The Magnum Equation Read online

  The three of us walked companionably around the show grounds for a time, greeting other exhibitors and spreading news of Starmaker’s miraculous recovery. Technically, Hank was supposed to be on a leash and I had one wrapped around my waist in case anyone complained. Hank did so much better on his own, though, that I always tried to leave him free to roam.

  Eventually we headed for peace and quiet in the form of the outer road around the grounds and found a suitable area on the paved track that ran parallel to the back of the huge coliseum. It was there I finally let my tears fall and buried my face in Sally’s sleek neck. I didn’t cry long. I never do. This time I wasn’t even sure why I was crying other than the fact I was dog tired and overly upset by the Zinners’ tragedy. I knew how I would have felt, had the horse been in my care.

  Feeling somewhat restored I turned my shoulder to Sally’s ear, which was a signal for her to walk with me, and headed toward the barns. Walking next to it, it was hard not to notice that the coliseum, for all the wondrous glory that would happen inside during the coming week, was covered with a greenish-beige vinyl over a cement block base. Within seconds I was happily discussing with Sally other, more suitable colors, for the coliseum. That’s the thing about horses. They’re very knowledgeable. With a blink of her beautiful eye, Sally let me know that she preferred sky blue while I leaned toward charcoal gray.

  We had just compromised with a nice blue-gray, which we both thought would look quite nice with the building’s green awnings and trim, when Sally stopped, turned at a right angle to face the coliseum and snorted. Sally often acted oddly and it was sometimes difficult for me to determine when she was just being a young mare, or when she was, as her owner would phrase it, “being psychic.”

  Several times in the past, Sally had bumped blue things with her nose before she won a championship. She had also blown bubbles in her water bucket and pawed holes in her stall. Some people said those “clues” could maybe have been put together to solve a murder and a kidnapping––if one believed that sort of thing.

  Now Sally refused to move forward when I asked her to walk on, and instead angled her body to block me from moving. I had learned from experience that when Sally acted like this we’d get past it a lot quicker if I lowered my body energy, focused entirely on her and acknowledged her with my voice.

  “Okay, Sally. Smart girl. I’ll think about it but now we have to get back to your stall.” And with that, Sally deigned to walk toward the barn. I was so glad that none of the other exhibitors had seen Sally’s “episode.” Despite the friendships, showing horses was still a business and here on the show circuit rumors spread quicker than a hen on a June bug. No need for anyone to think Sally was obstinate.

  Just before we reached the end of the coliseum, Noah pulled up on one of the show’s faster transports, a golf cart.

  “Man, Cat, you pull the disappearing act on me before I even know you’re on the grounds. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  “Just like you, Noah. Start complaining right away. Don’t even give me a chance to say hi or anything,” I said, as Sally and I continued our walk. My words were sharp, but my voice was as good-natured as my smile.

  If such things exist, Noah Gregory and I were platonic soul mates. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find we had been twins in another life. As show manager, he was fully responsible for everything from securing the facility, to the tiny day-to-day details of running the show. Needless to say, his job was filled with a great amount of pressure. A decade earlier Noah and I had gone to school together here at MTSU, and both of us had come away with degrees in equine science. Over the ensuing years we had developed a special relationship and as soon as I’d seen Starmaker lying in his stall, I knew Noah would seek me out as soon as he could. I also knew, without even talking to him, that Noah felt responsible. The health of all the horses on the show grounds was one of his areas of responsibility. A responsibility, he was sure to feel, he had failed.

  “I guess you heard,” he said, rolling his cart along slowly next to us as Hank jumped in to lick his face. “It’s got all the exhibitors upset. Colic can happen to any horse at any time for just about any reason, but still. Every trainer here is thinking he could be in Tony’s shoes and no one needs to pull a horse out of the competition. The stakes are too high, especially as the trainer with the most points and the owner of the horse who scores the highest in all the classes each get a twenty thousand dollar bonus.”

  I realized Noah was talking to himself as much as he was to me and I let him ramble. Hank, Sally, and I responded noncommittally at the appropriate places.

  As we reached the first of the horse barns, Noah’s cell phone rang at the same time his walkie-talkie squawked. Hank jumped out of the cart and took up a spot on the other side of Sally. Sally didn’t bat an eye at the sudden noise––or at Hank–– but I jumped a foot, proving the walk had done Sally a lot more good than it had me. Noah listened to the scratchy words coming through the walkie-talkie, his finely chiseled face a mask of tightly controlled emotion.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Security found a gun. And hey,” he added, “put that dog on a leash.”

  3

  AS MUCH AS I WANTED to follow Noah, I knew I couldn’t. There was just too much to do. So as Noah sped away, the three of us turned to head in the direction of our stalls. We hadn’t gone ten steps when I heard a familiar, and dreaded, voice.

  “Hey Cat, wait up.”

  I ignored the request and instead encouraged Sally to break into a jog trot.

  “Cat, come on. You’re not still mad at me, are you?”

  I increased my pace, resolutely keeping both my head and my shoulders facing forward.

  “Cat, please.”

  As the voice was now directly beside me, I could no longer avoid it or the person to whom it belonged.

  “I have nothing to say to you, Cam,” I replied.

  “Aw, Cat, come on,” he pleaded. “I said I was sorry. And I am. I really am.”

  I looked up into Cameron Clark’s exquisitely handsome face, but could read nothing in his deep-set gray eyes. They were as blank as I’d found his soul.

  “Sorry? Yeah, right,” I said, surprising myself with the strength of my feelings. “You don’t even know the meaning of the word.”

  Cam and I had over the course of several years been what my grandmother would have called “an item.” Superficially, he was everything I had thought I wanted in a man: tall, strong, dark, handsome, and nicely packaged with a small trust fund, courtesy of his late mother. However, over time, I found that Cam was also vain, egotistical, conceited, and self-absorbed. Time after time he put himself before others and it was a source of amazement to him that others didn’t do the same.

  The final straw, for me, was last fall at the world championships when the owner of an up-and-coming stallion missed his wife during the exhibitor party. He went back to their room to look for her and found her gaily romping in bed with none other than the amazing Cam. Cam couldn’t seem to figure out why the husband, the wife, and I were all upset. I hadn’t bothered to talk to him since. Besides, I’d recently started dating a veterinarian who lived near me just west of Nashville and I, at least, only dated one person at a time.

  “Cat, you never gave me a chance to explain––”

  “Explain! There’s nothing to explain. You don’t get it and you never will.”

  “At least let me buy you a drink and we can work it out.”

  By this time we had arrived at our stalls, and Jon and Darcy were staring at us, open mouthed at the heated exchange. I handed Sally to Jon, who busied himself settling Sally back into her stall. But, I could tell Jon’s ears were still turned in my direction.

  “Cam, look. It’s over. We’re through. We were headed in that direction before the ‘worlds.’ That just finished things for us, that’s all.”

  “Okay. So we won’t get personal. I can see you’re not ready for that. So we’ll talk. About horses
, about the show! My yearling colt is really coming on––”

  “You, you, you!” I screamed. “That’s all you think about. You. What about Tony and Annie? What about the colt they had that was not only coming on, he was already there? And now he’s out of the competition. He may not even survive. Go away, Cam. Stay out of my life. Just. Go. Away.”

  In tears for the third time in the last thirty minutes, I ducked into the tack room and plopped myself down on a stack of bridle bags. Whew! I felt like I was on an emotional roller coaster. Luckily, both Jon and Darcy were used to my passionate Irish outbursts and gave me a few minutes to compose myself. I hate it when I get overly emotional and Cam knew just what buttons to push to achieve that effect.

  “Ah … you’ll squash those bridles permanently if you sit on them much longer,” said Jon. I looked up at him and smiled. Jon was the epitome of tact. Whatever his true thoughts, he never verbalized them, and instead chose to get on with the task at hand. He was a wonderful assistant and definitely worth his weight in bridles.

  We’d only recently gone back to that close camaraderie. Last spring I’d gotten a little too involved in the brutal murder of my next-door neighbor. In the process, the daily workings of the barn fell solely on Jon’s shoulders and he resented it more than I knew. Conversation at the barn was pretty slim until we went on the road last April. But time had done its job and now things were back to normal. Well, as normal as things ever got around my barn.

  “Sorry.” I stood up and brushed invisible specks of dust off the seat of my Wrangler Jeans. “Well, so much for that. Shall we finish here and get something to eat?”

  Later that evening Tony, Annie, Darcy, and I dawdled over the remains of apple steak and roast potatoes at The Apple Tree. It was a restaurant favored by show goers as much for its proximity to the coliseum as for its apple flavored menu and the large tree that grew in the center of the dining area and up through the roof. I never could figure out how they built the roof around the tree and why they never had any leaks. Shows you the type of life I lead if that’s all I usually have to worry about.

  When we were at shows Jon spent the night in the tack room, unless we hired a security firm to watch the horses, which we often did. Even then, he still preferred to bunk with the horses. He knew that our client’s horses were too valuable, and we had spent too much time with them, for anything to happen.

  Besides the fact that I felt each of those horses were part of my family, horses are actually quite delicate and can get hurt on seemingly invisible dangers. Put a horse in a padded room, I often joke, and she’ll find a way to hurt herself. Tonight I would bring dinner back to Jon in a “to go” box.

  “It’s interesting,” I said to Annie, “to see which of the exhibitors eating here tonight have stopped by to ask about Star, and which of them have ignored your existence.”

  “Oh now, Cat, don’t be down on everyone who hasn’t come over,” said Annie. “Some people just have a problem knowing what to say, so they don’t say anything.”

  “Bunch of ingrates if you ask me,” I said, picking the remains of a biscuit from Darcy’s plate, slathering it in apple butter, and popping it into my mouth. “Can’t say a word to you now, but just wait until the next show when they need to borrow a lead line, or a cinch. They’ll come running then, because they know you’ll both do whatever you can to help.”

  Annie and Tony were probably the nicest people in the “show business.” Plus, Tony had a knack for spotting top horses and earned a good local reputation as a horse trader when he was still a kid. Annie often said it was a mixed blessing that the children they so longed for never came as it allowed more time, and finances, for the horses.

  After they were married, Annie spent ten years waiting tables before she put down her order pad for good and began to help in the barn during the day while Tony was at the factory. She also began training horses for pleasure classes, horses that were judged at the walk, trot, and canter (or lope if the horse was ridden in western gear). Another ten years and Tony took an early retirement to finally follow his dream of breeding and handling top halter horses full time. Conscientious and hardworking, the Zinners had spent the last decade doing reasonably well with their own––and with their clients’ horses. They lived on a modest twenty-acre tract just south and a little west of Oklahoma City, housing their horses in a vintage hay barn that Tony had skillfully remodeled for their prime show string.

  Maybe it was the lack of a fancy rig or want of state-of-the art facilities, but the Zinners had never quite been to the top. Their many clients sent them good, but not great, horses to work with and I’d always felt it was a testament to Tony and Annie’s skill and dedication that they’d done as well as they had. Their horses were consistently tough competition at local and regional levels, but the Zinners had gotten very used to taking home third, fourth, and fifth place ribbons at the big national shows, the shows that really counted.

  They had been invited to this show only because they were so consistently close to the top with every horse they had, and because everyone loved them.

  That’s why the colic of their spectacular yearling colt, Starmaker, was so devastating and why the snobbish owners of past national and world champions made little effort to stop by the Zinners’ table.

  “Ooohh,” squealed Darcy as she looked at the doorway. “There’s that awful Melanie Johnston coming in. Just watch. She’s one who’ll see us over here right off, but she’ll turn up her nose and walk right by us. She hasn’t spoken to me at all since I beat her in our equitation class in Lexington last month. Then on the way out the gate she tried to pin Petey and me against the wall with that big old ugly cow she rides. Ooohh, how I hate her.”

  I sighed. Darcy was the very privileged and only child of publishing mogul Mason Whitcomb and tended to be spoiled, which was reflected in her views on life. Or maybe it was because she was seventeen. I tried to remember what it was like to be that age, but only recalled a monk-like dedication to horses.

  I’d taught Darcy for about four years. Her jet-setting parents were divorced, and consequently, Darcy ended up more and more in my care until last month when she announced to the world that she was moving in with me. I thought it would have been nice if she had consulted me first, but looking at it as a whole, it really was the best decision. She could ride and train with me every day, and was with people who not only cared about her, but let her know it.

  Although Darcy felt a fierce devotion to her tall, black gelding Peter’s Pride (Petey), over the years she had lost the giddy exultation about horses common to most horse-crazy girls. But she was a tough competitor and, I think, saw horse shows as a way of excelling in her own world, rather than her mom’s glamour world of beauty or her dad’s world of business and finance.

  Unfortunately for Darcy, Mason’s only reaction to her new place of residence was concern about the tuition he had already paid for her senior year at the very upscale, very private Nashville school he sent her to. Darcy’s mother had lived on “the continent” with a series of aging boyfriends for the past several years. But I convinced Mason that Darcy could finish out her senior year from my place. She drove her vintage Corvette to school anyway. Now she’d just drive a little farther.

  Our after-dinner conversation drifted around to the show, and, of course, to Starmaker.

  “Fill us in,” I asked Tony and Annie. “We arrived in the middle of everything, so I really don’t know all that happened.”

  “Oh Cat, like I heard––”

  “Darcy,” I replied evenly, “Tony and Annie were there. I’m sure they can tell it at least as well as you can.”

  Darcy flushed under my rebuke, but stopped short of going into an active sulk. She, too, was interested in what the Zinners had to say.

  “Well,” began Annie, who was for once tentative, “Tony and I got here Tuesday, two days ago. You know that much. In fact,” she said turning to Tony for confirmation, “I think most of the exhibitors pulled in the
n, didn’t they?”

  Tony nodded his round gray head, and continued. “All was well. Today we visited with folks and got the horses exercised, same as we always do before a show starts. We finally got where we had just the one filly left to work and then we were going to get something to eat.”

  “It was about one o’clock. Tony was in the arena with the filly, that nice two-year-old who was third at the Appaloosa nationals last month, and I took a moment to go to the ladies room, hadn’t gone all day, you know,” said Annie, picking up the story again. I smiled inwardly as I realized that although they were in shock, Tony and Annie were still in tune enough to finish each other’s thoughts, just as they always had.

  “When I came back, Mickey, our little terrier, was whining and acting very strange. I took him over to the grass to do his business, but he ran right back to the stalls. So I checked the horses and they were all as they should be. All except Starmaker. He was sweaty, groaning, and standing all stretched out with his head hanging. The next thing I remember, I was inside the stall hugging Star’s neck and screaming for Tony.”

  Tony, who was just returning with the filly, heard Annie’s screams and came running. “Mike Lansing’s crew got there about the same time as I did. He and Judy are stalled just behind us,” explained Tony, indicating another Appaloosa trainer and his wife, “and a few of the kids that train with them came over. Noah, of course, came, too.”

  Tony rubbed a weathered hand over his face and sighed.

  “Do you know why Star colicked?” I asked.

  “No,” said Tony. “He traveled well. The trip took us about eleven hours. He ate and drank well during, and after he got here. Today he seemed fine, then he colicked, lay down, stopped breathing, and we all thought he was dead.”