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Everybody shook their heads.
“You heard only one side of this exchange,” Andrew reminded him. “Isn’t it possible you’re misinterpreting what—”
“Of course it’s possible,” Brent snapped. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “And this conversation may not have had anything to do with Apollo’s Ice or Leopold’s Legacy. Nolan didn’t mention horses. But I didn’t mistake the guy’s tone. There’s a side to the Right Honorable, the Viscount Kestler, that we haven’t seen before. And I’d bet good money it’s not one his peers would approve of.”
Andrew took a sip of his coffee. “Nolan Hunter has social position, considerable wealth and an impeccable reputation. Why would he risk all that?”
“How the hell do I know?” Brent retorted. “But he is the owner of Apollo’s Ice, and until we find out who’s behind the DNA fraud, he’s my prime suspect.”
“A trip to England might be just the thing,” Jenna observed. “Especially right now.”
No one needed elaboration. They were all aware that the anniversary of Marti’s death was approaching.
Three years ago Brent’s wife had started complaining about nonspecific problems, mostly lethargy and tiredness, nothing she could put her finger on. Athletic, bright and perpetually cheerful, she had captured Brent’s heart thirty seconds after they’d bumped into each other, literally, in the college library. They’d gone together for two years before getting married right after their graduation, he with a degree in animal husbandry, she with a double major in English and sociology.
Since their twin daughters had just started kindergarten, Brent and Marti chalked her sluggishness up to her missing the girls being home all the time. He suggested she start a new project to keep herself busy.
Six months later, she died of cancer.
He’d lost her, and that loss still lay heavy on his heart, dominating his every private thought. If only he’d insisted she go to a doctor sooner… If only…
He’d spent countless hours harboring that guilt but precious few wallowing in it. He had his beautiful twins to guide through their grief and sorrow. It was a purgatory no parent ever wanted to suffer, yet it surprised him to realize that somehow he’d succeeded. He was proud of his daughters. They made him want to go on.
“What about the girls?” Jenna asked. “School starts next week.”
“I’ll take them with me,” Brent told her. “I don’t want to be separated from them right now.”
“I’ll talk to the school principal,” his mother said. “Althea’s very accommodating about children taking trips with their parents.”
“Where are they this morning?” Andrew asked. “Surely not sleeping late. That’d be a first.”
“They went down to the stables with Granddad to see Raleigh’s Rascal, Isabella’s new foal. They should be back any minute.”
Just then they heard a commotion at the back door, the high-pitched excited voices of young children and the low rumble of a mature man. A moment later two identical eight-year-old girls burst into the room.
“Isabella let us touch her baby,” Rhea exclaimed. “Rascal is so soft.”
“And he hasn’t got any teeth yet,” Katie added, “just like a regular baby.”
Their ponytails were held back with yellow ribbons to match the bright yellow polo shirts they were wearing with red jeans.
Their great-grandfather stood behind them. Tall and lean, with a fuzzy head of white hair, at eighty-six, Hugh Preston still had the power to dominate a room simply by walking into it.
At his heel stood Seamus, a steely-blue-gray-colored Irish wolfhound whose shoulders came to the man’s knees. Hugh patted him on the head, then pointed to the corner, where the dog contentedly lay down with a slight groan to observe the activities of the humans around him.
“I figure sixteen hands,” Hugh said about the foal. “A bay now, but I’m hoping he’ll gray out like his sire.” He poured himself coffee.
“I want orange juice,” Rhea said, racing over to the marble counter and reaching for the nearly full pitcher. Katie was beside her, competing for it.
“Whoa.” Brent rose from his seat. “I’ll pour. First, how about showing some manners by saying good morning to your grandparents?”
“Good morning,” they sang in unison.
“And Uncle Andrew,” Brent prompted.
They wished him a good morning, as well. Immediately Rhea asked, “Can we have our juice now?”
Suppressing a smile, Brent poured it for them. “How would you girls like to go on a trip?”
“To Disney World?” Rhea asked, wide-eyed. “Jennifer and her mom went there over Christmas. She said it was awesome.”
“I was thinking of England.” He handed them each a medium-size glass only half-full.
“I don’t want to go to England,” Katie told him with a pout. “I want to go to Disney World.”
“You’ll get to see the Tower of London,” Thomas told them.
“And we can hear the clock strike,” Rhea contributed. “Bong, bong, bong—”
“That’s Big Ben,” Andrew said. “The Tower of London is a castle.”
Katie frowned. “Then why do they call it a tower?”
“It’s where the queen keeps all her jewelry,” Jenna explained.
“You mean the queen lives in a tower?” Katie asked. “Like Rumpelstiltskin?”
“No,” her sister said impatiently. “She lives in Buckingham Palace.”
“But why doesn’t she keep her jewelry with her at home, like other people?”
Exasperated, Rhea said, “Because she’s not like other people, silly. She’s the queen, and she’s got so much jewelry she doesn’t have room for all of it in her palace.”
“When do you plan to leave?” Thomas asked his son.
“I don’t want to go to England,” Katie repeated, clearly not enticed by the lure of seeing a tower full of jewelry.
“In the next day or two,” Brent answered, “if I can make the arrangements.”
As they settled down to family breakfast, Brent mentally reviewed the other reasons he wanted to investigate Nolan Hunter, the Viscount Kestler. Over the past week Brent had learned that Marcus Vasquez, Melanie’s fiancé and Quest’s former trainer, was actually Nolan’s illegitimate half brother. Marcus had also confided to Brent that he suspected Nolan was not being completely up front about the breeding scandal, though he could offer no proof to support his allegation. Brent might have dismissed it as sour grapes over the issue of the Spaniard’s paternity, had he not overheard Nolan’s phone conversation.
A horse in Dubai owned by Lord Rochester had purportedly been sired by Apollo’s Ice. Not long after the Sandstone Derby, the horse was found dead. Poisoned. DNA tests revealed the stallion had not been sired by Apollo’s Ice, but by the same mysterious stallion that had sired Leopold’s Legacy. Brent had discussed the matter on the phone with Lord Rochester, but the Englishman had no idea who could be behind the fraud.
“What’s your game plan in England?” Thomas asked, after the girls had been excused to return to the barn to see the new pony again.
“I thought I might start at the Jockey Association in London, see what I can pick up there.”
“Marcus mentioned that Nolan’s younger sister Devon teaches in a private girls’ school near Oxford,” Jenna commented. “Briar Hills Academy, I think he said. You might contact her to see what light she can shed on the situation.”
“If you need help, son,” Thomas said, “all you have to do is call. You know that. One of us…all of us…can be on the next available flight to Heathrow.”
“I don’t have to tell you to be careful, brother,” Andrew said. “This scam 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 and take you to her straightaway.”
Beyond a small vestibule, she led them into a central hall that was dominated by a wide, gracefully curving staircase with an ornate wrought-iron banister topped with a shiny wood rail. A thick, red wool runner covered the white marble stairs, softening their ascent.
At the head of the stairs, Heather led them to a heavy, dark paneled door on the right and turned the polished brass handle. They entered a reception area.
“If you’ll wait here, sir.”
She went to the open doorway beyond and tapped on the framework. “Mr. Brent Preston and his daughters, Rhea and Katie, have arrived, Mrs. Sherwood-Griffin.”
The woman who emerged was tall, close to six feet, and Raphaelesque in build.
“Mr. Preston,” she said in a strong but pleasant voice, “how very good of you to visit us. I’m delighted to meet you.” She immediately shifted her attention to the girls. “Rhea and Katie. So which twin is which?” Her smile seemed genuine.
More the extrovert, Rhea spoke up. “I’m Rhea. She’s Katie.”
Eyes twinkling, Mrs. Sherwood-Griffin took a minute to study the two of them, her attention flicking from one to the other. After what seemed like a very long interval, she asked, “Do the two of you always dress alike?”
“Mostly,” Rhea said brightly. “Except Aunt Melanie bought us ugly green dresses. I think they look like barf, so I never wear mine. But Katie wears hers sometimes.”
“I didn’t bring it with me,” Katie informed her. “And it doesn’t look like barf. It’s more like…celery pudding.”
Mrs. Sherwood-Griffin’s brows rose precipitously. “Celery pudding? I’ll have to think about that. Rather an unusual image, I must say.” She was clearly straining to control a smile. So was Brent.
“Let’s go for a walk, shall we? I’ll show you our grounds before it starts to rain, and you can tell me about your school back home in Kentucky.”
Brent had mentioned where they were from when he’d called from the States to make the appointment. She’d obviously made note of it. The day was overcast and gloomy. The headmistress queried the girls about the subjects they were studying in school and asked questions to determine their level of advancement. Satisfied with their answers, she let them run ahead to the play area.
A scrap of paper fluttered to the ground.
“Katie, you dropped something.”
One girl turned around, while the other looked over at her sister.
