With a click the door opened, large enough to get a railroad lorry through. The two women entered the tunnel. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker scurried inside.
“There’s a fortune in here,” Harry whispered.
Tucker’s ears went up. Mrs. Murphy froze.
“Don’t bark, Tucker. He knows the humans are here but he doesn’t know we are. Whine. Give Harry a warning.”
Tucker whined, softly. Harry leaned over to pat her. “Mommy, please pay attention,” the dog cried.
“Hide, Tuck, hide.” Mrs. Murphy jumped from a desk to the top of a wardrobe near the doorway. Tucker hid behind the lorry.
Harry felt their fear. “Cooper, Cooper,” she whispered and grabbed Cynthia’s arm. “Something’s wrong.”
Cooper pulled her pistol. Harry did too.
A light footfall played on their ears. Inside the tunnel, sounds were magnified and distorted in the 536 feet of rock. Harry crept to the right side of the opening. She stood on the other side of the lorry. Cooper remained in the deep shadows to the left.
A familiar, charming voice reached them. Josiah was too smart to appear in the opening. “I underestimated you, Harry. Never underestimate a woman. Officer Cooper, I know you’re armed. I suggest you toss out your weapon. No reason to defile Claudius Crozet’s handiwork with bloodshed—especially mine.” Cooper kept silent. “If you don’t toss out your weapon I’m going to throw in this gasoline-soaked rag and just the tiniest Molotov cocktail I happen to have with me for the evening’s enjoyment. I also have a gun, as I guess you know. It’s Kelly’s. When ballistics files its report on Bob Berryman, it will frustrate that stellar public servant Rick Shaw, and tell him Bob was killed with a dead man’s gun. It’s nasty dying in a fire and if you run out I’ll be forced to shoot you. If you throw out your weapon, Officer Cooper, perhaps we can make a deal. Something more lucrative than your vast public salaries—both of you.”
“What was the deal you made with Kelly? Or Maude?” Harry’s voice, sharp and hard, reverberated through the tunnel.
“Kelly enjoyed excellent terms, but after four years at twenty percent he got a little greedy. As you can see, there’s enough stockpiled in the tunnel that I could dispense with his services for the future. When my inventory runs low I shall find another feckless fellow eager for profit.”
“You used his paving enterprise.”
“Of course.”
“And his trucks.”
“Harry, don’t try my patience with the obvious. Officer Cooper, throw out your gun.”
“First, I want to know why you killed Maude. It’s obvious what she did, too.”
“Maudie was a dear woman but her ovaries ruled her head, I fear. You see, she really was in love with Bob Berryman. When business reasons compelled me to remove Kelly Craycroft from our board of directors, she didn’t want to be an accessory to murder.”
“Was she?”
“No. But she became frightened. What if I were caught and what if our profitable venture were disclosed? Berryman, stringing her along, kept telling her he would leave Linda, and Maude loved that cretin. A shaky partner is worse than no partner at all. She could have given us away, or worse, she could have spilled the beans to Bob Berryman—pillow talk—who with his amusing sense of honor would have traipsed directly to the authorities. You see, poor Maude had to go. Now, darlings, I’ve indulged you long enough. Throw out the gun.”
“Did you try to drown Mrs. Hogendobber?” Harry wanted to keep him talking. She had no plan, but it gave her time to think.
“No. Throw out your gun.”
Harry dropped her voice to the gossip register, a tone she prayed would be irresistible to Josiah. “Well, if you didn’t slash those pontoons, who did?”
He laughed. “I think it was Little Marilyn. A real passive-aggressive, our Little Marilyn. She didn’t go for help until she realized that two of the ladies on Mim’s yacht couldn’t swim. She just wanted to ruin her mother’s party. I can’t prove it, but that’s what I think.” He laughed again. “I would have given anything to have seen that boat sink. Mim’s face must have been fuchsia.” He paused. “Okay, enough chat. Really, there’s no point in anyone’s being hurt. Just cooperate.”
“Well, how did you get your victims to eat cyanide?”
“You are prolonging this.” Josiah sighed. “I simply poured cyanide on a handkerchief, pretending it was cologne, and quickly put it over their mouths! Presto! An instant dead person. Now get with the program, girls.”
Harry intoned. “You didn’t have to mutilate them.”
“An artist’s touch.” He sniggered.
“One more teeny-weeny question.” Harry gulped for air. Her voice was steely calm in the suffocating atmosphere. “I know you brought the goods up here in a lorry, but where did you get them in the first place?”
Josiah hooted. “That’s the best part, Harry. Mim Sanburne! I’ve been her ‘walker’ for years. The finest homes. New York, Newport, Palm Beach, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, wherever there is an elegant party, a must gathering. I’d appraise the merchandise and then one or two years later, voilà—I’d return for an engagement of a different sort. No engraved invitations. That was the easy part. You bribe a servant—the rich are notoriously cheap, you know. Pay someone enough to live on for a year and a one-way ticket to Rio. How simple to get in when the master and mistress were gone. The hard part was lifting the lorry off the track and rolling it inside the tunnel each time we were finished—that and trying to stay awake the next day. We never had to work that hard, though. Perhaps three houses a year. Distribution is easy once the fuss dies down. A small load to Wilmington or Charlotte. A side trip to Memphis. Wouldn’t snooty Mim just die? She looks down her long nose at thee and me, yet she’s consorting with a criminal—an elegant criminal.”
“Big profits, huh?”
“Ah, yes, sweet are the workings of capitalism—a lesson you’ve never learned, my girl. Now, time’s up.” His voice, hypnotic, promised all would be well. This was just a glorious lark.
Harry edged closer to the mouth and in pantomime to Coop said that she would throw out her gun. Cooper nodded. Mrs. Murphy fluffed her tail, ready to strike.
“You won’t toss in that Molotov cocktail. The fire would ruin your inventory. The smoke and commotion would bring all of Crozet up here to the tunnel. Now that would spoil everything. If we’re going into business, we’d better trust one another right now. You throw down your gun first and Officer Cooper will throw out hers.”
“Don’t take me for a fool, Harry. I’m not throwing down my gun first,” he snapped.
“You’re the creative one, Josiah. Think of something,” Harry taunted him. “You can starve us out but Rick Shaw will notice you’re missing. That won’t do. We’d better reach an agreement now.”
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“Never underestimate the power of a woman,” Harry mocked. “I’d hate for one of us to kill the other, because you couldn’t remove the body until the middle of the night, and in this flaming heat the corpse will start to stink in two to three hours. That’s disagreeable.”
“Quite so,” came Josiah’s clipped response. “What would you do if you killed me?”
“What you did to Maude. Then I’d wait a year, and Coop and I would sell off your stash. Oh, we don’t have your contacts, Josiah, but I’m sure we’d make some kind of profit.” She lied through her teeth.
“Don’t be an ass! With me you can make a fortune. By yourself, you’ll get caught.”
“I got this far, didn’t I?”
A long silence followed. The unlit Molotov cocktail was placed at the opening. Josiah’s hand quickly withdrew.
“Proof positive of what a saint I am. There’s the Molotov cocktail.”
“Josiah”—Harry hoped to keep him talking—“how did you fake the postmarks?”
“My latent artistic impulses surged to the fore.” He smiled. “I’ve got waxes, inks, stains, bits of ormolu, you name it, to repair the furnitur
e. I mixed up a color and then tapped the postmark letters with old typeface. The inscription came compliments of my computer. I thought the postcards a flourish. I rather relished the picture of poor Rick Shaw’s face as he tried to make sense of it—once he realized the postcards were a signature. You realized quite quickly. I was terribly impressed.”
“But not scared?”
“Me? Never.”
“Your gun.” Harry’s voice made the demand sound like a social request.
“What about Coop? Is she really in there? I want to hear her voice. How do I know you haven’t killed her?” Josiah made a demand of his own. What he wanted was to hear where she was.
“Here.” Cooper nodded to Harry. She then swiftly moved to stand right beneath Mrs. Murphy. Tucker put her front paws on the lorry.
Harry, on Coop’s signal, said, “On the count of three, you throw down your gun. She’ll throw down hers. One . . . two . . . three.” She tossed out her gun as Josiah threw his in the opening.
He had a second gun. He didn’t waste time. He bolted into the tunnel, firing randomly. Mrs. Murphy jumped, claws at the ready, onto his head. Then slid to his back. Tucker, on her hind legs, pushed the lorry, which, despite its slow pace, knocked him off balance when it bumped into him. Tucker then bit his gun hand as he stumbled to the tunnel floor, his knee hitting a steel rail. Josiah lifted his gun hand, the dog still hanging on his wrist, and aimed straight for Harry, who dropped and rolled. Mrs. Murphy hung on his back, digging into him full force. Cooper, with deliberate precision and trained self-control, fired once. Josiah grunted as the bullet sank into his torso with a thud. He fired wildly. Cooper fired one more shot. Between the eyes. He twitched and was dead.
“Tucker!” Harry rushed to the dog, bruised but wagging her tail.
Cooper scooped up Mrs. Murphy as she walked over to Harry. She kissed the kitty, whose fur still stood straight up. “Bless you, Mrs. Murphy.” She reached down and felt for Josiah’s pulse. She dropped his arm as if it were rotten meat. “Harry, if these two hadn’t thrown him off balance he would have hit one of us. His gun was on rapid fire. The tunnel isn’t that wide. He was no dummy, except for his little slip in the post office.”
Harry sat on the moist earth, Tucker licking the tears from her face. Mrs. Murphy stood on her hind legs, her front paws wrapped around Harry’s neck. Harry rubbed her cheek against Mrs. Murphy’s soft fur.
“It’s a funny thing, Cooper. I didn’t think about myself. I thought about these two. If he had hurt Mrs. Murphy or Tucker, I would have killed him with my bare hands if I could have. My mind was perfectly composed and crystal-clear.”
“You’ve got guts, Harry. I was armed. You threw out your gun to sucker him in.”
“He wouldn’t have come in otherwise. I don’t know—maybe he would have. God, it seems like a dream. What a cunning son of a bitch. He had two guns.”
Cooper frisked the body. “And a stiletto.”
46
Mrs. Hogendobber rapturously returned on the day following Harry’s shoot-out with Josiah. The media had a field day with the heroic postmistress, her valiant cat and gallant dog, as well as stalwart Officer Cooper, so cool under fire. Harry found the hoopla almost as bad as being trapped in the tunnel.
Rick Shaw, fully briefed on the engagement with Josiah DeWitt, never mentioned in his prepared statement that Josiah’s entry into wealthy homes was on Mim Sanburne’s arm. Naturally, all of Crozet knew it, as well as Mim’s rich friends, but at least that detail wasn’t splashed across America. Jim secretly relished that his wife’s snobbery had been her undoing, and he was thrilled to be rid of Josiah.
Pewter envied her friends terribly and ate twice as much to make up for being denied stardom.
Fair and BoomBoom dated. No promises were made yet. They struggled to find some equilibrium amid the torrid gossip concerning them. Harry went from being the tough wife who threw out her husband to the innocent victim—in public, but not Harry’s, opinion.
Susan got Harry to take up golf for relaxation. Harry wasn’t certain that it relaxed her, but it began to obsess her.
Little Marilyn and Mim made up, sort of. Mim had brains enough to know that she would never dominate her daughter again.
On schedule, Rob brought the mail and picked it up. Harry kept reading postcards. Lindsay Astrove returned from Europe, sorry to have missed the drama. Jim Sanburne and the town council of Crozet decided to make money from the scandal. They offered tours of the tunnel. Tourists rode up in handcarts. A nice booklet on the life of Claudius Crozet was printed and sold for $12.50.
Life returned to normal, whatever that is.
Crozet was an imperfect corner of the world with rare moments of perfection. Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker witnessed one of them on a crisp September day.
Harry looked out the post office window and saw Stafford Sanburne, with his beautiful wife, step off the train. He was greeted by Mim and Little Marilyn. He had a big smile on his face. So did Harry.
Afterword
I hope you enjoyed my first crime novel. Tell my publishers if you did. Maybe they’ll give me an advance for another one.
Uh-oh, I hear footsteps in the hall.
“Sneaky Pie, what is this in my typewriter?”
Books by Rita Mae Brown with Sneaky Pie Brown
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REST IN PIECES
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PAY DIRT
MURDER, SHE MEOWED
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CAT ON THE SCENT
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PAWING THROUGH THE PAST
CLAWS AND EFFECT
CATCH AS CAT CAN
THE TAIL OF THE TIP-OFF
WHISKER OF EVIL
Books by Rita Mae Brown
THE HAND THAT CRADLES THE ROCK
SONGS TO A HANDSOME WOMAN
THE PLAIN BROWN RAPPER
RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE
IN HER DAY
SIX OF ONE
SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT
SUDDEN DEATH
HIGH HEARTS
STARTING FROM SCRATCH:
A DIFFERENT KIND OF WRITERS’ MANUAL
BINGO
VENUS ENVY
DOLLEY: A NOVEL OF DOLLEY MADISON IN LOVE AND WAR
RIDING SHOTGUN
RITA WILL: MEMOIR OF A LITERARY RABBLE-ROUSER
LOOSE LIPS
OUTFOXED
HOTSPUR
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Barry Monteith was still breathing when Harry found him. His throat had been ripped out.
Tee Tucker, a corgi, racing ahead of Mary Minor Haristeen as well as the two cats, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, found him first.
Barry was on his back, eyes open, gasping and gurgling, life ebbing with each spasm. He did not recognize Tucker nor Harry when they reached him.
“Barry, Barry.” Harry tried to comfort him, hoping he could hear her. “It will be all right,” she said, knowing perfectly well he was dying.
The tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy, watched the blood jet upward.
“Jugular,” fat, gray Pewter succinctly commented.
Gently, Harry took the young man’s hand and prayed, “Dear Lord, receive into thy bosom the soul of Barry Monteith, a good man.” Tears welled in her eyes.
Barry jerked, then his suffering ended.
Death, often so shocking to city dwellers, was part of life here in the country. A hawk would swoop down to carry away the chick while the biddy screamed useless defiance. A bull would break his hip and need to be put down. And one day an old farmer would slowly walk to his tractor only to discover he couldn’t climb into t
he seat. The Angel of Death placed his hand on the stooping shoulder.
It appeared the Angel had offered little peaceful deliverance to Barry Monteith, thirty-four, fit, handsome with brown curly hair, and fun-loving. Barry had started his own business, breeding thoroughbreds, a year ago, with a business partner, Sugar Thierry.
“Sweet Jesus.” Harry wiped away the tears.
That Saturday morning, crisp, clear, and beautiful, had held the alluring promise of a perfect May 29. The promise had just curdled.
Harry had finished her early-morning chores and, despite a list of projects, decided to take a walk for an hour. She followed Potlicker Creek to see if the beavers had built any new dams. Barry was sprawled at the creek’s edge on a dirt road two miles from her farm that wound up over the mountains into adjoining Augusta County. It edged the vast land holdings of Tally Urquhart, who, well into her nineties and spry, loathed traffic. Three cars constituted traffic in her mind. The only time the road saw much use was during deer-hunting season in the fall.
“Tucker, Mrs. Murphy, and Pewter, stay. I’m going to run to Tally’s and phone the sheriff.”
If Harry hit a steady lope, crossed the fields and one set of woods, she figured she could reach the phone in Tally’s stable within fifteen minutes, though the pitch and roll of the land including one steep ravine would cost time.
As she left her animals, they inspected Barry.
“What could rip his throat like that? A bear swipe?” Pewter’s pupils widened.
“Perhaps.” Mrs. Murphy, noncommittal, sniffed the gaping wound, as did Tucker.
The cat curled her upper lip to waft more scent into her nostrils. The dog, whose nose was much longer and nostrils larger, simply inhaled.
“I don’t smell bear,” Tucker declared. “That’s an overpowering scent, and on a morning like this it would stick.”
Pewter, who cherished luxury and beauty, found that Barry’s corpse disturbed her equilibrium. “Let’s be grateful we found him today and not three days from now.”
Wish You Were Here (Mrs. Murphy Mysteries) Page 22