Рита Браун: Crazy Like A Fox

“Sister, you will always command a room.” He grinned at her, proving once again why women adored him.

The garter discussion pooped out. They finally reached what they were all dying to talk about, since it was mid-September.

“How’s your season so far?” Joyce Fendley, who had joined them from her committee meeting, Master of Casanova Hunt, asked.

The table erupted. Everyone babbled at once. The dryness. The heat. Tons of game but the scent wouldn’t hold. On they talked. A group bound by passion, by love of animals, for no one would kill a fox, and without realizing it, by love of one another.

Marion reached in her pocket for her cellphone, wanting to check the weather. Her face registered surprise. “I can’t believe I did that.”

“Did what?” Sister asked.

“I left my cellphone on the display case.”

Jake, overhearing, suggested, “You know where the key is kept. Go back after dinner. It’s a lot closer than driving up from Warrenton tomorrow.”

Marion’s shop, Horse Country, was located at 60 Alexandria Pike in Warrenton, miles away. Clothing, silver, hand-painted china, and horse furnishings could all be found therein. Marion’s idea for a fashion show really was to raise money for the museum, but if seeing runway models encouraged people to come to the store, so much the better.

“Do you know exactly where you left it?” Joyce inquired, having spent time in her life on search missions.

“Right by Wesley Carruthers’s artifacts.”

Jake, overhearing, folded his napkin. “There were so many suspects in his disappearance, I think every man who foxhunted in Virginia and Maryland was questioned by the police.”

“Wasn’t Averell Harriman one of the leading suspects?” Joyce mentioned the wealthy man who performed public service.

“Absurd. Averell would never commit murder.” Jake spoke. “I was a kid at the time but I remember my father paying a lot of attention to this.”

“Some women”—Joyce glanced around the table—“would never have been foolish enough to risk their position no matter how handsome the man.”

“I agree,” Sister added. “But the old gossip trumpets that plenty of ladies did.”

“Well, the real scandal, the one that broke the camel’s back, was when he was supposed to be sleeping with Christine Falconer as well as her daughter Madge.” Marion suppressed a grin.

“No!” Sister exclaimed.

“You hadn’t heard that?” Marion was surprised.

“Dear God,” Sister thought out loud. “He must have been out of his mind.”

“Or they were.” Jake ordered an after-dinner drink.

“Wasn’t Jim Falconer Undersecretary of State?” Joyce inquired. She thought a moment and answered her own question. “He was. All those men had served with distinction in the war, and when Eisenhower swept into office so did they.”

“Did a good job, too. We’ll never see public servants like that again.” Sister’s voice rose slightly. “Sorry. That was an editorial comment.”

Jake waved the apology away. “I think we all feel that way. Look how many presidents we’ve had in the last few decades who have never served their country in uniform, never been in a war, not that I want people to go to war, but if they have to I think they are more reluctant to squander American lives.”

“Hear, hear,” all responded in unison.

As the meal finished, people stood up.

Jake called to Marion, “Look at Weevil’s cowhorn. It’s foxhunting scrimshaw. Quite something.”

—

Driving back to Morven Park, Sister said, “How many times have I looked at that horn and wished I could pick it up and view the entire scene? All I could see was the fox, a few hounds behind.”

Marion considered. “Maybe I should put mirrors around it.”

She drove into Morven Park, the early fall air still warm. The mansion, a great white sepulchre, commanded a level rise above the one thousand acres. The massive Doric columns bore testimony to the power of the place, the solidity of it, the gravitas of Westmoreland Davis himself, a former Virginia governor who had lived there. Five chimneys poked up through the gray roof, multiple flues sticking above the white chimneys. Heating the mansion, always expensive, must have been near impossible before electricity.

Marion closed the door to her Jaguar, as did Sister. The two women fetched the key from behind one of the long green window shutters.

Flipping on lights as they walked in, they reached the Hall of Fame room quickly.

“Right where I left it,” Marion rejoiced, snatching her phone.

Turning it on to see if she still had a charge, she noticed a small red circle by the camera icon.

Sister, looking over her shoulder, watched as Marion touched the camera.

Both women stared, speechless.

“What!” Marion, shocked, finally spoke.

Sister looked at the moving picture. “It can’t be true.”

Marion then looked at the case. The horn was missing. “Sister, it is.”

There in front of them, taking a selfie video, was Weevil, smiling, holding up his horn. He wore a black turtleneck. They couldn’t see what else he was wearing.

“This is impossible. He’s been dead, we think, since 1954.”

“And if he were alive, he’d be about ninety-five. I recall someone at the table saying he was thirty-two when he disappeared. This man,”—Sister pointed to the iPhone—“is in his early thirties.”

Marion looked at the case. The lock wasn’t broken, but she knew it would be easy enough to spring. She pressed the camera on the phone again.

“There may be more.”

There was. Weevil put the horn to his lips and blew “Gone to Ground.”

Marion gasped. “It’s impossible.”

Sister put her arm around Marion’s shoulder. “It may be impossible, but there is Weevil Carruthers blowing ‘Gone to Ground,’ telling us he’s safe and sound. Cheeky devil. Handsome. Handsome. Handsome.”

Marion swallowed hard. “A ghost?”

Sister inhaled deeply. “Marion, I want to find out and I don’t.”

CHAPTER 2

Comet, furious with himself, flew through the late-summer corn soon to be harvested at the western edge of Ed and Tedi Bancroft’s large estate. The praying mantis clinging to a corn leaf dug its spikes in deeper as Comet brushed through the corn. The mature gray fox, a dashing fellow, zigzagged as Dasher, a hound in his prime, ran close behind, too close. The pack of The Jefferson Hunt, first cast at seven-thirty A.M. due to the September heat, had started from the covered bridge at the Bancrofts’. Noses to the ground, those hounds, hunting for their first season, darted about, finally settling down when Cora, the older head female hound, chided them. On they pressed, the day promising little. Heat already coming up, high 50s now. The scent would lift to dissipate quickly but that was cubbing, the beginning of every hunt season. As in any sport where there’s been a layoff, foxes, hounds, horses, people need to slip back in the grove. The young foxes, like the young hounds, learned the horn calls, the ways to baffle hounds as well as where various dens offered a place to duck in. Often, the owner of the escape den complained loudly. The sound of the pack always shut up the fox, gopher, or whoever owned the den. Then again, once danger passed, the uninvited guest, with apologies, left.

Comet knew it was a Thursday, a hunt day for Jefferson Hunt. Living near the kennels, he knew the schedule, especially when the horses to be hunted the next morning were brought into the barn that night. No one wanted to chase a playful horse, risk being late to a hunt. In they came.

Keenly aware of the seasons, Comet figured the late corn would soon be harvested. Those wonderful corn patches burst with birds, mice, any creature wanting corn on the cob. Even after the harvest, the stalks, the corn left on the ground brought in so many tasty creatures. Comet had plenty to eat where he lived, but he felt like hunting. So he crossed the beautiful wildflower meadow between Jane Arnold’s Roughneck Farm and After All, the Bancrofts vast, immaculately maintained estate. Passing through the large meadow, black-eyed Susans nodding, then into the cornfield, he could hear the chatter from the mice, the occasional chipmunk even before stepping into the slightly rustling corn.