The Hounds and the Fury

by Rita Mae Brown

  On reaching that same spot, Sybil pulled out the cell phone Sister insisted she carry in case of injury. She punched in Sister's prerecorded number, which was 7.

  At the vibration, Sister grabbed her phone out of her pocket.

  "Sister, I'm at the edge of Binky's southernmost hay field. Jason's crossing it at a trot, heading for Tattenhall Station, I expect," said Sybil in a low voice.

  "Thank God, you're all right. Don't take any chances, Sybil. Walter and I are behind you, moving up. Half mile. Tops."

  "Right." She clicked off the phone.

  Jason heard a human voice, very faint. He turned to see Sybil at the edge of the woods. He wheeled Kilowatt, pulled out his gun, and rode hard straight for her.

  Sybil slipped back into the thick woods. She rode off the deer trail to dip down into a swale. It would take him a minute or two to find her. She noticed boot prints at the edge of the swale.

  Conventional wisdom would have dictated she run, but her entire back would be exposed. Steeling herself, she clicked off the safety of her .22, six bullets in the chamber instead of ratshot. Small though the caliber was, in the right place that .22 could stop a person cold.

  She held the reins in her left hand, her right arm extended. All she needed to do was swing her arm to her target.

  Jason assumed she would run away. Kilowatt, fast, would get so close to her that he could drop her. Then he would turn and race like mad across the hay field. He couldn't lose more time.

  He stopped to listen for the sound of her hoofbeats. Silence. Then he heard the rustle of leaves as Bombardier moved a little. Walking deliberately toward the sound, he, too, readied his .45.

  Athena quietly flew ahead of him. As she passed over the lip of the swale she called, "Hoo, Ho Ho, Hoo." Athena saw Donny Sweigart Jr. in camouflage fatigues, crouched in the bushes by the edge of the swale.

  Bitsy, on the same vector, emitted one screech, her little beak agape. They circled and landed in a treetop.

  Sybil looked in the direction from which they had flown. Three seconds later, Jason appeared at the edge of the swale from that same direction.

  He had a smirk on his face that said, "Like shooting fish in a barrel."

  Donny pushed through the brush and startled Kilowatt, who took a step back. Jason steadied himself and turned as Donny threw a round ball of frozen blood. It hit Jason hard in the chest. His right arm jerked up. He squeezed the trigger.

  Sybil fired as the blood hit Jason, that split second saving her.

  Hit in the shoulder, feeling the sting that soon followed, Jason had to decide who to shoot first. Donny, a country boy, knew that running made him a target. If he stayed and fought, he'd have a chance. So would Sybil. Donny grabbed Jason's leg.

  Jason fired, just missing Sybil.

  This time she rode toward him as he attempted to smash the butt of his gun into Donny's face. Sybil patiently took a deep breath, making certain of her target since she knew two lives depended on her—or three lives: Jason might shoot Bombardier.

  She fired, squeezing the trigger gently. Jason slipped backward off Kilowatt, who didn't move, oddly enough. Nor did Jason.

  Sybil reached him. His eyes stared up at the sky. A neat hole over his right eye testified to her marksmanship.

  "Thank God for you, Donny. Thank God."

  She fired in the air three times, the universal signal of distress. Then her heart pounded and she shook.

  "Steady girl, steady. We did it." Bombardier nickered as he nuzzled Jason's marvelous horse.

  Three minutes later, flying through and over all obstacles, Sister and Walter reached the two humans and two horses.

  Seeing the round frozen ball of blood, Sister understood. "Donny." She half smiled.

  Sheepishly, he smiled back, for Sybil had dismounted and was hugging him fiercely, a most thrilling feeling.

  CHAPTER 30

  Personal cataclysms take many forms. All provide the same result: you're tossed into the air. Some people fall hard, others hit the ground but rise and learn, a few land on their feet, and fewer still bounce back higher than they had been cast down.

  Sister usually fell into the last category. Yesterday's event, though distressing, energized her.

  "People are like teabags. You never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water," she said to Shaker as they finished power washing the feed room. "Betty and Sybil are strong."

  "Hell of a way to find out," Shaker grunted. "I should have been with you when he first knocked you off Aztec."

  "First of all, honey chile"—she used the Southern nomenclature with warmth—"how could you know? You pulled the hounds from danger. You did the exact right thing. From the safety of the woods, there's no way you could know. It all turned out right." She paused. "He used an old dirty polo trick, actually. He put his knee behind mine and kicked my leg up high and hard. Over I went."

  "No polo where's he gone—unless they play with pitchforks."

  "By the grace of God."

  "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help," Sister smiled. "Sybil, Betty, and I are lucky, lucky women." She shrugged, tears filling her eyes.

  Shaker misted over, too. 'You never know, do you? You never know what's around the corner." He rolled the power washer back to the corner. "We could eat off the floor."

  "That's a thought."

  "Boss, I didn't get a chance to really talk to you yesterday, what with the police and all. I did pop my head in last night to see that you were okay."

  "Three-ring circus, wasn't it?" She rolled up a hose.

  "How did you know?"

  "At first, I didn't. Iffy's behavior kept me focused on her. I'm convinced she tried to shoot Gray. Wasn't a hunter catching the last days of deer season. Can't prove it, but I believe it to be so."

  "Gray was on to her."

  "Well, he was on to someone cooking the books. He couldn't discuss it, but I knew something was amiss. I thought maybe Garvey was stealing the cream. That idea soon faded, but Iffy could have worked with Garvey and discovered she was going to take the fall. A lot of thoughts flitted through my peabrain."

  "But she was guilty?" His thick eyebrows moved upwards.

  'Yes, she was—and what's even more disgusting is she killed Angel. Jason gave her the scopolamine, the stuff that's used for motion sickness and arthritis." She walked into the kennel office, Shaker following. "Tell you one thing, Ben Sidell is good. He put his nose down and followed every scent trail."

  "Thorough."

  "That he is. He figured out the insurance scam. I had no idea about that. Ben and his staff interviewed every living patient on Jason's roster. Jason did save lives, but there were people on his roster who feigned symptoms, including Alfred DuCharme. They were never sick in the first place. Jason wrote up treatment in collusion with the phony patient, and the money rolled in. When Ben went through his patient roster, since some called Jason, that tipped him off to the fact that he was under suspicion, but he was confident he'd covered his tracks."

  "Two crimes?" Shaker dropped in the chair by the desk, turning it so he could face Sister as she sat behind the desk.

  "More than that. One attempted murder. I'm counting Iffy shooting Sam. One murder: Angel. Then Iffy's murder. A brilliant insurance scam, two million dollars pilfered from Aluminum Manufacturing. The insurance companies will get involved with their own investigation, but Ben's estimate is that Jason sucked up about nine million dollars."

  "Nine million!" Shaker exclaimed.

  "It's obvious you haven't seen a hospital bill in a long time. Jason specialized in cancer. The diagnostic tests, the chemo and radiation if needed, the operations if needed, the aftercare, the pharmacy bills. It's insane. Really, it's easier to die. It's certainly cheaper."

  "I'll remember that." His wry smile was engaging.

  "Here's the thing I don't understand. By all accounts Jason was a good doctor. Why wasn't that enough? Doctors make a good living. But he must have had so
me kind of instinct, some sixth sense of who could be corrupted. Someone might have a few cancer cells on the skin. He'd talk them into letting him invent a major cancer, and they'd split the insurance money. He even went so far as to perform some operations, not cut-open-the-chest stuff, but still, in-office procedures on healthy people. Mostly he threw patients into a fake radiation and chemo program and raked in the money. Walter—who is tremendously upset, by the way—said it's not that hard to acquire x-rays and records. He thinks Jason took those of deceased people. He'd x-ray his 'patient' later, and lo and behold, the tumor or the cancer would be in remission. The cleverness of it, the attention to detail—it's almost admirable."

  "Nine million dollars." Shaker fixated on the loot.

  "Think what we could do with that money?" Sister sighed, then glanced out the window. "Sun's up."

  "Clearing up." He rose and walked to the hot plate. "Tea? Coffee?"

  "Tea."

  "Angel loathed Iffy. How could Iffy kill her without Angel knowing? I mean, Angel wouldn't take motion sickness stuff from Iffy, I don't think." Shaker returned to the main subject.

  These two, working cheek by jowl for decades—for Shaker had been hired as a young man to whip-in—had long ago divested themselves of connecting every sentence to the one prior.

  "Angel had some arthritis, common enough in someone eighty-four. Walter suggested an over-the-counter remedy. Remember, Ben had questioned him thoroughly when the news about Angel came back from the labs. First he visited Margaret DuCharme. Later, after he saw me he questioned Walter, and Walter said he'd recommended cream with scopolamine in it. No big deal; we could go down to Rite Aid and buy ajar. Iffy mentioned to Angel that much faster relief could be had by putting a patch behind her ear." Sister gratefully accepted her tea, the bag steeping. "She said this in front of Garvey. I mean Iffy was smart, and she was bold. Garvey told Ben that Iffy told him to try it if he stiffened up, and also to take shark cartilage pills."

  Shaker blushed. "I take them. Glucosamine and chondroitin, too. Works."

  "The things I find out." She put the teabag on her teaspoon and wrapped the string around it to squeeze out the excess water, then dropped the spent bag into the wastebasket.

  It landed with a plop.

  "Try it."

  "Long as it isn't a lethal dose."

  "Doesn't it have that stuff in, soopy—"

  "Scopolamine." She pronounced each syllable. "There's no way to know, but the logical conclusion is that Iffy brought in a patch loaded with the stuff and told Angel to put it behind her ear. If she didn't, no one would know it was murderous. Who else would use it? Iffy would have to find another way to kill Angel as Angel's suspicions of Iffy's stealing intensified. But Angel did put the patch on. Iffy timed it, walked into Angel's office forty minutes later—remember, Angel's age played a part in the speed of this stuff—and she removed the ear patch."

  "But where'd the two million go? Iffy was tight as a tick."

  "Went to Jason, who obviously wasn't."

  "Jesus. She killed for that bastard?"

  "She was in love with him. We'll never know what he promised her. Marriage?" She shrugged.

  Shaker absorbed this. "Iffy in love."

  "Hard to imagine."

  "He must have really played her." Shaker shook his head in disbelief and disgust.

  "We can all be fools in love. I guess it just proves that Iffy was human."

  "I guess." He sipped his tea. "Lorraine's got me off coffee completely now. She says tea is better for me."

  "Reckon it is." She rose and looked outside the window up to the house. "Gray's still asleep. Light's not on upstairs. Poor guy; he's exhausted. First he finds the cover-up at Garvey's. Then Sam gets shot. Then he's in the dark until I nearly bought the farm yesterday. I was lucky Jason didn't shoot me. He was slick; I'll give him that."

  "Why wouldn't he shoot you?" Shaker quickly amended that. "Not that I wanted him to."

  "Ha. You say." She teased him and sat back down. "Ben only had him on insurance fraud. Iffy was the embezzler, not Jason. He received the proceeds of her ill-gotten gains, but he was technically innocent. If he'd shot me yesterday he'd have had a much tougher time in court."

  "He shot Iffy."

  "We know that, but Ben still would have to prove it. And it wouldn't be easy. Jason's big bucks could have hired a lawyer that would make Sherman's march look like trespassing."

  "That's a fact." Shaker appreciated the wiles of high-paid lawyers, thanks to a divorce many years earlier.

  "That was my first clue that Jason was our man."

  "Damn. I sure didn't have any idea. All I knew was that Iffy had been planted over Jemima Lorillard. How do you get to Jason from that?"

  "He thought he was clever, but he was no fox. He didn't know squat about hounds. I mean the man hunted with us and not once during the season did he really study the hounds at work. No, he was a run and gun." She held up her hand as if holding off a protest. "I know, I know, they pay their dues and I am grateful so long as they don't interfere with hounds or staff, but really, how can you foxhunt and not study hounds? I will never understand it. If they want to run and jump all the time they should take up three-day eventing."

  "That's not easy."

  "Didn't say it was." She sat back down. "But it's not foxhunting. You need to appreciate hounds a wee bit. Wouldn't hurt to know something about quarry."

  "How did that get you to Jason?"

  "The fox knows how fabulous hound noses are. You and I know. Jason didn't. He stupidly buried Iffy over Jemima, but he only dug down about three feet. He knew Sam and Gray's schedule. He was smart about that. And he was smart enough not to just throw her over a ravine somewhere because the vultures would circle round soon enough. His one bit of luck was the twenty-four-hour thaw. Guess he would have kept her in the freezer until there was one otherwise."

  "Ugh."

  She laughed. "I know; that was mean. Anyway, he was lucky there. But hounds can smell six feet down. Not even snow is going to stop them if the ground isn't frozen deep. I suspect by planting Iffy at the Lorillard graveyard he thought to throw suspicion on Gray should Iffy come to light—which she did, a lot earlier than Jason expected. Since Iffy didn't like Gray, the reverse could also be true. It's not locked down, but I do think Jason was shrewd enough to do something like that. He had to get rid of the body somewhere; might as well create confusion with it."

  "He showed he couldn't be trusted when he whipped-in to Crawford, pardon the expression." Shaker meant that Jason's performance couldn't be called whipping-in.

  "Oh, and wasn't that a moment?" she gleefully recalled. "Crawford called Ben last night to say he knew nothing about Jason's crimes. Ben called me, and we had a good laugh."

  "He didn't. I mean I hate his guts, but I don't think he was part of it." Shaker grimaced.

  "Never underestimate the greed of the rich." She drank a large gulp. "But I agree. I don't think he knew anything. Couldn't really be part of it, anyway. Too busy chasing hounds all over Jefferson County."

  They both laughed.

  She got up again to check the bedroom light. "Still out. I'm glad he stayed last night."

  "I was shook up. You really must have been rocked."

  "Jason thought the boar would kill me. He would still be clean of murder if he was caught. Like I said, I was lucky. It's funny; you know, it didn't really hit me until I finally got home. Gray came with me, and I walked into the kitchen. Golly ran up with Raleigh and Rooster. Hit me like a brick."

  "That would be a hard way to die, gored to death."

  "Even if I didn't die; imagine the damage?" She exhaled. "Scares me, those pigs. Always has."

  A pair of headlights shone into the windows.

  Shaker stood up, holding his heavy cup. "Betty."

  "What's she doing out here? She should be primping for church." Sister stood up, too.

  Betty cut her lights, got out, hurried through the cold, and knocked three times on t
he kennel door, which she then opened. "I couldn't sleep." She threw herself on Sister. "We almost lost you."

  Sister hugged Betty. "Honey, we might have lost you, too, or that beautiful Magellan."

  They were all crying again, wiping each other's tears, then laughing.

  "Big girls don't cry," Shaker laughed as he reached in his pocket for a clean handkerchief and handed it to Betty.

  'You need it as much as I do," she sniffled as she laughed.

  "I'll be manly and use the back of my hand."

  This sent them into fits of laughter—the laughter of relief, companionship, and deep love.