“Countenancing murder, are you?” She closed her eyes gratefully as the mild yet complex tastes reached her tongue and throat.
“No. But Crawford stirs up hornets’ nests. Fontaine”—he shrugged—“lightweight.”
“A crazed husband?” Doug offered.
“Hell, no. By the time he got at them the husbands were bored.” Shaker roared with laughter.
“If you say so.” Sister exhaled, knowing what the others did not—that Fontaine had had a fling with Shaker’s wife before she left.
“Business?” Walter asked.
“Worthless,” Shaker resolutely replied.
“Better find out who he owes money to, then.” Doug turned his back toward the stove. His pants stuck to his muscled legs.
“Half the county. I can tell you that.” Sister took off her boots, her wet socks, too.
“I can see it now: ‘Murder among the hunt set.’ ‘Galloping revenge.’ How about ‘Toff goes to ground’?” Shaker smiled slyly and the others couldn’t help it; they smiled, too.
“The papers and TV stations will have a field day. Paper ought to be delivered by now.” Walter sipped the coffee, glad for its warmth. “I expect there will be a lot of questions at the hospital today.”
“Walter, you were kind to come out here this morning.”
“Sister Jane, I will help in any way I can.”
“Smart killer, I’d say. Drawing off the young entry like that. Had to be a real hunting man.” Shaker puffed contentedly.
“He’ll forget something, something so small. . . . They always do, you know.” Sister half believed what she said. Mostly she hoped it was true.
CHAPTER 38
The morning after Fontaine was killed, while Sister, Shaker, Doug, and Walter investigated the hog’s-back jump, Crawford Howard nicked himself shaving. Normally, this slip would have brought forth a torrent of vituperation: at the razor, at the shaving cream, at the lighting, and lastly at himself.
This morning he kept whistling. Fontaine was truly totally dead. He’d called last night to offer his services to Sheriff Sidell and to make certain that swaggering ass, Fontaine Buruss, really was gone, his temperature at least forty degrees below normal. If only that insufferable oaf weren’t in the cooler, Crawford would have the merriment of watching him go into rigor mortis. Let the funeral director deal with that.
He wondered how to handle Martha. Sensitive, attached to Fontaine, she would be weepy for days, perhaps weeks. She’d sobbed when Sister made the announcement. Crawford put his arm around her, offering solace.
How he kept himself from gloating even he didn’t know. He congratulated himself on his discipline.
Washing the white shaving cream off his face, patting his cheeks dry, he scrutinized himself in the mirror. Thanks to a discreet and gifted plastic surgeon in New York City he looked maybe forty-five, not the fifty-four he was. His hairline had receded a bit but other than that, he looked good. He was getting bored with the mustache and beard. Too artsy. He thought he’d make an appointment at the barber’s to get the beard shaved off. He’d softened a bit but he’d put down his money at the gym, arriving four days a week at seven to work with a personal trainer.
He had envied Fontaine, his luxurious mane of hair and his trim waistline. Fontaine kept in splendid condition, burning the calories in bed no doubt.
Ah, but he was dead now. Dead. Dead. Dead. Crawford had never realized what a solid sound that word had. Deadwood. Dead honest. Deadbeat. Dead. He began to enjoy the word. It wasn’t far from “deed.” Was being dead a deed? Was being dead a state of being, which English seemed to suggest, or was dead no being at all, just a linguistic twist?
Dead.
Well, he wouldn’t be dead for many a year. His doctors told him that.
He’d win his ex-wife back. He didn’t think of her as an ex but merely as a woman he possessed who had slipped out of his pocket. He loved Martha but he possessed her. A man had to own many things in order to be important and a good-looking woman was one of those things. Children, of course, were optional.
She’d want to stay on at the office until Sorrel Buruss decided what to do with the business. Martha was uncommonly loyal. Then he’d steer her toward home again. A pair of diamond spray earrings from Tiffany would help.
The best thing about Fontaine’s untimely demise, untimely for Fontaine, was that now Crawford would be joint-master of the Jefferson Hunt. Sister really had no choice.
He’d been reading about hounds. He’d wait but in good time he’d suggest an infusion of July blood and perhaps some Dumfriesshire, also. After all, he could read a pedigree as well as any other person. Top line, tail line. How simple.
Joint-master. About time, too.
CHAPTER 39
Given the jolt of the day, Cody spent that night at her parents’ home. Bobby spent half the night on one phone line while Betty was on the other.
Cody imagined the county intersected with a series of actual lines and they’d glow when in use. Finally the entire country would be pulsating with talk.
She and Jen sat in the kitchen eating fruit while overhearing Mom and Dad.
“Any ideas?” Cody asked.
“No. He didn’t look bad, did he? Asleep except for the hole in his coat. I’ve never seen a dead person before.” Jennifer took the clinical approach. “I was with the field but I could see he didn’t look slimy.”
“Fresh is better than nonfresh.”
Jennifer sang. “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, and I’ll play pinochle on your snout.”
“That’s compassionate.” Her older sister peeled back an orange, tossing the rind at Jennifer.
“He was old.”
“Not as old as Mom and Dad. Early forties, I think.”
“Forty is old.” Jennifer bit into an apple. “I’ll never live to be forty.”
“Bullshit. We’ll live way beyond that. Don’t give me this dying young crap. James Dean. Kurt Cobain. Elvis.”
“Elvis was old.”
“Forty-two. I don’t exactly get Elvis.”
“See. You have to be old to get him. Like Nine Inch Nails. Old.”
“They’re not old.”
“Yeah they are. Another decade. What matters is what’s happening right this minute. The eternal present.”
“Have you been reading self-help books? That doesn’t sound like something you’d say, Jennifer.”
“The therapy sessions are warping my mind.”
“Not enough.” She sighed. “So you have no compassion for Fontaine Buruss?”
“All he wanted was for someone to slob his knob. Yuck.”
Cody laughed and Jennifer laughed, too. Fontaine, driven by sex, gravitated toward a female as she lurched out of puberty. Maybe he didn’t sleep with underage girls and maybe he did—who knew? Or if they did, they weren’t talking—but any sign of sexual maturity captivated him. He was handsome. Women are fools for handsome men.
Betty called from the next room, her small office off the kitchen also called the recipe room, since she kept file after file of recipes. “Keep it down. How will it sound in the background if you two are whooping it up?”
“Yes, Mother,” they both said.
“Who are you calling now?” Cody asked.
“Aunt Olivia.”
“Mom, she lives in Chicago.” Jennifer giggled.
“She grew up with Fontaine. She’ll want to know.”
“Is there anyone you haven’t called? What about the bag boy down at Kroger’s?” Cody teased her.
“You two are taking this shock rather well.” Betty strode out of her office.
“Shit happens.” Jennifer burst out laughing again.
Betty’s hand flew to the space between her breasts. “Jennifer.”
“Mom, it’s not like he was my best friend. And he didn’t look so bad dead.”
She walked across the kitchen floor, her slippers barely making a sound, opened the refrigerator, taking out a soda.
/> “Better take two. You’ll be thirsty from all that talking,” Cody advised.
“And what do you think of all this?”
“I don’t know.” Cody grew somber. “I got along with him.” This was an understatement but since her family had no idea of her affair, they couldn’t appreciate her approach. “Once you knew what he was, he was easy. That’s how I see it.”
“And that’s how most women saw it.” Betty popped open the can. “But murder?”
“Yeah, well.” Jennifer suddenly darkened.
“Guess he pissed the wrong person off.” Cody tidied up her pile of orange parts.
“What if it wasn’t personal? You’re assuming it is. What if this is some nutcase who is opposed to hunting?”
“In Virginia. Mom.” Jennifer rolled her eyes.
“Pretty farfetched.” Cody supported her sister.
“Well, serial killers are around us. This could be some person’s sick idea of power. Random killings in the country. It happens. No place is ever safe from that kind of sickness now. People kill to kill.”
“Bet he owed somebody money.” Jennifer had a pedestrian worldview so at odds with her heavenly beauty.
“He did owe money.” Betty sat down with her girls. “Cody, you used to see him at the barn. Weren’t you trying out that horse—uh . . .”
“Keepsake.”
“That’s the one. Ever notice anything off the mark?”
“He didn’t talk business with me. If anyone had good reason to kill Fontaine, apart from someone he owed money to, it would be his wife, don’t you think?”
“She’d never!” Betty’s voice grew loud.
“I didn’t say she did, only that she had more reason than anyone. That is, if your soon-to-strike-again serial killer idea is wrong,” Cody replied.
“I wouldn’t laugh about that. There are serial killers in Virginia. There are too many unsolved murders.” Betty raised her voice. “And that’s the thing, Cody, that’s just the thing. How in the hell did Fontaine get separated from the field to follow a splinter group of the pack? It doesn’t make any sense.”
CHAPTER 40
November resembles a curveball. Just when you think you know where the ball will go over the plate it shifts on you and you’re swinging wind.
The rain morphed into tiny ice bits clicking on windowpanes; cars skidded off roads. Inky and Aunt Netty met at the base of Hangman’s Ridge. They trotted to the kennels, a half-mile distance but seeming much farther in the biting weather.
“No hound will show his face in this. They’re curled up in deep straw.” Netty thought they were spoiled.
When Sister built the main building out of cinder blocks she had dropped fluffy insulation in each row before the next row was laid over it. The result was a structure that hounds couldn’t chew to pieces when bored yet one that stayed cool in summer and warm in winter. Then, too, hounds threw off a lot of body heat, making the sleeping quarters toasty.
“We won’t need to worry about Raleigh and Golly. They’ll be in the big house.” Inky squinted through the sleet. “She takes good care of her pets.”
Aunt Netty said, “Before you were born and the blizzards hit, she put on her snowshoes and fed us.”
“Don’t most masters feed their foxes if the weather is bad?”
“Some do. Some don’t. Some believe that a fox has to survive nature’s tantrums. Others believe a little help now and then is a good thing.” Netty paused. The kennel loomed up ahead. “Might as well go right up to the chain-link fence and bark.” She trotted up. “Yoo-hoo. Cora. Archie.”
No one stirred inside.
“Do you mind if I try?” Inky politely asked.
“Go right ahead.”
“Diana. Diana, it’s Inky.”
They heard a few grumbles back in the bitch section of the kennel and then the magnetic door flap went whap as Diana, head down, pushed through. The lovely tricolor, lots of black on her saddle, hurried to the fence. She was surprised to see Aunt Netty.
“Diana, this is Aunt Netty.”
“Golly,” the hound gushed, “I’ve been on your line but I never thought I would see you.”
Aunt Netty, pleased, replied, “I know a trick or two.”
“What are you all doing out on a filthy night like this?”
“Diana, we need your help.” Inky came straight to the point. “Reynard, Netty’s nephew, was shot, then used as a drag to split the pack.”
“That’s how—“ Diana hoped Dragon wouldn’t get into more trouble, since he’d led the split faction.
Netty interrupted, her sharp features ablaze, sleet stinging her face. “We have only one clue.”
“What?”
“A rope left in the ravine to the northeast of the hog’s-back jump. This weather will blot out any hoofprints but the rope should still be there. If we help you, do you think you can get the pack to go there on hound walk?”
“The humans will never stand for it. If we bolt, I mean.”
“I think I have a way.” Netty raised her voice, as the sleet intensified. “Since Raleigh goes on hound walk you must tell him this plan. His cooperation is the key.”
Diana listened gravely as Netty mapped out her idea to be used on the first clear day.
After the sleek red finished, Diana blinked her eyes. “I’ll talk to the others.”
“Thank you.” Inky smiled.
“Diana, has anyone told you you’re much like your grandmother, Destry?” Before Diana could answer “No,” Netty chortled. “Now, that was a hound.”
The foxes melted into the darkness as Diana walked back to the kennel. She was young. Who would listen to her? But she hadn’t put a paw wrong since cubbing began. She decided to whisper to Cora while the others slept. If Cora listened, it meant two things. First, they might get the humans to the rope. Second, she had earned the respect of the pack’s strike hound.
She softly picked her way through the sleeping girls, as Sister called them, to snuggle next to the hard-muscled, lightning-fast Cora.
“Cora,” Diana whispered low. “There’s a rope in the ravine. It might have something to do with Fontaine’s murder. We need to get the humans to it. Aunt Netty has a plan.”
At the sound of Aunt Netty’s name Cora’s eyes opened wide. Diana had her full attention.
CHAPTER 41
Puffs of breath rolled out of Sister’s, Shaker’s, and Doug’s mouths like cartoon balloons. Each carried a knob-end whip with a long eight-plaited thong. A twelve-plaited thong existed but it was so expensive, almost two hundred dollars for twelve feet, that few staff members were fortunate enough to own one. At the end of the thong a brightly colored thin popper dangled.
The popper, if one were to be perfectly perfect, should be the same color as the hunt’s colors. Made in Italy, woven of silk, long poppers could be ordered from Fennell’s Tack Shop in Lexington, Kentucky, for 95 cents. Shorter ones were sold by Horse Country in Warrenton for about $1.25.
In desperation people had been known to use shoelaces for poppers, L.L. Bean duck boot laces proving the most reliable.
The knob-end whips, formed from ash, blackthorn, or even apple wood, were generally used only by staff members for walking hounds. A good knob-end was passed down from generation to generation, as was a good antler-handle formal hunt whip.
The three humans gathered in front of the kennel paid no mind to their knob-ends. Wearing down vests, thermal underwear, and other secrets of keeping warm at sunrise, they discussed who to take and who to leave in the kennel. They were as fooled by the weather, that sudden sharp turndown, as they were stunned by Fontaine’s murder.
Raleigh, called aside by Cora, listened intently.
Golly, lounging in the house kitchen, thought Raleigh loony tunes to roar out on a frosty morning, thanks to last night’s odd weather. She ate whatever crumbs were scattered on the countertops, then paraded into the pantry, where she jumped onto a shelf, throwing down dish towels until she succeeded in maki
ng a nest to her specifications in the remaining red-and-white-striped dish towels. Golly was very particular.
“Let’s just take them all, Shaker. They’ve been penned up a full day because of the weather. Doug can take the right; I’ll take the left. If our young group bolts, I think we can get them back. The longer we leave them in the kennel, the rowdier they’ll be.”
“There is that.” He pulled his lad’s cap further down on his head. “I’ve my doubts about this Dragon. Pity he’s so handsome.”
“Took his father two years to mature and settle down. Don’t give up on him yet.” She thought to herself that if he didn’t learn his lessons she would couple him to Archie. Archie did not suffer fools gladly.
“Ready?” Shaker asked Doug.
“Yes.” Doug pulled up his turtleneck.
“Okay, then.” Shaker opened the draw run gate and out they ran, invigorated by the cold and filled with purpose.
“I’ll go up front.” Raleigh danced around.
They walked in good order through the hickory-lined back lane that spilled out onto the low meadows, long grasses mixed with lespedeza, bent over by the frost and last night’s battering. As the sun rose each blade reflected its rays, thousands upon thousands of tiny rainbows.
Athena silently flew along the edge of the meadow, then disappeared into the woods.
She landed in the substantial pin oak by Netty’s den. “They’ve just plowed into the meadow at the bottom of Hangman’s Ridge.”
Netty stuck her head out of her front entrance. “Thank you, Athena. I’ll be on my way.”
“You’re not telling Target, I take it. Wise. Almost owl-like.” A low hoot rumbled from the enormous bird.
“He’s too emotional. And if St. Just shadows us—you never know about St. Just—Target might forget our mission.”
“I’ll rouse Inky.”
“I’ve underestimated grays. She’s very bright.”
Athena blinked that she agreed, then spread her wings, lifting off, moving quietly between the trees, then tilting upward to skim the tops.
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