Hounded to Death

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Cases of Jack Daniel’s Black and some Kentucky bourbons, too. Also cases of vodka.”

  “He lived in Tennessee; he would drink Jack. Also, Ben, much of his work involved socializing. I’ll bet he had a traveling bar in his car. He was a student of bourbon. I know that and he got Hope into distilleries to meet the real artists, the actual distillers. Then his wife put an end to that.”

  “Too bad his wife was suspicious but maybe she had just cause. About his traveling bar, well, lubricate the customer.” Ben polished off the last of his sandwich. “Feeding them first doesn’t hurt either.”

  “Is that a hint for more?”

  “I’m not a customer.”

  “You’re right. You’re a valuable member of the Jefferson Hunt Club who is learning the subtleties of hunting God’s most intelligent creature. You truly have come a long way.”

  The praise made him blush. “Thank you. I had no idea how complicated it is.”

  “There are people who hunt for forty years and don’t know what’s going on. Don’t know when a whipper-in has blundered into the covert; don’t know when hounds have overrun the line; never take into account the angle of the sun, the wind, or the time of the month.”

  “Time of the month?”

  “Can’t get foxes to run the day after a full moon. If they’re out they’ll pop right back into their den.”

  “Why?”

  “Full as ticks. Hunting is fabulous during a full moon. Every creature is moving about. A predator doesn’t have to work as hard to flush game.”

  “See? I learn something every time I’m with you.”

  “You flatter me. Dessert?”

  “I want the bomb.” The bomb was a huge round dome of chocolate-chip ice cream on a thin shortbread wafer. Over this was poured either chocolate syrup or crème de menthe.

  “That sounds good.”

  He ordered one with chocolate syrup; she ordered the crème de menthe. They ate themselves silly.

  After lunch, he walked her back to her car. “Now that the hound shows are over, maybe things will settle down. No murders, no disappearances.”

  “I was straining for a connection,” said Sister. “Probably didn’t have a thing to do with hound shows.”

  She was as right about that as Ben was wrong about future events.

  CHAPTER 14

  “All we want right now is for them to come happily when called,” said Shaker. He was wearing a white light canvas tool bag filled with cookies.

  Sister walked on the left side of the puppies while Tootie walked on the right.

  The sweltering summer heat would kick in soon enough, but at seven in the morning the air still felt as fresh in mid-July as it ever did.

  Puppy minds, like those of very young children, can concentrate for one minute, perhaps two. It’s a good huntsman who knows to keep everything fun and not to push beyond that point. This way the puppies, like children, don’t know they’re learning their ABCs.

  “Hold up,” Shaker said softly. He hunkered down and held out his arms and the V puppies ran to him, as did Momma Violet, whose presence ensured cooperation.

  Fat and wiggly, the thrilled little seven-week-old foxhounds ran up, some tripping in excitement. Shaker patted their heads and solemnly gave each one a cookie. The puppies daintily took the treat, aware that they must have done something right, given his tone. However, just why they were being rewarded was not yet clear. It would take a week or so for the lesson to sink in. Violet also took a cookie. Shaker ran his hands over her crown, telling her she was the world’s best mother.

  Then they walked back from the front of the kennels, where the puppies were put in the puppy run, with more cookies liberally distributed.

  The rumble of Betty’s ancient Volvo station wagon, followed by Sybil’s new truck, told the humans that the two whippers-in had arrived for hound walk—something the hounds had known from the time the vehicles turned off the state road, a mile and a half away.

  Betty burst through the door. “Battery died, just as I pulled into the kennel.”

  “I’ll give you a charge after hound walk,” Shaker volunteered.

  “Time to buy a new station wagon. Volvo has a six-cylinder one now.” Sister enjoyed keeping up with current automotive models.

  Sybil, picking a stone out of the heavy tread of her work boots, glanced up. “Why don’t you call Dan? Hope’s Volvo is probably for sale. It’s only a year old, I think.”

  Betty considered this, her blonde hair shining as a shaft of morning light came through the window. “You don’t think that’s ghoulish? And how come Dan controls the estate, not Paul?”

  “It’s not ghoulish, Betty. Her estate has to be settled,” said Sybil. “Remember when Hope bought the station wagon? She was already considering divorce, so she registered it in the clinic’s name. What good is the station wagon to Dan Clement? He’ll refer you to the lawyer, of course, but you’d be doing him a favor. Hope didn’t have much by way of family after her aunt died. You know, I hadn’t thought about it before, but I wonder what kind of will she left?”

  “Maybe she didn’t have one.” Shaker lifted the lid off the big garbage can where treats were kept and refilled the two sides of the tool bag on his waist.

  “She left a will. Hope was far too organized not to do so. She told me she was cutting Paul out of it,” Sister said.

  “Some people don’t like to think about death.” Sybil shrugged.

  “Does that mean you don’t have a will?” Sister picked up her crop and nudged her in the ribs.

  “I have one. Daddy would kill me.”

  “Darn straight.” Betty smiled. “I think I will call Dan after hound walk.”

  “What will you do with the blue bomb?” Sybil asked.

  “Sell it, I guess. I mean, it runs. I’ve kept it up. Put four new tires on last year and a new alternator. Car’s getting old; I’m getting old. I don’t feel like fooling with it. It’s an ’eighty-six, after all. The paint is so faded it looks as though it’s powdered with blue chalk dust.”

  “Hey, I’m tired of waiting!” Dragon complained from the draw pen.

  “Let’s get this show on the road.” Shaker smiled.

  “Literally.” Sister laughed.

  Tootie walked with Shaker. He’d taken a shine to her because she loved hounds and had the gift. Also, she hung on his every word.

  “Can’t draw two strike hounds. You can for a walk but not for a hunt.”

  “Why?”

  “Split the pack.”

  “That’s why you don’t take Cora and Dragon together?”

  He smiled. “You noticed.”

  “Not until the middle of last season, but I wondered.”

  “You know, there are people who hunt for years and don’t know one hound from another.”

  “But they’re quiet in the field, and that’s what counts,” Betty chipped in.

  “And they pay their dues,” Sister added.

  Bitsy, tiring of motherhood and feeling the nest was too small for four owlets, flew low overhead.

  Tillie, the lemon-and-white draft from Mo Schneider’s pack, had become less shy. “Why does that screech owl hang around?”

  Thimble, coming on her second year, felt important enough to answer. “Oh, that’s Bitsy. She lives in fear that she’ll miss something.”

  “Ha.” Bitsy clicked her bill, careful not to emit her signature call. “Groundling. I see and know more than you could ever dream of. Dumb hounds.”

  With that she pooped on Thimble’s head before flying over near Inky’s den.

  The other hounds laughed at Thimble, who, good-natured, laughed, too.

  Mist rose up from the wildflower field, long white streaks obscuring vision and then magically thinning into a pearly haze until they vanished altogether in a startlingly blue sky.

  After an hour’s walk, with everyone back in their respective runs, Betty called Dan on her cell. Hope’s 2007 CV70 all-wheel-drive turbo retailed for $28,750.
Dan had just put an ad in the paper.

  “Dan, what about twenty-six thousand, and I’ll bring you a check today?”

  He thought about it. “Done. Make it out to the clinic.”

  Betty hung up. “I’m the new owner of a station wagon with only thirty-four thousand miles. I really love the color, that light mist-green metallic.”

  “I do, too,” Sister agreed.

  “What will you do with the blue bomb?” Tootie quietly inquired. “Get whatever I can for it.”

  “I’d like to buy it.”

  “I’ll jump it and take it to Tommy Harvey’s. He can check it out for you and sell you a new battery. His prices are always fair.” Shaker liked doing business with people who did what they said they were going to do.

  “Actually, that’s a perfect place to take the wagon. Tommy’s got all the records,” Betty said. “He can tell you what it’s worth. Then maybe your dad will give you the money.”

  “I’m not asking Dad for anything. I’ve saved up.” Tootie’s voice rose a bit. “Dad’s paying for college. That’s enough.” She paused. “I wish I could stay here.”

  “You just go on to Princeton.” Betty was firm. “Those four years will fly by. Then you can think about coming back to live.”

  “Mary Baldwin is just over the mountain.” Tootie sounded plaintive. “I’d be happy there.”

  “Princeton is a fabulous school. You’ll like it once you get used to it. New Jersey is so crowded. Not much real country left.” Betty truly was delighted with the deal she’d just made and was feeling expansive. “And the blue bomb knows the way home. So whatever price Tommy gives you, that will be it.”

  “Okay.”

  The four women walked out into the warming air, feeling the rise in humidity. Shaker jump-started the Volvo.

  “Tootie, just in case this takes more time than we think, I’ll follow you there,” he offered.

  “Thank you.” Tootie smiled, her teeth so white that they almost seemed fake.

  “Lot of wheeling and dealing going on. Too much for me. I’m going to attack the Japanese beetles.” Sister headed toward her garden shed.

  “Don’t say that,” Sybil said in mock terror. “I haven’t seen one beetle yet.”

  “That’s because they’re all here with me.”

  That night, Tootie pored over her savings account, a total of one thousand five hundred dollars to withdraw. Betty was selling the blue bomb to her for less than Tommy’s evaluation.

  At home, Betty was feeling a tremor of attachment. She’d had that Volvo when it was new, the Copen-blue paint shining, the interior without a spot of wear. Still, one must move on.

  She opened all the cubbyholes and storage places in Hope’s 2007 Volvo, pulling out little notebooks and odd pieces of paper.

  “Bobby, look at these numbers.” She handed him bits of paper.

  “Huh?” He’d been reading the newspaper and reached absentmindedly for the papers.

  “See?” Betty said.

  “See what?” A flicker of irritation crept into his voice, for the day at the print shop had been a long one.

  “Look at these order numbers.” She bent over him, pointing over his shoulder. “That’s the number for pure red ink. These are paper numbers, Strathmore mostly.”

  He sat up a bit straighter, put the newspaper in his lap with his left hand, and brought the small paper slips up to his eyes with the right. “I’ll be damned. So it is.”

  “What was Hope Rogers doing with all that paper and ink?”

  “Well, honey, maybe she was planning some kind of an invitation for a party.”

  “She would have come to us. We give our hunt club members and vets a discount—a very attractive discount, I might add. Your idea.” She sweetly gave him the credit, even though the idea had been a mutual one thirty years ago, when they were young and just starting their printing business.

  “Betty, she died first.”

  “I don’t think so. For one thing, these little scraps are old. See?” She pointed out the grease spots from Hope’s fingers, yellowing at the edges on some papers. “She’s had these for at least a year.”

  Bobby was as good a judge of aging paper as his wife. “That doesn’t mean anything, honey. She could have had an idea about stationery or some announcement for the clinic and set it by.”

  “I still think it’s odd.”

  “Well, maybe, but why do you care?” He looked at her quizzically.

  “Maybe this will help us understand what really happened to her.”

  While Betty retreated to the kitchen to call Sister, Bobby wondered how his wife thought ink colors and paper types could shed light on Hope’s demise. However, he’d been married to her long enough not to voice this question.

  “I can’t make head or tail of it,” Sister said, after hearing Betty’s report.

  “If there were just a few numbers, I’d go with Bobby’s thought that Hope had planned some form of announcement or whatever for the clinic. But there are a lot of numbers here, for ink and specific paper types. And it’s not like she was comparing two reds or two blues. She’d obviously made up her mind.”

  “If only we knew about what.” Sister, in the last seven weeks, had come up with nothing but frustration regarding Hope.

  “I’m hanging on to these numbers.”

  “Do you ever feel her spirit is calling to us?” Sister asked, voice low.

  “Like the spirits on Hangman’s Ridge?” Betty paused. “You bet I do.”

  Later that same day, Sister wondered if spirits were at work or at least Hope’s spirit.

  The next day, Sister saw Paul Rogers in one of the aisles at the pharmacy. There’d been no service for Hope, a not uncommon practice regarding suicides. Depending on the denomination, some suicides are not buried in consecrated grounds.

  As she and Paul had no activities in common, once Hope left him, Sister rarely caught a glimpse of him.

  She stepped down the aisle. “Paul.”

  Startled slightly, he looked up at her. “Sister Jane.”

  “I know we aren’t close, Paul, and divorce divides more people than just the formerly married couples, but I hope you’re all right.”

  Grateful for the overture, he relaxed his shoulders. “Doing okay.”

  “Most separations are acrimonious. Perhaps in time you both would have remembered each other’s good qualities.”

  “Hope cheated on me.” His voice was flat. “I snooped. I’m pretty good with the computer so I got into her e-mails.”

  “I’m sure you were upset.” Sister did not enlighten him with her views on monogamy.

  “Grant Fuller.” He nearly bit the words. “I think it started when he showed her around the distilleries.” He tossed an orange box of Motrin into his cart. “Ended at the Mid-America Hound Show. Guess it was unpleasant. You know, she called me up to tell me it was over. How does that figure?” He sounded both bitter and still in love.

  “Well, I don’t know. Did you tell the sheriff ?”

  “Yes.”

  Back out on the road, she knew that she did the right thing in not revealing her personal information regarding Hope.

  Today was Saint Vladimir’s feast day, July 15. He lived from 955 to 1015. Originally a pagan with a penchant for violence, when he converted to Christianity in 989 he put aside violence as much as a prince could do in the tenth century. He also put away his many mistresses to marry Anne.

  Sister thought neither she nor Hope capable of emulating Vladimir. But carrying on with Grant Fuller? That surprised her.

  CHAPTER 15

  On Thursday, August 7, the heat was shimmering off the hay fields and the dirt roads by seven-thirty.

  “Too hot to have been born,” Sister grumbled, as they walked twenty couple of hounds, including three couple of the second T litter: Thimble, Twist, Tootsie, Trooper, Taz, and Tattoo.

  The youngsters had behaved so well that Sister and Shaker thought they could all go out together. They’d been
walking in couple straps since late spring; then, by early June, they had gone out uncoupled but only four at a time. On a sweltering morning, young hounds would be less inclined to shoot off—or so the humans reasoned.

  Sybil, on vacation with her sons at Prince Edward Island, would be home the end of the month. So this morning Tootie took the right side, Betty was on the left, Sister brought up the rear, and Shaker, as usual, walked in front.

  “I can never figure out why I want the hounds behind me when I’m on foot but in front of me when I’m on a horse.” Shaker had tied a bandanna around his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes.

  “That is a puzzle,” Sister agreed.

  The hounds walked toward the foot of Hangman’s Ridge. They were taken a little farther every day to prepare them for cubbing, which would begin after Labor Day. The youngsters had proved so obedient that the humans now thought they could relax.

  Then, too, the heat created a lassitude. Even if one was bucking hay, there was a languor to the work.

  “Aren’t you surprised that Val stuck to her desk job?” Betty asked Tootie.

  “Kinda. She likes the money, though.”

  “There is that,” Betty agreed. “Saw Felicity yesterday. She’s really feeling pregnant. Two months to go. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that by the last month you have to walk leaning backward.”

  “Carrying to term through summer’s heat.” Sister shook her head.

  “Remember all this, Tootie.” Betty laughed. “If you get pregnant try to do it in summer. Then you’ll deliver in spring. It’s much easier.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind.” Tootie smiled. “You know, what did surprise me was Val coming back for Felicity’s wedding. If it weren’t for you-all and Val, I don’t think anyone would have been there. Val still thinks Felicity is throwing her life away, but she doesn’t say that to Felicity anymore.”

  “Both sets of parents will live to regret being so narrow-minded.At least, I hope they will.” Sister still couldn’t believe those people.

  “Hell, some people never grow up. Look at Crawford.” Shaker’s loathing of Crawford had not dimmed with time.

  Twist, tail up over her back just as incorrect as it could be, whispered to Taz, “Let’s run!”