TheCart Before the Corpse Read online

  “Mostly woods. Hiram did not own but to the second tree line. Past that tree line is another hundred or so acres. More hills. Many more trees. A couple of streams in the valley. Pretty, but not for a horse farm.”

  By the time we’d finished exploring, the horses were ready for dinner, so I helped Jacob bring them in and feed them. Except for the bales in the aisles ready to be fed, most of the hay was stored in a lean-to shed behind the old barn, and the manure pile, always necessary in any horse operation, was on the far side of the barn away from the path and out of the way.

  Jacob had indeed cleaned the stalls and filled the water buckets. He had not, however, swept the center clay aisle free of bits of hay. Hiram liked his aisles swept twice a day. I could hear him in my head as clear as though he were standing beside me with a rake in his hand. “Unmade bed, a clean house looks messy. Unswept aisle, a clean stable looks dirty.” I turned away so that Jacob couldn’t see me blink back tears.

  The heck with the aisle. I’d make certain Hiram swept it tomorrow morning. I couldn’t take much more today.

  “Where did Hiram keep the records and his log books?” I asked as I dropped the last flake of hay into Heinzie’s stall. “I haven’t seen any filing cabinets. Not even a desk.”

  “Not in the workshop?”

  “I’ll check tomorrow.” If there were any file cabinets or boxes for papers in the old barn, I hadn’t noticed them, but then, I’d been concentrating on the area around the vis-à-vis. I didn’t have time to open the barn again now. I was worn out and dirty, and I was taking Peggy to dinner in Mossy Creek. I started to ask Jacob what he’d be doing for dinner, but thought better of it.

  “I go to Bigelow,” he said as he followed me to my truck. “After I am washed.” He pointed across the horse pasture to the trees where I could glimpse the corner of what must be his trailer. “I do not cook.” Then he leered.

  Obviously, somebody cooked. Female for sure. Probably where he went on the weekends to get drunk.

  “Do you check the horses at night?”

  “I let them out after they eat.”

  “Good.” Hiram had taught me that the more time horses spent out in pasture, the healthier they stayed. I climbed into my truck and reached for the ignition.

  “Hey,” Jacob said.

  I let my hand drop.

  “You are not so stupid about horses.” He stalked away.

  Had I just received a compliment? Probably as close as Jacob Yoder ever came to giving one. The Amish are not noted for bitterness and bad temper. What had happened to turn him into a curmudgeon? A felonious curmudgeon at that.

  Chapter 10

  Monday evening

  Geoff Wheeler

  Geoff Wheeler clicked his briefcase shut and locked his desk. He was more than ready to go home. He hated Monday paperwork days when he seldom left his office. He’d even brought his lunch from home.

  When he rotated his skull, the muscles of his neck popped like old silk tearing. He needed an hour in the gym but didn’t have the energy. All he wanted was a thick steak, a big salad and a glass of good red wine, all of which waited for him at his apartment. As he rounded the desk, his phone rang.

  He didn’t even bother to swear. “Wheeler,” he said when he picked up.

  “Got your back,” Amos said. “Ida went through our state senator, the sheriff and the lieutenant governor, but you’re good to go. Come on up. You want to stay with me or at the local inn?”

  Geoff closed his eyes. “The inn. I don’t share living space with anyone, much less another cop. You’re paying my expenses, right?”

  “Hey, the GBI works for the public, right?”

  “When we have to.”

  “So the State of Georgia should pay for this investigation. That’s why the legislature gives you the big bucks.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ll make you a guaranteed reservation for whenever you get here. Probably be late.”

  “It will be not, Amos. I’m tired, hungry, and have no intention of driving up to Mossy Creek until I’ve had a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you mid-morning tomorrow. You can buy me lunch.”

  “I’ll ask Ida if she’d like to join us. She wants to meet you. For your information, I intend to marry the woman, so don’t be flashing those baby blues of yours at her, got that?”

  “As a favor to you, I’ll keep my male magnetism under wraps.”

  Amos snorted and. “Keep your Viagra in the bottle is more like it.”

  He rang off. Geoff sighed deeply and left fast before anyone else could talk to him.

  Traffic in Atlanta sucked, but it gave him time to decompress and to think about what he was getting into. If the old guy in Mossy Creek actually had been killed, the sheriff and the state cops had destroyed the crime scene and compromised any evidence.

  He preferred to have forensic evidence to back up every conclusion. That might not be possible in this case. He’d have to go on straight interviews and interrogation. What he called ‘comparison shopping.’ Ask questions until something didn’t add up. The old fashioned way. He hated that.

  He wound up fixing himself a couple of bacon and egg sandwiches and tossing his sirloin into the freezer. He cleaned up the kitchen and turned on the dishwasher, then loaded the washing machine.

  He would have preferred to leave the kitchen in a mess and the underwear in his hamper, but he drove himself to keep his apartment straight. He hated facing mess when he climbed out of bed in the morning. Too many memories of waking to the aftermath of one of Brit’s parties.

  He set his clock early enough so that he could spend an hour at the gym on his way out of town, and collapsed naked and catty-cornered in his king-sized bed so his feet didn’t hang off the end. Why not? He hadn’t shared his bed with so much as a cat since his divorce.

  He wondered as he drifted into sleep what sort of woman this Ida was if Amos had an eye on her. Amos had been one of his groomsmen when he married Brittany, and had said during the reception that he felt certain Geoff would never have to return the favor. This Ida was mayor of Mossy Creek, so she couldn’t be a twenty-something popsy, but he’d be willing to bet she was eye candy.

  Brittany had been eye candy too. Pity he’d taken ten years to realize the sugar coating surrounded a rotten center.

  Chapter 11

  Monday evening

  Merry

  Peggy gave me a shiny key for the new lock on Hiram’s apartment door while we made plans to get together for dinner, then I dragged down the driveway to clean myself up.

  I expected to find the same mess we’d left last night, but Peggy had apparently spent the time while the locksmith was changing the locks putting the books back into their shelves and straightening the mail and magazines. I really hadn’t looked at the place last night before Sandy, the dispatcher, had sent us out to wait for Mutt, the cop. I should go over the mail to check for bills, but they’d have to wait.

  Peggy had furnished the little apartment with comfortable overstuffed furniture, the sort a man likes to relax in. A decent sized flat screen TV hung on the end wall, and the small galley kitchen looked adequate for a man who didn’t cook much.

  Actually, if I knew Hiram, he probably had invitations for dinner almost every evening, and the ones where he wasn’t invited out, the local ladies brought casseroles in. He was the perfect extra man. He played bridge, danced well, and looked extremely presentable. He liked women, and like most men who are famous in their own small ponds, he generally had to beat them off with a stick.

  Not that he did. He tried to convince my mother that he really loved only her, and that his one-night stands were not germane.

  Oh, sure. Maybe there’s a woman somewhere who believes that, but if so, I’ve never met one. Vic never convinced me either.

  The single bedroom had a king-sized bed covered with a handsome wedding ring quilt. The small bathroom backed up to the kitchen. I had been comfortable in much less palatial surroundings.

  No
trophies. No file cabinet. No desk. So where did he keep his logs and records? He must have paper backups even if he kept most of his files on his computer. Coggins tests for Equine Infectious Anemia came on paper, so did construction bills, information about worming and vaccination schedules, hay bills, feed bills, Jacob’s salary. Like most careful horsemen, Hiram would have kept copies of everything.

  Not only that, he always kept a running handwritten log like a ship’s captain. If a horse came up lame, Hiram wrote it down and what he’d done to correct it. If he dosed a horse with Bute or Banamine, he noted it. If a horse acted up at the breaking cart, he wrote it down. I should be able to reconstruct everything that had happened in his life with horses. He generally used gray school exercise books, but I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of anything that looked remotely like his logs.

  And how about a record of the money he was taking in? Granted, it wouldn’t match the outlay at this stage, but with boarding the pair of bays and the Friesian and the carriage repair work, he had some income. Bank statements?

  There had to be a repository of some sort. Most likely a rented storage room. Peggy might know where. But surely he’d have kept his current log where he could get at it easily. Had whoever killed him found and stolen it?

  Why?

  Because it held evidence incriminating the killer, obviously.

  I had brought my own laptop up to Peggy’s last night, but locked it in my truck when I left for the farm. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving it lying around where whoever had burgled the apartment could come hunting for it. I’d simply have to tote it back and forth with me. It would be loaded with emails about Hiram and requests for information from the driving magazines.

  I’d have to organize the memorial service tomorrow. I needed to meet Hiram’s lawyer to get the will probated and find out where I stood financially.

  None of this dealt with the most important part of Hiram’s death. Who had killed him? Who on earth hated him that much?

  Chapter 12

  Monday evening

  Merry

  Mama’s All You Can Eat Cafe didn’t look precisely like The Four Seasons in Manhattan, but Peggy assured me the food was nearly as good, if not as fancy. And much less expensive. I’m up for anything remotely resembling haute, or even demi-haute cuisine, and it seems Mama’s fried chicken and chocolate meringue pie are legendary. I could eat my weight in either one, and suddenly that cheeseburger seemed a million miles away.

  Peggy introduced me to our waitress Ellen Stencil, and told me that Mama’s is family style. If there are no free tables, people sit where there are empty seats the way they do in Germany.

  “I’m so sorry about Hiram,” Ellen said as she leaned down to give Peggy a near-cheek peck.

  Before our salads arrived, I was holding court. First to come by was a lady named Trisha Cecil with her husband Pruitt. She said in a near whisper, “Such a sweet man, and such a good bridge player.” She smiled down at me. “Do you play?”

  “Not since college, I’m afraid,” I said. I didn’t tell her that Hiram was a much better poker player than he was a bridge player. He taught me the difference between a straight and a flush when I was six, but the gambling bug never bit me. My allowance was much too precious to me to risk it on anything I couldn’t stuff into my mouth. Preferably chocolate.

  He gave up playing because he always won. If he was playing against the rich patrons who could afford to lose the money, they didn’t like losing bragging rights. If he was playing against the grooms and other professionals, he didn’t like taking their hard-earned cash. That same ability to assess the odds and play them consistently kept him in the winner’s circle with his carriage horses. He didn’t win every class, but he won often and well. He knew instinctively which chances to take and which to avoid.

  “Oh, bridge comes back like riding a bicycle,” Mrs. Cecil said in that soft voice. “I know it’s too early for you to be thinking of these things, but I do want to keep up my driving lessons. I’ll call to schedule the next one.” She left trailed by her husband who had not said a single word.

  “What lessons?” I whispered.

  “Didn’t Jacob tell you?” Peggy leaned toward me and lowered her voice.

  I shook my head.

  “Hiram was teaching us to drive.”

  I gaped at her. “Us? As in you?”

  She looked down at her plate and actually blushed. “I was his first lesson after he put in the dressage arena, and before that, we were driving the Halflinger in the pasture.” Then she met my eyes and her chin jutted as though I had threatened her. “I’ve even driven Heinzie to the big Meadowbrook. We were talking about my buying a horse and carriage to show. We have several driving shows in this area, you know.”

  I gulped my iced tea and composed my face as though this was the first time I’d heard of them. “I know. Several.” I managed a couple of them.

  “I was his star pupil.” Peggy waved a hand at the woman who had told me my bridge skills would come back. “She’s got a husband, but the others are widows. Hiram was an attractive man.”

  “You think they might want to continue taking lessons now that Hiram’s . . . not available? Surely they’re not interested in seducing Jacob.”

  Peggy choked on her iced tea. “There’s not a widow in Mossy Creek that is that desperate. Let’s face it, after you mulch the azaleas and cover the roses, there’s not much to do in a garden in the winter except read seed catalogs and plan for next spring.”

  “Gardeners?”

  “I don’t think Ida tried driving. She’s the mayor and has her own beau, so she didn’t hit on Hiram. Amos wouldn’t like it.”

  “Amos Royden? The police chief would have been jealous of Hiram?” Oh, boy, that was all I needed. First I ran afoul of Sheriff Campbell in Bigelow, a considerably bigger jackass than Don Qui and unlikely to do anything to rock the boat about Hiram’s death. Now I found that the Mossy Creek chief of police would have reacted badly if this Ida person came on to Hiram. Knowing Hiram, he would have, unless she looked like the Goodyear blimp or the Wicked Witch of whichever direction she came from. Even then, he might have reconsidered it if she was funny and rich. “What’s Ida like?”

  “Rich as Croesus, clever as a mongoose, and tough as pig iron.”

  “How old? And how thin?”

  “Thin enough. Early fifties. She was the most beautiful woman in Mossy Creek, and would still give our Miss Georgia a run for her money.”

  Just Hiram’s type. If I’d been able to cadge a sports’ agent’s fifteen per cent of all the money Hiram had talked women out of, I could buy my own horse farm and sit on my tush while illegal immigrants did all the work.

  “So what’s for dinner, ladies?” Ellen asked. I turned the menu over to Peggy.

  ”Evening, Peggy, Ms Abbott. I’m Amos Royden. We met this morning.”

  We shook hands across the iced tea glasses. He looked even better out of uniform. What a pity he was already taken, although not actually married. He was also a possible suspect in my father’s murder if Ida had eyes for Hiram. He pulled up a chair and sat across from me. Without being asked, Ellen set a glass of iced tea in front of him.

  “Did you talk to Sheriff Campbell?” Peggy asked.

  Amos laughed. “He is not happy. He is uncomfortable around formidable women,” he said to me.

  “Moi? Formidable? I was sweet, but assertive.”

  “The worst kind. He did send me a copy of the autopsy report. He’d give his eye teeth to put Hiram’s death down to some weird accident.”

  “But not you.” Peggy said. “You believe me.”

  He put up his hands. “Give us a chance. I just got the ME’s report this afternoon. I’ve barely looked at it. Maybe Sheriff Campbell’s right.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Peggy said.

  The look he shot Peggy had her suddenly fiddling with her napkin. Then he looked back at me. “Okay. So come around to my office first thing tomorrow morning, Ms Abbott
. We need to talk.” He smiled and walked away.

  “Oops,” Peggy said.

  During the entire dinner, Mossy Creekites whose names I could not possibly remember stopped by our table to meet me, offer condolences, tell me what a great guy Hiram was, ask when we were having the funeral, and what they could do to help.

  Four asked how quickly I’d be back offering driving lessons. As if, but I didn’t tell them that. Besides, I might have to figure out some way to continue teaching and training for the income. The horses needed to be fed and Jacob had to be paid, etc., etc., etc. After my less than glorious exit from the Meadows show, I might not have another show manager’s job for a while. I might not even have that job breaking two-year-olds I’d been expecting.

  I had not planned to have dessert, but by the time I had worked my way through my dinner with all the interruptions, my stomach was in knots, so I went for the chocolate pie. Chocolate will never let you down.

  “Sorry,” Peggy whispered. “We should have stayed home and ordered pizza.”

  “Not on your life,” I said as I dug into meringue.

  “So, when and how can I help?”

  “When what?” I could have fallen into that pie and never surfaced.

  “When are you going to do the memorial service and how can I help figure out who killed Hiram? And incidentally, when can we all take more driving lessons? Easter’s only a week away, and Hiram promised he’d give carriage rides in the afternoon. I guess you’ll have to do it.”

  “No way. Not happening.” So much for the meringue.

  “Why ever not?”

  Mentally, I smacked myself on the forehead. Idiot. Why could I never learn to keep my mouth shut? I’d have to tell her something. I took a deep breath and folded my napkin beside the oversized dish holding the remains of the pie. “I haven’t driven a horse in twenty years.”