Hounded To Death

CHAPTER 7

Fifteen couple of hounds marched down the muddy farm road, water standing in the deep ruts. No matter what yesterday’s shocking news, hounds must go out. As heat came up earlier, hounds walked out earlier.

Trinity and Tinsel, second-year hounds, enjoyed splashing.

Giorgio had told everyone how Mo opened the trailer door and snatched him. No one wanted to hear it again, so he walked along quietly. The other Gs babbled a bit.

Asa, an older hound, who after cubbing would be retired to lounge on the sofa this year, grumbled, “Damn kids.”

Diana and her littermate, Dasher, laughed.

Hounds loved their walks. As summer progressed, Sister, Shaker, and Betty might even go along on bicycles. This only worked if youngsters weren’t coupled to older hounds, since a confused youngster could drag the older hound right into the bicycle. Drawings of couple straps appear on Egyptian tombs thousands of years old. Humans learned early that yoking a younger hound to an older hound often shortened the learning time. The pharaohs or their minions had long ago figured this out, too. Foxhunters tend not to “improve” what works. If it was effective in 2000 b.c. or earlier, it would be effective now.

Today no one was coupled, a reward for how quickly the young entry were coming along.

Since everyone settled down, the humans could chat.

“What did Gray say?” Betty asked Sister, who had called her boyfriend to give him the horrible news.

“Shock. Dismay.”

“Seems to be everyone’s response.”

“One great thing is there are so many wonderful vets in the area,” Shaker said. “They’ll step in and help Dan. But that poor guy will have nightmares for a long, long time.”

Betty wore her wellies, now muddy up to the tops. “I didn’t see it and I’ll have nightmares.”

“You don’t suppose Hope ran afoul of one of the bigwigs, do you?” Shaker further explained his thoughts. “Her rescue work might have uncovered abuse or cheating with drugs. Big money in the Thoroughbred world can sometimes lead to big sins.”

“Long shot. After all, she was taking horses off their hands that weren’t winning and weren’t suitable for breeding. Wouldn’t matter if an owner was rich or not so rich; she was doing everyone a favor. Hell, she’d hook up her rig and go to Charleston, Mountaineer Track, Pimlico. She’d even haul all the way up to Saratoga and back. ’Course, if she threatened to expose someone, an abuser, you might be right. As for drugs, she wasn’t on the racetracks, so it’s doubtful she had knowledge of that.” Sister’s voice rose and Dragon turned to look at her. “Sorry, Dragon, you-all are fine.”

“Always want to be first, don’t you, boy?” Shaker liked Dragon, but his hardheaded ways tested the huntsman’s patience.

Diana and Dasher, his littermates, good as gold, just proved the axiom that breeding is Nature’s roulette.

“I do.” Dragon puffed out his broad chest.

“Idiot,” Asa remarked.

They walked toward Hangman’s Ridge, which loomed over Roughneck Farm. The ridge had earned its gloomy name in 1702 when the first criminal, Lawrence Pollard, was dispatched to the Hereafter from that very spot. There were precious few people this far west—the Wild West back then—it had been quite dangerous, so Pollard must have had it coming.

The early settlers struggled to create a lawful society. Up until the early nineteenth century, seventeen others followed Lawrence Pollard to the grave. At sixteen hundred feet above sea level, the swinging bodies would have been seen for miles around. Their ghosts haunted the ridge.

“When people commit suicide, usually they leave a note either to blame someone or excuse someone. Dan made no mention of a note. I keep turning it over in my mind; maybe I’ll find something. And you know she’d never fire a gun with a traumatized horse in the recovery room.” Sister paused to jump over a big puddle. “Made it,” she announced with pride, then continued, “Look, she didn’t commit suicide. I don’t care if her prints are all over that gun. How hard is it to shoot somebody, wipe down the gun and put it in the victim’s hand?”

“Easy,” Shaker said. “When Ben studies the wound and the splatter pattern—gross but important—he’ll have a better idea of whether she killed herself or not.”

“Even if it looks like she did, what if her killer were, say, a police officer? He’d know how to fake it.” Sister’s T-shirt was already soaked with sweat.

“That’s stretching it,” Betty responded.

“I know.” Sister sighed. “She was so special, always ready to help out. I can’t give it up. Actually, I just started.”

“That’s what scares me,” Shaker replied.

“Oh, come on, I’m not that bad, am I?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me.” Tinsel was drifting out. He whistled low and she moved back.

“If it were Paul, we’ll all be relieved.” Betty was sweating, too.

“Guess we’ll find out soon enough.” Shaker noticed Georgia, a gray fox, pop out of her den as they walked along the orchard. “Saucy wench.” Sister smiled as Georgia watched the hounds walk along.

When Diana turned to look Georgia’s way, the young vixen slipped back into her den.

“Haven’t had as many litters of cubs as usual this spring.” Shaker kept up with the foxes, as did Sister. “It will be a hard winter, I expect. They know about the weather and the food supply long before we do.”

“Amazing. If only I knew what a fox knows,” Betty said admiringly. “We’d have to chase you then,” Dasher teased.

The hounds, overhearing the humans, had learned about Hope’s demise. As she was the equine vet, not theirs, they weren’t close to her but they knew who she was. She’d visited the farm many times on call and sometimes just dropped by. No one had an opinion on her death, since they hadn’t been in her presence for months. As well as fear, the hounds could smell serious illness in a human. On Hope’s last visit, no one had picked up on either of these.

By the time Gray arrived at the farm at six, Sister’s chores were done. The light had softened; long thin wisps of clouds streaked through the sky.

He found her in the kitchen and gave her a big hug and a kiss. “I’m glad to see you.”

“How are you?”

“Frazzled.” He opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of tonic water. “Want one?”

“No.” She watched as he poured tonic over two ice cubes, then filled a jigger half full with scotch.

He drank the scotch neat, chasing it with the tonic. “That will help.”

“It must have been quite a day.” She smiled as she checked the chicken in the oven.

“For starters, the news about Hope Rogers is deeply disquieting. I can’t get her off my mind. Next, my aunt about ran me crazy. Sam and I”—Sam was his younger brother, a recovering alcoholic—“spent Sunday with her. My sister, of course, was too grand to make the trip. But the old girl bitched and moaned the entire time. Sam and I puttied windows, fixed floors, cleaned behind the stove and refrigerator. Christ, she wore me out. Then I got home at three to find the pipe under the kitchen sink had broken. I needed a paddle to cross the kitchen floor.”

“Oh, no! Did it ruin that beautiful hardwood?”

“Funny. The pipe must have burst not more than ten minutes before I walked through the door. Now that I’ve mopped it up, the floor is cleaner than it has been for a long time. I’ll never convince Sam to remove his boots on the porch before he comes in.” The two brothers lived together in a clapboard house, federal style, built at the time of the Revolution.

“Still want to go into reconstruction?”

Gray, a former partner in a prestigious accounting firm in Washington, D.C., had retired but did consulting work. He needed a full-time job, although not for the money. The first year of retirement had proved pleasant enough, then massive boredom had set in.

“I do.”

“Who fixed the pipe?”

“I did. I have extra pipe, all types and diameters, out in the shed from when I ran water to all the outbuildings. So I threaded a pipe and popped her in.”

“I hate threading pipe. That’s why PVC is so good. Give me sturdy, heavy plastic any day.”

“PVC’s fine for some purposes, but this was the hot water line. I used copper.”

“Fancy.”

“Only the best for a Lorillard.” He grinned. “That’s why I’m besotted with you.”

• • •

After dinner, Gray had the opportunity to demonstrate his besot-tedness;then they opened the bedroom windows. The night air had turned deliciously cool.

Odd thing about death, Sister thought, it reaffirms life and sex begets life. Even if the human can’t reproduce, the body tries. One falls out, one comes in. Nature’s logic.

“Sixty-nine looms ever closer.” Gray put his hands behind his head on the pillow.

“Are you preparing me so I won’t forget? I already have your present.”

He turned toward her. “No. Only that the next one is seventy. It sounds so old.”

“It is old.”

“You’re seventy-three, and you look maybe early fifties.”

“Liar.”

“It’s true. But I’m not you, honey. I’m starting to feel creaky.”

“Gray, if I’d been switched on the back of my legs by my ancient aunt, then spent time on my hands and knees fixing a broken pipe, bending over to mop up the floor, I’d feel creaky, too.”

“You’re right. It’s all attitude. Anyway, if I want to really feel rotten, I’ll focus on myself. I never have seen a happy narcissist.”

“That’s a thought.” She turned on her side as he flopped back, hands behind his head again. “Just think, Gray, how much life we’ve lived and how much we still hope to live. Hope Rogers didn’t even make it to forty.”

“That puts it in perspective.”

“I wonder if this has anything to do with the club? Her murder. I’m viewing it as murder.”

“Janie, no way.”

“Well, I can’t find a thread, but as master my first thought is always the club. So many of our people were her clients—well, their horses were. You know what I mean.” She rubbed his close-cut hair. “And my second thought is I want revenge. She was a good woman.”