Murder at Monticello

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Yankees don’t think so.” The corner of Harry’s mouth turned upward.

  “I liken Yankees to hemorrhoids . . . they slip down and hang around. Once they see how good life is around here, they don’t go back. Ah, well, different people, different ways. I’ll have to think about what you said—about money—which I am spending at a rapid clip as Hayden and I expand the office. Since Jefferson never stopped building, I can’t decide if he possessed great stamina or great foolishness. I find the whole process nerve-racking.”

  Lucinda Payne Coles opened the door, stepped inside, then turned around and shook her umbrella out over the stoop. She closed the door and leaned the dripping object next to it. “Low pressure. All up and down the East Coast. The Weather Channel says we’ve got two more days of this. Well, my tulips will be grateful but my floors will not.”

  “Read where you and others”—Larry cocked his head in the direction of Harry—“attended Big Marilyn’s do.”

  “Which one? She has so many.” Lucinda’s frosted pageboy shimmied as she tossed her head. Little droplets spun off the blunt ends of her hair.

  “Monticello.”

  “Oh, yes. Samson was in Richmond, so he couldn’t attend. Ansley and Warren Randolph were there. Wesley too. Carys, Eppes, oh, I can’t remember.” Lucinda displayed little enthusiasm for the topic.

  Miranda puffed in the back door. “I’ve got lunch.” She saw Larry and Lucinda. “Hello there. I’m buying water wings if this keeps up.”

  “You’ve already got angel wings.” Larry beamed.

  “Hush, now.” Mrs. H. blushed.

  “What’d she do?” Mrs. Murphy wanted to know.

  “What’d she do?” Lucinda echoed the cat.

  “She’s been visiting the terminally ill children down at the hospital and she’s organized her church folks to join in.”

  “Larry, I do it because I want to be useful. Don’t fuss over me.” Mrs. Hogendobber meant it, but being human, she also enjoyed the approval.

  A loud meow at the back diverted the slightly overweight lady’s attention, and she opened the door. A wet, definitely overweight Pewter straggled in. The cat and human oddly mirrored each other.

  “Fat mouse! Fat mouse!” Mrs. Murphy taunted the gray cat.

  “What does that man do over there? Force-feed her?” Lucinda stared at the cat.

  “It’s all her own work.” Mrs. Murphy’s meow carried her dry wit.

  “Shut up. If I had as many acres to run around as you do, I’d be slender too,” Pewter spat out.

  “You’d sit in a trance in front of the refrigerator door, waiting for it to open. Open Sesame.” The tiger’s voice was musical.

  “You two are being ugly.” Tucker padded over to the front door and sniffed Lucinda’s umbrella. She smelled the faint hint of oregano on the handle. Lucinda must have been cooking before she headed to the P.O.

  Lucinda sauntered over to her postbox, opened it with the round brass key, and pulled out envelopes. She sorted them at the ledge along one side of the front room. The flutter of mail hitting the wastebasket drew Larry’s attention.

  Mrs. Hogendobber also observed Lucinda’s filing system. “You’re smart, Lucinda. Don’t even open the envelopes.”

  “I have enough bills to pay. I’m not going to answer a form letter appealing for money. If a charity wants money, they can damn well ask me in person.” She gathered up what was left of her mail, picked up her umbrella, and pushed open the door. She forgot to say good-bye.

  “She’s not doing too good, is she?” Harry blurted out.

  Larry shook his head. “I can sometimes heal the body. Can’t do much for the heart.”

  “She’s not the first woman whose husband has had an affair. I ought to know.” Harry watched Lucinda Coles open her car door, hop in while holding the umbrella out, then shake the umbrella, throw it over the back seat of the Grand Wagoneer, slam the door, and drive off.

  “She’s from another generation, Mary Minor Haristeen. ‘Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge the immoral and adulterous.’ Hebrews 13:4.”

  “I’m going to let you girls fight this one out.” Larry slapped his porkpie hat back on his head and left. What he knew that he didn’t tell them was with whom Samson Coles was carrying on his affair.

  “Miranda, are you implying that my generation does not honor the vows of marriage? That just frosts me!” Harry shoved a mail cart. It clattered across the floor, the canvas swaying a bit.

  “I said no such thing, Missy. Now, you just calm yourself. She’s older than you by a good fifteen years. A woman in middle age has fears you can’t understand but you will—you will. Lucinda Payne was raised to be an ornament. She lives in a world of charities, luncheons with the girls, and black-tie fund-raisers. You work. You expect to work, and if you marry again your life isn’t going to change but so much. Of course you honored your marriage vows. The pity is that Fair Haristeen didn’t.”

  “I kept remembering what Susan used to say about Ned. He’d make her so mad she’d say, ‘Divorce, never. Murder, yes.’ There were a few vile moments when I wonder how I managed not to kill Fair. They passed. I don’t think he could help it. We married too young.”

  “Too young? You married Fair the summer he graduated from Auburn Veterinary College. In my day you would have been an old maid at that age. You were twenty-four, as I recall.”

  “Memory like a wizard.” Harry smiled, then sighed. “I guess I know what you mean about Lucinda. It’s sad really.”

  “For her it’s a tragedy.”

  “Humans take marriage too seriously.” Pewter licked her paw and began smoothing down her fur. “My mother used to say, ‘Don’t worry about tomcats. There’s one coming around every corner like a streetcar.’ ”

  “Your mother lived to a ripe old age, so she must have known something,” Mrs. Murphy recalled.

  “Maybe Lucinda should go to a therapist or something,” Harry thought out loud.

  “She ought to try her minister first.” Mrs. Hogendobber walked over to the window and watched the huge raindrops splash on the brick walkway.

  “You know what I can’t figure?” Harry joined her.

  “What?”

  “Who in the world would want Samson Coles?”

  6

  The steady rain played havoc with Kimball’s work. His staff stretched a bright blue plastic sheet onto four poles which helped keep off the worst of the rain, but it trickled down into the earthen pit as they had cut down a good five feet.

  A young German woman, Heike Holtz, carefully brushed away the soil. Her knees were mud-soaked, her hands also, but she didn’t care. She’d come to America specifically to work with Kimball Haynes. Her long-range goal was to return to Germany and begin similar excavations and reconstruction at Sans Souci. Since this beautiful palace was in Potsdam, in the former East Germany, she suffered few illusions about raising money or generating interest for the task. But she was sure that sooner or later her countrymen would try to save what they could before it fell down about their ears. As an archaeologist, she deplored the Russians’ callous disregard for the majority of the fabulous architecture under their control. At least they had preserved the Kremlin. As to how they treated her people, she wisely kept silent. Americans, so fortunate for the most part, would never understand that kind of systematic oppression.

  “Heike, go on and take a break. You’ve been in this chill since early this morning.” Kimball’s light blue eyes radiated sympathy.

  She spoke in an engaging accent, musical and very seductive. She didn’t need the accent. Heike was a knockout. “No, no, Professor Haynes. I’m learning too much to leave.”

  He patted her on the back. “You’re going to be here for a year, and Heike, if the gods smile down upon me, I think I can get you an appointment at the university so you can stay longer than that. You’re good.”

  She bent her head closer to her task, too shy to accept
the praise by looking him in the eye. “Thank you.”

  “Go on, take a break.”

  “This will sound bizarre,” she accented the bi heavily, “but I feel something.”

  “I’m sure you do,” he laughed. “Chilblains.”

  He stepped out of the hearth where Heike was working. The fireplace had been one of the wooden fireplaces which caught fire. Charred bits studded one layer of earth, and they were just now getting below that. Whoever cleaned up after the fire removed as much ash as they could. Two other students worked also.

  Heike pawed with her hands, carefully but with remarkable intensity. “Professor.”

  Kimball returned to her and quickly knelt down. He was working alongside her now. Each of them laboring with swift precision.

  “Mein Gott!” Heike exclaimed.

  “We got more than we bargained for, kiddo.” Kimball wiped his hand across his jaw, forgetting the mud. He called to Sylvia and Joe, his other two students working in this section. “Joe, go on up and get Oliver Zeve.”

  Joe and Sylvia peered at the find.

  “Joe?”

  “Yes, Professor.”

  “Not a word to anyone, you hear? That’s an order,” he remarked to the others as Joe ran toward the Big House.

  “The last thing we want is for the paper to get hold of this before we’ve had time to prepare a statement.”

  7

  “Why wasn’t I told first?” Mim jammed the receiver of the telephone back on the cradle. She put it back cockeyed so the device beeped. Furious, she smashed the receiver on correctly.

  Her husband, Jim Sanburne, mayor of Crozet, six feet four and close to three hundred pounds, was possessed of an easygoing nature. He needed it with Mim. “Now, darlin’, if you will reflect upon the delicate nature of Kimball Haynes’s discovery, you will realize you had to be the second call, not the first.”

  Her voice lowered. “Think I was the second call?”

  “Of course. You’ve been the driving force behind the Mulberry Row restorations.”

  “And I can tell you I’m enduring jealous huffs from Wesley Randolph, Samson Coles, and Center Berryman too. Wait until they find out about this—actually, I’d better call them all.” She paced into the library, her soft suede slippers barely making any sound at all.

  “Wesley Randolph? The only reason you and Wesley cross swords is that he wants to run the show. Just arrange a few photo opportunities for his son. Warren is running for state senate this fall.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m not the mayor of Crozet for nothing.” His broad smile revealed huge square teeth. Despite his size and girth, Jim exuded a rough-and-tumble masculine appeal. “Now, sit down here by the fire and let’s review the facts.”

  Mim dropped into the inviting wing chair covered in an expensive MacLeod tartan fabric. Her navy cashmere robe piped in camel harmonized perfectly. Mim’s aesthetic sensibilities were highly developed. She was one hundred eighty degrees from Harry, who had little sense of interior design but could create a working farm environment in a heartbeat. It all came down to what was important to each of them.

  Mim folded her hands. “As I understand it from Oliver, Kimball Haynes and his staff have found a skeleton in the plot he’s calling Cabin Four. They’ve worked most of the day and into the night to uncover the remains. Sheriff Shaw is there too, although I can’t see that it matters at this point.”

  Jim crossed his feet on the hassock. “Do they have any idea when the person died or even what sex the body is?”

  “No. Well, yes, they’re sure it’s a man, and Oliver said an odd thing—he said the man must have been rich. I was so shocked, I didn’t pursue it. We’re to keep a tight lip. Guess I’d better wait to call the others but, oh, Jim, they’ll be so put out, and I can’t lie. This could cost contributions. You know how easy it is for that crew to get their noses out of joint.”

  “Loose lips sink ships.” Jim, who had been a skinny eighteen-year-old fighting in Korea, remembered one of the phrases World War II veterans used to say. He tried to forget some of the other things he’d experienced in that conflict, but he vowed never to be so cold again in his entire life. As soon as the frosts came, Jim would break out his wired socks with the batteries attached.

  “Jim, he’s been dead for a hundred seventy-five to two hundred years. You’re as bad as Oliver. Who cares if the press knows? It will bring more attention to the project and possibly even more money from new contributors. And if I can present this find to the Randolphs, Coleses, and Berrymans as an historic event, perhaps all will yet be well.”

  “Well, sugar, how he died might affect that.”

  8

  Bright yellow tape cordoned off Cabin Four. Rick Shaw puffed on a cigarette. As sheriff of Albemarle County, he’d viewed more than his share of corpses: shotgun suicides, drownings, car accident after car accident, killings by knife, pistol, poison, ax—even a piano bench. People used whatever came to hand. However, this was the oldest body he’d studied.

  His assistant, Cynthia Cooper, recently promoted to deputy, scribbled in her small notebook, her ballpoint pen zipping over the blue lines. A photographer for the department snapped photos.

  Rick, sensitive to the situation, arrived at six-thirty P.M., well after five P.M., when Monticello closed its doors for the night, allowing for the departure of straggling tourists. Oliver Zeve, arms folded across his chest, chatted with Heike Holtz. Kimball looked up with relief when Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber walked down Mulberry Row. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker trailed behind.

  Oliver excused himself from Heike and walked over to Kimball. “What in the hell are they doing here?”

  Kimball, nonplussed, stuck his hands in his back pockets. “We’re going to be here some time, people need to be fed.”

  “We’re perfectly capable of calling a catering service.” Oliver snapped.

  “Yes,” Kimball smoothly replied, “and they’re perfectly capable of babbling this all over town as well as picking up the phone to The Washington Post or, God forbid, The Enquirer. Harry and Miranda can keep their mouths shut. Remember Donny Ensign?”

  Kimball referred to an incident four years past when Mrs. Hogendobber served as secretary for the Friends of Restoration. She happened one night to check Donny Ensign’s books. She always did George’s books and she enjoyed the task. As treasurer, Donny was entrusted with the money, obviously. Mrs. H. had a hunch, she never did say what had set her off, but she had quickly realized that Mr. Ensign was cooking the books. She immediately notified Oliver and the situation was discreetly handled. Donny resigned and he continued to pay back a portion of what he had siphoned off until the sum, $4,559.12, was cleared. In exchange, no one reported him to Rick Shaw nor was his name destroyed in the community.

  “Yes.” Oliver drew out the word even as he smiled and trotted over to the two women. “Here, let me relieve you lovely ladies of this burden. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’re bringing us food. Kimball thinks of everything, doesn’t he?”

  Rick felt a rub against his leg. He beheld Mrs. Murphy. “What are you doing here?”

  “Offering my services.” She sat on the toe of the sheriff’s shoe.

  “Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber, what a surprise.” A hint of sarcasm entered Rick’s voice.

  “Don’t sound so enthusiastic, Sheriff.” Miranda chided him. “We aren’t going to interfere in your case. We’re merely offering nourishment.”

  Cynthia hopped out of the site. “Bless you.” She scratched Tucker’s head and motioned for Harry to follow her. Tucker followed also. “What do you make of this?”

  Harry peered down at the skeleton lying facedown in the dirt. The back of his skull was crushed. Coins lay where his pockets must have been, and a heavy, crested ring still circled the bones of the third finger on his left hand. Tatters of fabric clung to the bones, a piece of heavily embroidered waistcoat. A bit more of the outer coat remained; the now-faded color must have once been
a rich teal. The brass buttons were intact, as were the buckles on his shoes, again quite ornate.

  “Mrs. H., come here,” Harry called.

  “I don’t want to see it.” Mrs. Hogendobber busily served sandwiches and cold chicken.

  “It’s not so bad. You’ve seen far worse at the butcher shop.” Harry deviled her.

  “That isn’t funny.”

  Mrs. Murphy and Tucker shouldn’t have been in the site, but so much was going on, no one really noticed.

  “Smell anything?” The cat asked her companion.

  “Old smoke. A cold trail—this fellow’s been dead too long for scenting.” The corgi wrinkled her black nose.

  Mrs. Murphy pawed a piece of the skull. “Pretty weird.”

  “What?”

  “Well, the guy’s had his head bashed, but someone put this big piece of skull back in place.”

  “Yeah.” The dog was fascinated with the bones, but then, any bones fascinated Tucker.

  “Hey, hey, you two, get out of here!” Harry commanded.

  Tucker obediently left, but Mrs. Murphy didn’t. She batted at the skull. “Look, you dummies.”

  “She thinks everything is a toy.” Harry scooped up the cat.

  “I do not!” Mrs. Murphy puffed her tail in fury, squirmed out of Harry’s arms, and jumped back to the ground to pat the skull piece again.

  “I’m sorry, Cynthia, I’ll put her back in the truck. Wonder if I could put her in Monticello? The truck’s a ways off.”

  “She’ll shred Mr. Jefferson’s bedspread,” Tucker warned. “If it has historic value, she can’t wait to get her claws in it. Think what she’ll say to Pewter, ‘I tore up Thomas Jefferson’s silk bedspread.’ If it has tassles on it, forget it. There won’t be any left.”

  “And you wouldn’t chew the furniture legs?” the cat shot back.

  “Not if they give me one of those bones, I won’t.” The corgi laughed.

  “Stop being an ass, Tucker, and help me get these two nincompoops to really look at what they’re seeing.”