“Huh.” Shaker was considering all this as they climbed upward.
“If you want to kill someone and you don’t want to get caught, I guess you plan for years or you plan pretty intensely and wait for the wind to blow in your favor. I don’t know if things had turned out differently, if the young entry hadn’t bolted onto that drag, that Fontaine would be alive. But whoever did it was waiting. The drag was brilliant. If it didn’t work, he would have tried later. Maybe something in the hunt field. Maybe something somewhere else. This strikes me as planned but still trusting to luck. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
“Sister, what you’re trying to say is our killer is one bold son of a bitch.” Shaker, breathing hard, was relieved to finally reach the top of the ravine.
They were at the back side of the meadows surrounding Hangman’s Ridge. The ridge was a quarter of a mile in front of them to the west. They’d made a lopsided semicircle around it. Soldier Road was to their right, the bridge spanning the ravine and the creek immediately behind them. This early in the morning, the roads icy, there was no traffic.
“Only a mile back home.” Shaker smiled, as he intended to stay in the meadow. The walking would be much easier.
“I suppose Ben Sidell will question everyone that hunted. Someone is bound to have seen Fontaine stop.”
“Maybe,” Doug answered Sister.
“You know last hunt season I noticed he’d stop to relieve himself. Maybe he was getting prostate problems. I suppose they can occur at about any time.”
“Wouldn’t know.” Doug laughed.
“You will.” Shaker laughed right back. “Then they go up in there with a Roto-Rooter.”
“Ah, the indignities of age.” She laughed along with them.
“But not there, Sister, not there.” Shaker laughed even harder.
“Honey, that’s where your indignities begin.”
They laughed the whole way back to the kennel, keeping in this vein.
Later when Sister walked back in the kitchen, Raleigh, who knew where lazy Golly would be, snuck up on her and blew in her ear.
“P-s-s-t,” she spat.
“Scares the pee right out of me.” Raleigh giggled, then told the cat everything as Sister called the sheriff.
“You knew about this. You left me knowing what the foxes and the hounds were going to do?” The cat was desolate.
“You snooze, you lose.”
“I’ll get you for this, Raleigh Arnold. I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do!”
CHAPTER 42
That same evening the clouds lifted, creating an odd sight: dark cumulus, Prussian blue overhead, with a thin band of turquoise twilight underneath.
Everyone on the farm was behind on their chores because of the long hound walk and the sheriff coming to pick up the rope. He asked questions about everything, which they expected. No doubt he would check today’s reports with Saturday’s, searching for discrepancies or new information. No one could accuse him of not being thorough.
Just as Sister and Doug were bedding down the horses they heard a trailer rumble down the drive.
Raleigh hurried outside, leaving Golly inside. He let out a perfunctory bark, then shut up. Golly was so upset at missing events she spent the remainder of the day following Raleigh around, to his amusement, not to hers.
“I’ll see who it is.” Sister slid back the heavy metal stall door, a mesh to allow cooling breezes in the summer.
In winter Doug or Sister could throw on an extra blanket. Keeping a horse cool in summer’s oppressive heat proved far more difficult than keeping them warm in winter.
The thin band of turquoise above the mountains slowly turned purple.
Sorrel Buruss cut the motor on the Chevy dually truck and stepped out into the cool air. “Sister, will you take Gunpowder and Keepsake? I should have called but I don’t know. I can’t seem to keep anything straight in my head and I know Fontaine would want the horses well cared for and used. They’ll sit around in the barn and that’s not right.”
“Sorrel.” Sister put her arm around the pretty woman’s shoulders. “I’ll give them the best of care. We’ll hunt them and when you’ve had time to think things through if you want to sell them, I will.”
“I’d like to donate them to the hunt.” Her lower lip trembled.
“Let’s wait and see how much money you have left when all is said and done. Okay?”
Sorrel, a well-groomed woman even in grief, cried. She couldn’t speak.
“Doug can unload. Come on. Let me get you a cup of coffee or a drink if it’s too late for coffee. All right?” As Sorrel nodded her agreement, Sister walked back into the stable. “Doug, will you unload Gunsmoke and Keepsake? We’ll be caring for them for a while.”
“Sure.”
Once in Sister’s kitchen, the fire roaring in the huge fireplace, Sorrel relaxed a little. “The funeral is tomorrow and I couldn’t stand one more deeply sympathetic condolence. One more person at the door. God, I must be awful. The kids are at Mom’s. They’re upset but at the same time kind of excited, all the food, flowers, people.”
“I often wonder what stays with them. The telling detail. I don’t know. I remember a great deal from my childhood and yet when my brother was alive he’d recall the same event not so much in contradiction but with a different emphasis. It used to make me wonder about my mind.”
“I gave up on my mind a long time ago.” Sorrel half smiled, grateful to be out of the gloom of her own home. “I apologize for just dropping in on you. I could have called. . . . I just went to the barn and pulled those guys out of their stalls. At least I remembered their halters and lead. I have moments when I can’t remember anything. I’m moving but I’m not functioning. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” Sister offered her some cookies, then sat down herself.
Raleigh reposed by the fireplace. Golly sat on the kitchen counter.
“I don’t know how I’m going to get through tomorrow.”
“You will.”
“How did you do it? Twice.”
“I told myself that the men in my life wouldn’t take kindly to a wife or a mother who fell apart in front of God and everybody.”
“I guess we just go on—I mean, I don’t even know why I’m here. I mean here as in alive. I don’t seem to have a purpose. I never did. I had a purpose as a wife and a mother but I can’t see anything. I—”
“Sorrel, maybe we don’t have a purpose. Maybe we’re here to just live. But whatever, right now you go through the motions. The substance of your life may be revealed later.”
“You have a purpose.” Sorrel’s face was so innocent and so open.
“To live.”
“You have the hunt club.”
Sister smiled. “Yes. I doubt that philosophers or even those people eager to live your life for you would find that much of a purpose but I have Nature, I love God’s creation, and this is a way to appreciate it.”
“You’ve lived a fabulous life.”
“Well, let’s just say I may not have done much good in this life but I haven’t done much harm either.” She smiled, pushing another cookie at Sorrel. “Eat. I know it’s hard but if you don’t your blood sugar will go haywire and you’ll feel like you’re on a roller coaster. I’ve got some nice cold chicken. How about a chicken sandwich with lettuce, pumpernickel bread?”
“Yeah!” Golly shouted.
Sister sternly eyed the calico.
“I don’t think so, thank you. Board . . . What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Really.”
“Sister Jane, can you think of anyone who would kill Fontaine?”
After a considerable pause Sister said, “I can think of plenty of people who might want to kill him but none who would.”
“He lived every single second while he was here.” Sorrel smiled ruefully. “I adjusted. I guess you could say my flame didn’t burn as bright as Fontaine’s.”