Fox Tracks (23 page)

“Some, but when I think about it, they are all skeletons of personal pain, the desire for social approval. For my generation, such events as a child out of wedlock, infidelity, or being homosexual oppressed people terribly.” She laughed again. “Well, not everybody.”

He laughed, too. “Hey, two fox dens in Walter’s shed? Why?”

“It’s not really two dens. It’s two entrances and exits and there will likely be more outside. Foxes aren’t the best architects in the animal kingdom, but they see the possibilities. For instance, when we draw down Broad Creek over at After All, have you ever noticed the den openings right above the creek, two or three feet above the water? They’re dug right into the creek bed.”

“I have,” said Ben. “I always wondered what the foxes did when the water rose.”

“That’s a fire exit, sort of. If a fox is besieged, he or she can always go through one of the tunnels, come out and jump into the creek, which will wash away scent. Foxes adapt, not just to weather and food conditions, they adapt to the hounds. My hounds possess
drive, so the foxes around here need to be resourceful. They adapt, and far more quickly than we do.”

“You don’t say?”

“You’d better believe it,” answered Sister. “The fox isn’t hampered by any belief system. He or she reads nature exactly as it is. And we are part of nature. I swear to you, Ben, they know us better than we know them.”

“Perhaps if you’re the hunted you have to.”

She considered this. “Yes. That’s why I think criminals in the upper ranks are often smarter than the rest of us.”

“They certainly aren’t hampered by morals.” He waited a beat. “Actually, that’s not quite true. In many cases, there really is honor among thieves. It’s unreasoned violence that captures our attention. Maybe because if we admit it, we are all capable of it.”

“True. Well, this has been a refreshing morning phone call. I am wide awake, alert, and ready for life.” Sister loved a challenging talk, especially with someone she respected.

“That it is. Now I need a promise from you and it’s not about foxhunting.”

“Shoot.”

“Don’t go down to Walter’s shed and don’t go to where we found Carter’s body.”

“Umm. If you tell me where the speed gun is today, I won’t.”

Ben feigned shock. “As a public servant, I can’t do that. I do know, however, that you suffer from lead foot, especially on Soldier Road.”

“Ben, you’ll make a Virginian yet.” She laughed at this Ohio transplant. “I promise. Do you mind telling me why?”

“The perp or perps could go back. I’m less worried about the shed than that abandoned road at the Lorillards’. We’ve scoured both places thoroughly, but Weems’ body lay a long time on that old road. The killer could have dropped or left behind some evidence,
and it is driven down in the mud. Say you’re that person, you put your hand in your jacket pocket you wore when you killed Carter. You discover a lighter or a trinket is missing. Even a match pack. But you can’t look for it while the corpse is fresh. He may have gone back, but if he did lose something and he didn’t find it, he’ll be worried now.”

“What about Gray and Sam?”

“I told them to steer clear, too. Our budget is so tight I can’t spare anyone to watch it full time, but I sent Jake over there, to sit in that road out of the woods, oh, maybe once a week. It’s a long shot.”

“Ben, you have a lot on your mind.”

“Everyone does.” His voice was warm. “The people who coast in life are the ones I feel sorry for.”

“Well, you and I will never need sympathy then.”

After bidding him goodbye and hanging up the phone, she tossed on her old flight jacket and went outside to the kennels.

Shaker was in the boys’ big run while Tootie was with the girls.

“Everyone okay?” Sister asked Shaker.

“Asa’s a little sore. He’s taken his canine Motrin.” Shaker smiled, mentioning Rimadyl.

“This really is his last year, isn’t it? Thought it was last year, but he’s so tough and he keeps up.” She opened the gate into the enormous run, dotted with large pines and oaks. “Asa, you’ve got some aches and pains. No hunting Tuesday and Thursday. I need you Saturday.”

“I can go all day every day,”
he bragged.

She looked into his soulful brown eyes. “Saturday’s tough territory.” Then she said to Shaker, “I think a few of our ‘P’ and ‘D’ girls are due in season, maybe March.”

“They are. A couple of ‘T’s,’ too.”

“Give them another year. I don’t like to breed a hound until he or she has hunted two full years, as you know.”

“Right.”

“No hurry, but think about the ‘D’s’ and ‘P’s’ you’ve hunted over the years. I’ll go back through the bloodlines. Way back. We should breed this fellow.”

“All right. We should breed Dragon, too.”

“No, his brother. Dragon is too much trouble.” She knelt down to pet Asa, then stood up. “I’ll go check our new kennelman,” she said, meaning Tootie.

She walked around to the girls’ yard, separated from the boys’ yard by a twelve-foot-wide path, easy to mow in summer.

“What are you doing in here?” Sister smiled at Tootie.

“Cleaning up, getting to know everyone,” said Tootie. She might be a college dropout, but she was far from lazy.

“I didn’t expect you to come work in the kennels.”

“I know, but I like it and I’ll do as much as I can on the farm until I get a job. And even then, I’ll still do chores in exchange for my rent.”

“All right then. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be in the barn.”

As it was Betty’s day to help in the barn, the two friends knocked the chores out in no time.

“Looked at the weather?” Betty asked.

“Did. Looks like it’s going to stay cold with some snow on Saturday. We should still be able to hunt this Saturday.” She closed a stall door. “Course, you never know.”

“Well, we hunt Skidby on Tuesday, Little Dalby on Thursday, and Tattenhall Station on Saturday. I wish I knew Skidby better,” Betty said of the newer fixture.

“Yeah, we lose it during deer season, and it takes years to really know a place. This will be our second year, but you know, that’s hunting.”

“I know,” agreed Betty. “Mill Ruins turned into a good day.”

“It’s full of foxes over there. We can thank Peter Wheeler for
that.” The fixture’s former owner, also a former lover of Sister’s, was a bold rider who bred foxes because he loved them, then set them free.

“Walter’s done a lot with that place, but it’s so much for one person to keep up,” said Betty. “That’s one of the reasons his shed could get used.” Betty had seen Walter ride off with Gray and assumed that a horse had thrown a shoe, taken a wrong step, or that Walter or Gray had injured themselves. Naturally she asked him about it at the breakfast. Walter probably shouldn’t have told her or others what he’d seen, but he was furious about being locked out of his own shed and then discovering it had been used.

“Walter has a lot of land, and it costs a lot of money to hire help these days,” Sister said, walking the center aisle, making a last-minute check of the barn.

Betty looked up as Tootie slipped in through the center aisle doors, closing them behind her. “Hey, girl.”

Tootie hugged Betty. “I’m really home now. I’m going to live in central Virginia.”

“Our gain,” Betty said, refraining from asking about details.

Sister checked the big round clock over the tackroom door. Another big clock was in the tackroom. No master ever wants to be late for a hunt club function.

“Girls,” Sister said. “Let’s go on down to Roger’s Corner. I need milk and I don’t want to go into town.”

“Are you buying milk for that worthless cat again?” Betty teased.

“She drinks half-and-half,” said Sister.

“When I die, I want to come back as one of your cats,” Betty joked.

“I’ll go first.” Sister smiled.

“Oh, come on. Your mother’s family lives until they’re national treasures.” Betty brushed straw from her coat.

“Well, are you two coming along or not?” asked Sister. “Truck?”

“Sure.” Betty strolled past Sister. “There’s more room in the truck for my big butt.”

Minutes later, the three of them cruised out to Soldier Road.

“Miss Franklin, I’ve been thinking about your printing press,” said Tootie, from the backseat. “You’ve said people aren’t printing up invitations like they used to, and business is bad.”

“Tootie, sometimes they don’t even properly print up wedding invitations. I find that shocking.”

Sister kept her eyes on the road. “Well, Betty, if that’s shocking, I’ve got some stories for you.”

“Mostly from your past, Madam.” Betty loved Sister and loved to torment her.

“Were you really bad?” Tootie leaned forward; her hands on the back of Betty’s captain’s chair.

“She was awful,” said Betty. “She won’t tell you, but I will.”

Sister glanced in the rearview mirror. “Let us just say I did not walk on water, but there were others who were worse. At least I was discreet.”

Tootie smiled, wondering what Sister and Betty really were like when they were young. “Want to hear my idea about your business?”

“Yes,” said Betty. “It will greatly elevate the conversation.”

Tootie leaned way forward into the space between the two front captain’s chairs. “Everyone I know texts, Skypes, stuff like that. It’s great, but it’s not special. What if you allowed people to design their own cards and stationery?”

“Don’t they do that on computers? They do.” Betty responded, although intrigued.

“It never looks professional. The color is never saturated—I think that’s the word graphics people use. What if people could come to you and really design cards? I know they can select paper colors, typefaces, stuff like that, but that’s kind of cut-and-dried,
too, isn’t it? I mean, what if they want to use rice paper or paper of an odd size?”

“Well, I never thought about it, but guess it is pretty formulaic.” Betty twisted in her seat to better look at Tootie.

“At Princeton, I’d go into the shops and a couple of times Val and I went into the Village. There are stores with really funny greeting cards, cards with like wheat stalks on them. Really original.”

“A letter press. What you’re talking about is a letter press.”

“Do you have one?”

“We do. It’s rarely used.” Betty thought about this. “But yes, one can do some creative things.”

“Maybe you could start by doing stuff yourself, getting it into shops, use the Internet to advertise. And make the ads funny.”

“Tootie, you just might have something,” said Betty, her enthusiasm growing.

“I think she does,” said Sister. “This is such a conformist time; everything is mass-produced. Anything personal is just about revolutionary.” She thought out loud. “Take a lot of work. Not just doing it, but getting stuff into stores.”

“We can sell some online,” said Betty. “You’d be surprised at how effective e-commerce can be, and Bobby and I haven’t taken advantage of much. We don’t really understand it and as Tootie has pointed out, we haven’t been thinking in new ways.”

“It’s hard to think in new ways when your back is against the wall,” Sister remarked.

“That’s when you should take the biggest chances,” said Tootie, who had taken the biggest one of her life to date.

As they thought, Sister kept her eyes on the road.

“Aha,” Sister half shouted.

“What?” Betty couldn’t see what was provoking the comment.

Sister pointed toward an SUV at a crossroads, parked to the
side. They were one mile from Roger’s Corner on Soldier Road. The speed gun was handheld.

Betty looked at the speedometer. “You’re okay.”

“Ben told me someone would be out on Soldier Road.”

“Did he now?” said Betty. “I wish I had that cozy a relationship with our sheriff.”

“Well, I had to make him a promise that I wouldn’t go to Walter’s shed, nor where Carter Weems was found.”

They turned into Roger’s Corner. Betty said, “Janie, Ben wouldn’t ask you that if he didn’t think there was some danger.”

“I know.”

“What in the hell is going on?” Sister’s old friend asked.

F
ebruary 13, Monday, promised light relief from the cold snap.

At 6:00
AM
the mercury was already touching 32°F.

Dressed in a handsome navy blue with chalk pinstripe suit, Gray kissed Sister on the cheek. “You know it’s already bumper to bumper on Route 66 outside of D.C.”

“Crazy. What time is your meeting?” Sister, like Gray, was already dressed for work.

“Eleven. Then lunch at the Press Club, which I truly enjoy.” He sighed. “I’ll be home Tuesday night.”

“Here.” She handed him a Tupperware container filled with pasta, just as he liked it. “In case you wind up working late.”

“Thank you, sweetie. You make the best tortellini. Sure you’re not part Italian?”

Gray tried to limit his time in Washington to one or two days a week. Although nominally retired, his old firm kept summoning him to solve sensitive problems with huge clients. Skilled at mathematical
sleight of hand, accountants could bury profits, hiding them from other accountants’ scrutiny. Gray, well paid for his brilliance, kept a small condominium in a high-rise near D.C.’s Kennedy Center. This way, if there were a performance at night he could attend, and as he had many good friends in D.C. his time spent there was convivial. What troubled him was the work, which just lately involved an uptick in campaign finance malfeasance on the part of clients. Given that it all was confidential, he kept these qualms to himself, but at times the weight of it bore down on him. What also bore down on him was the confusion of those campaign finance laws.

Never asking for details, Sister invariably knew when he needed a lift. She respected his loyalty to the firm and the confidentiality of many of his cases.

No sooner did Sister watch his car rumble down the drive than Tootie appeared in the kitchen with her laptop.

“Good morning,” said Sister. “What will it be?”

“Sister, I can make my own breakfast.”

“I know that, but I do a better job than you.” Sister enjoyed taking care of someone young.

Tootie smelled the enticing aroma of fresh oatmeal. “Whatever’s on the stove,” she said.