“It’s the heat. But that doesn’t change the fact that thatcat is a holy horror.”Cora curled farther into her cool mud crater. She wasn’t going to talk to the calico.
Golly reached the chain-link fence.“Good afternoon,Diana. Your nose is dirty.”
Diana sat down at the chain-link fence.“Keeps thebugs off.”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t get bugs.”
“Liar,”Cora called out.
“Tick hotel,”Golly fired right back.
“Flea bait. You hallucinate. I’ve seen you chase theghosts of fleas,”Cora replied, giggling.
“I have never hallucinated in my life, Cora. And youcan’t get my goat, ha,”she said,“because you’re a lowerlife-form and I’m not letting you needle me.”
“Oh, if you aren’t hallucinating, then what are youdoing when you, for no reason, leap straight into the air,twist around, race to a tree, climb up, drop down, and doit all over again? You’re mental.”
“Spoken like the unimaginative canine you are.”Golly raised her chin, half closing her eyes.“I’m being visitedby The Muse on those occasions.”
“I’m going to throw up,”Cora said, and made a gagging sound.
“Worms!”Golly triumphantly decreed.
Diana, thoroughly enjoying the hostilities, said,“Justgot wormed Monday.”
“Well, I walked down here in the heat of the day togive you girls some news, but since you’re insulting me Ithink I’ll go hiss at the puppies, teach them who’s bossaround here.”
“You can tell me.”Diana lowered her voice and her head, her dirt-encrusted nose touching the fence.
“You’re a sensible girl,”the cat replied.
In truth, Diana was sensible and also quite sweet. She loved everybody.
Cora, upright now, walked over.“Well?”
“Who said I was talking to you?”Golly opened her eyes wide.
“Oh come on, Golliwog, you know we’re dying to hear it,”Cora coaxed, buttering her up.
The luxurious calico leaned forward, her nose on the chain-link fence now.“It was Nola. The family dentistidentified her not an hour ago.”
Cora thought for a moment.“This will stir up a hornet’s nest.”
“If only we had known her … we hear and smell things.”Diana frowned.“We might have been able tohelp find out something useful.”
“The last hound that knew Nola Bancroft would havebeen Archie’s grandmother. She lived to be eighteen, youknow,”Cora said.“It was a long, long time ago.”
“You’d think if any of us had known about the murder, or if any of the horses over at After All Farm knew,they would have told. We’d know. We pass those thingsdown,”Diana said.
“Undomesticated.”Cora meant that undomesticated animals might have witnessed something at the time.
“Who lives that long?”Diana wondered.
“Turtles. That snapping turtle at After All Farm, thehuge one in the back pond, he’s got to be forty years old,I swear it,”Cora said.
“Amphibians aren’t terribly smart, you know. Theirbrain moves at about the same speed they do,”Golly said with a laugh. Then she thought again.“But they doremember everything.”
“How old is Athena?”Diana asked, thinking of the great horned owl.“They live a long time, don’t they?”
“Don’t know,”the cat and hound said in unison.
Diana lay down, her head on her paws, her face now level with Golly’s face, almost.“Why does it matter? Tous, I mean?”
“Because it really will stir up a hornet’s nest, Diana.People start buzzing. Old dirt will get turned over, and I promise you, ladies, I promise you, this will all comeback to the Jefferson Hunt Club. Sooner or later, everything in this part of the world does,”Cora said.
“Think Sister knows that?”Diana asked. She loved Sister.
“She knows. Sister has lived almost six hound lifetimes. Think of what she knows,”Cora said, shaking her head in wonder.
“Well, exactly how do you think this will affect us?Will people not pay their dues or something like that?” Diana asked.
“No. People drop out when it’s a bad season. No huntclub has control over the weather, but people act asthough they do, the fair-weather hunters, I mean.”Cora observed human behavior closely.“Or when there’s aclub blowup, which happens about every seven years.Archie always said humans do things in seven-year cycles. They just don’t recognize it.”
“Crawford Howard.”Golly curled her upper lip as she said his name.
“Up to his old tricks?”Cora snapped at a low-flying dragonfly.
“Cat intuition.”Golly smiled.“I have an idea. Whatever happened to Nola in 1981 was well done, if you will.When you’re hunting you all go places humans don’t.Sometimes even Shaker can’t keep up with you when territory’s rough. You might find something or smell something out there that could help solve this mess. After all,the best noses in the world are”—she paused for effect—“bloodhounds, but you all are second.”
“Second to none!”Cora’s voice rose, which caused a few sleepers to open one eye and grumble.
Humans ranked the noses of bloodhounds first, followed by bassets second and foxhounds third, with all other canines following. Foxhounds thought this an outrage. Of course they were best. Besides, who in the world could hunt behind a bloodhound? The poor horse would die of boredom. This was a pure article of foxhound faith.
“This has to do with hunting? Is that what you’re really thinking, Golly?”Diana noticed a few of the boys in the kennel were quarreling over a stick. How they had the energy to even growl in this heat mystified her. One of the troublemakers, of course, was her brother, Dragon.
“Yes, think about it. Cubbing starts September seventh. It’s the end of July. Stuff happens when you’rehunting. Everything speeds up. People reveal themselvesout there.”
“We sure hear them scream for Jesus.”Diana giggled as she recalled a few of the oaths elicited by a stiff fence.
“I have never figured that out. The horse jumps thefence, not them,”Cora said, laughing.
“Oh, but that’s just it, Cora. Sometimes the humantakes the fence and the horse doesn’t.”
They all laughed at that.
“We’ll keep our nose to the ground,”Cora promised.
“I have the strangest feeling that Guy Ramy will becoming back.”Golly lowered her voice again.“More catintuition.”
In a way, Golly was right.
CHAPTER 6
The Hapsburg saphhire glittered on the small glass-topped table. Outside, the long summer twilight cloaked the grand old trees surrounding Roughneck Farm, and scarlet tendrils of sunset seemed to ensnare the wisteria that climbed all over the back porch. The rose and gold light reflected off the windowpanes of the neat gardening shed, casting intricate designs across the emerald lawn.
Tedi and Sister sat on the screened-in back porch. The humidity was particularly oppressive this evening. Sister drank dark hot tea while Tedi nursed a martini as well as a glass of iced green tea. The mercury was dropping with evening’s approach. The humidity seemed determined to hang on. Sister believed drinking a hot drink on a hot day kept you healthier. No one else could stand anything hot.
Raleigh and Golliwog were curled up together in Raleigh’s Black Watch plaid dog bed. Rooster, Peter Wheeler’s lovely harrier, was stretched out in his own bed, covered in the Wallace tartan, next to Raleigh. Peter, an ex-lover of Sister’s, had bequeathed his handsome hound to her and his entire estate to the Jefferson Hunt to be administeredsolely by the master—not the Board of Directors. Peter’s eight decades on this earth had taught him a benign dictatorship was infinitely preferable to democracy. He died peacefully last year, a quiet end to a productive life.
Both Sister and Tedi now knew Nola had not died peacefully, a fact they were currently grappling with.
The animals listened intently, even Golly, who under normal circumstances would have told Raleigh how lucky he was to have her in his special porch bed.
“I knew. I always knew. So did you,” Tedi said sadly.