One Hoof In The Grave Read online

  Catherine Harris, the official technical delegate to the show, walked up behind Dick Fitzgibbons with her hands on her hips and an expression on her face that would have melted lead. “Those horses could have drowned.”

  I’m sure Catherine realized intellectually that Peggy was not to blame, but in the final analysis, it’s the reinsman’s job to keep his team under control, even in the event of a nuclear disaster. A horseman’s initial reaction in any accident is anger that horses have been put at risk. And we tend to take out that anger on whichever human being is closest.

  Catherine took a deep breath. “Sorry, Peggy, Merry. Not your fault, but when I find whoever set this up, I intend to flay them alive.”

  She turned to her young assistant. “Troy,” she said, “Go bring me that ludicrous banner.” She stormed off toward the bridge. “I’ll teach the moron who did this to put horses in jeopardy.”

  Peggy caught my eyes and essayed a shaky smile. “At least she’s got her priorities straight.”

  Chapter 2

  Merry

  If I ever found the idiot who thought opening a flapping banner across that bridge and howling into a bullhorn were appropriate methods to make an animal rights statement, I would do what the Chinese used to do to traitors. I would tie the fool’s arms and legs to four big strong horses and gallop them off in different directions until he was yanked apart at the seams. No, I’d use oxen and walk them slowly. He’d take longer to die that way.

  Catherine Harris would be a willing assistant. We’d known one another for years. My father Hiram actually taught her to drive when she was a teenager. She felt the same way about people who hurt horses as I did.

  Through narrowed eyes, Dick stared into the thick copse of pine trees bordering the road, then nodded at two grooms who stood at the edge of the lake holding the Halflingers. “The Halflingers aren’t going anywhere while we’re here,” he said. “Y’all, go see if you can find where that voice came from.”

  They ran into the woods and craned their necks to peer into the branches. “Damned voice didn’t sound human,” Dick said. “Probably using one of those fake voice things. Wouldn’t want to be recognized.”

  “I see it!” Jack Renfro pointed toward a tall pine that stood among the trees edging the course. He started toward the trees, but Peggy put a hand on his arm and stopped him.

  “Forgive me for saying this, but you are entirely too big to climb trees.”

  “Yes’m.” He sounded disappointed.

  “Leave it,” Catherine called. “I want the police to see the set-up.”

  As soon as I heard the words “set up,” I knew what to look for. I clutched Dick’s jacket around my damp body and squelched over to the causeway in my wet paddock boots. Even though I had already started to dry, the breeze on my wet jeans and shirt made me shiver. I ignored the discomfort while I searched the ground just past the turn.

  I found the trip wire for the banner almost at once. The wire was stretched just above fetlock level on a horse. Thank God it was thin enough to break easily when the horses hit it, although once they were cleaned up, we’d have to check for cuts around their ankles.

  “Dick, come look at this,” I said. The two broken ends of the trip wire lay on the damp grass and glinted in the sunshine. Each end was twisted around a stout twig driven into the soft ground on either side of the causeway. I knelt and spotted some kind of spring arrangement on the bridge. Break the wire and the banner would be released from the bridge rails on either side. Sort of like a horizontal Jack-in-the-box. I assumed there was some connection to synchronize the noise of the bullhorn as well, but somebody else could find that. Possibly someone was standing back in the shadows of the pines to cue the bullhorn. In today’s world, they probably used a cell phone app.

  Not my problem. I gave up shinnying up trees when I was a teenager and before I had a grown daughter.

  Dick hunkered down beside me and looked at the wire without touching it.

  “Peggy and I weren’t supposed to be in the first carriage, but I suppose this wire thingie would have been triggered by whichever carriage was first,” I told him. “An equal opportunity trap.”

  “The order of go was posted yesterday afternoon,” Dick said. “Makes you wonder.”

  Dick pulled me to my feet. Peggy had stayed with the horses. I didn’t think she could hear us, but she’d definitely know we’d found something.

  “Anybody who triggered that banner and the noise would probably have wound up in the lake,” I said. “The calmest horse would have spooked. And a pair would be that much harder to keep on dry land. Once Ned’s foot slipped in the mud, we were toast.”

  One good-sized horse might have been relatively easy to release from a submerged carriage, but Halflingers, although they qualify as a draft breed, are the size of large ponies, and with two of them to free—I didn’t want to think what could have happened to them.

  “I’m not certain we could have saved a four-in-hand of short Welsh ponies,” Dick said. “No matter how many people were holding their heads up, four horses wear a lot of harness, and it’s not easy to find the carabiners under water. Those heads would have stayed under, and there would have been nothing we could have done for them.”

  He was right. Horses can snort, and they can close their nostrils for a short period of time. I suppose that’s from when they were faced with snow or sandstorms in their wild days. But they can’t keep the water out of their lungs for long, and Ned and Golden had been dragged under again and again. An eighteen-hand draft horse might have been able to stand on the bottom and keep his head above water without assistance, but not these little guys.

  “We might also have some drowned human beings,” he added.

  As usual we think of horses first and people second. Marathon cross-country carriages carry a minimum of two people, but they often carry a third person as well. In that instance the navigator rides up front with the driver while another person hangs off the back as a counterbalance. The big carriages may carry a fourth person. That would have meant three or even four people in the water.

  Peggy is remarkably fit despite her age, and apparently she can swim, but dunking unprepared elderly drivers into a frigid lake might well cause a heart attack or seizure. Or drowning. Probably my drowning if Peggy ever heard me call her elderly.

  “Come on, you two need a hot shower and dry clothes,” Dick said. He threw one arm around my shoulders and one around Peggy.

  “The horses . . .” I said.

  Dick called over his shoulder, “Ortega, bring up the Halflingers as soon as you can, please, and give them a good bath. They’re starting to smell like a dead alligator. Come along, Miss Peggy,” he said to her. “We’ll pull the carriage out after everyone else has crossed over the bridge.” He called to Catherine, who stood on the bridge glowering down at the strip of canvas at her feet. “Catherine,” he called, “May we borrow your ATV? I rode down with somebody else.”

  “Give me a minute, then I want to speak to Merry and Peggy before they leave. Can you two put up with being damp for a minute?” She asked us.

  Of course we said yes.

  “I need to alert the other judges at the obstacles to what happened here and ask them to check their venues. Who knows what else this lunatic left? Tack strips? Elephant traps?”

  As a show manager, I’d often worked with Catherine Harris when she acted as Technical Delegate. She was in charge of following the national association rulebook and seeing that everyone else did as well. She took her job seriously and was very good at it.

  Whoever had set the trap had better be long gone, because if Catherine caught him or her, there’d be hell to pay.

  “We have to call the police,” said a woman behind me. “What were these blockheads thinking? They could have killed horses.” No one had so much as mentioned the possibility of killing us.

  “What the hell kind of show are you running, Catherine?” A bass voice shouted from up the hill near the starting g
ate.

  I knew that voice. Everybody knew that voice, as a matter of fact, and everybody hated it.

  The equipage originally scheduled to start first, Giles Raleigh with his four-in-hand team had halted halfway up the hill. His big bay geldings weren’t a bit happy that Giles had slammed on his brakes and stopped them so soon. They stomped and fussed while Raleigh’s groom stood at the head of the team and struggled to calm them.

  Raleigh tossed the reins to his daughter Dawn, his Gator, jumped from the box and strode down the hill toward Catherine.

  “Who told you to start down?” Catherine snapped.

  “I got to the start. Judge nodded. I started. Obviously you need better communication with your underlings,” Raleigh sneered.

  Catherine glanced at Troy.

  “I called, but he’d already left,” Troy said. He sounded sulky. “Probably jumped the gun.”

  “Oh, God,” Peggy whispered, slipped away from Dick and turned to intercept Raleigh. “Catherine’s not to blame for my accident, Mr. Raleigh.”

  He turned his attention to Peggy. “Woman, if you can’t keep your team out of the lake, you better take up knitting.”

  I dropped a hand on Dick’s arm. Dick loathed Giles Raleigh. In another age, he’d have called the man out and skewered him with his sword to defend Peggy’s honor. The spectators would probably applaud and provide Dick an airtight alibi.

  Dick was taller than Giles, who was built like a fireplug with a gut, but he was also twenty years older and thirty pounds lighter. I doubt if Dick had ever been in a fistfight, and certainly not with a snake like Giles Raleigh. Raleigh would cheat.

  Up to this point Peggy had seemed pretty apologetic. That is, until Raleigh attacked Catherine, who patently didn’t deserve it. “Young man,” Peggy said. Giles was in his fifties, but Peggy had been a college professor before she retired. I’d give her eight to five odds against King Kong. “Take out your anger on the idiot who deserves it. A nasty practical joker landed my team in the lake.”

  ”I was supposed to be first on course this morning,” Raleigh said.

  “How fortuitous for you that you were late,” Catherine snapped.

  For a man like Raleigh, there’s always someone handy to beat up on when anything gets in his way. “The starter should never have let me on the course with the pileup down here,” Giles said. I had to admit he was right about that, although I’d be willing to bet Troy was right as well. Giles had either jumped the gun or at least fudged his start.

  Giles turned back to Catherine. “If I weren’t such a damn fine driver, I might’a run my ole boys smack into that woman and her horses. Don’t know many drivers good enough to stop a team of seventeen hand warmbloods halfway down a hill when they’re rarin’ to go.” He glanced over his shoulder where his groom was just managing to head his team while his daughter Dawn struggled with four sets of reins. “Somebody was trying to drown me and my horses.”

  “Like, who’d want to do that?” Troy whispered.

  “Yeah, Raleigh, why would anybody want to drown you?” That came from one of the spectators who’d jumped in the water to cut the Halflingers free.

  “Lucky it was the two Halflingers that went into the lake and not that team you’re been irritating to death all weekend,” Catherine said. “Out of my way. I’m driving out to check the barrels before anybody else starts.” She turned to her assistant. “Troy, you stay here and call the other course volunteers. Give them a heads-up to check for tricks. I’d be surprised if there are any. This is the best location to set up a trap like this—close to the trees and out of sight of the house. I’ll be right back.”

  She floored the ATV, drove over the bridge and into the trees beyond. She hadn’t planned to drive over to check the barrels herself, so she must have decided it was a good excuse to get away from Raleigh before she decked him. I didn’t blame her.

  Troy walked halfway down the bridge away from everyone else and keyed his walkie talkie to begin his round of warnings.

  The woman who had given Peggy her driving apron stepped between Giles and Peggy. “We’d have rescued your horses, Giles. I’m not sure we’d have bothered with you.” She pointed up the hill. “Shouldn’t you get on back to your team before they run over somebody? That daughter of yours has her hands full hanging onto them.”

  He glared, but turned on his heel and strode back up the hill to his carriage and team. “Dawn, goddammit,” he called to his daughter. “What the hell are you playing at?”

  I winced. If my father had ever spoken to me the way he spoke to poor Dawn, I’d have taken my whip to him.

  Dawn was actually doing a fine job keeping Raleigh’s big team from bulling their way down the hill, brake or no brake. His groom was having more difficulty heading them—that is, standing in front of them and hanging onto the leaders’ bridles. All four bounced on their front hooves and tossed their manes. They were raring to go and furious that the crowd at the bottom of the hill was holding them up. Raleigh climbed into the carriage, elbowed his daughter off the right-hand driver’s seat and took the reins from her. “Get on up here,” he shouted to his groom.

  “Daddy,” Dawn said quietly. “We can’t start until Mrs. Harris says we can.”

  “Hell, we’ll never make the course time,” Raleigh said and glared at Peggy.

  She glared right back.

  “Everybody’s times on course are screwed up,” Dick said. “If Catherine agrees, we might as well take a Mulligan, if we can get Raleigh turned around and back to the start.”

  At that point Catherine roared back across the bridge on her ATV and stopped beside Troy. “Did you check with the volunteers?”

  “Yes’m,” he said. “No trouble. Nothing suspicious. They’ve been out there since dawn.”

  “I saw nothing at the barrels either. The rest of the course is pretty open.” She climbed down. “We’re good to go. Let’s get everyone moving.”

  “Catherine, give us a break,” said the man who had unhooked Golden. I needed to find out his name and send him a bottle of Jack Daniels. “At least six people went into the water. We all need some dry clothes and a gallon of coffee.”

  “Peggy’s obviously not driving, and none of the other carriages has started yet, so only Raleigh’s carriage will have go back up the hill and start down again,” Dick said. “We’ll run late, but not that late.”

  Catherine nodded. “Agreed.” She turned to the spectators with their ATVs. “Y’all all back up and give Raleigh room to turn around and drive his horses back up the hill,” Catherine said. “Raleigh, come back down as soon as the starter says you can.” She turned to the spectators. “The next few carriages are already up at the top ready to start. Those of you who went in the lake should have enough time to get dry before you have to put to.”

  Dick’s groom Ortega walked Ned and Golden onto the bridge so they’d be out of Raleigh’s way as well.

  It was a tight turn for Raleigh’s big marathon carriage and foursome. I must admit Raleigh did it with dispatch and without running over spectators or ATVs. As soon as he started back up the hill, the damp spectators climbed on their ATVs and followed him. The dry ones hung around to watch.

  Waiting on the bridge with Ortega, Ned and Golden had nearly dried. I doubted even a good bleaching with Silk and Silver would be enough to take the green out of their white blonde manes. “The sooner we get these horses on the wash rack,” Peggy said, “The sooner they’ll start looking like Halflingers again and not like green bullfrogs.”

  Actually, both Peggy and I looked a little green around the gills as well.

  Finally satisfied that the show was back under her tight control, Catherine came over to us. “Now. Tell me what happened.”

  I pointed over her shoulder toward the turn onto the causeway. “Look back there. Close to the ground. See those two twigs? You can just see pieces of the trip wire that somebody strung between them.”

  She leaned against the railing. “I can’t believe this w
as malicious. Maybe some teenager’s idea of a prank.”

  “Big Jack Renfro spotted a bullhorn wired onto a limb over there,” Peggy said and pointed into the trees. “The first horse that broke the wire would snap the banner up over the bridge. Then came the voice. That’s no practical joke.”

  Catherine considered, then said, “Y’all had any problems with animal activists in north Georgia?”

  “They seem to think we’re not worth bothering with,” I answered.

  “I’ve heard of a few incidents at the University,” Peggy continued, “But just lab rats and such. Nothing around here. Certainly no death threats.”

  “You think it’s random nastiness?” Catherine asked. “Teenagers?”

  I glanced at Peggy. “We agreed to go first this morning when Giles Raleigh was late. This really might have been meant for him.”

  Peggy said, “My husband used to say, ‘Never volunteer.’ Now I know why.”

  “Troy rode over the whole course at dusk last night with his girlfriend.” She lifted her lip slightly when she said ‘girlfriend.’ Catherine didn’t like her.

  Maybe she and Troy weren’t sleeping together after all.

  “If the wire had already been in place, Troy and Morgan would have set it off.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s only eight-thirty. Someone started early to mess up my show. As if Giles Raleigh weren’t enough trouble.” She sighed. “Why didn’t his mother do the world a favor and expose him on Grandfather Mountain at birth?”

  Chapter 3

  Merry

  In the end Catherine decided not to call the cops. As she said, “Can you see them sending a team of CSIs up that tree to fingerprint a bullhorn and an oak tree? They’ll say it’s a prank that went too far. We’re behind schedule as it is.”

  After we spoke to Catherine, Peggy and I walked along the causeway. Deep gouges in the mud bank alongside the causeway showed where Ned’s hooves had slid down followed by the four furrows of our cart wheels.