“I’ve been thinking. He didn’t go alone. And someone who really knew the territory, despite the fog or maybe even because of it, could have taken him up there, shot him, flown down the back side of the ridge, and been at the trailers not long after everyone else came in.”
“True.”
They sat there on the beat-up wooden chairs that had been donated to the kennel office almost thirty years ago.
He drummed his fingers on the metal desktop.“Why would Ralph willingly ride with his killer?”
“Maybe he didn’t know he was going to be killed. Maybe the killer said he needed help or he knew a shortcut—”
“Ralph knew Hangman’s Ridge. He had to know he was going wrong.”
“He still could have been bamboozled in some fashion.”
“Killer could have forced him up there.” Shaker wiped his hands on his thighs. “And somewhere along the way he made Ralph dismount.”
“Sybil was out there.” Sister shifted uneasily in her chair.
“Easy to slip away in the fog.” He poured himself more coffee. “I’m drinking too much of this stuff. So are you.”
“What if whatever the killer knew about Ralph was enough to ensure his cooperation?” Sister ignored his coffee comment.
“I wonder if we’ll ever know.”
She said with weariness,“Shaker, I believe it was Ralph who called me about looking in the river off Norwood Bridge.”
“Jesus.” Shaker sat up straight because some pieces were falling into place.
“Just hear me out. I don’t think Ralph killed Nola. He might have killed Guy; he couldn’t stand him because of Nola. But I don’t think he killed her. I think he accepted that he’d lost her. That romance was busted, and he was already courting Frances. On the rebound maybe, but people are like that.”
“They are.”
“But somehow he was connected with those murders. There is no doubt in my mind he helped the killer lift that fiftyfive-gallon drum and toss it into the James.”
“But over all these years you’d think he’d have told, or the guilt would have gotten to him.”
“Well, I couldn’t live with it. You couldn’t live with it. But obviously he could. And maybe, just maybe, he stood to gain by his actions.”
“I suppose he gained his life.” Shaker shrugged.
“Why?”
“Well, he knew the killer might kill him if he didn’t help.”
“Possibly. I think, though, that he came out ahead in some other way.”
“Was Ralph a vengeful enough man to want to see Nola dead?”
Sister turned this over in her mind.“No, but he might have wanted to see her suffer. You know, to see her finally get dumped by someone. But you’re right, I don’t think Ralph could have helped her killer. Which leads us to—what?”
Shaker’s thick auburn eyebrows jerked upward. “The killer might have told him Guy killed Nola. Ralph exploded and killed Guy. Or Nola’s killer had already done the deed and needed help disposing of Guy’s body. He’d be plenty tired from digging Nola’s grave, not that Ralph would know that.”
She shook her head.“If Ralph had known Nola was killed or thought she was killed by Guy, then he would have told Tedi and Edward.”
“I don’t think so. Look, we can never know what goes through someone’s head, but maybe Ralph thought, ‘done is done.’ He can’t bring her back. Maybe he had a special sympathy for the murderer. Or maybe the killer could somehow pin it on him? How could Ralph prove he was innocent?”
“That’s a good point.” She didn’t know if too much coffee was making her jittery or if she was jittery anyway. “Either way, he was vulnerable.”
Shaker slapped the table.“And who stood to gain more than Sybil? She’d get Nola’s part of the Bancroft fortune. Millions upon millions upon millions. Right?”
“We know one thing for certain we’d only suspected before.”
“What?”
“The killer really is in our hunt field.”
CHAPTER 31
The rain stopped Sunday morning, revealing skies of robin’s egg blue and temperatures in the middle sixties.
Sister, Shaker, and Walter met Ben Sidell at the mailbox for Roughneck Farm. They drove in two four-wheel-drive trucks to the cornfield, then parked off the farm road to walk to the coop between the cornfield and the Bancroft woods.
Impressed by Walter’s attention to detail at Norwood Bridge, the sheriff was glad the doctor accompanied them. Sister just felt better when Walter was around, although she didn’t really know why. The same was true for Shaker. He grounded her.
The mud sucked on their work boots. The ends of their pants’ legs were sopping wet from the grass.
Raleigh and Rooster bounded along with them. At first Ben resisted, but Sister convinced him their superior senses might turn up something helpful.
A half-moon puddle glistened before the coop, the depression the result of many hooves digging in before the jump.
Ben crouched down. The rains had washed away hoofprints. He stood up, leaning his hands on the top kick-board as he studied what had been the landing side of the coop on the way home from Saturday’s hunt. All he had found near the body was Ralph’s new flask. He’d hoped he’d find more here.
“And this was the last place anyone saw Ralph?”
“Yes,” Walter answered. “It was the last any of us saw him, those of us who stayed with Edward.”
“Shaker, Betty, and I left him at the apple orchard,” Sister reminded Ben.
“Right.” He cupped his chin in his right hand. “And you couldn’t see the hand in front of your face.”
“Right,” Walter again replied.
“Well, how’d you get over the coop?”
“Trusted my horse,” Walter said.
“And you still jumped it?” Ben thought these foxhunters were crazy.
“Sheriff, you do things in the hunt field you’d never do anywhere else.” Walter heard a caw as St. Just flew overhead.
“Over here,”Raleigh barked at Sister.
Sister walked to where both the Doberman and the harrier stood. A sodden handkerchief lay in the cleared path between the cornfield and the fence line.“Sheriff, I don’t want to touch this.”
They hurried over, and Ben knelt down and peered at the handkerchief. He pulled on a thin latex glove, picked up the wet, muddy handkerchief, and dropped it in a plastic bag.
“Keep coming,”Rooster, farther down the fence line, called out.
Shaker walked up to the hound.“Sheriff. A string glove.”
The white woven glove lay in a puddle.
A few minutes later the other glove was found where the cornfield curled right toward a small tributary feeding into Broad Creek.
The four humans and two dogs, wet to the knees, ankle deep in mud, sloshed to the base of Hangman’s Ridge.
“Hansel and Gretel,” Sister sorrowfully said. “Maybe Ralph dropped or threw away his gloves and handkerchief on the way.”
Shaker exhaled.“Anyone could have dropped gloves or a handkerchief. I just don’t know why Ralph would have left the other people. It makes no sense to me even if he was nervous. Wouldn’t there be protection in numbers?”
“Guilt—or he snapped. People do,” Walter said. He jammed his hands into his jeans pockets, then asked Ben, “What do you think?”
“I try not to jump to conclusions.”
“What can we do?” Walter asked.
“Wait for a crack in the armor,” Ben evenly replied. “The morning newspaper, which I’m sure you read, reported he was shot, the weapon hadn’t been found, and the sheriff is investigating.” He smiled ruefully, folding his arms across his chest. “That’s a nice way of saying we don’t know a damned thing.”
“You’re a doctor, Walter. Do you think our killer is rational?” Sister asked as she knocked one shoe on the other. Mud fell off in red clumps.
“I’m a neurosurgeon, not a psychiatrist.”