TheCart Before the Corpse (3 page)

“Hello?” She sounded breathless. She’d probably been out in the garden. She usually was in the spring.

“Mom?”

“Merry? What’s wrong? Oh, Lordy, is it Allie?”

I hadn’t heard the emotion in my voice, but she had and she’d jumped right to worrying about her granddaughter. “She’s fine.”

“You?”

“Not so good. Mom, Hiram’s dead.”

She caught her breath. “Hiram? What on earth? How? When?” I heard the creak of a wooden chair in the background as she sat down.

I choked back more tears. My mother was five hundred miles away in St. Louis. No sense in upsetting her more by letting her hear how upset
I
was.

“I always said one of these days he’d keel over dead with a heart attack,” she said.

“It was an accident. I don’t know the details. The sheriff of that place where he bought his new farm finally tracked me down at a show this afternoon.”

“Where are you?”

I told her and reiterated everything the Bigelow County sheriff had said to me. “The crazy thing is that we’d been emailing and talking on the phone lately. Dad sounded happy. Wanted me to see his new place, spend some time. I think he had a crazy idea I might come work with him.”

“Like that would have worked,” my mother said.

“I was maybe considering driving down. I don’t have another job for a couple of weeks. And now this. I can’t believe it.”

My mother’s voice sounded quiet and a bit distant suddenly. “He’d been emailing me too. You know your father would never apologize, but he acted as though he wanted to make things right between us.”

“Mom . . . ”

“I’ve long since forgiven him for what he did to me. I’m not so certain I could let him off the hook for what he did to
you
.”

“Don’t forget Allie.”

“She barely knows him. She thinks of Steve as her grandfather, not her step-grandfather. Have you called her?”

I shook my head, although my mother couldn’t see the gesture. “I called you first. I figured you’d know what I’m supposed to do. You’ve always been the one to handle the deaths in the family.”

“Each generation of women eventually hands over the death reins to the next, Merry.”

“But when Gram and Granddad and Aunt Phil died, they had plenty of friends within shouting distance. You had help.”

“Your father was kind of famous in a small way. . .”

“And lived on a new farm surrounded by strangers in a village in the boondocks of North Georgia. He didn’t have anybody else. I am it.”

My mother instantly switched to head-of-the-family mode. “Unless he changed his will, which I doubt since I had the devil’s own time getting him to make one at the time of the divorce, you are his sole heir and executrix of his estate. Since he died in an accident, there will no doubt be a delay in releasing the body. You know we always like to have the funeral within three days of the death, impossible in this case. I would suggest a memorial service as soon as possible after you know what’s what. Then either cremation or a graveside service at some later date. Do you have enough money?”

“For the moment. I’m due to start at The Meadows in a month breaking two-year-olds for Fergus Williams, and I’m running a carriage show in Southern Pines next month.” If they still wanted me after today’s debacle.

“I doubt he had much capital left after buying the new place and doing all that work to it, but he did have some life insurance, assuming he hadn’t let it lapse or borrowed against it. That should come to you. It won’t be much, but it should pay for the funeral and tide you over.”

“Mom . . . ” I hesitated, but I had to ask the question I’d never asked. “Do you ever regret . . . ”

“Divorcing him? Not for a single minute, even if I’d never met Steve, nor built a stable life for us. They say first love never dies, but he made our lives hell, Merry. I had to get us away before he destroyed us.” I could hear her breathing. “You may have reporters calling, although he’s been out of the international limelight for some time. He will no doubt rate an obituary in
The Whip
and
Driving Digest
. Maybe a couple of other horse magazines. You know the sort of thing ‘former driving champion dies, etc., etc.’ Say nothing personal. Don’t give them Allie’s address or telephone number, and whatever you do, don’t sic them onto Vic. God only knows what your ex would say to them.”

“Mostly something along the line of ‘that bastard wrecked my marriage’. Assuming he’s sober enough to be coherent.”

“We Lackland women don’t have good luck with men, do we, darling? At least not the first time.”

“No second time for me.” As always after a conversation with my mother, I felt calmer and surer of myself. We talked some more, but nothing substantive, and finally broke the connection. I tried my daughter Allie’s cell phone in New York, but on a beautiful April Sunday afternoon, I knew there was little chance I could get her. I left a message for her to call me, but didn’t tell her why. She might get around to it, or she might blow me off.

I went into Wal-Mart for a couple of six packs of diet soda, a bag of ice and a couple of packets of peanut butter crackers, filled the ice chest, and got on the road.

My mother was only partly right about my father almost killing us.

Actually,
I
was the reason my mother walked with a cane.

Chapter 3

Sunday evening

Merry

By the time I found Mossy Creek, I’d gotten lost on hilly back roads twice and asked where to locate Mossy Creek at three convenience stores.

Since I did not have directions to my father’s apartment, I called this Peggy Caldwell from my cell phone to find how to get there once I finally found Mossy Creek.

It was dusk before I pulled into the driveway at her address and simply sat. As long as I didn’t get out, meet the woman, talk to her about Hiram, I could almost pretend Hiram was alive somewhere and would come home to his new apartment.

I could see why he’d liked the town and Caldwell’s place, although he generally didn’t pay all that much attention to where he lived. He seemed as happy sleeping on hay bales in a cold barn waiting for a mare to foal as he did in a state bedroom in some baron’s castle in Bavaria. That’s one trait he passed down to me. My daughter Allie, who is settling into her first apartment in New York with three other girls, haunts flea markets, IKEA, and Crate and Barrel. Once she makes her first million—any day now at the rate she’s going—she’ll switch to Mario Buatta and move into the Dakota.

Since I never knew how long we’d be staying in any one location when I was growing up, I learned never to invest my heart in making friends I might have to leave tomorrow, or my money in my surroundings and possessions. Good thing, since Vic took most of what we owned in the divorce. He might have taken Allie as well, except that she was already a junior at the University of Kentucky and interning at Goldman Sachs in the summers.

Who needed human friends when I had the horses? Although a horse may try to kill you occasionally, it’s almost never out of meanness, and he won’t betray you. No matter how miserable my life has been from time to time, I could always count on a gentle nuzzle from a velvet nose to lift my spirits. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so lost and miserable if there had been a handy horse to love on.

I was glad Hiram had found a place to call home. Looking out the window of the truck I could see that the house was a 1930s Tudor, but well maintained.

Hiram’s landlady apparently liked to garden. Masses of azaleas in different shades ranging from coral to pale pink budded in her front yard, and the driveway dropped off sharply in back of the house to what looked like several acres of lawn with big trees and lush plantings.

Hiram said his apartment had been created on the lower level out of part of the garage. He could walk out the French doors from his small living room onto a patio under the main house’s deck and into the back yard. He loved spring, and would have enjoyed the quickening life he saw from his patio.

He’d actually sounded enthusiastic about the place, which surprised me. The apartment came furnished, which didn’t surprise me one bit. Most of the guest houses and above-the-stable trainer’s apartments he’d lived in came furnished. I doubted he owned a stick of furniture.

Hiram did accumulate harness, tack, carriages, horse blankets and horse coolers, a million items he needed to look after his four-footed charges. Since I didn’t see either a big diesel truck or a humongous horse trailer, I assumed both were parked at his new farm. His personal possessions probably fit into a couple of suitcases and maybe a garbage bag or two.

Personal possessions I’d be forced to go through. God, how I dreaded that. I doubted he kept old love letters from his lady friends on the carriage circuit, but if he had, I didn’t want to read them.

I seldom managed shows in Hiram’s part of the country or at the high levels at which he competed. Even on the few occasions I did, I generally managed to avoid coming face-to-face with him.

Maybe he thought he deserved the cold shoulder I gave him. Judging from his emails, after he retired and had time to look back, he finally began to
get
how badly he’d hurt Mother and me. And I had grown up enough to cut him some slack. He had never planned to hurt us, after all.

He always considered us a parallel universe. What he did in his professional and personal life away from us shouldn’t affect us. When he told my mother, “Honey, none of those women has anything to do with you and Merry,” he believed himself. When he didn’t come home on my birthday after he’d promised he would, he couldn’t understand why I was upset. After all, he was
driving
.

I ran into his current and former mistresses at shows regularly. I was studiously polite, whatever turmoil I felt inside. After all, he was no longer married to my mother, so he wasn’t committing adultery, although in some cases
they
were. I simply didn’t want to know more about his personal life than I already knew. I think most kids feel that way about their parents. I know Allie feels that way about me. I’d no more discuss a new boyfriend (assuming I had one) with her than I’d fly to the moon. Even at his age Hiram was still a handsome man and a charmer. No doubt he’d charmed his landlady. I sincerely hoped he’d found someone he cared about who cared about him. She had found his body. Where? This apartment? Out at his new farm?

I don’t know how long I had been sucking back the tears in her driveway when the front door of the house opened and light spilled out.

“Ms Abbott?” A female voice called. Strong. Not an old lady quaver.

I took a deep breath and climbed out of the truck. “Ms. Caldwell?” I went to her and offered my hand. “People call me Merry. Big joke.”

“Why?”

“I’m not.”

Her grip was firm. She was slim, nearly as tall as my five-ten and straight as a stick. No sign of a dowager’s hump. “Please come in. If I leave the door open for long the cats get curious and wander outside. If they manage to make the front porch they have hysterics trying to get back in. I’ll take you downstairs to Hiram’s apartment in a little while. I assume you’re hungry. Come in and have a drink and a sandwich. And please call me Peggy.”

I had the feeling I’d be expected to eat even if I’d stopped at a fast food joint twenty minutes earlier and scarfed up double cheeseburgers, and that she wanted to talk. So did I, but not necessarily tonight. My stomach rumbled. I
was
hungry. My peanut butter crackers had worn off a while back.

I followed her into an entrance foyer. Not much furniture, but the Oriental rug on the floor looked like a valuable antique. So did the one that covered the floor of the living room, the one I could glimpse in the dining room, and finally, the one in what I assumed was the library, since every wall held floor-to-ceiling bookcases stuffed with books. Even at a glance I could tell the books weren’t fancy by-the-yard editions, but well-worn paperbacks and hard covers. I could see the brightly colored spines of mysteries and detective stories. One of the larger books read
Murderers, Inc.

“Hope you don’t mind eating in the kitchen,” she said. “I don’t use the dining room except at Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

I felt something warm around my feet and looked down to see a gigantic tabby cat the color of butter, oozing figure eights around my ankles. When I reached down to scratch his head, he rolled over on his back and offered a rotund belly. As I raised my head, I saw a big gray tabby on top of a leather recliner by the fireplace, while a small black cat crouched on the windowsill and a gray cat sat neatly curled on a cushion on the hearth. They all watched me intently. I wondered how many others were lurking out of sight.

“Just the four,” Peggy said.

I was startled.

“I’m not reading your mind. People always wonder.”

“I like cats.”

“I’m glad. They own the place and generously allow me to have company if it’s willing to pet them. The one making amorous overtures to your paddock boots is Sherlock. He’s dumb but sweet. The old guy on the chair is Dashiell. He runs the joint. That’s Marple on the windowsill and Watson on the hearth.”

“Do they actually detect?”

“You’d be surprised. Now, what would you like to drink? Beer? Wine? Bourbon?”

“Actually, I’d prefer iced tea.”

“Sweet or unsweet?”

“Unsweet with lemon and artificial sweetener if you have it. These hips do not require sugar to spread.”

“Woman after my own heart. Sit.”

The kitchen cabinets had been redone at some time, but retained a dark patina. The appliances, however, were brand new steel jobs.

In less than five minutes we were drinking iced tea and eating thick home cured ham and extra sharp cheddar sandwiches while the cats regarded us solemnly from the archway into the library.

“I’m so sorry about Hiram. He’s only been living here eight months, but I was fond of him,” she said.

“I’m sure he was fond of you too. When that sheriff finally got hold of me, he said he’d tell me the details tomorrow when I see him, but he did say you’d found him and that it was a freak accident.”