TheCart Before the Corpse (34 page)

But my own pistol still lay in the center console of my truck. Once I was in my car, I should be able to sneak it out. I might not be able to kill a bear, but I was damn sure mad enough to kill
her
.

“All right,” she said. “Go on right this minute. If you tell anybody, if I so much as hear a car start up the drive in the next hour, that’s not enough time, and I’ll know it’s not you. I swear I’ll shoot first and ask questions later. I don’t have much to lose.”

“I can’t leave.”

“What?”

“You nearly hit the horse and carriage when you drove in. I can’t possibly get my truck past without backing him out of the way.”

“So back him.” She waved the gun at Peggy.

“I don’t know how,” Peggy said. “We were practicing going
down
the driveway, but I can’t back him up.”
Thank you, Peggy. You pick up fast.

“Then
you
do it,” Imogene said to me. She sounded exasperated. “I am losing my temper. Maybe I should shoot the horse.”

“No!” Peggy and I shouted together.

“You shoot the horse, you really will block the driveway,” I said. “He can’t back up if he’s dead.”

“You,” she waved the gun at Peggy. “Get down from there. You,” she pointed at me. “Back him up and go to the bank.”

“Stay where you are,” I whispered to Peggy as I walked over to her. “Look behind her.”

Don Qui poked his nose around the barn. That whinny must have alerted Don Qui that all was not well with Heinzie. He’d finally worked his way out of his stall and come to find him.

He had already stomped Imogene the way he stomped me, so he was predisposed not to like her. And she stood between him and Heinzie.

I put my hand on Heinzie’s halter. “Back!” I shouted as loud as I could. Instead of backing him, however, I pulled him forward toward the driveway.

Don Qui thought Heinzie was about to desert him again, and that woman stood between him and his beloved.

He galloped toward her, and at the last minute twisted and let fly with both hind hooves.

She shot forward like she’d been fired from a cannon. The gun fired, but her shot went wide. The pistol flew out of her hand and landed in the shrubbery.

Closer to her than my truck was to me.

Her ignition key flew even farther. She landed on her face in the gravel.

Heinzie woke up.

I jumped into the Meadowbrook. “Go!” I shouted to Peggy.

“
You
have to drive. I can’t handle this!”

I could see Imogene scrabbling around searching for the gun. We had to get away
now
.

Peggy shoved the reins at me.

“I can’t. I haven’t driven . . . ”

“Damnation, Merry, drive or die! I’ll kill us as surely as her bullets.”

She had a point.

“Trot on!” I shouted. Obligingly Heinzie trotted off down the road toward the highway. I heard the patter of tiny hooves behind me. Don Qui was following, bound and determined not to let Heinzie out of his sight.

We’d never beat that lunatic woman at a trot. I grabbed the whip from Peggy, flicked the reins against Heinzie’s rump, popped him on the shoulder and shouted “yah” at the top of my lungs.

Startled, Heinzie lifted his head and took off. Dick Fitzgibbons swore Heinzie was lazy. He was wrong.

I could no longer hear Don Qui’s hooves over the noise we were making, but I felt certain he was galloping down the driveway after us.

“Come back here!” Imogene howled.

“No way, witch!” Peggy yelled back at her.

“Hold on tight and swing your weight to keep us on the road.” I flicked the reins. “Move, dammit!”

I hadn’t touched reins in twenty years and all of a sudden I was hurtling down the side of a mountain with a crazy woman behind me.

Peggy clutched the wooden fender over the wheel for dear life. Just like my mother. This time, if I screwed up, I’d send all of us crashing down the side of the hill.

The wheels slid toward the edge of the road. A moment later something whined by my ear and I heard a pop.

“She found the gun!” Peggy screamed.

“Get down,” I shouted.

Heinzie bounded around the right hand curve, where Imogene couldn’t see us. The left wheel scraped hard against the shrubs and trees. A branch lashed my forehead. It stung like hell. Blood dripped down over my eyebrow and into my eye.

I took the reins in my right hand to dash the blood out of my eye and saw we were heading straight for the edge of the cliff.

I hauled on the left rein, and Heinzie whipped us around the curve with one wheel in the air.

“When we get down to the road, I’ll swing left and stop. Jump out and yank loose the traces and tugs on your side. I’ll get the left.”

“We can’t stop!”

“We can’t outrun her in the carriage on pavement. Once we pull Heinzie free, we can ride him double.”

“What? I can’t . . . ”

“Yes, you can. She can’t drive a car down a deer path. Heinzie can take us into the trees out of sight. Left! Now!”

The carriage hit a rock, and for a moment we went airborne. We hit hard enough to jar my kidneys into my skull, but Heinzie didn’t miss a step.

I could see the break in the trees between the two big boulders where the driveway met the pavement.

I stood on the brake and prayed.

Heinzie slid down the last dozen feet on his haunches, then swung left onto the road. The carriage rocked but stayed upright.

Don Qui slid into the back of the carriage and brayed in rage.

“Whoa, horse! Out! Now!”

Peggy leapt out, yanked the trace and tug on her side loose. I looped the reins around my forearm, something no one in their right mind should ever do unless they want one less arm, yanked the harness loose, and dragged the cart back far enough to free Heinzie. “Listen,” Peggy whispered. “She’s coming.”

A car growled and squealed behind us.

“Climb on in front of the saddle,” I said.

“How would you suggest I do that?”

“Put your left foot in my hands, grab hold of the hames and swing yourself over his back. Then grab my shirt and pull me up.”

“I can’t.”

“You damn well
will
!”

I doubted Heinzie had ever felt a human being on his back, much less two. I prayed he was too tired to buck.

The growl of the car grew louder, coming faster than I thought she could.

“You take Heinzie,” she whimpered. “I’ll hide in the trees with Don Qui.”

“Foot, dammit!” She stepped into my hands. I tossed her up so hard she nearly went all the way over Heinzie’s back to land head first on the pavement.

I scrambled onto the nearest boulder and swung onto Heinzie’s back and clamped my legs around him.

“I’ll never stay on,” Peggy cried.

“Grab the balls on the hames.” I kicked Heinzie off with the extra rein length dragging behind us, praying that Don Qui wouldn’t get tangled in it and yank me off onto the road.

“We have to call Amos.” Peggy’s voice bumped up and down with Heinzie’s trot.

Ahead of us the highway veered to the right. If we could put that curve between us and Imogene, we could plunge off down the mountain at the first break in the trees and call Amos from cover.

I peered back over my shoulder. Don Qui was managing to keep up.

Imogene’s elderly sedan roared like a 747 on final approach. At the road, she’d have to stop, get out of her car, pull the Meadowbrook out of her way and climb back into her car before she could chase us again. The light cart wouldn’t hold her up for long, but with luck, by the time she had the road clear, we’d be out of sight down a deer trail.

Imogene must have been doing fifty when she saw the cart and stood on her brakes.

Too late. She crashed it dead center.

It exploded into kindling. One of the wheels flew a dozen feet into the air straight at us. Wood shards rained down around us.

The wheel hit the ground, bounced, rolled past Heinzie and into the trees.

That did it for Heinzie. He spun away. Peggy keened and clutched the hames.

I hauled hard on the reins to stop him and watched in horror as Imogene’s car went airborne, sailed across the road and crashed down the mountainside on the other side.

Maybe Imogene screamed. Peggy and I sure did. Don Qui let out a bray of triumph.

The screech of tearing metal and the snapping brush seemed to go on forever.

Then silence.

Imogene couldn’t chase us any longer. At least not in her car.

I slid off, handed Peggy the reins and ran back toward the spot Imogene went over. “Take Heinzie. Call Amos,” I said over my shoulder.

“She’s got a gun! Stay here.”

I didn’t think Imogene was in any condition to shoot, but I ducked behind a tree just in case. I risked a look back. Peggy had her cell phone in one hand and Heinzie’s bridle in the other. She was leaning against his shoulder as they walked side by side. Hard to tell at this distance, but I think they were both shaking.

Don Qui, on the other hand, was munching clover on the shoulder of the road.

I kept the trees between me and Imogene’s path of destruction. Her car hung twenty feet down the hill with its nose accordion pleated around a pine and its rear end hiked in the air. Its tires spun, and smoke drifted lazily from under the hood.

I couldn’t see Imogene behind the remains of her air bag, but all four doors stayed closed. No way she could have climbed out that fast and ducked out of sight. She must still be inside.

Alive? Conscious? Still armed?

Still murderous?

Cars seldom burn in real accidents the way they do in movies, but that smoke under the hood scared me. Did I dare work my way down to the car and take the chance that Imogene was hunkered down in the front seat waiting to shoot me?

“Amos is already on his way,” Peggy called. “Come back here!”

“I’ve got to get her out.”

“No, you do not! Get back here or I’ll come down and get you.”

“You have to hold Heinzie.” I slid down in the underbrush, while I prayed any snakes in the area had been scared away.

I dropped low behind the car and peered over the trunk. I couldn’t see Imogene.

When I touched it, the car rocked. The pine tree against the hood was the only thing holding it. If it gave way, the car would slither all the way to the bottom of the valley and possibly cartwheel.

The car rocked a couple of inches and slid forward. I thought I heard a groan. “Can you open your door?” I asked.

Behind me I heard sirens. Car doors slammed. Man, that was fast.

“Merry, get back up here!” Geoff’s voice. “Now.”

“The car’s going to catch fire. I can reach her.”

Branches whipped behind me. A moment later someone grabbed the back of my collar and yanked.

“Hey!” An arm clamped around my waist. I recognized Geoff’s scent even as he hauled me summarily up the hill like a sack of potatoes. My feet scrabbled for purchase in the damp leaves. “Let me go.”

“Then climb.”

“All right!” He released me and I twisted to look up at him. “She has a gun.”

“Great.” He shoved me past him. Amos slid down beside us. “Gun,” Geoff said.

Amos rolled his eyes. Both men unholstered their guns.

When I reached the road, I ran to Peggy and Heinzie and wrapped my arms around both of them. Heinzie whuffled against my neck. He was so foamed with sweat he looked like a black and white pinto.

“He’s still blowing,” Peggy said.

His sides heaved with exertion. “Poor baby. Good boy.”

“The Meadowbrook’s toast.”

We moved Heinzie to the shoulder as an ambulance pulled up. For a horse with issues, he had performed magnificently. If Dick Fitzgibbons was willing to sell him, I intended to buy him. And Don Qui, of course.

Somehow, possibly from sideswiping the same bushes I had, he’d managed to peel a four-inch swath of skin and hair off his left shoulder and split his ear. Blood dripped down onto his shoulder. “Good boy,” I said over and over as I stroked his sweaty neck. “You saved our lives up there. If you hadn’t kicked her, we’d never have gotten away.” He ignored me and kept right on eating.

Peggy turned me to face her. “No, Merideth Lackland Abbott,
you
saved us. You drove that horse like a Roman chariot racer. Don’t you ever, ever again say that you can’t drive. You
did
drive and you
will
drive.”

“This was different.”

“Different, schmifferent! You drove that horse brilliantly.”

“I could have killed us.”

“But you didn’t.”

“It was Heinzie, not me.”

“Bull hockey. Heinzie trusted you, even if you didn’t. It is time you cut out all this nonsense. You have a driving barn to run, horses to train and a career to forge.”

“The last time . . . ”

“I do not care what happened the last time.“

I considered telling her about my inglorious attempt to drive Golden Boy, but that could wait. Instead, I said, “I refuse to drive marathons.”

“Fine. Drive dressage. Teach
me
to drive marathons. Teach Ida, teach Louise, teach the entire Garden Club and Sandi and Mutt and Geoff Wheeler. Teach Eula Mae, for pity’s sake. She’s over a hundred, but she drove mules in her younger days. Get yourself up in the box and show them how it’s done.”

“What if I hurt someone again?”

“Go take some classes with the experts and get your nerve and your skill back. Merry, you are not seventeen and mad at your father any longer. You are a grown woman. He gave you back your life. Don’t you dare turn your back on him.”

Chapter 34

Easter Sunday

Merry

The weather Easter Sunday was perfect for riding in a carriage around Mossy Creek.

Hank Blackshear had wanted to keep Don Qui overnight at the clinic to be certain he wouldn’t tear the stitches in his ear loose, but I wanted him in his own stall across from Heinzie. It was the least I could do. The Bible says something like, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” Don Qui would have done just that for Heinzie. Peggy and I simply received collateral benefits.

I wouldn’t separate them again. Dick agreed to let me have the pair for much less than he’d paid for Heinzie. After all, he couldn’t show Heinzie with Don Qui perpetually in tow, and I didn’t
want
to show him, simply use him to teach.