“That’s why you sent Walter—in case the news has to be broken now.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” Sister grinned, an appealing, girlish grin for a seventy-one-year-old woman, thin as a blade and just as sharp.
“Poor Tedi, not that I wouldn’t cry my eyes out if Outlaw died, mind you.” Betty referred to her adored and sturdily built horse.
“We all would. Even that asshole Crawford Howard would cry if Czapaka died.” Crawford was a rich, blowhard member of the Hunt, and his horse, Czapaka, endured him with only occasional moments of justified rebellion. Sister and Betty had known each other for all of Betty’s forty-odd years,so Sister spoke with complete candor to her. Had it been anyone but an old friend she would never have openly criticized Crawford.
“Tedi’s such a dear soul.” Betty sighed.
“Strange life.”
“I don’t wish inherited wealth on anyone. It’s a real curse,” Betty declared. “It’s one thing to earn a pile of money, it’s another to never work for anything at all.”
“I agree. I’ve known very few people who weren’t scalded by it in one way or t’other.” She pronounced “another” the old Virginia way.
“Tedi has surely had her share of suffering.”
“That she has.”
They halted their conversation, rising as a large backhoe chugged over the hill, down the farm road, then rattled through the covered bridge. Walter stood behind the driver, Jimmy Chirios, an industrious, cheerful young man only two years in the Bancrofts’ employ.
Jimmy cut the motor and looked down at Peppermint.“Just like that?”
“A peaceful death.” Sister had to shade her eyes to look up at him in the morning sun.
Walter hopped off the equipment.“Jimmy, we can’t bury him here. The creek floods wicked bad every couple of years. Higher ground.”
Domino and Merry Andrew, having moved away when the backhoe arrived, now returned to stand near their fallen friend.
“This side of the bridge is anchored on high ground. You wouldn’t have to drag him but a hundred yards. Did you bring a chain?” Sister inquired.
“Yep.” Jimmy handed the thick chain to Walter, who looped it around Peppermint’s hind legs, then snapped the heavy hook around another loop of chain on the back of the big yellow machine.
“Slow,” Walter ordered as the two women walked up to what they concluded would be the ideal spot above the abutment.
As Peppermint was dragged to his final resting place, Domino, his bay head bowed, and Merry Andrew, curious as always, followed behind, somewhat obscuring the mark Peppermint’s body made. Walter unhitched the chain, then unwrapped it from Peppermint. Jimmy started digging.
The rise, just above the bridge abutment, was a good place. Rain had softened the earth two days earlier, and the clawed jaw of the backhoe easily bit into it. Jimmy rapidly dug out a seven-foot-deep trench, then squared the sides, forming a tidy rectangle. As they were all country people, they knew that animals could smell decay under the earth. A good six feet or more for a grave was mandatory or, sure enough, whatever was buried would be resurrected by scavengers. And much as one might have missed the deceased, one did not wish the return of a hoof or a leg.
“Looks good,” Walter hollered through hands cupped to his mouth.
But Jimmy decided the side of the grave closest to the bridge needed more tidying.
He lowered the jaws into the earth. A crumble of rich alluvial deposit rolled down into the bottom as he swung the captured earth over the side of the grave.
“Stop!” Sister cried. She astonished them all by leaping into the grave.
“What the hell are you doing?” Betty said as Walter leaned over the grave. Then he, too, jumped right in.
At the bottom edge of the freshly dug hole, Walter and Sister stared at the whitened bones of what looked like an elbow.
“Human?” Sister asked.
“I think so.” Walter carefully brushed away the earth until more bone was revealed. Unable to resist, Betty joined them. Jimmy clambered down from the cab of the backhoe and knelt down at the edge of the gaping hole.
“I can’t believe this,” Betty gasped.
Walter kept brushing. More arm bones. Then a hand. Definitely human.
The long rays of the morning sun crept into the tomb, causing the royal blue of a huge sapphire flanked by two diamonds to glitter in the light.
“The Hapsburg sapphire,” Betty whispered.
“Sweet Jesus.” Sister’s hands shook as she reached to touch the sapphire, then pulled back.
CHAPTER 2
Creamy suds of disinfectant swirled down the large kennel drain as Shaker washed the feed room. The female hounds, called bitches or gyps, drowsy after their exercise and breakfast, lounged on the benches on their side of the kennels. The dog hounds on their side, separate from the girls, did likewise as well as being scattered throughout the runs like so many canine statues.
A few hound ears perked up, then dropped back as Sister Jane and Betty hurried into the kennels.
Shaker turned off the power washer.“Sad job putting old Pepper in the ground.” He hung the washer nozzle on a wall hook, then glanced over at his boss and dear friend. “Janie, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Ashen-faced, still a little shaky, she replied,“I have.”
The three repaired to Shaker’s office next to the kennels. The open windows let in the breeze carrying the tang of hound scent.
“Here, you’d better sit down.” He pulled out his desk chair for Sister. “You, too, Betty.” He moved over the spartan extra chair for Betty Franklin, who dropped into it. Betty kept swallowing.
“We have seen a ghost. We have.” Tears welled up in Betty’s expressive eyes.
Shaker, always a bit awkward in emotional situations but a feeling man nonetheless, patted Betty on the back.“On Hangman’s Ridge?” They hadn’t walked out that way, but it was the first thing that popped into his mind. The ridge was reputed to have been haunted since Lawrence Pollard had swung from the oak for having master-minded a land speculation deal that had impoverished all who had invested in it in 1702.
Sister shook her silver head.“Nola Bancroft.”
He perched his spare frame on the edge of the desk, a flicker of disbelief on his sunburnt features.“What are you talking about?”
Sister closed her eyes, inhaled deeply.“After you took hounds back, Walter got Jimmy to bury Peppermint. We couldn’t put him by Snake Creek, so Betty and I thought just above the abutment by the covered bridge would be high enough.” She took a deep breath. “Well, Jimmy did a fine job, but I saw bones. I jumped in, Walterafter me—”
“Me too,” Betty chimed in. “It was an elbow.”
“Walter brushed away the earth, and the arm bones appeared and then the hand. The Hapsburg sapphire was still on her finger… .”
Raleigh wedged himself tightly next to Sister’s leg since he could tell she was upset.
“My God, I don’t believe it! After all these years.”
“Twenty-one years,” Betty added. “Just a pile of whitened bones and that ring. The little metal belt buckle from her dress was there, too. Remember when Paul Ramy kept asking each of us what Nola was wearing the last time we saw her? Well, we’d all just seen her at Sorrel Buruss’s party.”
“She had on a blue flowered sundress,” Sister recalled. “Everyone teased her that she bought the dress because the blue matched her eyes and she sassed back that she bought it because it showed off her cleavage.” Sister smiled, remembering the impossibly beautiful younger daughter of Tedi and Edward Bancroft.
Nola had been twenty-four years old when she’d disappeared more than two decades earlier.
“Uh, is she still in the grave?” Shaker lowered his voice.
“I don’t know.” Betty shifted in her seat. “The sheriff showed up with Gaston Marshall, the coroner. Ben took statements from each of us and told us we could leave.”