“We’ll put them in the truck when we leave,” Joe said sensibly. “It’s warmer here with the horses and the straw than in the truck with the heater turned off.”
“Okay,” Vicki agreed.
When the humans left to grope their way to the house, Ben lifted his head. “Hmm.”
Gandy Man inhaled deeply. “Filthy day but that smells too interesting.” With that, the shepherd left the comfort of the trailer for the driving sleet. Ben followed.
Taking care of their mounts took longer, but after twenty minutes most people had put up their horses and done whatever needed to be done. Then some, holding hands, made their way to the house.
“We could form a chain.” Alida smiled.
“If we don’t reach the house in the next two minutes, we’d better,” Xavier added.
Once inside everyone started talking, hurrying for hot drinks, breathing a sigh of relief.
The Woodford group caught up on the Hinson news, as well as Middleburg Hunt news. Everyone wanted to know about everyone else’s season.
Phil made his way through the crowd, looking around. He spoke to people one by one, then came up to Sister and Gray. “Have you all seen Mercer?” he asked.
“No.”
“His horse was at the trailer but untied. I put him on the trailer. I figured maybe he slipped the knot. Mercer doesn’t always tie the best knot.” Phil looked at the door when someone opened it. “It will be a good story when he gets inside.” Phil rejoined the circle.
Sister made sure to speak to each Woodford guest, most of whom she knew. Maria, Nate, and Sonia kept a shuttle between the kitchen and the dining room. A good cook, Nate outdid himself.
Sister inhaled. “Did he make shepherd’s pie?”
“He knows it’s your favorite,” Gray replied.
“How did he know that?”
“I told him, and I bet he’s saved you a big slice in the kitchen. Otherwise, you won’t get any.”
True enough, for people stood in line for a slice—plus Sister rarely got to eat much at these gatherings.
A half hour passed with food, drink, chat and feet warming.
Phil returned. “Still no Mercer.”
“That is peculiar,” Gray said.
“I’m going out to look for him,” said Phil. “This isn’t like him. Maybe he fell and his horse came back. Who would know?” He walked toward the hall to fetch his jacket.
“I’ll come with you.” Gray put his plate on a small table and, as he walked away, he said to Sister, “Phil and I are going to look for Mercer.”
“I’ll come, too.” She hurried to them.
Seeing them leave, worry on their faces, Xavier, Ronnie, and Kasmir also followed.
Once outside, the brutal weather hit them again.
“Won’t do any good to look for hoofprints,” Phil said. “They’re all over the place.”
“The only thing I can think to do is to backtrack,” said Kasmir. “Let’s walk down the middle path, then turn toward the fence line. At least I think that’s the fence line.” He pointed west.
Staying together, they trudged through now stinging sleet. The fog hadn’t thinned.
Two dogs howling alerted them to something in the barn.
They reached the edge of the Saddlebred barn but couldn’t see the glowing skulls, the sleet was so thick.
“Blood.” Ben held his nose up, following the scent inside the barn.
“Fresh.” Then Gandy Man shouted, as he heard the humans outside.
The mannequin sprawled on the barn floor. Swinging slightly from the rafter was Mercer, blood dripping down his coat.
“Terrible trouble.” The two German shepherds sang a dirge, hoping to hurry along the humans outside.
Following the cry as best they could Sister, Gray, Shaker, Phil, Kasmir, Ronnie, and Xavier stepped into the barn.
“Oh, my God,” Phil gasped. “Mercer! Mercer!”
CHAPTER 28
In the old barn, Phil Chetwynd rolled old hay bales under Mercer’s body. Being tall, he stepped upon them, holding Mercer’s legs and, with great strength, lifted the body so the pressure was off the neck.
Ronnie Haslip, the most nimble, climbed up the rafters. Gray joined Phil. Gray knew Mercer was gone, but Phil, a man possessed, kept pleading, “We have to help him. Help me.”
And so the other men did. Ronnie, like most foxhunters, carried a pocketknife. He cut the rope and Mercer dropped down into Gray and Phil’s arms, the unexpected weight toppling them off the hay bales.
The two German shepherds, sitting down now, didn’t budge.
Kasmir, Shaker, and Xavier, also by the hay bales, did their best to break the fall, trying to prevent Mercer’s body from hitting the ground hard.
Xavier left the group to go back to the house and find Ben Sidell. Given the thick fog, he only found his way through the noise coming from the house.
Ben hurried out of the house with Xavier and Sister, groping their way to the Saddlebred barn. Once inside, the sheriff walked over to Mercer, carefully laid on the ground, on his back, bloodshot eyes staring upward.
Ben removed his leather hunting glove, placing his finger on Mercer’s neck. He said nothing, for it was obvious that Mercer was dead. He wanted to feel the temperature of the body. His guess was the body had cooled very slightly. Clearly the man’s neck was broken. Putting his glove back on so as not to leave more fingerprints, he gingerly tilted Mercer’s head to the side where his hair was matted with blood. He’d first been struck by a blunt instrument.
Phil leaned over on the other side of the body. “Let me perform CPR. He’s not dead. He can’t be dead.”
Ben rose, “I’m afraid he is, Phil.”
“No!” Phil knelt down to pump on Mercer’s chest.
Gray and Shaker had to lift Phil up, protesting.
With kindness but firmness, Ben said, “He’s gone. Anything any of us do to him will compromise this crime scene.” Turning to Sister, he said, “Will you go inside, tell everyone there has been an accident and no one must leave the house? Oh, Sister, when you get inside stay there until I get there, which will be some time. Don’t tell anyone what has happened, only that there has been an accident. I’m going to call the department right now and hope a team makes it out here in this miserable fog before too much time passes. Obviously, the faster we can go over all this, the better.”
“He can’t be dead.” Tears filled Phil’s eyes. “He can’t really be dead.”
“Phil, I’m going to ask you to sit down on one of the hay bales. Xavier, will you sit with him? Oh, Gray, perhaps you’d better go in with Sister. And whose dogs are these?”
Sister, before heading into the slashing weather, answered, “Vicki and Joe’s. The Middleburg folks.”
“Ah, well, they seem well behaved. They’ll have to stay here until folks are free to leave the house.”
Fortunately, Ben’s team arrived within forty minutes, a good time considering the deplorable conditions. Two law enforcement officers, both women, were sent into the house. Ben knew the women would be very good at calming people and getting statements. The new head of his forensic team went immediately to work and another young man carried a bright flashlight, as the electric power had long ago been cut off in this barn used only for hay storage and odds and ends.
No matter what happens in our life if you’re hunt staff, hounds and horses must be attended to. Sister, Shaker, O.J., and Tootie, due to the long delay at Oakside, finally reached Roughneck Farm at 6:00 P.M. The hounds, subdued, ate warm kibble, then quietly returned to their lodges and sleeping quarters. Rickyroo, Hojo, and Iota, Tootie’s horse, and O.J.’s mare, told everyone in the stable. Back at Oakside, Sister had asked Kasmir if he would take Phil’s horse and Mercer’s wonderful Dixie Do, to his farm. With Alida’s help, Kasmir loaded them up.
At Tattenhall Station, the Indian gentleman watched as Alida brushed the horses and comforted them.
“My man can do that,” Kasmir offered.
“They know something’s wrong. Sometimes a bit of attention helps.” Alida ran her fingers along Dixie Do’s neck.
Kasmir bedded the stalls himself thinking here was a woman not afraid of work and one who was sensitive as well.
Gray called Sam and told him the news. He met his brother as soon as Ben Sidell released him from Oakside. They both drove to Daniella Laprade’s. She took the grim news with steely calm, asked where her son’s body was, and wanted to know when she could see him. Gray called Ben Sidell, who called back in twenty minutes, saying she could see her son now. Mercer wouldn’t be sent to Richmond until tomorrow, assuming the weather improved.
So Gray and Sam drove their aunt to the county morgue. Using only a cane, Daniella stood firm as the large file cabinet, for that’s what it looked like, was opened and the body slid out, feet first on the slab.
Both nephews stood on either side of her in case she collapsed.
“He was a good son.” She then looked up at Gray. “Who did this?”
“Aunt D, we don’t know.”
“You’d better find him before I do. And it was a man. Women don’t kill like this. Hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” both brothers said.
Then she turned and walked out, barely using her cane.
Later, Sister, O.J., and Tootie, in the library at Roughneck Farm, discussed the remaining weekend.
O.J. leaned on soft cushions on the sofa. “I understand if you cancel Saturday’s hunt, Sister. Perhaps you should.”
“Mercer loved hunting. You all drove all the way from Kentucky. I think he’d want the hunt to go on. You know I’m a stickler for things being done properly. I wouldn’t do this if I thought it would be slighting him.” Sister stood up. “Let me call Walter. Best to discuss this with my Joint Master.”
Walter had by now been informed of everything. As Sister sat at the desk, Tootie mulled over the awful happenings while talking to O.J.
“It’s a strange coincidence,” Tootie said. “The first pogonip and now this one and both—well, awful.”
“Two murders.” O.J. felt suddenly very tired.
“Three.” Sister had hung up the landline. “You didn’t know our local vet, Penny Hinson, but three. It can’t be a coincidence. It can’t be.” She then returned to her chair, falling into it, also exhausted. “Walter agrees with me. Mercer would want the joint meet to continue and Saturday is the big day at the Bancrofts’. Always a beautiful fixture.”
“Yes, it is,” O.J. agreed.
They heard the back door open. The dogs ran to the kitchen, where Gray walked in from the mudroom.
“Gray.” Sister rose to greet him. “Let me get you a drink.”
He kissed her. “Thank you, honey.”
Neither O.J. nor Tootie said anything until Sister handed him his drink and he was comfortably seated in an armchair. She held up an empty glass toward O.J.
“I believe I will.” O.J. joined Sister at the bar. “I don’t know why but I want an old-fashioned.”
“Let’s make two.” Sister asked Tootie, “You’re twenty-one. Anything?”
“No, thanks.”
Once they were all seated and Gray had some restorative scotch in him, Sister asked, “How did it go?”
“No tears. No raised voice. She’s really a terrifying old woman.” He took another deep sip. “But I feel for her. She looked at him and said he was a good son. Then she wanted to know who killed him and told Sam and me to find the killer before she did.”
O.J. frowned. “Like a Greek tragedy.”
“In a way, yes.” Gray set his drink on a coaster. “You know, I keep thinking about that old barn, the House of Horrors barn. Whoever killed Mercer had a kind of sick sense of humor.”
O.J. murmured, “I guess.”
“And whoever killed him knew the place,” Sister added.
Tootie curled her legs under her. “And the killer took advantage of the rotten weather. It doesn’t seem like a planned murder.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Sister agreed. “You’re right about there being something spontaneous about this. The pogonip provided the chance and he or she was tremendously bold.”
“He. Aunt D says women don’t kill like that.” Gray spoke, having picked up his drink again.
“She’s right,” O.J. agreed.
The phone rang, Sister got up to answer it. After listening to Greg for a bit, Sister asked, “Eclipse? Eclipse, not Matchem?”
“Yes.” On the other end of the line, Greg Schmidt’s voice was positive.
“Eclipse.” She then recited. “Pot-8-Os, Waxy, Whalebone, Camel, Touchstone, Orlando, the second Eclipse, Alarm, Himyar, then Domino. That line. That Eclipse line?”
“Yes,” he repeated.
“I suppose you’ve heard by now all that’s transpired?” said Sister.
Greg replied, “Tedi Bancroft called me. I’m so very sorry.”
“Yes, I am, too. Greg, does anyone else know this, know Midshipman’s line back?”
“I couldn’t rightly say.”
“Thank you.” Sister hung up the phone, turned to the others and stated definitively, “Benny Glitters.”
CHAPTER 29
Daniella appraised Mercer’s house as she directed Gray and Sam in the large bedroom. “A place for everything and everything in its place,” she said.
“We won’t have the body for at least a week, I would think, Aunt D.” Gray stood in the large well-lighted closet.
“I want to select his clothes while it’s on my mind.” She leaned on her cane, the wheelchair in the living room should she tire.
Sam, allowed to go in to work a few hours late this morning, knelt down in the closet as his aunt shuffled through Mercer’s shined shoes. “Not a speck of dirt, even on the soles,” Sam observed.
“His idol was Cary Grant,” Daniella said with uncharacteristic warmth. “Mercer always said if a man can dress half as well as Cary Grant he’ll be smashing.”
“True,” Gray agreed. “Duke Ellington wasn’t bad either.”
“Those were the days, those were the days,” she intoned with a kind of wonderment. “Gray, I don’t want him buried in a black suit. The undertaker can wear a black suit, not my boy. He needs color. So”—she flicked her cane right under a navy suit, chalk pinstripes—“he always looked good in this and we can use an eggshell white shirt and, oh, the tie, the tie will be what makes it—that—and the pocket square.”
“A rosebud on the lapel,” Sam volunteered.
“I hadn’t thought of that.” She liked the idea. “Regimental stripes, so many regimental stripes, but I think for this, his last social occasion, we should use a solid-color silk tie. I say a glorious burnt orange or a cerise. Something that just says ‘Mercer.’ ”
“Right.” Gray, though not a man for a bright tie, did agree. “And the pocket square can be a darker color or a different color. Mercer always said matchups were boring.”
Daniella nodded. “Yes, he did. Now Sam, the rosebud. If we use the cerise tie it could be pink, now that’s bold, I think. If we use the burnt orange then I say a creamy white, not stark, and we won’t know until we go to the funeral home. We’ll have to hold the colors up to his face.”
This thought did not appeal to Mercer’s cousins, but dressing her son was of paramount importance to the ancient lady. They would do it. Both nodded.
A knock on the front door quieted them.
“I’ll get it.” Gray strode out of the room, glad for a moment out of the closet.
Opening the door, Phil—strained, drained, but composed—greeted him. “I thought you all would be here. The cars are here. I came to help.”
The two men walked to the bedroom.
Phil bent down to hug Daniella. “I am so sorry, so very very sorry. Whatever you want, just ask.” Tears rolled down his cheeks.
She kissed him and said, “I am not going to cry. Phil, don’t you cry either.”
He reached into his jacket, pulled out a linen ha
ndkerchief to wipe his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”
“We are going to celebrate him. Perhaps it’s easier for me because I know I will be joining him before you all do.”
“Auntie D, don’t say that.” Phil’s eyes teared up again.
“It’s the plain truth. The boys are helping me assemble his wardrobe. I think we’ve got it. Sam, why don’t you carry his clothing over to my house? In fact, we can all repair there for a drink and to plan the service.”
“Yes, but while we are here, I thought perhaps I could be of special service,” said Phil. “I know he had quite a few contracts lined up. Usually the bloodline research for the breeding season is over by now so everyone has been billed. But if anything is outstanding, I will call the client.”
Gray nodded his assent. “You know most of them anyway.”
“Do you know where he kept his important papers? You know, insurance, stuff like that?” Sam asked Daniella.
“He used his computer but he backed up every single thing. I told him all he was doing was making extra work. Just stick to the paperwork and throw out the computer.” She paused. “Phil, let Gray call Sheriff Sidell. We want things done properly.”
“Sure,” Phil assented. “Didn’t the sheriff go through his office?”
Daniella nodded. “Yes, but they said they would be back Monday. I guess they’re shorthanded.” She sighed deeply. “I don’t know.”
Mercer’s small, bright office was as meticulously planned as his closet, where items were divided by season and color. Seeing the office made Phil dab his eyes again. He got hold of himself.
“All the insurance, car title, and tax returns are in that file cabinet. I know it looks like a pie safe but it’s really his file cabinet. Phil, you know that,” Daniella said.
Having quickly contacted Ben, Gray walked into the office. “Take the billing folder,” Gray said to Phil while looking at his aunt. “Surely there’s some outstanding monies.”
“Mmm,” came her compressed reply as the monies would go to her.
Phil opened the double doors, revealing long, thin editing drawers within. “He was certainly imaginative. Did he take in his papers to the accountant for this year’s taxes—well, last year’s, I mean?”
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie Page 23