Let Sleeping Dogs Lie (25 page)

Right after the turkey parade, a confused squirrel paused for a moment, then prudently shot up a tree.

Far ahead of the field, hounds continued their cry, but the line was fading. They lost it at the edge of the woods.

“Dammit!”
Trooper cursed.

The racket disturbed a barred owl, now awake and crabby. The golden-eyed bird looked down at them from her hole in the tree trunk.

“Vulgarians,”
she issued her verdict.

The vulgarians, confused and irritated, sought the line in a 360° radius. Finally reaching the hounds, Shaker held up to watch. Anyone can thrill to their pack in full cry but to watch them work was Shaker’s joy, and Sister’s as well. Given the narrowness of the passage she stopped fifty yards behind him, but some of the hounds worked back toward her.

The huntsman allowed them ten minutes, deemed it futile, and called them to her.

Sister looked behind her. “Huntsman.”

Shaker yelled out before people tried to back into the mess. “Master, just turn around and go out. Let’s get back in the pasture.”

When they reached the pasture, hounds cast again. They tried for another hour but to no avail.

Not about to brave the cold, Close Shave’s new owners waved from the kitchen windows when the field rode by. Shaker took off his hat and Sister tapped hers with her crop. The field followed suit.

A stiff wind rolled down the mountains. Clouds backed up on the crest.

Shaker blew hounds back to him and rode up to Sister. “I think we’re done. This will be a very good fixture.”

“Yes, it will. God bless Cindy Chandler. We’ve got some work to
do, but that’s hunting, isn’t it?” Sister smiled, and turned Aztec as they walked back to the trailers.

A small tailgate marked the first hunt at Close Shave. Derek and Mo Artinstall allowed the club to tailgate in an old well-built, six-stall empty barn. Putting on a hunt breakfast was a great deal of work. Sister and Walter would never ask for such a gift from a landowner. In fact, they were happy to use the barn. Somehow it fit the spirit of the group. Out of the wind, director’s chairs and card tables set up, people were warm enough in their coats, some changing to down jackets for the tailgate.

Taking Tuesdays off, Walter had bought a variety of Woodford Reserve bourbons, each having been aged in different casks. Ribbons in hunt green colors adorned the necks of the bottles. These stood open on one card table with a large card, hunt scene on the front.

“Everyone, sign the thank-you card to celebrate our first hunt at Close Shave,” said Walter. “I’ll drop this off at the Artinstalls when we’re finished.”

One by one people came up, removed their gloves, blew on cold fingers, signed their names.

“How did you like Mumtaz?” Sister asked Alida.

“Ravishing. The mare is one of the best horses I have ever ridden.” Alida glowed.

Kasmir joined the two ladies, bearing two cups of bracing tea. “Would you all like a spike with that?”

Sister kissed him on the cheek. “You’re spike enough, Kasmir. Alida gave Mumtaz a good ride.”

“Ah, my girl needs a good rider. I bump along,” he demurred modestly.

“Kasmir, you’re a wonderful rider.” Alida complimented him honestly, for he was.

“A wonderful man.” Sister dearly loved Kasmir, praying as did everyone who was drawn to him that he would find happiness.

Mercer signed the card, then joined the others. As it was a small field, most everyone crowded around the Master and staff.

“Why don’t we all sit?” Sister invited everyone. “I don’t know why but my legs are tired.”

Those who brought their director’s chairs pulled them over. Always organized, Walter had carried bales of straw on the back of his truck, plus a few in his trailer. He’d placed them around the chairs and everyone gratefully sank onto canvas or straw.

Phil remarked, “It is funny how you can ride hard one day, no aches. Not much another day and you’re shot.”

“Low pressure,” Freddie Thomas offered.

“Well, a nip of spirits should pick up everyone’s pressure.” Mercer held up his plastic cup. “Say, whatever happened to our stirrup cups, the ones with fox heads?”

“Mercer, no one is carrying stirrup cups to a meet unless it’s a joint meet or a high holy day,” said Tedi Bancroft, who always found Mercer amusing.

“We need more elegance,” Mercer declared with conviction.

“Oh, Mercer.” Sam shrugged. “You’ve been saying that since grade school. Since you discovered Hubert de Givenchy.”

The crowd laughed.

Phil offered a toast. “To Mercer, first flight of sartorial splendor.”

“Hear! Hear!” They all agreed.

People wanted to amuse Mercer, especially those who had been at his grandfather’s somber reburial. No one could forget Daniella and most knew how demanding she was of Mercer.

They chattered among themselves.

Seated across from Phil, Sister smiled. “Remind me to carry a director’s chair.”

He wiggled on his straw bale, too. “Sticks right where it hurts, doesn’t it?”

“By the way, thank you for the extensive pedigrees for Matchplay
and Midshipman. I enjoy reading pedigrees. Going back through the names brings back memories.”

“Yes, it does,” Phil agreed enthusiastically. “I suppose most everyone measures their life by music, sports, books, movies, special occasions. For us, it’s horses, great runs.”

“That it is. Gray, Tootie, and I were looking at photographs of old horses. It’s interesting how some sires leave a stamp, and others not so much. Given Midshipman’s line, of course, we went back to Navigator. A very nice-looking horse with what was then thought of as a lackluster pedigree.”

Mercer leaned forward. “Proved them wrong.”

“I think it was the Ca Ira blood, the old French Thoroughbred who was Navigator’s sire,” Phil said. “No one knew much about him.”

“Ca Ira.” Kasmir popped up. “An eighty-gun frigate, French, that had the misfortune to battle Lord Nelson.”

“How do you know such things?” Alida was impressed.

“Going to school in England helped.” Kasmir smiled. “You do learn everything about Admiral Lord Nelson.”

“You did. I bet the others all forgot it,” Alida teased him.

Phil referred back to the photographs. “Hard to tell too much from those old pictures but you sure could see the good cannon bone on Ca Ira.”

“One doesn’t think of the French when one thinks of Thoroughbreds, or Germans either,” mused Gray.

“Given that those people had been at war with one another for centuries, that makes sense. Never give the other country credit,” Alida remarked, which made most of the others realize she was more than beautiful.

Phil asked Sister, “Must have been a scavenger hunt finding old photographs?”

“Anything is easy when you have Tootie and Gray. Put them in front of a computer.”

Tootie said, “It kind of started with Przewalski’s horse. Dr. Hinson told me I needed to study the evolution of the horse. That led to DNA.” She paused. “Dr. Hinson was so smart and she told me that one really breeds to families more than individuals. She said you needed the right mix. A horse like Benny Glitters from a great family is as rare as Mr. Chetwynd’s Navigator. Dr. Hinson said horses usually breed true. Well, she said people do, too.”

“She was right,” Phil agreed. “I’ll miss Penny. A terrible loss, both as a vet and someone who could see the big equine picture.”

Mercer nodded in agreement. “No date set for her service?”

“Not that I know of,” Sister confirmed.

“Medical Examiner. Takes time,” Sam replied simply.

“Well, how many suspicious deaths can there be in February? They can’t be that backed up.” Mercer put an entire chocolate chip cookie into his mouth.

“Who knows?” Freddie raised her eyebrows. “But you do associate violent crime with hot weather. At least, I do.”

“All the more reason to be a white-collar criminal.” Sam laughed. “Not seasonal.”

“Do you ever think that Crawford made his fortune illegally?” Phil asked.

“No. Not for one minute,” Sam responded instantly.

“Umm.” Phil changed course. “It’s good of him to let you hunt with us on Tuesdays.”

“It’s usually my day off,” said Sam, “but he is pretty good about it, especially if I bring along a green horse. Some learn more quickly than others. The trick is to be consistent.”

“Sam, I still say Crawford needs to get into racing.” Mercer ate another cookie, a pang of guilt accompanying the pleasure.

“He’s not going to hear that from me.” Sam tired of Mercer nudging him, always nudging him.

Phil stood up to look out the large glass windows in the closed barn door. “Windier.”

Cindy Chandler got up, too. “This is the winter that refuses to end, isn’t it?”

Sam and Gray talked to Mercer a bit more as the group started to break up.

“I’ll fold up the tables, put the bales back on your truck so you can go drop off the bottles,” Phil offered. “Otherwise, you’ll be here for another half hour.”

“Thank you.” Walter smiled.

“Mercer.” Phil called to his old friend to help him.

People removed their plastic food boxes from the card tables. No food was left. Mercer and Phil folded the card tables as the others folded their chairs.

Kasmir and Alida walked outside to his trailer. She thanked him again for allowing her to ride Mumtaz.

“Will you be hunting Thursday or Saturday?” He paused. “Of course, you will. You can ride Kavita Thursday and Mumtaz again on Saturday.”

“Kasmir, I can’t take advantage of you like that.”

“You’re not. My horses need to go out.”

“Mumtaz is gray. Did you ever read Tesio?” She named the great Italian breeder of the first half of the twentieth century. “He thought grays a mutation.”

“Yes. Tesio and the Aly Khan are worth study. But I don’t agree with the mutation theory, do you?”

“No. But then I look at paints and pintos, color horses. I don’t really know too much about their backgrounds but they aren’t as refined as Thoroughbreds. Thoroughbreds don’t come as paints. Although I bet there’s one somewhere out there.” She cupped her chin for a moment in her gloved hand.

“Bet not.” Kasmir held up five fingers for a five-fingered bet.

“You’re on.”

They batted this back and forth, each becoming colder by the moment.

Freddie called from her truck. “Alida!”

“All right,” Alida called back.

“I’ll bring your horse Thursday.”

“Kasmir, allow me to come to your stable. I can tack up my own horse. That way I’d get to know her a little bit.”

“Well—”

“Really, I like doing my own grooming and tacking up.”

“All right. Perhaps—Mmm, the fixture is forty minutes from my place—perhaps an hour and a half before the first cast?”

“I’ll be there.” Then with a mischievous glint to her eye she said over her shoulder, “I respect your opinion, but I think mine is better.” She burst out laughing.

He laughed, too, slipped into the cab of his truck, and the tears came. His late wife would say that to him constantly.

“Thank you, my love,” he whispered.

“She kept good records,” said Mercer. Asked by Ben Sidell, he reviewed the pedigrees of horses on whom Dr. Hinson worked.

Also asked by the sheriff, Sister sat next to Mercer at Penny’s desk at the Westlake Equine Clinic. “Ben, certain strains in all the breeds carry problems. Penny was wise to know each horse’s background if she could.”

Mercer turned from the screen to Ben, in the chair next to him. “That’s one of the problems with what I call backyard horses. Often Old Jose is bred to Sweet Sue because the owners think they’re a good match. They have no idea what they’re doing.”

“Isn’t there hybrid vigor among horses as well as people?” Ben smiled slightly.

“Yes,” Sister answered. “We don’t need to know names, but I’m assuming nothing in Penny’s records points to crime. Or misuse of drugs?”

“No,” said Ben. “But I don’t know pedigrees like you two do. And what struck me is the amount of research she put in during the last month of her life,” he added. “Could have been just a notion, as you Southerners say.”

“Oh, come on, they say it in Ohio, too,” Mercer shot back.

“Sister, what do you make of this fellow here?” Mercer pointed out a Quarter Horse cross.

“Poco Bueno blood, if you go back four generations. A very good Quarter Horse line. The dam, his mother, was that line and the sire, you know well, a chaser son of Damascus.”

“Right.” Mercer tapped away on the computer keys.

“And?” Ben asked.

“Whoever bred the gelding used two very good lines, sturdy. They looked for a mating they could afford. Ben, very few people could have afforded Damascus’s stud fee when he was alive. So this person knew his or her stuff, and wanted an appendix, a Thoroughbred/​Quarter Horse cross. You can find good blood if you look hard enough at a reasonable price, and anyone breeding an appendix horse would do just that.”

Ben rubbed the flat of his palm on his cheek for a moment. “Do either of you have any idea why Penny would have studied all this, plus all her research on equine DNA?”

“Again, to see if a condition she was treating could possibly be passed by blood,” Sister repeated. “Things like the inability to sweat, or hip problems—you’d be surprised what can show up. It’s only in the last twenty years, really, that some of these conditions can be pinpointed genetically. Prior to that, a lot depended on a horseman’s memory.”

“And honesty,” chirped Mercer, always quick to find a financial motive. “If a yearling looks fabulous, moves well but, you know, is a little screwy, how many sellers will tell? I worry a lot more about mental states than, say, a slightly crooked leg.”

Sister crossed her arms over her chest. “Ben, you know her client list, we don’t. Did Penny have any pedigree research not connected to her clients?”

“No.”

“What about going back to the beginnings, like Eclipse or Matchem?” Mercer named two foundation sires of Thoroughbreds in the United States.

“Matchem 1748, right?” Sister was thinking.

“Right.” Mercer then added, “Eclipse 1764.”

“You can go back that far?” Ben interjected, amazed.