Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

CHAPTER 13

“Lime green. Good silk.” Mercer in Brooks Brothers placed the tie back on the store’s display, an eye-catching tie-wheel on a round imitation Hepplewhite table. “I like a little color.” He looked at Gray. “You, on the other hand, have no imagination. You don’t need one more regimental tie.”

Gray held in his hands a lovely tie of olive with regimental stripes of thin gold next to wide maroon. “Mercer, I work in Washington in a conservative business. No one wants an accountant in a paisley tie, especially if that client is a senator.”

“How’d you stand it when you worked full-time? I couldn’t abide the boredom!”

“Same way you stand talking to people about breeding, people who don’t know a thing. That’s got to be boring, repetitious. It’s part of the business, educating the client.”

“Yeah.” Mercer pounced on a gorgeous raspberry tie with small embroidered rampant lions in pale blue. “This would do well.”

Gray reached over, taking it from his cousin’s hands. “Would.”

As Gray held the tie, Mercer stared at it. “Are you going to buy it?”

“Not if you are.”

“No, I need something bold. Anyway, we couldn’t both buy the same tie.”

“Like two women buying the same dress.” Gray laughed.

Mercer rolled his eyes. “Never.” He checked his thin watch. “Where’s Sam?”

“He’ll be along. Crawford always seems to come down to the stables just as Sam’s ready to leave.”

“Tough nut, that Crawford.”

“I steer clear. Actually my worst fear is that someday Janie will snap and kill him.”

“We’d all cover for her,” Mercer replied. “This salmon color, great for spring.”

“Mercer, it’s the middle of February.”

“Spring is just around the corner.”

Both men dressed well if a little differently. Their mothers, the sisters, drummed into them that you had only one chance to make a good first impression. And both women were clotheshorses themselves, loving the opportunity to dress husbands and sons. For them, it was having two fashion lives, male and female.

Gray walked over to a wall with square shelves, all of equal size, like a big bookcase. Shirts filled the squares, each one having a brass plate at the bottom, indicating neck circumference and sleeve length. Gray found the square with spread collars.

Mercer joined him. “Go ahead, buy a pink shirt.”

Gray turned to him. “Mercer, I’m not afraid to wear pink or peach or sea green. But only for casual wear. There is no way I can wear a shirt like that with a suit in D.C. Now stop sounding like my mother or your mother.”

“I could never sound like your mother,” said Mercer, imitating Graziella’s intonation, making Gray laugh.

Sam walked through the store’s entrance, looked around, spotted them and walked over.

“Get hit up by Crawford as you were leaving?” Mercer asked.

“No. Tootie and Dr. Hinson swung by. Marty’s horse has an abscess. I told Crawford I soaked Tonie.” He named the horse. “As I’ve been doing for the last three days. It will pop soon enough. But Crawford has to have an expert’s opinion, so he called Penny Hinson. He just came back from dragging himself all over the northeast to check curriculums. I’ll give him one thing, he is indefatigable and, of course, it helps to have your own jet.”

Gray and Mercer smiled.

Mercer appraised Sam. “You need a new jacket.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t go out at night.”

“Because you don’t have any clothes.” Mercer was half right.

The other half of the reason was that although Sam had stayed sober for years, nighttime carried the whiff of temptation.

“What I really need is a new pair of boots. Crawford says he’ll buy them if I go up to Horse Country for the February Dehner sale.”

Dehner, a boot company in Omaha, Nebraska, sent a representative to measure one’s foot, calf, instep. The customer then picked the type of leather, the color, the cut, and type of sole. A new pair could run $1,000 plus with the extras and, of course, everyone wanted the Spanish cut, which was a bit more leather on the outside knee, making one’s leg appear longer. Very elegant. Bespoke boots lasted for decades if one cared for them, which somewhat justified the price. When you’re in boots for most of the day, comfort becomes important.

“Go on up, then,” Mercer counseled.

“Guess I’d better.”

Gray and Mercer bought their ties and Mercer bought two shirts he liked.

In the parking lot, Mercer slid behind the wheel of his Lexus SUV and said to the brothers standing nearby, “Follow me. Lunch is on me.”

The two brothers drove behind their cousin a very short way to a nice restaurant near Brooks Brothers.

Once seated at a booth, the two brothers waited for Mercer to speak as he had asked them to lunch, a rare occurrence.

“You all are quiet,” the dapper fellow remarked.

“We’re waiting for you,” Gray replied.

Mercer launched in: “The funny thing about the body in Benny Glitters’s grave is the little dog elicited more sympathy than the human. The story got a lot of play in the media in Kentucky but it received a mention on national media, too.”

Sam was surprised. “It did?”

“You never watch the news,” Mercer chided him.

“Well, I missed it, too,” Gray confessed.

“It was there for one day, a brief splash. Anyway, I called the detective in charge. Granted this isn’t a red-hot case, but because of all the attention they make a stab at it. I asked if I find any of my grandfather’s dental records, will they compare them to the skeleton’s teeth? He said yes.”

“Mercer, do you have Harlan Laprade’s records?” Gray asked.

“I wasn’t half-assed about this.” Mercer paused dramatically. “Mother called Peter Zazakos, whose father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were dentists. Mirabile dictu, they kept all the records.” Mercer was almost jubilant.

For a moment, Gray and Sam said nothing, then Sam said, “I guess we should give him a decent burial in the Lorillard graveyard. That’s where we’re always planted. I know that’s Grandpa Laprade. They should know shortly in Kentucky. There can’t be that many murders in Lexington in February.”

“One hopes not,” Gray replied.

“Where’s Auntie D in all this?” Sam asked, about Mercer’s mother Daniella.

“Lashing me on. She’s quite caught up in the drama.” This was an unexpected comment from her son on Daniella Laprade, who at ninety-four retained most of her good qualities and all of her bad ones.

“She’s used to getting her way.” Gray’s eyebrows flickered for a second.

“We can solve this murder.” Mercer sounded so confident. “Mother says she knows in her bones. Those bones are her father and he was killed.”

“Mercer, you’ve fallen off your perch.” Sam used the old country expression. “Her, too!”

“No, I haven’t. I can’t say about Mother.” He smiled. “Sam, you’ve got good research skills. Think of all those term papers you wrote at Harvard.”

Sam got to the point. “Mercer, just what do you want?”

“I want you to research whorehouses in Lexington, especially the high-class ones. Lot of men with money to spend in Lexington. Times were good.” He paused. “We know that the fancy houses of prostitution for the white boys often had a few drop-dead gorgeous ladies of color, Chinese girls, other women considered exotics. International trade.” Mercer could always see the business angle of any transaction. “Might even be exciting. You know, his clothes were left folded in the laundry room.”

“Maybe the killer was in a hurry,” Sam suggested.

“Then why take off his clothes?” Mercer pointed a fork at Sam.

“That is a puzzle.” Gray took a swig of his hot coffee.

“Well, I guess I could do it.” Sam was a little intrigued.

“Gray, you investigate gambling parties,” his cousin ordered. “Poker. Dice. Horses. I’ve got a hunch a wide net of gambling was part of this.”

“Mercer, I think the dead should be left alone,” Gray interjected quietly.

Quick to seize on something he could use, Mercer agreed warmly. “Right, but Harlan Laprade is disturbed, so we might as well find out what happened. It would mean so much to Mother and to your mother, too, were she here.”

Hard to argue against this. Graziella died five years earlier of an aneurism. She rested in the Lorillard graveyard.

Gray sighed deeply. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Given our business, Gray, I expect you know every trick in the book, how to make money illegally, how to hide gambling wins and losses. That sort of thing. And people keep records, even if it’s chits. They have to remember who owes what to whom.”

“I’ll try.”

“Oh, the dog. It was a Norwich terrier. A vet looked at the skeleton. Didn’t need DNA.”

To change the subject, Gray asked, “You hunting tomorrow?”

“I am. After All is one of my favorite fixtures. It’s perfect, really.” He mentioned the Bancroft farm, everything arranged for foxhunting. Trails, jumps, creek crossings, all were maintained by the Bancrofts. People always liked driving through the covered bridge to arrive at the stables and thence up to the house.

“I’ll be with Crawford,” said Sam. “He’s hunting down in Buckingham County tomorrow, a huge fixture, about fifteen thousand acres of pine.”

“But Buckingham is Oak Ridge’s territory,” said Gray, referring to the hunt club that had the right to hunt there.

“Crawford is happy to spread his brand of contempt for others all around. Rules be damned. Sooner or later, the chickens will come home to roost.” Mercer hoped Crawford would get his comeuppance.

Sam was envious. “You all should have a good hunt.” Tuesday’s hunt in what was known as The Jefferson Hunt’s home territory would prove just that. For those who believe in prophecy, it would prove haunting.