One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (8 page)

The horses weren’t lathered as though they’d run away and tossed Raleigh off. Their backs were damp, but from the mist.

I couldn’t wait for another volunteer to show up to head the team. I needed to hunt for Raleigh right this minute. If he was hurt, minutes counted. Surely this wasn’t another attack of the lunatics from the bridge. This must be an accident.

I could feel my heart in my throat and that heat on the skin that means adrenaline is pumping big-time. I closed my eyes and remembered my mother lying on the ground under the wheels of a similar carriage that I’d been driving even though I’d been forbidden to. My stupidity had nearly cost my mother her life, and kept me from driving for nearly twenty years. So, believe me, I knew what could happen when someone fell off a carriage that size. But if Raleigh had fallen, where was he?

Behind the carriage I saw the parallel snail tracks the wheels had made through the wet grass. “Stand.” I said to the horses. A well-trained carriage team wouldn’t move until I released them.

The wheel track behind the carriage led away from the trailer area toward the far corner by the woods. Even now, with the fog lifting, I had to keep my eyes on the ground. Otherwise, I couldn’t see more than a couple of feet in front of me, although I looked behind me occasionally to check my location.

I was spooked. Raleigh would never abandon his team willingly. Moreover, why would he have put to at the crack of dawn in the first place? The cones class didn’t start until nine. He might not be scheduled to drive until noon. Nobody needed that much warm up.

I tripped over him.

He sprawled face down in the farthest corner of the arena.

The spike anchoring the cable at that corner should have been driven deep into the dirt.

Instead it was driven into the nape of Giles’s neck.

I sat down hard and clapped my hands over my mouth. He had to be dead.

Didn’t he?

I started to shout for help. Then I didn’t.

The fog seemed to steal not only sight but sound.

Anybody could be standing behind a pine watching me. For that matter, someone could be standing in the open six feet away in the fog. I wouldn’t see them and probably wouldn’t hear them. Then I felt warm breath on the back of my neck. I yelped and scrambled away on my backside.

Startled, Raleigh’s lead horse, the one who’d dropped grass on my shoulder, snorted and butted me with his nose. The team pulling their driverless carriage was standing practically on top of me. I made it to my feet and backed out of range. Either they weren’t all that well trained to stand, or they’d come looking for the nearest human being that could climb onto the carriage and take the reins.

I am generally calm during a crisis. That ability to turn off emotion is what makes me a good show manager, so I took hold of the coupling rein that held the leaders together and quietly led them away from the bundle of flesh that had been Giles Raleigh. When they were far enough away, I gave them the ‘stand’ command again, this time with more authority in my voice. “Do not come find me,” I said. Then I forced myself to go back to Raleigh.

The last thing I wanted to do was touch him, but I had to know if he had a pulse. I knelt beside him, touched the pulse point under his throat with two fingers, felt around. Nothing.

Since the stake driven up into his skull was still in place, there was almost no blood. The cable still ran through the pad eye and held the stake near to the ground. Raleigh must have been lying on the ground or kneeling when he was struck. Could his carriage have run over the spike, yanking it from the ground then left it lying point up? Raleigh fell out of his carriage and onto it somehow? Next to impossible, but better than the alternative, that someone had driven it into his head.

“What the hell?” I heard a male voice someone out in the arena, loud enough to penetrate the fog. “What the Sam Hill are you guys doing out here by yourselves? Where is Raleigh?”

“Over here,” I called. “It’s Raleigh. He’s hurt.” Actually, I was as sure as I could be that he was dead, but I wasn’t about to tell my erstwhile rescuer that.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation
agent Geoff Wheeler propped his feet on his dusty coffee table, blew on his mug of black coffee, opened the Sunday
Atlanta Journal
and pulled out the comics section. He bit into his third jelly doughnut from the box of Krispy Kremes. He might just finish the box.

He should be contentedly watching a non-blacked out Atlanta Braves game and drinking a couple of beers. He should have Merry Abbott curled up on the sofa beside him.

He considered driving north to Mossy Creek and
her
sofa, only he’d probably fall asleep at the wheel and wind up in a ditch. His plane had landed in Atlanta too late to call her last night, and when he’d tried this morning he’d gotten her voice mail—‘gone to a horse show. Please leave a message.’ She’d left a number for emergencies, but she probably wouldn’t return his call until she got home to Mossy Creek, if then.

Life had been a damn sight less complicated before he’d met Merry. He could go off on a deep cover assignment and not feel the isolation. He could enjoy working down south or on one of the barrier islands and not wish for an assignment around Dahlonega or Bigelow.

He’d met her a year ago when her father was murdered outside of Mossy Creek. He’d been instantly attracted to her, but involvement with murder suspects was definitely against Georgia Bureau of Investigation rules.

And Geoff was a stickler for rules. He had to be. Break the rules, and some defense attorney would have your ass for favoritism and get your airtight case tossed out. Juries did not enjoy wondering about the credibility of a police witness.

Once Hiram Lackland’s murder had been solved, they’d tried to get together, and even managed a couple of romantic dinners in Bigelow, the county seat for Mossy Creek. Most of the time, however, either he was off on assignment in South Georgia or she was at a horse show.

Geoff wanted more. Much more. He’d thought Merry did too. If they could find the time. At least the next time they met, she wouldn’t be a murder suspect. He wouldn’t have to hold back.

He nearly choked when his cell rang as he wolfed down his fourth doughnut. He swigged a mouthful of coffee, still hot enough to singe the roof of his mouth, and lunged for the phone on his kitchen counter.

He checked the ID. Unknown caller. Not Merry, then.

Sunday calls were never good, even thought he was officially off duty. He caught it as it started to go to voice mail. “Hello, Geoff? Agent Wheeler? This is Peggy Caldwell from Mossy Creek.”

His heart sped up. Had something happened to Merry? He hadn’t heard from Peggy since she’d sent him a Christmas card and an invitation to a Christmas party he hadn’t been free to attend. “How badly is she hurt?”

“I beg your pardon?” Peggy said. “Oh—Merry’s not hurt. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”

“Then why . . .”

“Can you come? I think she’s about to be arrested for murder.”

“You were on the ground again.”

I nodded. My head hurt so badly it was about to come off my shoulders. I hadn’t had so much as a cup of coffee. I was hungry, thirsty, and had a caffeine deprivation headache that was going to get worse if I didn’t get a big dose of it soon.

“I couldn’t just walk away from the man,” I said.

“Did you try to remove the spike?”

“Are you kidding? You never pull the instrument out of a stab wound. If you do, you risk letting loose a torrent of blood.”

“Not if he was already dead. Blood ceases to flow when the heart ceases to pump.”

“At that point I was hoping he still had some spark of life in him. I didn’t want to cause him to bleed out.”

“And you know this how? You a nurse? Have a medical degree?”

That was a new question. I suppose I shouldn’t have said anything about the puncture wound bleeding, but I was tired. “Sheriff, I breed and train horses. They hurt themselves a lot. Occasionally one of them will run into a sharp branch or a broken fence post and drive it into himself. My vet taught me many years ago never to remove any foreign object that might be keeping an artery or a major vein from blowing. So, no, I did not touch the spike. Or the cable or anything else around him, for that matter.”

“But you touched the carriage?”

I closed my eyes and ran back over my actions. “Raleigh uses—used—Biothane harness. It’s as shiny as patent leather and should take fingerprints well. Let’s see—I grabbed the leader’s bridle. I touched the coupling rein.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“That’s the rein that secures the two front horses together. I saw the reins were looped over the whip holder, but I didn’t touch them. You shouldn’t find my fingerprints anywhere else.”

“You and Raleigh had a big fight yesterday, right?”

I’d already gone over this several times. I proceeded to tell him again about our dunking in the lake and Raleigh’s reaction to it. “Everyone at the party last night will tell you he was charming to Peggy and me. I thought he was a jerk, but that’s no reason to kill him.”

“We have a witness who overheard you threatening to do just that.”

“Not recently.” Had I actually threatened to kill him after we left Sarah Beth? “If I did, I wasn’t serious. Everyone says stuff like that.”