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At which point Lucinda appeared out of nowhere. I think I winced at the sight of her.

“Look,” I said to Ruby, “I got a horse running this afternoon, I’d better get her ready. You gonna be around in the next few days? Can I talk to you a little more?”

“Oh,” she said, a weird tone in her voice, “there’s intrigue actually. I’m not really around. But sort of.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you about it. Soon.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling deflated.

Lucinda was looking at me. Her eyes were so dark they were impossible to read.

“I’ll talk to you soon?” I said into the phone.

“Yeah. Soon,” Ruby said.

And that was it.

I hit the Off switch and put my phone back in my pocket. I looked at Lucinda.

“I didn’t get any lunch yet. Was wondering if you still wanted to eat,” Lucinda said, her voice catching a little.

What with fussing over Clove and worrying about Ruby, I hadn’t eaten either. I figured going to the cafeteria with Lucinda might put me in the path of Roderick or one of the others I was trying to establish contact with.

I found myself enjoying Lucinda as I watched her shoveling food into herself. When she’d refused breakfast this morning I’d suspected some sort of eating disorder, but, unless she was planning to trot off to the toilet and vomit, the girl apparently believed in feeding her healthy appetite. She was putting it away and, seeing the look of surprise on my face, motioned at her food, and said, “I don’t store it, I burn it.”

I could feel eyes on us as we ate. Obviously word had in fact spread about Lucinda and me. No one knew me from a hole in the wall but Lucinda had been a top exercise rider. Her accident—and her coming back from it—was the stuff of minor legends. People knew who she was and they wanted to know her business. All the more if it involved a low-rent trainer who couldn’t possibly advance her stalled career.

As we left the cafeteria, Roderick accosted us. He was warm now. Evidently, my friendship with Lucinda had earned me points.

“I was thinking,” he said, “you get so you need some help with your string, maybe I could give you a couple hours here and there.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, trying to look pleased. “That’d be great, Rod, thanks. Course, I’m not there yet. Can barely pay myself. But it’s nice of you.”

Roderick grinned, though more at Lucinda than at me.

“I gotta go get my mare ready, she’s racing,” I told Roderick.

“Okay,” he shrugged, looked at Lucinda from under his eyelids then turned and walked off.

Lucinda seemed oblivious to the fact that the slow-witted groom wanted to follow her off the edge of the earth. She also didn’t seem to have anything to do with herself. I asked if she wanted to come help me get Clove ready.

“Sure,” she said.

She was hard to read. Not that I wanted that badly to read her, just that I felt like I owed it an attempt considering our two bodies had pressed up close to each other.

FORTY MINUTES LATER, Lucinda stood at my side as I gave the jockey I’d hired, Sylvere Osbourn, a leg up onto Clove and led the pair around the walking ring.

“What you want me to do with her, boss?” Sylvere asked in a condescending tone.

Sylvere had been a very successful apprentice in his native Panama before coming up to the States to seek his fortune. He wasn’t a bad rider but he refused to play politics and gave trainers and owners his undiluted and unsolicited opinion on just about everything. He’d have been better off having never learned English. There were plenty of riders who spoke not a word of it and thus couldn’t get themselves into hot water mouthing off. It was all the same to me though, the guy could ride and he was the best I could afford.

“She likes to come from behind so keep her in back of the pack awhile but don’t wait too long to make a move,” I told Sylvere. I’d gotten hold of tapes of three of Clove’s past races and had studied her preferences. I was hoping my conveying these to Sylvere wouldn’t go in one ear and out the other.

“She’s usually got enough in the tank to come wide though and she likes that better than waiting in traffic,” I added.

Sylvere