TheCart Before the Corpse Read Online Free Page B

sight.
    “Just the four,” Peggy said.
    I was startled.
    “I’m not reading your mind. People always wonder.”
    “I like cats.”
    “I’m glad. They own the place and generously allow me to have company if it’s willing to pet them. The one making amorous overtures to your paddock boots is Sherlock. He’s dumb but sweet. The old guy on the chair is Dashiell. He runs the joint. That’s Marple on the windowsill and Watson on the hearth.”
    “Do they actually detect?”
    “You’d be surprised. Now, what would you like to drink? Beer? Wine? Bourbon?”
    “Actually, I’d prefer iced tea.”
    “Sweet or unsweet?”
    “Unsweet with lemon and artificial sweetener if you have it. These hips do not require sugar to spread.”
    “Woman after my own heart. Sit.”
    The kitchen cabinets had been redone at some time, but retained a dark patina. The appliances, however, were brand new steel jobs.
    In less than five minutes we were drinking iced tea and eating thick home cured ham and extra sharp cheddar sandwiches while the cats regarded us solemnly from the archway into the library.
    “I’m so sorry about Hiram. He’s only been living here eight months, but I was fond of him,” she said.
    “I’m sure he was fond of you too. When that sheriff finally got hold of me, he said he’d tell me the details tomorrow when I see him, but he did say you’d found him and that it was a freak accident.”
    She set her iced tea glass down so fast it splashed on the butcher-block table. “That man is an idiot. I found him all right. But it was no accident, freak or otherwise. I’m afraid, my dear, your father was murdered, and very nastily, too.”
     

Chapter 4
     
    Sunday evening
    Merry
     
    Ooookay. People I know don’t get murdered. Certainly not my father. He could drive anybody up the wall, but not to the extent that they’d kill him.
    “I’m not crazy,” Peggy Caldwell said. “I do not have Alzheimer’s. I saw what I saw and know what I know. Somebody killed your father, Merry. The sheriff doesn’t want to deal with it because this county is supposed to be an All-American, crime-free, real-life Mayberry, at least in the press releases and the political speeches. That’s the way the governor likes it. Ham Bigelow. From one of this county’s founding families. Born and raised in the county seat. He still keeps a home in Bigelow, and a lot of his relatives live there.”
    “My father was killed in a break-in? Burglary gone bad?” That, at least, was feasible.
    “Not at all. Not in the way you mean.”
    “An addict looking for something to sell?”
    As a horse show manager and horse trainer I’m not unfamiliar with drugs. In some rural communities, cooking shake-and-bake crystal meth is easier, cheaper, and nets more profit than moonshine. Of course, it’s also a whole bunch more dangerous to cook, but I guess if you’re hooked on the stuff and can’t get an honest job, you’ll risk it.
    There’s also cocaine, marijuana, and crystal meth in the horse show world. The drug of choice generally follows the socio-economic level of the user. The rich and their progeny use cocaine and smoke pot. The grooms and stable hands tend toward crack and crystal meth. Of course the real drug of choice, at least in the south, is good ole demon bourbon.
    “I doubt even a hard-core addict would have thought to find drugs in Hiram’s barn,” Peggy said.
    “So . . . his . . . body wasn’t in his apartment downstairs?” It stabbed me in the gut to say it that way.
    “I found him on the floor of his workshop out at the farm.”
    “He must have had a heart attack or a stroke.”
    She took a deep breath. “You’re too tired to deal with what I’m trying to tell you, tonight. I’ll show you downstairs and let you get some sleep.”
    “I’m not going to sleep until I know what this is about. Please, just tell me all of it and get it over with.”
    “If you’re sure.” She took another deep breath. “I have