Рита Браун - Crazy Like A Fox

“Wonder why they didn’t arrest whoever was operating it, then?” Betty’s eyebrows knitted together.

“Paid off, or maybe it was easier to turn a blind eye. Excessive rectitude in law enforcement usually produces contrary results.”

Ben Sidell walked into the small room, unadorned by certificates, photographs, anything on the walls. The county sheriff’s offices were utilitarian and spartan. No one would accuse the department of squandering funds, what little they were allotted.

“Well?” He pulled out a chair to sit with them for a moment.

“Nothing much. The DeSotos and toothy huge Buicks bring back memories. The few photographs of Main Street do, too. But, Ben, whatever happened to Weevil, not a clue, really. The pictures of the women he was said to have wooed, some of them photos from the society page—no proof. The questioning certainly took into account the class of the woman being questioned. Obviously, no one admitted to anything other than hunting behind him.”

Ben, who had seen the video on Sister’s phone, pulled a photograph of Weevil toward him. “Eerie. The video. The spitting image. And you say Weevil—or whoever—talked to Tom Tipton?”

“Yes. Tom’s words were ‘Weevil to the teeth.’ ”

“Too bad Tom didn’t ask him what happened to him.” Ben smiled a little. “As no one is injured or in apparent danger, there’s not much I can do to help you, but this is highly unusual.”

“Thank you for finding the old file.” Sister folded the papers back together.

“For my Master, anything. Actually, the county records are quite good. Then again, I have to remember that records have been kept since before the Revolutionary War. I flipped through this. Of course, the women are terrifically good-looking. The men, when questioned, tight-lipped. I’m sure each man realized he was a suspect. Since no body was ever found, everything faded away. It is still very difficult to get any kind of conviction without a corpse.”

“I guess that’s why in murder mysteries so much time is spent on disposing of the corpse,” Sister added.

“If a body is just left out or tossed somewhere, does that mean the crime was not premeditated?” Betty asked Ben.

“Not always. Given the terrain here and the rivers, a body can go unnoticed for years. If an unburied corpse is found, it’s usually by a hiker or a dog. I expect central Virginia hides many bones.”

“It has certainly hidden Weevil’s.” Sister tapped the tabletop with her forefinger.

“You don’t believe this is a ghost?” Betty inquired. “Just asking.”

“No. Deep down, no. But then again, Tom truly knew him. He believes it was Weevil,” she answered.

“Why would a man blow ‘Gone to Ground,’ then blow it again at the hunt where we ran the young fox into the rock outcroppings? Then again blow ‘Going Home’ at Old Paradise?” Betty wondered.

“You discount echo?” Ben was becoming fascinated.

“I do. What we heard was a cowhorn. Whoever had it knew how to use it, knows the calls,” Sister replied.

“Weevil,” Betty simply said.

“Some kind of weevil, that’s for sure,” Sister responded. “The other thing is I called Marion. She’s asked questions. The most helpful person was Randy Rouse, Master of Loudoun Hunt. Ben, Randy is a hundred years old, and how shall I say, undimmed. He’d hunted behind Weevil a few times, but Randy was tied down by his own hunting obligations as well as his business ones. He told Marion so many people thought Weevil’s disappearance had something to do with the rumor that he slept with the Falconers, both mother and daughter.”

Ben shrugged. “That was a brave man, if he did it.”

“Randy didn’t indicate that he knew anything more than the gossip, but Marion played the video for him and he was shocked.”

“Weevil?” Ben inquired.

Sister nodded. “Well, who is to say, but Randy swore he sure looked like the Weevil he remembered. And he, too, wondered why would he take the cowhorn. He recalled the scrimshaw on the horn. Said he remembered that from hunting, thought it was lovely.”

“Isn’t his wife thirty-eight years younger than he is?” Betty wondered.

“Is. A real looker and a fabulous rider. The two of them are well suited for each other,” Sister replied. “You know, there are so many good marriages in foxhunting. I have often wondered, is it because we share danger?”

“Oh, honey, I don’t know. I think marriage is danger enough.” Betty laughed.

Ben put a hand on some of the untidied pages, for Sister had the rest in a neat pile. “I assume the Falconers are gone?”

“Yes. Both. And sad to say, the daughter Madeline—‘Madge’—died of the same type of cancer that took her mother. They were Northern Virginia people but we all knew one another from hunting. Of course, I knew Madge and Christine only socially and from hunting. Makes me wonder if cancer is inherited. Ah, well.” Sister thought a moment. “I keep coming back to that. Love or money.”

—

Vic Harris, exposed and humiliated, knew in his gut Yvonne would kill him if she could, for love and money. Well, soured love. She did the next best thing. The decision was whether to just cave and tell the press they had settled out of court, or to fight back even harder just to make the bitch miserable.

Yvonne had instructed her lawyers at Hart, Hanckle and Himmel to release to all the social media footage she had, thanks to the most expensive private investigation firm in Chicago: footage of her husband cavorting with his two blonde mistresses. The elect, the one receiving twenty thousand dollars a month, performed many a service, but what would knock back people of his generation was how Mistress Number One was only too happy to work over the close-to-sixty-year-old man with Mistress Number Two. He kept up, literally.

So there he was, a self-proclaimed leader of the black community, for decades extolling the necessity to praise and focus on African American women. He, of course, criticized Justice Thomas for marrying a white woman. Any man of color who married a white woman came in for a blast in his magazine, on his cable network. He even blasted Hispanic men who slept with white women.

The overground media reported this fall from grace. They showed head shots of the two knockout blondes, but could not show the home-style porn. The social media showed everything.

Unfortunately, this meant that Tootie beheld her father in action when a so-called friend sent it on to her. Unfair as her father had been to her, she didn’t want to see this. She didn’t want to know what a complete hypocrite he was.

She didn’t bother to text her mother. She drove over to Beveridge Hundred once her chores were completed. Shaker had not seen the trash, and Sister was at the sheriff’s office. Tootie would have gone to Sister first, but confronting Yvonne would happen sooner or later.

“Mother!” Tootie opened the door to the cottage.

“In the back.”

Within a minute, Tootie stood in the back garden on this perfect October day.

“I saw everything.”

“Ah.”

“Mother, why did you do it?”

“I didn’t do it. That’s the point.” Yvonne dropped into a wooden red Adirondack chair as Tootie followed suit, in a blue one.

“I know, but”—she groped for words—“that was awful. Everyone we know will have seen Dad. I am so humiliated.”

“You didn’t do it. You have nothing to be humiliated about. He has acted without regard for his wife or daughter. If anything, people should be sympathetic to us.”

“I don’t know.” Tootie’s voice trailed off.

“I built that business. I worked every day for years to build that business. I made calls. I organized dinners. I talked to complete assholes and pretended they were brilliant. He thinks because I’m a woman he can cut me out, buy me off cheap. He’s been married to me for thirty-one years and he thought he could back me down? He may be able to continue running the business without me—I expect he’ll hire a regiment of ass-kissers—but he will no longer be an admired person. I wonder what the wives of our friends will do? Maybe nothing. Maybe cut him dead. What I expect is my half of the funds—quite soon, actually.”