Catch as Cat Can

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Thanks, Sheriff.” She stood by the oxygen tank feeding the welding torch.

  “She'll live off that compliment for a month,” Tucker remarked as she sat discreetly next to a finished stuffed elk's head on the floor.

  Pewter, frightened by the noise of the welding torch, crouched behind Tucker. Mrs. Murphy perched on top of Donny's worktable. She remained motionless, since she didn't want to rouse the sheriff's attention either.

  “Think Harry will stuff us when we go?” She laughed as she surveyed Donny's handiwork.

  “Vile!” Pewter leaned harder on Tucker, who licked her head.

  Coop stood well behind Boom.

  Arms across her chest, Harry murmured, “Tell Booty?”

  “Yeah. Rick did.”

  “Did he know anything about the truck?”

  “Said it was his but for farm use. Never took it off the farm. Didn't much use it anyway, he said. No license plate. You know, he took it like the soldier that he was. He asked if Marge knew and Rick said that I was with her. He got in his car and drove in her driveway just as I was leaving. Poor Marge. He was her only son.”

  “Yeah.” Harry felt bad for Donny's mom, a much-liked woman.

  Rick checked his watch. “Harry, tell me about the woodpecker.”

  “I brought it in just before the Dogwood Festival and Donny said he'd get right on it. Business was always slower in the spring, the taxidermy business, I mean. His leather business was doing well and he was making coffee tables, too, out of license plates. One's over there.” She pointed it out. “He was bursting with ideas.”

  “Did he seem like himself?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged.

  “Did he look healthy?”

  “Very.” She waited a moment. “Sheriff, what's going to happen to my woodpecker?”

  “It's my woodpecker,” Pewter chirped up.

  “Shut up. Don't attract Rick's attention,” Murphy counseled.

  “For now, nothing. I told them to run it through an X-ray machine.” He turned to BoomBoom, who stopped for a moment, pushing up her protective face guard to check her work. “How you doing?”

  “Another five minutes, I hope.” She slapped the mask down and resumed cutting.

  “Find anything besides my woodpecker?”

  “A Dallas Cowboys windbreaker just as Sean described it.” Cooper squinted when a shower of sparks flew off the safe. “And a matchbook from Roy and Nadine's restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky. Very colorful.”

  “Any ideas?” Harry asked.

  “That's what I was going to ask you.” Rick hitched up his belt. “You've known Clatterbuck all your life. Did you like him?”

  “Yeah. Always seemed levelheaded. He didn't run with a bad crowd. Didn't have a lot of bad affairs with women. Stuff like that.”

  “Huh.” Rick grunted.

  “I guess you looked for the key to the safe?”

  “Yes, we did. Why?”

  “Oh.” Harry turned her palms up for a moment as if in supplication. “Hate to see the safe ruined.”

  “It's not ruined. I can put it back together if Rick wants me to.” BoomBoom turned off the torch. She waited a moment, then pushed the heavy lock with her gloved hand. “Sheriff, if you grab one handle and I grab the other I think we can pull it out. I'm afraid if I try to do this by myself I'll push it into the safe and that might damage whatever's in there.”

  “Good thinking.” He grabbed a brass handle.

  They both pulled on the count of three and the heavy lock and spinning handle fell out on the floor with a clunk. Rick stepped aside as BoomBoom, gloves on, reached in and pulled open the door.

  “Oh, my God!”

  Each shelf contained bundles and bundles of crisp new bills, neatly stacked.

  “That's a lot of stuffed deer heads,” Mrs. Murphy laconically observed.

  32

  The shock of finding five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in Donny Clatterbuck's safe was nearly as great as finding Donny himself.

  Harry and the animals drove to Miranda's, a place of sanity and common sense. To her surprise, BoomBoom wanted to go, too.

  They found Miranda and Tracy playing gin rummy. Tracy was winning.

  “Knock, knock.” Harry let herself in, with Mrs. Murphy rushing first through the door. “I'm coming unannounced and BoomBoom's about two minutes behind me.”

  Tracy rose, as befit a Virginia gentleman. “You look a little peaked, Harry, my girl. Some fortification?”

  She shook the rain off in the little back-door entranceway. “How about a steaming cup of tea with a drop of Maker's Mark in it?” She mentioned the famous sipping whiskey distilled in Loretto, Kentucky.

  “Why, Harry.” Miranda stood up herself, heading to the teapot. “I don't remember you ever roping your tea.”

  “Well, I'm wet, I'm chilled, and I'm sorely vexed, as my grandmother used to say.”

  BoomBoom stepped in tight behind Harry. “Miranda, forgive me. I just had to see you.”

  “Are you two having another fight?” Miranda turned on the gas stove while Tracy opened the cabinet serving as a liquor chest. “BoomBoom, what can I get you?”

  “A straight shot of gin will revive me considerably.”

  “What in the world is the matter with you two girls?” He put his hands on his hips.

  Harry hung up her worn Barbour coat. BoomBoom did likewise, only her Barbour coat was new and longer. One couldn't reside in Albemarle without a proper Barbour coat, made in England and the best working raingear in the world. Tucker, anticipating treats, moved over to be near Miranda. Pewter, no fool, headed straight for the table.

  “I don't know where to start.” BoomBoom shook her long blond hair, droplets of water falling to the oak floor.

  “I'll start.” Harry pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “Rick Shaw and Cynthia Cooper were called up to Culpeper this afternoon because Donny Clatterbuck had been shot through the head.”

  Miranda exclaimed, “Oh, no! We haven't heard—”

  “He was in the truck Sean described Wesley Partlow as driving to his salvage yard to sell your hubcaps, and don't feel left out, the only people who know about this are Donny's family. Big Mim probably doesn't know yet unless Rick is calling her now.”

  Both Tracy and Miranda sat down at the table to listen to Harry as they waited for the water to boil.

  “What in the world is going on?” Miranda rubbed her cheek with the palm of her hand.

  “Nobody knows. It's scary.” BoomBoom also sat down as Tracy rose to pull out a chair for her, then reseated himself.

  “The truck had stolen plates, old ones with new stickers. Coop told me that. The plates are from a Newport News car dealership. The dealer has no idea how the plates were stolen. No cars were missing. Coop asked if he would send over his employee rolls so she could check for criminal backgrounds. Nothing. The truck, as it happens, is Booty Mawyer's old farm truck. He says it hasn't been off the farm. Been moldering in one of his sheds. That's what he told Rick when Rick gave him the bad news. But, of course, it has. He said sometimes Don would move hay from one shed to another—but, you know, Booty's getting on in years and it would be easy to fool him. Well, he wouldn't know anything unless he saw it with his own eyes.

  “And before I get to why we're together—in the back of the truck, on the seat, was the Dallas Cowboys windbreaker exactly as Sean described it.”

  Tracy got up to pour the tea. He motioned for Miranda to stay seated. He put the pot on the table, set out four cups, smacked the Maker's Mark bottle directly in front of Harry, then opened the refrigerator and brought out cold cuts. He figured, correctly, that Harry and BoomBoom hadn't eaten. He also put a chilled green bottle of Tanqueray gin in front of BoomBoom.

  “Honey, let me do that.” Miranda got up to arrange the food, bringing out the homemade seven-grain bread, fresh butter, and local honey.

  Within minutes an impromptu cold supper sat before the two hungry women.

 
; “Thank you.” BoomBoom gratefully buttered a piece of bread cut thick.

  Harry chattered as she, too, made herself a sandwich, surreptitiously dropping food bits to her pets. “Coop said the only thing in the windbreaker was a matchbook from Roy and Nadine's, a hot restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky. She called the restaurant, gave them the fake Wesley's description, and the manager said he had no recollection of anyone like that, nor did it seem that would be the kind of customer Roy and Nadine's would attract. He did, however, promise to ask his employees if they remembered anyone looking like that. She's sending on the mug shot.

  “But, well, Boom should tell you what happened next.”

  “Donny has that huge safe in his shop, the kind that's taller than I am. Harry suggested I call Rick and offer to open the lock using my welding torch. She was right because Rick couldn't get a service representative for twenty-four hours plus there was the expense of getting him here. So over I went, cut out the lock, and what do you know . . . there's a ton of money inside the safe! Five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Five hundred and twenty-five thousand!” BoomBoom repeated.

  “Stacked neatly. So new you could smell it. Rick says it isn't counterfeit either.” Harry sipped her tea.

  “Where in the world would Donny Clatterbuck get money like that?” Miranda brought both hands to her face in surprise.

  “New? Directly from a bank or someone who had access to new bills, who dealt in large sums often.” Tracy's mind whirred along. “Someone who either needed Donny to stash the money, giving him a cut, or someone who needed Donny.”

  “For what?” BoomBoom poured honey over a piece of buttered bread.

  “He was good with his hands.” Harry tried to feed Tucker another small piece of meat under the table. Pewter snatched it before the dog could get it so Harry tore another small piece for the corgi. The mild altercation revealed Harry's feeding the “kids” from the table—not that anyone really cared that much.

  “I'm here, too,” Murphy reminded the humans.

  Miranda gave her a tidbit. “This is so—so hard to believe. Donny never threw money around.”

  “No, he didn't,” Harry confirmed.

  “He could have put the money in the bank but he didn't. This points to his doing something illegal.” Tracy, hand poised in midair with a butter knife, said, “And it seems obvious that he knew in some fashion the young man found hanged. The question is, how and why? That kid looked as though he didn't have a dime.”

  “Coop can't find a trace of him anywhere. Wesley's not his real name,” Harry said.

  “I wonder if Marge knows about the money.” Miranda thought about Donny's mother, worrying for her welfare.

  “Highly doubtful, my love,” Tracy replied.

  BoomBoom finished her sandwich, which made her feel more conversational. “Wait until Lottie Pearson hears this.”

  “What's Lottie Pearson got to do with this?” Miranda asked.

  “She blew him off just like she spurned Roger. She wants money and prestige or what passes for it. When she hears that Donny Clatterbuck had a small fortune in his safe, she'll pass out.”

  “Five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.” Miranda couldn't imagine that much money.

  “We helped count it. Had to wear plastic gloves that Rick and Coop keep in the squad car. They have to avoid blood because of AIDS so they carry these hospital gloves around.” Harry thought a moment, then excitedly said, “When I took my woodpecker to Don, I noticed the safe. I asked him if that's where he kept his millions and he said, ‘Only half a million.' I thought he was kidding.”

  “‘He who loves money never has money enough, he who loves wealth never has enough profit; this, too, is vanity.' Ecclesiastes, Chapter Five, Verse Ten,” Miranda quoted.

  “What a memory,” Tracy marveled.

  “Miranda is a marvel.” BoomBoom smiled.

  “Mim really must not know what's happened.” Harry's mind stayed on the murder. “Or she would have called you. Rick usually gets to her.”

  Miranda said, “She's in New York this weekend visiting Stafford and his wife.”

  Stafford was Mim's son, who rarely returned home as he loved his family more the farther away they were.

  Mrs. Murphy washed her face with her paw. “We've got work to do.”

  “I'm not going out in the rain,” Pewter stoutly stated.

  “I didn't say we were.”

  Tucker nuzzled her pal. “What do you have in mind?”

  “We need to get to Aunt Tally's and snoop around. I should have thought of it during the tea party but I got caught up in the commotion.”

  “Aunt Tally's is a long, long hike, Murphy. Talk Harry into driving us over there.”

  “Sure, Pewter. She listens about as well as any human.”

  Tucker thought about it. “She's right, Murphy. The creeks are over their banks. We won't get across. We've got to convince Harry to drive us there somehow.”

  The pretty tiger pondered this, then curled her tail around her. “You're right.”

  “Finally, someone's giving me credit around here,” Pewter crowed, then for good measure reached up and hooked a piece of bread off the table before a human could stop her. Once the bread was on the floor she knew the humans wouldn't touch it even if they scolded her, which they didn't, as they were too busy deciding if Lottie Pearson really was a gold digger. BoomBoom said yes. Harry said maybe. Miranda wanted to think the best of her and Tracy opted not to have an opinion.

  “Don't let it go to your head. Listen, we'd better get over there tomorrow. If this rain would only stop.”

  “What's on your mind?” Tucker respected the tiger's brain power, the quickness of her mind.

  “We need to examine the floor of the dining room, open the cupboards in the pantry, investigate the places where Tally keeps food. We might have to check the outbuildings. I don't know exactly but I can tell you this, if we find what I think we're going to find, either Sean O'Bannon is in on this or he's the next victim.”

  33

  At twelve midnight on the dot the rain stopped. Mrs. Murphy had become accustomed to the incessant din on the rooftop. The silence awakened her. Curled up next to Harry, she lifted her head, then rose, stretching fore and aft.

  Tucker, asleep on the rug by the bed, snored lightly, her parted lips revealing her considerable canines as well as the small square teeth between them.

  Pewter, on the pillow next to Harry, was dead to the world. Her gray forehead rested next to Harry's pillow edge, her body formed a comma, her tail curled tight around her legs.

  No point waking up the Princess of Sleep. Next to eating, Pewter loved sleep.

  Murphy walked out of the bedroom, down the hall, careful to step on the old carpet runner. She liked feeling carpet beneath her paws. Then she bounced across the kitchen, out the animal door, and pushed open the screened porch door. The clouds, low and billowy, Prussian blue, flew across the sky, west to east. Puddles like black ice filled the small depressions in the driveway. Keeping that driveway in good working order gave Harry fits. She'd dutifully fill the holes only to have the stones eventually worm their way out to the side of the road. Every three years she would break down and hire Mr. Tapscott to bulldoze the long driveway, put down bluestone or crusher run, and then pack it as hard as possible. No wonder a large part of the state budget was siphoned off by road maintenance. If only Harry had the tiniest fraction of that budget, her road would be in tiptop shape.

  Murphy often thought of human cares. Not that she thought road maintenance a foolish care. After all, she was a farm cat; she understood the importance of roads, tractors, and re-seeding pastures. But much of what humans fussed over seemed silly to her. They worried about their looks, about money, about their social standing.

  Cats ignored social standing. To be a cat meant one was at the top of the animal chain. And since cats are not herd animals, each cat remained a complete individual. This didn't mean that Mrs. Murphy lacked kitty frien
ds. It only meant that she didn't rely on them for a sense of herself. She simply was.

  She hopscotched across puddles, entering the barn. The three horses, sound asleep, didn't hear her. She jumped on the tack trunk. Gin Fizz slept like Tucker, on his side and snoring. Tomahawk and Poptart slept standing up. Murphy couldn't imagine sleeping standing up.

  She crept into the tack room. The mice were playing with a jacks ball, singing at the top of their lungs, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

  She pounced, narrowly missing the fattest mouse.

  “Eeek! Mad cat. Run for your life!” they screamed, scrambling for the hole in the wall. They all made it.

  Murphy put a glittering eye to the hole shaped like an upside-down U. “Have the decency to clean up after yourselves. My human doesn't think your games are funny. And you've left grain bits all over the floor. You'll get me in trouble and if you get me in trouble I'll nail one of you if it's the last thing I do!”

  “Bully,” a high-pitched voice replied.

  “We had a deal. You leave the tack room clean and I leave you alone.”

  “You surprised us. We would have cleaned up.”

  “Sure.” Mrs. Murphy batted the jacks ball between her paws.

  “Give us the ball back. We'll clean up. I promise.”

  “Maybe I will and maybe I won't.” With that she catapulted straight up in the air, turned halfway round, dropping back on the ball. She flopped on her side, kicked the ball out with her hind legs, then chased it wildly under the saddle racks and bridle hooks. She whacked it hard with her right front paw. The little red jacks ball slammed against the wall, bouncing back almost into her jaws.

  Murphy carried on like this for five minutes until she tired of solo handball. She tantalizingly deposited the jacks ball about a foot from the mouse entrance. Making a great show of leaving the tack room, she tiptoed back in, silently vaulting onto a saddle. Holding her breath, she waited until she saw tiny whiskers appear in the opening.

  “She's gone,” a voice said.

  “Oh, no, she's not. I know Mrs. Murphy. She's clever,” the original high-pitched voice replied.