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Sister smiled. “Mrs. Redmayne, how good to see you.”

“And you, Sister and Walter. I don’t get out much anymore. When I do I am happy to see everyone, and everyone looking so well.”

“Tomorrow’s hunt can’t be as good as Tuesday’s. What a barnburner.” He grinned.

“Isn’t it peculiar to partake of a sport where your star never tells you anything? For all I know, tomorrow might be another wild one. I hope so.”

“I do, too.”

“Good to see you, Mrs. Redmayne. Please come out with us anytime. We have our followers, and you know all of us.”

As they walked to their table near the fireplace Sister watched Mrs. Redmayne, a woman twenty years older than herself, an elegant woman. Age slowed her down but she still turned out like a star.

“Carter always knows who has the best jewelry.” She smiled. “It’s not me.”

“The engagement ring Ray gave you is stunning and I hardly know about jewelry, but that is one monster diamond. Plus you have those painted crystals, the hunt ones.”

“Every now and then my late husband did come through.” She waited for the waitress to place her salad in front of her. “Carter is a patient man. He keeps relationships fresh. He’s much like Harry Dunbar that way.”

“After that grand opening I think Kathleen will make it.”

“I do, too, plus Aunt Daniella will steer her in the right direction and to the right people. And possibly she and Buddy Cadwalder can share customers, special events.” She thought a long time. “Walter, you know I am not a conspiracy theorist.”

“I do.”

“But what if whatever you call this corona…”

“Coronavirus-19.”

“What if this was something being worked on, a kind of germ warfare and it got away from the Chinese or an unbalanced person let it loose? Is that possible?”

“It is,” he quietly replied.

“What a strange world. Strange to even think of that.” She grimaced.

“Any news on the stolen Munnings?” Walter switched gears.

“No. O.J. visited Fennell’s. The police had been there to look at sales of lead shanks. Well, Fennell’s sells hundreds of them each year to the stud farms, as well as foal halters then regular halters as they grow. No way to keep track of all the new lead shanks. The only murder victims that have been identified are Parker Bell and Delores Buckingham,” Sister answered. “The other drivers remain unknown.”

“If this virus really takes off, what a cover for the thieves! Everyone will be distracted.” Walter had just thought of that.

“Thieves are clever. There are a fair number of Munnings here in our country. You’d think they would have hit Great Britain first.”

“True. I expect this is the work of Americans.” Walter speared an artichoke. “As long as the thefts involved Munnings, I guess that is some form of clue.”

“There’s logic to it somewhere, along with the value of the work. The problem with logic is what’s logical to you may not be logical to me.” Sister sighed.

“If you want an exercise in logic, be a doctor. People do the damndest things to their body or ignore their body. Then again, there must be comfort in denial.”

“To kind of change the subject. Do you think most criminals get caught in the end?”

He shook his head. “No. The smartest criminals are white collar. Every day they steal from the companies they work for, or if elected steal from the people or suck up whatever lobbyists give them.

“Actually, I’m not against lobbyists presenting their case. But I am against money under the table or other vices perhaps far more interesting than money. While I’m at it, any progress from Crawford’s private detective?”

“No.” Then Sister said, “I’ll make you a bet. Fifty dollars. I bet whoever the thieves and the killers are, they are part of the show world or the racing world.”

Walter smiled. “I’ll take that bet and double it. I bet whoever this is in some way is involved in the art market or a museum.”

They shook hands. “You’re on,” both said.

CHAPTER 25

March 5, 2020   Thursday

Two fixtures, abutting each other, filled five hundred acres on the opposite side of the ridge from Crawford Howard’s Beasley Hall. As Crawford maintained his own pack of Dumfriesshire hounds, Jefferson Hunt feared rolling up over the ridge and then down into Beasley Hall. Although Sister and Crawford had made amends over the years, no one ever wants to wind up on land not granted to them to hunt. It would set his hounds crazy. The master doesn’t live who hasn’t had some offended, red-faced landowner screaming at them, or worse, passing a shotgun over the master’s head. Crawford would forgo the shotgun, which he considered redneck. Lawyers were his shotgun. He could make your life miserable. He might not flame out these days, but why take the chance?

To this end he allowed Sam Lorillard and Skiff Kane to hunt with Jefferson Hunt today. Sam rode Sugar in Second Flight. The horse, trained, had not been trained as a foxhunter, and much as Sam wanted to go slow, Crawford, not a horseman, wanted to know if he had made a good purchase. Sam’s idea was to keep the gleaming animal in the rear, keep calm, and if she became overfaced turn back to the trailers. Skiff rode with him on Czapka, Crawford’s made hunter, a warmblood who mostly tolerated his master’s squeeze-and-jerk method of equitation.

The group parked at Fairies Bottom, the day held promise, the mercury remained in the low forties and a heavy cloud cover pressed down chimney smoke as well as scent.

Fairies Bottom, so called because when the temperature lifted, that first night of late May or early June, the fireflies appeared in massive squadrons of light. Back in the mid-nineteenth century one of the children thought they were fairies and the name stuck. Next to this simple, well-maintained farm nudged, in a northwesterly fashion, Pitchfork Farm. Built in the 1920s, the buildings appeared modern compared to Fairies Bottom. And as is often the case in the country, the owners of Fairies Bottom had to sell the land when times grew hard. Soon after they did, the crash of ’29 plummeted everyone down with it. The owners of Fairies Bottom seemed prescient. As for Pitchfork Farm, drama swirled about it. The next owners, having bought it in the last six months, seemed easy enough. They gave Jefferson Hunt permission to hunt, but as yet they had not availed themselves of the social life of the club.

A few trees, buds swelling red, offered hope against the denuded trees. Spring would come.

Weevil, Betty, and Tootie surrounded the hounds, eager to go. Weevil couldn’t sleep last night because he wasn’t sure which way to cast. The last thing he wanted to do was create an uproar with Crawford Howard.

“I’ll cast in the first meadow. If we don’t find, I’ll swing toward Pitchfork Farm,” Weevil informed his whippers-in.

If hounds hit a hotline and kept running northwest, they would eventually land in Mousehold Heath, fifteen miles away. Healthy, that distance on a hard run will push close to an hour. As they had just hunted Mousehold Heath, Weevil hoped he could find something on these two fixtures without going too far afield. Weevil cleared a simple coop in the middle of the fence line directly across from the house.

Noses down, the pack moved forward. Pookah slowed under a hickory, branches reaching to the sky.

“Old.”

Cora, out today, checked the younger hound’s line. “Doesn’t mean it won’t heat up. Let’s see.”

Sterns swaying, all the hounds shifted over to the tree line at the edge of the pasture, still brown but a hint of green peeking underneath. On and on they worked, steady. This was not a sight to thrill those people who hunt to ride but it did excite those who ride to hunt. The younger “B” hounds quietly worked alongside the older hounds. Indeed the line did heat up. Hounds trotted, as did the field behind them.