A Hiss Before Dying

by Rita Mae Brown

  Yancy stifled a groan as Dr. Downey cut away another piece of torn cartilage.

  “I must do this, Sir, else as you heal it will sometimes entangle what remains of your knee. This won’t take much longer,” he said consolingly.

  “Do what you must.” Yancy repeated the phrase, then said to John, “Is Mr. Holloway wounded?”

  “Upper arm. He will be fine.”

  “I am glad.” Yancy breathed deeply as more cartilage and bone bits were removed.

  Dr. Downey, young eyes, worked quickly and carefully. He dabbed at the blood. Fortunately, there wasn’t a great deal at the knee. Noticing this, John wished he had been the surgeon to his old regiment.

  “Dr. Downey, we will wait until you have completed your work on Mr. Grant,” John said.

  “Ah, thank you. Better Mr. Grant not be in his carriage bounced around longer than necessary.” He looked at Henry. “It won’t be much longer.” Then he looked directly into Yancy’s eyes. “In time, some of your bone may grow a bit but this knee will never be able to support weight. You will need a brace and a crutch.”

  Yancy tried to smile. “At least I am alive.”

  “I will return to Mr. Holloway,” John informed them all, then thought perhaps another kind of healing might take place. “Although wounded himself, Mr. Holloway insisted that Dr. Downey attend to you first, Yancy. I sincerely hope you two can find a way to reach an accord.”

  “I’ll never like him, never.” Yancy sighed, then took a ragged intake of breath as more cartilage was cleaned up as well as a bit of flapping flesh now sewed around the shattered knee. “But I will do my best to be,” he paused “civilized.”

  John slightly bowed, then returned to the carriage where DoRe, down from his driving seat, had cut away Jeffrey’s shirt. Jeffrey was bleeding more than Yancy.

  “Do you think the bullet hit your bone?” John inquired.

  “No.” Jeffrey removed his hand from the hole in his arm.

  “You are most fortunate. Dr. Downey can fix you up. He said he wouldn’t be long with Yancy.”

  “What is his wound?”

  “You blew apart his kneecap,” John stated.

  “Ah.” The young man exhaled.

  —

  Three hours later, DoRe drove down the long Big Rawly drive as Maureen flew out of the house.

  “You’re alive! Oh, thank God, you are alive!” She went to hug and kiss him, she couldn’t contain herself, and then noticed the torn shirt and the blood. “What happened? How bad is it? Oh, get out of this carriage and into the house.”

  John stepped out, smiled up at DoRe. “He will be fine, Mrs. Holloway, fine.”

  She never asked about Yancy, shepherded Jeffrey into the house, calling orders to all and sundry as she did so.

  John climbed up next to DoRe as they drove to the stables. One of the young men brought out his horse, all groomed, relaxed and happy. John tipped the man, mounted up, and was at Cloverfields within forty minutes since he walked most of the way. The entire episode had exhausted him.

  Catherine, down at the stables, hearing the slow hoofbeats, dashed out to see her handsome husband nearing the stable.

  “How so?” She reached him.

  “Both alive. Jeffrey’s hit in the arm. He’ll be fine. Yancy, on the other hand, has a shot-up kneecap. I suppose he will walk eventually with a cane or crutches but I doubt he will ride again.”

  “I do hope this is the end of it.”

  “I think it is. Neither one flinched. Let us hope this is a new day.”

  November 29, 2016 Tuesday

  In the hayloft, Harry, after opening the back high double doors, stood at the edge throwing out rich fragrant hay bales. The two cats watched this work, grateful they didn’t have to throw hay.

  “Alfalfa bales can weigh up to sixty pounds,” Mrs. Murphy noted.

  “Orchard grass and clover is heavy enough.” Pewter saw Tucker, on the ground below, observing the pitched hay. “She thinks she’s helping.”

  “Keeps her happy. The grass hasn’t totally browned out yet, there’s green. Our human is fanatical about nutrition for all of us.” Mrs. Murphy admired Harry’s sense of responsibility.

  “In that case, I’m in the mood for fried chicken.”

  “What, no tuna?” Mrs. Murphy wondered.

  “Fried chicken, and if she makes greens with fatback I can pick out all the fatback. Humans need to learn to cook for cats. Our palates are more developed than theirs. They eat tomatoes, remember?” Pewter’s silky eyebrows raised.

  “Odd. How about cauliflower?” The tiger grimaced.

  “I’ll eat it if she’s melted cheese on those little white things,” Pewter confessed.

  Tucker, ears up, barked, “Cooper.”

  “Let’s go.” Mrs. Murphy dashed for the ladder, climbing down backward.

  Harry, hearing the car, threw out two more bales, shut the doors, latched them from the inside, and slid down the ladder. She liked, when wearing gloves, to put her hands outside the ladder, hold on, and slide down with her feet also on the outside.

  “Show off.” Pewter turned up her nose.

  “Looks like fun,” Tucker, inside now, remarked. “You’re jealous because you can’t do it.”

  “At least I can climb up to the hayloft,” the gray animal fired back.

  “Coop, let me toss the hay into the pastures. Won’t take a minute,” Harry informed her friend.

  “I’ll help you.”

  The two women walked behind the barn, each picking up a hay bale by the string, chucking it over the fence. Harry then climbed over that pasture fence, fished a pocketknife out of her pocket, cut the string, rolled it up, stuffed it in her old Carhart jacket pocket.

  This task consumed maybe ten minutes. Finished, Harry headed for the kitchen.

  “Harry, I’m fine. You don’t need to feed me.”

  “I can eat!” Pewter instantly refuted Cooper’s comment.

  “Well, I’m hungry and I have these poor starving animals. Got up at five-thirty and I just now finished the last of the chores.”

  Once in the kitchen, coats on the Shaker pegs, Harry warmed up the morning’s coffee she’d made for Fair, put on the teapot for herself. Then she opened the refrigerator, cut up some leftover chicken, put it down for the animals, who raced for their bowls.

  “Hey. I have liver pâté, fresh French bread, and farm butter. Also have jams.”

  “Liver pâté?”

  “Coop, my husband now evidences an interest in more elegant foods than my succotash.” Harry smiled. “It really is good although I always feel bad for the goose.”

  “Omnivore.”

  “Sure, we’ll eat anything.”

  The tall deputy waited for Harry to sit down before buttering bread.

  “Not much of a Thanksgiving for you, was it?” Harry commiserated.

  Cooper shook her head. “We got as much as we could. By the way, MaryJo died last night from her internal injuries from the crash, plus the wound from Darrel when he shot her. Damn fool, she’s in the car, door crushed against her and she’s still firing at us. Insane. Gone.” Coop tapped her forehead.

  “Conscious?”

  “In and out but we did find out a few things. Bruce, her husband, swore he knew nothing. Thought all the money came from her investment business.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know. Rick and I talked about it, well, everyone on the force has talked about it. Rick says if wives don’t know when husbands are crooks, is it not possible that husbands don’t know about their wives? As long as the money rolls in, would you be suspicious?”

  “I don’t know. If people came in and out of the house at odd hours, I would be. She fooled us. She could have fooled him.”

  “She fooled us to the tune of six million dollars, give or take, over the last three years. She had a bursting account.”

  “My God!” Harry exclaimed.

  “Selling illegal animal parts, feathers, fur,
ground-up bones, is a huge worldwide business and she was the nerve center for the East Coast. She and Panto supplied everyone and anyone, and a big part of the business flowed from the tribal wannabes. The people who declare themselves to be of that blood but have inherited no regalia or implements from their ancestors.”

  “Do you think they are tribal members?”

  “Not really,” Cooper honestly answered. “Perhaps a few, but remember that white woman who declared herself African American to get a job? People do weird things especially if they believe it confers status. All I know is we now have records from her computer and there will be hundreds of arrests in the original thirteen colonies. People who don’t get wind of this and run away anyway.” Cooper slumped in her chair.

  “So she and Panto were in business?” Harry asked.

  “Yes, but she was in effect the major stockholder. We’ve got the financial records. Our computer whizzes really are unbelievable. They cracked her codes and we all read the financial statements with our mouths hanging open. The money!”

  “So do you have a record of everyone she did business with?”

  “Yes, but many of these accounts are under code names like Gray Wolf, Black Bear, that sort of thing. In many instances, the transfer was in cash. She was nothing if not slick.”

  “Did she say why she killed Panto?”

  “No. She betrayed very little except to say her work involved religion.”

  “What?”

  “No kidding. She could only say she was supplying goods for religious ceremonies.” Cooper drank a bit more of the coffee, which wasn’t bitter since it hadn’t been sitting that long.

  “How can that be?”

  “Consider Quakers. Nonviolent people. They can choose not to fight in a war. Yes, they have to register as conscientious objectors but their wishes not to kill are respected. Or the Amish. There are things they can do or not do that the rest of us can’t. This honoring of different faiths, if you will, is even more pronounced for tribes. They have treaties from the United States government allowing them their own government.”

  “A recipe for problems.” Harry sighed. “Then again, look what we’ve gone through here just to get our Virginia tribes recognized by that same Federal government that herded people onto reservations.”

  “It is confusing. Do I think people are taking advantage of this? No. A few are and the really smart ones like MaryJo do more than take advantage. Once the media gets hold of this it will stir a political hornet’s nest. A lot of MaryJo’s customers are Asian, recently moved here, as well as people from parts of the world we regard as primitive. They believe in spirits and pacifying those spirits. Some of the things, shrunken whale penises, no kidding, are ground up and used as aphrodisiacs.”

  “For men, I assume.” Harry started to laugh.

  “Well, I’m not going to take it.” Cooper laughed, too.

  “It’s a crazy world.” Harry sighed.

  “It is and our good old American way allows a certain amount of gaming the system. Remember the First Amendment. There can be no national religion. Mostly it’s good and has served us well. When it doesn’t you have to scratch your head, but remember, Harry, there are people here who believe the earth is flat.”

  “Good Lord,” Harry whispered. “Back to all this, you think Panto wanted more money?”

  “I do. And I think you were targeted because you shot your mouth off about contraband. Granted, you did not meddle, but somehow you were onto this in your own lopsided way.”

  Harry demurred. “I didn’t really figure it out, it just seemed likely, given we found eagle feathers, a cage. Which reminds me, Pierre Rice.”

  “We think he was working for the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. They were well aware of game being poached off our national parks and they were also well aware that this was a billion-dollar industry, much of the goods being sold in the U.S. Pierre, bit by bit, was closing in. He narrowed it down to the big rigs carrying contraband from the mid-South to all directions. First, he looked for big box trucks. But these folks are more subtle than that. They filled new cars being delivered with cages, boxes, et cetera, all cleaned up, of course, and hauled them to Afton pass on Route 64. There MaryJo, Panto, and the people who worked for them, we’re still arresting drivers, met the rig, transferred the contraband.”

  “The dead driver’s face?”

  “Don’t know. The medical examiner believes he was torn up by an animal. Possibly he realized Pierre was tailing him and he had something really valuable, stopped to free the animal or bird and the creature took his revenge.”

  “Good,” Harry replied.

  “MaryJo placed all the blame for the murders on Panto before she died. Said Panto killed Pierre, shot at you. Panto had killed Pierre at old Cloverfields, crossed the creek, and dumped him at Sugarday. Granted she was loaded on painkillers, but I wouldn’t believe all that anyway. She proved herself an excellent liar and, if you will, a good businesswoman.”

  “Ever find Liz’s Sioux Indian dress, the one that hung on the wall of the shop?”

  “No. I have no doubt it is in some rich person’s collection. Maybe in time. I’m amazed we’ve pieced together this much. And in some ways I think Bruce may be telling the truth because if he was in on his wife’s criminal business he would probably have destroyed her computer.”

  “Didn’t think of that.”

  “Pierre was very close,” Cooper said. “But we don’t know why he went to Cloverfields. Was he lured there?”

  “The Rices are descended from the Cloverfields Rices.” Harry folded her hands on the table. “Panto must have known about the chits. Lured him in some way.”

  “MaryJo swore Panto robbed Liz’s store for his own personal profit. Anything she could pin on him she did.”

  “She wasn’t stupid until the end.”

  Cooper nodded.

  The phone rang. Harry jumped up to answer the old wall phone that she adored. “Harry here.”

  “Harry, can you come over to St. Luke’s?” Reverend Jones’s deep, deep voice asked.

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “The Taylors’ grave has been opened. You need to see this.”

  “I’ll be right there. Coop will be with me.”

  —

  Within twenty minutes, Harry, Cooper, Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker stood over the opened graves, spades resting on their sides at the piled earth.

  “I told you I smelled old bones,” Tucker, self-satisfied, bragged.

  “That pearl is as big as a pigeon’s egg!” Harry gasped.

  The skeleton, lying faceup on top of a lidded casket, shreds of mustard-colored silk still intact, wore her necklace, for it had to be a woman, a necklace of incredible value and the pearl, the centerpiece, was gigantic. Smaller, matching pearls were earrings. Given the size of the pearl in the necklace, smaller for the earrings was relative.

  “Whoever she was, she was rich,” Cooper declared.

  “No doubt.” The Reverend shook his head. “How did she wind up stashed on top of the Taylors? Whoever put her here knew the community well. Obviously knew that Michael and Margaret had died together. The earth would be easy to dig.”

  “Whoever killed her wasn’t a thief,” Harry posited. “Had to be hate.”

  The two fellows who had dug up the grave asked Reverend Jones, “What should we do, Reverend?”

  “Coop?” The Lutheran minister looked to the deputy.

  “Well, it is a body, so I have to call in the forensic team. Once we get all the photographs we need, you can fill this back in.” She paused, smiled slightly. “I don’t think anyone is in danger. Think we’ve had enough of that.”

  “Maybe.” Harry considered the situation. “But someone had an idea about this, else why were the tombstones knocked over and knife marks in the soil?”

  “True,” Reverend Jones replied. “Let’s do as Cooper said. This will be a big story for TV and the papers. Arouse a lot of curiosity. Someone may come f
orward. Really, no harm was done.”

  “You dug up the tomb?” Cooper inquired.

  “Yes. I just got to thinking and my curiosity got the better of me.” He smiled. “Usually it’s Harry who gives in to her curiosity. I’m glad I did. I will pronounce the service for the dead before she’s taken away.”

  “Old bones. What can they tell?” Pewter sniffed.

  “Sometimes if a bone is cut or smashed they know how a person was killed. And they most always can determine gender. ’Course, that’s easy with these bones. Sometimes they can determine race and age, too. We’ll see,” Mrs. Murphy pronounced.

  While the five humans, two cats, and one dog waited for the forensic team to show up, Reverend Jones did read the service for the dead and the humans acted as witnesses and mourners.

  Not only did the sheriff’s department get there, but so did Channel 29, Channel 6 had a stringer, and The Daily Progress sent a reporter. This was going to be a big story.

  As the skeleton was removed the Progress reporter asked Harry what she thought.

  “There are so many stories about buried treasure at the old estates. Well, one turned out to be true.”

  “Reverend Jones,” the reporter asked, “did you hear stories about buried treasure in the graveyard?”

  “No, but I believe everyone in here is a buried treasure.”

  Finally on the way home, Mrs. Murphy said to her two friends and Harry, if she could understand, “I wonder who will get the pearl necklace?”

  “It should go to the church,” Tucker forcefully said.

  “Nothing is that easy,” Pewter grumped. “That necklace is worth a fortune.”

  “A bloody fortune,” Mrs. Murphy added.

  Harry commented as she turned down the dirt and gravel road to the farm. “It’s been quite a day.”

  The blue jay swooped in front of the Volvo, screaming at Pewter inside.

  “Fatty Fatty!”

  “I understand why people will kill one another. I will kill that blue jay. I will. I will,” the gray cat vowed.

  Harry finished up the early-evening chores, her mind whirring. She never saw it coming with MaryJo. She never imagined a richly laden pile of bones would be tucked away in St. Luke’s graveyard, either.