Рита Браун - Outfoxed

“Yes.” Sister offered her some cookies, then sat down herself.

Raleigh reposed by the fireplace. Golly sat on the kitchen counter.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get through tomorrow.”

“You will.”

“How did you do it? Twice.”

“I told myself that the men in my life wouldn’t take kindly to a wife or a mother who fell apart in front of God and everybody.”

“I guess we just go on—I mean, I don’t even know why I’m here. I mean here as in alive. I don’t seem to have a purpose. I never did. I had a purpose as a wife and a mother but I can’t see anything. I—”

“Sorrel, maybe we don’t have a purpose. Maybe we’re here to just live. But whatever, right now you go through the motions. The substance of your life may be revealed later.”

“You have a purpose.” Sorrel’s face was so innocent and so open.

“To live.”

“You have the hunt club.”

Sister smiled. “Yes. I doubt that philosophers or even those people eager to live your life for you would find that much of a purpose but I have Nature, I love God’s creation, and this is a way to appreciate it.”

“You’ve lived a fabulous life.”

“Well, let’s just say I may not have done much good in this life but I haven’t done much harm either.” She smiled, pushing another cookie at Sorrel. “Eat. I know it’s hard but if you don’t your blood sugar will go haywire and you’ll feel like you’re on a roller coaster. I’ve got some nice cold chicken. How about a chicken sandwich with lettuce, pumpernickel bread?”

“Yeah!” Golly shouted.

Sister sternly eyed the calico.

“I don’t think so, thank you. Board . . . What do I owe you?”

“Nothing. Really.”

“Sister Jane, can you think of anyone who would kill Fontaine?”

After a considerable pause Sister said, “I can think of plenty of people who might want to kill him but none who would.”

“He lived every single second while he was here.” Sorrel smiled ruefully. “I adjusted. I guess you could say my flame didn’t burn as bright as Fontaine’s.”

“No. Your flame burns steadily. It has to, Sorrel; you’re a mother. Men can leave. They can leave us flat out. They can die. They can run off with other women or they can show up on their thirty-seventh birthday and declare they want to climb Mount Everest before they’re forty. We’re tied to the earth. Once the children are grown I suppose we can do those things, too, but how do you break a lifetime of holding back?”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“I think a lot. I’m alone much of the time or I’m doing chores. My mind is always on an adventure.” She picked up a cookie, putting it in Sorrel’s hand. “Okay. You don’t have to eat it but look at it. I’m making a sandwich even if you won’t eat it. Take it with you.”

“There’s enough food in my house to keep a brigade full.”

“Then I’m making one for myself.”

As the older woman buttered the bread she chatted and listened.

Doug knocked on the back door, then came inside. “Horses are fine, Mrs. Buruss. I’ve turned your trailer around.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s a great trailer,” he said admiringly.

“Only the best. You know how he was.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.” His handsome face radiated honesty.

“There isn’t anything else you can say. Thank you, Doug.”

“Did Sister tell you? We found the rope. We think it’s the rope.”

Sister turned her silver head to face Doug. “I was getting to that.”

Both Sister and Doug explained how they’d found the rope, where they’d found the rope, and what it looked like.

“Sounds like Fontaine’s King’s rope.”

CHAPTER 43

Four hundred and sixty people crammed into the pre-Revolutionary Episcopal Church. Built in 1749, laid brick with white lintels, the unadorned structure sheltered by ancient spruces and hickories exuded an inviting presence. It didn’t take a particularly active imagination to envision colonists tying up their horses, doffing their tricornes, or adjusting their Sunday hats if female, to cross the threshold into the vestry.

Every member of Jefferson Hunt attended, many genuinely sorrowful. Crawford, not at all sorrowful, escorted Martha. He walked to the grave site in the churchyard as well, just to make sure the walnut casket would be lowered into the ground.

Martha, keeping her misery in check, wiped her eyes from time to time. Crawford kept his eyes down much of the time.

The Franklins sat together. Jennifer held a lace handkerchief to her eyes, not to dab tears but to hide the laughter. Dean Offendahl, one of her high school boyfriends, in the choir, would wink at her. Betty, outraged, headed straight for Dean once the service was over. A funeral might be a good place to fall in love but it wasn’t a good place to flirt. Jennifer, unaware of her mother’s mission, walked with Cody and Bobby to chat with Sister, Doug, and Shaker. Together they walked out to the parking lot, a light northerly wind mussing everyone’s hair.

They stopped out of respect as the funeral director ushered Sorrel and the kids into the black limousine. Fontaine’s sister from Morgantown, West Virginia, and her family followed in the next black limo.

“She’s holding up remarkably well,” Betty quietly remarked.

“You’d think she’d be glad to get rid of him,” Cody said in a low voice.

Doug firmly said, “Cody.”

She shrugged.

Sister walked over next to her. “If love were logical, you would be one hundred percent correct but love isn’t logical. If it were, no one in their right mind would marry. For all his faults, she loved him. She loved him from the day she met him in college.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“I suspect you have mixed emotions yourself.”

This terse sentence from Sister cut to the bone. Cody wondered if Sister knew about her affair. Unlike most people, Sister Jane did not feel compelled to tell people what she knew. A slight chill bumped down Cody’s spine.

“Would you like to ride with me?” Doug offered, hoping for the chance to talk to Cody alone before the gathering at the Buruss home.

Cody agreed and once the door was closed she blurted out, “God, I’d give anything for a drink right now.”

“No.”

“I won’t, I won’t. But funerals make me shaky.”

“Cody, did you ever notice a special rope in Fontaine’s stable?”

“What do you mean?”

“From out west. King’s ropes, I think. Stiff. Used to rope steers and calves.”

“No.”

“Think hard. Maybe he hung it in the tack room or inside his trailer. You’d notice it, as it’s different from the stuff you buy at the co-op.”

“No. I’d show up three times a week, saddle up Keepsake, and that was that. In and out.”

CHAPTER 44

Alone in bed that night, Sister scribbled on a yellow legal pad. She was reconstructing everything she could remember from the time she first saw Fontaine until he vanished. Next to her was her red leather-bound hunt diary. After each hunt she wrote the events in her diary. Reading about hunts years later delighted her.

She and Raymond used to sit in bed together writing in their respective hunt diaries. He’d fuss at her because she’d use a fountain pen and he was afraid she’d spill ink on the sheets. She never did.

Outside the night was crystal clear as only a November night can be.

Golly rested on the pillow next to her. Sister thought of it as Raymond’s pillow. Raleigh curled up in front of the fireplace in the bedroom, the aroma of cured hardwoods filling the room.

The more she thought about opening hunt, the more disturbed she became. Why kill Fontaine in the hunt field? Surely it would have been easier to kill him somewhere else.