“Come in,” Mrs. Hogendobber invited her. “You usually do.”
Susan dropped into the seat opposite Miranda. “Poor Ned. People are calling up, outraged that he’s defending Kerry McCray. The fact that every citizen has the right to a trial before their peers escapes them.”
“Trial by gossip.” Mrs. Hogendobber shook her head.
“If people want to be ugly, there’s not a lot you or Ned can do about it. If I were in trouble, I’d sure want Ned as my attorney.”
Susan smiled. “I should count my blessings. After all, my husband wasn’t killed, and what are a few hate calls?”
“I bet Kerry doesn’t even have a toothbrush,” Miranda thought out loud. “Girls, we should go over to her house and pack some clothes for her. This is the United States of America. Innocent until proven guilty. Makes no matter what public opinion is, she’s innocent under the law until proven guilty. So we shouldn’t shun her.”
The other two sat quietly.
Finally, Susan replied, “Miranda, you always bring us back to the moral issue. Of course we’ll go over there after work.”
40
“This place is pin tidy.” Mrs. Hogendobber put her hands on her hips. “I had no idea Kerry was such a good housekeeper.”
“Remind me never to invite you to my place.” Cynthia Cooper carefully packed some toiletries.
Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, and Susan called Cynthia before going over to Kerry’s. The Sheriff’s Department scoured the place, so Rick Shaw said okay to the ladies’ visit as long as Cynthia accompanied them.
He didn’t know that Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tee Tucker accompanied them also.
While Susan and Harry threw underclothes, T-shirts, and jeans as well as a good dress into a carryall bag, the animals went prowling.
“There’ve been so many people in here, so many scents.” Tucker shook her head.
Mrs. Murphy spied the trapdoor to the attic. Pewter craned her neck at the door.
“Think we could get up there?” Pewter asked.
“I’ll yodel. Mom hates that worst of all.” Tucker laughed, threw her head back, and produced her canine yodel which could awaken the dead.
“My God, Harry, what’s wrong with your dog?” Cynthia called from the bathroom.
Harry walked into the hallway to the bedrooms and beheld Tucker yowling in the key of awful. Mrs. Murphy circled around her legs. Pewter was frozen under the attic trapdoor.
“If I go any faster, I’ll make myself dizzy.” The cat slowed down.
“You three are pests. I should have left you home.”
“Oh, yeah?” Murphy reached up with her claws on Harry’s jeans, wiggled her rear end, and climbed up Harry so quickly that the young woman barely had time to complain about the claws.
“Ouch” was all she could say as Mrs. Murphy reached her shoulders, then stood on her hind legs and batted at the attic door.
“If she doesn’t get it, she’s comatose,” Pewter wryly noted.
Susan stuck her head out in the hallway. “A human scratching post. What a good idea. What does she see up there?” Susan noticed Murphy’s antics.
“A trapdoor, stupid,” Tucker yapped.
“Hey. Hey, Cynthia,” Pewter called, as did Susan.
Cynthia and Mrs. H. walked out as Susan called. Susan pointed to the trapdoor. Harry cocked her head to one side to see it and then Mrs. Murphy jumped off.
“Did I tell you that your animals were here when we arrested Kerry? Tucker ran off with the plastic bag in which we had the cord, the suspected murder weapon, all sealed up. She dropped it in the field. Mrs. Murphy used her claws like a chainsaw. What a mess. Fortunately, I retrieved it before she damaged the evidence. This place has to be five miles from your house.”
“I’m going to start locking you two up. You hear?”
“We hear but we aren’t listening,” Murphy sassed.
Pewter was impressed. “Did you really do that?”
“Piece of cake,” Mrs. Murphy bragged.
“You couldn’t have done it without me.” Tucker was jealous.
Susan brought a chair in from the kitchen, stood on it, and opened the trapdoor. A little whiff of scorching-hot air blasted her in the face.
After searching around, they found a ladder in the basement. Cynthia went up first, with a flashlight from her squad car. “Good. There’s a switch here.”
Mrs. Murphy, who loved climbing ladders, hurried up as soon as Cynthia crawled into the attic. Tucker, irritably, waited down below. Harry climbed up. Pewter followed.
“Even the attic is neat,” Cynthia noted. “You know, I don’t think our boys were up here. Don’t repeat that. It makes the department look sloppy, and guess what, they were sloppy.”
“It’s easy to miss what’s over your head.”
“Harry, we’re paid not to miss evidence,” Cynthia firmly told her.
“I’m coming up too,” Susan called up.
“Well, don’t knock down the ladder when you get up here, Susan, or we’ll be swinging from the trapdoor.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Susan appeared in the attic. “How can you breathe?”
“With difficulty.” Harry grimaced.
“What’s up there?” Miranda called from below.
“Not much. Two big trunks. An old pair of skis,” Harry informed her.
“A large wasps’ nest in the eave.” Mrs. Murphy fought the urge to chase wasps. The buzz so attracted her. The consequences did not. “Let’s open the trunk.”
Cynthia pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and gingerly opened the old steamer trunk. “A wedding dress. Old.”
Harry and Susan, on their knees, looked in as Mrs. Murphy gracefully put a paw onto the satin. Cynthia smacked her paw. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Lift up the dress.” The cat held her temper.
“Bet this was Kerry’s grandmother’s. It’s about that vintage.” Susan admired the lace.
“Harry, take that end and I’ll lift this one,” Cynthia directed.
They lifted up the beautiful old dress. Underneath were old family photo albums and some letters from overseas.
Harry picked up a pile neatly tied in a ribbon. The postmark of the top letter was Roanoke, Virginia, 1952. The pile under that was from overseas from the mid-1980s. They were addressed to Kerry’s mother. “I think this is her mother’s stuff. She probably brought the trunk over here after Barbara McCray died. Do you need to go through it, you know, read the letters and stuff?”
Cynthia rooted through the rest of the trunk, then carefully replaced everything. “I don’t know. If Rick wants me to do it, I can, but I’ll ask first. Right now we’ve got a lot on her.”
“It’s circumstantial,” Susan quietly reminded her.
“That $250,000 is a lot of circumstance.” Cynthia sighed and closed the lid of the trunk.
Pewter, squatting on the second trunk, directed them. “Hurry up and open this one. It’s hot up here.”
“Go downstairs, then,” Mrs. Murphy told her.
“No, I might miss something.”
Cynthia gently lifted Pewter off the trunk. “Heavy little bugger.”
Mrs. Murphy laughed while Pewter fumed.
Cynthia lifted the lid. “Oh, boy.”
Harry and Susan looked into the trunk. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, on their hind legs, front paws resting on the trunk, saw it too.
“Her goose is cooked!” Mrs. Murphy exclaimed.
A black motorcycle jacket, black leather pants, and a black helmet were neatly placed in the trunk.
“You know, I had hoped it wasn’t her.” Cynthia softly closed the trunk lid.
“Me too.” Susan sadly agreed.
“It looks bad, but—” Harry lost her voice in the heat, then regained it. “But she’ll get a fair trial. We can’t convict her over a motorcycle helmet.”
“I can tell you, the Commonwealth’s Attorney will sure try,” Cynthia said.
Susan p
atted Harry’s shoulder. “It’s hard to accept.”
They climbed down the ladder, Mrs. Murphy first, and filled in the expectant Mrs. Hogendobber.
“Well?” Tucker inquired.
“Motorcycle gear in the trunk.” The cat, dejected, licked Tucker’s ear. Grooming Tucker or even Harry made her feel useful if not better.
“Oh, dear” was all Mrs. Hogendobber could say.
Pewter clambered down to join them. “Kerry’s going to be stamping out license plates.”
41
Norman Cramer’s funeral was as subdued as Hogan Freely’s was grand. Aysha, disconsolate, had to be propped up by her mother, immaculate in black linen. Ottoline couldn’t bear Aysha’s grief, but as she and her daughter were the center of attention, she appeared as noble as she knew how. Although part of it was an act, part of it wasn’t, for Ottoline lived for and through her daughter.
The residents of Crozet, stunned at this last murder, sat motionless in the pews. Laura Freely wasn’t there, which was proper, as she was in deep mourning. Reverend Jones spared everyone the fluff about how death releases one to the kingdom of glory. Right now no one wanted to hear that. They wanted Kerry McCray tried and sentenced. If hanging were still in the penal code, they’d have demanded to see her swing. Even those who at first gave her the benefit of the doubt were swayed by the money in her account, and the motorcycle gear in her attic.
Mrs. Hogendobber constantly told people the courts decide, not public opinion. No one listened. Susan, as Ned’s wife, was particularly circumspect. Harry said little. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the other shoe hadn’t yet dropped.
She sat in the fourth pew in the front right side of the church, the pews being assigned on the basis of when your family had arrived in Albemarle County. The Minors settled here over two centuries ago. In fact, one of the Minors founded Crozet’s Lutheran church and was buried in the old graveyard behind it. The Hepworths, her mother’s family, were Church of England, and they held down their own front-line pew in the Tidewater.
She sat there even when the service ended and the congregation filed out. She scrutinized their faces in an unobtrusive way. Harry scanned for answers. Anyone could be in on this. She imagined each person killing the biker, then Hogan, and finally Norman. What kind of person could do that? Then she imagined Kerry’s face. Could she kill?
Probably anyone could kill to defend oneself or one’s family or friends, but premeditated murder, cold-blooded murder? No. She could so easily picture Kerry bursting into fury and killing Norman or Aysha, but she couldn’t imagine her tracking him down or hiding in the back seat of his car, popping up, asking him to pull over, and then choking the life out of him with a rope. It didn’t fit.
She walked outside. The overcast sky promised rain but had yet to deliver. Blair and Fair were waiting for her.
“You two a team or something?”
“We thought we might go to the cemetery together. It will keep us from squabbling, now, won’t it?” Fair shrugged his shoulders.
“Are you two up to something?”
“What a distrustful thing to say,” Blair mildly replied. “Yes, we’re up to being gentlemen. I think we both are ashamed of how we acted at Mim’s. We’ve decided to present a united front in public and spare you further embarrassment.”
“Remarkable.” Harry dully got in the car.
42
Labor Day marked the end of summer. The usual round of barbecues, parties, tubing down the James River, golf tournaments, and last-minute school shopping crammed the weekend.
Over two weeks had passed since Norman was strangled. Kerry McCray, her defense in the hands of Ned Tucker, was freed on $100,000 bail, raised by her much older brother, Kyle, who lived in Colorado Springs. He was shocked when informed of events, but he stuck by his sister. Kerry, ordered by Ned to keep her mouth shut, did just that. Kyle took a leave of absence from his job to stay with her. He feared Kerry would be badly treated. He swore on a month of Sundays that the motorcycle gear was his. When it came back from the lab, no blood or powder burns had been found on it. Most people said he was lying to save his sister’s skin, ignoring the fact that in the early seventies he’d had a motorcycle.
The sun set earlier each day, and Harry, much as she loved the soft light of fall and winter, found the shorter days hectic. So often she woke up in the dark and came home in the dark. She had to do her farm chores no matter what.
Fair and Blair took polite turns asking her out. Sometimes it was too much attention. Mrs. Hogendobber told her to enjoy every minute of it.
Cynthia Cooper and Rick Shaw relaxed a little bit. Cynthia hinted that as soon as schedules could be coordinated, they had a person who could sink Kerry’s ship.
Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and even Pewter racked their brains to think if there was a missing link, but no one could find it. Even if the humans could have understood the truth about scent, which never falters—one’s scent is one’s scent—and even if they could have understood that Kerry’s scent was not on the murder weapon, chances were they would have discounted it. Humans tend to validate only those senses they perceive. They ignore any other species’ reality, and, worse, they blot out any conflicting evidence. Humans need to feel safe. The two cats and dog were far wiser on that score. No one is ever safe. So why not live as much as you can?
The avalanche of mail at the post office on Tuesday following the holiday astonished Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber.
“Fall catalogues,” Harry moaned. “After a while they get heavy.”
Little Marilyn walked through the front door and up to the counter. “You must hate holidays.”
“Nah.” Harry shook her head. “It’s these catalogues.”
“You know what I’ve been doing?” She put her purse on the counter. “I’ve been rereading the letters Kerry and Aysha and I sent to one another when we were abroad and the letters Aysha sent to me when I returned home. I can’t find anything unbalanced in Kerry’s letters. It’s what you would expect of two young women right out of college. We wrote about where we went, what we read, who we met, and who we were dating. I guess I’ve been searching for some kind of answer to how someone I’ve known so long could be a murderer.” She rested her head on her hand. “No answers. Of course, I still have a shoebox left. Maybe there will be something in there.”
“Would you mind if I read them too?”
“Harry, that’s private correspondence.” Miranda frowned.
“That’s why I’m asking. Marilyn can always say no.”
“I’d be happy for you to read them. Maybe you’ll catch something I’ve missed. You know how the keys you’re looking for are always the ones right under your nose. You wanted to see the stamps anyway.”
“In that case, would you mind if I joined you?” Mrs. Hogendobber invited herself, and, naturally, Little Marilyn said she wouldn’t mind at all.
Two cups of coffee and a slice each of Mrs. Hogendobber’s cherry pie later, the ladies sat in Little Marilyn’s living room surrounded by shoeboxes. Mrs. Murphy squeezed herself into one where she slept. Tucker, head on her paws, dozed on the cool slate hearth.
“See, nothing special.”
“Except that everyone expresses themselves well.”
Harry added, “My favorite was the letter where Aysha said you should lend her a thousand dollars because you have it to lend.”
Little Marilyn waved her hand. “She got over it. Well, I’ve finished the last. Might as well put these back in order.”
Big Marilyn knocked on the door. Her daughter lived on a dependency on her mother’s estate. Dependency, although the correct word, hardly described the lovely frame house, a chaste Federal with a tin roof and green-black shutters. “Hello, girls. Find anything?”
“No, Mother. We were just putting the letters back in place.”
“You tried, that’s the important thing.” She breathed deeply. “What an inviting aroma.”
“Cherry pie. You need to sample it. I�
�m branching into pies now. Market sells out of my doughnuts, muffins, and buns by eight-thirty every morning. He says he needs something for the after-work trade, so I’m experimenting with pies. Don’t think of this as calories, think of this as market research.”
“Bad pun,” Harry teased her.
“Just a tad.” Mim held her fingers close together as Miranda blithely ignored her and cut out a full portion. As she did so, a drop of cherry sauce plopped on a letter.
“Clumsy me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Little Marilyn instructed her.
Mrs. Hogendobber placed the knife on the pie plate, then bent over. She carefully wiped the letter with a napkin. “Hmm.”
“Really, Mrs. Hogendobber, don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not, actually.” Miranda handed the letter to Harry. “Queer.”
Harry studied the airmail envelope from France, postmarked St. Tropez, 1988. “Always wanted to go there.”
“Where?” Mim inquired.
“St. Tropez.”
“One of Aysha’s. I don’t think she missed a city in France.”
“Look closer.” Mrs. Hogendobber pointed to the postmark.
Harry squinted. “The ink.”
“Precisely.” Mrs. Hogendobber folded her hands, as happy in Harry’s progress as if she’d been a star pupil.
“What are you two talking about?” Mim was nosy.
Harry walked over and placed the letter in the elder Marilyn’s lap. Mim pulled out her half-moon glasses and held the letter under her nose.
“Look at the color of the ink.” Harry cast her eyes around the piles of letters for another one from France. “Ah, here’s one. Paris. Look at the color here. This one is from Kerry.”
“Different, slightly but different.” Mim removed her glasses. “Aren’t inks like dye lots? This letter is from Paris. That one from St. Tropez.”
“Yes, but postal inks are remarkably consistent.” Harry was now on her hands and knees. She pulled out letters. “The letters from 1986 are genuine. But here, here’s one from Florence, December 1987.” Harry handed that letter to Little Marilyn while giving her one from Italy the year before.
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