Hotspur (22 page)

CHAPTER 30

For some people, Ralph's end came as a relief. Eager for tidy answers, they assumed he had killed Nola and Guy and had finally, undone by the unearthing of the dead, shot himself. The fact that no gun had been found did not disturb their desire for an easy answer. Then, too, most suicides don't shoot themselves between the eyes.

Others, no less eager for answers but less inclined to take the easy way out, wondered what Ralph could have done to provoke such a violent end.

Sister felt a sense of foreboding; an evil had been unleashed. Then she realized the evil had always been with them, they'd just chosen not to notice.

She and Shaker sat on that ridge for two full hours. First came the sheriff and his crew, then the Rescue Squad to remove the body once it had been photographed, examined, and finally released.

The kids waited back at the stable as they were told. Sister informed them they'd found Ralph. She spared them the details. When she and Shaker finally returned to the farm, they discovered the girls had done all their chores.

Raleigh and Rooster stuck to Sister's side likes burrs.

The rain continued, but the fog started thinning out. An oppressive mugginess made it hard to breathe, and even though the temperature remained tolerable, the closeness of the air felt like a shroud.

As they lacked a kennelman, Sister and Shaker were responsible for the job of cleaning the kennels after a hunt. Tired but usually happy from the day's hunt, they tackled this with the help of a couple of cups of black coffee. Today the girls had given them an unexpected respite. When Betty returned to pick up Jennifer and Sari, Sister insisted on giving the girls each a fifty-dollar bonus. Betty didn't protest. She was too shaken up by Ralph's murder.

The outdoor runs glistened in the downpour. The indoor runs and pens had been powerwashed. Each of the raised sleeping beds was filled with fresh, soft sawdust chips.

The hounds were snuggled down in their cozy beds, sleeping after a good hunt. They had enjoyed having the two young women fuss over them.

After the girls left, Sister and Shaker sat down in the kennel office. They'd told everything they could think of to Ben Sidell, but they hadn't had a chance to talk to each other. Given the swift shock of it, they found they hadn't much to say to each other immediately.

“Hell of a note.” Shaker wiped his face with a towel.

“It's not a sight I'll soon forget.” She took the towel from him and wiped her own face and hands. “If only I'd led the field back to the Bancrofts'.”

“Sister, you couldn't have seen any more than Edward did. Fog was thick. Cut it with a knife.”

“My ears are more educated.”

“True, but you'd have been up ahead. Ralph was in the back. Once it stops raining we can go back to the coop. Maybe we'll find something on the ground, but it would appear he left the coop and rode to the ridge.”

“I've been thinking. He didn't go alone. And someone who really knew the territory, despite the fog or maybe even because of it, could have taken him up there, shot him, flown down the back side of the ridge, and been at the trailers not long after everyone else came in.”

“True.”

They sat there on the beat-up wooden chairs that had been donated to the kennel office almost thirty years ago.

He drummed his fingers on the metal desktop. “Why would Ralph willingly ride with his killer?”

“Maybe he didn't know he was going to be killed. Maybe the killer said he needed help or he knew a shortcut—”

“Ralph knew Hangman's Ridge. He had to know he was going wrong.”

“He still could have been bamboozled in some fashion.”

“Killer could have forced him up there.” Shaker wiped his hands on his thighs. “And somewhere along the way he made Ralph dismount.”

“Sybil was out there.” Sister shifted uneasily in her chair.

“Easy to slip away in the fog.” He poured himself more coffee. “I'm drinking too much of this stuff. So are you.”

“What if whatever the killer knew about Ralph was enough to ensure his cooperation?” Sister ignored his coffee comment.

“I wonder if we'll ever know.”

She said with weariness, “Shaker, I believe it was Ralph who called me about looking in the river off Norwood Bridge.”

“Jesus.” Shaker sat up straight because some pieces were falling into place.

“Just hear me out. I don't think Ralph killed Nola. He might have killed Guy; he couldn't stand him because of Nola. But I don't think he killed her. I think he accepted that he'd lost her. That romance was busted, and he was already courting Frances. On the rebound maybe, but people are like that.”

“They are.”

“But somehow he was connected with those murders. There is no doubt in my mind he helped the killer lift that fifty-five-gallon drum and toss it into the James.”

“But over all these years you'd think he'd have told, or the guilt would have gotten to him.”

“Well, I couldn't live with it. You couldn't live with it. But obviously he could. And maybe, just maybe, he stood to gain by his actions.”

“I suppose he gained his life.” Shaker shrugged.

“Why?”

“Well, he knew the killer might kill him if he didn't help.”

“Possibly. I think, though, that he came out ahead in some other way.”

“Was Ralph a vengeful enough man to want to see Nola dead?”

Sister turned this over in her mind. “No, but he might have wanted to see her suffer. You know, to see her finally get dumped by someone. But you're right, I don't think Ralph could have helped her killer. Which leads us to—what?”

Shaker's thick auburn eyebrows jerked upward. “The killer might have told him Guy killed Nola. Ralph exploded and killed Guy. Or Nola's killer had already done the deed and needed help disposing of Guy's body. He'd be plenty tired from digging Nola's grave, not that Ralph would know that.”

She shook her head. “If Ralph had known Nola was killed or thought she was killed by Guy, then he would have told Tedi and Edward.”

“I don't think so. Look, we can never know what goes through someone's head, but maybe Ralph thought, ‘done is done.' He can't bring her back. Maybe he had a special sympathy for the murderer. Or maybe the killer could somehow pin it on him? How could Ralph prove he was innocent?”

“That's a good point.” She didn't know if too much coffee was making her jittery or if she was jittery anyway. “Either way, he was vulnerable.”

Shaker slapped the table. “And who stood to gain more than Sybil? She'd get Nola's part of the Bancroft fortune. Millions upon millions upon millions. Right?”

“We know one thing for certain we'd only suspected before.”

“What?”

“The killer really is in our hunt field.”

CHAPTER 31

The rain stopped Sunday morning, revealing skies of robin's egg blue and temperatures in the middle sixties.

Sister, Shaker, and Walter met Ben Sidell at the mailbox for Roughneck Farm. They drove in two four-wheel-drive trucks to the cornfield, then parked off the farm road to walk to the coop between the cornfield and the Bancroft woods.

Impressed by Walter's attention to detail at Norwood Bridge, the sheriff was glad the doctor accompanied them. Sister just felt better when Walter was around, although she didn't really know why. The same was true for Shaker. He grounded her.

The mud sucked on their work boots. The ends of their pants' legs were sopping wet from the grass.

Raleigh and Rooster bounded along with them. At first Ben resisted, but Sister convinced him their superior senses might turn up something helpful.

A half-moon puddle glistened before the coop, the depression the result of many hooves digging in before the jump.

Ben crouched down. The rains had washed away hoofprints. He stood up, leaning his hands on the top kick-board as he studied what had been the landing side of the coop on the way home from Saturday's hunt. All he had found near the body was Ralph's new flask. He'd hoped he'd find more here.

“And this was the last place anyone saw Ralph?”

“Yes,” Walter answered. “It was the last any of us saw him, those of us who stayed with Edward.”

“Shaker, Betty, and I left him at the apple orchard,” Sister reminded Ben.

“Right.” He cupped his chin in his right hand. “And you couldn't see the hand in front of your face.”

“Right,” Walter again replied.

“Well, how'd you get over the coop?”

“Trusted my horse,” Walter said.

“And you still jumped it?” Ben thought these foxhunters were crazy.

“Sheriff, you do things in the hunt field you'd never do anywhere else.” Walter heard a caw as St. Just flew overhead.

“Over here,”
Raleigh barked at Sister.

Sister walked to where both the Doberman and the harrier stood. A sodden handkerchief lay in the cleared path between the cornfield and the fence line. “Sheriff, I don't want to touch this.”

They hurried over, and Ben knelt down and peered at the handkerchief. He pulled on a thin latex glove, picked up the wet, muddy handkerchief, and dropped it in a plastic bag.

“Keep coming,”
Rooster, farther down the fence line, called out.

Shaker walked up to the hound. “Sheriff. A string glove.”

The white woven glove lay in a puddle.

A few minutes later the other glove was found where the cornfield curled right toward a small tributary feeding into Broad Creek.

The four humans and two dogs, wet to the knees, ankle deep in mud, sloshed to the base of Hangman's Ridge.

“Hansel and Gretel,” Sister sorrowfully said. “Maybe Ralph dropped or threw away his gloves and handkerchief on the way.”

Shaker exhaled. “Anyone could have dropped gloves or a handkerchief. I just don't know why Ralph would have left the other people. It makes no sense to me even if he was nervous. Wouldn't there be protection in numbers?”

“Guilt—or he snapped. People do,” Walter said. He jammed his hands into his jeans pockets, then asked Ben, “What do you think?”

“I try not to jump to conclusions.”

“What can we do?” Walter asked.

“Wait for a crack in the armor,” Ben evenly replied. “The morning newspaper, which I'm sure you read, reported he was shot, the weapon hadn't been found, and the sheriff is investigating.” He smiled ruefully, folding his arms across his chest. “That's a nice way of saying we don't know a damned thing.”

“You're a doctor, Walter. Do you think our killer is rational?” Sister asked as she knocked one shoe on the other. Mud fell off in red clumps.

“I'm a neurosurgeon, not a psychiatrist.”

“For which we're all grateful.” Sister half smiled at him. “But you see people in crisis daily. Surely you get a feeling about the real person. Do you have a sense of this person?”

“Well, yes, I think our killer is rational and opportunistic. The fog gave him—or her—a chance to do what he or she was ultimately planning to do. Sister, I think it was Ralph who called you,” Walter said.

“Me too. Shaker and I thought of that. And I told the sheriff, too.”

“Shock. It's a hell of a shock to see someone you know like that.” Shaker wanted to get his hands on the killer. “Poor bastard, flat out in the rain.”

“Which brings me back to why?” Sister said. “Why make a spectacle of Ralph? Why not kill him away from everyone? Why not dispose of his body and be done with it just like he thought he had done with Nola and Guy? I wonder if this isn't a warning.”

“The hanging tree, a warning to all, the place of punishment.” Shaker nodded up toward the ridge.

“Shaker's right. This was so dramatic. He's arrogant. He thinks he's invincible. He must have some incredible sense that he'd never be suspected.”

“No one would think Sybil killed her sister,” Shaker said quietly. He didn't want to think Sybil capable of such a deed, but she had the best motive that he could discern.

“Paul Ramy certainly fingered her for a suspect. But he couldn't make anything stick,” Ben confided to them. “He thought if she killed her sister that her family would protect her.”

“Tedi? Never!” Sister quickly responded.

“Sister's right. But Edward might cover for her,” Shaker added. “He'd lost one daughter. What good would it do to have the other in jail? I assume that's what a father would think.”

“I don't believe it. I know Edward is protective of his girls, well, fathers always are, aren't they?” Sister's voice rose quizzically. “But he's a man of principle. I don't know that he would provide an alibi for her. Even if he thought the original murders were an isolated incident, you know, if he was sure she'd never kill again, he wouldn't help her.”

“Paul's reports say she stayed at the party, then went to the C&O with Ken. Other witnesses confirm seeing her there.”

“The Bancrofts could pay off the entire county,” Shaker said.

“Oh, come now, someone would talk. Keep a secret for two decades? Not here.” Sister interlocked her fingers. “I agree that Sybil had a financial and perhaps even an emotional incentive, but I don't think she did it. Had Nola lived, Sybil's inheritance would still be beyond most people's wildest dreams.”

“Never underestimate the greed of the rich,” Ben Sidell said. “But you're right, Sister, that our killer feels we can't touch him. He's fooled everybody for twenty-one years. I doubt he's even that scared now.”

“Pride goeth before a fall,” Sister said quickly. Then she whirled around, as did Shaker, their senses sharper than either Ben's or Walter's.

A brush, brush in the cornfield alerted them.

Raleigh and Rooster charged down a row, the stalks bending deeply.

“It's Clytemnestra and Orestes,”
Raleigh informed them.

Encouraged by the canine companionship and hearing the human voices, the large Holstein cow and her calf walked out of the corn, making a squishy sound with each step.

“You two!” Sister was disgusted with them. “Raleigh, Rooster, let's herd them home with us. We'll get them over to Cindy's later.”

“You bet.”
The dogs paced themselves behind the two bovines, keeping just out of reach of a cow kick.

“Guess we might as well walk you home, too,” Ben said. “I'll take down the yellow tape tonight.” He indicated the police tape used to cordon off Hangman's Ridge. “Nothing else to find here.”