Crazy Like a Fox

by Rita Mae Brown

  Marion swallowed hard. “A ghost?”

  Sister inhaled deeply. “Marion, I want to find out and I don’t.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Comet, furious with himself, flew through the late-summer corn soon to be harvested at the western edge of Ed and Tedi Bancroft’s large estate. The praying mantis clinging to a corn leaf dug its spikes in deeper as Comet brushed through the corn. The mature gray fox, a dashing fellow, zigzagged as Dasher, a hound in his prime, ran close behind, too close. The pack of The Jefferson Hunt, first cast at seven-thirty A.M. due to the September heat, had started from the covered bridge at the Bancrofts’. Noses to the ground, those hounds, hunting for their first season, darted about, finally settling down when Cora, the older head female hound, chided them. On they pressed, the day promising little. Heat already coming up, high 50s now. The scent would lift to dissipate quickly but that was cubbing, the beginning of every hunt season. As in any sport where there’s been a layoff, foxes, hounds, horses, people need to slip back in the grove. The young foxes, like the young hounds, learned the horn calls, the ways to baffle hounds as well as where various dens offered a place to duck in. Often, the owner of the escape den complained loudly. The sound of the pack always shut up the fox, gopher, or whoever owned the den. Then again, once danger passed, the uninvited guest, with apologies, left.

  Comet knew it was a Thursday, a hunt day for Jefferson Hunt. Living near the kennels, he knew the schedule, especially when the horses to be hunted the next morning were brought into the barn that night. No one wanted to chase a playful horse, risk being late to a hunt. In they came.

  Keenly aware of the seasons, Comet figured the late corn would soon be harvested. Those wonderful corn patches burst with birds, mice, any creature wanting corn on the cob. Even after the harvest, the stalks, the corn left on the ground brought in so many tasty creatures. Comet had plenty to eat where he lived, but he felt like hunting. So he crossed the beautiful wildflower meadow between Jane Arnold’s Roughneck Farm and After All, the Bancrofts vast, immaculately maintained estate. Passing through the large meadow, black-eyed Susans nodding, then into the cornfield, he could hear the chatter from the mice, the occasional chipmunk even before stepping into the slightly rustling corn.

  The pack, moving westward, curling slightly south, baffled the whippers-in. Betty Franklin and Tootie Harris thought the hounds would sweep north toward the old Pattypan Forge, always a good spot. But noses down, silent, they pushed. The two humans knew they were working, but the scent wasn’t strong enough to speak. Perhaps in time it would heat up and they would open, sing.

  Shaker Crown, the huntsman, in his early forties, liked letting his hounds solve problems. Some huntsmen were always picking up hounds, moving them to a place considered by the human more favorable. Foxes cared nothing for what humans considered favorable, but the incessant fiddling with a pack of hounds made them dependent on the humans. Given human shortcomings, never a good thing.

  Sitting in the big cornfield, Comet ate succulent corn. Why bother hunting? He’d started out thinking catching a mouse would be bracing, but the sweetness of the corn, those large lower ears just waiting to be plucked, proved so much better than running about listening to the mice scream bloody murder to one another. Those high-pitched voices could be irritating. Full, Comet had been sloppy. He’d left the farm before the hound and horse trailers had, so he didn’t know where they were going. He knew it was a hunt day. He’d also seen the trailers, cleaned and ready to go. Sloppy. He knew perfectly well that After All was one of the hunt’s best fixtures, a place where a club could hunt. He also knew it was cubbing, and Sister Jane never liked to take her youngsters too far from the kennels. If a youngster wandered off, a rarity but it did happen, they would find their way home. If an older hound, used during cubbing to settle and train the youngsters, began to tire, he or she could return to the trailers or wait to be picked up by a road whip, a person in a special hound truck ready for any task. Today it was Betty’s husband, Bobby Franklin.

  Well, the hounds nosed around the edge of the cornfield and by the time Comet heard them, Asa, the old gentleman with the basso profundo voice, opened.

  “Gray!”

  “Shit.” Comet cursed as kernels tumbled from his jaws.

  Giorgio, in his second year hunting, crashed into the corn close behind Dasher, who didn’t mind as he was fast. The hounds strung out in the corn rows, the corn bending as they pushed through.

  First Flight, led by Sister on Keepsake, a most sensible horse, skirted to the edge of the cornfield, following on the outside. No Master, or field member for that matter, ever wanted to destroy a farmer’s crop. Hunts lost territory through such thoughtlessness.

  Shaker also kept clear of the unharvested corn; ahead of Sister, he listened to hound voices, each of which he recognized. Betty Franklin, way on the other side of the cornfield, where it abutted the woods, also listened as did Magellan, her Thoroughbred. Hearing the corn swish gave him a moment.

  “There’s a monster in there.” The rangy fellow wavered.

  “Magellan, calm yourself.” She patted him on his neck.

  He trusted Betty, as most creatures did. He somewhat stopped tensing, but his ears swiveled all over the place.

  Betty thought to herself that this was how a large prey animal survived. One should never punish a horse for being a horse. Instead, give him confidence. One did that by remaining calm, with a low voice, a pat, and just the tiniest picking up of the reins in case a buck occurred. Magellan, now past that, had been more than capable of launching you when younger.

  Already over the hog’s-back jump, waiting in the wildflower field was the second whipper-in, Tootie Harris, age twenty-two. Given that she couldn’t go into the cornfield, she prudently galloped ahead, took the jump, turned her horse’s head toward the horn calls, and waited. She especially did not want to turn the fox. Given his path of running, she was pretty sure it was Comet. They’d become well acquainted with each other, as the gray lived under part of the old stone foundation, laid in 1787, of her newly built, “old” cabin.

  Sure enough, she watched the wildflowers sway mightily. He was out of the corn. She counted. By the time she reached thirty, Dasher was in the wildflower field. She could just see his handsome head and his stern. Within seconds the rest of the pack pushed on. The field, moving fast alongside the corn, kept behind Shaker, who had slowed slightly, fearing he would step on one of the hounds. Couldn’t see a thing. The Bancrofts kept a riding path around all their crop fields, so Sister turned right, reached the midpoint of the field, checked Keepsake, turned left, and in two strides she was over the hog’s back, a jump that scared horses not accustomed to seeing one. Fortunately, everyone in the field this Tuesday was a Jefferson member, so the jump proved no obstacle. Those in Second Flight, the one with no jumping, continued on to a large gate. As always, the dismount, the opening, and two people staying behind to close took time, but Second Flight did catch up just in time to see everyone standing in front of the authentic-looking cabin.

  Comet, secure under the foundation, watched as Pookah and Pansy, two hounds in their second year, dug at the large stones.

  “Give it up, girls,” Comet barked.

  “I knew it was you! I will get you. I will.” Pansy allowed herself a moment.

  “You’re delusional. If you couldn’t reach me when I fell half asleep in the cornfield, you’ll never catch me. Never.”

  Asa, now nose to nose with the girls, his voice mellow, replied, “True enough, smartass, but we made you run for it.”

  A pause followed this. “Well, yes, you did.”

  That pleased the hounds. Shaker blew “Gone to Ground,” and praised his hounds. “We’re home. We’ve been out for an hour and a half, heat’s coming up. Why don’t I just walk them to the kennels?”

  “Good idea,” Sister agreed.

  The pack, terribly pleased with itself, walked smartly to the kennels, which took all of seven minutes.

&nbs
p; The riders who were not staff parked at After All. They turned to go back, led by Ed and Tedi Bancroft.

  Tedi called over her shoulder, “You’ll be at the breakfast?”

  Sister nodded to her friend and neighbor.

  —

  Hounds up, horses wiped down and turned out, Sister, Betty, Shaker, and Tootie piled into Shaker’s aging Land Cruiser, which he’d bought used. He loved that vehicle; it could churn through anything, fit six people inside if needed. He could flop down a seat and put a few hounds in the SUV, too. The gas mileage was a trial, but other than that the Land Cruiser was made for country people.

  Gray Lorillard, Sister’s boyfriend, owned a new Land Cruiser. Just made Shaker’s mouth water.

  —

  The back verandah, people talking, the table laden with food, the serve-yourself bar not being used hard as most people would leave to go to work, bore testimony to the endless hospitality of the Bancrofts. A few outsiders sniffed that given all that inherited wealth they could afford to be gracious. However, many a rich family exhibited robust ungraciousness. The Bancrofts liked people. True WASPs, they kept their good works to themselves, but for four generations the Bancrofts had helped thousands of people, most especially through their bequests to hospitals and educational institutions.

  Kasmir Barbhaiya, who had moved from India, chatted exuberantly with Tootie concerning Asa’s deep voice. The small group—it was a weekday hunt, so only about twenty people had come out—relived the hunt.

  Sister kissed Tedi on the cheek. “When you were at Madeira you-all hunted around Virginia and Maryland, did you not?”

  “What fun it was.” The attractive woman, in her mid-eighties, beamed.

  Sister, her cellphone in the inside pocket of her light tweed, pulled it out. Marion, a technical whiz, had sent Sister a copy of Weevil at the museum. Marion had also taken this to the police department, which found it marginally interesting. A missing cowhorn from Morven Park appeared to endanger no one. Jake Carle, like Marion and Sister, was riveted. Marion and Jake decided not to send out a notice to museum members. Not that they would hide anything should someone notice a missing cowhorn, but better to wait. It was all too fantastic. Then again, the cowhorn could show up without undue detective work, which wasn’t going to come from law enforcement people.

  “Do you recognize this man?” Sister played the video.

  Tedi smiled. “Weevil!” Then her hand flew to her breast. “Weevil at the museum?”

  Sister explained what had transpired.

  “Edward. Edward, darling, come here a moment.” Tedi then leaned toward Sister. “He was at Dartmouth when I was at Madeira, but he’d come home for the holidays and we hunted around. By the time I was a junior in college we’d covered most of Virginia and Maryland.”

  Edward excused himself from Sam Lorillard, Gray’s brother, who worked for Crawford Howard, a thorn in the side of Jefferson Hunt. Crawford, however, was happy to use the hunt to train his green horses, Sam in the irons.

  “Honey, look at this.”

  Sister played the video.

  “There were no videos when Weevil was alive,” Edward, a man married to facts as well as to Tedi, remarked.

  “Darling, this was three days ago.”

  “That’s impossible.” He looked again at the replayed images. “Impossible.”

  Sister stared up into Edward’s eyes. She was six feet tall, and he was taller. “You were in your early twenties then. Is it possible you don’t exactly recall how he looked?”

  “Not likely.” Edward half-snorted. “That s.o.b. romanced my sister, then took one look at Tedi and made a pass at her. I charged right up and said, ‘If you so much as lay a hand on her, I will kill you.’ ” He smiled sheepishly. “I was a young man in love and now I’m an old man in love.” He wrapped his arm around his wife’s still-tiny waist.

  “And you, Tedi, do you believe this is Weevil Carruthers?”

  “Sister, if you ever saw the man in the flesh, you would never forget him. That’s Weevil.”

  “Could it be someone made up to look like Weevil?”

  Tedi stared at the video, then into her friend’s cobalt eyes. “No. A man would have to be born that impossibly handsome. He was, you know. Did you ever see him?”

  “From a distance. My mother took me to a hunt on our way down to Raleigh once. I was, I don’t know, maybe ten. I dimly remember a handsome blond man on a steel gray horse. I think I was too young for a strong response.”

  Edward laughed. “Indeed. I remember when he disappeared. If you were a hunting man you practically had to take a ticket and stand in line at the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Department. The department called on Richmond officers to help, I remember that. Too many suspects—they were overwhelmed. Never found him, of course.”

  “Until now, if you believe in ghosts,” Sister simply stated.

  Taken aback, Edward replied, “I don’t. I don’t, but that video is hard to explain and blowing ‘Gone to Ground’ is, well, very Weevil.”

  “People must have liked him despite all,” Sister said.

  “Oh, he was great fun, charming, a hard rider, and he could hold his liquor. Men liked him until he slept with their wives or daughters. After I told him I would kill him, he smiled at me, and said, ‘She’s worth killing for. I’m glad you know that.’ Then he tapped his cap with his cowhorn, nodded to Tedi, and rode off. How could I not like him?”

  “You?” Sister focused on Tedi.

  “Yes, he was impossibly handsome but he was, oh, fifteen years older than I, so he seemed old. But I liked him. He was a rip-roaring huntsman, but you know, in those days more game, fewer roads. Thought today good hound work, by the way.”

  “Was.” Sister loved a compliment, which she always took to be for the hounds, not herself. “This video is so strange. I had to show you, as surely there’s some kind of logical explanation. Although unlike you, Ed, I do believe in ghosts.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Neat piles of papers on the right-hand side of Crawford Howard’s specially built enameled desk reflected the blue light of the computer screen Crawford was studying. The L-shaped desk had a heavy glass insert in the section where he wrote letters. The desk itself, enameled in hunter green, dominated the room, as did the man himself.

  Crawford, now in his mid-fifties, had made his first fortune in Indiana, building strip malls. Once secure, he moved to central Virginia, which he remembered, as a young man, visiting historic sites with his parents. He fell in love with the beauty of the state, and the strange romance of the battlefields, starting with Yorktown. He also fell in love with foxhunting. He began hunting with Trader Point Hunt near Zionsville, Indiana. As this was a drag hunt, he learned to jump because hounds always found the dragged scent. Once he moved to Virginia he encountered the vagaries of live hunting, as well as the difficult terrain of The Jefferson Hunt, where he started.

  Accustomed to getting his way, thanks to his wealth, he felt, after a few years and large checks to the club, he should be appointed Joint Master to serve along with Sister Jane. However, riding and giving money is not the same as knowing hunting, and he didn’t really know it. He knew real estate, he knew construction, he knew the stock market, but he couldn’t tell the difference between an American foxhound and an English foxhound. While that can be learned, modifying one’s behavior’s to Virginia standards was too much for certain egotistical personalities. Crawford was such a one.

  Needing, at long last, a Joint Master, Sister asked Walter Lungrun, M.D., in his early forties. She’d known him since he was a child. She also knew her husband had fathered him on Mrs. Lungrun. Neither she nor her husband referred to this, and Mr. Lungrun raised Walter as though his own. In theory, no one knew.

  In a snit, Crawford withdrew from The Jefferson Hunt to start his own outlaw pack. Having blown through three huntsmen, it was not a success. He’d hired a young woman, Cynthia Skiff Cane. She could deal with his meddling better than the prior men, but there we
re days when even she had to walk away, diplomatically.

  Having lost some weight, Crawford, in good shape, still with a full head of hair, proved attractive enough. His wife loved him. Someone did, thankfully.

  He leaned back in his chair, letting out a long deep breath. “My God.”

  Then he picked up the phone to call an old college friend in New York City who was a vice president at a large brokerage house. “Larry.”

  “Crawford, how are you?”

  “Dismal. I’ve been looking at our dollar rising even higher today. The euro is about worthless.”

  After a pause, Larry replied, “Great for importers. Bad for exporters.”

  “My mat business is suffering. I’m losing money hand over fist.”

  Crawford, keeping his fingers in many pies, had bought into a wonderful business manufacturing car mats and truck bed mats to protect the paint and offset the slipperiness of a truck bed, especially in foul weather. You could break a leg back there.

  “You fortunately are diversified. I have clients who really are going broke over this.”

  “I hate to lose money,” Crawford grumbled. “And I believe I will lose more. Why did anyone ever think a European Union would work? They’ve been killing one another over there for centuries. Hell, if you go back to Julius Caesar and Vercingetorix, thousands of years. Absurd.”

  “Well now, Crawford, I’d like to think that World War Two truly woke them up. I’d like to think that the European Union will pull the chestnut out of the fire.”

  A long sigh followed this. “I’m not going to argue.”

  “That’s a first.” His old friend laughed. “Back in the days of our Sigma Chi bull sessions, who could argue all night long, with or without booze?”

  Crawford smiled at those days, how much he loved his fraternity, the sheer fun of it all. “You’d be surprised at how much I’ve learned.”

  “You married Marty. That was the best move you ever made. You make a mess, brother, she cleans it up.”