“Guess he had to be.” Tedi leaned into Sister. “You can’t run a business like his without people trying to tear you into little pieces.”
“Tedi, I don’t know if something like today’s discovery can bring good. But—maybe it can bring peace.”
Tedi shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know about peace, but I must find out what happened to my—baby.”
A chill touched Sister at the base of her neck just as a blazing bolt of lightning hit close to the house. Sparks flew, pink sparks widened into a halo of fireworks, and then the room went dark.
Ken Fawkes, the Bancrofts’ son-in-law, said, “Dad, it must have hit the transformer. I’ll crank up the generator.”
Ken had fallen into the habit of calling his father-in-law “Dad.”
The servants glided into the room, lighting candles, carrying hurricane lamps. Being plunged into darkness was not an uncommon experience in the country.
Sister wondered whether she should tell Tedi what she felt, felt so strongly that it was as if she’d been hit by that bolt of lightning. “Tedi, you will find out.”
Tedi turned to look directly into her friend’s warm eyes. “Yes, I think I will. I don’t think I’m going to like it.”
Sister kissed her friend again. “So many people want to see you, Tedi. I’ll come by tomorrow.”
“No, no, let me come to you. I want out of this place.”
“Good.” Tedi embraced her one more time, holding her tightly, then released her.
Sister nodded to people, shaking hands as she made her way over to Sybil, Nola’s older sister. Sybil, an attractive forty-six years old, was red-eyed from crying. The sisters had resembled each other, but in Nola, Sybil’s features had found perfection. Sybil’s jaw was a trifle too long, her eyes a light blue, whereas Nola’s were electric blue just like Tedi’s.
Scattered throughout the house were family photographs. If Nola had not been in those photographs your eye would have focused on Sybil, a pretty girl. But Nola was there and you couldn’t take your eyes off her.
On a few occasions, Sybil’s resentment of her sister would explode. Everyone understood, even Sybil’s own peers when they were children. It was damned hard to be outshone by your bratty little sister, and yet Sybil did love her. The two of them could fall into transports of giggles, pulling pranks, riding first flight in the hunt field. Both were good students, both were good with people, and both clung to each other as the children of the very rich often do once they discover they are very rich.
“Sister—” Sybil didn’t finish her sentence as the tears came.
Sister took her in her arms. “Be strong. Grab mane. Eyes up.” She told her the same thing she used to tell her when Sybil faced a big fence as a small child. And Sybil had been good to Ray Junior. Sister loved her for that. Sybil was a few years older than her son, yet always paid attention to him and rode with him. Both of them could ride like banshees.
Nola, while always friendly to Ray Junior, was too busy conquering men even as a fourteen-year-old to pay much attention to the boy. Nola had discovered her powers early and was determined to use them.
“I will.” Sybil sniffed.
Ken joined them. “Thank you for coming.” He embraced Sister.
“I’m just so glad you and the children are here.”
“We haven’t told the children all of it. Only that their Aunt Nola was finally found. What do you tell a ten-year-old and a six-year-old in a situation like this?” Ken shrugged.
“The truth—as gently as you can, because if you don’t, someone else will,” Sister forthrightly replied. “They’re strong.”
“Mother wants us to move back into the big house, but we can’t. We’re staying at Hunter’s Rest, but I’ll be with Mother every day,” Sybil said.
Hunter’s Rest, a two-story frame house, was located at the southernmost border of the large estate. It once housed the farm manager.
“If you need to get the children away, drop them with me. The S litter”—Sister mentioned a robust litter of foxhound puppies whelped in mid-May—“need walking out and handling. And you know they’re always as welcome as you are.”
“Thank you.” Ken placed his large hand on her shoulder. Apart from a slight paunch, he was holding his own against middle age. A few strands of gray appeared in his sandy hair and eyebrows. A small bald spot like a tonsure bore testimony to the encroaching years, but one had to be taller than Ken to see it.
Later, as Sister and Shaker drove back through the continuing rain, Shaker loosened his dark blue tie. “Had the damndest feeling.”
“What?”
“Well”—he paused, then sheepishly looked over at Sister—“I think I’ve seen too many TV mysteries.”
“What?” she persisted, knowing he’d have to work up to anything that couldn’t be proven by logic.
“Well, I felt that somebody in that room knew—knew what had really happened to Nola.”
CHAPTER 4
The windshield wipers on the Mercedes S500 flipped at their highest speed as Crawford Howard and his wife, Marty, drove back toward town. They had met and married at the University of Indiana, made a fortune in strip malls, moved to central Virginia, divorced, and remarried, all before age forty-seven. Surprisingly, neither of them appeared exhausted by this process.
“Honey, slow down.” Marty involuntarily shrank back as the water from puddles splashed against her side window.
“This machine can handle everything.”
“This machine must still obey the laws of physics,” she wryly replied. But knowing how he loathed being corrected, she hastened to add, “Edward was glad to see you. I know you’ve had a long day, but thank you for making the effort.”
He slowed to forty-five miles an hour. “That girl must have been something. Those photographs of her all over the house—really something.”
The Howards had moved to Jefferson Hunt Country after Nola’s disappearance.
“Don’t you think people are jumping to conclusions?” Marty’s voice rose.
“What? That she was murdered?”
“Right.”
“Honey, people don’t commit suicide and bury themselves. If they commit suicide, sooner or later the body is found. And she disappeared in September, so you know she would have been found quick enough.”
“Betty Franklin said the last time anyone saw her alive was at a party Sorrel Buruss gave for the first day of cubbing. But you’re right. It’s still hot in September.”
“A first-day-of-cubbing party. That’s a good idea.”
Foxhunting rarely opened with a home run, more like a base hit. Cubbing introduced young entry, those hounds hunting for their first year, to the young foxes, being hunted for the first time. The older hounds and hunt staff helped steady the youngsters, keeping them running between the bases instead of straying off into center field. The young foxes, with a bit of luck, learned the rules from the older foxes, but in case a youngster was caught unawares, many a huntsman would steer his pack away to save the fox. If the pack couldn’t be deterred, if scent was just flaming, a whipper-in would do his or her best to warn the fox. If hounds were far enough away, the whipper-in would speak to the fox. The sound of a human voice usually set the fox to running. If hounds were close, the whipper-in would smack his or her boot with their crop. The sound alerted the fox. The whipper-in didn’t want to use his or her voice, if possible, in those circumstances, for the hounds would know the human’s voice.
No one wanted to kill a fox under any circumstances, whether in cubbing or later in formal hunting. American foxhunting was purely about the thrill of the chase—the joy of good hound work and hard riding. Unfortunately, most Americans formed their concept of foxhunting from the English traditions. This was a misunderstanding American foxhunters fretted over continually.
“Wonder why we don’t have a party like that anymore?”
“Bad organization.” Crawford rarely let slip the opportunity to criticize, imp
licitly suggesting he could do better.
Foxhunting clubs, like all volunteer organizations, rolled with the ebb and flow of individual enthusiasm. One member might host an annual breakfast or party for years, then grow weary of it. The master might suggest that someone else pick up the slack, but she or he couldn’t exactly give orders. Orders usually attend paychecks.
“Well, darling, perhaps we should host one. Bring back a lovely tradition.”
He braked sharply as a deer shot across the road. “Big rats, that’s what they are.” Then he returned his attentions to his recently remarried wife. “Wouldn’t hurt. And let’s do it properly. None of this platter of ham biscuits and a pile of doughnuts. Mumm de Cramant.” He mentioned a champagne of which he was particularly fond.
“Cristal.” She loved Louis Roederer.
“I’m not serving $270 bottles of champagne. As it is, the de Cramant is running about $70, although if I order a few cases from Sherry-Lehmann I can get the price down. Don’t worry, sweetie, they’ll be damned impressed when they taste it.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” She noticed the sign to the entrance of the Franklins’ small farm swinging wildly in the increasing wind. “Turning into a filthy night. Almost as if Nola’s ghost has stirred up the winds.”
“Now, Marty.” He laughed.
“I believe in spirits. What about the ghosts at Hangman’s Ridge? People have seen them, and people who aren’t”—she weighed her next word—“flighty.”
“Pure bunk. Anyway, this will all blow over, forgive the pun. If there’s any evidence left on the body at all, I guarantee you it will lead back to Guy Ramy. It just figures. So the real work is finally tracking him down. You know someone around here knows where he is or helped him get out of town. Boy’s father was the sheriff. Man might have been the sheriff, but I’ll bet you he protected his own.”
“But honey, everyone who knew them said Guy loved her.”
“Men kill the women they say they love every day.”
“Makes me wonder why the compliment isn’t reciprocated.”
“Women are more moral.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I do. I know you’re my moral superior. And I wished when we were younger I’d asked you about things, deals, people. But I didn’t.” He shifted in his seat. “Although I still think you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Not that I’m condoning smashing people to bits, but competition is the lifeblood of trade, it’s the lifeblood of this country. Someone has to win and someone has to lose.”
“I guess Nola lost.”
“Don’t worry over it, Marty. This will get settled now that the body has surfaced. Really. And there’s nothing we can do about it except do whatever the Bancrofts need done.” He slowed for the entrance to their farm, Beasley Hall. It was named long before they bought it. It was named for Tobias Beasley, the original holder of the land grant from Charles II. “Wonder if Edward Bancroft has more money than I do? If I’d inherited what he inherited I’d have turned it into four or five billion dollars by now. You know, these people who inherit fortunes let gentlemen investors manage their money. The investments return maybe three percent or four percent a year. I can’t understand anyone being that passive about their money.”
“I don’t know if Edward has as much as you do, honey, but he’s not passive. He ran the Bancroft empire until a few years ago when he retired.”
“Coffee.”
“What, dear?”
“Their money started in coffee, of all the damn things. I’d never put my money in anything where Mother Nature was my partner. But I guess it was a different time. Early nineteenth century. That ancestor of his had to be pretty damned smart.”
“Now they just seem damned, don’t they?”
“The Bancrofts? No. Marty, don’t let this Nola thing affect you. The Bancrofts made whatever adjustment they had to twenty years ago. Sybil married a decent enough fellow, they have two grandchildren, and sure, you never forget a child, but I don’t think you can say they’re damned.” He pulled into the new garage attached to the original main house, an addition Crawford had commissioned.
The new wing was tastefully done and didn’t resemble a garage. If anything, it was the tiniest bit overdone.
The garage doors rolled down behind the red Mercedes.
The first building on this site was a log cabin built in 1730 by Tobias Beasley’s grandson. Over the years it had been replaced with a handsome brick structure boasting a huge center hall and four-over-four windows. Each generation that made money added to the main house. This meant about every thirty or forty years a ballroom would be built or more bedrooms with sleeping porches. Whatever excited the owners’ fancy was added, which gave Beasley Hall true character.
Crawford opened the door into the mudroom and ushered his wife through.
“Thank you, dear.”
“Nightcap?”
“How about a small brandy with a rind of orange on the rim.”
He laughed at her but made her the drink and brought it upstairs to their huge bedroom, decorated by Cole-fax and Fowler. Crawford could have hired Parish Hadley out of New York, but no, he had to go to London. The woman who put the English country house look on the map, Nancy Lancaster, whose mother, Lizzie, had been born a Langhorne of Virginia, was influenced by Mirador, the Langhorne seat in Albemarle County. Crawford liked telling people he and Marty were simply bringing her talent back home. Nancy Lancaster, born in 1897, had been dead since 1994, but her decorating firm soldiered on.
The simple truth was that Crawford was a dreadful snob.
They slipped into their scarlet cashmere bathrobes from Woods and Falon, another English firm, and nestled into an overstuffed sofa suffocating with chintz-covered pillows.
Marty enjoyed unwinding on this sofa before retiring to bed. When she and Howard had separated and Crawford’s lawyers had played the old starve-the-wife routine, she’d had ample time to consider the financial impact of divorce on middle-aged women. She realized she could not make a graceful transition into the ranks of the nouveau pauvre.
“When is the first day of cubbing this year?” Crawford put his arm around her.
“September seventh, I think.”
“Time to leg up the horses.”
“Time to leg up ourselves.”
“Oh, honey, you look fantastic. In fact, you look better than when I married you.”
“Liar.”
“It’s true.”
“You can thank the business—and yourself.”
One of her demands for returning to Crawford, who had been unfaithful to her, was that he buy her the landscaping firm where she had been working to make ends meet. She’d fallen in love with the business. When the owner, Fontaine Buruss, died an untimely death in the hunt field, Crawford made a handsome settlement upon Fontaine’s widow. Marty had never been happier now that she was running her own business. She had a real purpose of her own.
He kissed her. “Funny how things work out.”
“You look pretty fantastic yourself.” She winked at him.
He’d lost his paunch, changed his diet, and worked with a personal trainer. He’d also endured liposuction, but he wasn’t advertising that fact.
The rain slashed at the windowpanes, and Crawford’s heart beat right along with it. When Marty winked it meant she wanted sex.
Crawford, like most people with business drive, also had a high sex drive. He adored making love on a rainy night, too.
He reached up and rubbed her neck. “Did I tell you how crazy I am about you?”
What he didn’t tell her was that he had not given up his long-standing goal of becoming joint-master of the Jefferson Hunt and that that very day he had put his plan in motion. By God, he would be joint-master whether Jane Arnold wanted him or not.
CHAPTER 5
Large, overhead industrial fans set high in the ceiling swirled, their flat blades pushing the air downward, and window fans also sucked i
n air from the outside and sent it over the sleeping hounds. This arrangement kept flies out of the kennels as well.
It was late afternoon, the day after Nola had been discovered. The rains had been followed by the oppressive heat typical of the South.
The Jefferson Hunt Club Kennels, built in the 1950s, were simple and graceful. The building’s exterior was brick, much too expensive to use now thanks to higher taxes and higher labor costs. The large square structure housed the office, the feed rooms, and an examination room where a hound could be isolated for worming or the administration of medicines. At the back of this was a 150-foot-square courtyard of poured concrete sloping down to a central drain. The roofline from the main building gracefully extended over one side of this courtyard by about eight feet. Lovely arches much like those underneath the walkways at Monticello supported the overhang.
Open archways bounded the courtyard, again like the ones at Monticello. The dog hounds lived on the right side and the gyps on the left. Each gender had its own runs and kennel houses with raised beds and little porches. The puppies lived at the rear with their own courtyard and special house. A small, separate sick bay nestled under trees far to the right.
The design—simple, functional—was pleasing to the eye. Doorways into the sleeping quarters were covered with tin to discourage chewing. The center sections of the doors to the runs were cut out and covered with a swinging heavy rubber flat, like a large mud flap on a truck, so the hounds could come and go as they wished. Eventually someone would get the bright idea to chew the flap, but a large square of rubber was easier to replace than an entire door.
All sleeping quarters were washed down every morning and evening. Painted cinder-block walls discouraged insect infestation. The floors sloped to central drains.
Many hounds slept in their raised beds, the wash of refreshing air keeping them cool. Others were dreaming in the huge runs, a quarter of an acre each, filled with large deciduous and fir trees. Some hounds felt the only proper response to blistering weather was to dig a crater in the earth, curling up in it. Fans whirling over kennel beds was sissy stuff.
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