Whisker of Evil

by Rita Mae Brown

  News of an oral rabies vaccine, used extensively in France, had Harry and other foxhunters hopeful it would soon be allowed here in the States. Feeding foxes their vaccine would be much easier then.

  “Yes. I’m grateful. Why do you ask about rabies?”

  “Two humans have had it. Both dead, although one was killed outright. They discovered the rabies later, after the autopsy.”

  “Two humans. That’s very strange.”

  “What about the raccoons or the beaver? You all talk.”

  “Everyone here is fine.” She looked lovingly at her litter. “They’re too young for their distemper shots or their rabies. Early fall.” She let out a long sigh. “Means I’ll have to get in the cage. They’ll come in it if I do, but, oh, Mrs. Murphy, those cages scare me.”

  “I know. They scare me, too, but a little fear is better than a lot of rabies,” the cat sensibly said.

  “I know.”

  “Foxes have long memories. Ask some of the old ones if their grandmothers or great-grandfathers ever spoke of Mary Patricia Reines.”

  “She was buried up in the high pastures behind St. James under the stone wall. That’s the story I always heard. But whoever dragged her up there didn’t do a good job. That’s how come her arm was dug out. That’s what I was told by my grandfather.”

  “Why didn’t anyone see the killer?”

  “Grandpa said it was a wicked rainy night. No one with any sense was out. And that was one of the reasons the human got away with it. Not only were no other humans out, the pouring rains washed out all his tracks. You’d be surprised how many human remains we’ve found over time, all the way back to murders from the colonial era. One of those men is under the Clam parking lot down at UVA. That’s what my grandfather told me. Someone killed back in 1781. But these things are always troublesome when they come to light. Best to keep silent.”

  “Did your grandfather say anything about a horse? Ziggy Flame, Mary Pat’s great stallion, disappeared when she did.”

  “Ziggy was in the high pastures. He lived.”

  “Hmm.” Mrs. Murphy tilted her head to look directly down at one of the cubs, who shrank closer to his mother.

  “Is Harry off on one of her toots?” The fox knew Harry could get obsessed.

  “Yes.” Mrs. Murphy nodded. “She has more curiosity than I do.”

  At that they both laughed, then Mrs. Murphy headed back toward the house. She was disturbed by the thought that some of Mary Pat’s bones had been scattered over time. A crow or some small predator must have taken the hand or a finger and dropped it near or in Potlicker Creek, and year after year the ring, finally off the bone, must have inched its way down to where Harry found it. Unless Barry had it. Dropped it. That was equally disquieting.

  Being a feline, her senses were much sharper than Harry’s, although Mrs. Murphy knew Harry possessed remarkable hearing for a human and was able to hear into some of the cat range. She also possessed a decent nose. But what Harry could never possess was that extrasensory perception that even the lowliest feline had. And that sixth sense was warning Mrs. Murphy that danger was coming closer, closer in a fashion that not even she could suspect.

  A startling swoosh overhead sent her crouching, eyes upward.

  “Hoo, hoo, HA!” The great owl laughed as she landed.

  “Flatface.” Mrs. Murphy breathed a sigh of relief.

  Flatface lived in the cupola in Harry’s barn. She wasn’t especially social, but she was more social than the giant black snake who lived up there and had recently taken to interrupting her hunting circle to steal some of Simon’s treasures. Simon had saved a perfect little robin’s egg, which the black snake took right off his special towel.

  But Flatface, like Mrs. Murphy and the vixen, was a predator. It was easy for predators to talk to one another honestly.

  They discussed Barry Monteith and Sugar Thierry both having rabies.

  “Something over there,” Flatface said. “And if it’s over there it may well spread throughout the county.”

  “That’s just it. I asked the red vixen if there were any reports among the foxes. She said no, and same for the raccoons and beaver.”

  “What about the skunks?”

  “It’s difficult to ask them.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.

  “I’ll perch in a tree and ask next time I see one.” Flatface, true to the myths, was very wise. “And Sugar had no memory of being bitten?”

  “No.”

  “The silver-haired bat can bite you and you’d never know it.”

  “Fair, Paul, and Tavener helped at St. James when the health department went into the cottages, barns, and outbuildings to look for bats and catch them to test them, but I heard—and this is really strange—there were none.”

  Flatface turned her head almost upside down, then right side up. “Ah, that gets the kinks out.”

  “There are all those caves in the Shenandoah Valley. I mean not just the Luray Caverns but caves all over. Just right up over these mountains. I know they’re full of bats. If you have any friends over there, maybe they could ask the bats if they know about rabies among them.”

  “No owl will go into those caves. Fetid. Why humans do it is beyond me. The air’s not fit to breathe.”

  “I thought some of them had fresh air piped in.”

  “Mrs. Murphy, never breathe where there are bat rookeries. This is something every owl learns as an owlet. I pass it on to you.” Flatface walked along with Mrs. Murphy for a few paces, her side-to-side rolling gait amusing to the cat, who nonetheless respected how fear-inducing Flatface was in her natural element, the air.

  The cat told her about Mary Pat’s remains.

  “Ah, well, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. That was a long time ago. Before my time or yours.” Flatface lifted her head, opening her beak. “Storm. Be here within the hour.”

  No sooner had she spoken than a light breeze tumbled down the mountains, ruffling Flatface’s feathers and lifting up Mrs. Murphy’s fur.

  “If you do hear anything, tell me.” The tiger cat watched as the owl stood to her full height, opening her wings.

  Just as Flatface lifted up, she said, “I will. Now, see if you can’t keep Harry from playing detective.”

  “I’d be a miracle worker,” Mrs. Murphy called up.

  “Hoo, hoo, HA.”

  26

  Emotions are messengers.” Carmen, her own nails buffed to a high luster, filed down BoomBoom’s. “And I realized that the anger I felt was just covering up the sorrow and the loss. Which meant I had a lot of love, and I can love. I just have to get through this.”

  “What are you going to do?” BoomBoom leaned back in the comfortable chair, the light jazz music in the background competing with hair dryers and conversation.

  “Review my relationships. Not just the last one but all of my relationships with men. My father. My brothers. I have unrealistic expectations.” She breathed in through her nose, as a thin, colored cigarette was firmly clamped between her lips. “And I like bad boys. I’ll like a nice guy for a while and then I get bored.”

  Since this was Carmen’s beauty parlor, she would damned well smoke if she wanted to and she defied the “health Nazis,” as she called them, to stop her.

  “Don’t we all?” BoomBoom laughed, her bosom, and the reason she endured her nickname, heaving upward.

  “I suppose. And I suppose they have some pretty stupid ideas about us.” Carmen put BoomBoom’s left hand in a slanted bowl so her fingertips would be washed in emollients.

  “I know.” BoomBoom, born and raised in the country, did know. Having graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with honors, she was well educated and intelligent. Her major had been English, so if she had not married very well, she could have been taught to do just about anything. However, women as beautiful as BoomBoom always marry well unless they are stone stupid.

  Carmen hopped to a variant of her topic: men. “Well, that Dr. Langston is as cute as a bug�
�s ear. He said these days very few doctors can diagnose rabies or even Lyme disease because they mimic other diseases, and he said another hard one is syphilis. He said they all have some things in common, but I said I was a lot more worried about AIDS, and he said he was, too. These little dots of whatever a virus is can evolve quickly. It’s like they have intelligence.”

  “It is strange and frightening.” BoomBoom closed her eyes, her long lashes dark against her suntanned skin.

  “Boom,” Carmen’s voice rose.

  “What?”

  “Want me to shut up? I can go on, I know. And I’m upset over Sugar dying, so I’m blabbing more than usual. I just open my mouth and whatever I’m thinking pops out.”

  “I’m thinking, too.”

  “Boom,” Carmen lowered her voice to a whisper, “have you ever been truly in love?”

  “In high school.” BoomBoom laughed, opening her eyes.

  “Who?”

  “Charlie Ashcraft. That lasted two months.”

  “He was gorgeous, though. Died the death he deserved.” Carmen snapped her mouth shut like a turtle, for Charlie had seduced and abandoned women for all of his thirty-seven years until it finally caught up with him in the men’s locker room at Farmington Country Club. “One has few defenses against such male beauty. People say that about you.”

  “Oh, that I have male beauty?” BoomBoom giggled.

  “Hey, hold still.” Carmen squeezed BoomBoom’s right hand tighter. “You know what I mean. Men can’t resist you.”

  “Men are easy. Now, seducing women, that would be a challenge.”

  “Boom!” Carmen pretended to be scandalized, then lowered her voice again. “Would you?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is I’m very, very happy alone. Do you know, Carmen, I haven’t been alone since I graduated from college? Even after Kelly died, I had one affair after another. This New Year’s I made a resolution to take a year off. I might go out, I might date someone steadily, but I am not sleeping with him. I’m not making any promises until I arrive at next New Year’s.”

  A long, long pause followed, then Carmen dipped BoomBoom’s right hand into another slanting bowl. She reached for a terry-cloth towel, removed BoomBoom’s left hand, rubbed it vigorously. “I don’t think I could do it.”

  “Be alone for a year?”

  “I’m too scared.”

  “Didn’t you just say that emotions are messengers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fear is a big, big messenger. Pay attention. If you listen, fear will bring you courage.”

  Carmen slathered BoomBoom’s left hand in a thick pink cream. “But when I’m alone, things rattle around in my head. I need someone to love me.”

  “You need you to love you. And you know who taught me that without trying?” BoomBoom said as Carmen shook her head. “Harry.”

  “Harry?”

  “When her marriage broke up, she put her head down and kept working. She didn’t run out and grab the first man who winked at her. And she’s been alone for years now. And she kept her mouth shut. Still does.”

  “But he still loves her.”

  “She didn’t know that for a good, long year, and that doesn’t mean she’ll take him back, although he’s worked hard at—well, at himself.”

  “How many years have they been divorced?”

  “Umm, four, I think.”

  “Four years is a long time to be alone.”

  “Maybe, but you certainly get used to your own company. And while I’m hardly Harry’s closest confidant, I think she’s learned a lot. I think she has forgiven him and she realizes how much he means to her. Are you putting me in the heated mittens again?”

  “I am. While you’re sitting there waiting for the color to work”—Carmen had added some lightener to BoomBoom’s blond hair—“we might as well go the whole nine yards. I’m going to do your feet, too.”

  “Full service.” BoomBoom wriggled her toes in her sandals. “I’m not in the advice business, but time alone won’t hurt you.”

  “The thing is, if only Barry hadn’t gotten himself killed. I kind of thought the relationship was over. But we’d screamed and hollered and thrown things at each other before, and then time would go by and there’d be a full moon.” She sighed.

  “So you thought maybe you’d find him again during the full moon?” A wry smile played on BoomBoom’s full lips.

  Carmen shrugged. “Who knows, but now I’ll always wonder.”

  “You’re doing the smart thing, reviewing your relationships with men. Everything will sort out; it always does.”

  The door opened and Tavener Heyward came in for his haircut.

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you quite this way.” Tavener chuckled as he sat next to BoomBoom.

  “Be careful.” BoomBoom narrowed her eyes, feigning revenge.

  “Oh, I am. We’re all careful around you. Beautiful women must be obeyed.”

  They both laughed, as did Carmen, now slathering BoomBoom’s right hand in pink goo. The mittens, plugged in, were just reaching the right temperature.

  “Are you going up to Timonium?” BoomBoom mentioned a regional thoroughbred sale held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds. She didn’t discuss Sugar’s passing with Tavener, as they’d spoken on the phone early that morning. She’d called about Keepsake, the mare in foal, and the conversation got around to Sugar.

  “Thought I’d go take a look at Orion’s Sword’s babies. I’ve been tracking this stallion, and if I like the babies, I’m going to try to bring him back to my place. He’s a Mr. Prospector grandson, and you can’t go wrong there.”

  “That will give you six stallions. Not that you shouldn’t get some Mr. Prospector blood, but, Tavener, you’ll need more staff.”

  “Oh, I know it.” He turned his head from BoomBoom to stare in the mirror as Henry Dickie snipped, the silver hairs falling to the ground. “Still, I’ll never live down that I didn’t buy Ziggy Dark Star when Marshall Kressenberg found him in Kentucky. A full brother to Ziggy Flame, and I foolishly let him get away. Oh, how I have repented my economies.”

  “You’ve certainly got some good stallions.”

  “Well, Captain Kieje put me on the map.” Tavener mentioned the stallion, sire of many graded stakes winners. “And, at least, I bought a share in Dark Star. That was something.”

  The Captain had lived to the ripe old age of twenty-five. His son, Kieje’s Crown, was as potent and successful as his sire.

  “Tavener, I hope our state fairgrounds, being constructed even as we speak, will look better than Maryland’s.”

  “It will,” Tavener said with confidence.

  “All the money in the state of Maryland and they build that bland thing in Timonium.” She would have thrown up her hands but the mittens were plugged in to an outlet restricting her movement.

  “Well, we can tease our Maryland friends all we want about Timonium, but they’ve got the Maryland Hunt Cup, the Preakness, and some damned good horses.”

  “Chalk it up to being a border state during the War Between the States.” BoomBoom smiled. “That’s when Virginia lost our equine hegemony.”

  The thoroughbreds, often called blooded horses, led by grooms and women, had walked through two mountain ranges and forded deep, swift rivers to another border state, Kentucky. Given the economic devastation as well as the appalling loss of human and equine life after the war ended, those animals that had managed to avoid consumption never returned. Many were hidden so they wouldn’t go to the war.

  One could barely even find a mule or donkey after 1865 in Virginia, much less a man between the ages of twelve and seventy who had all his limbs and mind intact.

  “We’ve done precious little to get it back.” Tavener, a stalwart on every thoroughbred and racing commission in the state, had fought the good fight for over two decades. When Virginia finally voted to allow racing, they put the track outside of Williamsburg, not the best place at that time. However, the buildings were lo
vely and the turf track was one of the best in the country. Perhaps in time the population would grow south of Richmond to support the track. It sure was a long haul for horsemen, though, most of whom were in central or northern Virginia.

  “Now, you’ve spearheaded every group, you really led us to racing. And, Tavener, you can’t blame yourself for the location of Colonial Downs. No, it isn’t convenient to the largest population in our state, which clogs up every artery in northern Virginia.” She smacked her lips. “Occupied Virginia.” They laughed and she continued, as Carmen soaked BoomBoom’s feet in soothing oil. “But you’ve done your share.”

  “If we don’t get more Off Track Betting sites, BoomBoom, you can kiss it all good-bye. And I am just tired of fighting these entrenched interests who think gambling will lead us to the devil. The equine industry pumps one billion dollars into our state economy, and if we can expand racing and Off Track Betting, I guarantee another billion in two years’ time. I mean it, I’d bet my life on it.”

  “Now, don’t you think foxhunting brings money into the state?”

  “I do.” His eyes opened wide. “I do, but wagering, BoomBoom, hundreds of thousands of dollars of handle on race days—all to the public good.” He used “handle,” which meant the money flowing through the betting windows.

  “Dr. Heyward, sit still.” Henry rapped him on the shoulder with the scissors.

  “Sorry. I get hot about this.”

  “And other things.” BoomBoom blew him a kiss just to torment him.

  “Whooee.” Carmen fanned herself, adding to the merriment. “Dr. Heyward, Barry always said you ran a tight ship. He said he was going to give you a run for your money someday.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” Tavener smiled broadly.

  “Said he was going to get good stallions, and he already had those mares. He and Sugar—” She stopped. “They had big dreams. He read everything. He said he studied what Mary Pat did, too. He asked questions about her and looked for notes and stuff.” She smiled. “But he said you were really, really smart.”

  “I’m flattered. It’s hard to believe they’re gone.” He snapped his fingers. “You never know.”