Whisker of Evil

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Inhale it?” Fair tried not to sound incredulous.

  “That’s what I read.” Jerome was not repeating exactly what he read, but he felt he was close enough.

  “Jerome, I’d steer clear of Harry for a week or two.” Fair changed the subject.

  “She was wrong.”

  “That’s not the point.” Fair didn’t think Harry was wrong, but no need to argue with someone as bullheaded as Jerome. “She’s upset. She loves her animals the way people love their children. Take my advice and leave her alone.”

  Jerome slowed for a sharp curve. “Well, if you ask me, animals are more faithful than people, so I guess I can’t blame her.”

  “Thanks.” Fair hung up.

  It then occurred to Jerome that the reason Harry threw Fair out a few years ago was because he’d cheated on her. The story was that he’d cheated more than once, just went through a wild phase, but Fair swore he did not cheat, if you will, until they had separated, which was when he started seeing BoomBoom.

  Fair dialed the offices of McIntire and Langston. The receptionist put him straight through to Bill.

  They discussed what Jerome had just told Fair.

  “So it really is possible?” Fair asked.

  “No. I don’t think so. I don’t think there have been any inhalation cases ever reported, but there are droplets of saliva—tiny, microscopic droplets—in infested caves.”

  “You breathe the aerosolized virus?”

  Bill answered, “Yes.”

  “Do you have any knowledge of Barry or Sugar visiting these caves?”

  “No. Well, let me amend that. There is nothing in either of their medical records requesting the inoculation. But you all would know if they were spelunkers.” Bill, being new to the area, deferred to Fair. “The reason those guys get the shots is because there are so many thousands of bats. It’s insurance in case someone gets bitten. And I haven’t heard or read of any cases.”

  “As far as I know, neither Barry nor Sugar so much as set foot in a cave.”

  “Both of their rabies types were of the silver-haired-bat variety. Makes sense in the absence of trauma. A tiny, tiny wound.”

  “Sorry to be slow here, Bill, but let me go back to climbing around caves for a moment. In your opinion, if I go into such a place, what are my chances of being bitten?”

  “Let me answer that this way. If you go walking in the woods, what are your chances of being bitten by a rabid raccoon? It’s about the same.”

  “I see. Thanks, Bill, I know you’ve been besieged today. That damned Jerome.”

  “Someone ought to tape his mouth shut with duct tape. I have some right here in the office.” Bill’s tenor deepened. “Along with all this excitement, the place has been buzzing about Harry and Miranda quitting.”

  “They did. And Jerome provoked it. I think Pug would have found a solution, at least until the new P.O. is built. I guess we forget that he has to answer to Washington.”

  “Luckily I only have to answer to God,” Bill wryly replied.

  After Fair hung up the phone, Alma popped into his office. “Doc, BoomBoom. Says Keepsake has a bad discharge.”

  “Tell her I’ll be right over.”

  BoomBoom’s barn, an elegant four-stall affair with a brand-new standing seam copper roof, was nestled under large locust trees. Fair was her regular vet, although she often spoke to Tavener. If Fair was out of town, which was rare, Tavener would take care of BoomBoom. As BoomBoom felt she utilized Tavener’s specialized knowledge, she always sent a sumptuous Christmas gift as a thank-you.

  Fair cleaned up Keepsake, checked her with ultrasound to be sure.

  “Well, she’s bred.”

  “The lady or the tiger? A mule or a horse?”

  “You’ll know around the first of April.” He bent over to pick up his clipboard, which rested on a tack trunk in BoomBoom’s colors, magenta and gold.

  “Does she have venereal disease?” BoomBoom, a good horsewoman, knew venereal diseases could be passed from stallion to mare and vice versa.

  “No. She had a small tear here on the outside of her vagina and it got infected. She’s a fine, healthy mare. To be on the safe side, give her SMZ and just swab her in the mornings and the evenings. Keep it clean. The flies are the main problem.”

  BoomBoom tolerated bugs, as she had no choice. “I looked her over when she came on back. I didn’t see any blood.”

  “You know horses. They find more ways to injure themselves. She could have gotten caught up in thorns. Who knows, but she’ll be fine.”

  Fair wrote up the call, walked to his truck, and pulled out a jar of SMZ since BoomBoom had only a few left. Most horsemen keep antibiotics in the barn, as well as some tranquilizers. If an animal is hurt, one often needs to keep them quiet, depending on the injury; hence the tranquilizer.

  “Pug Harper couldn’t find his ass with both hands.” BoomBoom laughed. “You should have seen him trying to tend to the P.O.” BoomBoom, knowing Harry, cut to the chase. “Does she know what she’s going to do? When we all paid her a call, she seemed fine. You know, I think this is the best thing to happen to her. She needs something that will use her mind. She’s way too bright to be filling mail slots.”

  “You’re right.” Fair washed his hands in the barn sink.

  BoomBoom handed him a towel. “This is your chance. She’s been more affectionate around you. She spends more time with you. Go for it.”

  He dried his hands, exhaled deeply. “Do you really think so?”

  “She needs you.”

  “She won’t marry me because she’s out of a job. She has too much pride.”

  “She needs you.” BoomBoom restated the obvious. “She needs your strength, comfort, thoughts about her future. It’s not about money. We all know she won’t take a nickel. That’s her fatal flaw. She has to learn to receive. When she called for help on the shed, I thought that was a huge breakthrough.”

  He considered this as he folded the towel, placing it on the rack. “Guess it was.”

  “She’s changing.” BoomBoom smiled. “We’re all changing. That’s life.”

  “Boom, there are people in this county who haven’t had a new thought in thirty years and don’t want one.”

  “And we might pass and repass them, but we aren’t spending time with them, are we? You have to grow. It’s life’s imperative. Grow or die. Harry’s growing. This is the best thing that’s happened to her. Make it the best thing that’s happened to you.”

  “Sometimes you surprise me.”

  “Sometimes I surprise myself.” The beautiful blonde laughed. “Fair, I care about you. And for all of my strained relationship with Harry, which improved so much after we were trapped last winter down at U-Hall,” she said, “I care about her. We’ve been together since we were children, all of us, and we’ll be together when we’re old like Miranda, Big Mim, Jim, Tracy. I’m coming to grips with the fact that we’re a generation. It’s kind of like being in a regiment.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, it is.”

  “You and I had a lot of fun together, but it was the wrong time. And you know the truth?” Her eyebrows raised. “I’m a consumer when it comes to men. Good as you are, well, I’m not going to settle down, and I think that shocked you. You weren’t ready to settle down, anyway. We’re pushed into it by society. No one should ever think about starting a relationship until one year after a divorce, I swear.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever marry again?”

  “When Kelly died, I mourned him. But you know the truth? The truth I never told anyone? If he’d lived I would have divorced him, the controlling son of a bitch.” She said this without rancor. “I don’t want any man telling me what to do.”

  “Neither does Harry.”

  “You don’t tell her what to do, you suggest. You know how to handle Harry, when you think about it.”

  He laughed. “I think she knows how to handle me. A lot of times she knows what I’m going to do before I do it.”
r />   “Listen to me, as an old friend, this is your chance.”

  He leaned down—although not very far, because BoomBoom was six feet tall and he was six five—and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re a special lady.”

  33

  Blood was lightly splattered over the windshield of the white Jeep.

  When Deputy Cooper arrived, the motor was still running.

  Jerome Stoltfus slumped to the side of the steering wheel. He had been shot in the back of the head, the bullet exiting through his forehead and out the front windshield.

  Cynthia double-checked her watch. Ten twenty-one P.M., Wednesday night, June 23. She pulled on thin latex gloves and felt for a pulse in Jerome’s neck. None, which she expected. The body was cool but not yet cold.

  She peeled off the gloves, walked over to Little Mim. “You okay?”

  “Yes.” Little Mim’s face was bone white.

  “Excuse me while I call Rick. Then I’ll ask you a few questions and you can go home.”

  “Coop, you do whatever you have to do,” Little Mim, who was shocked but in control, replied.

  Cooper punched in to the dispatcher. “Get me the sheriff. Wake him up if he’s asleep.”

  Within minutes she heard the familiar voice. “Better be good.”

  “Jerome Stoltfus. Shot through the back of the head. Yellow Mountain Road, about two miles from the entrance to Rose Hill.”

  “Be right there.”

  Cooper returned to Little Mim. “Did you see any other cars?”

  “No. Nothing. I was coming back from Aunt Tally’s and I noticed the Jeep pulled off the road. I slowed because I knew it was Animal Control, and I wondered if Jerome was picking up an injured animal since I couldn’t see him. So I pulled up behind and walked to the embankment, but I still didn’t see him. That’s when I looked in the car. And that’s when I called the sheriff’s department. I knew he was dead the second I saw him.”

  “It’s a shock to see someone like that.” Cooper was genuinely sympathetic.

  “Yes, it is,” Little Mim answered slowly, “but what went through my head was, ‘Who got him first?’ I mean, everyone was furious with him.”

  34

  Coroner Tom Yancy bent over Jerome Stoltfus at twelve-thirty Thursday morning.

  He had gotten out of bed and rushed down to meet Sheriff Shaw. The two men had worked together for over fifteen years. If Rick called him at midnight it was important.

  Wearing a lab coat, Rick observed closely as Yancy inspected the wound.

  “A great deal of damage to the skull.” He pointed to what was left of Jerome’s face on the right side. “See the angle? The gun was held in the right hand, placed snug against the base of the skull—look at these powder burns—and fired upward at this angle. The bullet emerged above the right eye and pretty much took out that side of the head. Death was instantaneous. Did you find the bullet? Large-enough caliber to do this—thirty-eight, forty-five more likely.”

  “No. Cooper’s back where Jerome was found. Wasn’t on the hood of the car or in front of it. She’s good. If it’s there, she’ll find it.”

  “Hmm.”

  Rick nodded, as he knew what Yancy was thinking. “Our perp could have picked it up. It’s a possibility.”

  “Mm-hmm. He’d be a lucky devil, but he’s been lucky so far.”

  “Guess you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

  “Guess I am.”

  Rick slapped his hand against his thigh. “Damn. Damn! Yancy, I don’t know any more than when I started investigating Barry’s death.”

  “You know more about rabies. I’ll send in brain tissue to Richmond on Jerome, by the way.”

  “Christ, if he tests positive for rabies I suppose we’ll have to barricade the town.”

  “People tend toward the irrational.” Yancy carefully picked up a bone fragment with tweezers as Jerome’s hand twitched.

  “I hate that,” Rick said ruefully.

  “I’ve had them sit bolt upright.” Yancy laughed.

  “You and I get to see what nobody else wants to.”

  “The human body is like a map. If you know how to read it, you’ll find your destination.” Yancy peered at the shattered skull. “Let’s keep his head just the way it is until Jason can take photographs tomorrow. Okay by you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Want to stay for the rest of his autopsy?”

  “Sure. You got out of bed for this. The least I can do is keep you company.”

  “You added a little excitement to my life.”

  “Are you being humorous?”

  “I’m a laugh a minute.” Yancy put down the long stainless-steel tweezers. “I’ve cut open two young men and now Jerome. He’s young, too, although there was something odd about Jerome. He always seemed like an old man who would wear cardigans.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now, Sugar and Barry worked together. One was clearly murdered. The other could have picked up the disease at the same location. What I’m saying is the vector of infection was the silver-haired bat, and it’s not a far putt to consider they both may have been bitten in the barn or somewhere on that farm or some farm they visited together. But Jerome—well, I’d say this is getting very interesting.”

  “Went over every building at St. James with a fine-tooth comb. Yancy, nothing. Nada. Zero.”

  “Have you asked yourself what Barry and Jerome had in common?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “I think Jerome was figuring out how Barry and Sugar contracted rabies. I don’t know if he figured out what it was that made Barry dangerous to someone, unless it was about rabies.”

  Both men looked down at the mortal remains of Jerome Stoltfus.

  “Better hope he kept good notes.”

  “Our computer wiz is in Jerome’s office right now. His logbook was on the seat of the car.”

  Yancy pulled the sheet over Jerome, the blood seeping through it the minute it touched Jerome’s broken face. “Funny thing is, you know the killer knows that. You’d better believe he flipped through that logbook.”

  “He couldn’t get to the computer.” Rick paused. “Well, I take that back. I don’t know who walks in and out of Jerome’s office, and I don’t know what Jerome put on his computer.”

  “Did you send someone to his house?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve covered the bases.”

  Rick spoke to the corpse. “Jerome, we underestimated you.”

  35

  At six Thursday morning the phone rang in the tack room. Harry had already brought the three hunters in so they could eat peacefully in their stalls. She was heading out to the barn to check on the broodmares when the phone called her back.

  “Hello.”

  “Harry,” Susan breathlessly said, “Jerome Stoltfus was shot to death on Yellow Mountain Road.”

  “You’re kidding.” Harry didn’t believe it, but, then again, so much was happening that was out of kilter.

  Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, hearing the change in Harry’s voice, trotted into the tack room to listen.

  “I’m not kidding. Little Mim found him last night.”

  “Good God.” Harry, who had been leaning over the desk, dropped into the old wooden office chair. “How’d you find out?”

  “Little Mim called Ned when she left the scene. She wanted to know since she found the body what might be expected of her legally. Just her testimony, of course, but Little Mim’s careful—more careful than I perhaps realized. And then she wanted to ask his advice on how to handle this at the next town-council meeting. She and Ned have become political cronies even though they’re from different parties.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” A flare of anger escaped Harry.

  “Because it was late and you were asleep. Don’t get testy,” her best friend said frankly.

  “Anyone caught?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.” She grabbed a pencil an
d began doodling on a notepad. “I can’t pretend I’ll miss him. He was insufferable.”

  “True, but we could count on our fingers and toes the number of insufferable people we know. We don’t kill them.”

  “I know that,” Harry snapped, irritated at Susan’s moralizing. “And I know something else. If Jerome was killed he must have found out something about Barry’s death or about this rabies stuff. If Jerome had uncovered the link concerning the rabies infection, why would anyone kill him over that? You’d think the whole county would thank him. No, he dug up something out at a farm call or poring over paperwork. God, if only I had an idea, even a shadow of an idea.”

  “The sheriff and Cooper no doubt feel the same way. On the surface of it, it’s crazy.”

  “Most things appear that way until you find the connection. There has to be a connection between Barry’s murder and Jerome’s.”

  “What crossed my mind is, what if Jerome had rabies, too.”

  “Susan, don’t say that. Really.”

  “I know.” And Susan did understand the potential for panic. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You’re not on your way to work, that’s why.”

  “Oh. I forgot about that. The news.” She rapped the eraser end of the pencil against the tablet. “I suppose if I think about it, I’ll—oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem real yet.”

  “Did you know that Miranda already has seventy-two signatures on the petition Ned drew up concerning Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and Pewter?”

  “No.”

  “Miranda gets things done. Of course, it doesn’t matter now. Her goal was five hundred signatures.”

  Harry laughed. “We don’t have that many postboxes in the post office.”

  “She was ready to walk the streets.” Susan sighed. “Harry, I wish I knew what was going on. It’s a bad time.”

  “You’re safe.”

  “How do I know?”

  “Because I told you so.”

  “Do you know something I don’t?” Susan asked, a note of suspicion in her voice.