Alicia answered, “Karma. Her words.” She imitated Maggie’s delivery. “Alicia Palmer, darlin’ girl, when I shook his hand I felt a karmic bond. Many lives. Then we spoke and I found in this life a courteous gentle Virginia gentleman.”
“Which means?” Harry lifted one eyebrow.
“Means she’s coming down from New York for New Year’s. She’ll stay here, of course. They’re going to the dance at Farmington Country Club. She’s bought three gowns from Bergdorf Goodman. One of them is bound to be right.”
“Wonder what Herb thinks?” Harry thought Herb looked good in a tuxedo. It helped to hide his paunch, which he was now exercising to remove.
“He invited her, so he must like her,” Fair reflected.
Fair got up and refilled everyone’s coffee cup. He noticed a pair of headlights coming down the drive. “Boom, are you expecting anyone?”
“No.”
In the country, dear friends don’t feel compelled to call first, so an unannounced visitor wasn’t that out of the ordinary.
The car pulled into the drive, the lights cut off. In the darkness BoomBoom couldn’t tell the make of the vehicle. The back door swung open and a teary Susan walked in.
“Susan, what’s the matter?” Harry asked.
“Well, I drove to your house, then I remembered you said at the post office that Fair was checking Boom’s mare and . . .” Susan rambled on before she got to the point. “Ned’s staying in Richmond tonight. He said he has so much to do he needs to stay over, but when I called him back on his cell he didn’t pick up.”
Alicia got up and pulled another chair to the table, as BoomBoom fetched another plate and table setting. “Susan, sit down. Please join us.”
“I can’t eat. I’m too fat. That’s why he’s sleeping with other women.”
“Susan, you don’t know that. Now, come on. And he needs to stay in Richmond sometimes, but especially now.” Harry led her to the table.
Fair, upset for Susan, poured a cup of coffee for her. “She’s right, Susan. Don’t worry about him not answering his cell. I mean, he might be in a meeting or the battery could need a recharge. Don’t worry.”
Susan wiped her eyes as Alicia placed a hot potpie in front of her.
“What am I going to do?” Susan asked in a flat tone.
“You’re going to relax with your friends, enjoy this potpie, and we’ll figure this out together.” Alicia took charge.
“You’ll feel better if you eat this.” BoomBoom encouraged Susan. “Your blood sugar drops and everything looks much worse.”
Reluctantly Susan pierced the pie, the enticing aroma curling up to her nostrils. She gingerly took a bite, then another. “It is good.”
“The goddess herself made it,” BoomBoom teased.
“Will you stop?” Alicia rolled her eyes.
“Susan, I don’t think Ned is having an affair. Really. I’m not just saying that to make you feel better, but I think I’d know,” Fair said.
“Would he tell you?”
Fair was reassuring. “Maybe. Look, he’s never been in politics before. He probably feels he’s over his head.”
“I haven’t heard a breath of scandal about Ned. If he were up to something I’d know by now.” BoomBoom soothed her.
“I’ve been married to the man since I was nineteen. I know him. He’s up to something. He’s distant.” Susan’s lower lip quivered anew.
“Has it occurred to you that perhaps you’re distant?” Alicia reached over to pat Susan’s left hand.
“How’s his health?” BoomBoom inquired.
“Healthy as a horse,” Susan responded, then turned to Alicia. “Maybe I have been weird.”
Harry asked as she cut into a spice cake with thick icing, “Susan, you said Ned is healthy as a horse. Wasn’t Great-Uncle Thomas healthy as a horse?”
“He was. Why?”
“Why assume he died of a heart attack just because he was eighty-two?” Harry said as she passed a piece of moist cake to Fair.
“It’s not an unreasonable assumption,” Fair replied.
“But he had no history of heart disease, am I right?” Harry persisted.
Susan thought for a moment. “The Bland Wades live forever. He was worried about his heart. He’d been experiencing irregular heartbeats. But still, at his age that’s to be expected. Like I said, the Bland Wades are tough. Brooks takes after that side.”
“Danny looks a little like a Bland Wade,” Fair said.
“I always thought he resembled his father,” Susan hastily replied.
“He’s handsome no matter who he resembles.” Alicia thought Susan had lovely children.
Susan repeated, “He looks just like his father.”
Harry got back on track. “Do you have any reason to believe Brother Thomas was sick?”
“No,” Susan said.
“A major coronary would take him right out. There might not be any indication before the attack.” Fair was thinking about the kind monk.
“You didn’t ask for an autopsy.” Harry was thinking out loud, not asking a question.
Susan answered, though. “Of course not, Harry, he was two years older than God. Let the poor soul be buried with dignity.”
“I think you should exhume him and have an autopsy performed.”
“Harry, we’re eating,” BoomBoom chided her.
24
On December 9, Friday, the few lovely days of the temperature climbing to the forties ended. Clouds, steel gray, unfurled from the west, winds led the clouds onward, and a low-pressure system made animals and humans tired. The temperature headed down, down.
A small crew stood around Brother Thomas’s grave as Travis Critzer sank the big claw of the front-end loader into the earth, aided by Stuart Tapscott. Travis could operate anything with a motor in it. Skilled as he was, he was glad to be digging up the coffin before the hard frost returned, and he was glad to have his father with him. Although not his blood father, Stuart was the man who had raised him, taught him his trade.
Brother Frank and Brother Prescott stood, faces sour. As it was Friday, the day of public execution for centuries, it became considered the devil’s day. It was devil’s work disturbing what was left of a good and godly man. As the number-two man in the monastery, Brother Prescott volunteered to oversee this disgusting task. Brother Handle, overwhelmed with the response to the statue, gratefully accepted this offer. Dealing with the hordes of people, with unrest among the brothers themselves, made Brother Handle wonder why he ever thought becoming a monk would steer him clear of the world’s follies. In fact, the pressures increased to the point where he offered no protest at the exhumation. Once a grave was consecrated, Brother Handle believed it should not be touched. However, Brother Thomas’s family, under the leadership of Susan Tucker, was insistent. Brother Handle knew Ned Tucker had been elected to the state senate in November. Best to keep a Tucker happy.
Susan, Harry, and Deputy Cooper also watched the yellow claw dig into the flinty earth. A thin cover of soil was quickly stripped away; the subsequent layers were poor. That’s why this corner of the monastery held the mortal remains of the brothers. No sense in wasting good soil.
The county coroner, Tom Yancy, waited, too, glad for a chance to escape the lab. He and Cooper had worked together over the years, a healthy respect developing between them.
Although it was Coop’s day off, she accompanied Harry and Susan. She’d seen enough exhumations to know that they can be disturbing to next of kin or friends of the departed. Also, Harry had promised that afterward they’d drive up Interstate 81 to Dayton’s furniture store, just south of Harrisonburg. Coop had saved enough for a sleigh bed, her Christmas present to herself, and Harry said Dayton’s would have the best—not the cheapest, but the best.
Susan tightened the scarf around her neck. “Wind’s come up.”
“An ill wind that blows no good,” Harry quoted the old saying.
“You’re full of Christmas spirit,” Tom said
.
“Sorry. Kind of hard to be cheery at an exhumation.”
“Look at it this way.” The coroner grinned. “If the old fellow died a natural death, that will be good news. I know you two ladies haven’t witnessed an exhumation. Brother Thomas won’t be in that bad a shape; he hasn’t been in there long enough. His nose might have crumbled a little, his cuticles might have receded, which will make it look as though his fingernails are still growing, but it won’t be all that bad.”
“What about the stench?” Harry wasn’t one to mince on reality.
He waved his hand. “He won’t smell like Chanel Number Five, but remember, it’s been cold up here, and even though he’s below the frost line, it’s plenty cold down there. Might be blowing up some, but just step back and hold your nose. That way you won’t get a blast and if you faint you won’t fall into the coffin.”
“I’m not going to faint.” Harry’s pride flared up.
“Might puke, though,” he genially replied.
“Good God, this is so gross.” Susan’s eyes misted over. “I feel like I’m violating him.”
“I don’t know about that, but Susan, if he was murdered then we have to find his killer. Brother Thomas deserves that, at least. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
“There’s a lot to be said for simple justice.” The lanky deputy took a long draw on a Camel, then gratefully exhaled a plume of blue smoke.
“Cooper, might I bum a cigarette off you?” Susan implored.
“Of course.” Coop reached in her parka pocket and fetched out the familiar white pack covered with thin cellophane, the camel, facing left, dutifully standing at the ready.
“Cheater,” Harry teased Susan.
“Can’t help it.”
“Kills the smell,” Tom cheerfully added.
“Uh, Coop, give me one, too. I’ll buy you a pack.” Harry reached for the offered cigarette.
The three women drew on their cigarettes. Nicotine, calming in most circumstances, worked for Cooper and Harry, who rarely smoked. Susan, however, remained nervous and wished she was inhaling a mentholated cigarette.
The claw scratched the top of the pine coffin.
Within minutes, Travis carefully dug around the edges of the handmade coffin.
Brother Prescott and Brother Frank stepped up to the grave site. They dropped two stout ropes down into the pit. Travis, being much younger than the two monks, hopped down, slid the ropes with a little wriggling under the coffin. Stuart Tapscott grabbed the ropes on the edge of the grave to keep them from sliding back into the pit.
The coroner and Brother Frank took opposite ends of one rope, Brother Prescott and Travis the other. Stuart stood well back. He didn’t want to see the body.
“All right, one, two, pull,” Travis commanded as the coffin lifted up with relative ease.
Travis and Brother Prescott pried the lid. Before the coroner picked the lid off the coffin, he said, “You might want to stand back and let me look first, ladies.”
Harry, belligerently, stepped right up to the coffin; Susan stepped back.
Tom looked up at Harry and half-smiled. He picked up the lid.
“Holy shit!” Harry exclaimed.
The coffin contained three fifty-pound bags of potting soil.
Shock registered on Tom’s face as well as those of the two brothers. Susan plucked up her courage to look inside.
Coop was already on her cell phone, punching in Sheriff Shaw. “Rick, we’ve got a real problem.”
Susan’s nervousness, then anger, focused on Brother Frank and Brother Prescott. “What’s the meaning of this? What have you done with my great-uncle!”
Brother Frank, face white as the snow still folded in the deepest tucks of the ravines, stuttered, “Mrs. Tucker, I swear to you with God as my witness, your great-uncle was in this coffin when the lid was nailed shut.”
“One more miracle for the mountain,” Harry cracked.
“What?” Brother Prescott was deeply upset.
“You’ve got a statue crying bloody tears, and now you’ve got a resurrection.” Harry, at that moment, didn’t trust either of the brothers any further than she could throw her lit cigarette.
25
The clutter on Sheriff Rick Shaw’s desk didn’t reflect his mind, which was clear and concise in its workings. An avalanche of flyers and bulletins from the county, the state, and the federal government rolled over his desk.
He carefully sifted through the mail, smiling each time junk mail hit the large round metal wastebasket. Anything pertinent he stacked in a steel mesh file box, a gift from Cooper last Christmas.
Now this Christmas pressed on him. He hadn’t bought one present. His wife, whom he dearly loved, shouldered much of that burden, but he wanted to buy her something special and hadn’t one idea.
Three people had missed work today because of the flu, one being the receptionist, who sifted people like Rick sifted mail. Deputy Cooper had some days coming to her. She hadn’t taken any vacation time this year, but he was shorthanded and Coop, being Coop, pitched in. She had one day off, today, and that turned into work. She never made it to Dayton’s.
Rick pushed his chair back when she walked into the office.
“Here.” She tossed a carton of Camels on his desk. Another carton was tucked under her arm.
“Living large. Thank you.” He slid the carton into his long middle desk drawer. “Really.”
“They’re from Harry.”
“Harry?”
“She bummed a fag off me, so she bought me a carton and then one for you. She sends her regards and she’s sorry to hear everyone is flat on their backs with this damned new strain of flu. Jeez, hope we don’t get it.”
“I’m chewing so much vitamin C, I’m about to turn orange. And echinacea. My wife stuffs it down my throat, God bless her.”
“Helen’s a good woman. Everyone needs a wife—even a wife.” Cooper pulled up the wooden chair, an old office chair from the 1940s. “I’d settle for one husband, though.”
“He’d be a lucky man.” Rick had learned to cherish his deputy over the years, although initially he resented a woman in law enforcement and gave her every crappy job that came along. Her upbeat personality, meticulousness, and steadiness in a crisis changed his mind. He fretted that she wouldn’t find the right guy. Many men think a woman cop is gay, and Cooper wasn’t. She wasn’t movie-star beautiful, although she was attractive. She was, however, shy with men who attracted her.
“Thanks, boss.” She opened a fresh pack of Camels. “You won’t believe this—on top of the coffin with bags of potting soil, I mean—but Harry actually smoked half a cigarette. She gagged, but she puffed like a chimney.”
“Did she, now?” He laughed.
“She thought when the lid came off the coffin she’d be puked out by the stench, so she lit up. Not a bad tactic, since smoking compromises your sense of smell. Sticking a gob of Vick’s Vapo-Rub up your nose is better.” Cooper pulled a small jar out of her coat pocket. “Didn’t use it since I figured Brother Thomas would be frozen.”
Rick grunted. “Maybe they intended to plant him and misplaced the body.”
“Very funny.” She tapped the end of the fresh cigarette on the desk. “Anything on Nordy?”
“Pete Osborne copied the last year of Nordy’s assignments. We viewed those segments that Pete thought could possibly inflame someone to murder.” Rick accepted the cigarette Cooper offered him. He sniffed the distinctive rich aroma of unsmoked tobacco, then struck a kitchen match on the large red matchbox. Rick didn’t like lighters. He thought the gas odor filtered into the cigarette. “He made us copies.” He held up a DVD in a blue cardboard envelope, which bore Pete’s distinctive scrawl. “Can’t believe the technology.”
“If I have a good Christmas I’ll buy myself a DVD player. Still have a year of car payments left.” She paused. “Prices keep coming down. Eventually I’ll be able to afford one. Didn’t mean to get off the subject. What do you
think about what you saw?”
“The segment where Nordy was outside a supposed drug dealer’s house was volatile. Jamaicans ran out and hit him. The one where he broke the story on the check-kiting scheme shook up people. The trials on that start in March. People have killed for less. There are the usual interviews with victims’ families, with murderers—emotional but not the same payoff.”
“How do you mean?”
“Emotions run high, and Nordy’s footage creates sympathy for the victim. However, that’s not the same as pointing the finger and accusing someone of guilt. Murder usually isn’t a thought-out crime; most of what we see is spur-of-the-moment. But the check-kiting schemes, mmm, that kind of crime demands thought. It’s usually committed by someone with a higher education, someone who might get off with a good lawyer. To save their own neck, that kind of criminal might murder.”
“But a white-collar criminal wouldn’t kill Nordy. He’d hire a dog’s body, don’t you think?” She used the phrase “dog’s body,” meaning someone who lived for odd or onerous chores.
“Exactly.” Rick swung his feet up to rest on his desk. “Nordy was going to see the check-kiting story to its bitter conclusion. As for the Jamaican drug dealers, again, there’s a lot of money at stake. This is a wealthy county, and people want their cocaine, Oxycontin, and whatever, you know? They’ll get it. There’s motive there and cunning.”
“You’re not convinced.”
He exhaled. “No.”
“It’s the pen in the eye, isn’t it?”
His eyebrows lifted in appreciation. She knew how his mind worked, which was a comfort. “In all my years I have never seen that. I’ve seen torture, I’ve seen infants raped, which is about the sickest goddamned thing I have ever seen, but I’ve never seen this. It’s so simple.”
“Yeah, how do you trace a ballpoint pen? Harry thinks it might have something to do with eyes. That’s a message, the eyes.”
He pursed his lips together. “The carton of cigarettes is a bribe. She’s going to get stuck right in the middle of this. Incorrigible! The empty coffin, so to speak, must have sent her into the stratosphere.”
Cat's Eyewitness Page 16