One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (24 page)

While everything about Sarah Beth screamed, “Newly acquired for a price,” Juanita whispered “Been there, always had that.”

She laid her hand on Peggy’s arm and gave her an air kiss, then stepped back and said, “You’re holding up well. How’s Merry?”

“Not in jail.”

“Glad to hear it.” Without seeming to, she moved the two of them past the dining room and into the butler’s pantry beyond. She leaned against the cabinets through whose windows gleamed china, crystal, and a ton of well-polished silver. “Harry is not happy. Sheriff Nordstrom’s a nice boy, but he’s way out of his depth.”

“That’s why he turned the case over to the GBI. Has Agent Wheeler come to talk to you and Harry yet?”

“Not so far, although Harry spent some time with him Sunday afternoon after Merry found Giles’s body. Seems competent, but Harry and I think he ought to be digging into Giles’s finances. I heard rumors he was sailing close to the wind. Not that he didn’t as a general rule, of course.”

“Anything specific?”

“You know the way Harry and I feel about Ham Bigelow and his crowd,” Juanita wrinkled her nose. “If half of what they get up to ever comes out, the general populace will roll out the tumbrels, and we’ll all wind up on the guillotine.”

“Not me. I’m a peasant. And I can knit.”

She grinned. “I’ll remember that, Madame DeFarge.” She stopped speaking as a tall man wearing a clerical color passed through, smiled, but didn’t stop. He shoved through the swinging door into the kitchen as though he owned the place.

“Seriously,” Juanita said in not quite a whisper, “I suspect not even Dawn knew all the robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul stuff Giles was into.”

“I thought that was called a Ponzi scheme,” Peggy answered.

“Near enough.” Juanita set her empty highball glass on the glass-topped breakfast table, but immediately picked it up and rubbed the wet circle off with a paper napkin. Then she set the glass down on the napkin with a small nod. Not a woman who left even small messes for others to clean up. “Giles wanted Harry in on a limited liability company with him and Governor Bigelow five or six years ago,” she said, “but Harry turned them down. Then came the mortgage collapse.”

“I’m sure Agent Wheeler has someone looking into Giles’s finances. They even have a name for the people who do that. Forensic Accountants.”

“Looking for where all the financial bodies are buried. Anyway, give him a heads-up. Ham Bigelow gets bitchy real quick when anyone looks too closely at his land deals, and the GBI works for the State of Georgia.”

“The state of Georgia is just what Ham thinks he is—just like Louis the Fourteenth—
l’etat, c’est moi.”

The door opened and Harry stuck his head in. “Juanita, I’ve had it up to here saying nice things about Giles. At the rate I’m lying, my nose is gonna get home before I do. And I want some dinner that doesn’t come in bite sizes. Can we go now? Oh, hey, Peggy.”

Juanita threw Peggy a look. “Yes, dear. Coming.” She patted Peggy’s arm and trailed after her husband. “See you at the funeral?” she said over her shoulder.

Peggy nodded. She wondered if Juanita had singled her out simply to pass on information about Giles’s financial condition and aim the investigation away from the driving crowd. Everyone kept intimating that Giles Raleigh had crooked deals going, but nobody had as yet mentioned anything specific. Geoff would know more, but he’d never tell her and Merry.

She mentally re-girded her loins and pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen. Three white-coated servers were shuttling full trays of finger food out and empty trays in to be refilled. A chef wearing a chef’s toque and a triple-fronted white chef’s jacket was taking a cookie sheet of miniature quiches out of a restaurant-size oven.

Yep. Definitely not the local funeral ladies, although the local funeral director would have his own cadre of women who usually handled finger food for the viewing and after-the-funeral buffet. The emblems on the waiters’ breast pockets read
The Elegant Gourmet, Dahlonega
. That would come across as arrogant to the locals. Not that Sarah Beth would care, of course, nor even notice. Assuming that Dawn did inherit the farm, Sarah Beth would be moving out soon anyway, probably to the Raleigh condo in Atlanta.

The priest had disappeared through one of the other doors. Although the service was to be held at the local Episcopal Church, Peggy suspected that Giles had never darkened the door of the place. She intended to chat up the good rector to find out.

“’Ma’am, ‘scuse me.”

Peggy flattened herself against the wall beside the pantry door to allow a waiter past with a chafing dish of something pinkish and gooey—probably shrimp, although it looked more like molten bubblegum. “Sorry,” she whispered and backed out of the room.

She found the priest standing by the dining room table. He wasn’t eating greedily, but as steadily as a grazing antelope. She picked up an iced shrimp guaranteed not to burn the inside of her mouth and introduced herself. “You must be the rector from St. Andrews,” she said.

He gulped down whatever he’d been eating, leaving a plate still full of goodies—heavy on the caviar. “Yes indeed, Father Clemons. St. Andrews is my baby.”

Peggy introduced herself and shook his hand. “Must be nice to have a parishioner like Giles in your congregation.” She meant a rich parishioner, of course, although she doubted Mr. Clemons would admit to that.

He nibbled on a quiche. “We didn’t see much of Giles, although Sarah Beth is always willing to volunteer. Don’t know what we’d do without her. She supplies the energy to keep our needlepoint group in high gear. We’re redoing all the kneeling benches.”

“I didn’t know she did needlepoint.”

“Oh, my yes. She gives classes. She did most of the designs.” He gave a small smile. “Of course, it takes years to accomplish a project that big. I suspect I’ll be long gone before all the benches are finished.”

“To a larger parish?”

This time he laughed. A silken orator’s laugh from a man who was used to public speaking. “In a manner of speaking. I was thinking more of dead or retired.”

“You’re a young man—from my prospective, that is. Too young to have grandchildren?”

“My wife died several years ago. We were childless.”

“You could remarry.”

His eyes took on a faraway glint. Peggy followed his glance. He was staring at Sarah Beth in the front hall, with the expression a hound dog gets when he spots a ham biscuit just outside his kennel.

Well, my, my.
All those hours working out the details on the kneeling bench project might have brought the reverend a bit closer to Sarah Beth than was good for either of them.

Good grief, he couldn’t be the father of her baby, could he? Episcopal priests were not celibate like their Roman Catholic brethren, but the Episcopal Church still frowned on divorce, particularly among its clergy.

It would, however, be permissible to marry a widow, even a pregnant one. One more motive for Sarah Beth, and, she supposed, for the reverend Mr. Clemons as well.

When Clemons put his empty sherry glass down and excused himself, Peggy picked it up on her linen napkin and surreptitiously stuffed it in her purse. She had no idea whether it was possible to get DNA from an unborn fetus. Geoff already had Raleigh’s DNA if he needed to test it, but at some point he might be interested in Clemons’s DNA as well. She intended to give the glass to him just in case.

“Where does the money come from for the building, the equipment, the van—all of it. I doubt she’s forty, and she’s in practice alone. So, she either has a rich and generous family, inherited it, has backers and silent partners, or . . .”

“She’s doing something crooked,” I said.

“Not necessarily, but it’s a definite possibility. So how does a vet make crooked money?”

“Drugs, obviously,” Peggy said. “Even I’ve heard of Special K.” Ketamine. Used by vets to anesthetize.

“Plus PCP and a number of other drugs that are valuable on the street. Take a lot of fake prescriptions to pay for
that
equipment,” Geoff said. “And the DEA keeps pretty close tabs on vets to be certain that scheduled drugs are properly accounted for.”

“Pardon the interruption, but, Merry, you said you wanted to check the farm before we drove back to town,” Dick said.

“Please, if it’s not too far out of the way. The contractor hung the new gates and put in one keypad this afternoon. I want to be certain it’s functioning.”

Dick turned right into the main driveway of the farm and drove up to the new steel gates. They looked secure, but I climbed out to take a closer look. The other three followed me.

“I thought you said they had a keypad,” Peggy said, pointing at a heavy chain and padlock locking the two gates together.

“It’s right there,” I said pointing. “Call the padlock my rampant paranoia.”

Geoff shook the gates. “Take a tank to drive though those.”

“Hey, be careful. The concrete’s not totally set yet,” I said.

“But, Merry, can’t someone park down here off the road and then shimmy around the gateposts and walk up the drive?” Peggy started toward the far end of the gate.

“Don’t!”

She stopped.

“The guys strung up two strands of electric fence hidden in the grass and shrubs on both sides of the drive. The fence only goes about six feet in either direction, but you’d have to be a mountain goat to get around it. The fence runs off the same solar panel as the keypad and has battery backup. You’d get zapped before you realized you were in an electronic minefield. It can be circumvented, but only with prior knowledge and a good pair of wire cutters.”