One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (9 page)

“Uh-huh.”

I didn’t volunteer any information about his trying to curtail my manager’s jobs at horse shows. If it came out, it came out. Nothing I could do about it. But I wasn’t going to bring it up and give Nordstrom more ammunition against me.

“Sheriff, I’ve been much more forthcoming than I probably should have. I’m hungry, tired, and I have a headache. I have to get home to my other horses, so Peggy and I can load up and head back to Mossy Creek.”

“Nobody said you could leave the area.”

“Nobody said I had to stay, either. I have horses at home that need looking after. Unless you have additional questions or plan to charge me with something, I don’t think you can force me to stay.”

“I could hold you as a material witness.”

I didn’t know whether he could or not and didn’t want to find out.

“We’re interviewing everyone . . .”

“Then letting them go home,” I said. “I heard what you told your deputies.” The only difference between most of them and me was the size of our bank balances and the political influence many of them could wield.

“One final question. Who might have wanted to kill Raleigh?”

Lots of people loathed him, but loathing didn’t usually escalate to murder. “In all honesty, I didn’t know the man that well.”

“But you didn’t like him? Maybe hated him?”

I shook my head. “I don’t hate, sheriff. It takes too much energy. I seldom go further than dislike.”

“You planning on leaving the state anytime soon?”

“Not for six weeks. Peggy and I will be driving at a couple of shows, but they’re both in Georgia. Next weekend I have a two-day carriage show and clinic at my place in Mossy Creek. The next time you plan to speak to me, please give me some warning so I can have my lawyer with me.”

“You think you need a lawyer?”

“Sheriff, everybody involved in a murder investigation needs a lawyer.”

I said goodbye to him, opened the door, and walked right into Geoff Wheeler’s chest.

He grabbed my shoulders, held me at arms’ length, and said, “What the hell have you done this time?”

I shoved away from Geoff and cracked the back of my head on the frame of the door. My headache went up a couple of notches. So did my blood pressure. “
Me
?”

I heard footsteps behind me, then Nordstrom’s voice. “Geoff Wheeler? Where the hell did you come from?”

Geoff eased me aside and behind him before he stuck out his hand. “Hey, Stan. I promise I’m not intruding on your territory. I was in the neighborhood and picked it up on the scanner.”

I knew that was a lie. So, I supposed, did Stan the Man. Short for Stanislaus?

“You know this wo—lady?”

“Met her and Peggy Caldwell on a case last year.”

Stan held the door open as an invitation to Geoff to enter. He did and closed it in my face. Oh, lovely. Once the sheriff heard about my father’s murder in Mossy Creek last year, he’d arrest me on general principles. I went to find Peggy, certain that she had called him to come rescue me.

“No chance he could have done it himself?”

“Suicide? Accident? I don’t see how, but I’m willing to be convinced if the medical examiner in Atlanta tells me it’s possible.”

“I’ve been around these people enough to know they do not get off the driving box for any reason on show grounds. So why would Raleigh get down, wrap his reins around the whip holder, and walk off? Bad enough to leave a single horse, but a four-in-hand?”

“A cry for help? The pinewoods come right up to the edge of the arena on that side. Anybody could stand in those woods at that time of the morning in a heavy fog without being seen. I just found out about some kind of animal rights prank yesterday morning. Banner, lot of noise. This doesn’t seem like the same sort of thing, but we’re checking it out. So far, nothing.”

“Any footprints?”

Stan shook his head again. “Thick pine needles do not take prints. No handy fibers caught up in the needles either.”

“Huh.”

“So,” Stan said. “Now that you’re here, how do I make you all official so we can get your CSI team down here?”

“Make the call. Let them know I’m staying. No telling how long it’ll take the CSI van to get here.”

“At least you
have
techs. We have ten deputies to police the entire county, and I’m the only one who’s even
seen
Quantico.”

“Make the call,” Geoff repeated and stood. “Call Chief of Police Amos Royden in Mossy Creek if you want a run down on Peggy and Merry. They can be a handful, but the only reason I can think of that Merry Abbott might consider killing someone is if she caught him hurting horses.” He stopped with his hand on the door. “Raleigh didn’t hurt his horses, did he?”

Stan guffawed. “Not to the best of my knowledge. Man, you ought to see your face. You’re dead serious, aren’t you?”

“I just came back from an assignment in the Caribbean,” Geoff said with as much dignity as he could muster. “That’s why my face is red. Sunburn.”

“Riiiiggghhhht.”

He threaded his way through trucks and trailers until he spotted Merry’s white dually and its attached horse trailer. He didn’t see Merry, but Peggy stood on the step of the tack storage area hanging a set of harness on one of the hooks inside.

“Need a hand?” he asked.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and said, “Thank God, you came.” She stepped off the trailer and hugged him. Surprised, he hugged her back.

“I don’t think Stan Nordstrom is going to arrest Merry,” he said when she’d released him. “Not at the moment. Where is she, by the way?”

“Borrowing a set of VSE harness and a small cart. It folds flat, so we can stow it under the marathon carriage. You can help slide it in and help put the carriage cover on.”

“What’s a VSE?”

“Stands for Very Small Equine,” Peggy said and shook her head. “Miniature horses. Worse. Miniature donkeys.”

“Like Don Qui?” Geoff said. He flashed back to Don Quixote, Merry’s miniature donkey that had tried to stomp and bite him at every opportunity.

Peggy leaned her hip on the side of the pickup. “Merry is teaching Don Qui to drive.”

“You’re kidding, right? When did she develop the death wish? Sorry, bad choice of words.”

“She read up on the breed. Apparently, they have a reputation as kind, easy-going animals . . .”

Geoff snorted.

“And she says if he’s going to continue to eat her grain, he’s going to have to pay his way by training students.”

“Training them to do what? Bail out of a carriage at a dead gallop?”

“I know, I know,” Peggy said. “But she is bound and determined. So we’re borrowing a miniature Meadowbrook cart and small harness from Juanita Tolliver. Her grandchildren have outgrown their VSEs and graduated to Welsh ponies, so she’s not using it at the moment. We’ve been longeing and long-reining him since February, but we don’t have a small cart.”

He glanced up.

“Here she comes. Don’t say a word about Don Qui. She doesn’t want anyone to know until she’s certain he’ll be trustworthy to a cart.”

Merry had draped the VSE harness around her neck, and balanced the little two-wheel cart behind her. Built of natural wood, it wasn’t much bigger than a dog cart. She walked between the shafts in front as though she were a horse and pulled the cart behind her.

Since the Meadowbrook cart was entered from the rear, both left hand and right hand seats folded down so driver and passenger could climb through, open up the seats, and sit behind the dashboard and between the two wheels. With the seats down, the cart stood no more than three feet from the ground to the top of the wheels. It probably weighed less than a hundred pounds, but it was cumbersome for a human being to pull. It was one of the few carriages that could be folded flat, so that it would fit into the back of a van.

When she reached the open door of her trailer, Merry began to collapse the cart. Both Geoff and Peggy hurried to help her. Her face was streaming with sweat despite the cool breeze.

She glared at Geoff, and said, “Take this harness off me before I trip over the reins and break my neck.”

He reached for it. “Please might be nice,” he said.

“I’m not feeling polite. Not after you disappear for months and then barely say hello before you accuse me of murder.”

“Hey,” he said and draped the harness over his own neck. He reached for one of the shafts, but she shook him off. “I was undercover. I couldn’t call you, and I didn’t accuse you.”

“You demanded to know what I had done
this
time. Like I was some sort of serial killer. I’m sure Thor the Wonder Sheriff took note.”

“He’s letting us go. Don’t pick on the man.” Peggy said.

A big rig with living quarters nearly as large as Raleigh’s passed them in a fug of diesel fumes.

“And we’re not giving him time to change his mind,” Merry said. The center ramp on the trailer was already down. Inside, Geoff could see another, larger carriage with its shafts already secured to the roof of the trailer.

“Is that thing going to fit?” he asked.

“If you’ll help me get it inside, it’ll slide backwards between the four wheels of the marathon cart with the shafts beside it on the floor.” Merry said. “I’ve already measured.”

Easier said than done, but he shooed Merry out of the way and managed to slip the cart into position. When she finished tying it down and stood, she brushed against him. He felt as though she’d jabbed a cattle prod into his chest. From the way she bounced away, he suspected she’d felt the same charge, but she carefully avoided looking at him.

Women didn’t have a clue how soft their breasts felt. His ex-wife Brittany had been practically flat chested. She called it model-thin. He called it cadaverous, but not where she could hear him.