Book Four of the Winning Odds Series: Soon to be a Movie

by MaryAnn Myers

  “I know. My mom called me,” Lucy said. “She said you were on cloud nine.”

  “That’s an understatement. Hey, Cracker Jack! How are ya?” Junior helped himself to salad and spaghetti. Clint passed him the bread. Miguel poured him a glass of tea.

  “I’m doing well,” Cracker Jack said. “I guess I just don’t have much of an appetite.”

  Vicky had noticed. “There’s an old Irish proverb that says, ‘Food is no more important than wisdom.’ Eat.”

  Cracker Jack smiled. “I think I know that proverb. It’s about the fear of God.”

  “Around here, it’s the fear of Vicky,” Clint said. “If I were you, I’d eat.”

  “Or at least try,” they all said together.

  Vicky laughed. “Enough. Okay? All of you, enough. Eat.”

  Chapter Nine

  Randy hadn’t heard from Dawn in well over seven hours and he’d decided to swing by the house to check in on the children and try getting through to Dawn from their home phone. When he saw his dad and George standing in the aisleway of the stallion barn, he stopped to talk to them. “What’s going on?”

  “Well,” his dad said. “We appear to have had a stroke of good luck. The well pump froze up this morning for some reason, but we seem to have it fixed.”

  “How’d that happen?” Randy teased.

  “Your mom found a wiring schematic in some archive somewhere on the internet.”

  “Really?”

  The fact that his mom had become so computer savvy lately surprised just about everyone, but no one more than Randy or his father. It wasn’t but a few years ago Liz that was still trying to master the VCR. Then one day she did her first Google search by typing in a simple question. “Who sang Bye Bye Miss American Pie?” She’d been trying to recall the singer’s name for hours and kept singing the same verse over and over again hoping it would spark her memory. “Drove my Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry.”

  “Frankly I don’t care about that Chevy and I could care less about the levy,” Señor told her. “I’ve heard enough of that song to last a lifetime.”

  “Google it, Grandma.” DR showed her how and that was that. She was hooked. All the answers to everything she ever wanted to know were right at her fingertips. She even had a laptop of her own now and all because of her curiosity about Don McLean and that Chevy levy.

  “See,” Señor said. “She zoomed it and printed it somehow with this thing called landscaping so it would all come out on one page. That woman amazes me.”

  “It’s a format, Dad. Meaning horizontal. Wide.”

  “Yep,” Señor said. “It’s wide.”

  George nodded in agreement. “All on one page.”

  Randy smiled, marveling at the two of them. They were two peas in a time-warp pod. “I’m going to run up to the house and see the kids.”

  “They’re all over at T-Bone’s with Carol. They’re playing checkers with Cracker Jack and Steven.”

  “I think Steven’s teaching them how to cheat,” George said.

  Randy laughed. “All right. I’ll stop over there. Where’s Mom?”

  “She’s at the Garden Center. She’s worked up a flower design on the computer for the front of the new hospital. They’re picking out shrubs.”

  “All three of them,” George said. “Your mom, Glenda, and Susie.”

  “It’s kinda early for that, don’t you think?” Randy said. “It’s going to be months and months before the building’s ready for plants.”

  “Yes,” George replied. “But there’s a big sale.”

  “Oh.”

  Señor nodded. “A really big one. They took the truck.”

  ~ * ~

  Randy backtracked to T-Bone’s Place and found just about everyone out on the back porch playing checkers. The children, seated at a table with Cracker Jack, rushed down to greet him then hurried back to their chairs. “I am a King!” D.R. said.

  Randy laughed.

  “I’m a Queen,” Maria said.

  “Me too,” Maeve added. “See!”

  “Care to join us?” Cracker Jack asked.

  Randy hesitated, and just then, his cellphone rang.

  “Is it Mommy?” Maeve asked.

  “No. It’s Mark.” Randy turned to take the call. “What’s up?”

  “Code Blue in ER,” Mark said.

  Randy chuckled. Mark had such a sick sense of humor.

  “If you can give me a hand I’d appreciate it.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Shifting Gears.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Randy muttered. “I’ll be right there.” He gave the children a hug and had just started down the steps when for some reason he looked back. Maeve had tears in her eyes.

  “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “I miss Mommy!”

  Randy smiled and walked back and gave her a kiss. “I miss Mommy too. She’ll be home in a couple of days, don’t you worry. Right now I have to go check on a sick horse.”

  D.R. patted his arm. “It’ll be okay, Daddy. You’ll make him better.”

  “Thank you, son. I’ll try.”

  Maeve wiped her eyes, her little bottom lip quivering. “I want you to stay.”

  “I can’t, honey. I’ll be home in a little while.”

  “No you won’t.” She sniffled. “You won’t come home till we’re asleep.”

  “Stop saying that,” D.R. said. “You’re making Daddy feel bad.”

  Randy looked to Carol for help and was stunned at the sad expression on her face. On everyone’s faces. “I promise. I’ll be home for dinner. Okay? I was home for dinner last night, wasn’t I?”

  More sniffling. “Yes.”

  “Okay. All right then. I’ll see you all later.” Randy turned to leave, glanced back one more time, and in the truck just sat there for a moment. “What kind of father am I?” He didn’t have long to ponder that question. No sooner said than his phone rang again.

  “Hurry,” Mark said.

  “I’m on my way.”

  ~ * ~

  Linda stood behind the Racing Secretary counter contemplating the evening ahead and why she had agreed to go on a date with a relatively perfect stranger, and an accountant at that. He’s kinda cute, but that’s no reason. Not entirely. What was I thinking?

  What should I wear? Who am I kidding? All I have is jeans. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Maybe I should go to the Mall. Oh yeah, show up in something brand new. That’ll scream ain’t been on a date in over four and half years.

  Tom walked into the room headed for Wendy’s office. As he passed by, Linda hesitated and then blurted out, “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  “Well that’s a loaded question. What the hell?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Is this about your date?”

  “Yes. What else? You think your opinion of me would matter otherwise. Give me a break!”

  “In that case, let me go check with Wendy. She’ll know the correct answer. I don’t like playing these games.”

  Linda laughed. “Never mind.”

  “No. Wait. You asked. I’ll give you an answer. I’ll just go find out and be right back.”

  “Oh Jesus!”

  When Tom entered Wendy’s office and asked, Wendy smiled and shook her head. “She’s obsessing.”

  “So what do I tell her?”

  “Tell her she’s very pretty and I said so too.”

  Tom walked back down the hall and relayed the information. Simon Fitzgerald, one of the Racing Stewards, was pouring himself a cup of coffee and looked up. No one had been in the office with Linda ten seconds ago; otherwise she probably wouldn’t even have asked the question.

  “No way am I going to call you Pretty Woman,” Fitzgerald said. “I know how you feel about that flick.”

  Linda rolled her eyes. “Don’t even go there.” She hated that movie, thought it was degrading to women, thought it depicted them in the worst possible light: waiting for a knight in shining armor t
o save them from a life of sin, rescue them from…. “Thank you,” she said, with a sudden realization. “Both of you.”

  “For what?”

  “For making me feel pretty in the best possible way. Thank you. I don’t need a man in my life. I may want one someday. Maybe now, who knows. But I don’t need one. And I certainly don’t need one to rescue me or make me feel good about myself. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Fitzgerald said.

  “Anything to help,” Tom added, grinning. “Glad we could take care of this for you.”

  Linda laughed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to head on back over to the future. Moving right along.”

  ~ * ~

  Dusty hobbled down Julio Rodriguez’s shedrow and came to a painful halt in front of Tiz Gee Wiz’s stall. The horse looked equally impaired. “So what happened?”

  Julio shrugged, standing outside the stall. “Damn if I know. He train good this morning. Doc Burns say a hairline fracture. He may come back. He may be done. No one know.”

  The horse was a pretty chestnut with a white blaze and three, maybe four white socks. It was hard to tell the color of his right front leg since it was in a cast from just above the coronet band to the knee. Dusty glanced under the horse’s belly. It was a gelding. He stroked the horse’s neck. “What’s the owner’s position?”

  Tiz Gee Wiz’s groom Franklin was sitting on a bench just the other side of the horse’s stall. “He’s a cheap fuck.”

  Dusty looked at him.

  “I hate that man.”

  “I take it he doesn’t want to give him time off,” Dusty said.

  Julio shook his head. “He say no more money.”

  “He claims he knows someone who’ll take him and lay him up.” Franklin spit in the dirt. “Yeah, right.”

  Dusty sighed. For the most part, with rules being as stringent as they are at Nottingham Downs, that old type of thinking where some owners would try to sell a sore horse to the “highest bidder” also known as “killer buyers” was fortunately a thing of the past. “Have him get me the information and we’ll check it out.”

  Julio nodded.

  “Don’t worry.” Dusty patted Franklin on the shoulder. “We’ll make sure everything checks out. He’s not going anywhere. That’s what I’m here for.”

  Franklin nodded. “Thank you.”

  Dusty took a notepad out of his shirt pocket and wrote down the horse’s name. “He’ll be documented and flagged in his owner’s file, not to mention both stable gates.” He read a statement from a printed index card tucked in the notepad. “As with any horse that enters Nottingham Downs, this horse is under state jurisdiction and any violation is cause for immediate banning of owner and trainer from the grounds for life, no exceptions, no appeals.”

  “I understand,” Julio said. “I know.”

  “Good.” Dusty stroked the horse’s neck again, talking softly to him. “You’ll have every opportunity to get well. That’s our promise.” With that, he hobbled down the shedrow.

  Julio called after him. “Gracias, Dusty. Muchas gracias.”

  Chapter Ten

  George marveled as Glenda, Liz, and Susie came tooling up the driveway. “A few plants?” The truck bed was fully loaded, plus Liz and Susie were each balancing huge shrubs on their laps in the cab, their faces barely visible through the foliage.

  “Who said it couldn’t be done!” When Susie opened the door and handed George a five-gallon azalea, he glanced under the headboard. There were two additional azaleas wedged between her feet. “How’s that for a one-tank trip.”

  Liz gave Susie a push. “Get out. I can’t move. My circulation’s cut off.”

  Señor had gone for a haircut and arrived home shortly thereafter. By then, the women had scattered in three different directions to prepare dinner and George was left watering and fertilizing the plants - all forty two of them.

  Señor read the label on the fertilizer. “It says here it’s all organic. So’s horse shit.”

  “I know.” George chuckled. “That’s what I said. But apparently some of the plants they chose are so delicate, they don’t like horse shit. You hear that, Beau?”

  At the sound of his name, Beau raised his head and nickered from the nearby pasture where he and Hurry Sandy were grazing lazily and enjoying the sun on their backs.

  “I used to be a horse trainer you know.”

  Beau put his head back down and continued grazing.

  “Yep! Look at me now.”

  Every year about this time between foaling, breeding, and weaning season, George got bored with having so little to do, and his moodiness was rubbing off on Señor. “Yeah, well I used to be a farmer. Now I’m going to a hair salon for a haircut. There isn’t a barber within ten miles of here. What’s that all about?”

  “I don’t know. Glenda cuts my hair. I’m not going to no beauty salon.”

  “Well, listen to you. Are you saying I…?” Both turned abruptly when they heard a loud clang-clanging noise off in the distance and getting louder. “Hot damn!”

  “They’re here!”

  A convoy of earth-moving equipment turned the corner and started lining up down the side of the road. .

  “All right! Let’s get this done.” Señor scooped out the fertilizer and started sprinkling it on the rest of the plants. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Liz looked out the kitchen window a few minutes later and saw George driving the tractor full speed with Señor balancing on the crossbar, the two of them hell bent for the building site. “Don’t you be getting in the way,” she yelled out the window. “You’ll end up hurt.”

  Señor laughed. “Yeah, right! Like we’re going to do that! Woman!”

  Liz lowered her head and sighed.

  ~ * ~

  With the carefully-worded “Alert” in his hand, Richard climbed the stairs to the announcer’s booth and took a seat next to Bud Gibson While he waited for Bud to announce the results of the eighth race, he glanced over it one more time. He and Wendy had just spent the last forty-five minutes composing it, revising it and revising it, and yet….

  Bud turned off the microphone and looked at him. “What’s up?”

  Richard handed him the piece of paper. “I need you to announce this for me.”

  “You want me to read it just the way it is?” Bud asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Bud nodded. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Nottingham Downs & Casino is happy to report that the earthquake we experienced several days ago did only nominal structural-damage. The repairs scheduled should not inconvenience our loyal fans and patrons in any significant way. Thank you.”

  “Okay.” Richard said. “That sounded good.”

  Bud looked at him. “Should I be announcing the races out in front of the grandstand just to be safe? Come on, I’m higher up than anyone else here.”

  Richard chuckled. “No, you’re fine. We’re all fine. It’s all just part of the process. It’s a disclaimer.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Bud shook his head. “It sure sounded like a loaded proclamation to me.”

  Richard laughed. “I’m on the bottom floor. If anyone should be worried, it’s me! I got your back. You come falling down, I’ll catch you.”

  Bud smiled. “Well, that’s sure a load off my mind. Carry on.”

  On the way down the stairs to the elevator on the third floor, Richard glanced at his watch. By now Wendy would have posted the disclaimer on the website. He dialed her cellphone. “Any comments?”

  “Just the regulars.” They had a small group of anti-Thoroughbred racing, anti-gambling regulars that always responded immediately with a negative response or tirade following any news, good or bad. “Just them. No one else yet.”

  “Good. My flight leaves at seven. I’ll check in with you in the morning unless I hear from you otherwise.”

  “Oh, by the way. You got another message from Janet.”

  “Who?”

  “Janet. The
mystery woman.”

  “Ah, Jesus.” Richard sighed. He’d been under enough pressure the past two weeks preparing for the Congressional hearing in Washington. The last thing he needed was a mystery woman in his life. “What did she say?”

  “Same thing. Don’t be late.”

  “Shred it and don’t even tell me if I get any more.”

  “Got it. Done.”

  ~ * ~

  Randy stood next to Mark in the barn aisleway at Shifting Gears assessing a horse’s sad situation. Rescued from a barn fire, the Irish Warmblood was heavily sedated and down in his stall.

  Karen and Veronica currently had five horses in intensive care. There was a young Standardbred stallion that had gotten caught up in barbwire. He was healing nicely and happy to be alive and loved. Two of the others were emaciated Thoroughbred geldings seized from their former owner under court order. Both had been at Shifting Gears a little over two months now and seemed to have “turned the corner.” There was also an underweight grade mare in foal that had been saved from slaughter. And the Warmblood.

  Aside from an area on his shoulder that had suffered third degree burns, his physical wounds were largely superficial. He’d undergone immediate veterinary treatment following the fire and the burn wounds were responding to treatment. His emotional state was the utmost concern at the moment, the most critical. Without sedation, he was frantic - running the stall, running the paddock fence, running the pasture. He was dangerous to himself and everyone around him.

  His owners had given up on him, literally. An upper-level dressage horse, he was useless to them the way he was now. The young woman who’d been showing him had already moved on to another mount. It had been close to two weeks and he wasn’t getting any better. He was getting worse.

  Randy got down on one knee next to the horse and Mark picked the horse’s head up so he could examine the horse’s eyes. “See what I mean?”

  Randy nodded.

  “What?” Veronica asked.

  “His eyes are responsive. His body is sedated, but it’s like, pardon the pun, it’s like they’re on fire.”

  When the horse flinched, Karen whispered to him to not say the word fire again.

  Randy smiled and scratched the horse behind the ear. “Where is Hillary anyway?” Hillary was the volunteer horse psychic. Usually, she’d be here when a new horse arrived.