A Hiss Before Dying

by Rita Mae Brown

  “I’m sure you made him question his.”

  She laughed, a laugh of relief and remembrance. “Oh, he declared I ended whatever sexism he might harbor. He’d tease me that I can’t cook, I’m not so socially adept, and he could read people better than I can. He was right, too.” She leaned forward. “Deputy, he was my best friend. I hope you have a friend like Pierre, someone who will tell you the truth, someone who will help you out of a jam even when they told you not to do the stupid thing you did to get there.”

  Cooper smiled again. “I do. One last question. Did you know of a routine or process Pierre had to prepare for a case?”

  “Yes,” came the instant reply. “I could guess what he was working on by what he was reading. And he was careful about checking out books from the library. One can get records now, although it’s only supposed to be the authorities, but let’s face it, a computer whiz can get everything. Often he would ask me to buy books. They would be on my credit card, not his. Again, he often said he was up against people with a lot to protect. He needed to fly under the radar.”

  “Any recent purchases?”

  “The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman,” came her reply. “And books on Native American customs. He was showing an interest in tribal regalia, accurate clothing that a person must wear if they wish to perform in festivals. He knew about the Indian children being recorded as colored back in the early twentieth century. Colored was the legally acceptable word and it obviated recognition of tribal blood, affiliation. He was making quite a study of the Virginia tribes, their legal disappearance, but I can’t imagine where it would have led.”

  “That’s something. Certainly out of the ordinary,” Cooper mumbled, then looked at an ornate wall clock. “I have taken up so much of your time. Thank you.”

  “As I said, Deputy, I nattered on but you made me feel so comfortable.”

  Cooper stood up, and Dr. Ely did also. She was nearly as tall as Cooper. The officer handed her card to the doctor, who read it, tucking it into her front pocket.

  “Call me, Dr. Ely. If anything should occur to you, even if it seems not important, anything at all about Pierre, call me. We want to find his killer. No matter how odd something seems, no matter how unbelievable someone’s murder, I promise you it makes sense to whoever committed the crime. Once we know why, we can almost always find who.”

  February 14, 1786 Tuesday

  “Wore the Mistress’s sapphire necklace.” DoRe relayed this compelling information to Bettina, whom he had come to visit.

  Getting off Big Rawly, never easy, was made a bit easier when DoRe asked Maureen Selisse if he could go over and pick up a small enclosed carriage. Ewing Garth, knowing Mrs. Holloway wished one for herself, was happy to lend it to the wealthy woman to use. If she really liked it, then her young, handsome husband would find one for her or arrange to have one built in Philadelphia. Everyone knew the order would go to Philadelphia, after a show of considering alternatives, for Maureen needed to appear extremely fashionable, and that meant the best, most expensive small conveyance possible, one that would certainly outshine the Garths’.

  DoRe ran the stables, knew what he was doing, and was finally coming back to life after the death of his beloved wife and the disappearance of his son, Moses. These punishing events both happened within a year and a half.

  Bettina sat across from the big, middle-aged man in the impressive carriage harness room, the potbellied stove keeping it just right as the beginning of a light snow started outside.

  And the stable help was working at the three stables but did not pop their heads into the wood-paneled room. Everyone at Cloverfields knew Bettina set her cap for DoRe. Not only had she set her cap, she commanded Serena and a few of the other girls to cart down a feast. Bettina believed the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach.

  “Mrs. Selisse’s sapphire necklace? Lord, Lord.” Bettina exhaled.

  “Can’t get used to calling her Mrs. Holloway. I slip, too. Bettina, I didn’t know where to look when Sheba came down to the stables wearing that fur, the beaver skin, and a sapphire necklace. She’s the only slave got a fur, I can tell you that but then we all know Sheba’s not exactly a slave, according to her.”

  “But where was Mrs. Selisse? That witch wouldn’t let Sheba wear her sapphire. Anyway, Sheba has some jewelry of her own. She gets something every Christmas and I know it’s hush money. I know it.”

  He bit into a biscuit, so light it melted in his mouth. “No one can cook like you.” He beamed, then cut into a piece of pork braised on one side, with tiny slivers of lemon rind also on it.

  Bettina had dried fruits, canned vegetables, all manner of flours. She wasn’t considered one of the best cooks in the state of Virginia for nothing, and that alone set Maureen Selisse off. She wanted the best cook, the reputation for the best table and entertainments and, of course, now the best small carriage.

  “The Missus was down on the James at the foundry. She is running the business. She’s running it as well as Francisco. She pretends that Jeffrey,” he named the young, handsome husband, “is the boss but we all know that story.”

  “Yes, we do.” Bettina slid more biscuits his way.

  “I feel a little sorry for him. Yes, he married himself a rich, rich widow, but he’s at her beck and call and that’s no life for a man. It’s a funny thing, Bettina, he goes on down to the cabinetmaker’s shop, builds some things. Works right along with the men there. He makes her pretty things and she oohs and aahs over them but tells him not to get too close to those people, as she calls us. He’s always good to all of us.”

  “Just so he isn’t good to the women. We know what happened last time.”

  “Poor, poor Ailee. The last in a long line of pretty girls that Francisco played with. And my poor, poor boy.”

  Bettina, voice lowered even though no one was around, said, “Moses is doing well. The man and wife up there, the man Charles was in camp with, Captain Graves, I think is his name, they write back and forth. Moses works hard. Has made friends with the freemen there, and there are a lot of them.”

  Moses, thanks to John and Charles, now lived and worked in York, Pennsylvania.

  A soft smile creased DoRe’s face, his silver mustache curved upward. “He’s a good boy. He was a good son. I often wonder if his mother had lived, could she have talked sense to him? I couldn’t. That boy lost his mind over Ailee. Lost his mind.”

  “She was extremely beautiful and he was young.” Bettina smiled kindly. “And I don’t know if your angel wife could have stopped him. Things happen, DoRe.”

  He cleared his throat. “You help me find peace, Bettina.” He put down his fork, his plate was clean. “I am thinking I can live again. I know my boy’s alive and that lifted a heavy weight. And I thank you, Bettina, I thank you with all my heart for getting me little messages, for calming my spirit about Moses, and right under Mrs. Selisse’s nose.” He laughed, as did she.

  “Time heals us,” Bettina simply said. “When my Norbert died, I never thought I would smile again, but a year passed, then two and three. You heal.”

  “Norbert was so much older than you, Bettina. You are a woman in the prime of life.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You know what I think?” He leaned toward her. “I think your Norbert and my Claudia, I think they want us to live. We, I don’t know, we kind of insult them if we don’t.”

  “I’m mighty glad to hear that, DoRe. You have suffered enough.”

  He smiled a big, broad smile at her. Yes. He was going to court her but he would be slow. A man can’t be too careful and they were owned by different people. It was complicated but not impossible.

  Catherine burst into the stable, her son running after her. She opened the carriage room door.

  “DoRe, how good to see you.”

  “Miss Catherine, you spoil me. Yes, you do.” He stood up as she took his hand.

  “JohnJohn, this is DoRe. He is head man at Big Rawly. All the horses, al
l the carriages and sleds, DoRe is in charge of it all.”

  “Like Barker O.?” The little boy named the slave in charge of driving, the driving horses, and plow horses at Cloverfields.

  Bettina laughed. “JohnJohn, Barker O. and DoRe have been competing against each other for years. When the weather is good and each man is up, oh, my, what a show.”

  DoRe blushed a bit. “Now, now.”

  Seeing that Catherine was in the room, Barker O. burst in, slapped his rival and friend on the back. Jeddie, Ralston, and Tulli squeezed in. Everybody wanted to say a word to DoRe. Everyone had known Moses. DoRe didn’t know that Ailee had hidden on Cloverfields with Moses. He only knew that somehow, he didn’t know how, the white folks got his boy to York, Pennsylvania, to a safe place, a job, good people. Nor did he know Ailee killed herself. No one would tell, and even if they could, they wouldn’t. Why spread sorrows? But DoRe was a respected man and no one could figure out how he could stand Maureen, but what could he do? She owned every hair on his head.

  Everyone was talking at once. Talking about the weather. Talking about Yancy Grant babbling about running his horse, Dark Knight, when spring came. Talking even more about how Yancy Grant hated Jeffrey Holloway because he, Grant, wanted that rich widow for himself. He had debts to pay plus her fortune would raise him up, he believed he belonged on top. Catherine listened intently because slaves knew more than the white people. And the slaves at Big Rawly watched Maureen with the searching eye, as the old phrase goes. Soon as they were at another plantation the gossip would fly.

  Then John, Charles, and Karl Ix piled in. The room, small, was jammed. The only person missing was Ewing himself, buried under paperwork in his office. The good fellow didn’t know there was an impromptu party.

  Rachel walked in, squeezed next to her sister.

  DoRe, properly, said, “You two beautiful girls take my seat. You’re both small enough to sit side by side.”

  “Rachel, sit here.” Bettina stood.

  Catherine, knowing Bettina was sweet on DoRe, she’d known it since Francisco was murdered, ribbed her sister. “Actually, we just wanted to say hello. We’d better get back to our tasks before the snow decides to come down.”

  “Well, I’d better be going, too.” DoRe smiled.

  “Jeddie, hitch up the Charleston green carriage for DoRe.” Catherine looked at the man. “I noticed you rode one horse and brought the other. Good thing. Carriage needs two horses.” She smiled. “But then you remember everything.”

  “I do try, Miss Catherine. I do try.”

  Catherine inclined her head to her husband, who got the message, and one by one the folks filed out.

  As the carriage was being hitched up, the brass on the trappings shining like gold, Bettina wrapped food in dish towels, her tried-and-true method, put all in a large basket, and covered that with another towel.

  “You are trying to fatten me up.” He smiled at her, then said low, “I thank you and I will do what I can to warn you about Sheba. She’s up to no good. Blaming little birdy-boned Mignon for stealing jewelry and ribbons. Says she took the pearl necklace, too. I wonder where that witch has hidden that necklace?”

  “No one has seen Mignon, so maybe she made it.”

  “I hope so. If that little lady spotted a penny in the dust she’d try to find the owner. We all know how honest Mignon was. Sheba has Mrs. Selisse, somehow she has her.”

  “I think we have a good idea what she’s holding over Maureen’s head,” Bettina remarked.

  “Sheba knows what really happened with Francisco, but there’s not one thing we can do about it. Not one thing.” DoRe shrugged.

  “Well, you can keep clear of her.”

  Jeddie knocked on the door. “Ready, DoRe.”

  “Be right there, boy.” He took the offered basket, cleared his throat again. “Bettina, if it’s fine with you, I would like to call upon you when I can.”

  “Oh, my, yes.” Impulsively she kissed him.

  She couldn’t believe she did it.

  DoRe was glad she did and felt that kiss on his cheek the whole way home.

  November 5, 2016 Saturday

  Harry cut the motor on her lightest tractor, the John Deere forty-horsepower, already twenty-three years old. She turned around in the seat, satisfied with how straight the rows were. Then she cut the motor on, lifted the disc attachment, drove out of the large garden, and cut the motor again. She swung down.

  “Straight as an arrow.” Cooper admired Harry’s work.

  Like most farmers and gardeners in the Mid-Atlantic, Harry prepared the ground for spring in the late fall. Usually mid-October proved ideal, but the unusual warmth pushed the discing, harrowing, dragging chains to the first week of November. Get the timing wrong and shoots will pop up only to be killed by frost. Do the prep work too late and the fertilizer and winter seed, if planted, don’t properly work into the soil.

  Harry loved trying to figure it out. Cooper, bravely attempting to garden, loved it less. Harry, knowing this and that Cooper wasn’t a country girl, took over.

  Harry brought over equipment plus saved horse manure to make a rich mixture of commercial fertilizer, manure, and old straw.

  Cooper observed all this, making a mental note to do her part in the spring and get the jump on weeding.

  “Let’s unhook this and hook up the manure spreader. Oh, pour some bagged fertilizer into the manure, will you?”

  “How many bags?” Cooper asked as they unhooked the disc and hooked up the manure spreader, a sturdy cart.

  “Mmm.” Harry eyed the twenty-five-pound bags leaned up against the big tree. “Let’s start with five and see how it goes. You were smart to buy the lighter bags, by the way. We have nothing to prove by toting fifty-pound bags of fertilizer. That’s what my husband is for.” Harry laughed.

  “That man could toss one hundred pounds like a basketball.” Cooper knew how strong Fair Haristeen was.

  “Could.” Harry smiled.

  Like many women, she appreciated a super-strong man.

  The two cats and dog watched the humans work from the well-kept Jones family graveyard not far from Cooper’s large garden.

  “Her garden is twice as big as Mom’s,” Pewter noted. “She must be feeding half the sheriff’s department.”

  “Ha.” Mrs. Murphy flicked her tail. “When she paced out this garden in the spring, she had no idea what she was getting into. The good thing is, Mom didn’t have to do her garden. There was enough in Cooper’s.”

  The three laughed. Cooper did overdo and Harry knew the tall deputy would never be able to keep up with even the tomatoes, much less the rest of her sprawling, ambitious garden. So Harry would help her weed, attack the beetles, pull up the okra, really good okra. The two women liked working together and having a friend to pull weeds with and chatter about this and that. And Cooper learned, yes, she did.

  “Okay.” Harry turned around. “Two more bags and we’ve got it. Stuff is mixing in just great.”

  Cooper opened two bags, pouring them in, Harry started the PTO again and the manure spreader churned out the cooked straw, old manure and the fertilizer producing an odor, not offensive yet most distinctive. Harry, smart, used what she had on the farm. Every three years she’d call up Rachel at Southern States and do an extensive fertilizer spread on her acreage, depending on the crops. Fertilizer prices could fluctuate with gasoline prices. Last year, Rachel convinced her to try carbon packing which added $58 per acre. Best thing Harry ever did. Her pastures, good, became spectacular. So she paid the money for another packing, this would be two years in a row. Then she thought she’d wait and see how many years the process held before doing it again.

  Like all farmers, Harry knew Mother Nature was a harsh business partner. Sometimes she held a cornucopia. Other times, you lost everything. But sun, soil, and water were the key, and fortunately for Harry, she had all three in a potent combination.

  Cooper, on the other hand, just west of the dividing creek, had poo
rer soils. So instead of working on all her pastures, Harry focused on the garden. If she could help her wonderful neighbor, a former suburban girl, learn from that, then in the future she might be able to convince Cooper to grow hay. You can always make a bit of money on high-quality hay.

  “Done.” Harry triumphantly finished the garden fertilizer run.

  Cooper, wiping her hands on her red kerchief, looked at the now-covered quarter acre. “Thanks to you, I really did have a terrific yield.”

  “Wait until next year. Your asparagus will be up. Harvest it every two years. You can’t believe how good it tastes from your own garden. The next thing you need is chickens.”

  “You don’t have any.”

  “I used to, but the cats chased them. You can turn your chickens out in the morning and drive them into a pen at night. You will be amazed at how effective they are, so you don’t need to use chemicals. I hate all that pesticide stuff. I don’t care what anybody says, it gets into the water supply.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too. Well, the chickens will have to wait until spring.”

  “Good, then we can come over here and chase chickens.” Pewter puffed up.

  “Waddle is more like it.” Tucker guffawed.