Рита Браун - Out Of Hounds

“I would give anything if Mrs. Clinton had not said that.” Gray meant it.

“Me, too, but having said it, you and I and other rural people are more or less damned. Maybe this is the first shot across the bow.” She feared and always would fear people who felt they had the right to tell you how to live. “Imagine what it was like when religion was the stone that was thrown at you? And that wasn’t that long ago. Well, the Dissolution was but you know what I mean. Being Catholic was an issue during the Kennedy election. I was young but I sure remember. My mother was appalled that people said the stuff they said.”

Feeling better thanks to the hot soup and the good scotch, Gray smiled. “Well, my mother, God rest her soul, used to say, ‘People are no better than they should be.’ Aunt Daniella certainly lived up to that.”

As Aunt Daniella married three men plus enjoyed numerous affairs, she did.

“She looked great, by the way. Well, she always does and she and Yvonne are almost inseparable. Yvonne is finally relaxing, the anger over her now despised ex-husband has dissipated. When she and Victor would visit Tootie at Custis Hall, I could feel their disapproval. Wasn’t a lot better when Tootie enrolled at Princeton either, disapproval from afar. Given that she is Tootie’s mother I walked carefully around her. But back to this barking thing, let’s say someone has had it with Crawford Howard,” she posited a suspicion. “Wouldn’t this be a way to get even with him?”

Gray smiled. “Well, they’d be risking years in court because he would never give up and he has the money to never give up. The law exists for those who can afford it.”

She smiled back. “You’re right, you usually are, but we would all be dragged into it. Foxhunters have to stick together.”

Leaning back he noticed Golly’s claw under the box top. “Golly, don’t you dare.”

She looked Gray directly in the face, her golden eyes wide. “Bother.”

“Golly.” Sister stood up, took the package away from the gorgeous cat, opened the broom closet, slipping it inside. “Until I can take it upstairs. She has to know everything.”

“I think she already does.”

“It really is a beautiful sweater.”

He finished his scotch, exhaling with pleasure. “Here we are talking about the dog ordinance, how long before a motion is floated to punish cat owners when the cats kill birds? Hear that, Golly?”

“Good Lord.”

“I’ll scratch their eyes out!” Golly threatened.

Once in the library, Sister’s favorite room, they sat with their feet up on hassocks. Gray had his arm around Sister’s shoulders. The warmth of each other felt like a glow for each of them. Theirs was a tested love, one that endured and deepened.

“Gray, what if you and Ronnie,” she named the club treasurer, “got together with Keswick, Farmington Hunt Club, and the Farmington Beagle Club, along with Waldingfield Beagles, and yes, Crawford, and pulled numbers. It would take time, but put together a package of the economic benefits to those communities hosting hunt clubs. The truck dealers alone would plump up those numbers. The real estate agents. The hay dealers, the food dealers.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “Okay. Okay. It will take time but it is a good idea.” He sighed. “Crawford will be a handful.”

Unknown to either of them, Crawford Howard sat in his living room with the Albemarle Sheriff’s Department. Someone had stolen his priceless Munnings painting from his room while he and his wife attended a hospital fundraiser. Whoever did it knew how to disarm an expensive alarm system and knew the Howards owned a stunning piece of art.

CHAPTER 4

February 8, 2020 Saturday

The painting by Sir Alfred Munnings of his wife, Violet, standing with a dappled gray, Isaac, is so beautiful, so perfect that the vision of it has passed into national consciousness in the British Isles and North America. Even people who are not horsemen would recognize it if they saw it, given that it represents an eternal bond between woman and horse. Violet, painted in 1923, wears a black sidesaddle habit, her hair folded in a bun, hairnet over that, her top hat glistening. Her left hand rests on her hip, her right hand holds Isaac’s reins. His head is dipped slightly, a moment of quiet understanding between horse and rider. The size of the stolen painting, fifty inches by forty, meant the thief or thieves must have been prepared. Certainly they wouldn’t risk a work of art worth millions to rough handling in transport.

Sister sat with Crawford Howard and his wife, Marty, in their huge den, the empty space where the painting hung underscoring their loss.

Crawford, although restoring Old Paradise across from Tattenhall Station, lived in a grand house, Beasley Hall, that he had built when first moving to Albermarle County ten years ago. The entrance to the place, guarded by two huge bronze boars, each atop a stone pillar to which the wrought-iron gates were affixed, also announced if not his intentions at least his interests. They were replicas of Richard Neville’s insignia, the boar. The Duke of Warwick, confidant and adviser to Edward IV, proved brilliant, filled with high courage, high ambition. He was ultimately disenchanted with the young man he helped place on England’s throne. He was Warwick the kingmaker but he underestimated Edward’s sexual impulsiveness. Elizabeth Woodville, a young widow, was and is considered even today to be one of the most beautiful women to have ever lived. She upset Warwick’s applecart, as he had planned a marriage with the daughter of the king of France, politically useful but not as beautiful as Elizabeth.

Crawford felt he, too, carried Warwick’s intelligence, ability to see ahead, and high courage. He wasn’t afraid to take chances, which set him apart from most Virginians, who are sluggish about risks. He branched out from strip malls, turning everything he touched to gold. But like his hero he often neglected to consider how irrational the human animal can be. Not that he was ever irrational. Just ask him.

Sister was still in hunt gear, for she had driven directly over while Betty and Gray carried the horses back to the farm. Today’s hunt had been erratic. You just never know about scent. She pulled off her boots on the big bootjack placed by the front door for just such an occasion.

Marty kept the house to perfection. Sister’s stockinged feet glided across the floor.

Facing the two as she sat by the fireplace she gratefully sipped a hot Assam tea. Sister and Marty got along famously. Not so much with Crawford, as he was loath to forgive her for not selecting him joint master years back. Instead she had picked Walter Lungrun, M.D., who by Crawford’s standards was a pauper. Walter was Big Ray’s outside child, which Sister suspected even while Ray was alive. Walter’s father, the man considered his father, accepted his wife’s transgression and raised Walter as his own. It was never discussed. The young man rode as a child. Sister had known him all his life. There was no need to trumpet his genetics. But Walter touched her heart and he was great with people. Crawford barked orders. Not a good idea. Money can buy you everything but respect. He would have been an economic godsend as a joint master, but a disaster in every other fashion.

Sister and Crawford managed a truce over the years, working together on those boards on which they served.

“I spent a fortune on that security system,” he fumed.

“You always have the best but criminals study what they do as we study what we do. The smartest can figure things out. Crawford, if people can hack the Pentagon they can get into anything.”

Marty put a plate of scones on the coffee table, poured herself tea, and sat down. “That was my fiftieth birthday present. Has any woman ever received anything better?” She smiled at her husband.