Hotspur (3 page)

“The truth—as gently as you can, because if you don't, someone else will,” Sister forthrightly replied. “They're strong.”

“Mother wants us to move back into the big house, but we can't. We're staying at Hunter's Rest, but I'll be with Mother every day,” Sybil said.

Hunter's Rest, a two-story frame house, was located at the southernmost border of the large estate. It once housed the farm manager.

“If you need to get the children away, drop them with me. The S litter”—Sister mentioned a robust litter of foxhound puppies whelped in mid-May—“need walking out and handling. And you know they're always as welcome as you are.”

“Thank you.” Ken placed his large hand on her shoulder. Apart from a slight paunch, he was holding his own against middle age. A few strands of gray appeared in his sandy hair and eyebrows. A small bald spot like a tonsure bore testimony to the encroaching years, but one had to be taller than Ken to see it.

Later, as Sister and Shaker drove back through the continuing rain, Shaker loosened his dark blue tie. “Had the damndest feeling.”

“What?”

“Well”—he paused, then sheepishly looked over at Sister—“I think I've seen too many TV mysteries.”

“What?” she persisted, knowing he'd have to work up to anything that couldn't be proven by logic.

“Well, I felt that somebody in that room knew—knew what had really happened to Nola.”

CHAPTER 4

The windshield wipers on the Mercedes S500 flipped at their highest speed as Crawford Howard and his wife, Marty, drove back toward town. They had met and married at the University of Indiana, made a fortune in strip malls, moved to central Virginia, divorced, and remarried, all before age forty-seven. Surprisingly, neither of them appeared exhausted by this process.

“Honey, slow down.” Marty involuntarily shrank back as the water from puddles splashed against her side window.

“This machine can handle everything.”

“This machine must still obey the laws of physics,” she wryly replied. But knowing how he loathed being corrected, she hastened to add, “Edward was glad to see you. I know you've had a long day, but thank you for making the effort.”

He slowed to forty-five miles an hour. “That girl must have been something. Those photographs of her all over the house—really something.”

The Howards had moved to Jefferson Hunt Country after Nola's disappearance.

“Don't you think people are jumping to conclusions?” Marty's voice rose.

“What? That she was murdered?”

“Right.”

“Honey, people don't commit suicide and bury themselves. If they commit suicide, sooner or later the body is found. And she disappeared in September, so you know she would have been found quick enough.”

“Betty Franklin said the last time anyone saw her alive was at a party Sorrel Buruss gave for the first day of cubbing. But you're right. It's still hot in September.”

“A first-day-of-cubbing party. That's a good idea.”

Foxhunting rarely opened with a home run, more like a base hit. Cubbing introduced young entry, those hounds hunting for their first year, to the young foxes, being hunted for the first time. The older hounds and hunt staff helped steady the youngsters, keeping them running between the bases instead of straying off into center field. The young foxes, with a bit of luck, learned the rules from the older foxes, but in case a youngster was caught unawares, many a huntsman would steer his pack away to save the fox. If the pack couldn't be deterred, if scent was just flaming, a whipper-in would do his or her best to warn the fox. If hounds were far enough away, the whipper-in would speak to the fox. The sound of a human voice usually set the fox to running. If hounds were close, the whipper-in would smack his or her boot with their crop. The sound alerted the fox. The whipper-in didn't want to use his or her voice, if possible, in those circumstances, for the hounds would know the human's voice.

No one wanted to kill a fox under any circumstances, whether in cubbing or later in formal hunting. American foxhunting was purely about the thrill of the chase—the joy of good hound work and hard riding. Unfortunately, most Americans formed their concept of foxhunting from the English traditions. This was a misunderstanding American foxhunters fretted over continually.

“Wonder why we don't have a party like that anymore?”

“Bad organization.” Crawford rarely let slip the opportunity to criticize, implicitly suggesting he could do better.

Foxhunting clubs, like all volunteer organizations, rolled with the ebb and flow of individual enthusiasm. One member might host an annual breakfast or party for years, then grow weary of it. The master might suggest that someone else pick up the slack, but she or he couldn't exactly give orders. Orders usually attend paychecks.

“Well, darling, perhaps we should host one. Bring back a lovely tradition.”

He braked sharply as a deer shot across the road. “Big rats, that's what they are.” Then he returned his attentions to his recently remarried wife. “Wouldn't hurt. And let's do it properly. None of this platter of ham biscuits and a pile of doughnuts. Mumm de Cramant.” He mentioned a champagne of which he was particularly fond.

“Cristal.” She loved Louis Roederer.

“I'm not serving $270 bottles of champagne. As it is, the de Cramant is running about $70, although if I order a few cases from Sherry-Lehmann I can get the price down. Don't worry, sweetie, they'll be damned impressed when they taste it.”

“I'm sure you're right.” She noticed the sign to the entrance of the Franklins' small farm swinging wildly in the increasing wind. “Turning into a filthy night. Almost as if Nola's ghost has stirred up the winds.”

“Now, Marty.” He laughed.

“I believe in spirits. What about the ghosts at Hangman's Ridge? People have seen them, and people who aren't”—she weighed her next word—“flighty.”

“Pure bunk. Anyway, this will all blow over, forgive the pun. If there's any evidence left on the body at all, I guarantee you it will lead back to Guy Ramy. It just figures. So the real work is finally tracking him down. You know someone around here knows where he is or helped him get out of town. Boy's father was the sheriff. Man might have been the sheriff, but I'll bet you he protected his own.”

“But honey, everyone who knew them said Guy loved her.”

“Men kill the women they say they love every day.”

“Makes me wonder why the compliment isn't reciprocated.”

“Women are more moral.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I do. I know you're my moral superior. And I wished when we were younger I'd asked you about things, deals, people. But I didn't.” He shifted in his seat. “Although I still think you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Not that I'm condoning smashing people to bits, but competition is the lifeblood of trade, it's the lifeblood of this country. Someone has to win and someone has to lose.”

“I guess Nola lost.”

“Don't worry over it, Marty. This will get settled now that the body has surfaced. Really. And there's nothing we can do about it except do whatever the Bancrofts need done.” He slowed for the entrance to their farm, Beasley Hall. It was named long before they bought it. It was named for Tobias Beasley, the original holder of the land grant from Charles II. “Wonder if Edward Bancroft has more money than I do? If I'd inherited what he inherited I'd have turned it into four or five billion dollars by now. You know, these people who inherit fortunes let gentlemen investors manage their money. The investments return maybe three percent or four percent a year. I can't understand anyone being that passive about their money.”

“I don't know if Edward has as much as you do, honey, but he's not passive. He ran the Bancroft empire until a few years ago when he retired.”

“Coffee.”

“What, dear?”

“Their money started in coffee, of all the damn things. I'd never put my money in anything where Mother Nature was my partner. But I guess it was a different time. Early nineteenth century. That ancestor of his had to be pretty damned smart.”

“Now they just seem damned, don't they?”

“The Bancrofts? No. Marty, don't let this Nola thing affect you. The Bancrofts made whatever adjustment they had to twenty years ago. Sybil married a decent enough fellow, they have two grandchildren, and sure, you never forget a child, but I don't think you can say they're damned.” He pulled into the new garage attached to the original main house, an addition Crawford had commissioned.

The new wing was tastefully done and didn't resemble a garage. If anything, it was the tiniest bit overdone.

The garage doors rolled down behind the red Mercedes.

The first building on this site was a log cabin built in 1730 by Tobias Beasley's grandson. Over the years it had been replaced with a handsome brick structure boasting a huge center hall and four-over-four windows. Each generation that made money added to the main house. This meant about every thirty or forty years a ballroom would be built or more bedrooms with sleeping porches. Whatever excited the owners' fancy was added, which gave Beasley Hall true character.

Crawford opened the door into the mudroom and ushered his wife through.

“Thank you, dear.”

“Nightcap?”

“How about a small brandy with a rind of orange on the rim.”

He laughed at her but made her the drink and brought it upstairs to their huge bedroom, decorated by Cole-fax and Fowler. Crawford could have hired Parish Hadley out of New York, but no, he had to go to London. The woman who put the English country house look on the map, Nancy Lancaster, whose mother, Lizzie, had been born a Langhorne of Virginia, was influenced by Mirador, the Langhorne seat in Albemarle County. Crawford liked telling people he and Marty were simply bringing her talent back home. Nancy Lancaster, born in 1897, had been dead since 1994, but her decorating firm soldiered on.

The simple truth was that Crawford was a dreadful snob.

They slipped into their scarlet cashmere bathrobes from Woods and Falon, another English firm, and nestled into an overstuffed sofa suffocating with chintz-covered pillows.

Marty enjoyed unwinding on this sofa before retiring to bed. When she and Howard had separated and Crawford's lawyers had played the old starve-the-wife routine, she'd had ample time to consider the financial impact of divorce on middle-aged women. She realized she could not make a graceful transition into the ranks of the
nouveau pauvre.

“When
is
the first day of cubbing this year?” Crawford put his arm around her.

“September seventh, I think.”

“Time to leg up the horses.”

“Time to leg up ourselves.”

“Oh, honey, you look fantastic. In fact, you look better than when I married you.”

“Liar.”

“It's true.”

“You can thank the business—and yourself.”

One of her demands for returning to Crawford, who had been unfaithful to her, was that he buy her the landscaping firm where she had been working to make ends meet. She'd fallen in love with the business. When the owner, Fontaine Buruss, died an untimely death in the hunt field, Crawford made a handsome settlement upon Fontaine's widow. Marty had never been happier now that she was running her own business. She had a real purpose of her own.

He kissed her. “Funny how things work out.”

“You look pretty fantastic yourself.” She winked at him.

He'd lost his paunch, changed his diet, and worked with a personal trainer. He'd also endured liposuction, but he wasn't advertising that fact.

The rain slashed at the windowpanes, and Crawford's heart beat right along with it. When Marty winked it meant she wanted sex.

Crawford, like most people with business drive, also had a high sex drive. He adored making love on a rainy night, too.

He reached up and rubbed her neck. “Did I tell you how crazy I am about you?”

What he didn't tell her was that he had not given up his long-standing goal of becoming joint-master of the Jefferson Hunt and that that very day he had put his plan in motion. By God, he would be joint-master whether Jane Arnold wanted him or not.

CHAPTER 5

Large, overhead industrial fans set high in the ceiling swirled, their flat blades pushing the air downward, and window fans also sucked in air from the outside and sent it over the sleeping hounds. This arrangement kept flies out of the kennels as well.

It was late afternoon, the day after Nola had been discovered. The rains had been followed by the oppressive heat typical of the South.

The Jefferson Hunt Club Kennels, built in the 1950s, were simple and graceful. The building's exterior was brick, much too expensive to use now thanks to higher taxes and higher labor costs. The large square structure housed the office, the feed rooms, and an examination room where a hound could be isolated for worming or the administration of medicines. At the back of this was a 150-foot-square courtyard of poured concrete sloping down to a central drain. The roofline from the main building gracefully extended over one side of this courtyard by about eight feet. Lovely arches much like those underneath the walkways at Monticello supported the overhang.

Open archways bounded the courtyard, again like the ones at Monticello. The dog hounds lived on the right side and the gyps on the left. Each gender had its own runs and kennel houses with raised beds and little porches. The puppies lived at the rear with their own courtyard and special house. A small, separate sick bay nestled under trees far to the right.

The design—simple, functional—was pleasing to the eye. Doorways into the sleeping quarters were covered with tin to discourage chewing. The center sections of the doors to the runs were cut out and covered with a swinging heavy rubber flat, like a large mud flap on a truck, so the hounds could come and go as they wished. Eventually someone would get the bright idea to chew the flap, but a large square of rubber was easier to replace than an entire door.

All sleeping quarters were washed down every morning and evening. Painted cinder-block walls discouraged insect infestation. The floors sloped to central drains.

Many hounds slept in their raised beds, the wash of refreshing air keeping them cool. Others were dreaming in the huge runs, a quarter of an acre each, filled with large deciduous and fir trees. Some hounds felt the only proper response to blistering weather was to dig a crater in the earth, curling up in it. Fans whirling over kennel beds was sissy stuff.

Two such tough characters, Diana and Cora, faced each other from their shallow earthen holes, now muddy, which pleased them.

“Hate summer,”
Cora grumbled.

“It's not so bad,”
the beautiful tricolor replied, her head resting on the edge of her crater.

“You're still young. Heat gets harder to handle as you
get older,”
Cora said. She had recently turned six.

Six, while not old, gave Cora maturity. She was the strike hound, the hound who pushes forward. She sensed she was slowing just the tiniest bit and knew Dragon, Diana's littermate, would jostle for her position.

Cora hated Dragon as much as she loved his sister. Quite a few hounds loathed the talented, arrogant Dragon.

Being the strike hound didn't mean that Cora always found the scent first. But she worked a bit ahead of the rest—not much, perhaps only five yards in front, but she was first and she wanted to keep it that way.

If another hound, say a flanker, a hound on the sides of the pack, found scent before she did, Cora would slow, listening for the anchor hound, the quarterback, to speak. If the anchor said the scent was valid, then Cora would swing around to the new line, racing up front again. She had to be first.

If the anchor hound said nothing, then Cora would wait for a moment to listen for someone else whom she trusted. All she waited for was
“It is good.”
If she didn't hear it soon, then she'd push on.

For years the anchor hound of the Jefferson Hunt had been Archie, a great American hound of substance, bone, deep voice, and reliable nose. Archie, a true leader, knew when to knock a smart-ass youngster silly, when to encourage, when to chide the whole pack, and when to urge them on. He died a fighting death against a bear, ensuring his glory among the pack as well as among the humans. They all missed him.

Diana, though young, possessed the brains to be an anchor hound. No one else exhibited that subtle combination of leadership, drive, nose, and identifiable cry. Cora knew Diana would become a wonderful anchor, but her youth would cause some problems this season. Like a young, talented quarterback, Diana would misread some signals and get blitzed. But the girl had it, she definitely had it.

In fact, the whole D litter, named for the first letter of their mother's name as is the custom among foxhunters, oozed talent. And in Dragon's case, overweening conceit.

Puppies taunted one another, their high-pitched voices carrying over the yards drenched in late-afternoon sunshine.

“Pipe down, you worthless rats,”
Cora yelled at them.

They quieted.

“Too bad Archie can't see this litter. He was their grandfather. They're beauties.”
Diana watched one chubby puppy waddle to the chain-link fence between the yards, where he studied a mockingbird staring right back at him from the other side.

“Babblers.”
Cora laughed.
“They are beautiful. But
the proof is in the pudding. We'll see what they can really
do two seasons from now. And don't forget”—she lowered her voice because gossip travels fast in close quarters—
“Sweetpea just isn't brilliant. Steady, God
bless her, steady as a rock, but not an A student.”

Sweetpea was the mother of this litter.

“I wish it were the first day of cubbing.”
Diana sighed.

“Don't we all. I don't mind the walking out. Really. The
exercise is good, and each week the walks get longer. You
know next week we'll start with the horses again, which I
enjoy, but still—not the same.”

“Heard the boys in the pasture yesterday.”
Diana meant the horses.
“They're excited about starting back
to work so long as Sister, Shaker, and Doug go out early,
really early.”
Diana sniffed the air. A familiar light odor announced the presence of Golly grandly picking her way through the freshly mowed grass toward the outdoor run.

Diana rose, shaking the dirt off.

Cora, too, smelled Golly.
“Insufferable shit.”

Diana laughed.
“Cora, you're crabby today.”

“It's the heat. But that doesn't change the fact that that
cat is a holy horror.”
Cora curled farther into her cool mud crater. She wasn't going to talk to the calico.

Golly reached the chain-link fence.
“Good afternoon,
Diana. Your nose is dirty.”

Diana sat down at the chain-link fence.
“Keeps the
bugs off.”

“I wouldn't know. I don't get bugs.”

“Liar,”
Cora called out.

“Tick hotel,”
Golly fired right back.

“Flea bait. You hallucinate. I've seen you chase the
ghosts of fleas,”
Cora replied, giggling.

“I have never hallucinated in my life, Cora. And you
can't get my goat, ha,”
she said,
“because you're a lower
life-form and I'm not letting you needle me.”

“Oh, if you aren't hallucinating, then what are you
doing when you, for no reason, leap straight into the air,
twist around, race to a tree, climb up, drop down, and do
it all over again? You're mental.”

“Spoken like the unimaginative canine you are.”
Golly raised her chin, half closing her eyes.
“I'm being visited
by The Muse on those occasions.”

“I'm going to throw up,”
Cora said, and made a gagging sound.

“Worms!”
Golly triumphantly decreed.

Diana, thoroughly enjoying the hostilities, said,
“Just
got wormed Monday.”

“Well, I walked down here in the heat of the day to
give you girls some news, but since you're insulting me I
think I'll go hiss at the puppies, teach them who's boss
around here.”

“You can tell me.”
Diana lowered her voice and her head, her dirt-encrusted nose touching the fence.

“You're a sensible girl,”
the cat replied.

In truth, Diana was sensible and also quite sweet. She loved everybody.

Cora, upright now, walked over.
“Well?”

“Who said I was talking to you?”
Golly opened her eyes wide.

“Oh come on, Golliwog, you know we're dying to
hear it,”
Cora coaxed, buttering her up.

The luxurious calico leaned forward, her nose on the chain-link fence now.
“It was Nola. The family dentist
identified her not an hour ago.”

Cora thought for a moment.
“This will stir up a hornet's nest.”

“If only we had known her . . . we hear and smell
things.”
Diana frowned.
“We might have been able to
help find out something useful.”

“The last hound that knew Nola Bancroft would have
been Archie's grandmother. She lived to be eighteen, you
know,”
Cora said.
“It was a long, long time ago.”

“You'd think if any of us had known about the murder, or if any of the horses over at After All Farm knew,
they would have told. We'd know. We pass those things
down,”
Diana said.

“Undomesticated.”
Cora meant that undomesticated animals might have witnessed something at the time.

“Who lives that long?”
Diana wondered.

“Turtles. That snapping turtle at After All Farm, the
huge one in the back pond, he's got to be forty years old,
I swear it,”
Cora said.

“Amphibians aren't terribly smart, you know. Their
brain moves at about the same speed they do,”
Golly said with a laugh. Then she thought again.
“But they do
remember everything.”

“How old is Athena?”
Diana asked, thinking of the great horned owl.
“They live a long time, don't they?”

“Don't know,”
the cat and hound said in unison.

Diana lay down, her head on her paws, her face now level with Golly's face, almost.
“Why does it matter? To
us, I mean?”

“Because it really will stir up a hornet's nest, Diana.
People start buzzing. Old dirt will get turned over, and I
promise you, ladies, I promise you, this will all come
back to the Jefferson Hunt Club. Sooner or later, everything in this part of the world does,”
Cora said.

“Think Sister knows that?”
Diana asked. She loved Sister.

“She knows. Sister has lived almost six hound lifetimes. Think of what she knows,”
Cora said, shaking her head in wonder.

“Well, exactly how do you think this will affect us?
Will people not pay their dues or something like that?”
Diana asked.

“No. People drop out when it's a bad season. No hunt
club has control over the weather, but people act as
though they do, the fair-weather hunters, I mean.”
Cora observed human behavior closely.
“Or when there's a
club blowup, which happens about every seven years.
Archie always said humans do things in seven-year cycles. They just don't recognize it.”

“Crawford Howard.”
Golly curled her upper lip as she said his name.

“Up to his old tricks?”
Cora snapped at a low-flying dragonfly.

“Cat intuition.”
Golly smiled.
“I have an idea. Whatever happened to Nola in 1981 was well done, if you will.
When you're hunting you all go places humans don't.
Sometimes even Shaker can't keep up with you when territory's rough. You might find something or smell something out there that could help solve this mess. After all,
the best noses in the world are”
—she paused for effect—
“bloodhounds, but you all are second.”

“Second to none!”
Cora's voice rose, which caused a few sleepers to open one eye and grumble.

Humans ranked the noses of bloodhounds first, followed by bassets second and foxhounds third, with all other canines following. Foxhounds thought this an outrage. Of course they were best. Besides, who in the world could hunt behind a bloodhound? The poor horse would die of boredom. This was a pure article of foxhound faith.

“This has to do with hunting? Is that what you're
really thinking, Golly?”
Diana noticed a few of the boys in the kennel were quarreling over a stick. How they had the energy to even growl in this heat mystified her. One of the troublemakers, of course, was her brother, Dragon.

“Yes, think about it. Cubbing starts September seventh. It's the end of July. Stuff happens when you're
hunting. Everything speeds up. People reveal themselves
out there.”

“We sure hear them scream for Jesus.”
Diana giggled as she recalled a few of the oaths elicited by a stiff fence.

“I have never figured that out. The horse jumps the
fence, not them,”
Cora said, laughing.

“Oh, but that's just it, Cora. Sometimes the human
takes the fence and the horse doesn't.”