Hotspur

CHAPTER 30

For some people, Ralph’s end came as a relief. Eager for tidy answers, they assumed he had killed Nola and Guy and had finally, undone by the unearthing of the dead, shot himself. The fact that no gun had been found did not disturb their desire for an easy answer. Then, too, most suicides don’t shoot themselves between the eyes.

Others, no less eager for answers but less inclined to take the easy way out, wondered what Ralph could have done to provoke such a violent end.

Sister felt a sense of foreboding; an evil had been unleashed. Then she realized the evil had always been with them, they’d just chosen not to notice.

She and Shaker sat on that ridge for two full hours. First came the sheriff and his crew, then the Rescue Squad to remove the body once it had been photographed, examined, and finally released.

The kids waited back at the stable as they were told. Sister informed them they’d found Ralph. She spared them the details. When she and Shaker finally returned to the farm, they discovered the girls had done all their chores.

Raleigh and Rooster stuck to Sister’s side likes burrs.

The rain continued, but the fog started thinning out. An oppressive mugginess made it hard to breathe, and even though the temperature remained tolerable, the closeness of the air felt like a shroud.

As they lacked a kennelman, Sister and Shaker were responsible for the job of cleaning the kennels after a hunt. Tired but usually happy from the day’s hunt, they tackled this with the help of a couple of cups of black coffee. Today the girls had given them an unexpected respite. When Betty returned to pick up Jennifer and Sari, Sister insisted on giving the girls each a fifty-dollar bonus. Betty didn’t protest. She was too shaken up by Ralph’s murder.

The outdoor runs glistened in the downpour. The indoor runs and pens had been powerwashed. Each of the raised sleeping beds was filled with fresh, soft sawdust chips.

The hounds were snuggled down in their cozy beds, sleeping after a good hunt. They had enjoyed having the two young women fuss over them.

After the girls left, Sister and Shaker sat down in the kennel office. They’d told everything they could think of to Ben Sidell, but they hadn’t had a chance to talk to each other. Given the swift shock of it, they found they hadn’t much to say to each other immediately.

“Hell of a note.” Shaker wiped his face with a towel.

“It’s not a sight I’ll soon forget.” She took the towel from him and wiped her own face and hands. “If only I’d led the field back to the Bancrofts’.”

“Sister, you couldn’t have seen any more than Edward did. Fog was thick. Cut it with a knife.”

“My ears are more educated.”

“True, but you’d have been up ahead. Ralph was in the back. Once it stops raining we can go back to the coop. Maybe we’ll find something on the ground, but it would appear he left the coop and rode to the ridge.”

“I’ve been thinking. He didn’t go alone. And someone who really knew the territory, despite the fog or maybe even because of it, could have taken him up there, shot him, flown down the back side of the ridge, and been at the trailers not long after everyone else came in.”

“True.”

They sat there on the beat-up wooden chairs that had been donated to the kennel office almost thirty years ago.

He drummed his fingers on the metal desktop. “Why would Ralph willingly ride with his killer?”

“Maybe he didn’t know he was going to be killed. Maybe the killer said he needed help or he knew a shortcut—”

“Ralph knew Hangman’s Ridge. He had to know he was going wrong.”

“He still could have been bamboozled in some fashion.”

“Killer could have forced him up there.” Shaker wiped his hands on his thighs. “And somewhere along the way he made Ralph dismount.”

“Sybil was out there.” Sister shifted uneasily in her chair.

“Easy to slip away in the fog.” He poured himself more coffee. “I’m drinking too much of this stuff. So are you.”

“What if whatever the killer knew about Ralph was enough to ensure his cooperation?” Sister ignored his coffee comment.

“I wonder if we’ll ever know.”

She said with weariness, “Shaker, I believe it was Ralph who called me about looking in the river off Norwood Bridge.”

“Jesus.” Shaker sat up straight because some pieces were falling into place.

“Just hear me out. I don’t think Ralph killed Nola. He might have killed Guy; he couldn’t stand him because of Nola. But I don’t think he killed her. I think he accepted that he’d lost her. That romance was busted, and he was already courting Frances. On the rebound maybe, but people are like that.”

“They are.”

“But somehow he was connected with those murders. There is no doubt in my mind he helped the killer lift that fifty-five-gallon drum and toss it into the James.”

“But over all these years you’d think he’d have told, or the guilt would have gotten to him.”

“Well, I couldn’t live with it. You couldn’t live with it. But obviously he could. And maybe, just maybe, he stood to gain by his actions.”

“I suppose he gained his life.” Shaker shrugged.

“Why?”

“Well, he knew the killer might kill him if he didn’t help.”

“Possibly. I think, though, that he came out ahead in some other way.”

“Was Ralph a vengeful enough man to want to see Nola dead?”

Sister turned this over in her mind. “No, but he might have wanted to see her suffer. You know, to see her finally get dumped by someone. But you’re right, I don’t think Ralph could have helped her killer. Which leads us to—what?”

Shaker’s thick auburn eyebrows jerked upward. “The killer might have told him Guy killed Nola. Ralph exploded and killed Guy. Or Nola’s killer had already done the deed and needed help disposing of Guy’s body. He’d be plenty tired from digging Nola’s grave, not that Ralph would know that.”

She shook her head. “If Ralph had known Nola was killed or thought she was killed by Guy, then he would have told Tedi and Edward.”

“I don’t think so. Look, we can never know what goes through someone’s head, but maybe Ralph thought, ‘done is done.’ He can’t bring her back. Maybe he had a special sympathy for the murderer. Or maybe the killer could somehow pin it on him? How could Ralph prove he was innocent?”

“That’s a good point.” She didn’t know if too much coffee was making her jittery or if she was jittery anyway. “Either way, he was vulnerable.”

Shaker slapped the table. “And who stood to gain more than Sybil? She’d get Nola’s part of the Bancroft fortune. Millions upon millions upon millions. Right?”

“We know one thing for certain we’d only suspected before.”

“What?”

“The killer really is in our hunt field.”