“Just hear me out.” Harry held up her hand. “We secure the jewelry in our safe, where it is already. We write up the discovery, the time, the building of St. Luke’s, our history. We know when she was dumped on the Taylors’, pretty much.”
“Why do we?” Mags eyebrows raised.
“Think, Mags. If their grave was opened even two weeks after their deaths, that would have been obvious. She had to be placed on their coffins within a day or two of their joint burial. Someone could dig up the freshly dug earth, toss her in, replace the earth.”
This really got them.
“You’re right!” Janice nearly clapped her hands.
“So if we write our history, each year on our anniversary, which I take to be when the organ was first played, we hand out a booklet with photos of St. Luke’s, the gardens, the original architectural plans, the history of Charles and Rachel West, of subsequent pastors, and our big mystery. On that day we open our church to all, which we pretty much do anyway, and we display the necklace and earrings.”
No one said one word. Minutes passed. The cats looked at one another, feeling this an excellent opportunity to steal more food, which they did.
Finally Pamela, smiling broadly, added, “With armed guards. Drama.”
“Yes! Once a year.” Harry beamed. “I don’t think St. Luke’s has ever received our historical due.”
“Hear. Hear.” All the ladies rapped the table.
“Now what?” Mags asked.
“We talk to Reverend Jones. We secure his approval. We begin writing St. Luke’s history, which will take time, lots of work, digging up photos, all that stuff.”
“Like Katherine Butterfield’s history of St. Anne’s-Belfield.” Libby mentioned the late historian of the fashionable private school of Albemarle County.
“If we could produce something half as good, we’d be in deep clover.”
Harry smiled, as she had much admired Mrs. Butterfield.
Susan tapped her spoon on a glass. “All in favor of securing the jewelry and displaying it on our annual foundation day, say ‘Aye.’ ”
“Aye.” In unison.
“All in favor of a history with drawings and photos of St. Luke’s, say ‘Aye.’ ”
“Aye.” In unison.
Then Janice piped up. “You didn’t ask for all opposed.”
“Janice, the vote was unanimous.” Susan threw up her hands.
“Oh. Okay,” Janice agreed.
Lucy Fur, full, said to her two friends, “Do you think Poppy will go for it?”
Elocution replied, “I do.”
Cazenovia added, “As long as the history is accurate. Doesn’t hide anything. He’ll like the idea.”
“Given the necklace, well, that’s a mystery. Humans love a mystery.” Lucy Fur thought a moment. “That means they have to write about the cats, dogs, and horses of St. Luke’s.”
“Harry will see to that.” Cazenovia cleaned her whiskers.
“Maybe they’ll find the answer to the bones,” Lucy Fur said.
“Given that her neck was broken, it can’t be a good story.” Cazenovia raised her voice. “You know, we don’t kill one another. Maybe once in a blue moon but cats don’t kill one another. Humans do.”
“We know that.” Elocution lifted a long, silky eyebrow.
“Talk of old troubles might bring on new,” Cazenovia said with authority.
17
June 4, 2019
Tuesday
The early corn pushed up shoots already over a foot tall. Harry had organized her fields by projected harvest data. Corn could be harvested into late September some years. The sunflowers would usually be in full bloom mid-August. The rest of her flatter lands hosted various mixtures of orchard grass, clover, timothy, and alfalfa. Alfalfa seed, expensive, guaranteed it would be paired usually with timothy. Whether two-footed or four-, everyone had preferences.
Harry walked through the fields abutting the mountains, where she planted fescue. Fescue could cause a pregnant mare to spontaneously abort. However, fescue could tolerate heat and cold. It was a native Virginia plant, made good hay. As this part of her farm received a bit less light due to the mountains and a bit more cooling temperatures, fescue thrived, but she never put a pregnant mare in these pastures.
Walking with her, ever-present notebook slid into her jeans back hip pocket, was Susan.
Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, Tucker, Pirate, and Owen sniffed delightful odors: bobcat, deer, Canadian geese. The geese resting on those pastures closest to the fast-running creek paid no attention to the little convoy. The animals had learned the hard way as youngsters that geese can be aggressive. Tails had been hurt by those beaks. Tucker wouldn’t even look at one in the eye.
“Come on. You’ve dawdled over your hay, your corn, your sunflowers. Let’s get up there and measure some of the timber,” Susan grumbled.
“You’ve been a good egg.”
“I have. I am always a good egg.” Susan began the climb using the farm road.
A quarter of a mile up, the grade still easy, Harry fetched a measuring tape from her other hip pocket.
“Good thing we marked some of these last year.” She moved to a fine hickory, wrapping the tape around the trunk.
“Number one. Thirty-one inches. Right on the silver line.”
“Yeah. A bit higher now. She’s growing. M-m-m. Just a hair below thirty-three. Good growth.”
Susan wrote down the figures. “Given almost eight months of rain last year, she should be getting a bigger waistline.”
Every hundred yards, give or take, for the two had not measured distance that precisely, they would measure a tree with silver painted around the trunk. Spray paint proved so easy to use.
The climb steepened. Progress slowed. While in good shape, both breathed a little harder. Susan, who ran daily, felt a twinge in her calves that surprised her.
On and on they toiled until near the top of the lower ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. At fifteen hundred feet, it set against the taller mountain behind it.
Westerners mocked the Blue Ridge. “Hills. These aren’t mountains.”
To which a Virginian would reply, “These were once the tallest mountains in the world. You are looking at the power of time.”
That usually shut them up. Harry loved mountains, any mountains, but her heart rested with the Blue Ridge. Right now her heart was beating.
“Five minutes’ rest. The closer we get to the top, the more it gets me. Once when I was in Sheridan, Wyoming, I drove up the Big Horn. As I didn’t know the terrain, I figured I’d better drive. The high meadows are beautiful and as I parked and sat there, up came a herd of cattle being driven by cowboys and women, too, to their summer pastures. The only way we could do that here is to fence them. Too close to 250 or 64. Damn roads.”
Susan, glad to sit on a cut trunk for a moment, nodded. “That was the trip where we split at Salt Lake City. We don’t do that anymore.”
“Only if we plan. At twenty, summer vacation felt like heaven.”
“It was heaven,” Susan reminisced.
The dogs stayed with them. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, noses almost as keen as dog noses, caught a whiff of those not so old bones.
Moving east to the rock outcropping, they found the rib cage after passing the well-hidden still.
“Not much left.” Mrs. Murphy observed the whitened ribs.
“Hey, look at this.” Pewter headed for the partial skull, baseball hat still in place. “Let’s tell Harry.” Off she shot.
Tucker’s ears drooped. She knew exactly what had happened, as did Pirate.
“What’s wrong?” Owen licked his sister’s face.
“Damn cats. They found what’s left of that human,” Tucker answered.
“Follow me!” Pewter hollered as Mrs. Murphy came
up behind.
“Pewter, don’t take them there. It will start a mess,” Tucker warned.
“A dead person. I found it! Wait until you see what’s left. Dead. Dead. Dead,” Pewter gleefully announced.
Pirate, confused, inquired, “Why is Pewter so happy about a dead human?”
“Because she found it. Harry and Susan will follow her.”
“Yes?” The Irish wolfhound’s ears lifted.
“Pirate, if they are still fussing about the bones in the old grave at St. Luke’s, think how they’ll be now. They have no sense.”
“But the person is dead,” Pirate rightly said.
“They will have to find out why, if possible. Was it a natural death or murder? And don’t forget, Pirate, the still is not far from the remains. That will set them right off.”
Owen chimed in. “Pirate, you haven’t seen these two, um, on the case.”
Puffed up like a broody hen, Pewter would run forward, run back, claw Harry’s jeans leg, and run off again, with Mrs. Murphy by her side.
“A still!” Harry spied the small shack-like building.
“Damned if it isn’t,” Susan agreed.
Being country girls, they had seen stills, none of which resembled the high-class apparatus for beer Mags and Janice used at Bottoms Up.
The cats kept going. The dogs followed, too.
“Here!” Pewter triumphantly stood by the opened rib cage.
“What the hell!” Harry exclaimed.
Then Pewter ran to the skull under the boulder. “Heads up!”
“Very funny.” Mrs. Murphy did laugh, though.
The two women came over.
“Black hair. What’s left. You’d think some animal would have torn the cap off,” Susan noted.
Over the years both Harry and Susan had seen a few corpses or skeletons. Again, being country girls, death did not offend them. It was part of life. Cause of death did provoke them, though.
“A man?” Harry half asked, half declared.
“Don’t know that many women with hidden stills.” Susan plucked her cellphone out of her shirt pocket.
“Ned?”
“No, the sheriff.”
Within thirty minutes Sheriff Shaw and a deputy, Dwayne, drove over the high meadow, stopped, and walked over to them. For once, GPS had routed them correctly.
The two women told their story while Dwayne inspected the still.
“It’s intact,” he announced.
Sheriff Shaw, kneeling down, touched nothing. “Hard to say but I’d bet whoever this was died early fall.” He stood back up. “Get forensics out here. We need to photograph everything undisturbed, then send this to Richmond.”
“Not much left,” Harry said.
“Those folks are the best. You’ll be surprised at what they deduce.”
“I found this! Me! Me! Me!” Pewter crowed.
“She’s going to be impossible,” Tucker predicted.
“She’s impossible now,” Owen remarked.
“There are police dogs. I should be a police cat!” Pewter bragged.
18
December 19, 1787
Wednesday
“A bit of cheer.” Shank held up a brown bottle at the main stable at Royal Oak. “Lift your spirits.”
Martin, standing in the back of an old wagon bought with Maureen’s down payment, beamed. “Here, gentlemen, a sip to tantalize your taste buds.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Ard smiled broadly, taking the bottle from Martin’s outstretched hand. “Great Day!”
“Your eyes are watering,” Dipsy howled at him, grabbing the bottle. “A real man can take a drink.”
So he did and about fell over coughing, which made the other men roar.
“Gentlemen, these are potent waters.” Shank grinned as one by one the male workers at Royal Oak crept into the main stable.
Ard, clearing his throat, wiping his eyes, said, “Boys, we can’t all be in here at the same time. Those of you with brave hearts, pay up and go back to work. Don’t want Mr. Finney thinking we’re slacking, especially with Christmas up ahead.”
A murmur passed through the men as one by one they fished coins out of their pockets to pay for the bottle, not cheap at three dollars for a full bottle and half that for a half bottle but, oh, so desirable. Now, where to hide the bottle? Can’t let the wife find it if a man had a wife. And the bunkhouse, your best buddy would drain your bottle dry if he found it. You’d find him passed out or dead.
Excited talk filled the air while the horses ignored it all.
William, all braggadocio, handed over his money.
Martin lifted a bottle from the banked hay. “Here you go, young man. Best country waters in the States.”
William uncorked his bottle, sniffed, took a swig. He was smart enough to take a small sip, but that still packed a punch.
Ralston, curious, tried to sniff William’s bottle, but the slightly taller William cuffed him.
“Young fellow, come here. A small, restorative sip. A man’s mouth can only get but so dry.” Martin beckoned to Ralston.
Ralston gingerly sipped the contents, gulped, stood still, rooted to the spot. Then he passed the bottle back up to Martin in his green, broad-brimmed hat with a jaunty pheasant feather in it. Naturally, Ralston didn’t want to appear weak or unmanly so he, too, fished out the requisite amount, a bit of money for him, but he did it.
“Hurry up, boys. Back to work,” Ard barked, then enjoyed a tiny drop of the magic.
Giggles alerted the men that women approached.
Miss Frances strode in. “And what might you be selling?”
Shank nodded to her, respectful to a female, grabbed the bottle from Martin, and reached out to her. “Madam, these are very strong waters but you might wish a small lift.”
Eyeing him suspiciously, she tilted the bottle to her lips, took a swig—not a small one—licked her lips, and handed it back.
“Madam,” Martin exclaimed, “you possess a formidable palate.” He figured no one would know that “palate” wasn’t the correct word but it sounded high-class.
Glaring at him, she put one hand on her hip. “I’m Irish. We all possess formidable palates.” She put the accent on the “p.”
Sensing he had the men over a barrel, for how could they be shown up by a woman, Martin leaned down, smiled big. “Merry Christmas, you Alainn Bean-vassal.”
She stepped up on the side step, grasping the bottle he had given her, kissed him on the cheek, and stepped down, staring at all the workers. “Never miss the chance to kiss a handsome man.”
He had called her “beautiful lady” in Celtic. She rarely heard her native tongue anymore.
The men rushed the cart, coins jingling in hands as Miss Frances turned to leave the barn. One kitchen worker had snuck out and Sulli did, too, peeking into the barn.
Shank noted Sulli as he had noted William and Ralston.
Shank and Martin sold a lot of strong spirits made with crystal clear mountain water. Given their product, they found ways to get onto farms or into homes, loosen tongues. They had beads, children’s toys, a few small items of silver like thimbles, for every woman sewed. A silver thimble presented by one’s husband, son, or beau delighted a lady and a fellow could afford it. Silver impressed. Gold even more, obviously.
Dipsy, two swigs in his gullet, walked up to Shank. “If you two peddlers want a cart that will outlive you both, we make them here. Noticed yours is rickety.”
“ ’Tis,” Shank agreed.
As the people filtered out, Dipsy persisted. “Leave your horse and cart here for a minute. Follow me.”
The two, eager to observe all they could at Royal Oak, followed the older fellow to the small but well-organized shop where the blue cart stood waiting to be delivered to Rosemont
. He held out his arm in an expansive gesture. “The best.”
Shank and Martin circled the cart. Martin knelt down to look under the bottom. “Heavy axle.”
“Takes an elephant to break it,” Dipsy bragged.
Shank knelt down, too. “You know, sir, you might be right. What would a wagon like this run?”
“This one is sold but I’ll see if Mr. Finney would take an order or sell one we use on the farm, at a lower rate, of course.”
“What would this cost new?” Martin stood up.
“One hundred and fifty dollars. Two hundred if you want a ten-foot bed and you want special paint. We can make any length you want. Our axles will hold the weight.”
“Let us consider this, Mr.?”
“Dipsy Runckle. Call me Dipsy.”
Martin, rubbing his chin, said, “Mr. Runckle, we travel. Many people would see this piece of handiwork. We could sell some. Actually, I believe we could sell a lot. If you lower the price for us, we might be able to swing it.”
Dipsy crossed his arms over his chest. “Mr. Finney can be a hard man, but I’ll talk to him. He’s a shrewd businessman and would be able to consider your offer.”
“And what would you like, Mr. Runckle?” Martin smiled.
“We can discuss that if I convince Mr. Finney.”
Once back out on the road, Martin and Shank drove five miles to their lodgings. The horse, a decent enough half-breed, trotted, for the cold enlivened her.
“Fit the description.”
“Did.” Shank agreed. “Girl is a pretty thing.”
“Is.” Martin felt the heavy coins in his pocket. “You know we made over sixty dollars. If our line of work ever fails, I think we have a new one.”
Shank laughed. “Ever notice how people close to mountains make good liquor? When we met with Mrs. Holloway, I figured there had to be some fine distillers in the region.”
“You think ahead.” Martin smiled at him, holding the reins loosely.
“If we can lure those three off Royal Oak, our job will be easier. If not, we’d better be careful. The owner is a powerful man. His people don’t talk.”
“We’re retrieving stolen property.”
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