“What about searching for the victim? Surely the possibility of a limp could give him away. Someone somewhere knew a lame man visited Medley Orion. And he wasn’t a tradesman.”
“It’s baffling.” Miranda leaned on the opposite side of the counter. “But I’ve turned this over and over in my mind and I believe this has something to do with us now. Someone knows this story.”
Mim tapped the counter with her mail.“And if we know, it will upset the applecart.” She grabbed a letter opener off the counter and opened her personal mail. Her eyes widened as a letter fell out of a plain envelope postmarked Charlottesville. Letters were pasted on the paper: “Let the dead bury the dead.” Mim blanched, then read it aloud.
“Already has,” Harry said. “Yeah, the applecart’s upset.”
“I resent this cheap theatric!” Mim vehemently slapped the letter on the counter.
“Cheap or not, we’d better all be careful,” Miranda quietly commented.
35
Ansley, in defiance of Warren, allowed Kimball Haynes to read the family papers. She even opened the safe. After she heard about Lulu’s trouble with Samson, she figured the girls ought to stick together, especially since she didn’t see anything particularly wrong with allowing it.
Reflecting on that later, she realized that she felt a kinship with Lulu since they shared Samson. Ansley knew she got the better part of him. Samson, a vain but handsome man, evidenced a streak of fun and true creativity in bed. As a young man, he was always in one scrape or another. The one told most often was how he got drunk and ran his motorcycle through a rail fence. Stumbling out of the wreckage, he cursed,“Damn mare refused the fence.” Warren had been riding with him that day on his sleek Triumph 750cc.
They must have been wild young bucks, outrageous, still courteous, but capable of anything. Warren lost the wildness once out of law school. Samson retained vestiges of it but seemed subdued in the company of his wife.
Ansley wondered what would happen if and when Lucinda ever found out. She thought of Lucinda as a sister. Conventional emotion dictated that she should hate Lucinda as a rival. Why? She didn’t want Samson permanently. Temporary use of his body was quite sufficient.
The more she thought about why she allowed Kimball access to the papers, the more she realized that Wesley’s death had opened a Pandora’s box. She had lived under that old man’s thumb. So had Warren, and over the years she lost respect for her husband, watching him knuckle under to his father. Wesley had displayed virtues, to be sure, but he was harsh toward his son.
Worse, both men shut her out of the business. She wasn’t an idiot. She could have learned about farming or Thoroughbred breeding, if nothing else. She might have even offered some new ideas, but no, she was trotted out to prospective customers, pretty bait. She served drinks. She kept the wives entertained. She stood on high heels for cocktail partyafter cocktail party. Her Achilles’ tendon was permanently shortened. She bought a new gown for every black-tie fund-raiser on the East Coast and in Kentucky. She played her part and was never told she did a good job. The men took her for granted, and they had no idea how hard it was to be set aside, yet still be expected to behave graciously to people so hideously boring they should never have been born. Ansley was too young for that kind of life. The women in their sixties and seventies bowed to it. Perhaps some enjoyed being a working ornament, the unsung part of the proverbial marital team. She did not.
She wanted more. If she left Warren, he’d be hurt initially, then he’d hire the meanest divorce lawyer in the state of Virginia with the express purpose of starving her out. Rich men in divorce proceedings were rarely generous unless they were the ones caught with their pants down.
Ansley awoke to her fury. Wesley Randolph had crowed about his ancestors, notably Thomas Jefferson, one time too many. Warren, while not as bad, sang the refrain also. Was it because they couldn’t accomplish much today? Did they need those ancestors? If Warren Randolph hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he’d probably be on welfare. Her husband had no get-up-and-go. He couldn’t think for himself. And now that Poppa wasn’t there to tell him how and when to wipe hisass, Warren was in a panic. She’d never seen her husband so distressed.
It didn’t occur to her that he might be distressed because she was cheating on him. She thought that she and Samson were too smart for him.
Nor did it occur to Ansley that a rich man’s life was not necessarily better than a poor man’s, except in creature comforts.
Warren, denied self-sufficiency, was like a baby learning to walk. He was going to fall down many times. But at least he was trying. He pored over the family papers, he studied the account books, he endured meetings with lawyers and accountants concerning his portfolio, estate taxes, death duties, and what have you. Ansley had waited so long for him to be his own man that she couldn’t recognize that he was trying.
She took a sour delight from the look on his face when she told him that Kimball had read through the family papers from the years 1790 to 1820.
“Why would you do a thing like that when I asked you to keep him and everyone else out—at least until I could make a sound decision. I’m still—rocky.” He was more shocked than angry.
“Because I think you and your father have been selfish. Anyway, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.”
He folded his hands as if in prayer and rested his chin on his fingertips.“I’m not as dumb as you think, Ansley.”
“I never said you were dumb,” came the hot retort.
“You didn’t have to.”
Since the boys were in their bedrooms, both parents kept their voices low. Warren turned on his heel and walked off to the stable. Ansley sat down and decided to read the family papers. Once she started, she couldn’t stop.
36
The dim light filtering through the rain clouds slowly faded as the sun, invisible behind the mountains, set. The darkness gathered quickly and Kimball was glad he had driven straight home after leaving the Randolphs’. He wanted to put the finishing touches on his successful research before presenting it to Sheriff Shaw and Mim Sanburne. He was hopeful that he could present it on television too, for surely the media would return to Monticello. Oliver would not be pleased, of course, but this story was too good to suppress.
A knock on the door drew him away from his desk.
He opened the door, surprised.“Hello. Come on in and—”
He never finished his sentence. That fast, a snub-nosed .38 was pulled out of a deep coat pocket and Kimball was shot once in the chest and once in the head for good measure.
37
The much-awaited movie date with Fair turned into an evening work date at Harry’s barn. The rain pattered on the standing-seam tin roof as Fair and Harry, on their knees, laid down the rubberized bricks Warren had given her. She did as her benefactor suggested, putting the expensive flooring in the center of the wash stall, checking the grade down to the drain as she did so. Fair snagged the gut-busting task of cutting down old black rubber trailer mats and placing them around the brick square. They weighed a ton.
“This is Mother’s idea of a hot date.” Mrs. Murphy laughed from the hayloft. She was visiting Simon as well as irritating the owl, but then, everyone and everything irritated the owl.
Tucker, ground-bound since she couldn’t climb the ladder and never happy about it, sat by the wash stall. Next to her was Pewter, on her sleepover visit as suggested by Mrs. Hogendobber. Pewter could climb the ladder into the hayloft, but why exert herself?
“Don’t you think the horses get more attention than we do?” Pewter asked.
“They’re bigger,” Tucker replied.
“What’s that got to do with it?” Mrs. Murphy called down.
“They aren’t as independent as we are and their hooves need constant attention,” Tucker said.