One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02]

by Carolyn McSparren

  “Troy plans to apologize to you and Peggy for that awful banner.”

  “That’s not necessary.” God, it was the last thing I needed.

  “Yes, it is. I haven’t told him about your relationship and I won’t, not ever, without your permission, but I think if you got to know him you’d like him and want to tell him yourself.”

  Not damned likely.

  She grasped my hand again. Lord, the woman couldn’t keep her hands off me or keep herself out of my space. I wanted her gone. I no longer wanted her to judge my show or train on Sunday, but I couldn’t cancel without a reason and didn’t plan to reveal the one I had. After this weekend I would avoid her and her son—no way would I call him my half-brother. I watched her drive down the hill until the first turn obscured her truck.

  Ten minutes later I had Heinzie, the big Friesian, saddled. Since his first excursion riding Peggy and me bareback, I’d ridden him often. Dressage under saddle improved his driving, and vice versa.

  Today the riding helped me.

  Something in my face backed Peggy and Dick off. They went into the clients’ lounge and shut the door without asking any questions.

  I worked Heinzie in the dressage arena for nearly an hour. By the time I finished cooling him out we were both worn out and sweaty.

  Peggy had finished afternoon feed. Everyone except Heinzie was munching happily.

  “Don Qui kept an eye on the back door, so he could be certain Heinzie hadn’t flown away and left him,” Peggy said as she shut Heinzie’s stall door so that he could eat his dinner. “He didn’t bray. Big step forward.”

  Bless the woman. She didn’t ask a single question. Dick had gone back to her house for a nap before dinner. I hadn’t made up my mind what, if anything, to tell them. Dick had been Hiram’s friend for twenty years or more. Peggy had been his first and best friend in Mossy Creek.

  I hadn’t known my father well since I was a child. Peggy and Dick could give me a better take on whether he would or would not deflower an eighteen-year-old virgin and walk away without another thought.

  Chapter 29

  Merry

  I finished locking up for the night. Riding Heinzie had helped my mood a bunch. If I had a half brother, I’d have to deal. I was less concerned about the half-brother part than I was about the half-brother as killer possibility.

  Peggy was already waiting in my truck, when I heard a car gun up the drive from the road.

  “You expecting anyone?” Peggy asked.

  I shook my head. The minute I recognized Morgan’s red Mini-Cooper, I leaned in, slipped the gun from my center console into the pocket of my jeans jacket and tossed Peggy the truck keys. “Move over and start the engine.”

  She slid across and started the truck, as Morgan came to a stop a foot from my front bumper. I gripped my Glock and waited while she and Troy got out.

  “Mind moving your car?” I asked. “We need to get home.”

  “Mrs. Abbott?” Troy said. So he hadn’t gone back to college as Catherine thought. He’d gone straight to Morgan instead. “Can I talk to you a minute?” He sounded subdued.

  Morgan slid out from behind her wheel. “I told you this is stupid. Let’s go.”

  “We came to apologize,” Troy said.

  “Maybe you did. I have nothing to apologize for.” She lifted her chin. All that passion, green eyes, red hair, and a body that many men might literally kill for. I wouldn’t have liked her without the banner and the bullhorn. As it was, I was way past loathing.

  “So why did you come with him?” I asked.

  “Morgan offered to drive me.”

  She brushed him off with one peremptory hand. “That harpy he works for told him to apologize or lose his job. He should have told her to shove it, but she’s got her hooks into him. I came because I wanted to see the cells where you chain your slaves.”

  “Sorry, all empty. Move your car or I’ll move it for you. This truck can shove your Mini over the cliff.” I opened the passenger door.

  She said to my back, “We’re right to do what we do, and if you weren’t one of them, you’d admit it.”

  “One of whom?”

  “The enslavers of animals. The destroyers.”

  “Are you one of those people who want me to turn my horses loose in the Okefenokee Swamp to fend for themselves?”

  “They did when they were free.”

  I turned back to face her. “Some fifteen thousand years ago, about the time a Mongolian shepherd jumped on a pony, or a wolf ate scraps, curled up warm beside a huntsman’s fire and got his ears scratched. Your ancestors might have been able to survive in the wilderness then too. You want to try it without Bergdorf’s and Kroger’s?”

  “How about the wild mustangs?”

  “How about them? They have been on open range for hundreds of years where there is at least a modicum of food to eat, unless they die miserably of drought or floods or battles for mares or worm infestations or colic or breach birth or broken legs or wolves or coyotes or Grizzly bears or snakebite. Every month I send money to the human beings who make certain that they have hay and water, and rabies powder and a dozen other vaccines, and plenty of room to roam. And every year human beings adopt some of them and I suspect the horses are glad of it.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “No, I can’t. I do see that afterwards they’re healthy and relaxed and enjoy being around people. When we domesticated animals we signed a pledge to look after them.”

  “How paternalistic—you’re saying we’re better than the animals.”

  Peggy had climbed out of the truck and come to stand at my shoulder.

  “We do have opposable thumbs,” she said mildly. “Which makes it easier to serve them by picking up a bale of hay or a hoof pick. Most of us feel a sense of empathy between us and them—herd instinct, if you will. When you put up that stupid banner, you nearly drowned two of your precious animal buddies.”

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Troy said. He’d come to apologize, not debate. “No way we thought anybody would get hurt.”

  “Nobody was, no thanks to you,” I snapped. “Troy, I accept that you’d probably have jumped off the Empire State Building to keep getting laid. Morgan used you. She would have been happy to see a couple of horses drown.”

  “I wanted you all to drown, not only the horses,” Morgan snarled.

  I saw the astonished look Troy threw her. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Of course I do. We’d have gone viral on the net. I video-taped the whole thing from the woods.” She rounded on him. “What did you think would happen? At the very least, that old wrinkly should have drowned.” She pointed at Peggy. Uh-oh.

  I could see on his face the numb realization that she was dead serious.

  “This old wrinkly,” Peggy said. “was captain of her swim team at college.”

  “A million years ago,” Morgan sneered.

  I put a hand on Peggy’s arm. We didn’t need to go to jail for assault.

  Troy was completely out of his depth. I felt kind of sorry for him, but he should have known better than to let Morgan La Fey drive him out here.

  “They’ll all be better off dead!” Morgan said. ‘Kill them all—dogs and cats and sheep and cattle . . .”

  “Hey, wait,” Troy said. “You never said anything about killing them.”

  “If they’re so screwed up they can’t live free, then we should kill them. Period,” Morgan said. She turned on me. “It’s your fault. If you hadn’t made them dependent, they could survive without you. Since they can’t, they should die.”

  “Human babies are dependent,” I said. “Does the same go for them, or is your pogrom just for other species? Just mammals, or do you include birds and reptiles and fish?”

  “Man,” Troy said. He was staring at Morgan as though he’d never seen her before. “Like I don’t believe in testing on animals, or dog fighting and puppy mills and stuff, but nobody’s killing my dog.”

 
; I had a sudden vision of Peggy armed with an AR-15 ready to fend off anyone who tried to hurt her four cats. I’d be standing down at the end of my road with a bazooka or a hand-held missile launcher if I could get my hands on one, ready to protect even Don Qui with my life.

  “Grow a pair, why don’t you?” Morgan sneered at Troy. “What good are animals? They’re already victims, having chemicals poured into their eyes so the rich can have a new moisturizer, or slaughtered so the rich can eat sirloin, or tearing each other apart so the rich can bet on them, or pulling wagons or letting people sit on top of them so the rich can bet on races.” World class sneer.

  My God, this wasn’t about animals. It was about Morgan versus the rich, which, according to Dick, she was part of. She’d even been a debutante. Maybe that was what caused the disconnect.

  Peggy had spoken of herd instincts—pity, compassion, love, grief, loyalty—the ineffable connection between human beings and The Other. How could Morgan possibly feel the awe of gazing down at a cat asleep on her lap? Or a horse nuzzling her cheek? For that matter, watching a whale spout or a tiger pad through his jungle. She wasn’t doing this because she felt a part of the animal kingdom. She was doing this because she didn’t.

  Morgan was running on hatred and envy. No empathy for animals or human beings either.

  I am so grateful and in awe of people who fight to save the mustangs or rescue fighting dogs or stop testing of cosmetics on rats and rabbits or scrub excrement off kennel floors, or protect manatees or break up puppy mills or battle for humane treatment of chickens . . . the list is endless. I may not always agree with them or their methods, but I know they care. Animals are real to them.

  “I have a suggestion for you, Morgan,” I said. “Go herd sheep in Montana or drive cattle in Texas or volunteer at a veterinarian’s office. Go watch what happens when a dog visits an old people’s home or opens a door for a kid with MS. See if you get it. I don’t think you will, but if you don’t give it a try, your soul is going to shrivel up and die on you.”

  “You self-righteous bitch,” she whispered. “I hope one of your precious horses kicks your brains out. Come on, Troy.”

  “Nunh-uh,” he said. “Mrs. Abbott, can I have a ride back to Mossy Creek? My—Catherine can pick me up there.” He didn’t sound angry so much as stunned.

  Morgan threw him a venomous look, dove into the Mini, whipped it around, barely missing the fender of my truck, and spurted gravel all over us.

  “Slow down,” I shouted. I didn’t want her to fly over the edge on her way down. Or did I?

  “I’ll phone you,” Troy called after her, his voice full of hope even now. “We have to talk.”

  “Don’t bother,” she shouted over her shoulder.

  “I think you just lost a girlfriend,” I said.

  He watched until the Mini drove out of sight. “She didn’t mean all that stuff. She’s really a nice person underneath. She’s just upset.”

  “Gee, ya think?”

  His shoulders hunched. He was trying to convince himself, not me. And not doing a very good job of it.

  In my book she was a dangerous harpy. If anybody I’d met lately seemed capable of murder, she did. But why would she target Raleigh? Did she even know the man?

  After a moment, Troy looked up at me. His eyes belonged on a Cocker Spaniel that had just been kicked. “Man, I thought I knew her. I believed in what she said we were doing. Get a little publicity, you know? No harm, no foul. How come I still love her?”

  “You’ll get over it.”

  He called Catherine, who promised to pick him up at the Hamilton Inn.

  On our drive into Mossy Creek, he sat in the back seat of the truck and never said a word. Neither did Peggy, although I could tell she was itching to discuss what had just happened.

  Maybe Raleigh had an actual reason to think that banner was aimed at him. Maybe he even guessed Morgan was behind it and knew why. Had he done one of his seduce-and-run numbers on her? She wouldn’t take being dumped by a rich and powerful man well. If she threatened to cause a scandal, he’d fight back hard and dirty.

  If he decided to get Troy and Morgan kicked out of school, he’d find a way. A previous animal rights stunt might lead to expulsion. Then there was the perennial favorite of campus cops—smoking dope in the dorm. Everybody did it. The cops usually turned a blind eye.

  But they could be convinced or bribed not to look the other way.

  Had he threatened Morgan after the banner incident?

  Maybe she agreed to meet him at the dressage arena Saturday morning to talk him out of it. He’d think she was capitulating. Did she have the strength to knock Giles off his driving seat? Did Troy?

  She might step out of the trees and sweet talk him into getting down on his own. Then a tap on the head to drop him, and zap, in goes the spike.

  Theoretically, she and Troy had been together in bed at the motel. But he’d have lied for her in a heartbeat. Or he might have been so zonked out from marathon sex that she could have driven an ATV out of the motel room without disturbing him. Or she could have drugged him. Or they were together killing Raleigh.

  As Morgan had said, he needed to grow a pair. She conned him into raising that banner, but after his reaction to her ‘kill them all’ speech, I couldn’t see him murdering Raleigh. I needed to report to Geoff, and incidentally ask him if the medical examiner had found any bruises on Raleigh’s skull.

  Chapter 30

  Thursday morning

  Merry

  We needed horse feed, so I ran by our local feed store on my way out to Lackland farm to pick up a dozen fifty-pound sacks of rolled oats. As I backed out, Brock pulled into the café next door. What was he doing in my neck of the woods? Meeting somebody? It wasn’t early for someone like us, but it was early for normal businessmen.

  As I pulled out, I saw a black BMW pull into the parking lot and park beside Brock’s truck. A moment later Whitehead, the governor’s pit bull, climbed out and went inside. Coincidence? Was Brock meeting Whitehead? How could the two men possibly know one another?

  Only through Raleigh.

  I pulled my hat down low and slunk into the café. Thank God Whitehead and Brock were sitting in a back booth. Neither looked up when I sat down behind them and buried my face in my menu.

  “There’s a vacancy on your damn board right now,” Brock said. He kept his voice low, but I could understand him.

  “So?” Whitehead said.

  “Put me on it.”

  Whitehead laughed. “For God’s sake, why would we do that?”

  “Because the minute I marry Sarah Beth I’ll be able to vote her shares.”

  “You so sure she’ll marry you?”

  “Hell, man,” Brock said, “The woman’s carrying my baby.”

  Whitehead hesitated. “Once you’re legally married, then, we’ll consider it.”

  “Then give me an advance on the salary I’d make.”

  This time Whitehead laughed out loud. “A salary for a job you don’t have? I don’t think so.”

  “I need that money. I owe some people.”

  “Go to a loan shark.” Whitehead slipped out of the booth. I turned away and practically memorized my menu.

  Brock followed, “Hey, don’t walk out on me.”

  Whitehead didn’t answer him. He tossed a bill beside the cash register and let the door close in Brock’s face. Brock followed him, protesting all the way.

  “You want some coffee, hon?” The waitress asked.

  “Uh, I’ve got an emergency,” I said. I gave her a couple of dollars and left. Neither Brock’s truck nor the BMW were in the lot, so I drove to the farm and unloaded the feed.

  Peggy had errands to run Thursday morning, so I was alone. As soon as I fed and watered the horses, I organized my incursion into the governor’s land. I had to know whether it was possible to reach the highway from my pasture through the governor’s land.

  I put on my snake proof Wellington boots with heavy socks unde
r them, and an old pair of heavy canvas pants I used in the wintertime. I’d be hot, but that was better than being bit by a copperhead. These clothes would protect me from poison ivy and oak as well. I put on my thickest leather driving gloves, my hard hat, and a pair of wraparound sunglasses, holstered my pistol, and grabbed the machete I used for clearing brush. I also made certain my cell phone was charged and getting a signal. Sometimes when the weather’s bad, cell phone reception to and from Hiram’s mountain disappears only to reappear with the sun.

  “Okay, George of the Jungle, let’s see where the sniper went.”

  Not for the first time I wished I had a dog. Not necessarily a big dog. A yappy Jack Russell terrier would do to alert me to danger. Maybe I should check out the Bigelow animal shelter.

  Nah, not until my house was finished and I moved away from Peggy’s. It would be lonely enough without her and the cats. I needed a few barn cats to keep the rats in check, although after Morgan’s ranting I was no longer sure if letting cats kill rats in my barn was enslaving them or setting them free to fend for themselves.

  My musings had taken me to the far end of the lane between the mare and gelding pastures. It was a cul-de-sac with my fence at the property line. No gate. On purpose.

  I hadn’t given much thought as to how I intended to get past the fence. It was heavy thoroughbred diamond wire mesh with white electrified tape along the top. At the moment, the tape was not live. Generally, horses get one shock and never go near it again. However, I had a stallion once that tested it every morning, just to make certain nobody had screwed up and left it off, so he could go hunting for a mare to breed.

  In the north corner, I found someone had carefully clipped the wire mesh to make a hole large enough for a human being. I crawled through and reached back for my machete. I could see the grass was flattened, and the vines pulled aside, but the ground was too hard to take foot or hand prints.

  I scrambled to my feet and bonked my hard hat on a low-hanging branch. The men who owned this land theoretically used it as a hunting preserve, but I doubted they bagged many deer on it. There was more to eat on my side of the fence.