Book Four of the Winning Odds Series: Soon to be a Movie

by MaryAnn Myers

  Fitzgerald chuckled. “Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order and everything becomes chaos.”

  Linda had to think. The next line. The next line. “I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos?”

  “It’s fair,” Fitzgerald replied.

  “The Joker,” Hank said. “Even I knew that!”

  “Yeah? Well, you're not the man I knew ten years ago,” Linda said.

  Hank remained quiet.

  “It's not the years, honey,” Linda added. “It's the mileage.”

  Fitzgerald smiled. “Indiana Jones. Carry on.”

  “Is that true? That’s who said that?” Hank asked, sticking his head out the office door.

  “The truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

  All three laughed.

  “All right, but I’ll tell you what,” Hank said. “There’s a cold wind blowing, and I aim to be on that train.”

  Linda and Fitzgerald laughed. “You’re so full of shit!” Linda said.

  “Hey, at least you stopped talking to yourself. ‘All you need is twenty seconds of insane courage and I promise you something great will come of it.’”

  Fitzgerald nodded. “We’ve created a monster. Lord help us all.”

  ~ * ~

  When Cracker Jack dropped Heather off at her BMW in the racetrack parking lot, she noticed Richard’s car was still there. It was Ladies Happy Hour at the Country Club, so that’s where she headed. Her friends Rebecca and Jaclyn were waiting for her, as usual.

  “Ooh, it looks like it was a good afternoon for you,” Jaclyn said. “What put the color in your cheeks?”

  “A ride on a trolley car, all afternoon.”

  “Never heard it called that before,” Rebecca said.

  Heather laughed. “Did you ever hear about a guy named Cracker Jack Henderson?”

  “No.” They both shook their heads.

  “But ooh la la, it’s about time,” Jaclyn said.

  When the server put Heather’s favorite drink down in front of her and she thanked him, he looked at her in an odd way. “Sweetie, have you looked in the mirror?”

  “You mean my hair?” Heather laughed. “I’ve been on a trolley all afternoon.”

  Jaclyn and Rebecca wagged their eyebrows. “She was just going to tell us all about it.”

  Heather laughed. “It was a real trolley, and the man….”

  “The uh so-called driver?” Rebecca asked.

  Heather shook her head. “The driver is about eighty years old.”

  “Ooh, that’s not fun,” Jaclyn sat back.

  “Are you kidding me? It was a blast. We went everywhere. We even went to the cemetery to visit his wife’s grave. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun!”

  Heather’s two friends just looked at her.

  “Are you off your meds?” Jaclyn teased.

  Heather laughed. “I can’t believe you’ve never heard of him. Everyone knows him.”

  “Well, apparently we aren’t everyone,” Rebecca replied.

  Heather smiled. “I’m starving.”

  Rebecca and Jaclyn looked at one another in disbelief. Heather? Starving? Mildly hungry would be a stretch, let alone starving.

  “Kenny, can you bring us some more of this artichoke dip? Why does it taste so good?”

  “Because you’re all aglow,” Rebecca said.

  Kenny walked away shaking his head.

  “So what’s new with you two?” Heather asked.

  “Oh,” Rebecca said. “Tonight’s the opening ceremony for the Playhouse. We were deciding what we’re going to wear. What are you planning to wear?

  “Actually I’m not going to wear anything.”

  “Ooh, baby!” Jaclyn laughed.

  “I’m not going.” Heather said. “I changed my mind. I’m going to call Richard and have him meet me at the farm for dinner. They’re having chicken and dumplings tonight. It’s Richard’s favorite and since they don’t make it here and it’s obvious I never make it….”

  “Oh, that’s our girl,” Rebecca said. “You had me worried there for a minute. Kenny,” she called to him. “Can you bring us another round.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like having dinner at the farm,” Heather explained. “I just don’t have much in common with anyone there.” Thus said, she felt a wave of depression wash over her. Not again, she thought. No…. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Right, like my black satin dress and my afternoon delight,” Rebecca said, wagging her eyebrows again. “Talk – about – a – ride!”

  ~ * ~

  When Richard received a text from Heather to meet him at the farm for dinner at Glenda and George’s, he was not only surprised but leery. They used to have dinner at Meg’s Meadows at least once a week before she started finding excuses not to go anymore. Like the Playhouse tonight. The Figaro Musical was not one of her favorites, not to mention it was two and half hours long, way too long for her attention span of late. But when he’d mentioned going to the dinner this evening before he left for Washington, all of sudden they had plans.

  He didn’t like to think about it, but had to wonder if she was up to something. Being devious or calculating was not usual behavior for her. Then again, nothing she’d done lately seemed even remotely characteristic.

  Most everyone was already seated and passing dishes when he arrived, an empty seat waiting for him next to Heather. He ventured a kiss on her cheek and unfolded his napkin. It wasn’t until he was handed the bowl of asparagus from someone to his right that he realized Cindy and Marvin were present. He smiled and gave Cindy a hug and shook Marvin’s hand.

  “Good to see you! Is it safe to say you’ll be moving home for good soon?”

  “Today,” Cindy said. “With Marvin able to work from home remotely and me just biding time at the clinic with my replacement already on the job, it didn’t make sense to stay there any longer.”

  “She wants to be here to oversee the construction of the hospital. I fear for the crew,” Marvin teased.

  Randy and Mark were last to arrive. Both washed up at the kitchen sink and took their seats.

  “Where’s Linda?” Richard asked.

  “Mommy’s on a nutter date,” Maria said. “She won’t be late.”

  “What?” Heather said, the blood draining from her face.

  “A nutter date. She won’t be late.”

  Wendy looked from her to Richard and back. “You mean like Alice in Wonderland, I’m late. I’m late. I’m late for a very important date.”

  “Yes!” Maria and Maeve nodded. “Don’t be late.”

  Awkward moment averted, everyone got down to the business of eating. When Ben glanced at Tom, he just shrugged. “So, Randy, any more news from Dawn?”

  He shook his head, adding for the children’s benefit, “All is well.”

  “Where is she?” Heather asked.

  “On an assignment in Uganda,” D.R. said, all grownup like. “She’s been gone four days.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot.” Heather glanced around the table. “What kind of assignment?”

  Randy looked at his children and hesitated. “Beads maybe.”

  “Beads?”

  Randy waved his fork with pretend nonchalance. “The women make them from recycled magazines and newspapers. She said she’d uh, tell us all about it when she gets home.”

  “In a couple of days,” D.R. added.

  Maria and Maeve nodded. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow? “So, Cindy.” Randy changed the subject. “Are you reporting for duty tomorrow?”

  “What time?”

  “Oh?” He looked at Mark. “What? Six-thirty? Seven? Eight?”

  “Wait a minute. Somebody has to be there for the crack of dawn. I vote it’s Cindy.”

  Cindy laughed. On her last visit home, she had taken turns riding with her brother or Mark so she could get to know the clients, and her only complaint was having to be on the job before daybrea
k. Unless she’d been on call at the small animal clinic she didn’t have to start work until well after eight a.m. Racetrack hours were a huge adjustment for someone known as a night owl.

  Ben chuckled and shared the story about the morning he came back from the track kitchen and found Cindy sound asleep on the cot in the tack room, “Vetwrap in one hand and a jar of Furacin in the other. Literally sleeping on the job!”

  “I was up all night that night with these two and a mare that wouldn’t foal,” Cindy said. “I have never been that tired in my life. They had me on the road by five the day before. What was it you said Doc Jake said about all-nighters?”

  Randy smiled. “It’ll make you think serious things in a very goofy way.”

  “I can relate,” George said. “That one year we had seven mares in here to foal, I probably wouldn’t have been able to shout out my own name if I’d had to. I remember looking down the chute from the loft and thinking all the mares looked like momma bears.”

  Dusty helped himself to some more dumplings. “I sat in a protest once in the sixties for three days and started hallucinating.”

  “Well,” Tom said, “if it were the eighties you’re talking about, that would be a little out of the ordinary. But the sixties….” He shook his head.

  The grown-ups laughed.

  “Speaking of the protests,” Richard said. “I think the hearing in Congress went very well. As I mentioned to Wendy and Tom at lunch today….” No sooner said than he regretted bringing up the subject of lunch, which would almost certainly have Heather remembering the message from Janet Dupree. Oh well, why stop now? “I look for good things to happen. Not tomorrow, maybe not even this year. But the tide is turning. That was apparent by the questions that were asked of everyone. I felt good leaving there.”

  Heather looked at him. He imagined her thinking, “I’ll bet you did.”

  Tom studied the two of them. Wendy studied Tom.

  D.R. studied all of them. He didn’t understand what they were talking about. Again. He speared a dumpling with his fork and pointed. “When you’re in your sixties, Grandpa says you’ve only just begun.”

  They all laughed.

  During dessert of chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream, Heather told them about her afternoon with Cracker Jack in the trolley. She talked about how much fun she had, and how amazed she’d been at how many people knew him.

  “He was a celebrity here for a long time,” Ben said.

  “And somehow he managed to not be involved in one scandal,” Dusty said, propping his foot up. “That’s unheard of these days. He’s always been a gentleman.”

  “You mean he wasn’t at that sit-in with you in the sixties?” Tom asked.

  Dusty smiled. “Actually he was. He took the podium that day and I was real proud of him. He was against the war and so was I.”

  Heather seemed distracted to Glenda as they washed dishes, but they weren’t exactly close enough friends for Glenda to ask what was on her mind. “You okay?”

  “Yes,” Heather said. “I was just thinking about Dawn. Wow, an assignment in Uganda. That’s amazing.”

  Glenda lowered her voice. The children were watching TV in the living room. “Actually she went to try and find out about her Aunt Maeve’s death.”

  “What do you mean? Didn’t she drown?”

  “Yes, but that’s all we know. Dawn went to find out why.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was a long way to the Nile. But even so, practically everyone in the village decided to accompany Dawn. Since they certainly wouldn’t all fit in the Jeep, they all walked. When Nabu became tired, Dawn picked her up and carried her.

  “They are all family,” Wesesa explained, alongside Dawn. “They are all they have. Very few people come to Mangeni. They are like lepers in the story of Jesus.”

  Some of the women walked ahead; some followed behind.

  “When one dies, all their cries can be heard for miles and miles.”

  Several of the women started humming and the others joined in. Little Nabu hummed as well. “You have a beautiful voice,” Dawn told her.

  The little girl smiled.

  Dawn glanced over her shoulder to check on Virginia. She seemed to be holding up well, humming also, with children milling all around her. It was warm, but not oppressive. There was a nice breeze.

  If anyone had to stop along the way, everyone stopped. Kissa, the woman reluctant to have any association with Dawn, looked at her oddly during one of the stops. There was something about the way Dawn had smoothed the loose tendrils of her hair off her face as she gazed into the distance. It was as if she were seeing Dawn for the first time, or seeing….

  “Maeve.”

  Dawn turned.

  “You look like her,” Kissa said, her bottom lip trembling. “Just now. You look like her.”

  Dawn smiled and nodded with tears welling up in her eyes.

  “My daughter Nasiche. She drown that day too.”

  Abbo studied one and then the other. “We must keep going.”

  As they made their way to the river, it was as if Kissa had opened the floodgates to the women’s memories of Aunt Maeve. They shared one story after another, many of them sad, many of them happy. “She snore so loud.”

  Dawn wiped her eyes and laughed. “I know.”

  “Here,” Wesesa said, after they’d walked a good while. “I will carry Nabu now.”

  Dawn handed the child to her and glanced ahead. The river, winding its way like a snake in the reeds came into view. Dawn sucked in her breath, her heart fluttering.

  “So heavy the rain that day,” she heard one of the women say. “The water so high.”

  “I do not remember ever so high before.”

  As they approached the river bank, Kissa began to chant what sounded like a song at first, then a storm, high and low, high and low, the words turning into cries of anguish and pain.

  “Nasiche did not know how to swim,” Abbo said.

  “Normally the water in this stretch of the Nile is shallow,” Wesesa said. “Nothing more than a wading pool for the children. A place to frolic and play - not to die.”

  “Nasiche fell and went under,” Abbo said.

  Dawn looked at Kissa.

  “Maeve dove into the water and swam after her. She could not save her, but did not want her to die alone.”

  “We held Kissa back. And we watched. It was all we could do.”

  Dawn covered her mouth, her hand and voice trembling. “Did she reach her?”

  “Yes.”

  Dawn nodded, sobs wracking her body. Wesesa put her arm around her. “We will leave you alone now. Take your time. We will wait for you.”

  Dawn nodded again and again, trying to speak. “Where does the river go?”

  “Out to sea,” Abbo said. “They never came back up.”

  Dawn reached for Kissa’s hand as the women turned to leave and squeezed it tight. When she walked away, Dawn knelt down onto her knees at the edge of the river bank and just stayed like that for a long, long time, staring out to the sea.

  The women formed a circle a watchful distance away. They hummed. The children hummed. They waited.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Junior checked Max’s feed tub in the morning and did a happy dance. The horse had nickered for breakfast along with all the other horses in the Miller barn and had eaten every bit of his bran mash from the night before. Initial thoughts; there was a race in the book for him on Saturday. The perfect condition; never win three going a flat mile for $4,000. He’d never win going a mile, but he’d come flying his last couple of starts. Junior was convinced if he stretched this horse out to a flat mile, it would suit him just fine.

  Second thoughts, he wasn’t so sure. The horse could also have just been passing some tired horses. Since Max was a ship-in and had yet to race here, Junior obviously hadn’t watched him run so really there was no way for him to know for certain. He’d phoned Max’s previous trainer twice now and the man had
n’t returned his calls. Apparently he wasn’t going to. He’d sold him the horse and that was that. Junior was on his own.

  Tom arrived at the barn a few minutes later, then Ben, and then Dusty, hobbling on his crutches and in obvious pain. Tom poured him a cup of coffee and handed it to him. “You have to stop going up and down those stairs.”

  Dusty had to agree. “Are any of the kids coming home in the next couple of days?”

  “No. Gordon’s still in London. Matthew’s over at Hillary’s.”

  Ben looked at him. “How are you going to get by today? How many horses do you have?”

  “Well, apparently we acquired an additional one last night. He was a ship-in and pulled up bad. Jason refused an exit slip on him and the trainer dropped him at the barn.”

  “What’s the trainer’s name?”

  “Chase, I think.”

  Junior entered the tack room. “Wally Chase?”

  “Could be. Why? Do you know him?”

  “That’s who I bought Max off of. What did he do?”

  “He left a horse he ran here yesterday in the ReHab barn. There was a note tacked to the feed room door.”

  “Did he hay and water him? Did he feed him?”

  “Yes. He probably should have done him up though. It looks like he might have pulled a suspensory.”

  Within seconds of Dusty saying that, Cindy arrived at the barn with Randy. She entered the tack room, yawning. “This sucks.”

  “Morning!” Ben said, smiling.

  Cindy squinted at him. “Is that you, Ben?”

  Ben laughed. “You’ll get used to it. Though this is a little early even for Randy.”

  Randy poured a cup of coffee, handed it to his sister, and poured one for himself. “The answering service left me a message about a horse in the ReHab barn. We’re headed there now.”

  “Good,” Dusty said. “Can I hitch a ride?”

  Randy nodded and looked at Cindy. The truck was a two-seater.

  “I’ll walk,” she said. “Maybe I’ll be awake by the time I get there. Which way do I go?”

  Randy smiled. He loved his sister and loved her dry sense of humor, but always marveled at how dramatic she could be, even as a child. “Why don’t you just follow along behind the truck. That way you won’t get lost.”