One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (16 page)

“When are you joining Ringling Brothers?” Geoff Wheeler said from the shadows in the barn doorway. “I’d definitely pay to see that again.”

“You want us to join you at Clown College?” I asked.

He moved aside so that Don Qui and I could get past him.

“Sorry, I left my big red nose at home.”

“Kept the big shoes, I see.”

“Geoff,” Peggy said from behind me. “I am so glad to see you. We have so much to tell you. Someone tried to run us off the road on our way home yesterday. I think they were trying to kill us.”

While I washed Don Qui down with tepid water, Geoff lounged against Heinzie’s stall door and listened to Peggy’s story more or less politely.

“Peggy,” he said, “There’s a bunch of good ole boys who think running a big horse trailer off the road is great sport. You have nothing to show it was personal.”

“Not personal? How could it not be personal? There’s a sign on the back of the trailer that reads ‘Caution, Horses’ in
big
letters with the name of the farm.”

“Probably wouldn’t have mattered to Bubba if you’d been hauling Durocs or Black Angus. Or chickens. Think what fun they’d have had if you’d decanted a couple of thousand Rhode Island Reds on the highway.”

“They didn’t wait around to see if we went over,” I said quietly. Geoff always picked up on the first sign of female hysteria. “And Bubba usually drives a pickup, not a big, shiny SUV with mud covering the license plate.”

“The only mud there was on it, by the way,” Peggy chimed in.

“So say that they were actually out to get you. Why? You might be hurt, but you have airbags.”

“The horses don’t,” I said. “And airbags wouldn’t have helped much if we’d flipped over on our side.”

“Airbags that didn’t deploy because we kept going and didn’t hit anything,” Peggy said.

“The horses might have been killed or so badly wounded we’d have had to put them down.” I shuddered. I’ve never had to do that, but on long trips, I keep not only an extensive first aid kit for horses, but syringes of Acepromazine to sedate an injured horse and enough barbiturate to kill one. And a gun in case the drugs take too long.

“You say horse people will do anything to avoid hurting horses, so who do you know who’d risk the horses to get at you?” Geoff asked.

“Maybe after you drive a steel stake through somebody, hurting horses isn’t such a whopping leap,” I said.

“And preferable to spending the rest of your life in jail,” Peggy added.

“If all this is true,” Geoff said, “Then someone thinks you either saw something or know something dangerous. What?”

I led Don Qui to his stall and tossed him some extra hay. “I have no idea. I have to get these guys fed. Can we talk later? Amos said you were spending the night at the Hamilton Inn.”

“And having dinner at Mama’s. How ‘bout both of you join me?” Mama’s was one of Mossy Creek’s excellent restaurants. Geoff had learned to like it on his last visit to Mossy Creek to clear up my father’s death.

The last thing I wanted was to have to clean up and stay awake during dinner, but the food would be good, and I wouldn’t have to cook it or clean up after it, a winning combination in my book. We agreed. I’d had fun at our last dinner together in Bigelow before Geoff up and bailed on me. Tonight we would go back to our favorite topic for dinner conversation—murder. And my involvement in it.

“I’m going to help Merry feed and turn out,” Peggy said. “You go on down and check in to your hotel. Meet you for dinner sevenish?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Peggy said and slipped her hand under his arm.

Uh-oh. She wanted to talk. Privately.

Peggy knew how much Merry wanted to move into her new cabin, but she would miss having her in the apartment downstairs. She didn’t have to sabotage the construction, however. The contractor was doing a great job of missing deadlines on his own.

‘You’ll be moved in by Labor Day,” she said and patted Merry’s shoulder. She was surprised at how tense her muscles felt. “It’s the site prep, the gravel, the grading, the footings and slab and so forth that take the time. All the rain we had in March didn’t help either.”

Peggy pulled her to her feet. “Come on. You’ll feel better after a shower and a good dinner.” As they walked to their vehicles, Peggy said, “Sooner or later you’re going to have to talk to Geoff. Might as well be tonight. As to the horses, where
you
are is where the trouble will come, if it comes. The horses should be all right. They are every night.
You
are safer in your apartment.”

“Every night doesn’t follow a murder. Which at least one lawman thinks I probably committed.”

“Geoff doesn’t really think you killed anyone. He’s trying to be—I don’t know—circumspect. You know he likes you.”

“I thought so for a while. Now that I’m involved in another murder, he’s treating me like just another suspect.”

“Only until he finds the killer.”

If he was keeping Merry at arm’s-length again, the way he had when he was investigating her father’s murder, he was just being silly. There was a limit as to how closely he adhered to the GBI regs about personal interaction with suspects and witnesses. Time Merry told him to stop being a stuffed-shirt and get a grip.

Peggy would leave them after dinner to talk it out. “See you at home,” she said and drove off. In her rear view mirror she saw Merry climbing into her truck, sagging with exhaustion.

Dammit, Peggy thought, as she whipped around a corner too fast. Life was too short to miss a chance at love. One day her newly-retired husband Ben had been digging in his flowerbeds, enjoying their new home in Mossy Creek. The next he was dead, and she’d never stop missing him, wishing they’d had longer.

Once they found one another, she and Dick Fitzgibbons had seized the day. Why couldn’t Geoff and Merry?

Neither of them had a significant other. Well, Merry didn’t. Geoff might have a dozen girlfriends in Atlanta pining for him. They’d both had bad first marriages. These days, nearly everybody had at least one. Family? Geoff had no children. Merry had her daughter Allie, who never visited, not even at Christmas. She went skiing instead. Merry had joined Peggy’s family for Christmas dinner.

Peggy’s daughter Marilou might be a control freak, but at least she was there and cared about her mother. And Peggy had a grandchild, her darling Josie.

Christmas afternoon, Merry had spent alone with the horses. That’s where she always went when she was unhappy or lonely or upset. They didn’t talk back or ask questions.

Merry couldn’t—or wouldn’t—leave her horses for long. Geoff was always working in Atlanta or elsewhere. Long distance relationships were tough. Both Merry and Geoff needed to rearrange their priorities. Both Peggy and Dick understood that.

At some point Merry had learned to avoid risking her emotions. She wasn’t a physical coward, Lord knew, but she didn’t like getting her heart bruised. She preferred to act as though she didn’t feel emotional bruises, only physical ones. Responsible for the carriage accident that crushed her mother’s leg, Merry had simply stopped driving, even quit horses entirely for several years.

She had distanced herself from her father after her mother divorced him, and only reconnected with him just before he died. She dumped her unfaithful husband. Geoff hadn’t exactly hurt her. He’d simply disconnected without explanation.

In time Merry could overcome her fears. She had returned to horses, then to driving, made up with her father before his death, even forgave Vic. So there was a good chance she and Geoff could get back to where they were. She’d opened up Peggy’s world to horses. Peggy wanted to open Merry’s to a relationship with a real man.

Ten minutes later, she pulled into her garage as Merry pulled in the driveway behind her. Her knees ached as she climbed the stairs to her back door.

What the heck. Even a day as tough as this was more exhilarating than sitting in her recliner reading murder mysteries with four cats. The Mossy Creek Garden Club ladies still didn’t understand why her gardening had dropped by the wayside. She didn’t have the nerve to tell them that she’d never been all that fond of gardening in the first place. She preferred her manure straight from the horse.