One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02]

by Carolyn McSparren

  As I walked by, a gust of wind caught one big feathered creation and lofted it clear off Juanita Tolliver’s head.

  “Botheration!” she yelled and dove after it. I caught it just before it hit the ground.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” she said. “I dropped my dadgum hat pin before I could stick it in.” She bent over to search for it. I could see the tight pin curl on the top of her head crisscrossed with bobby pins. “Gotcha!” she said triumphantly as she came up with a hatpin dangling from her fingers. The end of it was crowned with a series of bright red beads the color of pigeon-blood rubies. At least I assumed they were beads. Some of the antique pins the ladies had inherited from their great-great grandmothers sported actual gems. The more unusual the pin, the more cachet to the wearer.

  Juanita set her hat on her head and jabbed the pin through the felt. “There. See if you can fly off now, doggone you,” she said. She tossed me a wave and walked off to warm up for her dressage test.

  A lady I did not recognize took her place at the mirror, sat a bright yellow straw hat surrounded with yellow silk peonies on her head and repeated the pin curl and hatpin jab. Her jacket was the same jonquil yellow, which went beautifully with her red hair. She looked from the waist up as though she were ready for a drive through Central Park in eighteen eighty, but her black slacks and dusty paddock boots kind of ruined the ensemble.

  “Are they supposed to look like that?”

  I jumped and turned to find Geoff behind me holding out a cup of coffee.

  “Two artificial sugars, one milk,” he said.

  The man knew how I liked my coffee. “Thanks,” I said and cupped it in my palms to warm my hands before I took a swig. “What happened at Gwen’s last night?”

  “I love it when a plan comes together,” he said with a broad grin. “Four big men. No gunfire. They came like little lambs. The DEA thinks they’re probably Russian Mafia, but of course they’re not talking.” He shrugged. “At least we know who we’re dealing with.”

  “Will they talk?”

  He shook his head. “Doubt it, but you never know. Thank God, it’s not my problem. Not this time, at any rate.”

  I took a deep breath. He was safe and here with me. “So, want to watch a dressage test?”

  “Sure.”

  We were halfway around the stable when I stopped as though I’d run into a steel girder.

  “Hey, you okay?” he said. “Coffee too hot?”

  I grabbed his arm and turned him around. Dawn Raleigh was standing at the mirror settling a black Fedora onto her blond hair. Armando stood behind her.

  “Mourning hat, I assume,” Geoff whispered. “Where we going?”

  “Just come. I need to ask you something.”

  We walked around to the far side of the parking lot where we were alone before I stopped him. “Tell me again about Raleigh’s wound.”

  “Wounds, plural.”

  “I got that. Tell me.”

  He described the wounds in detail.

  “He was killed by a hat pin,” I said.

  Geoff didn’t say anything for half a minute. I thought he’d laugh, but instead he shook his head. “Had to be sharper than a hat pin.”

  “Come with me.” I opened the door of Hiram’s truck and the glove compartment. Still wrapped in tissue paper, nestled Peggy’s new hat pin for her blue hat. The one she’d bought at the Tollivers’ show. I unwrapped it, took the little protector off the business end and poked it into Geoff’s hand.

  “Hey!” He jerked his hand away.

  “I didn’t even draw blood. But I could have.” I handed it to him.

  He tested the tip. “Damn. I had no idea those things were so sharp.”

  “Have to be to go through all those layers of tulle and silk and felt and feathers and still hold.”

  “Would a woman be strong enough to shove it into Raleigh’s spine?”

  “Would I?”

  “Yeah, you would.”

  “So would most of the women here, not that it was necessarily wielded by a woman. A man could have pinched his wife’s hat pin, climbed up on the box with Raleigh, laid his arm along the back of Raleigh’s seat, then wham.”

  I slid into the truck and across the center console. Geoff slid in behind me and slammed the passenger side door. Anyone who wanted me desperately could call me, but they might have to wait long enough to let us finish our talk. I casually laid my right arm along the back of his seat and turned halfway toward him.

  “We’ve been thinking of all the ways the killer could have conned or forced Raleigh onto the ground to stab him with the stake,” I said. “Not just off the box, but on his face in the dirt. None of the explanations ever made sense. But if he was struck while he was still sitting in the carriage . . .” I jabbed my index finger into the base of Geoff’s skull.

  “Hey! That hurt.” He twisted away.

  “Then he fell off face down . . .”

  “Raleigh falls off the carriage, already dead,” Geoff said. “The killer climbs down, pulls the hatpin out, shoves the stake in fast, and slips back into the woods.” Geoff ran his hand down his face. “Simple when you know how.”

  “So long as the hat pin was inside the wound, the only blood would be on the weapon itself, wouldn’t it?” I asked.

  He nodded. “He died instantly. Dead bodies don’t bleed, they seep. So why use the stake at all?”

  “You said it yourself, Geoff. To obscure the original wound.”

  “Yeah.” He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. “Stick the pin back in your hat, and go back to the show. We weren’t searching for another weapon at that point. We thought we had the weapon.”

  “Could the killer count on that?” I asked. “Or would he or she want to dispose of it?”

  He ran his hand down his face. “It could be anywhere. I hate like hell to ask the forensic boys to go back to Harry Tolliver’s place to search the woods again.”

  “Maybe it’s not in the woods.” I said quietly. “We’ve been trying to figure out why someone has been breaking into this place and knocking me into cellars. As improbable as it is, maybe they are looking for something. Something like a discarded hat pin?”

  “Why bother? You people wear gloves all the time, so no fingerprints, probably. A hat pin is a hat pin.” He turned in his seat to look at me. “Isn’t it?”

  “Not always.” I shook my head. I could feel my excitement building. I told him about inherited hat pins, valuable hat pins, memorable hat pins, identifiable hat pins. “Somebody killed Raleigh using a hat pin that might be traceable. I don’t know how, but what if somehow I wound up with the thing. The killer has been searching for it ever since. Is that crazy?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. It may be, but just let’s entertain that thought for a minute. Where could it be?” He felt around the inside of the truck. “Anything else in the glove compartment?”

  “My truck was locked and my trailer was down at the opposite end of the parking area from the space where the body was found. If it were me, I’d get rid of the thing close to where I used it. But I couldn’t toss it into the trees. Your techies would undoubtedly have found it. I’d want it off my person. I couldn’t be certain no one would search for another weapon.”

  “Where would you hide it?”

  “I’d bury it in a bale of hay,” I said.

  “No good. It would be found the minute the bale was used.”

  “What if it was my own bale of hay?”

  “Then why come after you? If that is indeed what the killer is looking for.”

  “Okay. Then you come up with an idea.”

  “Let me have a minute to think,” he said and put his left knee on the seat so he could twist to look directly at me. “What did the killer have access to at the Tollivers’ that he hasn’t been able to access since?”

  “That’s why they ran us off the road,” I said, warming to his line of reasoning. “If we’d crashed, if we’d been unconscious or dead, whoever ran us off co
uld have searched at leisure.” I shook my head. “But how does that help? We still don’t know who owns the killer SUV.”

  “How many dark vans would you say were parked at the Tollivers?”

  I shrugged. “Fifteen, maybe.”

  “Locked?”

  “Probably not. At a private show, most people leave their keys on the front seat or the dashboard in case the vehicle has to be moved to let a trailer go past.”

  “So anyone could climb into an SUV, drive it for thirty minutes or so, drive it back, park it in the same spot, and walk off.”

  “What if the owner wanted his van while it was gone?”

  “Make up an excuse. I’m so sorry, my truck was blocked in, and I had to pick up a prescription for my sick horse.”

  “Lame.”

  “Would you question one of your friends?” Geoff asked.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “What did you bring home from the Tollivers?”

  “The things we took with us in the first place,” I said. “Tack, horses, stable stuff, carriages, feed, hay. We’ve fed the hay. No hat pin.” I hesitated.

  “What?” He must have seen something in my face.

  “We brought home one thing we didn’t take with us. We borrowed the Tollivers’ little Meadowbrook to drive Don Qui.”

  “Where had it been parked?”

  “Harry Tolliver moved it out of the way to leave room for the other carriages and trailers. It had been sitting in the back end of his stable by the woods.” I gasped.

  “Right. Out the way but close at hand for anyone walking out of the woods.”

  “I pulled it to our trailer by the shafts, then collapsed it and slid it under Dick’s big marathon carriage. I didn’t see any hat pins.”

  He nodded. “Presumably it was hidden somehow. What did you do with it when you got it home?”

  “We left it locked in the trailer. It fit perfectly between the wheels of Dick’s marathon carriage. We didn’t need either carriage right away, so we left them both where they were under Dick’s dust cover in the trailer.” I stared at Geoff. “That cover comes all the way to the ground. Somebody looking in the back window of our trailer wouldn’t have seen the VSE carriage folded up under the big one.”

  He began to laugh. “Talk about frustrating. Your killer tries to run you off the road. Doesn’t work. He hunts for your little Meadowbrook here and can’t find it. You almost catch him, so he knocks you into the cellar. Then he comes back, still can’t find the carriage, and we almost catch him. Poor guy must be half crazy with frustration.”

  “The next time he tries to get in, he finds locked gates, cameras, more lights, deadbolts on every door. I almost feel sorry for him.”

  “Don’t.”

  “But did the same person kill Gwen or was it the drug dealers?” I asked. “Two separate killers seems pretty far-fetched. Unless it was two people working together.”

  “Try this on for size,” Geoff said. “Gwen was up all night at the Tollivers before Raleigh was killed. After she finally cleared her colic, she’d want a few hours of sleep back home. Everyone else would hole up to catch a little sleep in their trailers or inside the stable.

  “She swore she didn’t see Raleigh putting to, but maybe she saw his killer. Someone who shouldn’t have been there that early, or later said they weren’t. Eventually she realized what she’d seen and tried her hand at blackmail. She still hadn’t been paid for the coke shipment, remember, because it hadn’t yet been picked up. She could have seen blackmail as a stopgap measure.”

  “Or maybe a little windfall she wouldn’t have to share with Brock.”

  “She was one greedy woman. As small as she was, she wouldn’t have stood a chance against a surprise attack from someone holding a wire garrote.”

  I shivered. “We’ve been calling the killer he, but it doesn’t have to be, does it? I mean, if it really was a hatpin . . .”

  “If somebody walked up to Raleigh that morning brandishing a revolver or a kitchen knife, he’d have reacted differently. He wouldn’t consider a hatpin as a weapon, nor a woman as a threat.”

  “Why not just abandon the hatpin in the wound?” I asked. But I already knew the answer. “Wait—”

  “You said it yourself. Somehow it’s recognizable.”

  “So where is it?”

  “Where’s the little Meadowbrook?” he asked.

  “We set it up to drive Don Qui. Then Dick locked it in Hiram’s barn out of the way.”

  “Murderous bastard still can’t get to it.”

  “I have the key.” We climbed out of the truck. I pointed three people with questions to Sandi, unlocked the barn, slipped inside with Geoff and twisted the deadbolt behind us. The little Meadowbrook stood like an altar boy beside Dick’s marathon carriage.

  Hiram installed lots of work lights when he used this barn as his workshop, so we had plenty of light even with the doors closed. At first glance I couldn’t see where to hide anything like a hatpin around the Meadowbrook. The carriage was all wood except for the two leather seats. I propped the folding left seat up against the fender, used Geoff’s penlight and searched for pin pricks in the upholstery. Nothing.

  The right-hand seat was screwed down and couldn’t be lifted. In order to check it out, I had to lie down on my back and look up. I was about ready to give up and let Geoff try, when I saw that there were a couple of loose stitches along the bottom seam of the seat. No stuffing poked through, but there seemed to be a lump under the leather.

  “Give me your pocketknife,” I said.

  “How do you know I carry one?”

  “Don’t be a wiseass.”

  He handed me the knife.

  “Now hold the flashlight right here.”

  “Your wish is my command, princess, but put these on before you go monkeying with anything else. You’ve already had your hands all over this cart, so your fingerprints will be on it in any case, but now that we know what we’re looking for, it’s better to take precautions.” He handed me a pair of latex gloves. I’ve never known him to be without several pairs. Must be an occupational thing, like carrying a gun.

  I gripped the knife in my teeth pirate fashion while I put on the latex gloves. Then I waggled the knifepoint carefully into the seam to widen it just enough to get two fingers inside. “I feel something,” I said. “It’s lumpy.”

  “Hurry up.”

  “I’m hurrying.” By the time I had worried the object far enough out of the upholstery to get a grip on it and pull, I was sweating. “Gotcha,” I said. “Give me a hand here.”

  Geoff grabbed me around the waist and pulled me up and into his arms. I think he was considering kissing me, but it would have been difficult while I held a lethal weapon in each hand—his knife in one and a six-inch hatpin without a guard in the other.

  I tore my eyes from his as he dropped his hands and aimed his flashlight at the pin. It looked rusty.

  Not rust. Dried Blood. I recognized it at once. I know whose hatpin it was, although I prayed I was wrong. I looked closer.

  I was right.

  “Oh, dear God.” I said. “Oh, my.”

  “Whose is it?”

  I hesitated.

  “You know who owns it.” He laid his flashlight on the seat, pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket, and laid the pin gently in it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

  “Doesn’t mean the owner is the one who used it. Maybe the killer stole it from her.”

  “Dammit, Merry. Who owns the pin?”

  I didn’t want to say the name even now. “Look at the end of it. That’s not a bead. It’s an antique topaz. I’ve seen it dozens of times.”

  “Who, blast it?”

  I sighed. “Catherine Harris.” I cut my eyes at him. “But she has an alibi, doesn’t she? Both she and Troy? And why on earth would she kill Raleigh? I know they didn’t like one another, but . . .”

  “Go get Peggy’s hatpin out of your truck. Don’t let anyone see you do it
.” He wrapped Catherine’s pin in the handkerchief, then slipped it carefully into his jacket pocket.

  I went. He took Peggy’s hatpin from me, bent down and carefully inserted it in the upholstery where Catherine’s had been.

  “You’re setting up a sting, aren’t you?” I said.

  He nodded. “Worked for Stan and the cocaine.”

  “Would you please wait until after the clinic to arrest her?”

  His jaw dropped halfway to his belt buckle. “I beg your pardon.”

  I drove my hands through my hair. “I’m crazy and selfish, but she’s no danger to anyone here, is she? Think about the money for Casey’s carriage. Think about the bad publicity to the farm. Oh, God, I sound like the mayor in Jaws. Don’t warn people about the twenty-foot shark. It might disturb their afternoon at the beach.”

  “Even if it is hers, she may not have used it. I need to check a few things before I arrest her or anyone else.”

  “Don’t you need a warrant?” I asked in a small voice.

  He shook his head. “I can arrest without a warrant. You’ll have to act as though nothing unusual has happened.”

  Just great. How could I treat Catherine as though I hadn’t a clue she might be a killer? Heck, if Troy really was my half-brother, then she was my kinfolk. Sort of. I dropped my head in my hands. “I wish all these people would go home. I should never have had this show.”

  He pulled me against him and propped his chin on the top of my bent head. “Hang in there. You say you’re good in a crisis. Prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Keep this door locked until I tell you to open it. Stay the hell away from Catherine, Troy, and anyone else who had a reason to kill Raleigh.”

  “What are you going to do?” I sounded whiny. I hate that.

  “Some elementary police work. I’m headed to Mossy Creek to borrow Amos’s office.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I’m going to try to break an alibi and isolate a motive.” He shoved his flashlight into his back pocket, took my face in both hands and kissed me. He took his time. So did I. The man could kiss, I’ll say that for him. I dropped his knife—never a good thing to do with a knife. Since I didn’t spear either of us in the instep, we ignored it for some time. I suspect by the time he let me go, I was cross-eyed. I certainly couldn’t breathe.