Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  She shrugged. “How should I know?”

  I sighed and stepped out from the embrace of her arm. Her comfort felt heavy and overbearing to me now; I needed to act. I couldn’t sit and wait for the news reporters to figure out I was at the track still, or be kept away from my farm by their mere presence. Tiger watched me intently, his eyes burning with some inner flame that should have signified his competitive nature but really just meant he wanted some grain to go with his hay. He felt the same way, though. He wanted to be moving, all the time. Never standing around, waiting to be given permission.

  “Oh well… some potential client we just lost, probably,” I said dismissively, to close the subject without looking too out of the loop in front of Kerri. But even that didn’t make much sense—we didn’t take on many clients. We concentrated on our own horses. It was a decision we’d made a few years ago and we’d stuck with it. Along with the few outside owners we took on, things had been working just fine. So why would Alexander be courting new clients? And why wouldn’t he tell me?

  I shook my head. That didn’t matter right now. We had to move. I picked up the wash bucket left outside Tiger’s stall. “Let’s get ready to pack this crazy horse up and get out of here.”

  “Alexander said we were staying here tonight.”

  “Well, he’s welcome to, if he’s going to stay in a mood. But I’m going home. No one’s telling me I can’t drive in my gate and sleep in my own bed, and Tiger doesn’t need to stay at the races a second longer than necessary.”

  Kerri looked at him thoughtfully, his big eyes, his flared nostrils, his pricked ears. He was the picture of a fit racehorse, bursting with run, anyone could see it. The racetrack atmosphere had him sky-high on endorphins and self-satisfaction. “So he’s retired?”

  “As of today.” I pushed down the hurt those words caused me and resolved to concentrate on the future. He hadn’t made a champion racehorse, but there were other championships out there for horses to win. Yesterday couldn’t matter—yesterday was Market Affair as a two-year-old, and sending my Saratoga string to south Florida, and now it was going to be Tiger’s racing career as well. Tomorrow was all that mattered, I resolved. Whatever was coming next—I’d focus all of my energy on that.

  We got busy putting the day’s gear back into the green-enameled tack trunk. The wash bucket, filled with sponge, sweat scraper, and liniment, went into one corner; the neatly folded cooler into another. The bottles of Show Sheen and shampoo and fly spray were wedged against a little wooden box that rattled with spare horse shoes. The scissors and spare bandage tape were put into the grooming tote alongside combs and brushes, and the grooming tote was placed gently on top of the rest of the trunk’s contents. I closed the lid, its bandage slots empty now that Tiger was all wrapped up like a Christmas present, and Kerri and I each picked up one brass handle and marched it out to the horse trailer where it waited, two barns away, in the parking area.

  My fingers fumbled as I pulled the little tack room key out of my pocket and it bounced away into the gravel somewhere beneath the trailer. Cursing, I set down my end of the tack trunk and dove after it. I stood back up scarcely a minute later with stone dust on my khaki slacks and Mary Archer grinning down at me.

  Kerri stood off to one side, her side of the tack trunk still hefted against her shin, looking at me nervously. “Thanks for the warning,” I said dryly, not bothering to greet Mary. The other woman laughed in a coarse, smoky voice; she made no pretensions about our relationship.

  Kerri only blushed; she had always been afraid of confrontation with the rough-edged Appalachian trainer. But I knew now that Mary Archer was all venom and no fangs. She could sling dirt with the best of them, but she’d never been any real threat to me—even when she was spreading gossip about me all over the backside, all she’d ever really done was hurt my feelings. My horses hadn’t suffered, so what difference did it make in the long run?

  After I’d seen her run for the hills at the Otter Creek bush track, and get one-upped by the Rodeo Queens in their big hats and stiletto heels down in Miami, I was starting to think gossip was the only weapon she actually had.

  But Mary Archer just went on grinning her big toothy smile, the one she saved for gotcha moments just like this. “Just wanted to say hello to my favorite do-gooder. How’s business these days, Alex? Ready for a big breeding season with those fancy stallions of yours?”

  My eyebrows came together before I could guard my expression. What on earth could that mean? “I guess so,” I answered, trying to keep the suspicion from my voice. “Not breeding a lot this year. Keeping things simple.”

  “Oh, was that the plan?” she asked archly. “I coulda sworn you were plannin’ on rampin’ things up this spring.”

  “Nope.” I turned my back to her and unlocked the tack room door, my mind racing as I tried to catch up with her veiled words. What on earth was she getting at? We had only two stallions, and neither of them were by any means fancy. They were barely practical, at this stage in the game. We wouldn’t have a big stallion on the farm until Personal Best retired, assuming he went as far as we hoped.

  “Well, that’s good then. You won’t be disappointed this way.”

  “Disappointed? No, don’t think so.” I reached past her for my end of the tack trunk, and nodded at Kerri to help me lift it up into the tack room.

  “Think Alexander might see it different,” Mary called, rocking back on her heels. “Think he had somethin’ maybe he hadn’t told you yet. Might not matter now, though.”

  I stayed in the tack room, busying myself with moving jackets on hangers. There was a hot flush on my cheeks despite my best intentions to ignore her barbed tongue. Was there something he wasn’t telling me? Was this something to do with that mysterious Wallace character?

  Why would Mary Archer know more about my farm’s business than me?

  Ridiculous. She didn’t know a thing. I carefully ran the zipper up a few monogrammed jackets, pretending they were in danger of falling from their hangers. If I ignored her, she would leave. Like a dog begging for scraps, if she didn’t get anything, she’d move on to the next table.

  Kerri, following my lead, climbed up into the sleeping quarters and made a great show of fixing the sheets and pillows. Mary poked her head inside, and her voice echoed in the small space.

  “This looks comfy. Might wanna use it. Cuz I wouldn’t go home tonight, Miss Do-Gooder.”

  “What?” I turned around, slippery satin jackets sliding to the floor.

  “You heard me. I wouldn’t go home. Unless you figure any publicity’s good publicity. You’re about to get real famous on the evening news. I think if you leave now you might make the eleven o’clock broadcast.” Her malicious grin was unbearable, and I immediately knew without a doubt that she was the one who had called the local news.

  Kerri realized it too. “Mary, why would you do this? We’ve never done anything to you.”

  “Oh no?” Mary eyed Kerri skeptically. “Well, maybe you haven’t, child, but your boss has done plenty. She’s interferin’, she’s connivin’, and she’s got a lip on her. Thinks she can get away with anything she wants cuz she married money. Well guess what—” Mary turned her beady eyes back on me, squinting at me through a thousand wrinkles. “Your fast little mouth has finally caught up to you.” With that, Mary’s head disappeared from the tack room door.

  Kerri jumped down from the sleeping area and poked her head out. “She’s heading around to the frontside,” she reported after a moment. “What was she talking about?”

  I didn’t answer at first. I slipped the fallen jackets back on their hangers and arranged them carefully on the metal bar. I straightened Alexander’s wide-brimmed oilskin hat he’d brought back from Australia, and the small collection of baseball caps on the rack above. I fixed the blinds on the window so that they hung perfectly even. I had leaned down and started to pick up bits of hay and straw from the berber carpeting when Kerri finally gave up on getting a straight answe
r from me.

  “There’s no point in talking to you when you’re like this,” she sighed, and I heard her footsteps thump on the metal step outside, before she left me all alone.

  Finally, the solitude I’d been waiting for since Alexander had announced I was a target. I sat down heavily, letting the flakes of straw slip from my fingers, and leaned back against the wall. I meant to think about Tiger and his future; I meant to begin planning, for real this time, the next chapter of his life. It was more important than whatever cryptic B.S. Mary had been trying to get me to pay attention to. She was nothing, I reminded myself. Nothing. Whatever silliness she’d stirred up, well that would pass. It had to. In the meantime, Tiger was what was important.

  Still, when I closed my eyes to picture my dark handsome ex-racehorse, all I saw was the field of broodmares back at the farm, as I’d seen it this morning, driving towards Tampa. The mares swishing their tails across bellies swollen with pregnancy, moving heavily through the brown-green winter pasture, their expressions content and their actions unhurried. The older mares had the quiet knowing that comes from years spent in their most natural of functions; the younger ones were eager to please and followed in the matrons’ footsteps. They had all been athletes once; their lives were given over to making new athletes now.

  They wouldn’t all be successful at that job, not every year, not with every foal. There were two foals already in the pasture, the earliest of early January foals, and it was impossible to know if lightning would strike and new racehorses would emerge from those spindly-legged little babies snoozing in the grass, or if they’d fail at the vocation they’d been born and bred for, and have to seek gainful employment and kind owners in another discipline. If they’d be another Personal Best, or if they’d be another Market Affair—who could say? Or, I thought sadly, they could be another Tiger. Fast, but not fast enough. All careers came to an end, and when the breeding shed wasn’t an option… only luck could save a horse then.

  Every foal born was a roll of the dice, and we were gaming with lives.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Alexander still hadn’t come back by the time I’d pulled the trailer around to the loading dock. I pretended I didn’t care, and threw open the trailer door anyway. Kerri led Tiger, still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as if he’d never run a race (and the fact was, he really hadn’t), up the gravel ramp and settled him into one of the trailer stalls. Naturally he was unconcerned with the loading business and was only interested in the hay-net already tied up inside, so much so he nearly dragged her into the corner where it was hanging. If Tiger could have spoken up and told us what he wanted as his next career, I’m sure it would have been “professional hay-eater.”

  If that was a viable career path, I’m sure he would have been top-notch.

  As it was, I thought, checking the door latches and trailer hitch with a thoroughness that bordered on paranoia, it was hard to say what he was going to be good at. His temper had become legendary around the barn over the past year—he wasn’t mean, but he was too clever by half. He had “a sense of humor,” as horse-people will say when they like a naughty horse that they probably shouldn’t. He took peoples’ hats without their knowledge and buried them under dirty straw bedding; he threw saddle towels under the hooves of horses walking the shed-row to initiate explosive spooks that he could settle back and watch with clear amusement; he had progressed from gently nibbling his handler’s neck and shoulders during a curry-comb session to tearing shirts and drawing blood with what was less a love-nip and more a coltish provocation. And then, of course, there was his behavior under saddle—the rearing and spinning, the roguish baiting of lead-ponies, the occasional dropped shoulder and spin maneuver that had gotten me off more than once.

  “He’s basically turned into a big bully,” I reflected.

  Kerri pulled on her seat belt. “Who? Tiger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s an asshole,” she agreed amiably. “But I like him for some reason.”

  “He’s smart. Every time he does something, you’re reminded of how smart he is. It’s different than when a horse does nasty things out of spite. He’s not malicious, he’s just…” I turned on the truck, trying to think of what it could be. What was Tiger trying to tell us, when he was being a big pain-in-the-ass teenager?

  “He’s bored,” Kerri suggested.

  “You think?”

  “He’s been running in circles for a really long time.”

  “That’s true.” I put the truck in gear and the diesel engine rumbled reassuringly. I did love the sound of a diesel truck. It was the redneck in me. Every horsewoman’s got a little, no matter how urban or sophisticated she might have started out. We started to creep along the bumpy road towards the frontside.

  In the trailer behind, Tiger kicked the walls with a rhythmic bang-bang-bang. I knew from experience that he wasn’t going to stop until we were out on Race Track Road. I suspected he only kicked to show off to the other horses that he was leaving for the countryside and his very own paddock while they were stuck in their stalls, with only their dwindling hay-nets and dirty old Jolly Balls to amuse them. “Such an asshole,” I muttered, shaking my head, and Kerri laughed.

  As we approached the clubhouse parking lot, I slowed the truck and peered at the cars that were left over after the day’s card. “Do you see Alexander’s car?”

  Kerri leaned out of the window. “I think that’s it up by the very front,” she said after a moment. “The black Audi?”

  “There are like ten black Audis.”

  “The one that belongs to your husband, if that narrows it down? The one that is parked in your driveway and that you see every day and sometimes also drive places in?”

  “Shut up.” I stopped the truck altogether and craned my neck to see over Kerri’s head. “I guess that could be his. He got here pretty early.”

  Bang-bang-bang! “Goddammit, Tiger.”

  “Why’s he hanging out on the frontside still? That’s not like him.” Alexander was more social than I was, but he still preferred the solitude of home to any sort of crowd, especially after a race-day. Especially after a poor race-day like this one.

  “He thinks we’re staying in town tonight.” I sat back down and touched the gas pedal gently. “He doesn’t even know we’re leaving.” And I turned the truck onto Race Track Road, cutting off a few cars for the hell of it. Time to go home. He’d call when he realized I wasn’t back at the barn, and I’d ignore the call, and he’d be mad at me tonight, and then tomorrow he’d come home and see that there hadn’t been any reason to worry about going home as planned, and everything would blow right over.

  It had to.

  Tampa and Ocala are neighbors, but not near ones. Kerri had dozed off, head against the window, and I was nearly through a Super Mega Giant Gulp full of Diet Coke from the truck stop before we exited the interstate for the last time and drove west, cutting through the dark country night with our retired racehorse in tow. I was tired, although the caffeine was keeping my eyes open and my hands on the wheel, and the thought of putting Tiger in his stall, straightening his wraps, and giving him another few flakes of hay was just about all the work I could face before I crept into the house, took a shower, and finally found my bed. Hell, with Alexander gone for the night, maybe I’d just skip the shower.

  Kerri stirred and woke as we rattled over Marion County’s less-than-pristine roads. “We almost home?”

  “Five minutes. You going home tonight? You can crash in the guest room if you want.” The guest room was more of a storage room where we threw all the things we did not want to think about, like a broken vacuum cleaner and several dozen cases of an equine dietary supplement some company had sent to us as a promotion, without mentioning that horses on it tested positive after races. (Luckily, someone else made that mistake before we did.) But behind all this there was a bed, anyway, with sheets on it and everything, and that was all anyone needed, right? “I think the sheets got washed since last
time you stayed.” Maybe.

  Kerri stretched and yawned. “Tempting. I’ll let you know after we get Tiger unloaded.”

  We turned onto our own road and the engine rose in pitch as the truck climbed the first in a succession of high hills between us and the farm. Cotswold sat in the most rolling section of Marion County, and the hills were like mountains to me. It seemed like the truck felt the same way, especially with a trailer to haul. I was looking down at the RPMs, wondering if I ought to change gears, when Kerri straightened in her seat and said “What’s all that light?”

  The truck crested the hill and several tall towers, lit with spotlights and capped with satellite dishes, appeared in the distance. We blinked at them for a second, and then the truck was plunging back down the hillside and the towers disappeared. Only the glow of artificial lights remained, its source hidden below the hill ahead, but its gleam unmistakably foreign on a county road lined with expansive horse farms and secluded houses.

  “I don’t know,” I lied. I’ve just been warned that at least one news van is parked at the farm gate, Alexander had growled.

  “Those were spotlights.” I could feel Kerri’s eyes on me in the dark truck. “And satellites. Those were news vans. Mary wasn’t lying. They do want to put you on the eleven o’clock news.”

  The engine coughed as we began to roll up the next hill and I realized I’d let my foot drift up from the pedal. I floored it, and the diesel roared back to life, carrying us back towards another view of the battlefield ahead. As we hit the crest of the hill, just a quarter mile left between us and the farm’s driveway, the spotlights’ white glow was nearly blinding. Beneath the dome of light, there they were: the showy news vans, their satellite dishes reaching towards the stars, ready to broadcast my homecoming to the world. I could picture the reporters slicking back their hair and straightening their jackets every time a truck appeared on the country road, ready for the one that would hold the rogue horse trainer they were waiting for, the one whose horse had been abandoned in the Everglades.