The Tail of the Tip-Off

by Rita Mae Brown

  “So you do think the murders are related?” Harry couldn’t hide the note of triumph in her voice.

  “Yes, I do, and once you’ve killed two people, what’s a third?”

  * * *

  25

  The basketball game that evening was a subdued affair made even more dolorous by a poor performance. UVA lost by seven points.

  Mychelle’s body had only been found that morning, but the story was already on the television news. Those not watching the news soon heard about it from their neighbors on the bleachers. People, being the curious creatures that they are, walked by the broom closet and stopped to stare. A few were disappointed that blood wasn’t smeared on the floor.

  Even Matthew Crickenberger, ever ebullient, was quiet. He handed out drinks as always but didn’t have the heart to blow his noisemakers. BoomBoom dispiritedly shook her blue and orange pennant a few times but that was about it.

  Fred Forrest, too shaken by Mychelle’s murder, didn’t attend the game.

  After the game, Harry sprinted to her truck. She had talked with Fair on the phone earlier. Both of them decided this wasn’t the night for him to take Harry and BoomBoom out for a drink.

  The lights of the university receded as she rolled down Route 250 passing Farmington Country Club on the right, Ednam subdivision on the left. About a mile from Ednam the old Rinehart estate reposed on the left. Subdivisions like Flordon and West Leigh were tucked back into the folds of the land but much of it remained open. A sparkle of light here or there testified to a cozy home, a plume of smoke curling up out of the chimneys.

  Harry loved leaving Charlottesville, rolling into the quiet of the countryside. She’d shift her eyes right and left searching for the reflection off a deer’s eyes or a raccoon. Seeing that greenish glare, she’d slow down.

  Then she reached the intersection of Route 250, which curved left toward Waynesboro and then Staunton. She took the right into Crozet, new subdivisions dotting the way into town. She passed the old food processing plant, currently empty and a cause for sadness. She passed the tidy row of small houses on the north side of the road. A tricky little curve ahead kept her alert. The supermarket was on the right and the old, still-intact train station perched on her left.

  When she reached the intersection with the flashy new gas station she turned left. A blessed absence of traffic allowed her to poke along. She could see the lights on in Tracy Raz’s apartment. He’d renovated the top floor of the old bank building, which he was buying. Closemouthed, he wouldn’t tell anyone what he planned to do with the building but, knowing Tracy, it would be interesting. He hadn’t even told Miranda, whose curiosity was reaching a fever pitch.

  When she finally pulled into the long driveway to the farm she felt oddly happy. She loved her little part of the world and most of the people in it. She knew people’s grandparents and parents, she knew their children, she knew their kith and kin including the ones not worth knowing. She knew their pets and their peculiarities—both the pets’ and the people’s. She knew who had the oldest walnut tree, the best apple orchard, who put up the best Christmas decorations, who was generous, who was not. She knew who liked the color red and who liked blue, who had money, who didn’t, and who lied about what they did have. She knew who could ride and who couldn’t, who could shoot and who couldn’t. She knew the frailties of ego and body. She’d seen the ambitious rise, the lazy fall, and drink and drugs claim their fair share of souls. She’d watched the ebb and flow of gossip about any one person and had been a victim of it herself, divorce being a spectator sport. She’d seen undeserving people prosper occasionally and the deserving brought low through no fault of their own. She knew chaos was like a chigger. You couldn’t see the little blighter but the next thing you knew, there it was under your skin biting the hell out of you.

  Murder was chaos. Apart from the immorality of it, it offended her sense of order and decorum. Furthermore, a murder acted like cayenne pepper on her system, it speeded her up. It inflamed her own ego. How dare someone do this? And what really nibbled at her was the fact that whoever did thought they were smarter than other people. She flat-out hated that. She would not be outsmarted.

  When she pulled up to the back door, she saw three pairs of eyes staring out from the kitchen window. She heard Tucker barking a welcome.

  She sprinted to the door, walked through the screened-in porch, opened the door to the kitchen and a rapturous welcome.

  “My little angels.”

  “Mom!” came the chorus.

  “Kids, I’m going to figure out what’s going on around here. We’ll show ’em.”

  “She never learns.” Tucker’s ears drooped for a moment.

  “And we do double duty. Her senses are so dull, without us she would have been dead a long time ago,” Pewter complained.

  “And so would we,” Mrs. Murphy forcefully said. “She saved me from a sure death at the SPCA and she took care of you, too, Pewter. She talked Market Shiflett into giving you a home when he found you abandoned under the Dumpster. The fact that you ate him out of his convenience store is another matter. She saved us both. Where she goes, we go.”

  Pewter, chagrined, replied, “You’re absolutely right. One for all and all for one.”

  Tucker laughed. “You all are so original.”

  As Tucker had been a gift to Harry from Susan Tucker, she didn’t feel saved but she still felt lucky. Harry loved her and Tucker loved Harry, devotedly.

  “Aren’t we chatty tonight?” Harry picked up Murphy, kissing her forehead, and then she picked up Pewter, kissing her, too.

  “Human kisses.” Pewter grimaced.

  As Pewter wriggled out of Harry’s arms, Murphy kissed the human back, her rough tongue making Harry giggle. Then she put Murphy down and knelt to kiss Tucker. Harry loved her animals and, if truth be told, she probably loved them more than people.

  As for her declaration that she would figure out what was going on, she might have been a little less cocky if she had been sitting in on Mychelle Burns’s autopsy.

  * * *

  26

  Cooper, wearing a lab coat, stood beside the corpse as Tom Yancy worked.

  Sheriff Shaw had prowled the corridors of the Clam during the game. He didn’t have to say why. She knew her boss. He was a good law officer, his methods were laudable, but he also had a sixth sense. Sometimes if he’d just walk around or sit at a crime scene, he’d get what he called “a notion.” Through his example, she’d learned to trust her own instincts. There was no shortcut to hard police work but, still, those instincts could put you on the right track.

  “No strangulation. No rape.” Yancy talked, his face not two inches from Mychelle’s neck. “No bruises.”

  “No struggle?”

  “No. The first wound you saw, the one here right under the thoracic cavity didn’t kill her. It was this one, not so easily seen.” He pointed to a surprisingly clear stab wound. A few drops of blood discolored the entry point right below her heart. “The weapon nicked her heart but it took some time for it to kill her. She had a strong heart.”

  “No similarity at all to H.H.?”

  “No. Not in method. She faced her killer. He or she stabbed her once, then twice. Close. The killer was very close. He used a stiletto or thin-bladed knife. Delivered with force. The internal bleeding was much more severe than the external. As I recall, you said there was blood but not a mess of it.”

  “Right.”

  “She wasn’t expecting the blow. There are no fingerprints on the back of her neck. If she had tried to flee, the killer would have reached around and held her by the back of the neck to deliver this wound at this angle. If she’d turned away or he’d grabbed an arm, the wound would be at a different angle, flesh would be torn. My educated guess is this blow was a complete surprise delivered by someone she knew well enough to let him or her get very close.”

  “Stiletto.” Cooper thought to herself that this was an odd choice for a weapon, something for opera, no
t real life or death.

  Yancy half-smiled. “Be a lot easier to knock someone off with a butcher knife but a big knife is harder to conceal.”

  “Anything else I should know?” Cooper asked.

  Yancy shrugged. “She had genital herpes.”

  “Did H.H.?”

  “I saw no external sign.”

  “Do you have any blood left from that autopsy?”

  “Down in Richmond. Yes.”

  “Better run a test for it. It’ll show in the blood, won’t it?”

  “Oh yeah.” Yancy exhaled. “I wish we’d get that toxicology report on H.H. soon.”

  “Amazing what shows in the blood, isn’t it?”

  “The human body is amazing, how people abuse it and it just keeps ticking. I’ve cut open people whose livers were like tissue paper. I’d lift them out and they’d disintegrate, I mean come apart between my fingers. And that wasn’t what killed the corpse. Makes me wonder.”

  “Apart from the genital herpes, anything else?”

  “She was in good health. The knife pierced the left lung, as you can see here”—he held down the chest cavity where he’d opened her up—“then nicked the heart. With each beat of the heart the nick tore a little bit more. The blood seeped out.”

  “Was it painful?”

  “Yes. You can feel your heart.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Hope she believed in Him. Maybe it gave her comfort.”

  “How strong would you have to be to stab her twice like that?”

  “Not weightlifter strong but strong enough.”

  “A slight person could do it with great force?”

  “Sure.”

  “H-m-m, well, the usual. Tests for drugs, alcohol, and I guess poison.”

  “She wasn’t poisoned. The body doesn’t lie, Coop. She died by violence.”

  Cooper noticed Yancy’s blue eyes. “More than any of us you see what we do to one another. I see it in a different way but you see it in the tracery of the veins.”

  “Like you, I try to keep my professional distance and I’d be a liar if I said there weren’t people on this slab who didn’t deserve it. But a young woman, prime of life, I gotta wonder. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if she’d been sexually molested it would make more sense to me. This,” he shook his head, “this was about as far away from sex as you can get.”

  * * *

  27

  Wearing a white hard hat, Fred Forrest buttonholed Matthew Crickenberger at the site of the new sports complex. Tazio and Brinkley had just arrived, too. Matthew greeted the wiry man with no affection and none was returned. Tazio said hello to Stuart Tapscott and Travis Critzer who would be in charge of the earthmoving operation. They didn’t get a chance to put in another word.

  Fred folded his arms across his chest. “Don’t think because I’m shorthanded that you can get away with anything.”

  “Oh, come on, Fred, I’m not trying to get away with anything. I’ve always gone by the code, exceeded code.” Matthew’s voice betrayed a hint of disgust.

  “You’re all the same,” Fred sneered. “I’m hiring someone real soon and I’ll have him up to speed in no time. You’d better toe the line. Going to be my special project, right here.” He tapped the frozen earth with his foot. “Going to drop by just about every day.”

  “You can do whatever you want,” Matthew, his face florid, replied.

  “That’s exactly right.” Fred, no trace of humor, jutted his chin out. “Think you were damned lucky to get your environmental impact studies passed. UVA.” He sniffed, implying the studies were accepted because this was a UVA project.

  The truth was the opposite. Any time the university sought to expand or build, the county faced the hue and cry from non-university people that the school, like a giant gilded amoeba, was smothering the county. Any UVA request going before any county board or the county commission itself bore unusual scrutiny. Also, any university project was certain to be reported in the newspaper, radio, and on TV. The public then would respond.

  Fred knew that. He wanted to get Matthew’s goat. If the opportunity presented itself for Fred to needle Matthew, he took it.

  “You’ve got a copy of the study, Fred. Read it yourself.”

  “Did. That’s why I said you’re lucky.”

  Stuart Tapscott, an older and wiser man, had to walk away. Travis, in his thirties, followed Stuart’s prudent example. They didn’t want to say something they would later regret.

  Tazio stuck by Matthew. Brinkley stuck by Tazio.

  “Get that damned dog out of here.” Fred pointed a finger at the handsome animal.

  “No.” Tazio stared Fred straight in the face.

  “You’ll do what I tell you or I can make life interesting.” He practically licked his lips.

  “It’s not against code for me to have a dog with me on the job. And you push me, I’ll push right back. Go bully someone else.”

  “You think because you’re a woman and black I’ll go easy on you? Think again. You’re all the same, you architects, big construction people. You think you’re better than us. Make more money. We’re just clock punchers. I know what you think. How you think. Get away with whatever you can.”

  “Leave Tazio alone, jerk,” Brinkley warned as he put himself between Fred and Tazio.

  “That dog’s growling at me. I’ll call Animal Control.”

  “He’s clearing his throat.” Matthew, feeling unflappable today, smiled. “Fred, run along. We’ve got work to do.”

  “I’ll go when I’m goddamned good and ready.”

  “Suit yourself.” He turned his back on Fred, put his hand under Tazio’s elbow, guiding her to a spot ten yards away where a peg with surveyor’s tape was in the ground. Brinkley remained next to Tazio but looked over his back.

  Fred followed them. “Design will never work. Too much glass. Too expensive to heat.”

  “It will work. Not only will it work, it will be less expensive to heat and cool than the building currently in use, and this building is twice the size, thanks to my design”—she squared her shoulders—“and thanks to modern materials.”

  “Glass will pop out in the first big storm. Pop out like what happened to the John Hancock Building in Boston.”

  “Fred, we haven’t even broken ground, why don’t you plague someone else? You can’t find fault with dirt.” Matthew winked at Tazio.

  “Yeah, leave my mother alone.” Brinkley seconded the motion.

  “I can declare the foundation inadequate. Shifting substrata.”

  “Go ahead. I’ve got a geologist and an engineer to prove you wrong. Go ahead, Fred, get on the wrong side of UVA. You aren’t going to find one thing amiss, you’re going to delay construction, cost the university money and, buddy, I wouldn’t give a nickel for your social life in this town.”

  “Scares me.” He feigned fear then said with malice, “I know how to cover my ass.”

  “Is that why Mychelle is dead?” Matthew verbally slipped the knife right between his ribs.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean!” The cords stood out on Fred’s thin neck.

  “That you were banging her, buddy, and it got too hot. You just did her in.”

  Face contorted with rage, he spat, “You son of a bitch. Liar.”

  “You were in love with her. I’ve got eyes.” Matthew had the whip hand now.

  Tazio and Brinkley watched with lurid fascination. Stuart, Travis, and the other men stopped what they were doing to watch and listen, too, since Fred hit the screaming register.

  “Never! Never. I ought to kill you. I ought to tear your tongue outta your head.”

  “You’re awfully emotional for a man who wasn’t in love with a woman. Awfully emotional for someone who says he’s innocent.” Matthew was unfair, but then Fred had been unfair to him.

  Fred placed his feet apart, doubled his fists. “Loved that girl like she was a daughter. You’ll turn anything slimy, Matthew. Way your mind works.”
>
  “Well, I ask myself, why would someone like Mychelle get killed? Sure can’t be anything to do with her job. She was an irritant but not a major problem, and there’s nothing she can offer any of us, good or bad, to get herself killed. That leaves a few little things, drugs or some kind of sordid affair. I pick the sordid affair and you are the most likely candidate, although why she’d bother with you is beyond me. Then again, I don’t claim to understand women.”

  “Sick. You’re sick.”