Cat on the Scent

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Yes.” Herb crossed his arms over his chest.

  “And I have a missing person I am treating as, shall we say, an unfriendly disappearance. We find the airplane. Nothing, except it’s covered with pussycat paw prints.” He cast an eye at Mrs. Murphy, even though he didn’t realize those were her prints. “I’ve combed through Tommy’s house and his office with his housekeeper. Nothing has been taken. The only things missing are what he was wearing—the clothes on his back, a signet ring, and his forty-five-thousand-dollar Schauffenhausen watch.”

  Herb whistled at the price.

  “We’ve alerted pawnshops across the country. We’ve sent out photographs to every law-enforcement agency. Not a trace. What I’m driving at is—things are just too damned curious.” Rick slapped his thigh in disgust. “I’ll check this for prints, fibers, you name it.” He sighed audibly. “But I can’t put it together.”

  “Nobody can, boss.” Coop brightened. “At least we’ve got another clue.”

  “There is that.” He smiled.

  “Do you think the killer is trying to implicate me?” Herb reached for his rod as though the touch of it would make everything all right.

  “No, I don’t.” Rick smiled. “And I have a suspicious mind. There are so many places to dispose of a jacket. . . . Whoever put it here is in effect giving us the finger—begging your pardon, Reverend.”

  “Van Allen was probably wearing this jacket when he disappeared,” Cynthia said. “Herb, if you don’t mind, leave the truck here for a day. We need to check it for prints.”

  “We’ve got a portable compressor. I’ll fill your tire. Once we’re finished tomorrow you can take it down to the garage.”

  “Thanks, that would be a big help.”

  Lucy Fur rubbed his leg. “Don’t worry, Poppy. Everything will be all right.”

  “Tommy Van Allen was wearing a trench coat, collar turned up, when I saw him at Tally Urquhart’s.”

  “You saw him?” Lucy Fur stopped midrub.

  “I couldn’t see his face but how many six-foot-five men are there? I was far away, it was getting foggy with a hard rain. But he wasn’t wearing that bomber jacket.”

  “Maybe he left it in his car and grabbed the trench coat because it was raining?” Pewter said.

  “It doesn’t matter whether he was wearing it, left it in a car, or whether this jacket was in someone else’s car or someone else’s house. That’s really irrelevant at this point.” Murphy’s words were clipped.

  Pewter disagreed. “I think it’s relevant. The killer or accomplice wanted to get rid of evidence. Maybe he forgot this jacket was in his car or trunk or something?”

  “No way.” The tiger stood up. “He’s putting down bad scent.”

  “Deliberately misleading us?” Lucy Fur sat on Herb’s sturdy walking shoe.

  “You’d better believe it—and enjoying himself in the bargain.” Mrs. Murphy felt the whole complexion of the events had changed, like a lighting-change during a play. The mood shifts with the light. It can suddenly become treacherous.

  * * *

  24

  Tubes invaded H. Vane-Tempest’s body. Alert but in pain, he lay in the hospital bed counting the minutes until the next shot would bring him relief. What hurt most was his reset shoulder blade.

  “Honey, drink a little water. You’ll get dehydrated.” Sarah held a plastic water cup with a big plastic bent straw in it.

  Dutifully he drank. “Where’s that goddamn nurse?”

  “She’ll be here in a minute.” Sarah checked her watch.

  The heavyset nurse appeared, right on time. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve felt better.”

  She checked his chart and took his pulse.

  “He’s very uncomfortable. Can’t you increase his dosage?”

  “No. Only the doctor can do that.” The nurse gently removed her fingers from his wrist. “This will help for now. I know it wears off sooner than you’d like, but Dr. Svarski is a firm believer in getting people up and out of here as soon as possible. If you become dependent on painkillers it’s that much harder.”

  H. Vane glared at her as she stuck the needle into his left arm.

  “What about his sleep? If you give him a higher dosage at night he’ll at least be able to sleep right through. As it is now, he wakes up.”

  “Mrs. Tempest—”

  “Lady Vane-Tempest.” Sarah was testy.

  “Ma’am, you’ll have to discuss this with Dr. Svarski. I cannot increase your husband’s dosage.” She abruptly left the room.

  “I hate nurses.” Sarah closed the door, then sat next to him. “Would you like me to read to you?”

  He smiled at her. “Thank you, but I can’t seem to stay focused on anything. My mind wanders. I couldn’t even answer Shaw’s questions.”

  “He understands.” She lowered her voice. “Henry, it’s just us. No repercussions. I understand you don’t want to make accusations you can’t support. You’re exceedingly fair that way. But between us, who would want to shoot you? Is there something I don’t know?”

  He looked into his wife’s imploring eyes. “Sarah, the only person I can think of is Archie.”

  “Yes, of course.” She put her hand on his.

  “Lately I’d have gladly shot him.” He laughed but it hurt so badly he stopped.

  She shook her head. “He’s snapped, I suppose. The sheriff can’t arrest him until they have more proof. . . . How are you holding up, honey, you look done in.”

  “Tired.”

  “Sleep. You need lots of sleep.”

  “Yes, but it’s so boring.” He squeezed her hand and promptly fell asleep.

  * * *

  25

  News of the bomber jacket appeared in the Daily Progress. A storm of speculation followed and a plethora of leads—all dead ends.

  This Saturday, Harry was determined to wax her Barbour coat. If she didn’t do it now she’d regret it in about two days, when more rain was predicted.

  She warmed the wax as she brushed the coat, inspected the seams, emptied the pockets. An old movie ticket fell out.

  “I can’t even remember the last time I went to the movies.”

  “You need to get out more often,” Tucker advised.

  Mrs. Murphy, grooming her tail, listened to the blue jay squawking outside the barn door. Birds excited her senses. Blue jays were saucy, fearless, and expert dive-bombers.

  “Shut up,” Pewter called out.

  “Shut up yourself, fatso!”

  “I have half a mind to go out there and teach him a lesson,” Pewter grumbled.

  Murphy admired her tail. Having this appendage gave her better balance than Harry but the maintenance could be tiresome. If she forgot to hoist it, she picked up mud or dust. If she was caught in pouring rain, her tail looked like a very long rattail, which offended her exalted vanity. If she brushed by a lily she would smear her tail with sticky rust-colored pollen. In fall she picked up “hitchhikers.” Biting them out of her tail was a time-consuming process. Still, she’d rather have a tail than not.

  She thought Harry would be much improved with a tail. Tucker could certainly use one.

  A flurry of squawks, screeches, and whistles drew her from her grooming. She dropped her tail, which she had picked up in her paw.

  “That jay family is pushing it too far.” Pewter shook herself and strolled to the barn door.

  “Death to cats!” The jay swooped down on Pewter, flew through the barn, and zoomed out the other end.

  “I’ll break your neck!” the humiliated cat hollered.

  “I’ll help you.” Mrs. Murphy trotted over to Pewter.

  Tucker joined them, too.

  Again the jay swirled around the hayloft, then dove at a forty-five-degree angle.

  Murphy leapt straight up, the swish of tail feathers by her ear. She clapped both paws together but missed.

  “Ha!” the jay called out.

  “Let’s lure him into the hayloft. We
’ll cut down his air space,” Pewter sagely advised.

  Mrs. Murphy blinked. “Forget him, I’ve got an idea. Follow me.”

  The two animals trailed after Murphy as she loped across the field.

  “Where are we going?” Pewter asked.

  “To Tally Urquhart’s.”

  “Why?” The day was pretty enough that Pewter felt she could endure exercise.

  “The blue jay made me think of it.”

  “What?” Tucker’s soft brown eyes scanned the fields.

  “I should have thought of this before. We need to work in circles around the barn. A human can’t see the nose on his face.”

  The animals arrived at the abandoned barn a half hour later. Since the weather was good they had made excellent time.

  “The sheriff has scoured the barn and the outbuildings. My plan is that we each work fifty yards apart in a circle. Pewter, take the closest circle. I’ll take the second circle. Tucker, you take the farthest circle. If anyone finds something, yell. If we don’t find anything let’s work three more circles.”

  “When you saw the two humans, where did they walk?” Tucker lifted her head to the wind.

  “Down the dirt road.”

  “If Tommy was killed out here he could be buried anywhere,” Pewter said.

  “Yes, but the other human was little. He wouldn’t be able to drag that heavy carcass far.”

  “Let’s go to work.” Tucker trotted out 150 yards from the barn and shouted back, “We’ll use the road as our rendezvous point, but remember, I’m on the farthest circle, so it will take me longer to get back here.”

  “Okay.” The two cats fanned out.

  Murphy worked quietly. She found old smoothed-over bits of glass from long-ago bottles for poultices, worm remedies, even liquor. Here and there she turned up a rusted horseshoe or a rabbit’s nest. She throttled her instincts to hunt.

  They worked in silence for an hour. Murphy, on the second circle, came back about ten minutes after Pewter.

  “What’d you get?”

  Pewter shrugged. “Ratholes and high-topped shoes.”

  “Come on.”

  “A piece of an upper, I think, anyway. Humans sure put their bodies into some pinchy clothes and shoes.”

  “Whee-ooo.”

  The sound, to their right, sent them scrambling. Tucker sat on the edge of an old dump. Pieces of tractor stuck out through the brambles, which seemed to grow overnight.

  “What have you got?” Pewter thought the graveyard of machines eerie.

  “Nothing, but wouldn’t this be a great place to dump a body?” Tucker said.

  “Yes, but we would have smelled it when we led Harry to the barn.” Mrs. Murphy marveled at how quickly brambles grow in the spring. They were already twirling through an old discarded hay elevator.

  “Yeah.” Tucker, disappointed, bulled through the thorns into the pile, her thick coat protecting her. “I’ll just nose around.”

  “No hunting, Tucker. We’ve resisted.”

  “Pewter, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  The cats stuck around just in case. The strong, low-built dog pushed straight into the dump. She would nose through some of the debris, a delightful prospect.

  Being next to mountains, the area had shifted over the years with small tremors. A rusted truck, an ancient Chevy from the 1930s, had been turned on its side by quake tremors. Vines and rusting were slowly pulling it apart.

  A faint but tantalizing odor curled in Tucker’s nostrils. She sniffed around the truck, then started digging underneath it.

  As she ripped into the soft earth, the corner of a sturdy, small suitcase appeared. It might once have sat on the seat of the truck but had probably slid out once the glass broke. Over the decades the truck had settled on top of it, and it was covered with fallen leaves and vines depositing layers of humus.

  “Found an old suitcase.”

  “So what?” Pewter catcalled.

  “It’s heavy leather, got steel corners. It has an alluring odor—faded, very faded.”

  “What’s she babbling about?” Murphy grumbled.

  “Let’s go see.”

  Tucker gave a hearty tug on the suitcase, then another.

  The latch gave just a bit. She tugged some more.

  “Will you get back to work?” Murphy circled around the worst of the brambles, crawling low to avoid the others. She walked over an old Massey-Ferguson tractor, then dropped onto the side of the Chevy.

  “I’m not going in there!” Pewter shouted.

  “Who asked you?” Then Tucker yelled again. “Golly!”

  The cat stepped up as the dog sniffed the musty odor of old death.

  The two friends blinked.

  “It’s a tiny skeleton.” A bit of lace still hung over the skull. “A tiny human skeleton!” Mrs. Murphy gasped.

  “What will we do?” Tucker’s voice was almost a whisper.

  “Will you come out of there?” Pewter paced, irritated to the point of putting up her tail.

  “We’ve found a skeleton,” Murphy called out.

  “You’re just saying that to get me in there.”

  “NO, we’re not,” they answered in unison.

  Pewter paced, sat, paced, cursed, then finally crawled in. “You’re lying. I know you’re lying.”

  “Look.” Mrs. Murphy leaned back.

  “Liar.” Nonetheless Pewter did look. “Oh, no.” She sat down.

  “Nobody buries their baby in a suitcase.” Tucker was indignant.

  “You’re exactly right.” Murphy licked the dog’s ear.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Pewter asked.

  “Someone killed this little thing.” Mrs. Murphy sighed. “Tucker, do you think we can pull the suitcase out of this rubble?”

  * * *

  * * *

  “No.”

  “The rats will get at it, or raccoons.” Pewter felt quite sad. “Can you cover it again?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t very deep. If you two help it won’t take long.”

  Tucker pushed the suitcase back, then turned around, throwing dirt on their discovery with her hind legs.

  The cats threw dirt on it as well.

  Once it was covered they took a breather, then crawled back out.

  “Let’s go home,” a subdued Pewter requested. “We won’t find Tommy Van Allen.”

  * * *

  26

  At the eastern end of Crozet, on Route 240, the large food plant, which had been through successive corporate owners, dominated the skyline. On the south side of the white buildings ran the railroad tracks, a convenience should they need carloads of grain shunted off onto sidings. These days huge trailers pulled in and out of the parking lot, a sea of macadam. Each time a driver shifted gears a squelch of diesel smoke would shoot straight upward, a smoke signal from the internal-combustion engine.

  The giant refrigerator trucks hauled the frozen foods to refrigerated warehouses from whence the product made it directly to the freezer sections of supermarkets.

  Loading the behemoths in the docking area plunged men from cavernous freezers into the baking temperature outside and then into the long, cold trailers. This was not the most desirable job in the United States and many a Crozet High School graduate working on that platform rued the day he had decided not to try for college.

  While a lot of the town’s residents worked in the food factory, just as many did not. It was odd, really, how little social impact the big corporation had on the town except for creating traffic in the morning and then again at quitting time.

  For a manager on the way up, Crozet was a good stop. Most deplored the small town, calling it Podunk or some other putdown. For those who weren’t southern, the jolt of Virginia life came like unexpected turbulence at twenty thousand feet. Charlottesville, offering some cultural delights, was disdained because it wasn’t Chicago, a fact that Charlottesvillians were keen to perpetuate.

  Wilson C. McGaughey, thirty-two, ambitious, o
rganized, and a student of time-management schemes, daily outraged those people working in his unit. Bad enough that he mocked their speech, called them slow and inefficient; now he’d taken to putting up flow charts for the workers’ edification. Next to the flow chart and the weekly productivity quota McGaughey had what his underlings dubbed the Weenie List—workers who had excelled. Two were chosen each week. Next to that was the Shit List, the names of those who did the poorest work. If your name made the Shit List three times in one year Wilson fired you. Simple as that.