Claiming Christmas (Alex and Alexander Book 3)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  “This is going to be messed up,” I said, and Kerri nodded.

  I parked the truck as close to the driveway entrance as I could, the better for a quick getaway, and we pulled on our baseball caps like they were disguises. Both of them were given out as advertisements for stallions, and I wondered if any of the horses at this makeshift, illegal racetrack were descended from the high-dollar horses whose names were embroidered on our caps.

  The music was pumping from an amplifier as we walked across the grass towards the open space beyond the trailers, where I could only assume the racetrack was. Country music, about God and Country, Guns and Girls. There was a rebel flag flying from the oversized CB antenna of a camouflage-painted pick-up truck. This was the Real Florida they didn’t tell the tourists about.

  Hell, I thought, as we came through the forest of trailers and found ourselves gazing at the tight bull-pen of a racetrack, the metal bleachers full of cowboy hats and boots, and the little six-horse starting gate set up at the opposite end of the clearing. This was the real horse racing they didn’t tell the tourists about.

  Or any of us.

  There were about thirty horses making their way around the track at various speeds, none of them keeping any of the rules about only trotting “the wrong way” or riding slowly to the outside and speedy to the inside. There wasn’t even an inner rail, so when riders got annoyed or cut off by another horse, they could just swing across the grass of the infield.

  It was sort of like the bedlam and mayhem of the warm-up ring at a hunter show, when every kid on every pony in the state sort of forgets everything they’ve ever been told about arena etiquette and there is a general sense of impending doom. You’re just waiting for tangles of equine legs and shrieking children. That was what the racetrack here looked like, except that most of the horses seemed to be ridden by jockeys old enough to drive, maybe even buy alcohol.

  Most of them.

  “Is that a kid?” Kerri whispered, nodding towards a spotted cross-bred with long legs and no tail at all that was trotting along the outside of the track. The rider was a baby-faced little boy with no helmet and a big grin. One of his teeth was missing.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “He can’t be more than thirteen.”

  “He’s sixteen if anyone asks,” a voice said from behind us. I turned around, heart in my throat, and was shocked to see a familiar face.

  “These aren’t quite your type people, are they?” Mary Archer smirked, her tanned face sinking into a thousand deep wrinkles. “No lattes here, honey.”

  Beside me, I felt Kerri draw back a little. I put my hand on the small of her back to help her stand her ground. She knew the depth of my old enmity with Mary Archer better than anyone; she’d been there when Mary had made it her business to discredit me around the barns at Saratoga even while Mary’s destructive training practices had sent one horse after another careening down the claiming ladder. And, unfortunately, she knew that Mary had the ability to unnerve me like few other people. But we weren’t going to back down now. Not with Wendy’s horse on the line.

  And that’s what I was starting to call the ungainly bay filly in my mind: Wendy’s horse. I was tired of seeing one small girl get nothing but the short end of the stick every damn time. Looking up at Mary’s malicious smile, I was more determined than ever: I was going to get my hands on that horse, bring her back to Cotswold, and pay her bills myself if I had to, but Wendy wasn’t going to face another disappointment — not this time, at least. This was her horse.

  But I still wondered why Mary Archer was here. Briefly, I considered espionage: she was following me, she was going to spread gossip about me yet again; but I shook the thoughts away. That was over the top, even for her. And she’d stopped bothering about me once the Saratoga meet had ended and her stable was dissolved and sent around the country. I didn’t even know who she was working for these days. “Didn’t know you got kicked out of legal racing,” I suggested, going on the offensive.

  Mary’s lip curled and she pushed a lank lock of graying hair behind her ear. “I’m here scouting, just like you. Better hope we don’t have eyes on the same nag. That didn’t work so well for you last time.”

  Last time, when she dropped Luna into a claimer so that her boss’s nephew could claim her. And I’d lost the shake that day, but I had the horse now. “Whose barn is she in now?” I asked with satisfaction.

  “One win since,” Mary smirked. “Lotta good all that fuss did ya.”

  “Whatever,” Kerri said, rather unimaginatively, but she was right. “Let’s get moving if we want to catch any races.” She nodded her head in the direction of the low metal grandstands behind us. I nodded and followed, giving up the advice to stay out of sight. If Mary Archer could show her ugly mug around here, Kerri and I certainly could.

  We clanked up the metal steps in our paddock boots, feeling conspicuous and overly English amidst the sea of cowboy boots and oversized belt buckles, and took our seats at a relatively isolated corner near the top. The lower seats of the grandstand were crowded with good old boys in white Stetsons and camouflage caps, drinking from cans of Bud and red Dixie cups. A few men tilted their cowboy hats back to stare at us, but they must have figured that if we knew how to find the place, we were okay to be there, because they went back to their beers and their perusals of the chaos warming up on the little bull-ring track in front of them without much more than a grunt and a wink.

  “You’d think they’d be excited to see us,” Kerri whispered. “If coming out here to look for talent is a thing, which I didn’t know it was, they’d probably just think we were more racing people with deep pockets.”

  “I don’t know how deep Mary Archer’s pockets actually are,” I disagreed, “Or if it’s actually a thing or it’s just her thing. And if she’s our ambassador, they’d probably like to run us out of here. She’s probably scammed every single person she ever bought a horse from.” Mary could sour the crowd just by showing up. She was incapable of honesty, as far as I could tell.

  “First race, five minutes! First race, five minutes!” squawked a hitherto unseen loudspeaker suspended from a pole just behind us, which explained why no one else was sitting in this section of the grandstand. Once I had recovered from the ensuing heart attack, I noticed that most of the horses were clearing the course, and half a dozen small, tightly muscled horses had been gathered near the rusty little starting gate, evidently bought second or third-hand from an Ocala training track.

  “Quarter horses,” Kerri guessed.

  “Quarter race, anyway.” I didn’t think there were many breed restrictions on tonight’s racing card: there was at least some Appaloosa blood in that little roan horse, who had a sparse dappling of black spots across his round hindquarters. “I think it’s just divided by distance.”

  The horses were loaded with, I had to admit, no more than the usual amount of chaos. The Appaloosa reared as the doors behind him were slammed closed, setting off the horses on either side of him; there was a lot of swearing and shouting — again, the usual. And then everyone seemed to have all four hooves on the ground at the same time and the gates were sprung open with a splendid sense of timing on the part of the amateur starter. The jockeys, who seemed to range in age and height from middle-school to middle-aged and jockey-height to basketball-player-height, sent their mounts forward with elbows and heels and voice and stick, kicking up a cloud of dust in their wake as they went galloping down the little sandy track.

  The six horses ran as a tightly-packed bunch down the first straightaway, in front of the grandstand, and I gritted my teeth as they approached the first tight turn as one. A horse near the rear got too close to the horse in front of him, clipping heels; he stayed on his feet but fell far behind. His jockey shouted at him and slapped him with his stick like a crazed person. It was violent behavior that would have gotten a jockey ruled off a sanctioned track; here it seemed to be cause for amusement, sending up guffaws from the crowd. “Whoop him up Jakey!” someone
shouted, and there was a chorus of “Whoop him up Jakcy!” as the jockey got the horse galloping after the pack again.

  By the time the race was over, one chaotic loop of the bull-ring track, lasting about thirty breathless seconds, one horse had fallen, two had stopped running, and one was obviously lame. Obvious only to me, I supposed — the lame horse was also the winner, and he jogged unwillingly to the half-circle of straw bales that was designated the winner’s circle. The jockey hopped off and accepted a beer and slap on the back.

  I turned to Kerri, who was watching the proceedings with wide eyes and open mouth. “This is brutal.”

  She smiled weakly. “Let’s just hope she’s in the next race so we don’t have to see too much more of this.”

  But she wasn’t in the next race, or the one after that. We turned and scoped out the field behind the grandstand where the unraced horses were milling about, and the trailers where a few were tied up, pulling at hay-nets or pawing or napping.

  “That could be her,” Kerri suggested, pointing to a horse far out in the field. “Dark bay, long legs…”

  “Why couldn’t the kid have fallen for a horse with four white socks and a full blaze?”

  Kerri agreed. “We’re going to have to wait until we see her up close, that’s all,” she sighed, turning away from the warm-up field.

  She had better enter a race, I thought, and soon. The sun was starting to sink; November days were short, even in the Sunshine State, and the temperature was dropping as well. I pulled my sleeves down as far as they’d go — elbow length — and shivered a little.

  And then, there she was.

  The horses circling for the sixth race were next to the grandstand. I looked them over — a motley crew of washed-up Thoroughbreds, mostly, with bumpy legs and suspicious tendons. But most of them had never forgotten what race-day meant, or what they had been born for. Their legs were mashed to hell, but their eyes were bright and their heads were high: this was their element. It made my heart thump a little to see them and wonder how many had tried their hearts out on the tracks I knew and ran my horses on. How many had been poised for greatness before an injury or a bad race had sent them off the rails and into the swamps, how many had been retired to a quieter, safer life before they found themselves sold to one of these bush-racers? But if the track was tiny and their bodies were sore, the horses themselves had forgotten in the excitement and anticipation of being allowed to run.

  And Wendy’s horse was no different from the others, at least not in head carriage and high action. She looked like a little warhorse down there, with her nostrils flared and her eyes ringed with white, her head snapping this way and that as she took in her rivals, the shouting crowd, the sandy track just beyond. She was ready, ready, ready — every sinew and nerve and muscle in her body was electrified, quivering, prepared to go into battle and emerge the victor. And she looked good, despite being a little light in flesh, despite being rather coarsely groomed. Her muscles were toned and bursting through her skin, a result of galloping up and down that sloping pasture, no doubt. The hill-work had paid off: I actually thought she might be able to pull it off.

  “She looks good,” Kerri said, echoing my thoughts. And then: “Uh-oh.” She nodded her head to a knot of people standing just beyond the circling racehorses.

  I looked and saw him standing there, the large bearded bear of a redneck who had chased us away from his property with his shotgun over his shoulder. And of course who was he talking to, but Mary Archer.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “No no no no no no —” Kerri grabbed the back of my shirt as I started to bound down the grandstand.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed. “You can’t go down there. What are you going to do — fight her?”

  “She’s buying Wendy’s horse — ”

  “Um, I don’t think she is.” Kerri pointed. “You have to stay for the whole show.”

  I leaned over the railing of the grandstand. Kerri was right. The owner had folded his arms across his barrel — no easy feat considering the size of his gut — and Mary was gesturing with her hands, waving her arms, looking generally insane. “Holy crap,” I said. “He’s refusing to sell.”

  “It’s a Christmas miracle,” Kerri said dryly.

  “Not quite. If he’s refusing to sell to Mary, will he refuse to sell to us?”

  “Maybe he just knows Mary’s a crap trainer?” Kerri suggested hopefully. “Maybe she finally scammed the wrong cowboy?”

  I sighed and sat back down, still keeping my eyes on the pair. But it looked like the conversation was over; Mary was stalking away, shaking her head. A few of the other men in the group were looking after her and laughing. “Maybe you’re right.” It seemed possible, judging by the way everyone was apparently joking about her. “Maybe no one here will have anything to do with her.”

  We watched Mary heading across the field towards the parking area. “She’s leaving!” Kerri gave me an elbow in the ribs. “They hate her! They won’t sell her anything. You have to be pretty awful to not be able to buy off one of these guys.”

  “She’s definitely awful.”

  The loudspeaker behind us made a preemptive popping noise and we both had time to clap our hands over our ears before it called the horses for the sixth race to the starting gate. I felt my mouth go dry and my stomach lurch. This was it. This was the filly’s race — what if she got hurt? And then what was going to happen? Either way, I had to go down and deal with her owner. I didn’t look forward to talking to him again, even though this time he wouldn’t be armed and I would have a checkbook.

  At least, I didn’t think he was armed.

  I watched him lead the filly over to the starting gate, the kid on her back swinging his legs free of the stirrups and laughing with him — probably about Mary Archer. Then he turned her over to the guys acting as starters and came back to the grandstand to sit with some friends. He cracked open a beer someone offered him and laughed at another joke, the picture of relaxation.

  Meanwhile, I thought I was going to throw up.

  Everyone loaded in the gate like the old professionals that they were. Again, it struck me how different this field of horses was from the ones in the earlier races. The Quarter Horses and Appaloosas, the Paints and the crossbreds, they hadn’t been racehorses in the legal sense of the word, just horses these guys liked to race. This group of Thoroughbreds, though, took things much more seriously. They knew their job. They lived for their job. They were going to do their job or die trying.

  That was the frightening part.

  I had my eyes closed when the horses broke from the gate. Kerri grabbed my arm and held on tight, my skin turning white under her fingers. “She’s on top!” she hissed in a panic. “She’s in front by two!”

  I opened my eyes just as the horses sped past us on the way to that horrendous tight turn. Kerri was right — Wendy’s horse had put her dark head in front and was pulling away from the pack. But she wasn’t going to be able to maintain her speed; she was charging into the turn and at that pace, she’d never be able to make the corner.

  At the last moment, her jockey nearly stood straight up, his stirrups way out in front of her shoulders as he water-skied her around the turn, yanking back hard on her mouth and then hauling her to the left through his own will and strength. She flung her head up, mouth gaping against the bit, but the gambit worked: she only overshot the turn by a little, running all alone in the center of the track as she made for the backstretch.

  “Oh my God,” I moaned. “How many times are they going to go around this track?”

  “Maybe just once? No one else went further than a quarter mile.”

  “No one else had Thoroughbreds,” I said grimly, and Kerri was quiet.

  The answer was three times: they went around the little loop three times, coming up on their own tracks so many times that the horses were enveloped in a cloud of dust by the final straightaway. After running wildly all across the track in her bid to stay in f
ront and make the impossible turns, the filly was flattening out now, her steps coming without conviction, her body laboring. But she had done it — she had stayed ahead, and before my eyes the winless maiden from Gulfstream won her first race: about six furlongs over white scrub sand, somewhere near Otter Creek, Florida.

  “He’s not going to sell her now,” I said bleakly, watching the owner jump up and give the crowd a good fist-pump.

  “He might if he thinks you’ll pay a lot for a winner,” Kerri suggested.

  “Maybe.”

  “Want to go talk to him?”

  “In a minute, in a minute.” I had to think what to say. I had to be ready. And I wasn’t — not a little bit.

  In the end we decided to tail him back to the horse trailer, hoping that we’d catch him alone. Little by little the crowd of friends around him dissipated; there was another race or two for them to catch, a few more beers to finish, and for all I knew they’d end the night with hog roast or a fish fry or a hoe-down or something. By the time he reached his trailer, a shiny aluminum goose-neck that was much nicer than anything else I’d seen at his property, the filly’s owner was alone, just as I’d been hoping.

  He tied her lead-rope to a slat on the side of the trailer and started uncinching her saddle. Kerri gave me a shove and I stumbled forward. He took one look at me and stopped what he was doing. “What the hell you doin’ here?”