“Retreating.” Marion noted that Cabel, her arm through that of the unsteady Clayton, appeared to be led out the door, the time being ten thirty. Actually, Cabel was leading him.
“It’s hard to believe, but once upon a time Clayton was gorgeous,” Sister mused.
“Too much lasagna.” Marion giggled.
“Do you think Cabel knows how to make lasagna?” Sister found this incongruous.
“Why not? She helped Clayton build his business. He had the idea; she had the energy. She can learn to do anything.”
Clayton installed unbelievably expensive sound and telephone systems in cars and trucks. The punch numbers for the radio, like a keyboard, also worked for the phone. A tiny speaker above the rearview mirror allowed the driver to talk while keeping both hands on the wheel.
“Exactly when did you favor Clayton with your person?” Bill put it delicately, knowing Sister wouldn’t be angry with him.
“Nineteen ninety-eight,” Gray answered.
For a moment, conversation stopped.
Finally Sister said, “You’ve done your homework.”
He took her hand in his. “I want to learn everything there is to know about you.”
“Not everything, please,” she replied. She’d only sipped half a glass, but the champagne had put her one step from giddy, since she rarely drank.
“Oh?” Gray’s eyebrows rose.
“A girl has to have some secrets.”
“Here, here!” Joyce raised her glass, as did the other ladies.
“You could give us a hint,” Bill said.
“Dad, then it wouldn’t be a secret,” Jeanne responded.
“One hint. I’ll divulge one. No man in this room has any idea of the time it takes to remove the hair on your body, do the hair on your head, polish your nails, apply makeup, and so on.” Sister lifted her hand.
“Shaving takes time,” Gray said, “especially if you have a mustache.”
“Hope I never do.” Sister laughed.
The rest of the evening continued in this vein, laughter, dancing, marvelous food, good liquor, and Cuban cigars for those gentlemen and a few ladies who donned their coats, repairing to the pristine outdoors to puff contentedly away, all the while cursing an embargo in effect since the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who had humidors packed with Cuban cigars, enough to last decades if he’d lived, poor fellow.
Finally the clock struck twelve. The band played on, but Gray rose and kissed Sister’s hand. “Honey, I’d better be going.” He had a meeting in Washington, even though it was Sunday, with the number-two man in the IRS. Gray, retired from the most prestigious D.C. accounting firm, was often called quietly, away from prying eyes, to counsel on tax matters. Capital gains was his specialty. He didn’t mind performing regular audits for businesses, though. Gray lacked haughtiness and, much as he had flourished among the powerful, he was equally happy sifting through the records of a small local company, working with the owner. He truly loved accounting, hard as it was for many people to understand, because it gave him insight into different types of businesses. It also made him an extremely shrewd investor. There was a time when a rich and powerful African-American excited comment. These days, fortunately, success was becoming more evenly distributed.
After Gray left, Marion touched Sister’s shoulder. “Ready?”
“Of course.”
Not wishing to drive the whole way back to her farm, Sister had accepted Marion’s invitation to spend the night in Warrenton. Marion lifted her spirits, making her laugh until the tears rolled down her cheeks. Also, she liked seeing Marion’s house. Whatever Marion touched became colorful, dramatic, splashed with a hint of flamboyance like Marion herself. Sister’s house, by contrast, was subdued, anchored in the eighteenth century.
Driving back to town, roads packed hard with snow despite the snowplows’ steady work, the two chattered about the ball and about politics.
“You should run for office,” Sister counseled.
“Never,” came the swift one-word reply.
“Marion, you have uncommon good sense. You’d never squander the taxpayers’ money.”
“That’s not what people want these days. They want false glamour, a smooth liar, and, above all, a pious hypocrite.”
“There are a few good people in the game.”
“I know, but I couldn’t do it. Could you?”
“Actually, I think I could. Would I enjoy it? No.”
“You know what? I forgot to bring Trigger in. Do you mind if we swing by the store? Won’t take but two minutes. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Trudy when I realized I’d left him outside. She would have run her mouth all over the ballroom. And I did say I was worried he’d be damaged. Got so busy trying to get out of the store on time that Trigger slipped my mind.”
“Let’s put Trigger in his stall,” Sister agreed.
“It’s not hard for two of us to move him inside.”
“It will be a treat, in high heels and snow.” The older woman laughed, although she didn’t mind getting her feet wet. It wouldn’t take long.
Driving in from the west, they turned onto Main Street, then right onto Alexandria Pike, moving slowly down the steep grade. There were two parking lots, one larger than the other; Marion pulled into the smaller one out front.
Both women stepped out, heels sinking into the packed snow, and did a double take.
“Those damn kids! This is what happens when I forget to take Trigger in.”
A beautiful naked model sat astride the life-sized statue.
Sister paused before wrenching her heel from the snow. “Looks real.”
“Trigger’s been saddled with gorillas and with witches for Halloween. And it always makes the newspaper, the photograph. They’re so slick, those kids. They do it right under my nose when the store’s open.”
The snow made a small popping sound as the two be-gowned women worked their way toward the horse statue, now burdened by the naked woman.
Sister grabbed Marion’s arm just as she was about to unlock the chain that anchored Trigger to the building. “Marion, don’t touch anything!”
“Why?”
“This isn’t a model.”
“What?”
The rider, ravishingly beautiful, jet-black hair and dark eyes, had her hands on Trigger’s neck as though holding his mane. Her mouth was slightly open. A tiny hole was visible over her left bosom, where her heart would be. Sister walked behind the dead woman to behold a small exit wound.
“She’s real!”
Marion followed Sister’s finger. “Oh, my God!”
“Whoever did this had plenty of time.” With the sangfroid that was typical of her in dangerous and difficult situations, Sister had already quickly absorbed the details.
“What makes you say that?”
“When a person dies they void themselves. She’s clean as a whistle.” Sister stepped back to study the body. “What a beautiful, beautiful woman, in the first flower of life.”
Marion, voice low, whispered, “Lady Godiva.”
CHAPTER 2
Marion called on her cell phone, and the two women waited for the sheriff in front of the store. The door was still locked.
“That’s one good thing. At least nothing is stolen.” Sister wrapped her arms around herself and kicked snow off her shoes.
“I hope not. There’s a downstairs door that the public doesn’t use but we do. It’s storage.”
Without another word, the two women carefully negotiated the steep steps down to the lower level. Despite being plowed two days ago, the area was packed hard again, thanks to the recent snowfall. The February sky glittered with stars so bright some shone blue-white.
Marion fetched her car keys from her pocket, pressing the tiny LED light on the chain. A narrow bright-white beam illuminated the doorknob.
Relief filled Sister’s voice. “Nothing is smashed.”
Marion placed the key in the lock, but the door swung open without a c
lick. “That’s odd.”
Sister knelt down. “It’s cut clean through. The tongue of the lock is in the door.”
Marion, face ashen now, grabbed Sister’s forearm. “Maybe he’s still in the store.”
“Do you have a gun in there?”
“No.”
Sister spied a box of twitches, a device used on the lip to make horses stand still for things they might not like, such as getting their mane pulled. A small loop of chain was embedded in a three-foot heavy wooden dowel. She grabbed one. “I’ll go first. If he’s in there, I want to get him.”
“It’s my store. I should go first.” Marion plucked a twitch out of the box too.
“I’m six feet tall and a master. I’m used to physical…” Sister’s voice trailed off as her foot touched the first stair. She flicked on the light, feeling incredibly alive. Danger was her element.
Marion recognized the truth in Sister’s words. Sister Jane Arnold was tough as nails and surprisingly quick on her feet. Marion figured if Sister did whack someone, she could then help bring him down. Prudent and wise, not a woman to take an unnecessary chance, Marion was no coward. She thought Sister was reckless, heedless, but then most foxhunters are.
Sister hesitated at the top of the stairs that emerged into the tack and equipment room. The only sound was the slight whir of the heating system, set at sixty at night to keep pipes from freezing. Marion reached up behind her to click on the lights for the first floor. Nothing seemed disturbed at first glance, but if the killer was also a savvy thief, he or she would head for the saddles, some of them $4,000 a pop.
They stepped into the next room, which contained liniments and other odds and ends crucial to horse people. In the distance Marion heard a siren. “Thank God,” she whispered.
Sister nodded.
They moved to the north wall, where the gorgeous English leather bridles hung, the saddles on racks before them. Not one had been moved. Carefully, they inspected every inch of the store, including the two dressing rooms and the smaller storage room next door. Everything was in order, except that the phone lines had been sliced through.
Marion checked the locked case where antique jewelry, Essex crystals, and foxhunting china was kept. Again, untouched. So were the cases by the cash register, which housed specially cast hunting horns, the size of whose bells helped to determine the tone. They could cost $300, give or take; a specially ordered silver one was truly expensive. All was in order here as well.
Red lights reflected through the windows at the front door.
“Why would someone go to all the trouble to cut that lock and leave this place intact?” Marion sank to the front counter.
“I don’t know.”
Both women instinctively scanned the long shelves right above the cash register, where items of extraordinary value were often displayed. These shelves ran at a right angle to each other, the longer of the two terminating not far from the front door. The bronze sculpture of a fox above the register stood, gorgeous as ever, awaiting a buyer with very deep pockets. Just as the sheriff reached the front door, Marion and Sister gasped.
“It’s gone!”
The John Barton Payne silver bowl, weighing thirty-five pounds with a two-foot diameter and engraved with past winners of the Warrenton Horse Show, had vanished along with the companion thirty-pound silver tray and the close to two-pound silver ladle. Its value was unmeasurable. The Warrenton Horse Show, owner of this impressive perpetual memorial trophy, would be disconsolate. Donated to the show in 1935, the sentimental value exceeded its monetary value.
It was two-thirty in the morning before Sister and Marion, finally in pajamas, collapsed in the living room, a fire roaring near their warmed feet. Though exhausted, neither could sleep.
During the ordeal, Sister had noted that Marion did not cry, whine, or complain about how awful this was. The younger woman had kept to the facts and answered the sheriff’s questions clearly. She showed him the cut lock and even had the presence of mind to hand him a detailed photograph pulled off the computer showing all sides of the punch bowl.
Given the hour, no one from the local paper was monitoring the sheriff’s calls, so they were spared the press, at least for now. No one recognized the slain beauty. The forensic crew and the ambulance struggled to remove her, tearing some skin in the process. Using warm water from the store bathroom, they carefully soaked the leftover patches until they could put the unstuck flesh into little plastic bags. Somehow, this process upset the two friends as much as discovering the body in the first place. The initial shock had been wearing off, but now the terrible event was becoming more real.
“Odd that a woman so stunning is a cipher. Beautiful women are generally noticed,” Sister mused.
“She could have been murdered somewhere else and then brought here by whoever killed her and cleaned her up,” Marion replied.
“But why would the murderer want to steal a punch bowl? You know there’s a photograph of me in the punch bowl, age two, along with a foxhound puppy?”
“All the more reason to find it.” Marion stared into the fire, every fiber of her body tired, her mind overwhelmed but still functioning. “Why my store?”
“Your store is central in town. Most everyone goes past it.”
“What if this is meant for me in some way?”
“Unfortunately, Marion, we can only wait and see.”
“I need to warn Wendy. This will blast her right out of bed, but she’ll forgive me.” Wendy Saunders had worked in the store with Marion for years. “I suppose I should call my brother too, even though it’s closing in on the hour of the wolf.” She meant between three and four in the morning.
“The Romans had a saying, ‘Man is wolf to man.’”
“In this case, woman.” Marion punched in the numbers, then listened with a flash of disgust. “Damn these things. They never work when you need them.” She hurled the cell phone into the fire, where it began popping within seconds.
It was the one outburst of emotion she had allowed herself.
Sister nodded approvingly. “God, I wish I’d done that. Half the time my damn cell phone doesn’t work either.”
A bit of tension ebbed away as the plastic cell phone melted, taking all the information Marion had encoded there into the fire.
CHAPTER 3
Leg-breaking weather, Sister thought to herself. Just a few inches of slick mud masked frozen ground underneath.
The bite in the air kept hounds, horses, foxes, and humans alert. It was Tuesday, February 19, three days after the Casanova Hunt Ball, and the victim remained unidentified. Marion’s store had closed one day to accommodate further forensics but was now open. When Sister went home Sunday afternoon, her friends had rallied around, the bizarre circumstances of the murder having made the news stations. The corpse stayed cold and covered at the morgue, so there were no photos of her, but Trigger flashed across local television screens and made the newspapers.
Foxhunting, thank the gods, swept away the cares of this world, even cares as disgusting as murder. A lapse in concentration could mean missing the fox or, worse, the jump. A fall on this greasy mud meant a cleaning bill at the very least and perhaps a broken bone. It was called leg-breaking weather for good reason.
The fox cared little for this. A stout field of twenty-five people was gathered on a hill overlooking old Tattenhall Station, an abandoned white board-and-batten building still exuding a forlorn charm. Hounds had picked up the perfume of a young red dog fox looking for a girlfriend behind the abandoned station.
Courting season usually started in mid-January for gray foxes, while reds took up the siren call of love in February. This bright, cheerful youngster, new to romance, was still learning the ways of the female. He’d run a beautiful six-mile loop, leading them right back to their starting point. Sister reflected impishly that all the higher vertebrates took their time with this process, and some males never did figure it out.
Shaker Crown, huntsman, dropped his feet
out of the stirrups and wiggled his toes, praying for circulation. Sister, observing her longtime hunt servant and friend, kicked her feet out of the stirrups as well, a tingle occurring in her toes immediately, followed by mild pain. Cold took its toll but hunting is a cold-weather sport. They were used to it, even if they did sometimes shiver. She couldn’t feel her fingers. Sister believed foxhunting toughened you up. Rarely did she or other club members suffer the full effects of flus or colds; their immune systems were cast iron.
Horses stamped their feet, splatters of mud and snow squishing out from shod hooves. Tedi and Edward Bancroft rode immediately behind Sister. Four talented high school seniors from Custis Hall, a private girls’ academy, rode in the rear as was proper. Joining first flight, the jumpers, as a capper was Kasmir Barbhaiya in black tails (also called a weaselbelly coat), top hat, white cords, and custom-made boots. Riding one of the Vajay’s Thoroughbreds, Kasmir proved impressive. Behind them, grateful for the check and breathing time, stood second field, Bobby Franklin in charge. Everyone’s cheeks glowed with high color.
Dragon, a bold fourth-year hound ever impatient of leisure—and he considered a check leisure—grumbled. “There’s a fox behind the church at the crossroads. Why doesn’t Shaker take us there?”
Asa didn’t bother to look at the upstart hound. “Trust the huntsman.”
“We’ve only run for an hour.” Dragon stood.
“Shut your trap,” Cora, strike hound and leader growled. “Shaker will think we’re babbling.”
Dragon’s littermate Diana wondered how her brother could be so blockheaded when her other brother, Dasher, overflowed with good sense.
Even the first-year entry, taken out two at a time so as not to overload the pack with youngsters, displayed more good manners than Dragon.
A light breeze had picked up since first cast at nine o’clock. It blew from the west with a bite and the riders, sweating from the long hard run, felt a slow chill seep in.
Sister turned around. “Scent will hold, don’t you think, Tedi?”
The Tell-tale Horse Page 3