“Susan, you are the best!” Harry, who rarely cooked, beamed.
“In fact, give yourself forty-five minutes. You ought to knock a mess of bushogging out by then.”
“Roger.” Harry touched the brim of her straw cowboy hat.
Each year she bought a new Shady Brady and wore it hard. By the end of the year that hat was tired, plus she’d invariably forget to bring it in the house and would leave it in the tack room, where the mice would chew on it.
Tucker, snoring next to the tack trunk in the barn, lifted her head when she heard Susan come down the drive. She roused herself, hoping that Susan had brought along Owen, her corgi brother.
As the two dogs played tag, the bemused cats watched.
“What’s funny about those two is they have no idea they’re shrimps.” Pewter rested her head on her outstretched paw.
“Dwarfs.” Mrs. Murphy accurately described the two corgis, large animals bred down to shortened legs but with the torso and head of larger dogs.
As corgis go, Tucker and Owen were on the large size of the breed. Tee Tucker weighed forty pounds and her brother weighed about forty-six, but he carried a little potbelly. Neither dog was terribly overweight, and both could turn on a dime and give you a nickel’s change. Given that their function was herding cattle, their size and demeanor were perfect for the task. A small dog like a miniature pinscher might not get the respect of the cattle, but a corgi with a stout bark and strong jaws could nip heels, duck or leap sideways, and drive those cattle down the road.
“Murphy, I’ve been thinking about Barry. No, we couldn’t smell another animal, but he had the stench of fear on him. We didn’t talk about that,” Pewter said.
“Hmm.” Mrs. Murphy sat up. “I attributed that to nature. He was afraid of what killed him.”
“Me, too,” Pewter replied.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Well, let’s say a bear grabs him or even takes a swipe so only his throat is touched.”
“Yeah . . .” The tiger nodded, waiting.
“Wouldn’t Barry have thrown his right arm up to protect his throat? That’s the natural human reaction. They have no other defense in that situation and, God knows, the poor things can’t outrun a rabbit.”
“Pewter, you’re right. And there wasn’t a mark on him, at least not that we could see. No dirt on his right arm or bruises or blood. It’s—”
“Unnatural.” Pewter finished her thought for her.
“Even if a huge raptor swooped down on him, he’d still throw his arm up.” Mrs. Murphy considered other possibilities.
“Okay, suppose the bird hit him from behind with his talons balled up. Barry stumbled and somehow fell faceup. Well, he’d have a big knot on the back of his head.”
“Thought you didn’t care much about humans except for Harry and a few of her friends.” Mrs. Murphy taunted Pewter just a bit.
Pewter drawled, “I don’t. But I was thinking about what kind of animal would kill Barry without him having any time to defend himself at all.”
“You’re it!” Tucker roared by, too close for comfort, as she chased her brother.
“Watch it!” Mrs. Murphy swiped at the white rear end.
The possum, Simon, awakened for a night’s foraging, peered out of the hayloft door, open to let the breezes through the hay. “Pipe down.”
The cats looked up at Simon, whom they liked well enough. “Good luck. Tucker’s about to go into her frenzy. Give her another minute and she’ll chase the tail that isn’t there.”
Simon, half-domesticated, had endured every shot and test for EPM, a degenerative, complicated disease that would be passed to the horses, and emerged a remarkably healthy possum, if a disgruntled one.
“I’m not coming down until those two are in the house. They’ll chase me. Tucker forgets her manners when Owen’s around,” Simon grumbled.
As Susan stepped out back to ring the large bell hanging by the screen door, the dogs decided that the prospect of food was more alluring than chasing each other to exhaustion.
“Simon, have a good evening.” Pewter shook herself, then trotted to the screen door.
Pewter was never one to hang back when food was on the table.
Mrs. Murphy called up, “Peppermints in Mom’s barn coat. She forgot to give them to the horses.”
“Thanks!” Simon could taste those candies already.
Harry, hungry, pulled her tractor into the old shed the minute she heard the bell. Johnny Pop, the old John Deere, belched a few times, black puffs of exhaust rising like smoke signals from the exhaust pipe. Harry disengaged the PTO—the power takeoff—a rotating axle that powered attachments. Tomorrow before climbing back on she would dutifully check fluids on her old tractor. She had a mania for maintaining all equipment properly because she assumed she’d never be able to buy any more.
The two friends caught up on their own doings as well as everyone else’s. The animals gratefully ate the chicken that Susan had made for them.
“Susan, no wonder Ned married you.” Harry smiled as Susan put apple crisp before her for dessert.
“Bet he has days when he wonders,” Susan laughed as she sat down to the apple crisp topped with vanilla ice cream. “Oh, ran into Fair, and he said he’s off this coming weekend if we want to go to the furniture stores in Farmville.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Can’t make up my mind. If I go I’m afraid I’ll buy that chest of drawers I keep dreaming about. My husband won’t be happy about it.” She sighed, then smiled as she delivered ice cream and apple crisp to her mouth.
“Let’s wait until we get closer to the weekend. I don’t want to be tempted, either.” Harry savored the crunch of another mouthful of apple crisp. She changed the subject. “Is Mim going to Keeneland this year?”
“She’s waiting for Saratoga.”
“I’d love to go!” Harry adored Saratoga Springs, a beautiful city north of Albany, New York, and the center of the thoroughbred world in August.
“She’s selling this year.”
“She had those two yearlings by, uh, one’s by Fred Astaire and the other is by J. C. Smells, the Pennsylvania horse. But the mares are granddaughters of Secretariat. Everyone wants that blood, especially from the mares.”
“Mim is shrewd. Ran into her, too, and she said you had found Mary Patricia Reines’s class ring. I can’t believe you didn’t call me.”
“I’m sorry.” And Harry was. “I’ve been on overload and I didn’t know who it belonged to when I found it. Took it to Coop only because I found it not far from where I found Barry, poor guy. And she took it to Aunt Tally. It’s a long story about why she took it there instead of to Rick, but, anyway, Big Mim knew. And Mary Pat’s initials are inside the ring plus the date, 1945. Oh, Coop and I came back here after Aunt Tally’s and used Mom’s big magnifying glass. The inscription, which is reversed so you can use the ring for stamping, is Victuri te salutamus.”
“We salute you, Victory?” Susan’s Latin was rusty but serviceable. “Or, we who are about to be victorious salute you?”
“Close enough. The ring is worn but I think it’s Victuri. Could have been Victoria, she who conquers.”
“Victoria, -ae, is conquest, victory,” Susan said. “Easy to remember since it’s first declension. I forget fourth and, well, if you don’t use it you lose it.”
“Men say that, too.”
They burst out laughing.
“Well, victory is feminine but victor is masculine. It’s coming back. Victor, victoria.” Susan polished off the apple crisp. “That’s so good.”
“Is there more?”
“Yes. I shouldn’t, but, well, the thing about temptation is, if you can resist something it’s because it’s not tempting enough.” She walked over to the counter. “What about you?”
“I’m full.”
“I’m never full.”
“Susan, you’ve always been like that. You burn it off.”
“I burne
d it off until I turned thirty-five. Then my metabolism changed. I don’t know why yours didn’t.”
“Farm work.”
“Thank God you spend part of each day inside at the post office or you’d be rail thin.” She cut another large helping, using Harry’s spatula.
Harry needed more kitchen utensils. Susan made note of that for future presents.
“Didn’t we have fun putting in all those trees?”
“Fun? I about broke my back.”
“I loved it.”
“Harry, you love anything with a motor in it, and you and BoomBoom were in hog heaven. It’s so funny to see BoomBoom in the cab of that eighty-horsepower tractor. I mean, she really is one of the most beautiful, feminine women, and she works at it, too. But let her get in a car or a tractor and, like you, she’s as good as any gearhead. She is a gearhead!”
“I’ve gained a new appreciation for BoomBoom. I think that ordeal we survived at the Clam turned me around.” Harry mentioned the big sports arena at University of Virginia, where they had been pursued by two criminals.
They worked together, fought back, and lived. The cats and dog helped, too.
“I’m glad. Before it slips my mind—where is Mary Pat’s ring?”
“Here.” Harry removed it from her pinkie.
“Rick let you have it? I can’t believe it.”
“I found it. Cooper took it to him first thing Monday morning. They dusted it and examined it and, as you would suspect, my prints, Aunt Tally’s. Obviously, no one expected much, but Rick went through the motions. Rick said I could have it. Coop brought it by on her way home last night. Finders keepers.”
“That’s good luck. Finding a ring is good luck, even if in the end she had bad luck. I guess we’ll never know. Back to our Latin. Finding a dismembered hand is good luck. It means power is coming to you. Victory.” Susan pointed to the tiny inscription on the ring underneath the Episcopal shield.
“Vespasian was sitting in his tent after a battle and his dog brought him a hand. He knew he’d be emperor. 69 A.D., I think. It’s amazing how that Latin does stick in there.” She tapped her head. “That’s why I made Danny and Brooks take it. Danny is still taking it up at Cornell, and, Harry, he called me this morning and says he still doesn’t know what he wants to be. I thought he’d be a lawyer like his dad, but Brooks, you know, I think she’s heading that way. Well, it’s too early to tell. They have to find their own way.”
“You’re a good mother, Susan.”
“Tosh.” Susan waved away the compliment and handed back the ring to Harry. “What a lovely woman she was. Generous to a fault. I always thought she was brave because she never married, and in her generation you married even if you were as ugly as a mud fence.”
“Never thought about it. We were in grade school when she disappeared. It amazes me how sensitive you were to other people even when we were kids.”
“Mary Pat was an original. Remember the time she let us ride on her track? We were nine years old and we thought we were in the homestretch for the Preakness!” Susan glowed.
Harry, content after a full meal, lapsed into nostalgia, “I was on Silly Putty, that gray pony, and you were on Tickles. You won.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Wonder why Mary Pat didn’t marry. She was beautiful and rich. Maybe she figured if she married she’d lose control of her money,” Harry said. “Back then if you weren’t careful or if the trusts weren’t tied up, you did. I mean, women were chattel. And Mary Pat was making money from breeding horses. You could do that then. Maybe she didn’t want to risk losing that money. You know,” she sat upright, “I never did think about it. When you’re a kid you mostly think of yourself and your peers. I thought the world began with me.”
Susan laughed. “I think that’s the way every generation feels until it matures. Mary Pat didn’t marry because she was gay.”
“Mary Pat?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Big Mim told me. I mean in her own way. They were friends. Mim wasn’t direct about it exactly, but I put two and two together.”
“Mary Pat gay? Must have driven men wild. She was gorgeous,” Harry exclaimed.
“So were the women around her. I guess Mary Pat had an eye for a good woman just as she did for a horse.”
“To each her own.”
“That ring looks good on you.”
“I wonder if she was killed because she was gay.” Harry reached for her teacup.
“You don’t know that she was killed. She could have suffered a heart attack and never been found.”
“Right. She and Ziggy Flame had simultaneous heart attacks.” Harry mentioned the great stallion who disappeared along with Mary Pat.
“Ziggy—he was never found, either,” Susan mused.
“Mim said something. You know how smart she is. She said if I found the ring in the creek bed, then Mary Pat is somewhere upstream.”
“Possibly.” Susan cleared the table, walked over, and put her hand on Harry’s shoulder. “When do you want to start looking?”
Harry touched Susan’s hand. “Susan, you know me too well.”
“Cradle friends.”
“How about tomorrow after I get off work? And I’ll ask Fair so he doesn’t fuss.”
“Tomorrow. Meet you here at five-thirty?”
“I’ll burn the wind getting home.” Harry got up to wash the dishes. “Oh, today a tourist all hot to get to Monticello somehow took a wrong turn and wound up at the post office. So Miranda gave her directions. And you know what this lady says as she leaves?”
“No.”
“She says, ‘Crozet’s so ugly even Lot’s wife wouldn’t have looked back.’ ”
9
. . . Running through the barn as though chased by the avenging Furies themselves.” Tavener Heyward slapped his thighs, laughing until the tears rolled down his cheeks.
Fair Haristeen laughed with him. “Paul will never live that down.”
“I asked him what possessed him to do such a thing, and he said when he heard Big Mim coming toward the barn he got so flustered, because she has No Smoking signs posted about every two feet, that he stuck his cigarette in his back pocket. Never thought about putting it out. That’s one derriere that will sit lightly in the saddle for the next week,” Tavener, his hazel eyes merry, said.
Paul de Silva, Big Mim’s new trainer, was a young, wiry, small-sized man with dreamy eyes and curly black hair. He spoke with a light Spanish accent, which added to his allure. He worked with Big Mim’s hunters, those for the show ring and those for actual hunting, often the same horses. Big Mim believed in bringing along horses the old way: foxhunting them first, then introducing them to the show ring or steeplechasing. Paul appreciated the wisdom of this approach. He had a terrible crush on Tazio Chappars, an architect. He was trying to find the right approach to her, since he feared she wouldn’t look at a horseman twice. Horsemen’s prospects aren’t as shining as those of architects, although miracles do happen.
The two vets met in front of the post office and, the morning being especially lush and fragrant, they stood outside and chatted for a while. At nine-thirty they’d both been up for five hours.
“Saw a lovely little fellow over at Albemarle Stud this morning,” Fair reported. “Another one of Fred Astaire’s babies out of an old Cool Virginian mare. As correct as they come.”
Cool Virginian was a stallion, now deceased, who had enjoyed a solid career as a stud.
“Who bred him?”
“Dr. Mary O’Brien. I’m going to see if she’ll sell him to me. I’d like to buy him for Harry. You know how good Harry is with a young horse. Five years from now he will be the best-looking horse in the hunt field. Just a balanced little guy.”
“Ah, love.” Tavener winked, for he meant both the love of a woman and the love of a horse.
“Makes the world go ’round.” Fair, who at six feet five towered over Tavener, wrapped his arm around the o
lder vet’s shoulder. “We wouldn’t be here without it.”
“Well, my lad, you wouldn’t have a business without it.” Tavener laughed. “Neither would I, neither would I. But I tell you, equine matings are better planned than human ones.”
“Frightening, isn’t it?” Fair dropped his arm to open the door to the post office.
“Hello, gentlemen.” Miranda leaned over the wide counter.
Harry, who was at the back table, put down the magazines she was collecting. “Two good-for-nothing, good-looking men. I don’t know, Miranda. I think we’d better call Rick Shaw and ask for protection.”
“Heartless. Harry, you always were heartless.” Tavener shook his head. “And what have you been up to this fine morning?”
“Sorting your bills.”
He winced. “And have you noticed they always come faster than the money? It’s one of those irrefutable laws of finance, just as Newton’s laws are of physics. Ah, yes, what comes up must come down. The financial version of Newton’s Law is, what comes in must go out.”
“If we secede from the Union again and fight a limited war, we’ll get war reparations and all be rich.” Fair’s deep voice filled the room.
Tucker had already barreled through the animal door in the divider between the public area and the work area. Tucker loved Fair.
The two cats, recumbent in a mail cart, loved Fair, too, but not enough to disturb their repose.
“Certainly didn’t hurt Germany or Japan.” Tavener nodded his head in agreement. “The United States gives away more money than any nation in history, and you know what? Those nations take our money and despise us. We really ought to keep some of it right here in Virginia. You’ve got a good idea there, Haristeen.”
“Isn’t life wonderful? Isn’t life grand?” Tucker wiggled, then stood up on her hind legs, resting her front paws on Fair’s shins.
“Miss Happy Camper,” Pewter sarcastically said, and rolled to her other side, which meant she rolled into Mrs. Murphy since the canvas in the mail cart had no firm bottom.
Whisker of Evil Page 5