One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02]

by Carolyn McSparren

  “Plenty of expensive equipment?”

  Dick nodded. “What about you, Merry? You know her family?”

  “Nope. I’ve never been to her clinic either. I use Casey Blackshear’s husband in Mossy Creek. It’s an excellent clinic and he’s a fine vet, but it’s not Auburn or UGA vet school.” I turned to Geoff. “What are you really asking?”

  “Where does the money come from for the building, the equipment, the van—all of it. I doubt she’s forty, and she’s in practice alone. So, she either has a rich and generous family, inherited it, has backers and silent partners, or . . .”

  “She’s doing something crooked,” I said.

  “Not necessarily, but it’s a definite possibility. So how does a vet make crooked money?”

  “Drugs, obviously,” Peggy said. “Even I’ve heard of Special K.” Ketamine. Used by vets to anesthetize.

  “Plus PCP and a number of other drugs that are valuable on the street. Take a lot of fake prescriptions to pay for that equipment,” Geoff said. “And the DEA keeps pretty close tabs on vets to be certain that scheduled drugs are properly accounted for.”

  “Pardon the interruption, but, Merry, you said you wanted to check the farm before we drove back to town,” Dick said.

  “Please, if it’s not too far out of the way. The contractor hung the new gates and put in one keypad this afternoon. I want to be certain it’s functioning.”

  Dick turned right into the main driveway of the farm and drove up to the new steel gates. They looked secure, but I climbed out to take a closer look. The other three followed me.

  “I thought you said they had a keypad,” Peggy said, pointing at a heavy chain and padlock locking the two gates together.

  “It’s right there,” I said pointing. “Call the padlock my rampant paranoia.”

  Geoff shook the gates. “Take a tank to drive though those.”

  “Hey, be careful. The concrete’s not totally set yet,” I said.

  “But, Merry, can’t someone park down here off the road and then shimmy around the gateposts and walk up the drive?” Peggy started toward the far end of the gate.

  “Don’t!”

  She stopped.

  “The guys strung up two strands of electric fence hidden in the grass and shrubs on both sides of the drive. The fence only goes about six feet in either direction, but you’d have to be a mountain goat to get around it. The fence runs off the same solar panel as the keypad and has battery backup. You’d get zapped before you realized you were in an electronic minefield. It can be circumvented, but only with prior knowledge and a good pair of wire cutters.”

  “I still say you need CCTV,” Geoff said. “Right up there.” He pointed to a big oak that overhung the driveway. “Is the other drive set up with a keypad, too?”

  “Not yet. The gates are hung, but they’re only closed with a padlock and chain at the moment. No keypad, no electric fence yet. The guys concentrated on the main driveway.” I turned to Geoff. “This whole set-up was amazingly inexpensive. How much do CCTVs cost?”

  “You can get half a dozen nanny-cams for around a thousand dollars,” Geoff said. “If you’d had one the other night, you might know who tossed you on your butt in the cellar and got you snake bit.”

  “I’ll spring for the CCTVs,” Dick said. “I’ll have someone come out and install them tomorrow.”

  “Dick, I can’t let you . . .” I said.

  “Hey, I have a vested interest. I don’t want anything to happen to Heinzie.” He wrapped an arm around Peggy. “Or my two best girls. Since we’re here, let’s drive up and check on the horses.”

  I removed the padlock and chain. When we were all back in the car, I gave Dick the gate code to try. It worked. Peggy already knew it, and I had planned to give it to Dick and Geoff anyway.

  After the gates swung open, Dick drove the Lincoln up the winding road with the ease of a long-haul truck driver or a man used to driving horse vans.

  In the parking area, Dick pulled up beside Hiram’s white dually. There were dawn-to-dusk floodlights on the peak of the workshop aimed at the parking lot, and motion sensor lights in front and on the pasture side of the stable behind it. We’d had a terrible time aiming the motion sensors, until we hung them far enough back from the pasture that Heinzie and his buddies couldn’t trip them accidentally.

  Or I thought we had.

  I put my hand on Geoff’s arm and pointed toward the stable, “Those lights aren’t supposed to be on.”

  “The horses set them off?” he whispered back.

  I shook my head. Motioning for us all to be quiet, he unholstered the small automatic that had fit so smoothly under his navy sports jacket that I hadn’t even realized he was armed.

  I’m sure agents aren’t even supposed to go to the bathroom unarmed, never mind to a wake for a murder victim.

  “Get back in the car and wait for me,” he whispered. At that moment the stable lights went off, leaving only the light on the workshop shining directly down on the four of us.

  “We can’t just . . .”

  “Dammit, woman, do as you’re told for once in your life.” He moved away from me, fading into the darkness.

  I opened my mouth, took a look at Peggy as she scuttled around the car in a half crouch, and did the same.

  Dick started the car and said, “Get down on the floor, both of you.”

  “But . . .”

  “Merry, shut up,” Peggy said. Her voice came from somewhere under the dashboard. I ducked as Dick swung the car and started down the precipitous driveway.

  He turned on the headlights after we passed the first turn, effectively shielding us from the parking area. Twenty feet farther, he stopped and shut them off again. “We’ll wait for Geoff here.” He opened his center console and pulled out a big revolver.

  “How come the guys get all the armament?” I asked. “My Glock’s in the center console of Hiram’s truck. I could have gotten it.”

  “Unless we’re facing an army, which I doubt, this should be enough,” Dick said.

  We sat. The country is never silent, certainly not at the end of May. Every frog and toad in a ten-mile radius was advertising his reliability as a pollywog progenitor. The evening breeze murmured in the trees and rustled the new leaves. The pine trees answered shuuussshhh. Small limbs on the oak trees crackled and popped.

  That was no oak tree!

  Real shots don’t reverberate like shots on television. They sound thin and unimportant like a balloon popped by a child. Everyone in the car had enough firearms experience to know we’d heard two.

  “Stay down,” Dick said and shoved my head down when I peered over the back seat.

  “We have to help Geoff,” I said as I reached for the door handle. “He could be hurt.” Or worse. My adrenaline started pumping And my mouth went dry. I did not want anything bad to happen to him. Not until I’d had a chance to scream at him for scaring me to death.

  “You move and I’ll bash you over your hard head with the butt of this pistol, Meredith,” Dick said. When he called me Meredith, I knew he wasn’t kidding.

  “Flashlight,” Dick said. “Coming down the drive.”

  Peggy made a sound somewhere between a moan and a whimper, but she stayed on the floor.

  “Geoff?” Dick called. He used his strong courtroom voice. He’d opened his driver’s door and hunkered down behind it in true highway patrol fashion with his gun in his hand. Dick was the gentlest, most courtly man I knew, but he’d been a marine in Korea. That experience doesn’t go away.

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Whoever it was got away.” Gun and flashlight in hand, he walked down the hill toward us.

  I jumped out of the car and threw myself at him. “You nitwit! You could be dead!”

  “Merry, I’m afraid you need a new motion sensor light on the far side of the stable. Whoever was up there shot it out.”

  He holstered his weapon and tossed his flashlight to Pegg
y before he wrapped his arms around me. I plastered myself to him like a Nicotine patch. He felt warm and solid. I felt cold and trembly.

  “What happened?” Peggy said. She climbed out from under the dashboard.

  “When I rounded the corner of the workshop, I saw someone hauling ass down the lane between the pastures, and I mean booking. I ran after him, but he was past the throw distance of my flashlight and on the edge of the light from the stable. After I tripped and damned near fell, he turned and shot out the motion sensor over my head.”

  “You returned fire?” Dick asked.

  “Yeah. I missed.”

  “Hell of a shot,” Dick said.

  “Unless he was aiming for you,” I said. I was still clinging to him and tried to step back, but he pulled me tighter. I didn’t resist.

  “Don’t think so, but I hit the dirt just in case. By the time I got up and found my flashlight, he was long gone.”

  “But where did he go?” Peggy asked. “There’s nothing back there but the fence line. It’s a cul-de-sac at the edge of the governor’s property.”

  “Beyond the boundary fence, it’s all woods and vines and drop offs,” I said. “And snakes. I wouldn’t go down that hill in broad daylight with a shotgun, much less in the dark with a pistol. Could you tell if it was a man or a woman?”

  “Could have been either. The usual bad guy uniform—black jeans, black hoodie, probably ski mask. No face, at any rate.”

  “Tall or short?” Dick asked. “Fat or thin?”

  “Medium. Didn’t run like a girl.”

  “Huh. These days half the women around don’t run like girls,” Peggy said. “Merry certainly doesn’t.”

  “I’d rather drive a carriage. I only run when I’m chasing horses,” I said. “I’ve seen game trails on the governor’s property,” I pointed past our fence. “But they’re not easy to spot in full daylight, much less in the dark. If somebody escaped that way, wouldn’t you have seen a light in the woods?”

  Geoff shook his head. “Not in that underbrush, if they aimed the light at the ground in front of them. Barn and stable were both locked.”

  “We lock the barn when we leave because that’s where all Hiram’s tools are. My contractor’s bonded, of course. He or his foreman is always around when they’re working, so they make sure none of Hiram’s tools go missing during the day.”

  “So, the barn is unlocked during the day?” Geoff asked.

  “We tried locking it all the time, but we kept having to chase down the key to get something. Waste of time. We store things in there we need during the day.”

  “Like what?”

  “Fence posts, sheets of plywood, wire, extra carriages that we’re not using or that need mending . . .”

  “So one of the workmen could case the barn during the day and come back after dark to break in,” Dick said.

  Peggy nodded. “I do hope not. Bobby would be so upset. I’ve caught a couple of the men peeking in the barn during the day. One guy told me he was just interested in the carriages.”

  “I found tool marks around the door. Somebody tried to get in,” Geoff said. “It’s a heavy door, but half an hour with a good crowbar would jimmy it open.”

  “I didn’t find any suspicious tool marks before I left.”

  “Must have scared the bejasus out of whoever it was when we drove into the lot,” Dick said. “Want me to come back after I drop you all and keep an eye on the place tonight?”

  “If anyone stays, I will,” I said.

  “No you won’t. Not after the last time.” He turned to Dick. “Nothing else will happen tonight. Probably long gone across the fence,” Geoff said.

  “I hope he gets bit by a rattler,” I said. Whoever tried to break in had violated my place, and by extension, me. The only good thing was that Geoff seemed to be relaxing his hands-off policy towards me since he’d been shot at.

  “I’d like to check the other gate before we drive back to Mossy Creek,” I said. “If this is the same person who knocked me into the cellar, that’s the way he got in last night. He might have crossed the pasture and left the same way.

  We drove around and found the new gate for the second driveway untouched. “He’d need a car to get here,” Peggy said. “We didn’t hear one drive down this road. So where is it?”

  “Maybe he hitchhiked,” I said.

  “Nobody picks up hitchhikers at night along this road.”

  “Is there anywhere to park a car on the governor’s side?” Geoff asked. “That’s where he disappeared.”

  “I assume so,” I said. “I know they have hunting parties over there in the fall, and I see cars and trucks turning in from time to time when I have to go to Bigelow that way. They could be running a meth lab or a casino over there for all I know. I avoid the place. Whoever it was is long gone whichever way they went.” I decided to check out the fence line between my place and the governor’s land tomorrow morning. Maybe I’d find a marked trail and evidence of a parked car at the bottom of the hill. And I wouldn’t tell anyone ahead of time I was doing it. They’d all have a fit.

  This time when we drove away, Geoff and I were belted in, but he reached across, took my hand and held it all the way to his hotel.

  Chapter 26

  Late Tuesday night

  Geoff

  Geoff sat at his laptop in his hotel room and wrote up his notes. Too many people were better off with Raleigh dead. But what pressure had made one of them commit murder at that particular time and place, and in that way?

  If Raleigh truly intended to fire Brock, then killing his boss might preserve Brock’s job as well as hide the reason behind Raleigh’s anger at him. So, what did Raleigh have on Brock? And how dangerous was the knowledge? How deeply involved was Gwen Standish, the veterinarian?

  Of course, Geoff couldn’t rule out the beautiful widow. If Raleigh had discovered Sarah Beth was pregnant by another man, she’d be better off as a widow before Monday morning when Raleigh could institute divorce proceedings.

  Who was the father? Brock? Armando? Mr. Clemons, the priest? Or someone completely out of left field?

  And what about Dawn? If Raleigh had given his daughter an ultimatum about dumping the polo player, she’d have motive to kill him before he could disown her. But would he? As an important cog in his business empire and his breeding and training operation, she was not easily replaced. Geoff felt fairly certain Raleigh would have kept threatening, while trying to talk her around.

  Or maybe he held a different kind of threat over Dawn’s head? Could he actually have the polo player deported? How quickly? So, what did Dawn believe her father would do and when?

  As for Armando, his alibi checked out. He played two games on Saturday and was on the polo field in Palm Beach as a referee when Dawn called him to tell him about her father. That didn’t mean he didn’t have some involvement or know Dawn’s intentions.

  Other possibilities?

  Technical delegate Catherine Harris certainly loathed Raleigh, but Geoff couldn’t see that she was under any time pressure to get rid of him. He couldn’t have her fired. He couldn’t even force her to fire Troy, her assistant.

  Geoff had been surprised to discover that Troy Wilkinson and Harris slept in separate rooms at the motel. He was even more surprised to find that Morgan, Troy’s girlfriend from college, had joined him for the weekend.

  Catherine and Troy met at the motel to drive to the show grounds on Sunday morning about the time Raleigh’s body was found.

  Then there was Gwen, the vet. Geoff wanted to know how she’d managed to equip that clinic and vet van so expensively. He agreed with Peggy that Brock was probably her partner and that they could have something to do with illicit drugs.

  Tomorrow he’d call his buddy at the DEA to see if he had any suggestions about what the pair might be up to.

  Raleigh had screwed a bunch of people one way or another. Any of them might have killed him or even paid to have him killed.

  Harry Tollive
r said he’d gotten out of Raleigh’s dubious financial schemes while the getting was good, but he could be lying. Others might not have been so astute—or so lucky. For that matter, the governor’s cronies could have had Raleigh killed. That crowd did not like to lose.

  The forensic accountant in Atlanta had only begun to dig into Raleigh’s records. Could it be significant that the person he’d chased at Lackland Farm had disappeared onto the governor’s land?

  Geoff realized he needed to stop calling it the governor’s land. The governor was only one of a consortium of owners. But if they hunted over that land, then the entire consortium would be much more familiar with the pathways than anyone else.

  Finally, He needed to ask Dick Fitzgibbons why he and Raleigh hated one another.

  Chapter 27

  Merry

  It was clear and hot for Raleigh’s funeral. An amazing number of people had driven up from Atlanta for the services, and all those bodies were taxing the air conditioning. Governor Ham Bigelow and his acolytes stood outside intercepting any previous or possible future contributors to his campaigns. Eventually, he went into the church, made sympathetic noises to Sarah Beth and Dawn, then slid into the pew just behind them as though he were a member of the family.

  Sarah Beth was certainly a glamorous widow in a plain black linen sheath that probably cost as much as my pickup truck. She also wore a big black Panama hat, black nylons, and black kid gloves. Even she didn’t go so far as to wear a veil. In north Georgia in late May she’d have asphyxiated.

  “Everyone knows you don’t wear black kid gloves after Easter,” Peggy whispered.

  “I don’t wear gloves except when I drive,” I whispered back. “And they’re always brown.” I was wearing my good black slacks and a black linen shirt, black flats, and no hat. I had one bad moment when Peggy threatened to wear her teal driving hat, but I talked her out of it.

  Dawn was dressed like me. She sat on the front pew with Armando between her and Sarah Beth. They seemed cordial enough for stepdaughter and stepmother. I wondered if that would survive the division of Raleigh’s estate.