The Fame Equation (2 page)

Keith was riding Bob and I have to say the hunky singer looked darn good on a horse. He, his wife, Carole, and their large brood of kids, lived next door to me. I’ve had a not-so-secret crush on Keith as long as I can remember and when he asked me to give him riding lessons so he could look good in this video, my brain instantly turned to mush and for a few minutes there, I couldn’t walk straight.

I quickly learned that Keith was a stickler for perfection. The trouble was, many cowboys ride with a split rein, which means the left and right reins are not tied together. This is so a cowboy can drop the end of the reins to the ground when he dismounts as a signal for the horse to ground tie, or stand “tied to the ground.”

Keith wanted to be that cowboy and resisted every effort I made to get him to ride with a knot in his reins, or with a closed set of reins. Closed reins are made up of one long strap, and barrel racers use them all the time. Yet another idea was for Keith to hold the split reins in his right hand, but according to Keith, none of those options were “the cowboy way.”

The obvious solution was for Keith to ride to the left of the blond girl. Then he could just reach out his right hand. But with the lay of the land, the surrounding hills, the ambient light, and a host of other technicalities that I had no interest in, Fitch wanted Keith to the right of the other horse and rider.

“Sorry about the rein,” Keith said. “What is that, two broken reins now?”

“Three,” I answered with a smile.

“I’ll replace––”

“I know. We’ll deal with it later. Fortunately, I have one other pair in the trailer. But Keith?” I made sure he was paying attention. “You
have
to knot these. They are the last pair I have with me and I heard Fitch tell his assistant that we are losing the light. Just keep your hand over the knot and no one will see it except during the quick moment when you transfer your reins. Besides,” I finished, “no one will be looking at your hands. Your fans will be looking at your smiling face.”

I knew I certainly would be.

The other rider, rising superstar Melody Cross, was on Sally Blue. By the time I finished with Keith, Buffy Thorndyke and Bill Vandiver, Melody’s publicist and hair/makeup/ wardrobe guy, had surrounded her. I’d known Buffy for a while. She used to be a reporter with the
Ashland City Times
, the local paper for the northern half of Cheatham County, where my stables were located. We were about fifteen miles west of Nashville, Tennessee, close enough to the city to be attractive to commuters, yet rural enough to house some interesting characters.

I had just met Bill today, although his reputation had preceded him by several months. Melody swore by his hair color and extension work and I had to admit that her hair always looked fabulous.

Melody was last year’s Country Music Association New Artist of the Year. Her first three singles had gone number one and she was on a fast track to major stardom. I had met Melody a few months ago when she, at Keith’s suggestion, also contacted me about riding lessons. Before she and I met, Melody had not only never been on a horse, she had never touched one. But, she was just as determined as Keith that she perform her own riding in the video, and also ride well. The horses and I found her to be kind, with a natural ability to understand equine body language. She progressed quickly.

What also moved fast was our friendship. Outside of my barn crew, a few other trainers, and the owners of my horses, I didn’t have many friends. Noah Gregory was a friend from college who now managed horse shows, but I only saw him a few times a year when we were both at shows, and when we were both supremely busy. Keith’s wife Carole and I were friends, but she had four kids, the oldest being around ten, so her time was limited.

Annie Zinner was like a second mother to me, mine having passed away when I was nine, but she lived in Oklahoma. Annie and her husband, Tony, were trainers who had a unique connection to my assistant and barn manager, Jon Gardner, who was also a friend. Then there was my live-in riding student Darcy. She had just turned eighteen and had a trust fund. While Annie was like a mother to me, I was like Darcy’s second mom, hers being so busy marrying and divorcing minor European royalty and all.

But I didn’t have a close BFF girlfriend until Melody and I clicked. Right from the start I found myself making trips to her little rental home in Pegram, a commuter town in the southern part of our county. Between recording sessions and tour dates, interviews and meetings, Melody often showed up at my barn with old-fashioned cake doughnuts and a thermos of hot chocolate, or on warmer days, iced chai lattes. I liked her, and I found that fact odd. My veterinarian boyfriend aside, I normally liked dogs and horses better than I liked people. But I liked Melody.

I liked gossiping with her, watching chick flick DVDs, and helping her eat her latest batch of homemade cookies. Cookie-eating aside, those other things were not activities I normally liked to do. I even liked helping Melody choose her wardrobe for her live performances and found that task wasn’t so different from helping a riding student choose attire for the show ring.

The reason for the shoot today was the music video for Keith and Melody’s new single, “Do Good.” In the past few months I’d learned a lot from Melody about the music business. She and Keith were two hot stars on the same label, Southern Sky Records, and the powers that be had decided that teaming them up on a duet was a great way to maximize the label’s brand.

The single was a catchy, feel good song written by Melody, Keith, and Melody’s manager, Davis Young. Davis was a former guitar player in a band that had a few hits a decade or so ago. He was a little taller than medium height, had a lean body, and the requisite music industry goatee. His was a reddish brown. Rather than try to stage a comeback, he’d moved into management and had done well. I’d learned that it was not unusual in Nashville to have three or even four songwriters collaborate on a song, or, like Davis, for those songwriters to also have other music industry jobs.

In addition to Davis, who stood near the craft services truck drinking a mug of hot chocolate that should have had my name on it, Chas Chadwick, head of Southern Sky, was on the set. Chas was a dark, broody, preppy sort of fellow who looked to be in his mid-forties. He had spent most of the day standing just past the reach of Fitch’s windmilling arms. I guess when your company is paying more than a hundred grand for a video, you want to be sure you get your money’s worth.

Augie Freemont, a stocky, older man with a shaved head, goatee, and earring, was the booking agent for both Keith and Melody, and had come by during lunch. He was memorable also for the impressive double roll of fat on the back of his head. I’ve always wondered how that happens. I mean, who gets fat rolls on the back of their head? Augie wasn’t thin, but he wasn’t obese, either.

Scott Donelson, Melody’s attorney, had popped onto the set earlier, but only stayed a few minutes. It was a show of support that was probably worth at least two billable hours to his client, plus mileage expenses of course.

The lights and cameras had supposedly been tweaked and Fitch was now waving his arms in a way that I assumed meant they were ready for the horses and riders. I gave a last swipe of baby oil to Bob’s dark nose to make it glossy, and placed my fingers over Keith’s left hand to encourage him to tighten his grip on the knot in his reins.

The riders jogged across the wide infield of the steeple-chase grounds and I wondered, for what must have been the thousandth time that day, how the label or video company got permission to film here. Usually Metro Nashville guarded the grounds like a crown jewel and firmly encouraged hikers and other visitors who came to Percy Warner Park to stay off the steeplechase course.

The music cued and the song began to play. Although they were not recording audio in this scene, the music helped both the horses and the riders get into their roles. Keith and Melody turned Bob and Sally and they all began to canter, again, to a point near the moving video camera. The horses cantered in time to the music and at the appropriate spot Keith and Melody looked longingly at each other. Keith then transferred his reins into his right hand and reached out to enfold Melody’s right hand in his left. Then the two stars cantered on, past the camera and presumably off into happily ever after.

“Cut!” Fitch yelled. “That’s a wrap.”

Numerous hugs and high fives were exchanged amongst the crew. You’d have thought they’d just won the lottery, and in their world, maybe they had. Keith and Melody handed the horses to me, and both stayed to help untack. Jon Gardner had been here most of the day. But, as the afternoon lengthened, good guy that he was, he felt a need to head back to our barn to feed the other horses in our care. Fortunately, he had driven over separately, in his rusty, dark blue sedan.

“Go,” I said to Keith and Melody as soon as the horses’ legs had been wrapped for trailering. “You have a party to get ready for.”

The “wrap party” was a traditional festive event held after the close of any major music industry project. This one was being held at a therapeutic riding center in Kingston Springs, the southwestern-most town in Cheatham County. Melody was a member of the church that sponsored the riding center, The Holy Church of the Mighty Happy.

Melody had tried several times to get me to go services with her on Sunday mornings when she was in town, but either I was at a horse show, or just didn’t feel the need to go. Catholic by birth, even though I did not attend mass regularly (okay, hardly ever) I was uncomfortable in the Southern Methodist church my boyfriend Brent went to, and assumed the same would apply with this congregation.

“Cat? You want a little touch up before we go to the wrap party?” Bill asked, a cordless hair straightener in his hand. “A little smoothing? Your curls are really . . . curly.”

Bill was being tactful. My long hair looked like a dull brown rat’s nest. A day of humid November breezes had turned my careful ponytail of this morning into a frizzy mess. Despite Bill’s stellar reputation, I made a habit of avoiding hair salons. No one had ever made my hair look good, so I stopped wasting my money. Melody had been working on me, though. Maybe someday soon I would pay a visit to Bill’s salon.

“Ah, not right now, Bill,” I said. “But thanks. I have to get the horses home before I can head to the party. I’ll see you there, though.”

I loaded Bob, the heavier of the two horses, first. The only trailer I had was a six-horse diagonal haul, and I’d made a spot for him just in front of the first trailer axle. I asked Sally to go in next, but she resisted. That was odd behavior for her, but Sally sometimes acted very oddly. Instead of joining Bob, she craned her neck to the left, and whinnied at Keith, Melody, Davis, and Chas, who were talking about a hundred feet away.

“Bye, Sally,” Melody called, waving at her favorite horse. “See you soon.”

Sally looked at the group a moment longer, sighed, and stepped into the trailer.

After a quick wave of my own, I got into the cab of my truck and headed for River Road.

M
Y FARM WAS LOCATED ON
the south bank of the Cumberland River. It was twenty rolling acres of what used to be part of the massive Fairbanks Plantation, which was owned during the Civil War by a scoundrel named Col. Samuel Henley. I had learned a lot about Col. Sam earlier this year when my neighbor, a recent owner of the ancestral Henley home, got herself murdered.

I purchased my farm eight years ago, just after I graduated from Middle Tennessee State University with a degree in equine science. My beloved grandmother, who had raised me from the time I was nine, passed suddenly and I found more than eighty thousand dollars in cash stuffed under her mattress. I used every cent to buy my old farmhouse and accompanying old tobacco barn, and hung out my horse training shingle. I had been fortunate since then, racking up national wins on the Appaloosa horse show circuit just about every year, and I couldn’t have done it without Jon Gardner.

Jon showed up on my doorstep roughly four years ago and moved into the apartment I had just renovated in the barn loft. He was an enigma, although I had learned something about his family a few months ago. Not much else about his past had come forth since then, but I gave thanks every day that he was on my team.

I had hoped to convince Jon to come to the wrap party with me, but as soon as we got Sally settled in her stall she sank her head deep into her water bucket and began to blow bubbles. Agnes was positive that Sally only did that if something big was about to happen (or had already happened). And indeed, in some people’s minds, a case could be made that Sally might possibly be psychic. In this instance, maybe Sally understood that millions of people would soon see her on Country Music Television and other music video channels. That didn’t explain the tie in to the water and bubbles, though.

Jon was more concerned with Sally’s behavior than I was and decided to stay home to watch her. I also suspected that he just didn’t want to go. Jon was a quiet watcher, an observer of people and animals, which is one reason he was so good with horses. Interacting with people, however, was another story. Jon was not a gregarious sort, and I had the feeling that a party filled with people he did not know was the last place he wanted to be.

Many in Nashville would jump at an invitation to a music industry wrap party, but after a phone call, I realized that in addition to Jon, my boyfriend Brent was not one of them. Brent was a small animal veterinarian in nearby Clarksville, Tennessee and was quite certain that he’d much rather balance his checkbook than go to the event.

Darcy, however, was another story. Darcy was a senior in high school, a student and friend who now lived with me. Her dad, Mason Whitcomb, was a Nashville magazine and Internet media publishing mogul who lived in the ritzy Green Hills area of Nashville. He often was too busy for his only child. Darcy’s mother I have already mentioned. Both parents loved her dearly, but Darcy decided last summer that I was the one to give her the attention she needed. I actually didn’t mind.