“Bourbon’s okay if good but I prefer scotch if I’m going to drink.” She paused. “And I like rye, but a good rye is hard to find. It fell out of favor. The younger generations don’t much like hard liquor. Wine, beer, and mixes I don’t even recognize seem to be their standard. My daddy always said, Takes a man to drink rye; then he’d hand me a little. I’m not sure what the message was.” She smiled, for she loved her father; mother too.
“Toughening you up, your dad.” Gray snuggled into the pillows by the arm.
“Get settled, will you?” Golly complained, as was her wont.
“Golly, if you’d drink a toddy it would improve your mood.”
“If I drank a toddy I’d be in The Guinness Book of World Records.”
“You probably are.” Raleigh baited her vanity.
She bit. “For what?”
“Cat with the flabbiest belly. Swings when you walk.” Raleigh chortled, a breathy sound that dogs make when laughing.
Golly considered flaying him but was comfortable. “I’ll have my revenge.”
“Did you know there’s a drink called a Huntress Cocktail?” Gray stroked Golly more, her fur soft.
“I did not.”
“Three-fourths ounce of bourbon, three-fourths ounce of cherry liqueur, one teaspoon of triple sec, and one ounce of heavy cream. Sounds awful.”
“Does. Is there a Hunter’s Cocktail? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
“One and one-half ounces of rye and one-half ounce of cherry brandy. Stir and serve over ice. The other one you shake up with ice or ice shavings, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass.”
“How did you learn so much about mixing drinks?”
“Alcoholism runs in the Lorillard family.” He didn’t smile, saying this as a matter of fact, which it was. “I can remember uncles, grandparents—white uncles too—gleefully sharing the mysteries of potions, mixed drinks, you name it. For a while there when I was young I drank a lot, but then I caught myself. Obviously, Sam didn’t.” He stopped and lifted his glass. “To my pickled kin, regardless of the color of their skin.”
Sister reached for her drink with a slight grunt and toasted. “At least Sam’s back from the precipice.”
“He works at it. That man is religious about his AA meetings. I guess you substitute one addiction for another. Ever notice how alcoholics always have a glass in their hand, water or soda or something?”
“I have, actually. What is it Alcoholics Anonymous says? Alcohol is a craving of the body and an obsession of the mind.” She shrugged. “What people do is their business as long as they don’t wipe me out on the road. But there are still cultures or enclaves where drinking is important. Parliament in England, for one. Still seen as a real test of balls. Can a man hold his liquor? No wonder Tony Blair has hung on to power for so long. Hell, they’re all too loaded to mount an effective ouster.”
“Used to be that way here. I still think young men go through the phase, some of them.” Gray thought about it. “What’s the difference? If it’s not drink, someone will hand you a pill and tell you life will be rosy. There’s something in humans that can’t accept reality.”
At this, the animals lifted their ears. They’d been saying this for years to one another.
“True. It has to be prettiest up or denied. But don’t you think alcohol was one of the few ways to deaden physical pain before the advent of huge drug companies and the billions of profits from pills?”
“I do.” Gray shrugged. “I’m not going to solve the alcohol problem.” He took another gulp. “You know, I can’t drink all this either.” He laughed. “It’s good, though, if I do say so myself.”
“Yes, it is. We’ll consider this as alcohol used for its proper purpose, a medicinal application.”
“I’ve been thinking about the silver punch bowl.”
“Yes.” Her voice lowered again.
“It’s pretty obvious. You’ve thought of it too. This person either knows you well or knows about you. The thing is, why do they want to implicate you?”
“For theft?”
“Murder.”
She remained quiet while she took a long, long sip herself. “Why me?”
CHAPTER 12
The creamy English leather of the high-quality bridles hanging on the wall distracted Sister for a moment. It was noon on Sunday, February 24, and Marion had met Gray and Sister at Horse Country, which remained closed on the Sabbath, so the three of them could go through without being disturbed.
Aga, Marion’s female Scottish terrier, led Raleigh and Rooster upstairs. Aga proved a gracious host, showing them her special ceramic food dish and matching water bowl.
“I had to repair the downstairs lock immediately,” Marion said, leading them to the housing for the security system. She flipped open the heavy plastic box, exposing tiny colored wires and computer chips.
Gray, using the button LED flashlight on Marion’s key chain, directed the thin bright beam into the box. Even though the overhead light shone brightly in the utility room, which housed the water heater, the furnace, and the water filter, he needed more light.
The two women peered behind him.
“All those tiny computer chips.” Sister sighed. “No bigger than half your little fingernail.”
“Airplanes are full of them too. Just think what would happen if one melted?” Marion tilted her head upward toward the colored entanglement in the box.
“How often do you revamp your security system?” Gray asked.
“I haven’t. I mean, I remodeled seven years ago when I acquired the bottom of the building, but I haven’t bought another system.”
“Yes, it was state of the art. This isn’t my field, ladies, but you’d be surprised what you learn when you defend a client in front of the IRS.”
“What do you mean?” Marion wondered, ever curious.
“If a client had been robbed and his records destroyed, our firm—well, my old firm—investigates independently. I’ve stuck my nose in all kinds of security systems. The most troubling are the infrared ones.”
“You mean where little red beams crisscross a room?” Sister knew that much anyway.
“Sounds like a great system. Anything moves and the system calls the satellite, which bounces to the police. However, in a store like this, what if, for whatever reason, an object falls off a shelf and sets off the alarm. You can see the problems.”
“That’s why I chose this system.”
“It was good in its day, but I suspect whoever came into the store knew it depended on your phone lines, ground lines. Cutting them was easy. They all emerge from the building.”
“Didn’t you have a fruit loop—um—about seven years ago?” Sister recalled a somewhat odd employee.
“Well, more lazy than crazy.” Marion frowned. “But he wasn’t a thief.”
“No ugly parting?” Gray glanced from the box to Marion.
“Firing someone is upsetting. He lost his temper, but it all worked out. He just wasn’t meant to be inside. He’s working on a farm west of town.”
“A decent relationship?” Sister didn’t need to elaborate.
“Socially”—Marion searched for the right word—“superficially pleasant, I’d say.”
Gray pressed the button, the beam cut off, and he shut the box, handing Marion her keys. “I assume you’re purchasing a new system?”
“Installed tomorrow to the tune of eighteen thousand dollars.” Marion sighed.
The three of them repaired to her office, where she turned on a light, the store remaining dark lest someone think it was open. “Aga, aren’t you generous.”
Aga, in the office, had allowed Raleigh and Rooster to play with her special nylabone.
Rooster grunted. “Can’t crack this thing.”
“All right, out,” Sister ordered her two. “There isn’t room for all of us.”
Reluctantly, her two dogs left to flop down hard outside the door; the flop indicated canine sulking.
Aga picked up her bone and joined them.
“Would you like coffee? A drink perhaps?”
“No, thanks.” Gray was glad to sit down. His legs still ached from yesterday’s riding.
“Me neither.”
Gray leaned forward. “Marion, has the sheriff talked about your security system to you?”
“Only to ask who knows how to disarm it to open the store and how to set it to close it at night.” She paused. “He did say I could put the punch bowl back up, since your sheriff dusted it. I don’t think they have room for anything that big at the station.” She leaned back.
“I’ll bring it in.” Gray started to get up.
“Not now, honey. We can do that in a minute.” Sister leaned forward too. “Marion, is there a customer who knows about your security system?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If they’re in the security or electronic business it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out, especially on a day when you’re really busy,” Gray said.
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Marion frowned.
“Christmas,” Sister suggested.
Marion paused. “That’s a possibility. There are so many people in here from Thanksgiving to Christmas, a customer could easily slip into the furnace room undetected.”
“Or check outside for the wire outlet,” Gray added.
Gray rose. “I’ll get the punch bowl. I won’t set the alarm off, will I?”
“No.” Marion smiled at him, then called out, “Wait, Gray. Let’s put it in my car. I can put it back on the shelf once I’m sure the new security system works. And I have a system at home. I’ll keep the bowl there.”
He returned and leaned against the office door, glad to keep his knees straight for a moment.
“I can’t think of anyone who would want to kill someone, steal a punch bowl, and then leave it in my barn.” Sister folded her hands together. “I’m dizzy from thinking.”
“Goes around faster and faster. We need to slow down.” Marion realized her flashes of insight were coming when they felt like it, not on command. “Let’s trust our instincts. It would seem whoever is behind this wants to mark both of us.”
“Like a fox marks territory?”
“Yes.” Marion, having spent a lifetime with foxhunters, understood the game.
“A beautiful woman from India, and you and me?” Sister shook her head.
“We aren’t dead yet.”
CHAPTER 13
Tattenhall Station glowed blue in the twilight, the western sky still showing traces of scarlet and gold. Sister drove through and turned right, down the long lane leading to Faye Spencer’s farm. She’d called Faye at work, asking if she might drop by.
The door opened the minute Sister’s boots touched the front porch, the overhead light already shining.
“Come on in, stranger,” Faye greeted her. “Tea? Hot chocolate? You name it. I even baked cookies yesterday. Still fresh.”
“Hot chocolate.”
Once the chocolate was poured, Faye and Sister sat in the living room. The old clapboard farmhouse had been built when the railroad first came through, for the foreman who oversaw Tattenhall Station’s construction. The fire crackled. On the baby grand piano, its top down, a shawl artfully draped over the ebony, stood a photograph of Gregory Spencer in uniform.
“We’ve missed you in the hunt field.”
Faye, pretty and in her early thirties, sighed. “Oh, Nighthawk threw a shoe, took a little chunk of hoof with it. We’ll be back once my farrier gets to work on it.”
“How’s everything else?”
Faye ran her fingers through her glossy auburn hair, cut in a pageboy. “Coming out of it. Two years. Sometimes time flies, sometimes it crawls.”
“Sounds about right. The first year of Ray’s death I hurt, plain hurt. The second year I felt numb. Then in high spring of that year I started to revive. I suppose we grieve in our individual ways and you’re young, whereas I was in my fifties. I don’t know if that made it easier or not.”
“I miss him. Don’t get me wrong. I do, but now I can think of Greg without bursting into tears.”
“He was a focused man.” Sister smiled at the memory of him. “He loved the army. You know what they always say about war, it’s the brave lieutenants and captains who die in the largest numbers among officers. Those who survive usually become senior officers if they stay in the service.”
“I do know that.”
“Greg would be proud to see how far you’ve come with the company.”
“There are days when I think the name Warp Speed is so-o-o wrong.” She drew this out humorously.
“You could change it to Three Speed.” Sister laughed.
“Might be a good idea. Three Speed. Some days I think we’re almost there; other days I feel sucked back by an ebb tide. It’s exciting, though, Sister, to think we may be on the cusp of developing a twenty-first-century Rosetta Stone. You write the phrase you want to speak into computer or cell phone and you receive a script of the translation. If you’re online with someone from another country, their input is translated. We’re so, so close. I believe the day will come when this can be done phonetically. Right now, though”—she held up her hand as if to stave off an onslaught—“we’re concentrating on text.”
“Sounds like a miracle.”
“No, just hard work. Every language can be broken down into nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. Structure is relatively similar among the Indo-European languages. It’s when we reach into Chinese and Japanese that we go back to the Bible and read about the Tower of Babel.”
“Ideograms?”
“Oh”—Faye waved her hand, her wedding ring golden in the reflected firelight—“no way. Everything has to be put in our alphabet; that’s just the first hurdle.”
“What about Russian?”
“That’s easier because the Cyrillic alphabet mostly parallels ours. And the structure does too. Russian will be next; we aren’t working on it now. I love this. I really do. I’m glad I’m not the linguistic expert, though. I stick to the nuts and bolts.”
“Bucknell University served you well.”
“Did.” She drank more hot chocolate. “Met Greg there. Funny, because we were both from Virginia. That’s what connected us in the first place.”
“Leave home to find home,” Sister said.
“Greg had this calling,” she recalled fondly. “He followed it and I followed him and then I found mine. He was so sweet. When he was posted to Iraq, he said, Honey, you supported me. I’ll support you.”
“Think he would have stayed in the army?”
“No. His idealism tarnished in Iraq. He wanted to complete his tour of duty and his time in the service, and then he said he’d work for me. I don’t know if that would have been a good idea, but I suppose we’d have found out.”
“What would he have done? He wasn’t in your field.”
“Sell. Greg could talk a dog off a meat wagon.”
Sister nodded. “Yes, he could.” She changed the subject. “Only three weeks left in the season. Can’t you borrow a horse while Nighthawk heals?”
“Clayton Harper stopped by and said I could borrow his young mare. Think I will.”
“Have you seen Marty Howard lately?” Sister was glad Faye would be back hunting.
“No, but Crawford comes around the office. He likes to check on our progress. I keep meaning to call Marty for lunch.”
“Me too.”
“Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do about her.” Faye knew the situation. “Say, High Vajay dropped by Saturday after the hunt with his friend, Kasmir, can’t say his last name—”
Sister filled in. “Barbhaiya.”
“Couldn’t have been more polite. Anyway, he asked me some questions about Tattenhall Station and the community. He said he was in contact with Norfolk and Southern. You gave him the information.”
“The grass doesn’t grow under his feet.”
“Seems like
he’d be a good addition to the place.”
“Does.” Sister placed her cup on the woven coaster. “Well, I’ve got to get back. A new horse came in yesterday, settling in, but I’ll check on him.”
“Kilowatt?”
“News travels fast.”
“Yes, it does,” Faye agreed.
“It occurs to me that you’re—I guess the phrase is cutting edge—on the cutting edge of technology. What do you think about the murder of the woman in research at Craig and Abrams?”
A shadow crossed the young woman’s features. “I don’t like it. I wonder if she knew something.”
“Technical?”
“That or sabotage.”
“Political?”
“Hmm, probably not. I was thinking, what if one company wanted to destroy or drive down the stock prices of another? Let’s stick to price. If she had information about development, it’s possible for someone in a competing company or one that wanted to gobble up, say, Company A, to delay the development project. It’s not that difficult if you have information. Look in another arena. Toyota overtook General Motors as the number one carmaker in the world. Yet even with all their resources in every department, it took Toyota years to develop a full-sized truck to compete with the American half-tons. And then they had to delay its entry onto the car lots by almost six months. Now I’m not saying there was sabotage, but even without, launching a new product is hazardous.”
“Back to what you first said. Could such information be worth millions?”
“Yes. If the shark company bought up Company A after stocks were depressed thanks to a delayed product release or whatever, it would save millions for the buyer, then ultimately make them billions. The lady in question, had she lived, could have wound up in a high position with stock options Midas would envy.”
“Good Lord.”
“Business can be ruthless.”
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