“Miss Fatty Screwloose.” Mrs. Murphy opened one jaundiced eye.
“I am not fat. I am round. It’s the way I’m built.”
“Doesn’t explain the ‘Screwloose.’ ” Mrs. Murphy gave a little laugh that sounded like a cackle.
“I’m leaving you, Hateful.” Pewter lurched out of the mail cart, which further discomfited the tiger.
The cart rolled a little bit, the form of Mrs. Murphy clearly delineated on the bottom.
“Hello, Pewter.” Fair leaned over the counter.
“Hello, Fair.” The cat minded her manners. “I am going on record: Mrs. Murphy is conceited and mean. She’s mean because she doesn’t eat enough. She thinks she’s sleek and beautiful. She looks weedy and”—a spiteful pause—“wormy.”
That fast, Mrs. Murphy shot out of the mail cart. She erupted like a feline Old Faithful geyser, straight up and spewing, as she headed right for Pewter, who flattened herself to withstand the onslaught.
“You’ll pay for that!” Mrs. Murphy pounced on Pewter, who rolled over so her powerful hind legs could bang into Mrs. Murphy’s beige tummy.
They rolled, hissed, spat, and then Pewter broke free to give everyone the thrill of seeing her circle the interior of the post office three times at top speed before blasting out the back animal door, where she crossed the alley and headed into Miranda Hogendobber’s beloved garden.
Mrs. Murphy was right on her tail.
“The energy.” Miranda shook her head in wonderment.
“Life.” Tavener smiled. “We’d do well to learn from them. To live in the moment.”
“I don’t mind their living in the moment. It’s when the claws come out. I mind that a lot,” said Tucker, who had been scratched on the nose a time or two.
“Harry, my girl, I left my key in my other coat pocket.” Tavener put both elbows on the counter.
She reached into the back of the postbox, pulled out a handful of envelopes and two magazines, which she slid to him over the counter. Behind her a sign read, PLEASE DON’T FORGET YOUR KEY. MAIL CANNOT BE HANDED TO YOU OVER THE COUNTER. This was yet another federal regulation ignored because it made not a bit of sense in a small community. Most farmers and merchants in Crozet were responsible, hardworking people, who had the great good sense to set aside the morass of state and federal regulations whose only purpose was to drag down productivity and increase paperwork.
In fact, most Virginians went about their business minding their own business. If they absolutely had to do something like get a county sticker for their vehicle, they did. But the motto of residents of the Old Dominion was, “That government governs best which governs least.” This was first uttered by another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson.
Of course, if Jefferson could return to see the mess of it, just the tax laws alone, he’d pass out. Then he’d wake up and get to work cutting the Gordian knot the rest of us have allowed to become entwined around ourselves.
When Tavener took the mail from Harry’s hands, he blinked, then reached for her right hand. He held it, turned it back side up. “Holy Cross. Haven’t seen one of those rings in years. Mary Pat wore one.”
“This is Mary Pat’s,” Harry quietly replied.
Tavener gasped. “My God, where did you get it?”
“Found it in Potlicker Creek. Both Sheriff Shaw and Deputy Cooper examined it. Couldn’t find anything. Didn’t expect to, anyway, so they gave it back to me.”
Tavener sagged and Fair caught him. “Tavener, are you all right?”
He nodded, then leaned his elbows and weight on the counter. “I never thought I’d see that ring again. She was good to me. I worshiped that woman. I worshiped the ground she walked on.”
Fair patted Tavener’s shoulder sympathetically while Miranda, the most expressive of the group, flipped up the divider and came around. She gave Tavener a good hug.
He hugged her back. “Not a day goes by I don’t think of her and give thanks she walked into my life. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for Mary Pat.”
“She was a good soul.”
“And beautiful. I was ten when she vanished, just old enough to begin to look at women but not old enough to know why I was looking at them.” Fair remembered her honey brown hair, which had streaks of blond in it, hair so shining that light seemed to come from it instead of reflecting off it.
“Mary Pat was one of the great beauties of her generation.” Tavener stood up straight, wiping his eyes with his forefinger knuckle. “Sorry. Shocked me—seeing her ring.”
“Maybe one day we’ll know what happened to her,” Miranda said.
“I hope so, but I gave up on that years ago.” Tavener picked up his mail. “Harry, it would make her happy to know you wear her ring. You were just a sprite when she left us, but you could stick on a horse and Mary Pat liked that. Yes, it would make her happy.” He opened the door and shut it softly behind him, too overcome to stay.
“I feel awful.” Harry bit her lower lip.
“Honey, you didn’t do anything,” Fair comfortingly said.
“I had no idea.” Harry turned as Mrs. Murphy and Pewter both came back in, the animal door flapping.
“That was very nice of him to say that Mary Pat would have liked you to have her ring. She never had any children and I think she regretted that. She liked you and Susan and BoomBoom. You were all such happy, feisty little things.” What Miranda neglected to say was that she, too, regretted not having children. For whatever reason, she and George just hadn’t had them. In those days, fertility studies hadn’t progressed very far.
“How old was Mary Pat when she disappeared?” Fair asked Miranda.
“Mmm, late forties, maybe about forty-five or forty-seven. And still beautiful. Maybe more beautiful,” Miranda said. “The money. We always thought maybe she was killed for money, but Alicia Palmer, hot-blooded though she was and young as she was—in her middle twenties, I guess—just didn’t seem the murdering kind.”
“Women can lose their tempers and kill. I don’t know if we don’t kill as frequently as men or if we don’t get caught.”
“It was all so long ago, and now it’s stirred up again and, really, we have a recent serious matter. What if whatever killed Barry is out there and kills again? I wouldn’t rest too easy until we know more about that unfortunate young man’s end.” Miranda sighed.
“She’s right,” Tucker resolutely agreed. “Brinkley!” Tucker bounded to the front door as a handsome, well-groomed yellow Labrador retriever, tail wagging, waited on the other side of it. His human, Tazio Chappars, opened the door.
The two dogs rapturously greeted each other. The cats, on the divider now, liked Brinkley but thought it prudent not to be too effusive. That was dog stuff.
The humans chatted. Tazio, who was half Italian and half African-American, was warm, gentle, and very, very gifted. Young as she was, she was being sought out for large commercial commissions ever since her design won the competition for the new University of Virginia Sports Complex.
Just then Paul de Silva came in to pick up his mail.
“Paul, hear you went up in flames.” Fair pointed to Paul’s cute, tight rear end.
A small burn hole in his left back pocket was evident.
Paul, embarrassed, told his story and was delighted when Tazio laughed, too. They walked out together, his heart beating so hard in his chest he could barely breathe. He still couldn’t work up the nerve to ask her out, but she smiled at him, giving him hope.
Miranda, observing this from inside the post office, said, “They make a cute couple.”
Harry and Fair turned to look.
“They do.” Fair smiled. He was much more romantic than Harry.
But even Harry agreed. “They do.”
“Of course, not as good-looking as you and I.”
“Fair.” She punched his arm but was nonetheless pleased at the compliment.
Mrs. Murphy rolled her eyes.“Another woman would have kissed him, but, no, Harry punches him.”
“She can read fine,” Tucker opined.
“Emotionally dyslexic,” the gray cat shrewdly said.
The other two remained silent but knew there was truth to Pewter’s insight.
10
Potlicker Creek earned its name in the early nineteenth century. The runoff from the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, clear and cool, tumbled into Potlicker Creek and many others that ultimately rolled into the James River, the first river in the New World to nourish an English colony, which survived back in 1607.
The Native-American name of Potlicker Creek had been lost along the way. The strong-running waters took on a succession of names over the centuries depending upon who owned the land, but finally, after the War of 1812, Potlicker Creek stuck. The many stills tucked away in the hollows along the creek testified to the curative effects of the water when distilled.
Harry and Fair worked the western bank while Susan paralleled them on the eastern. The cats stayed with Harry, while Tucker and Owen assisted Susan.
The deep pools under the overhanging trees remained still, the current gentle underneath. Small schools of smallmouth bass called rockfish in these parts lazed there along with other fish.
Muskrats plied their trade, skippers darted on the glassy pools, while blue herons and green herons fished along the banks. Crayfish burrowed to get away from those long, lethal bills. Frogs croaked, turtles slept in the sun.
The late-afternoon warmth lulled everyone except the insects. As the humans would approach, small clouds of tiny black no-see-ums would flare up, occasionally aided by a hornet buzzing by to a football-size gray home hanging overhead from a sycamore limb.
The deer slept in small coverts, the squirrels dozed in their nests, and the groundhogs, already plump, waddled in the small meadows that dotted the woods like green jewels.
The goldfinches and purple finches chirped and darted about along with bluebirds, indigo buntings, and nuthatches. Cultivation was close, and the birds made the most of having the best of both worlds. Then, too, finches are active little creatures with bright black eyes, missing nothing.
The cats ignored the chirping and chatter. Never let a bird know it’s getting to you.
The humans diligently looked for any suspicious sign—a weathered rock pile, a beaten-down mound. Nothing presented itself except for the occasional faded beer can, a few old glass soda bottles from long before they were born. Susan could never resist that stuff and soon she was toting her treasures, begriming herself in the process.
They walked about three miles away from the borders of Aunt Tally’s land before finally turning back.
Harry and Fair each took some of Susan’s finds as she was tottering. They turned off the old path, walked up the narrow deer path, emerging on top of a rolling, low foothill about a mile from Harry’s westernmost border. These three had grown up here. Dropped from a helicopter anywhere between the Afton Gap and Sugar Hollow, they could find their way home.
At the westernmost corner of Harry’s land, where it touched both the land of Blair Bainbridge and Aunt Tally, stood Blair and Little Mim. An old quince tree marked the spot where the three pieces of land touched one another.
Harry waved, little bits of dirt falling on her hair from the brown bottle she carried in her right hand. In her left she had a cobalt-blue medicine bottle. Blair and Little Mim, surprised to see them all, waved back.
Within minutes they were at the old quince tree.
“What are you all doing back here?” Blair said.
“Look!” Susan put down her pop bottle. “Nehi. Now, when was the last time you saw that? Or Yoo-Hoo? And then I’ve got this old Pepsi bottle here. I mean, this one’s even before Joan Crawford took over the company.”
“Joan Crawford ran Pepsi?” Little Mim thought that was odd.
“Yes.” Susan, who avidly read movie-star biographies, supplied the information. “She married the president of Pepsi, and when he died she took over. And look at this blue. Have you ever seen such a blue?” She pointed to the flat-sided cobalt-blue bottle that Harry carried.
“Susan, what do you intend to do with all this?” Little Mim, smiling, wondered.
“Wash them out, put them on my windowsill, and I’ll—”
“Move them because you won’t be able to clean around them,” Harry finished her sentence.
“No, I won’t. I’ll put stuff in to root.”
“I know what this is about,” Fair genially said. “Ned will get so tired of the clutter, he’ll finally build you that little greenhouse you’ve always wanted.”
“Hey, I never thought of that.” Susan brightened, then her smile faded. “No, he won’t. I’m getting the interior of the house painted. You can’t believe how expensive it is. For just three rooms and the trim it’s almost eight thousand dollars.”
“Big rooms,” Harry simply said.
“Hell, Harry, it’s not the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. They aren’t that big.”
“If it were the Hall of Mirrors, Susan, you wouldn’t need to get much painted.”
“Will you shut up.” Susan playfully put her hand over Harry’s mouth, which now had a dirt smear. “Oops.”
“Maybe that’s where the expression ‘Eat dirt’ came from.” Blair laughed.
Harry wiped off her mouth, but a little of the grit lodged between her teeth. “Yuck.”
“Are you checking your borders?” Fair asked Blair.
Little Mim answered for him. “He’s trying to figure out how much land he really has, since this old place was always described as two hundred and thirty acres more or less.”
“Surveying costs so much that folks just approximated and no one at the courthouse much minded. It’s such a nice piece of land.” Harry picked up a blade of grass to chew to get the earthy taste out of her mouth.
“Remember Herbie’s old uncle?” Little Mim recalled a slender gentleman, the last Jones to inhabit the farm.
“Bryson,” Susan said. “He was so courtly.”
“He used to sit up in the family graveyard and read Greek. He had a wonderful faculty for languages but wasn’t much of a farmer or businessman.” Fair had liked the old gentleman.
“Used to drive the Rev crazy because he couldn’t go to seminary and look after the farm, too. You keep the cemetery looking good for Herb,” Harry complimented Blair.
“I enjoy it. I like being outside.” Blair, although one of the highest-paid models in America, was growing weary of flying to locations over the world, dealing with the egos of photographers and other models.
“Harry, I haven’t seen you since Saturday.” Little Mim pushed a lock of hair from her eyes. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Harry shrugged. “I felt terrible for Barry.”
“And they still don’t know what killed him?” Blair put his arm around Little Mim’s shoulders.
“Yancy performed the autopsy.” Fair mentioned the coroner. “Sent off tissue samples to Richmond. I ran into him this afternoon and he hadn’t heard anything back, but sometimes these things can take a month or longer depending on how backed up they are down there.”
“Did he find anything on the body?” Blair, like everyone else, was curious.
“Not that he mentioned. He said Barry had no marks on him except for his throat. And here’s the really strange part: The wound was clean. Clean as if it had been surgically created. No saliva. No bits of rust.” Fair shook his head. “Yancy hopes that something will show up in the blood work.”
“It’s so clean it almost seems premeditated.” Little Mim, intelligent like all the Urquhart clan, pursed her lips.
“By an animal?” Blair handed Harry his kerchief, since she hadn’t removed all the dirt.
“The human animal,” Mrs. Murphy quietly said.
11
A pair of brilliant turquoise eyes peered out of the passenger side of the car. Sissi, a gray tuxedo cat, was irritated that her human, Rose Marie Dunlap,
was chatting at the gas pump at the Amoco station.
Sissi accompanied the always well-turned-out Rose Marie on her regular trips from Washington, D. C., to Crozet. She enjoyed riding in the car but she enjoyed arriving at their destination even more, the farm of Rose Marie’s daughter, Beth Marcus.
“I haven’t seen you in ages.” Rose Marie smiled.
“You know it’s been years since I’ve been back here.” Marshall Kressenberg, florid, bent over to shake her hand. “I was coming back from Lexington, Kentucky, and thought I’d stop by to see some of my old running buddies. Course, I should have called first. Everyone’s out and about.” He accented “out and about” the Virginia way, which also sounds Canadian. “You’re looking well.”
And indeed, Rose Marie Dunlap’s appearance—petite, fresh, and healthy—belied her eighty-six years.
“I keep busy. For one thing, Sissi keeps me busy.”
At the sound of her name Sissi meowed, “Let’s go to Beth’s now!”
Marshall laughed as the cat continued to jabber. “Well, I’m so glad to see you.” He opened the door to his truck.
“I read your name in the sports pages. I’m glad you’ve done so well.”
He closed the door, window down. “It’s a good thing the horses are running and not me. I wouldn’t make it to the first pole.” He laughed, cut on the motor, and drove off.
“We can go now,” Sissi grumbled.
Rose Marie slid behind the wheel. “You can be so impatient.”
Marshall switched on his cell phone, dialing Big Mim’s barn number. Big Mim had a good breeding program, good but small. He wouldn’t mind seeing what she had before the sales. The barn recording came on. He disconnected and headed out toward I-64. Tavener could tell him what Mim had on the ground. Maybe it was just as well no one was around. He’d get pulled into long conversations, and he needed to get back to Maryland.
Too much going on in the horse world right now.
12
A sample of Barry Monteith’s brain tissues rested under the fluorescence microscope.
Whisker of Evil Page 6