Sybil ordered Tootie, “Get back up on the ridge. Take my horse with you.”
With that, she dismounted, slipped her .22 pistol with ratshot out of the holster and crept downward, one tree at a time.
Tootie did as she was told. Fit to be tied, Shaker was calling and calling his hounds. Tootie hollered to him for all she was worth.
He made his way to her as she headed to the ridge. She told him what she had seen. He dismounted, taking his ratshot, handing Hobo’s reins to Tootie.
“Wait here.” The muscular huntsman ran down the deer path.
The hounds, treeing their human quarry, set up a booming racket.
Much as Tariq wanted to shoot them, he knew people were coming for him. Cursing, because he might have made it, he reached into his pocket for more shells.
Sybil and Shaker, working together now that Shaker had reached her, fanned out, moving toward Tariq.
The hounds heard them coming, but the Egyptian did not.
A flurry of ratshot hit the tree. He ducked, turning away from the shooter. He realized he had a chance to get away if he could kill or wound the hunt staff, especially Shaker and Sybil, who were closing in. Betty was below him. He didn’t know who was above him, but he figured it had to be staff.
Betty left her tree and ran to another.
She picked up a small rock jutting out of the soft earth, threw it for all she was worth. It clattered, hitting a tree near the one the hounds surrounded.
It was enough to draw Tariq’s attention. Shaker, who had been stealthily making his way down, fired, as did Sybil, from the opposite direction.
Tariq tried to fire at them, but lost his balance and fell from the tree, the rifle discharging into the air. That fast, Dragon ripped out his throat.
CHAPTER 37
“I’ve always wanted a purple boob,” Sister told Betty, Tootie, and Gray as she sat in the den, her feet up.
“Thank God you bought that cigarette case,” said Gray. “I’m glad I didn’t say anything about the cost.” He smiled. “It’s priceless.”
He picked up the case from the coffee table. A bullet wedged in the middle of it, the tip flattening against the back side.
Gray and Tootie had brought back Sister from the emergency room. After cleaning up, as she’d been muddy from head to toe, Betty had met them at the house. She’d brought her cap for them to see the crease on the top made by Tariq’s bullet.
Sister sighed. “We can give thanks Dragon killed him before he shot anyone else. If Tariq could have gotten his rifle up he would have fired.”
“Odd,” Betty mused. “He fell out of the tree but he never loosed his grasp on the rifle.”
Tootie said, “He was such a good teacher. I liked him so much. What happens to people?”
The three older people didn’t immediately respond.
Even Golly, quick with a criticism, said little. Events had shocked her, too.
At last, Gray offered a partial explanation. “I guess anyone can justify what they do if they believe they are doing it for a great cause. For Tariq, raising lots of cash to help protect the Coptic people, millions of them, was worth a few American lives. That’s all I can think of, but I know we all underrated Ben Sidell.” Gray moved his thoughts to something he could understand.
Gray had spoken with the sheriff once they got Sister to the emergency room, where she regained consciousness. “Ben knew contraband was moving out of our county. At first he assumed it was illegal liquor, but then realized it had to be tobacco. The laws have changed to allow smaller batches of liquor to be sold. That isn’t to say there still isn’t money in moonshine, but the ’shine is off, forgive the pun.”
“How’d he know that?” Tootie asked.
“Pretty much the same way Sister figured it out: Albemarle County and central Virginia are the perfect distribution centers for the northeast, and even into Chicago.”
Sister leaned on Gray’s shoulder for a moment. “But Tariq. Never in a million years would I have thought he was behind something like this.”
“The real leadership of his smuggling operation is in Cairo. He was important, had a great cover, spoke perfect English.”
A knock on the back door sent the dogs barking. Tootie hurried to see who was there, and shortly afterward she and Ben Sidell returned.
“Did you learn anything new just lately?” the genial sheriff asked Sister.
“Yes, you’re a good sheriff.”
“Butter me up. I ought to slap you with every citation I can find. Sister, you damn near got yourself killed, nearly blew our operation. And furthermore, I had to spend a damned whole hour with Animal Control convincing them the hound was protecting his owner. I spun a lovely tale for Dragon. Madam, you are a lot of work.”
“I am. I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?”
“A stiff Scotch would help. I’m finally off duty.”
Gray walked to the bar to pour Ben a serious amount of single-malt Scotch. “Anyone else ready for a libation?”
“I think I might have a whiskey sour.” Betty stood up, served Ben his drink, then returned for one of her own. For himself, Gray made his usual Blanton’s and bitters.
“Thank you.” Ben gratefully took a sip. “High-test.”
“Hard day.” Gray smiled as he sat down, his own drink in hand.
Betty turned to Ben. “Is the embassy informed?”
“Yes. It is our great good fortune that a former secretary of state lives in Albemarle County. He told me to simply hand them the report of events. Nothing more.”
“Which means they know about the contraband?” asked Sister. She may have ached, but her mind was sharp as ever.
“Sure.” Ben put his glass down. “We’ve been working on this for over a year. This is an annual multi-hundred-million-dollar business. The only monies that come to our citizens are those growers and workers in on the deal, the chain of true tobacco people or as they say: ’bacca. Then there’s the chain of truckers and those who distribute in the big cities. The hubs of distribution collect the cash. In other words, everyone who buys American Smokes in Boston, those store owners pay directly to the distributor and with cash. There are no records that we can find of the transactions. We’ve uncovered only one player in this entire network. And he’s dead.”
“Good Lord,” said Betty. “Tariq never spent much money.” She thought out loud. “Old car. Decent clothing, but nothing to suggest such income.”
“He didn’t have that much. Oh sure, he had more than Custis Hall paid him, but he wasn’t motivated by profit. Tariq was a true idealist. He believed he was protecting, saving even, Coptic Christians.” Ben folded his hands together. “Maybe he did. Who knows.”
“But how? The military will control Egypt one way or another and those men are mostly Muslim. They harass the Christians and the Muslim Brotherhood will go back on every promise they make about protecting all Egyptians. They believe in Sharia, which sure isn’t good for Christians. The Brotherhood and the Army are enemies but both are anti-Christian. The embassy has to be alert to all this.”
“The secretary of state was not exactly forthcoming about why this needs to remain silent, but after working on this case, talking to him, reading everything I can get my hands on, and watching Arab TV, in translation, I have a pretty good idea.” Ben unfolded his hands, placing them on his knees. “We believe dictatorships are bad and that every country should be a democracy, preferably in our image. England has been working on democracy since 1215; little by little, France flip flops since the French Revolution. We believe she’ll remain mostly democratic. Look at the European nations, and the Scandinavian ones; close as they are to us, not all of them are successful at it.”
“Neither are we.” Gray laughed. “But what you’re saying is this is an impossible dream for a Mideast country.”
“He feared the Muslim Brotherhood are elected in force and that they will go back on their word of working with others. It’s a case of the lesser of two evils.
The fear of Tariq was that the Muslims will wipe out the Christians or drive them out of Egypt. Religious extremists are rarely motivated by profit. They are much harder criminals to catch.”
“Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don’t,” Sister remarked.
“Yes.” Ben drank his drink down to half. “Graft, payoff, are a way of life in most of the world. You can’t do business in South America without it and not over there either. I didn’t know that the military in Egypt can run businesses, but they can. Anyway, Tariq felt his people would be much safer with a military neutral about Coptic Christians. Maybe he was right. All the money made from contraband is funneled into the pockets of the colonels and generals.”
The four sat there for a time; even the animals were quiet.
“Ideology kills, doesn’t it?” Tootie asked the dagger-to-the-heart question. “Doesn’t matter what it is.”
“It damn near killed Janie,” Gray said in a strong voice. “You could have been killed as well as Sybil and Shaker.”
“I heard you all kept coming for him,” said Sister, “and you Betty, no ratshot even.” She smiled at her best friend.
“I can’t believe I left my gun on the saddle, but I needed to get out of that open field.”
“I was wrong, Ben, I truly was and I apologize,” said Sister. “I expect the sight of that American Smokes pack is what set him off. And I also expect that those men killed with packs placed on their chests were killed because they wouldn’t sell the contraband.”
“That’s what we think. Tariq was in New York when Adolfo was killed. We think other operatives were in Boston and Chicago to kill those noncooperative shop owners. It was a strong warning to others.” Ben enjoyed the crackle and the odor of the fire.
“Carter Weems?” Sister asked.
“I expect he was hauling the stuff out of here and became a liability in some way.”
“And Art?” Sister asked again.
“Art is up to no good, but we can’t catch him at it. But I will give Tariq credit, he held it together, kept the trains running, so to speak, and only lost it at the end.”
“Tell you one thing,” said Betty. “Tariq was smart. He laid a clever drag and waited for the right day. Tracks don’t hold in footing like this. If he’d accomplished his goals, who would have found the drag line?” She raised her eyebrows. “I say the hounds are the real heroes.”
“Always are.” Sister held up Gray’s glass, then took a swig. “How can you drink this stuff?”
Though sore as hell where the cigarette case had pressed against her heart, Sister was returning to true form. “Ben, you’ve been wonderful. I know you live alone. Let me give you a puppy. It’s the purest love in the world.”
CHAPTER 38
Early March came and, cold though it might be, it lifted spirits because spring couldn’t be far. Hunting season for Jefferson ended mid-March.
Despite the bruising, Sister rode, drove her truck, and fell in love with Zoe and her puppies.
Tuesday’s hunt on March 6 was at a new fixture, Close Shave. It couldn’t have been better. They didn’t really know the territory yet, didn’t know their foxes, but as the foxes ran so did they.
After everyone was put up, Zoe given warm food, Sister shepherded Betty and Tootie outside to her truck.
“We’re going to scare people,” she said.
“I do that anyway,” Betty joked. “Especially without my makeup.”
Tootie sat in the rear of the truck. Betty hopped into the front seat, picking up the dryer. “Will you throw this thing away? You are not going to get it fixed.”
“Put it in your lap,” ordered Sister.
Sister drove near Roger’s Corner, where the small crossroads is. She parked where she’d seen the police cruiser weeks before.
“All right. Now I want you, Betty, to sit in the passenger seat and look serious. Tootie, I want you to stand behind me and hold this.” Sister handed Tootie the box used for the Johnson tracking collars. She kept the door of the driver’s side open, opened the window, stepped outside, and rested the black hair dryer on the windowsill.
Crouching behind the door but clearly visible, Sister pointed the hair dryer at the road. “Tootie, lift the tracking aerial over my head.”
“Are we going to get in trouble for this?” Tootie asked.
“I will take full responsibility. Here comes one. Look serious!”
A car heading for them over the speed limit braked dramatically, then glided by.
“Gotcha!” Sister said.
Those three women at their phony speed trap stayed out there in the cold for an hour, scaring the pants off people who thought they’d get a ticket. In a flash, Tootie had an idea of what Sister was like when she was her age.
Back in the truck, heading home, through her tears of laughter, Betty said, “You are crazy.”
Sister replied, “It’s good to be alive.”
To the Reader:
Tobacco is interwoven with the history of the New World. I found it fascinating. Should you wish to pursue the subject, you might begin with:
http://archive.tobacco.org/History/Tobacco_History.html
For an overview of government response to tobacco, try:
http://www.fda.gov/tobaccoproducts/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/default.htm
You will find much more if you search using your computer. As this is a work of fiction an extensive bibliography is out of place, but works on tobacco and tobacco families are not difficult to find.
If you took chemistry in high school, you will be able to battle through technical publications and monographs. If you pursued chemistry in college you might find the analysis of varying chemical compositions of the different tobacco types exciting. Even with my limited background in chemistry, I was amazed at how tobacco can be manipulated, for lack of a better word.
At bottom, tobacco helped build the United States. It is worth studying.
All best,
Rita Mae
Dedicated to the Three Foxhunting Muses:
Mrs. W. Patrick Butterfield (Kay)
Mrs. Gloria Galban Fennell
Mrs. David Lamb (Sally)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One of my hardest riding hunt club members, Mrs. William Johnson (Maria), has set up a Facebook page so that you may ride along with Sister Jane.
http://www.facebook.com/sisterjanearnold
We’ll see you in the hunt field.
The Sister Jane series
Outfoxed
Hotspur
Full Cry
The Hunt Ball
The Hounds and the Fury
The Tell-Tale Horse
Hounded to Death
Fox Tracks
Books by Rita Mae Brown with Sneaky Pie Brown
Wish You Were Here
Rest in Pieces
Murder at Monticello
Pay Dirt
Murder, She Meowed
Murder on the Prowl
Cat on the Scent
Sneaky Pie’s Cookbook for
Mystery Lovers
Pawing Through the Past
Claws and Effect
Catch as Cat Can
The Tail of the Tip-Off
Whisker of Evil
Cat’s Eyewitness
Sour Puss
Puss ‘n Cahoots
The Purrfect Murder
Santa Clawed
Cat of the Century
Hiss of Death
The Big Cat Nap
Sneaky Pie for President
The Nevada series
A Nose for Justice
Murder Unleashed
Books by Rita Mae Brown
Animal Magnetism: My Life with
Creatures Great and Small
The Hand That Cradles the Rock
Songs to a Handsome Woman
The Plain Brown Rapper
Rubyfruit Jungle
In Her
Day
Six of One
Southern Discomfort
Sudden Death
High Hearts
Started from Scratch: A Different Kind
of Writer’s Manual
Bingo
Venus Envy
Dolley: A Novel of Dolley Madison
in Love and War
Riding Shotgun
Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary
Rabble-Rouser
Loose Lips
Alma Mater
The Sand Castle
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RITA MAE BROWN is the bestselling author of a series of foxhunting novels—Fox Tracks, Hounded to Death, The Tell-Tale Horse, The Hounds and the Fury, The Hunt Ball, Full Cry, Hotspur, and Outfoxed—the New York Times bestselling Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries, and Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day, and Six of One, among many other novels. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, she lives in Afton, Virginia, where she is master of foxhounds of Oak Ridge Hunt Club and one of the directors of Virginia Hunt Week. She founded the first all-women’s polo club, Blue Ridge Polo, in 1988. She was also Visiting Faculty at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Visit her website at www.ritamaebrown.com.
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