One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (25 page)

“I still say you need CCTV,” Geoff said. “Right up there.” He pointed to a big oak that overhung the driveway. “Is the other drive set up with a keypad, too?”

“Not yet. The gates are hung, but they’re only closed with a padlock and chain at the moment. No keypad, no electric fence yet. The guys concentrated on the main driveway.” I turned to Geoff. “This whole set-up was amazingly inexpensive. How much do CCTVs cost?”

“You can get half a dozen nanny-cams for around a thousand dollars,” Geoff said. “If you’d had one the other night, you might know who tossed you on your butt in the cellar and got you snake bit.”

“I’ll spring for the CCTVs,” Dick said. “I’ll have someone come out and install them tomorrow.”

“Dick, I can’t let you . . .” I said.

“Hey, I have a vested interest. I don’t want anything to happen to Heinzie.” He wrapped an arm around Peggy. “Or my two best girls. Since we’re here, let’s drive up and check on the horses.”

I removed the padlock and chain. When we were all back in the car, I gave Dick the gate code to try. It worked. Peggy already knew it, and I had planned to give it to Dick and Geoff anyway.

After the gates swung open, Dick drove the Lincoln up the winding road with the ease of a long-haul truck driver or a man used to driving horse vans.

In the parking area, Dick pulled up beside Hiram’s white dually. There were dawn-to-dusk floodlights on the peak of the workshop aimed at the parking lot, and motion sensor lights in front and on the pasture side of the stable behind it. We’d had a terrible time aiming the motion sensors, until we hung them far enough back from the pasture that Heinzie and his buddies couldn’t trip them accidentally.

Or I thought we had.

I put my hand on Geoff’s arm and pointed toward the stable, “Those lights aren’t supposed to be on.”

“The horses set them off?” he whispered back.

I shook my head. Motioning for us all to be quiet, he unholstered the small automatic that had fit so smoothly under his navy sports jacket that I hadn’t even realized he was armed.

I’m sure agents aren’t even supposed to go to the bathroom unarmed, never mind to a wake for a murder victim.

“Get back in the car and wait for me,” he whispered. At that moment the stable lights went off, leaving only the light on the workshop shining directly down on the four of us.

“We can’t just . . .”

“Dammit, woman, do as you’re told for once in your life.” He moved away from me, fading into the darkness.

I opened my mouth, took a look at Peggy as she scuttled around the car in a half crouch, and did the same.

Dick started the car and said, “Get down on the floor, both of you.”

“But . . .”

“Merry, shut up,” Peggy said. Her voice came from somewhere under the dashboard. I ducked as Dick swung the car and started down the precipitous driveway.

He turned on the headlights after we passed the first turn, effectively shielding us from the parking area. Twenty feet farther, he stopped and shut them off again. “We’ll wait for Geoff here.” He opened his center console and pulled out a big revolver.

“How come the guys get all the armament?” I asked. “My Glock’s in the center console of Hiram’s truck. I could have gotten it.”

“Unless we’re facing an army, which I doubt, this should be enough,” Dick said.

We sat. The country is never silent, certainly not at the end of May. Every frog and toad in a ten-mile radius was advertising his reliability as a pollywog progenitor. The evening breeze murmured in the trees and rustled the new leaves. The pine trees answered shuuussshhh. Small limbs on the oak trees crackled and popped.

That was no oak tree!

Real shots don’t reverberate like shots on television. They sound thin and unimportant like a balloon popped by a child. Everyone in the car had enough firearms experience to know we’d heard two.

“Stay down,” Dick said and shoved my head down when I peered over the back seat.

“We have to help Geoff,” I said as I reached for the door handle. “He could be hurt.” Or worse. My adrenaline started pumping And my mouth went dry. I did not want anything bad to happen to him. Not until I’d had a chance to scream at him for scaring me to death.

“You move and I’ll bash you over your hard head with the butt of this pistol, Meredith,” Dick said. When he called me Meredith, I knew he wasn’t kidding.

“Flashlight,” Dick said. “Coming down the drive.”

Peggy made a sound somewhere between a moan and a whimper, but she stayed on the floor.

“Geoff?” Dick called. He used his strong courtroom voice. He’d opened his driver’s door and hunkered down behind it in true highway patrol fashion with his gun in his hand. Dick was the gentlest, most courtly man I knew, but he’d been a marine in Korea. That experience doesn’t go away.

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Whoever it was got away.” Gun and flashlight in hand, he walked down the hill toward us.

I jumped out of the car and threw myself at him. “You nitwit! You could be dead!”

“Merry, I’m afraid you need a new motion sensor light on the far side of the stable. Whoever was up there shot it out.”

He holstered his weapon and tossed his flashlight to Peggy before he wrapped his arms around me. I plastered myself to him like a Nicotine patch. He felt warm and solid. I felt cold and trembly.

“What happened?” Peggy said. She climbed out from under the dashboard.

“When I rounded the corner of the workshop, I saw someone hauling ass down the lane between the pastures, and I mean booking. I ran after him, but he was past the throw distance of my flashlight and on the edge of the light from the stable. After I tripped and damned near fell, he turned and shot out the motion sensor over my head.”

“You returned fire?” Dick asked.

“Yeah.
I
missed.”

“Hell of a shot,” Dick said.

“Unless he was aiming for
you
,” I said. I was still clinging to him and tried to step back, but he pulled me tighter. I didn’t resist.

“Don’t think so, but I hit the dirt just in case. By the time I got up and found my flashlight, he was long gone.”

“But where did he go?” Peggy asked. “There’s nothing back there but the fence line. It’s a cul-de-sac at the edge of the governor’s property.”

“Beyond the boundary fence, it’s all woods and vines and drop offs,” I said. “And snakes. I wouldn’t go down that hill in broad daylight with a shotgun, much less in the dark with a pistol. Could you tell if it was a man or a woman?”

“Could have been either. The usual bad guy uniform—black jeans, black hoodie, probably ski mask. No face, at any rate.”

“Tall or short?” Dick asked. “Fat or thin?”

“Medium. Didn’t run like a girl.”

“Huh. These days half the women around don’t run like girls,” Peggy said. “Merry certainly doesn’t.”

“I’d rather drive a carriage. I only run when I’m chasing horses,” I said. “I’ve seen game trails on the governor’s property,” I pointed past our fence. “But they’re not easy to spot in full daylight, much less in the dark. If somebody escaped that way, wouldn’t you have seen a light in the woods?”

Geoff shook his head. “Not in that underbrush, if they aimed the light at the ground in front of them. Barn and stable were both locked.”

“We lock the barn when we leave because that’s where all Hiram’s tools are. My contractor’s bonded, of course. He or his foreman is always around when they’re working, so they make sure none of Hiram’s tools go missing during the day.”

“So, the barn is unlocked during the day?” Geoff asked.

“We tried locking it all the time, but we kept having to chase down the key to get something. Waste of time. We store things in there we need during the day.”

“Like what?”

“Fence posts, sheets of plywood, wire, extra carriages that we’re not using or that need mending . . .”

“So one of the workmen could case the barn during the day and come back after dark to break in,” Dick said.

Peggy nodded. “I do hope not. Bobby would be so upset. I’ve caught a couple of the men peeking in the barn during the day. One guy told me he was just interested in the carriages.”

“I found tool marks around the door.
Somebody
tried to get in,” Geoff said. “It’s a heavy door, but half an hour with a good crowbar would jimmy it open.”

“I didn’t find any suspicious tool marks before I left.”

“Must have scared the bejasus out of whoever it was when we drove into the lot,” Dick said. “Want me to come back after I drop you all and keep an eye on the place tonight?”

“If anyone stays, I will,” I said.

“No you won’t. Not after the last time.” He turned to Dick. “Nothing else will happen tonight. Probably long gone across the fence,” Geoff said.

“I hope he gets bit by a rattler,” I said. Whoever tried to break in had violated my place, and by extension, me. The only good thing was that Geoff seemed to be relaxing his hands-off policy towards me since he’d been shot at.

“I’d like to check the other gate before we drive back to Mossy Creek,” I said. “If this is the same person who knocked me into the cellar, that’s the way he got in last night. He might have crossed the pasture and left the same way.

We drove around and found the new gate for the second driveway untouched. “He’d need a car to get here,” Peggy said. “We didn’t hear one drive down this road. So where is it?”

“Maybe he hitchhiked,” I said.

“Nobody picks up hitchhikers at night along this road.”

“Is there anywhere to park a car on the governor’s side?” Geoff asked. “That’s where he disappeared.”

“I assume so,” I said. “I know they have hunting parties over there in the fall, and I see cars and trucks turning in from time to time when I have to go to Bigelow that way. They could be running a meth lab or a casino over there for all I know. I avoid the place. Whoever it was is long gone whichever way they went.” I decided to check out the fence line between my place and the governor’s land tomorrow morning. Maybe I’d find a marked trail and evidence of a parked car at the bottom of the hill. And I wouldn’t tell anyone ahead of time I was doing it. They’d all have a fit.

This time when we drove away, Geoff and I were belted in, but he reached across, took my hand and held it all the way to his hotel.