One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02]

by Carolyn McSparren

  Women didn’t have a clue how soft their breasts felt. His ex-wife Brittany had been practically flat chested. She called it model-thin. He called it cadaverous, but not where she could hear him.

  Merry, on the other hand, might have muscles on her muscles, but she was definitely soft where she should be. He’d fantasized about her all over the Caribbean on his undercover assignment, but the fantasy didn’t come close to the reality.

  She slipped the heavy duck cover over the marathon carriage, pulled it down to the ground over the wheels, fastened it around the shafts, shooed him down the ramp ahead of her, then lifted and fastened the ramp before he had a chance to help. “You sticking around to help the sheriff?” she asked him.

  “For the moment. He’ll want to talk to you again. If I get officially pulled in, I’ll need to interview you as well.” Then it hit him. She was a suspect in a murder case again. That put her out of bounds again until he’d solved it. Damn and blast.

  “Do I have to come back here?” she asked. “It’s an hour from Mossy Creek.”

  “Depends. We may wrap this up fast.”

  “But you don’t think so, do you?” Peggy said.

  He shook his head. “Not unless somebody confesses. That’s not going to happen. From what I hear, there’s no shortage of people who disliked the guy.”

  “If that were the criterion for killing him, you’d be looking at a modern day Murder on the Orient Express,” Peggy said. “You know, the Agatha Christie mystery where all the suspects joined together to kill the guy.”

  “That may happen in one of your mysteries, Peggy, but not in real life,” Geoff said.

  “So I guess we won’t be seeing you again,” Merry said, still avoiding his eye.

  “I’ll drive over to Mossy Creek to interview you.”

  “Gee, thanks for the favor. Peggy, are Golden and Ned secured?”

  Peggy nodded. “Checked and double-checked, not to mention impatient to get home.”

  “Me too. Come on, let’s mount up.” She walked up to the driver’s side and climbed into her truck.

  Peggy leaned over to him and whispered, “Thank you for coming, Geoff. When you come to Mossy Creek, you can stay with me. I’ll take you to another garden club meeting.” She actually winked at him, climbed into the truck and waved out the window as the rig passed him. He watched it drive slowly down the long driveway toward the road. Then he went back to Stan. He’d definitely volunteer to interview Merry and Peggy again in Mossy Creek but damned if he’d ever be tricked into attending another one of Peggy’s garden club meetings. Those women were dangerous.

  Chapter 10

  Sunday afternoon

  Merry

  “We didn’t offer our condolences to Sarah Beth or Dawn before we drove off,” Peggy said.

  “And have them accuse me of killing Raleigh?”

  Peggy handed me a Diet Coke—one with caffeine for my headache. I drank half of it in one long pull. “Did you call Geoff Wheeler and ask him to come rescue me?”

  “Maybe,” Peggy said. She sounded guilty. “All right, yes. And you see how fast he got there. The man likes you, Merry.”

  “He likes you. He thinks I’m a pain in the butt.”

  “But not a murderer. The police always think the person who found the body is the killer.”

  “And it’s never true, is it?”

  “In real life, it often is.”

  “I did not kill Raleigh,” I said.

  “Of course you didn’t! Perish the thought.”

  With each mile farther from the Tollivers’ farm I relaxed a bit more. We’d picked their relatively small show close to Lackland Farms, so Peggy could drive her pair with less pressure from a horde of other equipages. She’d also see what it took to run a carriage show. Ours would be on a much smaller scale, pleasure classes Saturday with a separate carriage clinic on Sunday. We didn’t need as many volunteers, but the jobs were pretty much the same.

  “What I don’t understand,” I said as I pulled out my big aluminum gooseneck trailer out to pass a pickup truck doing thirty-five in a fifty-five zone, “is why Raleigh was out there at dawn with all four horses harnessed. Even if he decided to get a head start on his warm-up, he would have rousted his groom out of bed to get the horses ready and Dawn to act as groom on the carriage. It’s not that simple to harness four big horses alone.”

  “You don’t think he might have let them sleep?” Peggy asked, then answered her own question. “Nah. He’d have taken great delight in dragging them out of bed before dawn.”

  “So maybe he did,” I said. “Who’s to say he didn’t have someone with him?”

  “Someone who killed him, then went happily back to bed and left you to find him?”

  “I wonder how closely the sheriff and his posse checked the woods beside the arena? Maybe there were footprints or a piece of cloth on a branch. Maybe another of those dumb banners.”

  “If they didn’t check, Geoff will,” Peggy said with satisfaction. “He doesn’t miss much.”

  I shuddered and covered it up by chug-a-lugging the rest of my Diet Coke. “I didn’t say this before because I figured everyone would think I was crazy or hysterical or trying to spread the guilt around . . .”

  Peggy turned as far as her seatbelt allowed. “I won’t. What?”

  I eased on the brakes and brought my big truck and trailer to a standstill at a crossroads with a four-way stop. People who don’t drive trailers, particularly rigs with live animals in them, have no idea how hard it is to stop one or how long a distance it takes. I have signs all over the back and sides of my trailer reading “Lackland Farm” and “Caution, show horses.” That doesn’t always do the trick, so I’m extra vigilant.

  “Merry,” Peggy repeated, “Tell me.”

  I looked both ways, four way stop or not, and eased across the road. “When I found the carriage and nearly fell over Raleigh, I had the strangest feeling somebody was watching me.”

  Peggy made a sound.

  “I’m not talking about the horses either. You know I normally have as much ESP as your average earthworm, but I’m fairly positive someone was standing out of sight in the trees on the far side of the arena.”

  “You didn’t see anyone?”

  I shook my head and slowed down to give half a dozen turkey buzzards time to fly off the road and away from the dead armadillo they were cleaning up. They waited until the last possible moment, staring me down, then flapped off. “Not consciously. It’s probably nothing,” I said.

  “Did you tell the sheriff or Geoff?”

  “Lord, no. I nearly didn’t tell you.

  “If you’d been a few minutes earlier you might have seen the murder and gotten killed yourself.”

  “I heard the trees rustle, but that was probably the wind. I couldn’t prove anyone was there.”

  “But can the killer be certain of that?”

  We were driving slightly under the speed limit down a straight stretch of two-lane highway. This time on Sunday afternoon there was almost no traffic. The morning churchgoers were home and the evening prayer meeting goers hadn’t started yet.

  My truck has big side mirrors that stick out far enough to see around the trailer to what’s coming up behind. One minute when I checked, there didn’t seem to be anyone behind us. The next a big, honking SUV seemed to shoot out of nowhere. He must have been doing eighty.

  “That fool behind us is flying,” I said as he passed the trailer’s rear door and came up in the left lane. I slowed down to give him plenty of room to pass. The driver could be drunk, hyped up, or texting. I am always wary when I trailer horses.

  That wariness probably saved our lives.

  He’d barely passed my front fender when he swerved hard into my lane and slammed on his brakes. Peggy screamed. I swerved right and stood on my brakes to avoid him.

  I didn’t have time to scream before the maniac in the SUV took his foot off the brakes and laid rubber down the road doing at least a hundred. By the
n the damage was done.

  “Hang on!” I yelled and took to the shoulder. If I tried to stop, we were sure to flip both truck and trailer.

  So I floored it. Thank God the shoulder was fairly broad and relatively flat. For one terrible moment I felt the rig tilt to the right, then the big diesel gave me all it had. “Come on, baby,” I prayed as I fought the wheel, concentrating on one keeping us straight. If I pulled back onto the road too fast, we’d careen off the other side.

  I have no idea how long it took to get us back on the road and under control. Probably no more than a minute, but it felt like a lifetime. It very nearly was.

  When we were safely back on the road and headed down the right lane, I tapped the brakes. Up ahead on the right, I spotted an abandoned seafood restaurant with a big parking lot half overgrown with meadow daisies. I managed to slow down enough to make the turn. The rig bumped into the lot and came to a shivering stop.

  We stared straight ahead without uttering a sound, then I said, “My headache’s gone.”

  “What a breakthrough,” Peggy whispered. “Let’s email the AMA we’ve found a surefire cure.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Get out,” she said. “We have to check the horses.”

  “Can I walk on my knees? I don’t think I can stand.”

  Silently, slowly, carefully, we climbed out of the truck. The air bags hadn’t deployed, but then we hadn’t actually hit anything.

  We opened the door on the left side of the trailer. I was terrified we’d find both horses hanging from their halters with their necks broken.

  Ned had managed to pull his halter off. It hung, still tied to the trailer by its lead rope. He regarded us balefully, but he seemed unhurt.

  Golden was tied and annoyed about it, but he’d stayed on his feet.

  “I don’t see any blood,” Peggy said as she ran her hand down Ned’s legs.

  I checked Golden. “None here either. Possibly some pulled muscles. We can check when we get them home.”

  Across the partition, the two carriages had shifted no more than an inch to the left. One thing I’d learned from my father was how to tie down carriages so they don’t shift. The harness, however, lay in a python’s nest on the floor of the compartment. “Leave it,” I said.

  We closed everything up and walked back toward the trailer in silence. “Can you drive?” Peggy asked.

  “Of course,” I said. Then I walked over to the edge of the parking lot and threw up. Not that there was much to get rid of. I still had not had breakfast or lunch, and it was mid-afternoon.

  In the truck, Peggy handed me another Diet Coke and took one herself. I was way beyond spitting cotton. This had to be how people lost in the desert felt just before they died. I had experienced the dry mouth of fear before, but never this bad. We sat and drank in silence.

  When I reached to turn the key in the ignition, my hand shook.

  “Sure you can drive?” Peggy asked. “I can probably manage this thing in a pinch with you to coach me.”

  “I’ve had all the terror I can handle today, thank you. Did you get the license number of that car?” I asked.

  “I pray with my eyes closed.”

  We pulled into the road at a snail’s pace and drove that way for several miles.

  “Make and model?” I asked after I’d gotten up to something close to the speed limit.

  “Black SUV.”

  “Everybody has a black SUV,” I said.

  “I think it was black. The windows were tinted. I didn’t even glimpse a silhouette when it passed.” She thought a minute, then shook her head. “Could have been dark blue or green or even maroon. Something dark, at any rate. I think the license plate was covered with mud. Crazy hunter out poaching and drinking? Big joke running a horse trailer off the road?”

  “You really think that?”

  “The name of the farm is on the back of this trailer,” Peggy said. “They knew who we were. They knew we had horses.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I thought we were dead,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “The minute we get home, I’m calling Geoff.”

  I glanced at her. “To tell him what?”

  “What we both believe. Somebody just tried to kill us.”

  Twenty miles later, I asked, “Can we stop in Bigelow and pick up some cheeseburgers and fries? My stomach’s growling louder than the diesel.”

  We took up half the parking area at Wendy’s. Peggy went in while I stayed with the truck. No matter how tired we were, we had to drive out to the farm, unload the horses, check them over, feed and turn them out to pasture for the night. The carriages and harness were fine where they were. I could lock them in the trailer.

  Keeping an eye out for another attack of the killer SUV, I drove one-handed and practically inhaled the cheeseburger and fries.

  In the foothills north of Mossy Creek close to Lackland Farm, I had to slow down to make the curves without knocking the horses off their feet. This would have been a much more dangerous place to try to force us off the road. On the left, a narrow shoulder gave way to a precipitous wooded drop off. We’d have rolled up in a big ball. On the right, a narrow shoulder gave way to a wooded hill that climbed steeply to the top of our plateau. We’d have been crushed against the hill.

  “Why not go after us here?” I asked. “Wait. I can answer my own question. He couldn’t count on being able to get away from us here. He’d have to slow down for the curves too.”

  By the time we turned in between the two boulders that marked the driveway leading up to Lackland Farm, the shadows were deep under the trees and in the valleys, although at the top, the sun was still shining.

  One of Louise Sawyer’s grandsons, Pete, who was pre-vet at UGA, was barn-sitting for the weekend. He’d been working part-time between spring semester and summer school, knew the horses, and was completely trustworthy. With the horses in pasture and no training going on while Peggy and I were away, all he had to do was feed, water, and check to be certain none of the horses was hurt or colicking. He had our vet’s number on speed dial and knew when to call it. Pete also had the emergency cell phone number I used at horse shows. He hadn’t needed it.

  Driving the big rig up the narrow, winding gravel road that led to the plateau where the farm was located required careful maneuvering, but eventually I turned around in the parking area and backed the rig into its regular spot. The food had given me a second wind.

  Ned and Golden were so glad to be home that they trotted straight into the stable and waited in the aisle while we opened their stall doors.

  “Bless Pete,” said Peggy, as she peered into the boys’ stalls. “He’s filled their water buckets and put out their oats and hay.”

  He’d also left me a note on the white board beside the clients’ lounge telling me that everything was okay and that the other horses had been fed and watered.

  I walked out to the pasture where the other horses—and one miniature donkey—waited to be greeted. The water trough was clean and full, they were all munching hay, and nobody was bleeding or limping. Even Don Qui seemed glad to see us. He let loose a series of outstanding brays.

  When Ned and Golden finished eating, we didn’t bother to halter them before we opened their stall doors to let them into the pasture for the night. They were eager to greet their friends. Everyone bucked and snorted, then wheeled and took off running with manes flying and tails in the air.

  “God, I love horses,” I whispered as I watched them gallop away.

  Peggy dropped her arm across my shoulder. “Me too. Thank you.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “Letting me be a part of this.”

  “How about I let you be a part of driving us back to Mossy Creek? I’ve reached my limit.” I handed her the keys to my aging pickup. I don’t normally drive the big diesel truck unless I’m hauling a trailer. Since I still lived in the garden apartment under Peggy’s house, we’d driven out to the farm toget
her on Friday morning. Tired as we were, we didn’t even unhitch the dually from the trailer.

  Tonight I was glad I would not be alone on top of Hiram’s hill, but tucked safely inside Peggy’s Tudor revival cottage only minutes from the Mossy Creek police station.

  When we parked in Peggy’s driveway, she handed me my truck keys, opened her door and said, “I’ll call Chief Royden and tell him what happened to us on the road.”

  Amos Royden is chief of police of Mossy Creek. Not the jurisdiction for either the murder or the near miss on the road. “What would be the point?” I followed her to the bottom of the steps leading to her kitchen.

  “He needs to know about Raleigh’s murder and our involvement,” Peggy said.

  “That I’m a suspect? That I may be arrested?” I unlocked the door to my apartment and stood with my hand on the knob. “He’ll love that.”

  She leaned over her rail and said, “You don’t think Geoff or that sheriff person will call him first thing tomorrow morning? Or even tonight?”

  “Right now I don’t care.” I was beyond bone tired. I pretty much shut the door in her face. Then I stood under a hot shower until I turned pruny.

  That SUV might have been after me alone. Peggy and the Halflingers would simply have been collateral damage. Only Peggy wasn’t collateral anything to me, nor were Golden and Ned. If someone was after me, then let them come after me and not the people and animals I loved.

  I brushed my teeth and ran a comb through my wet hair. Surely nobody at the show would take the chance of hurting horses to get to me. Would they?

  I planned to lie awake and stew over finding Raleigh’s body and our narrow escape. Instead, I climbed naked into bed, pulled the duvet over me, and slept instantly.

  Chapter 11