Hotspur

by Rita Mae Brown

“Or he could be hurt.” Shaker said what she was thinking.

  “Girls, take care of Sybil’s horse, too, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Then can we help you look?” Sari asked.

  She waited a moment, her mind racing. “Yes. Take care of Trooper and Marquise first.” Then, voice lower, as if speaking to herself, she murmured, “Trooper is a sensible horse.”

  Shaker, his shirt soggy against his skin, touched Sybil’s elbow. “When did you last see Ralph?”

  “At the gate between the cornfield and our line. The hand gate. Of course, couldn’t see anything, but that’s where I heard him last. Ken, Xavier, Ron, Ralph, and I decided to go through the gate to get back home. You couldn’t even see the coop anymore until you were right up on it. No sense getting hurt. But we got strung out.”

  “The first thing to do is call your mother. It could be that everyone is back safe and sound.”

  Sister hurried into the tack room, knowing in her bones that all was most emphatically not safe and sound.

  CHAPTER 28

  “And why weren’t you out hunting today?” Tedi, steaming cup of hot chocolate in hand, asked Cindy Chandler, the owner of Foxglove Farm.

  The pretty blonde smiled. “I was going to go.”

  “Sure, Weenie,” Betty Franklin, nursing roped coffee, teased. She’d roaded hounds back to the kennel and left her horse there. As a whipper-in, her concern was the hounds. And Sister never minded Betty putting her horse up in Sister’s barn. She’d driven Jennifer’s car to After All since Sister asked her to go on ahead and be her stand-in while she and Shaker removed collars.

  “I really was. Cat Dancing and I are ready,” she mentioned her beloved mare, “but Clytemnestra and her calf, Orestes, broke down the back side of the fencing and escaped. Still haven’t found them.”

  “Cindy, can’t you call that damned cow Bessie? Does it have to be Clytemnestra?” Betty checked her watch. “God, it’s terrible to have to work for a living. I’d better roll on.”

  Tedi scanned her living room. “Sybil’s still not back.”

  Betty frowned a moment. “Maybe she’s at the barn.”

  Members had carried cakes, biscuits, and sandwiches they’d packed for a small tailgate into Tedi’s dining room. As with most spontaneous gatherings, it proved much more fun than the arduously planned variety.

  Edward had shepherded the field back to his barns. Not often acting as field master, he had neglected to make a head count.

  “Have any idea where the cow headed? Tracks?” Betty returned to the case of the missing cow and calf.

  “I tracked her across Soldier Road but lost her trail in the wildflower meadows. This fog is unbelievable. Don’t know how you all were out there without getting lost.”

  “Well, that’s another story.” Betty laughed.

  “We were never lost. No, not the trusty Jefferson Hunt Club.” Ken sipped his coffee, a shot of Irish Mist adding immeasurably to his pleasure since he was wet and chilled.

  “Rain dropped buckets on me, like the heavens had unzipped, so I went back home, took a hot shower, and then came over to ask Tedi and Edward to keep an eye out for Cly and Orestes. I’d better alert Sister, too,” Cindy thought out loud.

  “Once this fog lifts, we’ll find her. She’s hard to miss,” Tedi said.

  Clytemnestra, the black and white Holstein cow, was quite flashy. Her pastures, rich in redbud clover and alfalfa, should give the cow no reason for complaint, but Cly liked the excitement of escape. Also, she was nosy and wanted to see what was happening on other farms. She was teaching her offspring her tricks. Although still a little fellow, he eagerly absorbed his mother’s lessons. Their jailbreak over the summer when Sister, Walter, Shaker, and Doug built the new in and out jumps only inflamed them to further adventures.

  People slowly began to head home. They checked on their horses in their trailers, then drove away.

  “Hey,” Betty said, poking her head back inside the living room. She had left, gone to Jennifer’s car, then returned. “Ralph Assumptio’s trailer is down at the barn, but he wasn’t at the breakfast.”

  “Edward,” Tedi called, and her husband came in from the library.

  “What, dear?”

  “Did you see Ralph at breakfast?”

  “No, don’t think so.”

  “Ken?” Tedi asked her son-in-law, who wanted to change clothes and head for the office.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Good God, he must still be out there.” Tedi blanched.

  “Bobby brought up the rear,” Betty said. “We might reach him in the truck.” She walked into the kitchen to use the phone. Tedi followed. “Oh, Bobby, glad I got you. I’m still at the Bancrofts’. We can’t find Ralph.”

  “What?”

  “His trailer is here but he’s not, and no one remembers seeing him at breakfast.” Betty’s eyes met Tedi’s.

  “The last time I saw Ralph was at the coop between the cornfields and the woods. A couple of guys were back there,” Bobby recalled.

  “Let me talk to him.” Ken took the phone from Betty. “Hey, Bobby. Ronnie, Xavier, Ralph, and I had a drink while everyone was negotiating the coop. Sybil was back there with us, too. That’s the last time I saw him. You’re sure he didn’t come in and go home with someone else? Maybe put his horse on their trailer?”

  “No.” Bobby felt terrible. His job was to bring up the rear.

  Edward felt responsible, too.

  “Ralph wouldn’t leave his trailer here without asking,” Tedi said, truly worried now.

  As Ken talked to Bobby, the other line rang. Ken put Bobby on hold and heard Sister’s voice.

  “Is Ralph there?” she inquired.

  “No. We just noticed. I’m on the other line with Bobby.”

  “We need to look for him. I’m sending Sybil to where Snake Creek feeds into Broad. She’ll follow the creek back to your covered bridge. Ralph’s smart enough to use the creek. Put Betty on.”

  “Let me say good-bye to Bobby.”

  “Tell him to stay at work. We have enough people to find Ralph. Okay?”

  Ken relayed her message to Bobby, pressed the flashing button, and handed the phone to Betty.

  “Boss?” Betty’s voice rose.

  “Take Edward. Go to the Bleeding Rock. Retrace our steps that way. You’ll come out at the coop. Maybe he came a cropper at the coop.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ask Ken and Tedi to drive along Soldier Road. He might be walking on the road.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Cornfield and all around the base of Hangman’s Ridge. If we don’t find him in an hour I’m calling Ben Sidell. In fact, tell the others to take their cell phones. If no one finds Ralph, call me on my cell in one hour.”

  “Roger.”

  “Oh. Jennifer and Sari want to help. Do you mind?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I’ll put them in the orchard and tell them to follow hound tracks backward to the cornfield in case Ralph tracked hounds.” She hoped the tracks hadn’t completely washed away.

  “Okay.”

  “One hour.”

  “Right.” Betty hung up and gave the others Sister’s orders.

  They threw on Barbour coats or Gore-Tex jackets and hurried out of the house.

  Sister scribbled her cell phone number on a pad and handed it to Jennifer. “Call us. We’ll be in the cornfields and then around the bottom of Hangman’s Ridge. If you don’t find anything when you finally reach the cornfield, come straight back to the barn. Don’t leave the barn until you hear from me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jennifer said.

  With that, Sister and Shaker hopped into the truck. They parked and combed the cornfields, rain pouring down, fog as dense as ever, but found nothing unusual.

  Then they climbed back into the truck, mud caked on their boots, every new step seemingly heavier than the last, and they checked the base of the ridge. The rain had washed away any tracks. />
  “We might as well go to the top of the ridge. At least we can drive up,” Sister said, water running off her coat and onto the floor.

  “Why would he go up there? Even in the fog he’d know Hangman’s Ridge. He’d have to have climbed up,” Shaker sensibly said.

  “That’s true, but maybe he rode up to get his bearings and try to find the farm road. We don’t know where he parted company with Trooper. He could have covered a lot of ground and he could have suffered a concussion and been disoriented.”

  “We’ve tried everything else,” Shaker agreed. He kept the headlights on low since high beams would only reflect back off the fog, making vision even worse. “Can’t see a bloody thing!”

  “Drive along the flat part. At least to the tree.”

  “Christ, in this stuff we’ll probably run into it.” He crept ahead.

  The great gnarled shape hove into view, silvery fog sliding over branches.

  Not until they were almost right up to the tree did they see Ralph flat on his back.

  Shaker braked. Both he and Sister bolted out of the truck.

  “Oh no.” Sister covered her face for a second. Ralph had been shot right between the eyes.

  Shaker knelt down to feel for a pulse. Sister knelt on the other side of Ralph’s body. She, too, touched his neck.

  “Warm. He can’t have been dead long,” she said.

  “We heard the shot.”

  “Oh, Shaker, if only we knew what he knew.”

  “If we knew what he knew, we’d be dead, too.”

  Sister, a surge of fury running through her, cried, “Why didn’t he tell us!”

  “Because he knew he’d be killed.” Shaker held up his hands in a gesture of defeat.

  She stood up. “Goddamn whoever killed him!”

  CHAPTER 29

  The horses calling over the pastures told the hounds what had happened. The news passed from animal to animal. Domesticated animals wished to protect their humans.

  The wild animals, with the exception of the foxes, generally didn’t care what humans did to one another. Sister took care of the foxes, and they wished no harm to come to her.

  Athena, Bitsy, and Inky sat protected under a heavy canopy of oak leaves.

  “The killer’s come out of his lair,” Bitsy said. She had grown fond of some of the humans.

  “Bad enough Nola was killed. Bad enough,” Inky repeated to herself.

  Athena turned her head upside down, then right side up. “Cold-blooded. If we hadn’t sheltered in the Bancrofts’ barn we’d know who shot Ralph.”

  “The humans won’t figure it out, will they?” Bitsy worried.

  Athena breathed in, her huge chest expanding outward, parting her feathers enough to show the beautiful shaded variations underneath. “This is bad. Very bad. When a killer breaks cover like this he’s both ruthless and now reckless.”

  “What about Sister? Is she safe?”

  “Who knows?” Bitsy shrugged. “Any human who gets in the way is in danger, I would guess.”

  “Pity you foxes can’t lead the killer to his death. It would be a fitting end,” Athena said.

  “A lot of things happen during a hunt. Maybe we will get our chance,” Inky said, “if we can find out who it is.”

  “Well, this is certainly a hunt. If a mouse sits stock-still, I might miss him. But if he moves, then I’ve got a chance. This human is moving.” Athena blinked. “He really has broken cover.”

  “But he’s foiling his scent,” Inky said.

  “He’ll make a mistake. He’ll come into view. I just hope the next human who flushes him out is ready.”

  CHAPTER 30

  For some people, Ralph’s end came as a relief. Eager for tidy answers, they assumed he had killed Nola and Guy and had finally, undone by the unearthing of the dead, shot himself. The fact that no gun had been found did not disturb their desire for an easy answer. Then, too, most suicides don’t shoot themselves between the eyes.

  Others, no less eager for answers but less inclined to take the easy way out, wondered what Ralph could have done to provoke such a violent end.

  Sister felt a sense of foreboding; an evil had been unleashed. Then she realized the evil had always been with them, they’d just chosen not to notice.

  She and Shaker sat on that ridge for two full hours. First came the sheriff and his crew, then the Rescue Squad to remove the body once it had been photographed, examined, and finally released.

  The kids waited back at the stable as they were told. Sister informed them they’d found Ralph. She spared them the details. When she and Shaker finally returned to the farm, they discovered the girls had done all their chores.

  Raleigh and Rooster stuck to Sister’s side likes burrs.

  The rain continued, but the fog started thinning out. An oppressive mugginess made it hard to breathe, and even though the temperature remained tolerable, the closeness of the air felt like a shroud.

  As they lacked a kennelman, Sister and Shaker were responsible for the job of cleaning the kennels after a hunt. Tired but usually happy from the day’s hunt, they tackled this with the help of a couple of cups of black coffee. Today the girls had given them an unexpected respite. When Betty returned to pick up Jennifer and Sari, Sister insisted on giving the girls each a fifty-dollar bonus. Betty didn’t protest. She was too shaken up by Ralph’s murder.

  The outdoor runs glistened in the downpour. The indoor runs and pens had been powerwashed. Each of the raised sleeping beds was filled with fresh, soft sawdust chips.

  The hounds were snuggled down in their cozy beds, sleeping after a good hunt. They had enjoyed having the two young women fuss over them.

  After the girls left, Sister and Shaker sat down in the kennel office. They’d told everything they could think of to Ben Sidell, but they hadn’t had a chance to talk to each other. Given the swift shock of it, they found they hadn’t much to say to each other immediately.

  “Hell of a note.” Shaker wiped his face with a towel.

  “It’s not a sight I’ll soon forget.” She took the towel from him and wiped her own face and hands. “If only I’d led the field back to the Bancrofts’.”

  “Sister, you couldn’t have seen any more than Edward did. Fog was thick. Cut it with a knife.”

  “My ears are more educated.”

  “True, but you’d have been up ahead. Ralph was in the back. Once it stops raining we can go back to the coop. Maybe we’ll find something on the ground, but it would appear he left the coop and rode to the ridge.”

  “I’ve been thinking. He didn’t go alone. And someone who really knew the territory, despite the fog or maybe even because of it, could have taken him up there, shot him, flown down the back side of the ridge, and been at the trailers not long after everyone else came in.”

  “True.”

  They sat there on the beat-up wooden chairs that had been donated to the kennel office almost thirty years ago.

  He drummed his fingers on the metal desktop. “Why would Ralph willingly ride with his killer?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know he was going to be killed. Maybe the killer said he needed help or he knew a shortcut—”

  “Ralph knew Hangman’s Ridge. He had to know he was going wrong.”

  “He still could have been bamboozled in some fashion.”

  “Killer could have forced him up there.” Shaker wiped his hands on his thighs. “And somewhere along the way he made Ralph dismount.”

  “Sybil was out there.” Sister shifted uneasily in her chair.

  “Easy to slip away in the fog.” He poured himself more coffee. “I’m drinking too much of this stuff. So are you.”

  “What if whatever the killer knew about Ralph was enough to ensure his cooperation?” Sister ignored his coffee comment.

  “I wonder if we’ll ever know.”

  She said with weariness, “Shaker, I believe it was Ralph who called me about looking in the river off Norwood Bridge.”

  “Jesus.
” Shaker sat up straight because some pieces were falling into place.

  “Just hear me out. I don’t think Ralph killed Nola. He might have killed Guy; he couldn’t stand him because of Nola. But I don’t think he killed her. I think he accepted that he’d lost her. That romance was busted, and he was already courting Frances. On the rebound maybe, but people are like that.”

  “They are.”

  “But somehow he was connected with those murders. There is no doubt in my mind he helped the killer lift that fifty-five-gallon drum and toss it into the James.”

  “But over all these years you’d think he’d have told, or the guilt would have gotten to him.”

  “Well, I couldn’t live with it. You couldn’t live with it. But obviously he could. And maybe, just maybe, he stood to gain by his actions.”

  “I suppose he gained his life.” Shaker shrugged.

  “Why?”

  “Well, he knew the killer might kill him if he didn’t help.”

  “Possibly. I think, though, that he came out ahead in some other way.”

  “Was Ralph a vengeful enough man to want to see Nola dead?”

  Sister turned this over in her mind. “No, but he might have wanted to see her suffer. You know, to see her finally get dumped by someone. But you’re right, I don’t think Ralph could have helped her killer. Which leads us to—what?”

  Shaker’s thick auburn eyebrows jerked upward. “The killer might have told him Guy killed Nola. Ralph exploded and killed Guy. Or Nola’s killer had already done the deed and needed help disposing of Guy’s body. He’d be plenty tired from digging Nola’s grave, not that Ralph would know that.”

  She shook her head. “If Ralph had known Nola was killed or thought she was killed by Guy, then he would have told Tedi and Edward.”

  “I don’t think so. Look, we can never know what goes through someone’s head, but maybe Ralph thought, ‘done is done.’ He can’t bring her back. Maybe he had a special sympathy for the murderer. Or maybe the killer could somehow pin it on him? How could Ralph prove he was innocent?”

  “That’s a good point.” She didn’t know if too much coffee was making her jittery or if she was jittery anyway. “Either way, he was vulnerable.”