On each side of the base, a bronze plaque was bolted and each hound’s name was engraved, birth date and death date.
The plaques, representing forty years of Jefferson Hunt hounds, were filled. Newer plaques were affixed to the wrought-iron fence. The last one, bearing three names, had Archie’s name freshly carved.
A stone bench under a crabapple tree nestled in one corner. Sister sat down, Raleigh at her feet.
A fat snowflake twirled earthward, soon followed by another and another. The dark sky now had a pinkish cast.
Raleigh leaned shoulder to shoulder with Sister on the bench.
“Orion and Thurman, Bachelor and Button, Laura and Grinch.” She sighed. “I was young then and oh that seems so long ago, Raleigh, and yet like yesterday.” She read aloud other names. “Yoyo, Chigger, Splash, and Schooner. What good hounds. How lucky I’ve been in this life to have known such hounds. To be able to stay healthy, to have good friends. I think foxhunters are as nutty as golfers. You can’t think about much else, really.” The snow dropped thicker and faster. “You know, Raymond wanted to be buried here but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. She dragged him to Hollywood in Richmond. He’s with his kin and two presidents, John Tyler and I can never remember the other one. He’d rather have been with the hounds. Ray Junior is on the hill. Someday I’ll be with him. I think about moving Big Raymond. Once his mother died I guess I could have but then—” She put her arm around the glossy black shoulders. “It seems I should leave well enough alone. I guess they’ll plant Peter with his people. They’re all up by Monticello. It’s funny how families come back together in death. So often they couldn’t do it in life but once dead, people who hated one another are laid side by side. If that great day comes and the tombs give up their dead, can you imagine the shock? You pop out of your grave and there’s your brother, Fred, who you would happily dispatch all over again. Ha.”
“Something’s outside the cemetery.”
She hugged him closer. “Archie was the best. Brave and true. Diana, Cora, and Dragon didn’t back down but poor Archie paid for his courage. If you’d been there, you’d have jumped right in. Raleigh, you’re young and may you live a long time. You’ll be with me at the end. I promise. Golly, too, spoiled-rotten cat.” She smiled, determined not to cry. “I look at this ground and four decades of my life are here. It doesn’t seem possible. Losing Archie doesn’t seem possible. And Peter Wheeler. If you could have seen Peter in his forties and fifties. What a man. God, what a bizarre time.” She shivered, not from the cold. Sniffled. Collected herself and said with quiet determination, “I’m going to lay a trap for our killer. I can’t tell a soul and I refuse to kill a fox. I’d like to get the killer for killing the fox as much as for killing Fontaine. Damn him.” She paused. “Thanksgiving hunt. If only the foxes will cooperate.”
As she said that Inky came out of hiding. “Don’t chase me,” she said to Raleigh. “I’ll help.”
“I’ll tell the hounds.”
Sister, startled, blinked. “You.”
Inky blinked, then scampered away, leaving perfect fox prints in the gathering snow.
CHAPTER 52
A long polished table left just enough space to squeeze in and out of one’s chair. Vin Barber wanted a conference room like the conference rooms the ritzy Charlottesville and Richmond lawyers had. But Vin couldn’t get along with a plethora of partners and so kept his practice to himself and his son—more to himself, since his son was an unimpressive specimen.
Vin was, nonetheless, a good lawyer whose specialty was real estate and conservation, the two being allied.
Sitting at the head of the table, his bald head bent over the long legal briefs encased in heavy light-blue paper, spectacles down his nose, Vin could have walked out of a Daumier lithograph, minus the wig and robes, which would have improved his appearance.
Sister sat on his right and Bobby Franklin sat on his left. As president of Jefferson Hunt, Bobby needed to attend the meeting.
Having just heard the last will and testament of Peter H. Wheeler, they were stunned.
“Remarkable!” she exclaimed.
Bobby folded his hands together. “Yes, but can we meet his conditions?”
“I’d damn well try if I were you,” Vin, characteristically direct, said.
Bobby leaned across the table toward Sister. “Live to one hundred.”
“God willing.”
“No joint-masters.” Vin put his hands behind his head. “You don’t really want one anyway, do you? Even if Crawford wrote big checks, can you imagine talking to him on the phone every twenty minutes? He’s high-maintenance. Like to run you wild.”
“We can manage without a joint-master but operating expenses don’t diminish, as you know. Inflation affects us as well as General Motors.” Sister grasped the economics of the club, which is more than some masters. “We’ll find a way. But let me be clear: All of Peter Wheeler’s estate is held for Jefferson Hunt so long as I live and so long as I don’t take a joint-master. And he has left an annual income of fifty thousand dollars a year from his portfolio to maintain the farm.”
“Correct.”
“That’s not the tricky part.” Bobby, like most fat people, sweated easily and he was sweating now.
“I know.” Sister frowned.
“The tricky part is that once you have passed on, Doug Kinser must be the next master. Jesus, the board will hit the roof.”
“Because he’s black?” Vin questioned.
“For some, I expect their hemorrhoids will flare up,” Sister dryly replied. “But no, the real reason is the board of governors wants to govern. This removes from them the right to elect their master annually. Not so much a problem now but quite the issue when I’m dead and gone.”
“Doug would be the first black master in the country. In the world,” Bobby thought out loud. “Course, he’s only half black.”
“People don’t see it like that.” Vin tapped the eraser end of the pencil against the blue cover. “If you look the tiniest bit black, then you’re black.”
“Like the old race laws. If you have one percent Negro blood in your veins, you’re Negro.”
“Virginia had laws like that?” Bobby was appalled.
“Not just Virginia. Many states. Midwestern states. People feared mixing the races.” Vin paused. “The idea was like to like, I guess. I remember my grandma saying to me, ‘Stick to your own kind.’ There’s a logic to it,” he honestly added. “I can’t say that I agree with it but there’s a logic to it.”
“Bobby, our bylaws state that the master must be elected by the board of governors, who are in turn elected by the membership.”
“That’s what I’m saying. As long as you live, we don’t have a problem.”
“We do if I get decrepit.”
“You can still be master. You can still control the kennel and the hiring and firing. Someone else can be field master. We don’t have a problem. Oh, we’ll hear some quibbles about how you should have a joint-master but I can deal with that and so will others,” Bobby confidently predicted.
“Do we have to tell the membership of this?”
“Well—” Bobby unfolded his hands, making a tepee out of them.
“No one need know the full contents of this will so long as you enact its provisions,” Vin added. “There’s enough money annually for you to pay a salary, let’s say, put a first whipper-in at the house and he has to care for it. It could be quite comfortable.”
“Yes.” Sister’s mind was roaring along at a mile an hour. “Vin”—she leaned toward him—“I don’t mind if this will is read to the membership, but can we wait until after Thanksgiving hunt? It’s only two weeks away.”