One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (10 page)

Merry, on the other hand, might have muscles on her muscles, but she was definitely soft where she should be. He’d fantasized about her all over the Caribbean on his undercover assignment, but the fantasy didn’t come close to the reality.

She slipped the heavy duck cover over the marathon carriage, pulled it down to the ground over the wheels, fastened it around the shafts, shooed him down the ramp ahead of her, then lifted and fastened the ramp before he had a chance to help. “You sticking around to help the sheriff?” she asked him.

“For the moment. He’ll want to talk to you again. If I get officially pulled in, I’ll need to interview you as well.” Then it hit him. She was a suspect in a murder case again. That put her out of bounds again until he’d solved it. Damn and blast.

“Do I have to come back here?” she asked. “It’s an hour from Mossy Creek.”

“Depends. We may wrap this up fast.”

“But you don’t think so, do you?” Peggy said.

He shook his head. “Not unless somebody confesses. That’s not going to happen. From what I hear, there’s no shortage of people who disliked the guy.”

“If that were the criterion for killing him, you’d be looking at a modern day
Murder on the Orient Express
,” Peggy said. “You know, the Agatha Christie mystery where all the suspects joined together to kill the guy.”

“That may happen in one of your mysteries, Peggy, but not in real life,” Geoff said.

“So I guess we won’t be seeing you again,” Merry said, still avoiding his eye.

“I’ll drive over to Mossy Creek to interview you.”

“Gee, thanks for the favor. Peggy, are Golden and Ned secured?”

Peggy nodded. “Checked and double-checked, not to mention impatient to get home.”

“Me too. Come on, let’s mount up.” She walked up to the driver’s side and climbed into her truck.

Peggy leaned over to him and whispered, “Thank you for coming, Geoff. When you come to Mossy Creek, you can stay with me. I’ll take you to another garden club meeting.” She actually winked at him, climbed into the truck and waved out the window as the rig passed him. He watched it drive slowly down the long driveway toward the road. Then he went back to Stan. He’d definitely volunteer to interview Merry and Peggy again in Mossy Creek but damned if he’d ever be tricked into attending another one of Peggy’s garden club meetings. Those women were dangerous.

“So maybe he did,” I said. “Who’s to say he didn’t have someone with him?”

“Someone who killed him, then went happily back to bed and left you to find him?”

“I wonder how closely the sheriff and his posse checked the woods beside the arena? Maybe there were footprints or a piece of cloth on a branch. Maybe another of those dumb banners.”

“If they didn’t check, Geoff will,” Peggy said with satisfaction. “He doesn’t miss much.”

I shuddered and covered it up by chug-a-lugging the rest of my Diet Coke. “I didn’t say this before because I figured everyone would think I was crazy or hysterical or trying to spread the guilt around . . .”

Peggy turned as far as her seatbelt allowed. “I won’t. What?”

I eased on the brakes and brought my big truck and trailer to a standstill at a crossroads with a four-way stop. People who don’t drive trailers, particularly rigs with live animals in them, have no idea how hard it is to stop one or how long a distance it takes. I have signs all over the back and sides of my trailer reading “Lackland Farm” and “Caution, show horses.” That doesn’t always do the trick, so I’m extra vigilant.

“Merry,” Peggy repeated, “Tell me.”

I looked both ways, four way stop or not, and eased across the road. “When I found the carriage and nearly fell over Raleigh, I had the strangest feeling somebody was watching me.”

Peggy made a sound.

“I’m not talking about the horses either. You know I normally have as much ESP as your average earthworm, but I’m fairly positive someone was standing out of sight in the trees on the far side of the arena.”

“You didn’t see anyone?”

I shook my head and slowed down to give half a dozen turkey buzzards time to fly off the road and away from the dead armadillo they were cleaning up. They waited until the last possible moment, staring me down, then flapped off. “Not consciously. It’s probably nothing,” I said.

“Did you tell the sheriff or Geoff?”

“Lord, no. I nearly didn’t tell you.

“If you’d been a few minutes earlier you might have seen the murder and gotten killed yourself.”

“I heard the trees rustle, but that was probably the wind. I couldn’t prove anyone was there.”

“But can the killer be certain of that?”

We were driving slightly under the speed limit down a straight stretch of two-lane highway. This time on Sunday afternoon there was almost no traffic. The morning churchgoers were home and the evening prayer meeting goers hadn’t started yet.

My truck has big side mirrors that stick out far enough to see around the trailer to what’s coming up behind. One minute when I checked, there didn’t seem to be anyone behind us. The next a big, honking SUV seemed to shoot out of nowhere. He must have been doing eighty.

“That fool behind us is flying,” I said as he passed the trailer’s rear door and came up in the left lane. I slowed down to give him plenty of room to pass. The driver could be drunk, hyped up, or texting. I am always wary when I trailer horses.

That wariness probably saved our lives.

He’d barely passed my front fender when he swerved hard into my lane and slammed on his brakes. Peggy screamed. I swerved right and stood on my brakes to avoid him.

I didn’t have time to scream before the maniac in the SUV took his foot off the brakes and laid rubber down the road doing at least a hundred. By then the damage was done.

“Hang on!” I yelled and took to the shoulder. If I tried to stop, we were sure to flip both truck and trailer.

So I floored it. Thank God the shoulder was fairly broad and relatively flat. For one terrible moment I felt the rig tilt to the right, then the big diesel gave me all it had. “Come on, baby,” I prayed as I fought the wheel, concentrating on one keeping us straight. If I pulled back onto the road too fast, we’d careen off the other side.

I have no idea how long it took to get us back on the road and under control. Probably no more than a minute, but it felt like a lifetime. It very nearly was.

When we were safely back on the road and headed down the right lane, I tapped the brakes. Up ahead on the right, I spotted an abandoned seafood restaurant with a big parking lot half overgrown with meadow daisies. I managed to slow down enough to make the turn. The rig bumped into the lot and came to a shivering stop.

We stared straight ahead without uttering a sound, then I said, “My headache’s gone.”

“What a breakthrough,” Peggy whispered. “Let’s email the AMA we’ve found a surefire cure.”

“Shut up.”

“Get out,” she said. “We have to check the horses.”

“Can I walk on my knees? I don’t think I can stand.”

Silently, slowly, carefully, we climbed out of the truck. The air bags hadn’t deployed, but then we hadn’t actually hit anything.

We opened the door on the left side of the trailer. I was terrified we’d find both horses hanging from their halters with their necks broken.

Ned had managed to pull his halter off. It hung, still tied to the trailer by its lead rope. He regarded us balefully, but he seemed unhurt.

Golden was tied and annoyed about it, but he’d stayed on his feet.

“I don’t see any blood,” Peggy said as she ran her hand down Ned’s legs.

I checked Golden. “None here either. Possibly some pulled muscles. We can check when we get them home.”

Across the partition, the two carriages had shifted no more than an inch to the left. One thing I’d learned from my father was how to tie down carriages so they don’t shift. The harness, however, lay in a python’s nest on the floor of the compartment. “Leave it,” I said.

We closed everything up and walked back toward the trailer in silence. “Can you drive?” Peggy asked.

“Of course,” I said. Then I walked over to the edge of the parking lot and threw up. Not that there was much to get rid of. I still had not had breakfast or lunch, and it was mid-afternoon.

In the truck, Peggy handed me another Diet Coke and took one herself. I was way beyond spitting cotton. This had to be how people lost in the desert felt just before they died. I had experienced the dry mouth of fear before, but never this bad. We sat and drank in silence.

When I reached to turn the key in the ignition, my hand shook.

“Sure you can drive?” Peggy asked. “I can probably manage this thing in a pinch with you to coach me.”

“I’ve had all the terror I can handle today, thank you. Did you get the license number of that car?” I asked.

“I pray with my eyes closed.”

We pulled into the road at a snail’s pace and drove that way for several miles.

“Make and model?” I asked after I’d gotten up to something close to the speed limit.

“Black SUV.”

“Everybody has a black SUV,” I said.

“I think it was black. The windows were tinted. I didn’t even glimpse a silhouette when it passed.” She thought a minute, then shook her head. “Could have been dark blue or green or even maroon. Something dark, at any rate. I think the license plate was covered with mud. Crazy hunter out poaching and drinking? Big joke running a horse trailer off the road?”