the post office, and she looked peaked.

“Hello, Carmen.”

“Poor Sugar. I feel awful for him. He was such a nice guy. I’m just shook up. I mean, I guess, well,” she stammered, “we dated a little. Nothing major. I guess I lost interest because he was too nice a guy.” Her lower lip trembled.

Miranda flipped up the counter divider, walked over to Carmen, and put her arms around her. “I’m sorry, honey. Put your faith in the Lord.”

Tears cascaded over Carmen’s cheeks. “I do put my faith in the Lord. I just don’t have any faith in Rick Shaw or Cynthia Cooper.”

Harry quietly said, “Carmen, they’ll figure this out. They will.”

Carmen sobbed as Miranda hugged her. “And I keep thinking I kissed both Barry and Sugar. I know my tests came back okay, but what if the lab made a mistake?”

Harry, who had grilled Fair over rabies, reassured her. “You can only get rabies if the saliva enters your body from a bite, gets into the muscle tissue, and travels up your nerve highway. It takes one to three months. So the virus won’t be in the infected person’s saliva until they show the symptoms, until the virus has reached their brain. You’re fine.”

This calmed Carmen a lot. She hugged Miranda, then walked to the counter divider. “Dr. Langston did tell me that rabies in humans is extremely rare.” She wiped her eyes. “But I wonder—I mean, I wonder about Barry most of all. He had a kind of sly streak. I used to get on him about some of his horse sales, you know? He’d say he was an entrepreneur. I said I saw it differently.”

“How?” Harry asked, as three pairs of animal eyes focused on Carmen.

“Whenever money passes hands, it sticks to someone’s fingers. He was doing pretty good for a guy starting his own business, and you know what else?” She paused as Harry and Miranda leaned toward her. “There was a lot he didn’t tell Sugar. He’d tell me. Bragging.”

“Do you think he cheated Sugar?” Miranda hated this idea.

“Not exactly. I think he made side deals and just kept them to himself. Sugar wouldn’t even think to question Barry. Sugar was, well, you know, he lived up to his name.” The tears rolled afresh.

23

J esus Christ, what are you, jet-propelled?” Tavener exploded.

“We got a situation,” Jerome glumly pronounced.

“You’re damned right we do. We have an animal-control officer who’s a few bricks shy of a full load,” the veterinarian rancorously said.

The sun, brilliant today, illuminated the tiny broken veins in Tavener’s face, testimony that he’d lived a convivial life. Declaring every day a celebration, he delighted in bending his elbow.

“Paperwork.”

Tavener—called by Fair, who had been called by Harry—expected Jerome to show up at his office door, but not two hours after harassing Harry and then Blair Bainbridge. Fortunately for Tavener, his office manager, Tim Fornay, was equal to the challenge and had assembled the paperwork on every stallion and mare at Dr. Heywood’s breeding establishment. As an extra caution, Tim had also printed out rabies documentation on every equine patient.

Tim rose from his command station, a long and high desk to the left of the front door. He watched out the front window as the two men spoke. Then he called Ramon in the breeding shed, warning him that Jerome Stoltfus might stick his nose in their business. That meant, get your green card out and ready because, although Jerome had nothing to do with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, he was an official of Albemarle County and lived to throw his weight around.

Ramon told Tim, “No problem,” and returned to the business of packaging sperm straws in blue plastic cylinders crammed with dry ice. These would be picked up by FedEx and would arrive at their destinations by ten the next morning.

Those thoroughbreds to be registered by the Jockey Club had to be bred by a live cover, meaning the stallion literally covered the mare. However, those people breeding for hunters, eventers, steeplechasers, foxhunters, or even dressage saved the time and worry, to say nothing of the expense, of hauling their mares from Colorado or New Hampshire to Virginia. This way they could inseminate their mares without all that hassle and without the risk always attending a live cover. Stallions could get their legs broken by mares who found them singularly unattractive. By the same token, stallions could savage mares. Fortunately, such incidents were rare, but anyone who had ever been in the breeding shed when they occurred never wanted to see one again and often counted themselves lucky to get out in one piece.

Recently the technology had advanced so that, instead of pulling blood for blood-typing, a saliva swatch from the horse would do to prove the validity of the breeding. The Jockey Club instituted blood-typing in 1977, which was superseded by DNA testing in 2001. Before 1977, the true reason for a live cover was it was too easy to cheat, particularly those people green to the horse business. An unsuspecting owner would send his or her best mare to a good stallion without someone to watch the breeding, and would pay a whopping fee, only to have her bred to a lesser stallion. Even though a live cover was supposed to guarantee the legitimacy of the mating, unscrupulous people took advantage of the situation until 1977. After blood-typing was demanded, cheating became more difficult.