“All right. I’ll have Betty send out an email canceling the rest of the season. Signed by both of us.”
“Difficult as that is, we must do it. The other thing is, we’ll have to cancel our fundraisers until this is over, or at least until people are safer.”
Sister sat down, worried. “I guess everyone will be canceling their season. Even out west.”
Gray placed his fork across his plate. “If this lockdown eventually gets worse, small businesses will go under. Very few businesses have enough cash to shut down for even a month.”
“Well, we don’t know that yet.”
“Honey, if this gets worse, no one will be able to go to a lecture, a restaurant, get a haircut. This is only the beginning. Our governor will have to be clear about essential and nonessential and that will change. This really is only the beginning.”
“I hope you’re wrong.”
“So do I,” he agreed.
“Oh, forgot, Carter said another painting was stolen in Lexington but it wasn’t a Munnings.”
“Ah. Bet it is still worth a lot.” He rose, took his dish to the sink and hers as well. “What was that James Cagney movie? Never Steal Anything Small?”
“Anything James Cagney was in was terrific. Did you know he started as a dancer?”
“Didn’t. He did move with a kind of grace, though, didn’t he? Well, honey, you’d better call Betty. The sooner this goes out, the better.”
“You’re right.” Sister walked to the library, as it was easier to use the landline in there.
Betty, who had heard the governor’s address, agreed this was the right thing to do and she’d get on it.
No sooner had Sister hung up the phone than it rang again.
“Mrs. Arnold.”
“Yes.”
“This is Jordan Standish. I didn’t have a cell number for you so I called this number. I hope that’s okay.”
“It is. I’m not much for using my cell. It’s a surprise to hear your voice.”
“Uh, well, I called to thank you for talking to Mr. Barbhaiya. He has dropped the charges and he said you suggested that.”
“He gives me too much credit, but I do hope this works out. I am happy to show you hunting, but as it turns out we’ve all been grounded.”
“Yes. Me, too. I’ve dropped my campaign until this is over. Well, I haven’t dropped it, but no rallies or meetings. The other reason I called you is you asked me about those crimes.”
“I did.”
“I don’t have an answer but I had a thought. Now that people will be wearing masks, at least some of them, it will be easier to steal, I think.”
“I would never have thought of that. Thank you for considering my question. I hope we meet in better circumstances when this ends.”
“Yes, Ma’am. A lot will change.”
“You’re right. Keep well.”
“You, too. Goodbye.”
She hung up the phone and thought, “Will wonders never cease?”
“Done?” Gray called from the kitchen.
“Yes. You’ll never guess who I just spoke with.” She walked back into the kitchen to tell him about Jordan Standish.
“He’s right. Our state law forbids wearing a mask at a rally, gatherings. They can’t enforce it now, can they?”
“I guess not. This is all overwhelming.”
“It is. Will there be an increase in crime?” Gray breathed out. “Well, if we have to keep away from one another, if businesses are closed, I doubt it, but a well-thought-out crime, maybe.”
“What about mass violence?”
“Whenever people are frightened or angry or both, that is always a possibility.”
“Animals are smarter than people that way.” Sister believed that.
“Of course.” Golly preened.
CHAPTER 32
March 11, 2020 Wednesday
Late afternoon.
How quickly the day flew by. After Carter’s call then her calling Walter and the unexpected call from Jordan Standish, Sister walked down to the kennels to give Weevil and Tootie the news. Although young, neither one protested. For one thing, no one knew enough about the virus itself and the media had to stir the pot. Never pass up the opportunity to make money off a crisis. The political version of that was never let a crisis go to waste. The finger-pointing was in full swing.
She turned to the Richmond Times-Dispatch for sobriety, where she found it. No screaming, no predications of mass death, simply what the governor’s speech meant for Virginia and what was known about the virus. After reading, feeling more clear, she picked up the phone and began calling Betty, Aunt Daniella…another surprise, for she took it all in stride…Yvonne, Sam, Kasmir and Alida, Freddie Thomas. That took her to noon. Betty sent out the email but Sister felt next she needed to speak to every landowner and those calls carried her to tea time.
Golly, in her special bed on the counter, a place much resented by the dogs, lifted her head as Sister boiled water.
“Golly, it’s one thing after another.”
“It would be easier if you didn’t have two dogs.”
“Golly, shut up,” Rooster grumbled from his three-hundred-dollar bed with sides and a removable fleece interior.
Sister spoiled them in every respect, except they had to learn manners when puppies.
Raleigh, not bothering to lift his head, remarked to Rooster, “Rooster, no one could take a cat seriously. Pay her no mind.”
The water boiled while Golly did, too. As Sister poured the water over a Yorkshire Gold teabag, Golly vaulted from her luxurious bed, raced over to Rooster, smacked the harrier on the nose, immediately leaping back up to her bed.
“I’ll get you,” Rooster threatened.
Golly did not deign to reply but purred loudly, so Sister rubbed her head.
Sitting down at the kitchen table, Sister drank the strong English tea, which snapped her right back. “All right you all, I’m back at it.”
Once in the library she pulled out the last volume of Sir Alfred Munnings three-volume autobiography. No sooner had she opened the book than she shut it.
Walking over to the graceful desk in the corner she picked up the phone, dialed the 859 area code followed by O.J.’s number.
“Sugar, I meant to call you this morning after I heard the news, but all this coronavirus stuff has taken up the day,” Sister said as she heard O.J.’s distinctive voice.
“Actually, O.J., I meant to call you because I heard the Andre Pater painting of Catherine Clay-Neal had been stolen.”
“You have good connections. Will be on the six o’clock news.”
“Oh.” A silence followed this. “Carter Nicewonder told me.”
“Well, there you have it. Good connections. Is there a woman with some means to whom he hasn’t tried to sell jewelry?”
“Probably not.” Sister laughed. “Some of it is beautiful.”
“Is.”
“Is everyone at the museum okay?”
“Yes. Catherine and I were coming back from a hunt. She wanted to stop for a moment, we walked in, no girls. They must have heard our voices because they started screaming from the closet. Locked in. Two men with face masks. Guns. No one was hurt. Once released we all walked through the museum, which is when we found Catherine’s painting gone. She’s distressed. Who wouldn’t be?”
“Sidesaddle.” Sister had seen photographs of the large, stunning painting. “Well, O.J., this is the first painting that isn’t a Munnings. Are you all right?”
“I’m upset for her and for the museum. They have a fine security system but this happened in the broad daylight. All those two had to do was walk inside.”
“You would think this would stop. The longer it goes on, the more vulnerable the thieves are, or the mastermind.”
“You would think. So far no dead driver has been found. Of course, the girls never saw the vehicle, but they made off. Zip. Just like that.”
“Well, let’s keep in touch. We can still walk out hounds, we’ll be six feet from one another and in the open. I think this is extreme but Walter says, given our lack of preparation and it’s such a different type of bug, we have to do this. I guess six feet apart is better than six feet under.”
“For how long? People will lose their shirts.”
Sister thought a moment. “Yes. We’ve lived through flu epidemics before. I mean recently, not 1919, which was mass death worldwide. But all those recent flus that have names like SARS. I bet I have that wrong, but you know what I mean.”
“I do. Vaccines developed pretty quickly, so we can hope this does, too.”
“If this were up to the medical profession, I would agree. But the politicians are in it and both parties will try to use this to advance themselves. They don’t give a damn about the American people.” Sister revealed bitterness.
O.J. sighed. “I remember reading The Gilded Age in college. This is the second gilded age.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe it’s also the gelded age. So many men aren’t men.”
“Now, there’s a savage thought but funny,” Sister responded.
The two chatted a bit more then Sister hung up, returning to the sofa. Raleigh and Rooster laid on each side of her, their heads on her lap. Golly rested on the back of the sofa, her tail occasionally flicking over the human’s nose.
Sister stopped, brushed the tail back, then referred to the index in the back of the Munnings book. She rose, disturbing the dogs, looked in the index of volume one and volume two. Then she sat back down, looked into those warm brown doggy eyes.
“He never mentions Florence. Why didn’t I notice that?”
“Who’s Florence?” Golly asked.
Sister rose again, went over to Gray’s far too expensive computer and looked for Florence Carter-Wood. Photographs showed up of a beautiful woman then paintings of her. Paintings by Alfred Munnings.
“I wonder,” she muttered under her breath.
Florence was Sir Alfred’s first wife. They married in 1912. She committed suicide in 1914. She had tried to kill herself on her honeymoon but somehow pulled it together. She herself painted and was part of a group of painters before World War I known as the Lamorna Group. Others painted her as well, for she was so beautiful. She could ride. Sidesaddle, of course.
Sister thought about that. Today Florence might be considered depressive. Then she seemed to have a streak of melancholy but nothing so severe as to cause comment until her suicide attempt on her honeymoon.
Sitting there, surrounded by the best love, Sister considered what little she knew.
She said, “He never mentioned her. Not once in his three volumes, and according to this brief biography, not once after she died. Not once.”
Rooster replied. “I like it when you talk to me.”
“Ha. She’s not talking to you, she’s talking to herself. Humans do that.” The cat tossed her head in what she considered a fetching manner.
“She talks to us.” Raleigh couldn’t bear criticism of Sister. “When she talks out loud even if it isn’t to us we can learn something.”
Once again, the tall woman whispered. “Not once.”
CHAPTER 33
March 12, 2020 Thursday
Brilliant sunshine flooded pastures, trees almost blooming. Sister, Betty, Weevil, and Tootie walked hounds across the large field between her farm and the Bancroft’s After All. The temperature, in the low fifties, promised spring.
Hounds knew they were not hunting, as no one was on horseback. But the humans, far apart from one another, walked briskly. A human brisk pace was a hound’s fast walk sneaking into a slow trot.
Sister and Betty, in their hound-walking shoes, began to trot. Weevil and Tootie, up front, kept pace with the hounds. Sister and Betty brought up the rear.
“I’m going to have to work up to this.” Betty slowed.
“Me, too.” Sister smiled, watching the two young people and the hounds move away.
“I never was much of a runner.” Betty looked down at her breasts. “No support bras in my youth.”
Sister laughed. “Those protuberances can get in the way. I used to wrap mine with the tape used to wrap ankles. You know, that stretchy fabric. At least it was soft, but then again I am not as generously endowed as yourself.”
“You’re a C. That’s enough to hurt when you run or take a big jump.”
“Well, when you’re young, or at least for me, I noticed, but it wasn’t awful. Tell you what, when those first support bras came out for athletes, I bought one. Helps. Originally the material didn’t breathe, so you sweated like a horse. Then things improved.”
“Has. Look at the knee braces we can wear that don’t interfere with riding. Those are made out of elastic cloth. My left knee has gotten to the point where I hate to climb the stairs.”
“Operation?”
Betty groaned. “I guess. Maybe this summer. I lack enthusiasm but I hate losing mobility.”
“Honey, sooner or later age humbles you.”
Betty rejoined, “I was born humble.”
“I’d better duck before one hits me.”
As Tootie and Weevil turned to come back across the meadow, a few shoots peeking up, they beheld two women laughing at each other; they couldn’t hear what was being said, but more laughter.
“They never stop,” Tootie remarked.
“Good to have a friend like that. Do you think women make friends easier than men? Deeper friendships?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the way we go about it is different. Men like to do things together. Women sit around and talk. I’m not much of a talker.”
“I’ve noticed.”
She dropped her head and smiled. “But when Val and some of my classmates from Custis Hall and I get together, usually over their college vacations, I’ll talk. ’Course, no one can outtalk Val. I hope she runs for public office someday. She has that gift, you know?”
“I’ve never met her.”
“If Princeton lets people out early maybe she’ll stop by. She’s as tall as Sister. Maybe a little taller, a terrific athlete, blonde, blue-eyed, the American dream. She really is beautiful.”
“Tootie, she couldn’t be more beautiful than you.” He worked up his courage and it wasn’t a false compliment.
“I, well, thank you. I’ve always been in Mom’s shadow. I’m happiest in hunt clothes, that’s my idea of getting dressed up. The rest of the time, you can see.”
“A turtleneck sweater, jeans, and cowboy boots. Very sensible.” He smiled.
She laughed. “From the rear people will call me ‘Sir.’ ”
“Tootie, all you have to do is turn around. I bet they’re speechless.”
She laughed again. “They’re embarrassed.”
“I love you, Tootie.” Trident slid his head under her hand and the pack moved up a tiny bit to be close to the humans they all loved.
“I feel better with animals.”
“I do, too,” Weevil replied. “They’re honest and they try so hard for you. And I thank you because you try so hard as a whipper-in. You can ride like the devil.” He grinned a lopsided grin.
“You think?”
“I do. I don’t say much when we’re out there because my focus is on the quarry and the hound. I do try to thank you all after a hunt. That’s only proper for a huntsman. And Sister thanks us.”
“Sister’s hunting manners are impeccable. No matter what, even something right out of the blue, she’s calm, cool, collected, and diplomatic. I have to bite my tongue,” Tootie confessed.
“Me, too. Can you believe some of the dumb stuff people do and say, an
d this is a pretty wonderful hunt club? Still, every now and then I’ll look back or someone will yell out and I just want to paste them.”
They reached the two friends.
“Paste who? Wait, I mean whom. I’m standing next to a grammar queen.” Betty gave Sister a look.
“I am not.”
“You always correct me with lie and lay.”
“I never argue when you say you got laid.” Sister burst out laughing, as did everyone, most of all Betty.
“There are children present.” Betty blushed.
“Betty, they know more than we do. Think what Weevil and Tootie have been exposed to? I mean stuff we didn’t even know existed until our forties, and my forties precede yours.”
“It’s the Internet.” Weevil stopped and hounds stopped, sitting down, loving being out and being with staff.
“Our idea of racy was to smoke a cigarette.” Sister reached down to pet Diana.
“Not anymore. Everyone would jump down your throat,” Tootie said.
“Isn’t it amazing how many people want to live your life for you?” Sister’s voice lifted up. “As we walk back let me ask you two a favor. I’ve been rereading Munnings’s autobiography. Nearing the end of the last volume, the third. Will you do me a favor, since you can do anything with a computer, and research Captain Gilbert Evans? He was a friend of Munnings. They became estranged over the woman that was Munnings’s first wife and she, unfortunately, killed herself in 1914. But root out anything you can, including descendants.”
“Okay.”
“She’s on a mission,” Betty filled them in.
“I am. What I’ll be doing as you all are doing that is digging up great art thefts in the last century. The theft of the Munnings and now the Pater are bad, bold. It’s not the Mona Lisa but it’s, well, it seems to me, well coordinated.”
“Was the Mona Lisa stolen?”
“In 1911,” Sister informed them.
“What a memory you have,” Betty teased her.
“Betty, I am not the Ancient of Days. Granted, I’m no longer young, but anyway, I’ve been researching. The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911. Took a full day for anyone to notice.”
Out of Hounds Page 23