Рита Браун - Whisker Of Evil

“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

U sing 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.

It was now nine o’clock, Monday morning, June 28. Fair carried a banker’s box filled with printout sheets to Deputy Cynthia Cooper and Sheriff Rick Shaw.

“Can you condense this?” Rick lifted the white lid off the box.

“More or less.” The tall veterinarian appreciated how well organized and sparse the county sheriff’s headquarters were. Rick ran a tight ship.

“Fair, sit down. Can I get you coffee or a Coke or anything? A doughnut. Rick’s big on Krispy Kremes.”

Fair waved off Cooper’s offer. “Caffeine to the max. I stayed up until four-thirty this morning.”

“It must be good.” Rick smiled as he dropped into his chair, which he pulled out to face Fair.

“I think it is. I wanted to see if there was consistency in the offspring of Ziggy Flame. The Jockey Club has his records concerning registered breedings. His first year he was bred to fifteen mares. This only counts horses registered with the Jockey Club; remember, no records for the others unless Mary Pat left them.”

“She did.” Cooper told him. “That’s in the notebook we found in Barry Monteith’s effects.”

“May I see them later? It’d be good if I could take them home.”

“We can do that.” Rick nodded, thankful that Fair, a specialist in equine reproduction, wanted to study the notebooks.

“Ziggy’s second year he bred twenty-two mares, and the last year he bred thirty-one. Those are pretty good numbers for a stallion in central Virginia. Ten or fifteen would have been more usual. Granted, Mary Pat had fabulous connections, one being Paul Mellon, one of the best breeders America has seen. So she had a wider cast to her net than most people starting out with an unproven stallion but one who had a good racing career.”

“What were you looking for?” Rick’s eyebrows knitted together.

“Sorry, I got off the point, didn’t I?”

“That’s all right.”

“I was looking for color. Ziggy was a flaming chestnut, hence his name. Color in horses is complicated. But I was looking for percentages. You see, a chestnut stallion bred to a chestnut mare means one hundred percent of the offspring will be chestnut. So all of Ziggy’s offspring bred to chestnut mares must be chestnut. On the cover letter there, I’ve broken down the colors of his offspring according to the color of the mare he bred.”

“Great.” Cooper smiled.

“Okay, I’m a little dense here. All I know about horses is they eat while I sleep. Why is this important?” Rick reached for his cigarette pack.

“This is why.” Fair handed him the stats for Ziggy Dark Star, Flame’s full brother, a bay—which is a dark brown horse with a black mane and tail—born in 1967. Ziggy Dark Star’s lip tattoo started with a W. “This horse, a full brother to Flame, was a bay. But look at the number of chestnut offspring each time Dark Star was bred to a chestnut mare.”