Murder at Monticello

by Rita Mae Brown

Pewter meanwhile disagreed with Mrs. Murphy and Tucker over Warren Randolph as murderer. She countered that a man with that much money doesn’t have to kill anyone. He can hire someone to do it for him.

  Mrs. Murphy rejoined that Warren must have slipped a stitch somewhere along the line.

  Pewter’s only response was “Gross.”

  “Regardless of what you think, I don’t want Mother to get in trouble.”

  “She’s not going to do anything. She doesn’t know that Warren’s the killer,” Pewter said.

  The sweet purr of the Bentley Turbo R caught their attention. Mim got out of the car. “Miranda, have you spoken to Sheriff Shaw about Larry’s obituary notice and funeral?”

  Miranda, stake in hand poised midair, looked as though she were ready to dispatch a vampire. “Yes, and I find it mighty peculiar.”

  Mim’s crocodile loafers fascinated Mrs. Murphy as she crossed the lawn to join Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber.

  “Those are beautiful,” the tiger cat admired.

  “Piddle. It’s a big skink, that’s all.” Pewter compared the exotic crocodile skin to that of a sleek lizard indigenous to Virginia.

  As the three women consulted, worried, and wondered about Rick Shaw’s request, Harry noticed that Mrs. Murphy was stalking Mim’s shoes. She bent down to scoop up her cat, but Mrs. Murphy scooted just out of reach.

  “Slowpoke,” the cat taunted.

  Harry did not answer but gave the cat a stern look.

  “Don’t get her in a bad mood, Murph,” Tucker pleaded.

  In reply, Mrs. Murphy flattened her ears and turned her back on Tucker as Mim strode over to her Bentley to retrieve her portable phone. Miranda walked into her house. After ten minutes of phone calls, which left Harry reduced to putting in the garden stakes, Miranda reappeared.

  “No, no, and no.”

  Mim’s head jerked up. “Impossible.”

  Miranda’s rich alto boomed. “Hill and Woods does not have the body. Thacker Funeral Home, ditto, and I even called places in western Orange County. Not a trace of Larry Johnson, and I don’t mind telling you that I think this is awful. How can the rescue squad lose a body?”

  Harry reached for Mim’s mobile phone. “May I?”

  “Be my guest.” Mim handed over the small, heavy phone.

  “Diana”—Harry reached Diana Robb—“do you know what funeral parlor has Larry Johnson’s body?”

  “No—we just dropped him off at the hospital.” Diana’s evasive tone alerted Harry, who’d known the nurse since their schooldays.

  “Do you know the name of the hospital admissions clerk?”

  “Harry, Rick Shaw will take care of everything. Don’t worry.”

  Acidly Harry replied, “Since when do sheriffs arrange funerals? Diana, I need your help. We’ve got a lot of work to do here.”

  “Look, you talk to Rick.” Diana hung up.

  “She hung up on me!” Harry’s face turned beet red. “Something is as queer as a three-dollar bill. I’m going down to the hospital.”

  “Don’t do that—just yet.” Mim smiled. She reached out for the phone, her frosted mauve fingernails complementing her plum-colored sweater. She dialed. “Is Sheriff Shaw there? All right, then. What about Deputy Cooper? I see.” Mim paused. “Try and get her out of her meeting, if only for an instant.”

  A long pause ensued, during which Mim tapped her foot in the grass and Mrs. Murphy resumed stalking those crocodile loafers. “Ah, Deputy Cooper. I need your assistance. Neither Mrs. Hogendobber, Mrs. Haristeen, nor I can locate Larry Johnson’s body at any of the funeral parlors in either Albemarle or Orange County. There are many arrangements to be made. I’m sure you appreciate that and—”

  “Mrs. Sanburne, the body is still at the hospital. Sheriff Shaw wanted more tests run, and until he’s satisfied that Pathology has everything they need, the body won’t be released. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

  “I see. Thank you.” Mim pushed down the aerial and clicked the power to off. She related Cynthia’s explanation.

  “I don’t buy it.” Harry crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I suppose once the blood is drained out of the body, the samples won’t be as, uh, fresh.” Mim grimaced.

  Now Miranda grabbed the phone. She winked. “Hello, this is Mrs. Johnson and I’d like an update on my husband, Dr. Larry Johnson.”

  “Larry Johnson, Room 504?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He’s resting comfortably.”

  Mrs. Hogendobber repeated the answer. “He’s resting comfortably—he ought to be, he’s dead.”

  A sputter and confusion on the other end of the phone convinced Miranda that something was really amiss. The line was disconnected. Miranda’s eyebrows shot into her coiffure. “Come on, girls.”

  As Mrs. Hogendobber climbed into the front seat of the Bentley, Harry unlocked the back door of the post office, shushing the two cats and crestfallen dog inside.

  “No fair!” was the animal chorus.

  Harry hopped in the back seat as Mim floored it.

  “By God, we’ll get to the bottom of this!”

  63

  The front desk clerk at the Martha Jefferson Hospital tried to waylay Mim, but Harry and Miranda outflanked her. Then Mim, taking advantage of the young woman’s distress, slipped away too.

  The three women dashed to the elevator. They reached the fifth floor and were met, as the doors opened, by a red-haired officer from the sheriff’s department.

  “I’m sorry, ladies, you aren’t permitted up here.”

  “Oh, you’ve taken over the whole floor?” Mim imperiously criticized the young officer, who cringed because he knew more was coming. “I pay taxes, which means I pay your salary and . . .”

  Harry used the opportunity to blast down the corridor. She reached Room 504 and opened the door. She screamed so loud, she scared herself.

  64

  “What a dirty, rotten trick.” Mim lit into the sheriff, who was standing at Larry’s bedside. This was after Harry, Miranda, and Mim cried tears of joy upon seeing their beloved friend again. They even made Larry cry. He had no idea how much he was loved.

  “Mrs. Sanburne, it had to be done and I’m running out of time as it is.”

  Mim sat on the uncomfortable chair as Harry and Miranda stood on the other side of Larry’s bed. Miranda would not release the older gentleman’s hand until a sharp glance from Mim made her do so. She then remembered that Larry and Mim were once an item.

  “Still jealous,” Miranda thought to herself.

  Larry, propped up on pillows, reached for a sip of juice. Mim instantly supplied it to him. “Now, Larry, if we fatigue you, we can leave and the sheriff can fill us in. However, if you can talk . . .”

  He slurped and handed the drink back to Mim, as unlikely a nurse as ever was born. “Thank you, dear. I can talk if Sheriff Shaw allows me.”

  A defeated Rick rubbed his receding hairline. “It’s fine with me, because I think if these girls”—he came down heavy on “girls”—“hear from your own lips what happened, then maybe they’ll behave.”

  “We will,” came the unconvincing chorus.

  “Harry, I have Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and that funny Paddy to thank for this.”

  “Mrs. Murphy again?” Rick shook his head.

  “They led me to where Jim Craig, who was killed before you were born, had hidden his diaries. He was my partner, as you may know. Actually, he took me into his practice and I would have purchased part of it in time—with a considerable discount, as Jim was a generous, generous man—but he died and, in effect, I inherited the practice, which afforded me the opportunity to become somewhat comfortable.” He looked at Mim.

  Mim couldn’t meet his gaze, so she fiddled with the juice glass and the fat, bendable straw.

  He continued. “Jim’s diaries commenced in 1912 and went through to the day he died, March 5, 1948. I believe that either Colonel Randolph killed him, or Wesley, who was
right out of the Army Air Corps at the time.”

  “But why?” Miranda exclaimed.

  Larry leaned his white head back on the pillows and took a deep breath. “Ah, for reasons both sad and interesting. As detection advanced with the electron microscope, it was Jim who discovered that Wesley and his father carried the sickle cell trait. Now, that didn’t give them leukemia—you can develop that disease quite apart from carrying the sickle cells—but what it meant was that no descendant of the colonel or Wesley could, uh, marry someone of color—not without fear of passing on the trait. You see, if the spouse also carried the trait, the children could very well contract the full-blown disease, which has painful episodes, and there’s no cure. The accumulated damage of those episodes can kill you.”

  “Oh, God.” Mim’s jaw dropped. “Wesley was, well, you know . . .”

  “A racist.” Harry said it for her.

  “That’s a harsh way of putting it.” Mim smoothed out the bed sheet. “He was raised a certain way and couldn’t cope with the changes. But if he knew about the sickle cell anemia, you’d think he would soften.”

  “Or become worse. Who is more anti-Semitic than another Jew? Who is more antigay than another homosexual? More antifeminist than another woman? The oppressed contain reservoirs of viciousness reserved entirely for their own kind.”

  “Harry, you surprise me,” Mim primly stated.

  “She’s right though.” The sheriff spoke up. “Tell people they’re”—he paused because he was going to say “shit”—“worthless, and strange behaviors occur. Let’s face it. Nobody wants to ape the poor. They want to ape the rich, and how many rich black folks do you know?”

  “Not in Albemarle County.” Miranda began to walk around the small room. “But the Randolphs don’t appear to be black in any fashion.”

  “No, but it’s in the blood. With rare exceptions, sickle cell anemia affects only people with African blood. It must be inherited. It can’t be caught as a contagion, so to speak. This disease seems to be the only remaining vestige of Wesley Randolph’s black heritage,” Larry informed them.

  “And Kimball Haynes found this out somehow.” Harry’s mind was spinning.

  “But how?” Larry wondered.

  “Ansley said Kimball never read the Randolph papers,” Harry chipped in.

  “Absurd! It’s absurd to kill over something like this!” Miranda exploded.

  “Mrs. Hogendobber, I’ve seen a fourteen-year-old boy knifed for the five-dollar-bill in his pocket. I’ve seen rednecks blow each other away because one got drunk and accused the other of sleeping with his wife or called him a faggot. Absurd?” Rick shrugged.

  “Did you know?” Harry, ever direct, asked Larry.

  “No. Wesley came in for his physical occasionally through the years but always refused to have his blood taken. Being rich, he would fly out to one of those expensive drying-out or treatment clinics, they would take a blood test, and he’d have them read me the white cell count. I accepted that he had leukemia. He wouldn’t let me treat him for it and I assumed it was because I am, after all, a country doctor. Oh, he’d come in for a flu shot, stuff like that, and we’d discuss his condition. I’d push and he’d retreat and then he’d check into the Mayo Clinic. He was out of reach, but Warren wasn’t. He hated needles and I could do a complete physical on him only about once every fifteen years.”

  “Who do you think killed Jim Craig?” Mim spoke.

  “Wesley, most likely. The colonel would have hated it, but I don’t think he would have killed over the news. Jim wouldn’t have made it public, after all. I could be wrong, but I just don’t think Colonel Randolph would have murdered Jim. Wesley was a hothead when he was young.”

  “Do you think the Randolphs have always known?” Harry pointed to Mrs. Hogendobber, busily pacing back and forth, indicating that she sit down. She was making Harry dizzy.

  “No, because it wouldn’t have been picked up in blood tests until the last fifty years or so,” said Larry. “All I’m saying is that in medical terms earlier generations would not have known about the sickle cell trait. What else they knew is anybody’s guess.”

  “Never thought of that,” Sheriff Shaw said.

  “I don’t care who knew what. You don’t kill over something like that.” Miranda couldn’t accept the horror of it.

  “Warren lived under the shadow of his father. His only outlet has been Ansley. Let’s face it, she’s the only person who regarded Warren as a man. When he found out she was carrying on with another man, right after his father’s death, I think it was too much. Warren’s not very strong, you know,” Harry said.

  “I thought Samson Coles was the one carrying on. Not Ansley too?” Miranda put her foot in it.

  “Look no further.” Mim pursed her lips.

  “No.” Harry, like Miranda, found the scandal, well, odd.

  “Why don’t you arrest Warren?” Mim drilled the sheriff.

  “First off, Dr. Johnson didn’t see his would-be killer, although we both believe it was Warren. Second, if I can trap Warren into giving himself away, it will make the prosecution’s task much easier. Warren is so rich that if I don’t nail him down, he’ll get off. He’ll shell out one or two million for the best defense lawyers in America and he’ll find a way out, I can guarantee it. I had hoped that keeping Larry’s survival under wraps for twenty-four hours might give me just the edge I need, but I can’t go much further than that. The reporters will bribe someone, and it’s cruel to have everyone mourning Larry’s death. I mean, look at your response.”

  “Most gratified, ladies.” Tears again welled up in Larry’s eyes.

  “Why can’t you just go up to Warren and say Larry’s alive and watch his response?” Mim wanted to know.

  “I could, but he’d be on guard.”

  “He won’t be on guard with me. He likes me,” Harry said.

  “No.” Rick’s voice rose.

  “Well, do you have a better idea?” Mim stuck it to the sheriff.

  65

  As the Superman-blue Ford toodled down the long, winding, tree-lined road, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker plotted. Harry had been talking out loud, going back and forth over the plan, so they knew what she’d found out at the hospital. She was wired, and Sheriff Shaw and Deputy Cooper were positioned on a back road near the entrance to Eagle’s Rest. They would hear every word she and Warren said.

  “We could bite Warren’s leg and put him out of commission from the get-go.”

  “Tucker, all that will happen is you’ll be accused of having rabies.” The cat batted the dog’s upright ears with her paw.

  “I’ve had my rabies shots.” Tucker sighed. “Well, do you have any better ideas?”

  “I could pretend I’m choking to death.”

  “Try it.”

  Mrs. Murphy coughed and wheezed. Her eyes watered. She flopped on her side and coughed some more. Harry pulled the truck to the side of the driveway. She picked up the cat and put her fingers down her throat to remove the offending obstacle. Finding no obstacle, she placed Mrs. Murphy over her left shoulder, patting her with her right hand as though burping a baby. “There, there, pussywillow. You’re all right.”

  “I know I’m all right. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  Harry put Mrs. Murphy back on the seat and continued up to the house. Ansley, sitting on the side veranda under the towering Corinthian columns, waved desultorily as Harry, unannounced, came in sight.

  Harry hopped out of the truck along with her critters. “Hey, Ansley, I apologize for not calling first, but I have some wonderful news. Where’s Warren?”

  “Down at the stable. Mare’s ready to foal,” Ansley laconically informed her. “You’re flushed. Must be something big.”

  “Well, yes. Uh, come on down with me. That way I don’t have to tell the story twice.”

  As they sauntered to the imposing stables, Ansley breathed deeply. “Isn’t this the best weather? The spring of springs.”

  “I always get
spring fever,” Harry confessed. “Can’t keep my mind on anything, and everyone has a glow—especially handsome men.”

  “Heck, don’t need spring for that.” Ansley laughed as they walked into the stable.

  Fair, Warren, and the Randolphs’ stable manager, Vanderhoef, crouched in the foaling stall. The mare was doing just fine.

  “Hi.” Fair greeted them, then returned to his task.

  “I have the best news of the year.” Harry beamed.

  “I wish she wouldn’t do this.” Mrs. Murphy shook her head.

  “Me too,” Tucker, heartsick, agreed.

  “Well, out with it.” Warren stood up and walked out of the stall.

  “Larry Johnson’s alive!”

  “Thank God!” Fair exploded, then caught himself and lowered his voice. “I can’t believe it.” Luckily his crescendo hadn’t startled the mare.

  “Me neither.” Warren appeared dazed for a moment. “Why anyone would want to kill him in the first place mystifies me. What a great guy. This is good news.”

  “Is he conscious?” Ansley inquired.

  “Yeah, he’s sitting up in bed and Miranda’s with him. That’s why I tore over here without calling. I knew you’d be happy to hear it.”

  “Did he see who shot him?” Warren asked, edging farther away from the stall door.

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Watch out!” Tucker barked as Ansley knocked over Harry while running for her car.

  “What in the hell?” Warren bolted down the aisle after her. “Ansley, Ansley, what’s going on?”

  She hopped into Warren’s 911, parked in the courtyard of the barn, cranked it over, and spun out of the driveway. Warren ran after her. In a malicious curve she spun around—and baby, that car could handle—to bear down on her husband.

  “Warren, zigzag!” Harry shouted from the end of the barn aisle.

  “Get him back in here,” Fair commanded just as the foal arrived.

  Warren did zig and zag. The car was so nimble, Ansley almost caught him, but he darted behind a tree and she whirled around again and gunned down the driveway.

  “Warren, Warren, get in here!” Harry called out. “In case she comes back.”