“I’m sorry, my sweet.” He rubbed the side of his face against hers.
Pewter stifled a laugh.
“Bye,” they called to one another.
As Mrs. Murphy melted back into the field Paddy said, “You are nosy.”
“Well . . .” The tiger cat thought a moment. “I didn’t much care until Coty was killed and I found out he’d been in the barn the night before. I don’t know—guess I am nosy.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Another ten minutes.” Tucker babied Pewter. “Unless you want to run.”
“No, not another yard!”
“Wish I could figure out a way to get Mom or even Mim to dig up that stall,” Murphy thought out loud.
“About all she knows is when to open a can of food.” Tucker loved Harry but suffered no illusions about her mental capabilities.
“You’re right,” Murphy sadly agreed.
“Whatever is in that stall is going to cause a shitload of trouble,” Paddy sagely noted. “And Orion’s got to stand on it.”
“If he digs it up again just out of curiosity they’ll either put him in another stall to see if it’s pique on his part or put a rubber mat in the stall. I doubt he’ll dig, though.” Tucker was getting hungry herself.
“Why do you say that?” Pewter walked more briskly since she was close to home.
“He’ll be in enough trouble for bolting his stall and digging that hole in the first place. He’ll lie low for a while.” Tucker saw Mrs. Hogendobber’s house. “Hey, I’ll race you to the door.”
“No,” Pewter adamantly said, but the others took off, leaving her to grumble as she walked to the post office. “Bunch of show-offs.”
19
A small nicotine stain marred Arthur Tetrick’s lower lip. A dedicated pipe smoker, he contentedly packed in an expensive mix as he relaxed in Mim’s living room. He’d walked up to the house after Addie stalked off.
“Smartest horse. Too smart.” He tapped down the tender tobacco releasing a sweet unsmoked fragrance. “You’re going to have to put a combination lock on his stall door.”
Mim, out of the corner of her eye, saw Chark and one of her grooms chasing Orion in the field. This was a holiday, a canceled school day for the hunter, and he was making the most of it.
“Some sherry, Arthur?”
“No, no.” He waved his hand. “No libations until the sun’s over the yardarm.”
“Coffee or tea then? I have some wonderful teas that Little Marilyn gave me for my birthday.”
“A bracing darjeeling would do me a world of good.” He held the match over the bowl of his burl pipe, the bowl shining with the use of many years, the draw perfect. That same pipe today would cost well over $250, so Arthur cherished it. No true pipe smoker would stick the flame right into the bowl just as no true cigar smoker would ever put the flame to the end of the cigar.
Mim shook a tiny bell. Gretchen appeared at the doorway. Gretchen and Mim had been together so long neither could imagine life without the other no matter how unequal the terms. “Yes, Miz Big.” Her shorthand for Big Marilyn.
“Some darjeeling for the gentleman and some Constant Comment for me.”
“Morning, Gretchen.” Arthur nodded.
“Morning, Mr. Arthur. Cream or sugar?”
“Cream, well, half-and-half if you have it.”
“Oh, Miz Big, she got everything.” Gretchen turned, her wiry frame almost leaving a puff of smoke, she turned so fast.
“Mim, I’m here on a mercy mission.” He cleared his throat. “As you know, Adelia comes into her inheritance November fourteenth, the day after the Colonial Cup. It’s a considerable fortune, as you are aware. At that time she may elect to separate her share from Charles’s share, which, of course, I oppose. Adelia is a lovely, lovely girl with absolutely no head for business. She should never be allowed to get her hands on her money. The interest is sufficient to allow her to live very well indeed.”
“Bonds. Are you talking bonds, Arthur?” Mim shrewdly asked.
“Well, yes and no. As it now stands the Valiant resources are so conservatively invested that they reap barely six percent per annum. I have deliberately invested conservatively so as to run no risks until they inherit. Once that happens, I would still advise them to be prudent but to diversify more than I did when they were minors. They can afford a bit of risk, you know, keep the bulk in secure investments while targeting a small portion for high-risk/high-yield investments. My fear is, Adelia will take her money and—” He held up his hands. “Shiny cars, the usual foolish pleasures . . . Mim, you and I have both seen impulsive scions run through more money than Adelia will inherit. Large as the amount is, no well is bottomless. She greatly respects you. She finds me an old bore.”
“Impossible,” Mim said brightly as Gretchen delivered the tea.
Mim’s tea service, which had been in the family on her mother’s side since George III, caught the light, holding it prisoner to the lustrous silver. No one with an eye for beauty could behold her tea service without a slight gasp of appreciation.
“Need anything else?” Gretchen smiled.
“New knees.”
“I told you not to hunker down there in that garden this summer, but you didn’t listen to me. You don’t listen to anyone.”
“I’m listening to you now, Gretchen dear.”
“Yes, Miz Big, dear.” Gretchen put her hands on her hips. “Mr. Arthur, you talk to her. She is the most stubborn woman God ever put on this earth. She don’t listen to me. She don’t listen to her husband—’course, I don’t listen to mine either. She is just a whirlwind of opinion. Uh-huh.” That said, Gretchen wheeled and vacated the room.
“She is one of a kind.” Arthur chuckled.
“Thank God. I don’t think I could stand two.”
Mim used the delicate silver tongs to drop a sugar cube into her Constant Comment, making it even sweeter. “Now let me understand you fully. You want me to tell Adelia to be a bit more aggressive with her investments but not to get crazy and, of course, never, ever, on pain of death, to touch the principal. Ideally she will keep the money together with Charles’s.” A beat. “And you’d like to remain as an adviser, or in some capacity.”
“Um . . .” He nodded in the affirmative and placed his pipe in the pipe ashtray that Mim kept in the living room as he delicately brought the thin teacup to his lips. “I say, this is marvelous tea. My compliments to Little Marilyn.”
“Before I have this financial meeting with her, I want to know who you are recommending for handling the portfolio. After all, out of duty you must recommend people other than yourself. We must hope the children will be wise enough to stick with you.”
“I rather like Ed Bancroft at Strongbow and McKee.”
“Yes, he’s very good, but he’s older. They might work better with someone in his or her thirties.”
Arthur paled. “Too young, too young. A young person hasn’t ridden the market through a few cycles. They panic during contractions.” He refused to call a recession or a depression just what it was.
“Good point.” She leaned back in the silk-covered chair. “Well, you seem to be the best person for the job. There’s always Arnie Skaar, should they wish a change—you know, an assertion of independence.”
“Yes, Arnie’s good.”
“Will you be saddened if you lose your job?” she forthrightly asked.
“Oh, I never thought of it as a job, and in some ways Charles has been Adelia’s guardian more than I have. Really, I’ll continue to guide them as best I can no matter what happens. I was shocked, when Marylou disappeared, to discover she’d made me her executor. I thought she was so besotted with Mickey Townsend that she might have foolishly changed her will. Devastated as I was to lose Marylou, I was heartened by her caution on this matter.” He drew on his pipe. “Charles and I have been able to draw together. Adelia favored Mickey, and, well—women are so unpredictable.” He held up his hands as if in supplication.
“You’ve done your best. Being anyone’s executor is a time-consuming and sad process. I was Mother’s executor, and I learned more in that one year than I think I did in all the years before.” Mim poured Arthur more tea. “Terrible news this morning. It’s giving us all the chills.”
“What?” He inhaled the delicate yet strong tea aroma.
“You haven’t heard?” Mim put her cup and saucer down.
“No.”
“Coty Lamont was stabbed through the heart on a dirt road off Route Twenty-two. Dumped in the back of his pickup truck.”
“Good God!” Arthur’s cup slipped from his hand. He captured it with his saucer but slopped tea everywhere. “I’m so sorry, Mim.”
“Scotchgard.” She tinkled for Gretchen again. “Works wonders.”
“Ma’am.” Gretchen perceived the situation as soon as the “Ma’am” was out of her wide and generous mouth. “I’ll be back.”
She returned quickly with dishtowels, mopping up Arthur and dabbing the rug. “No harm done.”
“I do apologize. It was such a shock.”
“What shock?” Gretchen wouldn’t budge.
“Oh, Gretchen, Sheriff Shaw called to tell me there’s been another murder. Coty Lamont.”
“That handsome good-for-nothing jockey? Why, he used to ride for you, didn’t he, Mr. Arthur, back when you was in the game?”
“Yes, yes, I gave him his start. I gave a lot of men a leg up, so to speak. He left me to ride for Mickey Townsend and then moved on from there. That’s the way of the world—the young and ambitious, climbing the ladder.” He wiped his brow with a neatly folded linen handkerchief. “This is too much. Why didn’t Adelia and Charles say something?”
“They don’t know yet. Rick just called. I’d like to think I was his first call, but I doubt it. I’m going to buy one of those CBs that lets me listen to police calls.”
“No, you aren’t,” Gretchen scolded. “You’ll be running all over the county. Bad enough that Mr. Jim does it. ’Course, being mayor he has to, I guess.”
“Something’s dreadfully wrong,” Mim blurted out. “Arthur, you officiate at different races. Surely, you must know something.”
“No.” He wiped his brow again. “Coty Lamont. It doesn’t seem possible. And stabbed through the heart, you say?”
Mim nodded. “Apparently he wasn’t as easy to kill as Nigel Danforth was because Rick says he was shot first. Of course, they’ll do an autopsy, but he believes the shot preceded the stabbing. This grotesque symbol—the stiletto through the heart. And another playing card.”
“What do you mean?” Gretchen asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
“Gretchen . . . oh, sit down and have some tea. I’ll get a crick in my neck turning around to talk to you.”
Gretchen quickly fetched another cup, eagerly plopped down and helped herself to some of the darjeeling.
“You see,” Mim intoned, “the first man murdered had a playing card over his heart. The Queen of Clubs. Fair Haristeen found him. And Arthur, I must talk to you about Fair. Anyway, this second murder—” She paused. “The Queen of Spades.”
“Mojo.” Gretchen downed her tea in one big swallow.
Arthur smiled indulgently. “I don’t think anyone knows voodoo in central Virginia.”
“Mojo.” She clamped her jaw shut.
“Well, if it isn’t mojo, it still means something.”
“Means something wild. You stab a man through the heart, you got to get real close. You got to look in his eyes and smell his breath. You got to hate him worse than the angel hate the Evil One. I know ’bout these things.”
Arthur shuddered. “Gretchen, you are very graphic.”
“When was the last time you saw Coty?” Mim asked him.
“Montpelier. I was always proud of him, you know—that I saw his talent early and encouraged it. I emphatically did not encourage his arrogance.”
Mim’s tone flattened a bit. “But he was arrogant—arrogant and too clever by half.”
“Ain’t clever now.”
“That’s just it, Gretchen. Maybe he was, and like I said, he was too clever by half always playing odds with the bookies through fronts like Linda Forloines. No one could catch him at it.” She smoothed over her skirt. “I suppose I’ll go down and tell Charles and Adelia. Arthur, I’ll wait a day or two to have that financial discussion with Adelia.”
“Of course, of course. Well, I’d better be heading home. I was going to run some errands in town, then go to the office, but I think I’ll go straight home and, well—ponder.”
“Nothing to ponder. Somebody got a backwards passion. It’s worse than hate—reverse love.” Gretchen picked up the silver tray and ambled out.
20
“I resent that. I resent this whole damned line of questioning!” Mickey Townsend roared in Rick Shaw’s face.
Rick, accustomed to such displays, calmly folded his hands as Cynthia Cooper, behind him, took notes. “I don’t think there’s any way to make this pleasant. Nigel Danforth rode for you and—”
“Rode for me for two months. How the hell did I know he was, uh—a non-person?”
“You could have checked his green card.”
“Well, I didn’t. He was a decent jock and I let it go, so call down the damned bloodhounds from Immigration on me. They’ll harass me for hiring a skilled Brit, yet they let riffraff pour over the border and go on welfare and we pay for it!”
“Mr. Townsend, I wouldn’t know about that,” Rick Shaw replied dryly. “But you are a successful trainer. You have knowledge of the steeplechase world, and two jockeys have been killed within a week of one another under similar circumstances. You knew them both. And they both rode for you at various times.”
His face reddened. “Balls! Everyone in the game knew Coty Lamont. I don’t like your line of questioning, Shaw, and I don’t much like you.”
“You’re accustomed to having your own way, aren’t you?”
“Most successful people are, Sheriff.” Townsend folded his burly arms across his chest. “So I’m a prick. That doesn’t make me a killer.”
“Did you owe Nigel Danforth money?”
“Absolutely not. I pay at the end of the day’s race.”
“Easier when you don’t have withholding taxes and Social Security to worry about, isn’t it?”
“You’re damned right it is, and taxes will destroy this nation. You mark my words.”
“Did you owe Coty Lamont money?”
“Why would I owe Coty Lamont money?” The bushy eyebrows knitted together.
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“No.”
“Did you like Coty Lamont?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“That’s my business. He was a talented son of a bitch. That’s all I’m prepared to say.”
“We’ll get a lot further along if you cooperate with me.” He swiveled to exchange looks with Coop, who frowned. This was part of their routine before recalcitrant subjects. They could play “good cop, bad cop” but Mick was too smart for that game.
“Well, let me try another tack then. Did either Nigel Danforth or Coty Lamont owe you money?”
“No.” Mick rolled his forefinger over his neat black mustache. “Yes.”
“Who and how much?”
“Nigel owed me three hundred forty-seven dollars, a collection of poker debts, and Coty owed, oh, about one hundred twenty-two dollars.”
“You didn’t like Coty but you played poker with him?”
“Hey, there’s down time in this business. I don’t have to love a guy to let him sit in on a poker game.”
“You’re a good player?”
Mick shrugged.
Cynthia chimed in, “Everyone says you’re slick as an eel.”
“They say that because they don’t remember which cards are out and which ones are still in the deck. If you’re playing stud, that’s all you gotta do.” He shrugged those powerful should
ers again. “I’m not so smart.”
Rick rubbed his receding hairline. It was almost as if he were searching for the hair. “Coop, can you think of anything?”
“One little thing—Mr. Townsend, do the card suits have a special significance?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what if—crazy, I know, but what if I had a royal flush in hearts and you had one in spades. Who would win?”
“I would. The suits in ascending order are clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades.”
“But wouldn’t most people declare it a draw?” Rick puzzled. “I mean most people wouldn’t know the significance of the suits. At least, I don’t think they would. If a situation like that occurred, wouldn’t you draw off the deck, high card takes it?”
“In a situation with two royal flushes, you’d both have cardiac arrest and it wouldn’t matter. The odds are impossible.”
“But you know the significance of the suits,” Rick pressed.
“Yes, I do.”
“Isn’t there another way to look at the suits, a non-poker way?” Cynthia asked.
He leaned back in his chair. “Sure.”
“Can you tell me what that is?”
“You’ve done your homework. You tell me.” He stared at her.
“All right.” She smiled at him. “Clubs represent humans at their basest. Spades is a step up. Instead of clobbering one another, they work the earth. Diamonds is a higher level than that, obviously, but the highest type of human would fall into the heart category.”
“Well put.” Mickey smiled back at the young officer. He couldn’t help himself. She was nice-looking.
“A club and a spade have been used,” Rick drawled.
“So next comes a diamond. Somebody rich.” Mickey folded his arms across his chest. “Won’t be me. I’m not rich.”
21
Totem, a Thoroughbred hotter than Hades, ditched most people who climbed on his back. The only reason he wasn’t turned into Alpo was that he could run like blazes. Dr. D’Angelo had bought him on sight from Mickey Townsend at Montpelier. Linda Forloines, furious that she wasn’t in on the deal and hence got no commission, plotted how to get rid of the animal.
Murder, She Meowed Page 11