TheCart Before the Corpse Page 2

  “You’re not that far from Bigelow. We’re in north Georgia.”

  “He emailed he was living in some little town called something-or-other Creek. What was he doing in Bigelow?”

  “Um, Bigelow’s the county seat. That’s where the morgue is.”

  The morgue. That image hit me hard. Of course that’s where they’d take him. He wouldn’t care, but I did. I hunched my shoulders and said, “I can get on the road right now. How long is the drive to Bigelow?”

  “Probably three hours or so. But, ma’am, he was living in Mossy Creek. That’s where his place was.”

  “Mossy Creek. Now I remember. He said he had a studio apartment there in some woman’s house.”

  “Yeah. Peggy Caldwell. She’s the one who found him.”

  “Found him?

  “She said you could stay with her as long as you need to. I’ll call her and tell her to expect you tonight. You’re going to be pretty worn out by the time you get here. It’s not an easy drive. Not much Interstate. You got somebody with you? May not be a good idea you driving all this way alone right now.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’m used to long-distance driving. But shouldn’t I come to Bigelow instead? Do I have to identify—I mean . . . ”

  “No, ma’am. Mrs. Caldwell already identified him. No reason you should have to go through that. Anyway, it’s Sunday afternoon. Took us a while to track you down.”

  “I’m a horse show manager. I travel.” I made scribbling motions with my hand. Pete scrounged a credit card receipt and pen out of his pockets.

  “Ms. Abbott, nothin’s going to change between now and tomorrow morning. You get you a good night’s sleep and come in late morning. Bigelow’s only about twenty minutes from Mossy Creek. We need to talk, and there’s some paperwork we got to finish. And don’t you worry. Mrs. Caldwell knows everybody. She can help you make whatever arrangements you need. I’ll have somebody call her to tell her you’ll be there this evening.”

  He gave me the number of the sheriff’s department, and his private cell phone, which I thought was nice of him. Then he gave me Hiram’s landlady’s number and the address of Hiram’s apartment in Mossy Creek, although Hiram had included it in his last email to me.

  By the time I hung up, I felt utterly calm. That’s the way I always handle disaster. It’s what makes me a good show manager. After I solve the problem and calm everybody else down, that’s when I go to pieces.

  Even I couldn’t solve this.

  I started when I realized Pete still stood by with a look of concern on his face. “Oh, Pete, shouldn’t you be with Tully and Amy?”

  “They’re in the EMT trailer getting patched up. Tully shooed me off to check on Jethro and you. I’m headed her way now. But Merry. Hiram. Dead? Is Hiram really dead?”

  “That’s what the man said. Some kind of accident, but he didn’t go into details.”

  “I can’t believe it. I thought he’d outlive us all.” He shook his head. “Irascible old bastard. Sorry, Merry.”

  I started to giggle, then clapped my hand over my mouth. If I started, I’d have hysterics. Once my mouth was shut, I felt tears ooze down my cheeks. “Good epitaph. He would have liked it.” I squeezed Pete’s shoulder. He winced. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Bruises on my bruises. Probably won’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. This whole thing is going to cost my insurance company a bundle.” He took my arm and walked with me up toward the parking area. “I am seriously considering putting out a hit on the engineer runnin’ that train. Damn fool.”

  Pete was rich and powerful enough to make life extremely unpleasant for the man. “Don’t you kill him, and whatever you do, don’t tell Jack who he is or where to find him or he’ll do the killin’ for you. Tully would be angry if either one of you went to jail for manslaughter.”

  “Justifiable homicide.” We stopped by my truck. “I’d hug you, but I’d probably scream in pain. You leaving now?”

  “The show committee’s bound to want to talk to me, but I can’t deal with them right now.”

  “Don’t you worry, I’ll handle the show committee,” Pete said. His face looked grim. He ran a multi-million dollar company. The show committee should be a piece of cake for him.

  “And they owe me a check.”

  “You got a deposit slip in your purse? Give it to me. I’ll pick up your check and deposit it tomorrow morning for you.”

  “Thanks Pete.” I dug a deposit slip out of the satchel I use as a handbag and gave it to him. “I’ve already checked out of my motel. If they go on with the marathon, the show president can give out the awards anyway, so I was good to go right after the marathon until this happened.”

  “You get on the road. I’ll do the explaining. “

  I hesitated, half in and half out of the truck. “Pete, I didn’t set that course close to the railroad track.”

  “Shoot, I know that. I won’t let ’em use you as a scapegoat.”

  “If I leave now, it’ll look like I’m running away,” I said.

  “Merry, your daddy just died! Git.”

  Jack walked up behind Pete. “Tully’s hollering for you, Pete.”

  Pete nodded, patted my arm and limped toward the van the EMTs were using for their first aid station.

  Jack stood at the door of my truck, waited for me to climb in and shut the door with a resounding smack. Mercifully, I had parked on the far side and away from Jethro’s path of destruction, so my truck hadn’t sustained even a fresh dent—at least. “Hiram was a fine horseman and a great trainer, Merry,” Jack said. “Email us and let us know what’s going on. If you have a memorial service, I know some of us would like to come.”

  “Jack, it’s to hell and gone in No-where, Georgia, but I’ll let you know.”

  I could see him in my rear view mirror as I pulled out onto the road and turned toward the big wrought iron entrance gates of The Meadows, the farm that had hosted the show. As I drove over the railroad tracks to the road, I considered turning around. I did not want to face three hours of solitary driving with nothing to think about except the father I would never see again.

  I made it as far as a Wal-Mart parking lot before I pulled over, stopped, put my head down on the steering wheel, and bawled. We were so close to reaching some sort of meeting of minds, my father and I. Now we’d never have the chance.

  Eventually I gulped myself into silence. Then I got angry. “How dare you die on me, Hiram Lackland? I loved you. Now I can’t tell you.” I smacked the steering wheel so hard I yelped, took a deep breath and calmed down.

  What was I supposed to do now? Any death involves protocols and rituals, Southern deaths more than most. Even in retirement Hiram Lackland was a large fish in the small pond of international carriage driving. A great many people would have to be notified.

  I couldn’t face all that this afternoon. Still, a couple of people had to know right now. I dialed my cell phone and listened to it ring. Just as I was about to hang up—this was not the sort of thing one left on voice mail—it was answered.

  “Hello?” She sounded breathless. She’d probably been out in the garden. She usually was in the spring.

  “Mom?”

  “Merry? What’s wrong? Oh, Lordy, is it Allie?”

  I hadn’t heard the emotion in my voice, but she had and she’d jumped right to worrying about her granddaughter. “She’s fine.”

  “You?”

  “Not so good. Mom, Hiram’s dead.”

  She caught her breath. “Hiram? What on earth? How? When?” I heard the creak of a wooden chair in the background as she sat down.

  I choked back more tears. My mother was five hundred miles away in St. Louis. No sense in upsetting her more by letting her hear how upset I was.

  “I always said one of these days he’d keel over dead with a heart attack,” she said.

  “It was an accident. I don’t know the details. The sheriff of that place where he bought his new farm finally tracked me down at a show thi
s afternoon.”

  “Where are you?”

  I told her and reiterated everything the Bigelow County sheriff had said to me. “The crazy thing is that we’d been emailing and talking on the phone lately. Dad sounded happy. Wanted me to see his new place, spend some time. I think he had a crazy idea I might come work with him.”

  “Like that would have worked,” my mother said.

  “I was maybe considering driving down. I don’t have another job for a couple of weeks. And now this. I can’t believe it.”

  My mother’s voice sounded quiet and a bit distant suddenly. “He’d been emailing me too. You know your father would never apologize, but he acted as though he wanted to make things right between us.”

  “Mom . . . ”

  “I’ve long since forgiven him for what he did to me. I’m not so certain I could let him off the hook for what he did to you.”

  “Don’t forget Allie.”

  “She barely knows him. She thinks of Steve as her grandfather, not her step-grandfather. Have you called her?”

  I shook my head, although my mother couldn’t see the gesture. “I called you first. I figured you’d know what I’m supposed to do. You’ve always been the one to handle the deaths in the family.”

  “Each generation of women eventually hands over the death reins to the next, Merry.”

  “But when Gram and Granddad and Aunt Phil died, they had plenty of friends within shouting distance. You had help.”

  “Your father was kind of famous in a small way. . .”

  “And lived on a new farm surrounded by strangers in a village in the boondocks of North Georgia. He didn’t have anybody else. I am it.”

  My mother instantly switched to head-of-the-family mode. “Unless he changed his will, which I doubt since I had the devil’s own time getting him to make one at the time of the divorce, you are his sole heir and executrix of his estate. Since he died in an accident, there will no doubt be a delay in releasing the body. You know we always like to have the funeral within three days of the death, impossible in this case. I would suggest a memorial service as soon as possible after you know what’s what. Then either cremation or a graveside service at some later date. Do you have enough money?”

  “For the moment. I’m due to start at The Meadows in a month breaking two-year-olds for Fergus Williams, and I’m running a carriage show in Southern Pines next month.” If they still wanted me after today’s debacle.

  “I doubt he had much capital left after buying the new place and doing all that work to it, but he did have some life insurance, assuming he hadn’t let it lapse or borrowed against it. That should come to you. It won’t be much, but it should pay for the funeral and tide you over.”

  “Mom . . . ” I hesitated, but I had to ask the question I’d never asked. “Do you ever regret . . . ”

  “Divorcing him? Not for a single minute, even if I’d never met Steve, nor built a stable life for us. They say first love never dies, but he made our lives hell, Merry. I had to get us away before he destroyed us.” I could hear her breathing. “You may have reporters calling, although he’s been out of the international limelight for some time. He will no doubt rate an obituary in The Whip and Driving Digest. Maybe a couple of other horse magazines. You know the sort of thing ‘former driving champion dies, etc., etc.’ Say nothing personal. Don’t give them Allie’s address or telephone number, and whatever you do, don’t sic them onto Vic. God only knows what your ex would say to them.”

  “Mostly something along the line of ‘that bastard wrecked my marriage’. Assuming he’s sober enough to be coherent.”

  “We Lackland women don’t have good luck with men, do we, darling? At least not the first time.”

  “No second time for me.” As always after a conversation with my mother, I felt calmer and surer of myself. We talked some more, but nothing substantive, and finally broke the connection. I tried my daughter Allie’s cell phone in New York, but on a beautiful April Sunday afternoon, I knew there was little chance I could get her. I left a message for her to call me, but didn’t tell her why. She might get around to it, or she might blow me off.

  I went into Wal-Mart for a couple of six packs of diet soda, a bag of ice and a couple of packets of peanut butter crackers, filled the ice chest, and got on the road.

  My mother was only partly right about my father almost killing us.

  Actually, I was the reason my mother walked with a cane.

  Chapter 3

  Sunday evening

  Merry

  By the time I found Mossy Creek, I’d gotten lost on hilly back roads twice and asked where to locate Mossy Creek at three convenience stores.

  Since I did not have directions to my father’s apartment, I called this Peggy Caldwell from my cell phone to find how to get there once I finally found Mossy Creek.

  It was dusk before I pulled into the driveway at her address and simply sat. As long as I didn’t get out, meet the woman, talk to her about Hiram, I could almost pretend Hiram was alive somewhere and would come home to his new apartment.

  I could see why he’d liked the town and Caldwell’s place, although he generally didn’t pay all that much attention to where he lived. He seemed as happy sleeping on hay bales in a cold barn waiting for a mare to foal as he did in a state bedroom in some baron’s castle in Bavaria. That’s one trait he passed down to me. My daughter Allie, who is settling into her first apartment in New York with three other girls, haunts flea markets, IKEA, and Crate and Barrel. Once she makes her first million—any day now at the rate she’s going—she’ll switch to Mario Buatta and move into the Dakota.

  Since I never knew how long we’d be staying in any one location when I was growing up, I learned never to invest my heart in making friends I might have to leave tomorrow, or my money in my surroundings and possessions. Good thing, since Vic took most of what we owned in the divorce. He might have taken Allie as well, except that she was already a junior at the University of Kentucky and interning at Goldman Sachs in the summers.

  Who needed human friends when I had the horses? Although a horse may try to kill you occasionally, it’s almost never out of meanness, and he won’t betray you. No matter how miserable my life has been from time to time, I could always count on a gentle nuzzle from a velvet nose to lift my spirits. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so lost and miserable if there had been a handy horse to love on.

  I was glad Hiram had found a place to call home. Looking out the window of the truck I could see that the house was a 1930s Tudor, but well maintained.

  Hiram’s landlady apparently liked to garden. Masses of azaleas in different shades ranging from coral to pale pink budded in her front yard, and the driveway dropped off sharply in back of the house to what looked like several acres of lawn with big trees and lush plantings.

  Hiram said his apartment had been created on the lower level out of part of the garage. He could walk out the French doors from his small living room onto a patio under the main house’s deck and into the back yard. He loved spring, and would have enjoyed the quickening life he saw from his patio.

  He’d actually sounded enthusiastic about the place, which surprised me. The apartment came furnished, which didn’t surprise me one bit. Most of the guest houses and above-the-stable trainer’s apartments he’d lived in came furnished. I doubted he owned a stick of furniture.

  Hiram did accumulate harness, tack, carriages, horse blankets and horse coolers, a million items he needed to look after his four-footed charges. Since I didn’t see either a big diesel truck or a humongous horse trailer, I assumed both were parked at his new farm. His personal possessions probably fit into a couple of suitcases and maybe a garbage bag or two.

  Personal possessions I’d be forced to go through. God, how I dreaded that. I doubted he kept old love letters from his lady friends on the carriage circuit, but if he had, I didn’t want to read them.

  I seldom managed shows in Hiram’s part of the country or at the high levels at which
he competed. Even on the few occasions I did, I generally managed to avoid coming face-to-face with him.

  Maybe he thought he deserved the cold shoulder I gave him. Judging from his emails, after he retired and had time to look back, he finally began to get how badly he’d hurt Mother and me. And I had grown up enough to cut him some slack. He had never planned to hurt us, after all.

  He always considered us a parallel universe. What he did in his professional and personal life away from us shouldn’t affect us. When he told my mother, “Honey, none of those women has anything to do with you and Merry,” he believed himself. When he didn’t come home on my birthday after he’d promised he would, he couldn’t understand why I was upset. After all, he was driving.

  I ran into his current and former mistresses at shows regularly. I was studiously polite, whatever turmoil I felt inside. After all, he was no longer married to my mother, so he wasn’t committing adultery, although in some cases they were. I simply didn’t want to know more about his personal life than I already knew. I think most kids feel that way about their parents. I know Allie feels that way about me. I’d no more discuss a new boyfriend (assuming I had one) with her than I’d fly to the moon. Even at his age Hiram was still a handsome man and a charmer. No doubt he’d charmed his landlady. I sincerely hoped he’d found someone he cared about who cared about him. She had found his body. Where? This apartment? Out at his new farm?

  I don’t know how long I had been sucking back the tears in her driveway when the front door of the house opened and light spilled out.

  “Ms Abbott?” A female voice called. Strong. Not an old lady quaver.

  I took a deep breath and climbed out of the truck. “Ms. Caldwell?” I went to her and offered my hand. “People call me Merry. Big joke.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not.”

  Her grip was firm. She was slim, nearly as tall as my five-ten and straight as a stick. No sign of a dowager’s hump. “Please come in. If I leave the door open for long the cats get curious and wander outside. If they manage to make the front porch they have hysterics trying to get back in. I’ll take you downstairs to Hiram’s apartment in a little while. I assume you’re hungry. Come in and have a drink and a sandwich. And please call me Peggy.”