Probable Claws

by Rita Mae Brown

  “An exciting design and a well-executed one.” He smiled. “It really is my hope that with all the new young people pouring in, and more companies, we will architecturally become one of the most visually interesting cities in America. Come on, ladies. Allow me to escort you through the giant trench.”

  They stepped out. Sean led them over to one excavated spot with heavy wooden posts holding up the sides.

  “To keep it from caving in?” Harry wondered.

  “Right, and to give us a visual checkpoint. This end of the Z is almost finished; it’s much wider than it will eventually become. We thought we knew the earth underneath but there are always surprises.” He pointed to a gray section of this area. “Rock. Solid rock. Hard as the devil to get through even with all the equipment available to us today. We thought the rock was deeper but not in this spot. We need level bedrock for stability. Come on over here. Oh, wait a minute. I forgot. Let’s go back to the Rover.”

  They trotted back with him. He reached into the spacious back seat, handing each lady a construction helmet.

  “Forgive me.”

  Harry put hers on.

  Marvella remarked, “Fetching.” Then she clapped her hard hat over her silver hair.

  Even with her sheepskin-lined gloves Harry’s hands tingled cold. She jammed her hands in the pockets of her heavy coat.

  “How long do you think this part of the work will take?” Marvella asked.

  “Mmm, it’s going well. Two more months, if we’re lucky.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for inviting us down here, Sean. Harry has looked at the thumb drive of Russian art. She was an Art History major at Smith.”

  “What do you think?” he asked as he led them over to where men were using spades for more careful work.

  “I was surprised at the high quality and I was also surprised at their foray into modern art before all that was squashed.”

  Sean nodded. “And millions of people squashed with it. The Soviet Union only lasted seventy years after all that looting, killing, destruction.”

  “Ah, Sean,” Marvella said. “We all look through the shadow of the guillotine.”

  Before he could reply, they stood at the edge of another trench. A young man put his foot on the spade, sunk down, lifted up a load of earth.

  “What’s that?” Harry, sharp-eyed, pointed to something white exposed when the dirt was removed.

  “Keith, hold off a moment. Look at whatever that is.” Sean pointed.

  Keith dutifully did what the big boss said, brushed it with his glove. He pulled a pocketknife out of his zipped chest pocket, and began digging carefully, then in earnest. The three watched as he wiggled from the earth a skull, top jaw, no bottom.

  Sean immediately hurried next to Keith, who held the skull, and was bewildered and a little spooked.

  Harry and Marvella now came over.

  “I wonder how long this has been down here.” Sean blinked.

  “Well, not too long. This isn’t an indigenous person or a casualty of the war.” Harry pointed to the teeth still intact in the upper jaw. “Silver fillings.”

  “Harry, how observant you are,” Marvella exclaimed.

  Sean, already on his cellphone, called the city police. Then he clicked off.

  “Keith, where’s Tony?” He mentioned the foreman for this entire operation.

  Keith lifted his arm, pointing back toward the ramp. Tony, in a Rankin Construction work truck, a brand-new RAM 1500 painted white with the lettering, large, in script.

  Sean waved. Tony saw the boss’s Range Rover, then the boss. He parked next to the SUV, got out, moved quickly over to Sean. One didn’t keep a Rankin waiting.

  “Boss.”

  “Look.” Sean picked up the skull, which Keith had set down on the earth as he had no desire to continue holding it.

  “What the…?” Tony whistled.

  “Harry, oh, Tony, this is Mrs. Haristeen and Mrs. Lawson. Harry pointed out there are silver fillings in the teeth.”

  “So it’s been here at least since silver fillings replaced gold.” Tony knew something about gold fillings because his grandfather flashed gold teeth.

  “Better stop work. For now. The police need to get here.”

  “Shouldn’t we see if there’s the rest of whoever this is?” Tony sensibly asked.

  “That’s police work.”

  “You mean we shut this down until they clear everything?” Tony’s face blanched.

  Sean nodded. “No choice. Once the police get here, assess the situation, I can make some decisions.”

  “Sean,” Marvella quietly said. “Harry and I will leave you. It’s important this comes before anything.”

  “Ah.” He turned to Tony. “Drive these two ladies up to the top, will you? No, actually drive them home.”

  “No, please,” Marvella insisted. “You are going to need your foreman.”

  Once up on the sidewalk again, the two women took a deep breath.

  “Harry, your car is at my house. Let’s have a cup of tea.”

  As they walked to Marvella’s stately home, built at the end of the nineteenth century, the two discussed who could be under the dirt. A vagrant whom time forgot. A murder victim, come back to claim his revenge. Their imaginations roamed all over the place.

  Once at the house, restored by tea, they reviewed everything once more.

  Marvella, holding her cup in both hands for the warmth, looked at Harry. “You know, we’re all sitting on someone’s bones.”

  * * *

  —

  Speaking of bones, Susan Tucker, Harry’s best friend, had delivered fatback kindling to her grandmother at Old Rawly, the family estate still in Holloway hands. Susan’s grandfather was a Holloway.

  Putting the fatback in a huge brass kettle, Susan brushed over her jeans.

  Mrs. Holloway’s dog, Duke, chewed on a huge bone used as a doorstop.

  “Susan, Duke is dedicated. How many generations of Holloway dogs have chewed that bone?” The eighty-plus very healthy woman smiled. “You know the story.”

  “Sort of. When Marcia Garth married Jeffrey Holloway, she brought her corgi. Did I get that right?”

  “Since you breed corgis with those bloodlines, yes.” She sat in a wing chair facing the fire.

  “The Garths always had corgis. Since the Revolutionary War.”

  “Piglet,” Mrs. Holloway said with emphasis. “All I know is Marcia’s corgi, Parson, took this old bone from Cloverfields. How long it was there I don’t know, but your father’s people felt it made an excellent doorstop and so do I.” She was slightly startled when Susan’s cellphone rang. “I hate those things.”

  “Forgive me, Gran. It’s Harry.”

  “Tell her hello.”

  Harry, now on I-64 heading west, told Susan what had just transpired. When the call ended, Susan told her grandmother.

  The older woman thought a moment. “Susan, I have known Harriet since she was an infant. She has always had a nose for trouble. Who else would be standing in a dig hole when a skull is unearthed?”

  “You’re right.”

  “I would prefer not to be right in this account.” She lifted her hand but did not point a finger at her granddaughter. “Mark my words, no good can come from disturbing a body. Let the dead rest. Honor their bones.” Mrs. Holloway noticed Susan looking down at the big bone. “Perhaps we should even honor nonhuman bones.”

  “Well, Duke certainly is, in his own way.” Susan laughed.

  “Honey, do what you can to blunt Harry’s formidable curiosity. I promise you no good can come of it.”

  Susan nodded in agreement but knew it to be an impossible task.

  20

  January 24, 2017

  Tuesday

  “You won’t believe this.” Lisa charged into Felipe’s office. “Raynell, come in here.”

  Raynell left her computer, walked into Felipe’s tidy office. “Must be good.”

  “It is.” Lisa leaned over Felipe’s
desk. “They found a skull while digging for the Cloudcroft Building.”

  “What?” Raynell’s hand flew to her chest.

  “Kylie called from Richmond.” Kylie Carter was head of Nature First for all of Virginia. “It was on the six o’clock news this morning, Channel 6. The camera showed the spot where the skull was found, interviewed workmen including the foreman, Tony Vicenzo. He said hand work was being done to square off an area, and Keith Dodge unearthed the skull with his spade.”

  “You’re good at remembering names.” Raynell was impressed.

  “Actually, Kylie wrote them down. Anyway, the police were called, showed up, and now the excavating is shut down while they dig to see if they can find more of the body.”

  “Whoever it is had to be under there at least since the Kushner Building and maybe before.” Felipe knew the construction history of that particular area, as did all the Nature First people.

  Lisa cupped her chin for a moment. “True.”

  “This will cost Rankin Construction a fortune. And Cloudcroft.” Raynell thought in practical terms.

  “Well, the cops can’t really treat it as a crime scene until they unearth whatever is down there, if they can. And if there’s no evidence of wrongdoing, they’ll start up building again.”

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t rouse people to picket the place, carry signs.” Lisa was excited.

  “Lisa, they have the building permit. Picketing isn’t going to do any good,” Raynell sensibly told her.

  “She’s right.” Felipe backed Raynell. “But what we can do, do it with Kylie, of course, is write a press release about our goals, why we oppose hasty granting of permits, and why Nature First and other groups should be consulted before there is work. We have to frame it in a way where the construction companies realize it’s cheaper in the long run to hear us out, do some of the things we ask about the environment, history.”

  “Good idea.” Lisa now sat on the edge of his desk. “But what if that is a murder victim?”

  “Changes things,” Raynell replied. “A larger area will need to be carefully sifted. At least I think it will.”

  “The police will ask for personnel records from that time, from the first building. What if someone was fired? Someone missing?” Lisa was thinking out loud. “If we can just get them on graft, on payoffs.”

  “That’s a big jump,” Raynell replied.

  “The codes are strict now. If we jump to conclusions we’ll undermine our credibility.” Felipe raised his voice.

  Lisa’s voice rose. “Credibility. The big companies have no concern for history, whether after Europeans arrived or before.”

  “Lisa,” Raynell addressed her superior, “all that is true but we have to establish it, establish a time line if remains are suspicious. We have nothing to gain by intruding on this.”

  “How do we know this isn’t the remains of a drunk? Someone who fell into the foundation of the old Kushner Building or the building before that, and earth trickled down on him? Could really be anything.” Felipe folded his hands. “We need to think this through.”

  Lisa ordered, “Raynell, see if you can pull up anything on the old Kushner Building and the building before that.”

  “Right.” Raynell left for her small office.

  “You know what would really be perfect?” Lisa smiled. “If there’s an old cemetery under there. Like a pauper’s cemetery.”

  “I kind of hope not,” Felipe murmured. “One body is bad enough, if they find the body.”

  “Why?”

  “Because cemeteries are sacred ground.” Felipe was Catholic.

  “Oh, Felipe, don’t be medieval.”

  “Lisa, you don’t disturb the dead.”

  21

  January 25, 2017

  Wednesday

  “I’ve gotten the codes for 1984,” Harry told Cooper.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You’ve been tracking down Ducati XDiavels in the mid-Atlantic. I thought I’d save you time.” Harry pushed the paperwork across Cooper’s kitchen table as the cats and dog snoozed on the floor.

  Cooper opened the folder. “Pages and pages of rules. God, I hate this kind of stuff.”

  “That’s government. It’s even worse now.”

  “Did you read all this?”

  “I did, and I made a copy for me. Here’s the thing. I downloaded this. Right?” Cooper nodded so Harry continued. “Someone lifted the 1984 file from the rented car, and I am assuming whoever did that killed Gary. Could be wrong but it’s not a big jump. Why couldn’t they simply download this information?”

  “There had to be something else in the file box.”

  “Right? Contraband? A gold bar?” She held up her hand. “Bear with me. Drugs, which would be easy to hide, do not take up much space. Do I think he was a dealer, no, I’m just running with this. So what could it be?”

  “Well, Harry, if we knew that we might nab the killer.”

  “If it wasn’t something of material value then it has to be information.” Harry folded her hands on the table.

  Cooper thought about this. “That makes sense but information about what? Was he a spy? An informer? Now don’t laugh. We are too close to Washington. And of course, Virginia and Maryland are loaded with retired foreign officers, diplomats, senior military officers, and CIA, always the CIA. What cracks me up is the CIA people think you can’t spot them. It’s not that hard. Nor is it that difficult for the FBI unless someone is in deep cover, and seems to me they ought to be in Chicago or Phoenix for that.”

  “Why?”

  “Organized crime. It’s everywhere but it is especially powerful in those cities. Anyway, I can’t see that in this case. Gary’s murder was so public. Organized crime is more intelligent than that unless it’s one of their own.”

  “I really doubt Gary was one of their own. His murder was anything but hidden. Brazen. Absolutely brazen!” Harry clapped her hands for emphasis.

  “Yes, it was.” Cooper inhaled. “You read the codes?”

  Harry nodded. “Pretty clear. Now could a large construction company or, say, lumber supplier pay off city officials? Sure. Maybe Gary uncovered corruption, felt he would be in danger, resigned, and moved here.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t be the first.” Cooper glanced down at Pewter. “She snores.”

  “Yes, she does.” She looked down, had to crane her neck to see the rotund gray cat fast asleep. “She’s such a bad kitty at times but I really do love her. Can’t help it. Mrs. Murphy, on the other hand, is an angel. Well, anyway, back to this mess. What have you found out about Ducatis?”

  “Sweeping the mid-Atlantic. Not many. Wherever I have found the DiavelX, or is it the XDiavel, I have contacted the police department, asked for records. Nothing much jumps out at me. If I can ferret out a connection to Charlottesville or Gary, that’s a different story.”

  “This is what I think: The motorcycle was driven here in a closed van. Taken off. The job was done. Back into the van and driven to wherever home is.”

  “Not a bad idea, but why use a motorcycle?”

  “You can weave in and out of traffic. It’s easier to hide. There was no license plate, which is why I think it was taken off the road after the murder. Whoever it was knew his schedule, pretty much. Had it not been snowing, my hunch is they would have parked in the back, come in, killed him, and sped down the alleyway. The weather, all of us walking out onto the sidewalk, perfect. I bet he was heading for the back. Anyway, we’re not dealing with a shrinking violet.”

  “Right.” Cooper dropped her head in her hands for a moment then looked up, sat up straight. “Back to the codes.”

  “He must have kept paperwork about a violation, a payoff, or maybe an accident. I truly believe it’s information not drugs, diamonds, you name it. He saw something or knew something and kept a record. When your team sifted through the files, they found notes on building projects. It makes us hope there’s other information somewhere.”

&n
bsp; “Well, if that’s true surely he didn’t tip his hand when he left.” Cooper blinked. “I would hope not, but then who figured this out? And why now?”

  “Monday a part of a skull was found. You saw the televised reports. Accidents happen a lot in a job like that. Maybe someone was crushed by materials. Hit by a swinging crane. I don’t know. But what if Gary knew?” Harry said.

  “Wrongful death.” Cooper hummed. “That’s a big jump. I can’t think this has anything to do with the murder here.”

  “That’s the only thing I can think of.” Harry threw up her hands.

  “If you’re right that information is the key, then his death isn’t as bizarre as it seems. The file box is the key.” Cooper inhaled deeply. “Now I’m getting as crazy as you are. If I had to take a bet, it would be payoff. Enough for Gary to retire.”

  “But he didn’t retire. He went to work. And, Cooper, he was an honest man.”

  “There is one other nagging detail. And yes, I think, I hope, he was honest,” Cooper remarked. “Whoever killed Gary was a good shot. You watch TV and films and it looks easy to kill someone. It’s not. People who aren’t good shots spray bullets everywhere. Often it takes more than one shot. This was one simple shot straight to the heart.”

  Cooper warned her friend, “Gary is dead. The stakes are high. Few people kill for a thrill. I appreciate you getting the building codes, your thoughts. You are very logical but, Harry, you stumble onto things. Leave this to me and the department. None of us knows who, what, why, or how close the killer is. Don’t put yourself in danger. Yes, a dear man we all liked very much was killed in front of both of us. You are not going to avenge his death. We’re bumping around in the dark. Just let it alone.”

  “I will.”

  22

  January 26, 2017

  Thursday

  “Wow.” Harry once again admired the work already completed for Nature First.

  Lisa, excited, leaned toward Harry, sitting across from her desk.

  “One of our biggest projects, which we haven’t made public yet. We need more work, really, and to see if we can convince those at Monticello and Montpelier to return those places to their natural state.”