“Do you get hungry for timothy or for grain?” Poptart’s large brown eyes focused on the tiger, now standing on her hind legs to touch noses with the large creature.
“No. You’re right. I can’t expect you to like what I like and vice versa.”
“We like lots of the same things. Just not foods.”
“You’ll be surprised at how much less grain you’ll need to feed her.”
“I like my grain,” Poptart protested.
“She’s an easy keeper.” Harry patted the gray neck. “I give her half a scoop, a couple of flakes of hay, plus she’s got all that grass to eat.”
Fair also patted Poptart on the neck, then led her out to the pasture behind the barn, where she kicked up her heels and joined Gin Fizz and Tomahawk, who had been measured before she had.
“How come you didn’t tell me about Tracy Raz?”
“Fair, he just started renting here.”
“Seems a good man.”
“Miranda likes him. I’ve noticed she doesn’t quote the Scriptures around him as much as she does around us.”
Fair laughed as he leaned over the fence. Poptart bucked, twisted, and bucked some more.
They walked back to the house. The evening had begun to cool down. Tracy was calling on Big Mim. They sat in the kitchen together along with Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker.
“Sure you’re okay?” He reached for her hand.
“Yes.” She squeezed his offered hand. “It shocked the hell out of me. Both Mim and I about fell over.”
“I would have about passed out myself.”
“A dead body is bad enough but the”—she paused—“incongruity of it . . . that’s what shocked me.”
“It looks like this reunion might be, uh . . . eventful.”
“Well, that’s just it.” She grew suddenly animated. “I don’t remember anything from high school. I mean I don’t remember some awful thing that would provoke revenge. Especially senior year, the big one.”
“Yeah. I can’t remember anything either. But maybe something did happen in your senior year. You know how sometimes things are vague or you’re on the edges of it? Obviously, I was a freshman in college. All I remember from that year is missing you.”
“I wrote you a letter a day. I can’t believe I was that disciplined.” She laughed.
“Maybe you loved me,” he softly suggested.
“I did. Oh, Fair, those were wonderful and awful times. You feel everything for the first time. You have no perspective.”
“You had some perspective by the time we married. I mean, you dated other men.”
She patted his hand, removed hers, then noticed the animals, motionless, had been watching them. “Voyeurs.”
“Interested parties.” Murphy smiled.
“If this is going to get mushy I’m leaving,” Pewter warned.
“Bull. You’re as nosy as we are.” Tucker giggled.
“I feel like we’re the entertainment tonight.” Fair spoke to the animals.
“You are,” Pewter responded.
“They’re my family,” Harry said.
“So am I. Like it or not.” Fair leaned forward in his chair.
“Can you remember how you felt back then? The wild rush of emotion? The sense of being your own person?”
“I remember. People grow in lots of different ways. Sometimes they stop. I think Charlie stopped. Never got beyond high school. Leo got beyond it but his defenses stayed the same: shoot from the hip. Susan has matured.” He thought for a moment. “I think I have, too.”
“Have I?”
“Yes, but you won’t trust anyone again.”
“I trust Mrs. H. I trust Susan.”
“I should have said men. You won’t trust men.”
“I trust Market.”
“Harry, you know what I mean. You won’t trust men as romantic partners. You won’t let a man into your life.”
“I guess.” Her voice sounded resigned.
“You know, I dropped by tonight to see how you were—check the horses, too. I don’t know if it’s your reunion or because I’m getting close to forty . . . the murders or that this late summer has been uncommonly beautiful, but whatever it is—I love you. I have always loved you, even when I was acting a fool. And I think you love me. Love me the old way. Down deep.”
She stared into his clear light eyes. Memories. Their first kiss. Dancing on the football field to the car radio. Driving to colonial Williamsburg in Fair’s old 1961 Chevy truck. Laughing. And finally, loving.
“Maybe I do.”
“Equivocal?”
“I do.”
He leaned across the table and kissed her.
“It would be more romantic if they’d wash one another’s heads,” Pewter advised.
“They’re not cats,” Mrs. Murphy said.
“Nobody’s perfect.” Tucker burst out laughing.
* * *
27
At seven in the morning a haze softened the outline of trees, buildings, bridges. Rick Shaw and Cynthia Cooper, in separate vehicles, pulled into the paved driveway to the doctors’ offices. Johnson & McIntire, a brass plaque, was discreetly placed next to the dark blue door.
The white clapboard building looked like the house it once was. Back in the early fifties, Larry Johnson bought it and the house next door, where he continued to live.
Larry, slightly stooped now, his hair a rich silver, opened the door himself when the officers of the law knocked.
“Come in, come in.” He smiled genially. “If you all are up as early as I am, it must be important. The murders, I suppose.”
“Yes.” Rick closed the door behind him as they followed Larry into his office covered with a lifetime of service awards and his medical diploma.
“Can I get you all some coffee?”
“No, no, thank you. We’re already tanked.” Deputy Cooper fished her notebook from her back pocket.
“Larry.” Rick called the doctor by his first name as did most people. “You knew Charlie Ashcraft and Leo Burkey.”
“I delivered them. In those days you did everything. G.P. meant just that.”
“You saw them grow up?” Rick stated as much as he asked.
“I did.”
“And you would therefore have an assessment of their characters?”
“I think so, yes.” Larry leaned back in his chair. “Are you asking for same?”
“Yes. I took the long way around.” Rick laughed at himself.
“Charlie was a brilliant boy. Truly brilliant. He covered it up as any good Southern gentleman would do, of course. His success in the stock market didn’t surprise me as it did others. He was upright in his business dealings. Even as a child he was inter-ested in business, and honest. As you know, his downfall was women. He was like most men who were spoiled and coddled by a mother. They go through the rest of their life expecting this treatment and what amazes me is there is always a large pool of women willing to be used. But if you separated Charlie from the woman thing, he was a decent man.”
“What about Leo?” Coop asked.
“Strong. Even as a child, quite physically strong. A pleasing boy. You had to like him. Another good-looking kid, not as dramatically handsome as Charlie but good-looking. I saw little of him after he left for college and then moved to Richmond.”
“Did these two have anything in common that you could see?”
“No.”
“What about medically? Was there anything they both suffered from? Depression or something?”
“No. Not as far as I know. After all, I stopped being Leo’s doctor after high school. Both boys had the usual round of strep throat, flu, chicken pox. But nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Could either man have infected sex partners with venereal diseases?” Rick was zeroing in on the area he sensed would be most fruitful.
Larry put his hands behind his head, leaning back. He glanced at the ceiling, then back at the two before him. “As you know, the relationship
with a patient is confidential.”
“We know, but both patients are dead and I hope and pray these murders are at an end. But Larry, what if? I’ve got to find out everything I can. Everything.”
Larry’s voice dropped as he brought his hands back on his desk. “Rick, the two men don’t have anything in common medically. Again, I haven’t seen Leo Burkey as a patient since he graduated from college, which had to be, well, 1984 or 1985, I guess.”
Cynthia checked her notes. “Right. 1984.”
“So there are no illegitimate children from high-school days? No follies?”
“Not for Leo. Again, not under my care. Charlie, as you would imagine, was quite a different matter.”
“Yes,” Rick said. “Tiffany said you’d know everything.”
“She did, did she?” Larry shook his head. “Life is too short to be so unforgiving. Of all Charlie’s ex-wives and ex-flames she’s the one who hates the most. It will destroy her in the end.”
“Could you be more specific?” Cynthia tried to hide her impatience.
“He fathered a child after graduating from high school. The child was put up for adoption. The rumor always was that he fathered the child in high school but it was during his college days. That was the beginning of a career of sexual irresponsibility that rivals that of any rock star. He refused to use any form of birth control. He believed if a woman went to bed with him that was her responsibility. He used to say, ‘If she’s dumb enough to want the baby, she should have it.’ That sort of thing. He slept with so many people he contracted genital herpes, which he happily passed along. I treated him for gonorrhea eight times in his lifetime. Curiously, he never contracted syphilis.”
“What about AIDS?”
Larry leveled his gaze. “Yes. At the time of his death he was HIV-positive but showing no signs. He had resources and could afford every new drug that came down the pike, plus, apart from the sexual risks he took, he kept himself in good shape.”
“He could have infected others?” Cynthia was scribbling as fast as she could.
“Could and did.”
“Will you give us their names?” Rick knew he wouldn’t.
“I can’t do that.”
“Any of them married?”
“Yes.”
“Brother.” Rick sighed.
“The husband doesn’t know and I suppose he won’t know until he discovers he’s infected or his wife shows symptoms. People can be HIV-positive for years and not know it. This virus mutates, it alters its protein shell. In a strange fashion it’s an intelligent virus. Every day we learn more but it’s not enough.”
“Charlie slept with woman A. Did she become positive immediately?”
“I don’t honestly know. Yes, I can’t give you a hard and fast answer. We do know of cases where an uninfected person has repeated contact with an infected person, sexually, and does not contract the disease. There’s a famous case of two female cousins, African-American, who are prostitutes. They have been repeatedly exposed to AIDS, yet remain immune. The other oddity is that different people show clinical signs of infection at different times. A fifteen-year-old boy may show signs quite soon after becoming positive whereas a thirty-five-year-old man might not show any for years. It’s puzzling, infuriating, and ultimately—terrifying.”
Rick and Cynthia sat silent.
Cynthia finally spoke. “Does the woman know she’s HIV-positive?”
“Yes. One is in denial. I see that quite often when a person learns they have a disease for which there is no cure. Flat denial.” He folded his arms across his chest, glanced at the ceiling. “The other woman died last year. There were two. There may be more but I’ve only treated two. I’m not the only doctor in town.”
“I see.” Rick clasped and unclasped his hands.
“People are capable of great evil—even nice people. Life has taught me that. Korea opened my eyes and then general practice did the rest.” He paused. “Having said that, I think I’m a good judge of character. The woman still alive would not kill Charlie Ashcraft. I really believe that. I don’t think Leo Burkey is even in the picture on this one.”
“Would Charlie Ashcraft ever sleep with men?” Cynthia surprised both men by asking what to her was obvious: Charlie and Leo could have been lovers.
A considered moment followed. Larry cleared his throat. “Under the right circumstances, yes. Charlie was driven—and I mean driven—by sex. He was irrational and irrationality is always dangerous. We tend to laugh off sexual dysfunction in men, especially if it’s of the aggressive variety, satyriasis.”
“Beg pardon?”
“The male version of nymphomania,” Larry answered Cynthia.
“Oh.”
“We laugh and tell jokes about what a stud he is but in fact he’s sick. In Charlie’s case he was sick in body as well as in mind.”
“Did Tiffany know about the AIDS?” Rick inquired.
“He was not infected when they were divorced, which was three years ago. Charlie became HIV-positive shortly thereafter and displayed no signs of the disease. In other words, he was HIV-positive but he had not yet developed full-blown AIDS. I don’t know if Tiffany knew about it. She would, of course, know about the genital herpes and she no doubt suspected there were unclaimed children along the way.”
“More than the one?” Cynthia was surprised, although on second thought she wondered why.
“Yes—but only one lives here. The others were out of town.”
“My God, did he provide for them or anything?” Like most women, Cooper had a strong maternal streak and couldn’t understand how some men could be so callous concerning their offspring.
“As far as I know he didn’t do squat.” Larry rose from his chair and sat on the edge of his desk before them. “We’re professionals. You and I see things most people do not see and don’t want to see. We aren’t supposed to be emotional. Well, I fail because there were times when I could have killed Charlie myself—and yet, I liked the guy.” He held up his hands.
“Larry, the mother might have strong motivation to kill Charlie.”
“Not now. The child is in the late teens and in no danger from infection. Charlie became HIV-positive seventeen years after the child’s birth. As for the other women, why kill him now? Furthermore, Rick, the murders of Charlie and Leo appear to be by the same person. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“The connection is the answer and I don’t have it.” He cleared his throat. “When do you get the autopsy report on Leo?”
“Not until next week. Everyone is on vacation. The coroner’s office is shorthanded.”
“Would you like me to call in and ask for special blood work?”
“Yes, thank you. If they both were HIV-positive that would be a beginning.”
“I’ll call them right now. We can talk to them together.” He glanced at the clock on his desk. “Someone will be there by now.”
The rest of the day Cynthia Cooper thought about the young person in Crozet. She hoped the person would have Charlie’s looks and his brilliance but not his grotesque irresponsibility. Then she thought how she looked at people every day but didn’t really see them. They were all accustomed to one another. If there was a resemblance to Charlie, she’d missed it.
* * *
28
The slight drone of a bumblebee, growing stronger by the moment, irritated Mrs. Murphy to the point where she opened one glittering green eye. The marvel of insect engineering zoomed closer. She batted at it with a paw but the large black and yellow creature zigged out of the way.
“Losing your touch,” Tucker laconically commented.
“Bull. I’m lying on my side. If I’d been sitting up that bomber wouldn’t have had a chance. ’Course, if I’d been sitting up she wouldn’t have come near me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tucker, also on her side under a hydrangea bush, said.
Mrs. Murphy sat up. “Where’s Pewter?”
“In the post office. Leave the air-co
nditioning? Ha!”
The sweltering heat intensified. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker had left the post office to scrounge around Miranda’s garden in the late morning. It didn’t seem so hot then but they couldn’t find anything of interest despite a soft, lingering chipmunk scent, so they fell asleep.
Pawing Through the Past Page 15