Puss ’n Cahoots

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Scent’s fading.” Pewter curled her upper lip toward her nose, which helped gather what odor there was.

  “The cedar shavings are overpowering.” Tucker sat on her haunches. “I should have thought of that!”

  “The cedar shavings are always overpowering. What’s the big deal?” Pewter twitched her tail.

  “The big deal,” Tucker was irritated, “is that we were minutes behind the deed. The dye smell was still potent.” Tucker stated what was obvious to her.

  “You’re right. But who dyed Queen Esther, who walked her out the back of Barn Five to hand her off to Ward? We know he took the horse.” Mrs. Murphy swept her whiskers forward.

  “Did he know he was taking stolen goods?” Pewter wondered.

  “I expect he did, but let’s go to Charly’s barn first,” Tucker suggested, and before the last syllable left her mouth, the cats shot out of the stall, bits of cedar shavings hitting the corgi in the face. “Hey!” Tucker called after them as she roared out of the stall, soon catching up.

  The three animals scooted around trainers, riders, and grooms between barns, only slowing down if the humans were mounted or leading a horse. At only ten-fifteen, August’s sultry reputation was well earned.

  By the time they reached Barn Three by the practice arena, Tucker’s pink tongue hung out. She stuck her head in a water bucket for dogs that was tucked in the corner of the barn, as there’s no such thing as a horseman without a dog. The cats, on their hind legs, also drank.

  “Hotter here than in Virginia.” Pewter panted.

  “It is. At home we’re by the mountains, and the ocean’s not that far away,” Tucker thoughtfully replied. “There’s usually a cool breeze.”

  “From our farm it’s one hundred forty miles—well, first you run into the Chesapeake Bay if you draw a straight line, but still, almost the same, to big water,” Mrs. Murphy stated. She thought of the Atlantic Ocean as big water.

  “How do you know that?” Pewter doubted the tiger.

  “Because I read the map with Mom. If you draw a straight line from Crozet east, you wind up just below Point Lookout, where the Potomac River pours into the Chesapeake Bay. If you crossed the water you’d wind up at Assateague Island, and that’s the Atlantic Ocean. Okay, so it’s more than one hundred forty miles to the Atlantic, but it’s not all that far to where the river meets the bay. Even though we’re about the same latitude as here, our weather’s different. Anyway, that’s what Mom says, and she cares about the weather.”

  “Will you two shut up? Let’s get to work,” Tucker commanded.

  Neither cat wished to take orders from a dog, but Tucker was right, so they fanned out, alert to any possibility.

  Mrs. Murphy, claws like tiny daggers, climbed up the side of a stall to walk along the joists overhead.

  Coming in the opposite direction, the large ginger cat in charge of the barn stopped, thrashed his tail vigorously, eyes wide. “What are you doing in my barn!”

  Below, Pewter heard the challenge just as the rest of the barn-cat crew emerged from the hospitality room.

  Tucker, large enough to scare them, bared her fangs so the cats scattered to encircle Pewter. Tucker was on to that.

  Overhead, Mrs. Murphy loudly answered the ginger cat. “We’re looking for clues about the stolen horse. We figure Charly had the most incentive.”

  “Wasn’t in my barn.” The ginger allowed his fur to settle down, but the tip of his tail swayed.

  “No, she wasn’t, but we saw her being loaded onto Ward’s van. Do you work for Charly?”

  “No. I work for the fairgrounds,” the fellow replied.

  Mrs. Murphy checked where a stall corner was, so she could back down just in case he decided to fight. Looked like he was calming down, so she relaxed a bit.

  “Why do you care about the horse?”

  “Kalarama. I’m,” she told a white lie, “a Kalarama cat. If anything unusual happens, please tell me. I’m in Barn Five. Doesn’t have to be about a horse. Could be anything, you know, sort of strange.”

  Tucker walked beside Pewter, the other barn cats eyeing them with suspicion from a distance. The corgi stuck her head in a wastebasket outside a stall. Nothing.

  She repeated this, putting her head in a red grooming bucket.

  “Tucker, you’re just looking for chicken, trying to pretend you’re really looking for clues.” Pewter taunted the dog.

  “In the first bucket I smelled yerba maté tea, health-food-bar wrappers, orange peels, and needles that had contained Banamine.” She named a horse tranquilizer. “In this grooming bucket I smell cocaine in the little green tin marked Bag Balm.”

  That shut up Pewter, who became more alert. She even climbed up the stall sides to peer in, then she backed down.

  The last garbage bucket did have chicken bones, but Tucker resisted.

  “Nothing here,” Tucker called up to Mrs. Murphy.

  “Try the hospitality room,” Mrs. Murphy called down. “The humans don’t use it until showtime.”

  Minutes later, Tucker and Pewter emerged from the resplendent navy and red room.

  “Big fat zero,” Pewter called up.

  “Don’t talk about yourself that way.” Tucker’s voice filled with mock concern.

  “Bubble butt. Tailless wonder,” Pewter shot back, but she was grateful Tucker escorted her, keeping the other cats at bay.

  “Thanks for letting us visit your barn. I’m Mrs. Murphy, by the way.” The tiger cat watched her two friends below.

  “Spike.” He smiled, revealing that his left front fang had been knocked out.

  Mrs. Murphy hastily backed down a stall corner to drop in front of the cat and dog. “Come on.”

  “We aren’t going through every barn, are we?” Pewter, alarmed, raised her voice. “It’s already nasty hot.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Murphy ignored her, and they marched over to Ward’s barn. His green and white hospitality suite was more modest.

  They repeated the process of checking each grooming tray, each wastebasket or open trunk.

  Again nothing.

  They walked up to Barn One, where Booty Pollard rented one half of the barn. His colors, orange and white, were uncommon in the horse world, but he’d graduated from the University of Texas and proudly used the Longhorn colors. Miss Nasty’s empty cage, filled with toys, sported a limp orange pennant with a white “T.” The cage sat outside the entrance to the suite, as it needed a good airing out. Miss Nasty was not a good housekeeper, nor was her namesake.

  Mrs. Murphy prowled above the horses while Pewter and Tucker worked below.

  Although hot, Pewter kept at her task. She was interested since this involved another animal. Usually she and her friends accompanied Harry as she tried to help another human. Pewter loved horses, so she continued to brave the heat. She sauntered into the hospitality tent, where blue ribbons hung from massive longhorns at the top of the canopy. The whole top of the hospitality room was filled with blue ribbons. On the second row, below photos of horses and clients, red ribbons were neatly displayed on clear fish wire strung below the photos. Immediately below that were the yellow ribbons for third place.

  Some trainers grouped the ribbons by horse, but Booty grouped by position, another manifestation of his eye for design and color.

  Pewter flipped up a tack-trunk hook, but she couldn’t lift the lid. She moved to a small bridle box next to the massive trunk, and that was easy to open.

  “Bingo.” She dashed outside. “Found it.”

  Mrs. Murphy climbed down as Tucker ran into the room. Inside the bridle box were four bottles of hair dye, neatly stacked.

  “It’s the color of Booty’s hair.” Mrs. Murphy wondered why people thought other people couldn’t tell.

  “Four bottles.” Pewter was excited. “Two empty.”

  “You’ve got a point there.” Mrs. Murphy was intrigued. “We’ve got Booty and Charly supposedly hating each other but best friends at two in the morning. Ward loads Renata’
s horse. Booty’s got the dye.”

  “We don’t know that was Renata’s horse.” Tucker watched as Pewter closed the bridle box.

  “No, we don’t, but the horse that Ward loaded could have been a double for Queen Esther except for color,” Mrs. Murphy replied. “That horse moved like Queen Esther.”

  “Charly trained Queen Esther. Don’t you think he’d know the horse we saw was her by the way she moved? He wasn’t that far behind Ward.” Mrs. Murphy pricked her ears forward.

  “I’m glad it doesn’t have anything to do with us. Not our horses.” Tucker could imagine Harry’s distress if someone stole one of her beloved horses.

  “It will.” The tiger heard footsteps approaching. “Mother won’t sit still while Joan and Larry are in trouble.”

  “Fair will keep her straight.” Tucker recalled the many times before they remarried that Fair tried to rein in Harry’s curiosity.

  “She’s rubbing off on him more than he’s rubbing off on her. Mark my words,” Pewter observed.

  Tucker sighed, eyes riveted on the doorway to the room, but the person walked by. “Two humans to protect. They can’t run fast, they can’t smell worth a damn, they can’t see very well in the dark, and they always think they know more than they do.”

  “Ignorance is bliss.” Pewter saucily tossed this off as they walked back to Barn Five.

  “Or death.” Mrs. Murphy injected that somber note.

  Impeccably though casually attired in her working riding clothes, Renata DeCarlo answered questions from reporters as she groomed her gray gelding, Shortro. Voodoo stood in the next stall, observing everything. Not that she groomed her horses regularly, but it made good copy. Renata understood good copy. Dreadful as this theft was, she would get something out of it. Shortro initially shied from the minicam, but then he adjusted. He had a good mind.

  Joan organized flight control, since media people jammed Barn Five. She answered questions, too. When the media became too great she walked some down to the practice ring. Others shot the grandstand, panning to the show ring, where the fairgrounds crew watered all the flowers in the raised center section used by officials and judges. The organ, a staple of big Saddlebred shows, was covered. The maintenance activity at noon yielded colorful footage. Like so many middle-class people regardless of background and race, the reporters didn’t “see” laborers, the result was the same: they missed information by not questioning the barn help, which was mostly Mexican.

  Fair, helping another vet who was shorthanded that day in Barn Two, ignored the stream of people traipsing through the aisle, notebooks or minicams in hand. What no one could ignore was that none of these people had a clue about how to behave around horses. The nervousness of grooms and trainers was translated by the media as anxiety over the theft of Queen Esther. It never occurred to them that their presence fed anxiety. Much as a sweating, hard-pressed groom might secretly wish for a horse to kick one of these intrusive twits out of the barn, the ensuing lawsuit would make the happiness short-lived. Now, a little nip on an arm or shoulder probably wouldn’t provoke a lawsuit, and that would please both horse and groom.

  Renata left Shortro. The reporters followed like ducklings behind momma duck.

  “You all need to ask your last questions. The next group is ready to come on in.” Joan, back from the grounds tour for the first group, smiled when she said this. Of course, what she wanted to say was, “Get your sorry selves out of here. You’re troubling my horses and tiring me out.” However, she kept smiling.

  A pretty woman from the ABC affiliate in Louisville stepped outside into the light as Renata stood in the barn doorway, which was quite wide. The actress was framed, a prudent choice by one who lived in front of the camera, and the reporter knew this shot would be picked up all over the country. Her cameraman knew it, too, obviously.

  “Miss DeCarlo, would you like to make a film about a Saddlebred someday, a Saddlebred Seabiscuit?”

  “Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Yes, I’d love to.” Renata beamed into the camera. “Screenwriters, you heard it here first.”

  The reporter, raven-haired, then asked, “Have you been happy with your most recent roles?”

  Renata’s face set for a split second, because her last two films had been high-budget stinkers, then relaxed. “No,” she honestly replied.

  “Bad scripts?” The reporter kept fishing.

  Renata looked down at her paddock boots, specially made for her by Dehner in a peanut-brittle color rarely seen these days. Then she looked up, thoughtfulness on her face. “You can always find a reason why something doesn’t work. You can always point the finger at someone else. The real reason my last two movies haven’t been box-office hits,” she paused for effect, “is I’m getting away from what’s really important.”

  The reporter was sucked right in, giving Renata her forum. “Would you tell us what that is?”

  “I want to make films about real people facing real problems. You’d be surprised at how difficult that is. No one wants to make those kind of films.” She paused again, then complimented the reporter. “That’s why your idea for a film about Saddlebreds is, forgive the expression, on the money.”

  Renata stepped back into the aisle, into the shadows, and Joan stepped into the light. “Thank you all.” She beckoned for the next group to come in, determining that this would be the last. Commotion takes its toll on horses, many of whom would show tonight.

  Joan was a horsewoman: horses first, people second.

  Harry retreated to the last stall Kalarama rented. If Joan needed her, she’d tell her, so she stayed out of the way. Astonished at how Renata had manipulated the media, how polished and poised she’d been in the face of boring questions, Harry realized how shrewd Renata was. She also thanked the good Lord that she wasn’t a public figure.

  Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker tagged along.

  At the south side of Barn Five, Harry started to step outside, when she noticed all the hands of Kalarama in heated discussion with the Mexican grooms of Barn Four. They stood in a clot between the two barns.

  Her Spanish was the high-school variety, but she knew horseman’s Spanish. She listened intently.

  Manuel, arms folded across his chest, shook his head; Jorge, towel thrown over his shoulder, seconded the stable manager.

  Harry couldn’t pick up all of it, but what she did hear was a slender young man from Barn Four repeat that he saw nothing. Then Jorge reminded Manuel that the watches were over by nine in the morning. No one was on watch duty when the horse was stolen.

  Manuel again challenged the others by demanding to know who walked Queen Esther out of the stall. The horse didn’t open the door and walk herself.

  The men’s voices grew higher in pitch; they spoke faster. All she could figure was accusations had been made, but she did hear loud and clear an older, gray-haired man say to Manuel that whoever walked out Queen Esther worked for Kalarama. No other explanation.

  Manuel threw up his hands, stalking off toward the practice arena.

  Harry took a deep breath. She checked her watch. One-thirty, and the night show was five and a half hours away. If people watched the five o’clock news before driving to Shelbyville, they’d see Renata, the empty stall, Joan, Larry, Charly Trackwell, Booty Pollard, Ward Findley, other trainers, owners, and riders, and this place would be pandemonium.

  “Pandemonium,” she whispered, her animals looking up when she spoke. “You all know about Pan.”

  “I don’t.” Pewter wanted to get in the shade.

  “The satyr—half god, half goat. He plays the double pipes.” Mrs. Murphy usually read whatever Harry was reading by draping over her neck or on the pillow behind her.

  As if understanding them, Harry knelt down to pet her friends. “When Pan plays his pipes, all creatures forget their tasks; they play and frolic the way goats play and frolic. Cut a caper. ‘Caper’ means ‘goat.’ Well, anyway, so far so good, but sometimes Pan plays a different tune and all creatures become
frightened, rumors fly, they run around and bump into one another, and no good comes of it. That’s pandemonium.”

  Harry was prescient, but even Harry couldn’t have imagined the events of that Thursday night.

  By six that evening, large cumulus clouds began piling up in the western sky. White though those clouds were, the oppressive heat and the odd stillness of the air hinted at a later thunderstorm.

  The flurry of reporters and camera crews had left for long languid lunches. A few decided to stay for the evening show, since the footage might be exciting and they could string out the story for two days. Fans were filling up the grassy parking lots; junior riders preparing for their first class betrayed a mixture of nervousness, arrogance, and bad makeup.

  Although Springfield was only forty-five minutes away from Shelbyville thanks to improved roads, Joan and Larry kept a room at the Best Western in case they couldn’t get back to the farm in time to change for the evening.

  People dressed up at night, Saturday evening culminating in their finest outfits. Given the heat, women wore linen dresses or even shorts, but color coordination mattered, as did hair, nails, and jewelry. As for the men, some wore jackets and ties, others fought the heat with Ralph Lauren Polo shirts, light pants, loafers without socks. If a man wore jeans in the evening it usually signified he was a groom. The trainers dressed up; it was an indication of success.

  Renata understood this, just like she understood that less is more. Her makeup, so perfect as to be nearly undetectable, especially to the male eye, accentuated her cheekbones, her high coloring. Attention was heaped on her with expressions of sympathy and concern. Despite her hardship, this was not entirely unwelcome.

  A stream of well-wishers, like ants at a picnic, trudged to Barn Five. A few tacky ones asked for autographs, but most were horse people, so asking for an autograph from another horse person would cast doubt on one’s seriousness as a horse person. However, horsemen did bring on their coattails family, friends, and almost friends, all of whom were dying to meet the beautiful movie star. In having to choose whether to try Renata’s patience or land on the bad side of relatives and people one sees every day, most people elected to please their friends.