TheCart Before the Corpse (31 page)

“So was your apartment. The killer borrows keys. We found Jacob’s wiped clean in the ignition of his truck.”

“What were they looking for?” Peggy asked.

“If it was the same person who turned over our stuff, they were looking for information.” Merry leaned back and closed her eyes. “I feel like that guy in Lil’ Abner that has a black cloud over his head. Everything I touch turns to crap.”

“Go home,” Geoff said. “Take a hot bath, have a drink, eat something, go to bed.”

She laughed. “Thank you for the advice, Mother Wheeler, but I still have horses to feed this evening.”

“Then do it now and leave. We’ll be here a good bit longer.”

“Come on, Merry, I’ll help,” Peggy said and pulled herself to her feet.

Geoff offered Merry a hand. She took it and let him pull her up. He felt for a moment as though she’d lean against his chest and let him wrap his arms around her. At the last second, however, she stepped back, squared her shoulders and walked out of the stable.

Peggy glared at him. “You two need to get your act together.”

He gave her a ‘whatever do you mean’ raised eyebrow.

She sniffed and went after Merry.

Was it that obvious that he was attracted to Merry? He was fairly certain she was attracted to him as well. Having to arrest her for murder wouldn’t be the best next step in building a relationship. He’d better clear her and find the real killer before he was forced to do just that.

He wound up calling the inn from his car and ordering a couple of steak sandwiches, then eating them in his room in front of the television set with the sound off. The local eleven o’clock news carried a short story on the discovery of a body in Bigelow County, but that was all. Tomorrow’s stories would be more extensive. Merry would probably be met with half a dozen news vans when she went out to feed the horses in the morning. Hiram’s death had been put down to accident and hadn’t roused the newshounds. This one would. He decided to be there first.

She would find soon enough that the big wheelbarrow she used to carry fresh manure from stable to manure pile was missing. It was on its way to the crime lab in Atlanta. When she found it had been used to transport Jacob’s body from the murder site in front of the barn around back to the dump site, he didn’t think she’d want it back. It had been hosed out, but there were still traces of blood in the crevices around the edge. DNA would confirm what he knew in his gut. The blood belonged to Jacob.

Once the medical examiner confirmed what he suspected, that Yoder had been killed and buried Sunday evening, he’d have to start checking alibis all over again. He didn’t much care whether Tom Darnell or Ken Whitehead was guilty. Had to be one or the other.

So long as Merry was safe. Peggy too, of course. They alibied one another from two in the afternoon Sunday until Monday morning. Merry might have had barely enough time to kill Jacob when she went out to the barn Monday morning, but not enough to bury him and clean up her mess before Peggy arrived. He could think of no way they could be in this together. They’d known one another a week. Hardly time to make an alliance to commit murder.

Sheriff Campbell might believe Merry was Superwoman. Geoff didn’t. He hoped she’d turned off the ringer on her cell and landline phones tonight. Reporters were capable of calling at two in the morning. He’d already told the front desk at the Hamilton Inn not to put calls through to him. Merry and Amos both had his cell phone number. Anyone else could wait until morning.

He woke at one a.m., still dressed with a crick in his neck and the television flickering. He brushed his teeth, stripped, slid under the covers and slept again instantly.

His last thought before sleep took hold was that tomorrow would be a bitch anyway you looked at it.

Chapter 31

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

Merry

I’m used to handling local reporters who cover the horse shows I manage, but they generally want human-interest stuff, not crime interviews from one of the suspects. I had to shoo two TV trucks and three reporters’ cars out of my way so I could drive up the hill to the farm. They had enough sense not to follow me onto my property. It would be up to the cops to move them out of the public road. Geoff could speak to them if he wanted to, but Peggy and I wouldn’t even give them a ‘no comment.’ With luck they’d give up by lunchtime and move over to bug the sheriff and Amos Royden.

When I talked to her at Hiram’s viewing, I hadn’t given Katie Bell from the
Mossy Creek Gazette
anything but salient facts about Hiram’s life that she could have gotten off Google, and I wasn’t about to add anything now.

Peggy had cancelled the two driving lessons scheduled for the afternoon. Ida called to ask if we were still planning to drive in Mossy Creek on Sunday afternoon.

“Up to you,” I told Peggy.

She nodded and said into the phone, “We’ll be there.” After she hung up, she asked, “This Fitzgibbons guy is definitely coming to help me drive, right?”

“To the best of my knowledge. It’s obvious we can’t drive Heinzie to the road again until the reporters leave, so we’ll work him to the vis-à-vis in the arena. I’ll shut Don Qui in his stall and let him yell his head off.”

Over his objections, I fastened his door securely. No way he could open it. He brayed and kicked while we harnessed Heinzie, but when I followed Peggy out to the arena, he was still confined to his stall.

Heinzie didn’t seem to miss him much, which was good. That meant we could load up Heinzie and the vis-à-vis, leave Don Qui locked securely in his stall, and do our Easter duty in Mossy Creek.

Don Qui kept up a bray that would have gone an ocean lighthouse one better. After twenty minutes, however, he went silent.

“Finally,” I said. “He must be worn out.”

She stopped Heinzie in the middle of the arena beside me and pointed toward the in-gate with her whip. “I don’t think so.” And in he trotted.

“No way!” I ran into the stable and stopped at his stall. The latch was in the upright position instead of pointing down, and the sliding door was open enough for his fat little body to squeeze through. I had closed and latched it tight, but he was out, and I still had no idea how he’d done it.

He was furious, of course. He tried to stomp my other foot. This time I narrowly avoided having a matching semi-circular bruise on the instep of my right foot to match my left.

When I led Heinzie back to the pasture, Don Qui trotted beside him, then wheeled and kicked the gate again.

I prayed we wouldn’t have reporters and TV trucks rolling down the streets of Mossy Creek on Sunday if we were forced to take Don Qui along. He’d probably bite or kick or generally misbehave and be caught on camera and flashed over the news.

We ate sandwiches sitting on the hay bales. “Geoff has a point,” I said as I tried to find a position that didn’t poke me with hay. “We need chairs even if we have to make do with canvas jobs until the estate’s settled.”

We had decided to lacquer the vis-à-vis and put the newly upholstered seats back in while the weather stayed warm and dry, so we hauled it out to the far corner of the parking area onto a big tarpaulin and sprayed it black. We finished tacking and stapling the new seat covers and screwed them back in as well.

“The old girl doesn’t look bad at all,” Peggy said, as we cleaned up our mess and rolled the carriage back into the barn. “The red upholstery and the black lacquer look spiffy.”

“Still got a lot of work to do before it goes to its new owner, whoever that might be,” I said. “You know, if we’re going to have a black and red carriage and a black horse, we need to fancy Heinzie up some. I could braid his mane in a French braid with red yarn, and we could put red rosettes on his hames.”

Hiram had taught Peggy about harness, so she didn’t ask me to define hames. Farmers know what they are, but most non-driving people don’t.

There are two basic types of carriage harness. One uses a breast strap that goes across the horse’s chest. The other, frequently seen in draft hitches or pairs pulling larger carriages, uses a big leather horse collar that fits over the horse’s head and lies against his neck and shoulders. The harness itself is attached to hinged metal pieces that fit into the grooves of the horse collar and buckle at top and bottom. The metal pieces are called hames. Anyone who has watched the Budweiser Clydesdale hitch has seen the big horse collars fitted with shining silver hames that rise like wings high above the horse’s neck and end in big silver balls that are often decorated with streaming ribbons or fat rosettes.

Heinzie’s harness was much less elaborate, but its hames did end with a pair of steel balls that stuck up over his shoulders. Perfect for ribbons.

“Can you do that?” Peggy asked.

“Piece of cake. I’m sure Hiram has a braiding kit with everything I need somewhere.”

“I haven’t seen anything like that,” Peggy said dubiously. “Would he have red yarn and ribbons?”

“Probably ten colors of yarn, gel to comb the mane smooth, braid hooks, little bitty rubber bands . . . A complete grooming kit and buckets as well, so he wouldn’t have to pack and repack every time he went to a show.”

“I don’t remember seeing anything like that in his truck.”

“I’m sure it’s all in the trailer tack room. Up to now we haven’t needed anything from it. You sweep the trailer bed. I’ll check out the tack room.”

When I opened the tack room at the front of the gooseneck, I felt a tremendous jolt. Here was the essence of Hiram, my professional horseman father, in a way almost as palpable as the scent of his aftershave.

The trailer tack room was as excessively neat as the stable and his workshop. Much neater than his apartment in Peggy’s basement.

Trailer tack rooms run the gamut from landfill filth to laboratory cleanliness. Hiram kept
his
immaculate. A film of dust coated everything, but he’d organized and labeled every hook.

He’d stacked clean water buckets and feed tubs in one corner beside a square feed container built to keep out moisture and vermin. He’d hung perfectly coiled lead, lunge and long lines on hooks beside oiled halters and bits of harness and buckles handy for emergency repairs on harness and carriages. A polished brass whip rack held lunge and buggy whips, each carefully coiled around its personal whip roller.

I opened the lid of the plastic step stool sitting against the gooseneck and found woolen horse coolers and fly sheets folded and interleaved with blocks of cedar to prevent moth damage.

No braiding kit, however. It must be tucked away in the gooseneck, which was taller than my head and deep in shadows this late in the spring afternoon.

When I came back five minutes later with a hand lantern and flashed it into the recess, I could see several grooming boxes, and in the very back, a couple of metal boxes the size of computer printers.

The first box I opened held brushes, curry combs and other normal grooming supplies. The second held the braiding stuff.

I had to climb into the gooseneck to grab the two metal boxes. The first held a horseman’s pharmacopoeia of drugs, ointments, liniments and fly sprays.

The second felt heavier and was locked. It didn’t make any sound when I shook it. I dragged it out, set it on the floor and perched on the top step while I juggled keys on Hiram’s key ring to find one small enough to fit.

I thought I was out of luck, but finally a key that looked small enough to fit a woman’s jewelry box clicked in the lock.

When I opened it I realized I’d found Hiram’s records. His logbooks for the last two years lay on top of a hanging file of manila folders.

I opened the current log. Suddenly he spoke to me as clearly as though I heard his voice. He might not have noted my birthdays, but he wrote down the date when each horse was wormed, or given a rhinopneumonitis or strangles shot, and when the next would be due. Between us, Peggy and I horsed the box into my truck and my apartment while we repeated “no comment” endlessly to the media.

The twenty copies of Hiram’s death certificate had arrived, so the first minute I had free, I could start transferring Hiram’s assets to my name, and beat my American Express bill. Since we knew we’d be trapped at home once we got there, we’d made a side trip to Bigelow and loaded up on Chinese take out. No Chinese restaurant yet, in Mossy Creek.

We decided to eat in my apartment for a change, although Peggy said the cats were annoyed. She’d been away more than she’d been home lately.

“I’ve been taking horrible advantage of you,” I said as I opened one of the little paper boxes and found egg rolls.

“I haven’t done one thing I didn’t want to do,” she said as she opened the Moo Shu pork and searched for the pancakes and black bean sauce. “I don’t know why, but I have the feeling we’re nearly finished.”

“It’s finding Hiram’s log books,” I said, and divided a box of shrimp fried rice between our two plates. “I’m certain it must all be there, if we have the sense to understand it.”

“When are you going to tell Geoff you have the box?” She concentrated on unwrapping her chopsticks to avoid looking at me.

“After dinner.”

“He’ll be furious that you moved the box, and he’s going to ask why it’s taken this long to find it.”

“It never occurred to me that Hiram would put paperwork and bills into the trailer where they could mildew. Stuff in that trailer nose is entirely too hard to get ahold of, and it was never part of the crime scene. Geoff never asked for a search warrant for the trailer. He wouldn’t have gotten one anyway. I suppose I could have given him permission to search the trailer, but why would I? Why would he? What was Hiram thinking?”

“That Jacob Yoder or someone else would come looking.”

*

When I called Geoff at the Hamilton Inn, they refused to put me through, so I used his cell phone. After I told him what I’d found, he started to yell at me, then he went very, very quiet. Uh-oh. I was in deep doo-doo. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said. “Don’t touch anything.”

“I already have.”

When he walked, no, stalked in, I handed him a cold beer with one hand and a sheaf of papers with the other. “The ground water on the governor’s side of the hill stinks.”