“I do eat the damned stuff, Netty!”
Before he could cuss her out and tell her to stop mothering him, Athena, talons spread, swooped over them.“Hoo hoo hoo.”She laughed as they both flattened. She turned and landed on the lowest limb of the slippery elm.“Good evening.”
“Athena, you scared the wits out of me,”Netty grumbled as she dusted herself off.
“Why, Netty, I don’t think that’s possible.”
Netty, somewhat mollified, said,“You’re looking well.”
“Shrews, I’ve been eating shrews. Does wonders forme. Well, Target, cat got your tongue?”
“No, it’s good to see you. I hear you helped out UncleYancy the other morning.”
“St. Just was calling the hounds on after they’d lostscent.”
“I’ll kill him if it’s the last thing I do.”
“You know, Target, that’s what he says about you,” Aunt Netty said, adding her two cents.
“I’m here with the news. Guy Ramy’s body, sealed in afifty-five-gallon drum, was dredged out of the James thismorning. A red-winged blackbird watched the wholething.”
“Blackbirds, crows, ravens,”Target snarled,“can’tbelieve a word they say.”
“Don’t let your hostility to the species blind you to thetruth,”Athena sagely counseled.
“You’re quite right,”Aunt Netty agreed, and wanted to kick her brother hard with her hind leg. One needed to pay court to Athena. She stared crossly at Target.
Although full of himself, he wasn’t stupid.“You areright, Athena. I hear the name, St. Just, and my bloodboils. He killed my son.”
“And you killed his wife. You’re even. Be done withit.”She raised herself to her full height, as she’d been leaning down to speak to the foxes. Athena, at two feet tall, was undeniably regal.
Target weighed his next words.“Yes, but I think it’sgone beyond that. I don’t think he’ll stop. After all, hecalled the hounds on Uncle Yancy.”
“I know. My concern is that you don’t endanger otheranimals with this blood feud. There’s enough going onnow. Finding Guy Ramy is not a good omen for any of us.”
“The humans are already stirred up about Nola Bancroft.”Aunt Netty moved over to sit beside her brother.
“The human who killed these two knew enough to putthem where vultures couldn’t get them or dogs dig themup. He or she knows a little something about animals.Right?”
“Yes.”Aunt Netty nodded her head.
“And although none of us were born then, we know from the humans’ incessant talking that Nola and Guydisappeared after the first day of cubbing in 1981. A fullcycle. Cubbing has just begun.”She leaned down toward them again.“And if they turn up something or someonegets a notion, they’ll start digging, literally. They’ll disturb our dens and nests and flush game. They’ll makea mess.”
“I’d better tell the cubs at Wheeler’s Mill,”Target thought out loud.
“I already did. And Bitsy is telling Butch, Mary Vey,Comet, and Inky.”Athena mentioned the gray foxes.
“Do you really think it’s that bad?”Target wondered, not wanting to challenge her, just wondering.
“Actually, I’m afraid one of them’s going to snap.” Athena’s low voice dipped even lower.“Bitsy, Inky, andI saw Ralph Assumptio, crying, parked by the side ofthe road.”
“That’s it. He’s the killer, then,”Target declared.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”The brown bird cast her golden eyes upward as a blue heron, late, headed for home.“My point is they are all feeling the strain.”
“Do the hounds know?”Aunt Netty asked.
“Yes. Bitsy is telling them.”
“Who cares if they know?”Target didn’t dislike the hounds, but he felt them an inferior member of the canine family because they allowed themselves to be domesticated.
“Are you argumentative tonight or thickheaded?”Netty nudged him on his shoulder.“The hounds are closer to thehumans than we are.”
“And the killer is a foxhunter as surely as I am theQueen of the Night.”
A little while after Athena had left, Charlene returned. Target and Netty filled her in, then they all discussed what Athena meant about the killer being a foxhunter. They weren’t sure.
Athena had been figuring. There had been no reports of struggle. If there’d been a fight in a car or truck, someone would have noticed the blood and the damage to the vehicle. If someone had sold their vehicle immediately after the disappearance, someone would have noticed that, too. Both Nola and Guy willingly followed or climbed into the vehicle of their murderer. Nola’s car was left at the Burusses’. Guy’s was parked downtown on the street. Athena had gathered all this with Bitsy’s help by listening to the humans talk on their porches or on the phone, windows open.
She had just been sharing all this with Bitsy, sitting on a crossbeam in Sister’s barn. Bitsy nodded.“Guy andNola knew their killer.”
Athena added,“And trusted him.”
CHAPTER 22
The humidity, suddenly oppressive, pressed down on the green pastures, the blazing white and deep pink crepe myrtle, the orange daylilies. Even the green metallic dragonflies, surprised by the rapid climb in temperatures and the dew point, sat motionless on lily pads in ponds. Rockfish dozed in deep creek eddies, frogs burrowed in cooling mud.
Lafayette, Rickyroo, Keepsake, and Aztec stood nose to tail under the enormous pin oak in their pasture. Showboat, Gunpowder, and Hojo did the same under a fiddle oak in their neighboring separate pasture.
Golliwog reposed on the library sofa. Raleigh and Rooster stretched out at Sister’s feet beneath her desk.
The Louis XV desk, a wedding gift from Raymond’s mother, was not an idle antique. Despite its great value, Sister worked at the desk much as the royal court secretary who had scribbled at it centuries ago.
The library, not a large room, housed Sister’s most beloved books, especially her sporting library. Some of those volumes, precious to her as well as collectors, had been written and printed in the eighteenth century. She loved the pages themselves, crisp paper of such high quality, one would have to search the great libraries of Europe for its equivalent today. The type, velvet black, had been cut into the paper by metal, each letter set by hand. The typefaces, elegant yet simple, had been carefully selected by the bookmaker or possibly even the author.
Sister had observed that modern books, printed on cheap paper, thermographed print, disintegrated in decades. The author not only had nothing to do with the process but was actively kept from it.
Sister inhaled the special tang of her library as she worked. Old fires, leather bindings, a scented candle on the mantelpiece added to the allure of the room along with the Heather St. Claire Davis painting of herself on Lafayette leaping down an embankment over a creek bed, hounds in the near distance, the huntsman right up with them.
The twenty-first century, mass production having vulgarized just about every single human activity, still could not cheapen foxhunting. For this, the older woman was profoundly grateful. This pastime could never become a vehicle for mass merchandisers. Whippers-in would not be embroidering advertisements for tires, cars, or deodorant on their coat sleeves. Saddle pads would not bear a pharmaceutical logo. Velvet hunt caps, black derbies, glistening silk top hats would be spared a dotcom address.
Sister wasn’t a snob, far from it. Nor was she especially rich. Raymond, to his eternal credit, had done well as a stockbroker, leaving her with a portfolio large enough to provide for her needs. Raymond figured life would never get cheaper, only more and more expensive, as Americans demanded ever more services, which meant ever more taxes. He knew the cities would always vote themselves more money. Country people would have to fight not only for their way of life but simply to have a life. He had invested wisely and died knowing that whatever his failings as a husband, he had been a good provider.