Running low to the ground, hounds covered ground quickly. They reached a deep ravine, the sun’s rays long and slanting in winter, darkness gathering in the defile. The minute Sister picked her way down the narrow path, a deepening cold hit her. Hounds started up the other side, then turned back to run in the crease of the ravine. A narrow, often rocky trail rested alongside the crease, which turned into a thin hard-running stream emerging from underground.
Horses could trot but not much more. The ravine’s end opened into a wide, fast eastward-running creek, its waters swollen with runoff from the mountains. Here, the first snowflakes fell.
The hounds leapt into the creek. Sister and Lafayette followed, the going slow, as the current was swift and the water about three feet high at that entry point. On the other side, hounds continued south, still on Old Paradise property. Suddenly they stopped, surrounding an old locust tree.
A small black bear nestled up in its branches, looking down. Small though he was, if he chose to come down, one swat from his paw could break ribs or the neck of a hound.
Lafayette loathed the bear, but he behaved himself. Some of the other horses got nervous.
“Chicken,” the hound Dasher called up to the bear.
“I’m a bear, not a chicken,” the young fellow sensibly replied.
“All right, let’s go.” Shaker looked up. “For a fat little fellow, you can move.”
The fat little fellow clicked his jaws, a snapping sound that could be heard all the way back to Second Flight.
Sister looked down the creek west, then east. “If we follow the creek, there’s a decent crossing farther down. We’ll come out on the old farm road that leads up to the barns. Mmm, maybe a twenty-minute ride. Best to walk.”
Which they did. By the time they reached Old Paradise, the ground was dusted white like a sugar cookie. The snowflakes, small, could even be heard as they hit tree branches.
Everyone put up their horses. Betty, boots and socks off, old muck boots now on, had a big thermos of coffee. Sister had tea. Most everyone had something. The weather was worsening and, much as Jefferson Hunt relished an impromptu tailgate or even a planned one, this wasn’t the day.
Tariq Al McMillan, who rode out with the Custis Hall girls whose classes allowed them to hunt on a weekday, came up to Sister. “Thank you, master, and good evening.”
She always enjoyed hearing his lovely British accent. “Wonderful day,” said Sister. “Will I see you next hunt?”
“On Saturday. Thursdays I teach.” He tapped his crop on his hard hat, slightly bowed, then turned to leave.
“Did you ever hunt in the Shires, Tariq?” she called after him.
“I did. America is wilder.” He smiled, enhancing his handsome features. “At first, hunting outside of England was so different. I wasn’t altogether sure if I would like it. But now, of course, I can’t live without it.” He turned to join the students at the Custis Hall van, who were calling to him.
Once back at Roughneck Farm, Sister untacked Lafayette, wiped him down, put him in a stall with fresh warmish water, three flakes of alfalfa, and an orchard grass mix. She topped this off with a big kiss on the nose, which he endured.
Her other staff horses, Keepsake, Rickyroo, Aztec, and Matador, watched this from their own stalls.
“You’re such a suck up,” teased Keepsake, a nine-year-old Thoroughbred-quarter horse mix.
Lafayette then filled in all of them on the day’s hunt, which he knew would create waves of envy.
Up in the barn’s rafters, Bitsy, the screech owl, usually outside, fussed over her nest. She peered down, ruffled her feathers, wiggled her butt into her nest. It was going to be a long, cold night.
Knowing that, Sister checked everyone’s blankets, cleaned her tack in the heated tack room, then threw on her father’s old fleece-lined flight jacket from the Army Air Corps in World War II to trudge across the way to the kennels. Snow fell steadily.
On Saturdays and some Thursdays, Betty helped her with those chores, leaving her horse in Sister’s barn. But on Tuesdays, she and Bobby needed to hurry home and get back to business.
The kennels, added onto by Sister and her husband, Ray, back in 1964, beckoned Sister in the failing light. The white snow contrasted with the old paprika-colored brick. The back of the kennel quad was lined with huge trees inside a chain-link fence. The male and female dogs lived in separate large brick units, whereas the larger square center building housed the office, special runs for hounds being bred, as well as a more sequestered portion closed off inside with a metal door, a place for injured hounds to recuperate. Each of the hound quarters had a large outside run. But now no one was outside except Sister. When she pushed open the heavy wooden door, she spotted Shaker, bent over the desk, writing in his hunting journal.
“Everything locked down tight?” she asked.
“Yeah, before the details slip away, I just want to recount the hunt, who did what. Then I need to go home and throw some wood in the fireplace.”
“Me, too.” The wood-burning stove in her basement needed feeding twice a day.
Shaker lived in the tidy clapboard house perhaps fifty yards from the kennels. It was part of his huntsman’s contract. Sister kept everything in good order. If he needed a new refrigerator, she bought the best. Her father told her sixty years back when she was twelve, “If you have good help, keep them.”
Her daddy had sure kept his. His friends had chided him for paying his help too much, but Peter Oberbeck had men who worked for him all their lives. He missed them when they retired or died. Of course, they turned out full force when his time came, a tribute to a good man. This respect for good people had been passed on to Sister. She didn’t judge people on how much money they had, or who they knew. She judged them on what they did. Were they competent, hardworking? Were they as good as their word? And like everyone who came into her life, whether staff or friend, her ultimate criteria was, “Do they have a good heart?”
Someone with a very good heart drove slowly by the kennels in a Land Cruiser.
Shaker grinned. “Your boyfriend is here.”
“Need a hand with anything? He can wait.”
“No, everyone’s fine. Hojo’s wearing his new blanket. He’s out in his pasture and I’ll put him up in the barn in a minute.” He glanced out the window, flakes falling hard and fast. “Looks like this is going to stick around.”
“We need it. It’s been an oddly mild winter. Well, if you don’t need anything else, I’ll go up home.”
When she walked through the back door, Raleigh, her Doberman and Rooster, the harrier, a beautiful tricolor hound that resembled a small foxhound, rushed to greet her.
Naturally, Golliwog, the cat, made Sister come to her.
In the kitchen, Gray gave Sister a big kiss.
“What a hunt,” she exclaimed. “I wish you’d been with us.” She unfastened her titanium stock pin and began untying the tie.
“Me, too, but I promised Garvey Stokes I’d meet with him. He’s a smart fellow, really.” He noticed the pin. “Next time I see Garvey I’ll tell him you always use the special pin he made for you.” Gray paused. “I saw Felicity, too. She looks good and is a smart one, too.”
“That she is.”
Felicity Porter, Tootie and Val’s classmate, worked for Garvey while she and Howie, her husband, lived in a dependency on Crawford’s estate. She took college classes at night and soaked up everything she could about Garvey’s metal business.
Gray walked over and sat at the table, opening the New York Times, which he’d brought home. “Look,” he said a few moments later, pointing at an article found on one of the back pages.
Sister read the column, read it again, then looked at him. “What in the hell is going on?”
“That’s exactly what happened on Madison Avenue,” Gray said, clearly perplexed.
The owner of an exclusive tobacco shop in Boston had been murdered. Just like Adolfo Galdos, a pack of American Smokes had been left on
his chest.
CHAPTER 7
“Away of life swept away,” Sister mused as she read from her computer screen, an activity they only had time for in the evening. “Nationalizing an industry is never as good as letting those who know how to run it do their job. Here, look at this.”
Fretting over a crossword puzzle, Gray sighed and put down the paper to sit next to her at the desk. He’d learned long ago when Sister took a notion to go with it. “What is it you’re looking at?” he asked.
Filling the right side of the screen was a grainy sepia photo of acres upon acres of mature tobacco plants.
“Southside?” he guessed, naming that part of Virginia below the James River, closer to North Carolina.
“No. Pinar del Río in Cuba. This was Adolfo Galdos’ father’s plantation.”
Gray read the copy. “Four generations of tobacco growers. The Galdoses must have been among the first Spaniards to settle Cuba.”
She scrolled down, and more photos of the family appeared. She’d fiddled around doing Internet searches on tobacco shops, then searched for Sophia Galdos, knowing the designer would have a great deal written about her. Sister couldn’t erase Sophia’s charming father Adolfo from her mind. She found photos going back to the beginning of photography. The family members were such a good-looking bunch, and Sophia was a knockout. A former model, she had become a clothing designer, the transition a great rarity in the fashion world.
Gray and Sister read an interview with her, in which Sophia, now in her early forties, explained why she turned to design. Gray read aloud, “I wore so many bad clothes on the runway I knew I could do better.”
Sister laughed. “I like this girl. What a fierce business, though. A designer has to be creative, smart about money, and tough. Not only do you face the press with each season’s showing, you have to deal with all the behind-the-scenes backstabbing.” She studied Sophia’s most recent fashion line. “How about that?” she said, raising her eyebrows at a spare, elegant off-the-shoulder evening gown.
Returning to the old family photos, Sister recognized that Sophia’s cutting-edge designs also had echoes of the spare, gorgeous clothes that her female relations had worn long before air-conditioning.
Gray hunched forward. “So the plantation was nationalized and the Galdoses figured out that eventually they’d be imprisoned. Hmm. But when Adolfo Senior came with little Adolfo and his sister, he didn’t try to break into the tobacco business—or at least not growing it.”
“Well, this is just a shot in the dark, but back in Cuba they grew Criollo tobacco for cigars,” said Sister. “Up here it’s almost all cigarette tobacco. Cigar wrapper tobacco is grown in Connecticut, a little bit in Massachusetts. Who knows, honey, maybe after losing everything, Adolfo’s dad just couldn’t bear to start again in the same business. It doesn’t say here whether or not he was able to smuggle out seed, but if he did, he probably sold it to other Cubans emigrating to Nicaragua or the Dominican Republic. Why does anyone think revolution improves life?”
“It does, if you’re the revolutionary.” Gray half laughed. “Ever notice how they’re all intellectuals or lawyers? They stir up the lower classes, foment bloodshed, come to power, and perhaps the poor have more than before, but they sure as hell don’t have any power.”
She scrolled through more photos, more history, then returned to Sophia’s webpage featuring her latest clothing collection. “I feel so sorry for this woman. To lose your father like that.”
“Every day someone loses someone they love to violence, war, a car accident,” Gray said, voice rising. “But this is uncanny. Somehow this Boston murder is related to Adolfo’s death, don’t you think?”
“It’s certainly strange,” said Sister. “The man who owned the tobacco shop in Boston was also a second-generation Cuban.” She drummed her fingers on the highly polished surface of the mahogany desk. “There has to be a connection.”
“Maybe. But it’s all far away. I don’t think our two tobacco shops in Charlottesville are in danger.”
“Don’t be so sure, Gray. The man who owns the shop in Seminole Square is Cuban.”
“So he is. I forgot about that.” Gray considered that. “Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m sure he’s safe.”
“I hope so,” she said before changing the subject. “You were groaning over there with that puzzle. Why do you do crosswords if they make you so miserable?”
“There’s nothing quite as satisfying as one completely filled out.”
“Sometimes I wonder about you.”
“Ditto.”
They laughed and she leaned in toward him, kissing him on the cheek.
He rubbed his unshaven cheek. “Sorry. A little rough.”
“That’s one of the marvelous things about being a woman. No scraping of the face. However, there are a few other drawbacks.”
“You have no drawbacks.”
“Oh, the honey dripping from those lips.” She smiled at him. “Okay. While you were suffering the tortures of the damned with one down and twenty-three across, I looked up American Smokes. Nothing came up. The company isn’t listed anywhere. There are a few small tobacco companies—one using white burley tobacco, which they claim is mild and has a lower nicotine content—but no American Smokes.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” said Gray. “No cartons in the stores either, I guess, or the media would surely shoot a close-up of the brand, you know, a photo or explanation in the paper.”
“Doesn’t make sense.” She returned to more online reading on the subject of tobacco. “Air-cured or fire-cured can affect nicotine content. I looked that up, too. I sure remember the fire-curing. Hey, did I tell you the fox we put to ground ran into the old curing shed at Kasmir’s property? Still gave off that wonderful fragrance. You know, that smoky sweet smell that makes you want to close your eyes and dream?” She caught her breath. “But back to the subject at hand: nothing about American Smokes.”
“So you’ve been researching tobacco, types, curing, all that? May I ask why?”
“Two murders occurred in tobacco shops, both with Cuban owners, no money was taken. All of this compels me in a strange way. I know this is really crazy but I almost feel I owe it to Adolfo Galdos. He was a true gentleman.”
“Doesn’t sound strange. Events happen in life that galvanize our sense of honor. This is one.”
“Don’t hear that word much anymore: honor.”
He nodded. “When I walked over to take you back to the hotel, after the police released you and Tootie, they didn’t know if anything was missing from the humidor or the safe. Did they ever find out if anything had been taken?”
“The paper said nothing. Same in Boston. I’ll bet the police, the Feds, good old Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms crawled all over those stories.”
“It will all come out in the wash.”
“I just hope no other bodies come out with it.” She looked out into the darkness. “Our first real winter storm.”
“Want to make a bet on how long the power lasts?”
“No.” She cut off her computer. “Let’s think good thoughts.”
“Right. I stopped by the home place thinking I might see my brother. Thought Sam might have heard something about Crawford bitching about your tangle at the Hunt Ball. Sam wasn’t there, but the place was pin tidy.”
Gray and his brother lived in the Lorillard home place, a lovely large clapboard house maybe four miles from Sister’s place as the crow flies, the Bancroft’s land coming between the two farms. Gray spent more and more time at Sister’s. Neither one mentioned living together. Gray liked getting away, keeping an eye on his brother. He soaked up memories when home. Sister enjoyed her independence, but she was equally happy when Gray stayed with her. Perhaps someday they’d cohabit. Sister was not a needy woman. She liked her own company.
“Don’t you have to go to the bathroom?” the calico cat asked the dogs.
“Why?” Rooster picked up his head.
“Soon it’ll
be bedtime. If you go now, you won’t have to go in the middle of the night.” Golliwog feigned concern. “It’s snowing hard. The dog door might be covered over and you won’t get out! If you end up going in the house, you know she’ll have a running fit.”
The Doberman rose with a little groan. “You’re right.”
Eyes half-closed, Golliwog waited on the back of the sofa until she heard the dog door flap shut. Then she shot off the sofa.
Sister turned her head as the cat sped toward the kitchen, but she didn’t think too much of it.
Golliwog pressed through the animal door from the kitchen into the mudroom, then positioned herself right by the next animal door, cut into the mudroom entrance. The heavy plastic flap had a magnetic strip so when animals went in and out the door would fasten shut, thereby keeping out the heat, cold, rain, and snow.
She waited. Given the bad weather, neither dog wished to be out in it, so it wasn’t too long before Raleigh stuck his head through the door to enter. Golliwog gave the sleek black dog a nasty rap on his tender nose.
“That hurt!” Raleigh cried out.
“Die, dog!” Golliwog puffed to twice her size, ego to match.
“I’ll get in. I’ll break her neck,” Rooster growled. Golly, having heard the threat, moved to the side. When Rooster stuck his head through, he didn’t see her at first, and out came the claws. Golly drew blood this time.
“Ow, ow, ow!” the harrier howled.
Hearing the commotion, Sister hurried out to the mudroom. Golly didn’t budge.
Sister opened the mudroom door, a gust of wind blew snow on the floor and the two dogs, heads down, hurried inside. Drops of blood fell on the slate floor. Neither dog looked the cat in the eye as she was prancing sideways, hoping to incite even more terror.
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