Puss 'N Cahoots

flips those fangs out and you put him over a little cup with plastic wrap over it, stick his fangs in it, and the venom just drips out. Easy.” The other two men listened with no comment. “What’s interesting about a coral snake is the fangs don’t retract. You should see her.”
    “I see Miss Nasty. That’s enough,” Charly said.

B efore Ward reached the entrance to I-64 to head east, his cell rang.
    Charly, on the other end, growled, “Ward, do you know where Renata was last night?”
    “No.”
    “She rode back with you in the van.”
    Ward replied, “She left her truck at my place. When we got back, she drove off.”
    “She tell you where she was going?”
    “No. Why would she?”
    “You tell me.” Charly, peeved, disconnected the call.
    His call did convince Ward that Charly’s relationship with Renata went deeper than being her trainer. Ward kicked himself for being blind, or maybe he just didn’t want Renata to have had an affair with the likes of Charly.
    Within ten minutes Charly turned down the long, winding, tree-lined drive to his immaculately manicured establishment.
    His house, with the white Ionic pillars standing out from the weathered red brick, the boxwoods and magnolias dotted about, the freshly painted barns, fence lines trimmed neatly, looked like David Selznick’s version of Tara.
    As someone who sold at the high end of the market, Charly understood that rich folks might not know too much about horses, but they wanted the dream, “the look.”
    Some folks with big bucks did know horses, but they, too, succumbed to being doted upon in Charly’s vast front room in the main barn. Sofas, chairs, a fireplace, a kitchen, and a huge plasma TV flat on the wall shouted money, money, money. The indoor arena, larger than the one at Kalarama, had two viewing areas, one enclosed with glass in case the client didn’t wish to inhale the dust. There were small refrigerators in the viewing areas should a body desire to drink but not wish to walk the few steps back to the sumptuous lounge.
    Charly, vain about his dress, proved equally vain concerning his surroundings. No surprise then that the women in his life fit into the perfect picture. The affairs were ornamental. He did love his ex-wife, but she, too, had to meet a standard of beauty reflected in fashion magazines, television, and film. One day she’d had enough of being eye candy, walked out, matriculated at the University of Kentucky to study physical therapy, and she never looked back. She didn’t tell tales out of school, which Charly appreciated, especially after witnessing Booty’s sulfurous divorce.
    Charly tired of affairs and one-night stands. They took too much energy. Chasing women distracted him from his main purpose: making and selling spectacular Saddlebreds. He wanted, needed, a wife who could be spectacular herself but who could ride, too. His first wife, whom he had married when he returned from the first Gulf War—a first lieutenant glad to be home—possessed all the necessary graces, but she wasn’t a horsewoman. It seems superficial to non-horse people, since many couples enjoy differing sports, pastimes, but it just doesn’t work that way too readily with horse people.
    Charly made money. He made even more bringing in the undocumented workers. The profit for each worker was two thousand dollars in cash, no checks. Still, he was forever scrambling. A rich wife would help. If he had to pick between money and beauty, money would win. A man could find beauty on the side.
    Standing in front of his main barn, hands on hips, pouted a woman who radiated both beauty and money. Renata DeCarlo, fresh at nine-thirty in the morning, wore white Bermuda shorts and a magenta belt; a pair of white espadrilles on her size-8 feet completed the ensemble.
    Curious how sometimes friends, lovers, husbands, and wives will select the same colors to wear that day without consulting each other. Charly wore white jeans and an aqua shirt.
    He parked by his house and walked the two hundred yards to the barn.
    “Where have you been?” she asked, then smiled irresistibly.
    “Breakfast with the boys. I could ask the same of you. Why weren’t you at the show last night?”
    “I wasn’t riding in a class and I had a script to read.”
    “Renata, how fortuitous.” He was in front of her now.
    “Heard. I’m very glad I missed it.”
    “When I find out who called, I’ll break their neck.” He checked himself, because no one except