Рита Браун: The Tell-Tale Horse

Marion recognized the truth in Sister’s words. Sister Jane Arnold was tough as nails and surprisingly quick on her feet. Marion figured if Sister did whack someone, she could then help bring him down. Prudent and wise, not a woman to take an unnecessary chance, Marion was no coward. She thought Sister was reckless, heedless, but then most foxhunters are.

Sister hesitated at the top of the stairs that emerged into the tack and equipment room. The only sound was the slight whir of the heating system, set at sixty at night to keep pipes from freezing. Marion reached up behind her to click on the lights for the first floor. Nothing seemed disturbed at first glance, but if the killer was also a savvy thief, he or she would head for the saddles, some of them $4,000 a pop.

They stepped into the next room, which contained liniments and other odds and ends crucial to horse people. In the distance Marion heard a siren. “Thank God,” she whispered.

Sister nodded.

They moved to the north wall, where the gorgeous English leather bridles hung, the saddles on racks before them. Not one had been moved. Carefully, they inspected every inch of the store, including the two dressing rooms and the smaller storage room next door. Everything was in order, except that the phone lines had been sliced through.

Marion checked the locked case where antique jewelry, Essex crystals, and foxhunting china was kept. Again, untouched. So were the cases by the cash register, which housed specially cast hunting horns, the size of whose bells helped to determine the tone. They could cost $300, give or take; a specially ordered silver one was truly expensive. All was in order here as well.

Red lights reflected through the windows at the front door.

“Why would someone go to all the trouble to cut that lock and leave this place intact?” Marion sank to the front counter.

“I don’t know.”

Both women instinctively scanned the long shelves right above the cash register, where items of extraordinary value were often displayed. These shelves ran at a right angle to each other, the longer of the two terminating not far from the front door. The bronze sculpture of a fox above the register stood, gorgeous as ever, awaiting a buyer with very deep pockets. Just as the sheriff reached the front door, Marion and Sister gasped.

“It’s gone!”

The John Barton Payne silver bowl, weighing thirty-five pounds with a two-foot diameter and engraved with past winners of the Warrenton Horse Show, had vanished along with the companion thirty-pound silver tray and the close to two-pound silver ladle. Its value was unmeasurable. The Warrenton Horse Show, owner of this impressive perpetual memorial trophy, would be disconsolate. Donated to the show in 1935, the sentimental value exceeded its monetary value.

It was two-thirty in the morning before Sister and Marion, finally in pajamas, collapsed in the living room, a fire roaring near their warmed feet. Though exhausted, neither could sleep.

During the ordeal, Sister had noted that Marion did not cry, whine, or complain about how awful this was. The younger woman had kept to the facts and answered the sheriff’s questions clearly. She showed him the cut lock and even had the presence of mind to hand him a detailed photograph pulled off the computer showing all sides of the punch bowl.

Given the hour, no one from the local paper was monitoring the sheriff’s calls, so they were spared the press, at least for now. No one recognized the slain beauty. The forensic crew and the ambulance struggled to remove her, tearing some skin in the process. Using warm water from the store bathroom, they carefully soaked the leftover patches until they could put the unstuck flesh into little plastic bags. Somehow, this process upset the two friends as much as discovering the body in the first place. The initial shock had been wearing off, but now the terrible event was becoming more real.

“Odd that a woman so stunning is a cipher. Beautiful women are generally noticed,” Sister mused.

“She could have been murdered somewhere else and then brought here by whoever killed her and cleaned her up,” Marion replied.

“But why would the murderer want to steal a punch bowl? You know there’s a photograph of me in the punch bowl, age two, along with a foxhound puppy?”

“All the more reason to find it.” Marion stared into the fire, every fiber of her body tired, her mind overwhelmed but still functioning. “Why my store?”

“Your store is central in town. Most everyone goes past it.”

“What if this is meant for me in some way?”

“Unfortunately, Marion, we can only wait and see.”

“I need to warn Wendy. This will blast her right out of bed, but she’ll forgive me.” Wendy Saunders had worked in the store with Marion for years. “I suppose I should call my brother too, even though it’s closing in on the hour of the wolf.” She meant between three and four in the morning.

“The Romans had a saying, ‘Man is wolf to man.’”

“In this case, woman.” Marion punched in the numbers, then listened with a flash of disgust. “Damn these things. They never work when you need them.” She hurled the cell phone into the fire, where it began popping within seconds.

It was the one outburst of emotion she had allowed herself.

Sister nodded approvingly. “God, I wish I’d done that. Half the time my damn cell phone doesn’t work either.”

A bit of tension ebbed away as the plastic cell phone melted, taking all the information Marion had encoded there into the fire.

CHAPTER 3

Leg-breaking weather, Sister thought to herself. Just a few inches of slick mud masked frozen ground underneath.

The bite in the air kept hounds, horses, foxes, and humans alert. It was Tuesday, February 19, three days after the Casanova Hunt Ball, and the victim remained unidentified. Marion’s store had closed one day to accommodate further forensics but was now open. When Sister went home Sunday afternoon, her friends had rallied around, the bizarre circumstances of the murder having made the news stations. The corpse stayed cold and covered at the morgue, so there were no photos of her, but Trigger flashed across local television screens and made the newspapers.

Foxhunting, thank the gods, swept away the cares of this world, even cares as disgusting as murder. A lapse in concentration could mean missing the fox or, worse, the jump. A fall on this greasy mud meant a cleaning bill at the very least and perhaps a broken bone. It was called leg-breaking weather for good reason.

The fox cared little for this. A stout field of twenty-five people was gathered on a hill overlooking old Tattenhall Station, an abandoned white board-and-batten building still exuding a forlorn charm. Hounds had picked up the perfume of a young red dog fox looking for a girlfriend behind the abandoned station.

Courting season usually started in mid-January for gray foxes, while reds took up the siren call of love in February. This bright, cheerful youngster, new to romance, was still learning the ways of the female. He’d run a beautiful six-mile loop, leading them right back to their starting point. Sister reflected impishly that all the higher vertebrates took their time with this process, and some males never did figure it out.

Shaker Crown, huntsman, dropped his feet out of the stirrups and wiggled his toes, praying for circulation. Sister, observing her longtime hunt servant and friend, kicked her feet out of the stirrups as well, a tingle occurring in her toes immediately, followed by mild pain. Cold took its toll but hunting is a cold-weather sport. They were used to it, even if they did sometimes shiver. She couldn’t feel her fingers. Sister believed foxhunting toughened you up. Rarely did she or other club members suffer the full effects of flus or colds; their immune systems were cast iron.