One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02]
Read One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] Online
Authors: Carolyn McSparren
Merry Abbott is once again trying to rein in a runaway mystery in the elegant but deadly world of carriage-horse competitions
I tripped over him.
He sprawled face down in the farthest corner of the arena.
The spike anchoring the cable at that corner should have been driven deep into the dirt.
Instead it was driven into the nape of his neck.
I sat down hard and clapped my hands over my mouth. He had to be dead.
Didn’t he?
I started to shout for help. Then I didn’t.
The fog seemed to steal not only sight but sound.
Anybody could be standing behind a pine watching me. For that matter, someone could be standing in the open six feet away in the fog. I wouldn’t see them and probably wouldn’t hear them. Then I felt warm breath on the back of my neck. I yelped and scrambled away on my backside.
Book Two
The Merry Abbott Carriage-Driving Mysteries
by
Carolyn McSparren
BelleBooks, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.
BelleBooks
PO BOX 300921
Memphis, TN 38130
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-101-2
Print ISBN: 978-61194-017-6
Copyright © 2011 by Carolyn McSparren
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design: Debra Dixon
Interior design: Hank Smith
Cover art credits:
Skeleton © Andreas Meyer | Dreamstime.com
Tombstone © 2009 Susan McKivergan
Hat © Brian Griffith
:Mhog:01:
Thanks to Meredith Giere, who took the time to write me after she saw a picture of me and my driving horse, Zoe, in the national driving magazine. She gave me Hail Columbia for all my harnessing mistakes and has become my friend and go-to person on all things technical.
Thanks to Beverly Hollingsworth, my co-driver and trainer, who cajoled and threatened me into driving in my first actual driving show, The Nashoba Carriage Classic. I didn’t fall out of the carriage and Zoe was an angel.
Thanks to Sam Garner, who trained Zoe and me to drive in the first place and fixes my carriage when it breaks down. And to Patsy, his wife, who puts up with all of us.
Thanks to the folks at Nashoba Carriage Association, and to Pam Gamble, who drives draft horses to carriages for hire in Memphis.
Thanks as always to my critique partners, Phyllis Appleby, Patricia Potter, and Barbara Christopher, who shepherded me through my first draft, and to Debra Dixon and Patricia Van Wie, both wonderful editors.
Finally, thanks to Zoe, who is usually a saint, but can be a demon. I learned a long time ago that when things get really bad, go hug a horse. It helps.
I hope you like this second driving mystery. I’m working on the third Meredith and Peggy mystery right now.
Saturday morning
Merry
Marathon day is always tense at a carriage driving show. There was enough adrenaline floating around to win every gold medal at the Olympics. I breathed deeply of the scent of pines that crowded both sides of the starting track and tried to relax.
It was barely dawn on a chill north Georgia morning in early May. Around me horses put to carriages paced the staging area atop the Tollivers’ hill as they waited for their signal to start down to the first obstacle.
Harness jingled, drivers and grooms cajoled their teams to settle them. Eager to start, the horses whinnied, stomped, and snorted. Peggy Caldwell, my landlady and first friend in Mossy Creek, Georgia, was driving our pair of Halflinger horses, Golden Boy and Ned, over her first marathon course. She’s a natural reinsman, but I’d been training her less than a year. Now, she needed the experience of driving a pair in an actual show.
I was more nervous than she was. At least I would be with her, standing behind her seat on the steel marathon carriage as her gator—short for Navigator. My friend Pete Hull swears that some anonymous driver shortened the term because “gators” are mean suckers with big mouths, the better to snarl at their slow or downright dangerous drivers.
As gator, I was supposed to keep us on course, on time, and use my not inconsiderable weight to counterbalance the carriage around turns.
Until we got the signal to start, I was standing in front of our Halflingers and slipping them sugar cubes to keep them calm, so Peggy wouldn’t tense up even more. I was tense enough for both of us.
“Where the hell is Raleigh?” I heard Pete Hull shout. “Wasn’t he supposed to start first?”
Peggy and I were due to go second, after Giles Raleigh’s four-in-hand team of Dutch warmbloods. I saw the judge in charge of starting speaking on his cell phone, and a moment later he came over to us. “Peggy, Merry, that was Raleigh on the phone. He’s got to replace a broken pole chain on his lead horses. He’ll be here in a couple of minutes, but we can make up the time if y’all go first. How about it?”
“Oh, Lord,” Peggy whispered. “Do we have to?”
I gave her a thumbs-up. “Our boys are getting more antsy by the minute.”
“Why don’t you take over the reins?” she asked me.
I shook my head. “You’ve trained with both Ned and Golden. You know the course. I’ll be on the step right behind you coaching you. You’ll do fine. Have at it.”
She sucked in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Then let’s do this thing.”
I gave Ned and Golden a final pat, walked around behind the cart, climbed on the gator’s step, and patted her shoulder. “Okay, kiddo, let’s have some fun.”
“Oh, Lord,” Peggy whispered and clicked to the pair of Halflingers. “Trot on.”
They trotted smoothly down the path toward our first obstacle. We were off.
Peggy and I had agreed on one goal. No disasters. Like all the competitors, we wore hard hats and body protectors, even though we had no intention of driving our horses at a dead gallop the way the more experienced drivers did.
“We might as well be driving through the clouds in the Alps.” Peggy said. She had a point. Heavy mist nearly obscured our path. It rose in thick clouds from the surface of the little lake in the valley. “We’re driving into a witch’s cauldron.” Peggy whispered. “I’ll never be able to see where to turn onto the bridge.”
I could feel the tension in her shoulder when she leaned back against the seat in front of me, but her hands seemed steady on the reins.
At the bottom of the hill we had to make a sharp right turn beside the lake onto a causeway that led to a wooden bridge. The bridge wasn’t steeply arched or narrow, but some horses hated the sound of their hooves on the wood so much they took one step, stopped dead and refused to cross. Peggy and I had practiced driving across boards with the Halflingers for the last couple of months. We figured they were cool, even if we weren’t.
On Friday evening, all the drivers and navigators had ridden over the marathon course on the back of pickup trucks, so we knew what obstacles we’d encounter and where. The bed of a truck, however, gives a different perspective from when you’re handling the reins of sensitive horses who’ll picked up on every emotion transmitted through your hands.