Probable Claws

by Rita Mae Brown

  “So?”

  “Well, I think these codes related to jobs on which he was working.”

  “I still don’t see what’s going on.”

  “Tazio, give me a minute. I am beginning to see a pattern. Every code so noted deals with excavation. The notations about steel or joists, nothing. Well, somehow the dinosaurs mean something.”

  “I dimly remember from one of my geology classes that from Baltimore to just below Richmond, plus a chunk of Pennsylvania, was for millions of years a vast primordial swamp.”

  “I’ve been reading about that, too. The other oddity is both Gary and Lisa kept papers from magazines, National Geographic, the good ones. They had almost identical papers and I first saw that with an article on frogs. Then I found an article both cut out about mammoths. It had photos of the reconstructed mammoth from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.”

  “In his file box?”

  “No. That was in his long center desk drawer. When you moved in and I helped, I went through his drawers. I know the sheriff’s department did but I wanted to double-check. So I think there’s a pattern. The key is the 1984 file.”

  “Ah.” Tazio’s brow wrinkled.

  “We need to find that box.”

  “My hunch, which I have said before, is if you find that box you find the killer.” She breathed out. “You’ll tell Cooper all this?”

  “When I am more sure.”

  “Harry, this isn’t a safe study.”

  “I know. And I know I get in her way. But I can do things my way. They have to follow protocol, which can often slow things down. I’ll tell her, really.”

  “Harry, he was gunned down in front of everyone in cold blood. If you get too close, whoever this is, whatever this is about, they aren’t going to pull back.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “ATTACK!”

  Brinkley, wide awake, bounded to the back door.

  Harry and Tazio hurried in, for the hissing and growling sounded awful.

  Poor Pirate lay flat on the ground, ears down. Tucker stood on all fours, while Mrs. Murphy joined her cat friend.

  “Attack. The giant spider attacked me,” Pewter, eyes wide, screamed.

  Mrs. Murphy, calm, said to the humans, “The giant spider ran over her tail. Leapt right out of its cubbyhole and ran over her tail.”

  “She weighed a ton!” Pewter, tail looking like a bottle brush, told them.

  “All right. Let’s go into the next room, pick up our stuff, and head for home. Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day. Stuff to do.”

  “There is a dangerous monster in here,” Pewter, riveted to the spot, warned.

  “It is big.” The puppy, feeling a little safer, offered his opinion.

  “Big. It’s gigantic. It has long legs and too many eyes. It glares at me. I can see the hatred, and its terrible mouth works opposite ours. Oh, it’s a terrible sight.” Pewter slowly walked into the next room.

  Once in the Volvo station wagon, heat turned on but still cold, the four animals sat in the backseat. The rear with the big window was still cold. This way they were closer to the heat.

  “She has no idea how much danger she’s in. That spider will come out and bite. Poison!” Pewter dramatically predicted.

  “How do you know she won’t bite you first?” the corgi slightly maliciously asked.

  “I can run fast. Harry’s slow. Humans are slow. It’s amazing that they survive,” Pewter remarked.

  “I noticed that.” Pirate’s bushy eyebrows rose up. “Do you think it’s because they only have two legs?”

  “That’s some of it,” Mrs. Murphy answered.

  Pewter, breathing deeply, intoned, “That spider will kill.”

  “Right,” Tucker dryly replied.

  38

  February 15, 2017

  Wednesday

  Scarf wound around her neck, Harry peered through the peephole in the painted fence for the Cloudcroft project. With the exception of a small square where the bones had been discovered, the digging neared completion. Hands in pockets, she fished out a small pair of binoculars. Usually these reposed on the kitchen windowsill so she could watch birds if cooking or washing dishes, a towel always handy to pick up the binoculars. Lifting them to her eyes she quickly adjusted them. The picture, crystal clear, revealed the soil, much of it alluvial deposits from the James. Digging in Richmond proved easier than digging in those places where the soil was red clay, baked hard as the bricks made from it in colonial times.

  She scanned every edge. If something was going to show up it would be on the edge. A pile of dirt, not yet removed, towered at the northwest corner, the wind blowing from that direction, even with the wall. Not much could dampen a winter wind. She paused. Glints from soda cans, pieces of plastic bottles, an odd lumber fragment, such things protruded from the dirt pile. If anything or anyone lay in the middle, no one would know.

  Her question was if something unusual showed up, would the workers report it?

  Cold air tingled in her lungs. She pulled her scarf up over her nose. Days such as this gave Harry new respect for Canadians. Leaning her head against the wall, she scanned again, then placed the binoculars in her pocket as well as her one hand. South by a few blocks, the great river flowed over quite beautiful rapids. Bald eagles soared. Often they flew over Richmond itself to their nests. The avian life on the river blossomed. Ending the spraying of DDT in 1972 had allowed life-forms to again flourish.

  On the way downtown she had stopped at each location where a notation had been made in Gary’s files. She knew two of those locations involved a death. One was the Kushner Building, the other was years before on a site at West Broad Street where Mr. Asplundah was found dead sitting next to the excavation. The third referred to steel, as well as a new advanced insulating material back in the early eighties. As those structures stood, well built, she could glean nothing except they were big-ticket buildings. Expensive even then, they’d cost twice as much to replace, possibly more, given stricter building codes. Irritating as those codes were, they might save lives and structures in the event of a catastrophic hurricane or flooding. As the weather was changing, she hoped whoever drew up the codes was right. But in her heart she knew cash payments to the right people could circumvent some of this. Meeting new standards cost and it cost more every day.

  Here a beautiful building, a hoped-for showpiece for the new Richmond, would cost forty-two million. That was the estimated cost with an undisclosed profit. Any delay, any lost time due to weather or goods not shipped on time would send that figure upward with the profit percentage diminishing. Anyone in construction understood this, which was why a home builder or someone like Rankin Construction tried to fold in such delays. If anything went amiss, no government bailout. Nor should there be. Private enterprise was just that. Harry understood all that, for as a farmer, although her parameters were different, no bailout was available for the small farmer. As to huge agribusiness, well, that could be something different. City workers need cheap food or one gets mass disturbances. Cheap food means mega-farming companies, fiddling with crops, using giant machines instead of people. So now, a man working for a huge company would look at the computer in his tractor or combine. Was there anyone left who knew how to get out, check the seeds, check the seedlings, check the half-grown crop? She could scoop up a handful of soil and know what she had. A computer printout might be helpful but unnecessary. You either knew your job or you didn’t.

  So, looking at this enormous project, one important to a city on the verge of booming, Harry wondered who knew their job.

  Even with fur-lined boots her feet felt numb. She pulled out the binoculars one more time; sighing, she returned them to her pocket, walked to her station wagon. She had called Marvella before leaving the farm, who graciously invited her to drop by.

  When Harry stepped into Marvella’s home she visibly relaxed.

  “You’re cold as ice.” Marvella put her hand on Harry’s cherry red cheek.

  �
�I swear it would feel better if it snowed some more.”

  “I think you’ll get your wish. Here, let me take your coat.” Marvella helped Harry out of her knee-length coat. “This weighs a ton.”

  “Does but it’s warm.”

  “Come into the kitchen. Wednesday is my girl’s day off.”

  Following the slender woman to her kitchen, Harry appreciated the works on the wall. The kitchen, itself modern, spotless, still radiated some warmth, something a bit cozy.

  “Coffee, tea, or how about some hot chocolate?”

  “Hot chocolate sounds good.”

  “You know when the Spaniards conquered the Incas, the Aztecs, whoever they conquered down there, they were fascinated by chocolate. No chocolate in the Old World or bananas or tomatoes. Hard to imagine. Well, no coffee, either.”

  “Or cocaine.”

  “You’re right.” Marvella poured milk into a saucepan. No shortcuts for her.

  “All these outlawed drugs have useful applications. They are a natural form of medicine, of painkillers, but…well, you know.”

  “I do. All a government has to do to create illegal fortunes is outlaw a substance or a service. Prostitution, for example.”

  “Hard work, I would think.” Harry inhaled the aroma.

  Marvella folded in expensive ground chocolate with the milk, poured that into a cup for Harry. She sat down to join her.

  “As you know I was over at Cloudcroft. They’ve made a lot of progress.”

  “So have I. I am very close to getting Rankin Construction’s agreement to underwrite the Russian exhibit.”

  “You know Sean well?”

  “As you saw, we get along fine but it’s a social friendship, not a deep friendship. Given my work for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, best I stay on everyone’s good side.”

  Harry laughed. “I’m sure they feel the same way about you.”

  “I hope so.” Marvella smiled. “I truly hope so.”

  “It’s just the two of us and I know I am a newer person in your life, but I have to ask: Do you trust Sean Rankin?”

  Eyebrows knitting together, Marvella replied, “I have no reason not to trust him.”

  “What about his father?”

  “When Tinsdale and I moved here, Reg Rankin was slowing down, beginning to hand over, in bits, the company to Sean. I only met him a few times. Older generation. Proper. A man of his time.”

  “Honest?”

  “Well, again I don’t know. I’ve never heard anything to the contrary. Now let me ask you, why these questions?”

  “Over the years a few deaths have occurred at construction sites.”

  “Harry, that’s natural. Construction can be dangerous.”

  “I know, but in going through Gary Gardner’s files, his building code files, I’ve found dates written in the margins for jobs wherein someone died. And 1984’s file is missing. That’s the year the man whose skeleton we found died. Now Gary is dead as is Lisa Roudabush, both of whom shared a fascination for earlier epochs, for dinosaurs, architecture later, obviously. Somehow it’s too close for comfort.”

  “Be careful. If you mention this without hard proof you have just angered, or at the very least irritated, a powerful man, a powerful company with many employees.”

  “That’s why I came to you. I’m not mentioning it.”

  She breathed deeply. “I’m old enough to know there are many reasons to kill, a lot to cover up. Illegal transactions, that sort of thing. At least in private business if they have affairs it’s usually not fatal. In politics it used to be, but now they cling to Jesus, apologize, cry, and appear to be forgiven.” She let out a peal of laughter.

  “I’ve often wondered if God has no sex, no women as partners in his life, how can he forgive infidelity for one?”

  Marvella laughed again. “Because he doesn’t understand it.”

  “Well, whatever this is about, I think sex has nothing to do with it.”

  “But wouldn’t it be more interesting if it did?”

  “You’re awful.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m honest. Financial misdeeds are dull and those who commit them are dull. Now a roaring sexcapade? The best. Think of the South Carolina governor caught with his pants down. Oh, I so loved it.”

  Harry laughed. “Too good to be true.”

  “Too good to be true. You’re too young to remember, you weren’t even born, when Wilbur Mills, head of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, the most powerful committee in Congress, and always will be…Well, the esteemed congressman was found disheveled and drunk at a public fountain in D.C., cavorting, or hoping to cavort with, a stripper who had indeed shed some unnecessary garments. It was so public the press couldn’t cover it up. The gentleman’s agreement unraveled.” She shook with mirth.

  “You’d think those guys would figure it out, especially now that the gentleman’s agreement is over.”

  “Oh, Harry, men think they’re only as old as the woman they’re sleeping with.”

  “It’s not working,” Harry shot back, and they both doubled over.

  “You know, it’s not that I think women are better than men, truly, but I do think we are more realistic, especially about sex.”

  “Marvella, don’t you think we have to be and always will?”

  The elegant older woman nodded. “I don’t know if I would go so far as to say gender or race or the time at which you were born is destiny, but in many ways it fulfills the definition.”

  On and on they chatted, delighted with each other’s company, then Harry glanced at the superb grandfather clock. “Marvella, forgive me. I have overstayed my welcome. You should have thrown me out.”

  “I enjoy your company. You are a generation younger than I. I find our exchanges invigorating, and the fact that you were an Art History major is an extra bonus.”

  “Thank you.” Harry stood up, leaned over to give Marvella a kiss on her smooth cheek.

  Marvella stood. “Isn’t it fate that we meet people whom we feel we have known all our lives?”

  “Yes.” As she walked to the door, Harry slowed for a moment. “You know, there are many dimensions to existence and we see only one. I think there are more and when we have these feelings, whether it’s knowing someone or déjà vu, I think we just get a peep of another dimension.”

  “I do, too, but we are hag-ridden by logic. Speaking of which, your piecing together these disparate bits of information is logical, but with a leap of faith, if that’s what one can call it. Best to remember, that killer is out there and whatever is at stake remains at stake.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Consider, Harry, and again this is a function of age, anyone in power, whether political or financial, may not use force, but there is always implied force.”

  “Well…” Harry digested this unsettling thought or tried to do so.

  “Again, be careful. Maybe it’s better you don’t know.”

  “I know you’re right, and I know you don’t want me to stumble into a nest of vipers, but I think I already have. And I think whatever this is involves both power and money, millions.”

  “I hope you’re wrong. I fear you’re right.” This time Marvella pecked Harry on the cheek, opened the door, and watched her walk to her Volvo, open the door, and get in.

  39

  February 16, 2017

  Thursday

  “Thanks, Felipe.” Harry smiled at the slender dark-haired young man. “I know this request is a bit odd.”

  “No, no. It’s always good to see you, and your wildlife people have helped us.”

  “Takes all of us, I think.” Harry felt a tug at her jeans.

  “Ask if he has any treats.” Pewter effected a sweet look.

  “Pewts.” Harry looked down at Pewter and Mrs. Murphy.

  She’d left Tucker and Pirate at home, thinking it might be too confusing and sad for the puppy.

  “Hi, Harry,” Raynell called from behind her computer. “Holler if you have quest
ions.”

  “Thanks.” Harry walked straight back to Lisa’s office, which was as she’d left it.

  The sheriff’s department carefully checked out everything then put it all back in place. There was nothing in her office or on her computer to give them any clues, at least not clues that they could currently understand.

  First scanning Lisa’s shelves, with her own notes from Gary’s office in hand, she noticed a few books duplicated. One was The Great Warming by Brian M. Fagan. Of course, there were a few books on reptiles both extinct and current, one recent bestseller on birds that Harry also had read, and Why Birds Sing by David Rothenberg. Gary had most of the dinosaur books, the reptile books, alligators, crocodiles, stuff like that. She pulled a book out, jumped back, then giggled.

  “What’s up?” Mrs. Murphy wondered.

  “A big rubber spider behind the books.” Harry’s hand flew to her chest as though she’d understood her sensible cat.

  “Ha. I have saved you every time we are at Gary’s. I battle real spiders,” Pewter bragged.

  Mrs. Murphy jumped on the polished desk, where the book on dinosaurs that Lisa had been reading when she died was closed, sitting on the corner. Harry had pulled it off the bookshelf but hadn’t leafed through it yet. She was hoping it would give her a clue as to the dinosaur fascination.

  Harry made notes, checked off those books that were the same. Then she sat down at the desk as Mrs. Murphy investigated the dinosaur book. Pulling open a long center drawer, she took out a sheaf of papers. The frog article sat on top. Gary had the same information. A long magazine piece about when the Blue Ridge Mountains were covered with water interested Harry, as well as the receding of the waters and the upheavals that created the Fall Line running throughout the state. The earth had been lowered to such a degree that running roughly southwest to northeast, waterfalls marked the break just like the Continental Divide in the far West. Tidying up what she’d read, she put them back in the drawer in exact order.