Whisker Of Evil

18

Looking good.” Fair beamed as he watched the ultrasound image on the small screen early Friday morning, June 11.

“Finally.” Sugar Thierry smiled.

Ultrasound helped determine whether a mare was in foal or not. A tiny little camera on a thin, flexible hose was inserted into the mare’s vagina and gently pushed up into the womb. The other end, attached to a small box with a screen, allowed the veterinarian to see if a breeding had been successful. This was usually done fourteen days after the breeding took place.

Most mares allowed this intrusion without too much fuss. A gentle handler and a handful of hay, if needed, distracted her from whoever was fiddling around her nether regions. Danzig’s Damsel endured this but sighed a long sigh once Fair had finished observing her womb.

Sugar walked Danzig’s Damsel, whose barn name was Loopy, into her stall. As most thoroughbreds have long names often indicating their bloodlines for their Jockey Club registration, a barn name is a must. She was an old-fashioned thoroughbred of substance and good bone. Her great-granddam had been in Mary Pat’s band of broodmares. Mary Pat favored distance runners as opposed to sprinters, which put her in the minority.

As Fair and Sugar walked out of the long white shed row barn into the early-morning sunshine, Fair admired the pignut hickories lining the gravel drive.

“How’s Binky?” Fair mentioned another one of Sugar’s mares, an old acquaintance.

“Out in the back pastures. She’s enjoying her retirement.”

“Binky’s got to be twenty-five if she’s a day.” Fair smiled, remembering the light chestnut mare from her flaming youth. She could be a handful.

“Every bit.” Sugar rubbed his temples. “Pollen count must be up again. Been fighting this headache for two days now.”

“This May was a record breaker. My truck was yellow. Couldn’t see out the windshield for the pine pollen.”

“Yeah.” Sugar stopped at Fair’s truck as the tall veterinarian put the ultrasound equipment in the special aluminum tool beds made for veterinarians. “Haven’t seen Paul for a couple of weeks. How’s he doing?”

“Pretty good. He gets along with Big Mim.”

“That’s half the battle, but at least she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to horses. More than you can say for most of these rich folks.”

“You’re talking about the comeheres.” Fair used the slang “come here” pronounced as one word, which meant someone who moved into the area.

“You’re right. She was born to it.”

“Nan Young’s a good hand with a horse. She’d work part time if the money’s right.” Fair thought this was a good time to mention help.

“I’ll talk to her.” Sugar rubbed his head again. “All that paperwork Barry did with the Jockey Club—the insurance stuff and stallion shares—I never paid a bit of mind to that. My job was out here. Course, he did a lot of that, too.”

“You two were a good team.”

Sugar, in his late twenties, sported a winning grin. Although not classically handsome—he had a crooked nose—he had an appealing way about him. Lean, hardworking, he loved the thoroughbred business. “Got in a couple of lay-up mares yesterday, which will help the cash flow.”

Lay-up mares or lay-up horses are placed at smaller farms with good care, usually by large farms or by private city owners who have an injured horse off the track or a broodmare and they can’t or won’t pay the expensive day rates charged by trainers, boarding tracks, and large racing operations. With careful management, a lay-up facility could provide a useful service to horse people and make a little bit of money.

“Might be able to find a few more for you.” Fair liked Sugar.

“Fair, will you do me a favor?” Sugar’s dark-blue eyes looked away, then back at Fair.

“If I can.”

“After Barry was killed I made out a will. Kind of gave me the creeps, you know.”

“I do.” Fair smiled, since no one liked to consider one’s own mortality, especially when in one’s twenties.

“If anything happens to me, you get my horses, you and Harry. You’ve both been good to us. I know you’ll do the right thing by my girls. I know you would never sell a horse to the knacker, and I got to thinking about old Binky. Knacker would just haul her out for meat price.” His eyes misted over. “That’s not right. Not right to do that to an animal that did right by you.”

“I agree.” Fair clapped his big hand on Sugar’s shoulder. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, but if it should, I’ll make sure all your horses are happy.”

Sugar smiled. “I know Harry won’t sell any of them.”

“You got that right.” Fair laughed, for his ex-wife couldn’t bear to part with any animal once she got to know him or her. “Have you talked to Harry?”

“No,” he sheepishly replied. “Well, I don’t know that anything will happen, and she’d get all upset. Easier to tell you.”

Fair tried to think as Harry would. “Sugar, are you worried that you might be in danger? Barry’s death was bizarre, and with each passing day it seems more, well, bizarre.”

Sugar’s voice rose. “What did he know? I can’t think of anything. Barry worked hard. What could he have known? I go over it and over it. He just pissed someone off. Over a girl. That’s what I think. So they rip out his throat and dump him. That’s what I think.”

“Kind of what I think, too. When there was no saliva found on the body, that was the tip-off. But I thought he was between romances and not between the sheets.”

“Me, too, but he could have taken up with a married woman. He knew how to talk to women.” Sugar said this with admiration.

“I’m starting to think it isn’t about talking to women, it’s about listening to them.”

Sugar thought about this. “Might be right. I sure do listen to Carmen. That girl can talk. We’re sort of going out.”

“I’ve got new respect for Barry.” Fair paused, then winked. “And you.”

“Why?”

“Barry didn’t talk to you about his conquests. He wasn’t a braggart, even to his best friend. And you’ve been very circumspect about Carmen.”

“A couple of times Barry said Carmen plucked his last nerve, but that was different. Barry was raised right.”

To be raised right as a man in the South, regardless of class or color, meant you did not discuss women in disparaging terms and you never whined about a woman if she did wrong by you; you kept your mouth shut. Men suffered in silence.

Like most ideal behavior, many men tried to live up to the standard but fell short.

“Speaking of being raised right, these mares represent an investment of money and hard work. Your mother would have been proud.”

Sugar beamed. “Thanks.”

Sugar’s father left his mother when Sugar was four, and the ne’er-do-well subsequently died in a bar in Baltimore, literally falling off the barstool dead drunk. His mother passed away three years ago of lung cancer.

“Well, I’d better push off. Got a couple of mares to check over at BoomBoom’s.”

“She do late breedings, too?”

“No. She’s only got two mares left, the hunters. As luck would have it, the pretty refined bay, Keepsake, jumped the fence and checked around until she found someone she liked.”

Sugar laughed. “Hope it wasn’t a donkey.”

“That’s just it. We don’t know. The closest intact horse”—meaning stallion—“lives down Whitehall Road at Phyllis Jones’s place. Let’s hope that’s where that hussy visited. Called Phyllis. Her fences are just fine, but the mare might have jumped in and jumped out.”

“No wonder Boom hunts that mare.”

Fair nodded in agreement. “For BoomBoom’s sake let’s hope it was one of Phyllis’s stallions—because those are nice, nice horses—and not the donkey over at Short Shot Farm.”

“I didn’t know they had a donkey.”

“Just bought it for their little girl.”

Sugar started to laugh. “I want to see this one. If BoomBoom winds up with a mule, she’ll pitch a fit and fall in it.”

If a donkey breeds a horse, the offspring is a mule. Mules can’t breed as they are sterile.

“Hey, Boom will fool you. If it’s a mule, she’ll keep it.”

“No way.”

“Five bucks says I’m right if it’s a mule.”

“Can’t predispose her toward keeping the critter. Promise.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” Fair laughed as he repeated the childhood oath.

“Five bucks.” Sugar shook Fair’s hand.

As Fair climbed into the truck he called back, “Try one of those generic antihistamines. There are a couple that won’t make you drowsy. Knock that headache right out.”

“Okay.”