Puss 'N Cahoots

by Rita Mae Brown

  Ward Findley, who was twenty-nine and had close-cropped, jet-black hair and sparkling blue eyes, quickly came up to the Kalarama box, leaned over, and whispered to Joan, “You’d better get to the barn.” Right behind Ward came Booty Pollard, his pet monkey on his shoulder. “Trouble,” Ward continued. The monkey, Miss Nasty, chattered as she peered at everyone in the box. Miss Nasty loved Booty, but she hated his snake collection, which he kept at home. She, at least, got to travel. Fortunately, the snakes did not. Booty did have peculiar tastes in pets.

  Paul, overhearing, stood up.

  “Daddy, you stay here. People need to see you and Mom.” Joan was already out of the box.

  Fair, an equine vet, followed her. Kalarama had their regular vet, but he didn’t attend the shows. The organizers kept a vet on the premises so there was no need for each competitor or breeder to tie up their own vet for the four evenings of the show.

  Not to be left behind, Harry scooped up both cats, her progress slowed by the two unhappy kitties squirming in her arms.

  “If you’d put me down, I could follow just fine,” Mrs. Murphy complained.

  “She thinks you’ll run off,” Tucker, excited by the tension in the humans, commented.

  “You’re a big, fat help,” Mrs. Murphy growled.

  “I’m a dog. I’m obedient. You’re a cat. You’re not.” Tucker relished the discomfort of her two friends, since they often lorded over her.

  The conversation abruptly ended as they reached Barn Five, where three horses were being led into the barn, Charly Trackwell trotting after them, his face grim. They were not Joan’s horses.

  “Isn’t that the chestnut mare from the practice ring?” Pewter studied the gleaming animal, her long neck graceful.

  “Yes.” Mrs. Murphy was happy when Harry unhitched Pewter’s and her leash and quickly deposited them in the hospitality room. Pewter used the opportunity to jump onto the table, snatching a succulent square of ham.

  “You’re a goddamned diva!” Charly shouted at Renata DeCarlo, who stormed ahead of Charly.

  The loss of board and training fees for three horses would hurt Charly a bit, but the real blow was losing his movie-star client.

  Joan prudently stood by a stall, since Charly now faced Larry, Renata to Larry’s side. Fair stood behind Larry.

  “I’m sick of you shouting at me, Charly.” Renata, face flushed, was remarkably calm.

  Charly turned to Larry. “You’re behind this, Hodge. You’ve been trying to steal Renata away from me since she came to my barn.”

  “That’s not true.” Larry kept his voice level.

  “You love the glamour. And you’ll make a bloody fortune. You always do.” Charly, shaking with rage, stepped toward Larry.

  Renata grabbed Charly’s arm, which he threw off. “You’ve criticized me one time too many. You’re an egotistical shit and I’m sick of it.”

  Much as he wanted to hit her and Larry, too, Charly managed to control himself. He stopped breathing for a second, then gulped air. “Renata, you redefine the word ‘ego.’”

  “We can all sort this out tomorrow when everybody has calmed down,” Larry sensibly suggested.

  “The hell with you.” Then Charly wheeled on Renata and pointed his finger right in her face. “I know about you.” With that he turned on his booted heel and left.

  Manuel Almador, Larry’s head groom, watched along with Jorge Gravina, second in command to Manuel. Their distaste for Charly flickered across their faces.

  Renata, floodgates now bursting, allowed Joan to shepherd her to the hospitality room. The people who had gathered at the barn’s entrance dispersed, a few to follow Charly. They had to trot, since his long legs covered the ground.

  As Renata’s sobs subsided, Larry, Fair, Manuel, and Jorge consulted one another in the aisle.

  “Manuel, you and the boys will need to sleep here all week. Take four-hour shifts. Charly will have his revenge, and I don’t want it to be on Renata’s horses or ours, either.”

  Manuel nodded; he knew Charly’s reputation.

  Handsome Charly, an explosives expert and captain in the first Iraq war, was explosive himself.

  “I can check, too. We’re just down the road,” Fair offered.

  “Thanks. The men can handle it.” Larry appreciated Fair’s offer. He glanced at his watch. “Olive.” He named a client riding in the next class. Larry needed to walk with her to the arena, then stand alongside the rail so she could see him. He smiled. “No charge for the extra entertainment.”

  Back in the hospitality room, the animals listened as Renata ticked off Charly’s list of faults, most notably that he was arrogant, didn’t listen to her, and was a man, which seemed to Renata to sum up his original sin.

  “Dramatic,” Tucker succinctly observed.

  “It takes a while for humans to dissipate big emotions.” Mrs. Murphy sat on the maroon tack trunk piped in white and black. “Some of them never do. They’re still talking about what happened to them thirty years ago.”

  “Key to happiness, a bad memory.” Pewter swept her dark gray whiskers forward. The stolen ham, happily consumed, contributed to her golden glow.

  Mrs. Murphy’s green eyes studied Renata’s perfect face. “A little too dramatic for my taste.”

  The three Virginia animals, along with Cookie, sneezed. Renata’s perfume was too strong for their sensitive noses, but Joan didn’t respond to it. The animals marveled at the failure of human noses, even one as delicate and pretty as Joan’s.

  Finally, Joan calmed down Renata, reminding her that she was riding in the third class. She guided Renata to the dressing room. Renata considered the third class a warm-up for the rest of the week. She needed the taste of competition more than the gelding she would be riding, a flashy black-and-white paint named Voodoo. She could have skipped it but wanted to teach Charly a thing or two. He wasn’t going to affect her riding. Renata, ready to wail anew when she realized her tack trunk and clothes were at Charly’s hospitality room, was short-circuited.

  At that moment, Charly’s head groom, Carlos, appeared along with Jorge, Kalarama’s groom, with Renata’s trunk, clothes, and tack. Not a speck of dirt besmirched anything. She liked Carlos and tried to give him a tip, but he refused. Jorge refused also.

  As Renata changed, Jorge tacked up Voodoo, while Shortro and Queen Esther watched. Voodoo, the first good Saddlebred Renata had bought, had a special place in her heart. Voodoo taught her a great deal while forgiving her mistakes.

  Joan, Harry, Fair, and the animals walked back to their Kalarama box as the crowd clapped for the contestants leaving the second class.

  Paul and Frances were now looking down from the top tier of the main grandstand. The odor of the food had enticed them from the box. Joan settled in her chair. The third class, with a full twenty-five entrants, seemed to go on forever, finally being won by a young lady riding a horse bred in Missouri by Callaway Stables, outside the town of Fulton.

  Joan reached around to drape her jacket over her shoulders. She gasped. “My pin.”

  Harry looked at the jacket, then got down on her hands and knees to inspect the ground. “Oh, Joan, it’s not here.”

  Fair stood up, checking the entrance to the box. “How about if I go to lost-and-found in case it fell off and someone picked it up?”

  “It didn’t fall off. The clasp had a triple lock.” Joan’s face, mournful, registered this loss. “Someone took it off.”

  “Maybe your mother did when she left the box.” Harry was hopeful.

  A flicker of hope illuminated Joan’s beautiful features. “Well, maybe.” Her voice lowered. “I kind of doubt it. All these years I’ve been coming here, I never worried about anything being stolen. I can’t believe this.” She sighed deeply. “Mom is going to be really upset with me.” She paused. “I’m upset.”

  “Not to be crass, but how much do you think the pin is worth?” Harry put her hand on Joan’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know. Twenty-five thou
sand? Thirty?”

  “God!” Harry, mindful of every penny, now turned whiter than Joan.

  “We may find it yet,” Fair said comfortingly.

  Joan’s shoulders straightened. “We might. But I don’t know if we’ll like what we find with it.”

  “That’s a strange thing to say.” Harry’s eyebrows raised quizzically.

  “I have this terrible feeling…” Joan’s voice trailed off.

  This melancholy premonition vanished as Miss Nasty, Booty’s sidekick, free at last, rollicked along the top board of the show-ring rail.

  How long she’d escaped her confinement was anybody’s guess, because she could be stealthy when she wished. Now her desire to be the center of attention overtook her.

  Fortunately, the horses for the fourth class would have a five-minute wait as two tractors with drags fluffed up the footing in the ring.

  Pewter observed the young monkey. “Ugly as a mud fence.”

  “Must have slipped her chain.” Tucker did think it was funny that Miss Nasty waved her tiny chapeau to the crowd.

  Cookie, who knew the monkey only too well, replied, “Miss Nasty doesn’t have anything as common as a chain. She’s tied with a silken cord that has a gold lock on the end. She knows how to pick it. And she can pick the lock to her cage, too. Booty should keep her in her cage all the time, but he likes to have her with him. She gets into everything. Once she climbed into a car and started it. I heard she let out his snakes, and some of them are poisonous. No one would go to his house until he found them all.”

  “People leave their cars unlocked at shows?” Mrs. Murphy registered surprise.

  “No big deal.” Cookie nodded.

  “If Miss Nasty picks the lock on her silken cord, why doesn’t Booty use something stronger?” Pewter wondered.

  “Oh, he accuses people of freeing her. He can’t face how naughty she is. It’s a good thing he can’t understand what she says. She should have her mouth washed out with soap.” Cookie laid back her ears as Miss Nasty approached, paused to stand up and clap, then waved her hat and put it back on. She dropped to all fours, loping along the top rail again.

  “Her dress is fetching.” Fair laughed at the pink sundress, which matched her straw hat, a small fake peony attached to the pale green chiffon ribbon.

  “She owns an extensive wardrobe.” Joan, despite her pin’s disappearance, smiled. “When Annie divorced Booty, he acquired the monkey, naming her Miss Nasty in honor of his ex-wife.”

  “Low blow.” Harry giggled.

  “Not low enough.” Joan’s grin widened. “Her dresses and ensembles are copies of Annie’s. Annie shopped a lot at Glasscock’s, an expensive store in Louisville, so I bet you Booty pays plenty for Miss Nasty’s frocks.”

  “No!” Harry found this delightfully wicked.

  “How did he remember what Annie wore?” Fair was puzzled, because he wasn’t good at remembering such details.

  “Booty is as vain as Charly about clothes. He even remembers things I wore years ago,” Joan replied.

  “Maybe he’s gay.” Fair shrugged.

  “That is such a stereotype.” Harry punched him.

  “Booty’s not gay, he just likes clothes, fashion. He’s got an aesthetic streak. I mean, he wears alligator belts and boots. I expect the belts alone cost three hundred fifty dollars.”

  “Ex-wife ever see Miss Nasty?” Fair thought that would provoke fireworks.

  “She’s seen her.” Joan’s eyes twinkled. “It was not a successful introduction.”

  “Did they wind up at the same party with the same dress?” Harry laughed.

  “In fact, they did. Booty must have called every friend of Annie’s he knew to find out what she was wearing. They were in Lexington, and I expect the screams could be heard all the way to Louisville, maybe even down to Memphis. Annie vowed revenge, but only after she’d called Booty every name in the book and some we’d never heard before.” Joan paused a beat. “Best party I ever attended.”

  The laughter drew Miss Nasty to the Kalarama box. She poked her fingers in her various orifices.

  “Crude.” Pewter wrinkled her black nose.

  “Fat.” Miss Nasty turned a somersault.

  Booty appeared at the in-gate at the other end of the ring from the Kalarama box. Spying his cavorting pet, he hastened toward her. She stopped, stood up as tall as she could. She rubbed her chin.

  “Miss Nasty, Daddy’s coming,” Joan jollied her. “Daddy’s wearing a pink shirt to match your pretty dress.”

  “He’ll beat your red ass until your nose bleeds,” Pewter, enraged at being called fat, predicted.

  Miss Nasty extracted something unpleasant from her nostril, flinging it at Pewter.

  The cat lunged forward toward the offending creature, but Miss Nasty leapt off the rail, scurrying toward one of the tractors. Skillfully timing her leap, she landed on the back fender, then reached for the back of the seat and grabbed it to swing onto the driver’s shoulders. He swerved but recovered. He knew Miss Nasty, so he made the best of it.

  Booty walked inside the ring. He dangled an enticing piece of orange. At the first pass of the tractor, Miss Nasty was tempted. On the second, Booty turned his back on her to head out of the ring. She succumbed.

  Booty swooped her up amid cheers.

  “He really is wearing an alligator belt and boots.” Harry gasped.

  “You can buy me that for my birthday,” Fair suggested.

  “I think I’d better buy a lottery ticket first.” Harry calculated the expense of the boots and belt. Then she saucily said, “My birthday is in five days, but I’ll pass on the boots. Pass on the monkey, too.”

  “I’ll kill that monkey,” Pewter fumed.

  “You say that about everything,” the tiger teased.

  “I will!”

  “You’ll have to brave boogers to do it,” Mrs. Murphy warned.

  “Or worse.” Tucker appeared solemn.

  “You just wait and see.” Pewter ignored the teasing.

  Harry dropped back to her hands and knees again, looking on the wooden floor of the box. “I swear I’ll find your pin, Joan. You know how I get. Don’t despair.”

  The air-conditioner hum awakened Harry, who was accustomed to sleeping with the windows open at home, the only sounds being that of the night. Fair, flat on his back, had one arm draped over his massive chest, the other by his side. He slept hard, but like most people in medicine, one ring of the phone and he’d be wide-awake.

  Pewter snored slightly as she curled up next to Mrs. Murphy. Tucker, on her side by the bed, didn’t lift her head when Harry got up.

  However, as their human friend pulled on jeans, T-shirt, socks, and sneakers, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker opened their eyes. Pewter remained dead to the world.

  Harry slipped into the bathroom, closed the door, and clicked on the light so as not to wake her husband. She left him a note, which read:

  Honey,

  Couldn’t sleep. Took the truck. I’m going to Barn Five. I’ll probably be back before you wake.

  Love,

  Miss Wonderful

  Then she crossed out “Miss” and wrote above it “Mrs.” She propped the note against the mirror, using her makeup bag to hold it.

  She clicked off the bathroom light, then felt her way to the hotel-room door. Tucker and Mrs. Murphy, eyes better in the dark than Harry’s, walked out with her.

  “If you’re going, we’re going.” Tucker blinked, still sleepy.

  “Pewter will have a cow.” Mrs. Murphy giggled, for the gray cat hated to miss anything, even though she hated to cut short her beauty sleep.

  Harry unlocked the door of the F-250, Fair’s vet truck, where his medicines, needles, and gauze were locked in a special made-to-order aluminum trunk bolted to the truck bed. Most equine vets used a similar system, since they needed to call on their patients more than their patients called on them. Many a time Fair spread a large plastic sheet on a level part of a pasture and operated on the
spot. This ability to act instantly saved lives.

  Harry grumbled that they’d spend a fortune in gas driving the eight hours, first to Springfield, home of Kalarama Farm, then on to Shelbyville. They did, but Fair wanted to be able to assist should a crisis occur. Each time they pulled up to the pump, it cost eighty dollars. Harry swooned, then recovered. Fair shrugged, paid the bill, and said the whole world would suffer for depending on oil.

  As neither of them had a ready-made solution to this spectacular global crisis, they kept rolling down Interstate 64.

  As the big V8 turned over, the clock on the dash read “one forty-five.” Harry adjusted the seat. The truck’s captain chairs could go up and down, forward and back, and even alter firmness of the backrest. The pedals could go up and down to adjust to leg length. The truck beeped when one backed up close to any object. Despite sucking gas, the machine thrilled Harry. She drove a 1978 Ford truck, and a few years ago Fair, hoping to win her back, helped her purchase a dually to pull her horse trailer. But her everyday drive was the half-ton pickup, which was a far cry from this tricked-out hunk of metal. However, she loved her old truck. Harry was loath to part with anything that still promised usefulness. Her sock drawer testified to this.

  She allowed the motor to warm up, then pulled out of the Best Western parking lot, passed the not-yet-open Wendy’s and the tractor dealership she wanted to visit, and turned right on the old main road, Route 60, which connected Louisville to Lexington. Then she turned left at the intersection and drove less than a quarter of a mile to the main parking lot by the practice arena. Charly Trackwell rented stalls in that lower barn. No one stirred, so she drove on the empty paths to Barn Five. She cut the motor and opened the door so Mrs. Murphy could hop out. She lifted Tucker down.

  Barn owls flew in and out of the various barns. A whip-poor-will called in the bushes. A horse nickered when she walked into the barn.