Hounded to Death

by Rita Mae Brown

  This Saturday, August 16, thirty members of Jefferson Hunt had come, armed with chain saws, axes, hammers, nails, ATVs, and Gators, to clear trails and build jumps at Skidby. Their first work party at the end of June had accomplished a lot. This second work party would open the large estate for its first year of hunting.

  Many a master is tempted to throw up jumps everywhere and cut many trails: impressive but unwise. Best to open new territory like a wheel. Get round the perimeter and make spokes into the center. Not that these trails would be straight lines, given the topography, but the wheel pattern made for best access. However, one doesn’t know how the foxes will run. So save money and energy at first by only putting up jumps where absolutely needed. The second year, jumps can be added by taking into account the foxes’ running routes.

  Mitch rode first flight when he could. Like too many fox-hunters he cared little for the hound work, but other than that Sister liked him well enough. His enthusiasm in opening Skidby rubbed off on everyone despite the heat.

  Sister, Mitch, Barry Baker, and Gray Lorillard made up one work party, their job being to clear the trails. Bobby Franklin headed a group coming behind them, to build any jumps that might be necessary and double-check the trails. Work parties of four, each headed by an experienced foxhunter, fanned out in all four directions. They’d meet back at the barns at two for a late lunch. Given the hot weather, they’d started at seven-thirty.

  Betty and Tedi drove a Gator filled with ice chests. People carried their own water but, knowing the heat, Betty arranged to visit each party with sodas, water, tonic water, Gatorade, and sandwiches. That way she could also assess how each party was progressing and see if they needed special help.

  Barry, seventy-four, Sister, seventy-three, and Gray, sixty-nine, all outworked Mitch, who was only forty-five. Although relatively fit, Mitch wasn’t really an outdoor guy. He usually paid others to do what he found himself doing today.

  “How far are we from Dinwiddie Creek?” Barry asked, his red T-shirt soaked through as well as his neckerchief.

  “Half a mile,” Mitch answered.

  “We’ve made good progress.” Sister smiled. “Well, let’s press on. Ought to be cooler at the creek.”

  As they worked, Mitch pointed out old meadows that the forest had reclaimed. “Second growth. I’ll turn it back into pasture eventually.”

  “Hard work, that,” Gray said laconically, as he cut a low-hanging branch from a fiddle oak.

  “I’ll let the loggers do it. Make a bit of money, too.”

  “Still have to get the stumps up, Mitch—burn ’em or bury ’em—and then you’ve got to smooth out the land and scratch it up real good, so when you put that first dressing of fertilizer on, it can work way down into the soil.” Gray was simply transmitting what he’d observed.

  Mitch took it that Gray thought he was stupid. “I know all that.”

  Sister prudently said, “Then you know what’s ahead of you.”

  Barry stepped in. “Ever go into the caves where the officers hid after April 9, 1865? The date of our surrender at Appomattox Courthouse?”

  Mitch brightened. “I did. Found a broken pipe, a piece of spur. Didn’t go deep, but one day I’ll really explore those caves. Who knows what else I’ll find?”

  “Perhaps you’ll show me sometime.” Barry whacked at dead vines.

  “Be glad to,” Mitch replied.

  The whine of the green Gator’s little engine announced Betty and Tedi. A minute later they appeared.

  “Ice-cold drinks, food; get your ice-cold drinks!” Betty called.

  “Looks like you-all could use them.” Tedi hopped out to stretch her legs.

  “How’s it going with the other teams?” Sister asked.

  “Good. Xavier’s made the most progress. I never realized how organized he is.” Betty had known Xavier, also called X, since he was a boyhood friend of RayRay’s. “He lashes them on.”

  “Walter’s struggling with the pond and the swamp, which he’s now calling the Little Dismal.” Tedi laughed. “I never heard our joint master cuss before, but today the air is blue.”

  “Beavers.” Mitch smiled. “That pond will be twice as big next year, after they dam up the water.”

  “Amazing creatures. People used to shoot them.” Barry grabbed a Gatorade. “That’s frowned upon these days so they trap them and remove them, but soon enough another crew comes to wherever the first one lived. A good site is a good site, and beavers know what they want.”

  “I’ll bet anyone here fifty dollars that whatever fox lives in that area will head straight for the swamps when we pick up scent.” Sister turned to Barry. “Remember the time we were all out with Deep Run? Must have been ’seventy-two. The fox headed into a swampy area, swam out, and sat on top of the beaver lodge.”

  Barry smiled. “Never forget it.”

  “If our fox does that, I’ll not only meet your bet, I’ll give you an extra fifty.” Gray winked at Sister.

  “I can feel that money sliding right across my palm.” Sister opened her neckerchief to put in more ice and grabbed an egg salad sandwich made by Bill Johnson. The Johnson family had joined recently.

  Gray and Barry followed suit with the ice, but it didn’t occur to Mitch to do the same.

  “We’re off. Next stop Shaker,” Betty said.

  “He picked that northwest corner. He’ll be up and down ravines.” Mitch smiled, glad they had the southeastern corner of Skidby, with its generous rolling hills and flat pastures.

  “Yeah, but it will be cool when he gets to the bottom.” Gray finished off his drink. “You know, we could institute a new tradition, a Gator to meet the hunt at checks.”

  “Ha. You won’t be looking for Gatorade,” Betty teased. “Something stronger.”

  “Fortifies the resolve.” Barry slapped Gray on the back.

  After the ladies left, the team picked up some energy. The brief rest and drinks helped.

  Barry, veteran of many a work party with Deep Run, knew people fell into a rhythm. Chatting can help the rhythm and so can singing, but the younger generations had not grown up singing as they worked. Tempted as he was to start the rounds he loved in the fields, songs he heard as a child and sang as a man, he figured it would make Mitch uncomfortable. Mitch wouldn’t know the words and would mistake the songs for slave ditties. Like many Americans, Mitch didn’t really know his country’s history. Field hands all sang. Color might determine the song, but it didn’t determine the singing.

  Gray, who’d also grown up singing, whistled. That was his solution to the problem. After all, Mitch was the landowner, and no one wished to make him ill at ease.

  All hunting depends on the generosity of landowners. A hunt cannot pay to hunt; the Master of Foxhounds Association forbids it. It’s a good rule that prevents rich hunts from driving out poor ones. Also, since farmers have to agree to allow their lands to be hunted, the contact brings a community closer together. Over time, landowners and foxhunters not only become friends but realize their political interests are identical. There is strength in numbers.

  Barry was working alongside Mitch. “Never asked you. Why did you choose research instead of a practice?”

  “Residency taught me I’m not good with people. I was fascinated by their symptoms but I lacked a good bedside manner. Hell, even Lutrell chides me about it.” He laughed at himself.

  “Bedside manner to a woman means you worship her as a goddess.” Barry laughed. “Sure worked with Noddy.”

  “What was her real name?” Mitch asked.

  “Gertrude. She hated it. Didn’t even like Trudy, which I like. Her mother called her Noddy because she’d nod off to sleep in church.”

  “Lutrell was named for her mother’s family. She never says much about it one way or the other, but have you ever met a Lutrell who was ashamed of being a Lutrell?” Mitch, not being old blood, thought it silly.

  “No. That’s the southern way. If your mother’s maiden name can be used as a first n
ame for one child, do it. Then use other family names, if they’re grand enough, for middle names. Or you can take the maternal names as the middle name. You know, Mitch, if you pay attention to someone’s name, you already know a lot about that person here.”

  “What do you make of Mitchell Charles Fisher?”

  Barry threw a tree limb off to the side of the trail. “Couple of ways to look at it. Fisher could be an Anglicization of Fisk or Fisker, Old Norse for fish or fisherman. Or it could be straight Anglo-Saxon. But it’s a name attached to a task, just as Wright or Carter is. The list is endless. Mitchell is a strong name, so your parents wanted you to be a strong man. Oh, the other thing about Fisher is it could be a Jewish name. Often the names from central Europe puzzled the men at Ellis Island so they gave the Jews more English-sounding names or the folks did it themselves once they lived here for a while. Diamond, for instance, is usually a Jewish last name.”

  “Don’t think anyone was Jewish. It would be a help in my profession.” Mitch smiled. “You must have learned a lot, sitting on the bench. About people, I mean.”

  “Sure did. I’d study the witnesses, study the defendant, the accuser, the lawyers. Even if the proceedings became tedious, my mind kept busy.”

  “Miss it?”

  “No.” The reply was forceful, and Mitch’s raised eyebrows elicited further response. “By the end my disgust level was so high I felt like retching.”

  “Lawyers will do that to you.”

  “That’s the rub, Mitch. Most lawyers are decent enough and a few are truly brilliant. Hearing their arguments, watching them shape a trial—and the great ones do—could be thrilling. It’s the flotsam and jetsam who come before the judge. Scum in a three-piece suit. People who commit evil and then want to wriggle out of it describes ninety-eight percent of the people I saw. My retirement day was one of the happiest days of my life.” He shook his head. “Enough of that. You picked research. Do you like it?”

  “I do. I can help people, but I don’t have to deal with them.”

  “What about the dogs?”

  “What?” Mitch stood up straight.

  “I’m a judge. I can find out anything. I know exactly what you do.”

  “They’re not mistreated. And the work we do saves human lives.”

  “Starving a dog seems like mistreatment to me.” Barry’s voice carried an edge.

  “You can’t make an omelet without cracking eggs.”

  “Human life trumps all other forms of life?”

  Without a second’s hesitation, Mitch boomed, “Of course it does.”

  “Those two sure have a lot to talk about,” Gray said to Sister. They had moved ahead of the others.

  “Can only catch pieces of it.” Sister grunted, intent on leveling a stub in the ground with an ax. “I hate these damned things.”

  “Yeah. Have to keep at them every year.”

  “Mitch and Lutrell want to have a big breakfast the first time we hunt his fixture. Given that September can be bloody hot, what do you think about mid-October?”

  “Perfect. The leaves will be turning, the pastures will still be green, and with any luck the air will be a bit crisp.”

  “Luck is right. Sometimes you’ll get a seventy-degree day followed by a forty-eight-degree day. Changing temps make me feel like a shuttlecock.”

  “Janie, I can’t imagine you as a shuttlecock.” He laughed.

  They heard Barry’s cell ring but didn’t pay much attention until they heard a loud, “What?”

  Mitch stopped too, for the expression on Barry’s face was one of intense attention.

  Barry said, “How could they not know? That’s crazy.”

  They all had paused in their work. Might be rude to eavesdrop but they couldn’t help it.

  At last Barry flipped the phone shut. Sister moved toward him with Gray.

  “Barry, are you all right?”

  “Grant Fuller was found hanging in the freezer of one of his former slaughterhouses. Fonz called. He heard it on the local radio station. He’s in Arkansas, as you might remember. And how could they not see a man hanging from a meat hook?” He scanned the faces of the other three. “Fonz said Grant was found at the back of the freezer, which must be huge, and he’d been put in a large garment bag.”

  “Good God!” Mitch exclaimed. “That really is crazy, hanging a man on a meat hook.”

  “So he was preserved?” Gray inquired.

  “Fresh as a daisy—according to what Fonz heard,” Barry added.

  A pileated woodpecker, a huge bird sometimes close to two feet, sang its primitive song. Sister listened to the woodpecker, then ventured an opinion. “Maybe he wasn’t in the freezer all this time. I don’t care how big the freezer is at the slaughterhouse, someone would have noticed. He could have been on ice somewhere else and then moved. Why?” She shrugged. “Who knows, but these weird murders—and I swear to you-all that Hope was murdered also—are too much a part of the equine community, if you will.”

  Barry stared at Sister. “Your mind amazes me.”

  “Just thinking out loud.” She brushed off what she hoped was a compliment.

  “Honey, why would someone freeze Grant Fuller, then hang him up now?”

  “I don’t know, Gray. And I find it peculiar that he was in a bag. If the killer wanted to scare the bejabbers out of people, you’d think he’d just hoist the body up there.” She stopped. “ ’Course, if he was already frozen and then moved, how would the killer get the meat hook through his back? Guess I answered my own question.”

  Barry leaned against a tree, then wished he hadn’t, for ants marched up and down the trunk. “Bet you’re right about the meat hook.”

  “Revenge. Grant’s death and Mo’s death are revenge killings,” Sister said.

  “Could be.” Barry nodded.

  “You knew Grant about as well as I did. Any thoughts?” Sister asked Gray.

  “Affable. Glib, even.” Gray considered the person they’d met socially on occasion. “He didn’t strike me as a man to arouse passions one way or the other.”

  Barry, listening, added, “He was getting a little roly-poly.” He smiled. “A surefire passion killer. Although there are other forms of passion. The only thing I heard—gossip, really—is that Grant showed such an interest in introducing Hope to the distillers that his wife nipped their association in the bud.”

  “It was Grant who introduced her to bourbon.” Sister could picture it.

  “Her fascination with distillers took over,” Barry continued. “She was a scientist—vets are—and distilling is a science. I could see why she’d become obsessed with it. A lot easier than subduing a thrashing horse to operate. The trick is getting close enough without getting kicked to stick the tranquilizer in.”

  “You got that right.” Sister knew animals in pain could hurt you unwittingly. “Perhaps someone gave Grant a tranquilizer before doing whatever. Awful thing to be hoisted on a meat hook.”

  “It’s grotesque.” Mitch wiped his brow and then his arms with an oversized handkerchief.

  “If the point of the killing is revenge, why tranquilize the man? Letting him suffer would seem to me to be what the killer wanted.” Barry had hit the nail on the head.

  “The things you do in this life catch up with you sooner or later.” Sister was aghast at the news but wanted to get back to work. She could be single-minded, especially when it involved hunting.

  “Karma?” Barry smiled at her.

  “More like bad luck, I’d say.” Mitch paid little heed to anything that couldn’t be quantified scientifically.

  “Remember your Dante? The lowest circle in Hell has the Devil encased in ice.” Gray thought that was a haunting image of the paralysis of evil.

  “Karma.” Sister repeated Barry’s judgment.

  CHAPTER 20

  “I’ll be glad when cubbing starts.” Sitting on the patio facing west, Gray leaned back against the big pillows in his comfortable wooden chair. Sister’s old house afford
ed a gorgeous view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  Large bug lamps glowed as the sun set behind the mountains, the clouds above reflecting an undergirding of gold. It was Friday, August 22.

  “Me, too.” Tootie agreed. Then suddenly her face registered dismay. “I forgot. I’ll be at Princeton.”

  “Once you settle in up there, Sister will write you letters of introduction to the neighboring hunts. Most people don’t know it, but New Jersey has some good clubs. Always has.” Gray sipped a refreshing Tom Collins.

  Not a heavy drinker, he did enjoy an end-of-the-day drink: gin or vodka mixes in summer and a scotch on the rocks in winter.

  Sister carried out a large tray of fresh vegetables cut in thin strips, crackers, and some cheese—Raleigh, Rooster, and Golly following closely, in case she dropped something edible—and set the tray on the outdoor coffee table. She picked up her glass of tonic water with its big wedge of lime and dropped in a chair to the left of Gray.

  He reached out his hand and she held it. “I was just telling Tootie that I’ll be glad when cubbing starts.”

  Sister beamed, for she loved that he shared her passion for hunting, although perhaps not to her degree. “Sugar, I’m thrilled to hear that.”

  He touched his military mustache with his right forefinger, smoothing it first right and then left, a slight grin twitching the carefully groomed mustache upward. “Always like seeing the young entry, and—well, once you’re hunting perhaps all this worry about the summer’s ugly events will fade away.”

  “Been that bad, have I?” She squeezed his hand.

  “I didn’t say that,” he replied diplomatically.

  “Didn’t have to.” She turned to Tootie. “How bad have I been?”

  Tootie stalled a minute, then said lightly, “Mildly obsessed.”

  Sister leaned back, stretching her long legs onto the wooden footrest that matched the chair. “I know.”

  “Here’s a rare moment.” Golly immediately jumped onto Sister’s lap.

  “She admits things—sometimes.” Raleigh always defended his beloved human.

  “I can count them on the claws of one paw.” Golly held out one razor-sharp claw to make her point, as well as to remind the lowly dogs that she could do serious damage.