TheCart Before the Corpse by Carolyn McSparren Page A

almost every evening, and the ones where he wasn’t invited out , the local ladies brought casseroles in . He was the perfect extra man. He played bridge, danced well, and looked extremely presentable. He liked women, and like most men who are famous in their own small ponds, he generally had to beat them off with a stick.
    Not that he did. He tried to convince my mother that he really loved only her, and that his one-night stands were not germane.
    Oh, sure. Maybe there’s a woman somewhere who believes that, but if so, I’ve never met one. Vic never convinced me either.
    The single bedroom had a king-sized bed covered with a handsome wedding ring quilt. The small bathroom backed up to the kitchen. I had been comfortable in much less palatial surroundings.
    No trophies. No file cabinet. No desk. So where did he keep his logs and records? He must have paper backups even if he kept most of his files on his computer. Coggins tests for Equine Infectious Anemia came on paper, so did construction bills, information about worming and vaccination schedules, hay bills, feed bills, Jacob’s salary. Like most careful horsemen, Hiram would have kept copies of everything.
    Not only that, he always kept a running handwritten log like a ship’s captain. If a horse came up lame, Hiram wrote it down and what he’d done to correct it. If he dosed a horse with Bute or Banamine, he noted it. If a horse acted up at the breaking cart, he wrote it down. I should be able to reconstruct everything that had happened in his life with horses. He generally used gray school exercise books, but I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of anything that looked remotely like his logs.
    And how about a record of the money he was taking in? Granted, it wouldn’t match the outlay at this stage, but with boarding the pair of bays and the Friesian and the carriage repair work, he had some income. Bank statements?
    There had to be a repository of some sort. Most likely a rented storage room. Peggy might know where. But surely he’d have kept his current log where he could get at it easily. Had whoever killed him found and stolen it?
    Why?
    Because it held evidence incriminating the killer, obviously.
    I had brought my own laptop up to Peggy’s last night, but locked it in my truck when I left for the farm. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving it lying around where whoever had burgled the apartment could come hunting for it. I’d simply have to tote it back and forth with me. It would be loaded with emails about Hiram and requests for information from the driving magazines.
    I’d have to organize the memorial service tomorrow. I needed to meet Hiram’s lawyer to get the will probated and find out where I stood financially.
    None of this dealt with the most important part of Hiram’s death. Who had killed him? Who on earth hated him that much?
     

Chapter 12
     
    Monday evening
    Merry
     
    Mama’s All You Can Eat Cafe didn’t look precisely like The Four Seasons in Manhattan, but Peggy assured me the food was nearly as good, if not as fancy. And much less expensive. I’m up for anything remotely resembling haute , or even demi-haute cuisine, and it seems Mama’s fried chicken and chocolate meringue pie are legendary. I could eat my weight in either one, and suddenly that cheeseburger seemed a million miles away.
    Peggy introduced me to our waitress Ellen Stencil, and told me that Mama’s is family style. If there are no free tables, people sit where there are empty seats the way they do in Germany.
    “I’m so sorry about Hiram,” Ellen said as she leaned down to give Peggy a near-cheek peck.
    Before our salads arrived, I was holding court. First to come by was a lady named Trisha Cecil with her husband Pruitt. She said in a near whisper, “Such a sweet man, and such a good bridge player.” She smiled down at me. “Do you play?”
    “Not since college, I’m afraid,” I said. I didn’t tell her that Hiram was a much better poker player than he was a