Hotspur

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Oh, that long coop. Ralph was touchy. It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Not bad enough to induce murder?”

  His eyes widened. “Ralph never really liked Guy. He just hated that we called him Hotspur. Said it glamorized the bastard. Pardon my language.” Ken cleared his throat. He’d been taught not to swear in front of a lady. “But kill Guy? No.”

  She left, stopped by Franklin Printing. Betty and Bobby offered their full support for the raise.

  By noon she’d called on every board member except for Ralph. She’d give Ken the day to reach him and then she’d have a word with Ralph at tomorrow’s cubbing.

  She pulled up to the feed store. Given all the stops she needed to make, she’d left Raleigh and Rooster home. She missed having them in the truck with her. She enjoyed their “conversation,” as she told friends. She’d chatter away to her dogs, who always seemed so interested in everything she had to say.

  She bumped into Alice Ramy emerging with a dolly loaded with chicken feed.

  “Alice, let me help you.” Sister unloaded the fiftypound sacks onto the back of Alice’s pickup. Alice, although a few years younger than Sister, was frail with tiny, light bones.

  “Thank you.” Alice shut the tailgate. “Sister, I’m told I can have Guy back. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Would you like me to make arrangements? It might be easier.” Alice nodded as Sister put her arm around Alice’s waist. “Tell you what. I’ll follow you home and unload the feed. You make a cup of tea, or even better, a gin rickey. It’s still warm enough for a gin rickey. I’ll call Carl from your house.” Carl Haslip, Ronnie’s cousin, owned the best funeral home in the county.

  An hour later, the feed safely stacked in the chicken coop, Sister called Carl, who lifted this burden off her shoulders.

  Alice wanted Guy placed next to his father. She didn’t want a service. Enough time had passed was how she put it.

  The two women sat on Alice’s back porch, where a canopy of wisteria draped over the crossbeams, for the back porch was under a huge pergola. Alice had taste in some things, plus she made a wickedly delicious gin rickey.

  “Thank you, Jane.”

  “I was glad to help.”

  “I haven’t been a good neighbor. Wasn’t much of a neighbor to Peter, either.” She mentioned Peter Wheeler, whose farm adjoined hers to the south. “I miss him. I don’t know why. All I ever did was complain to him or about him.”

  “He was a good man. I miss his sense of humor.”

  “Guy adored him.”

  “Mutual, I think.”

  “You know that fellow who is in there now? Walter, the doctor? He puts me to mind of Raymond.”

  “Oh?”

  “Different coloring, but same size and build, and even the bone structure of his face.” She sipped a deep draft. “A quieter man than Raymond.”

  “My husband liked being the center of attention.”

  “And how. Guy was like that, too. Don’t know where he got it. Both Paul and I were quiet-living people even when we were young.”

  “He was beautiful. Beauty generates its own energy.”

  Alice watched her cat, Malarky, climb up the wisteria to nestle in a branch and gaze down at them. “Yes, he was beautiful. He took after my grandmother. Same eyes, same black curly hair. I always wished I looked like her. She was beautiful even in old age.”

  “Now, Alice, you’re an attractive woman.”

  “Liar”—she stretched her legs out—“but I thank you all the same.” Malarky shifted his weight, sending wisteria leaves twirling downward. “Fatty,” she called up to him.

  He ignored her.

  “Won’t be long before the leaves turn, even though it’s seventy-four degrees today. The other morning I walked out in the fog and it was chilly.”

  “Lot of fog now. Earth’s warmer than the air.” She turned to face Sister. “Since they found Guy I’ve thought about things. I guess I knew he was gone. He would have found some way to reach me even if he had killed Nola. He wouldn’t have killed her, but even if he had. I just don’t know who killed him, but I think we’ll find out.”

  “Yes, I think we will, too. Alice, did Paul ever tell you anything he’d discovered?”

  “No. He said he could account for people’s movements. I guess you’d say everyone had an alibi. He didn’t really have suspects.”

  “Did Guy ever talk about someone he hated or who might have hated him?”

  “Mmm, sometimes Ronnie Haslip would get on his nerves. Guy thought Ronnie was flirting with him. I just laughed at him. And he and Ralph started bickering. They’d got on well as children and all through high school. But those last months of Guy’s life they were at odds.”

  “Did you know why?”

  “No. You know, the night before he died, he stopped off home. I was watching an old movie, Dark Victory, with Bette Davis. He sat next to me on the sofa and said he was getting bored with everyone. He needed a change.”

  “Do you think he meant Nola?”

  “I don’t know. He wasn’t very specific. But he said the time had come for him to do something with his life. He wasn’t upset, just kind of sober. I can’t think of a better word.”

  “Did Paul find out anything that upset you?”

  “No. I knew Guy partied too much with all those rich people. I knew he had some growing up to do.”

  “Ronnie Haslip, Xavier, and Ralph weren’t rich then.”

  “No. But the Bancrofts, the Taylors, the Jansens. Too much too soon. All of them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever worry that Ray would fall in with that crowd, or their younger sisters and brothers, when he became a little older?” Alice sipped her drink, held one of the ice cubes in her mouth, then released it on the next swallow of gin rickey.

  “I did.”

  “Well, you and Raymond weren’t poor. I suppose Little Ray could have kept up with the Joneses.”

  “That was Big Ray’s department. But Alice, I don’t think Raymond or I would have tolerated that behavior in our son even if we could have afforded it. This county is full of people who just suck off their trust funds.”

  “Most don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

  “I don’t begrudge them the money. What I can’t stand is that they don’t do anything for anybody else. They party, golf, hunt, travel, ricochet from one thing to another. They marry, have children, divorce, marry again, and think the world belongs to them. I have to tolerate the ones in the hunt club, but I sure don’t have to socialize with them.”

  Alice smiled. “I’ve never heard you talk like that.”

  “Alice, you’ve never heard me talk,” Sister bluntly replied.

  A silence followed, then Alice spoke. “I haven’t liked myself much since Guy disappeared. I lived for my family, and when they were gone I didn’t have any friends. Well, you are right. I haven’t heard you talk, really talk. I haven’t heard anyone talk. And how much life do I have left? I don’t want to live it like this. My son has come back to me. Not as I wished, but he’s come back and, you know, he reproaches me. Guy wouldn’t want me as his mother now.”

  Surprised by this outburst, Sister softly said, “Love never dies. His love is as real today as the day he died. He would want you as his mother. He wants you to be happy.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I do. I draw on Raymond’s love every day. He wasn’t perfect. Neither am I. But he loved me and so did my son. I live with that love.”

  Alice finished her drink. “I never thought of it that way. I only thought of what I’d lost. Well, I’ve cried through many a night. I cried when Ben Sidell told me they’d found Guy. The more I cried, the more I knew I had to do something. I can become someone my son would like to know.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “The first thing I’m going to do is take some classes at Virginia Tech. I’ll have to commute, but I checked out the classes on the computer. I can take classes on
Mondays and Wednesdays. I’m going to get a little apartment in Blacksburg, go down Sunday nights and return Wednesday afternoons. I heard that Lorraine Rasmussen wanted to get out in the country, money’s tight for her, and I’ve rented her rooms upstairs. We’ll share the kitchen, the living room. She’ll take care of Malarky and my chickens.”

  “Well, Alice, that’s wonderful.”

  “Do you want to know what I’m going to study?”

  “Of course.”

  “Poultry science and cattle breeding. I’ve always wanted to breed high-quality cattle, but Paul wouldn’t let me do it. He said the market was like a roller coaster. Well, he’s gone. I’m going to do what I want to do.”

  “Good for you.”

  “And one other thing. You were always nice to me even when I wasn’t nice to you. So if you want to go through here when you hunt, you go right ahead.”

  “Alice!” Sister leapt out of her chair and gave Alice a hug.

  “See, I knew all this time you just wanted to hunt my land.” Alice, her face red, laughed.

  It wasn’t until she was halfway up her own driveway that Sister realized she never did buy her groceries.

  CHAPTER 26

  Each board meeting rotated to a different board member’s home. Ralph and Frances Assumptio hosted this one. Frances spent her time and energy cleaning and decorating. The place, farther west from Sister’s down Soldier Road, had a warm feel to it full of handsomely worn oriental rugs, old silver, and overstuffed club chairs.

  One of the rules of the Jefferson Hunt was that no food or liquor could be served until after the board meeting. Past experience proved the necessity of this rule.

  As usual, the entire board showed up. Shaker’s raise passed unanimously. When Ralph wasn’t looking, Ken winked at Sister, who winked back.

  They had checked off everything on the agenda when Bobby Franklin, as president, asked pro forma, “Are there any new items not on the agenda?”

  Crawford, wearing a flattering turquoise shirt, spoke. “I’d like us to consider building a clubhouse and showgrounds. We lack a central meeting place—neutral territory, if you will—and showgrounds would help our horse show committee immeasurably. We’d have a permanent home for our activities.”

  “Wait a minute. This club has no debt. You’re talking about running up mountains of debt,” Ralph piped up, his eyebrows knit together in concern.

  “One of the reasons we have no debt is because Raymond and Sister built the ‘new’ kennels on their farm at their own expense,” Bobby said, quickly giving credit where credit was due. He knew perfectly well what Crawford was up to.

  “What happens when Sister leaves us?” Crawford blurted out.

  “I’m not leaving,” Sister said, enjoying watching him squirm. “I would never willingly leave the Jefferson Hunt. You might vote me out, but I won’t leave on my own.”

  “Never!” Betty vehemently spoke.

  The rest rumbled their agreement.

  “Well, what I meant to say is, what if you have to leave us, what if it’s not your idea?” Crawford recognized his blunder and wished these damned Virginians weren’t so subtle. And how they prized it, too. Made him sick. Everything took twice as long because of their damned subtlety.

  “You mean if I died?” Her gray eyebrows raised quizzically.

  “Well—yes,” Crawford sheepishly replied.

  “The kennels will still belong to the Jefferson Hunt Club, as will the rest of Roughneck Farm.” She had dropped a bombshell.

  No one knew what to say.

  Betty started to cry.

  Bobby also wiped away tears. “Now, we don’t have to go into this. It’s not our business.”

  “You know, I wasn’t withholding it to be obstructionist.” Sister folded her hands on the table. “It’s just no one likes to think of their own demise. When Peter died, it shook me.” Murmurs echoed this sentence, as it had upset all of them. “He’d had good, long innings. I never thought Peter would die. He was made of iron, but the last year when he didn’t ride anymore, I guess deep down, I knew. When a foxhunter stops riding, well?” She shrugged, and the others knew what she meant.

  “You aren’t going anytime soon. Only the good die young.” Bobby recovered himself.

  Everyone laughed.

  “I should live forever, in that case. But I had to think about how I had arranged my effects. And I’d pretty much left everything as Raymond and I had once decided. But that time is past. I have no true physical heirs, but I have plenty of hound children and horse children— and your children.” She smiled warmly. “The Jefferson Hunt will always have a home. I wish I could leave you more money. Who knows what the future will bring. But you have the physical plant.”

  “Hear! Hear!” Ken applauded.

  The others followed his lead.

  “So we don’t need to go into debt.” Ralph Assumptio’s long face lit up.

  “I rather wanted this to be a surprise, but Crawford, your concern, which is quite legitimate, forced my hand.”

  “I certainly had no idea. I didn’t mean to.” He truly meant it.

  “And I agree with you, Crawford, that a showgrounds would help us,” Sister said. “We might even be able to rent it out to other groups and make a bit of money. Imagine that, a hunt club more in the black than in the red.”

  Everyone laughed again.

  “You have an idea about the showgrounds?” Crawford ran his forefinger and middle finger over his lips, an unconscious gesture of thoughtfulness.

  “I think it’s a good idea, but I really don’t want it at Roughneck Farm while I’m alive. I couldn’t stand the commotion.”

  “What if I bought a piece of property near your place?” Crawford suggested.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Ken said. His voice carried authority, an authority he didn’t have in his youth. “Naturally, I’ll need to discuss this with Tedi, Edward, and Sybil, but there is a triangle of land, those acres on our western border. The old logging road goes into it. Perhaps we could donate that to the club and start on the showgrounds next spring, if all goes well.”

  “Still taking on debt,” Ralph grumbled, lowering his head like a bull. He’d been sullen lately. “Bulldozers, grading—why, just the preparation for a ring can easily cost thirty thousand dollars. It’s the drainage that gets you. Now, I don’t want to discourage your gift, Ken, assuming your wife, mother-in-law, and father-in-law agree, but a building program would still mean debt—a grandstand, fencing, fencing around the show ring, that cash register starts ringing up. And you need a sprinkler system, otherwise you’ve got a dust bowl in the summer. You need a tractor and harrow to drag the ring. You need night lights. You need P.A. equipment, otherwise no one will know what’s going on, and I can tell you right now a bullhorn isn’t going to cut it. That’s for starters, folks. And how big do you want the ring? Big. Doesn’t do you a bit of good to build a small one.”

  “Now, Ralph, we can figure these things out.” At that moment Crawford wanted more than anything to strangle Ralph.

  “He’s right, though,” Betty chimed in. “It’s a long-term project, but if the land is donated, with effort and a lot of bake sales, hunter trials, and hunter paces, we could raise the money over the years and then build it.” Betty feared debt, too. She and Bobby struggled to pay their mortgage sometimes.

  The last thing Betty, Bobby, or Sister wanted to do was wear out the members by always trying to squeeze money or work out of them.

  Ronnie Haslip, uncharacteristically silent for most of the meeting, said, “If you build a ring, you should build it three hundred feet by one hundred and fifty feet and board it solid so you can also play arena polo there. Could bring in a little more revenue. And you might want to think about stables, the kind that used to be at the Warrenton Fairgrounds. Then you’ve expanded your versatility.” He held up his hand as Ralph opened his mouth. “And your budget, I know.”

  Bobby twiddled with his pencil, then spoke, a
rather high voice from such a large body. “How can we do this without exhausting our members? This is a huge project. If we add more obligations like more shows, hunter trials, bake sales, you name it, we are going to plain wear out our people. Today, just about everybody works a real job and they don’t have time.”

  “Well, what if I headed up an exploratory committee?” Crawford suggested. “Maybe we could float a bond so people aren’t going crazy with these nickel-and-dime projects.”

  “My nickel-and-dime project brought in fourteen thousand dollars last year,” Ralph reminded them. He was justifiably proud of his horse shows, one of which was A rated.

  “No disrespect, Ralph, but those shows are a lot of work,” Ronnie said. “If Claiborne and Tom Bishop didn’t give us the use of the Barracks,” Ronnie named their large indoor arena, “gratis, we’d be lucky to make a thousand dollars. And it takes just about everyone in the club to work that big show you do, the A one.”

  Shows were rated by the American Horse Shows Association. Tempting though it was to think of it as a report card, it usually reflected the level of competition, the courses, etc. A show rated B wasn’t necessarily a bad show, it was just somewhat simpler and didn’t attract many professional riders who wanted to gain points, rather like professional tennis players trying to keep their rankings on the computer.

  Sister kept out of most board discussions unless they related to hounds, hunt staff, hunt territory. She kept out of this one but was listening intently.

  “Crawford, do you have dollar figures in mind?” Ken short-circuited Ralph’s indignation. “These horse shows are a godsend to us even if they are a lot of work. How much more could we bring in if we had this facility?”

  “You could charge the polo club, homeless since the old fairgrounds were torn down, at least five thousand a summer. Other groups would be charged on a day rate. I can get figures from Expoland, Commonwealth Park, and the Virginia Horse Center.”

  “Those are big operations.” Bobby tried not to let his personal animosity for Crawford cloud his judgment.