Рита Браун - Whisker Of Evil

“You were hurt.” Aunt Tally, as always, cut straight to the bone. “No wonder your inspection visits were short.”

“Bad enough we didn’t know where Mary Pat and Ziggy were. Worse to be the prime suspect. The whispers, the cold shoulders.” She stared out across the infield. “All those people silently disapproving of our relationship could use this as an excuse to be ugly. While Mary Pat was alive I was protected by her aura, her wealth. When she disappeared, the ugliness was unveiled. The people who were good to me were Harry’s mother and father, Miranda and George, Tally, Mim, and Jim. And that was it.”

“They certainly ate crow when they found out you’d inherited the kit and kaboodle. Course, that took a year. Mary Pat had to be declared legally dead. It was complicated, but you emerged the winner.” Aunt Tally relished the tale. “What really shocked them was when they found out she’d adopted you. Smart, that Mary Pat. Very smart. It was the only way she could legally protect you. Did you know you’d been adopted?”

“Yes.” Alicia closed her eyes for a moment. “Since gay people couldn’t get married, they had to find ways to protect one another. By adopting me, Mary Pat made it very difficult for someone to contest the will. Also, if she’d been critically ill, I would have been able to visit her in the hospital as next of kin. Heterosexuals don’t realize how many barriers there are for gay people in situations like hospitalization. It’s better now in some places where domestic partnership is recognized by the state, but when we were together it was still the Dark Ages. I live a marvelous life because of Mary Pat, but I’d give back every penny to see her walk out from those racing barns. You can’t compare money with life, you just can’t. And I know you know that, Aunt Tally.”

“Speaking of eating crow.” Harry’s eyes narrowed, for bounding toward them were the three animals, with Pewter carrying feathers in her mouth.

Before leaving the barn, Pewter asked the swallows if they’d houseclean. She wanted some nice long tail feathers or wing feathers.

They complied, and she picked them up only to race out of the barn, followed by Mrs. Murphy and Tucker.

“She is the biggest fake in the world,” Mrs. Murphy spat.

Tucker, running alongside the tiger cat, said, “They’ll never believe her.”

“She’s killed a bird.” Aunt Tally rapped her cane on the ground.

“Pewter, how could you?” Harry disapproved.

Pewter, upon reaching Harry, dropped the feathers and rubbed against Harry’s leg. “I am a mighty hunter.”

“Gag me.” Mrs. Murphy sat on the feathers for spite.

37

W hat do you make of it?” Cooper leaned toward Fair’s computer screen.

Fair examined the latest data on reported rabies cases, nonhuman, in Virginia. “That we are, fortunately, in a valley of the rabies cycle.”

Cynthia Cooper had brought over Jerome’s computer discs, his handwritten notes, plus a detailed U.S. Geographical Survey topographical map he’d had for the St. James area, since that’s where the rabies seemed to have broken out.

It was seven-thirty in the evening, and long, late rays of sun were slanting over meadows outside.

“Being at the bottom of the trough makes it unlikely for humans to be exposed?” Cooper asked.

“In theory, yes, but we know there’s always a pool of the rabies virus in existence. It never goes away. It flares up, then subsides.”

“Hmm, nothing new here. Go to his suspect file.”

Fair clicked, bringing up Jerome’s icons, while at the bottom of the screen a bikini-clad woman walked across with a sign over her head reading “Suspects.”

Laughing, Fair said, “Jerome was more of a computer nerd than I would have thought.”

“I just saw the nerd.” Cooper felt guilty.

“Here we are.” Fair opened the file and beheld photos of a raccoon, a skunk, a possum, a bat, a cow, and a horse. “And he had a sense of humor.”

“I never was witness to it. When’s the last time you treated a horse for rabies?”

“Never. I’ve given the shots. But there was a case years ago in Greene County.”

She waved her hand. “I know. I was hoping we’d find something new.”

“But your people have been over this.”

“They aren’t veterinarians.”

“What else is on here that you want me to examine?”

“Jerome never used your services, did he?”

“Cooper, Jerome didn’t know one end of a horse from the other.”

“Well, look at this.” She reached across Fair’s broad chest, took the mouse, moved it, clicked, and brought up another file.

“I’ll be.” Fair read out the list of Ziggy Flame’s progeny. “He traced all of Ziggy’s descendants. He must have had help from the Jockey Club.”

“My question is, why would he be interested?”

“I don’t know.”

“And it’s curious that neither Barry nor Sugar, although in the breeding business, had these records.”

“Not so curious, Coop. A stallion like Ziggy would have had great influence had he lived long enough, but Ziggy only covered mares for three years. His percentage of stakes winners was, according to this”—Fair scrolled back to the beginning of Ziggy’s data on progeny—“seventeen percent. If he’d been in service longer he’d have gotten better and better mares. And seventeen percent is a terrific stat.”

“What happened to the horses he sired that didn’t go to the track? Can we find them?”

“Only if the owners registered them with the Jockey Club. If someone buys a horse that, for whatever reason, isn’t destined for flat racing or chasing, they often don’t register the foal.”

“But for every foal registered, the Jockey Club will have records?”

“You’d better believe it. The American records go back to 1873, and the English Jockey Club records go back to 1791.”

“Forgive me if I ask stupid questions, but I really know nothing about how this works. Wouldn’t you register every thoroughbred born?”

“No.” He leaned back in his office chair. “Registration is the responsibility of the owner. A breeder only goes through the process if they’re going to keep the foal or if, thinking the colt or filly will bring a bigger price as a two-year-old, they decide to hold it. Usually they don’t, for the simple reason that it’s expensive. Breeding is a numbers game. You’ve got to put a lot of foals on the ground and select. Most of the big breeding farms will stand four or more stallions. In the old days a farm could afford to stand ten or even twenty, but escalating taxes and costs have put a stop to that. One result is, fewer and fewer stallions get the good mares. People can’t afford to take a chance on an unproven stud. And given the laws of unintended consequences, we’re narrowing the gene pool, which I think is pretty awful.”

Cooper ran her fingers through her blond hair. “I take a mare to a stallion. I register the offspring.”

“Right.”

“What about in-house breeding?”

“Again, it depends on how deep someone’s pockets are. Most of the big farms will breed some of their own mares to some of their own stallions or to someone else’s stallions.” He swiveled to face Cooper. “You see, breeding is both a science and an art. On paper I can be a genius. What actually gets delivered usually proves that I am a mere mortal.”

“But you think Ziggy was good?”

His blue eyes lit up. “Coop, Ziggy was a star. He had bone, drive, brains. His stride was long and fluid. His heart girth was deep so he probably had a big heart, which means he could pump more blood throughout his body, oxygenate himself. It improves athletic performance. He had large nostrils and could suck that air right into his huge lungs. Ziggy had it all, except that he was a chestnut, a bright, gleaming red fellow.”