Free One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] by Carolyn McSparren Page B

offer our condolences to Sarah Beth or Dawn before we drove off,” Peggy said.
    “And have them accuse me of killing Raleigh?”
    Peggy handed me a Diet Coke—one with caffeine for my headache. I drank half of it in one long pull. “Did you call Geoff Wheeler and ask him to come rescue me?”
    “Maybe,” Peggy said. She sounded guilty. “All right, yes. And you see how fast he got there. The man likes you, Merry.”
    “He likes you . He thinks I’m a pain in the butt.”
    “But not a murderer. The police always think the person who found the body is the killer.”
    “And it’s never true, is it?”
    “In real life, it often is.”
    “I did not kill Raleigh,” I said.
    “Of course you didn’t! Perish the thought.”
    With each mile farther from the Tollivers’ farm I relaxed a bit more. We’d picked their relatively small show close to Lackland Farms, so Peggy could drive her pair with less pressure from a horde of other equipages. She’d also see what it took to run a carriage show. Ours would be on a much smaller scale, pleasure classes Saturday with a separate carriage clinic on Sunday. We didn’t need as many volunteers, but the jobs were pretty much the same.
    “What I don’t understand,” I said as I pulled out my big aluminum gooseneck trailer out to pass a pickup truck doing thirty-five in a fifty-five zone, “is why Raleigh was out there at dawn with all four horses harnessed. Even if he decided to get a head start on his warm-up, he would have rousted his groom out of bed to get the horses ready and Dawn to act as groom on the carriage. It’s not that simple to harness four big horses alone.”
    “You don’t think he might have let them sleep?” Peggy asked, then answered her own question. “Nah. He’d have taken great delight in dragging them out of bed before dawn.”
    “So maybe he did,” I said. “Who’s to say he didn’t have someone with him?”
    “Someone who killed him, then went happily back to bed and left you to find him?”
    “I wonder how closely the sheriff and his posse checked the woods beside the arena? Maybe there were footprints or a piece of cloth on a branch. Maybe another of those dumb banners.”
    “If they didn’t check, Geoff will,” Peggy said with satisfaction. “He doesn’t miss much.”
    I shuddered and covered it up by chug-a-lugging the rest of my Diet Coke. “I didn’t say this before because I figured everyone would think I was crazy or hysterical or trying to spread the guilt around . . .”
    Peggy turned as far as her seatbelt allowed. “I won’t. What?”
    I eased on the brakes and brought my big truck and trailer to a standstill at a crossroads with a four-way stop. People who don’t drive trailers, particularly rigs with live animals in them, have no idea how hard it is to stop one or how long a distance it takes. I have signs all over the back and sides of my trailer reading “Lackland Farm” and “Caution, show horses.” That doesn’t always do the trick, so I’m extra vigilant.
    “Merry,” Peggy repeated, “Tell me.”
    I looked both ways, four way stop or not, and eased across the road. “When I found the carriage and nearly fell over Raleigh, I had the strangest feeling somebody was watching me.”
    Peggy made a sound.
    “I’m not talking about the horses either. You know I normally have as much ESP as your average earthworm, but I’m fairly positive someone was standing out of sight in the trees on the far side of the arena.”
    “You didn’t see anyone?”
    I shook my head and slowed down to give half a dozen turkey buzzards time to fly off the road and away from the dead armadillo they were cleaning up. They waited until the last possible moment, staring me down, then flapped off. “Not consciously. It’s probably nothing,” I said.
    “Did you tell the sheriff or Geoff?”
    “Lord, no. I nearly didn’t tell you.
    “If you’d been a few minutes earlier you might have seen the murder and gotten killed