She promised Dr. D’Angelo that she would faithfully work Totem. She’d then take a bar of soap and lather him up fifteen minutes before D’Angelo walked into the stable. This way the horse looked as though he’d been exercised. Then Linda would make up a story about how he had behaved, full of little details to cement her lies. As soon as D’Angelo left she’d hose the horse off and turn him out in the paddock.
Will, grabbing the halter with a lead chain over the nose, helped his wife walk the horse to the paddock.
“I’ll get this horse out of here in two months’ time,” she bragged.
“How?”
“Ask Bob Drake to ride him when D’Angelo’s here.”
“Bob Drake can’t ride this horse.” Will’s eyes widened.
“Exactly.” She grunted as the large animal bumped into her. She hit his rib cage with her fist, hoping he’d not bump into her again.
They both breathed a sigh of relief when Totem walked into his paddock and the gate closed behind him.
“Linda, Bob could get hurt—bad.”
She shrugged, “He’s a big boy. He doesn’t have to ride the horse.”
Will pondered that. “Well, he gets planted. Then what?”
“Then I tell D’Angelo he could get sued with a horse like this. I’d better take it off his hands.”
Will smiled, “The commission ought to be pretty good.”
“Just remember”—she winked at him—“we’re going to own our own stable—real soon. We can make money in this business. Real money.”
“What if D’Angelo won’t sell?”
“He will.” She rubbed her hands together. “I’ve got him all figured out. Listen, honey, I’ve got to make a pickup tonight. I’ll be back real late.”
He frowned. “I wish you’d let me go with you.”
“I’m safe. It’s better if only one of us knows who the supplier is. Since I knew him first, it doesn’t make sense to drag you into it. And he’d never allow it.”
Will shielded his head as a gust of wind blew straw and hay bits everywhere. “It’s dangerous.”
“Nah.”
“Two of our best customers are dead.”
“Has nothing to do with us.”
“God, I hope not.” Will’s features drained of animation.
Linda didn’t want Will to know the supplier for two reasons. In a tight spot he might spill the beans, ruining everything. And he’d know the exact amount of coke being sold to her. That would never do because she didn’t want him to know how much she kept back for herself. She cut it lightly once before bringing it back home. Then she and Will cut it together, using a white powdered laxative.
Will could be the brawn of the outfit. She was the brains. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Later that night, at ten-thirty, when Linda pulled out of the driveway in the truck, Will hurried outside and jumped into Dr. D’Angelo’s old farm truck. He followed her, lights off, until she turned south on Route 15. He allowed a few cars to buffer the zone between himself and his wife. Then he clicked on the lights and followed her to her rendezvous.
22
Silver strands of rain poured over the windshield. Harry could barely see as she drove to work. The windshield wipers sloshed back and forth, allowing momentary glimpses of a road she luckily knew well.
Mrs. Murphy, paws on the dash, alert, helped Harry drive. Tucker wasn’t quite able to rest her hind paws on the bench seat and reach for the dash.
“Big puddle up ahead,” the cat warned.
Harry slowed, wondering why her tiger was so chatty.
“Mom, a stranded car dead ahead.” Mrs. Murphy’s claws dug into the dash.
Mickey Townsend’s beautiful silver BMW rested by the side of the road, the right wheels in a drainage ditch that had swollen from a trickle to a torrent.
Harry stopped, putting on her turn signal because the old truck’s flasher fuse had a tendency to blow. Of course, that wasn’t as annoying as having the gear shift stick whenever she tried to put it in third gear. The passenger window looked as though Niagara were pouring over it. She couldn’t see a thing.
“Damn.” She pulled ahead of the beached vehicle, careful not to suffer the same fate. “Guys, stay here.”
“Don’t go out in that,” Mrs. Murphy told her. “You’ll catch your death of cold.”
“Stop complaining, Murphy. You stay right here. I mean it.”
She clapped her dad’s old cowboy hat on her head, which channeled the water away from her face and off the back and front of the hat. She’d never found anything better for keeping the rain out of her eyes. She also wore her Barbour coat, a dark green dotted with mud, and her duck boots. They would keep her dry.
She slipped out, quickly closed the door, and prayed no one would skid around the curve as it appeared Mickey Townsend must have done. She put her hand over her eyes and peered into the driver’s seat. Nothing. She walked around to the other side, just to be sure he wasn’t bending over outside his car, trying to figure out how to extricate himself from this mess. He wasn’t there.
She lifted herself back up into the truck, clicked off the turn signal, and rolled on down the road. By the time she walked through the back door, carrying both Mrs. Murphy and Tucker under her Barbour, Mrs. Hogendobber had sorted out one bag of mail.
“Miranda, I’m sorry I’m late. I couldn’t go over twenty-five miles an hour, the visibility was so awful.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mrs. Hogendobber airily replied. “The water is ready for tea and I whipped up oatmeal muffins last night and another batch of glazed doughnuts. I can’t bake enough doughnuts for Market. He sells out by ten o’clock.”
“Oh, thanks.” Harry gratefully pulled off her raincoat as Mrs. Murphy and Tucker shook off the few drops of water that had fallen on them. Harry hung up her coat on the coat rack by the back door and poured herself a cup of tea. “I’d die without tea.”
“I doubt that, but you’d sure be grouchy in the morning.” Miranda helped herself to a second cup.
“Oh, I better call Rick.” Harry carried the steaming cup with her to the phone.
“Now what’s wrong?”
“Mickey Townsend’s BMW is stranded at Harper’s Curve.” She punched the numbers.
“I hope he’s all right. Things are so—queer just now.”
Harry nodded. “Sheriff Shaw, please, it’s Mary Minor Haristeen.” She waited a minute. “Hi, Sheriff. Mickey Townsend’s BMW has two wheels dropped in a ditch at Harper’s Curve. I got out to check it and it’s empty.”
“Thanks, Harry. I’ll send someone over once things quiet down. It’s one fender bender after another on a day like this.” He paused a moment. “Did you say Mickey Townsend’s car?”
“Uh-huh.”
His voice sounded strained. “Thanks. I’ll get right on it. That curve can be evil.”
The phone clicked and Harry put the receiver back in the cradle.
“Well?”
“At first he didn’t seem too worried about it but now he’s sending someone right over.”
“You know, at choir practice last night Ysabel Yadkin swore that Mickey is involved in a big gambling scam and that Nigel Danforth owed him oo-scoobs of money. I asked her what was the last steeplechase she attended and she gave me the hairy eyeball, I can tell you. ‘Well, Ysabel,’ I said, ‘if you’re going to tell tales, you ought to at least know the people you’re talking about.’ She fried. But then after practice she came over and declared that I was being snotty because I had horsey friends. Her Albert knows Mickey Townsend because he works on that expensive car of his.”
“Since when did Albert start working on BMWs?”
Mrs. Hogendobber drained her mug, returning to the second mailbag. “Since they offered him more money than Mercedes.”
“Mrs. H., sit down, you did that first bag all by yourself. I’ll do this one.”
“Idle hands do the devil’s work. I don’t mind.”
Toge
ther they tipped the bag into the mail cart just as BoomBoom Craycroft sashayed through the front door at eight o’clock sharp.
“What a morning, and the temperature is dropping. I hope this doesn’t turn to ice.”
“We’re a little behind, BoomBoom, and it’s my fault.”
“I can help.”
“Oh, no, don’t bother,” said Harry, who knew that BoomBoom’s idea of help would be to sort for five minutes, then have a fit of the vapors. “Why don’t you run a few errands and come on back in about half an hour?”
“I guess I could.” She plucked her umbrella out of the stand where she had dropped it. “Isn’t it awful about Coty Lamont?”
Before she had the complete sentence out of her mouth a soaking-wet Mickey Townsend pushed open the door and sagged against the wall.
“Mickey, are you all right?” BoomBoom reached out to him.
“Yes, by the grace of God.” He began shaking; he was chilled to the bone.
“Come back here.” Miranda flipped up the dividing barrier. “You need a hot drink. I’ll run to the house and get some of George’s clothes. They’re too big for you but at least they’re dry.”
“Oh, Mrs. Hogendobber, a cup of coffee will put me right.” His teeth chattered, belying his words.
“Now you stay right here,” Miranda commanded as Harry made him a cup of instant coffee.
“Sugar and cream?” Harry opened the tiny refrigerator to reach for the cream.
“Two sugars and a dab of cream.” He held out his hand for the cup, then put both hands around it, vainly trying to stop shaking.
BoomBoom joined them as Mickey dripped water all over the floor.
“He’s white as a sheet,” Tucker noted.
“I stopped by your car.” Harry threw her coat over his shoulders.
“How long ago?”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“Just missed me.” His teeth hit the rim of the cup. “I couldn’t find a house. I headed into the cornfield there but realized I had to come back to the road because I couldn’t see anything and I’d get lost. I mean, I know that territory but I couldn’t see a damned thing and I was—” He gulped down a few warm mouthfuls of coffee. “God, that tastes good.”
Miranda pushed open the back door, turned and shook her umbrella out the door, and then closed it because the wind was blowing the rain into the post office. A shopping bag of clothes hung on her arm. “You go right into the bathroom and towel off. There’s a big towel here on top. And get into these clothes.”
Mickey did as he was told, finally emerging in pants with rolled cuffs and the sleeves of George’s old navy sweater rolled up, too, but he was warm.
“Mrs. Hogendobber never throws anything out.” Mrs. Murphy laughed. “I guess it’s a good thing.”
He ate a glazed doughnut and continued his story. “I found the road again and knew if I could get into town you’d be in the post office early. Say, I’d better call a towing service.”
“I already called Rick Shaw.”
“What for?”
“I didn’t know where you were or whether you were okay—things being what they are,” Harry said forthrightly. “So I called him.”
“Well, he’s not worried about me. He treats me like the chief suspect.”
“He sounded worried enough on the phone,” Harry stated.
“Yeah—well.” Mickey slumped a moment, then straightened his back. “I guess I’m a little worried, too.”
“Everyone’s worried.” BoomBoom nibbled an oatmeal muffin.
“I know that road like the back of my hand. Someone swooped down behind me and ran me off the road.”
“People don’t pay attention to the weather—” Miranda prepared to launch into a diatribe about the bad driving habits of the younger generation, meaning anyone younger than herself.
Mickey cut her off, “No, whoever this was wanted to run me off the road—or worse.”
“What?” BoomBoom stopped mid-bite.
“They nudged me from behind and then drew alongside and pushed me right off the road. If we’d been twenty yards farther up the road, it would have been a steep drop, I can tell you that.”
“Could you see who it was?” Harry asked.
“Hell, no, not in this rain. It was a big-ass truck, I can tell you that. I’m not even sure about the color, although I thought I caught a glimpse of black or dark blue. GMC maybe, but I don’t know. It happened so fast.”
“Why don’t they ask him what he was doing down that road in the first place?” Mrs. Murphy rubbed against Tucker.
“Too polite.” Tucker loved it when the cat rubbed on her.
“This is no time to be polite. And furthermore, I don’t believe him.”
“You don’t believe he was run off the road?”
“I believe that.” The cat’s whiskers touched and tickled Tucker’s nose. “But he’s hiding something.”
“Maybe he knows what’s in Orion’s stall?”
“Tucker, I don’t know about that. I don’t think we’ll ever get the humans to dig down deep enough, and Orion can’t help. He’s switched to another stall, remember?”
“Yeah. So what is it about Mickey Townsend?”
“You can smell fear as well as I can.”
23
Harry, Susan, Fair, Big Mim, Little Marilyn, and BoomBoom all had their noses out of joint because the rain had forced them to bag their long-planned foxhunting with Keswick Hunt Club. The only good thing about the rained-out Saturday was that Harry finally went grocery shopping.
As she wheeled her cart around the pet food aisle, always her first stop, she saw Cynthia Cooper piling bags of birdseed into her cart.
“Coop.”
“Hey. Great minds run in the same direction.”
“Mrs. Murphy will shred the house if I don’t get her tuna. She tore the arm off the sofa last week. I still haven’t put it back together.”
“Because of tuna?”
“No. I left her home from Montpelier and took Tucker. Made her hateful mean.”
Five years ago, hearing a story like that, Cynthia Cooper would have thought it a fabrication. However, she had grown to know Harry’s cat and dog as well as other Crozet animals. The stories were true. In fact, Mrs. Murphy had pointed out a skull fragment to her on a case at Monticello. It could have been blind luck but then again—
“One of these days I’ll get a cat, but I work the most terrible hours. Maybe I need a husband before the cat. That way he can take care of the cat when I’m on duty.”
“Hope you have better luck than I did.”
“Doesn’t it make you crazy that everyone tries to get you and Fair back together—including Fair?” Cynthia laughed.
Harry rested her elbows on the push bar of the cart. “Lack of imagination. They don’t believe another eligible man will come through Crozet.”
“Blair Bainbridge.” She was referring to the model who had bought the farm next to Harry’s a few years back.
“His career takes him away for such long stretches of time. And I think Marilyn Sanburne the younger has set her cap for him.”
“Quaint expression.”
“I’m trying not to be rude.” Harry inadvertently kicked the cart and almost fell on her face as it rolled out from under her.
“How much more shopping?” Cynthia pointed to Harry’s long list.
“Forty-five minutes. Why?”
“If you buy pasta I’ll make it.”
“No kidding?” Harry eagerly said. Not being much of a cook, she loved being asked to dinner or having someone cook for her.
“That way we can catch up.” Cynthia put her finger to her lips, the hush sign.
Harry understood right away. “Be back at the house in an hour.”
As she rounded the next aisle in a hurry, she beheld BoomBoom, ear pressed to cans of baked beans.
“I’m in this aisle now.” Harry had to twit her. “I mean, unless the beans are talking to you.”
>
“You need to do something about your hostility level. I really and truly want to take you to Lifeline with me.”
“I am doing something about my hostility level.” Harry mimicked BoomBoom’s mature and understanding voice, the one reserved for moments of social superiority. With that she pushed her cart away.
“What do you mean?” BoomBoom put her hands on her hips. “Harry, come back here.”
Harry twirled around the next aisle without looking back. BoomBoom, miffed, hurried after her. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Harry called over her shoulder, throwing items into her cart at a fast clip.
BoomBoom, never one to miss an emotional morsel, cut the corner too close and rammed into a toilet paper display that tumbled over the floor, into her cart, and onto her head.
Harry stopped and laughed. She couldn’t help it. Then she turned her cart, threw a couple rolls into it and said to the fuming BoomBoom, “Wiped out, Boom.”
“Oh, shut up, Harry!”
“Ha!”
Cynthia hooted as Harry recounted the supermarket incident. She dipped a wooden fork into the boiling water to pluck out a few noodles. “Not quite ready.”
Harry set the table. Mrs. Murphy reposed as the centerpiece. Tucker mournfully gazed at the checkered tablecloth.
“Here.” Harry tossed the corgi a green milkbone.
“How can you eat that stuff?” Murphy curled her front paws under her chest.
“I’ll eat anything that doesn’t eat me first.”
“Very funny. My grandmother told me that joke.” The cat flicked her right ear.
“Here we go.” Cynthia put the pasta on the table. “Is she going to eat with us?”
“Well—if she bothers you I’ll put her on the floor, but she loves pasta with butter, so once this cools I’ll fix her a plate.”
“Harry, you’ll spoil that cat.”
“Not enough,” came the swift reply as Harry diced pasta for the cat and then made a small bowl for Tucker, too. She put butter on her own noodles while Cynthia drenched hers in a creamy clam sauce.
“Can’t I interest you in this sauce?”
“You can interest me, but I’ve got to lose five pounds before winter really sets in or I won’t get rid of it until April. Susan and I made a vow last week not to put on winter weight.”
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