“But they are more outraged by the president is what you’re saying?” Aunt Daniella understood politics as only an old person can. “Let’s assume the big company rolls over property rights. What’s left of that cuts down trees, imperils public lands, endangered species. Soliden has filled politicians’ pockets for decades. I remember those decades. What happens when a major disaster occurs, and it will? I promise you, it will. It might not be a blown pipe. What about mud slides from disturbed earth? Soliden has to go over the Blue Ridge. Everyone will pretend to be shocked by the disaster.”
“All those who supported it will turn tail.” Sister stated the obvious.
“So my question is: Where is the Democratic Party? Aren’t they the ones who care about the environment? Amend that, aren’t they the ones who say they care about the environment?” Sam hit the nail on the head.
“Hell, Sam, the Democratic candidates and the Democratic Party in this state had been sucking up money from Soliden for decades, as Aunt Dan said.”
“To be fair, Soliden also gives money to the Republican Party,” Sister added.
“My point is,” Gray continued, “what if someone who believed in the party, who is passionate about environmental issues, killed Luckham?”
“Well, who? Someone in the hunt club?” Sam fired back.
“It’s possible that someone planned to kill the president of Soliden. Maybe not at Christmas Hunt but who was there trying to take his measure. Literally, I guess. Well, the storm comes up. A perfect opportunity.”
“Gray,” Sister responded. “Could happen, but whoever killed him had to know the territory. Otherwise he’d have been left in the open, granted covered by snow for a time. But there was no trace later and whoever killed him had to get him out. I now truly believe the killer is in our hunt club. I don’t want to believe it, but who else would know the land?”
A long silence followed this, then Yvonne spoke. “It makes sense that foxhunters would be passionate environmentalists. Just knowing people as I do as a newcomer, I can see that. My daughter is a passionate environmentalist. Kasmir, Alida, Freddie, you, Ronnie, just about everyone.”
“Crawford is the best candidate. Not a Jefferson Hunt Club member but”—Sister was fighting a headache, this was all getting to her—“there’s no way.”
“I keep coming back to what if there’s another reason?” Gray rattled the huge ice cubes in his glass.
Aunt Daniella had one of those special ice machines that produced big cubes, maybe not as big as Rubik’s cube but big.
“And why his hands? Where’s the rest of him?” Yvonne, having seen a hand, thought this more than odd.
“Animals got at him,” Gray said.
“Then he has to be out there, right?” Sister asked.
“You’d think the cadaver dogs would have found him if wild animals found his hands,” Yvonne replied.
“Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to think.” Sister surprised them. “We’re outdoor people, right? We foxhunt. Knowing how some animals feed on carrion, our conclusion is an obvious one. What is obvious to me, again, is this is a foxhunter. And this is someone leading us away from him or her. Like a fox fouling his scent.”
CHAPTER 30
Pointing to the large U.S. Geological Survey map, Dewey traced the elevation lines. “You can see how rapidly the grade changes at the westernmost edge of Old Paradise’s flatlands. You’re climbing the Blue Ridge in a hurry.”
Sister, knowing Dewey had the latest maps as well as current information about the pipeline, asked if she could look at the maps. She also wanted an overview of where the hands were found.
Standing next to Dewey in his office, she nodded. “And the ravines are narrower, many deeper. The water can cascade down.”
“That’s why Binky had his still there.” Dewey mentioned a DuCharme now in prison. “Wasn’t it Binky?”
“Binky knew about it but it was his nephew, the younger generation.”
Weevil, whom Sister had asked to join her, was surprised. “Everybody knew?”
Dewey smiled genially. “Young man, there have been generations of DuCharmes making outstanding liquor for two hundred years. Everybody knew and everybody was smart enough to stay away, most especially the revenue man and the sheriff.”
“Why?” Weevil innocently asked.
“Because anyone who troubles a good distiller often doesn’t live long,” Dewey replied.
“Don’t worry, Weevil. You won’t be traversing anyone’s still.” Sister glanced at him as he stood next to her. Then she turned her attention back to Dewey. “You have all the maps for Chapel Cross? I have a few but nothing like you.”
“As a developer, I need detailed, up-to-date maps. Look here.” He leaned toward a large screen, computer keyboard in front of it, then sat down.
Weevil stood behind him, transfixed. “Did you have this built?”
Dewey nodded. “My trade is like any other trade. The better your tools, the better your decisions and your work. Sister, look here.” He pointed to red lines on a topo map of part of Old Lynchburg Road and then blue lines. “The red lines are state roads listed for improvement, usually an extra lane or better turn lanes.” He pointed again to blue lines. “If I develop this land on the plat, then this is what I would do, a high-grade asphalt, too. Roads are costly but good roads help sell houses. Now look at this.” Photos, large, appeared on the huge screen. “This is the Windsor model.” Punched again. “The Kent, the Cornwall. You get the idea. All are set back fifty feet from the road. That’s a big setback so the front lawn landscaping must be somewhat in place. The buyer will customize, but the worst thing you can do is sell a house on a plot with rye grass recently sown.”
“This is one of your developments?” Weevil, new to the area, didn’t know Old Lynchburg Road.
“A solidly middle-class development. Affordable for an assistant professor at the university, an associate could buy a bigger house, but these are in a $200,000 to $350,000 price range. That’s now middle class.” He looked up at her. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“Is. I nearly passed out when the sticker price on the Tahoe was $54,000 loaded. I was going to buy a stripped-down version but Gray told me not to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. He reminded me of how much I am on the road, off the road, etc. So I swallowed hard and paid it.”
“Know what you mean. By the way, I’m selling the Range Rover if you know anyone that’s interested. Sucks too much gas.” He then returned to the computer. “Here, let me show you the development out by Zion Crossroads. First I’ll show what it was as raw land three years ago.” A photo appeared of scrubland, not a lot of roll to it but a pleasing prospect facing south, which is in the direction of the James River, although miles away.
“Barren.”
“Look at it now.” A large entrance beckoned into a winding drive, landscaped with rows of Bradford pears. Close-ups of homes appeared, more expensive than the Old Lynchburg development.
“How can you sell more expensive homes there than, say, at Old Lynchburg Road?” Sister was fascinated.
“Richmond. You can commute to Richmond now. Be at the Fan or even downtown in forty-five minutes, an hour if traffic is bad. And if you work on the west end, which now stretches to the edge of Goochland County, you can be at the office within half an hour. This looks good to city workers. They get their taste of the country but on a city salary.”
“You must have bulldozed the land, created a roll.” Weevil had a sharp eye.
“I did. Visual interest is important. Of course, the best of the best is a view either of the mountains or the James River or both. There are parts of Buckingham County above the James where you can look across and see the Blue Ridge in the distance. Why don’t I build in Buckingham?” he asked rhetorically. “It’s south of the James, always an issue in Virginia and it’s just too far
away from Richmond, Charlottesville, although if you work it right you can get down to Lynchburg.”
“South of the James?” Weevil asked.
“Wrong side of the tracks,” Sister told him. “Dewey, go back to Chapel Cross. First give me the overview.”
“I can give you an aerial shot.” He brought up the lands abutting the mountains, the crossroads visible although far below. “The lay of the land is gorgeous whether you go north of Chapel Cross for about ten miles or south for ten miles. East you run into Western Albemarle High School. You can do some developments heading that way, Old Trail has certainly been successful.” He mentioned a dense development. “But working that way, it just becomes more and more difficult. However, if it were developed, the cheapest house on five acres would be in the eight-hundred-thousand-dollar range. It’s a spectacular location.”
“Are there road improvements scheduled for Chapel Cross?” Sister wanted to know.
“No. I think Crawford and Kasmir have taken care of that. The DMV is overburdened as it is, so if the two largest landowners had contacted the delegates from our district, an improvement could be pushed back for a decade.”
“So you don’t have any indication of that?” Sister asked.
“No, but I can show you in detail the proposed route of the pipeline.” He tapped away for about three minutes and then the route appeared coming down from the top of the Blue Ridge, down behind Old Paradise, across the lower lands at a forty-five-degree angle, crossing the road, nipping a good part of Beveridge Hundred, and then following Broad Creek east.
“Isn’t this floodplain?” Weevil pointed to the route paralleling Broad Creek.
“Yes. That’s partly why this route was so stupid. I do think Crawford has solved the problem. Soliden will shift south. So we all owe Crawford and a lot of dead people our thanks.” Dewey nodded. “But real estate is still frozen. Until people know the exact route, little will sell or be put on the market. Trust me, real estate brokers are dipping into emergency funds.”
“Look here.” She leaned forward, placed her finger on land south of Chapel Cross, then placed her finger on the Carriage House.
As the map was large, these were dots, but one could gauge the distance.
“Um-m, six miles? It’s hard to tell when the territory is rough. You’re pointing out the hands?”
“I am. Now if those hands were found where they were, why can’t the cadaver dogs find the rest?”
“If I knew that, I’d be the sheriff.” Dewey brought the Carriage House close up. “Damnedest thing.”
“I told Ben to check outbuildings, even the old Gulf station. He did. Nothing. There has to be a corpse out there but the dogs can’t find it.”
“Which means there may not be a corpse out there,” Weevil suggested. “Maybe he was tossed somewhere else. The hands were cut off.”
“This is a lot of territory. If a body were carried to a ravine”—Dewey brought up a bigger picture of a ravine running down the mountains—“the cadaver dogs would be climbing the mountain. And then again, there’s rock outcroppings, sinkholes. That body could have been stuffed just about anywhere.”
“It could, but wouldn’t the killer have to have driven to get there? You’d think someone would have noticed. The vehicles out there belong to landowners and to the workers at Old Paradise. Someone would have seen something.” Sister put her hands on Dewey’s shoulders. “What if the body was dismembered in a safe place? Hands thrown here. Say a torso up by Brownsville.” She named a rural area up on Route 810, far away.
Dewey turned his head to face her. “You’ve seen too many horror movies. Can you imagine the mess, dismembering a corpse?”
Weevil piped up. “Not if it were frozen. It would take an electric saw or a lot of sweat but it wouldn’t be a mess.”
“Jeez, I hope you two never get mad at me.” Dewey shook his head.
CHAPTER 31
Hearing the trucks and trailers, Inky decided she’d stay inside her den this Saturday, February third. Target, under Tootie’s front porch, made the same decision. Both foxes lived in dens perfectly placed to know what was going on. The food was good, too. One could saunter into the stables at night, pick up tidbits left on a tack trunk or nibble on sweet feed. The sweet feed rolled in molasses was the best. Both Sister and Tootie put out table scraps. Inky, black as coal, and Target, flashy red, were spoiled.
Living such a good life did attract other foxes for overlong visits. Comet, a gray in the prime of life, paid just such a call last night. Comet created a backup den under the cottage. Fortunately there was so much food, the two males didn’t fight about it, but Target resented Comet’s dropping in and out. He should make up his mind and stay at After All. Comet, on the other hand, felt he had earned a spacious den near the covered bridge at After All. The den at Roughneck Farm he considered his second home, a condominium. Usually he came over for those extra treats as well as gossip.
“Is it true that Uncle Yancy sleeps above the mudroom door into the kitchen at the Old Lorillard place?” Target asked.
“Says he does. I haven’t gone over there to look,” Comet answered. “The good thing about the Lorillard place is there are plenty of escape routes. The bad thing is one is too close to Pattypan Forge. I hate that place.”
“Dark,” was all Target said.
“Dark and you have to put up with Aunt Netty.”
“Aunt Netty has many opinions all of which she wishes to share.” Target laughed. “Poor Yancy.”
Comet felt the same way. “I’m going to duck out for a minute and see what they’re up to. If I were the huntsman I’d cast toward After All. Always a lot of jumps, the stuff they like.”
“Tell me which way the wind is blowing. I’ll tell you how he’ll cast,” Target promised.
Comet left the den by the front entrance, slipped out from under the stone foundation, full of lots of fox-sized holes. The foundation lifted up the house, or rather the house was rested upon it and the newer portion, the clapboard part, had lattice around the bottom so the notched hardwood logs used as part of the foundation didn’t show. Sections of the log had been cut out to make it easy for a human to crawl underneath if something needed fixing.
Sitting perfectly still, the elegant gray observed a flurry of activity. Horses being backed off trailers, humans slapping a rag at their boots to knock off newly accumulated dirt, and, as always, two humans facing each other. Comet watched as a tall lady flipped over one end of a snowy white stock tie, then flipped it under the big square knot. The other side duplicated this so that the tails of the tie crossed over each other under the carefully tidied square knot, a big knot.
What a lot of work, the gray thought to himself.
He could hear half-grown puppies wailing, howling, bitter tears. “I want to go.” “I’m big enough.” “I know the horn calls.” The list continued at a high decibel range.
Comet slipped back into the main part of Target’s den. “You should see the people. A real mob.”
“It’s occurring to them that the season is flying along. Maybe six more weeks left.” He licked a paw. “They might remember that some of our worst snowstorms happen in March.”
“That and the wind,” Comet replied.
“And how bad is the wind and from what direction?”
“Steady but not a great force. Enough to ruffle your fur and it’s from the northwest per usual.”
Target lay down, paws crossed in front of him. “He’ll cast toward After All and then when he gets into the woods he’ll turn either north or south. He doesn’t want the wind at their tails.”
As Target predicted, Weevil, hounds, and whippers-in waited while the large field pulled themselves together. Shaker, back from the hospital, talked to people as they rode by. Then he climbed into Skiff’s car to follow as best they could by car. Aunt Daniella and Yvonne cho
se to miss today’s hunt, each having other obligations as well as wondering what might happen hunting today. They were happy to miss it.
“Master?” Weevil asked Sister.
Walter, out today, rode tail in First Flight, the best position for a doctor who doesn’t mind working on his day off.
“Let’s go.” Sister smiled at the young man.
“Come along,” Weevil called to the hounds, eager to get cracking.
They jumped over the simple coop in the fence line around the pasture behind and surrounding Tootie’s cottage and Shaker’s. Behind that reposed the large wildflower field so another jump was necessary. This one was three substantial logs stacked as end logs, cut so the large logs could be dropped in. These natural jumps, if you had manpower or a front-end loader, could be easily built as well as inexpensively built. A coop, on the other hand, relied on seasoned planed boards from the lumberyard. That could cost you, plus you had to paint them. However, a coop could be built in a garage and driven to its final destination. This saved many man-hours.
Bobby Franklin led Second Flight to each gate, leaned over, flipped the Kiwi latch, shaped like a comma, a godsend to riders, pushed open the gate from the side of his horse, calling out, “Gate, please.”
That meant the last rider in Second Flight had to close the gate accompanied by one other rider. As no horse wants to be left behind when others move off, a companion was good manners as well as prudent.
On all her gates Sister had affixed a small wheel at the free end. This made opening and closing easy until there was snow. Fortunately, the snow melted except for in the ravines.
Dreamboat, behind Diana, said, “Feels like a good day.”
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