A Lady's Luck. Ken Casper

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СКАЧАТЬ is international and somebody’s making big bucks. The closer we get to the truth, the more desperate they’re going to get.”

      Two

      Tuesday, January 6

      The two-hour flight from Louisville to New York, followed by a three-hour layover there and another six hours crossing the Atlantic, left Brent exhausted. He’d never been one to sleep on planes, and with his twin balls of energy in tow there was no way he could have gotten a wink if he’d tried. After charming the neighboring passengers to the point of weariness, the twins settled down in front of a children’s movie.

      Finally he had time to review the one-sided telephone conversation he’d overheard.

      “We’re safe, I tell you. The bastard doesn’t know a bloody thing,” Hunter had said.

      Was the epithet simply a crude expression, or was he referring to Marcus Vasquez, his illegitimate half brother, who had been a trainer at Quest for a few months but left in December to become head trainer at Lucas Stables, where Brent’s sister, Melanie, was currently a jockey? The two had fallen in love and were planning to marry.

      “He can think whatever he bloody well wants,” Hunter had protested further, “but he has no proof, so he’ll keep his mouth shut, if he knows what’s good for him.”

      Proof of what? And if he was referring to Marcus, the statement wasn’t completely true. Marcus had told Brent he was convinced Hunter was behind the breeding mix-up that was destroying Quest Stables, but he also admitted he had no idea how the fraud was done, nor had he a lick of evidence to support his accusation. Marcus also confessed to hating Nolan Hunter’s father for abandoning Marcus’s late mother. Marcus was a damn good trainer, as Melanie’s recent Gulf Classic win on Something to Talk About attested, but his emotional involvement with Hunter robbed him of objectivity, though in Brent’s opinion, not necessarily credibility.

      By the time the plane landed at Heathrow, they’d passed through customs and climbed into a taxi, the girls were finally showing signs of winding down. Wanting them to stay awake long enough to get to bed under their own power, Brent kept up a running narrative, pointing out the things he recognized on the trip from the airport to their hotel in London. The striking facade of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Trafalgar Square. Buckingham Palace. By the time he tucked them into bed, it was after one in the morning, local time.

      He chuckled to himself. They were sound asleep before he even had a chance to pull up the covers. A three-ring circus entering the room wouldn’t have awakened them now.

      He poured himself a small Scotch from the bar in the sitting room and sipped it as he reviewed his plans for the next few days. Touristy stuff mostly, for the girls. He’d first come to England months ago to see Nolan Hunter right after the DNA imbroglio became known. The man had let him talk to his help, as well as take additional blood and hair samples of Apollo’s Ice for further DNA testing, convincing Brent at the time that Hunter was on the up-and-up.

      “Let’s think outside the box, as you Americans would say,” Hunter had proposed, while pouring generous quantities of fine Napoleon brandy into cut-crystal snifters, “and see if we can pull a Sherlock Holmes on this singular case.”

      To no avail. Nolan Hunter himself appeared to be uninvolved in whatever was going on. He had actually remained in England, for example, when Apollo’s Ice was standing at stud in Kentucky, where Brent had witnessed the live cover that resulted in Leopold Legacy’s conception.

      Brent checked on his sleeping daughters. The two could be exhausting, but they were unquestionably the joy of his life. He couldn’t imagine the world without them. He thought of his late wife, Marti. She’d never been to England. She would have loved it, but with two young children, they’d decided to delay any major trips until the girls were older. Now here he was alone, wishing Marti were with him.

      The long day’s tension gradually seeped from his tired muscles and frazzled nerves. Pouring most of the whisky down the sink, he rinsed the glass, undressed and climbed into the other queen-size bed.

      He awakened to the sounds of giggling and the room flooded with light. The clock on the bedside table said nine-fifteen. The girls, to his amazement, were already dressed, Rhea sitting behind her sister on the other bed, brushing her long brown hair.

      “I’m hungry,” Katie said. No new phenomenon.

      “Good morning to you, too,” he returned with a yawn and a stretch. It had been over twelve hours since any of them had eaten. He discovered he was famished, as well.

      Twenty minutes later the three of them were on their way downstairs for breakfast and a day on the town. The girls stuck up their noses at the kippered herring offered on the hotel buffet, but they decided they “really, really liked” the sausage links called bangers. He wondered if it might be because of the name.

      “This bread tastes funny,” Rhea said as she bit into her second triangle of buttered toast.

      “Not funny,” Brent corrected her. “Different. You’ll find a lot of things are different here. It’s one of the best parts about traveling, getting to try new and different things.”

      “It’s good,” Rhea agreed reluctantly, as she picked up another slice. “But I still say it tastes funny.”

      The next day they did what most first-time London tourists did. Watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Gawked their way through the Tower of London. Craned their necks at the imposing edifices of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. They went to see The Lion King, rode double-decker buses—always on the upper level, of course—and took refuge in Victoria Station during a torrential downpour.

      And then it was time to try to solve the mystery of Leopold’s Legacy.

      Finally, after another “proper” English breakfast at the hotel buffet, the three of them set off from Paddington Station for Oxford.

      The sky was pewter and the trees bare, but once past the suburbs and outskirts of London, the English countryside took on a quaint, nostalgic quality with its Tudor houses, thatch-roofed cottages and thick-walled Norman churches. An hour later they arrived in the famous university town.

      Getting a taxi wasn’t nearly as difficult as comprehending what the driver was saying as he chatted with the girls along the way. What amazed Brent was that they had so little difficulty understanding his lingo, at least after the first few exchanges.

      Briar Hills Academy for Girls occupied a nineteenth-century manor house of brown brick tucked neatly among low rolling wooded hills a few miles northwest of Oxford.

      Brent had arranged for the visit before leaving the States, saying he was an American businessman anticipating an assignment to England in the not-too-distant future and wanted to check out schools where he could send his daughters. He’d called again yesterday from London to confirm this morning’s appointment. He wasn’t altogether surprised when a young lady in her early twenties emerged from the stone-arched doorway to meet them as they alighted from the cab.

      “Mr. Preston?” she asked.

      Stepping forward as the taxi circled around in the gravel forecourt and grumbled away, he admitted he was. “These are my daughters, Rhea and Katie.”

      She offered her hand. “I’m Heather Wilcot. Mrs. Sherwood-Griffin, the headmistress, asked me to welcome you СКАЧАТЬ