Live and Let Growl (21 page)

I paused and had a look. The big carton was filled nearly to the brim with dog show memorabilia from the 1970s and '80s. There were marked catalogs from the Poodle Club of America National and Regional Specialties, and half a dozen well-read copies of the annual
Poodle Review
stud dog edition. Stacked beneath those were numerous glossy issues of other decades-old canine magazines and periodicals.

“Wow.” I pulled out a worn copy of
Poodle Variety
and began to flip through its pages. “Look at these old ads. The Poodles in here are amazing.”

“Of course they are.” Aunt Peg was in the kitchen with Ringo, making sure that he got a drink. “They're the ancestors of most of the good Poodles you see in the ring today.”

“Puttencove, Eaton, Bel Tor . . .” The illustrious kennel names rolled off my tongue like those of long-lost friends. “How cool is this?”

I set the first magazine aside and reached for another. Then I stopped and glanced up. “Do you think it's all right if I look at these? I mean, it's not like I have Miss Ellie's permission to go through her things.”

“I think Miss Ellie would be disappointed if you didn't look,” Aunt Peg said. “She kept all those magazines for a reason, probably because she referred back to them herself. I'm sure she would have been happy to share them with you.”

I spent the next half hour happily immersed in Poodle history. After Faith and the Fab Four had settled down to nap, Aunt Peg came over and joined me. Together we worked our way through Miss Ellie's incredible collection of twentieth-century Poodle media.

Reaching into the carton for another new magazine to peruse, I found my fingers closing over something that was the right size and shape but bound with a hard cover. The book was wedged in down near the bottom of the pile. Curious, I shifted some other things aside and jiggled it free.

The tome gave off a musty smell as I lifted it up and out of the box. Its pebbled-leather back cover was dotted with mold. I flipped the book over and saw that it was an old yearbook.
FOXCROFT SCHOOL
1974 was emblazoned across the front.

“Look at this.” I held the volume out to Aunt Peg. “I found Miss Ellie's high school yearbook.”

“Hmmm, 1974.” She opened the cover carefully and began to flip slowly through the pages. “I'll bet that was her graduating year. Let's see if she had a senior picture.”

I looked over Aunt Peg's shoulder as she thumbed through the section of the yearbook devoted to the school's graduating class. Some of the pages stuck to each other and needed to be separated gently. The names of the senior girls were listed in alphabetical order.

“Elizabeth Bernice Everley, Sarah Marjorie Framingham. . .” Aunt Peg read. Then she pointed to the next page and said with satisfaction. “Here she is, Eleanora Bentley Gates from Lexington, Kentucky.”

I leaned in for a closer look. Like all the others, Miss Ellie's photograph was black and white. She was wearing a creamy off-the-shoulder dress and had a string of pearls around her neck. Her head was tilted up toward the light and she had a dreamy, faraway look on her face.

“Miss Ellie was beautiful,” I said. “What does it say about her?”

Beneath the picture was a quote that Aunt Peg identified as coming from John Lennon's song “Imagine.” It was followed by a paragraph of humorous quips relating to Miss Ellie's time at Foxcroft. Lastly, she had filled in the blanks left in some rather predictable phrases.

“Favorite food . . . rare steak,” I read. “Always ready to . . . play hooky. I'd rather be . . . at the stable.”

Then my eyes skimmed over the last item and I lifted my head abruptly.

“Look at that,” I said.

“What?” Aunt Peg pushed my hand aside. “I can't see anything while you're in the way.”

I pulled back and Aunt Peg read aloud the same words that I'd seen a moment earlier. “When she should be studying, often found . . . writing love letters to Danny Nash.”

Chapter 21

“M
aybe it's a coincidence,” said Aunt Peg.

“Maybe it's not,” I shot back.

“Daniel Nash . . . Danny Nash . . . they might even not be the same person. And so what if they are? Lots of single people are reconnecting with old beaus from high school. It's the thing to do these days.”

“Miss Ellie didn't mention him,” I pointed out.

“Why would she have done that when we had so many other, more interesting things to talk about? There was no reason for Miss Ellie to make us privy to the intimate details of her life.”

“It is
not
a coincidence,” I insisted stubbornly. “Unless you're asking me to believe that two different people named Daniel Nash both happened to have connections to members of the Gates family?”

“All right. Then suppose they are one and the same,” Aunt Peg said, equally stubborn. “Maybe Miss Ellie's old friend Danny Nash decided to buy a racehorse. He remembered that she came from a prominent Kentucky family and he asked her to introduce him around.”

“Nope. That's not the way it happened.”

“How would you know?”

“Because that's not what Daniel said when we were talking to him at Miss Ellie's funeral.”

“Oh?” Aunt Peg thought back, then shook her head. “I'm not sure I remember that part.”

“We were standing with Gates and Erin when Daniel came over to pay his respects,” I told her.

“That's right. Gates introduced him to us and Daniel said that he was a Puritan from Boston. That made an impression on me because he's from our area of the country, more or less. It occurred to me that he was a long way from home, too.”

“Daniel also mentioned that he hadn't known Miss Ellie long. He said Billy had just introduced the two of them a week earlier.”

“How very interesting,” Aunt Peg said thoughtfully. “Clearly I should have been paying closer attention at the time. I would hate to think that we might have overlooked something like that.”

It wasn't exactly high praise. But it was closer to an expression of approval than I usually get from Aunt Peg. So maybe I basked just a little.

She shut that down in a hurry.

“Obviously we ought to have a conversation with Mr. Nash,” Aunt Peg said. “What kind of contact information do we possess for the man?”

“None that I'm aware of.”

“Do something about that, would you?”

“Umm . . . like what?”

“You have a phone; I suggest you put it to good use. In the meantime, I'm going to return the boys to the backyard and make sure that they have access to shade and water out there.”

I started with accommodations on the west side of Lexington, those closest to both Midway and Keeneland. It only took fifteen minutes to track down the hotel in Beaumont Centre where Daniel Nash was staying. The person manning the front desk offered to connect me to Mr. Nash's room but I declined. Instead I bookmarked the hotel's address and handed the information over to Aunt Peg.

“I hate leaving these dogs on their own again,” she said, “but I suppose it can't be helped. Hopefully Gates will be by in a few hours to tend to them. In the meantime, isn't it lucky that we were planning to switch locations anyway?”

“I take it we're about to join Daniel Nash in Beaumont Centre?”

“Indeed,” Aunt Peg replied cheerfully.

We locked the back door and took one last look around the house to make sure everything was in order before letting ourselves out the front. As we passed through the living room, Aunt Peg reached into the carton where I'd replaced Miss Ellie's yearbook. Without even breaking stride, she scooped the book back out and slipped it beneath her arm.

“All in aid of a good cause,” she said. “I'm sure Miss Ellie won't mind if we borrow this for a day or two, in case Mr. Nash needs further persuasion to talk to us.”

“But Gates—”

“Pffft.” Aunt Peg waved a hand through the air, shutting down my objection with her usual disregard for criticism. “We'll have it back where it belongs before he even notices it's missing.”

* * *

Our plan hit a small snag: the hotel in Beaumont Centre did not accept pets. Luckily the hotel's daytime manager was the second person Faith would meet that day who had grown up with a Poodle and still remembered that childhood companion as the best dog
ever
. Having been introduced to Faith—who was her usual charming and Poodlely self—the woman allowed Aunt Peg to persuade her to bend the rules on our behalf.

In return we agreed to take a room in the back of the hotel on the ground floor. We also promised to keep a low profile and that Faith wouldn't be exercised where the other guests could see her. That appropriate cleanup was our responsibility went without saying.

It wasn't until after we'd completed the check-in and unloaded our things from the minivan that Aunt Peg casually mentioned that she'd also persuaded the day manager to divulge Daniel Nash's room number.

“How?” I asked. “She's not supposed to do that.”

“She's not supposed to do this either,” Aunt Peg said, gesturing toward Faith who was lounging happily on the nearest bed. “But she did.”

Honestly, I don't know why this stuff even surprises me anymore.

“So what's our plan?” I asked.

“I'm going to ring Daniel Nash's room and invite him to join us for dinner this evening. Gates has already introduced us, after all. So I'll present myself as another newcomer to the Thoroughbred industry and ask if he wants to get together and compare notes.”

Aunt Peg always sounds so sure of herself. I wish I had even half of her confidence. Maybe it's a height thing. I've always wanted to be taller, too.

“What if Daniel says no?” I asked.

“Why would he do that?”

“I don't know. Maybe he's busy tonight. Or maybe he won't remember us. Could be that he's tired of talking about horses since he's probably been doing it all week. Maybe he's not even in his room. . . .”

I might have kept going, but Aunt Peg had stopped listening to me. Instead, she was making a connection via the hotel phone. Her conversation with Daniel Nash was brief. It was also—much to my surprise—punctuated at one point by what sounded like a girlish giggle.

“I guess he remembered who you were,” I said mildly when she'd hung up the phone.

“Of course he remembered us.” Aunt Peg's brisk reply steamrolled right over my innuendo. “And he wants to hear all about Lucky Luna. Daniel told me there's a lovely restaurant across the street named Azur. We'll be meeting him there at six-thirty.”

“Just don't forget,” I told her.

Aunt Peg paused in the act of lifting her rolling bag up onto a suitcase rack. “Melanie, what are you talking about now?”

“We know that Daniel Nash lied to us. And that for some reason he's chosen to hide his former connection to Miss Ellie from her family.”

She slanted me an exasperated look. “So?”

“So he's not the kind of man we want to trust.”
Did I really have to point that out?

When Aunt Peg didn't reply, I added, “And I don't want to hear any giggling over dinner.”

“I won't if you won't,” Peg snapped.

Just as long as we were both on the same page.

* * *

Even at six-thirty on a Tuesday night, Azur was already crowded. In horse country people get up early and they go to bed early. And their socializing habits follow.

Daniel Nash was at the restaurant when we arrived. He had taken a table outside on the patio. The late-March evening was brisk, but heaters warmed the small courtyard to a very comfortable temperature.

Daniel stood as we approached. He had donned a sports coat for the occasion and his silk tie was festooned with tiny flying horses. As the waiter held out my chair, Daniel stepped over and seated Aunt Peg himself. The smile she thanked him with made me want to smack her.

Any minute now, there was going to be giggling. I just knew it.

“I hope this is all right?” Daniel asked Aunt Peg. “I'm visiting from Massachusetts where we're still months away from being able to eat outside, so I couldn't resist giving it a try. But if you think you're going to be cold, we can move indoors.”

“This is fine,” Aunt Peg replied. “Melanie and I are from the Northeast, too. So this weather feels mild to us.”

“Where in the Northeast?” Daniel asked after the waiter had taken our drink order and disappeared.

“Connecticut. Fairfield County,” I said. “I live in Stamford and Aunt Peg is in Greenwich.”

“Lovely area.” Daniel nodded. “I went to college in New Haven.”

“Yale?” Aunt Peg asked with interest.

Daniel confirmed her guess. Then he and Aunt Peg spent the next fifteen minutes comparing connections and trying to discover friends, school ties, club affiliations, or even far-flung relations that they might have in common. And repeatedly coming up blank.

For some reason, that initial lack of success didn't deter either of them. I sat back in my seat and watched in silence as Daniel and Aunt Peg continued to spar back and forth. The longer their name dropping game went on, the more it began to seem like a competition.

Several dozen people were brought up and quickly discarded as possible links. But oddly, the only person whose name hadn't been mentioned was the one Aunt Peg and Daniel should have started with: Ellie Gates Wanamaker. It appeared that they were both determined to explore every other potential association first.

I sipped a glass of cool Chenin Blanc and pondered the interesting fact that Daniel seemed to be scoping out Aunt Peg's bona fides with every bit as much attention to detail as she was devoting to his. He had represented himself as a newcomer to the horse industry, but obviously something had already taught him to be wary. I wondered what that was.

“Melanie?”

I tuned back into the conversation and saw that Aunt Peg was gazing at me expectantly. I didn't have even the slightest idea why.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “What did you say?”

“Daniel was just asking me how well we knew the Gates family.”

Well, then. Game on.
Finally
.

“Aunt Peg and Miss Ellie were old friends,” I told him. “But I just met her for the first time last week. Although I've been familiar with Miss Ellie's name and her line of Standard Poodles for years.”

“Is that so?” Daniel sounded perplexed by my comment. That made him easy to categorize:
not
a dog person.

“Gatewood Standard Poodles,” Aunt Peg told him. “In their day, Ellie's Poodles were famous, and justly so. Any student of the breed is well aware of her contribution to it.”

“Aunt Peg and Miss Ellie used to compete against each other at the big dog shows on the East Coast,” I added.

“Then I must have misunderstood.” Daniel turned back to Peg. “I was under the impression that you had horses.”

“Just the one, I'm afraid,” Aunt Peg admitted. “I unexpectedly inherited Lucky Luna last month. She lives at Six Oaks Farm. Last week when we ran across each other at the training track, I had just come from visiting her for the very first time.”

“Yes, I remember that day,” Daniel said with a frown. “I had no idea who you were, but I overheard some of what you said.”

“Aunt Peg has never been shy about expressing her opinions,” I told him. “I hope you weren't offended.”

“Not in the least. In fact, I would have been interested in hearing more. But Billy was pulling me in one direction and you disappeared in the other and the moment was lost.”

The waiter came to take our dinner order and offer us refills on our drinks. Aunt Peg and Daniel accepted. Mindful of my recent misadventure, I switched to sweet tea instead.

“So you don't have a background in horses,” Daniel continued when the waiter had left, “and yet you had a clear preference for one of those two-year-olds over the other. Even more interesting to me, you didn't pick the bigger, more visually impressive horse. Why is that?”

“The bay was a better mover,” Aunt Peg told him. “And isn't that what it's all about? Which horse can get around the track the fastest?”

“Simply speaking, yes. Although Billy Gates has been educating me to understand that other factors come into play as well. Things like a horse's ancestors and its preference for one racing surface over another. Not to mention correct conformation which helps promote long-term soundness.”

“It sounds like you've learned quite a lot in your short time here,” Peg said.

“I'm trying. Although I'm still very much aware of my limitations. That's why I hired Billy to guide me through the sales process.”

“And why you were wondering how well we were acquainted with his family?” I asked.

“It never hurts to seek a second expert opinion.”

“I'm hardly that,” Aunt Peg said. “I wish I were. I'm every bit the newcomer to this business that you are. So if you discover a way to avoid making mistakes, I hope you'll pass that knowledge along to me.”

The two of them smiled at each other as if they were already complicit in furthering each other's goals. I stopped just short of rolling my eyes.

Our food arrived and conversation waned as we began to eat. Daniel and Aunt Peg had both chosen the lamb steak. I was eating a restaurant specialty, bourbon fried chicken, so all was right with my world.

“You asked about our connection to the Gates family,” Aunt Peg said between bites. “Now I'd like to hear about yours.”