“Pewter wants on the counter.” Fair thought the meow meant that. He lifted her onto the counter, where she rolled on her back and also rolled her eyes.
The humans thought this was adorable and fussed over her. Mrs. Murphy, boiling with disgust, jumped onto the counter and spat in Pewter’s face.
“Jealousy’s the same in any language.” Fair laughed and continued to pet Pewter, who had no intention of relinquishing center stage.
Tucker moaned on the floor. “I can’t see anything down here.”
Mrs. Murphy walked to the edge of the counter. “What are you good for, Tee Tucker, with those short stubby legs?”
“I can dig up anything, even a badger.” Tucker smiled.
“We don’t have any badgers.” Pewter now rolled from side to side and purred so loudly the deaf could appreciate her vocal abilities. The humans were further enchanted.
“Don’t push your luck, Pewter,” Tucker warned. “Just because you’ve got the big head over knowing what happened before we did doesn’t mean you can come in here and make fun of me.”
“This is the most affectionate cat I’ve ever seen.” Maude tickled Pewter’s chin.
“She’s also the fattest cat you’ve ever seen,” Mrs. Murphy growled.
“Don’t be ugly,” Harry warned the tiger.
“Don’t be ugly.” Pewter mocked the human voice.
Mrs. Murphy paced the counter. A mail bin on casters rested seven feet from the counter top. She gathered herself and arched off the counter, smack into the middle of the mail bin, sending it rolling across the floor.
Maude squealed with delight and Fair clapped his hands together like a boy.
“She does that all the time. Watch.” Harry trotted up behind the now-slowing cart and pushed Mrs. Murphy around the back of the post office. She made choo-choo sounds when she did it. Mrs. Murphy popped her head over the side, eyes big as eight balls, tail swishing.
“Now this is fun!” the cat declared.
Pewter, still being petted by Maude, was soured by Mrs. Murphy’s audacious behavior. She put her head on the counter and closed her eyes. Mrs. Murphy might be bold as brass but at least Pewter behaved like a lady.
Maude leafed through her mail as she rubbed Pewter’s ears. “I hate that!”
“Another bill? Or how about those appeals for money in envelopes that look like old Western Union telegrams? I really hate that.” Harry continued to push Mrs. Murphy around.
“No.” Maude shoved the postcard over to Fair, who read it and shrugged his shoulders. “What I hate is people who send postcards or letters and don’t sign their names. For instance, I must know fourteen Carols and when I get a letter from one of them, if the return address isn’t on the outside I haven’t a clue. Not a clue. Every Carol I know has two-point-two children, drives a station wagon, and sends out Christmas cards with pictures of the family. The message usually reads ‘Season’s Greetings’ in computer script, and little holly berries are entwined around the message. What’s bizarre is that their families all look the same. Maybe there’s one Carol married to fourteen men.” She laughed.
Harry laughed with her and pretended to look at the postcard for the first time while she rocked Mrs. Murphy back and forth in the mail bin and the cat flopped on her back to play with her tail. Mrs. Murphy was putting on quite a show, doing what she accused Pewter of doing: wanting to be the center of attention.
Harry said, “Maybe they were in a hurry.”
“Who do you know going to North Carolina?” Fair asked the logical question.
“Does anyone want to go to North Carolina?” Maude’s voice dropped on “want.”
“No,” Harry said.
“Oh, North Carolina’s all right.” Fair finished his Coke. “It’s just that they’ve got one foot in the nineteenth century and one in the twenty-first and nothing in between.”
“You do have to give them credit for the way they’ve attracted clean industry.” Maude thought about it. “The state of Virginia had that chance. You blew it about ten years ago, you know?”
“We know.” Fair and Harry spoke in unison.
“I was reading about Claudius Crozet’s struggle with the state of Virginia to finance railroads. He foresaw this at the end of the 1820’s, before anything was happening with rail travel. He said Virginians should commit everything they had to this new form of travel. Instead they batted his ideas down and rewarded him with a pay cut. Naturally, he left, and you know what else? The state didn’t do a thing about it until 1850! By that time New York State, which had thrown its weight behind railroads, had become the commercial center of the East Coast. If you think where Virginia is placed on the East Coast, we’re the state that should have become the powerful one.”
“I never knew that.” Harry liked history.
“If there’re any progressive projects, whether commercial or intellectual, you can depend on Virginia’s legislature to vote ’em down.” Maude shook her head. “It’s as if the legislature doesn’t want to take any chances at all. Vanilla pudding.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” Fair agreed with her. “But on the other hand, we don’t have the problems of those places that are progressive. Our crime rate is low except for Richmond. We’ve got full employment here in the country and we live a good life. We don’t get rich quick but we keep what we’ve got. Maybe it isn’t so bad. Anyway, you moved here, didn’t you?”
Maude considered this. “Touché. But sometimes, Fair, it gets to me that this state is so backward. When North Carolina outsmarts us and enjoys the cornucopia, what can you think?”
“Where’d you learn about railroads?”
“Library. There’s a book, a long monograph really, on Crozet’s life. Not having the benefit of being educated in Crozet, I figured I’d better catch up, so to speak. Pity the railroad doesn’t stop here anymore. Passenger service stopped in 1975.”
“Occasionally it does. If you call up the president of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and request a special stop—as a passenger and descendent of Claudius Crozet—they’re supposed to stop for you right next to the post office here at the old depot.”
“Has anyone tried it lately?” Maude was incredulous.
“Mim Sanburne last year. They stopped.” Fair smiled.
“Think I’ll try it,” Maude said. “I’d better get back to my shop. Keep thy shop and thy shop keeps thee. ’Bye.”
Pewter lolled on the counter as Harry put the Cokes in the small refrigerator in the back. Mrs. Murphy stayed in the mail bin hoping for another ride.
“Are these a peace offering?” Harry shut the refrigerator door.
“I don’t know.” And Fair didn’t. He’d gotten in the habit, over the years, of picking up Cokes for Harry. “Look, Harry, can’t we have a civil divorce?”
“Everything is civil until it gets down to money.”
“You hired Ned Tucker first. Once lawyers get into it, everything turns to shit.”
“In 1658 the Virginia legislature passed a law expelling all lawyers from the colony.” Harry folded her arms across her chest.
“Only wise decision they ever made.” Fair leaned against the counter.
“Well, they rescinded it in 1680.” Harry breathed in. “Fair, divorce is a legal process. I had to hire a lawyer. Ned’s an old friend.”
“Hey, he was my friend too. Couldn’t you have brought in a neutral party?”
“This is Crozet. There are no neutral parties.”
“Well, I got a Richmond lawyer.”
“You can afford Richmond prices.”
“Don’t start with money, goddammit.” Fair sounded weary. “Divorce is the only human tragedy that reduces to money.”
“It’s not a tragedy. It’s a process.” Harry, at this point, would be bound to contradict or correct him. She half knew she was doing it but couldn’t stop.
“It’s ten years of my life, out the window.”
“Not quite ten.”
“Dammit, Harry, the point is, this isn
’t easy—and it wasn’t my idea.”
“Oh, don’t pull the wounded dove with me. You were no happier in this marriage than I was!”
“But I thought everything was fine.”
“As long as you got fed and fucked, you thought everything was fine!” Harry’s voice sank lower. “Our house was a hotel to you. My God, if you ran the vacuum cleaner, angels would sing in the sky.”
“We didn’t have money for a maid,” he growled.
“So it was me. Why is your time more valuable than my time? Jesus Christ, I even bought you your clothes, your jockey shorts.” For some reason this was significant to Harry.
Fair, quiet for a moment to keep from losing his temper, said, “I make more money. If I had to be out on call, well, that’s the way it had to be.”
“You know, I don’t even care anymore.” Harry unfolded her arms and took a step toward him. “What I want to know is, were you, are you, sleeping with BoomBoom Craycroft?”
“No!” Fair looked wounded. “I told you before. I was drunk at the party. I—okay, I behaved as less than a gentleman . . . but that was a year ago.”
“I know about that. I was there, remember? I’m asking about now, Fair.”
He blinked, steadied his gaze. “No.”
As the humans recriminated, Tucker, tired of being on the floor, out of the cat action, said, “Pewter, we went over to Kelly Craycroft’s concrete plant.”
Alert, Pewter sat up. “Why?”
“Wanted to sniff for ourselves.”
“How can Mrs. Murphy smell anything? She’s always got her nose up in the air.”
“Shut up.” Mrs. Murphy stuck her head over the mail bin.
“How uncouth.” Pewter pulled back her whiskers.
“I was talking to Tucker, but you can shut up too. I’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
“Why were you telling me to shut up? I didn’t do anything.” Tucker was hurt.
“I’ll tell you later,” the tiger cat replied.
“It’s no secret. Ozzie’s probably blabbed it over three counties by now—ours, Orange, and Nelson. Maybe the whole state of Virginia knows, since Bob Berryman delivers those stock trailers everywhere and Ozzie goes with him,” Tucker yipped.
“Nine states.” Mrs. Murphy knew Tucker was going to tell.
“Tell me. What did Ozzie blab and why did you go to the concrete plant?” Pewter’s pupils enlarged.
“Ozzie said there was a funny smell. And there was.” Tucker liked this turnabout.
Pewter scoffed, “Of course, there was a funny smell, Tucker. A man was ground into hamburger meat and the day sweltered at ninety-seven degrees. Even humans can smell that.”
“It wasn’t that.” Mrs. Murphy crawled out of the mail bin, disappointed that Harry had lost interest and was giving her full attention to Fair.
“Rescue Squad smells.” Pewter was fishing.
“Smelled like a turtle.”
“What?” The fat cat swept her whiskers forward.
Mrs. Murphy jumped up on the counter and sat next to Pewter. Since Tucker was going to yap she might as well be in the act. “It did. By the time we got there most of the scent was gone but there was this slight amphibian odor.”
Pewter wrinkled her nose. “I did hear Ozzie say something about a turtle, but I didn’t pay too much attention. There was so much going on.” She sighed.
“Ever smell ‘Best Fishes’?” Pewter’s mind returned to food, her favorite topic. “Now that’s a good smell. Mrs. Murphy, doesn’t Harry have any treats left?”
“Yes.”
“Think she’ll give me one?”
“I’ll give you one if you promise to tell us anything you hear about Kelly Craycroft. Anything at all. And I promise not to make fun of you.”
“I promise.” The fat chin wobbled solemnly.
Mrs. Murphy jumped off the counter and ran over to the desk. The lower drawer was open a crack. She squeezed her paw in it and hooked out a strip of dried beef jerky. She picked it up and gave it to Pewter, who devoured it instantly.
10
Bob Berryman laughed loudly during the movie Field of Dreams. He was alone. Apart from Bob, Harry and Susan didn’t know anyone else in the theater. Charlottesville, jammed with new people, was becoming a new town to them. No longer could you drive into town and expect to see your friends. Not that the new people weren’t nice—they were—but it was somewhat discomforting to be born and raised in a place and suddenly feel like a stranger.
The new residents flocked to the county in such numbers that they couldn’t be absorbed quickly enough into the established clubs and routines. Naturally, the new people created their own clubs and routines. Formerly, the four great social centers—the hunt club, the country club, the black churches, and the university—provided stability to the community, like the four points of a square. Now young blacks drifted away from the churches, the country club had a six-year waiting list for membership, and the university was in the community but not of the community. As for the hunt club, most of the new people couldn’t ride.
The road system couldn’t handle the newcomers either. The state of Virginia was dickering about paving over much of the countryside with a bypass. The residents, old and new, were bitterly opposed to the destruction of their environment. The Highway Department people would be more comfortable in a room full of scorpions, because this was getting ugly. The obvious solution, of improving the central corridor road, Route 29, or even elevating a direct road over the existing route, did not occur to the powers-that-be in Richmond. They cried, “Expensive,” while ignoring the outrageous sums they’d already squandered in hiring a research company to do their dirty work for them. They figured the populace would direct their wrath at the research company, and the Highway Department could hide behind the screen. The Republican party, quick to seize the opportunity to roast the reigning Democrats, turned the bypass into a political hot potato. The Highway Department remained obstinate. The Democrats, losing power, began to feel queasy. It was turning into an interesting drama, one in which political careers would be made and unmade.
Harry believed that whatever figure was published, you should double it. For some bizarre reason, government people could not hold the line on spending. She observed this in the post office. The regulations, created to help, just made things so much worse that she ran her post office as befitted the community, not as befitted some distant someone sitting on a fat ass in Washington, D.C. The same was true for the state government. They wouldn’t travel the roads they’d build; they wouldn’t have their hearts broken because beautiful farmland was destroyed and the watershed was endangered. They’d have a nice line on the map and talk to the governor about traffic flow. Every employee would justify his or her position by complicating the procedure as much as possible and then solving the complications.
Meanwhile the citizens of Albemarle County would be told to accept the rape of their land for the good of the counties south of them, counties that had contributed heavily to certain politicians’ war chests. No one even considered the idea of letting people raise money themselves for improving the central corridor. Whatever the extra cost would be, compared to a bypass, Albemarle would pay for it. Self-government—why, the very thought was too revolutionary.
Harry, raised to believe the government was her friend, had learned by experience to believe it was her enemy. She softened her stance only with local officials whom she knew and to whom she could talk face-to-face.
One good thing about newcomers was, they were politically active. Good, Harry thought. They’re going to need it.
She and Susan batted these ideas around at the Blue Ridge Brewery. Ice-cold beer on a sticky night tasted delicious.
“So?”
“So what, Susan?”
“You’ve been sitting here for ten minutes and you haven’t said a thing.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Lost track of time, I guess.”
“Apparently.” Susan smiled. “Come on
, what gives? Another bout with Fair?”
“You know, I can’t decide who’s the bigger asshole, him or me. What I do know is, we can’t be in the same room together without an argument. Even if we start out on friendly terms . . . we end up accusing each other of . . .”
Susan waited. No completion of Harry’s sentence was forthcoming. “Accusing each other of what?”
“I asked him if he’d slept with BoomBoom.”
“What?” Susan’s lower lip dropped.
“You heard me.”
“And?”
“He said no. Oh, it went on from there. Every mistake I’d made since we dated got thrown in my face. God, I am so bored with him, with the situation”—she paused—“with myself. There’s a whole world out there and right now all I can think of is this stupid divorce.” Another pause. “And Kelly’s murder.”
“Fortunately the two are not connected.” Susan took a long draft.
“I hope not.”
“They aren’t.” Susan dismissed the thought. “You don’t think they are either. He may not have been the husband you needed, but he’s not a murderer.”
“I know.” Harry pushed the glass away. “But I don’t know him anymore—and I don’t trust him.”
“Ever notice how friends love you for what you are? Lovers try to change you into what they want you to be.” Susan drank the rest of Harry’s beer.
Harry laughed. “Mom used to say, ‘A woman marries a man hoping to change him and a man marries a woman hoping she’ll never change.’ ”
“Your mother was a pistol.” Susan remembered Grace’s sharp wit. “But I think men try to change their partners, too, although in a different way. It’s so confusing. I know less about human relationships the older I get. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. I thought I was supposed to be getting wiser.”
“Yeah. Now I’m full of distrust.”
“Oh, Harry, men aren’t so bad.”
“No, no—I distrust myself. What was I doing married to Pharamond Haristeen? Am I that far away from myself?”
Back home, Mrs. Murphy prowled.
Tucker, in her wicker basket, lifted her head. “Sit down.”
Wish You Were Here (Mrs. Murphy Mysteries) Page 7