Рита Браун - The Hunt Ball

“Looks like a big dog or something pawed away at the stones.”

“Yeah. Sticking her under the church was a hurry-up job but not such a stupid one. People rarely come back here. Whoever killed her shoved her under the church as far back as he could crawl, piled up leaves over her, then put some stones back in the foundation. Don’t know if he opened up the foundation or if the stones crumbled away. Not all of these,” he pointed to snow-covered stones, “match.”

“Guess there’s not enough for a visual I.D.”

Ben shook his head. “Been tore up pretty good. Nature’s recycling.” He grunted softly. “The teeth. We’ll get a positive I.D.”

Ty jammed his hands in his pockets as two men in orange hazard suits slid back out on their stomachs, body pieces in plastic bags.

Ty asked, “Do you think Mrs. Arnold knew who that was under there?”

“She probably has an idea despite the condition of the body. Sister’s uncanny. She said she should have trusted her hounds when they went to the chapel.”

“Do you want to call Mrs. Norton? I can if you—” Ty didn’t finish, for Ben interrupted.

“I’ll call. She knows it’s coming.”

“Because Brown University called her yesterday.”

Ben shrugged, “Well, she’s a bright woman. They asked her if she had seen Professor Kennedy, who has never missed a class. The conclusion has to be dismal. Now we have the evidence.” Ben rolled his eyes toward the slightly waving treetops. “Ty, we’re in the fog, but it’s about to lift.”

“Why?”

“Because our killer had to hurry. People who hurry make mistakes.”

“When are you going to give a statement to the press?” Ty considered what Ben had just said.

“Tomorrow. I need tonight to think.” He lifted his foot, shaking the cold out of his toes, snow spraying. “And I want to call on a few people.”

“Long night?” Ty’s expression was dolorous.

“Not for you. Tomorrow I want you to see if you can find Professor Kennedy’s backup system. Someone as meticulous as she had to be in her line of work wouldn’t have had only one copy of her data. It’s possible that whatever she found, whether it had to do with those artifacts or with something else at Custis Hall, might be encoded in that data.”

“Okay.”

“The other thing is this: My statement will simply be that the remains of an unidentified woman were found. I’ll give an estimate of age and race and say we won’t have any more information until the dental records are checked, which may take some time.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Find the killer.”

Ty’s eyebrows furrowed. “Sister said he knows the territory.”

“After this, there can’t be any doubt about that.”

C H A P T E R 2 6

Soft golden light flooded the snow-covered campus. Tracks crisscrossed the quads. The lovely diffuse December light somewhat made up for the long, black, cold nights. Last night the mercury had dipped to twenty-one degrees, but at eleven in the morning it shot up to forty-six with promise of further rising.

Tootie, Valentina, and Felicity, in riding clothes, walked toward their dorm.

“Did I bump Money? I swear I didn’t. Bunny’s in a mood. She always takes it out on me.” Valentina loved the look of the school after a snow.

“Didn’t see. I was in front of you,” Tootie said.

“Me, too.” Felicity noticed a determined squirrel stuffing acorns into her fat cheeks from a chinquapin oak.

Tootie noticed as well. “Mrs. Childers said chinquapins grow where the soil is alkaline. Sure are a lot of kinds of oaks.”

“I like water oaks. Don’t see them this far west.” Felicity liked botany. “There’s something romantic about water oaks.”

Valentina’s blue eyes narrowed. “You’re talking about oaks and I got my ass chewed by Bunny, the bitch.”

“One dollar,” Felicity grinned. “No, two.”

“Oh, pulease!” Valentina rolled her eyes. “Ass is a body part.”

Tootie stopped, holding up her hands. “I’ll make the call on this. Otherwise you two will go on for days. Val, you owe one dollar. I accept your explanation for ‘ass.’ Okay, F.?”

“Okay.” Felicity kept grinning as Valentina dug into her britches for a dollar.

“You’re such an accountant. How boring.”

“It won’t be boring when we throw our end-of-the-year party, funded mostly by your mouth.” Felicity laughed, her features relaxing from her normal strained visage.

“Did anyone ask for early acceptance?” Tootie wondered about college.

“No,” said Valentina as she shook her head. “We’ll get in to wherever we apply. We’ve got good grades and lots of extracurricular activities.”

“Don’t be so sure.” Felicity’s worried expression returned. “Places like Stanford and Yale, Smith, those places, the best of the best.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to Princeton and they’ll be lucky to have me,” Valentina said with lightheartedness.

“Be funny if we wound up at the same college.” Felicity wanted the comfort of her dear friends even if they did bicker.

“Never happen,” Valentina pronounced. “What are the odds of the three of us getting in to Princeton?”

“Pretty good according to your analysis,” Tootie replied.

“Jennifer and Sari both got in to Colby.” Felicity liked the two college freshmen, having ridden with them many times.

“Colby isn’t Princeton,” Tootie remarked. “It’s a good school and all, but how many people want to go to Maine? Too cold.”

“If that was the criterion then no one would apply to Wisconsin or Michigan or Vermont.” Valentina saw the door of the dorm swing open and Pamela Rene emerge. “Chicago’s dream girl, in her own estimation,” she said under her breath.

“Okay, we all applied to Princeton. Tootie and I applied to Duke. You and I applied to Colgate. You and Tootie applied to Bucknell. At least two of us might make it.” Felicity kept on track.

“And I applied to Virginia Tech,” Tootie added.

“Yale,” Valentina said.

“Northwestern,” Felicity chimed in.

As Pamela approached them, Valentina asked, nicely, “Pamela, where’d you apply to college?”

Fingering her red scarf, Pamela stopped. “UVA, Tufts, Ole Miss.”

“Ole Miss?” Tootie’s eyebrows shot upward. “A Chicago girl like you at Ole Miss. Pamela, that surprises me.”

“I did it to piss off my mother.” She laughed. “She wanted me to apply to Radcliffe, Mt. Holyoke, Bard, and Vassar. If I get in to all three, I think I’ll go to Ole Miss anyway. But I put in a late application to Brown because I liked Professor Kennedy. Did it over Thanksgiving.”

“Did you have a good one?” Felicity didn’t like Pamela either but she tried to like her. Felicity tried to like everyone.

“No. But it was good to see my friends. What’d you guys do?”

“Stayed at Sister Jane’s. We hunted with her and she took us to other hunts. We hunted almost every day,” Tootie bubbled.

“Yeah, we cleaned the kennels with Shaker and we learned all the hounds’ names.” Felicity’s eyes sparkled.

“Cleaned all the tack, too.” Valentina’s stomach rumbled. Time for lunch.

“I like cleaning tack.” Felicity heard Valentina’s stomach, reminding her that she was hungry, too. “It’s therapeutic and Sister cleaned with us so she told us stories about hunting when she was our age. It was really cool. Back then people stayed out so long they brought two horses,” she enthused.

This happiness weighed on Pamela. “Guess you all are the favorites.”

“If you’d stayed here, Sister would have invited you, too.” Pamela knew Sister was evenhanded. “You’re a good rider, Pam.”