The Tail of the Tip-Off

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Darn,” Susan softly said.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Now I want some.”

  “Come on over. I’ll make enough for both of us.”

  “Thanks, but that doesn’t solve the problem of my extra ten pounds.”

  “Oh, Susan, you are not fat.”

  “You haven’t seen me naked recently.”

  “Do I have to?” Harry laughed. “And we had this discussion.”

  “You know what I’m going to do? Now I’m going to make macaroni and cheese. Ned doesn’t really need it, either.” She sighed. “Bum.”

  “Ta-ta,” Harry laughed and hung up the phone.

  When she walked into her kitchen, the phone was ringing. Miranda told her about the interviews. Then BoomBoom called, which surprised Harry. Fair called. Herb called. By the time she made her macaroni and cheese she was starving but she fed the animals first.

  After she ate and cleaned up, she called Cooper who had indeed pulled up everything on the county computers. Nothing seemed amiss.

  They batted ideas back and forth, none of them illuminating.

  Mrs. Murphy sauntered back into Harry’s bedroom where she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror on Harry’s door.

  She stopped. She leapt sideways. She huffed up. She jumped sideways to the mirror. She spun around. She leapt upward, her paws outstretched, her formidable claws exposed. Then she performed a backflip, again attacking her own image.

  Tucker ambled in during this fearsome performance. After five minutes of hissing, smacking, and subduing the mirror, the tiger cat hopped onto the bed.

  “Cats are mental.” Tucker giggled.

  “I heard that.” Mrs. Murphy peered over the edge of the bed down at the corgi.

  “So?”

  “Death to dogs.” Mrs. Murphy dropped down onto her canine pal, pretending to shred her. Then she shot back up on the bed, ran a few circles on it, flew off at the mirror and for good measure smacked her image one more time.

  Pewter now entered the room. “What a mighty puss.”

  “Smoke and mirrors.” Mrs. Murphy swept her whiskers forward, puffing out her chest.

  Tucker lifted her head. “What did you just say, Murphy?”

  “Smoke and mirrors.”

  “I think that’s what’s going on. Smoke and mirrors.” Tucker sat up as the two cats stared at her, then looked at one another. Tucker had hit the nail on the head.

  * * *

  30

  Where is he?” Matthew Crickenberger stormed into Fred Forrest’s office in the county building.

  Sugar McCarry, a twenty-one-year-old feisty secretary whose fingernails had half-moons painted on them, simply said, “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying to me, Sugar. I know you’re covering up for that sorry son of a bitch!”

  “Mr. Crickenberger, I don’t know where he is.” She stood up, putting her hands on her hips. “And I don’t much like your attitude.”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn what you don’t like.” He strode over to Fred’s desk and with one arm swept everything off it. “You tell him to keep his goddamned big mouth shut. You tell him he is a lying sack of shit. You tell him if I see him I will create a whole new face for him, one without teeth. You hear me?”

  “I hear you. Now if you don’t get out of here right this minute, I’ll call security.”

  “Go ahead. I know what’s going on in this office. Gambling, and, Sugar, you’re playing with fire.” He walked out, not bothering to close the door behind him.

  Sugar heard his footsteps retreat down the hall, the green, black, and white squares of the linoleum floors so highly polished they appeared wet.

  Breathing shallowly, she put her finger on the pushbutton phone. She was going to dial security but thought perhaps this was too big for the security in the county office buildings, housed in old Lane High School. Instead she called the Sheriff’s Department.

  Deputy Cooper, just finishing writing up a fender bender at the main library only a few blocks away, arrived within fifteen minutes. Sugar told her everything as accurately as she could. She injected no personal feeling into her report.

  “Did you know that Fred called a press conference to question the plans for the sports complex?”

  The surprise on Sugar’s face proved she didn’t know. “What?”

  “Look, I don’t know whether Tazio’s plans are good or not. They’re beautiful, that’s what I know, and I know that Matthew Crickenberger has built large structures and done a good job. So he won the bid. Up to this point I don’t recall there being a public denouncement of anything Crickenberger has done—not from your department. From the public, yes. Any kind of development is seen as bad by some people, but, Sugar, do you have any idea, any idea at all, what is going on?”

  “No.”

  “Did Fred come down especially hard on H.H.?”

  “No.” Her eyebrows shot upward. “Why do you ask that?”

  “H.H. was in the running to build the complex and now he’s dead and so is Mychelle.”

  “They had the funeral over in Louisa County. Her people are from Louisa.”

  “I know,” Cooper said.

  “I went. Fred went. Maybe he’s stirred up. You know how some people get. They have to take out their emotions on someone.”

  “Yes. You don’t appear too upset over Mychelle’s death.” Cooper hit her with a zinger.

  Sugar’s nostrils flared, a blush of color rose to her already rouged cheeks. “I didn’t like her, Deputy. No point in pretending, I really couldn’t stand her. She thought she was better than me. Thought she could give orders. I think she just loved giving orders to a white girl but that doesn’t mean I wished her dead. I just wished she’d get another job or that I would.”

  Cooper folded her arms across her chest. “I believe you.”

  “I don’t care whether you believe me or not,” Sugar sassed. “I am sick of all this. Fred’s been a real shit. He’s never been Mr. Wonderful to begin with but lately he’s been—nothing’s right. I don’t take his phone messages right. I don’t reach him on the road fast enough. I don’t—well, you get the idea. And then Mychelle. I tell you what, she played him like a harp. Oh, out in public, on the site, she deferred to him. Mr. Forrest this and Mr. Forrest that and he ate it up, ate it up. She could get anything out of him she wanted. This place has been no fun. Not Fun Central. I’m looking for another job. Not in government. No pay anyway. I can do better.”

  Cooper chose not to be offended by her tone. “I hear you.”

  Sugar, realizing that Cooper was also paid by the county, softened. “I’m sorry, Coop. I didn’t mean to, well, you know. I’m sick and tired of it and it’s just like Fred to do something like this and not warn me. He’s not sitting here when Crickenberger comes on in here, his face as red as a turkey wattle. I read in the paper about people losing it and just blowing people away. At the post office and stuff, going postal.”

  “Fred should have told you.”

  “Creep.” Sugar lowered her voice although no one was with them.

  “You can go to court and ask for a restraining order against Matthew if you’re afraid he’ll come back.”

  “Hey, I’m out of here. Anyway, he wants Fred not me. I’m not going to court. I’ve seen enough around here to know I’m never going to court if I can help it.”

  “Amen.”

  “And you know what really fried me? He’s standing there right in front of my desk screaming at me. Screaming that I know what’s going on, that I’m gambling, that I’m playing with fire. I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. I play bingo. I go with Mom Friday nights to the firehouse and play bingo. He’s crazy.”

  What Cooper knew and no one else did except for Rick Shaw was that Mychelle Burns had withdrawn most of her savings account, $5,000. For someone in Mychelle’s position, that was a lot of money. For Cooper that was a lot of money.

  “Did he accuse you o
f gambling?”

  “Sort of.” She glanced at her computer then back at Coop.

  “M-m-m, office pools?”

  “Oh yeah, but I don’t play. I don’t care about football and basketball. Bores me to tears. I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t understand how they do it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you just pick a winner, I understand that, but for the office pool you have to pick the scores. For the World Series you have to select the winning game, you know, like the sixth game. I’m not doing that. It’s too complicated.”

  “Is there ever an office pool for UVA sports?”

  She thought about this. “Five bucks a head.”

  “Point spread?”

  “I don’t understand point spreads.”

  Cooper smiled. “Doesn’t matter.” She sat on the edge of Sugar’s desk as her feet hurt. “What about basketball?”

  She shook her head. “Fred would kill anyone who bet against the girls’ basketball team. He loves those girls. No bets against UVA girls.”

  “Did he and Mychelle ever talk about the games?”

  “Yeah, sometimes. I tuned them out. I don’t like basketball.”

  “Well, do you ever remember them talking about point spread?”

  “No. Neither one talked much, really. They usually stuck to business, but if they didn’t it was basketball.”

  “Did you ever hear them make a bet with each other, you know, something like, oh, Jenny Ingersoll will make fourteen points tonight?”

  Sugar’s brow wrinkled. “Oh, I don’t know. It would have gone in one ear and out the other.”

  “Ever see or hear either of them pick up the phone and place a bet?”

  “No.” She waited a beat, though. “Could have done it on their cell phones.”

  “We’ve investigated the calls from all their phones. Nothing out of line. Fred doesn’t even call home.”

  Sugar leaned forward. “Are you suspicious about Fred? Like he killed Mychelle?”

  “No.”

  She exhaled audibly. “Good. I really don’t want to be here if that’s what you’re working on.”

  “Do you think he could have killed Mychelle?”

  “Nah.”

  “Why?”

  “Just don’t. He really liked Mychelle. Her death has hit him hard.”

  “Most murders are committed by someone who knows the victim, often quite well.”

  “I know. I read the papers. I watch TV, but Fred, nah.”

  “Sugar, how long have you worked here?”

  “Two years. I graduated and got a job.”

  “Charlottesville High?”

  “Murray.” Sugar mentioned a high school specializing in gifted young people who often had trouble flourishing in the big high schools—Charlottesville, Albemarle, Western Albemarle.

  “Ah. Didn’t want to go on?”

  “No. School bores me. I’m lucky I graduated.” She twirled a pencil. “I was kind of rebellious, you know.”

  “That comes as a big surprise to me.”

  Sugar laughed. “Yeah, well, what can I say?”

  “A couple more questions. Did you ever notice Mychelle making large expensive purchases, like a leather coat or just something that caught your eye?”

  “No.”

  “Fred?”

  “Um, no. Fred always goes someplace good on his vacation. That’s about it.”

  “Well, thanks. Now you can say anything you want to Fred, but if you tell him how upset Matthew really was when he charged in here I expect I’ll be getting a call.” Cooper pointed to the mess on the floor. “You going to leave that there?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  Cooper considered this. “Up to you but it will fan the flames.”

  “Fred would take a picture. He’s just the type.” Sugar sniggered. “For future use.”

  “We’re thinking along the same lines.”

  As Cooper reached the door Sugar asked quietly, “Am I in danger?”

  “I don’t think so. But if anyone frightens you or you think something is weird, you call me, I don’t care if it’s three in the morning, you call me.” She gave her her card with her personal number and her cell number.

  “I will.” Sugar paused, then slipped the card in her skirt pocket. “Is Matthew right? Is some kind of gambling going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Cooper honestly replied. “I wish I did, but that’s my job. I’ll find out. You can bet on that.”

  * * *

  31

  The St. Luke’s Parish Guild gathered as usual in the welcoming meeting room. Cherry logs crackled in the fireplace. The old rugs, worn through to the backing in some places, remained on the floor. The carpet men absolutely, positively, without fail would be there Friday morning to start work. By this point no one was holding their breath.

  Matthew Crickenberger, composed, chaired the meeting. Herb added information as needed. Herb believed the chair should rotate and so it did. He thought this fostered leadership. If one didn’t wish to be a leader, then it taught appreciation for those who were.

  Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, Tucker, Brinkley, Cazenovia, and Elocution considered raiding the communion wafers again. Given that their initial depredations had not been discovered, they all voted to leave well enough alone. And since this upcoming Sunday was a communion Sunday their misdeed would most likely be discovered. Instead they settled into Herb’s office, all sitting on the large chesterfield sofa. Herb, like Susan Tucker, liked chesterfield sofas. The one in his living quarters was dark green, this one was a rich maroon.

  They could hear Tazio and BoomBoom in the next room discussing fund-raising ideas.

  “How come St. Luke’s has so many poor parishioners?” Brinkley wondered.

  “Doesn’t. All the churches cooperate to help with the food drive,” Cazenovia, the senior kitty, replied.

  “Humans eat strange stuff. Asparagus,” Tucker said.

  “I like asparagus,” Elocution demurred.

  “You do?” Tucker was aghast.

  “I like greens every now and then,” Elocution replied, “especially with my communion wafers.”

  “What does Tazio feed you?” Tucker loved hearing about food.

  “Puppy chow mixed with canned food. Sometimes she gives me the fat off meat, too.”

  “Oh, that sounds delicious.” Tucker licked her chops.

  “Tuna.” Pewter closed her eyes, purring.

  “Chicken.” Mrs. Murphy smiled.

  “Mouse tartare,” Cazenovia declared.

  “A giant knucklebone, jammed with marrow.” Tucker wagged her nonexistent tail.

  “Gee”—Brinkley’s soft eyes were puzzled—“how do you get your human to give you such treats?”

  “Since you can’t go into the market with them, it’s hard,” Tucker advised. “Seize the day. If you walk by a restaurant with big picture windows, wag your tail if someone is eating steak or a hamburger. Point with your right paw. Gets them every time and they really figure it out. You can train them with food.”

  “Don’t expect miracles,” Cazenovia added.

  “Well, you need to practice being cute.” Mrs. Murphy rolled over showing her beige tummy with the stripes lighter than on her back. “Like this.”

  “Do I do that in front of a restaurant?” Brinkley innocently asked.

  “No, no. Your human will pitch a fit because you’ve rolled in dirt or whatever is on the sidewalk. Just point.” Tucker demonstrated a point. “Trust me, they get the point.”

  “Very funny,” Pewter dryly said.

  “How long does it take to train a human?”

  “Brinkley, all your life. Now some lessons they retain such as your feeding time because it’s tied to their feeding time.” Mrs. Murphy liked the yellow Lab. “Going to sleep, waking up at the same time, they learn that pretty quickly, too. Truth is, we’re usually on similar schedules so it’s not too taxing for them. But other things, getting them to notice somet
hing out of the ordinary or warning them that another human isn’t right, oh, that’s hit-and-miss.”

  “Really?” He nudged the tiger cat who patted his nose.