“You know I have to.”
Not paying her condolences to BoomBoom would have been a breach of manners so flagrant it would be held against Harry forever. Not actively held against her, mind, just remembered, a black mark against her name in the book. Even if she had more good marks than bad, and she hoped that she did, it didn’t pay to play social percentages in Crozet.
It wasn’t just facing the jolt of a shocking death that caught Harry; it was having to face the entire social spectrum. Since asking Fair to leave, Harry had kept pretty much to herself. Of course, Fair would be at the Craycrofts’. Even if his big truck was not parked in the driveway she knew he’d be there. He was well brought up. He understood his function at a time like this.
The gathered Crozet residents would not only be able to judge how BoomBoom held up during the hideous crisis, but they’d also be able to judge the temperature of the divorce, a crisis of a different sort. Behaving bravely was tremendously important in Crozet. Stiff upper lip.
Harry often thought if she wanted a stiff upper lip she’d grow a moustache.
“Are you going to leave me here?” Tee Tucker asked.
“Yeah, what about me?” Mrs. Murphy wanted to know.
Harry looked down at her friends. “Susan, either we take the kids or you’ll have to run me back home.”
“I’ll run you home. Really isn’t proper to take the animals to the Craycrofts’, I guess.”
“You’re right.” Harry shooed Mrs. Murphy and Tucker out the post office door and locked it behind her.
Pewter, lounging in the front window of Market’s store, yawned and then preened when she saw Mrs. Murphy. Pewter’s countenance radiated satisfaction, importance, and power, however momentary.
Mrs. Murphy seethed. “A fat gray Buddha, that’s what she thinks she is.”
Tucker said, “You like her despite herself.”
Mrs. Murphy and Tucker glanced at each other during the ride home.
Tucker rolled her eyes. “Humans are crazy. Humans and ants—kill their own kind.”
“I’ve had a few thoughts along those lines myself,” Mrs. Murphy replied.
“You have not. Stop being cynical. It isn’t sophisticated. You’ll never be sophisticated, Mrs. Murphy. You came from Sally Mead’s SPCA.”
“You can shut up any time now, Tucker. Don’t take your bad mood out on me just because we have to go home.”
Once in the house, Mrs. Murphy hopped on a chair to watch Susan and Harry drive off.
“You know what I found out at Pewter’s?” Tucker asked.
“No.”
“That it smelled like an amphibian over behind the cement mixer.”
“How would she know? She wasn’t there.”
“Ozzie was,” Tucker matter-of-factly replied.
“When did you find this out?” the cat demanded.
“When I went to the bathroom. I thought I’d go over and chat with Pewter to try and smooth over your damage.” Tucker enjoyed chiding Mrs. Murphy. “Anyway, when Bob Berryman stopped by the store, Ozzie told me everything. Said it smelled like a big turtle.”
“That makes no sense,” Mrs. Murphy paced on the back of the chair. “And just what was Ozzie doing over there, anyway?”
“Didn’t say. You know, Murph, a tortoise scent is very strong.”
Not to people. The tiger thought.
“Ozzie said Sheriff Rick Shaw and the others walked over the scent many times. Didn’t wrinkle their noses. How they can miss that smell I’ll never know. It’s dark and nutty. I’d like to go over there and have a sniff myself.” Tucker began trotting up and down the living room rug.
“It probably has nothing to do with this . . . mess.” Mrs. Murphy thought a minute. “But on the other hand . . .”
“Want to go?” Tucker wagged her tail.
“Let’s go tonight when Harry’s asleep.” Mrs. Murphy was excited. “If there’s a trace, we’ll pick it up. We can’t leave now. Harry’s upset. If she comes back from the Craycrofts’ and finds us gone it will make her even more upset.”
“You’re right,” the dog concurred. “Let’s wait until she’s asleep.”
Cars lined the long driveway into the imposing Craycroft residence.
Josiah and Ned parked people’s cars for them. Susan and Harry pulled up.
Josiah opened Harry’s door. “Hello, Harry. Terrible, terrible,” was all the normally garrulous fellow could say.
When Harry walked into the house she found enough food to feed the Sandanistas, and was glad she’d brought flowers for the table. She was not glad to see Fair but damned if she’d show it.
BoomBoom sat in a huge damask wing chair by the fireplace. Drained and drawn, she was still beautiful, made more so, perhaps, by her distress.
Harry and BoomBoom, two years apart in school, were never close but they got along—until last year’s Hunt Club ball. Harry put it out of her mind. She had heard the gossip that BoomBoom wanted to catch Fair, and the reverse. Were men rabbits? Did you snare them? Harry never could figure out the imagery many women used in discussing the opposite sex. She didn’t treat her men friends any differently than her women friends and Susan swore that was the source of her marital difficulties. Harry would rather be a divorcée than a liar and that settled that.
BoomBoom raised her eyes from Big Marilyn Sanburne, who was sitting next to her, dispensing shallow compassion. Her eyelids flickered for a split second and then she composed herself and held out her hand to Fair, who had just walked up to her.
“I’m so sorry, BoomBoom. I . . . I don’t know what to say.” Fair stumbled verbally.
“You never liked him anyway.” BoomBoom astonished the room, which was filled with most of Crozet.
Fair, befuddled, squeezed her hand, then released it. “I did like him. We had our differences but I did like him.”
BoomBoom accepted this and said, “It was correct of you to come. Thank you.” Not kind, not good, but correct.
Harry received better treatment. After extending her sympathy she went over to the bar for a ginger ale and to get away from Fair. What rotten timing that they had arrived so close together. The heat and the smoldering emotion made her mouth dry. Little Marilyn Sanburne poured a drink for her.
“Thanks, Marilyn.”
“This is too awful for words.”
Harry, ungenerously, thought that it might be too awful for a number of reasons, one being that Little Marilyn’s impending wedding was eclipsed, temporarily at least, by this event. Little Marilyn, not having been in the limelight, just might learn to like it. Her marriage was the one occasion when her mother wouldn’t be the star, or so she thought.
“Yes, it is.”
“Mother’s wretched.” Little Marilyn sipped a stiff shot of Johnny Walker Black.
Mim’s impeccable profile betrayed no outward sign of wretchedness, Harry thought to herself. “I’m sorry,” she said to Little Marilyn.
Jim Sanburne blew into the living room. Mim joined him as he walked over to BoomBoom, whispered in her ear, and patted her hand.
Difficult as it was, he toned down his volume level. When finished with BoomBoom he hauled his huge frame around the room. Working a room, second nature to Jim, never came easily to his wife. Mim expected the rabble to pay court to her. It galled her that her husband sought out commoners. Commoners do vote, though, and Jim liked getting reelected. Being mayor was like a toy to him, a relaxation from the toils of expanding his considerable wealth. Since God rewarded Mim and Jim with money, it seemed to her that lower life forms should realize the Sanburnes were superior and vote accordingly.
Perhaps it was to Marilyn’s credit that she grasped the fact that Crozet did not practice equality . . . but then, what community did? For Mim, money and social position meant power. That was all that mattered. Jim, absurdly, wanted people to like him, people who were not listed in the Social Register, people who didn’t even know what it was, God forbid.
A tight smile split her face.
An outsider like Maude Bly Modena would mistake that for concern for Kelly Craycroft’s family. An insider knew Mim’s major portion of sympathy was reserved for herself, for the trial of being married to a super-rich vulgarian.
Harry didn’t know what possessed her. Maybe it was the suppressed suffering in the Craycroft house, or the sight of Mim grimly doing her duty. Wouldn’t everyone be better off if they bellowed fury at God and tore their hair? This containment oddly frightened her. At any rate she stared Little Marilyn right in those deep blue eyes and said, “Marilyn, does Stafford know you’re getting married?”
Little Marilyn, thrown, stuttered, “No.”
“We aren’t close, Marilyn. But if I never do anything else for you in your life let me do this one thing: Ask your brother to your wedding. You love him and he loves you.” Harry put down her ginger ale and left.
Little Marilyn Sanburne, face burning, said nothing, then quickly sought out her mother and father.
Bob Berryman’s hand rested on the doorknob of Maude’s shop. She had turned the lights out. No one could see them, or so they thought.
“Does she suspect?” Maude whispered.
“No,” Berryman told her to reassure her. “No one suspects anything.”
He quietly slipped out the back door, keeping to the deep shadows. He had parked his truck blocks away.
Pewter, out for a midnight stroll, observed his exit. She made a mental note of it and of the fact that Maude waited a few moments before going upstairs to her apartment over the shop. The lights clicked on, giving Pewter a tantalizing view of the bats darting in and out of the high trees near Maude’s window.
That night Mrs. Murphy and Tucker tried to distract Harry from her low mood. One of their favorite tricks was the Plains Indian game. Mrs. Murphy would lie on her back, reach around Tucker, and hang on like an Indian under a pony. Tucker would yell, “Yi, yi, yi,” as though she were scared, then try to dump her passenger. Harry laughed when they did this. Tonight she just smiled.
The dog and cat followed her to bed and when they were sure she was sound asleep they bolted out the back door, which contained an animal door that opened into a dog run. Mrs. Murphy knew how to throw the latch, though, and the two of them loped across the meadows, fresh-smelling with new-mown hay.
There wasn’t a car on the road.
About half a mile from the concrete plant Mrs. Murphy spied glittering eyes in the brush. “Coon up ahead.”
“Think he’ll fight?” Tucker stopped for a minute.
“If we have to make a detour, we might not get back by morning.”
Tucker called out, “We won’t chase you. We’re on our way to the concrete plant.”
“The hell you won’t,” the raccoon snarled.
“Honest, we won’t.” Mrs. Murphy sounded more convincing than Tucker.
“Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. Give me a head start. I might believe you then.” With that the wily animal disappeared into the bushes.
“Let’s go,” Mrs. Murphy said.
“And let’s hope he keeps his promise. I’m not up for a fight with one of those guys tonight.”
The raccoon kept his word, didn’t jump out at them, and they arrived at the plant within fifteen minutes.
The dew held what scent there was on the ground. Much had evaporated. Gasoline fumes and rock dust pervaded. Human smells were everywhere, as was the scent of wet concrete and stale blood. Tucker, nose to the ground, kept at it. Mrs. Murphy checked out the office building. She couldn’t get in. No windows were open; there were no holes in the foundation. She grumbled.
A tang exploded in Tucker’s nostrils. “Here!”
Mrs. Murphy raced over and put her nose to the ground. “Where’s it go?”
“It doesn’t.” Tucker couldn’t fathom this. “It’s just a whiff, like a little dot. No line. Like something spilled.”
“It does smell like a turtle.” The cat scratched behind her ears.
“Kinda.”
“I’ve never smelled anything quite like it—have you?”
“Never.”
5
Even Mrs. George Hogendobber’s impassioned monologue on the evils of this world failed to rouse Mrs. Murphy and Tucker. Before Mrs. Hogendobber had both feet through the front door she had declared that Adam fell from grace over the apple, then man broke the covenant with God, a flood cleansed us by killing everyone but Noah and family, Moses couldn’t prevent his flock from worshipping the golden calf, and Jezebel was on every street corner, to say nothing of record covers. These pronouncements were not necessarily in historical order but there was a clear thread woven throughout: We are by nature sinful and unclean. This, naturally, led to Kelly Craycroft’s death. Mrs. H. sidestepped revealing exactly how Hebrew history as set down in the Old Testament culminated in the extinction of a paving contractor.
Harry figured if Mrs. Hogendobber could live with her logical lacunae, so could she.
Tossing her junk mail in the wastebasket, Mrs. Hogendobber spoke exhaustingly of Holofernes and Judith. Before reaching their gruesome biblical conclusion she paused, a rarity in itself, walked over to the counter, and glanced over. “Where are the animals?”
“Out cold. Lazy things,” Harry answered. “In fact, they were so sluggish this morning that I drove them to work.”
“You spoil those creatures, Harry, and you need a new truck.”
“Guilty as charged.”
Josiah entered as Harry uttered the word guilty.
“I knew it was you all along.” He pointed at Harry. The soft pink of his Ralph Lauren polo shirt accented his tan.
“You shouldn’t joke about a thing like that.” Mrs. Hogendobber’s nostrils flared.
“Oh, come now, Mrs. Hogendobber, I’m not joking about the Craycroft murder. You’re oversensitive. We all are. It’s been a terrible shock.”
“Indeed it has. Indeed it has. Put not thy faith in worldly things, Mr. DeWitt.”
Josiah beamed at her. “I’m afraid I do, ma’am. In a world of impermanence I take the best impermanence I can find.”
A swirl of color rose on Mrs. Hogendobber’s beautifully preserved cheeks. “You’re witty and sought-after and too clever by half. People like you come to a bad end.”
“Perhaps, but think of the fun I’ll have getting there, and I really can’t see that you’re having any fun at all.”
“I will not stand here and be insulted.” Mrs. Hogendobber’s color glowed crimson.
“Oh, come on, Mrs. H., you don’t walk on water,” Josiah coolly replied.
“Exactly! I can’t swim.” Her color deepened. She felt the insult keenly; she would never think of comparing herself to Jesus. She turned to Harry. “Good day, Harry.” With forced dignity, Mrs. Hogendobber left the post office.
“Good day, Mrs. Hogendobber.” Harry turned to the howling Josiah. “She has absolutely no sense of humor and you’re too hard on her. She’s quite upset. What seems a trifle to you is major to her.”
“Oh, hell, Harry, she bores you every bit as much as she bores me. Truth?”
Harry wasn’t looking for an argument. She was conversant with Mrs. Hogendobber’s faults and the woman did bore her to tears, but Mrs. Hogendobber was fundamentally good. You couldn’t say that about everybody.
“Josiah, her values are spiritual and yours aren’t. She’s overbearing and narrow-minded about religion but if I were sick and called her at three in the morning, she’d be there.”
“Well”—his color was brighter now, too—“I hope you know I would come over too. You only have to ask. I value you highly, Harry.”
“Thank you, Josiah.” Harry wondered if he valued her at all.
“Did I tell you I am to be Mrs. Sanburne’s walker for the funeral? It’s not Newport but it’s just as important.”
Josiah often escorted Mim. They had their spats but Mim was not a woman to attend social gatherings without clinging to the arm of a male escort, and Jim would be in Richmond on the day of K
elly’s funeral. Josiah adored escorting Mim; unlike Jim, he placed great store on status, and like Mim he needed much external proof of that status. They’d jet to parties in New York, Palm Beach, wherever the rich congregated. Mim and Josiah thought nothing of a weekend in London or Vienna if the guest list was right. What bored Jim about his wife thrilled Josiah.
“I dread the funeral.” Harry did, too.
“Harry, try Ajax.”
“What?”
Josiah pointed to her hands, still discolored from cleaning the stamps two days ago.
Harry held her hands up. She’d forgotten about it. Yesterday seemed years away. “Oh.”
“If Ajax fails, try sulfuric acid.”
“Then I won’t have any hands at all.”
“I’m teasing you.”
“I know, but I have a sense of humor.”
“Darn good one too.”
The late afternoon sun slanted across the crepe myrtle behind the post office. Mrs. Murphy stopped to admire the deep-pink blossoms glowing in the hazy light. Harry locked the door as Pewter stuck her nose out from behind Market’s store. Courtney could be heard calling her from inside.
“Where are you going?” the large cat wanted to know.
“Maude’s,” came Tucker’s jaunty reply.
Pewter, dying to confide in someone, even a dog, that she had seen Bob Berryman sneak out of Maude’s shop, switched her tail. Mrs. Murphy was such a bitch. Why give her the advantage of hot news, or at least warm news? She decided to drop a hint like a leaf of fragrant catnip. “Maude’s not telling all she knows.”
Mrs. Murphy’s head snapped around. “What do you mean?”
“Oh . . . nothing.” Pewter’s delicious moment of torment was cut short by the appearance of Courtney Shiflett.
“There you are. You come inside.” She scooped up the cat and took her back into the air-conditioned store.
Harry waved at Courtney and continued on her way to Maude Bly Modena’s. She thought about going in the back door but decided to go through the front. That would give her the opportunity to see if anything new was in the window. Beautiful baskets spilling flowers covered the lorry in the front yard. Colorful cartons full of seed packets were in the window. Maude advertised that packing need not be boring and anything that would hold or wrap a present was her domain. She carried a good stock of greeting cards too.
Wish You Were Here (Mrs. Murphy Mysteries) Page 5