One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] Read Free Page A

seizure. Or drowning. Probably my drowning if Peggy ever heard me call her elderly.
    “Come on, you two need a hot shower and dry clothes,” Dick said. He threw one arm around my shoulders and one around Peggy.
    “The horses . . .” I said.
    Dick called over his shoulder, “Ortega, bring up the Halflingers as soon as you can, please, and give them a good bath. They’re starting to smell like a dead alligator. Come along, Miss Peggy,” he said to her. “We’ll pull the carriage out after everyone else has crossed over the bridge.” He called to Catherine, who stood on the bridge glowering down at the strip of canvas at her feet. “Catherine,” he called, “May we borrow your ATV? I rode down with somebody else.”
    “Give me a minute, then I want to speak to Merry and Peggy before they leave. Can you two put up with being damp for a minute?” She asked us.
    Of course we said yes.
    “I need to alert the other judges at the obstacles to what happened here and ask them to check their venues. Who knows what else this lunatic left? Tack strips? Elephant traps?”
    As a show manager, I’d often worked with Catherine Harris when she acted as Technical Delegate. She was in charge of following the national association rulebook and seeing that everyone else did as well. She took her job seriously and was very good at it.
    Whoever had set the trap had better be long gone, because if Catherine caught him or her, there’d be hell to pay.
    “We have to call the police,” said a woman behind me. “What were these blockheads thinking? They could have killed horses .” No one had so much as mentioned the possibility of killing us .
    “What the hell kind of show are you running, Catherine?” A bass voice shouted from up the hill near the starting gate.
    I knew that voice. Everybody knew that voice, as a matter of fact, and everybody hated it.
    The equipage originally scheduled to start first, Giles Raleigh with his four-in-hand team had halted halfway up the hill. His big bay geldings weren’t a bit happy that Giles had slammed on his brakes and stopped them so soon. They stomped and fussed while Raleigh’s groom stood at the head of the team and struggled to calm them.
    Raleigh tossed the reins to his daughter Dawn, his Gator, jumped from the box and strode down the hill toward Catherine.
    “Who told you to start down?” Catherine snapped.
    “I got to the start. Judge nodded. I started. Obviously you need better communication with your underlings,” Raleigh sneered.
    Catherine glanced at Troy.
    “I called, but he’d already left,” Troy said. He sounded sulky. “Probably jumped the gun.”
    “Oh, God,” Peggy whispered, slipped away from Dick and turned to intercept Raleigh. “Catherine’s not to blame for my accident, Mr. Raleigh.”
    He turned his attention to Peggy. “Woman, if you can’t keep your team out of the lake, you better take up knitting.”
    I dropped a hand on Dick’s arm. Dick loathed Giles Raleigh. In another age, he’d have called the man out and skewered him with his sword to defend Peggy’s honor. The spectators would probably applaud and provide Dick an airtight alibi.
    Dick was taller than Giles, who was built like a fireplug with a gut, but he was also twenty years older and thirty pounds lighter. I doubt if Dick had ever been in a fistfight, and certainly not with a snake like Giles Raleigh. Raleigh would cheat.
    Up to this point Peggy had seemed pretty apologetic. That is, until Raleigh attacked Catherine, who patently didn’t deserve it. “Young man,” Peggy said. Giles was in his fifties, but Peggy had been a college professor before she retired. I’d give her eight to five odds against King Kong. “Take out your anger on the idiot who deserves it. A nasty practical joker landed my team in the lake.”
    ” I was supposed to be first on course this morning,” Raleigh said.
    “How fortuitous for you that you were late,” Catherine snapped.
    For a man like Raleigh,