TheCart Before the Corpse

by Carolyn McSparren

  So I’d better find Hiram’s records.

  “Thought I told you to wait outside,” Wheeler said from the doorway.

  “Don’t do that! You scared me half to death.”

  “Don’t do what? Walk into where I told you I was going? Or don’t catch you doing something you don’t want me to see?”

  “I am so not doing a thing I don’t have a right to do. I was looking at the carriages Hiram was restoring. I have to find out who they belong to so I can return them.”

  “Shouldn’t be difficult.” Wheeler glanced around the barn. “Where’d he keep his paperwork?”

  “Good question. You see any filing cabinets?”

  “No. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  “Are you dismissing me?”

  “Yes. Go home. I’ll come by after I finish here.”

  “Say what?”

  He sighed. “Ms Abbott, I realize that you are staying in your father’s apartment, but I do need to go over it.”

  “Why?”

  “He may have left a note saying, ‘if I should be murdered, so-and-so did it.’”

  “You are one callous bastard.”

  He closed his eyes. “Right. Sorry.”

  “Simply because I don’t go off into hysterics doesn’t mean I’m not grieving. He was my father, and some place inside I haven’t accessed in twenty years I loved him.”

  “Then let me check his apartment.”

  “Okay, but call first or I won’t open the door.”

  “Good enough.” He walked back towards the vis-à-vis, then glanced at me over his shoulder. “Go away.”

  I did.

  Jacob had finished feeding and mucking. He dumped the contents of the manure cart on top of the pile, then trundled it back into the barn. He didn’t speak when he saw me waiting for him.

  “What did you tell Wheeler?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Cannot say what I do not know. I have an alibi.”

  “He going to check it?”

  “That man checks he has a head on his shoulders before he climbs from bed in the morning.”

  “Who is she? The alibi?”

  He shook his head. “None of your . . . business.”

  It wasn’t. But that didn’t mean I’d stop asking questions. I’ve never understood how the Jessica Fletcher types manage to be so rude and nosy and get away with it. Jacob already disliked me, so I might as well practice being rude and nosy on him. “Was Hiram worried about anything?”

  “You.”

  “Huh?”

  As he raked the aisle, I walked alongside him.

  “You arriving down here to see him. Like to have worked me to death finishing the fencing and spreading the sand in the arena and staining the wood on the stalls. Trying to finish the vis-à-vis, too, so you could drive around town on Easter.”

  “He knows I don’t drive.”

  Jacob swept the steel tines of his rake within an inch of my sneaker. He expected me to jump back. I wanted to, but managed to hold my ground. “He drove, did he not? He could see good as anybody up close and trotting slow. How you think him and me have been fixing the carriages? Heinzie is lazy, but he is unlikely to run into anything at a walk.”

  “Who owns the carriages?”

  “He did.” He waved a hand toward the back of the stable.

  “Not the new ones. The ones in the workshop he’s restoring.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. Vis-à-vis is sold to somebody out of town. Atlanta, maybe. Supposed to pick it up after Hiram used it Easter.”

  “What about the driving lessons he’s been giving?”

  Jacob snickered, pulled a tin of tobacco out of his rear pocket and started to stuff a wad of it into his cheek.

  I held up a hand. “Not in the barn.”

  “I do not smoke it. Hiram never minded.” He dug the rake into the clay so hard he had to yank the tines free.

  “I do. I hate the stuff.”

  “You make too many rules.” He shoved the bits of hay out the back door of the stable and onto the grass. Normally, that would bother me. I preferred to have it added to the manure pile, but I let it go.

  I might need a new farm hand sooner than I thought. “The lessons?”

  “The women take lessons to get close to Hiram. He made sweet talk so they came back for more.” He simpered at me. Brown teeth showed between thin lips. His voice went deep. “Sweet thing, you slide on over here and let Hiram help you handle those reins.” He sounded amazingly like Hiram in his southern gentleman role, and different from his usual stilted Pennsylvania voice.

  I shuddered. “What about Mrs. Caldwell?” Jacob might well know if Hiram and Peggy had been more than friends.

  “She is very serious about the driving. Some take to driving like they find the Holy Grail. Hiram looked to buy her a carriage and a Halflinger once he found a good deal. She is a natural driver. Good hands. He thought even of having her drive the Friesian to the vis-à-vis part of the time on Easter.”

  Peggy hadn’t mentioned that to me, but maybe Hiram hadn’t told her yet. “And the rest of the time? Not me?”

  “Hiram planned to drive. You would ride with him.”

  Right. What was I supposed to do when he casually handed me the reins in the middle of Main Street with half the kids in Mossy Creek in the vis-à-vis and their parents watching? Sneaky old coot. I would have climbed down and left him on his own. One cripple on my conscience is way more than enough.

  “Now you’ll have to drive,” I said. “I’ll ride along if Peggy can’t, but I will not handle the reins.”

  The sneaky look again. “Not in my job description.”

  “How about ‘other duties as assigned.’”

  “You pay me extra, say a hundred bucks?”

  I nodded. “You have any ideas where his paperwork is?”

  “Told you no. In Aiken, maybe.”

  “Jacob, who wanted him dead?”

  He held up his hands. “Not me. I am hired labor only.”

  “Much more than that. You go back a long way.”

  “Does not mean we were close.”

  “Please, you worked for him. You saw things. Who did he get crossways with?”

  For a moment, a foxy expression passed across his face, but was gone almost before I registered it. He did know something. Something he wasn’t about to tell me.

  I gave up. We went over details of the morning schedule, and I helped him put the horses out for the night. Equines, that is. Don Qui decided he wanted to stay inside, away from the Mayflies until he realized Heinzie was outside. Then he brayed until I let him out to join his buddies.

  “I am going to town now,” Jacob said. “I will return in the morning to feed and water.” He started across the pasture but stopped ten feet away and turned back to me. “I am not a trainer,” he said. “If you plan to continue running this farm as a training establishment, then either you must quickly hire someone to train or return to driving yourself.” He stalked off across the pasture.

  I stuck my tongue out at his retreating back. Mind your own business. The thing was, he was right. I couldn’t afford to hire a first class trainer, certainly until I had a full barn, and I wouldn’t have a full barn if I didn’t hire a trainer or train myself.

  I could bribe Yoder to do some of the driving, and Peggy would pitch in as well. Jacob said she was a fast learner with a real aptitude for driving, but she was still a beginner.

  I enjoyed ground driving horses but no faster than a walk. Running around the arena behind a trotting horse would give me a heart attack in five minutes.

  I could lunge the horses and give a student driving lessons from the ground, but that simply wasn’t good enough.

  I had to get back in a carriage and drive.

  I leaned over the pasture fence, and all the horses wandered over to have their foreheads scratched. Don Qui wriggled in front of Heinzie and stood between his forelegs. I always carry a pocketful of sugar cubes, which really makes a mess
in the washing machine if I forget to remove them. I handed sugar cubes to Don Qui and Heinzie.

  “Okay, guys,” I said, as the others crowded closer. I doled out cubes to the two Dutch warmbloods and the Halflinger pony. I hadn’t paid attention to any of them except to feed and water them and muck their stalls. Being out in pasture instead of standing in stalls had calmed down the Dutch warmbloods, but they also hadn’t been driven since Hiram’s death, so they were probably hyper again. The owner had sent them to Hiram because they were unruly. Even if they behaved like angels, I had no business attempting to build my confidence behind a pair of sixteen hand high-strung warmbloods.

  And Heinzie was too darned big to put to without help. Simply dragging the big Meadowbrook up behind him and lifting it over his tabletop rear end and into the tugs would take two people. No horse took kindly to being poked in the butt with a wooden shaft.

  Peggy said Hiram used Golden Boy, the Halflinger, as a lesson horse for his beginning students. Those I had met were all female and middle-aged or older, so Golden Boy must be gentle and forgiving. Since he was technically small enough to be considered a pony, his Meadowbrook cart and harness were both smaller and lighter than Heinzie’s. I could put him to without help.

  Last, but definitely not least, he didn’t have a deranged emotional attachment to a psychotic miniature donkey the way Heinzie did.

  At some point, I decided, I’d put Golden Boy to his cart and attempt to drive while Jacob or Peggy stayed by the fence to monitor.

  I backed up a step and stared into Golden’s chocolate eyes. He seemed to understand me. I could almost hear him telling me he’d look after me.

  I’d never be able to conquer my rotten phobia with anyone looking on. What if I failed? Jacob would snicker, which would be bad.

  Peggy would pity me, which was worse.

  I had to pick up the reins when I was alone, or not at all. Once I was confident driving Golden Boy, I could spring it on them like Poltergeist. “I’m baaaaccck!”

  On the other hand, driving alone was as dangerous as scuba diving alone. And what about the epitaph carved on the cowboy’s tombstone? “Aw, he ain’t gonna do nothing.”

  “You won’t, will you, Golden?” I said and scratched behind the Halflinger’s ears.

  Alone it would be. I’d walk Golden sedately into the dressage arena, an enclosed space. No trot. Once I’d broken through the taboo or the phobia make that terror I’d tell Peggy what I’d done and go from there. It wasn’t as though I’d forgotten how to drive. I started handling the reins on my pony cart when I was five, and I’d been handling them with Hiram since I was three. My hands and arms still remembered, even if my brain fought to forget.

  And OMG how I missed it! I hadn’t admitted that even to myself. I told myself that simply working around horses was enough. That the occasional trail ride in the saddle compensated for missing long, leisurely drives or heart-stopping marathon runs.

  Besides, if I drove alone and messed up, nobody else would be hurt.

  That was what had taken me off the box. I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting a passenger or horse. There were fewer carriage accidents than riding accidents, but the ones there were tended to be much worse.

  What the heck. I had a hard hat, a cell phone, and a couple of hours of daylight left. Why wait? I might never push my courage to the sticking place again. Technically, I wouldn’t even be alone. Geoff Wheeler was in the barn, although I didn’t plan to let him catch me driving Golden Boy.

  I stared into Golden Boy’s wide brown eyes. “I can do this,” I said. Golden Boy wiggled his ears in agreement. I haltered him and cross-tied him in the stable aisle. I opened the gate to the dressage arena so that I wouldn’t have to get off the cart to do it once I was holding the reins. This would be a piece of cake.

  None of the horses had been groomed properly in days, and once I began to curry and brush Golden Boy I realized that his natural golden color had concealed a thick layer of dirt and dander. He leaned into me as I worked, sighing in pleasure. The longer I worked, the harder I brushed, the calmer I grew.

  Golden Boy stood patiently while I harnessed him and put him to the Meadowbrook, and I put on my hardhat.

  I unclipped the cross ties, picked up the reins and walked around to the rear of the cart, lifted the seat and put one foot on the rear platform.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Stand.” I lifted my other foot onto the platform and took a deep breath. I was aboard if not actually sitting down yet. So far, so good.

  My full weight pushed the rear platform down and lifted the shafts in the tugs. Golden snorted, lifted his head and braced himself against the additional weight.

  As the cart tilted backwards, I caught my breath, grabbed for the back of the seat, rammed the toe of my left shoe hard into the steel brace under the seats, and yelped in agony. Startled, Golden Boy took a little crow hop and pulled the cart out from under me.

  I yanked my toe out, let go of the seat, teetered, overbalanced and fell back, tearing the reins out of my hands. I grabbed for the fender to stay upright, but missed. Both feet went out from under me. I landed on my back in the dirt and knocked the wind out of myself.

  My hard hat thwacked the ground hard enough to rattle my brain. I couldn’t draw a breath. My heart ceased to beat, and once I gasped it back to life, it raced.

  I’d broken my toe, or maybe my foot. Or my back. Or my ribs, or my stupid fool neck. I sat up and saw the reins trailing in the dirt behind the cart.

  Released from his crossties and with no one holding his reins, the pony was free to canter off with the cart behind him.

  Just like Jethro.

  Unlike Jethro, Golden Boy walked.

  Thanking God for short-strided ponies, I dove forward, smacked my chin on the edge of the back step, grabbed the reins, and wound up face down in the dirt. I spit out the dirt and barked, “Golden Boy, whoa!”

  Obligingly, he stopped and turned his head as far as he could to try to peer behind him in puzzlement. We were supposed to be going on a drive, weren’t we?

  I pulled myself to my feet behind the cart. My chin hurt, but I didn’t feel any blood, thank God. I’d never explain blood to Peggy, but makeup would cover any bruise. I prayed Geoff hadn’t heard me shout. I was embarrassed enough without a witness.

  I was dying to take my right shoe off to check for broken toes, but was afraid to look. I unhooked the hard-hat without letting go of the reins and tossed it behind me onto the wash rack. It bounced.

  “Was it good for you too?” I asked Golden Boy. “Personally, I had a whee of a time.”

  He snorted, anxious to move off.

  “Sorry, guy, not gonna happen.” Not this afternoon and probably not in the future.

  I’d been damn lucky. Thanks to Hiram’s training and a good-natured pony, nothing bad had happened. Nothing except that I had totally freaked and dropped the reins on an unsecured pony put to a cart. If I’d done that during a show, I’d have been kicked off the grounds.

  This time there was no show committee to blame.

  I’d tried and failed miserably. I didn’t plan to try again.

  Chapter 18

  Tuesday evening

  Merry

  I managed to sneak my truck past Geoff’s and down the driveway without his seeing me. I’d brushed as much dust as possible off my clothes, but my face was filthy.

  As I turned left on the country road that intersected with the main road to Mossy Creek, I nearly sideswiped an empty silver Beemer parked along the narrow shoulder fifty yards from Hiram’s driveway. The car blended dangerously into the evening shadows. Who’d be wandering around out here at five-thirty on an April afternoon?

  I wasn’t aware of any open hunting season in Georgia this late in the spring. Besides, who takes a Beemer on a hunting trip? By the time I thought to write down the license plate number I was around the curve where I couldn’t see the car in my rearview mirror. I made a mental note to ask Peggy if she knew anyone who drove t
hat kind of car, then decided I was being paranoid. The car wasn’t on Hiram’s property or even on his side of the road.

  Hiram’s property started on the right side of the road and climbed up the hill. Somebody must own the land on the other side of the road that continued down the hill. Whoever owned it was simply checking it out, although I didn’t see a soul. I also didn’t see a ‘for sale’ sign anywhere along the road on that side, and at first glance couldn’t see any viable use for the parcel. It looked to be made up of old growth woods, scrub pines and thick vines and underbrush that grew straight down the mountain. There was probably a streambed at the bottom, but it was much too far away to see or hear.

  No good for farming. Any house would have to be built on stilts sunk deep enough into concrete so that the house wouldn’t slide down the hill during the first big rainstorm. Construction would cost a fortune. Logging would be next to impossible, since any logs would have to be hauled straight up the hill to the road. Hunting would be brutal. I’d seen several deer trails disappearing down into the woods on that side, but any hunter who shot a deer down there would have to haul the carcass up the hill though poison oak and sumac. And snakes. I do not do snakes.

  If the original farmers who owned Hiram’s land had owned that land as well, I suspected their heirs would be stuck with it forever unless they turned it into a nature conservancy. Good thing they hadn’t tried to force Hiram to buy that parcel when he bought his farm.

  *

  Peggy had asked me to stop for a drink when I made it home. As I drove up I saw a number of packages on her front porch. I parked my truck, went in the kitchen door, and told her about them.

  “Oh, Lord. Food. I put the car in the garage when I came home from Marilee’s and didn’t look out when I turned the front porch light on. I didn’t even see them. We’d better bring them in.”

  We found several covered aluminum dishes and throwaway plastic containers on Peggy’s front porch, as well as a couple of cakes and loafs of zucchini bread. Just as Geoff Wheeler said.

  I guess the people that dropped them off didn’t want to take the chance of leaving them in the driveway outside my door, so they left them on Peggy’s front porch. They might well have assumed she was feeding me anyway. In any case they knew her and didn’t know me. It took the two of us a couple of trips to bring them in off the porch and set them out on her kitchen counters and table.