TheCart Before the Corpse (19 page)

“No! I’ll catch a cab to Ida’s.”

“If you’re worried the police department will find out about this, they will regardless of whatever precautions you take, and they’ll sympathize. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.” She leaned across him and opened his door. “Take some aspirin before you collapse. Helps the hangover.”

Five minutes later he staggered into his room and fell face down across his bed. Then he draped one arm over the side to touch the floor and stop the room from spinning. He seldom drank anything stronger than the occasional lite beer or glass of wine, and never before lunch. How could he have been so stupid? He hadn’t expected a ladies garden club to be drinking alcohol in quantity at eleven in the morning.

But whatever they used in those Mimosas did
not
taste of champagne. Vodka. Had to be. Lots of Vodka. Vats of Vodka. It was about the best damned punch he’d every had. Too bad it punched back.

He’d have the Godzilla of all hangovers when and if he woke up. At this point, death seemed a better option.

Chapter 21

Wednesday

Merry

I left the funeral home with most of the arrangements for Hiram’s funeral finished.

Now all I had to worry about was finding the honorary pallbearers and paying for all this. Maybe I should have cremated Hiram after all.

No. Somehow I’d pay the costs, even if I had to borrow money from Mr. Robertson. At the moment, American Express was on the hook for more than my yearly bill had been last year.

An hour later I left Hiram’s accountant’s office a happier camper. I would indeed be able to pay off American Express, and keep the farm’s expenses up to date as well.

Actually, after I eventually transferred all the accounts to my name, I wouldn’t be rich, but I would be comfortable. Hiram had done better than I would have imagined. He’d invested wisely and made money through the years. He had hefty checking and savings accounts not only in Bigelow, but in Aiken.

Mr. Haywood, the accountant, gave me copies of Hiram’s previous tax return and agreed to do his final tax return as well as to contact his investment accounts and social security for me.

He did not, however, have any of Hiram’s records for the current year, nor know where they were. Frustrated again.

I couldn’t transfer Hiram’s checking and savings accounts without copies of his death certificate. Mr. Robertson said they’d be sent directly from the state to the funeral home and wouldn’t arrive for a week or so. As soon as I got the funeral out of the way, I needed to start trying to find a lock box or storage shed in Mossy Creek or Bigelow in Hiram’s name. Then I’d have to start in Southern Pines and Aiken.

I hoped the death certificates would arrive before my bill for the funeral did or my credit would be shot to hell. I picked up a turkey sub and a couple of six packs of diet soda and drove straight back to the apartment. On the way I called Jacob Yoder’s cell phone. When he answered, he sounded morose and grumpy, but sober.

Probably the reason he was morose and grumpy.

“Yeah, I handled it all this morning, and I will handle it this evening and tomorrow morning.” He sighed deeply. Much put upon. Of course, it was his job, but that didn’t make him any happier about doing it. “When’s the funeral?”

I told him and asked him to be an honorary pallbearer.

“Got no suit. You will spring for one?”

I could see him buying an expensive Italian suit on my dollar. “Sorry, not in the budget. Wear whatever you wear to take your lady friend out on the weekends.”

Silence. “Very well. I suppose.”

“I’m up to my ears until the funeral’s over, Jacob. If I can count on you, I promise I’ll add another hundred to the Easter driving.” What was another piddly hundred bucks compared to what I’d already spent?

Another silence. “Very well.”

“Sober. Drunk doesn’t count.”

I hung up before he could protest. What I needed now was lunch, a nap, my laptop and a telephone.

Answering machines being what they are, the last call recorded was the first to play back. I listened to them all and wrote down the ones I needed to return on a memo pad, crossed out duplications from Peggy’s list, then started from the bottom to work my way up.

The horse magazines were easy. They already had obituaries for present and past celebrities on file, so I only had to bring them up to date about the new farm. I didn’t mention murder. They offered to post notices including the time and place of the funeral on their web sites.

Katie Bell at the
Mossy Creek Gazette
was tougher. I had to promise her an in depth interview after the funeral. I also sicced her onto Geoff Wheeler and Amos Royden. Amos was undoubtedly used to fending her off. I didn’t even know what
I
was supposed to know, much less what Amos wanted let out to the media.

Next I called acquaintances in the driving community. I started in Wellington, Florida, outside of Palm Beach, where a great many rich horse people and their employees spent their winters showing their horses or playing polo.

Since I was calling in the middle of the afternoon, I got a large proportion of answering machines. I worked out a short message to thank them for caring and gave them the basics about Hiram’s death and the funeral arrangements. I mentioned that we were having only a private graveside service. I didn’t quite emphasize private, but I hoped they got the message.

I also didn’t actually say Hiram had an accident or a heart attack, but if they got that impression, I didn’t tell them different.

Finally after two hours, four diet sodas loaded with caffeine, most of a gigantic bag of Cheetos, a left ear that was probably coming down with gangrene, and a telephone bill I didn’t even want to think about, I checked off the last acquaintance call.

That left the few people whose names I recognized either as former employers, or that Hiram had called real friends. And former mistresses, of course, but females weren’t necessarily his mistresses simply because they were female. Hiram loved women whether he slept with them or not. Old or young, fat or thin, beautiful or horse-faced, even rich or poor, he enjoyed them all so long as they made no demands on him like fatherhood or marital fidelity.

I was casually acquainted with most through shows I’d managed, but only three had known me before Hiram and my mother divorced, when I was still driving, which meant they knew
why
I no longer drove.

Chances were that Dick Fitzgibbons, Hiram’s last and longest employer, would know more about his recent affairs than any of the others, so I started with him. A retired corporate CEO, Dick would be home in his elaborate stable or out in his dressage arena exercising one of his horses.

He gravitated towards matched teams of blood bay Danish warmbloods. Hiram had picked out his last pair in Denmark, brought them to Dick’s and trained them.

Hiram seldom made mistakes about horses, even when they were young. That’s not as easy as it sounds. Fillies and colts grow in stairsteps, first the front end outgrows the rear, then the rear end outgrows the front. Even the most beautiful youngster goes through stages when he’d make Don Qui look like Secretariat. Hiram could look beyond that gawkiness to see how the horse would mature. I was never as good as he was.

He could also gauge whether the horse would take to driving. Some horses feel the first tug, freak out, jump the nearest fence, destroy the breaking cart or truck tire tied behind them and never recover emotionally. No matter how carefully they are nurtured, they’ll never be trustworthy to a carriage. Hiram could tell by his own brand of horse ESP.

I saw Dick last a couple of years back at a carriage show north of Lexington, Kentucky, where I lived. That day Dick told me that Hiram had retired from driving competitively because of his eyes. First time I’d heard that.

“Can’t say that I blamed him for retiring. No way to thread a team through cones or drive them at a dead gallop around marathon obstacles without perfect depth perception,” Dick had said. “Hiram can still drive and train horses, but he can’t take the chances he used to take, and that means time penalties and knocking over cones.”

And no blue ribbons. For Dick, winning was the only thing, as somebody famous once said.

This afternoon when Dick answered, he said, “I’m in my arena driving my new Halflinger to a piddling little Meadowbrook. Oh, how far have the mighty fallen.”

“How’re your warmbloods?”

“Much better. Hiram came over here a while back to tune on them for a couple of days. Tune on
me
, that is. Nothing wrong with the horses. I’m not looking to repeat my performance around the cones in Lexington.”

I burst out laughing.

A moment later he joined me, but his laughter sounded rueful. “I almost gave up driving after that little fiasco. It was the first show I ever drove without Hiram there to coach me. I do hate making a fool of myself in public.”

“Oh, come on, Dick. You didn’t make a fool of yourself.”

“We both know you’re lying through your teeth, an unbecoming trait in a lady,” he said. “I knew in the warm-up ring I was out of my depth. By the time we trotted through the in-gate and started through the cones, they’d decided if they had to drive with an idiot on the reins, they’d get it over as fast as possible, and in whatever order they picked.” He sighed. “My record for the number of cones knocked down and the times off course is not likely to be bested in this century. Not the way I’d like to be remembered.”

By rights, the judge should have excused Dick halfway through for being off course, but she must have been as stunned by the mayhem as the rest of us and figured he couldn’t stop anyway.

“Took the crew twenty minutes to reset and remeasure the course,” Dick said.

I remembered. The looks they gave Dick would have melted tar in a blizzard.

I’ll say this for him. He had not blamed his horses, and he’d climbed down off the box laughing. “I got to call Hiram right now,” he’d said as his groom led his team away. “He’ll bust a gut when he hears how well I did without him. Maybe if that new place of his goes under, he’ll come back to me.”

That was how I’d first learned Hiram had bought land in North Georgia for his own place. I’d assumed he’d be at the show. Frankly, I still don’t know if I hoped to meet him or to avoid him.

Now Dick said with a catch in his voice, “Hell, Merry, I can’t believe he’s gone.”

Neither could I. No one had mentioned Hiram had been away from Mossy Creek recently. He must have left Jacob in charge, which meant that Hiram trusted him, even if I didn’t. “Did he seem worried about anything when he came to Aiken?”

“Seemed in high spirits. Said he’d found something that somebody was going to pay him big bucks for. When I pressed him, he smiled and clammed up.”

“What sort of thing? A horse?”

“Don’t know. He said he’d bought it for a song. I figured it was a carriage. He working on anything interesting?”

“An old doctor’s buggy that’s on its last legs and a late nineteenth century dog cart that needs a lot of work. And a vis-à-vis, but I think it’s already sold. To you?”

“Nope. Not my style.”

“Dick, did he leave anything with you?”

“What kind of thing?”

“I can’t find any of his old logbooks or files. Surely he didn’t throw that stuff away when he moved, did he?”

“He wouldn’t do that. Let me check the storage room over the barn. I seldom go up there, so he might have left a half dozen file cabinets without my knowing. You in a hurry?”

“I need to find out who owns the horses we’ve got, for one thing.”

“Heinzie and Don Qui are mine.”

“Oh. That’s new. When did you switch to Friesians? And a donkey? Come on, Dick. You driving a VSE? Can you come get them?”

“Unless you’ve pulled a miracle and weaned Don Qui away from Heinzie, I’d rather leave them with you. Can’t show a horse in the ring with a donkey attached to him like a limpet.”

”Surely it isn’t that bad.”

“Oh, no? Try driving a dressage test with that little demon at the in gate or locked in a stall screaming his head off.”

“Why were they ever allowed to get that close in the first place? Heinzie’s what? Three?”

“Coming five. Heinzie’s mother died when he was less than a week old. We hand raised him and brought in Don Qui as a baby to keep him company. As a stud colt Heinzie couldn’t go out with the mares, so they grew up together. Heinzie gets separation anxiety unless he can either see or hear Don Qui while he drives. Don Qui goes straight to rage if you try to keep them apart.”

“I don’t know if I can be much help.”

“Give it a shot. Hiram said Heinzie’s come a long way. He planned to use him to drive a big carriage at some event or other.”

Easter. “Hiram was supposed to take people on carriage rides on Easter afternoon.” That meant I’d have to get the wheel put back on the vis-à-vis and check out and tighten everything else. Then I’d have to keep Jacob sober to drive around Mossy Creek with everyone’s children. “Did he say what he was planning to do with the donkey while he drove Heinzie in town?”

“Leave him in the trailer where Heinzie could hear him, probably.”

One more thing to worry about. To show just how distracted I was, I hadn’t heard Dick’s last sentence and had to ask him to repeat it.

“I said,” Dick said, “Like most Friesians Heinzie’s very quiet and good natured, but I’d have Don Qui close by when the farrier comes to trim and shoe. Hiram was giving lessons to a couple of his more advanced pupils with him.” We talked some more, then I rang off.

The
farrier
. The horses’ feet looked in pretty good shape, but I didn’t know when they’d last been trimmed and shod, and I had no idea who’d been doing the work. Hiram could trim hooves, but not shoe. Maybe Jacob did the work. If not, would Jacob know who had?

The more I got into this running Hiram’s operation, the more I realized I needed Jacob.

Maybe I’d actually get around to finding out who killed my father sometime in the next millennium.

Chapter 22