“Satin!” she said, her voice smooth and well-modulated. “So glad you came.” She gave Satin a brief hug and turned to Crockett. “And, of course,” she went on, “you are Officer Crockett.”
Crockett smiled and took the offered hand. “Thank you for inviting us over,” he replied. “And Crockett will do just fine. You, I assume, are Charlene.”
“I am. I’ve heard a lot about you, Crockett.”
“I can’t seem to get Satin to sign a non-disclosure agreement.”
“Not only her,” Charlene said. “Jack spoke highly of you after your visit, and it seems your name and reputation are well considered by several people I’ve come to know.”
Crockett smiled. “It’s a thin line between noteworthy and unworthy,” he said.
“And your wife is a real find. I consider Satin to be a wonderful asset to my little venture. I hope she and I are becoming friends.”
“That would be good,” Crockett said, slipping his arm around Satin’s waist. “Her friendship is the best thing in my life.”
Charlene studied him for a moment. “You’re absolutely serious, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely,” Crockett replied.
The woman smiled at Satin. “You are very fortunate.”
“I think so. It works both ways.”
“It should,” Charlene said, then seemed to shift her thoughts. “I must run away and be a hostess. I hear you like horses, Crockett.”
“More than some of them like me.”
Charlene laughed. “Perhaps, before the afternoon is over, you and Satin might care to ride out to the barn and see some of mine.”
“I look forward to it.”
“Good. I must be off. Duty calls.”
They watched her walk away and Satin spoke up. “She’s in official mode.”
“You mean she’s not like that all the time?” Crockett said.
“God no! She’s a pistol. Loose and funny. But now she’s doing what she’s expected to do. Holding up her end of the deal. Gracious, charming, and playing the role.”
“Ah,” Crockett replied. “She’s not like this at work?”
“I’m sure she will be with the customers, and she is with the staff a little bit. But with me, she’s a lot different. I walked in her office the other day, and she looked up at me and said ‘Girlfriend! What the fuck?’”
Crockett laughed. “I could live with that a lot better than the hostess mode.”
Satin scanned the crowd as a couple of more guests arrived. “We are the object of some curiosity,” she said. “Let’s walk around so I can introduce you to some of the people who’ll work at Kid Country. They all know I’m married to the illustrious Crockett. I’m sure most of them will be disappointed after they actually meet you.”
“I should have brought my cane,” Crockett said.
Over the next few minutes Crockett was introduced to a plethora of people whose names he’d never be able to recall. While Satin was engaged in conversation with two young women, he made a break for it and walked over to the grill. Jack Bryant, spatula in hand, grinned at him.
“Crockett,” he said.
“Save me,” Crockett replied, returning his grin.
“Grab that big fork and turn the bratwurst,” Jack said. “Try to look busy. God, I hate these things.”
Crockett chuckled. “Ever the perfect host, I see.”
“Glad you could make it,” Bryant went on. “I could use some adult company. Charlene won’t land in one spot for more than a minute and most of this bunch are young enough to be my kids. I heard the word awesome float through the air eleven times in less than thirty seconds a while ago. Want a drink?”
“Soft only,” Crockett said. “I have to work today.”
“After you finish with the brats, help yourself. And if you wouldn’t mind, grab me a scotch on ice. If I leave these burgers right now, it could result in a social disaster.”
“My pleasure,” Crockett said, rolling the brats over. He returned with the drinks a couple of minutes later and handed Jack the scotch.
“Thanks,” Bryant said. “Now, duck and cover.” He raised his voice and shouted above the din. “Come and get it!”
An avalanche of young humanity descended on them, and Jack and Crockett were kept busy for the next few moments, shoveling burgers and brats on offered plates as the herd clamored for food. When the assault slackened, Bryant began putting the few things left on the warming grill.
“If you’d be kind enough to grab us some plates, whatever you need, and a brat bun and hamburger bun for me, I will attend to other things.”
“Gotcha,” Crockett said, and headed for a serving table. When he returned, Jack had piled bar-b-que beans, potato salad, deviled eggs, and slaw on two additional plates and was waiting to serve brats and burgers. After a short visit to the condiment section of the buffet, the men repaired to a small table in the shade of an old oak on the far side of the pool and out of the crush.
“Great teamwork,” Bryant said.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Crockett replied, and tore into a brat.
Fifteen minutes later, as Crockett was finishing some outstandingly good food, Bryant returned to the grill and loaded it to around fifty percent capacity to satisfy the second-helping crowd. When Crockett went to dump his trash, he noticed a whumping sound in the distance. Satin appeared out of the covey and sidled up to him.
“You eat?” she asked.
“Jack and I lunched together. Have you ever met him?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll introduce you after while. He’s busy on the grill right now, and I hear the Baby Banana in the distance. Stitch is on the way.”
“Baby Banana?” Satin asked.
Crockett smiled. “Yep. Blackbird was the first helo. This one, as you know, is smaller and yellow. That’s what he called it when he flew in for the drug bust. We can expect a mass exodus to watch him land, followed by a fresh assault on the goodies. I’m going to help Jack. Do you feel abandoned?”
“You can make it up to me later.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“That’s been good enough so far,” Satin said, and joined the throng heading toward the front of the house and the arrival of the helicopter.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Stitch’s entrance was dramatic. He appeared out of the west around a thousand feet above the festivities, then began to spiral downward at an alarming rate before disappearing out of sight at the front of the house. The crowd bolted to see where he went. Jack laughed.
“Where’d everybody go?” he asked.
“They eat your food and then just disappear,” Crockett said. “Ungrateful wretches.”
“Charlene picked up that guy’s fuel tab so he could take anybody who wants to go for a short ride,” Jack went on. “These kids will love that.”
“Nice of you to do that for them,” Crockett said.
Bryant shook his head. “Charlene did that for them. I did it for her.”
“How long you two been married?”
“Nine or ten years. You?”
“Still newlyweds. Just over a year.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I was married for a little while about a thousand years ago, stayed single for a long time. Then, Satin came along.”
“Char likes your wife a lot. Most women bore her. Hell, most people bore her. Your wife must be a pretty together lady.”
Crockett smiled. “What you see is what you get,” he said.
“I think that’s why my wife works with the animal organizations and keeps horses like she does. More honesty and less bullshit from her four-legged friends.”
“How’d you two meet?”
“I had a couple of businesses that didn’t have the best public image. Funded an animal shelter for dogs for some positive publicity. She was with one of the major animal welfare groups and heard about it. Came out to look things over.”
“And yet,” Crockett s
aid, “I haven’t seen any dogs around your place here.”
“Char’s got two tiny ones of some kind that stay inside. Nervous little things. A crowd like this would scare the crap out of them.”
“I must admit that I’m surprised,” Crockett went on. “With this house and acreage, I would have assumed you’d have dogs for security.”
Jack smiled. “I have security,” he said.
“I met two of them. Preston and the guy with the shaved head. I’ve noticed Preston around the outskirts of things a couple of times this afternoon. Haven’t seen the other fella.”
“Clark,” Bryant said. “You may not see him, but I can guarantee that he has seen you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He’s ex-military. He has skills.”
“He needs to be more mindful of sunlight reflecting on binoculars,” Crockett replied.
Bryant chuckled. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“I miss a lot,” Crockett said. “Just not as much as some people.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the two wives. Charlene was now dressed in a man-tailored shirt, two hundred dollar blue jeans, and western boots. She smiled at her husband. She introduced Satin and announced she was going to take Crockett and Satin up to see the horses.
“Go ahead,” Jack said. “The helicopter has the crowd’s attention. I think I’ll be safe from the thundering herd for a while.”
The three of them took a John Deere Gator up the hill behind the house to an impeccable barn. The indoor arena was about a hundred by a hundred fifty feet and surrounded by a total of sixteen large box stalls, complete with cork floors and automatic watering systems. There was a feed room, hay storage, a wash rack, a tack room, and an office. Two Latinos hustled around caring for the horses and keeping the stalls clean and picked up. There were seven horses in residence, saddlebreds and thoroughbred-saddlebred crosses. Tall, leggy, aristocratic equines in which Crockett had little interest, but the scent and feeling of the place was very pleasing. Charlene walked them partway down the arena.
“Four of the big horses are on pasture right now,” she said, “and our trainer has two with him for a hunter-jumper meet in California.”
“You ride these monsters?” Satin asked.
Charlene laughed. “Not me,” she said, walking toward a stall. “I leave that to the pros. When I ride, I ride Pokey.”
Crockett and Satin looked in the stall to see a dun colored quarterhorse of only about fourteen and a half hands. He had a delicate ear set, a good jaw line, typey hindquarters, a short back, and stepped forward out of curiosity to stick his nose out to Crockett over the bottom half of the stall’s Dutch door.
Automatically, Crockett took a half a step to one side to stay in an easy horse sightline and let the little gelding sniff him from six inches. After Pokey snorted and bobbed his head, Crockett scratched the horse’s jaw for a moment, then blew his breath gently across the animal’s muzzle.
“Nice to meet you, too, Pokey,” he said.
Charlene’s smile was huge. “You know horses,” she said.
“A little,” Crockett replied, looking the horse over. “I see some old scars on his front legs,” he went on.
Charlene nodded. “He’s a rescue,” she said. “He’s coming seven now, but when he was a colt, he was hard broken. They whipped him. When I got Pokey, he wouldn’t let anybody come near him. As it is, he’s easy until he’s saddled. Gets real nervous when anybody’s on his back. Old memories, I guess.”
“What’s your trainer say?”
“Doesn’t care. He’s a gaited horse guy. Couldn’t care less about Pokey.” She studied Crockett for a moment. “What do you say?” she asked.
“Old memories can sure be an influence,” he replied. “So can the predator reflex.”
“What’s that?”
“Hardwired into horses,” Crockett went on. “They’re herbivores. Prey animals. Something on their back is an attack. You need to get their trust before you get on ‘em. Obviously, whoever broke this horse didn’t take the time to do that. They’re also very social. A horse is a herd animal. How does he get along with the other horses?”
“Most of them push him around.”
“That’s a shame. He’s a sweet little guy.”
Charlene studied him again. “What would you do?”
“Me?”
“No, the other six Crockett’s in the building.”
Crockett grinned. “I’m not a horse trainer.”
“I’ve got a horse trainer,” Charlene replied. “What I need is advice from a horse person. What would you do with him?”
“Start from scratch,” Crockett said. “First, I’d get him a friend. A young female Boer goat would be good. They’re strong and nice tempered. Tear down a wall and give him and the goat a double stall together. Put some bedding in it. Peanut hulls are good and easy to clean. Add a big beach ball or something like that and hang a couple of gallon jugs with an inch or two of sand in the bottom for weight from the rafters so he can reach ‘em and knock ‘em around with his nose. That and the goat will give ol’ Pokey, here, companionship and something to play with. Nobody likes solitary confinement.”
Charlene laughed. “That makes a lot of sense,” she said. “My trainer never said a word about that kind of thing.”
“That’s because he’s concerned with the animal’s performance. I’m concerned about Pokey’s happiness.”
“Shit. It’s that simple?”
“It’s simplistic, but not simple. You’ll have to retrain him. Work him from the ground, both free and with lines. Use a spinning rope to motivate him, not a whip. Take your time. Get his confidence. In two or three weeks, he’ll be following you around like a puppy. Then, and only then, introduce him to a blanket on his back, then a saddle pad, then a saddle, a lightweight western stock saddle. Use a bozal or something. It’s not good to put steel in a timid horse’s mouth, or any horse’s mouth, by my way of thinking. There are any number of wonderful horse training programs out there, books and DVD’s. Check the internet. There’s a guy from Australia who’s a genius at it. You do what one of the proven systems says to do, and ol’ Pokey here will not only be your horse, he’ll be your partner.”
“Would you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Train him, I mean us.”
Crockett laughed. “Charlene, my dear, I have a bad back and only one leg. My horsey days are over. Besides, you don’t need me. You just need direction. Check the internet.”
“Thank you,” Charlene said. “What you’ve said, and the fact that you’ve said, it means a lot to me.”
“It means a lot to Pokey, too,” Crockett replied, rubbing the horse on the forehead. “This is fun, but I’m afraid I have to break it off. I’ve gotta go be a cop pretty soon.”
They walked the rest of the way down the arena and out the rear of the structure. About half a mile away and down the sloping terrain from there they stood, Crockett glimpsed the corner of a roofline through the trees.
“Another barn?” he asked.
“Used to be for hay storage years ago when this was a farm,” Charlene said. “Broken down now. There’s not even a path to get to it, anymore. All overgrown with thistles and thorny stuff. There are several more old outbuildings and barns on the property, but I think they’re all unusable for anything. This is a big place. That subdivision, something-Brook Estates?”
“Stonebrook,” Crockett said.
“That’s it. Stonebrook Estates used to be part of this land. So did the golf course.”
As they walked toward the front of the barn, Satin, who’d been unusually quiet, spoke up.
“You have a real opportunity here,” she said.
“I do?”
“Sure. It would take significant time and money but, instead of just letting this acreage go to waste, you could get a small dozer in here and cut riding trails all through this place. Miles of them. Get rid of these fancy horses and ge
t some gentle animals that kids could ride. Give lessons. Add a program for disadvantaged children to get them out of Kansas City and into the country on horseback. Maybe even disabled or developmentally challenged kids for equine therapy. You have a great idea for Kid Country. Why not expand the concept? You’d have volunteers coming out of the woodwork. My God, woman, you could make a real difference in a lot of lives!”
Charlene stood as if stunned for a moment, then turned to Satin. “Girlfriend,” she said, “you are a fucking genius! If I can get Jack to go along and actually do it, would you help?”
“I guess.”
“I mean, it’s your idea! If it works out, I’ll get you out of Kid Country and just put you in charge of the program.”
“In charge?”
“You’ll hire who and what we need and put the thing together. I’ll get in the way and bitch!”
Satin grinned. “Sorta like the way things are now, huh?” she said.
“Exactly! Only even worse for you.”
“Deal,” Satin said.
Crockett drove the Gator back to the house as the two women prattled on about Satin’s big idea. Charlene walked them out to the truck and embraced her.
Six Cut Kill Page 11