30
Why don’t you buy your own car?” Susan grumbled as she drove her Audi station wagon from the vestry-board meeting. “Here it is Saturday, a perfect day for chores and errands, and I’m hauling your little white butt around.”
“Too much money.” Harry affected a prudent and pious tone.
“Your husband will buy you a car if you want one.”
“It seems…” She thought for a moment. “Excessive.”
“So I drive out to your farm, pick you up, bring you to St. Luke’s, and now we’re cruising around because you want to enjoy how great my wagon rides. I’ve spent three dollars in gas just picking you up.”
“I’ll pay you.” Harry wrinkled her nose. “Besides, I take you places in my truck. And I just discovered my truck needs a new alternator, so it’s in the shop. You can drop me off on the way home.”
“Your F-150 that was foaled in 1978? It’s not a bad ride. Better than your dually. That thing will rattle your teeth.”
Harry nodded. “It may suck up gas, but it hauls the rig, hauls the flatbed. I can do a lot of farm chores with that, and it saves me buying another tractor. Blair lends me his big eighty-horsepower. I thought I might could buy it when he and Little Mim moved to Rose Hill, but he took the tractor. Good thing, because she was still using that old Massey Ferguson from the seventies, the one where the gears would lock up and you’d fly along. Scared the poop out of me when I saw it.”
“What is that old Massey Ferguson in horsepower?”
“One twenty.”
“Mercy.” Even though not a farmer, Susan, like most people in the area, had an appreciation of the equipment, maintenance, skill, and time it took to produce any crop.
Now that she and Harry were partners in the timber tract, she was learning a lot and she loved it.
“So, what’s your gas mileage?”
“I tell you this every time we go out.” Susan noticed a maple tree downtown in high orange-red color.
The trees and bushes in town usually peaked before the ones in the country, because town temperature was often five or more degrees higher due to building density, more asphalt roads, and more car and furnace emissions.
“Twenty-five miles to the gallon on the open road. Sometimes twenty-eight,” Tucker piped up, since she’d heard it so many times.
Susan patiently repeated these same numbers to Harry.
“Pretty good for an engine this big, machine this heavy.”
“You’re not old enough to get Alzheimer’s; maybe you have Halfzheimer’s,” Susan teased her.
“I remember. I like to hear you say it,” Harry teased her back.
“Funny, Ned took Owen to the office today, and I miss my little guy. We spend most every waking moment together.”
“Corgi love.” Tucker smiled.
“Don’t make me throw up.” Pewter faked a gag.
“Hairball! Hairball alert!” Mrs. Murphy jumped away in mock disgust.
“Better than a worm-hanging-out-of-your-butt alert.” Pewter’s pupils narrowed for a second.
“I have never had a worm emerge from my nether regions.” Mrs. Murphy was incensed.
“Oh, puh-leese Louise.” Pewter drew out the word. “I’ve seen spaghetti strings out of that anus.”
“Never!” Mrs. Murphy cuffed the gray cat, who slapped her right back.
“Get me out of here,” Tucker whined as she tried to climb into the passenger seat up front.
“No, Tucker.” Harry turned. “You two, stop it. If I have to crawl back there, there will be big trouble in River City. You hear me?”
“I hear you, but I’m not listening.” Pewter whacked Mrs. Murphy again.
Mrs. Murphy leapt onto the rotund kitty. Since Susan had put the seats down, the two now rolled all the way to the hatchback door.
“Susan, if you pull over, I’ll settle this.”
“Oh, let them have at it.”
“You’ll have blood in your car.”
“Harpy!” Pewter snarled.
“Liar!” Mrs. Murphy scratched.
The lightbulb switched on in Tucker’s brain, and she called out above their mutual insults, “What I want to know, Pewter, is what are you doing studying Mrs. Murphy’s anus?”
This produced the desired effect. Both cats stopped screaming and clawing.
Pewter disentangled herself from the tiger cat, huffed up to full blowfish proportion, and jumped sideways toward the corgi. “Death to dogs!”
“Don’t think about it.” Tucker, bracing herself, snarled.
“Harry will put you in mincemeat pie when I’m done shredding.” Her chartreuse eyes, pupils full to the max, glittered with fury.
Mrs. Murphy, who should have known better, leapt on Pewter from behind, and the two rolled back to the hatchback door again.
“All right!” Harry turned to Susan. “Let me settle this.”
Susan pulled off High Street into a bank parking lot. “They’ll scratch you.”
“They’d better not if they know what’s good for them.”
Harry opened her door. Hearing it slam, the cats perceived the situation. They parted, retreating to opposite sides of the back, and began grooming.
Harry flipped up the hatchback. “Just what in the hell do you two think you’re doing?” No feline response brought forth a human torrent. “It’s a privilege to ride in this station wagon. It’s a privilege to visit Cazenovia, Lucy Fur, and Elocution. And it’s a privilege to cruise around town. If I hear one squeak, one snarl, one ugly meow, you two worthless cats are never riding in this station wagon again. Worthless. You haven’t caught one mouse in the barn, and I know they are there.”
Mrs. Murphy replied, “We have a deal with the tack-room mice. They aren’t destructive. They’re—”
Pewter interrupted. “She hasn’t a clue.”
“You shut up, fatty screw loose. You’re the reason we’re in this predicament.”
“Me! Me!” Pewter stood up.
“Don’t you dare.” Harry grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, shaking her lightly, the way her feline mother would have done.
Releasing the gray cannonball, Harry peered intently at Mrs. Murphy, pointing her index finger right at her. All three animals knew what that meant. The next gesture would be a little smack on the fanny.
Harry shut the hatchback, returned to the front. “Susan, how do people with children do it? You had two.”
“Animals are more intelligent.” Susan laughed good-naturedly.
Harry wheeled around as if to catch the cats off guard. “I’m watching you.”
Silence.
They drove east on High Street. “How about I turn down by Fifth Street and I’ll pick up 64?”
“How about we cruise by Woolen Mills first?”
“What’s in Woolen Mills?”
“Mike McElvoy’s house.” Before Susan could protest, Harry rapidly said, “When we were at the Poplar Forest ball, Mike and Noddy came by. The usual small talk, and she kidded about his work shed. Said he’d spent as much money on that as she did remodeling the kitchen.”
“And?”
“She said it’s where he buries the bodies.”
“Harry, that’s a figure of speech.”
“Well, we can at least peek in it. Susan, remember Tazio told us he’s antiabortion, and might I remind you, Tazio is still in jail. What’s a drive by?”
“Nothing I guess, unless you swing the shotgun out the window.” She exhaled. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things.”
“Because I’m your best friend. Because you love me.”
Susan smiled. “I do, but you drive me crazy.”
“Not a far putt.”
They both laughed uproariously.
“Yeah, well.” Susan shrugged.
“I love you, too.” Harry waited a beat, then whirled around again. “I’m watching.”
“Two-legged toad. You’ll get back trouble before I do,” Pewter sassed, but her anger to
ward Mrs. Murphy ebbed.
“Miss Hemorrhoid,” Mrs. Murphy added, a devilish glint to her eyes.
Triumphantly, the gray cat sang out, “Now who’s talking about anuses.”
Mrs. Murphy froze, considered another retaliatory attack, but thought better of it, for Harry meant what she said.
The two-story frame house, painted a Williamsburg blue with white trim, came into view. It was at the end of the street, which afforded a bit more quiet, not that Woolen Mills was particularly noisy. It was a pleasant neighborhood, the only drawback being when the winds changed at the city sewage-treatment plant.
“Hey, those boxwoods are gorgeous.” Susan noted the boxwoods lining the walkway to the front porch.
“English. Tight as a tick.” Harry craned her neck to see the shed. “Slow down.”
“I’m going five miles an hour,” Susan dryly replied.
As she turned in the small cul de sac, Harry caught sight of the shed at the rear of the verdant lawn. “Hey, that is nice, and he has a gravel drive up to it. He could do all kinds of things there, and who would notice?”
“Presumably Noddy?”
“Naw.” Harry shook her head. “If he’s there working away or using a computer or something, she’d be busy herself.”
“Where did I read that Internet porn sites have become a big problem in marriage?” Susan tried to recall the magazine as she drove out of the cul de sac.
“You’d think it would be better than hiring prostitutes.”
“That’s not the point,” Susan, more thoughtful on these matters than Harry, replied. “The point is that instead of communicating with his wife or his girlfriend, a man watches porn sites with those icons of physical perfection. Empty sex.”
“That’s probably true. I’ve never seen a porn site.” Harry turned to Susan. “Who has the time to sit down and watch a computer or TV? You know, I didn’t watch one baseball game all the way through this summer, and I love my Orioles.”
“You and I are in the minority. Americans squander millions of hours in front of the TV. I read somewhere that it totals eight years of a life. And then there’s the computer screen. It’s sad and frightening.”
“Here’s what I don’t get. Why do men watch porn when there’s a living, breathing woman in the next room?”
“Because they aren’t communicating, like I said. That is one thing I will give Ned. He’ll talk. Oh, I might have to goad him into it or charm him, but he will. It’s one of the reasons we’ve weathered some of the storms we have.” She picked up speed. “He’s a good man.”
“That he is.” Harry was quiet, looked in the back again with a glare, then returned her attentions to Susan. “Fair communicates better than I do. I don’t know. I can’t get the words out. Hell, most of the time, I don’t even know what I’m feeling.”
“I know.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That those of us who know you and love you know that speaking about your emotions isn’t your forté. But when you must face them, you do. Course, it takes a damned disaster.”
She replied ruefully, “I don’t understand how I can be smart in one area and just dumb as a sack of hammers in another.”
“We’re all like that. You’ve seen me struggle with math. If it weren’t for you, I’d never have gotten through geometry and algebra in high school.”
“I love math. There’s always an answer.”
“Exactly.” Susan smiled broadly. “Emotions aren’t clear-cut like that. But don’t you find, as you get older, that you improve in the area where you’re, say, not so gifted?”
“Kinda.” Harry changed the subject, since she never could think what to say about her emotional reticence. “If I had the money, do you know what car I would buy? If practicality weren’t an issue?”
“A big Mercedes?”
“They are stupendous. But that’s still practical. I’d buy a Porsche 911 C4.” Animation filled her body. “Oh, that sweet, short throw between gears, the top note of the engine. God, I love it.”
“Gearhead.”
“I am, but you know, so is BoomBoom.”
“Wonder why she never bought a Porsche?”
“She switched to Mercedes because of BMW’s iDrive. She likes big cars, so Porsches are too small. But now Mercedes has Command system, just as ridiculous as iDrive. Bet she does buy a Porsche next.” Harry shook her head. “The Germans may well be the most intelligent people on the face of the earth when it comes to engineering, music, and I would have to say war, but they do tend to overcomplicate.”
“War. How can you say that?”
“Look at what they accomplished since Frederick the Great. Their fatal mistake was not learning the painful lesson of World War One.”
“Which was?”
“Germany can’t fight a war on two fronts, and Germany can never defeat the United States.”
“Ah.” Susan liked history, although modern history fascinated her less than the eighteenth century, her favorite time. “But have we learned anything from World War One and World War Two?”
“I think we did. The real question is, did we learn anything from Vietnam?”
“God, Harry, I hope so.”
They drove along, thinking about these issues. These two dear friends, born with lively minds, might delight in daily doings and local events, but they could and did consider larger issues. Chances are, the Founding Fathers and Mothers would see in them a vindication of their hopes for an enlightened citizenry. What else the Founding Fathers and Mothers might think of the times was anybody’s guess.
“Susan, I have got to get into that shed.” Harry was allowing her desperation to free Tazio and to pin the crimes on Mike to muddy her usually clear head.
“Don’t you dare.” Susan’s voice rose.
“There might be evidence.”
“If that man is a killer, you’re putting yourself in grave danger, forgive the pun.”
“You’d do it for me.”
“I’d like to think I would.” Susan turned onto the ramp heading west onto 64.
“Tazio deserves it. She’s not close like you and I are close, but she deserves help.”
“Let Paul do it. Tell him.”
“Susan, I can’t do that and you know it. Paul wouldn’t be any good at something like this.”
“You may be right about that, but, Harry, don’t even think about it. If you’re that worried, send Cooper or Rick there.”
“Can’t do that without compelling evidence of either corruption or murder or both. I have to find some evidence. We know Carla loathed him. We know he’s antiabortion.”
“That’s hardly enough to convict a man, and being antiabortion doesn’t make him Bechtal’s accomplice. I beg you, don’t do this.”
As they rode in silence, everyone in that Audi station wagon knew that Harry would not listen to Susan’s good sense.
31
Sunday, October 5, flourished under the stationary high-pressure system that had ushered in the heartbreakingly beautiful weather of yesterday. The sky, intense blue, domed an emerald-green Virginia quickening to the accelerated pace of fall.
Harry dutifully sat in church with her equally dutiful husband. She soon forgot to be antsy, because Herb gave a sermon based on Mark, Chapter 10, Verse 16.
“And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.”
The good reverend expounded on this theme. How do we nurture one another, comfort one another, walk through life together?
She hoped she could remember not just what he said but also how he said it in his deep, resonant voice, because she wanted to repeat it word for word to Miranda. He would return to the sentence from Mark as a refrain. She was pretty sure she could remember that.
As the service ended and the choir sang, the parishioners marched out to where Herb, as was his custom, stood at the front door, shaking everyone’s hand, inquiring as to their health and welfare before sending them on their way. Such
a simple act—putting his hand upon them—bound them all closer together. When she felt his warm hand shake hers, his left hand touch her shoulder, she realized with a thud that Herb had been practicing what he had been preaching for decades.
She left him, warmed as well as wondering how she could miss something so obvious. She determined to try to be more like Herb. Given her focus on task, this would be a challenge.
“Honey, give me a minute. I have to catch up on Zenaida.”
As Fair nodded, turning to talk to other congregants, she raced over to the woman in charge of food for the October 25 St. Luke’s reunion. Harry promised four bushels of Silver Queen corn, harvested in August and put in cold storage. She worried it might not be enough and that the corn might not be as tasty as she’d hoped. Silver Queen should be eaten the second it’s plucked off the stalk. However, good yellow corn was still being harvested in the southernmost counties of Virginia, and she wondered if she should purchase some as a backup.
Harry noticed while she and Zenaida spoke that Fair, lively and laughing, was talking with Susan and Ned. His countenance changed for a moment, becoming concerned.
He is the most empathetic man, she thought to herself, then returned to corn. “If it has to be Silver Queen, I expect I can get it sent up from Georgia. Florida? Want me to call around?”
“That gets pricey.” Zenaida furrowed her gray brows. “Yellow will do.”
“I’ll pick up a couple of ears from the refrigeration plant and do a test run. With any luck, we might be okay.”
“Good. Do that first.” Zenaida, easy to work with, smiled underneath her burgundy velvet hat.
Ladies still wore hats to service at St. Luke’s. Harry usually plucked whatever complemented her outfit, but if she felt like spiting whoever sat behind her—an un-Christian action—in summer she’d wear a broad-brimmed hat with flowers. Since she spent most of her day wearing a baseball hat, she felt denuded without something on her head.
The Purrfect Murder Page 21