Puss 'N Cahoots

by Rita Mae Brown

  “What else? No women. No booze. No drugs. I mean, he might have visited prostitutes, but that wasn’t going to get him killed. What could he do that would create that kind of danger?”

  “That’s a big jump, Harry.”

  “I know it is, but I believe his death is connected. I can’t prove it, that’s all.”

  Fair turned onto one of the north–south roads that would head back toward Lexington, which was now about forty minutes south. “Let’s go by Payson Stud. They’re real horse people. They understand bloodlines and stand some stallions that retired sound after years of racing. Then we can drive west to Paula’s.”

  “Funny, isn’t it, how the business has changed?”

  “True everywhere. Saddlebreds have changed; the necks seem to get longer and longer. Thoroughbreds—well, we’ve discussed this ad infinitum—are bred for five to seven furlongs. I can’t bear it.” His voice carried more emotion than usual. “Even the black-and-tan coonhound. Now that the AKC recognizes them, they’re being bred racier. Well, that may be pretty to a lot of people, but pretty is as pretty does. Whenever Americans start fiddling with breeds, they lighten them, lighten the bone most times. Look at the difference between a German shepherd from Germany and one from here.”

  “Kind of shocking.” She agreed wholeheartedly with her husband.

  “The fanciers ruin a breed, and then thirty or forty years later someone tries to revive it along proper lines. The worst thing that can happen to any dog is to become popular, and I tell you, it’s not so good for horses, either, although, thank God, it’s a lot more expensive to breed horses than dogs, so there aren’t as many people mucking it up. You never, ever remove an animal from its purpose.”

  Delighted by his outburst, since he was usually buttoned up, she said, “Honey, you should go on television. You can make complicated matters easy to understand.”

  “Really?” He was flattered.

  “You can.” She paused. “That’s what worries me about Ned a little bit. He does the reverse.”

  “He’s a lawyer.”

  Ned, Susan Tucker’s husband, had been elected to the Virginia assembly. As this was his first year, it meant many adjustments for him and for Susan, Harry’s friend from cradle days.

  “It’s good that Alicia’s given you this project.”

  “She’ll even pay me a commission for finding the horse and then training it.” Harry beamed. “I like earning my way.”

  “I know. Hey, that willow tree may be the largest I’ve ever seen.” He pointed to a willow down near an old springhouse, with a creek running through it.

  “Probably bodies buried underneath it.”

  “Harry.” Fair shook his head.

  “Well—” She couldn’t explain why murders, crimes riveted her. “Joan told me all about the murder of Verna Garr Taylor, allegedly by General Denhardt, and then when he got off, how her three brothers gunned him down.”

  “No more murders in Shelbyville.” He sighed. “Jorge was enough.”

  “You never know.” Harry actually sounded hopeful.

  “Harry.” He reached over with his long arm to punch her left shoulder.

  “I’m resting.” Pewter opened her eyes when Harry rocked slightly to the right.

  “I didn’t say I was hoping for another murder. I’m hoping to find Joan’s pin. I hope someone finds Jorge’s murderer. I’m just saying,” she slowed her words, “you never know.”

  She was right.

  Because stall rents bit into Ward’s slender budget, a horse finishing his or her class at the end of the evening would be driven back to the farm, unless a client was riding the animal the next night. Ward would sit down to figure out if the extra trips cost more than the stall rent for that day, given the horrendous increase in gas. He solved this problem by vanning other people’s horses to the various stables when he took one of his own horses back to the farm. His van could carry six horses. Since clients paid by the mile the savings came out to be about thirteen dollars a day—pin money, but pin money was better than no money.

  Prudently, Ward placed the cash from smuggling illegal workers in a half-size fireproof vault. He marked down these funds according to each transaction as profits from hauling mulch to landscape sites. Not that he expected anyone to break into his vault or authorities to sweep his records, but he thought ahead. His motto could well have been “Plan for the worst, hope for the best.”

  Ward intended to buy one young stallion and perhaps three exceptional broodmares when the sum reached four hundred thousand dollars. He wanted to play safe, so he was looking for just the right stallion from the Rex Denmark line. Since Supreme Sultan, foaled in 1966, led the list of sires of Hall of Fame broodmares, he wanted mares from that line. Whether or not he had the breeding gift would be apparent in a few years. One stallion would lead to more if he enjoyed any kind of success, and those stud fees would prove a nice augmentation to his training fees and board income.

  He’d figured out the cost to put up six-board fencing for the first stallion’s paddock, the cost of a clean but small breeding shed, and the costs for shipping semen.

  Ward left nothing to chance save for the Russian roulette of breeding. It wasn’t as easy as Mendel’s peas. He envied Joan Hamilton her extraordinary success. Some people had the gift, just as Donna Moore of Versailles had the gift of finding incredible prospects and making them better.

  He and Benny parked by the practice arena at ten-thirty in the morning to take home a gelding for an amateur owner in Barn Three and to take one of his clients’ horses back to his barn. He’d already driven back to his farm in his pickup after breakfast, checked on everything, turned everyone out, then hopped in the van with Benny, who regaled him with stories of a busted date last night. She had a bust, all right, but the rest of her screamed nonstop neurosis. Benny could make Ward laugh, and the two of them had laughed all the way to Ward’s rented stalls at Shelbyville. Ward had two horses going tonight. It should be an easy day, more or less.

  Harry and Fair pulled into the opposite lot near Route 60. Both were elated, since the gelding at Paula’s Rose Haven farm impressed them. Fair did a thorough check, asking Paula to call in her vet for X-rays when possible. Fair didn’t have his portable X-ray equipment with him.

  Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker strolled down to visit Spike. Cookie, still at Kalarama Farm, wouldn’t come in until the evening’s classes. This pleased Tucker, since she’d have gossip for the pretty little Jack Russell.

  “Hope Spike has some dirt.” Tucker snapped at a monarch butterfly who flew low.

  “Wouldn’t you rather he had bones?” Pewter, food never far from her mind, replied.

  “Wouldn’t mind, but I wouldn’t give you any.” Tucker smiled devilishly.

  “Dog bones taste like cardboard.” Pewter had gnawed a few Milk-Bones and overstated her case.

  “Good, I don’t have to share.”

  “But a knucklebone, a real true bone, that’s a different story.” Pewter’s eyes half closed in remembered bliss.

  “You two ate a big breakfast. How can you think about food?” Mrs. Murphy liked her tuna, chicken, and beef, but food wasn’t her obsession.

  “You need to surrender more to the rituals of pleasure,” Pewter declared.

  Both Mrs. Murphy and Tucker stopped for a moment to stare at each other. Where did Pewter come up with that? The large gray kitty sashayed on, her tummy swinging from side to side. She certainly indulged in her rituals of pleasure. The two friends lifted their silken eyebrows, then followed Pewter, in as good a mood as anyone had ever seen her.

  Charly Trackwell was not yet in the barn. Carlos had watered the horses, checked everyone’s feed, double-checked them after they’d eaten, and was now going from stall to stall lifting hooves. The barn cats reposed on the tack trunks, a mid-morning nap being just the thing on a day that promised to get into the nineties with high humidity.

  Spike, on his side on an old saddle blanket in navy and red, sno
red. His paws twitched.

  “Let’s not wake him,” Mrs. Murphy whispered.

  A startled horse caused the ginger cat to open one eye, and then a hellacious shriek sent him bolt upright along with the other barn cats.

  Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker craned their necks to view Miss Nasty, in an orange and white polka-dot dress, swinging from a barn rafter. The horse eyed her with the greatest suspicion.

  Carlos, hearing the horse shy, quickly looked into the stall but didn’t see Miss Nasty at first. The monkey swung down, grabbing his grimy baseball cap. She then scurried across the beams, cap in one paw.

  “Mine, mine, mine!” the brown creature triumphed.

  Carlos, furious, ran under the beam. “Diablo!”

  “Ha, ha.”

  “I hate that disgusting thing.” Pewter curled her lip. “So dirty.”

  Spike, wasting no words, climbed up the stall post and hurried across the wide beam toward the monkey. “You’re on my turf, bitch. Get the hell out of my barn.”

  Benny, walking by the barn, heard the monkey’s shrieks. He stuck his head in.

  “I’ll shoot her,” Carlos threatened.

  “Don’t do that, Carlos.” Benny smiled. “Booty will shoot you. If you turn your back on her, she’ll be disappointed and eventually drop your hat.”

  “No, I won’t. I’ll tear it to shreds,” Miss Nasty boasted as she kept one jaundiced eye on a puffed-up, approaching Spike.

  “You’ll pee on it, Miss Nasty.” Mrs. Murphy hoped to distract her so Spike could knock her hard. “We know you pee on things.”

  “And you don’t?” Miss Nasty twirled the cap in her paws, then put it on her head, but it slipped over her eyes. She quickly pulled it off, then waved it at Spike.

  Carlos walked with Benny to the end of the barn toward the parking lot. “Not working.”

  “Give it time.” Benny took off his green ball cap with the white logo. “Use mine. Hate to see your bald spot.”

  “I don’t have a bald spot.”

  “If you tear your hair out over that goddamned monkey you will.” Benny laughed and headed toward the van.

  The old van would grumble, belch, smoke, start, then cut off. He didn’t know if it was the starter or the battery, and he’d attend to it later, but he wanted to get the motor turned over and let it run for a few minutes before putting the horses on.

  As Carlos returned to his duties, Miss Nasty, having lost her human audience, waved the cap at Spike. “Cats are stupid. Humans are descended from me. That’s why I’m smart.”

  “You have a lot to answer for,” Mrs. Murphy sarcastically said as she, too, climbed up on the opposite stall so the monkey would be between herself and Spike.

  Seeing this, Spike advanced slowly. “I’m descended from a saber-toothed tiger. You’re lunch.”

  “Don’t forget to take off her ridiculous dress first,” Mrs. Murphy reminded Spike.

  Miss Nasty stood up as tall as she could on her hind legs. “I look good in orange.”

  “Dream on.” Pewter laughed from down below as Tucker sat right underneath the chattering monkey.

  “Yeah, you’d have to shop in plus size,” Miss Nasty called down just as Spike leapt toward her.

  The monkey emitted a shriek, jumped over the ginger cat, dropping the hat in the process. She ran hellbent for leather toward the other end of the barn. Spike gave chase.

  Tucker picked up the ball cap and waited for Carlos to come out of the stall, which he did since the monkey created havoc.

  “She keeps getting away from Booty.” Pewter stated the obvious. “And she steals things. Charly cussed a blue streak yesterday because she got into his barn and ran off with the colored brow bands he uses on his bridles.”

  Mrs. Murphy, running on the opposite beam parallel with the monkey, yelled down, “That’s it!”

  “What?” Pewter asked as she tracked their progress from down below.

  “She stole Joan’s pin!” Mrs. Murphy hollered.

  Tucker, silent because she had Carlos’s hat in her mouth, dropped it. “Miss Nasty, where’s the pin?”

  “You’ll never know!” The monkey slid down the end stall pole and, tail out, ran as fast as she could away from the barn.

  Spike shimmied down and chased her to the end of the practice arena, then turned back just as Benny walked into the barn. The old van rumbled, warming up in the lot. Benny picked up Carlos’s hat as the head groom stepped out of the stall, too slow to swat the monkey with a broom.

  As the two men swapped hats, Spike, puffed up like a conquering hero, walked back into the barn. “Showed her.”

  “She admitted it! She has the pin.” Mrs. Murphy was beside herself. “We have to get it from her.”

  An enormous explosion shook the rafters of the barn. Dust rose up, then fell below.

  The animals flattened on their bellies. The horses whinnied, terrified. Carlos and Benny rocked sideways. They regained their equilibrium as the animals crept toward the parking-lot end of the barn.

  Ward’s green and white van, front torn off, engine parts scattered over the lot, burned, thick black clouds rising upward.

  “Oh, my God.” Benny put his right hand over his heart.

  “God had nothing to do with it.” Mrs. Murphy wanted more than anything to get her humans back to Crozet, Virginia.

  By the time Harry, Fair, Booty, and others reached the parking lot, the flames had engulfed the remains of the van. Fortunately the only other damage was to the windshield of a truck parked fifty yards from the van. A piece of debris had smashed through it.

  As the people stood there helplessly watching, Benny ran for Ward, who upon hearing the explosion had put the horse to be moved back in a stall. He didn’t know what had happened, but he figured the commotion would spook the horse.

  The two men now ran to the parking lot.

  Carlos, who’d been as close to the event as Benny, explained to the others what they heard, what they saw. Charly had pulled into the Route 60 parking lot minutes before the van blew apart. He ran down, too.

  As Ward and Benny approached, Booty hurried to him. “Man, I’m sorry. What a goddamned mess.”

  Charly, hearing this, bluntly said, “Mess? Benny could be dead.” He waited, then added, “I’ll guarantee you when the cops finally finish crawling over what’s left, they’ll find it was a bomb.”

  “We’re not in Baghdad.” Booty frowned.

  Ward, speechless, put his arm around Benny’s shoulders.

  Benny, voice low, whispered, “Someone wants us dead.”

  “Just me, I think.” Ward’s voice was even softer than Benny’s.

  Renata drove into the lot. She had seen the black smoke curling upward but couldn’t have imagined the source. Upon seeing that this wasn’t a brush fire, she turned around, but she heard fire engines and knew she couldn’t get out, because they’d both reach the opened gate at about the same time. So she pulled a one-eighty and cautiously drove behind the long barn where Charly kept his horses. She, too, got out and ran to the scene.

  She reached the small knot of people as the fire trucks and sheriff’s squad car spit out small stones tearing into the parking lot.

  “What happened?” Renata asked.

  Charly simply said, “Ward’s van was bombed.”

  “Oh, God.” She quickly walked over to Ward but didn’t really know what to say, so she hugged him, then Benny. Renata wondered if this show was cursed, but she kept her misgivings to herself. She could be emotional, but she could put other people’s feelings first. Right now Ward needed consoling.

  Booty snarled, “Charly, stop saying the van was bombed. It could have been anything. I mean, these old jobs, the wires burn, touches grease or gas. Boom.”

  “Booty, my job was explosives.” Charly referred to his combat service. “I’m telling you, someone planted a bomb in Ward’s van. The kind that detonates a few minutes after ignition.”

  Harry asked the question on other minds, too. �
�Why?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Charly, upset, growled.

  Renata, voice quiet but commanding, said, “We’re all upset, Charly, don’t take it out on Harry.”

  “You’re right. Harry, I apologize.”

  “That’s okay.” Harry’s eyes watered as the wind blew the smoke their way.

  “Let’s move,” Fair sensibly suggested. “Sheriff Howlett knows where to find everybody. We’ll just add to the confusion.”

  Benny, shaking now that it had begun to sink in, said, “My favorite penknife was in that van.”

  Ward tried to think if he’d left anything valuable in the cab or in the box. Apart from two leather halters and lead shanks, he couldn’t think of anything.

  As Harry and Fair walked back to Barn Five, she touched Fair’s forearm. “Where are the kids?”

  “I expect the explosion scared the bejesus out of them. They’ll be back at the barn.”

  They were chasing Miss Nasty through Booty’s barn. The monkey squealed to high heaven. Given the commotion down in the parking lot, no one was paying attention to an irate monkey.

  Mrs. Murphy kept up with her as she climbed rafters and dropped down to beams, but Pewter and Tucker shadowed her from the aisle. Miss Nasty finally squeezed out under an eave and climbed up to a large overhanging light fixture at the main entrance to the barn. There she sat howling obscenities and abuse. For good measure she tried to pee on Pewter and Tucker, who’d just emerged from the barn, but they ducked back in.

  Mrs. Murphy backed down a stall post and walked to the large entrance. She called up to the monkey, “Tell me where the pin is and I won’t bother you.”

  “Never! Never!”

  “Why’d you take it?” Tucker asked, then dashed to the side.

  As Miss Nasty had completely emptied herself, Tucker was safe. The two cats, realizing this, also walked outside and turned to view the monkey, who swung on the light fixture, then righted herself and sat on it. She sure wouldn’t be doing that if it were night and the fixture were turned on.