“Saturday.”
“Who is it?”
“Bonnie Baltier and Leo Burkey. She’s driving down from Warrenton and he’s coming over from Richmond. I promised them dinner as a reward.”
“Better do the shoot soon. I mean, you never know who else will die.” Harry rolled the full mail cart over to the counter.
“That’s ghoulish,” BoomBoom indignantly replied.
“You’re right.” Harry sighed. “But I couldn’t resist. I mean I could keel over right here. We’re all so . . . fragile.”
“Prophesy.” Fair raised an eyebrow and Harry whitened.
“Don’t say that. That’s worse.” BoomBoom, an emotional type, crossed herself.
“I didn’t say it was a prophecy. I said prophesy.”
“I’m a little jangled.” Boom’s beautiful face clouded over.
“Your affair with Charlie was in high school,” Harry snapped. “That’s too far back to be jangled.”
“That is uncalled for, Harry, and you’re better than that,” Miranda chided.
“Don’t know that I am.” Harry stuck her jaw out.
“Charlie Ashcraft was a big mistake. That was obvious even in high school. But I had to make the mistake first.” Boom’s face was pink. “I know you think little of me, Harry Haristeen, and not without just cause. I’ve apologized to you before. I can’t spend my life apologizing. I am not promiscuous. I do not go around seducing every man I see and furthermore when my husband died my judgment was flawed. I did a lot of things I wouldn’t do today. When are you ever going to let it go?”
Harry, amazed, blurted out, “It’s easy to be gracious now—I even believe you. But it wasn’t your marriage that hit the rocks.”
“That was my fault.” Fair finally spoke up. He’d been too stunned to speak.
“Why don’t you three go out back and settle this?” Miranda saw more people pulling into the parking lot. “I know this is federal property and you have a right to be here, but really, go out back.”
“All right.” Harry stomped out, slamming the back door behind her.
“I think we’re on duty.” Mrs. Murphy jumped down, then scooted across the back room.
Pewter followed. Tucker walked out the front door when Fair held the door for BoomBoom. She tagged at their heels as they walked between Market Shiflett’s store and the post office to the parking area in the rear.
In the parking lot by the alleyway they stood mutely staring at one another for a moment.
“Come on, Mom, get it out. Get it over with,” Mrs. Murphy advised.
“I’m being a bitch. I know it.” Harry finally broke the silence.
Fair said, “Some wounds take a long time to heal. And I am sorry, truly sorry. Harry, I was scared to death that I was missing something.” He paused. “But if I hadn’t made such a major mistake I wouldn’t have known what a fool I was. Maybe other people can learn without as much chaos, but I don’t think I could have grown if I hadn’t gone through that time. The sorrow of it is, I dragged you through it, too.”
Harry leaned against the clapboard side of the post office, the wood warm on her back. All three animals turned their faces up to her. She looked down at them, opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“Go on,” Mrs. Murphy encouraged her.
Harry picked up the tiger cat, stroking her. “I don’t guess there is another way to learn. I don’t know if it’s worse being the one who goes or the one who stays. Does that make sense?”
“It does, sort of,” BoomBoom replied. “We’re so different, Harry, that if this hadn’t happened we still wouldn’t be best friends. I’m driven by my emotions, and you, well, you’re much more logical.”
“I apologize for my rude remarks. And I accept your apology.”
“Mom is growing up at last.” Tucker felt quite proud of her human.
Before more could be said, Mrs. Hogendobber opened the back door. “Cynthia Cooper here to see all three of you.”
They trooped back in, feeling a bit sheepish.
Cynthia noticed their demeanor and after a few pleasantries she asked them about the shoot, if they noticed anything un-usual about Charlie, if they had any specific ideas.
Each person confirmed what the other said. Nothing was different. Charlie was Charlie.
Cooper stuck her notepad in her back hip pocket. “Harry, I need to see you alone.” She shepherded Harry out to the squad car. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter watched through the window. They could clearly see from their perch on the divider.
“What’s going on?” Tucker, intently staring out the window, asked.
“Mother is frowning, talking, and using her hands a lot.”
“I can see that. I mean what is really going on?” the dog snipped.
“H-m-m.” Pewter blinked, not pleased with the turn of events.
The air-conditioning hummed in the squad car. Empty po-tato chip bags lay on the seat. Harry removed them to the floor.
“Whatever possessed you to tell Charlie Ashcraft he’d die before you’d sleep with him?”
“Coop, I don’t know. I was mad as hell.”
“Well, it doesn’t look good. Because of that outburst I have to consider you a suspect. It was a dumb thing to say.”
“Yeah . . .” Harry bent over, picked up the potato chip bags, and folded them lengthwise. “I hated that guy. But you know perfectly well I didn’t kill him.”
“Can you account for your whereabouts from six-thirty to eight last night?”
“Sure. I was on the farm.”
“Can anyone corroborate this?” Cooper wrote in her steno pad.
“Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker.”
“That’s not funny, Harry. You really are a suspect.”
“Oh come on, Cynthia.”
“You are a member of the country club. It wouldn’t have been difficult for you.”
“No, I’m not,” Harry quickly spoke. “Mom and Dad were but after they died I couldn’t afford the dues. I’m allowed to go to the club once a month, which I usually do with Susan if she needs a tennis partner.”
“But your presence at the club wouldn’t seem unusual. Everyone knows you.”
“Coop, let me tell you: there are old biddies, male and female, who have nothing better to do than cast the searching eye. If I had been there, you can be sure someone would have reported me because I’ve already played with Susan this month. I’ve used up my allotted time.”
Cynthia flipped her book closed. “Do you think you could kill?”
“Sure, I could. In self-defense.”
“In anger?”
“Probably,” she replied honestly.
“He sexually baited you.”
“He’d been doing that since high school.”
“You snapped.”
“Nope.” Harry folded her arms across her chest.
Cynthia exhaled through her nostrils. “Rick will insist on keeping you an active suspect until better shows up. You know how he is. So don’t leave the state. If an emergency should arise and you need to leave Virginia, call me.”
“I’m not leaving. Now I’m insulted. If you don’t find the killer, I will.”
“What I’d advise you to do, Harry, is watch your mouth. That’s why we’re sitting in my squad car on a hot August day.”
“I suppose BoomBoom couldn’t wait to tell how I lost my temper.”
“Let’s just say she performed her civic duty.”
“That bitch.”
“Yes, well, if that bitch winds up dead you are in trouble.”
“Coop, I didn’t kill Charlie Ashcraft.”
Relenting, dropping her professional demeanor, Cynthia replied, “I know—but shut up. Really.”
Harry smoothed the folded potato chip bags on her thigh. “I will. I don’t know what’s come over me. It’s like I just don’t give a damn anymore.” She stared out the window. “You think it’s this reunion? I’m getting stirred up?”
“I don’t know. Your high-s
chool class seems, well, volatile.” She paused. “One more question.”
“Sure.”
“Do you think this murder has anything to do with your high-school reunion?”
“Nah. How could it?”
* * *
10
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Tucker inquired of Mrs. Murphy and Pewter as the animals watched Harry fall in love with her new truck.
“She’s read the manual twice, she’s crawled under the truck, and now she’s identifying and playing with every single part she can reach in the engine. Humans are extremely peculiar. All this attention to a hunk of metal,” Pewter said.
A little breeze kicked up a wind devil in front of the barn door where the animals crouched in the shade. Harry worked in the fading sunlight.
“It’s a perfect red.” Mrs. Murphy felt more people would notice her riding in a red truck than in any other color. “Look who’s rolling down the road.”
They heard the tire crunch a half mile away, saw the dust and soon Blair Bainbridge’s 911 wide-body black turbo Porsche glided into view, a vastly different machine than the dually but each suited for its purpose.
Harry put down the grease gun she’d been using and wiped her hands on an old towel as Blair stopped. “Hey, had to see the new truck. I didn’t believe it when Little Mim told me, but when Big Mim said you truly had a new truck, one that could haul your trailer, I had to see it.”
“Big Mim is interested in my truck?” Harry smiled.
“The only topic of conversation hotter than your red truck is the end of Charlie Ashcraft. Everyone has a suspect and no one cares. Amazing.” He stretched his long legs, unfolding himself from the cockpit of the Porsche. “It seems like everyone knew Charlie but no one really knew him.”
“You could say that about a lot of people.”
“Yes, I guess you could,” he agreed.
She lingered over the big V-8 engine, admiring the cleanliness of it, touching the fuel injection ports, which meant she had to stand on an old wooden Coca-Cola box to lean down into the compact engine. “Blair, men talk. What are they saying?”
“Oh,” he waved his hand, “I’m not in the inner circle.” He took a breath.
“You know I value your judgment. You were born and bred here and, uh . . .” He stopped for a moment. “I find myself in a delicate situation.”
“Too many women, too little time.” Harry laughed.
He laughed, too. Harry relaxed him. “Not exactly, but close. Over the years we’ve become friends and I think I would have committed more blunders without you. I’m afraid I’m heading for a real cock-up, as the Brits say.”
“Little Mim.”
“Yes.” He glanced up at the sky. “See, it’s like this: women accuse men of being superficial over looks. Trust me. Women are equally as superficial.”
“You would know.” She smiled at the unbelievably handsome model.
Blair flew all over the world for photo shoots. The biggest names in men’s fashions wanted him.
“You’re not going to put up a fight? You’re not going to tell me men are worse than women?”
“Nope.” Harry jammed her hands in her back pockets. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
“Little Mim has a crush on me. Okay, I’ve dealt with crushes before and I like her. Don’t get me wrong. But over the weekend I was at a fund-raiser and, of course, the Sanburnes were there. Big Mim pulled me away from the crowd, took me down to the rathskeller, and closed the door.”
“This is getting serious,” Harry remarked. The rathskeller was a small stone room in the basement of the Farmington Country Club.
“She offered me cash if I would stay away from Marilyn. She said modeling was not a suitable profession for her son-in-law.”
“No!” Harry blurted out.
“I make a lot of money, but let’s just say my business is timesensitive. I’d be a liar if I said I’m immune to a big bribe. And I’ve had enough scrapes and breaks to my body to wake me up to that fact. My Teotan Partnership Investment is doing very well, though. But really, I was shocked that the old girl would try to buy me off.”
Through various twists and turns Blair wound up sole director of a corporation originally set up to sell water to Albemarle County. However, he’d begun bottling it and selling the mountain water—purified, of course—in specialty stores. This proved lucrative.
“You don’t need her money.” Harry thought to herself that it must be nice.
“No. But the Sanburnes control Crozet. If I spurn Little Mim, I’m cooked. If I ignore Big Mim’s wishes, I’m cooked.”
“M-m-m.” Harry removed her hands from her pockets and rubbed them together absentmindedly. “Do you like Marilyn?” She called Little Mim by her Christian name.
“Yes.”
“Love?”
“No. Not yet, if ever. That takes time for me.” He pursed his lips.
“Well, squire Little Mim around to local functions, spend some time with her and her family. Sometimes when you really get to know someone things look different. You look different, too.”
He paused and rephrased his thoughts. “If I’m up-front about getting to know her daughter, the family, Mim will take it better if I choose to spend my life with her daughter?” he questioned, then quietly added, “If the relationship should progress, I mean.”
“He is a Yankee.” Mrs. Murphy laughed because Blair missed the subtlety of Harry’s suggestion.
“Because he’s only thinking of his feelings about Little Mim.” Pewter had gotten a spot of grease on her paw, licked it, and spit.
“Go drink water,” Tucker told her.
The gray cat scampered into the barn, standing on her hind legs to drink out of the water bucket in the wash stall.
“He’s missing the point, that this gives Little Mim and Big Mim plenty of time to assess him.” Tucker stood up and shook. “Mom’s betting on Little Mim getting the stars out of her eyes.”
“No. I think Mom is giving everyone a chance to draw closer or gracefully decline. If he walks away from Mim’s offer she’ll be furious. And if he took it he’d be held in contempt by her forever.”
“He’s in a fix. You don’t think Little Marilyn knows?”
“Tucker, it would kill her.”
“Yeah.”
Pewter mumbled back, “Let’s drag that grease gun into the woods.”
“You’ll have even more grease on you.”
Pewter eyed the dog. “I hate it when you’re smarter than I am.”
All three animals laughed.
“. . . no hurry,” Harry continued. “If you go slow and be honest, things will turn out for the best.”
“I knew you’d know the right thing to do.”
“And pay court to Big Mim even if she’s cold to you. She loves the attention.”
“Right.” He folded himself back into his car. “Glad you fi-nally got a new truck.”
“Me, too.”
He drove back down the driveway without fully realizing that now he really wanted Little Mim precisely because her mother refused him. Suddenly Little Mim was a challenge. She was desirable. People are funny that way.
As soon as he was out of sight, Harry raced for the phone in the tackroom.
“Susan.”
“What?”
“I was just thinking about how people say one thing and do another—sometimes on purpose and sometimes because they don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Yes . . .” Susan drew out the yes.
“Well, I was just talking to Blair about another matter but it made me think about people concealing their true intentions. Like Charlie’s behavior toward Marcy Wiggins at the shoot.”
“He didn’t pay much attention to her at the shoot.” Susan thought back.
“Exactly,” Harry said.
“H-m-m.” Susan thought it over.
“Let’s raise the flag and see who salutes.” Harry’s voice filled with excitement.
“What do you mean?” Susan wondered.
“Leave it to me.” Harry almost smacked her lips.
“She’s incorrigible.” The tiger cat sighed.
Pawing Through the Past Page 7