TheCart Before the Corpse (2 page)

I felt Jethro’s warm breath against my neck as I faced him and leaned my shoulder against his. “Please be okay,” I whispered. Jack hooked a hand on his bridle, but Jethro was too worn out to go anywhere. The stallion took a tentative step, snorted once to frighten any residue of banshee away, then took two more steps. He walked ‘dead sound,’ meaning without injury, in civilian terms. He was bleeding from a couple of shallow cuts on his shoulder, probably from collisions with the fenders of trailers. He’d scraped himself a bit from the asphalt on the road, but the damage was minor. A few stitches, a little Betadine antiseptic, and he’d be fine. Amazing that he hadn’t ripped a leg tendon on the fender of a truck or gashed himself to the bone on a trailer door.

“Merry, honey,” Jack said, “Idn’t that your good leather jacket?”

I looked down. It was the only thing I’d had to toss over Jethro’s head. He now stood with his front hooves squarely in the middle of four hundred bucks worth of tan suede.

“It’s okay,” I said and laid my cheek against Jethro’s dark brown neck. “What on earth happened?”

Jack pointed toward the railroad tracks that ran along the far side of the fence by the road. “You know how you told ’em not to set the first leg of the marathon so close to the train track?”

I nodded. “But thirty or forty trains have rattled by in the last two days. The horses couldn’t have cared less. The show committee said I was crazy to worry.”

“Uh-huh,” Jack continued. I watched his enormous hands flex into fists. “The dumbass engineer on that last freight must-a decided it’d be cute to blow his whistle as long and loud as he could just when he got even with Jethro. Shoot, like to scared
me
half to death. No wonder Jethro spooked. If I ever find out that devil’s name . . . ”

Looking at Jack’s face, I prayed for the engineer’s sake that Jack never would find out his name. Jack was the kindest, gentlest man I knew until you messed with his horses. Then it was a thermonuclear explosion. I once saw him pick up an incompetent fill-in farrier at a horse show up by the scruff of his neck and toss him halfway down the barn aisle. The farrier had driven a nail straight into the quick of a mare’s hoof, then went right on shoeing her after she thrashed and squealed. Frankly, I thought Jack had been extremely forbearing. I’d probably have cracked the man over the head with his hammer.

“Are the Hulls okay?” I asked. I’d been so busy worrying about Jethro, I hadn’t given his drivers a thought.

“Tully’s got a broken wrist and Amy’s got a scraped chin. Other than maybe fifty thousand dollars worth of damage to vehicles and trailers, everybody’s just fine, including Jethro. Thanks to you,” Jack said.

Jethro still stood in the middle of my jacket, but there wasn’t much point in moving him now. I doubted Pete Hull’s insurance would include a new one. “I haven’t run that hard since I was in high school.” I leaned over and put my hands on my knees to steady my breathing. I’m well past thirty, although I don’t generally let on just
how
well. I do have a daughter out of college, however, and though I’m in good shape, jogging in the park hadn’t prepared me for running flat-out over a rutted hay field. It’s a miracle I didn’t trip, fall flat on my face and break my ankle. “Thank the Lord I didn’t have to run any farther. Like to have killed me. Pure luck I caught him.”

“And guts,” Jack said and shook his head. “The insurance companies are going to have a field day on this one.”

“Hey, girl, you’re a hero!” Pete Hull trotted up and smacked me on the shoulder.

“Just lucky, Pete. Y’all okay?”

“Gonna be. I told those idiots on the show committee we were asking for trouble to run the first leg of the marathon that close to the railroad track.”

Still, it was easier to blame me, only a hired hand, after all, as the show manager, than to blame the show committee or the paying customers. Somehow I’d wind up carrying the can for the accident. Although it’s a rule that drivers wear hard hats during the marathon, a number of the old guard still grumbled.

They all refused to wear hard hats during the other classes, although the rules say that no one can ever be penalized for choosing to wear one. The ladies preferred their summer straw hats festooned with feathers and ribbons. The men wanted their top hats and bowlers. Elegant, but those wouldn’t protect their skulls in case of a runaway like Jethro’s. The show committee would be after me to talk and talk and talk about whose fault Jethro’s escapade was. If I hadn’t needed my check, I would have run for my truck and ducked them. But I needed the money, even if I didn’t get the accompanying smile and pat on the back for a job well done.

“Will you go with me to see the head of the show committee?” I asked Pete.

Before he could answer, my cell phone rang. I dragged it out of the pocket of my jeans and answered it, grateful for the interruption.

“Ms Abbott? Merideth Lackland Abbott?” an unfamiliar voice said. Male, heavy southern accent.

“Yes?”

“No easy way to say this, Mrs. Abbott. I’m afraid your father has met with an accident.”

I grabbed Jack’s arm. “Hiram? What happened? Is he all right?”

“Um, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid he’s dead.”

The next thing I knew I was sitting on the ground while Jack shoved my head down between my knees. That was when I threw up.

Chapter 2

Sunday Afternoon

Merry

Pete Hull took the cell phone out of my hand and held it to his ear. “Give her a minute. Who is speaking, please?” I looked up at him as he listened, and I saw his face go slack. “Hiram? He’s dead?” The buzz started at once among the people who were gathered around us. “How? . . . right.” He listened some more, then handed the phone back to me. “Merry, honey, I’m so sorry.”

I took the phone and stared at it as though it was a copperhead. Finally I put it to my ear. “This is Merideth Abbott again. Who did you say you were?” Must be a joke. Men like Hiram Lackland didn’t just up and die.

“This is Sheriff Campbell of Bigelow County, Georgia.”

“Oh, God, did he have an automobile accident? Was anybody else hurt?” Hiram had sworn he’d been sober for ten years, but Hiram had always been a good liar.

I stuck my finger in my ear to try to cut the noise around me and turned away from the crowd. I felt like an idiot still sitting on the grass, but I wasn’t certain I could get up on my own. My father had been pushing seventy, but these days, that’s practically middle-aged. There had to be some mistake. Hiram Lackland was indestructible. Lord knows he’d tried to kill himself often enough. He was like Jethro. He left a path of destruction behind him, but always walked away sound.

“No, ma’am. Not an automobile accident.”

“Don’t tell me he turned over a carriage. He wasn’t supposed to be driving alone.”

“I’m afraid it was a freak accident. Look, Ms Abbott, it’s kind of complicated to discuss over the phone. Where are you, exactly?”

Everyone except Pete had backed away. Jack was walking Jethro back to the barn. The others, I assumed, wanted to give me some privacy. Actually, I guess they really wanted to gossip about the whole Jethro incident. I reached up a hand so that Pete could pull me up. “I’m sitting on the ground in a pasture about fifty miles north of Chattanooga.”

“You’re not that far from Bigelow. We’re in north Georgia.”

“He emailed he was living in some little town called something-or-other Creek. What was he doing in Bigelow?”

“Um, Bigelow’s the county seat. That’s where the morgue is.”

The morgue. That image hit me hard. Of course that’s where they’d take him. He wouldn’t care, but I did. I hunched my shoulders and said, “I can get on the road right now. How long is the drive to Bigelow?”

“Probably three hours or so. But, ma’am, he was living in Mossy Creek. That’s where his place was.”

“
Mossy
Creek. Now I remember. He said he had a studio apartment there in some woman’s house.”

“Yeah. Peggy Caldwell. She’s the one who found him.”

“
Found
him?

“She said you could stay with her as long as you need to. I’ll call her and tell her to expect you tonight. You’re going to be pretty worn out by the time you get here. It’s not an easy drive. Not much Interstate. You got somebody with you? May not be a good idea you driving all this way alone right now.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m used to long-distance driving. But shouldn’t I come to Bigelow instead? Do I have to identify—I mean . . . ”

“No, ma’am. Mrs. Caldwell already identified him. No reason you should have to go through that. Anyway, it’s Sunday afternoon. Took us a while to track you down.”

“I’m a horse show manager. I travel.” I made scribbling motions with my hand. Pete scrounged a credit card receipt and pen out of his pockets.

“Ms. Abbott, nothin’s going to change between now and tomorrow morning. You get you a good night’s sleep and come in late morning. Bigelow’s only about twenty minutes from Mossy Creek. We need to talk, and there’s some paperwork we got to finish. And don’t you worry. Mrs. Caldwell knows everybody. She can help you make whatever arrangements you need. I’ll have somebody call her to tell her you’ll be there this evening.”

He gave me the number of the sheriff’s department, and his private cell phone, which I thought was nice of him. Then he gave me Hiram’s landlady’s number and the address of Hiram’s apartment in Mossy Creek, although Hiram had included it in his last email to me.

By the time I hung up, I felt utterly calm. That’s the way I always handle disaster. It’s what makes me a good show manager. After I solve the problem and calm everybody else down, that’s when I go to pieces.

Even I couldn’t solve this.

I started when I realized Pete still stood by with a look of concern on his face. “Oh, Pete, shouldn’t you be with Tully and Amy?”

“They’re in the EMT trailer getting patched up. Tully shooed me off to check on Jethro and you. I’m headed her way now. But Merry. Hiram. Dead? Is Hiram really dead?”

“That’s what the man said. Some kind of accident, but he didn’t go into details.”

“I can’t believe it. I thought he’d outlive us all.” He shook his head. “Irascible old bastard. Sorry, Merry.”

I started to giggle, then clapped my hand over my mouth. If I started, I’d have hysterics. Once my mouth was shut, I felt tears ooze down my cheeks. “Good epitaph. He would have liked it.” I squeezed Pete’s shoulder. He winced. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Bruises on my bruises. Probably won’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. This whole thing is going to cost my insurance company a bundle.” He took my arm and walked with me up toward the parking area. “I am seriously considering putting out a hit on the engineer runnin’ that train. Damn fool.”

Pete was rich and powerful enough to make life extremely unpleasant for the man. “Don’t you kill him, and whatever you do, don’t tell Jack who he is or where to find him or he’ll do the killin’ for you. Tully would be angry if either one of you went to jail for manslaughter.”

“Justifiable homicide.” We stopped by my truck. “I’d hug you, but I’d probably scream in pain. You leaving now?”

“The show committee’s bound to want to talk to me, but I can’t deal with them right now.”

“Don’t you worry, I’ll handle the show committee,” Pete said. His face looked grim. He ran a multi-million dollar company. The show committee should be a piece of cake for him.

“And they owe me a check.”

“You got a deposit slip in your purse? Give it to me. I’ll pick up your check and deposit it tomorrow morning for you.”

“Thanks Pete.” I dug a deposit slip out of the satchel I use as a handbag and gave it to him. “I’ve already checked out of my motel. If they go on with the marathon, the show president can give out the awards anyway, so I was good to go right after the marathon until this happened.”

“You get on the road. I’ll do the explaining. “

I hesitated, half in and half out of the truck. “Pete, I didn’t set that course close to the railroad track.”

“Shoot, I know that. I won’t let ’em use you as a scapegoat.”

“If I leave now, it’ll look like I’m running away,” I said.

“Merry, your daddy just died! Git.”

Jack walked up behind Pete. “Tully’s hollering for you, Pete.”

Pete nodded, patted my arm and limped toward the van the EMTs were using for their first aid station.

Jack stood at the door of my truck, waited for me to climb in and shut the door with a resounding smack. Mercifully, I had parked on the far side and away from Jethro’s path of destruction, so my truck hadn’t sustained even a
fresh
dent—at least. “Hiram was a fine horseman and a great trainer, Merry,” Jack said. “Email us and let us know what’s going on. If you have a memorial service, I know some of us would like to come.”

“Jack, it’s to hell and gone in No-where, Georgia, but I’ll let you know.”

I could see him in my rear view mirror as I pulled out onto the road and turned toward the big wrought iron entrance gates of The Meadows, the farm that had hosted the show. As I drove over the railroad tracks to the road, I considered turning around. I did not want to face three hours of solitary driving with nothing to think about except the father I would never see again.

I made it as far as a Wal-Mart parking lot before I pulled over, stopped, put my head down on the steering wheel, and bawled. We were so close to reaching some sort of meeting of minds, my father and I. Now we’d never have the chance.

Eventually I gulped myself into silence. Then I got angry. “How dare you die on me, Hiram Lackland? I loved you. Now I can’t tell you.” I smacked the steering wheel so hard I yelped, took a deep breath and calmed down.

What was I supposed to do now? Any death involves protocols and rituals, Southern deaths more than most. Even in retirement Hiram Lackland was a large fish in the small pond of international carriage driving. A great many people would have to be notified.

I couldn’t face all that this afternoon. Still, a couple of people had to know right now. I dialed my cell phone and listened to it ring. Just as I was about to hang up—this was not the sort of thing one left on voice mail—it was answered.