Рита Браун - Whisker Of Evil

“There will be a raindrop in Richmond. It will be two miles wide!” Susan mocked.

Harry made a mental note to ask Blair about his property when they were finished today. She didn’t want anyone else to overhear, not because she felt they would be indiscreet but because she’d promised Herb to be delicate in the matter.

They caught up on gossip, traded opinions about their favorite baseball teams.

Tazio, on her third pickle, asked, “Coop, any progress about Barry?”

Harry reached for the pickle jar.

“No. I keep hoping we’ll get a break. We did do one thing, though, for which I thank Fair. He tested each of the mares to make sure they were what Barry and Sugar said they were—you know, had the correct bloodlines. And when the babies come next year, he’ll test them.”

“He didn’t tell me.” Harry was surprised.

“And?” Paul’s dark eyebrows raised up.

“He called me this morning on my way over,” Cooper replied. “Said they were legit.”

“But wouldn’t someone find out? I mean soon enough?” Blair, not a horseman, was puzzled.

“Yes. But if the paperwork were faked and, say, Person A bought a mare, he might not know he was duped until the foal was born. The owner would go to register the foal, thinking she was a granddaughter of Secretariat, and find out otherwise. Then they’d take saliva to check the DNA from the mare and discover she wasn’t what the seller said she was.”

“But the owner would come right back on Barry and Sugar,” Harry declared.

“If they were still in town,” Coop laconically replied.

“Barry wouldn’t do that. Sugar neither. I can’t believe they would.” Paul defended them. “I’m new to Crozet, but I think they were straight up.”

“They were,” Harry simply responded.

“I have to track down any and every possibility.”

“Do you think Barry’s murder has something to do with his business, then?” Harry shrewdly asked.

“Well”—Cooper paused and held her breath, while everyone stared at her—“it might prove a fruitful avenue. He wasn’t alcoholic, no drugs—maybe a joint occasionally, I heard, but a pretty clean guy. No gambling debts. His debt was on the property he rented. He’d paid for the mares outright, he and Sugar. He paid for his truck outright. He hadn’t paid for the stud fees, but as I understand it those aren’t due until the foal stands and nurses.” Coop looked at Harry.

“Right.”

“So what’s left?” Tazio held up her hands, a pickle in the left one.

“Business or romance?” Coop reached for another piece of fried chicken.

“Carmen. She’s got a temper but not that bad.” Susan laughed.

“We’ll find out. It takes time.” Coop had faith in herself and in Sheriff Rick Shaw.

“I think it’s connected to Mary Pat.” Harry opened a can of Coke.

Everyone looked at Harry, waiting for more. She smiled and shrugged.

She decided not to say more, but she thought, Mary Pat disappeared with Ziggy Flame in 1974. Thirty years later a young man, infected with rabies, is killed. He was just starting out in the breeding business, but Barry definitely had the gift. Did he find out what happened to Ziggy Flame? Did something occur to him as he pored over bloodlines, walked St. James Farm, visited the sales? And if he found out what happened to Ziggy, surely Mary Pat’s killer would be in Ziggy Flame’s shadow.

28

S ilvery mist enveloped the sleeping countryside. A faint gray light on the eastern horizon announced dawn, dragging in its wake a new day, bright as a freshly minted copper penny. Church bells would not call the faithful to service for hours on this Sunday morning.

Alicia Palmer learned to awaken before dawn when she lived with Mary Pat, who was a happy early riser. This chore became a habit, one that served her well in her glory days in Hollywood, where she’d be ensconced in the makeup chair at five-thirty in the morning.

Fence lines hugged rolling terrain and rambling roses spilled over road banks as Alicia walked down the long curving drive toward the graceful brick pillars, whose twelve-foot wrought-iron gates stood open.

If Alicia reversed her walk, the drive, lined with majestic pin oaks, would fork, one half twisting toward the outbuildings and barns. The other half of the Y, the left prong, swung to the main house.

Alicia stopped at the juncture of the Y, the house and barns enshrouded in mist. Although beautiful, a ghostly aura permeated St. James: it was never the same without Mary Pat.

The cool tang of the morning, of the rambling roses, filled her nostrils. She’d loved St. James as much as she’d loved Mary Pat. She’d been young here, full of energy, pride, and naïveté. She wondered that she could ever have been that young, and yet here she was standing at her favorite spot, standing where she stood at age twenty-five. What a trickster time is.

Tears filled Alicia’s luminous eyes. She leaned against the white fence and thought if she closed her eyes Ziggy Flame would gallop over to her. Ziggy, being surprisingly tractable for a stallion, favored Alicia.

The untractable creature was Mary Pat, a woman who lived at full blast. During her life Alicia had met the rich and powerful of Hollywood and, by extension, the political hangers-on eager for vote magnets, yet none of them ever measured up to Mary Pat. The sheer raw energy of her could become an irritant as people tried to keep up physically and intellectually.

Alicia realized early on she could keep up physically but not intellectually. She didn’t mind. She’d never thought of herself as particularly bright, but she was sensitive.

“A thorn was given me in the flesh,” Alicia mouthed the words from Second Corinthians, Chapter 12, Verse 7.

Miranda had quoted the Scripture to her in relation to the Japanese beetles currently invading her garden.

Alicia felt that the thorn in her flesh was the memory of Mary Pat. If she’d been more attentive, if she’d been less ambitious, she knew in her heart all would have been well. She felt a vague and growing guilt. If she’d stayed, she believed, Mary Pat would never have been killed. She left for her screen test and returned to desolation and accusation.

She could prove nothing. Not her innocence nor lack of complicity. She had only her own sensitivity for a guide, that same sensitivity that had made her one of the best actresses of her generation. The star part of her life meant nothing to her. Being a fine actress meant something.

Nostalgia overwhelmed her. A slash of pink illuminated the eastern sky. Mary Pat used to say, “Live each day as though it were your last.”

Echoes from the past seemed louder in the fog. Alicia felt the fog would lift in all respects.

29

W hile everyone else returned to work on Monday, Fair Haristeen, who’d been on call during the weekend, was still working. Fortunately, he loved his work, but this afternoon he was tired.

Priscilla Freidberg and her daughter, Dharam, had saved a lovely thoroughbred mare from the killers. So many good animals wound up on the knacker’s wagon to be hauled to the slaughterhouse because people could no longer afford them if they couldn’t run. Thoroughbred, standardbred, and quarter-horse racing, while exciting, led to heartbreak back at the shed row. Horses were run too young in America, the fault of punitive taxes and rising prices. Few could afford to keep a horse until three to run him. The youngsters would go out as two-year-olds. The people in Washington, responsible for much of this, would then turn around and consider passing legislation to protect the animals at the end of their careers. If they’d considered how very different and difficult raising stock was, this would never happen in the first place. The suffering should be laid at Congress’s door.