Cat on the Scent

by Rita Mae Brown

  She walked to the door, rolled it back with a heave, and blinked.

  “Holy shit.”

  “You got that right,” Mrs. Murphy catcalled.

  * * *

  * * *

  * * *

  20

  Warm spring light flooded the barn, illuminating Rick Shaw’s face as he stood under the wing of the Cessna. Behind him a young woman dusted for fingerprints.

  Not a drop of blood marred the shiny surface of the airplane or the cockpit, although there were muddy paw prints on the wings and the cockpit. No dings, dents, or smears of oil hinted at foul play.

  The wheels of the small plane were blocked. In fact, everything was in order. The gas tank was almost full. They could have crawled up into the Cessna to cruise through creamy clouds on this, a gorgeous day.

  Cynthia spoke to Tally Urquhart. Miss Tally’s sight remained keen, her hearing sharp, but her powers of locomotion had diminished. After fervid wrangling sprinkled with the utterance of unladylike epithets, she had agreed to stop driving. No longer able to ride astride, she allowed herself the pleasures of driving a matched pair of hackney ponies, to the terror of the neighbors. Her majordomo, Kyle Washburn, had the honor of transporting her to her many clubs and good deeds. It was also his duty to hang on when she took the reins. There were many in Albemarle County who thought no amount of money was too much to pay Kyle.

  “I told you that,” Tally snapped.

  “I know it’s irritating, ma’am, but my job is to check and double-check.”

  She tossed her white curls, hair still luxuriously thick. “Tommy Van Allen put his plane in my big hay barn and walked away, never to return. And I heard nothing.”

  “At no time did you hear a plane buzz the house?” Cynthia braced herself for the blast.

  “Are you deaf? No.”

  Kyle stepped in. “Miss Tally is in town a lot, Deputy. Anyone who knows her and her busy schedule would have no trouble landing here when she was out of the house.”

  “You hear anything?” Cynthia smiled at him.

  “No.”

  “Mr. Washburn.” She leaned toward his weathered, freckled face. “How could this plane sit here and you not know it?”

  “Winter hay barn,” Tally snapped as though that simple description would be enough for any intelligent person.

  “Miss Tally fills this barn up with hay in the fall. Usually I open it wide in May. Air it out. I’m behind this year—a little.”

  “So you two think whoever parked the plane here—do you park a plane?—well, whoever did this knows Miss Tally’s schedule?”

  “Yes,” Kyle answered while Tally glared. This was damned inconvenient and she knew the situation would bring her bossy niece over to once again interfere.

  Using her cane with vigor, hand clutched over the silver hound’s head, Tally stalked Harry.

  “I don’t know any more than you do.” Harry shrugged.

  “You know a good deal less.” Tally pointed her cane at Harry. “You say you chased these varmints here?”

  “I’m no varmint,” Tucker yipped.

  “They led me right to the barn.”

  Tally studied the animals at Harry’s feet.

  “Sometimes animals know things. Your mother had a marvelous sense of animals. She could talk to them and I swear they talked back,” Tally said, her smile momentarily tinged with melancholy. Then, steeling herself, she again eyed Harry. “You get used to it. By the time you’re my age everyone’s dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. No use crying over spilt milk.” She took a little breath. “And if you ask me, Tommy Van Allen is dead, too.”

  Rick, respectfully silent until now, asked, “Why do you say that, ma’am?”

  “Tommy Van Allen is wild as a rat. He’d be here if he were alive.”

  “Some people think he was selling drugs, made a big haul and disappeared,” Rick suggested.

  “Piffle.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “He might use them. He wouldn’t sell them. That boy was a lot of things but stupid wasn’t one of them. He wouldn’t sell drugs.” She pointed her cane at Rick’s chest. “Every time something happens around here everyone yells ‘Drugs.’ Too much TV.” She turned to Harry. “You’re a nosy kid. Always were. In the blood. Your great-grandfather was nosy.”

  “Which one?”

  “Biddy Minor. Handsomest man I ever saw. Had to know everything, though. Killed him, of course.”

  Rick, a student of local crime, said gently, since it wouldn’t do to correct her, “It was never proven.”

  She raised an eyebrow, barely deigning to refute his prattle. “Proving and knowing are two different things, Sheriff. Just like I know Tommy Van Allen is dead. I know it. You have to prove it, I suppose.”

  “Ma’am, we can’t convict anyone without proof.”

  “Convict them?” Her thin voice rose. “Convict them—they’re out on the streets in six months.”

  Rick blushed. “Miss Tally, I feel exactly the same way but I have a job to do. I’m elected to this position.”

  She softened. “And so you are. Well—what else do you want to know?”

  “Can you think of any reason why someone would want to kill Tommy Van Allen?”

  She paused thoughtfully. “No more than anyone else. By that I mean he had his share of angry ex-girlfriends, his share of people who plain didn’t like him.”

  “Can you think of any reason why someone would shoot Sir H. Vane-Tempest?”

  “Pompous, silly ass.” She shrugged her bony shoulders. “You’re going to canvass my neighbors, aren’t you? Surely one of them heard this airplane.”

  “We’ll speak to everyone,” Rick assured her.

  A crunch of tires on gravel turned all heads in the direction of the Bentley Turbo R pulling into the open barn.

  Tucker barked as the motor was cut off and one elegant leg swung out the driver’s side. “Mim!” The little dog rushed forward to greet the haughty Mim, who nonetheless loved dogs. She bent over to pat Tucker’s head, and the dog happily tagged at her heels.

  “Don’t you start telling me what to do.” Tally’s lower lip jutted out.

  “I’m not. I’m here to help.” Mim stopped to study the plane. “Extraordinary,” she said quietly.

  “If you all don’t need me any longer I’ll go.” Harry began to move toward the open door.

  “Go on.” Sheriff Shaw nodded.

  Cynthia called out, “I’ll catch you later.”

  Miss Tally placed her left hand on Harry’s arm. Her thin ring gleamed. “Mary Minor, you never believed the story about my brother shooting your great-granddaddy because Biddy walked up on his still, did you?”

  “No.”

  She nodded, satisfied. “Good girl.”

  Harry herded Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker into the truck, hearing Mim say, “Now, Aunt Tally, why would anyone put a plane in your barn?”

  “To give me excitement in my declining years.”

  * * *

  21

  That evening Harry walked out to the creek dividing her land from Blair Bainbridge’s. A soft squish accompanied each step. Pewter picked her paws up, periodically shaking them.

  “It was much worse the other night,” Mrs. Murphy nonchalantly remarked.

  “I’ll have to spend half the night washing my feet.”

  “Stick ’em under the faucet,” the dog joked.

  “Never.” Pewter shook her paws again.

  Harry stopped at the creek. The sun was setting, crowning the mountains in pink clouds suffused with gold.

  Tucker sat down.

  “I’m not sitting down in this,” Pewter complained.

  “You’re cranky. Bet you’ve got a tapeworm.”

  “I do not!” The cat slapped at the dog, who laughed.

  “You should talk.” Mrs. Murphy hated those monthly worm pills but they worked. She knew Tucker sometimes cheated and spit hers out. Then she’d feel bad, Harry would discover evidence of roundworms, and T
ucker would really get a dose of medicine.

  Harry drank in the sunset and the sound of peepers. She studied her animals; uncanny, as though they knew where the plane was stashed.

  It occurred to Harry that whoever deposited Tommy Van Allen’s airplane would not be happy to know that she had discovered it. But someone would have eventually done so. She didn’t think she’d be in the line of fire.

  But Sir H. Vane-Tempest was.

  “Just doesn’t compute,” she said out loud.

  “It’s not our problem.” Pewter felt that suppertime started with sunset. She turned to face the distant house, hoping Harry would take the hint.

  Instead Harry climbed the massive walnut tree. Mrs. Murphy joined her, as did Pewter.

  “What am I supposed to do?” the dog whined at the base of the tree.

  “Guard us, Tucker,” Mrs. Murphy said.

  “I might have to,” the dog grumbled, “and lest you forget, egotist of all time, I ran and chased the bobcat.”

  “You did. I really am grateful.”

  “How often do humans climb trees?” Pewter watched Harry swing her legs as she sat on the low, wide branch.

  “Not very often. As they get older they don’t do it at all, I think,” Mrs. Murphy answered. “You see so much more from up here. You’d think they’d want to keep doing it.”

  “No claws. Must be hard for them.” Pewter kept her claws dangerously sharp.

  “Everything’s hard for them. That’s why all their religions are full of fear. You know, hellfire and damnation, that sort of thing.”

  “And being plunged into darkness.” Tucker agreed with the tiger cat.

  “If they could see in the dark as well as we do, their gods would be dark gods.” Mrs. Murphy pitied humans their wide variety of fears.

  “If they were bats their gods would be sounds.” Tucker suffered no religious anxiety. She knew perfectly well that a corgi presided over the universe and she ignored the cats’ blasphemous references to a celestial feline.

  “How long do you think Harry will live?” Pewter rubbed against the cobbled trunk of the tree.

  Walnuts, beautiful trees, possessed the exact right type of bark for cats to sharpen their claws on—and it was good to rub against, too.

  “She’s strong. Into her eighties, I should say, maybe as long as Tally Urquhart,” Murphy replied.

  “Then why are humans scared, really? They live much longer than we do.”

  “Nah. Just seems longer.” Tucker giggled.

  The cats laughed.

  Mrs. Murphy watched Harry hum to herself, swinging her legs as she enjoyed the slow shift of colors from pink to salmon to bloodred shot through with fingers of gray. She truly loved this human and wished Harry could be more like a cat. It would improve her life.

  Harry suddenly noticed the animals all observing her.

  She burst out laughing. “Hey.”

  “Hey back at you,” they replied.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Yes,” came the chorus.

  “It’s time for supper.”

  “Pewter,” Mrs. Murphy corrected her.

  Pewter fell silent. If she complained she’d probably be stuck out in the walnut tree longer. With luck, Harry’s bucolic rapture would pass soon.

  “Do you ever worry about who will take care of Mom when we’re dead?” Tucker soberly asked Murphy.

  “She’ll bring in a puppy and a kitten by the time we’re old. We’ll train them.”

  “I’m not training any kitten,” Pewter huffed.

  “That’s because you have nothing to teach the next generation.”

  “Aren’t we clever?” Pewter boxed Murphy’s ears.

  Murphy boxed right back, the two felines moving forward and backward on the heavy branch as Harry laughed at them. Pewter whacked Murphy hard and the tiger slipped. She grabbed at the branch with her front paws but her hind legs dangled over the edge.

  “Here.” Harry reached over and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, pulling her up. She put the tiger cat in her lap.

  Pewter advanced on Murphy.

  “Don’t you dare or I’ll fall off.” Harry shook her finger at Pewter, who grabbed her finger. She sheathed her claws but her pupils were big so she appeared ferocious.

  “Who will open the cans if Harry gets hurt?” Murphy spit in Pewter’s face.

  “Now that’s enough!” Harry tapped the tiger’s head with her index finger.

  It didn’t hurt but it was irritating.

  A sweet purr attracted everyone’s attention. A pair of headlights, a mile off, swung into view. Blair pulled into his driveway. He got out of his car, then opened the door for Little Mim.

  “Can she see?” Pewter asked Murphy.

  “It’s clear enough. She can see that far. Interested, too.”

  “Who wouldn’t be interested in the Porsche,” Tucker said.

  “She’s curious about him.”

  “Oh.” Tucker watched a twig by the creek. “What was that about Biddy Minor? Miss Tally said curiosity killed him?”

  “I don’t know. Long before my time. That’s way back in our great-grandmothers’ time, I guess.”

  “You’d think they’d talk about it.” Pewter backed down the tree. If the others weren’t going home, she was. There might be some dried crunchies left in the bowl on the countertop.

  “Maybe they did and we didn’t hear it. But I don’t think Harry’s talked about it.” Mrs. Murphy hopped out of Harry’s lap and backed down the walnut also. She talked as she felt for her footing, the slight piercing sound of her claws sinking in bark audible even to the human. “Maybe she made a passing reference. It would have happened in the twenties, I think.”

  “That long ago?”

  Murphy reached the bottom as Tucker walked over to her. “Well, if Biddy was Harry’s great-grandfather, you figure he was born in the 1880s, not much later than 1900 for sure.”

  “Let’s look it up in the family Bible,” Tucker suggested, “when she’s asleep.”

  “Okay.” Pewter would have agreed to anything just to get to the house.

  Harry “skinned the cat,” turning upside down from the branch and dropping to the ground below.

  “Very good,” Murphy praised her.

  As they walked back together Harry asked them, “Did you all know about Tommy Van Allen’s plane?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Murphy and Tucker replied.

  Pewter said nothing because she hadn’t seen it before, even though Mrs. Murphy had told her everything.

  Harry smiled at them, oblivious to their answers.

  “Smart kids.”

  “Sometimes,” Tucker, more modest than the cats, responded.

  “What I don’t like about this is it’s too close to home.” Murphy emphasized home. “Tally Urquhart’s only four miles away.”

  “It doesn’t concern Mom no matter how far away or how close it is.” Pewter had taken to calling Harry Mom even though she had been raised by Market Shiflett and she occasionally helped out in the store.

  “This is a small town. Everything concerns everybody and we led Mom to what may become damaging evidence for someone else. We were stupid.” Murphy realized her mistake.

  “I never thought of that.” Tucker pressed closer to Harry.

  “Me neither. I wish I had.”

  “Don’t worry until they find a body,” Pewter said.

  “Whoever landed that plane had guts. The fog that night was thick as Mrs. Hogendobber’s gravy. Bold ones like that do things other people don’t dream of, they take wild chances. Whoever was with Tommy probably killed him, which means I saw the killer. I couldn’t tell you one thing about him, though, except that he was shorter than Van Allen. But whoever killed Tommy can’t be but so far away.”

  “You don’t know that.” Pewter played devil’s advocate.

  “But I do.” Mrs. Murphy dashed ahead a few paces. “What would someone far away have to gain by removing Tommy Van Allen—”<
br />
  “And removing H. Vane-Tempest,” Tucker interrupted.