One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (20 page)
Read One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] Online
Authors: Carolyn McSparren
Merry
By noon when I woke, my entire body seemed to be a single throb. I stood under another long shower and took a deep breath before I looked at the damage. I’d been hit just above my waist, so I could check the bruise in the mirror.
And boy, was it a doozy. The doctor had been right to demand an X-ray. If I ever caught the person who hit me . . . As I rubbed horse liniment into my aching back, I realized I didn’t want to think what would happen if Geoff or Peggy actually got a glance at it. I’d never be allowed to leave the apartment again.
I unwrapped my wrist, saw no sign of infection, slathered antibiotic ointment across the bite, then used my teeth to apply a fresh bandage and wrap the wrist with bright blue Vetrap, the stretchy wrap I use to bind the horse’s wounds. Every horseman keeps a supply at home for minor sprains and such. Much better than people bandages.
I dressed and went upstairs to bang on Peggy’s door.
When she opened it, all four cats eddied around her expecting me to love on them. When they smelled the horse liniment, however, they turned tail and disappeared.
“If it’s not the idiot child,” Peggy said. “Do come in. I have the straitjacket all laid out and ready.”
“Don’t start. I’m starved. Thank you for looking after the horses this morning.”
“They’re all fine. Everything is locked up tight, and I put a padlock on the pasture gate by the old cellar.”
“You think I ran into a plain old thief or vagrant?” I asked.
“If not for our road rage incident, I’d say yes. As it is . . . How’s your wrist?”
“Hurts, but not as badly as I thought it would.”
“Be grateful it wasn’t a poisonous snake.”
I sank onto a kitchen chair and accepted a glass of ice tea. “I owe that snake a big apology.”
“I beg your pardon?” Peggy sat opposite me.
“Big king and rat snakes keep the poisonous snakes away,” I said. “They eat them. He was a good snake and I killed him.” Maybe it was the cumulative effects of assault and drugs, but I felt downright maudlin when I thought of what I had done to that poor unassuming snake.
“Snake is snake,” Peggy said. She reached across for the platter of sandwiches on the kitchen counter and held it out to me.
“Is not.” I took one and ate half of it in two bites. I was starved. Fear does that to me. “That snake was in the cellar catching field mice and minding his own business. If it hadn’t been so chilly last night, he’d have been able to slither away safely, but he couldn’t move fast in the cold air. Must have scared the stew out of him when I hit him with that light. No wonder he nailed me. I owe him an apology for blowing off his head.”
“Whatever you say.” Peggy rolled her eyes.
“Do you mind driving me out to pick up my truck?”
“
Can
you drive?”
“I’ve had worse cuts and bruises than this falling off horses. I’m good to go.”
“And stoked to the gills with pain meds,” Peggy said. “You have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow. In the meantime, I can change your dressing.”
“Already done. I’ve watched over enough horses with injuries. The wound is neither hot nor suppurating. No sign of blood poisoning or infection. I really don’t need to see your doctor unless something changes before morning.”
Peggy nodded. “We’ll see. Geoff called to check on you. He’s coming out to the farm this afternoon to help with evening feed and to look for signs of attempted burglary.”
“Just what I need,” I said.
“You may be surprised.”
Geoff
When Geoff walked into the stable that afternoon, he was amazed that Merry, whom he expected to be home in bed, had finished bridling and hitching that infernal donkey to her pair of long lines. Peggy rolled her eyes at him.
“Now I know you’re crazy,” he said. Merry’s wrist was wrapped in bright blue Vetrap.
“You and I had a bet, remember? Five bucks that Don Qui would be marginally better today?”
“Oh, for . . . we can postpone the bet under the circumstances.”
“If I let him slough off, he’ll think he beat me. Can’t have that. I have a full training schedule tomorrow and a couple of driving lessons with Creekites, so this afternoon is my only free time. If I don’t keep moving, my back will freeze up.”
Peggy made circles with her finger against her temple.
“If you’re determined, why don’t you let me handle those reins or lines or whatever you call them?”
Merry stared at him with her eyebrows raised almost up to her hairline. “What do you know about long-lining a horse?”
“Exactly as much as you think, but with this ass, all I have to do is stay far enough back from his rear end to avoid his hooves when he kicks, and hang on when he goes forward, right?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“I offered,” Peggy said, “But she turned me down flat, too. Merry, let him do it. You can walk beside him and give instructions.”
Merry looked at them both, then down at Don Qui’s fat little body already duded up in its shiny VSE harness and blinkered bridle.
She closed her eyes for a second and sighed. “Let me get him out in the arena and set up for you, then you can give it a shot.”
That must have cost her, which meant she was further below par than he’d guessed. She gathered the lines while Peggy slipped Don Qui’s halter on over his bridle and led him out to the arena.
When he saw Heinzie, his friend, standing by the pasture fence watching, he let forth a single bray, but whether he was complaining or showing off, Geoff had no way of knowing.
“I’ll handle the whip,” Merry said. Don Qui stopped in the center of the arena, allowing Merry time to play out the long lines and show Geoff how to hold them. “I’ll give the commands. You guide.”
Geoff realized at once that he’d lost his bet. Don Qui had either mellowed in twenty-four hours or figured that he wasn’t being attacked from the rear. Maybe the difference was simply Heinzie’s presence at the fence. He walked forward on command as though he’d been doing it forever. Until Geoff tried to turn him left on Merry’s command. Geoff got the lines crossed and tangled, then hauled hard on the left line.
Don Qui took instant exception. He stood straight up on his hind legs, then plunged forward kicking as high as possible with his rear end. Startled, Geoff dropped the lines, and Don Qui took off at the donkey version of racing gallop with the lines flying behind. Merry took two hobbling steps after him before she gave up.
Geoff had run track in college and still ran to keep in shape, but the lines flying behind the donkey eluded his grasp when he reached for them.
Peggy stepped out in front of Don Qui with her arms up. “Whoa, dammit!”
As the donkey zigzagged to avoid her, Geoff caught one of the lines and hauled him around in a circle so tight he nearly fell over before he stopped. Donkey and man stood facing one another, both gasping from the exertion. Geoff turned to Merry, who stood in the center of the arena with both hands on her back and eyes tight against her obvious pain. Or the pain of losing the bet.
“So, who wins the bet?”
“Call it even,” Peggy said. “Could have been operator error.”
“Take your five dollars,” Merry said.
“Buy me a drink tonight and call it even,” Geoff said.
“I can’t drink with all the crap I’m taking.”
“Yeah, but
I
can.”
“We can’t quit yet,” Merry said. “He has to get it right first.”
That took a while. He had mastered going straight ahead, but seemed to have difficulty turning in either direction without bucking. Eventually, with Peggy holding the longe line and Geoff working the lines properly, he managed to circumvent the arena. Since it was eighty meters by forty, that was a creditable distance for a small creature.
By the time they finished, Merry stood in the center while Peggy and Geoff did the actual work. Everyone except Merry was drenched with perspiration, when she finally called a halt to the exercise.
“Remind me not to do this again,” Geoff said they walked into the stable.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Peggy said. She looked at Merry. “You look a little gray around the gills. How badly do you hurt?”
“Bad enough. I need another dose of pain meds.”
“How’s your wrist?” Geoff asked.
“Not too bad. Feels as if I have fifty small paper cuts.”
“Eeew!” Peggy said. She put Don Qui on the wash rack, and she and Geoff stripped him of his harness.
He looked over at Merry, his face suddenly serious. “I got info from Atlanta over my cell on my way out here. The Governor’s fancy chums? One of them was Giles Raleigh. He owned a twenty per cent interest in the limited partnership that holds title to the other side of your mountain.”
Merry sank back against the wall. “God, no. I had no idea. The only one I’ve ever met, the one who tried to intimidate me into selling, is the governor’s pet Jack Russell terrier, Whitehead. Giles never mentioned it.”
“Do they still want to buy your place?” Geoff asked.
Peggy took the harness across to the tack room, washed the bit and hung it all up from its harness rack.
“Nobody’s bugged me about it for a long time. Once the water report about the arsenic in the ground water on that side of the hill came out, and the construction of high-dollar vacation homes went to hell in the recession, I assumed they’d given up the idea of developing it.”
“Or were hanging onto it until prices went back up,” Peggy said from the doorway of the harness room. “So what happens to Raleigh’s twenty per cent now?” She took Don Qui’s lead rope and led him into his stall.
“Haven’t seen the will yet,” Geoff said. “Merry, what say Peggy shows me how to get these guys fed and watered and bedded down. You drive home and get some rest.”
“Are you supposed to do chores for suspects?” she asked.
“She’s not a suspect. You are.”
“Okay, you got a deal.” She held up a hand at Peggy. “Yes, I can drive. I’m not totally spaced out. If you don’t mind, I’m going to nuke a diet meal and go to bed.”
“Do you want me to feed
you
, Geoff?” Peggy asked.
“I owe
you
a meal, Peggy, not the other way around. Give me a rain check. I’m meeting Amos Royden at the Hamilton Inn. I need to bounce some ideas off him.”
“Promise me you’ll stay home,” Peggy said to Merry. “Shall I spend the night out here?”
“With the pasture gate and all the doors secure, I think the horses should be okay. If we do get burgled, anything inanimate can be replaced.”
Geoff toted and fetched while Peggy fed and watered, then watched her drive down towards the road before he climbed back out of his Crown Vic.
He had come to know this place fairly well during the investigation into Hiram’s murder. He had thought at the time that with no one actually living on the place until Merry’s house was built, it needed better security. He locked tack, feed, and clients’ room in the stable, then shut the stable doors and chained them.
The big double doors to the old barn that Hiram had converted to his workshop were heavy, thick, and securely padlocked. A burglar would be most likely to go for the workshop. A junkie could fence power tools easily.
Finally he checked to be sure all the doors on Hiram’s white dually and trailer were locked.
Someone could break in—there was always a way in if you had the time, the tools, and the desire—but he hoped the average burglar would pass the place by for an easier target.
The willingness of Merry’s intruder to employ violence bothered him. He hadn’t hesitated to use a two by four on Merry and toss her into that cellar. He might have clubbed her across the skull and killed her. He hadn’t.
Geoff couldn’t be positive the incident on the highway had been more than road rage or drunken rednecks, but the bruise on Merry’s back didn’t lie.
Assuming the two incidents were connected, then connected to what?
The road down the hill lay in shadow, making it even more hair-raising a drive. He took his time. At the foot of the hill, he paused between the two big boulders that marked the entrance before he turned left to drive back to Mossy Creek.