Puss 'N Cahoots

drank her tea once Joan sat down. “I shy away from it, but I lack your gift.”
    Joan waved off this compliment as they both attacked the coffee cake.
    “I should make you a real breakfast, but you know me.” Joan wanly smiled since she never had time nor much inclination to cook.
    “I’m the same way. Fair usually brings something home after his last call, and he likes to grill.”
    “Don’t they all. I mean, have you ever seen anything like men hovering over their barbecue? They’re even competitive about the sauces, and if they marinate the meat—” She rolled her eyes heavenward.
    “Didn’t you say they were just as bad in Australia and even South Africa when you visited there?”
    “Honey, they’re probably attacking one another with tongs in China. Show a man a grill and a piece of steak and he loses his mind.”
    “True, but we get to eat it.” Harry winked.
    “Ever notice how we’re cooks but they’re chefs?”
    Both women laughed at that.
    “You’ve got a couple of Thoroughbreds.” Harry noticed how moist the crumbs were on top of the coffee cake.
    “I do, but I don’t breed them. Paula Cline and I run a couple. My older brother Jimmy’s usually got a few on the track, too.”
    “If you hear of a good youngster, good mind, a little too slow, and the owners want out, let me know.”
    “I will. For you?”
    “Make it into a foxhunter for Alicia Palmer.”
    Because Joan knew Harry’s friends, she needed no biography of Alicia. “Still hot and heavy with BoomBoom?”
    “’Tis.”
    “I’d never thought that of BoomBoom, not that I care. She just mowed men down like a scythe.”
    “Both did. That may be why they found each other. They got bored.” Harry laughed.
    “Or maybe it’s truly love.” Joan hoped it was, because underneath she was a romantic.
    “Funny, isn’t it? All those years I hated BoomBoom. Hell, we even fought in grade school, and then when I divorced Fair I could avoid my own failings by being angry at her.”
    Fair had had an affair with BoomBoom.
    “The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”
    “Miranda says that all the time.”
    Miranda had worked with Harry for years at Crozet’s post office.
    Joan looked up at the round kitchen wall clock. “What time do you have?”
    “Nine.” Harry checked her wristwatch, which had been her father’s.
    “Forgot the power was out.” She pulled her chair underneath the clock, stepped on it, and moved the hands forward. “What a storm. I’m surprised there wasn’t more damage. We must be okay, because Larry hasn’t called on his cell.”
    Larry and Fair, both on ATVs, were checking the entire farm. While Manuel could have assigned someone to this task, the men really wanted to drive around on the ATVs, plus Fair would be there if any horse had sustained an injury. Poor Manuel had been devastated by Jorge’s murder. The first thing he did this morning was to go to Mass and say a prayer for Jorge’s soul.
    “That’s some good news.”
    Joan pulled the chair back, sitting down with a thump, which made Cookie bark. The animals had flopped on the couch in the living room. “Oh, Cookie, it’s just me.”
    “Never know,”
the Jack Russell called back.
    “You know, I’m kind of all right, my mind is clear, and then all this hits me again, and I feel my heart beat faster, I go back over every little thing, and I can’t figure it out. Then I get kind of obsessed and I go over and over where we were, what we were doing, and everyone else and who’s mad at whom, and I get dizzy.”
    “At two last night, Fair and I tried to remember who was on the rail for Renata’s class and who wasn’t. I finally fell asleep.” Harry put both hands on her teacup. “This morning I read the program to see who had horses in the class and who didn’t. I thought anyone not on the rail could be a potential murderer, but the storm put an end to that theory. Folks starting running in all directions at the first thunderclap.”
    A car drove into the driveway. The door to the garage, which was under the house, was open.
    “Grandma’s here,”
Cookie announced.
    “Yoo-hoo,” Frances called up.
    Paul and Frances lived at the corner of Kalarama Farm in a lovely, unpretentious two-story brick house that went back to the time of the great Kalarama Rex, foaled in 1922.
    Harry whispered, “She know?”
    “Not yet.” Joan stood up as her mother opened the door into the kitchen.
    “Good morning.” Frances