Puss 'N Cahoots

the supermarket, and who knows what I’ll find along the way.” Frances turned to Joan. “If you give me your beige linen jacket I’ll take it to the cleaner. Remember to take off my mother’s pin. And Joan, didn’t I raise you not to put your elbows on the table?”
    Joan gulped. “Give me a minute.”
    Harry made small talk with Frances. Joan returned with her jacket.
    Frances stood up, draped the jacket over her arm. “Remember, we need luck tonight, three-year-old fine harness class. It’s pin night.” She smiled.
    “I was going to rest it tonight and save it for the five-gaited.” Joan really was a bad liar, but Frances didn’t notice at that moment.
    “Luck won’t run out as long as the points of the horseshoe are up.” Frances opened the door to the basement and descended, each wooden step reverberating until she reached bottom.
    Neither Harry nor Joan spoke until they heard the motor turn over.
    “I’m cooked. I’m such a coward. I can’t tell her.”
    “There’s still time. I don’t think you’re a coward. We might find it.”
    “Here I am, fussed up over a pin. Jorge is dead and Renata’s horse is missing.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I can’t believe myself.”
    “Joan, it’s human nature. We can’t fix the big problems so we concentrate on the small ones.”
    “Well, I’ve got some whopping big problems.”
    “Would you recognize Queen Esther if you saw her?” Harry asked.
    “I would.”
    “I think I would, too, even though I haven’t seen her as much as you have. But she’s regal, she truly is a queen. Why don’t Fair and I cruise around and look, say, at Charly’s back pastures? You’re on overload. We might come up with something.”
    “I’ll draw you a little map where the different trainers have their farms.” She reached for a pad and pencil, always on the counter. “But I’ll tell you this, you won’t find Queen Esther at Charly’s.”
    “Why?”
    “He knows people think he’s behind this because he’s so angry with Renata. If he did take the horse, he’d put her with someone else.”
    “Out of state?”
    “Maybe, but I bet when all this quiets down, Renata will get a phone call or e-mail. Could be wrong, but I think he’s trying to rattle her cage. If the horse were truly stolen, she would have received a ransom note, like you said.”
    “Charly is rattling her cage.”
    “In all respects.”
    Harry leaned forward as Joan drew county lines and made arrows to where the farms were. “Sex thing.”
    “Charly is a snob—I mean, he hides it, but he wants good things, the best, and if he could marry Renata, wouldn’t he be on top of the world? He wouldn’t be the first good horseman to marry a rich wife.”
    “Ah, what about her?” Harry’s eyebrows raised quizzically.
    “I don’t know. I expect she has stronger feelings for him than she’s admitting. Would she marry him? Who knows? Look at all the actresses who marry men who become their managers, or they marry their directors. It’s not such a far jump to marrying their trainer. I mean, an actress is told what to do. They look for leadership.”
    “I never thought of that.”
    “Because you don’t. Maybe not every actress or actor is looking for someone to pick up the reins, but a lot are. Her career is sagging. She’s looking for something.”
    “Wouldn’t a good script make more sense?”
    Joan laughed. “When have people used sense?”
    “You’ve got a point there. What about Booty? Maybe she’ll go over to him.”
    “On the one hand, I’d like her here. The publicity is good for us, and Larry could make her a better rider. She’s not bad now. But she’ll need a lot of attention. Larry doesn’t have it to give and neither do I, although I doubt she’d need it as much from me as from him.” She smiled slyly. “Booty’s good. Big rep, but she doesn’t like him, I can tell, and one of the reasons is Miss Nasty.”
    “She is pretty awful.”
    “She is, but it’s the humiliation aspect: he’s telling the world his ex-wife is a monkey. The duplicate wardrobe is screamingly funny. I can’t help it, I laugh, but Renata gets it, you know. She’d never fall for Booty.”
    “Another actor?”
    “Could be, but she loves the horse world. She’ll land here ultimately one way or the other. And who knows, Charly might be a good husband, although at this exact moment it is hard to picture.”
    “Monkey business.” Harry smiled.

T he deep-green pastures of