The Tail of the Tip-Off

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Oh, that’s fine, but—” She picked up the collar.

  “You know”—he knelt down to clean out the sweet dog’s ears—“Mindy Creighton came in today. She had to say goodbye to Brinkley. He was almost twenty years old.” Dr. Shulman fought a little mist in his eyes. “She left his collar, leash, and bed, asking me to give them to someone who might need them. Said she just couldn’t bear to bring them back home. So next time you see her, thank her, not me.”

  “I thought I’d pay to get this boy back on his feet and find a good home for him.”

  “No! I want you.” The Lab put his head under her hand.

  Dr. Shulman smiled slightly. “Well, you’ll need these things until you do and—uh—Tazio, I should tell you that Labrador retrievers are excellent companions. They are used to lead the blind because they’re so rock steady.”

  “I’ll put signs up describing him. Someone might be searching for him.”

  Dr. Shulman looked down at the dog and, when Tazio’s head was turned, he winked.

  Sharon had already put the rabies tag on the collar, a bright royal blue. She placed it around the dog’s neck. “Perfect.” Then she tidied the papers at the front desk. “All right now. What shall we call this fellow?”

  Tazio, knowing an ambush when she saw one, nevertheless smiled, “Brinkley Two. Seems only right.”

  “I think so.” And she wrote down the name in black ink, block letters.

  “Sharon, I guess you heard about H. H. Donaldson?”

  “Sure did.” Sharon glanced up from her paperwork. “I shed not a tear.” A note of sarcasm was inflected in her voice. She looked up again. “I’m one of H.H.’s castoffs.” She waved her hand. “Oh, it was years ago but it still stings a little.”

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “I didn’t broadcast it.” She handed Tazio the papers with the day written down, the list of shots given, and when the dog would need boosters. “But it’s weird—now I don’t care.”

  “Could be the shock.”

  Sharon shrugged. “Maybe. I feel sorry for his little girl. And Anne. She’s a nice lady.”

  “I guess I put my foot in it.” Tazio blushed.

  “No you didn’t. I just felt like casting a weight off my shoulders. You’re still relatively new here, Tazio. This place is full of secrets.”

  “I guess any small town is.”

  “Got that right.” Sharon smiled, then stood up to pat Brinkley’s head. “You’re going to love this dog. Trust me.”

  With a weak little voice, Tazio half-protested. “I work too many hours to have a pet.”

  “I will never let you down,” Brinkley vowed to the architect. “Not with my last breath.”

  On the way home, Taz thought she’d better brave the supermarket. Just in case the storm lasted. The first flakes were falling. She pulled in next to Harry’s truck just as Harry put two large bags of groceries into the seat.

  “Taz, what have you got there?”

  Taz gave her the story.

  Mrs. Murphy shouted from the seat, “Welcome to Crozet, Brinkley. You were named for a good dog, a German shepherd.”

  “Thank you. Do you think she’ll feed me soon?”

  “As soon as you get home, and she lives maybe seven or eight minutes from here. She’s very responsible and, oh, make sure you tell her you like her work. She’s an architect,” Tucker helpfully suggested.

  “Don’t drool on her blueprints,” Pewter sassily said.

  “Oh, forgive me. I’m Mrs. Murphy, this is Tucker, and the smart mouth is Pewter. We live out by Yellow Mountain and we work at the post office so I’m sure we’ll see you.”

  As Harry and Taz talked about H.H.’s death, the shock of it, they moved on quickly, because it was cold, to the next guild meeting and what they both hoped to accomplish.

  “Hey, I was surprised to see you at the basketball game. You haven’t been a regular.”

  “I thought I’d give it a try.” The cold air tingled in Taz’s upturned nose.

  “Well, let me know if you need anything for your new best friend.”

  “Thanks. I’m hoping to find a home for him. I’d better grab some milk and bread and hurry home. Brinkley needs to eat.”

  “Yes,” Brinkley agreed.

  When Taz got home, the first thing she did was mix some canned food into the dry food. She watched while the famished animal gulped the food then drank water. When he finished he smiled up at her.

  “You know, even though you’re skinny, you’re a rather handsome dog.” She walked over to pet him. “You know, oh, I said that already, didn’t I? Well, how about if I put your bed in the bedroom? We don’t want it where people can see it.”

  She picked up the fleece doggie bed, placing it on the floor at the foot of her bed. She thought the dog would curl up and go to sleep for he had to be exhausted but Brinkley was so thrilled to find a person who might love him he followed her everywhere she went until she sat down at her computer. Then he blissfully slept at her feet.

  She couldn’t help but smile when she glanced down at him.

  Harry arrived home before the wind started howling. By the time she left the barn, the doors rattled.

  Walking to the house she complained to her animals. “First it’s El Niño, then it’s La Niña. Okay, that passed and with it the mild winters, but this is ridiculous. Second big blow in as many weeks.”

  Once in the house she fed her pets, buttered a bagel, pulled out a legal-sized pad, a pencil, and sat at the kitchen table. She diagrammed the inside of the Clam, marking who sat where. She diagrammed the parking lot, noting the spot where H.H. collapsed. Then she wrote down the names of everyone she could remember who either tried to assist or who watched helplessly.

  “Didn’t she hear a thing Herb told her?” Pewter crossly complained.

  “She heard.” Tucker gazed at Harry, her expressive brown eyes filled with concern.

  “She feels compelled to solve this or to at least shift the focus onto herself and away from Susan,” the tiger correctly surmised.

  “I think she’ll be careful.” Tucker hoped she would.

  “I’m sure she will but if she’s being watched, it’s only going to add fuel to the fire.” Mrs. Murphy knew her human very well.

  “Sooner or later people will know H.H. was murdered,” Pewter thought out loud. “Might take some of the onus off her.”

  “They won’t know until the report comes back from the state lab in Richmond,” Mrs. Murphy replied. “January isn’t the murdering season so those toxicology reports will be back soon enough, I’ll bet. She can get into a lot of trouble in that time.”

  “Maybe the storm will slow her down.” Tucker allowed Pewter to groom her.

  “We can hope.” Mrs. Murphy jumped onto the kitchen table.

  Harry looked at the cat and back at her drawing of the parking lot. “Ah, you three were in the truck. I’ll add that.” She added their names with a flourish. “Maybe if I can find out who H.H. was sleeping with I can figure this out.”

  In a way she was right and in a way she was wrong.

  * * *

  13

  Although the storm didn’t dump a lot of snow on the ground, the winds howled ferociously. Drifts piled up across the roadways, and five feet behind the drifts the asphalt shone as though picked clean. Nor did the winds abate. Shutters rattled, doors vibrated, and the stinging cold seeped through the cracks and fissures in buildings. The storm system stalled out, too, so every now and then a flurry of snow attended the wind.

  Harry’s three horses, Gin Fizz, Poptart, and Tomahawk, played outside wearing their blankets, each one a different color to please the horse. Unless the ground was glazed with ice, Harry turned her horses out. They needed to move about, burn off energy. She would bring them in at sundown. Often she’d pause during her barn chores to watch them dash around. Poptart, the youngest and lowest on the totem pole, liked to tease the two older horses. She’d sidle up to Gin Fizz, the handsome
, flea-bitten gray, then tug his blanket askew. She’d do this until he’d squeal, then she’d torment Tomahawk. Poptart was the baby sister at her teenage siblings’ party. Usually Tomahawk and Gin Fizz indulged her. When she’d cross the line they’d flatten their ears, bare their teeth, and snort. If that failed, a well-timed kick, not connecting, usually backed off the naughty horse.

  Simon, the possum, snored slightly as he slept in the hayloft. He’d made cozy quarters out of a hay bale. Since Harry knew he was there she’d never pulled out that bale. The owl dozed in the cupola, glad to be out of the wind. The blacksnake, in deep hibernation, was out of it. She wouldn’t stir until April at the earliest. Old and huge, she was as big around as Harry’s wrist. The mice cavorted behind the walls of the tack room, having burrowed into the feed room. Theirs was a merry life despite the efforts of Mrs. Murphy and Pewter to curtail their nonstop party.

  The doors at both ends of the center-aisle barn were shut tight, but they still slapped and banged. The stall doors to the outside Dutch doors were locked, top and bottom, but wind secreted itself between the frames, causing them to shake with each blast.

  Inside, Harry’s breath spiraled out as she spread a light dusting of lime over the wet spots. She’d clean out the soiled bedding, expose the wet spots and lime them, then let them dry and come back just before sundown to pull bedding over them. Once a week, usually Saturday morning, she’d strip down each stall so it would air out. Then she’d put a generous helping of fresh wood shavings over it. She liked straw because she could make a better compost out of it for her garden, but soiled straw was heavy and strained her back with each successive full pitchfork. Also, straw was getting expensive; more expensive still were peanut hulls. Some people even tried shredded newspapers. The good thing about Crozet, among other fine qualities, was the availability of small sawmills. She could find a suitable grade of wood shavings without any trouble, for a reasonable cost. Toss a little mix of cedar shavings in each stall and the barn smelled wonderful.

  She couldn’t prove it but Harry believed those cedar shavings helped keep down the parasites, not that she had to worry about parasites in this weather.

  Though proud of her barn system, her farm management, Harry wouldn’t brag about her accomplishments. She figured the shine on her horses’ coats and their happy attitudes spoke to anyone with horse sense. As to the rest of it, if a person drove down the long road to the farm they would behold a tidy, neat, well-loved farm no matter what the season.

  Over the years she’d dug two new wells at each end of the farm to accommodate watering troughs. In time she hoped to purchase one of those irrigation systems with pipes interspersed with wheels. The system would roll at a timed rate of speed over the pastures. It was moving sculpture, a beautiful sight to her eyes. Beautiful price, too.

  Droughts had begun to visit central Virginia. Not each year, but three years out of ten, say. She needed a good hay crop. An irrigation system could be a blessing.

  Harry tried to think ahead, to plan, but no matter how well she planned Mother Nature surprised her. So did people.

  She climbed the ladder to the hayloft. Mrs. Murphy followed her. Pewter adamantly remained in the tack room. Mouse patrol, she fibbed. Tucker stayed down in the aisle.

  Harry tiptoed to Simon’s den. Fast asleep on an old white towel, each time he exhaled the small stalks of hay wavered. She put down a bowl with graham crackers soaked in honey. Simon loved sweets. His water bowl was clean.

  Of course, he could drink water out of the horse buckets. The barn stayed warm enough for the water not to freeze over. Sometimes if the mercury dropped into the single digits the buckets would freeze, but if the temperature stayed in the twenties or low thirties outside, the temperature inside usually kept above freezing. The heat coming off those large horse bodies helped, too.

  Harry smiled as she peeped over at the possum. She’d even managed last spring to trap him—which he hated—but she took him to the vet where he received every shot possible. He was an extremely healthy possum, no carrier of EPM, a malady affecting first birds, then possums as carriers, and finally horses. Much as she adored Simon, Harry had to see to the health of her horses, hence the shots. He avoided her for weeks after that. No matter how many times the pets told him the traumatic visit had been for his own good, he stayed furious. He finally got over it in June, once again showing himself to Harry, taking small treats from her hand.

  By the time Harry climbed back down it was eight-thirty A.M. She’d knocked out her barn chores. She couldn’t do anything outside. She felt good about life. Harry loved getting her chores done in a timely and orderly fashion.

  The phone rang in the tack room. She picked it up. Tucker sat at her feet.

  A muffled male voice hissed. “Curiosity killed the cat. Mind your own business.”

  Click.

  She stood there with the receiver in her hand. “Shit.”

  “What a pretty thing to say,” Pewter sarcastically meowed.

  “I’ve just been warned off,” Harry said aloud.

  “I knew it! I knew this would happen,” Tucker worriedly said.

  “It will only make her more determined.” Mrs. Murphy hopped onto a saddle on a saddle rack.

  Harry took off her barn coat. The tack room, toasty, invited one to sit down, inhale the aroma of the stable.

  “Too bad she doesn’t have caller ID,” Pewter, who was interested in technology, said.

  “That’s the truth. On a day like today I bet whoever called didn’t go to a phone booth.” Tucker swiveled her left ear toward the wall. She could hear the mice whispering.

  “That voice was familiar but he must have had a cloth over the phone or something to disguise it. But damn, I know that voice!” She threw her work gloves on the floor. “I am a perfect ass.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mom,” Tucker sympathized.

  The slender woman pulled over the director’s chair from the desk. She dropped down into it, lifting her feet up to rest on her tack trunk, a present from her father for her twelfth birthday. He’d built it from glowing cherrywood, carving her initials in a diamond shape on the front.

  Harry observed her audience, which included the mice, although she couldn’t hear them nor did she know they’d gathered around their semicircular hole partially hidden by that very tack trunk. “Think about it. How can you have an affair in Crozet? You can’t even sneeze without someone saying ‘Gesundheit.’ There are only a few ways I figure a man or a woman for that matter can have an affair. Tucker, you look so interested.”

  Tucker, her head cocked, was drinking in every word. “I am. Dogs don’t have affairs so the concept alone fascinates me.”

  “What is it that dogs have?” Pewter sniggered.

  “Sex.”

  “How crude, Tucker.” Pewter, on the saddle rack below Mrs. Murphy—they were in a vertical line—had to laugh.

  “Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, so you need to be able to hide in plain sight assuming the affairee is a person living in Albemarle County. If your paramour lives somewhere else that’s easier. Too easy. A doctor has plenty of opportunities to get away with it. A private office, hospital rooms, all those nurses. Pretty easy. Anyone in a nine-to-five job, not so easy, but anyone who is self-employed, more chances. H.H. ran a construction firm. I suppose he could enjoy trysts in an unfinished building after the workers left but he’d have to drag a bed in there or a futon. Scratch that. He has an office. A real possibility, although a wife can cruise by and most wives would have a key. Still, that’s possible. The other thing is that a lot of construction sites, the bigger ones, have trailers, an on-site office. That would be real easy. Yeah, I can see that. And the last possibility, open to anyone, not just H.H., would be sneaking in and out of the paramour’s house or apartment assuming she’s unmarried. If she’s married, it’s got to be the office or the trailer. No way could he take a woman to the club or to a motel. Not in this county.”

  “Mother, have you co
ntemplated an affair? You’ve certainly thought this out.” Mrs. Murphy’s long whiskers swept forward then back as she, too, listened to the mice.

  “What do you want, pussycat?”

  “For you to behave,” the tiger replied.

  Harry laughed. She liked conversing with her animals although she didn’t know what they were saying. “Next issue. What kind of woman? H.H. wasn’t attracted to tarts. I’ve known him all his life. He liked well-groomed women, nice looking. He wasn’t the handsomest guy around nor the richest, so he wasn’t going to get, say, a BoomBoom but he could certainly attract, m-m-m, a nice-looking secretary. Maybe someone he met socially. He didn’t have much free time. What self-employed person does? He liked kayaking.” She thought. “No. We’d know. I’m sure. There aren’t but so many women on the reservoir.”