Cat's Eyewitness

11

Not necessarily." Rev. Herb Jones's gravelly voice had a hypnotic effect on people.

"I've become a cynic, I fear." Alicia's lustrous eyes, filled with warmth, focused on Herb.

They'd run into each other at Pet Food Discounters. Alicia was buying toys and pigs' ears for Maxwell, while Herb carried flats of special cat food for his two cats. He'd placed them on the counter, then walked to the toy section for some furry fake mice, when he bumped into Alicia.

The subject of the "miracle" came up and Alicia asked if Herb thought this might be a scam.

"Your line of work taught you not to trust." Herb placed his hand on Alicia's shoulder, feeling a pleasurable twinge when he did so. No man was immune to her beauty.

"And your line of work taught you the reverse." She smiled at him.

He reached for the furry mice with pink ears, little black noses, little beady eyes, the tail a dyed bit of thin leather. "I'll ponder that, Alicia. I have learned to trust God in His infinite wisdom, but I don't know that I always trust man—or should I say people?" He blushed. "Words change, you know. I'm beyond being politically correct. I, uh, well, I still think it's proper to open the door for a lady."

"So do I." Her laughter sounded like a harp's glissando. "But, now, Herb, do you think I'm a hard-edged feminist and will take offense if you use 'man' to mean humankind?" His eyebrows raised and she continued. "I won't take offense, but I will take note." Now her eyebrows raised. "So long as 'man' is the measure of all things, women will be shortchanged. I guarantee you that."

"Point well taken." He rubbed the fur on the mousies. "Antonia Fraser wrote a book some years ago. I wish I could remember the title but it was about men being the measure of all things in the seventeenth century, I believe. Quite good. I like her work even if I have forgotten the title."

"I do, too. That's one of the things we share, you know, a love of books." She selected a fake sheepskin doll, a sheepskin bone, and put them in her shopping cart. "Maxwell adores these toys. I tell him, 'Bite the man,' and he runs for the doll. If I say, 'Bite the bone,' he goes and shakes it and then brings it to me. You know, Herb, the love of a dog is the most perfect love in the world."

He chuckled. "Elocution and Cazenovia will disagree with you."

"Your communion cats." She laughed again, because all of Crozet had heard the story of Herb's cats eating the communion wafers, assisted in this desecration by Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker.

"They're very religious cats."

At this they both laughed.

He accompanied her as she walked down the aisle, which was stacked with foods, medicines, toys, and new products. How marvelous it was to walk with a woman. His wife had passed away some years ago. Grief still sat heavy on his shoulders, although he tried not to burden his friends. Only within the last six months could he imagine dating again. Imagining and doing were still worlds apart. He fretted over his age. Was he too old? Was he too set in his ways? Was he too overweight? Yes. Would he go on a diet? Maybe. Food was a comfort. He'd tussle back and forth with himself until he realized he most likely wouldn't do much of anything until he found a woman who caught his eye. Alicia did that. But, then, she knocked everyone for a loop.

As he strolled with her, chatting, reaching up high on shelves for her, placing twenty-five-pound bags of feed in her cart, energy flowed through him. When young, his father and mother had patiently counseled him on the qualities of a good mate, and he'd listened. His wife, very attractive, had been his lover, his friend, his partner. He'd chosen wisely.

He felt empty without a woman, and it wasn't just sex. He loved doing for a woman. He loved picking up the twenty-five-pound bags of dog food for Alicia. She could pick them up herself, but he could do it with such ease. The thousand small attentions a Virginia gentleman pays to a woman made him feel like more of a man. Without a woman to care for, dote over, occasionally fuss with and then kiss and make up, what was life, really?

"I'm so glad to be home. I don't know why I waited so long to come back." Alicia placed the furry mice in Herb's cart.

Herb put in a trial can of cat food that supposedly controlled hairballs. "If you want to get rid of hairballs, shave the cats." He laughed.

"Then you'd have to buy them little mink coats."

They laughed again. The glass front door opened. Harry and Susan swept through, Susan marching in front. She spied Alicia and Herb.

"Herb, say prayers for me. I've lost my marbles. I mean it. Sssst." She indicated that her brain circuits had fried.

Harry caught up, quickly defending herself. "Don't listen to her. She's—"

"No. Wait, let me tell them. First," Susan held up her forefinger, "look out the window. Gray skies, snow falling, not nasty-nasty but not great. So if it's that way down here, imagine what it's like on the mountain. Did I consider that? I did. Did I let my best friend talk me into going back to Afton? I did. Tucker, Mrs. Murphy, and Pewter ran through the iron fence—"

Harry interrupted, "The monks locked the big iron gates."

"And we stood there in the cold—which was worse that high up—snow falling, and we waited for those three little shits to come back. Excuse me for swearing. We had no business being up there in the first place, and you can't see the hand in front of your face. It's a miracle we didn't slide off the face of Afton Mountain."

"The Virgin Mary is working miracles," Alicia said with a straight face, then laughed. Herb couldn't help it; he did, too.

"Herb." Harry stared at him in mock horror.

"I'm a Lutheran minister, not a Catholic. I don't believe in miracles."

"You do, too." Susan's lower lip jutted out.

"I do but not—mmm, how can I put this—let's say that there's a reliquary with the tooth of St. Peter. Do I believe it will cure your ills? No."

"But if you were a dentist it might improve business should you own the reliquary." Alicia leaned on to him for a second.

Even Susan laughed, recovering from her snit. It worried her that she couldn't control her bad moods, her anxiety. Harry always talked her into stupid things. Susan would bark at her and that would be the end of it, but lately, every little thing about everyone—including her own self—irritated the hell out of her.

"Locked the gates?" Alicia folded her arms together, leaning on the handrail of the cart. Alicia's pearl necklace, which she wore often, glowed against her skin, each pearl the size of a large pea, perfectly shaped. Her shirt was open just enough to reveal delicious cleavage.

Harry noticed, like most women looking at another woman. She saw Alicia's beauty but it had no sexual effect on her. Seeing a beautiful woman was like seeing a beautiful horse. She appreciated it.

Alicia put her hand on his wrist. "We can settle up later. You go or you'll miss your meeting. You know Tazio will work her magic. I can't wait to see what she's come up with."

Tazio Chappars was a young architect who had won a big commission from The University to build a new sports complex. From this, other large commissions soon flowed. She kept her office in Crozet. The encroaching fame didn't go to her head. She served on the vestry board with Harry, both women exhibiting a lot of common sense. They worked well together.

Herb kissed each woman on the cheek, then hurried out the door.

"He may be the best man I have ever met." Susan put her hand in her pocket.

"And here comes one of the worst." Harry put her hand on her hip, calling to the curly-haired man who stepped through the door, "You're stalking us!"

Bo Newell, graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, owner of Mountain Area Realty, grinned as he beheld the ladies. "The Three Amuses. I'm not stalking you, I'm seeking divine inspiration."

"Buying food for the Almost Home Center?" Susan asked, since Bo and his wife, Nancy, along with Bette Grahame, spearheaded a drive to build a no-kill shelter in Nelson County.

"Yes." He put his hands in his pockets. "Thought I'd go up and pray on Afton Mountain for an angel. We need contributions."

"Not today. Another storm is brewing," Susan replied. "And the monks have locked the gates."

His light eyes opened wide. "You're kidding?"

"No," Susan said. "Harry forced me to go up there."

"At gunpoint, I'm sure," he slyly replied.

"Kidnapped," Harry said.

"Held hostage against her will." Alicia picked up on it.

"Is this like the rape of the Sabine women where they were carried off against their will? Harry just carried you off to the mountain?" Bo solemnly asked.

"Well, not with the two of us." Susan's mood was passing. "Murder maybe."

"Me!"

"Harry, it really does occur to me on the odd occasion." Susan nodded.

"Right here in Pet Food Discounters." Bo, voice rising, rubbed his hands. "But really, Susan, the monks have locked the gates?"

"Yes."

"That will keep Nordy out. Jesus, that guy is like a hemorrhoid. He slips down and hangs around." Bo was warming up, his typical outrageous humor in play. He paused, lowered his voice, now sounding achingly sincere. "Actually, I don't have to drive to Afton Mountain. The Madonna is in front of me." He kissed Alicia's hand.

"Bo, you are so full of it," Harry said.

"Think of me as Divergent Mary," Alicia quipped.

Bo loved a witty woman. "I'll think of you often." He sighed. "Well, ladies, I've got strays to feed. That must be how Nancy thinks of me. Was I lucky or what! I practiced my hangdog look."

"You were lucky." Susan smiled as he waved, heading toward the stacks of fifty-pound chow bags.

Alicia watched Bo for a moment, then turned to the two friends. "My friend Maggie Sheraton will be visiting me next week. I thought I'd give a small dinner party and invite Herb. Maggie lost her husband a few years ago. I think the two of them would get along."

"You mean Margaret Sheraton the actress?" Harry's jaw dropped.

"Yes."

"Didn't she win an Oscar?" Susan rummaged her brain for the film.

"Best Supporting Actress. Um, twelve years ago. She works now and then but, you know, Maggie is in her early sixties. The business ignores actresses who age. It's a sin to grow old in Hollywood. She's still good-looking. A man with Herb's strong character and warmth would appeal to her."

"He's not too fat?" Harry blurted.

"Harry." Susan elbowed her.

"Sorry."

"He is portly. She'll overlook it, but if a spark should fly between them, I bet he gets himself in better shape. He's let himself go."

"Miranda did that after George died," Harry remembered.

"Look at her now. She looks years younger. Lost the weight. Found love—another one of those miracles." Alicia smiled.

"Maybe there's one left over for me," Susan said plaintively.

"Honey, now, everything will be all right. Really. I just know things aren't what you think." Harry hugged Susan. "There's nothing to worry about."

"I hope so." Susan sighed.

Alicia reached for Susan's hand. "Courage. Life calls for courage." She squeezed her hand. "And Harry is right, it will all turn out."

"Think you'll find love again?" Harry couldn't help herself. She shouldn't have asked this directly and not in a public place.

"Yes," Alicia forthrightly replied. "Love may not make the world go around, but it certainly makes the ride worthwhile."

"I never thought of that." Harry folded her arms across her chest.

"If it has anything to do with emotions, you don't think of it. You're worse than any man I've ever met." Susan rolled her eyes.

"Poop to you. If we weren't in the middle of Pet Food Discounters, I'd say worse."

"You two can't live without each other." Alicia stood up straight.

"I could try." Susan giggled.

"Be bored." Harry giggled, too.

"I have two children, Harry. I don't need a third."

"Let's not talk about me." Harry turned back to Alicia. "Are we too country for you now? When you were here as a young person, you hadn't seen the world. You weren't a big movie star."

"Oh, Harry, I'd rather fall in love with someone country than the president of the largest entertainment group in the world. Trust me. I am so glad to be home, home with real people with real lives. Hollywood gave me many opportunities and a great deal of money. I'm grateful for that, but if you're not careful it can erode your sense of reality and, ultimately, your sense of self. It's a debilitating environment."

"I'm so glad." Susan corrected herself. "Not about a debilitating environment but that you could fall in love with a Virginian, a farmer, a banker, a—" She stopped.

Alicia looked from Susan to Harry, back again to Susan. "I know exactly what you're thinking."

"You do?" they asked in unison.

"Will I fall in love with a man or a woman?" Both women's faces reddened, then Susan nodded that Alicia had hit the nail on the head.

"It's none of our business." Harry picked up the mousies.

"Coming from you?" Susan was incredulous.

Alicia laughed. "Better get some mousies for Mrs. Murphy and Pewter. Since you're interested in my life, let me say one thing: anyone who refuses love is a fool. That may not answer your question, but that is a truth I have learned. Do I know? In a way, I do. While I have loved two men in my life, there was always a part of me on guard. I like being totally relaxed with another human being. Just being myself."

"Ah." Susan understood. "But Alicia, aren't all women on guard with men, even the men they've lived with for decades?"

"Susan, I can't believe you're saying that." Harry's eyes opened wider. "On guard?"

"I am. There's a part of me I keep to myself."

"Is that being on guard?" Harry puzzled. "I don't feel on guard with Fair. I can't say I feel on guard with men, anyway."

"Because you're a man in a woman's body, a beautiful body. I don't mean that as an insult. Harry, you've got bigger balls, forgive the phrase, than most of the men I know," Susan said.

"Oh, come on, that's not true. I'm tired of hearing that. Just because I don't ooh and goo and carry on about what a caretaker I am, ooze love and all that bullcrap, doesn't mean I think like a man. I'm logical. Big deal."

"You two have been having this argument since first grade. I'm heading to the checkout. Susan, I believe you can love a man and not be on guard. The reason I was on guard, even though I loved and was loved, was that I wasn't being true to myself. And, Harry, a good man is in love with you. You won't find anyone better. You all spoke directly to me, I'm speaking directly to you. Susan, drop your guard. Harry, seize love."

As Alicia left, Susan's face looked as though she'd been slapped hard. What the unusual woman said had cut deep down to the bone.

"Susan? Susan, are you all right?" Harry, also affected, touched Susan's face, which burned.

"Huh? Yes. Come on, let's get what we need. Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker will shred the truck seat."

Outside in the truck, the three animal friends constantly looked through the windshield for sight of Harry They had little to say to one another since coming down the mountain. The sight of the frozen monk wasn't grotesque, but it was macabre, startling, and it had sobered all three of them.

12

B'ruised air hovered over the friars as they ate in the common room. The meal was so silent, one could hear bread being torn from the freshly baked loaves. Brother Handle ate at a table perpendicular to the others. His scowl, etched on his face, accentuated the general discomfort.

Brother Mark, the youngest, sat with the other younger men— in this case, "younger" being anyone in their forties.

Brother Frank, head full of numbers, counted things. He couldn't help it. He'd count the number of loaves of black bread. He'd count the pencils on Brother Handle's desk, noting those with broken lead, with erasers chewed off. He'd count the number of steps from his cubicle to another cubicle. He'd count the number of long-needle pines from the large arched door of the main building to the chandler's shop. He'd count the bee boxes at the edge of the meadows. Sitting there, he counted heads. One was missing. He made a mental note to check the infirmary.

Once the meal concluded, prayers and song again given, Brother Frank walked nimbly down the long, cold corridor to the infirmary, the flagstones shooting cold upward through his shins. Brother John and Brother Andrew, both physicians, oversaw the infirmary. Cleaner than most hospitals, it contained the basics for emergencies. Both men kept certain drugs in a locked refrigerator and a locked cabinet. Some blood packets and plasma packets were also in the refrigerator. Brother Sidney needed his transfusion but in the event of a life-threatening emergency, blood types other than O, Brother Sidney's, were on hand. Since keeping blood in such a manner was against the laws, the two doctors felt no need to inform the Prior as to regulations. He assumed they knew what they were doing and they did. The laws about private physicians giving transfusions outside of a hospital or regulated clinic just didn't make sense at two thousand feet above sea level in, say, a bad storm. They needed the blood. Brother Frank knew what those drugs were, since he paid the accounts. Other than the two doctors and Brother Handle, it was assumed no one else knew of these powerful painkillers. A stainless-steel table dominated the center of a small operating room, used for routine sufferings such as stitching a wound. Anything more serious was performed at Augusta Medical Center, with one of the brothers, in scrubs, in attendance. Both men kept their licenses current, which meant they attended medical conferences and did whatever was necessary to stand in good stead in their profession.

Each had left lucrative practices for different reasons, but both were regularly off the monastery grounds to serve the poor at various local clinics.

Brother Frank also attended special conferences, if they addressed new methods of accounting or finance. He picked things up speedily. He could learn from the Internet, although the computer screen in his office hurt his eyes. This irritated him enormously, since a whole new computer system had been purchased just this past summer. Each shop had a terminal and a laser printer. Each computer could talk to every other computer. The cost just about sent Brother Frank over the edge. This expensive purchase did help keep track of sales and accounts, though. Much time was saved in each of the shops. And Brother Frank could keep current with each day's financial activities. That was all to the good, but the screen still hurt his eyes.

Some men retreat to a monastery for a life of contemplation, hoping to find a peace, an understanding, a closeness to God. Brother Frank had arrived out of profound disgust for the world.

As Brother Frank walked from sickroom to sickroom, twenty-five flagstone steps in between, door to door, Brother Andrew entered the infirmary.

Neither man felt compelled to remain silent in the other's presence. Neither would censure the other. Both men respected Brother Handle, his iron rule, but neither especially liked him.

"Can I help you?"

"Brother Andrew. Has anyone been in sick bay?"

"No, but these beds will fill up in the next three weeks as that new flu strain works its way through Virginia."

"Thought you gave us our flu shots?"

"Works for some." Brother Andrew half-smiled.

"I see. Shall we consider the flu a scourge sent from God to punish our sins?" Brother Frank liked probing, finding out what the other person really felt. Despite his cold demeanor, he respected a confidence. He earned the trust the other monks felt for him.

"I don't," Brother Andrew simply replied.

Brother Frank shrugged. "Microbes? Bacteria? Viruses? Haven't you asked what God wants with these tiny monsters?"

"I don't question God, I question man. But as a scientist, I hold that many of these seeming pests have a positive function on the whole."

"Just not positive for man?"

"Precisely. God gave us powers of reason. As a physician, it is my task to use that reason for the good of others. You might say I'm at war with the latest virus, bacteria, even deer ticks."

"Lyme disease."

"It's devastating. People don't realize how dreadful Lyme disease can be." Brother Andrew, relieved to actually be speaking with another intelligent person, sat down, drawing the folds of his robe around his legs. The infirmary wasn't as warm as it might be, although it was warmer than the corridors of the main building.

Brother Frank sat next to him, both men leaning back on the upright wooden school chairs, their sandaled feet stretched out before them.

"What do you make of all this?" Brother Frank turned toward the lean monk.

"The tears of blood?" Brother Andrew held his palms upward. "I didn't see them. And now that we're held here, I expect I won't until tomorrow, Sunday. Surely we can walk the grounds on Sunday?"

"I saw them." Brother Frank crossed his arms, his hands inside the sleeves up to his elbows. "I kept it to myself; four of us saw them and promised to keep it among us for twenty-four hours. Someone didn't."

"But I'd heard the tears were first seen by Harry Haristeen and Susan Tucker. They could have revealed this."

"I called Harry. I asked her to button her lip." He shrugged. "She probably couldn't do it. Too good a story."

Brother Andrew drew his feet in toward him. "Misogynist."

"My observations lead me to conclude that most women are superficial, emotional, and gossips."

"You're foolish, Brother Frank. Just because one woman wronged you doesn't mean they're all the devil's temptresses. Has it ever occurred to you that you asked for the wrong woman?"

Brother Frank's face darkened. "I gave her everything."

"That's not the point. The point is we often attract our own doom in the form of another person. If it's a woman, if it involves sex, so much the worse. The light by which we seek is the fire by which we shall be consumed."

"If you love women so much, why are you here?"

"One woman." Brother Andrew smiled a slow, sad smile. "Much as I understand a life of contemplation and prayer, I think we would all do ourselves much good by sharing our pasts. We learn from others. I'm a physician, and I couldn't save my wife from cancer. In the end I couldn't even stop the pain." What Brother Andrew did not divulge was that he finally injected a lethal dose of morphine into his wife to end her hideous suffering. He wondered, was he truly a murderer, or did he send to God a soul he loved more than any other, a soul at last free from pain? The monastery was his refuge from his perceived inadequacy.

"I'm sorry," Brother Frank said genuinely.

"I tell myself it was God's will." Brother Andrew put his hands on his knees. "Back to Harry. I see her more than you do when I go out to clinics. I'll stop by Crozet sometimes for fruit or an ice cream, my guilty pleasure. I'll talk to Harry at the post office. She would keep her promise. Someone else has disturbed our peace here. Would the other men have been indiscreet, not kept the promise?"

"I don't know. I can't imagine Brother Prescott doing this. I can, however, imagine Brother Mark, who is convinced this is a miracle, the Miracle of the Blue Ridge, Our Lady of the Blue Ridge." He grumbled, "People will pour through that gate once Brother Handle unlocks it, as he must sooner or later. How can we handle the numbers and the hysteria? Keeping silent, pretending the Blessed Virgin Mother isn't weeping, isn't going to cut it."

"I agree, but perhaps our leader thinks this diffuses the situation among ourselves."

"And perhaps it gives him time to think." A long pause followed. "We could make a great deal of money from this, you know."

"Ah." Brother Andrew nodded appreciatively.

"Will it fatten our coffers without violating our order?" He held up his hand as if in supplication. "As one who wishes to withdraw from the world, I don't like the idea of people beating their breasts, crying, making a spectacle of themselves in front of the Blessed Virgin Mother or, I confess, in front of me."

"She's seen worse," Brother Andrew wryly said.

"Ha." Brother Frank allowed himself a rare laugh, then stood up, his feet feeling slightly numb, tiny little pinpricks of pain slowly awakening them. "At least Brother Handle lets us wear socks with our sandals in winter, but my feet never feel warm. I hate it."

Brother Andrew stretched his feet out again. "I do, too. I think I can pray in here as easily as in my room, and it's a tad warmer." Brother Andrew wiggled his toes to make his point.

Brother Frank replied, a hint of playfulness in his voice, "Best foot forward."

"Quite right."

Brother Frank crossed his arms again, then slipped his hands back up the long folds of his sleeves. "So you haven't treated anyone in the last two days?"

"No. Why?"

"Well, I counted one head missing tonight."

"No, no one's sick that I know of." Brother Andrew now stood up. "Let's check the rooms. If someone was too sick to come to our evening meal I should know about it. It's quite possible in this aura of silence"—he tried not to be sarcastic but was anyway— "that someone is ill and told no one. We're all concentrating so hard on remaining silent, we aren't paying attention to one another. I didn't notice anyone missing."

"Someone is."

"Then I suggest, Brother Frank, that we get to it."

Together the two men walked down the east corridor. All was well there. Then they inspected the west corridor, nodding and smiling as they looked in on each brother. When they reached Brother Thomas's cubicle, it was empty.

"If we ask the other brothers whether they've seen him, we break the vow of silence imposed by Brother Handle," Brother Andrew whispered.

"Let's go to Brother Handle."

The two knew they'd find him in his office, books and papers piled high, his computer screen blinking. If they were lucky maybe the TV would be on. It was turned only to the news. He glanced up, not at all happy to be disturbed from his work— scheduling, which he loathed doing.

"Forgive us, Brother."

Brother Handle glared at Brother Frank. "What is it?"

"We can't locate Brother Thomas."

"Look in the carpenter's shop."

"He wouldn't be there, Brother Handle. He'd be in the chapel or at private prayer in accordance with your orders."

Remembering his recent order, Brother Handle's expression changed. "Where did you look?"

"In the infirmary. I counted heads at table. Brother Andrew, whom I forced to speak"—for this Brother Frank gained Brother Andrew's favor—"informed me that no one has been there for two days and the only case he or Brother John have seen within the week was a nasty cut on Brother David's forearm."

A long silence followed. "It's not like Brother Thomas to be disobedient or frivolous. He must be here somewhere."

"We can't find him." Brother Andrew spoke at last.

Brother Handle knew that Brother Thomas, despite his strong constitution, would most likely meet his maker before the other monks. Worried, he rose. "Brother Andrew, if he suffered a heart attack but not a fatal one, might he be disoriented?"

"Yes. We must find him."

Brother Handle said to Brother Frank, "Ring the bell, gather the brothers."

Within ten minutes all the brothers sat on benches in the great hall. Meetings were conducted there, not in the chapel. After lifting the ban on silence, Brother Handle asked if anyone had seen Brother Thomas.

The last time anyone could recall seeing the elderly fellow was the night before at chapel.

"Each of you go to your place of labor. See if, by chance, our brother is there, if he needs assistance. Brother Prescott, divide the remaining brothers into teams, give each a quadrant, and search the grounds. Oh, give them a whistle, too. You know where they are."

Twenty minutes later, those outside in the cold and the dark heard a shrill whistle rise above the stiff wind. All the monks outside hurried to the call.

When they reached the statue of the Virgin Mary, they found Brother Thomas. Brother Prescott had found him first. He had a hunch that the older man might have come to this place, a favorite place of his, so he took this quadrant along with Brother Mark and Brother John. Brother John was ministering to Brother Mark, who had passed out at the sight.

Brother Prescott quietly recited First Corinthians, Chapter 15, Verse 22: "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."

13

Dead as a doornail, Harry called to Fair as she hung up the phone.

"What?" He stuck his blond head in the tackroom.

"The monks found Brother Thomas dead in front of the statue, which is still crying blood. That was Susan."

"Poor Susan." Fair worried that Susan was on emotional overload.

"She's sad, of course, but he was eighty-two and she said he had a premonition. I think she's okay."

Mrs. Murphy pricked her ears. "So that's who it was."

Tucker grimaced. "Poor fellow. Frozen like that."

Pewter helpfully remarked, "Freeze-dried. You know, there are people who freeze-dry their pets or deer heads. It's an alternative to taxidermy."

When both Mrs. Murphy and Tucker stared at her, she turned her back and licked her paw.

"Think it hurt to die like that?" Harry wondered aloud.

"How does it feel when you get cold? It stings, throbs. Yes, it hurt, but maybe by the end he was so disoriented he didn't feel much." Fair hoped that was what happened, as he brushed hay off his sleeves. "Why would he go out there in this weather?"

"Because of the tears. He wanted to see it again." Harry finished wiping off a steel bit, the chamois soft in her hands.

"I guess." Fair pulled his leather gloves off, revealing red fingertips.

"I'm going back up there."

"Now?"-

"No, daylight. After all, I saw the tears first."

"Stay out of this."

"Aha!"

"What? Aha what?" He blew on his fingertips.

"You think it wasn't a natural death."

He clapped his hands together, the fingers stinging. "For God's sake, Harry."

"You told me to stay out of it. You only say that if I'm, uh..." She groped for the word.

"Nosy."

"I prefer curious."

"Call it what you will; you stick your nose in places where it doesn't belong. This is one of them."

"Now, Fair, Susan, and I did see the apparition. The cats and Tucker saw it, too. It was unnerving."

"Couldn't smell, though. Too cold and too high up." Tucker heard that tone in Harry's voice and knew nothing would stop her.

"I'm sure the testimony of Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker will comfort the monks greatly. You keep away from Afton. For one thing, Harry, they've suffered a loss, and you don't go snooping in those circumstances."

"There will be a service. They'll have to blast the ground out. Frozen solid. Guess they'll have to thaw him out, too, or bury him in a kneeling position, which isn't so bad."

"Harry, you think of—"

"Practical things." She completed his sentence.

"Graphic."

"Fair, do you think I think like a man?"

Accustomed to these abrupt shifts and the land mines that usually accompanied them, he stalled. There are some questions a woman asks that can't be answered by a man, no matter how he answers them, without a fight or a fulsome discussion. "Why do you ask that?"

"Susan said that to me. Actually, I've heard that since I was a child. You know that."

He rubbed his hands together. "You think logically. That's not specific to gender, despite cultural stereotypes."

She was relieved. "It doesn't bother you that I'm not... oh, you know."

"What?"

"I'm not frilly or gushy."

"If it's never bothered me before, why would it bother me now?"

"Good answer." Mrs. Murphy giggled.

"She wants more than that," Pewter wisely noted.

"Well, BoomBoom is feminine. Her body is very feminine. Mentally she's not really girly. Kind of middle of the road."

"Harry, I'm not going there."

"All right. All right. I will say for BoomBoom that she's no coward, that's for sure." Harry put another bridle on the four-pronged hook hanging from the ceiling. She rubbed it. "Wonder what it's like for her to have someone in town as beautiful or maybe even more beautiful than she is."

"Alicia?" He placed a bridle on the opposite prong, then reached for a sponge. "There's close to twenty years between them—fifteen or twenty, I guess. They get on like a house on fire. Maybe the age difference lowers Boom's natural competitiveness."

"I really like Alicia."

"I do, too." He smiled. "I liked her when I was in grade school. She didn't put on airs, she spoke to me as if I was an adult."

"I know why you like her," she teased.

"Only you, Skeezits." He called her by her childhood nickname.

"Really?"

"Really." Why did he have to keep proving himself to her? he wondered. But, then, most guys wondered the same thing, so he didn't feel alone.

"Miranda brought over her chicken corn soup. Want some when we finish the chores?"

"Did she bring over corn bread, too?"

"She did."

"Call her and see if she'll come out and have dinner with us; after all, she made it." He laughed.

"Date with Tracy."

"Tell you what, I'll make brownies." He glanced at the old large clock on the wall. "Half an hour."

"That's a deal." She loved brownies—anything chocolate.

The minute Fair left the tackroom, she wiped down a rein with one hand while dialing with the other.

"BoomBoom." Harry proceeded to tell BoomBoom what she'd just heard from Susan. Then she asked her to go to the top of the mountain with her. She knew BoomBoom would do it.

When she hung up the phone, she was thrilled with herself; she had a partner in crime. Harry liked doing things with people, and BoomBoom suggested that Alicia come, too. Three of them would deflect some of Fair's criticism—not that she'd tell him. Of course, he'd find out, but it might take a day or two.

She hummed to herself as she inhaled the odor of Horsemen's One Step, a whitish paste in a bucket. When she'd strip down her bridles, once a year, she'd wash them with harsh castile soap, rinse with pure water, then dip them in a light oil and hang them outside over a bucket to drip-dry. In the cold she used Horseman's One Step, which kept the leather supple after she cleaned it.

"Don't let me forget to put out candies for Simon," Harry cheerfully instructed her animals.

Simon, the half-tame possum, loved his candies.

Harry would occasionally put out little bits of raw beef for the huge owl in the cupola, but the owl was such a mighty hunter she needed little augmentation; Simon, on the other hand, was lazy as sin.

She chirped and chatted to her pets.

"She's going to get into trouble." Pewter shook her head.

"Never a good sign when she gets all bubbly like this," Tucker agreed.

"Then we'd better all hope that the Blessed Virgin Mother really can work miracles." Mrs. Murphy sighed.

14

BoomBoom sank into a snowdrift up to mid-calf. Shaking off her foot, she gingerly stepped ahead, hoping for more-solid ground. She sank again.

Alicia, also struggling, with a royal blue scarf over her mouth to ward off the bitter cold, couldn't help but laugh.

Harry, head down, pressed forward, slipping on the new powder over the compacted snow, which was like a layer cake with thin sheets of ice between the snow.

Tucker stayed immediately behind Harry. The cats, left at home, would exact their revenge for this slight.

A blush touched the snow. This Monday morning a thin mauve line appeared on the distant eastern horizon.

The three women, accustomed to rising early, rendezvoused at BoomBoom's house, drove to the top of the mountain, and parked BoomBoom's truck at the cleared parking lot of the Inn at Afton Mountain. They were hiking into the monastery the back way, which from the parking lot was only a quarter of a mile. However, the property covered over two thousand acres, and the statue of the Virgin Mary stood a good mile and a half from the property's northernmost edge.

It was a testimony to each woman's spirit that she elected to do this. Then again, Harry could talk a dog off a meat wagon.

The wind blew snow down the back of Alicia's neck, tiny cold crystals working their way behind her scarf. It occurred to her that this adventure prevented them from doing anything about Christmas. She felt overwhelmed at Christmas. When she lived in Hollywood, her staff decorated everything, and her husband—it didn't matter which one—wrote the check. This Christmas she was going to face it with Fred and Doris, who could always lift her spirits.

As the sky lightened in the distance, Mary was standing as a lone sentinel on the highest part of the mountain.

Harry paused for a moment. The image, stark against the bare trees, was compelling.

BoomBoom gave a low whistle. The other two floundered toward her. She'd found a deer trail snaking down toward the gardens below Mary as well as to the stone pumphouse that serviced the gardens, the greenhouse, and the garden cottage. They fell in line, Tucker still right on Harry's heels. The going was better now.

Native Americans invented the snowshoe. Tribes in the Appalachian chain had need of them. Harry wished she had a pair.

The three women and Tucker arrived at the statue just as the sun cleared the horizon, a deep-scarlet ball turning oriflamme.

It always amazed Harry how fast the color of the sun changed, how the world suffused with light seemed to smile.

Chickadees, goldfinches, cardinals, and small house wrens tweeted, swooped in and out of bushes, many heading for the places where the monks had put out seed. One bold male cardinal flew to the top of the Virgin Mary's head. He peered down at the humans and canine.

BoomBoom's gloved hand involuntarily flew to her heart. "My God."

Alicia, without thinking about it, put her arm around BoomBoom's waist, as she, too, stared at the tears on that face, radiant in the sunrise.

Harry, even though she'd seen it before, stood transfixed.

"Is it blood?" the dog asked the cardinal, as birds possess marvelous olfactory powers. The hunters were especially keen, but even a seed-eater like this flaming cardinal had a sense of smell beyond anything a human could imagine.

The cardinal cocked his head, one eye on the intrepid corgi, snow on her long snout. He then cocked it toward the tears, bent over low. "Yes."

"Are you sure? Blood has that odd coppery smell."

The cardinal, knowing the corgi wasn't going to chase him, carefully walked toward Mary's brow, the little bits of snow that fell from his pronged feet catching the light, falling as tiny rainbows. He bent over as far as he could. "I know that, you dim bulb! It's blood, human blood. I can tell the difference, can you, doggie doodle?" He threw down the challenge.

"Of course I can." Tucker puffed out her white chest, then said, "To humans this is Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, so she's very holy. Even a statue of her is holy. Her tears set them off. Not these three humans, but other humans."

"Mmm." The cardinal unfurled his brilliant crest as his mate flew onto a tree limb nearby. "I know about her. Jesus, too. You can't live among the monks and not learn their stories. Every species has its stories, I reckon." He puffed out his own plump chest. "The church has cardinals, you know, imitating us, which shows some sense, don't you think?"

"I never thought of that." Tucker had seen a Catholic cardinal, resplendent in his red cassock.

"Oh, yes" the bird confidently replied. "That's why they're called cardinals. They realize that we are closer to God than they are. I can fly nearer, you see. They're stuck on earth."

"Chirpy fellow, isn't he?" Harry whispered.

"Happy." Alicia smiled, pulling her scarf below her mouth.

"Never thought about flying." Tucker pondered the cardinal's remark.

"How could you? You're earthbound, too. I get to see everything."

"Have you seen God up there?" The strong little dog didn't think God sat on the highest tree branch.

"No." The cardinal, crest falling back down slick, lifted one foot from the snow, the tiny sharp claws on the end glistening. "The great cardinal in the sky is beyond my comprehension."

"How do you know it isn't a bald eagle?" Tucker had seen quite a few bald eagles in the last four years. The symbol of the United States was making a comeback along the great rivers of Virginia as well as near the incomparable Chesapeake Bay, one of the wonders of the world.

He blew air out of the two tiny beak holes. "Ha! What do they do but eat fish? Sit in trees, swoop down, and snag a fish. So self-regarding, those eagles. Wouldn't give you a nickel for the lot of them." He leaned forward a bit, toward the dog. "If the mature males didn't have that white hood—a little like the true Carmelite monks, you see, white hood over brown—well, you wouldn't look twice at them."

"They're pretty darn big." Tucker's brown eyes stared upward. Even she found the sight of the bloody tears peculiar.

"Piffle." The cardinal tossed his head and his crest again unfurled, which made his mate laugh. "Piffle, I say piffle. If I flew next to a bald eagle, you'd look at me first."

As the women examined the base of the statue, the huge boulder on which it was placed, and the area around it, they couldn't even determine where Brother Thomas's body had been found, because the fierce winds and snow squalls at this altitude swept away any depressions in the snow, depositing yet more snow.

"You say you can see everything when you fly? Did you see Brother Thomas's body?"

"Of course."

His mate lifted off the branch, landing gracefully on Mary's outstretched hand. "We saw everything," she boasted.

"What do you mean?" Tucker's ears pricked up and her mouth opened slightly, revealing strong, big fangs as white as the snow.

"Hour after twilight, and we, well, we live right over there." She indicated a knarled old walnut, big knobs on the sides. "Dark as pitch, snowing again, and we heard an odd sound, so I looked out and there he was"

"Came up to pray?" Tucker sat down, the snow cold on her tailless bum.

"I think so" she answered.

"Poor fellow must have had a heart attack, then froze to death." Tucker felt sorry for the old man, although perhaps dying in front of the Blessed Virgin Mother provided a comfort of sorts.

"Oh, no," the cardinal said. "No. He was praying. We snuggled back down but heard footsteps. Brother Thomas, being human, couldn't hear them in the snow. We roused ourselves in time to see what we could, but the flakes were flying; big ones, too, and thick. Someone snuck up behind him, put his right hand on Brother Thomas's mouth, and held him down with his left hand pressing on Brother Thomas's shoulder."

"What?" Tucker barked louder than she'd intended.

"It was hard to see; the snow swirled around. He bent next to the monk, then sort of arranged him back in his praying posture. Killed him, sure as shooting."

"Could you see his face?"

"His hood and cowl covered it," the female cardinal, who was a brownish chartreuse color with darker, reddish tinted wings and tail feathers, informed Tucker.

"A monk murdered another monk." Tucker thought this especially horrible.

"A man murders another man." The male cardinal hopped down to sit next to his mate. "When humans deny their essential natures, they get twisted."

"Yes, I agree, but I don't think murder is part of their essential nature."

"Ha!" He lifted his head back, emitting a warble. "They kill deer, they kill pheasants, they kill whales and dolphins, they kill lions and tigers, and they kill one another morning, noon, and night. All they do is kill."

"My best friend doesn't kill ."Tucker stubbornly defended Harry.

"She's a woman. Women don't go about killing things. The men do. I tell you, they live to kill." The cardinal noticed six goldfinches talking with animation to one another down in the old holly bushes.

"I don't believe that." Tucker wasn't rude, but she wasn't going to agree with something she found erroneous or wrong. "Most of them want to live and let live; the ones who don't cause all the trouble. And I don't see there's much we can do about it."

"That's true," the female cardinal replied.

"Are there odd things that happen up here? I mean, apart from Brother Thomas being murdered?" Tucker asked.

"Oh, my, yes" the female said, her voice dipping down.

"Not everyone in Holy Orders is holy," the male said. "They drink and smoke and take drugs." He opened his wings. "You'd better get out of here."

As the birds flew off, Tucker turned and inhaled deeply. Three other humans were coming on up; she could just catch their warm lanolin scent weaving over the frigid air, bright like a ribbon.

Alicia touched Harry's arm. "I don't think we're going to find anything."

BoomBoom spied the Brothers Frank, Andrew, and Mark before Harry saw them.

"Harry," Brother Frank called out.

"Oh, shit," Harry muttered under her breath.

15

The passing of Brother Thomas affected the three monks. It was assumed he died of natural causes. He was, after all, long in the tooth. If the cardinal could have communicated with these men, Brother Andrew would have performed an autopsy. Since the body wasn't embalmed, the deceased was buried quickly, with all the proper rites.

"What are you doing here?" Brother Frank angrily asked Harry as his eyes swept over the other two women.

"I came to see the Blessed Virgin Mother's tears." She told a half truth as Tucker sat protectively on her right foot, never taking her eyes off the three monks.

"Death from the ankles down" was Tucker's motto.

"The front gate is locked. How did you get in here?" Brother Frank's face reddened from emotion and the cold.

"Walked," Harry simply replied.

"Heavy going." Brother Andrew noted that all three women appeared in remarkable glowing health. He half-smiled. "Those media vultures can't come in the back way. 'Course, the camera is heavy, but they aren't up to the trek."

"We're country girls." BoomBoom hoped to defuse the situation. "And we are sorry to disturb you. Harry was the first person to see this phenomenon. We wanted to see for ourselves."

"This is the Miracle of the Blue Ridge." Brother Mark's eyes moistened. "Our Lady sends her love to us and she weeps for us. Her tears will wash away our sins."

"You are in no position to declare miracles," Brother Frank snapped, a wisp of gray hair escaping from under his hood.

"I'm not declaring anything." Brother Mark exhibited a rare streak of defiance. "Our Lady stands before us and we can't deny her tears."

"That's enough." Brother Frank raised his voice, which prompted Brother Andrew to lightly place an ungloved hand on the treasurer's shoulder.

"You're right, Brother, but this is so unusual we are each reacting in our own way." He turned to Brother Mark, smiled kindly at him, and then addressed Alicia, whom he recognized. "It's one thing to come through the snow and cold out of curiosity, but perhaps you have other reasons?"

"Do you know anyone who couldn't benefit from prayer?" Alicia did have her reasons. She was falling in love and not at all certain she wanted to do that, because, in her life, love upended everything.

"No," Brother Andrew warmly replied. He was not immune to her beauty nor to BoomBoom's.

"We're sorry we disturbed you," Alicia said. "But I must say, the sight of her tears is deeply moving."

"Yes." Brother Andrew smiled again.

"The love of Our Lady is available to anyone who prays to her. These external manifestations are"—Brother Frank searched for the word—"fripperies."

"That's not true!" Brother Mark blurted out, his hand gripping the rope tie at his waist. "This is a sign from—"

Brother Frank held up his hand as if to strike the impertinent pup, but stopped midair. "Haven't we endured enough without your extravagant outbursts?" He then grabbed Brother Mark's sleeve. "There's revelation and there's reason. Try using a little reason. You can't go declaring miracles."

Brother Andrew chimed in. "He's right. I'm not saying that Our Lady isn't reaching out to us, but we must be prudent and responsible in how we share this."

"Why? Channel Twenty-nine has already been here." Brother Mark didn't have the sense to shut up.

Brother Frank raised an eyebrow, stared directly at Harry. Her returning stare told him what he already knew. She'd kept her promise. "Did you really come to see her again?"

"Yes." Harry wavered a second. "Yes, I did, and I thought if we came up through the woods we wouldn't disturb anyone. And, I confess, I know that Brother Thomas was found, frozen, praying in front of this statue."

Brother Andrew sharply jerked his head in her direction. "How did you know that?"

"Susan Tucker. Brother Thomas was her great-uncle on her mother's side, the Bland Wades. The family was notified of his death. You knew they were related, didn't you?"

"Ah." Brother Frank, in his current state, hadn't remembered Susan.

"He was an old man, a good man. I don't know what we'll do without him. He was teaching Brother Mark how to use all the old tools, how to nurse along old equipment," Brother Andrew said with feeling. "If the boiler blew, Brother Thomas nursed it back to health. If an old joist needed mending, he could fix it using tools from the time this monastery was constructed." This was said with admiration.

"At least he died with Our Lady's face looking down at his." Brother Mark looked about to suffer another paroxysm of emotion.

"Yes, yes," Brother Frank absentmindedly murmured.

"The exertion of walking up here and the bitter cold may have been too much," Brother Andrew announced.

"I'm sorry. Really. I didn't mean to cause trouble, and I cajoled BoomBoom and Alicia into coming up here with me." Harry was contrite.

"Harry, your curiosity—well..." Brother Frank shook his head.

A puff of air streamed from her lips. "I know. I'm sorry."

"We are sorry," BoomBoom said. "We'll leave you in peace."

Brother Frank looked up at Mary's face. "As long as she's crying I don't think we will have peace here."

Brother Mark started to say something, but Brother Andrew quickly put his strong hand on the young man's wrist.

As the three women headed down into the ravine, the cardinal flew overhead.

"It was nice talking to you."

"You, too. Keep your eyes open. I'll be back," Tucker said.

"Your human won't be back up after this," the cardinal confidently predicted.

"You don't know Harry."

Following their tracks, which were already beginning to vanish in the blowing snow, the way back proved easier than the way up to the statue, despite a few slips here and there.

Once inside the cab of BoomBoom's truck, Alicia burst into laughter. "I feel like a kid."

BoomBoom laughed, too. "I know. It was like getting caught in school passing notes."

Harry, who sat by the window so Tucker could look out, squinched up tighter against it. "Brother Frank can just trip on his rosary beads. They should be praying to St. Valerian, the saint you invoke against exposure and snowstorms."

"Harry, you're a cynic." Alicia laughed at her. "Let's go into Staunton. We're already on top of the mountain. Take twenty minutes from here to Shorty's Diner. Time for breakfast."

"I second the motion," BoomBoom, jammed up against Alicia, agreed.

"Me, too."

"Me, too," Tucker echoed.

BoomBoom turned on the motor, letting it warm up for a moment. The truck, wired for phone, beeped as the motor cut on. BoomBoom pressed the number 4 on the numbers by the radio.

"Cool." Harry admired all things technical.

"I programmed in the numbers I call most frequently."

"Who is Number One?" Alicia wiggled her toes as they warmed up.

"I'll never tell."

"Her mother, luxuriating in Montecito, California. Bet you." Harry felt a surge of envy. She wanted this phone in her truck. However, her truck was so old the phone system would be worth more than the truck.

"No." BoomBoom smiled coyly, then a woman's voice came over the tiny speaker, built into the roof lining.

"Hello."

"Alicia, Harry, and I will be at Shorty's in half an hour, tops. Come on. I'll buy you breakfast."

"Wait a minute."

The others recognized the voice of Mary O'Brien, a doctor in Staunton.

"She's checking her book." BoomBoom opened her coat, unwound her cashmere scarf.

"I'll see you there." With that, Mary hung up.

As they pulled onto Interstate 64, heading west, BoomBoom stayed extra alert. Within five minutes they dropped down out of the fog that enshrouded the top of Afton Mountain. Below them spread the incomparable Shenandoah Valley, resting under a low gray cloud cover.

"Did you see that chinchilla coat Mary wore last Saturday?" BoomBoom loved clothes.

"Her mother's. Beautiful. You don't see chinchilla much these days." Alicia petted Tucker, who decided attention was better than looking at the Waynesboro exits.

"I always wanted a silver fox." Harry saw the Wendy's sign flash by, a stop for her in the hot weather. She liked the Frosties.

"I didn't know you were interested in furs," BoomBoom said.

"Well," a long pause followed, "I am, kind of, but my fashion sense is limited."

"Not a fashionista." BoomBoom—who was—said this without sarcasm.

"White T-shirt or white shirts, Levi's 501s, my cowboy boots or winter boots, an old cashmere sweater, and Dad's bomber jacket, unless it's hateful cold." Harry listed her wardrobe.

"You wore those two-carat diamond stud earrings at the Hospice Foundation." Alicia liked Harry. " Very becoming."

"Mother's. Kind of like Mary's chinchilla coat."

"Your mother dressed beautifully." BoomBoom remembered the elegant, soft-spoken Mrs. Minor, nee Hepworth.

"You know that show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?" Harry asked. "I need Queer Eye for the Straight Girl, except I don't think those boys would exactly get a country girl."

"They would. You have good bones and a great body," BoomBoom complimented her.

"You noticed." Alicia laughed.

BoomBoom blushed. "Sure. I've noticed since we were in first grade and Harry and I were forever competing in every sport there was. I'd win at some, she'd win the others."

"Then puberty hit. You got the big ta-tas." Harry giggled.

"You don't want bosoms out of proportion to the rest of your body," BoomBoom simply replied.

"Look, if you want a wardrobe overhaul, tell me and I'll go down to Nordstrom's with you, down in Short Pump. I'm not going up to Tyson's Corner. Wild horses couldn't drag me up there, especially now before Christmas, but I'll go to Short Pump after the holidays," Alicia offered.

"Thank you." Harry didn't mention that she didn't have the money, although the other two knew it.

Alicia, generous to a fault, was thinking to herself how to help Harry without embarrassing her by giving her the money. She'd find a way, just as she'd sent money anonymously to the Almost Home Pet Adoption Center in Nelson County after running into Bo Newell.

"If I took what I spend on clothes each year and put it in the stock market, I'd be a rich woman," BoomBoom mused.

"You're already a rich woman," Alicia corrected her. "You work for it. You might as well spend it. You can't take it with you. Witness Brother Thomas."

"Did he have anything?" BoomBoom asked.

"Yes," Harry informed them. "He inherited the fifteen hundred acres of Bland Wade land. Monks have the right to private property, to income from their labors. Over centuries this has caused abuses. There have been spasms of reform. But Brother Thomas had money. Don't know more than that." Harry paused. "Hmm, I wonder who else knew—about Brother Thomas's financial condition?" Harry stroked Tucker's ear.

"Don't go off on money." BoomBoom laughed.

Once at Shorty's, Tucker had to stay in the truck. Harry brought her sausages, putting them on the floor on paper towels, although BoomBoom didn't really care. Fussy as she could be about her own appearance, BoomBoom wasn't a queen about her truck. She loved animals, accepting the shedding, the little dropped bits of kibble here and there, wet nose smears, and muddy paw-prints on the windows.

The three filled in Mary about events on the mountain.

"No autopsy." Harry jabbed at her eggs.

"That's not unusual." Mary drank a strong cup of coffee.

"You're a doctor; don't you think everyone should have an autopsy?" Harry prodded.

"Not until they're dead," Mary dryly replied.

"I read, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, about noninvasive autopsies, kind of like Magnetic Resonance Imaging for corpses," Alicia said. She read five newspapers every day.

"It's so expensive. There's no way the staff at Augusta Medical is going to put a, shall we say, ripe corpse in the MRI machine and then use it for a live patient. And there's no way the county can afford an MRI for the dead. The price for this procedure on one corpse is about four thousand dollars."

"Four thousand dollars," Harry gasped. "I could put up a three-board fence in one paddock for that!"

"Oak or treated pine?" Mary asked, blue eyes twinkling.

As they were all country women, they were keenly aware of such costs. The fluctuations in lumber prices affected them a great deal.

"But don't you find it odd, no autopsy?"

"No. As a doctor, I would like to know the exact cause of each death, but for many family members, the procedure upsets them. They think it violates their loved ones, and I can understand that although I don't agree. When the soul leaves the body, that's that. Use the body to learn. I see Brother Andrew and Brother John at the Health Co-op"—she named a clinic for the poor—"and they feel the same way. In this case, the autopsy would need to be requested by Susan."

"Susan feels he should rest in peace." Alicia happily ate her eggs, sunny-side up.

"Harry, why are you obsessing about this?" BoomBoom figured she knew the answer but asked anyway.

"Well, what if he didn't die of natural causes?"

"I knew it!" BoomBoom triumphantly said. "Harry, you see a murderer behind every bush, I swear."

16

Arrogant twit." Pewter, her low opinion of all fowl confirmed, had been listening to Tucker recount her conversation with the cardinal.

Mrs. Murphy listened to the cherry logs crackle in the living-room fireplace as she reposed on the wing chair facing the old mantel with Wedgwood inserts. Pewter faced her in the other wing chair while Tucker had plopped in front of the fire.

Harry, at that moment, was opening a can of asparagus. Since she was in the kitchen she missed the conversation—not that she could have understood any of it, but she did listen when her animals spoke. From time to time, she grasped a bit of what they tried to convey to her. She hadn't gone into the basement or she would have instantly grasped the fury both cats wished to convey. They had turned their spite at being left behind on the fifty-pound bags of thistle and wild birdseed Harry stored there. With the bottoms neatly torn open, the tiny seeds spread over the concrete floor, long tendrils of edibles. Satisfied with the mess, the two returned upstairs to await Harry and Tucker.

"Brother Thomas knocked off his perch," Tucker said.

"Birdbrain," Pewter added.

"Brother Thomas, or are you still referring to the cardinal?" Mrs. Murphy sat up to stretch.

"Both," Pewter succinctly replied.

"That's mean, Pewts," Tucker said. "Brother Thomas wasn't a birdbrain."

"Well, he was stupid enough to pray in that bitter cold and blinding snow and then get choked to death or strangled." Pewter, despite her thick gray fur, hated cold.

"He wasn't strangled. The cardinal said a monk put his hand over Brother Thomas's mouth; he saw it through the blowing snow."

"Mmm, if he was strangled it would have shown. Apart from the marks on his neck, his eyeballs would have been bloodshot." Mrs. Murphy, having killed many a mouse and mole, although never by strangulation, had a sense of what happened according to type of death. And being a cat, she didn't shy from this as a human might.

"Could have covered up the marks with makeup," Pewter thought out loud.

"Not really. There's nothing anyone could have done about his eyeballs. Whatever was done to him worked quickly. Remember, too, he didn't fall over. He stayed kneeling, with his hands resting on the boulder base." Mrs. Murphy was becoming intrigued by this strange death.

"Probably half frozen already," Pewter saucily tossed off.

"Maybe so, maybe so." Tucker moved a foot away from the fire, since she was getting hot.

"Does the cardinal live near the statue?" Mrs. Murphy asked.

"On the ravine side. Lots of bushes and enough open spaces, too, to keep him and his mate happy. That whole place is full of birds."

"Birds stink." Pewter made a face.

"Chickens, turkeys, and ducks stink if they're in pens. Wild birds aren't so bad," Mrs. Murphy replied.

"You can smell them, though," Pewter replied.

"We can smell them. Humans can't. Humans can only smell a hen house." Tucker couldn't understand how any animal could live without a highly developed sense of smell.

"Smoking," Pewter said.

"Doesn't help them, but they aren't born with good noses. Look how tiny their noses are. Can't warm up air in that." Tucker laughed.

"Yeah, but look how tiny our noses are and we have excellent olfactory powers." Mrs. Murphy gave Tucker pride of place in the scenting department, but feline powers were very good. "It's their receptors—they don't have many. Nothing they can do about it."

"Harry uses her nose a lot for a human." Tucker studied Harry. "I think it's because she pays close attention to what's going on around her, so even though she doesn't have the equipment we have, she catches scent before other humans."

"She ought to pay attention to what's going on inside her," Pewter complained, as Tucker had filled in her friends concerning Fair's deadline.

"Not her way" Mrs. Murphy accepted Harry as she was. The cat had learned a long time ago that she couldn't change anyone. She didn't have much desire to change Harry, who was, after all, a less evolved species than herself. If she could change one thing, though, it would be to improve Harry's ability to understand the cats and dog. "She hasn't told Susan or Miranda about her Thanksgiving talk with Fair. Who knows when she'll work herself up to that?"

Tucker switched back to the statue. "The cardinal said the blood smelled coppery, which it does, you know."

"Very odd." Mrs. Murphy sat straight up with both paws in front of her like an Egyptian cat statue.

"Why kill Brother Thomas? "Tucker hated all this.

"Maybe his murder has something to do with his life before becoming a monk," Pewter sensibly replied.

"Brother Thomas took his vows before most of the other monks were born." Mrs. Murphy heard the refrigerator door open and close. "Who would even know about his life before he became a Greyfriar?"

"Maybe he molested boys and they've killed him." Pewter knew about the troubles in the Catholic Church.

"How? They hardly ever see boys and girls up there, unless a parent brings a child into one of the shops. It's not a destination for kids." Mrs. Murphy kept an ear tuned to the kitchen. "The only monks who see kids are the two doctor monks, and I could be wrong but I'd bet you ten field mice there's no way either Brother Andrew or Brother John would be abusing children."

"Maybe they're abusing one another." Pewter relished the sex angle.

"If they are, who would care?" Tucker began listening to the kitchen, too.

"I would!" Pewter stoutly replied.

"No one's abusing you, Pewter." Mrs. Murphy laughed.

"If I were a monk, I'd care."

"Those are grown men. They can defend themselves." Mrs. Murphy didn't believe sex was the issue.

"Not if two ganged up on you."

"She's right about that," Tucker agreed with the gray kitty, "but it does seem unlikely."

"So does murder," Pewter fired back.

"True enough." Mrs. Murphy half-closed her eyes.

"It's either something Brother Thomas did way back when before he was a monk that's caught up with him, you know, like 'vengeance is mine'—" Tucker, having listened to the Bible-quoting Miranda for years, cited this brief sentence fragment from Deuteronomy Chapter 32, Verse 35.

"Or he knew something, something big." The tiger cat suddenly shot off the wing chair and raced into the kitchen.

Tucker immediately followed.

"Hey!" Pewter yelled at them, then the aroma of beef reached her nostrils. She hightailed it off the wing chair.

Harry placed cooked beef with crunchies and broth in three bowls. Tucker ate a different kind of kibble than the kitties. Dog crunchies usually contain less fat than cat crunchies, which meant if Tucker could filch cat crunchies, she did.

Harry fried herself a small steak while the asparagus heated in a saucepan. Fair wouldn't be coming over tonight. Monday nights he stayed at the clinic, catching up on paperwork. They tried to spend Tuesdays, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays together.

Late November and December gave him a breather, as Fair's specialty was equine reproduction. In January and February breeders hit high gear and so did Fair. Thoroughbreds' foaling season overlapped part of breeding season. Foals appeared when they felt like it, like human babies, so Fair endured days with little sleep. The season finally stabilized around the end of March.

Tucker finished first, since she gobbled her food. The cats ate with more decorum, although Pewter sported food bits on her whiskers. This would be followed by a grooming routine that would put a cover girl to shame.

"The cardinal is full of himself because he's the state bird of Virginia." Tucker liked the bird despite his attitude. "Goes to their heads."

"State dog is the foxhound. I don't think it's gone to their heads." Mrs. Murphy liked foxhounds; she generally liked all types of hounds since they are good problem solvers.

"Should be the corgi." Tucker exhibited a small flash of ego.

"Queen Elizabeth has dibs on that." Mrs. Murphy laughed.

"Yeah, Tucker, you belong in Buckingham Palace or Sandringham or wherever." Pewter bit into a delicious warm bit of beef, the fat still on it making it extra sweet to her tongue.

"I do, don't I?" The sturdy animal smiled. "Well, you know the only reason the foxhound won out is because Virginia is the center of foxhunting in America. I mean, it's practically the state sport."

"Yeah," both cats laughed, "and the fox always wins."

Pewter quickly hollered, "Jigs for a bite." Then she stuck her face in Mrs. Murphy's bowl, grabbing a juicy chunk of beef.

"Damn," Mrs. Murphy cussed.

"Hee hee." Pewter chewed with delight.

"I know. I wished I'd said it first."

"Ever notice how a cardinal's beak changes color?" Tucker, observant, edged closer to Pewter's bowl, some food still inside.

"Hey, I see you. Forget it." Pewter growled.

"In case you're full, I'll help you out."

"Tucker, you liar." The gray cat hunched over her bowl.

"The cardinal's beak is black when he's a juvenile; he's grayish brown with color on his wings then. Sometimes people who don't pay attention to birds confuse the young males with females."

"Oh, how can they do that?" Pewter, mouth full, slurred her words. "The female has an orange bill, orange on her crest, and pretty orange-red on her wings and tail. .And she has a blush of color on her light gray breast. Can't miss her."

"Sometimes they're yellowish. There's a lot of color variation. One time I was talking to a female cardinal who was poking around in Harry's rhododendrons and I thought she was a cedar waxwing until I realized she didn't have the black mask." Mrs. Murphy finished her delicious dinner.

"I think what they eat affects their color. What we eat affects the gloss on our coats." Pewter finally gobbled the last mouthful, to Tucker's dismay. "Greedy," she said under her breath.

"Fatty" Tucker fired back.

The cat, lightning-fast, swatted the dog, who scooted backward.

"Ugly. I don't expect my friends to be ugly." Harry flipped her steak in the frying pan.

"It's Tucker's fault."

"Sure." Tucker shrugged. "To change the subject, I think our mother is on the trail again."

"But how would she know? She can't understand what the cardinal is saying." Pewter had already gotten over being angry at Tucker.

"The tears of blood." Mrs. Murphy cleaned her face.

"Huh?" Pewter began her grooming, too.

"She saw the tears of blood. Originally she wanted to go back and double-check, but Brother Frank cooled her with his phone call. Then Susan called and told her Brother Thomas died in front of the statue. Set her off. You know how her mind works." Mrs. Murphy knew her human very well.

"Or doesn't." Pewter moaned. "More treks in the cold."

"You don't have to go," Tucker airily said.

Pewter gave her an icy stare as Harry sat down at the kitchen table.

"We'd better be extra vigilant." Mrs. Murphy leapt onto an empty kitchen chair.

"Is there a state cat of Virginia?" Tucker asked.

"I don't think so." Pewter thought this a terrible oversight.

Virginia license plates carried various messages. Some had a ship with the date 1607, the year Jamestown was founded. Others had a yellow swallowtail butterfly, the state butterfly. Some had a horse on them, others a school logo. Harry's old license plates were simply white with blue letters, but she liked the ones with a cat and dog on them, signifying the driver as an animal lover. Pewter thought there should be a license plate devoted exclusively to cats, using her slimmed-down image, of course.

"How can that be?" Tucker wondered. "If we have a state butterfly, a state flower, a state tree, how can there not be a state cat?"

"Certainly it should be a tiger cat." Mrs. Murphy smiled.

"No, it should be a gray cat just like me." Pewter jumped onto another kitchen chair, peeking over the tabletop.

"I see you and you're not getting one morsel off my plate." Harry squinted at Pewter.

"We want you to start a petition so we can be the state cats." Pewter used her sweetest voice.

"And if we don't get selected—good old everyday cats—then I say we call on all alley cats in the state to descend on the state house, shred furniture, pull out computer plugs, and pee on papers!" Mrs. Murphy gleefully imagined the state house overrun by rioting cats.

"Bet the governor would have a fit and fall in it." Pewter laughed.

"He's seen worse, but this would be a first, a first for the whole nation." Tucker liked the idea.

"You all are chatty." Harry glanced at the newspaper. "Hmm, we still haven't gotten all the money the federal government promised us for security."

The animals as well as Virginia's humans knew if anything went wrong, they'd be on the front line. The image, ever-present in their minds, was the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Also, much of the Revolutionary War was fought in the state as well as sixty percent of the War Between the States.

"Why do people believe their government?" Pewter asked.

"Because they have to believe in something. They get scared without a system. They'll accept a system that doesn't work rather than create a new one; they're lazy. They're like a pack of hounds that way" Mrs. Murphy, a cat and therefore a freethinker, remarked.

"I'm a canine." Tucker tilted her head upward toward the tiger cat.

"Of course, you are," Pewter said soothingly, "but you spend your time with us. Our habits have rubbed off on you."

Mrs. Murphy laughed. "Maybe. But Tucker, it's like this: if you or I are scared there's a real reason—you know, the bobcat has jumped us behind the barn. We fight or run and then we're over it. They carry their fear all the time. It's what makes humans sick, you see. And it's why they have to believe in things that can't be true."

"Like a bunch of men sitting on top of a mountain with no women, no children, and thinking a statue of the Virgin Mary is crying tears of blood." Pewter let her tail hang over the edge of the chair.

"You don't believe in miracles?" Tucker hoped that there were miracles.

"Every day you're alive and someone loves you is a miracle," Mrs. Murphy wisely said.

"If Brother Thomas is resurrected, I'll believe in the tears." Pewter giggled.

Brother Thomas had been resurrected in a manner of speaking. The smooth stone with his name, birthdate, and death date beautifully incised marked an empty grave. Who would notice since it was a fresh grave? And it was a grave dug with difficulty since the ground was frozen. A backhoe had been used, and it was still a chore. The earth was replaced and tamped down. The next snow squall would obscure even the lovely stone that Brother Mark had labored to make perfect.

17

On Tuesday, November 29, a crowd of two hundred people gathered before the closed iron gates at the monastery. Brother Handle refused to unlock the tall, wrought-iron barriers. But by Friday, December 2, when the crowd surpassed one thousand people, many of them holding candles while reciting the rosary, he relented. The people walked slowly, in an orderly manner, to the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mother. Many, like the late Brother Thomas had done, fell to their knees. Some people prayed, immobile, for hours in the frigid air. When they tried to rise, they found they could not and other supplicants had to help them. During the afternoon, when the mercury nudged up to thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, Mary's tears began to melt and fresh ones slid down her cheeks, dripping onto the folds of her robe, onto the base of the statue. People dabbed handkerchiefs into the blood as it slid onto the base.

Fearing excessive devotions—perhaps a few pilgrims might be unbalanced—Brother Handle hastily organized a watch of brothers. These groups of four men took three-hour posts—one by the statue, the other three at the edges of the crowd. Another monk was stationed down at the open gates should anyone need assistance. In a concession to the cold, Brother Handle allowed them to wear gloves. Brother Mark, a month earlier accompanying Brother Thomas to a plumbing supply store, had cleverly procured heat packs from the mountain sports shop on the east side of Waynesboro. While others experienced shooting pains in their feet and hands, he stayed toasty

Nordy Elliott tried to get a TV crew up to the statue, but Brother John, down at the gate, adamantly refused. This ultimately worked to Nordy's benefit, because he interviewed the faithful as they returned to their vehicles. Many people cried, others couldn't speak, but all believed that the Virgin Mary had sent them a sign. Nordy's cameraperson, Priscilla Friedberg, used a lens almost as long as she was tall. She shot footage of Mary in the far distance, which made the statue and the crowds appear ethereal in the soft winter light.

The piece, which aired on the six o'clock news, looked terrific. Much as people would like television to transmit news, in essence the medium can't do this. It can only transmit images, with a splattering of words. The fact that millions of Americans believed they were informed because they watched the news was both ludicrous and frightening. To understand any issue or event, a person must take time, time to read well-written, well-argued positions about same.

Pete Osborne knew this. He read magazines and newspapers because he truly cared about government, world affairs, and the arts. To his credit he understood TV, tried to get the best images possible given the budget constraints of his small station. He checked all on-air copy. The material was cogent, concise, and packed with as much information as possible in the proverbial two-minute sound bite.

The tears of blood had a big bite.

Nordy's career kicked into a higher gear, as did Pete Osborne's, since NBC affiliates again took the feed from Channel 29.The difference between the two men was that Pete knew there would be a price to pay. He couldn't, of course, have known how very high, but he did know that success was demanding. There was a reason the great bulk of humanity elected to be mediocre.

That evening at Alicia Palmer's dinner party for the vivacious Maggie Sheraton, this topic was on all lips.

Alicia originally had envisioned a small dinner party where Herb could meet Maggie. BoomBoom brought up the fact that that looked like a setup. What if they didn't take to each other? Better to protect them by having more people.

More people turned into Harry and Fair, Miranda and Tracy, Bo and Nancy Newell, Susan and Ned Tucker, Tazio Chappars and Paul de Silva (now dating), and Big Mim and Jim Sanburne. Little Mini and Blair Bainbridge were in Washington attending the opera. Little Mim still had not told her parents that she was engaged. Her father knew it was coming because Blair, quite properly, had asked him for his daughter's hand, but the handsome male model did not indicate exactly when he would be asking for her hand, her foot, and other parts. The father was a bit nervous, which he prudently did not share with his wife. Big Mim had the skills to run the country, but she couldn't run her daughter. This did not prevent her from trying, nor did it prevent the attendant resentment from Little Mim.

Alicia Palmer would have asked Deputy Cynthia Cooper, for she was a lively dinner guest, but she'd been tied up for weeks helping Sheriff Rick Shaw reorganize the department, top to bottom.

Patterson's created an elegant, low, long centerpiece for Alicia's dinner party. She had requested white, pink, and purple flowers. This was December 2, and Alicia wouldn't decorate with red, green, and gold for a few more days. She thought it vulgar to rush the holidays. The decorations came down on New Year's Day, too, just as Mary Pat Reines had done. Alicia had absorbed most of Mary Pat's ways. Mary Pat was considered a rebel in her family, not because she was a lesbian (most families had gay members; however, they married and then discreetly engaged in affairs) but because she refused to marry and live by Reines standards. Mary Pat's mother and grandmother had a servant behind each chair when they gave dinner parties. Life was grand indeed.

Mary Pat's mother would visit the beautiful farm and gripe, "You live like a peasant."

Alicia simplified life even more, but by most standards, except for those of a Saudi prince, she lived a beautiful and blessed life.

Alicia asked BoomBoom who she wanted as her escort. BoomBoom said Alicia could be her escort. The older woman laughed uproariously at this but was flattered. Alicia had abandoned the idea of an equal number of men and women at the table years ago.

Mary Pat's idea for any party—and this held true for Big Mim and her aunt Tally—was to always have more men than women. Parties almost always had more women than men; changing the ratio ramped up the competition and energy among the men. It never failed. She'd raid the fraternities of the University of Virginia or call up a dear friend of hers who taught at Virginia Military Institute. She'd make a contribution to the group's treasury, not that she told anyone. Her parties were wildly successful because they overflowed with handsome young men, each of them coached to pay attention to the various ladies regardless of age.

Alicia, when away from her husbands, would have parties of only drop-dead gorgeous young women, many of them hoping for a film career like that of their hostess. The attention lavished on Alicia picked her up better than any combination of alcohol or drugs. She wondered why so many people in Hollywood succumbed to pills, powders, and liquid fire. As time went by and husbands went with it, she changed. Most women become stronger with age. She no longer needed the secret parties away from her husband, or a secret lover or two on the side—usually female, sometimes male—to spice up her life. The older she became, the more she realized that what she wanted was a partner, a true partner. She certainly hoped the woman wouldn't be ugly as a mud fence, but more than anything she wanted a woman in her life with a bubbling sense of humor, of adventure, of warmth and compassion. She would not turn away a gentleman with these qualities, but she found more of them in women than in men, or perhaps that was her illusion. Perhaps just as many men as women harbored these qualities. She leaned toward women intellectually, and her body gravitated toward the smooth skin of a woman. Long ago she realized there is no more reason to be gay than there is to be straight. It's not a choice. It simply is. You are what you are and it's up to you to make the best of it.

She sat at the head of the table, placing Herb at the foot. He protested that he didn't deserve the honor, but she told him how lovely it was to have a man at the table. She put Maggie on his right hand. Technically Maggie should have sat at Alicia's right as her guest of honor, but the hell with technicalities.

She also sat BoomBoom smack in the middle of the table, not considered a favorable place by those who understood that your place was indicated, literally, by your place. But BoomBoom knew her place in this community and had no need of visual reinforcement. She wanted the dinner to be a success, so she herself suggested she sit in the middle. In case conversation lagged, she could rekindle it from that position.

Jim Sanburne sat on Alicia's right. As Mayor of Crozet this made sense. His wife sat on Alicia's left.

She cleverly placed Harry on Herb's left, for Harry could be quite funny, often unintentionally so. She scattered everyone in a manner she thought would bring the best out in them, keep them alert, and she certainly kept Paul de Silva alert when she placed Fair Haristeen next to Tazio. She put Bo on Tazio's other side and placed Nancy Newell next to Fair.

By the second course the table buzzed. First of all, everyone enjoyed everyone else. They hoped a spark might be kindled in Herb and Maggie.

"They'll need the miracle of the fishes and the loaves," Big Mini commented on the crowds at Greyfriars.

"Can't the faithful brown-bag it?" Harry, ever practical, said, which elicited laughter. "Did I put my foot in it again?"

"No, it's just you." Susan smiled, happy that Ned was paying attention to her.

"Well, the Blessed Virgin Mother can bless a ham sandwich as well as fishes and loaves," Harry commented.

A moment passed and Herb said, his voice deep, reassuring, "I called Brother Handle to see if I could be of service. He thanked me but said they could manage. He did say people are giving the monks money, leaving money at the statue, leaving burning candles in glass votives, leaving contributions in the shops. He mentioned that the order does not seek wealth. I replied that surely there is no injunction against wealth seeking the order."

Maggie, who had done many commercial voice-overs, asked in her distinctive voice, "And what did he say?"

"That he would bow to God's will." Herb smiled broadly.

"Which means: take the money and run." Ned laughed.

"Susan, did Brother Thomas ever talk to you about his life in the order?" BoomBoom asked.

Susan, wearing a forest-green dress that looked good on her, shook her head. "Not much. The only thing he ever said was, people are people, and I never quite knew what he meant."

"That politics is politics and if you have more than three people in a room, you have politics," Jim replied.

"In Virginia you only need one person." Tazio, originally from St. Louis, laughed. "One Virginian can hold five conflicting opinions simultaneously."

The conversation switched to a state senator from Rockingham County who they felt would run for governor next election.

Herb, tone measured, inclined his head toward Maggie. "Conservative fiscally but quite liberal on what I call personal-choice issues, an interesting mix."

"The mix of the future." Jim Sanburne became enlivened. "This country can't continue with the kind of polarization we have now, a polarization because the extremes of both parties are controlling them. Americans aren't extremists."

"Only in defense of liberty," Herb smoothly said, cribbing from the late Barry Goldwater, earning an admiring smile from Maggie.

"What the extremists have done, which I find very dangerous, is pull the debates away from the center. So the center is now thirty degrees to the right of where it might have been during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a president who I feel was far better than he is credited for."

"Isn't that the truth," Big Mim simply said in reply to Alicia's astute observation.

"But all those men, men of that generation, whether Republican or Democrat, were fundamentally centrists," Tracy Raz, retired from a long career in the military and then the CIA, offered. "What we are seeing now is a generation not tempered by World War Two."

Paul de Silva, a South American with his green card—and therefore a lucky man—softly said, "You believe war brings wisdom?"

Herb, Jim, and Tracy had seen combat in World War II or Korea. Ned, a Navy man, just missed Vietnam but worked in the aftermath. Bo was in the fleet during Vietnam.

Herb lifted his chin. "What war teaches you is that you never want to see another one. I think the leaders that came out of World War One and World War Two did have a deep wisdom, a deep respect for human life. If lives must be lost, then the cause must be just and great. To squander an American life is a terrible calamity."

The group was silent for a minute. All agreed with the good reverend.

Harry finally spoke up. "It is strange, though, isn't it, that we can kill someone in a different uniform, but if we do that at home, it's murder."

"But maybe even murder is occasionally justified," Tracy said. He quickly held up his hands. "A wife kills a drunken husband who has their baby by the heels and is threatening to destroy the child. There are no easy answers, I'm afraid."

"And that's a gift." Alicia broadly smiled and brought them back to a lighter mood. "If it were easy, think how bored we'd be. Aren't all the great questions of life irrational, irrational to the human mind but perhaps not irrational to a mind greater than our own or to nature?"

"Like what?" Susan leaned toward Alicia.

"Love, the only fire against which there is no insurance. Intelligence is no guarantee that one will find the right love, shall we say? After all, consider Arthur Miller in love with Marilyn Monroe."

"Do I have to?" Harry popped off.

"Harry, God forbid you consider anything of the sort." Susan teased her.

"Let's pick someone closer to her generation." Miranda looked across the table at Tracy, thinking him the best-looking man for his age she had ever seen, and he was looking at her thinking the same of her.

"You don't have to give me examples. I know what you mean."

"Honey, I'll be your Arthur Miller anytime," Fair gallantly promised as the others applauded him.

"Does that mean I have to wear low-cut dresses, wiggle, and get a boob job?"

Maggie Sheraton's mouth dropped open for a second.

"That's our Harry." Herb beamed at Maggie.

"Darling, you don't need breast augmentation." Alicia carefully chose her words.

"You say that to all the girls." Harry couldn't resist.

"No, only the special ones." Alicia laughed at herself, which only made her guests all the more animated.

"Well, now, there's a subject for philosophers." Fair nodded to his hostess. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

This set them off.

Maxwell, sitting patiently by his mother's right hand, listened. Humans amused him, and being a Gordon setter he was more generous in his assessments than a Jack Russell terrier might have been. Tucker, Mrs. Murphy, and Pewter hunkered under the table. Tucker hoped for fallen tidbits. Alicia allowed them to attend the party because she loved animals, they were well behaved, and Maxwell and Tucker were fast friends. Resting in the front hall was Brinkley, Tazio's yellow Lab. He liked people well enough but, even though Labs are not known for being guard dogs, he liked watching the door. Brinkley had been saved by Tazio last winter during a nasty storm. His entire life was devoted to Tazio.

"Love stuff." Pewter yawned.

"They'll rattle on all night." Tucker chuckled.

"I had a boyfriend once," Mrs. Murphy said.

"We all know your boyfriend. Worthless, that Paddy." Pewter couldn't abide the black and white cat, who now lived in Keswick, having been rescued by Meredith McLaughlin.

Not only was he rescued by one of Albemarle County's biggest softies, he was doted on by her neighbors, Claudia and Andy Lynn, who loved creatures as much as Meredith did. The result was that Paddy was insufferable—plus he had a new girlfriend, named Twisted Sister.

"Worthless he may have been, but he was fun." That was all Mrs. Murphy had to say on the subject.

"While they're talking about love, you know Mom is figuring out when she's going back up to the monastery." Tucker thought the main course smelled mouth-watering.

* * *

Nordy Elliott was already there, lugging a heavy camera. He thought if he went alone and in the dark, he could shoot the footage he desperately wanted: a close-up of the Virgin Mary's face. And he was certain he could sneak in and not be detected. He was wrong.

18

Sweat poured down Nordy Elliott's face; a line of sweat rolled down the middle of his back. The heavy camera added to his distress. He'd been smart enough to park well away from the iron gates. Footing was treacherous. He'd pitched and fallen flat on his face but managed to keep the camera intact.

Breathing heavily, he approached the statue, which shone with a silver glow in the waxing moonlight. The skies, clear for a change, throbbed deep electric black, a black seen only in winter.

The crunch of his boots frightened Brother Mark at the statue. The men startled each other.

Nordy ordered, "Don't move."

"Don't give me orders," snapped Brother Mark, tucking his rosary in his robe's deep pocket. He stood up as Nordy walked to the front of the statue. He observed closely the look on the reporter's face when he beheld the tears of the Virgin. Rapture. This wasn't the rapture discussed in religious texts. This was the rapture of greed, greed for fame, for a bigger market, a national show. Without hesitation, Nordy swung the camera eyepiece to his own eye, his fingers numb with cold, sweat still running down his back. He held his breath so the camera wouldn't shake, the whirring sound of the motor being his reward. Nordy congratulated himself on shooting for two minutes, stopping, moving, then shooting from a different angle.

"All these shots are up toward her face. I need one where I'm level or shooting down." He spoke as if thinking out loud, not as though speaking directly to Brother Mark. He took a step back, slipped a little, and caught himself. He gingerly picked his way to a tree, put the camera on the ground, and, with difficulty, swung up.

"Her face is beautiful in this light." Brother Mark slid his hands into the heavy sleeves of his gray woolen robe.

"Mmm, hand me the camera, will you?"

Brother Mark picked up the camera, hoisting it over his head while Nordy leaned down and grabbed it with one hand.

"Heavy."

"I don't know how Priscilla does it."

"Oh, you can get women to do anything. I envied you that when we were in college."

"You tell them they're beautiful, smart, and that you want them. Works ninety percent of the time. You were always to the left of Pluto, Mark. You were out there spinning in your solitary orbit. Still are." Nordy hiked the camera to his eye, getting good footage of the statue. "This is going to look great."

"People need to see the tears." A pious tone informed Brother Mark's voice while he ignored the insult. "They need to feel that the Blessed Virgin Mother is crying for them."

"Uh-huh." Nordy cut the motor. "Here." He handed down the camera, then slid down the tree trunk backward. "I don't believe man is descended from the apes."

Holding the camera, Brother Mark found this observation peculiar. "Of course we aren't descended from the apes. Man is created in God's image."

Nordy laughed. "We aren't descended from apes because we'd climb trees better."

"You know, Nerdy really is the right nickname for you." Brother Mark handed the camera back to Nordy. "You have no feeling for beauty, no faith."

"I do, just not in the same things that you do," the reporter honestly replied with humor in his voice. "If you kneel like when I first walked up here, it would make a great shot."

"No."

"Why not? No one will know it's you; pull the hood over your head."

"No."

"What if I shoot you from the back?"

"In the back is more like it, Nordy. You'll walk over anyone to get ahead. The answer is no. Besides if Brother Handle found out, he'd—" Brother Mark stopped, listened carefully. "You'd better get out of here. Someone's coming."

"Maybe I can get them to let me shoot them praying before Our Lady."

With urgency, Brother Mark said, "And have your camera smashed? Then you've got nothing. You've got your footage of her tears of blood. People will see the miracle. Now get out."

Nordy now heard the footsteps coming closer. He ducked down the back side of the statue, slipping down the slope into the woods, where the sliver of moonlight wouldn't reveal him. He'd worked too hard for this footage to have it destroyed.

Brother Andrew's voice called out, "Who's there?"

"Me. Brother Mark."

As Brother Andrew came into view, he walked faster. "Who were you talking to?"

"No one."

The lanky monk looked down at the footprints, slick in the packed-down snow. There were so many footprints. "Who would be up here at this hour?"

"No one."

"Why are you here?"

"To pray. Why are you here?"

"I don't know." Brother Andrew shivered as a fresh wind rustled the dry oak leaves and pine needles, which wouldn't drop until spring growth. "I needed to think."

"This is the best place to do that. I come here as much as I can."

"Are you sure you were alone? I would've sworn I heard voices. Sound carries on a clear, cold night like tonight."

"Yes," Brother Mark lied.

Brother Andrew stared at him, then quietly said, "I don't believe you. If you know what's good for you, you'll go back to your cell."

19

Makes me sick." Harry turned up her nose.

"It's supposed to be progress." Susan slowed her station wagon as they passed the brand-new post office, under construction on the southwestern side of the railroad overpass.

"There wasn't one thing wrong with the old building. It's small, but Miranda and I made out okay."

"Miss it?"

"I do and I don't." Harry stared out the window as they drove north toward White Hall. "I miss seeing Miranda every day, and I really miss her orange-glazed cinnamon buns." Harry laughed. "I still see her, but it's not the same as working together. She spends more time with Tracy now." She paused a moment, turned toward Susan. "I expect she'll marry Tracy, don't you?"

"I expect." Susan laughed.

"Know what I miss about the post office?" Harry returned to Susan's original query. "Reading other people's postcards."

Susan smiled. "You were right to leave. It was time. You can do more and you will."

"Thanks for your vote of confidence." Harry meant it. "I alternate between not having a care in the world and dire panic."

"If you would remarry Fair, honey, much of your financial stress would lift."

"Is that why you married Ned?" Harry bit her lip.

"I married Ned because I was nineteen and pregnant with Danny, which you well know."

"Would you have married him anyway—later?"

"Yes." Susan nodded.

"This love stuff is too complicated." Harry sighed.

Susan braked as a squirrel foolishly dashed in front of the station wagon. "It can be."

"Do you love Ned?"

"Where did that come from? Oh, never mind." Susan took her right hand off the steering wheel and waved it dismissively for a second. "I do love him—more than I knew I did. I'm scared to death I'm going to lose him."

"Could you cheat?"

"Anyone could, given the right or wrong circumstances."

The temperature had soared to fifty-four degrees, and the melting snow and ice created flooded ditches, jammed culverts. In some places, creeks had jumped their beds. All one could hear was melting water, running water, water sloshing underfoot or over-foot. Susan slowed on some curves as water flowed over the black asphalt. The road to White Hall was twisty.

"A secret love?" Harry prodded. "Ever have a secret love? One you never told anyone—even me—about?"

"When I look back at how I felt when I was Brooks's age, you know, I can remember the events better than the emotions. When you're feeling powerful emotions for the first time, it's confusing and overpowering. My mind said one thing, my body another. That's not a secret love, but I suffered secret crushes.

"Let's get something to drink. I'm thirsty I put too much salt on my eggs this morning. I'm on a sea-salt kick, but salt is salt and I've got to cut it from my diet." Susan wearied of reflecting on her past.

They crossed the road. There wasn't much traffic out in White Hall. One other car, a BMW X5, was parked at the white clapboard convenience store.

"Nordy Elliott's car cost a pretty penny. He must be making good money." Harry had a memory for horses and cars. "What's he doing in White Hall?"

The answer was quickly forthcoming when she slid out of the station wagon and glanced across the street. On the southwestern corner of this small crossroads reposed a large, pretty creche. Nordy was there, microphone in hand, as Priscilla Friedberg held the camera on her shoulder.

"What would you like?" Susan knew Harry would have to go over and find out what he was doing.

"Uh, Co-Cola."

"Food?"

"Mmm, I'll wait until we get to town."

As Susan pushed open the door to the store, Harry walked across the paved two-lane road. She waited behind Priscilla until Nordy finished.

"—the joys of the season. Nordy Elliott. Channel Twenty-nine News." He waited a moment as Priscilla cut off the camera. "Harry, how are you?"

"What are you doing out here?"

"Every day until Christmas I shoot a creche or Christmas decorations."

"We cover a lot of territory." Priscilla patted the compact professional Panasonic, the latest in equipment. The flat image of video didn't bother her, because she was shooting reportage. Had she been shooting a television film it would have driven her crazy.

"Bet you do. The Virgin Mary story is good for you, Nordy. Everyone's talking about it."

He smiled broadly as he walked with Priscilla back to his car. "National feeds. It's a hell of a good story. Guess I shouldn't say hell."

"The Blessed Virgin Mother isn't revengeful," Harry replied. "However, Brother Handle might be."

"He's not too happy with me," Nordy acknowledged.

Susan emerged from the store with her hands full. Harry started up the wet steps to help Susan before she came down.

"Hi, Nordy. Hi, Priscilla," Susan called as they said their hellos.

Nordy bounded up the steps, passing Harry, stopping before the top one. He held out his hand for Susan to take it.

"It's nice to see you," he said.

"You're doing a great job with the Virgin Mary story." Susan appreciated his chivalry.

Harry, meanwhile, enjoyed her Coke. In her left hand she held the bag containing Susan's sandwich. Nordy carried the cup of coffee Susan had bought.

As they leaned against the car, Nordy asked the two friends, "Is BoomBoom dating anyone?"

Priscilla laughed. "Come on, Nordy. She'll never look at you in a million years."

He ignored his sidekick. "I asked her out and she said she's 'keeping clear of entanglements for a year,' but that doesn't mean she isn't dating."

"She's not." Susan thought the coffee tasted pretty good.

"What's her favorite flower?" he asked.

"Pink roses," Harry answered. "She also likes those big white lilies with the pink throats."

"Thanks." He smiled.

"She really is taking a year off. I know you're keeping count," Susan added.

"After months of no-go, you might look good," Priscilla teased Nordy.

"I always look good." He smiled, flashing strong, straight teeth.

As Nordy and Priscilla drove off to their next location in downtown Charlottesville, Susan and Harry lifted their faces to the warming sun.

"God, that feels good." Harry's cheeks flushed.

"Whenever winter wears me down, I look at the calendar and tell myself, no matter what, the first snowdrops will be up by mid-March and the crocuses soon follow, even if they have to peep up through the snow."

"Yeah. Winter is beautiful." Harry appreciated all those hidden things now visible with the leaves off the trees. "But nothing beats spring here in the foothills."

"Fall."

"Mmm, toss-up." She finished her can of Coke. "Looks like BoomBoom has another conquest."

"If she had a dollar for every man who tripped over his own feet in her presence, she'd be almost as rich as Big Mim." Susan wondered what it must feel like to have that kind of power.

"They fall in love with her but she doesn't fall in love with them." Harry crossed her arms over her chest.

"She's falling in love now."

"BoomBoom?"

Susan nodded her head in affirmation. "And you know, I think it's for real."

"How could she sneak out on us like that?"

"She hasn't. She's falling right in front of us."

"She is?"

"Alicia," Susan flatly stated.

"Alicia? Oh, never. BoomBoom isn't gay."

"I didn't say she was gay." Susan crumpled the paper bag her sandwich had been in, aimed for the big open garbage can, and sank her shot. "I said she was falling in love."

"In an ideal world you fall in love with the person, not the wrapping paper. Still. It's hard for me to believe." Harry frowned.

"Why? Makes you nervous?"

"No. Yes. Not because she's in love with a woman, but because I never saw it coming. Because I thought I knew BoomBoom. This changes things. I hate not knowing."

"Harry, she probably didn't know she could feel this way. And it doesn't change anything. She's the person we've always known. BoomBoom's a strong woman. She's endured social censure for her many affairs, for flaunting her beauty. She took it with good grace."

"You're right. I never thought of that."

"Once she figures out that she really is in love with Alicia, she'll be just fine."

"What about Alicia?"

"Alicia? She's crazy about BoomBoom."

"She is?"

"Harry." Susan threw up her hands in despair. "Come on, I'll take you to the John Deere dealer; you'll be in your element."

Harry brightened. "Have you seen the new compact tractors? Susan, they are something else." She stopped. "Oh, you're not going there, are you? You're pulling my leg."

Susan hugged Harry. "Sure. Come on, Skeezits."

Back in the car, heading east toward town, Harry asked, "Is there anything Brother Thomas ever said to you that stuck in your mind?"

"He was such a sweet man. He used to tell me to trust God. And, um... well, I do remember once when I was in high school I was upset about something—I don't even remember what it was—and he told me to thank God for my troubles. They're gifts in disguise."

"Do you?"

"No. I haven't learned that lesson." Susan powered up the steep hill near what used to be a farm called Rustling Oaks, owned by a fabulous horseman, Billy Jones. It was a subdivision now. Susan hoped Billy haunted the big, flashy homes.

"Me, neither."

"You're usually the one with the hunches about everything but romance," Susan smiled at her friend, "but this time I have a hunch that there are troubles up ahead. I hope I have the guts to get through them."

"You will." Harry's voice resonated with conviction. "I have a hunch, too. Brother Thomas did not die a natural death."

"Harry, don't let your imagination run away with you." Susan didn't want to think her great-uncle had been murdered.

"Why go out in that hellish cold? At his age? Remember Dante's Inferno? The lowest circle of hell is ice. Why would he go out?"

"He wanted to pray before the tears of blood."

Harry put her hands together, resting her chin on her forefingers. "I don't believe it."

"You know how you get. You eat up any conspiracy theory that you hear or read. Why, the last book you read was about the British poisoning Napoleon by degrees when he was exiled on St. Helena." She sighed, then continued. "G-Uncle Thomas was sweet and gentle. No one would kill him."

"Sweet and kind people are blasted every day all over the world." Harry marveled at the human capacity for evil.

"Why G-Uncle?"

"I don't know. But you feel that BoomBoom is falling for Alicia. I trust you about those things. You have amazing radar for human relationships. My radar is different. I pick up blips about these kinds of things, about secrets."

"Not my secrets." Susan said this with humor as they passed the left turn to Barracks Stud and the Barracks, two equine facilities.

"Yours aren't big enough." Harry lifted her eyebrow.

"That's what you think," Susan's voice slightly darkened.

"Then you're really, really good."

A long pause followed, traffic increasing. "Why would anyone kill Thomas? Really, Harry, it's incomprehensible."

"People are often killed just because they're inconvenient."

20

Large, round balls studded with pyracantha berries filled an enormous silver bowl that Mary Pat Reines had won at the Pennsylvania National Horse Show in 1962. Ropes of fresh garland hung over every mantelpiece, doorway, and even the front hall mirror. Alicia and BoomBoom were artfully placing oranges, apples, walnuts, and sprays of wheat throughout the garlands. Before the heavy evergreens were embedded with treasures, a thin red ribbon was entwined with a three-inch-wide gold mesh ribbon, and both were then woven through the garlands. The mesh ribbon's sides bolstered with thin wire proved easy to maneuver. The stunning finished effect lightened Alicia's spirits.

The shimmering melancholy veil lifted from Alicia's shoulders as she and BoomBoom worked this Sunday. She kept up a good front during Christmas, but the holidays made her dwell on those she loved who were no longer living. Bach's Magnificat played throughout the house.

"Every culture fights the dark," Alicia noted, selecting a robust red apple and placing it next to a pale green one. "Hmm, think I'll get one equal in size to the green. What do you think?"

"Your eye is better than mine, but balance is everything." BoomBoom's gold fox mask earrings with ruby eyes caught the firelight.

"Takes so long to find it. Balance." Alicia stepped back. "Better. Another half hour and we'll be about as festive as possible—well, except for the tree, and that monster won't get here until Thursday or Friday, a Douglas fir on steroids."

"Did you decorate in California?"

"Mm-hmm. One year I thought I'd use plants native to the great state of California. I used eucalyptus for wreaths. One eucalyptus wreath would have done the trick, but no, I filled the house with them. The place smelled like a spa. When one was greeted at the door, I'm sure they expected me to come out in a bathrobe. Sherry thought it was hysterical, but he had a pungent sense of humor." She smiled slightly.

"The studio head?"

"Driven man. Brilliant, really."

"Ever speak to him?"

"Once or twice a week. We couldn't live together, but once we gave that up, this amazing, supportive friendship flourished in marriage's place. I am a very lucky woman."

"It's not luck. You're good to people and they're good back."

"Thank you. I try, but once sex is in the mix, one becomes irrational. You know, I think men are more irrational about it than women. Women talk about it and are afforded the luxury of acting irrational, but men really are irrational."

"That's been my experience, except for Fair Haristeen."

Alicia sipped hot cider, put the white gold-edged porcelain cup down, and began tying the large gold mesh and thin red ribbon bow that would be the final touch. "Well?"

BoomBoom wedged in the last of the walnuts, the rough, roundish shell rubbing against her fingertips. She thought whole walnuts brought luck so she had one in the glove compartment of her car, her truck, and her purse. "Alicia, you're supposed to beg for details, not just a 'Well.' " She imitated Alicia's voice.

"Details at eleven." Alicia glanced at her watch. "Do you know, it's ten-thirty. I can't believe it. It feels like we've only been doing this for an hour."

"Time flies when you're having fun."

"It does and I do. With you. You're marvelous company." Alicia smiled. "All right. Details. Really. How was or is Fair not irrational?"

"Scientific mind, I guess. Think of it: a human doctor needs to learn one circulatory system, one set of bones, etc., but the veterinarian has to learn different species. I think vets need to be smarter."

"Debatable but good point. All right, he's logical. Right?"

"Logical. Considerate. Not especially passionate but not a dullard. We enjoyed each other, but I never felt he was mine. You know how men get when they're crazy about you, they can't take their eyes off you, they touch you constantly even in public, they want to sit close and they become territorial. Jealous. All of that."

"Perhaps he was still in love with Harry but didn't know it. A man under other circumstances would kill to be with you."

BoomBoom beamed. "You think so?"

"Oh, now, you know that. We both do. We have the looks they want, and men fall in love with what they see. It takes them longer to find out who you are, and some don't want to know. Then again, I can accuse some women of not wanting to know the man in their life but they'll take his paycheck in a skinny minute."

BoomBoom laughed. "Haven't heard 'skinny minute' in a long time. I've heard 'New York minute,' though."

"Well, were you angry with Fair?"

"No. He's handsome, strong, and very masculine. I suppose when you deal with life and death, you're covered with blood, you're pulling a foal out of a mare, probably you see life differently than someone who sits in front of a computer in a squeaky clean white office."

"Yes. If anything will cut the balls off men, excuse my bluntness, it will be the computer."

"I wonder about that myself."

"Men—women, too—aren't meant to sit still for hours on end. Oh, companies and commerce dress it up by using words like 'burn,' 'download,' 'firewall,' making anything to do with computers sound butch, but there's nothing masculine about clicking away at keys all day, staring into a blue screen. The body turns to mush and the mind alters, as well. You aren't fighting, you aren't cutting trees, plowing fields, hoisting up a steel girder. You're sitting, sitting, sitting. I suppose sneaking onto a porno site offers scant relief, but that's not real, either. Images. We're a nation duped by images, and I know that better than anyone. I used to be a twenty-foot image on a movie screen in films shot on seventy millimeter. You know, BoomBoom, it frightens me; what we are becoming frightens me because we run counter to nature, and creatures that violate nature die or cause catastrophe and everyone dies."

BoomBoom picked up her cup of cider and sat on the sofa facing the fire. Alicia had affixed the bow, and she sat down, too, beside BoomBoom. "Funny that we're having this discussion, because I think of it, too. I can do a lot of business on the computer. I can contact accounts, keep accounts, keep up with inventory, but my business sells a real product. I have to go to the quarry, and I'm searching for new quarries or relationships with other companies that have a product I don't, like marble. What I do is still real."

"You like business."

"I do. I'll give Fair that, he encouraged me. Most of the other men in my life, like my husband, either disregarded that part of me, patronized me, or, worse, tried to come into the business. Sort of the way nonacting husbands begin managing their wives' careers, I guess."

"Seen a lot of that. Fortunately, neither of my husbands was inclined that way. One ran a studio and the other one refitted 747s and other big flying cows for rich Saudis and rock stars."

"Did you think of Mary Pat as a husband?"

This question took Alicia off guard; she thought a moment, then burst out laughing. "No. God, she'd laugh to hear that. No, I thought of her as an angel. Even when I just had to have my career, I loved her but she knew better than to move kit and caboodle to Los Angeles. It would have killed her. She belonged in the country and, sad to say, that killed her, too, but Boom, when your time is up it's up, even if the agent of your death is another human being."

"Yes, I believe that."

The phone rang and Alicia reached for it. "Hello."

"Alicia, hello, this is Nordy Elliott. I called to tell you to watch the eleven o'clock news. Pete used the story about you and BoomBoom at the SPCA. I didn't think he'd use it until tomorrow. I tried BoomBoom but she's not home. I made copies of the story if you'd like, a DVD."