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“Why’d you work so dull, huh?” I asked the mare as I stood up and patted her neck.

Her ears shot forward and her eyes tried to tell me something but I couldn’t for the life of me guess what. I started scratching her cheek. Her eyes drooped shut.

“What’s the matter with Clove?” I heard a voice say. I turned around to find Lucinda, the exercise rider I’d hired to work my three horses for the duration of the Gulfstream meet, or until I finished up this particular investigation for the Bureau—whichever came first. As far as Lucinda knew, I was just some horse-loving guy who’d had an early midlife crisis and gotten a notion to train racehorses—and wasn’t really up to snuff just yet—which made Lucinda and me a good match. She’d been an A list exercise rider on the New York circuit but a serious accident had taken her nerve. She’d stopped riding and had gone home to North Carolina. But, like any true horse person, Lucinda had gotten to missing the brutal hours, excruciating physical regime, and low pay of racetrack life. She’d come down to Gulfstream and some of the lesser trainers gave her a few horses to work each morning. She rode well. Had nice, quiet hands. Everyone said she wasn’t the same rider she’d been a year earlier, but I hadn’t known her then and she seemed to ride my horses just fine. I wasn’t blaming her for Clove’s dull work this morning.

“Oh, hi,” I said, smiling at the girl. “I can’t find anything wrong with her. Guess she was just feeling lazy. What did she feel like to you?”

“Hard to say,” Lucinda shrugged. “She wasn’t rank or anything. Seemed like she was into working. Just didn’t have much in the tank. You really gonna race her?” Lucinda tilted her head and squinted at me.

“Yeah, I’ve got to,” I said simply.

“You broke?” she asked.

“Just about,” I said. I was running my operation with money the Bureau had shelled out but it was a point of honor: I wanted to make money, not lose it.

“Then drop her down to ten thousand,” Lucinda said. “Either she’ll get claimed or at least maybe earn a little purse money.”

“Nah, I like her. I have hopes for her.”

Lucinda rolled her eyes at me but smiled a little, which was nice. She was a tense girl. Intelligent, even pretty, but tense, as if endlessly on the verge of snapping. I’d almost never seen her smile, so I was pleased to have provided amusement—even if it was at the expense of my mare.

“You have hope based on what?” Lucinda said. “The fact that she can outrun some goats?”

I’d told Lucinda how I’d found Clove: living in a tiny paddock on a goat farm outside Wellington, Florida. At that point I had just arrived in Florida, had claimed one horse, Karma Police, out of a race at Calder Racecourse and was hunting around for two more. On the afternoon in question, I’d been heading to Riggs Farm, a small breeding and layup operation where there were a few older racehorses for sale. I was hoping to pick out two. I was driving to the farm slowly, taking back roads. I hadn’t been down here long and was surprised at how rural and lush the area was. It was one of those days when the world, and particularly this little patch of Florida, looked lovely. The sky was cloudless, the temperature hovering just above seventy. I passed a wide flat pasture filled with goats. I’d never seen so many goats in one place and I slowed the car down even more. Which is how I noticed the sign. A handwritten sign duct taped to a railroad tie at the end of the goat farm’s driveway: “Racehorse for Sale.” Generally, you didn’t go looking for racehorses at goat farms but what the hell. I pulled into the farm’s driveway. There was a series of sheds and, off to the side, a small yellow ranch-style house.

I parked the car and got out. No one came to greet me so I walked toward one of the sheds. Suddenly, a woman with a pitchfork materialized from I’m not sure where.

“You Sonny Boy?” she asked. She was holding the pitchfork like a weapon.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “My name’s Sam Riverman. I noticed your sign about that horse for sale.”

“Huh?” She