Let Sleeping Dogs Lie by Rita Mae Brown

son—“Lucius Censa, the Chetwynd’s stable manager, and a Negro worker accompanied the memorial. The Kentucky forensic people said the skeleton is that of an African American male, early forties, old break in the left leg. Anyway, they think the skeleton might be of the man who accompanied the slate memorial from here in Virginia to there. They also found a note in Lela’s hand about the slate and the man escorting it, whom she described as a ‘fine dark man with an adorable little dog.’ I’ll bet that was my grandfather!” Mercer said with excitement.
    “I thought your grandfather walked into a whorehouse and never walked out,” Phil remembered.
    “Am I missing a good story?” Sister leaned toward Mercer.
    “Grandpa Harlan did,” said Mercer, “but I didn’t mention that the whorehouse was in Lexington, Kentucky.”
    Phil calmly replied, “Mercer, even if it is your grandfather, why would he end up in a grave with a horse and a dog? It makes no sense.”
    “It makes sense to someone,” Mercer’s voice rose.
    “I’m sure they are all dead,” Phil replied.
    “Well, they may be but that doesn’t mean someone who is alivedoesn’t know,” Sister stated as Crawford, Mercer, and Phil looked at her.
    “If you all will excuse me, I’m going to concentrate on the living.” Crawford withdrew.
    “Me, too.” Phil smiled.
    Mercer drew close to Sister. “You’re right. Someone might know. Wait until I tell Mother. I want to know who killed my grandfather and why. Mother’s become very intrigued, too.”
    “I can understand that, Mercer, but you don’t know for sure that this body was your grandfather’s. As it was 1921, he must have had late children.”
    “He did and my father, his son, had me in his middle years. In my family, we stay, um, virile and healthy a long time.”
    “I hope so.” She winked at him.

CHAPTER 7
    Cold seeped into Uncle Yancy’s bones. At ten, for a red fox he was old. Quick thinking and cleverness kept him alive when other foxes fell by the wayside. He wondered when his spouse would leave her earth, a spacious den. A nag, Aunt Netty had plucked his last nerve and he had moved out. She said she threw him out. Over the last three years Netty’s expulsions became an annual event based, she said, on his messy ways. She prided herself on a clean den. His version was she didn’t know what she wanted and had turned into an old crank.
    Then spring would come, Aunt Netty would need help with one project or another, something usually involving killing rabbits, and she’d woo him back.
    This night, twenty-two degrees outside but cozy in the mudroom at the Lorillard home place, Uncle Yancy swore he wouldn’t fall for it this spring … if spring ever arrived.
    Yancy had chewed a hole through the floorboards from underneath the mudroom to crawl up next to the tack trunk. A few of the floorboards were rotten, which made it easier. Sam Lorillardhad thrown a pile of washed red rags in the corner, then forgot them. The fox, smelling crumbs and other tidbits would push the rags aside, enter through, then push them back. Once in the mudroom he had many places to hide, including jumping from shelf to shelf until he was on the highest one. To him, the mudroom was a little bit of heaven. The temperature inside hovered in the low fifties. The grasses and old towels in his den in the graveyard, another under the front porch, were all right if he curled up, but this was true luxury.
    Uncle Yancy recognized the Lorillard brothers, Gray and Sam. The two kept the home place, having bought out their snotty sister, Nadine, who was now a leading light in Atlanta, wanting nothing to do with country life. She certainly wanted nothing to do with Sam.
    Gray would stay home maybe two nights a week, less if he was called in for a consulting job in Washington where he retained a convenient small apartment. The rest of the time he stayed at Sister’s.
    Uncle Yancy knew many of the humans in his