Puss 'N Cahoots

wouldn’t stay long. She’ll wind up back with Charly. Too much emotion there. Takes a woman to know a woman.”
    “Yes.” Harry bit her lip.
    “I expect her to pull Queen Esther after the show. She did call and say she wasn’t showing the mare tonight. I wanted to make sure—after all, this is her last prep before Louisville. She’ll be up against even more horses at Louisville. Said she didn’t trust whatever was happening, so she wasn’t going to show her. I thought she’d do it for the publicity.”
    “Can’t blame her.”
    “No. Well, does this mean you’re going to show a Saddlebred?” A merry tone lifted Joan’s voice.
    “Actually, Joan, I’ll just walk him under tack, then see if he’s willing to do more.”
    “I knew it. I knew you’d turn him into a foxhunter.”
    Harry laughed. “He’ll tell me what he wants to do.”
    “That’s why you’re a good horseman.”
    “I’ll do anything,”
Shortro promised.
             
    As Harry and Joan finished up their conversation, Fair stood in the aisle of Charly’s barn. The smoke finally was dissipating and wafting eastward. The smell of it, the burned oil and metal, still hung over the place.
    “Seeing more of it.” Charly walked the aisle with Fair as they looked in on each horse. “More shows. More pressure. And if you have a client who has a four-hundred-thousand-dollar horse and they tell you not to turn him out in the pasture because they’re afraid of an injury, what do you do?”
    “I know it takes patience, but you need to show them what gastric ulcers are and how they affect an animal. Keep a horse in a stall with limited turnout, cram them full of high-energy food, subject them to high stress, you’re going to get ulcers. Performance drops. Once the ulcers are diagnosed, it takes twenty-eight days of a full tube of Ulcergard every day. And after that it’s a quarter tube a day. Don’t change the regimen and the ulcers return. People have to learn these are living, breathing, emotional creatures. They aren’t cars.”
    “I know. I know. Had five horses in my barn suffer from them.”
    “How many horses at the farm?”
    “Sixty. Give or take.”
    “How many in work?”
    “Well, horses come in and out. Some are there for specific training, a course, and they’re gone in a month, say, but on average, twenty-five.”
    “If you only have five with ulcers, you have a good program. Some people don’t use Ulcergard, by the way. They use papaya juice. I prefer Ulcergard. Ulcers are a bitch.”
    “Now if I could calm mine.” Charly smiled ruefully. “It’s feast or famine in this business.”
    “This last week can’t have helped.”
    “Never been through anything like it.” Charly folded his arms across his chest. “Well, the first Gulf War was bad, but we knew what we were about. This,” he held out one hand, keeping the other arm across his chest, “I don’t know. I feel like there’s someone behind every bush. That damned raid, along with Jorge’s murder, has everyone looking over their shoulders. Now this.” He shook his head, then stood straighter. “I’ll worry about it after the show. I will beat Booty if it kills me.”
    “Or him.”
    “Given all that’s happened, I probably shouldn’t say that, but I really do want to wipe his face in the dirt. Frederick the Great is going to win Shelbyville, and Louisville, too. He’s a world champion.”
    “For my part, I hope there’s good competition tonight.” Fair smiled at him and said, “No glory in a walkover.”
    Charly smiled, too. “They’ll make it hard for me. You’ll see a pretty damned exciting class.”

A s if the portents since August 2 hadn’t filled people with wonder and anxiety, the yellow stakeout around the debris of the van completed the aura of incipient danger.
    The show officials wanted the bits hauled off, but the sheriff declared they had to stay. Plus, they still were warm. Bomb experts called in from Louisville needed time to consider the pattern of debris.
    The result of this wise decision on the part of young Sheriff Howlett caused the officials consternation. Half of the main parking lot would be cordoned off, so they petitioned the sheriff and the mayor to allow them to mark the westbound shoulder of Route 60 for parking, as well as side streets closest to the fairgrounds. Residents didn’t complain about Route 60, but having their streets clogged up proved a major irritant. The smarter ones parked their