Puss 'N Cahoots

black-and-white paint named Voodoo. She could have skipped it but wanted to teach Charly a thing or two. He wasn’t going to affect her riding. Renata, ready to wail anew when she realized her tack trunk and clothes were at Charly’s hospitality room, was short-circuited.
    At that moment, Charly’s head groom, Carlos, appeared along with Jorge, Kalarama’s groom, with Renata’s trunk, clothes, and tack. Not a speck of dirt besmirched anything. She liked Carlos and tried to give him a tip, but he refused. Jorge refused also.
    As Renata changed, Jorge tacked up Voodoo, while Shortro and Queen Esther watched. Voodoo, the first good Saddlebred Renata had bought, had a special place in her heart. Voodoo taught her a great deal while forgiving her mistakes.
    Joan, Harry, Fair, and the animals walked back to their Kalarama box as the crowd clapped for the contestants leaving the second class.
    Paul and Frances were now looking down from the top tier of the main grandstand. The odor of the food had enticed them from the box. Joan settled in her chair. The third class, with a full twenty-five entrants, seemed to go on forever, finally being won by a young lady riding a horse bred in Missouri by Callaway Stables, outside the town of Fulton.
    Joan reached around to drape her jacket over her shoulders. She gasped. “My pin.”
    Harry looked at the jacket, then got down on her hands and knees to inspect the ground. “Oh, Joan, it’s not here.”
    Fair stood up, checking the entrance to the box. “How about if I go to lost-and-found in case it fell off and someone picked it up?”
    “It didn’t fall off. The clasp had a triple lock.” Joan’s face, mournful, registered this loss. “Someone took it off.”
    “Maybe your mother did when she left the box.” Harry was hopeful.
    A flicker of hope illuminated Joan’s beautiful features. “Well, maybe.” Her voice lowered. “I kind of doubt it. All these years I’ve been coming here, I never worried about anything being stolen. I can’t believe this.” She sighed deeply. “Mom is going to be really upset with me.” She paused. “I’m upset.”
    “Not to be crass, but how much do you think the pin is worth?” Harry put her hand on Joan’s shoulder.
    “I don’t know. Twenty-five thousand? Thirty?”
    “God!” Harry, mindful of every penny, now turned whiter than Joan.
    “We may find it yet,” Fair said comfortingly.
    Joan’s shoulders straightened. “We might. But I don’t know if we’ll like what we find with it.”
    “That’s a strange thing to say.” Harry’s eyebrows raised quizzically.
    “I have this terrible feeling…” Joan’s voice trailed off.
    This melancholy premonition vanished as Miss Nasty, Booty’s sidekick, free at last, rollicked along the top board of the show-ring rail.
    How long she’d escaped her confinement was anybody’s guess, because she could be stealthy when she wished. Now her desire to be the center of attention overtook her.
    Fortunately, the horses for the fourth class would have a five-minute wait as two tractors with drags fluffed up the footing in the ring.
    Pewter observed the young monkey.
“Ugly as a mud fence.”
    “Must have slipped her chain.”
Tucker did think it was funny that Miss Nasty waved her tiny chapeau to the crowd.
    Cookie, who knew the monkey only too well, replied,
“Miss Nasty doesn’t have anything as common as a chain. She’s tied with a silken cord that has a gold lock on the end. She knows how to pick it. And she can pick the lock to her cage, too. Booty should keep her in her cage all the time, but he likes to have her with him. She gets into everything. Once she climbed into a car and started it. I heard she let out his snakes, and some of them are poisonous. No one would go to his house until he found them all.”
    “People leave their cars unlocked at shows?”
Mrs. Murphy registered surprise.
    “No big deal.”
Cookie nodded.
    “If Miss Nasty picks the lock on her silken cord, why doesn’t Booty use something stronger?”
Pewter wondered.

    “Oh, he accuses people of freeing her. He can’t face how naughty she is. It’s a good thing he can’t understand what she says. She should have her mouth washed out with soap.”
Cookie laid back her ears as Miss Nasty approached, paused to stand up and clap, then waved her hat and put it back on. She dropped to all fours, loping along the top rail again.
    “Her dress is fetching.” Fair laughed at the pink sundress, which