Wish You Were Here (Mrs. Murphy Mysteries)

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Tobacco,” Officer Cooper added laconically.

  “What?” BoomBoom asked.

  “It’s a legal drug. Most addictive drug we’ve got. Ask Rick Shaw.” The vision of Rick sneaking another cigarette made Coop laugh.

  “Here in Virginia we know all about tobacco.” Harry examined the yellow pages. “Where’d you find these?”

  “Behind the frame of the poster he had on the wall. You know, the one where the duck is sitting in the lawn chair sipping a drink and there are bullet holes over his head. It was the last place I looked, and the corner of the backing was bent.”

  “I’m going to confiscate these.” Cooper reached for the papers in Harry’s hand.

  “I don’t want any of this in the paper. When you finally find out who the killer is you’ll find out what they were really doing. The publicity has been grueling enough. No more!”

  “I can’t control the press, BoomBoom,” Cooper truthfully replied.

  “That’s up to Rick, not Officer Cooper,” Harry reminded BoomBoom.

  “Do what you can, please,” BoomBoom begged.

  “I’ll try.”

  BoomBoom left. Harry and the policewoman watched her pull out of the driveway.

  Mrs. Murphy, who had politely listened to the coversation, emitted a loud shout. “Go up to the tunnels. That’s why I threw the papers on the floor. It’s worth another look.”

  “What lungs.” Cooper grinned.

  “You ate leftovers from Susan’s tonight.” Harry used her Mother voice.

  “Listen to me!” Mrs. Murphy bellowed.

  Tucker sniffed at Mrs. Murphy’s tail, hanging over the table. “Save your breath.”

  “Damn.”

  “All right.” Harry got up and opened the big jar of Best Fishes. She placed four of the delicious tidbits under the cat’s bright whiskers. Mrs. Murphy, in a fit, knocked the treats off the counter and stalked out of the room.

  “So emotional,” Officer Cooper said as Tucker scarfed down the treats.

  “Like people,” Harry said.

  36

  At seven forty-five the next morning, the phone rang in the Crozet post office.

  “Hello,” Harry answered.

  “Did you catch the killer yet?” Mrs. Hogendobber’s voice boomed.

  “How are you?” Harry was surprised at how happy Mrs. Hogendobber’s call made her.

  “Bored. Bored. Bored. Being under threat of death isn’t as much torture as being out of the swim. Did you catch him?”

  “No.”

  “Any clues?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me. I’m far away. I can’t blab.”

  “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

  “Mary Minor Haristeen, how dare you quote the New Testament to me like that? Why, I’m appalled at the suggestion that I would tempt you. I’m not tempting you. I’m simply trying to help. Sometimes a person considering the same evidence will see something new. Many cases have been solved that way.”

  “If you’re far away, Rick Shaw can’t make your life miserable. He can sure muck up mine.”

  This idea dawned on Mrs. Hogendobber and set. “He’d be thrilled for an answer. Now, I’ve known you since the day you were born. Prettiest little baby I ever saw. Even prettier than BoomBoom Craycroft—”

  “Don’t stretch the truth,” Harry interrupted.

  “You were—upon my soul, you were. You know I won’t breathe a word of this and I do have good ideas.”

  “Mrs. Hogendobber, I can’t speak as freely as I would wish.”

  “Oh, I see.” Mrs. Hogendobber’s voice registered her thrill with the development. “Someone we know?”

  “Yes, but not of the inner circle.”

  “Reverend Jones.”

  “Now why would you mention his name?”

  “He’s a lovely man but he’s not of my denomination. I don’t consider him of the inner circle.”

  “Hardly any of us attend your church. I’m an Episcopalian.”

  Mrs. Hogendobber, a self-confessed expert on Protestant churches, corrected Harry. “You are entirely too close to the Catholic church and so is Reverend Jones. The real Reformation came when churches such as mine, The Holy Light, freed The Word to the people. However, you don’t even attend Saint Paul’s, so you ought to stop claiming that you are an Episcopalian. You are a lapsed Episcopalian.”

  “Is that like fallen arches?”

  “Harry, such subjects are not humorous and it grieves me that you don’t see the light. That’s why we’re called The Holy Light.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Who’s there? Will they be offended if you tell?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s Officer Cooper.”

  “Really?” The husky voice shot upward.

  “Really. Now I’ve got to get back to work. You take care of yourself.”

  “I want to come home.” Mrs. Hogendobber sounded like a miserable child.

  “We want you to come home.” Harry thought to herself: Some of us do. Harry missed her.

  “I’ll call tomorrow. I can’t give you my number. ’Bye.”

  “’Bye.” Harry hung up the phone. “She’s a pip.”

  “There’s another one at the door.”

  Harry smiled and kept silent as she unlocked the door for Mim Sanburne, who was unusually early. She paused but did not say hello.

  “Good morning, Mim.” Harry decided a lesson in manners might be amusing.

  Big Marilyn’s expertly frosted hair caught the light. “Are you under house arrest?”

  “We’re rehashing the Stamp Act and how it led up to the Revolution,” Officer Cooper retorted.

  “Deference is greatly to be sought after in public servants. Our sheriff prides himself on his staff. But then—” Mim didn’t finish what would have been a threat, for Josiah jauntily opened the door. Nor did she tell Harry that she had indeed called Mignon Haristeen, who told her to mind her own goddamned business and reinstate Harry on the Cancer Ball committee. Yes, Mignon deplored the divorce but Harry had worked hard for the charity and the charity should come first. That made Mim back down.

  “Stop what you’re doing and come on over to the shop,” Josiah said. “I’ve worked a miracle.”

  “I’ll come over when Larry gives me my lunch break.”

  “That’s no fun. We should go now—the more the merrier.” He swept his arm to include Mim and Officer Cooper.

  “Thrilled,” Mim said without conviction.

  Susan pulled up at the same time as Rick Shaw.

  Josiah watched them through the window. “I envy you, Harry. You’re at the hub of Crozet–Grand Central.”

  “Hi,” Susan called out.

  Rick Shaw came in on her heels. “I need a buddy today when I ride,” she said. “You’re it, Harry.”

  “Okay—but I think we’ll melt.”

  Rick ushered himself behind the counter and collected BoomBoom’s papers from Officer Cooper. He made no attempt to hide this collection, but he didn’t draw attention to it either. “Has she been a good girl?” He nodded in Harry’s direction.

  “Good as gold.”

  “Officer Cooper, how long are you going to shadow Harry? Will I ever be able to have an intimate dinner with her?” Josiah emphasized the “intimate.”

  “Only if you do the cooking,” came Cooper’s swift reply.

  “Where’s Mrs. Murphy?” Susan inquired.

  “Pouting in the mail bin,” Harry said.

  “Sheriff Shaw, would you like to see the shop before I open it? You wouldn’t know it was the same shop,” Josiah persisted.

  It wasn’t. Harry dropped by after lunch. Well, after what started out as lunch and ended up being an appetite killer. She zipped into Crozet Pizza, only to behold BoomBoom and Fair in earnest conversation at a table. She was beginning to like BoomBoom more and Fair less but she couldn’t bear them together. She left without even a slice of that famous pizza.

  Maude’s shop, transforme
d into a high-quality antiques showroom, conveyed that sleek, urbane yet country mix that was Josiah’s forte. The packing materials were arranged in the back room and even they looked inviting. Officer Cooper rummaged around. She loved antiques.

  “You’re glum, sweetie. What’s up?” Josiah sidled over to Harry.

  “Oh, Fair and BoomBoom were at Crozet Pizza. It’s silly for it to hurt, but it does.”

  He curled his arm around her shoulders. “Harry, anyone who ever died of love deserved it. There are other fish in the sea and besides, you’ve wasted far too much time, far too much, on Pharamond Haristeen.”

  “I guess.”

  Officer Cooper rested herself in a cushy wing chair to better appreciate the discussion.

  “It’s a new day tomorrow, brighter and better.” He turned to Cooper. “You and I are going to be friends. You have exquisite taste, I can see, but tell me, is my favorite postmistress really in danger?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  Josiah pulled Harry even closer to him. “I wasn’t born yesterday. Mrs. Hogendobber certainly was packed off in great haste. If she’s on vacation, so to speak, and you’ve got a police dogsbody—pardon me—that means the authorities are worried about her and you. Well, so am I.”

  Officer Cooper crossed her legs. “I know you’ve spoken to Rick but for my satisfaction, who do you think is the killer?”

  “I don’t know, which is so frustrating . . . unless it was Mrs. Hogendobber and you’ve locked her up to keep the townies from lynching her. Mrs. H., a killer—unlikely, although she can kill a conversation faster than Limburger cheese.”

  “Any idea about motive?” Harry asked.

  “Some sort of grudge, I should think.”

  “Why do you say that?” Officer Cooper shifted her position.

  “He’s humiliated the bodies, if you think about it. I think that bespeaks some kind of powerful emotion. Anger. Jealousy perhaps. Or he was spurned.”

  “You’re such a romantic. I think it’s over money, pure and simple.” Harry folded her arms across her chest. “And the mutilation of the bodies is to keep us away from the real issue.”

  “Which is?” Josiah’s eyebrows raised.

  “Damned if I know.” Harry threw up her hands.

  “No. Damned if you do, because he would kill you—according to your analysis. According to my analysis you’re perfectly safe.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right.” Officer Cooper smiled up at Josiah.

  37

  Lolling under the crepe myrtle behind Maude’s shop, Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and Pewter waited for Harry to be released from her obligatory socializing.

  Pewter batted at a red ant scooting through the grass. “Black ants are okay but these little red ones bite like blazes.”

  “Better than fleas.” Mrs. Murphy lay on her back, her four legs in the air, tail straight out.

  “Last year was the worst, the absolute worst.” Tucker pricked her ears, then relaxed them. “Every week I was drenched with a bath, doused with flea killer, the worst.”

  “For me it was flea mousse. Harry doesn’t like bathing me, for which I am grateful. But, Pewter, this mousse smells like rancid raspberries and it’s sticky. Rolling in dirt, grass, even rubbing against the bark of a tree does no good. This year I’ve been moussed once.”

  “Market embraces the concept of the flea collar. The first week the fumes were so intense my eyes watered. After that I figured out how to wriggle out of them. He’s so slow it took four lost flea collars before he gave up.”

  “Do you like humans?” Tucker addressed Pewter.

  “Not especially. A few I like. Most I don’t” was her forthright reply.

  “Why?” Mrs. Murphy twisted her head so she could better observe Pewter. She stayed on her back.

  “You can’t trust them. Hell’s bells, they can’t even trust each other. Take a cat, for instance. If you wander into another cat’s territory, you know it right away. Unless there’s an important reason to be there, you leave. The lines are clear. Nothing is clear with humans, not even mating. A human being will mate with another human being for social approval. They rarely sleep with the person who’s right for them. But humans are much more like sheep than cats. They’re easily led and they don’t look where they’re going until it’s too late.”

  “They aren’t all like sheep,” Tucker responded.

  “No, but I agree with Pewter—most of them are. Something terrible happened to the human race way back in time. They separated from nature. We live with a human who has some connection to the seasons, to other animals, but she’s a country person. They’re few and far between. And the further humans move from nature, the crazier they get. In the end it’s what will destroy them.”

  “I don’t give a damn if they die, every last one. I just don’t want to go with them, if it’s the bomb you’re talking about.” Pewter slashed her tail through the grass.

  “The bomb’s the least of it.” Mrs. Murphy shook herself and sat up. “They’ll kill the fish in the rivers and then the fish in the oceans. They’ll wipe out more and more species of mammals. They won’t have good water to drink after they kill the fish. They won’t even have good air to breathe. If you don’t have an adequate oxygen supply, how can you think clearly? Worse, they have no sense of when and how much to breed. Even a squirrel can read a bad acorn harvest and hold back breeding. A human can’t read harvests. They keep reproducing. Do you know there are over five billion humans on the earth right now as I speak? They can’t feed what they’ve got and they’re breeding more.”

  “Plus they’re breeding sick ones because they won’t cull.” Tucker’s eyes were troubled. “Sick in body and sick in mind. If I have a weak puppy, I’ll kill it. It’s my obligation to the rest of the litter. They won’t do that.”

  “Do it! My God, they scream murder, and when they have to raise taxes to pay for the criminal acts of the sick in mind, or pay for the increased care of the physically weak, they pitch a fit and fall in it. They just won’t realize they’re another animal and the laws of nature apply to them too.” Pewter’s pupils expanded.

  “They think it’s cruel. You know, Pewter, you are right. They are crazy. They won’t kill a diseased newborn but they’ll flock by the millions to kill one another in a war. Didn’t World War II kill off about forty-five million of them? And World War I axed maybe ten million? It almost makes me laugh.” Mrs. Murphy watched Harry and Officer Cooper leave Maude’s shop by the back door. “I don’t much care if they die by the millions, truth be told, but I don’t want Harry to die.”

  Pewter trilled, a sound above a purr. “Yeah, Harry’s a brick. We should make her an honorary cat.”

  “Or an honorary dog,” Tucker rejoined. “She says that cats and dogs are the lares and penates of a household, the protective household gods. Harry’s big on mythology but I fancy the comparison.”

  Harry and Officer Cooper walked over to the crepe myrtle.

  “A kitty tea party.” Harry scratched Pewter at the base of her tail. Tucker licked her hand. “Excuse me, a kitty and doggie tea party. Well, come on, troops. Back to work.”

  38

  Bob Berryman prided himself on his physical prowess. Stronger in his early fifties than when he played football for Crozet High, he’d grown even more vain about his athletic abilities. Time’s theft of speed made Berryman play smarter. He played softball and golf regularly. He was accustomed to dominating men and accepting deference from women. Maude Bly Modena didn’t defer to him. If he thought about it, that was why he had fallen in love with her.

  He thought about little else. He replayed every moment of their time together. He searched those recollections, fragments of conversation and laughter for clues. Far more painfully, he returned to the railroad tracks today. What was out here halfway between Crozet and Greenwood?

  Immediately before her death, Maude had jogged this way. She took the railroad path once a week. She liked to vary her routes. Said it kept he
r fresh. She didn’t run the railroad path more frequently than other jogging routes, though. He backtracked those also, with Ozzie at his heels.

  Kelly and Maude had never seemed close to him. He drew a blank there. He reviewed every person in Crozet. Was she friendly to them? What did she truly think of them?

  A searing wind whipped his thinning hair, a Serengeti wind, desert-like in its dryness. The creosote from the railroad tracks stank. Berryman shaded his eyes with his hand and scanned east toward town, then west toward the Greenwood tunnel.

  She used to joke about Crozet’s treasure, and given Maude’s thoroughness, she’d read about Claudius Crozet. The engineer fascinated her. If she could only find the treasure she could retire. Retail was hard, she said, but then they shared that thought, since Berryman moved more stock trailers than anyone on the East Coast.

  It wasn’t until ten o’clock that evening, in the silence of his newly rented room, that Berryman realized the tunnel had something to do with Maude. Impulsively, driven by wild curiosity as well as grief, he hurried to his truck, flashlight in hand, Ozzie at his side, and drove out there.

  The trek up to the tunnel, treacherous in the darkness on the overgrown tracks, had him panting. Ozzie, senses far sharper than his master’s, smelled another human scent. He saw the dull glow at the lower edge of the tunnel where dappled light escaped through the foliage. Someone was inside the tunnel. He barked a warning to his master. Better he’d stayed silent. The light was immediately extinguished.

  Berryman leaned against the sealed tunnel mouth to catch his breath. Ozzie heard the human slide through the heavy brush. He dashed after him. One shot put an end to Ozzie. The shepherd screamed and dropped.

  Berryman, thinking of his dog before himself, ran to where Ozzie disappeared. He crashed through the brush and beheld the killer.

  “You!”

  Within one second he, too, was dead.