One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (35 page)

I spent the morning checking paperwork, setting up office equipment in the clients’ lounge, scrubbing the clients bathroom, putting plenty of toilet paper and paper towels in the porta-johns, setting out mega-garbage cans in strategic locations, setting up sign stanchions for the signs Sandi was bringing, checking off the list I carried in my pocket and praying to avoid rainstorms and disasters of every shape and form. Even this small of a show was a heap of work.

The bulk of the drivers didn’t plan to show up until Saturday morning in time to drive their dressage tests, but a few arrived early Friday afternoon. I had limited stall space for visitors and carriages, so in order to free up space for other people’s carriages, I locked all my own carriages in Hiram’s workshop. I planned to drive on Sunday in the clinic, but not during the show. Dick had already volunteered to set up Casey’s carriage and drive with her if I got caught with an emergency.

After lunch, young Pete and I set up the cones course and the hazards in the mare’s pasture. I noticed that the slash in the fence between the governor’s land and us was untouched, so if anyone had prowled around in our absence, they hadn’t come that way.

Louise’s husband Charlie dragged the dressage arena with the tractor while Peggy and I set up the judge’s table and chairs at C, the end of the arena nearest the stable.

There are a million theories why the letters spaced evenly around a dressage arena start facing C in the middle at one end, then heading right around the arena letters M, R, B, P, and F. A is at the end opposite C. Then the letters down the other side from A are K, V, E, S, and H. Nobody really knows why, but they are standard around the world.

We were as ready as we would be before four. I planned to spend the night in the clients’ lounge in my clothes. I’d shower and change in time to feed the horses in the morning.

At the last minute, Catherine decided she really would prefer to arrive Saturday morning and spend Saturday night after the exhibitors’ party in the Hamilton Inn. She agreed to pay for hers and Troy’s rooms. Originally, he hadn’t been slated to come with her, but apparently she didn’t want him out of her sight or where Morgan could get ahold of him again. Since Dick was still in residence at Peggy’s, having Catherine in a motel would lower the scandal quotient. Not that either Peggy or Dick cared.

Catherine had said Troy didn’t know he was my half-brother, and I wasn’t certain I wanted him told. I definitely didn’t want him to complicate this weekend. Time enough to confront that problem when my DNA results came back. Catherine would be duty bound to furnish Troy’s. We could check them against mine, and know for certain whether or not he and I were siblings.

Saturday morning

I schooled myself not to react when Troy climbed out of Catherine’s truck, but I found myself staring at him while I talked to Catherine. How alike were we physically? We were both tall. My hair (without cosmetic assistance) is basically dark blonde tending to dishwater. His hair was light brown. Mine is straight. So was his. I have enormous hands for a woman. He had enormous hands, period. I couldn’t tell about bone structure. He didn’t look much like Hiram to me, but he didn’t look much like Catherine either.

The garden club set up their mega-coffee-pot and handed out cinnamon rolls to the drivers and apples for the horses. Volunteers manned the driving venues, trailers arrived, cars arrived, Sandi arrived with signs, and before eight o’clock the place was settling for the first dressage test.

I turned over the office to Peggy and Dick, and got ready to head off trouble before it started.

There’s seldom an early morning on top of Hiram’s hill without at least a hint of breeze and some fog. This morning was no different. Although we’d all be in shirtsleeves before noon, this morning the lady drivers were already wearing their driving jackets and aprons. I had hung a couple of mirrors outside the front door of the stable, and two women were already jockeying for position to settle their elaborate hats.

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?”