Probable Claws

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Elkins always said Ali Asplundah was murdered.” Tony shook his head. “He’d whisper Ali knew too much.”

  “Ali died of a heart attack, leaning up against the huge cat he was working. Amazing how much better equipment is today.”

  “It’s easier to operate but all this computer chip stuff drives me crazy,” Tony responded.

  “Might be right. But when I started in this business, if a track came off a giant Caterpillar, a new one cost ten thousand dollars. That would be dirt cheap today. Forgive the pun.” Sean smiled broadly.

  “Yeah, nothing ever gets cheaper. Well, maybe computers.”

  “The hell.” Sean spat. “Apple sells a phone now for one thousand dollars. It’s nuts and people are dumb enough to pay for it. As for equipment, it’s astronomical, but you know we can’t do what we do without it. And”—he paused—“the stuff does last longer, just like car engines last longer.”

  “True.”

  “So what or why did Elkins think Ali was killed? Never said anything to me. No one did.”

  Tony felt a snowflake. “I don’t think anyone took him seriously. But even if they did, nothing to gain by that kind of talk around someone like you.”

  “Jeez, Tony, now I wonder what else I missed back in the day.”

  “Not too much. But finding his body makes me wonder about the complaining.”

  “Whatever he did, it would have to be a lot worse than complaining for someone to shoot him,” Sean sensibly said. “Funny to think that years later that lead was still pressed into his ribcage.”

  “I sure hope there are no more bodies under this ground or we’ll be way, way behind.” Sean also felt a snowflake on his nose, looked upward. “I swear February is the longest month in the year.”

  “We’ve got at least six more feet to dig. That’s much deeper than the base for the Kushner Building. We’ll probably find pigeon bones, squirrels, and if we find more humans, I’m willing to bet the remains are much, much older than Elkins’s.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “About what?”

  “About what to do if we find anything else?”

  “Tony, for God’s sake, hide it if it’s human. We’ll never get this job done. And we can always put the bones in a box, put it on another site. Preferably one being dug by Franklin Bros.” Sean let out a loud laugh.

  Tony shook his head, laughed. “Our biggest competitor is probably enjoying every minute of this.”

  “Yeah, old man Frank Franklin was hot when they didn’t get the bid. But we knew this site a lot better. After all, Dad built the Kushner Building.” He then smiled at Tony. “We all did. By then you and I knew a little more.”

  “Yeah, but times are different now. When we started out there was no Nature First, no Save the Bay, all the rest of it. Everyone has an ax to grind and yet everyone wants the city’s economy to tick up.”

  “Doublethink.” Sean slapped Tony on the back. “Back to work.”

  “What do you want to do if I find anything?”

  “Hide it. I mean it. Whoever digs up whatever, you take over. Tell him not to worry about it and save the bones. I’m willing to bet if you find the remains of a homeless dog from 1810 the whole damned job will shut down again.”

  Tony nodded, turned, and headed back to the men standing by their enormous machines.

  Sean climbed into the Rankin truck to head back to the office. A review of the files as well as soil types was in order. The police made copies of Elkins’s employment record. He wanted to review what they were reviewing. So much had happened, including frantic calls from the bank, from Cloudcroft, he hadn’t had the time to check things himself. Rankin had taken no construction loans, of course, but Cloudcroft, for all their braying about their obscene profits with growth of 9.7 percent just last year, seemed reluctant to spend those profits, hence a large construction loan on their part. So the bank called Sean, who reassured them that Cloudcroft truly was good for the loan. They didn’t want to risk operating capital, which they had told the bank. Did he think they had lots of money? He did but he also figured they were all a nest of vipers.

  Ronald Reagan’s quote of an old Russian proverb played in his mind. “Trust but verify.” He didn’t trust but he certainly verified.

  31

  February 2, 2017

  Thursday

  “Where’s Pirate?” Felipe asked when Harry walked through the door.

  “Home with Tucker. I thought it would be too upsetting for him to come back here. He’s still looking for Lisa. Breaks my heart.” Then she added, since Felipe looked brokenhearted, too, “He’s settling in. Tucker adores him. Mrs. Murphy rubs up against him. Pewter, pfft.” She flicked her hand.

  “Thank you for giving him a good home. I would have liked to have kept him. Such a mellow fellow, but my apartment is small and Pirate will not be small.”

  “No. He’s a loving puppy. He’ll be fine in time.” She smiled. “I stopped by to see if you and Raynell needed anything? Where is she by the way?”

  “Back in Lisa’s office. The sheriff’s department sifted through everything. She’s trying to get it all back in place before Kylie Carter shows up. Tomorrow.”

  “Ah. I assume nothing much came of the crime team.”

  He shook his head. “Well, they’re thorough. Actually, I was impressed with them, and we all know Cooper, of course.”

  “That’s something, I guess.” Harry unzipped her worn work jacket. “Feels good in here. Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

  “No, but thank you.”

  Raynell emerged from Lisa’s office, a sheaf of papers in hand. “Oh, hello, Harry.”

  “Just dropped by to check in on you all.”

  “We’re still in shock,” Raynell confessed, putting the papers on the side table by the front door. “I believe Lisa saved everything she’d ever read.”

  Felipe smiled. “Close to it. She’d research something on her computer, but if she read a magazine she’d tear out pages.”

  “Her file cabinets are organized. Give her that,” Raynell remarked. “Me, I’m paperless if I can help it. Just hit the save button. Takes care of everything.”

  A colored glossy page caught Harry’s eye. “Dinosaurs. Gary had little rubber dinosaurs everywhere.”

  “When he was working here, sometimes he’d be on all fours.” Raynell smiled. “The two of them would be yakking about a ‘saurus’ this and a ‘saurus’ that. I know Nature First has an interest in prior periods of life, but pretty much I stick to what’s on the planet now.”

  “Me, too,” Harry agreed.

  Felipe interlocked his fingers, placing his hands behind his head. “She had this theory that whatever happened before could happen again. Lisa believed Mother Nature moves forward and backward. She’d say, ‘Look at how rivers have changed course even in a few hundred years. Who is to say we can’t all be dragged back in time to the primordial swamp.’ ”

  Raynell shifted her weight from one well-shod foot to the other. “I guess anything is possible.”

  “Yeah, but the more we find from, say, the Triassic-Jurassic period to the Cretaceous period up to the Paleogene time, the more we will know about what truly happened. You know, the times of mass extinction. Look at what’s happening with these monster hurricanes. Maybe there will be evidence of enormous climate changes we haven’t found yet,” Harry said, betraying that she had done some homework.

  “People are pushing this change,” Raynell said with conviction.

  “We are, but that doesn’t mean that Nature wasn’t heading down that path. There’s so much we don’t know.” Felipe looked up at Harry, whom he much liked. “For instance, did you know that where the Blue Ridge Mountains are, our beautiful mountains, there was once a sixty mile by ten mile lake? It was a bit east of the mountains and over the millenia the mountains kept eroding into this lake. Every time there’d be an earthquake or an uplift of the mountains, they’d erode into the lake. S
o in this former lake, in the muds and that good old Virginia red clay, there is over two hundred and fifteen million years of stuff, of fossils, of footprints, of bones. We’re just beginning to understand what we are literally standing on.”

  “True, but Felipe, dinosaurs and whatever aren’t coming back,” Raynell calmly replied. “I don’t see that happening.”

  “We don’t know. What if the earth permanently tips just one percent more away from the sun or toward the sun? Think what could happen.”

  “It is fascinating.” Harry thought it was.

  “I guess it is, but I’m more concerned with saving and improving the environment for, say, hummingbirds, raptors, even elk if they release them into the mountains down in Lee County.” Raynell mentioned a Virginia county at its southwestern corner, a poor county but so beautiful.

  Harry glanced again at the pile of papers and couldn’t help herself. She flicked through a few of them.

  “Funny. Gary had this article in his files.”

  “What’s that?” Raynell asked.

  “This one.” Harry pulled out an article about why frogs survived when dinosaurs died en masse. “This one that states that eighty-eight percent of frogs on earth today began to flourish, just bred their little hearts out, after the dinosaurs died off.”

  “I haven’t read that one,” Felipe said, and smiled when Raynell handed the article to him. “Well, I better show frogs new respect.”

  “I read the article in Gary’s file box. Couldn’t help myself. As I recall the theory is that frogs survived because they didn’t need so much space to live. When the forests came back they could climb up in trees to escape predators or hide under leaves. Plus they could eat insects and there sure are enough of those, I guess, at any time on earth.” Harry laughed. “Chiggers. That’s what we really need. An investigation into why chiggers developed.”

  Felipe and Raynell laughed with her.

  “Well, I’d better get back to putting everything in order. Kylie will be here tomorrow with some of her staff.”

  “I imagine everyone is shook up.”

  “And then some. Felipe and I want to keep the office running.”

  “Raynell, they aren’t going to shut it down. What we’re really worried about is will we get a new boss or will one of us take over? It’s easier if it’s one of us mostly because we worked closely together, we knew Lisa’s methods and she really did teach us political maneuvering,” Felipe gratefully said.

  A concerned look crossed Harry’s even features. “Gary redid your office. He and Lisa got on like a house on fire. Both are dead. Murdered.”

  “Murdered? Lisa died of a stroke or a heart attack,” Raynell objected, clearly upset at the suggestion.

  “Well, we don’t know yet. But I believe the two deaths are connected.”

  “Harry, that’s nuts,” Raynell blurted out.

  “Yeah, well, I’ve heard that before. Maybe I am nuts but two people who knew each other fairly well, both had an interest in nature in all of its manifestations, both opposed rampant development by builders. I don’t know but that little light in my head just lit up.”

  “Harry, I hope it’s a dim bulb.” Raynell breathed deeply.

  32

  April 10, 1787

  Tuesday

  Ewing strode through the carriage stables, looking for his elder daughter.

  She glanced up from King David’s hoof, which Baxter O. held between his knees.

  “Baxter, thank you, you can put his hoof down.”

  Ewing, clearly agitated, focused on King David. “Is he all right?”

  “Fine. A little tender. A small stone bruise. The pastures are greening up. A little turn out and no work will fix him just fine.” She smiled at Baxter O., whose opinion she valued highly; they had talked this over.

  “Walk with me,” her father commanded. “I need to get the kinks out.”

  She teased him. “Head or back?”

  “Just you wait.” He smiled at her. He then launched into what was on his mind. “Roger Davis wrote Maureen Seli…I mean Holloway, to tell her there is to be a convention in Philadelphia in May. Settled. It will happen, and those representatives farthest away from Babylon on the Delaware are already on their way. What an opportunity this will be for endless pronouncements, legal twaddle, and rampaging self-interest. I don’t know what’s worse: deteriorating as we are or letting those men argue at a convention.”

  “Father, you’re the one who says we have to do something. We can’t have export and import taxes between states and that’s what the current situation amounts to, doesn’t it?”

  Grimly, he nodded. “Does, but Jefferson and his minions will be philosophically opposed to Adams and his following. Each will parade his Latin, too.”

  “Surely there will be more moderate men.”

  “Hamilton?” Ewing’s voice lowered. “Jefferson hates him, loathes him, and I expect it’s mutual. So that means Madison loathes him. I don’t see how an accord, even a rough accord, can be affected with these intensely self-regarding men.”

  “When you speak, I am glad I am not in politics.” Catherine smiled.

  “It’s the devil’s work. Is. I have lived a long time. I have observed from across the ocean the foolishness of kings, who worry more about their conquests and how they will be remembered than in fostering trade. They know nothing about trade and how wealth is created. They only know how to spend it like the mess in France with the queen’s jewelry. It’s absurd. And we’re absurd, too.”

  “Will Washington be there?”

  “He will. He’s probably the only man who can keep order. Franklin is eighty-one. But he has a way of bringing people together.”

  “I thought Jefferson was still our ambassador to France.” Catherine was well informed, but only her family knew this, as well as Maureen, who divined it.

  A slight breeze tousled Ewing’s hair. The early afternoon burst with spring’s promise of renewal. Many trees sported small buds opening to reveal true spring green color. The daffodils still bloomed but on the down side. Next would come the tulips with their wide array of colors.

  “Oh, he’s in France, but I tell you who will be there, in his clever way. Madison. Madison. Madison.”

  “Hence Roger Davis’s centrality to all this?”

  “Mmm.” Ewing pursed his lips. “Madison is shifty. Brilliant, yes, but so are Hamilton and others. But Madison leaves little trace of his goings and comings. He’s like a tailor using invisible thread.”

  “I thought you liked his mother.”

  “She makes Franklin look young.” Ewing laughed. “Nell Madison has been dying since the day she was born. Whatever affliction is present or talked about, she has had it or is exhibiting the first symptoms. She’ll outlive us all. No wonder James isn’t married. She’s driven them all away.” He laughed again.

  “Much as I like John’s family, I am glad they are in Massachusetts. And then when we visit them once a year, or they come here, I feel peeved at myself. His mother is a hardworking, loving woman and she never tells me what to do.”

  “Oh, my dear, who can do that? I’ve been trying since you learned to walk.”

  A slight blush rose on Catherine’s cheeks. “I listen.”

  “Now you do but you were a handful.”

  “Rachel was perfect.” Catherine smiled.

  “Let’s just say Rachel is more like your mother.”

  “And I am more like you.” Catherine slipped her arm through his.

  He looked down for a step or two then looked up at an aqua sky. “So they say.”

  She laughed. “Back to Philadelphia. It’s a Quaker city. How can it be Babylon on the Delaware?”

  “Don’t be fooled by all that simplicity rubbish. A Quaker can spend money as well as the rest of us. Perhaps they’re smarter about hiding it. No lavish jewelry or excessive furniture. However, I have yet to see a rich Quaker who doesn’t own a handsome carriage.”

  “I suppose each group of pe
ople has their ways and a way to get around them.” She drew even closer to her father.

  “True. My fear is an agreement that is sensible, focused on trade, the latest farming practices won’t be reached. Everyone will question slavery but no state will really do anything. Look how many slaves New York has. It will be a deadlock. And all the disagreements will be on the table.”

  “Maybe they have to be on the table to get anything done.”

  He patted her hand. “I don’t know, my dear. I believe in letting sleeping dogs lie.”

  “It is a sensible way to live and yet these are new times. No one ever thought we would throw out King George, defeat the British Army and Navy, dispense with born aristocrats and royalty. I suppose we should all fall on our knees and give thanks for Lord North.” She cited the prime minister who most felt misled the king.

  “And fall on our knees for Washington. How he kept together the different state militias, most of whom only signed up for three months and weren’t paid, I might add.”

  “Many still haven’t been.”

  “Yes. Yes. That’s unforgivable. You see a man begging on a Richmond or Williamsburg street and he lost his legs at Guilford or some other battle. It’s a sin, you know.”

  “I do. John isn’t shy about expressing himself when it comes to his comrades. He’s not a political man but he feels deeply for those who served.”

  A sharp smile crossed Ewing’s face. “Old men start the wars. Young men fight them. It’s been that way since Marathon.” He waved with his free hand. “I can’t let this affect me so.”

  “Father, you risked your life not in battle but by working for the cause, by pouring money into it, by raising troops.”

  “I did and I never dreamed it would come to this.”

  “Does the future ever turn out as we dream?”

  “I don’t know, my dear. My future has you, your sister, good husbands, grandchildren. In so many ways it’s better than I could have imagined. Politics, national direction, that’s a different matter.”