Outfoxed (23 page)

They were at the back side of the meadows surrounding Hangman's Ridge. The ridge was a quarter of a mile in front of them to the west. They'd made a lopsided semicircle around it. Soldier Road was to their right, the bridge spanning the ravine and the creek immediately behind them. This early in the morning, the roads icy, there was no traffic.

“Only a mile back home.” Shaker smiled, as he intended to stay in the meadow. The walking would be much easier.

“I suppose Ben Sidell will question everyone that hunted. Someone is bound to have seen Fontaine stop.”

“Maybe,” Doug answered Sister.

“You know last hunt season I noticed he'd stop to relieve himself. Maybe he was getting prostate problems. I suppose they can occur at about any time.”

“Wouldn't know.” Doug laughed.

“You will.” Shaker laughed right back. “Then they go up in there with a Roto-Rooter.”

“Ah, the indignities of age.” She laughed along with them.

“But not there, Sister, not there.” Shaker laughed even harder.

“Honey, that's where your indignities begin.”

They laughed the whole way back to the kennel, keeping in this vein.

Later when Sister walked back in the kitchen, Raleigh, who knew where lazy Golly would be, snuck up on her and blew in her ear.

“P-s-s-t,”
she spat.

“Scares the pee right out of me.”
Raleigh giggled, then told the cat everything as Sister called the sheriff.

“You knew about this. You left me knowing what the foxes and the hounds were going to do?”
The cat was desolate.

“You snooze, you lose.”

“I'll get you for this, Raleigh Arnold. I'll get you if it's the last thing I do!”

CHAPTER 42

That same evening the clouds lifted, creating an odd sight: dark cumulus, Prussian blue overhead, with a thin band of turquoise twilight underneath.

Everyone on the farm was behind on their chores because of the long hound walk and the sheriff coming to pick up the rope. He asked questions about everything, which they expected. No doubt he would check today's reports with Saturday's, searching for discrepancies or new information. No one could accuse him of not being thorough.

Just as Sister and Doug were bedding down the horses they heard a trailer rumble down the drive.

Raleigh hurried outside, leaving Golly inside. He let out a perfunctory bark, then shut up. Golly was so upset at missing events she spent the remainder of the day following Raleigh around, to his amusement, not to hers.

“I'll see who it is.” Sister slid back the heavy metal stall door, a mesh to allow cooling breezes in the summer.

In winter Doug or Sister could throw on an extra blanket. Keeping a horse cool in summer's oppressive heat proved far more difficult than keeping them warm in winter.

The thin band of turquoise above the mountains slowly turned purple.

Sorrel Buruss cut the motor on the Chevy dually truck and stepped out into the cool air. “Sister, will you take Gunpowder and Keepsake? I should have called but I don't know. I can't seem to keep anything straight in my head and I know Fontaine would want the horses well cared for and used. They'll sit around in the barn and that's not right.”

“Sorrel.” Sister put her arm around the pretty woman's shoulders. “I'll give them the best of care. We'll hunt them and when you've had time to think things through if you want to sell them, I will.”

“I'd like to donate them to the hunt.” Her lower lip trembled.

“Let's wait and see how much money you have left when all is said and done. Okay?”

Sorrel, a well-groomed woman even in grief, cried. She couldn't speak.

“Doug can unload. Come on. Let me get you a cup of coffee or a drink if it's too late for coffee. All right?” As Sorrel nodded her agreement, Sister walked back into the stable. “Doug, will you unload Gunsmoke and Keepsake? We'll be caring for them for a while.”

“Sure.”

Once in Sister's kitchen, the fire roaring in the huge fireplace, Sorrel relaxed a little. “The funeral is tomorrow and I couldn't stand one more deeply sympathetic condolence. One more person at the door. God, I must be awful. The kids are at Mom's. They're upset but at the same time kind of excited, all the food, flowers, people.”

“I often wonder what stays with them. The telling detail. I don't know. I remember a great deal from my childhood and yet when my brother was alive he'd recall the same event not so much in contradiction but with a different emphasis. It used to make me wonder about my mind.”

“I gave up on my mind a long time ago.” Sorrel half smiled, grateful to be out of the gloom of her own home. “I apologize for just dropping in on you. I could have called. . . . I just went to the barn and pulled those guys out of their stalls. At least I remembered their halters and lead. I have moments when I can't remember anything. I'm moving but I'm not functioning. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” Sister offered her some cookies, then sat down herself.

Raleigh reposed by the fireplace. Golly sat on the kitchen counter.

“I don't know how I'm going to get through tomorrow.”

“You will.”

“How did you do it? Twice.”

“I told myself that the men in my life wouldn't take kindly to a wife or a mother who fell apart in front of God and everybody.”

“I guess we just go on—I mean, I don't even know why I'm here. I mean here as in alive. I don't seem to have a purpose. I never did. I had a purpose as a wife and a mother but I can't see anything. I—”

“Sorrel, maybe we don't have a purpose. Maybe we're here to just live. But whatever, right now you go through the motions. The substance of your life may be revealed later.”

“You have a purpose.” Sorrel's face was so innocent and so open.

“To live.”

“You have the hunt club.”

Sister smiled. “Yes. I doubt that philosophers or even those people eager to live your life for you would find that much of a purpose but I have Nature, I love God's creation, and this is a way to appreciate it.”

“You've lived a fabulous life.”

“Well, let's just say I may not have done much good in this life but I haven't done much harm either.” She smiled, pushing another cookie at Sorrel. “Eat. I know it's hard but if you don't your blood sugar will go haywire and you'll feel like you're on a roller coaster. I've got some nice cold chicken. How about a chicken sandwich with lettuce, pumpernickel bread?”

“Yeah!”
Golly shouted.

Sister sternly eyed the calico.

“I don't think so, thank you. Board . . . What do I owe you?”

“Nothing. Really.”

“Sister Jane, can you think of anyone who would kill Fontaine?”

After a considerable pause Sister said, “I can think of plenty of people who might want to kill him but none who would.”

“He lived every single second while he was here.” Sorrel smiled ruefully. “I adjusted. I guess you could say my flame didn't burn as bright as Fontaine's.”

“No. Your flame burns steadily. It has to, Sorrel; you're a mother. Men can leave. They can leave us flat out. They can die. They can run off with other women or they can show up on their thirty-seventh birthday and declare they want to climb Mount Everest before they're forty. We're tied to the earth. Once the children are grown I suppose we can do those things, too, but how do you break a lifetime of holding back?”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“I think a lot. I'm alone much of the time or I'm doing chores. My mind is always on an adventure.” She picked up a cookie, putting it in Sorrel's hand. “Okay. You don't have to eat it but look at it. I'm making a sandwich even if you won't eat it. Take it with you.”

“There's enough food in my house to keep a brigade full.”

“Then I'm making one for myself.”

As the older woman buttered the bread she chatted and listened.

Doug knocked on the back door, then came inside. “Horses are fine, Mrs. Buruss. I've turned your trailer around.”

“Thank you.”

“It's a great trailer,” he said admiringly.

“Only the best. You know how he was.”

“I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say.” His handsome face radiated honesty.

“There isn't anything else you can say. Thank you, Doug.”

“Did Sister tell you? We found the rope. We think it's the rope.”

Sister turned her silver head to face Doug. “I was getting to that.”

Both Sister and Doug explained how they'd found the rope, where they'd found the rope, and what it looked like.

“Sounds like Fontaine's King's rope.”

CHAPTER 43

Four hundred and sixty people crammed into the pre-Revolutionary Episcopal Church. Built in 1749, laid brick with white lintels, the unadorned structure sheltered by ancient spruces and hickories exuded an inviting presence. It didn't take a particularly active imagination to envision colonists tying up their horses, doffing their tricornes, or adjusting their Sunday hats if female, to cross the threshold into the vestry.

Every member of Jefferson Hunt attended, many genuinely sorrowful. Crawford, not at all sorrowful, escorted Martha. He walked to the grave site in the churchyard as well, just to make sure the walnut casket would be lowered into the ground.

Martha, keeping her misery in check, wiped her eyes from time to time. Crawford kept his eyes down much of the time.

The Franklins sat together. Jennifer held a lace handkerchief to her eyes, not to dab tears but to hide the laughter. Dean Offendahl, one of her high school boyfriends, in the choir, would wink at her. Betty, outraged, headed straight for Dean once the service was over. A funeral might be a good place to fall in love but it wasn't a good place to flirt. Jennifer, unaware of her mother's mission, walked with Cody and Bobby to chat with Sister, Doug, and Shaker. Together they walked out to the parking lot, a light northerly wind mussing everyone's hair.

They stopped out of respect as the funeral director ushered Sorrel and the kids into the black limousine. Fontaine's sister from Morgantown, West Virginia, and her family followed in the next black limo.

“She's holding up remarkably well,” Betty quietly remarked.

“You'd think she'd be glad to get rid of him,” Cody said in a low voice.

Doug firmly said, “Cody.”

She shrugged.

Sister walked over next to her. “If love were logical, you would be one hundred percent correct but love isn't logical. If it were, no one in their right mind would marry. For all his faults, she loved him. She loved him from the day she met him in college.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude.”

“I suspect you have mixed emotions yourself.”

This terse sentence from Sister cut to the bone. Cody wondered if Sister knew about her affair. Unlike most people, Sister Jane did not feel compelled to tell people what she knew. A slight chill bumped down Cody's spine.

“Would you like to ride with me?” Doug offered, hoping for the chance to talk to Cody alone before the gathering at the Buruss home.

Cody agreed and once the door was closed she blurted out, “God, I'd give anything for a drink right now.”

“No.”

“I won't, I won't. But funerals make me shaky.”

“Cody, did you ever notice a special rope in Fontaine's stable?”

“What do you mean?”

“From out west. King's ropes, I think. Stiff. Used to rope steers and calves.”

“No.”

“Think hard. Maybe he hung it in the tack room or inside his trailer. You'd notice it, as it's different from the stuff you buy at the co-op.”

“No. I'd show up three times a week, saddle up Keepsake, and that was that. In and out.”

CHAPTER 44

Alone in bed that night, Sister scribbled on a yellow legal pad. She was reconstructing everything she could remember from the time she first saw Fontaine until he vanished. Next to her was her red leather-bound hunt diary. After each hunt she wrote the events in her diary. Reading about hunts years later delighted her.

She and Raymond used to sit in bed together writing in their respective hunt diaries. He'd fuss at her because she'd use a fountain pen and he was afraid she'd spill ink on the sheets. She never did.

Outside the night was crystal clear as only a November night can be.

Golly rested on the pillow next to her. Sister thought of it as Raymond's pillow. Raleigh curled up in front of the fireplace in the bedroom, the aroma of cured hardwoods filling the room.

The more she thought about opening hunt, the more disturbed she became. Why kill Fontaine in the hunt field? Surely it would have been easier to kill him somewhere else.

The risk in killing a human being when near to a hundred mounted followers as well as foot followers bespoke either boldness or frenzy. Granted, the foot followers remained on Hangman's Ridge with Peter Wheeler. Foot followers almost always camped out at the Hangman's Ridge fixture because of the vistas and because they could eat their breakfasts, drink coffee or roped coffee, and catch up with old friends.

The killer knew all this, of course, but what puzzled her was why take such a chance? It was a hell of a chance. Wouldn't it have been easier to lure Fontaine onto a back country road and shoot him? Or poison him?

On one level she was furious, white-hot with rage, that someone would commit a crime in
her
hunt field.

On another level, she was frightened. The swiftness of the murder, the cool appraisal of the situation, and then the lightning strike, pointed to an exceptionally courageous person.

She'd listened to the arguments and theories from friends. It had to be a foxhunter, one who really knew the sport. Well, that was obvious. Others said it was planned but impromptu, which is what she, Shaker, and Doug pieced together once down in the slippery ravine.

Still, there was an element of elegant revenge. The killer picked the hunt field for an emotional charge. The hunt field meant the world to Fontaine but it must also have meant something for the killer or for the killer and Fontaine together.

She also thought it would decimate her hunt field. What a pity, for the season had promised to be a great one, one of those magical seasons that rolls around every fifteen to twenty years.

She'd canceled Tuesday's hunt since the funeral was Wednesday. Tomorrow the regulars would be out. Saturday would tell the tale because it was an especially good fixture, Beveridge Hundred.

She turned out the light but couldn't sleep. Every time she'd turn Golly would grumble. Finally, she clicked on the light to read
Anna Karenina
. Tolstoy was a bit of a hunting man. Not so good a hunting man as Turgenev, Balzac, or Trollope but still she liked reading those authors who understood and appreciated hunting. Then, too,
Anna Karenina,
complex, shifting, profound, never loosened its grip on her, not from the first day she'd picked it up at age seventeen. Of course, then she hated Karenin. Now she understood him perfectly.

 

In the stable, snug under their blankets, the horses dozed. Gunsmoke woke with a start. He usually lay flat out and snored. He whinnied.

Lafayette awakened.
“Okay?”

“Yeah. I keep feeling that rope hitting me.”

“I wouldn't think to look for a rope over a jump. Not when hounds are running,”
Lafayette said.

“It was high.”

“When did Fontaine leave the field?”

“He pulled off for a toot after helping Lottie Fisher. He'd pull the stuff out of his jacket, sniff, wait a minute, and then rejoin everyone. People thought he was going to the bathroom. Course, sometimes he did.”

“No one called him over?”

“Not exactly. He sat for a minute to catch his breath, too. Hard run. Anyway, I saw Rickyroo in the distance. Doug was ahead of the main pack; then I heard the pack split. Off to the right and behind us I heard hoofbeats. Fontaine turned my head away because he started moving toward the main pack. The horse and rider were behind in the woods but moving fast. I wonder if that person beckoned him? He headed toward the split pack after that. You could really hear them, too. No one called out to him. I hear better than he does. Did. I could hear the horse in front of me but now way ahead—and the woods were thick. Fontaine was following. I'm certain of that.”

“Weird.”
Lafayette's eyes were closing.

“I remember one thing before I hit that rope. Behind the fence line, back in the woods, a horse snorted.”