Probable Claws

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Pretty much. Go light on pellets. Use senior food for the older guys. It’s more expensive but properly fed those old horses will hold their weight. And a good blanket never hurts. An easy day.”

  Returning to her most pressing problem, Cooper said, “I called Dawn Hulme, Gary’s ex-wife. Wanted to reach her before anyone else did. If you can do that you often get an unprepared response.”

  “And?” Harry’s eyebrows rose.

  “Shock. No phony sorrow. She said they rarely spoke over the years. I asked could she tell me why they divorced. She said she started proceedings. He never listened to a word she said and she was sick of it. He didn’t beat her, run with other women. He was married to his work; but then, many men are. She repeated again that he never listened to anything she said, asked about her day, what she felt. Nothing. She asked him to go to counseling. He refused and her next call was to a divorce lawyer. And she admitted it was acrimonious.”

  Fair, spoon midair, remarked, “I listen.”

  “You do. Really, I’m the one who could be accused of not listening, of being a little dense,” Harry confessed.

  “A little!” Pewter yelled up from her food dish, painted with her name on the side.

  “Now, Pewts,” Mrs. Murphy said.

  “She never listens to one thing I say. There’s a box of rocks upstairs.” Pewter indicated Harry’s brain, which did make the other two animals laugh.

  “Don’t you find it odd that we were standing on the sidewalk and the motorcyclist cruised up?” Harry wondered.

  “No. Opportunity equals preparation. I think Gary would have been killed no matter what; and when the motorcyclist saw us there it presented a better opportunity than if he had to park, go into Gary’s office, or wait for a client to leave. He might have left a few pieces of thread from his scarf or a tread from his boots, I don’t know; but this way, slow down, drive over, pull the trigger. Nothing is left for forensics to pick up. Whoever did this can think quickly. At least that’s my idea now.”

  “I would have never thought of that,” Harry admitted.

  “You don’t need to.” Cooper smiled.

  “And it could have been a woman?” Fair inquired.

  “The tinted visor of the helmet covered the whole face. Motorcycle clothing tends to be leather and given the wind, especially now that it’s cold, I think anyone would wear a heavy leather jacket, leather pants, and boots. You wouldn’t know gender from the clothing.”

  “Coop, I never heard one word about him running around after Dawn. That divorce must have throttled any thoughts of another relationship.”

  “Women do kill and, Harry, how do we know that wasn’t a professional killer?”

  “That’s outrageous,” Harry blurted out.

  “So it seems, but I have to consider everything no matter how seemingly absurd. One thing I do know and that is that murder makes sense. The killer has a good reason to him or her. The only time I would waffle on that is impulse killing—you know, two guys are loaded at a bar, one thinks he’s been mocked, a fight ensues, etc. That’s impulse killing and the truth is that stuff happens mostly among the uneducated, the young. Of course, publicly I can’t say that but generally an impulse killer is not too intelligent. Someone who kills in cold blood is.”

  “Ah,” Harry murmured.

  “Ah and don’t try to solve this. Your curiosity does not serve you well.” Cooper was firm. “Are you in danger? No, probably not. This killing was planned and worked out totally in the killer’s favor. You start poking around, things might turn ugly.”

  “Hear, hear.” Fair seconded Cooper.

  “She doesn’t listen to me. She won’t listen to them,” Pewter prophesied.

  4

  November 1, 1786

  Wednesday

  Still a bit warm, some leaves waved slightly on the trees as Ewing Garth with his two beautiful daughters walked west from the imposing brick house in which he lived. The girls, as he called them, each married to a good man, lived in identical clapboard houses one quarter of a mile from the main residence. Catherine was twenty-two, the elder by two years. Her house’s back side faced west, the Blue Ridge Mountains. She could watch sunsets from the back porch. Rachel’s home, opposite her sister’s by perhaps another quarter mile, also faced the mountains. Rachel could repose on her front porch with her blond husband, watch the birds, watch the colors of the mountains change. For Catherine and Rachel this enticing vista made even the hard days worthwhile.

  Ewing, a touch portly, stepped out briskly. He stopped at the edge of the harvested cornfield.

  “Good year.” He beamed.

  “We have plenty stored along with oats, barley, and sweet, sweet hay,” Catherine chimed in, happy, for she took charge of the extensive stables.

  “Father, when are you coming with Charles and myself to see the progress at St. Luke’s? You will be astonished at how much he has accomplished since the Taylors’ funeral.”

  The Taylors, husband and wife, were buried October 15. Respected, liked, their mutual passing from lung disease brought everyone together. To these two people belonged the honor of being the first to sleep in the lovely cemetery roughly a hundred yards behind the church structure. Set off with stone walls, it seemed to promise peace.

  The entire church, constructed of fieldstone, was topped with a slate roof. Quads behind the church reflected the central quad between the two wings, which resembled each other. A covered arched walkway on both sides connected the two buildings at the ends with the church. Even with the protection of the stone arches, if the wind blew the weather would hit you. The church itself sat smack in the middle, large lawns behind and in front of it. The exterior was complete. Now the fastidious interior work occupied Charles West, Rachel’s husband.

  “I will visit, I promise.” His eyes swept down to a timber tract beyond the cornfield.

  “You’re still shocked that I’ve become a Lutheran,” Rachel teased him.

  “No, no, my dear. Your sister and I will uphold the Episcopal faith.” He grinned.

  Catherine slyly inserted, “Uphold not necessarily believe.”

  Ewing chuckled. “What would your sainted mother say?”

  The two sisters looked at each other and laughed.

  “I’ve seen regiments of woolly bears.” Catherine cited the furry caterpillars seeking safe harbor to spin their cocoons.

  “Yes, quite a few. Will be a hard winter. They portend such things.” Ewing began to walk again. “I’ve heard that Roger Davis has been asked by Mr. Madison, James not William, to assist him with his voluminous correspondence and writing. Mr. Davis can speak Latin as fluently as Greek.”

  “And he never lets us forget it.” Catherine grimaced for they were the same age but taught by different tutors.

  “Too much Cicero.” Rachel smiled. “I quite liked the poetry though.”

  “You’re good with languages.” Catherine complimented her younger sister. “I’m good with numbers.”

  “Ah yes,” Ewing said. “I received a letter today from Baron Necker, my friend in Paris. It’s interesting the people a young man meets on his grand tour. My father was wise to send me. Here it is thirty years later and the baron and I still write, he’s somewhat younger, full of ideas. He told me the royal treasury is almost bankrupt, the French deficit is over a hundred million livres, and repayment of their debt is two hundred fifty million in arrears. Payment to the Army and Navy is now erratic, as it is for government ministers. You have a head for numbers, my dear, but clearly Louis XVI does not.” He looked at his elder daughter.

  “The numbers are so big it’s hard to fathom.” Rachel shook her head.

  “We have domestic and foreign debt enough. Virginia is faltering at paying down her war debts. Indeed our leaders during the war appear not to have been able to add or subtract.” Ewing relished the long slanting rays of the sun on his face. “I think we will discharge our debt but what about the other states? Then what?”

  “Well, i
t can’t be as bad as France.” Rachel took some comfort in that, plus she wasn’t too interested in politics.

  “The king must call an assembly. There’s no other way.” Ewing sighed, for an assembly would bring problems of its own.

  Any time a group of men gathered to decide upon weighty issues, little good rarely came of it, in his opinion.

  “All France has to do is declare a war on Austria or Spain, march in, and steal whatever that nation has lying about. That’s the way they do things over there.” Catherine shrugged.

  “Now, where did you hear that?” Ewing turned to her.

  “From you, Father. You’ve always said they are a lot of squabbling children with an idiot at their head.”

  “Did I really say such a thing?”

  “You implied it. You are much too gracious to be as blunt as I.” Catherine reached for his hand and squeezed it.

  “Well, no one in their right mind will lend France money.” He stopped at the edge of the timber tract. “And if we don’t set our own house in order, no nation will lend us anything either. No credit. You can’t move forward without credit.”

  “Father, you have vats of credit.” Catherine, who worked with her father, admired his business acumen.

  “But I am not a nation. I can see to our increase but I can’t manage the affairs of thirteen states, each of them so different from the other.”

  “We’d be better off if you did.” Catherine praised him.

  “Now you sound like your mother. She was always puffing me up.” He grinned.

  “Speaking of puffing up. Have you heard that Maureen Selisse Holloway”—Rachel used both her married names for Maureen’s first husband had been murdered—“is rumored to be trying to buy a title for Jeffrey?”

  Jeffrey was the second husband, divinely handsome, perhaps fifteen to twenty years younger than his fabulously wealthy wife. She wasn’t telling.

  “What?” Catherine’s jaw dropped.

  “Yes. DoRe told Bettina.” Rachel mentioned the head of Maureen’s stable, a middle-aged widower who was courting their head cook and head slave woman, herself a widow. All crossed their fingers that this would work out and each feared, but kept silent, that Maureen would find a way to hold back DoRe.

  “We don’t have titles here,” Ewing forcefully said.

  “She’s painted her coat of arms from her birthplace in the Caribbean on her coach. She’ll buy him a title then pretend it’s of no consequence, but we will be expected to address them as Count Pooh-bah,” Catherine predicted.

  “Foolishness.” Ewing turned for home.

  “But amusing to watch.” Catherine slipped her arm through his as did Rachel on his other side.

  “Father, if DoRe asks Bettina to marry him, you will have to buy him. It’s only right.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “And you will have the two best coachmen in Virginia. Won’t that give Yancy Grant hives.”

  Catherine mentioned their head coachman, Barker O., as well as another horse breeder.

  “Maureen will make it difficult.” Rachel knew how petty and vicious Maureen could be.

  “Oooh,” Ewing drawled, “if the baronetcy or dukedom is dear enough she’ll sell and sell quickly.”

  “How do you feel?” Rachel asked her sister, changing the subject.

  “Fine. I’m only in my third month. This is it. No more. Two children is enough.”

  “Three,” Rachel announced. “Three and I also have three.”

  Rachel had two girls.

  “No, I am not having three children.”

  “You have John and I have Charles.” Rachel laughed out loud as she mentioned their husbands.

  “You girls go to the same school. Your mother used to say that about me. She’d call me her ‘old boy.’ ”

  “It is true, Father? Men don’t grow up.” Rachel pinched him as she said that.

  “I feel old enough. My bones creak,” he complained.

  “Pfiffle. You can wear out men half your age. You’re trying to work on our sympathies,” Catherine remarked.

  They all laughed as arm in arm they strolled back, the air chilling now that the sun had set. Three people bound by blood, by the times, by deep love. How fortunate that they could not see the future, but then no one can.

  5

  December 29, 2016

  Thursday

  “You have a sharp eye,” Cooper noted.

  “I don’t know about that but I try to notice things.” Harry stood in the small foyer of Gary Gardner’s office. She’d been asked to meet Cooper there as she knew his office work habits well.

  “He worked alone. Small operation. He was the creative one. He really didn’t need other people, especially with what computers can do now.”

  “That’s what he always said. That’s why he moved here. The company became too big in Richmond, too many layers of people piddling in his work. He was happy here.”

  “The way of the world these days. Nothing gets done quickly, that’s for sure. Everyone wastes time covering their ass.” Cooper noticed the framed photographs on the walls. “So I’ve been talking to former clients. No one has had a bad word to say about him.” Cooper turned to face Harry. “How often would you say you’ve been in his office?”

  “A lot. He came here in the mid-eighties. I was a kid when he moved here, but he and Mother got on so I’d accompany her to his office. He designed homes or additions for friends; as I got older I’d see him socially. He did a beautiful job for Nelson and Sandra Yarbrough, also Sara Goodwin. People saw his work. He helped Tazio Chappars and our group with the old school buildings we’re returning to their original state but with modern plumbing, etc. They researched old photographs, building materials of the time, really the late-nineteenth century. He made it fun and since neither one could design anything new, they didn’t butt heads. I doubt that they would have anyway.”

  Tazio Chappars, in her late thirties now, moved to the area after graduate school. Her family and college friends, Midwesterners, warned her that Virginia, a Southern state, would not be welcoming. They were wrong. Then again Tazio, warm, good-natured, could win over most people.

  Cooper returned to the expensively framed colored photographs. “I’m not an architectural historian but I do read. Mostly everyone around here wants the Georgian or Federal look, he seemed more influenced by the French.”

  Harry smiled. “Gary swore there were enough people in the area to design à la Palladio. He went his own way. He teased me and said I needed to expand my history mostly in the direction of the French.”

  Cooper smiled back. “So is anything different in here?”

  “The office?” Harry moved into the large room with his big computer, the drafting table in the middle of the room, also large, a regular desk, and the square bookshelves all along one wall.

  “My plans are still on the table.” She looked up and around, walked over to the bookshelves. “Coop.”

  The tall deputy came alongside her friend. “What?”

  “These shelves were packed. Some books are missing.”

  “Could he have taken them home?”

  “No, because when we met, I was here at the drafting table. The shelves were full.”

  “Can you remember any of them?”

  “Beautiful picture books. They’re still here.” She pointed to large coffee table books of French architecture, a few on great American houses. “His Vitruvius’s De Architectura is still here.”

  Cooper pulled one off the shelf, as there were ten volumes. “It’s in Latin.”

  “Gary said it was easy to read because it’s so technical. Little has changed. He went to an expensive prep school, St. Paul’s, I think. The boys had to take Latin. Said it was the best thing he ever did.”

  “You took a language, didn’t you?”

  “French. Four years in high school, four at Smith, and I’m still lousy at it. Occasionally he’d say something in French just to tweak me. Gary was a highly educated ma
n.”

  “Think. What’s missing?”

  Harry slowly walked along the shelves, stopping at the gaps in the lined-up books. “Did you look in his computer?”

  “Our tech wiz did. The only thing he mentioned was that Gary kept records of his recent work but nothing concerning Richmond.”

  “I would guess Rankin Construction Company has records of his designs there. And as far as I know no one here ever complained about his work in Richmond.”

  “No.”

  Harry stopped at a gap on a lower shelf. “Mmm.”

  “What.”

  “He kept boxes, you know those boxes like extra-large fat books. He kept building codes in them. They’re gone.”

  “Building codes. I’ll have his house double-checked but I don’t remember them.”

  “You know the big orange kind, looks like hard cardboard, old books. I can’t imagine anyone stealing them because you can get all that stuff online.” Harry was puzzled.

  “Did you ever look in them?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know what was in them.”

  “You’re right. But I do remember what was printed on the spines: codes and the years they were updated or changed from before he moved here. The recent changes he got off the computer. Every county has their own codes. Confusing, to me anyway.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No,” Harry replied as she returned to her design on the drafting table. “But you all secured this office. The files are missing. Did the department take them?”

  “No.” Cooper frowned. “The files were taken after the scene was supposedly secured. I’m not familiar with this office, but you are. I just felt something was off. I will, however, have his house double-checked for them,” she vowed.

  “Let me ask you a question. How many Ducatis are registered in Albermarle County?”

  “Very few. Six and one is from the late 1950s.” She paused. “We’ve spoken to each of the owners. No one was riding yesterday. We’ll send Dabney out”—she named a young fellow officer—“to double-check the models, but since we don’t really know the model of the bike on which the killer rode all we can do is gather stats and wait.” Cooper glanced outside as a light snowfall was starting. “How’d you know what the bike was?”