Outfoxed (26 page)

CHAPTER 51

The red taillights of Walter Lungrun's car glaring like banshee eyes receded down the driveway. They were the only pinpricks of light in a night raven black.

Sister watched from the mudroom. She was grateful that Walter had stopped by to offer sympathy over Peter's death and to tell her he'd seen the fox's body. He carefully did not mention standing in on Peter's autopsy.

While biologically on schedule, Peter's death certainly was untimely in other respects. She relied on his wisdom, his sense of people.

Raleigh stuck his nose in her hand.
“Don't worry.”

Rooster, brought home from Peter's, was so sad it made her heartsick to see him. Even Golly was nice to him. She'd brought the chickens home, too.

She patted Rooster's head, then flicked her black-and-blue wool scarf off the peg, slipped into a worn but warm olive quilted vest, pulling on a barn coat with a flannel lining over that. She and Raleigh walked out the back door.

The mercury had plummeted into the low twenties. She walked past the stable, the dutch doors shut against the cold. She heard Lafayette snoring, which made her laugh. She'd never met a horse who could make as much noise sleeping as her trusty gray partner.

Two hundred yards away she passed Doug's cottage, the pale straw-colored leaves on the Indian corn attached to the front door rustling in the light wind. She heard laughter within. Cody's car was parked on the other side of Doug's truck. The farm road ran between Doug's cottage and Shaker's bigger old-fashioned Virginia farmhouse on the right, a hundred yards farther down. A single light shone from the upstairs bedroom, the lace curtains pulled on each side. He was reading Patrick O'Brian sea stories, no doubt. Shaker, like millions of others, loved those tales. And like millions of other men he felt he'd been born in the wrong time. Luckily for Shaker, his work was physical and occasionally dangerous. Most poor sods chained in front of computer screens could only dream of adventure or they lived for the weekends where they did what men are supposed to do: run, jump, climb, battle the elements and sometimes each other.

She walked under the allée of hickories. The front drive was lined in maples. Much as she adored the intense fall color, she liked this back farm road with the hickories. It had a safe feel and in the summer the leaves formed a canopy over the dirt road. The hickories shorn of their leaves guarded the lane like dark, symmetrical sentinels.

The lane forked. To the left it ran up to the base of Hangman's Ridge, snaking finally up to the great oak itself. To the right it curved into the hound graveyard.

Sister pushed open the wrought-iron gate, smooth on its hinges. In the middle of the square under the walnut tree reposed a larger-than-life stone statue of a hound running. On the front it read:
REST, DEAR FRIENDS. WE WILL HUNT AGAIN SOMEDAY.

On each side of the base, a bronze plaque was bolted and each hound's name was engraved, birth date and death date.

The plaques, representing forty years of Jefferson Hunt hounds, were filled. Newer plaques were affixed to the wrought-iron fence. The last one, bearing three names, had Archie's name freshly carved.

A stone bench under a crabapple tree nestled in one corner. Sister sat down, Raleigh at her feet.

A fat snowflake twirled earthward, soon followed by another and another. The dark sky now had a pinkish cast.

Raleigh leaned shoulder to shoulder with Sister on the bench.

“Orion and Thurman, Bachelor and Button, Laura and Grinch.” She sighed. “I was young then and oh that seems so long ago, Raleigh, and yet like yesterday.” She read aloud other names. “Yoyo, Chigger, Splash, and Schooner. What good hounds. How lucky I've been in this life to have known such hounds. To be able to stay healthy, to have good friends. I think foxhunters are as nutty as golfers. You can't think about much else, really.” The snow dropped thicker and faster. “You know, Raymond wanted to be buried here but his mother wouldn't hear of it. She dragged him to Hollywood in Richmond. He's with his kin and two presidents, John Tyler and I can never remember the other one. He'd rather have been with the hounds. Ray Junior is on the hill. Someday I'll be with him. I think about moving Big Raymond. Once his mother died I guess I could have but then—” She put her arm around the glossy black shoulders. “It seems I should leave well enough alone. I guess they'll plant Peter with his people. They're all up by Monticello. It's funny how families come back together in death. So often they couldn't do it in life but once dead, people who hated one another are laid side by side. If that great day comes and the tombs give up their dead, can you imagine the shock? You pop out of your grave and there's your brother, Fred, who you would happily dispatch all over again. Ha.”

“Something's outside the cemetery.”

She hugged him closer. “Archie was the best. Brave and true. Diana, Cora, and Dragon didn't back down but poor Archie paid for his courage. If you'd been there, you'd have jumped right in. Raleigh, you're young and may you live a long time. You'll be with me at the end. I promise. Golly, too, spoiled-rotten cat.” She smiled, determined not to cry. “I look at this ground and four decades of my life are here. It doesn't seem possible. Losing Archie doesn't seem possible. And Peter Wheeler. If you could have seen Peter in his forties and fifties. What a man. God, what a bizarre time.” She shivered, not from the cold. Sniffled. Collected herself and said with quiet determination, “I'm going to lay a trap for our killer. I can't tell a soul and I refuse to kill a fox. I'd like to get the killer for killing the fox as much as for killing Fontaine. Damn him.” She paused. “Thanksgiving hunt. If only the foxes will cooperate.”

As she said that Inky came out of hiding.
“Don't chase me,”
she said to Raleigh.
“I'll help.”

“I'll tell the hounds.”

Sister, startled, blinked. “You.”

Inky blinked, then scampered away, leaving perfect fox prints in the gathering snow.

CHAPTER 52

A long polished table left just enough space to squeeze in and out of one's chair. Vin Barber wanted a conference room like the conference rooms the ritzy Charlottesville and Richmond lawyers had. But Vin couldn't get along with a plethora of partners and so kept his practice to himself and his son—more to himself, since his son was an unimpressive specimen.

Vin was, nonetheless, a good lawyer whose specialty was real estate and conservation, the two being allied.

Sitting at the head of the table, his bald head bent over the long legal briefs encased in heavy light-blue paper, spectacles down his nose, Vin could have walked out of a Daumier lithograph, minus the wig and robes, which would have improved his appearance.

Sister sat on his right and Bobby Franklin sat on his left. As president of Jefferson Hunt, Bobby needed to attend the meeting.

Having just heard the last will and testament of Peter H. Wheeler, they were stunned.

“Remarkable!” she exclaimed.

Bobby folded his hands together. “Yes, but can we meet his conditions?”

“I'd damn well try if I were you,” Vin, characteristically direct, said.

Bobby leaned across the table toward Sister. “Live to one hundred.”

“God willing.”

“No joint-masters.” Vin put his hands behind his head. “You don't really want one anyway, do you? Even if Crawford wrote big checks, can you imagine talking to him on the phone every twenty minutes? He's high-maintenance. Like to run you wild.”

“We can manage without a joint-master but operating expenses don't diminish, as you know. Inflation affects us as well as General Motors.” Sister grasped the economics of the club, which is more than some masters. “We'll find a way. But let me be clear: All of Peter Wheeler's estate is held for Jefferson Hunt so long as I live and so long as I don't take a joint-master. And he has left an annual income of fifty thousand dollars a year from his portfolio to maintain the farm.”

“Correct.”

“That's not the tricky part.” Bobby, like most fat people, sweated easily and he was sweating now.

“I know.” Sister frowned.

“The tricky part is that once you have passed on, Doug Kinser must be the next master. Jesus, the board will hit the roof.”

“Because he's black?” Vin questioned.

“For some, I expect their hemorrhoids will flare up,” Sister dryly replied. “But no, the real reason is the board of governors wants to govern. This removes from them the right to elect their master annually. Not so much a problem now but quite the issue when I'm dead and gone.”

“Doug would be the first black master in the country. In the world,” Bobby thought out loud. “Course, he's only half black.”

“People don't see it like that.” Vin tapped the eraser end of the pencil against the blue cover. “If you look the tiniest bit black, then you're black.”

“Like the old race laws. If you have one percent Negro blood in your veins, you're Negro.”

“Virginia had laws like that?” Bobby was appalled.

“Not just Virginia. Many states. Midwestern states. People feared mixing the races.” Vin paused. “The idea was like to like, I guess. I remember my grandma saying to me, ‘Stick to your own kind.' There's a logic to it,” he honestly added. “I can't say that I agree with it but there's a logic to it.”

“Bobby, our bylaws state that the master must be elected by the board of governors, who are in turn elected by the membership.”

“That's what I'm saying. As long as you live, we don't have a problem.”

“We do if I get decrepit.”

“You can still be master. You can still control the kennel and the hiring and firing. Someone else can be field master. We don't have a problem. Oh, we'll hear some quibbles about how you should have a joint-master but I can deal with that and so will others,” Bobby confidently predicted.

“Do we have to tell the membership of this?”

“Well—” Bobby unfolded his hands, making a tepee out of them.

“No one need know the full contents of this will so long as you enact its provisions,” Vin added. “There's enough money annually for you to pay a salary, let's say, put a first whipper-in at the house and he has to care for it. It could be quite comfortable.”

“Yes.” Sister's mind was roaring along at a mile an hour. “Vin”—she leaned toward him—“I don't mind if this will is read to the membership, but can we wait until after Thanksgiving hunt? It's only two weeks away.”

“Of course. We can do anything you say. Do you accept the terms of Peter's will?”

“I do and may God rest his soul. There won't be a day of my life that I don't think of Peter and thank him in my heart.” She couldn't finish. She broke down.

Bobby reached in his jacket, bringing out a linen handkerchief with an F embroidered on it. “Here.” His eyes wa-tered, too.

She wiped her eyes. “Another question. Peter wishes Doug to succeed me, which really is the best plan—”

Bobby interrupted. “But he has no money.”

“We've got a few years left to figure out how to make sure he does have the resources to run the club. There are bigger obstacles. First, we must convince the club that the title of hunt secretary carries almost as much weight as master.”

“That's saddling Doug with a hell of a burden,” Bobby blurted.

“It may be but it also ensures that those with a big ego and big pocketbook like Crawford might contribute generously if elected as hunt secretary. Look, once this will is read, no one but a bloody fool will try to fiddle with it. We need that land. It's good land, too. We couldn't possibly buy it. Not at today's prices and it's close to a hundred acres. The club will fall in line.” She held up her hand. “We'll have to hear this, that, and who shot the cat but they'll fall in. My question to you, Vin, is twofold: What if Doug should predecease me? Secondly, what if Doug were convicted of a felony?”

This got both men's full attention.

Vin cleared his throat. “If Doug predeceases you, then you have the right to name your successor with the stipulation that it be someone Peter taught as a child.”

“And would we be within the spirit and scope of Peter's will if, say, Doug committed a felony? I should say was convicted of a felony. Then would I have the right to name a successor? Again, someone who Peter taught.”

Flipping up pages of the will, Vin read intently. He cleared his throat again. “I think you would not be in violation of this will.”

Bobby, bolt upright now. “You think Doug killed Fontaine?”

“I didn't say that. I'm asking a reasonable question. Personally, I hope Doug does succeed me. He will be a fine master once he gets the hang of it. Don't jump to conclusions.”

Of course, they had.

 

CHAPTER 53

The motor purred as Sister Jane and Bobby Franklin sat in her Durango in the parking lot of Vin Barber's law firm. Over a foot and a half of snow had fallen last night, the temperature stayed low, and the skies threatened more snow.

“Talk to me.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

That directive meant tell me everything and I know plenty as it is.

Bobby sighed. “When I thought you were searching for a joint-master I supported Crawford Howard. Let me hasten to add that was a grievous error and I have since repented of my ways.”

“In florid fashion, I've heard.”

“Uh—yes. Anyway, Fontaine found out—not that I was actively campaigning for Crawford. I'd only verbally committed to his support and I hadn't yet lobbied other board members. Well, Fontaine threatened to take away his business from me and to make sure others shunned my press. As you know, Fontaine did use us for most of his needs. The income from Mountain Landscapes has been steady. Crawford threw me big jobs but I wasn't sure if all of his jobs would outweigh Fontaine's jobs and vice versa. I believed Fontaine's threat. I was between a rock and a hard place.”

“Let me get right to the point, Bobby, and I ask this with no malice intended: Did you kill Fontaine?”

“No. I'd much prefer to kill Crawford.”

“That seems to be the prevailing mood.”

“About me?”

“No, about Fontaine's death. When asked, people say they wonder why Fontaine, or they say exactly as you did. Curious.”

Bobby squirmed in his heated seat, the warmth toasting his back. “How do I turn this thing down?”

“Flip it off.” She reached over and cut off the heated-seat button. “The warmth in the car is sufficient, although I love these heated seats.”

“I carry my own heat with me.” He smiled sadly. “Now look, Sister, do you honestly think I would or could kill Fontaine Buruss because he threatened my business?”

“No, but I had to ask. But you could kill him if he threatened or harmed Cody.”

Bobby's head rocked back a moment. “Why do you say that?”

“You tell me.”

“Rumor.”

“Have you asked her?”

“Of course not.”

“All right, then, let's look at this from another angle. Do you think Cody had an affair with Fontaine?”

Bobby really squirmed in his seat now. “He was old enough to be her father almost.”

“Since when has that stopped a man?”

A sickly pallor flooded Bobby's broad face. “Yeah. Is this relevant?”

“For Chrissake, Bobby, if I didn't think it were, do you think I'd sit here for the sheer pleasure of making you uncomfortable?”

“I know. I know.” He gripped the handguard as though the vehicle were moving. “Do I think Cody had an affair with Fontaine?” An agonizing silence followed; then he spoke much too loudly. “Yes. Goddammit. Yes. I could have killed him for that. She's made enough of a hellhole of her life as it is without him digging her in deeper.” He caught his breath. “Rehab and therapy. Betty and I have to go once a month along with the kids—I'm finding out stuff I wish I didn't know. Cody would sleep with anyone to get cocaine—more than one at a time. I'm amazed she's alive and not suffering from AIDS. And Jennifer has always worshiped Cody. That was misplaced admiration. I hope we've stopped this before she
really
follows in Cody's footsteps.” He wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “If they were sons, I'd have thrashed them within an inch of their lives.”

She swallowed. “Bobby, we've known one another for a long time. Children go their own way and even if it's the wrong way they have to learn. Cody had sense enough to put herself through rehab. She's looking for a good job. Restaurant work brings her into contact with much of what she needs to avoid. It's going to be difficult for both of your girls but Jennifer has an earlier start on cleaning up. Everyone knows Cody's history here. At least Jennifer's misdeeds are on a smaller scale. Cody's back with Doug and if anyone can help her stay on the straight and narrow—it's him.”

“I'm very grateful to him,” Bobby mumbled. “I behaved badly this summer. I even rejoiced when they broke up.” He stared out the window, tears rolling down his cheeks. “You know, I'm ashamed of myself. I was worried about what people would say.”

“Color.”

“That didn't help. Money. You know a father likes to see his daughters married to men of means. Right now that seems—superficial.”

“It's the way we were raised. And it's not far wrong. Love is potent. Money is omnipotent. No father wants to commit his daughter to a poor man. Have you said anything to Cody about Doug?”

He shook his head. “No.”

They sat watching a few isolated flakes fall, presaging more to come.

“Maybe you should talk to Cody.”

“That's what Betty says.” He turned his face toward hers. “I don't want to upset her. I'm afraid she'll go backward.”

“Admitting you were wrong about Doug isn't going to upset her.”

“Actually, I was thinking about Fontaine. Asking her.”

“I don't know. Done is done.”

His voice, barely audible, shook. “I don't know if Jennifer will make it. She's in trouble before Cody was—at her age—or, maybe I see it. . . . I didn't see it with Cody. Jennifer's still under my roof. I don't know what to do.”

“Jennifer has your full attention. I suppose negative attention is still better than no attention. She's always been in Cody's shadow. I thank God I passed through adolescence before the words ‘self-esteem' were uttered.” She sighed.

He brightened, then laughed. “God, it's such bullshit.”

The gloom lifted. They sat in silence again.

“Early snow. A long winter, I think.”

“I love winter.” He smiled. “Always loved Peter Wheeler's Christmas tree. It will be lonely without him. They don't make them like that anymore. People don't have time for one another anymore.”

“We do.”

“The club. It's an obsession that keeps us together . . . but yes, we're lucky that way. Except for Fontaine's murder. I still can't get over that. During the damned hunt.” He slapped his leg.

“I never thought I'd be facing anything like this.”

He checked his watch. “I'm glad Peter made the land contingent on you remaining sole master. It's better.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

“You're right. I don't thank you enough. I don't thank Betty either.”

“Buy flowers. Go home and kiss her.”

“Think I will.”

“Two more quick questions. You usually lead hilltoppers. I don't see what's behind me but you do. I hear Fontaine used to stop at least once during a hunt.”

“He did.”

“I assumed this was to go to the bathroom. Now I think maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, did you ever see him go to the bathroom? Not that you're looking but sometimes you men will stop and hold one another's horses.”

“No. I never saw him. I'd see him veer off and then he'd be back with us within fifteen minutes. Sometimes took longer if we were on a hot run.”

“Two thoughts occur to me. He always found the field. He knew hunting. He knew territory. He knew the shortcuts and he knew not to foul the line of scent. Is it possible he stopped for an assignation?”

“Pretty short one.”

“That would appeal to him.”

“Well—I guess, but wouldn't we see a woman leave, also?”

“Not if she were a whip.”

He winced. “Pretty damned irresponsible.”

“As I said. Done is done. It's a theory, not a fact, but my mind is turning over everything. If he wasn't stopping to go to the bathroom, he had to be doing something he didn't want the rest of us to see.”

“Tell you what. Let me ask the men. Maybe someone did see him.”

“Good. It's easier for you to ask than for me. The next question is, when do you want to call a general membership meeting to announce Peter's bequest? If we don't do this, it will leak out. I'll be besieged with calls. You'll be besieged with calls.” She poked his biceps. “Bet you rue the day you were elected president.”

“Sometimes. Got a calendar?”

She flipped down the glove compartment. A calendar was fastened to the inside. “How's that for service.”

He put on his reading glasses, the black heavy frames, square, so ugly they bordered on fashionable. “Friday. I'll get the phone tree started. Or we could just meet after hunting Saturday.” He stopped himself. “No, horses will be tied to the trailers. Everyone will be thinking about their horses and about food. Friday. It's awfully short notice but I bet we'll get a good turnout—all things considered. Time?”

“Six. Let's get them right after work. Ask Betty to organize coffee—maybe some cookies or something.”

“Okay. Whoo, coming down now. You know I've put over a hundred twenty thousand miles on that old Chevy Blazer.” He nodded toward his smallish four-wheel-drive vehicle parked next to Sister's car. “Still runs like a top and no rust. When the engine finally dies I think I'll just pop in a rebuilt one.”

“I think you should donate it to the club. We'll auction it off as Wonder Wheels.” Her voice rose in imitation of a salesman.

“We'll make a fortune.” He leaned over, kissing her on the cheek, then opened the door. “Course, you could bronze it and use it as sculpture.”

Driving back home, Sister remembered Peter had also left the club his 1974 badass pickup with the 454-cubic-inch engine in it. Another old Chevy.

She listened to Rachmaninoff's Symphony in E-flat on the way home.