The Last Virginia Gentleman

by Michael Kilian

  Someone had gotten at least some of the horses in the burning building out of their stalls, and they were running loose all over the grounds. A couple of grooms were chasing after them, trying to herd them into the ring. But the pasture gate was wide open, and, in ones and twos, they were making their way through it into the open. A man Showers recognized as a house servant was uselessly directing a stream of water from a plastic garden hose into the now towering flames. Two others, Alixe’s cook and a housemaid, stood unhelpfully nearby, staring at the fire in shock and stupefaction.

  “Forget that!” Showers shouted at the man with the hose. “Soak down the other building! Hurry up! Cinders are landing on the roof!”

  The man, more used to orders than independent thought, hurried to do as bidden. Showers turned to the women.

  “Did you call the fire department?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, get some more hoses and help him! Keep that roof wet!”

  He hurried away, stumbling over a mound of earth as he hastened to the pasture gate, lifting and pulling it closed, just as two of the animals came pounding furiously up, veering away as their avenue of escape closed before them. Fastening the gate closed, scraping his knuckles on the rough iron latch, Showers looked back to the stables. He could hear horses kicking and bellowing inside the building that was as yet untouched by fire.

  Alixe’s huge front yard was enclosed by fencing—as good as a corral. A farm truck with a horse trailer on its hitch was parked alongside the barn. Showers went to it, found keys under the floor mat, where he knew Alixe kept them in her farm vehicles, and drove the rig away from the building. Bumping over the yard, he took it around in a circle to the side of the stable building that faced the front yard, pulling to a stop perpendicular to the fence, the truck and trailer blocking the lane that ran between it and the stable. Then he kicked and bashed down the top and middle rails on one small section of fence. He’d created a corral.

  He was taking too much time. The smoke and heat were bitter. Coughing, he hurried into the near stable. The frightened horses inside were raising bedlam in their stalls. One had kicked through a stall door and half pushed himself through it. Showers snatched up a halter and started his desperate work, one by one catching hold of the animals and dragging and hauling them out of the barn and into the sanctuary of the front yard. He had gotten four into it by the time the Dandytown volunteer fire department arrived. With the help of the grooms and one of the firemen, he had all of the animals out of the barn and in the enclosure by the time Alixe roared up.

  “What the hell is this?” she bellowed.

  Just then the center section of the burning barn collapsed with a great crash of timber and a hiss of exploding, spewing flame. Becky’s frightened face appeared next to Alixe’s.

  “We were at the inn,” she said. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Showers replied. “It was burning when I got here. You’ve got loose horses all over. Some of them got out through the back pasture.”

  “Shit!” Alixe said. She repeated the word over and over. Becky went running after one of the horses still in the yard.

  The firemen had run a hose to Alixe’s pond and two powerful streams of water were arcing from their pumper into the collapsing barn.

  “What do I do?” Alixe said. “What the hell do I do?”

  Showers didn’t know what to say. His own front gate was open. The horses that had run into his yard could be out on the highway by now.

  “We have to get after the loose ones,” he said. “They’ll be all over the county if we don’t.”

  More vehicles were pulling up from the road. Horse people, coming to help.

  “Everyone who was in the bar must be coming over,” Alixe said. “Fat lot of fucking good they’re going to do. They’re all drunk. Shit. So am I.” She turned to a groom. “Don’t stand there! Round up some of the calmer mounts and get some saddles on them! And get some flashlights!”

  Becky trotted by, riding a horse bareback, her hands clutching the mane. The flames from the burning stable building continued to subside, as much from lack of fuel as from the quenching water.

  “You up to riding, David?” Alixe said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, let’s get after them!”

  They worked on horseback and on foot through the night and well into the early morning. One horse had crashed through a barbed wire fence into a brush pit and injured itself so badly it had to be shot. All the others, except for two, were recaptured and brought to safety. Most had gotten no farther than the back reaches of Alixe’s farm or the woods behind Showers’ place, though three had made it out onto the road and were found at sunrise, grazing on a lawn nearly a mile distant. Two others were still missing. After sending Becky and the others who had been helping them back to get some sleep, Alixe and Showers made a last circuit of the meandering fence line encompassing their properties, then turned their tired mounts back to her stables. The sun was rising high, already hot.

  The one building had been completely destroyed and a long connecting shed badly damaged. Otherwise, the farm survived intact. Alixe counted herself lucky.

  “Never a fire,” she said. “Never in all these years. I always figured if I got one it would be a hell of a lot worse than this.”

  “It’s bad enough,” Showers said, remounting. “I wish I’d gotten to it sooner.”

  “Listen, m’dear,” said Alixe, reaching from her horse to slap his shoulder. “If it hadn’t been for you, I might have lost the whole damn thing.”

  They trotted into the stable yard. Smoke was still rising from the piles of ash and charred timber. Most of the firemen were gone, but the sheriff and a few of his deputies were on the scene, gathered around something in the ashes that Alixe feared was one of the still missing horses.

  It wasn’t. The charred, skeletal, smoking body was that of a human. A deputy, using a rake, rolled it out of the acrid debris. The face was hideous, teeth exposed in a macabre, fleshless grin, empty eye sockets huge and staring. One of the other deputies turned away, gagging. Showers had once served a tour of duty in Central America. He’d seen such bodies before.

  “That must be Joe Smitts,” Alixe said. “He’s been missing all night.”

  “He saved your horses,” Showers said. “He got them all out.”

  Alixe turned to her other grooms, who were standing nearby.

  “And just where were you gentlemen when all this started?”

  They looked at each other sheepishly. “We were in the show barn,” said one. “A little card game. Joe heard the horses acting up, and went to check on ’em. I guess that’s him.”

  Sheriff Cooke took the rake and nudged the head of the burned man a little.

  “He must have fallen under the horses,” he said. “The side of his head is caved in.”

  They went to her kitchen. After Alixe produced a bottle and glasses, they sank into two of the antique wooden chairs set around her huge round oak table. Alixe took a large slug of her whiskey, coughed, and then leaned back her head.

  “There’re two horses still unaccounted for,” he said.

  “Something funny here, David,” said Alixe. “I only own two bay horses. Only two in all that stock. Now, we didn’t exactly take a careful census out there, but I don’t recall seeing either of them in our roundup. I’ll bet you anything, David, those two missing horses are my bays.”

  “The Queen Tashamore horse is a bay,” Showers said.

  “He is that.” She emptied her glass with another gulp and then slammed it down hard on the tabletop. “He is that, Captain Showers. Billy Bonning tried to get his hands on that horse at the auction. Billy works for Bernie Bloch, and Bloch wanted that horse.”

  Showers rubbed his chin. “I’m too tired to think straight,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not. I’ve got a dead boy out there. And at least one dead horse.”

  “Alixe, Bloch is certainly not my idea of a horseman, bu
t he wouldn’t set fire to a barn just to get at that bay. The man is worth a billion dollars. He can afford any horse in the country.”

  “Billy Bonning would do it. That wretch would do anything if you paid him enough. You know how quick a barn can burn. How could one groom get all those horses out of their stalls without any of them even getting singed, and then end up a piece of roast meat himself?”

  “He was injured.”

  “Right. Stepped on, the sheriff said. By the very last horse? If the barn was already on fire when he got there, half those animals would have perished. Most of them would have. I’ll bet you anything that fire was started after they were all out of their stalls.”

  “A parting gesture.”

  “More than a gesture.” She poured more whiskey. “They were covering their tracks. Hoping all the horses would run off—as they might have done, if it weren’t for you.”

  They sat drinking without speaking. Finally, Showers stood up. “The sheriff probably hasn’t left. Let’s go talk to him.”

  “No, no. That lard-bellied cracker would just think we were nuts. I don’t want to bring in the law until an insurance investigator takes a look at this.”

  “There’s something else we can do. I’ll go over to Dandytown Bloodstock and see about this Coggins report.”

  “You do that, David. I’m going to find out where Billy Bonning was last night.” She stood up. “And we better give some thought to moving that new bay stallion of yours to someplace other than your barn.”

  Ned Haney was as much a member of the Dandytown horse country aristocracy as Showers and the Fairbrothers. His family had founded Dandytown Bloodstock in the 1880s and had been conducting semiannual auctions there ever since, in addition to operating a feed, stud, and general livestock sales business year round. Ned divided his time between Dandytown and branch operations in South Carolina and upstate New York, and was often in Europe. But he was always in town during the steeplechase and fox hunting seasons. He and Showers had known each other since childhood. They trusted each other.

  “It’s a bad Coggins, no doubt about that,” said Haney. “We’ve had a few of those over the years from that particular vet, rest his soul. Usually we catch them but, hell, David, we ran an awful lot of horses through here in that auction.” He flipped open a notebook on his desk. “Two hundred and seven head, including the private sales. But everything else seems to be in order. And the party with a grievance—if there is a grievance—is this May Moody, not you or Alixe. If there’s a claim to be filed, legally it has to be done by her. And, speaking of irregularities, Alixe bought that bay and sold him to you without obtaining a veterinarian’s certificate for either transaction.”

  Haney leaned back in his wooden swivel chair. He had dark hair going to gray and a very English face. He was married to an extremely attractive horsewoman from South Carolina, who spent much of her time there. There was talk of other women in his life. Lenore’s name had been mentioned.

  “It isn’t that I want a claim pressed against you, Ned. I just want an investigation. This is a counterfeit horse. I’m sure of it. Alixe has very strong doubts about the animal, too.”

  “You said the lip tattoo is correct. There’s been no alteration.”

  “We don’t know where that stallion was foaled, no matter what it said in your catalogue. There are countries where they don’t tattoo registration numbers. England is one of them.”

  “You’re suggesting that animal was smuggled into the country from abroad, brought down here, and then put up for sale at public auction open to all comers?” He went to his notebook again. “It only brought ten thousand.”

  “That’s about all the Queen Tashamore pedigree is worth now, the way the line’s been bred. That stallion is worth much more than that pedigree. It’s a different horse, Ned. Alixe and I figure it’s a two-year-old. You listed it as five.”

  “Even if true, why would anyone go to all that trouble for a mere ten thousand dollars?”

  “If there had been more bidders, the price might have gone a damn sight higher. The sheriff kept a lot of people back at the inn because of the Vicky Clay murder—including Bernard Bloch. I’m told he was interested in the horse.”

  “He paid a quarter of a million for the last horse he bought from me. Going by the papers, this stallion wouldn’t be in his league.”

  Showers fought back drowsiness. His long, hard night without sleep and his morning drink with Alixe were beginning to catch up with him.

  “What do you know about the seller? That outfit in New Jersey?”

  Haney shrugged. “Not much. They’ve only been in business a few years. They’re fiat-track people. Won quite a few races in New York.”

  “Why would they come down here to sell a horse? Why not use Fasig-Tipton up at Saratoga, or one of the other big concerns?”

  “We’re not that small, David.” Haney smiled, then shrugged again. “Perhaps there really is something wrong with that stallion—a congenital defect that Meade Clay somehow managed not to notice. Perhaps they thought they could dump it on one of us country bumpkins down here. That’s been tried before, though we’ve always caught it. But you say he seems in good shape.”

  “Very much so. He’s magnificent.”

  “If you want to file a claim on those grounds, that’s another matter. But you know the conditions of sale.” Haney picked up one of his catalogues and read from it. “‘Any horse sold in this sale which has a condition that must be announced as provided before time of sale, and is not so announced, shall be subject to return to consignor with refund of purchase price and reimbursement for reasonable expenses for keep, maintenance, and transportation of the horse from fall of the hammer—’”

  “I know that by heart, Ned. So do you.”

  Haney waved away the protest. “‘… provided that within seven days after date of sale the auctioneer receives written notice from the buyer and a written veterinary certificate, based on examination by the certifying veterinarian, that such a condition exists, and the same existed at time of sale, such times being of the essence. All warranties terminate seven days from date of sale, after which buyer shall have no right of return.’”

  He set down the catalogue. “We haven’t brought up the calendar, have we? It’s been seven days and then some. Seems to me that all this is pretty moot.”

  Showers felt as though he were thrashing around in a jungle, in the middle of the night.

  “Ned, you and I have done business for years. Our fathers did, and their fathers. I’m not bringing all this up just to be frivolous, or because I’ve lost my mind. Something is damned wrong.”

  Haney stood up as well. “If you’re convinced of that, David, that’s good enough for me. I’m not about to let any Dandytown Bloodstock transaction pass under a cloud. All I’ve been doing here is try to make clear all the procedural difficulties you face. Believe me, please. If there’s anything I can do to help you with this, I will.”

  “Just tell me what action there is that I can take.”

  “The most logical thing is to go to the courts. You can file suit over most anything. But you’d have to sue Alixe, and she’d have to sue that Moody woman, and she’d have to sue the people in New Jersey. It could take years, though. And you’d need a lot more proof than the suspicions you’ve brought up to me.”

  Showers nodded. “What else?”

  “Well, you could file a complaint with the Thoroughbred Association, challenging the pedigree. A notarized letter will do. Or you can write a letter to me, and I’ll pass it on to those New Jersey people with one of my own.”

  Showers reached and shook Haney’s hand. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Everything you suggested.”

  Showers stopped at Alixe’s farm before going on to his own. She was still out, and had not said when she would return. The firemen and sheriff’s party had gone, but her stablehands and several of her house servants were o
ut in the yard, still working to clean up the mess. A number of the recaptured horses had been put back into the surviving stable building, but many were still in the fenced front yard.

  “Put them in my barn,” Showers said. “Most of the stalls are vacant. You’ll have to bring over some feed.”

  “Yes sir, Captain Showers. Miss Percy will sure appreciate that.”

  “Tell her she’s welcome to anything she needs.”

  Becky’s Toyota was parked outside her cottage. He left her undisturbed and went directly to the main house. He’d attend immediately to the letters Haney had suggested.

  The pain in his injured leg had returned. His lower back ached as well. Ignoring this, he went to his closet and retrieved his typewriter, setting it up on his desk and inserting a piece of stationery with his farm’s letterhead on it.

  The words wouldn’t come. An overwhelming grogginess did. And then sleep.

  He was awakened by the phone. It was Alixe.

  “You all right, Captain?” she said. “You sound like you’ve just crawled out of the grave.”

  “I dozed off in my chair. I should have just gone to bed.”

  “Wish I could have joined you, love. Been all over Dandytown. We found the two bays. They were in an orchard on the Berryville road. Must have been five fucking miles from my place.”

  “A lot of fences between here and there.”

  “Yes. Very interesting, that. I’ve done some detective work, too. Found out how Billy Bonning spent the night, or at least how he says he spent the night. The son of a bitch was fucking that new Charlottesville woman of his at the Raiders Motel.”

  “He told you that?”

  “No, but a bartender did. The owner of that filthy place says he saw them go in and saw them come out this morning. But, who knows, maybe he fucked her to sleep and then slipped out to burn my barn. Maybe she’s just covering for him.”