Probable Claws

by Rita Mae Brown

  “I’m sure that’s the case.” Rachel smiled. “I’ll talk to Father to see if he’ll allow Jeddie to live over there alone.”

  “It’s not good to live alone. Remember Noah’s ark? We’re supposed to go two by two.” Bettina said this with authority, biblical authority no less.

  Serena gave the older woman a sideways glance then started to hum an old song about love.

  Rachel smiled. “Two by two.” She grinned at Bettina, got up to rejoin the endless talk with Maureen. All about Maureen, of course.

  Serena, voice low, said, “We all know you’ve got your eye on DoRe.”

  “Honey, it’s better if DoRe has his eye on me. Tell you what, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life it’s that for a woman to make sure she gets what she wants…well, let’s just say it has to be the man’s idea.”

  Serena, who married at seventeen, nodded. “It’s a lot of work.”

  11

  January 4, 2017

  Wednesday

  “One missing.” Coop crossed her arms over her chest.

  Harry, walking along the row of file boxes, nodded. “1984. The year he moved here.”

  The two, in Gary’s office, had placed the file boxes back on the shelf. All the contents had been examined, the boxes fingerprinted, scanned. The little rubber dinosaur toys, some tins, wooden boxes were replaced, not being considered important. He kept odd little things: animal teeth, old feathers, cat’s-eye marbles. Given the shock of the public death, Sheriff Shaw called other law enforcement people in for a few days’ help. The work flew along gratifyingly fast. But no fingerprints on the boxes other than Gary’s and few at that. He must have rarely consulted these papers. Whoever lifted the materials wore gloves. Given the cold surely they’d wear gloves outside but the books had been inside. Forethought.

  The bad weather kept most businesses closed. The two women observed no foot traffic, not much car traffic, either. The silence was unusual.

  Cooper stood scanning the inviting work space. “Nothing else was touched. The ceramic bowl on his flat work desk contained forty-five dollars in neatly folded bills. Still there. His bathroom, no medication. Of course, that could have been stolen.”

  Harry responded, “The only pill I ever saw him take, ibuprofen. He hated medication. He’d always tell me if I ever had another operation the drugs could be worse than the disease. I argued back but then again, when my breast cancer was discovered, it was a small tumor. Not advanced. No radiation or chemo. I was lucky. Five years, clean.” She took a deep breath. “Sorry. This is about Gary, not me.”

  Cooper waved the apology away. “Your operation affected him enough that he worried about you. And doctors push drugs. Maybe he had past experience.”

  “I don’t think so but perhaps his ex-wife did.” Harry offered that thought.

  “I guess I’ll drop in on the ex–Mrs. Gardner, now Hulme. Never hurts to do that anyway.” Cooper sat down in the desk chair while Harry sat on the stool in front of the impressive antique drafting table.

  The dog and two cats sniffed at the back door.

  “Faint. Grease. A hint of grease.” Tucker lifted her nose.

  Mrs. Murphy checked out the faint line just inside the door. “Car grease or motor oil, you think?”

  “Gary parked his car in the back. Could have been on his boots.” Tucker sat down. “Nothing on the door. Sometimes a door will brush against a person and you know where they were last, like, at the supermarket. Supermarkets always smell the same.”

  “They use the same cleaners.” Mrs. Murphy looked at the doorknob. “If the person came in the back door, the person who removed the files, they had to leave their scent. It’s been too long. Nothing. Just nothing.”

  “They knew how to open locks or had a key.” Tucker listened to the two women talking in the workroom. The back door opened onto a small entrance, a coatrack and bench against the wall. Just a small square space, a bathroom there, and then the door into the workroom.

  Pewter, uninterested in their door examination, batted at the floor along the wall. “A major spider!”

  The ground spider, not a web spinner, lifted its front legs, ready to fight. Pewter took a step back. The other two came over to look at the spider.

  “That is a biggie,” Tucker agreed.

  Pewter batted at the eight-legged creature again. It moved with speed to the back door before she could catch it. Although she didn’t really want to catch it, she did want to chase it. A small chip in the baseboard gave the spider safety. She ducked in.

  “Bet she has a nest in there,” Mrs. Murphy said.

  “How could Gary work here and not know he was keeping a big spider?” Pewter questioned.

  “The spider could hear him walking. The floor would tremble, right? So she could always hide.” Tucker was right about that.

  Pewter watched the little chip in the baseboard, tapped it, then moved a few feet to the bottom of the door.

  “Here’s another little space.” Pewter flattened, squinted, fished at the small space with an extended claw. “A dime.”

  Disappointed, she dropped the dime, wasn’t exciting. The three walked into the workroom. The door between the small back entrance and the workroom was kept closed to conserve heat. Harry and Coop had parked in the back, entered through the back, and left the door to the workroom slightly ajar.

  Harry looked at her friends, who walked in to sit at her feet.

  “Spider patrol,” Pewter announced.

  Harry smiled at the gray cat as she pulled out pencils from a jar clamped on the right side of the drafting table.

  “Clever. This way he didn’t have to get up and down for pencils. The drafting board is on a slant. He was always coming up with ideas.” She read the inscription on the pencil. “Sanford Design Ebony Jet Extra Smooth 14420. All the same.” She lifted each one out. One was worn down a bit. The others sharp. “This must have been the one he was using that day. He sharpened them every morning.” She carefully replaced the pencils. “Makes me sick. Just sick. And it makes me mad.”

  “That’s understandable but emotion clouds judgment.”

  “Does,” Harry agreed with Cooper. “It can also be a motivator.”

  “Can, but you’d better not be too motivated. I asked you here because you knew his office and this work space. You can’t whizz off and try to find his murderer.”

  “Coop, I have no idea. I have no place to whiz off.” She threw up her hands. “Stymied.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Pewter saw the spider emerge, race across the little space, go under the bathroom door. She took off into the small back room. The others followed.

  “It’s in the bathroom.”

  “Pewter, don’t disturb it. Maybe it has to go,” Tucker teased the frustrated cat.

  Pewter, pupils large, dashed over to the baseboard from which the spider had emerged. She couldn’t reach in with her entire paw but she could extend two claws. She hooked a tiny metal triangle.

  “Ha.”

  Mrs. Murphy got up, examined Pewter’s find.

  “Look. This spider’s like Simon, a hoarder.”

  The possum in the barn didn’t hoard, but he kept treasures.

  Mrs. Murphy cocked her head. “Looks like a little spike from a dog collar.”

  Hearing “dog collar,” Tucker peered into the space. “Could be.”

  “Or it could be a stud from a motorcycle jacket.” Mrs. Murphy remembered the black leather jacket on the killer. They barked and meowed until Harry, irritated, came to them. She knelt down with the three to stare at this small shiny object.

  Harry, picking up the stud, said, “Coop.”

  The deputy walked in as Harry dropped the little stud in her hand. “The animals had this on the floor. Don’t know where they found it.”

  “I know our team went over this place with a fine-tooth comb.” Cooper was frustrated by the breaking into Gary’s office.

  “I’m sure they did but this might be easy t
o miss depending on where it was.”

  “A spider had it,” Pewter announced.

  “You don’t know that,” Tucker grumbled.

  “Well, you could open the bathroom door and ask her,” Mrs. Murphy ever so helpfully suggested.

  Neither woman said anything about the small stud. Cooper reached into her pocket, pulled out her clean handkerchief, and folded it inside.

  “I found it.” Pewter stood on her hind legs to bat at the handkerchief in Cooper’s hand.

  Harry reached down to push the gray cat back a little. “Could be anything.”

  “Could, but just to be sure I’ll take it to the lab. Could be off a dress, one with stud patterns, could be from a dog collar. Old Gringo makes a boot with a kind of swirling stud pattern over the toe. I’d love to buy that pair of boots. Too expensive.”

  “Or it could have come off a motorcycle jacket.” Harry exhaled through her nose loudly.

  “Could, but it would be a stupid killer to come back here wearing the same jacket.”

  Harry turned to go back into the workroom. “Noisy, obvious, and how could he carry the file boxes? That’s the only thing that was missing from here.”

  “1984. I’d better start digging into 1984.” Cooper had no idea how literal that would be.

  12

  January 6, 2017

  Friday

  “Marvella, how are you?” Harry spoke on the phone to a new friend in Richmond, Marvella Rice Lawson.

  The elegant older woman, a power in the art and African American communities, replied, “Good. The snow is beautiful, the main streets are plowed. Big piles of snow everywhere, but Tinsdale and I,” she mentioned her husband, “bundle up and take our walks. What about you?”

  “Same story. Main roads plowed. Fair plowed out our farm road, paths to the barn, and outbuildings.” Harry looked out the window. “Right now the snow is blood red. The sun first turned it gold but now it’s setting, blood red. Quite a sight.”

  “You know, Sotheby’s for the last few years has been selling collections of Russian art. Lots of snow scenes, troika rides, that sort of thing, but some of the work is lovely. And it’s the first time we’ve seen any of it.”

  “Isn’t it strange to think how politics affects the arts? Of course, there’s the good side, like those wonderful Renaissance painters giving us all their versions of the idealized Madonna.”

  “Usually their mistresses.” Marvella laughed.

  “Well, yes.” Harry laughed with her. “I was hoping you would be free next Friday and we could go to the Museum of Fine Arts. Have you seen the Architectural Etchings exhibit? They call it ‘Remnants and Revivals.’ Very uncommon work.”

  “I have, but I’m happy to go again. Shall I meet you there in the lobby, say, at high noon?” She paused. “Unless there’s another snowstorm. I’ve dutifully watched the projected weather report for the next week but one can’t go by it.”

  “There is that. Can you tell me where I might find a book containing some of those Russian paintings?”

  “I can do better than that. I’ll give you a thumb drive I made. I’ve been leaning on my friend, Sean Rankin of Rankin Construction, to sponsor an exhibit of Russian art. So I made one for him. Made extras. If Rankin won’t sponsor it someone else will. After all, look at all those incredible Fabergé eggs the museum has in its collection.”

  Hearing the surname Rankin, Harry replied, “Rankin Construction? The firm that began building the early high-rises in the seventies and beyond?”

  “The same, and they’re still doing it. They’re already digging the deep foundations for the Cloudcroft Building. On the site of an earlier building.”

  “Too many big buildings. They cut off the sunlight.” Harry gauged.

  “And they suck in the money.” Marvella paused. “Oops, here comes the UPS man. I’ll see you next Friday.”

  Harry, in her tack room, hung up. Speaking to Marvella put her in a good mood. Marvella, an art collector with the means to buy very good work, second-string painters from the nineteenth century, her favorite era, pulled Harry back to her college major, Art History. She wondered what had taken her so long.

  Harry dialed Coop’s cell. “Where are you?”

  “Office. Why?”

  “Oh, just wondered if you were out cruising around.”

  “No, I’m desk bound today and glad of it.”

  “Do you think I could retrieve my plans from Gary’s office? If I can’t have the originals, may I make a copy of the work he’s done?”

  “Wait a minute. Lisa Roudabush asked for Nature First’s design.” She pushed hold and in five minutes, which seemed longer than it was, her voice came back on. “Rick says he had duplicates made of current projects. But not today. The roads aren’t good. Let’s see how Monday is.”

  “He had to be working on other commissions, not just mine and Nature First’s.”

  “He was. One of them is a huge house for Gare Galbraith and Alex Ix. They’re transferring their project to Cathy Purple Cherry.” Cooper named a sought-after architect, offices in Annapolis, D.C., and Charlottesville.

  “That will be something. She’ll be as faithful to his work as Gare and Alex wish, but whatever she does, it will be the best.”

  “Could you live in one of those big houses?”

  “No. Mine’s big enough.” She waited a moment. “Just spoke to Marvella Rice Lawson. She says Richmond is pretty in the snow but only the main streets are open. I should have asked her if she knew Gary. She mentioned that she knew Sean Rankin. Rankin Construction.”

  “I’ll check him out. Actually, I need to ask Rankin Construction a few more questions. Just double-checking.”

  “I would imagine Sean is either old or the son of the Rankin that ran the firm then. They must have tons of money because Marvella is going to try to get Rankin Construction to sponsor an exhibit of Russian art at the museum.”

  “Well, why not?” Cooper evidenced little interest in painting or sculpture. “And I’m not going if they do it, by the way. My feet still hurt from when you dragged me through the exhibit of still life painting, much of it by women from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The flowers were beautiful but I can look at flowers in my garden. Well, actually yours.” She laughed.

  “Neanderthal. I am shocked,” said Harry, who was not.

  “Hey, Rick is buzzing me. Must be important. Talk to you later or tomorrow.” Cooper hung up, buzzed her boss.

  * * *

  —

  Driving carefully, Cooper headed to Crozet as she followed Rick’s instructions. First she stopped at Barbara Barrell’s used tack shop, Crozet Tack and Saddle.

  She opened the door. Barbara glanced up. “Are you looking for something for Harry?”

  “No. I’m glad you’re open though. The weather has kept a lot of businesses shut. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Sure. Come sit behind the counter with me. I doubt we’ll be interrupted. I really opened the shop to get out of the house.”

  Smiling, Cooper asked, “Were you open December twenty-seventh, Tuesday?”

  Barbara nodded. “Had a lot of after Christmas customers looking for bargains.”

  “Do you recall what you were doing around one PM?”

  “I can’t be exact but I had two ladies trying on jackets, formal jackets. It had to be roughly that time as they both discussed what they’d eaten for lunch.”

  “Did you see or hear anything unusual about that time?”

  Barbara answered, “No. When the ambulance roared by, maybe one-twenty PM, that alerted me.”

  “So before that, no traffic. Say a motorcycle?”

  Thinking hard, Barbara weighed her words. “Like I said, I was dealing with two women trying on formal jackets. I think I heard a buzz. Maybe a motorcycle, but my attention was on the two ladies for whom this was a monumental decision.”

  Cooper smiled. “Thanks, Barbara.”

  “I haven’t been helpful. I wish I co
uld be. Hearing an ambulance I assumed there’d been an accident, someone had a heart attack at work or home. I didn’t think about it. Of course, when I heard about Gary I was shocked. He was a good man.”

  “Yes, I think he was, too.” Cooper stood, thanked Barbara again, and left.

  13

  November 21, 1786

  Tuesday

  Catherine and Jeddie rode back to the main stable having exercised Reynaldo and Crown Prince. Mother Nature bequeathed to them a gloriously sunny day, mercury in the mid-fifties at eleven in the morning. When they started out the air, brisk, invigorated them and the horses. It warmed somewhat, plus the workout calmed the two boys, energetic fellows.

  Riding toward the paddocks, they looked down the two long rows of slave cabins, orderly, gardens in the back. Smoke curled upward from chimneys. The cabins boasted glass windows, an outrageous luxury for slaves as well as poor whites. Ewing, not one to display his wealth as did Maureen Holloway, evidenced it in more subtle ways. Building his own sawmill, a large weaving room, installing glass windows in every building, putting in real brick fireplaces bespoke money, lots of it. Yet the man wore only two pieces of jewelry, a ruby cravat pin his late wife gave him when they married and a gold watch his daughters gave him for his last birthday, April 2nd. Carrying time in his pocket irritated him slightly, but he wore the watch to please his girls.

  The front porches of the cabins, swept clean, had wooden chairs on them. Bettina’s had two heavy rockers and a swing. A small attached shed housed the dried firewood. The men cut firewood year-round. What rested in the sheds had been cut either last year or in the spring. Cloverfields would never run out of timber. Ewing owned two thousand acres in western Albermarle County. He was ever on the lookout for productive land, the closer to his main holdings the better. As for the North Carolina land, he would visit once a season. Catherine accompanied him, soaked up everything.

  Down the second row of cabins, in the distance above the creek, really on a bluff, reposed the large weaving cabin.