Hotspur

CHAPTER 6

The Hapsburg saphhire glittered on the small glass-topped table. Outside, the long summer twilight cloaked the grand old trees surrounding Roughneck Farm, and scarlet tendrils of sunset seemed to ensnare the wisteria that climbed all over the back porch. The rose and gold light reflected off the windowpanes of the neat gardening shed, casting intricate designs across the emerald lawn.

Tedi and Sister sat on the screened-in back porch. The humidity was particularly oppressive this evening. Sister drank dark hot tea while Tedi nursed a martini as well as a glass of iced green tea. The mercury was dropping with evening’s approach. The humidity seemed determined to hang on. Sister believed drinking a hot drink on a hot day kept you healthier. No one else could stand anything hot.

Raleigh and Golliwog were curled up together in Raleigh’s Black Watch plaid dog bed. Rooster, Peter Wheeler’s lovely harrier, was stretched out in his own bed, covered in the Wallace tartan, next to Raleigh. Peter, an ex-lover of Sister’s, had bequeathed his handsome hound to her and his entire estate to the Jefferson Hunt to be administered solely by the master—not the Board of Directors. Peter’s eight decades on this earth had taught him a benign dictatorship was infinitely preferable to democracy. He died peacefully last year, a quiet end to a productive life.

Both Sister and Tedi now knew Nola had not died peacefully, a fact they were currently grappling with.

The animals listened intently, even Golly, who under normal circumstances would have told Raleigh how lucky he was to have her in his special porch bed.

“I knew. I always knew. So did you,” Tedi said sadly.

Sister heard a squirrel clamber up the wisteria on her way to her nest in the attic. “We hoped. We always hoped.”

“I’m done crying. I know, Janie, that I can be all over the map, as you say.” She held up her hand to quell the protest. “I am a little different. I was never able to think the way you do. You think in sequences, you see patterns. Edward’s like that. I don’t. I gather it all up in one big basket, then dump it on the table and start sorting. But I eventually find what I’m looking for even if I drive everyone crazy doing it. It’s just the way my mind works.”

“You are an original,” Sister said, smiling. “I’m lucky to know you.”

“Do you realize we’ve known each other all our lives? But it seems like a split second. I don’t understand it. We’re seventy-one years old and I don’t feel old, I don’t act old, at least I don’t think I do. I don’t know where the years are. Are they hiding in my pocket? Are they wherever Nola is? What happened?”

Sister shrugged. “Wherever they are we sure packed a lot into them.” She sipped her tea.

“Yes, we did.” Tedi inhaled, her bright blue eyes flickering for a moment. “I’m not avoiding the subject.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“I know Nola was murdered. I didn’t need the dental chart to prove those bones were Nola’s any more than I needed Ben Sidell to tell me her skull had been crushed. A blunt instrument, he said, or a large rock. They aren’t going to find the answers to this under a microscope, it’s been too long. Too long.”

“Well, he has to go by the book. Otherwise he won’t stay sheriff for long.”

“I know that. I just want to know who killed her. I still think it was Guy Ramy. Dog in a manger. I can’t have her, so no one else can have her.”

“But Nola was perfectly capable of running off with Guy and he was madly in love with her.”

“They all were. And she wouldn’t have run off with Guy. Headstrong as she was, Janie, Nola loved money. I think she might have allowed herself a flaming affair. And enjoy it all the more knowing I did not approve nor did her father. But marry Guy?” She shook her head.“No.”

“I think she would.”

“Why?”

“She knew in time you and Edward would forgive her. You’d have made a settlement on her with the appearance of the first grandchild. After all, you acquiesced to Ken in time.”

A silence followed this.

“Maybe.”

“No maybe about it. Nola could play her father like a harp, and eventually you’d have given in as well. So long as she was happy.”

“He wouldn’t have made her happy.” Tedi’s voice dropped a quarter of an octave.

“Tedi, there’s ripe disagreement on that subject. People started talking about it in 1980, when Nola and Guy first fell in love. Opening Hunt. You could feel the electricity.”

“Odd. They’d known each other all their lives.”

“Not so odd. He went away to college, graduated, put in two years in the service. She hadn’t seen him, hardly, for six years.”

“I don’t understand it.”

“No one does. That’s why love is love.” Sister smiled. “Freshen your drink?”

“I’ll do it.” Tedi rose, walking to the small bar in the pantry just off the kitchen, the wide, uneven heart pine planks creaking underfoot.

A larger bar, more elaborate, still stood ready between the living room and the dining room. Raymond had loved to throw big parties. Sister had gotten out of the habit after his death in 1991; she figured hunting was her form of throwing a big party. Although she did always have the Opening Hunt from her farm, with a huge breakfast following at the house. Raymond and Ray both had gloried in these occasions. She rather more endured them and hoped she was a gracious hostess. The glitter on the table held her eye. Two diamonds of two karats each flanked the eleven-karat sapphire and picked up all available light, throwing it back on the large square-cut blue stone. Sapphires are usually too muddy or too pale. This one was a perfect royal blue—like a strip of startling water in the Caribbean.

Tedi called from the pantry, “You could pour me more tea, please.”

Sister poured tea from a graceful cut-glass pitcher, ice cubes tinkling inside, into Tedi’s frosted glass.

Tedi rejoined her. “Are you surprised I’m not crying? I’m not on the floor frothing at the mouth? It’s not that I don’t care. I do. I care passionately, but I don’t have one tear left in my body. And I don’t trust my emotions.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Nola disappeared I went to pieces. There’s really no other way to put it. Fragments of Tedi Prescott”—she used her maiden name—“were scattered from here to Washington and back. I wore out the road driving up there to the FBI. I just knew Paul Ramy wasn’t up to the task. Especially when Guy went missing. I was a total wreck. I regret that.”

“Honey, any mother would have been torn to shreds inside.”

“Yes, but I missed things. If I could have kept my wits about me, especially in those early days, I believe I might have picked up information, clues, nuances. I didn’t. All I felt was pain. I believe we were very close to the killer, to finding out who the killer was, and he slipped through our fingers to land God knows where.”

“We were all distraught.”

“Which works to a killer’s advantage.”

“Can you go over it again? Will it upset you?”

“No. I mean, I have been over it. I last saw Nola at Sorrel Buruss’s party. I think that’s the last time any of us saw her alive. We’d patched things up in the stable before hunting that day. She apologized and so did I. Had a whopping fight the night before over Guy. Anyway, she was in high spirits, I was in neutral spirits. Edward was grumpy but putting a good face on it since we were at Sorrel’s. Fontaine was an ass, as usual.” She mentioned the handsome husband of Sorrel. “Since Nola wouldn’t go to bed with him, he thought Sybil might be honored at his attentions. She slapped him square in the face. Sorrel, accustomed to his outrages, simply flipped him an ice cube to hold to his face. Nola laughed and laughed. Fontaine’s face grew redder and redder. I was furious when I saw Fontaine pressure Sybil. She’s a bit retiring and perhaps too anxious to please. I remember being very proud of her that she stopped that insufferable womanizer. Do you remember?”

“I do. And Peter Wheeler made a toast to Sybil. Let’s see, ‘Here’s to Sybil, beloved of Apollo. Let her be an example to all women.’ ”

“Everyone was pretty well lubricated except you. I used to wish you’d drink with us, and now I’m glad you never did. You were smarter than all of us, and you look better for it, too. Ah well, then.” Tedi sipped some martini, chased it with green tea. “Nola left without saying good-bye. The last time I saw her.”

Sister raised her index finger. “I overheard Sybil saying that she and Ken would meet Nola at the C&O downstairs. Some band was playing they wanted to hear. But I was talking to everyone and I can’t say I was paying particular attention to Nola.”

The C&O was and remained a popular restaurant and nightspot over in Albemarle County.

“And I didn’t know until the next morning that Nola never showed up. It wasn’t that unusual for her to say she’d be somewhere and not show. Nola was always open to a better offer, her words.” Tedi’s memories, bitter-sweet, haunted her. “I didn’t know until I saw Sybil at church. I was furious that Nola had stayed out all night but, well, it wasn’t the first time. I didn’t start to worry until Sunday supper.”

Leaning back in her chair, Sister glanced outside at the sky, darkening from turquoise to cobalt, then back at Tedi. “Here’s what I think, knowing what we now know. Nola was killed sometime between seven in the evening and early the next morning. You and Edward were building the covered bridge. The earth was still soft around it, remember? She had to have been killed in that time frame, because people don’t go burying their victims in broad daylight. Whoever killed her had to have known about the bridge work. That was a drought summer. The earth was hard as rock. Thanks to the bulldozers, the embankment and the base for the bridge weren’t packed tight yet. You were just putting the roof on the bridge. So whoever killed Nola knew that.”

“That’s right,” Tedi whispered.

“And we’d hunted through there Saturday morning. I’ve checked my hunt records.” Sister, like many masters, kept a detailed hunt diary. “We had forty-one people the first day of cubbing.”

“Everyone in the county knew about the bridge work,” Tedi said, a wave of hopelessness washing over her. She fought it off. “A lot of people knew, anyway.” Tedi reached for the ring. “I should have never given this ring to Nola. For her it was the Hapless sapphire, just as it was for its first owner.”

“Old sorrows,” Sister said.

“It was made for the Empress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Elizabeth. She had dark hair, was a wonderful, wonderful horsewoman like Nola. Loved foxhunting. Rented hunting boxes in England and flew her fences. But hers was not a happy life. Her son committed suicide, and she was assassinated. I often wonder, if she’d lived, would Franz Josef have signed the Declaration of War of 1918?”

As a foxhunter, Sister had always found the empress’s story irresistible. “As I recall, the Bancrofts bought this right after the First World War,” she said. “Nolan couldn’t have worried too much about the history of the stone if he gave it to his wife. She lived a long, happy life.” Nolan was Edward’s grandfather, who had lived through the terrifying action at Belleau Wood during the Great War.

Tedi held the ring up to the light; bits of rainbow struck off the diamonds, little dots splashing the walls. She slipped the ring on the middle finger of her left hand. “This was on my baby’s finger when she died. Now I’m wearing it. Every time I look at it I’ll remember her laughter. I’ll remember how much I loved her. I’ve not spent one day that I haven’t missed her, felt that ache. It’s kind of like my tongue going back to the site of a missing tooth. I swore I would find out what happened to her but never did. Now—this. Sister, I will find Nola’s killer even if it kills me.”

“That makes two of us.”