Рита Браун - Homeward Hound

“We are and we’ll ask you for ideas. Here’s what we’re doing. Coming up with hand phrases.” She read what they’d already thought about.

“Carry fire in one hand and water in the other,” Weevil said.

“I’ve never heard of that.” Tootie was trying to think of something.

“My mother says that. How about, a dab hand?”

“Don’t hear that much anymore, but it means you’re good at something. Handy.” Sister grinned.

“Did I say beat you hands down?” Gray took another sip of ice cold beer.

“Yes. Another good one. Hand-me-down,” Sister said.

Tootie finally came up with something. “Fall into the wrong hands. Oh, got another one. Wringing hands.”

“Keep talking.” Sister encouraged them.

“One hand tied behind your back.” Weevil speared a sausage.

“Whip hand. That should have been the first one we thought of,” Gray said.

“Grease your palm.” Weevil was liking this.

“Um-m-m, upper hand.” Tootie then added, “Hand in the cookie jar. That’s one of my mom’s whenever she reads about politicians.”

“And they’re supposed to have their hand on the tiller.” Weevil was quick.

“Hand in glove.” Gray came right back. “Speaking of politicians made me think of that one.”

“Hand in hand,” Sister wrote.

“Blood on your hands,” Gray added.

Tootie had another one. “And finger in the pie.”

“Good one.” Sister wrote, then looked up at them. “Play the hand you’re given.”

“Getting harder.” Weevil finished off his mashed potatoes. “Get a handle on it. Not exactly hand.”

“No, but it counts.” Sister wrote. “The Devil finds work for idle hands.”

Gray leaned back. “From my cold dead hands.”

“Honey, that’s too close for comfort”—she sighed—“not that any of this is comfortable.”

“Heavy-handed,” Weevil piped up.

“Well, yes. Gray’s had to put up with me but I now think so much of what has happened has some symbolism. If we can figure out the symbolism, we might be closer to the killer.”

“That’s just it, honey, we are close to the killer.” Gray was solemn. “That’s why Weevil is here. That’s why Sam is staying with the Van Dorns, which he did once the first hand was found.” He looked at Tootie. “We don’t want your mother alone and we all knew she might not want him in her house. This is the next best thing.”

“Is Mom in danger?”

“We don’t know, but the first hand was found out there in Chapel Cross. That’s where Gregory disappeared and that’s where Rory was found.”

“I still can’t believe his mother didn’t come to his service.” Tootie squeezed her lime into the bubbling tonic water.

“Tootie, you’ve never really seen poor whites until you’ve lived in the South. Many are good, but when they go bad, they’re in a class by themselves,” Gray warned her.

“Don’t you think that’s everywhere? The ignorant and the brutal?” Sister scribbled. “And that’s what worries me. Our killer is neither ignorant nor poor. He may be brutal. I don’t know. One can kill but not be brutal. But this person is intelligent and, in his way, sending the rest of us messages.”

“We’re not in safe hands,” Tootie responded.

That same Sunday evening, Ben Sidell, computer in front of him, was on the phone with the Goochland County sheriff.

“The medical examiner said she’d get on it tomorrow, first thing in the morning.”

The sheriff replied, “Liz has asked me to tell her the minute the exam is done. She’ll have John Noon Western’s funeral home retrieve the body. She wants an Episcopalian funeral. She said she wants him back and she wants his hands.”

“Actually, the hands are already there.” Ben checked on the dates on his computer screen.

“Damned mess, isn’t it?” The Goochland sheriff commiserated. “By the way, she asked for Gregory’s ring. She said he wore a ring on the little finger of his left hand. Saint Hubert, I don’t know Saint Hubert but I’m a Methodist.”

“No ring was found. Saint Hubert is the patron saint of hunters. I’ll double-check around here but I’m certain no ring was on that hand, what was left of it, and the white cotton glove.”

“I’ll let her know.”

“Thanks.”

CHAPTER 34

Water sprayed off the huge waterwheel at Mill Ruins. The millrace rarely froze at the mill itself, although it did freeze away from it.

February 6, cold, clear, a few clouds in the sky did not look promising, but foxes get hungry and Mill Ruins now hosted more than in the past. James, the oldest, lived behind the mill. Ewald, young, last season made a den in an outbuilding not far from the barn. Both these foxes were reds. Hortensia, a gray, lived in the big hay shed, which she quite liked. Her den, underground, provided protection when needed but she also liked to burrow into the big round hay bales. Sometimes she could hear mice chatter in those bales. The mice could smell her so no little marauder stumbled on Hortensia. Way at the back of this remarkable place Grenville, another gray, had a den in the storage shed.

Inside the large mill the gears still worked, the millstone still viable. Unfortunately, no one knew how to use it. Walter, who had a ninety-nine-year lease on the place, thought about finding a miller to rent it out, but then he considered the traffic on the farm with people bringing their grain. He told himself if he ever retired from medicine, he’d learn to be a miller. At one time this was the farthest-west mill in the county. After the Revolutionary War more people moved west. Numbers forged over the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah Valley. During the Articles of Confederation people cleared the land, plowed, planted. Once we created the Constitution, more stability, brave souls kept going into the Ohio Valley, land beckoning them. Citizens of the new republic had been promised the vast expanse of that valley would be made safe for them. However, Spain and England fostered other ideas, hoping to pin the newborn nation between the Appalachian Chain, the Alleghenies, and the sea while they took over the fertile valley, hoping someday to defeat us by arms. Monarchies feared this new political entity so they stirred up the tribes, made deals, and blood flowed. Then again, never underestimate one nation’s greed for the land of another.

Sister, on Midshipman, hunting him for the first time thanks to Weevil’s work, looked west and wondered did Americans truly know their own history anymore? She listened to the lap, lap of the waterwheel, knowing that cornmeal, grains kept those early settlers alive. That and being a good shot, bringing down deer. And sometimes bringing down each other.

Being Tuesday, the field was small. Walter always hunted his place and since doctors put in their schedules early, he could do it.

Weevil walked down the farm road, casting hounds behind the mill. James heard the commotion, stayed put. So hounds regrouped heading down the farm road, two large pastures on either side of the solid fencing. Interest here and there but nothing special. On they walked until finally just at woods’ edge, Pansy opened. A short run, a couple of bracing jumps, but this was a pick them up, put them down kind of day. Scent just wouldn’t carry.

Weevil worried that he wasn’t doing enough, didn’t know enough, but he was wise enough not to push or scold.

Finally, into the woods, steep decline toward Shootrough, the back of the farm, hounds screamed. Betty kicked it into high gear as did Tootie, who saw a large black shape in front of her. Iota snorted but kept going, closing the gap. A black bear, easily four hundred pounds, rumbled, the whole pack at his heels.

Being no fool, the bear climbed a pin oak, the branches thick so he half positioned himself on one of the big ones, looking down at the hounds.