Cat's Eyewitness

"I'd love one, and I'll be sure to watch. Thank you for calling me."

"I know it's late, but like I said, Pete decided to use it tonight. You wouldn't know where BoomBoom might be, would you? I'd like her to see it if she's near a set."

"Hold on." Alicia handed the phone to BoomBoom as she mouthed the name, "Nordy."

BoomBoom listened as Nordy effused over how the camera liked her; he didn't say he liked her, rather, the camera liked her. She had trouble getting him off the phone. "Yes, I'll be at Jill and Paul Summers's Christmas party. It's always the high point of the season." She listened. "I'll see you there if not before. Thank you for tracking me down." Once she was able to disengage him, she rolled her eyes, dropping her head back on the sofa. "He's such a wimp."

"Handsome."

"Still a wimp. If you want to ask a woman out, then do it."

"Men face a lot more rejection than we do. Each one handles it a bit differently. Don't be too hard on the fellow."

"You're right." BoomBoom handed her the phone. "We'd better watch our debut as the team of Palmer and Craycroft."

They walked into the den, and Alicia picked up the remote, clicking on the huge, fiat-screen TV After teasers and ten minutes of so-called hard news, they were rewarded with the footage of the two of them at the SPCA delivering a truckload of cat and dog food. Alicia was in the bed, handing down sacks of kibble and cat crunchies to BoomBoom. A stream of smiling workers lined up behind BoomBoom to carry sacks.

Nordy cut away to dogs and cats inside the pound, a clean and spacious one. There were also hamsters, one cockatoo, and an aging black goat. Then he cut back to the women, the truck now half full as workers continued to carry sacks of feed. He did a great job, even making a pitch for adoption and singling out some special animals.

BoomBoom started to cry. "I can't stand it."

"Sugar, what's wrong?" Alicia looked around for a hanky or tissue. She stood up. "Let me get you a—"

"I don't care if I have a runny nose and eyes if you don't. I can't stand seeing those animals. I don't know how anyone could abandon an animal."

"They abandon children. There are thousands of irresponsible shits out there. Excuse my foul language. Personally I'd like to bring back the stocks, put them in the town squares, and lock the creeps in. Then I'd show up with a big basket of rotten eggs and tomatoes."

"You're better than I am. I just want to shoot them."

Alicia dashed into the kitchen, returning with a box of Kleenex. "Here. Speaking of shooting, skeet?" She sat back down. "Sometime this week?"

BoomBoom nodded. "Where?"

"There's that wonderful club west of Staunton, or if Patricia's in the mood, we could go up to Albemarle House." She mentioned Patricia Kluge, who along with her husband, Bill Moses, was a good shot.

"If she's in town let's go there, then we can pick up stuff for Harry. Patricia is helping with Harry's wine research. Just look what she's done with Kluge Vineyards."

"Good idea. You know, it speaks well of you that you are friends with Harry. You genuinely like her."

"I always liked Harry, although she didn't like me, even in high school. Then I slept with Fair, and she loathed me. They were separated, but I was the focus for her discontent, not that she blabbed about it. Harry really does have class. You know, we didn't become friends until we were trapped together at University Hall."

"Yes. I heard that was quite an adventure." Alicia remained standing. "More cider? Port? Libations?"

"No."

The television again caught their attention. The footage was Nordy back at the monastery, the gates opened. He noted that it was Sunday. The camera panned the cars and trucks parked as far as the eye could see, many teetering on the edge of the road. It wasn't a wide road. He informed the viewers that numbers had steadily increased and that the statue still cried blood. Cut to the statue, tears actually running now that the mercury had climbed. While it was fifty-two degrees in The Valley, it was forty-five at the statue, still warm enough to melt snow and ice, warm enough to thaw Mary's tears. The cardinal flew onto her outstretched hand, tilted his head, unfurled his crest, whistled out his distinctive four long notes followed by many short ones, trebled. Then he flew away. Nordy interviewed people who weren't at the statue, since he had sense enough to keep it reverent. He nabbed them at the shops. The monastery did a big business between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The interviews were touching. Some came to expiate their sins, others came to be healed, many prayed for peace or for someone in need. All interviewed radiated a hope, a peacefulness.

After that segment passed, Alicia turned to BoomBoom. "Nordy's going to get a big career boost out of this. He's improving by leaps and bounds."

"Did it bother you that he didn't refer to you as a movie star?"

"God, no. I'm relieved. That's the past. This is now."

"What are you now?"

"A farmer." She stared at BoomBoom's face. "How about some Badger lip balm? You can rub it on your nose."

"I'm not going to get chapped from a few tears and a runny nose, but thank you."

"I can't live without the stuff." Alicia put a round tin about two inches from a Tiffany's silver box on the coffee table. "Here."

"Thanks." BoomBoom smeared the pleasant concoction of virgin olive oil, castor oil, beeswax, aloe vera, and other emollients on her nose, then also put a sheer film on her lips. "Smells wonderful."

"Comes in Cinnamon Bay, Tangerine Breeze, Highland Mint, Ginger-Lemon. There are other variations. I have a big tin of hand salve, too."

A long pause followed this. BoomBoom knew it was eleven-thirty, late for both of them. "Roads will be icy."

Alicia rose to check the thermometer in the window. "Still forty-two degrees Fahrenheit. You're in luck, although there might be a few places where the road is packed down. It's the black ice that gets you."

BoomBoom blushed. "I'd be in luck if the roads were icy."

Alicia laughed. "You say."

"I don't get it. If you were a man you'd have lunged for me months ago. Maybe I do get it. I'm not your type."

"BoomBoom." Alicia's voice sounded like dark honey. "You are very flattering. You're full of energy and ideas. You're a beautiful woman. I'm not immune to you."

"You're not?" BoomBoom brightened.

Alicia laughed. "Of course not, but you've taken a year off men. And furthermore, you haven't walked down this road before. It's not about gender, it's about learning another person. That takes time. And you're barreling down on your midlife crisis, if you'll indulge me in being older and a tiny bit wiser at this exact moment."

"You aren't part of my midlife crisis. I've got three years left." She smiled. "But I see it in Harry and Susan and even Little Mim. Forty lurks just over the horizon, so they must see it in me. That shift. That discarding what doesn't work, finding what really matters in life."

"It's only a number, but our culture makes such a to-do about it. I'm not that far from sixty, and you know what, I don't give a fig." She snapped her fingers.

"Does this mean you aren't going to jump my bones? I mean, what do women do? Who makes the first move? You're driving me crazy. I don't know what to do. Am I supposed to hit you with a flying tackle?"

"Bruising." Alicia felt every molecule of air in her lungs, going in, going out.

"Well, what am I supposed to do? I know what to do with men. I haven't a clue what to do with you, but I know that I have felt happier with you, even without sex or declarations of, what, amor, than I have ever felt in my life. I feel"—she searched for the word—"connected. Like I know you. Like I've always known you. I just don't know about the romance part of it, and I don't know how you feel. I don't want to wear out my welcome."

"You couldn't wear out your welcome. I never thought I'd feel this way again," Alicia honestly replied. "And I suppose deep down I didn't think I should make a move. I was afraid I might spoil our friendship."

"You mean you didn't know how I felt?"

"I hoped, but I wasn't going to push it."

BoomBoom got up, walking over to the window where Alicia remained. "Alicia, for the first time in my life I can't hide."

Alicia reached for BoomBoom's hand, and the younger woman felt a bolt of lightning blast up her arm.

She wasn't the only person who couldn't hide that night, but for the other one, the circumstances couldn't have been more alarming.

21

Black asphalt glistened as the snow runoff covered the road with a sheen of water. Nordy Elliott, hopes raised by his conversation with BoomBoom, drove too fast past the supermarket and Patterson's Florist. His spirits remained high even though he suffered bouts of irritation at driving into Crozet this late. No sooner had he clicked off with BoomBoom than his cell rang. The voice on the other end demanded that Nordy meet him at the Crozet Post Office.

Irritated though he was, the bright lights of the Amoco station amused him. Clean and well located, the modern station seemed out of place.

Turning left, he dipped beneath the railroad underpass, the senior home immediately to his right on the south side of the tracks. To his left, a series of small shops were strung out, including two restaurants. Ombra, with its booths, was Nordy's favorite. Right now Nordy wasn't hungry. He wanted to get this impromptu meeting over with and hurry back home to write copy for J&J Tire Service.

Being a reporter, he had grown accustomed to strange demands, personal meetings, behavior calculated for airtime. By now most Americans had learned that the more outrageous you looked and talked, the better your chances of getting your face, product, or cause covered. Anyone who appeared sober, reliable, and thoughtful was at an immediate disadvantage. Nordy had learned to puff them up, egg them on, thereby getting even better stories.

Within a hundred yards the new post office construction, set back, was visible. On Nordy's left, a temporary post office had been set up in a brick building, and that's where his contact had asked to meet him. Post offices are unlocked, with the back part shut up but postboxes available to their patrons. Occasionally, Sheriff Shaw of Albemarle County or his deputy, Cynthia Cooper, responded to a call about a drunk sleeping in the P.O. when the weather was bitter. Apart from that, anyone going into and out of the building, even in the wee hours, would attract scant attention.

Nordy pulled to the back and parked. His mind returned to BoomBoom. Every single woman in his viewing area thought he was hot. A young, single man, he took advantage of that, but the one he really wanted was the tall, cool blonde. There was something about her, not just her obvious physical attributes, that pulled him toward her. He knew her reputation as a heartbreaker. He could turn the tables. After all, he was handsome, slick as an eel, and on the way up.

He walked around to the front of the post office, opened the door. As the door was closing, his attacker leapt at him so quickly Nordy didn't have time to step back. He threw up his left hand, too late. He dropped like a stone from a ballpoint pen driven up through his left eyeball clean into his brain. Not a drop of blood fell on the floor.

The killer calmly took a chamois cloth to wipe the footprints where he had stood, flattened against the wall. Then he wiped up prints as he backed out the front door.

When Amy Wade entered the back door at seven A.M., she hung up her coat, then unlocked the thin corrugated metal pulldown, which came down to the countertop like a garage door, and pushed it up over her head. It took a moment for her to realize a dead man lay on the floor. She flipped up the divider, hurried over, and beheld the grisly sight. She sucked in her breath, holding it, and raced for the telephone.

Cynthia Cooper happened to be cruising through town, and when she arrived minutes later, she noted the position of the body and saw that the small muscles had gone into rigor. She'd never seen anyone killed with a ballpoint pen. She wasn't an unfeeling woman but one who, like every other law-enforcement officer who has to witness brutal things, had developed a balancing sense of humor. When her boss, Sheriff Rick Shaw, pushed open the door, she gave him a moment to assess the situation, then said, "The pen is mightier than the sword."

22

The orange cordon around the area where Nordy's body had been discovered stopped everyone walking into the post office. Human nature being what it is, plenty of people who didn't rent a postbox in Crozet filed through the door.

Harry and Miranda feverishly worked to sort the mail, deal with people who truly did wish to buy stamps, fend off inquiries, and smile at their friends.

Amy Wade, undone by the horrible sight, had asked to go home for the day. The postmaster called Harry and she immediately filled in, as did Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker. Miranda, always a port in a storm, hurried from her home across the alleyway to help.

The two friends worked like a well-oiled machine.

Big Mim strode in, removed her Robin Hood hat with the pheasant feather with one hand as she supported her ancient aunt Tally with her other. Aunt Tally used an ebony cane, elegant with a silver hound's head for the handle, but Big Mim liked to keep close when sidewalks were slick or steps wet.

"Incomprehensible!" the queen of Crozet pronounced judgment.

"Mimsy, it's perfectly comprehensible." Aunt Tally gently shook off her niece's hand to study the outline of the body chalked on the worn wooden floor. "He was uncommonly handsome, a little cock of the walk."

"Roosters are stupid." Pewter lounged on the counter, the better to see everyone.

Mrs. Murphy, next to her, agreed.

Tucker, sitting patiently by the table in the back, called out, "Yeah, but they're fun to chase."

" 'Til they hit you up with those spurs." As a kitten, Mrs. Murphy learned the hard way that even the lowly rooster had survival tools.

"What has that got to do with a gruesome end?" Big Mim didn't at first follow her aunt's line of thought.

Harry, slipping mail into the boxes, listened, as did Miranda, who sorted through the mail that arrived in canvas bags and was then dumped into a rolling cart.

"Couldn't keep it in his pants."

"Oh, Aunt Tally!"

"Sex. He jumped the paddock and mounted the wrong mare. Bet you even money." The old lady, still quite attractive although thin as a blade, tapped her cane on the floor.

"Doesn't murder usually come down to sex, money, or power?" Harry peeked out from around the back of the brass mailboxes.

"That's what they say." Miranda paused for a moment. "But such an end. So violent."

"And clever." Mrs. Murphy spread open her toes, unleashed her claws, then retracted them.

"What's so clever about jamming a ballpoint pen in someone's eye?" Pewter wondered.

"Simple. Nothing to trace. The pen was left in the eye, and I guarantee you— in fact, I'll give you my catnip if I'm wrong—there won't be one print on that ballpoint pen, no fibers or anything, either."

Tucker, interested now, padded over to sit beneath the kitties. "And cheap. Everyone in the universe has ballpoint pens."

The very tip of Pewter's fat, thick tail moved to and fro as she thought about this angle. "Because the weapon was a pen, does that mean the killer was opportunistic or thought it out? I mean, anyone could grab a ballpoint pen, right?"

"Thought out. Well executed." Mrs. Murphy watched the nonagenarian. Aunt Tally reminded her of a twenty-four-year-old cat that she had known years ago. The fire of life burned brightly, more brightly with age. The gift of any animal that old is they know a lot and they no longer care much what other cats or people think.

"Has anyone spoken to Rick?" Big Mim asked Harry and Miranda, who both knew that Big Mim had nabbed him the instant she heard of the death.

"No. What did he say?" Miranda, being Big Mim's contemporary, could let her know they were on to her question.

"Well"—the elegant lady made no attempt to explain her asking them first—"he said there was no blood. Of course, when they remove the pen there will be blood, I guess." Big Mim stopped herself, because the image was too gross. "Sorry. Anyway, he said they will go over Nordy's clothing and an autopsy will be performed, naturally. But he warned me that there wasn't one footprint by the body and the runoff of the melting snows took care of any hopes for one outside the building."

"This killer is too smart to leave a footprint," Mrs. Murphy offered her opinion.

Aunt Tally walked over to pet the cats, while Big Mim retrieved the mail, then joined her aunt at the counter.

The door opened. BoomBoom and Alicia came in.

"We just left Amy," BoomBoom said.

"How is she?" Harry liked Amy Wade, as did everyone in town.

"Shaken." BoomBoom's face reflected concern.

"But not stirred," Alicia said, then added, "She'll be back to work tomorrow."

"She sends her thanks." BoomBoom studied the chalk outline. "Dropped like a deer."

"Between the eyes or, in this case, in the eye." Aunt Tally ran her forefinger under Pewter's chin, then repeated the pleasing stroke for Mrs. Murphy. "These cats have big motors."

"Purr machines." Harry loved her cats. She flipped up the divider as well as opened the half door so Tucker could visit the people.

Big Mim told BoomBoom and Alicia what Sheriff Shaw had told her.

Alicia remarked, "Whoever committed the murder has to be quick as a cat."

"Why do you say that, darlin'?" BoomBoom casually called her "darlin'," but then, Southern women rained "sugar," "honey," "honey pie," and other sweet names upon their friends.

"Didn't Rick say there was no struggle? That Nordy's body crumpled?"

"Yes," Big Mim replied.

"Then the killer literally struck like a cat and Nordy had no time to react," Alicia said.

"If it was someone he knew, he might not have reacted quickly." A vague notion was forming in Harry's mind, something disquieting, still unfocused.

"True." BoomBoom nodded. "But even if he knew his killer, that person hit fast and hard. It takes a lot of force to drive an object into the human body."

"He didn't hit the socket, either. If he'd hit the bone it would have been a real mess." Aunt Tally allowed the cats to rub against her offered cheek. "Think about it. This killer knew what he or she was doing."

"What an awful thought." Miranda shuddered.

"You know, I spoke to him last night." BoomBoom stepped back from the cordoned area. "Like most men, he was tragically transparent."

Alicia smiled. "That he was not, Boom. He may have been transparent sexually, but he could be opaque about other things or he wouldn't be dead. The man was hiding something."

"Hard to believe." Harry folded her hands on the counter, then remembered she had a lot more mail to put in the boxes. The disruption had put them hours behind. "He was arrogant. I didn't like him, but I'm sorry he died like this."

"It is pretty awful." BoomBoom walked behind the counter. "Do you two need help? I'm happy to stay here."

Miranda smiled warmly. "Boom, if you really want to help, we will use you." She pointed to the overflowing mail cart. "Magazines."

"Boom, you are sweet." Alicia walked behind the counter, too. "Many hands make light work."

Aunt Tally glared at her niece for a moment, since this wasn't the type of labor Big Mim was likely to do. "Mimsy I think we should at least help for half an hour."

"Quite right." Big Mim sighed, removed her lush silver fox short-cropped jacket, walked behind the counter, and draped the jacket over the chair in the back.

The six women worked well together, chatting, going over the dreadful event and then drifting away to other subjects like the college basketball season about to begin. They all followed the University of Virginia men's and women's teams.

Susan blew through the door, stopped cold when she beheld the outline, then walked to the counter and, without a word, flipped up the divider, took off her coat, and attacked the large packages that had to be on industrial shelving. The shelves bore letters of the alphabet. If a person's last name began with "A," their large package would go on the "A" section.

"Sorry I'm late. Brooks's car died, so I had to run her to school. Took the opportunity to talk to her physics teacher." She picked up a package to go to the "T" section. "Nordy's death wasn't on the early-morning edition but it ran as a ticker tape, or whatever you call that underneath the picture, by nine. Good God."

"It will all come out in the wash." Aunt Tally sat at the kitchen table in the back where she sorted mail. "Why don't I toss this junk mail and save someone the trouble?"

"It has occurred to us many times." Miranda rolled the cart over to Harry.

"Thanks," Harry said as she continued to shoot mail into the back of the boxes. She checked the clock on the wall. "We're catching up."

The front door opened. A well-dressed woman who had parked her Mercedes SUV in the front came to the counter. Miranda reached the counter just as the woman placed a small, neatly wrapped package on the counter.

"Would you weigh this please?"

"Certainly." Miranda lifted it, placing it on the stainless-steel scale. "First class?"

"Yes." She glanced around. "What's going on here?"

Since Miranda didn't recognize the woman, she figured she either didn't live here, was visiting for the holidays, or had moved in that second. "We've suffered an unfortunate incident."

"What kind of incident?" She removed one of her gloves to reach into her Bottega Veneta purse for cash.

"The local news reporter, Nordy Elliott, was found dead here this morning."

"What?" Her eyes widened.

"That's all we know."

"Nordy Elliott, that terribly attractive young man who does the news?" She paused a moment. "I'm here visiting my son and daughter-in-law, so I watch the local news. Oh, that can't be."

"I'm afraid it is."

"What's this world coming to?" She fished out the amount, which Miranda told her was $3.20. "Before Christmas."

"Do you want this insured?"

"No." The woman noticed the gang in the back. Her eyes narrowed as she recognized Alicia Palmer, then they widened with pleasure. She leaned forward, whispering, "Is that Alicia Palmer?" Miranda nodded, and the woman continued, "Never forget her in War Clouds." She snapped up her change.

"No. Might I ask who is your son?"

She smiled. "Dr. Trey Seddons. He's just taken a position in the radiology department at Martha Jefferson, so I've come up to help him and Beth get settled."

As she left, Big Mim muttered, "Carpetbaggers."

"Now, now," Aunt Tally reprimanded her. "Can't be critical because she doesn't speak the King's English with the same perfection and lilt as do we all here. And carpetbaggers bring in money. Always have and always will."

"I don't mind the money, Aunt Tally, what I mind is they come here and want us to be like them. When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

"What's so great about the Romans?" Pewter wondered.

"Empire lasted a thousand years." Mrs. Murphy loved history.

"Because of the work of dogs, horses, cattle, and you cats. How could they have lived off the grains of Egypt if cats hadn't killed the mice? And how could they have had herds of cattle and sheep if we dogs didn't herd them as well as drive off marauders? And do animals get any credit?" Tucker shook her head.

"I don't want credit. I want tuna." Pewter let out a meow.

Harry knew that tone of voice. She handed her fistful of mail to BoomBoom, standing next to her with her own fistful of mail. "All right."

As Harry opened a can for the cats and a small one of beef for Tucker, Alicia and BoomBoom hummed and chatted. Susan talked to Big Mim, Tally, and Miranda as she shuttled packages to the shelves. Harry stopped for a moment and thought what wonderful friends she had, and then she noticed how Alicia and BoomBoom leaned toward each other; they glowed. Susan was right. She blinked, then thought to herself, "Lucky them."

"These tubes roll off the shelf." Susan stood on a small ladder in the "C" section, where Tazio Chappars's blueprints were placed.

"I know. There's a rubber wedge there, an old doorstop. I put one on each side," Harry informed her.

"I would have thought all this was done by computers. Someone would send the blueprints to Tazio's computer, she would print it and blow it up." BoomBoom liked technology.

"Can," Harry replied. "But Tazio says for the clearest blueprints, you have to get them done the old way. Also, this paper, the stuff in the tube here, stands a beating at construction sites. She says printers, laser printers, can't print out on blueprint paper. Anyway, I don't mind dealing with these. Kind of excites me, thinking of buildings going up."

"You have the building gene," Big Mim quipped.

"Your grandfather had it, too." Aunt Tally, long, long ago, had been passionately in love with Harry's handsome grandfather. She was in her late teens and he was married. People didn't divorce in those days.

"Wish I had the money to indulge it." Harry laughed. "But you know, being back here in the post office today is good for me. I know I've done the right thing. It really was time to move on, and I have got to make money."

"You will." Aunt Tally encouraged her. "Set yourself a goal, stick to it. You're smart as a whip."

"Thank you."

"See, she'll listen to you, Aunt Tally. She doesn't listen to me. I tell her how smart she is." Susan placed the rubber wedges on either side of the tubes.

"Ned have his team together?" Aunt Tally inquired.

"He does. Another three weeks and he's sworn in as our state senator and I will be truly married to an elected politician. I can't tell you how many people he interviewed for the jobs. He needs to have the right people, people who know the drill in Richmond. People who can get along. That's the problem, you know, in any office or wherever: can the people who work together get along? I worry about what this will cost us, too. He has an apartment in Richmond; the miles will pile up on the car when he switches back and forth from here to there. I didn't want him to spend money on an apartment, but he reminded me what happened when both houses fought over the state budget: long, long sessions. He really needs a little place there. And like I said, he really needs a team that can get along."

"We always did." Miranda patted Harry's shoulder as she squeezed behind her and BoomBoom.

"Easier when there's two," Big Mim said, then amended the thought. "If it's the right two."

Big Mim and Aunt Tally worked for an hour. Harry and Miranda were grateful to them, because they knew how out of the ordinary this gesture was and the two women really did help.

No sooner had the two climbed into Big Mim's go-through-anything Range Rover, saved for bad weather, than Alicia pulled out her cell phone to call Patterson's Florist.

"More amaryllis?" BoomBoom raised her eyebrows, then turned to Harry. "She's filled one room with red and white amaryllis, arranging them like a tree on this platform she's had built. I'm not explaining this very well. Anyway, she's placed all the pots, wrapped in foil, on the circular levels, and I've never seen anything quite like it. She's so visually creative."

"You are, too," Harry complimented her.

"Not like Alicia, but thank you."

They overheard Alicia. "Yes, one to Aunt Tally and one to Big Mini. Today, if possible." She paused, smiling at BoomBoom and Harry, then her attention returned to her order. "Yes. Say, "With thanks from the girls at the P.O.' Uh-huh. Put it on my account. Thank you so much." She hung up.

Miranda said, "We'll divvy that up."

"No, you won't." Alicia waved her hand.

"You think of everything." BoomBoom finished her row of boxes.

"You're prejudiced." Alicia returned to the mail cart.

A beat passed, then Susan simply said, "You two make each other happy."

For a moment no one uttered a word, not even the animals. Then BoomBoom, who thought she'd be scared only to discover she wasn't at all, replied, "We do."

And that was that.

Within the hour they finished the mail. It would have taken Harry and Miranda past closing to do it themselves. Miranda made a fresh pot of coffee, dashed across the alleyway, and soon returned with a large basket filled with chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, and fresh gingerbread, a thin glaze of vanilla icing on the top.

"Girls, I was in such a hurry to get over here after Pug called me"—she mentioned the postmaster of the area by name—"that I didn't have time to throw together some treats."

An impromptu party followed, with either Miranda or Harry rising to take care of a customer. Miranda even thought to bring dried liver treats for the cats and dog.

Harry bit into her second slice of gingerbread, then stopped mid-chew. Swallowing big, she said, "Know what?" The others looked at her. "The eye. Nordy was killed through the eye. The Virgin Mary is bleeding through the eyes."

The cats and dogs listened to this as they ate the treats brought for them.

"If she could smell, she'd have caught that whiff of lanolin and beeswax when we came to work," Tucker said. "Don't know about eyes, but I know that lanolin odor."

'Virgin wool," Mrs. Murphy replied.

"From an unmarried sheep." Pewter giggled.

"From someone wearing a virgin wool sweater, or a robe like a Greyfriar." The tiger ignored Pewter's joke.

23

It's a strange coincidence. Let that be the end of it." Fair pulled off the thin, long, whitish latex gloves he'd used to check a mare.

The gloves barely made a sound as they dropped into the garbage can in BoomBoom's stable. At six o'clock in the evening the sun had set an hour ago, and the sky was filled with low, dense, tinted clouds, the remains of one of those sunsets that goes on and on, the last brushstroke of color dying after an hour.

BoomBoom was holding the furry chestnut mare, a well-built animal by Lemon Drop Kid out of Silly Putty, a mare who broke down on the racetrack. BoomBoom, like Harry, Fair, and Big Mim, could pick a horse. The animal could be underfed, wormy, blowing its coat, or injured, yet she saw the potential. She was highly regarded by other horsemen, all the more so since this particular broodmare was by Lemon Drop Kid, a marvelous stallion who enjoyed a stellar career on the track.

As Fair worked on the mare, BoomBoom and Harry filled him in on conversations at the post office, their ideas, Susan's ideas, Miranda's, and, well, everyone's who flounced into the post office that day—which was everyone who could stand up. If you didn't show up at the post office, it meant you were involved in a flaming seduction or too sick to walk. After recovering from both fevers, one was expected to divulge the details in as amusing a manner as possible.

Harry bristled. "Oh, come on, I'm just tossing out theories."

"Your theories have a way of almost getting you killed."

"True!" the two cats and dog agreed as they sat on the stacked hay bales.

Alicia appeared in the open barn doors, the fading light framing her. Winter sunsets at this latitude were one more joy of living in central Virginia.

For an instant, seeing Alicia in the doorway, Harry could understand why BoomBoom had fallen in love with her. Then she looked at Fair washing his hands in the sink in the small tack-room, dirt on his coveralls, his green Wellies half brown with muck, and she thought he didn't need a sunset. He was beautiful to her. A thin pang of desire and even guilt shot through her body. She'd made him pay and pay for his sins. Maybe they weren't really sins. She said she'd forgiven him, and she had. She recognized at that very instant that she needed to forgive herself. She'd held on to the whip hand too long and she'd diminished herself in the process, as well as hurt a man who loved her more than life itself.

"How is she?" Alicia turned up the collar of her bomber jacket; the mercury was dropping faster than the New Year's ball in Times Square.

"Healthy. The infection cleared up." Fair turned to BoomBoom. "I'd ship her out to Kentucky after Christmas. They're so efficient and responsible at Payson Stud. They'll put her under lights and, when she's ready, she'll have multiple covers by St. Jovite." He mentioned one of the good studs standing at the farm. "I know those board bills ratchet up, but, BoomBoom, that's the stallion you want for this mare. He raced for years and retired sound. You want that hardy blood. After she's caught, ship her back. I'll take it from there. If you breed your other mare, go to Tom Newton's stud, Harbor Dean. But send this girl to Kentucky."

"You're right."

"Are you breeding her for the track?" Harry liked the mare; she had clean legs but was retiring because she'd suffered a cracked vertebra in an accident in the shedrows.

"Well, I know that's better for Payson Stud, but, no, I'm breeding her for foxhunting. One of the great things about the people at Payson Stud is that Mrs. Payson runs steeplechase horses, so she understands about jumping and, even more importantly, staying power. Peggy Augustus is another true horseman who cares about going the distance. Everyone these days seems to breed for sprint races. The good old distance bloodlines are thinning out. Remember, Husband, Peggy's stallion, was the sire of my best hunter. I'll be taking one of my other mares to Husband in January."

Horsemen, like golfers, could talk for hours, days, weeks about horses, bloodlines, great chasers and racers, great hunt horses.

Alicia, a horseman herself—although her knowledge was interrupted by the time she'd spent acting in California—said, "Why don't we continue this at the kitchen table? There's potpie waiting for you all, if you don't mind simple fare." She paused a moment. "Not referring to you, Fair."

At the massive farmer's table, the conversation bounced between recent events, horses, and politics, especially Wendell Ordman's career.

Fair cut into his pie, through crusty layers of perfection. "How did Maggie Sheraton like Herb?"

Alicia answered, "Karma. Her words." She imitated Maggie's delivery. "Alicia Palmer, darlin' girl, when I shook his hand I felt a karmic bond. Many lives. Then we spoke and I found in this life a courteous gentle Virginia gentleman."

"Which means?" Harry lifted one eyebrow.

"Means she's coming down from New York for New Year's. She'll stay here, of course. They're going to the dance at Farming-ton Country Club. She's bought three gowns from Bergdorf Goodman. One of them is bound to be right."

"Wonder what Herb thinks?" Harry thought Herb looked good in a tuxedo. It helped to hide his paunch, which he was now exercising to remove.

"He invited her, so he must like her," Fair reflected.

Fair got up and refilled everyone's coffee cup. He noticed a pair of headlights coming down the drive. "Boom, are you expecting anyone?"

"No."

In the country, dear friends don't feel compelled to call first, so an unannounced visitor wasn't that out of the ordinary.

The car pulled into the drive, the lights cut off. In the darkness BoomBoom couldn't tell the make of the vehicle. The back door swung open and a teary Susan walked in.

"Susan, what's the matter?" Harry asked.

"Well, I drove to your house, then I remembered you said at the post office that Fair was checking Boom's mare and..." Susan rambled on before she got to the point. "Ned's staying in Richmond tonight. He said he has so much to do he needs to stay over, but when I called him back on his cell he didn't pick up."

Alicia got up and pulled another chair to the table, as BoomBoom fetched another plate and table setting. "Susan, sit down. Please join us."

"I can't eat. I'm too fat. That's why he's sleeping with other women."

"Susan, you don't know that. Now, come on. And he needs to stay in Richmond sometimes, but especially now." Harry led her to the table.

Fair, upset for Susan, poured a cup of coffee for her. "She's right, Susan. Don't worry about him not answering his cell. I mean, he might be in a meeting or the battery could need a recharge. Don't worry."

Susan wiped her eyes as Alicia placed a hot potpie in front of her.

"What am I going to do?" Susan asked in a flat tone.

"You're going to relax with your friends, enjoy this potpie, and we'll figure this out together." Alicia took charge.

"You'll feel better if you eat this." BoomBoom encouraged Susan. "Your blood sugar drops and everything looks much worse."

Reluctantly Susan pierced the pie, the enticing aroma curling up to her nostrils. She gingerly took a bite, then another. "It is good."

"The goddess herself made it," BoomBoom teased.

"Will you stop?" Alicia rolled her eyes.

"Susan, I don't think Ned is having an affair. Really. I'm not just saying that to make you feel better, but I think I'd know," Fair said.

"Would he tell you?"

Fair was reassuring. "Maybe. Look, he's never been in politics before. He probably feels he's over his head."

"I haven't heard a breath of scandal about Ned. If he were up to something I'd know by now." BoomBoom soothed her.

"I've been married to the man since I was nineteen. I know him. He's up to something. He's distant." Susan's lower lip quivered anew.

"Has it occurred to you that perhaps you're distant?" Alicia reached over to pat Susan's left hand.

"How's his health?" BoomBoom inquired.

"Healthy as a horse," Susan responded, then turned to Alicia. "Maybe I have been weird."

Harry asked as she cut into a spice cake with thick icing, "Susan, you said Ned is healthy as a horse. Wasn't Great-Uncle Thomas healthy as a horse?"

"He was. Why?"

"Why assume he died of a heart attack just because he was eighty-two?" Harry said as she passed a piece of moist cake to Fair.

"It's not an unreasonable assumption," Fair replied.

"But he had no history of heart disease, am I right?" Harry persisted.

Susan thought for a moment. "The Bland Wades live forever. He was worried about his heart. He'd been experiencing irregular heartbeats. But still, at his age that's to be expected. Like I said, the Bland Wades are tough. Brooks takes after that side."

"Danny looks a little like a Bland Wade," Fair said.

"I always thought he resembled his father," Susan hastily replied.

"He's handsome no matter who he resembles." Alicia thought Susan had lovely children.

Susan repeated, "He looks just like his father."

Harry got back on track. "Do you have any reason to believe Brother Thomas was sick?"

"No," Susan said.

"A major coronary would take him right out. There might not be any indication before the attack." Fair was thinking about the kind monk.

"You didn't ask for an autopsy." Harry was thinking out loud, not asking a question.

Susan answered, though. "Of course not, Harry, he was two years older than God. Let the poor soul be buried with dignity."

"I think you should exhume him and have an autopsy performed."

"Harry, we're eating," BoomBoom chided her.

24

On December 9, Friday, the few lovely days of the temperature climbing to the forties ended. Clouds, steel gray, unfurled from the west, winds led the clouds onward, and a low-pressure system made animals and humans tired. The temperature headed down, down.

A small crew stood around Brother Thomas's grave as Travis Critzer sank the big claw of the front-end loader into the earth, aided by Stuart Tapscott. Travis could operate anything with a motor in it. Skilled as he was, he was glad to be digging up the coffin before the hard frost returned, and he was glad to have his father with him. Although not his blood father, Stuart was the man who had raised him, taught him his trade.

Brother Frank and Brother Prescott stood, faces sour. As it was Friday, the day of public execution for centuries, it became considered the devil's day. It was devil's work disturbing what was left of a good and godly man. As the number-two man in the monastery, Brother Prescott volunteered to oversee this disgusting task. Brother Handle, overwhelmed with the response to the statue, gratefully accepted this offer. Dealing with the hordes of people, with unrest among the brothers themselves, made Brother Handle wonder why he ever thought becoming a monk would steer him clear of the world's follies. In fact, the pressures increased to the point where he offered no protest at the exhumation. Once a grave was consecrated, Brother Handle believed it should not be touched. However, Brother Thomas's family, under the leadership of Susan Tucker, was insistent. Brother Handle knew Ned Tucker had been elected to the state senate in November. Best to keep a Tucker happy.

Susan, Harry, and Deputy Cooper also watched the yellow claw dig into the flinty earth. A thin cover of soil was quickly stripped away; the subsequent layers were poor. That's why this corner of the monastery held the mortal remains of the brothers. No sense in wasting good soil.

The county coroner, Tom Yancy, waited, too, glad for a chance to escape the lab. He and Cooper had worked together over the years, a healthy respect developing between them.

Although it was Coop's day off, she accompanied Harry and Susan. She'd seen enough exhumations to know that they can be disturbing to next of kin or friends of the departed. Also, Harry had promised that afterward they'd drive up Interstate 81 to Dayton's furniture store, just south of Harrisonburg. Coop had saved enough for a sleigh bed, her Christmas present to herself, and Harry said Dayton's would have the best—not the cheapest, but the best.

Susan tightened the scarf around her neck. "Wind's come up."

"An ill wind that blows no good," Harry quoted the old saying.

"You're full of Christmas spirit," Tom said.

"Sorry. Kind of hard to be cheery at an exhumation."

"Look at it this way." The coroner grinned. "If the old fellow died a natural death, that will be good news. I know you two ladies haven't witnessed an exhumation. Brother Thomas won't be in that bad a shape; he hasn't been in there long enough. His nose might have crumbled a little, his cuticles might have receded, which will make it look as though his fingernails are still growing, but it won't be all that bad."

"What about the stench?" Harry wasn't one to mince on reality.

He waved his hand. "He won't smell like Chanel Number Five, but remember, it's been cold up here, and even though he's below the frost line, it's plenty cold down there. Might be blowing up some, but just step back and hold your nose. That way you won't get a blast and if you faint you won't fall into the coffin."

"I'm not going to faint." Harry's pride flared up.

"Might puke, though," he genially replied.

"Good God, this is so gross." Susan's eyes misted over. "I feel like I'm violating him."

"I don't know about that, but Susan, if he was murdered then we have to find his killer. Brother Thomas deserves that, at least. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

"There's a lot to be said for simple justice." The lanky deputy took a long draw on a Camel, then gratefully exhaled a plume of blue smoke.

"Cooper, might I bum a cigarette off you?" Susan implored.

"Of course." Coop reached in her parka pocket and fetched out the familiar white pack covered with thin cellophane, the camel, facing left, dutifully standing at the ready.

"Cheater," Harry teased Susan.

"Can't help it."

"Kills the smell," Tom cheerfully added.

"Uh, Coop, give me one, too. I'll buy you a pack." Harry reached for the offered cigarette.

The three women drew on their cigarettes. Nicotine, calming in most circumstances, worked for Cooper and Harry, who rarely smoked. Susan, however, remained nervous and wished she was inhaling a mentholated cigarette.

The claw scratched the top of the pine coffin.

Within minutes, Travis carefully dug around the edges of the handmade coffin.

Brother Prescott and Brother Frank stepped up to the grave site. They dropped two stout ropes down into the pit, Travis, being much younger than the two monks, hopped down, slid the ropes with a little wriggling under the coffin. Stuart Tapscott grabbed the ropes on the edge of the grave to keep them from sliding back into the pit.

The coroner and Brother Frank took opposite ends of one rope, Brother Prescott and Travis the other. Stuart stood well back. He didn't want to see the body.

"All right, one, two, pull," Travis commanded as the coffin lifted up with relative ease.

Travis and Brother Prescott pried the lid. Before the coroner picked the lid off the coffin, he said, "You might want to stand back and let me look first, ladies."

Harry, belligerently, stepped right up to the coffin; Susan stepped back.

Tom looked up at Harry and half-smiled. He picked up the lid.

"Holy shit!" Harry exclaimed.

The coffin contained three fifty-pound bags of potting soil.

Shock registered on Tom's face as well as those of the two brothers. Susan plucked up her courage to look inside.

Coop was already on her cell phone, punching in Sheriff Shaw. "Rick, we've got a real problem."

Susan's nervousness, then anger, focused on Brother Frank and Brother Prescott. "What's the meaning of this? What have you done with my great-uncle!"

Brother Frank, face white as the snow still folded in the deepest tucks of the ravines, stuttered, "Mrs. Tucker, I swear to you with God as my witness, your great-uncle was in this coffin when the lid was nailed shut."

"One more miracle for the mountain," Harry cracked.

"What?" Brother Prescott was deeply upset.

"You've got a statue crying bloody tears, and now you've got a resurrection." Harry, at that moment, didn't trust either of the brothers any further than she could throw her lit cigarette.

25

The clutter on Sheriff Rick Shaw's desk didn't reflect his mind, which was clear and concise in its workings. An avalanche of flyers and bulletins from the county, the state, and the federal government rolled over his desk.

He carefully sifted through the mail, smiling each time junk mail hit the large round metal wastebasket. Anything pertinent he stacked in a steel mesh file box, a gift from Cooper last Christmas.

Now this Christmas pressed on him. He hadn't bought one present. His wife, whom he dearly loved, shouldered much of that burden, but he wanted to buy her something special and hadn't one idea.

Three people had missed work today because of the flu, one being the receptionist, who sifted people like Rick sifted mail. Deputy Cooper had some days coming to her. She hadn't taken any vacation time this year, but he was shorthanded and Coop, being Coop, pitched in. She had one day off, today, and that turned into work. She never made it to Dayton's.

Rick pushed his chair back when she walked into the office.

"Here." She tossed a carton of Camels on his desk. Another carton was tucked under her arm.

"Living large. Thank you." He slid the carton into his long middle desk drawer. "Really."

"They're from Harry."

"Harry?"

"She bummed a fag off me, so she bought me a carton and then one for you. She sends her regards and she's sorry to hear everyone is fiat on their backs with this damned new strain of flu. Jeez, hope we don't get it."

"I'm chewing so much vitamin C, I'm about to turn orange. And echinacea. My wife stuffs it down my throat, God bless her."

"Helen's a good woman. Everyone needs a wife—even a wife." Cooper pulled up the wooden chair, an old office chair from the 1940s. "I'd settle for one husband, though."

"He'd be a lucky man." Rick had learned to cherish his deputy over the years, although initially he resented a woman in law enforcement and gave her every crappy job that came along. Her upbeat personality, meticulousness, and steadiness in a crisis changed his mind. He fretted that she wouldn't find the right guy. Many men think a woman cop is gay, and Cooper wasn't. She wasn't movie-star beautiful, although she was attractive. She was, however, shy with men who attracted her.

"Thanks, boss." She opened a fresh pack of Camels. "You won't believe this—on top of the coffin with bags of potting soil, I mean—but Harry actually smoked half a cigarette. She gagged, but she puffed like a chimney."

"Did she, now?" He laughed.

"She thought when the lid came off the coffin she'd be puked out by the stench, so she lit up. Not a bad tactic, since smoking compromises your sense of smell. Sticking a gob of Vick's VapoRub up your nose is better." Cooper pulled a small jar out of her coat pocket. "Didn't use it since I figured Brother Thomas would be frozen."

Rick grunted. "Maybe they intended to plant him and misplaced the body."

"Very funny." She tapped the end of the fresh cigarette on the desk. "Anything on Nordy?"

"Pete Osborne copied the last year of Nordy's assignments. We viewed those segments that Pete thought could possibly inflame someone to murder." Rick accepted the cigarette Cooper offered him. He sniffed the distinctive rich aroma of unsmoked tobacco, then struck a kitchen match on the large red matchbox. Rick didn't like lighters. He thought the gas odor filtered into the cigarette. "He made us copies." He held up a DVD in a blue cardboard envelope, which bore Pete's distinctive scrawl. "Can't believe the technology."

"If I have a good Christmas I'll buy myself a DVD player. Still have a year of car payments left." She paused. "Prices keep coming down. Eventually I'll be able to afford one. Didn't mean to get off the subject. What do you think about what you saw?"

"The segment where Nordy was outside a supposed drug dealer's house was volatile. Jamaicans ran out and hit him. The one where he broke the story on the check-kiting scheme shook up people. The trials on that start in March. People have killed for less. There are the usual interviews with victims' families, with murderers—emotional but not the same payoff."

"How do you mean?"

"Emotions run high, and Nordy's footage creates sympathy for the victim. However, that's not the same as pointing the finger and accusing someone of guilt. Murder usually isn't a thought-out crime; most of what we see is spur-of-the-moment. But the check-kiting schemes, mmm, that kind of crime demands thought. It's usually committed by someone with a higher education, someone who might get off with a good lawyer. To save their own neck, that kind of criminal might murder."

"But a white-collar criminal wouldn't kill Nordy. He'd hire a dog's body, don't you think?" She used the phrase "dog's body," meaning someone who lived for odd or onerous chores.

"Exactly." Rick swung his feet up to rest on his desk. "Nordy was going to see the check-kiting story to its bitter conclusion. As for the Jamaican drug dealers, again, there's a lot of money at stake. This is a wealthy county, and people want their cocaine, Oxycontin, and whatever, you know? They'll get it. There's motive there and cunning."

"You're not convinced."

He exhaled. "No."

"It's the pen in the eye, isn't it?"

His eyebrows lifted in appreciation. She knew how his mind worked, which was a comfort. "In all my years I have never seen that. I've seen torture, I've seen infants raped, which is about the sickest goddamned thing I have ever seen, but I've never seen this. It's so simple."

"Yeah, how do you trace a ballpoint pen? Harry thinks it might have something to do with eyes. That's a message, the eyes."

He pursed his lips together. "The carton of cigarettes is a bribe. She's going to get stuck right in the middle of this. Incorrigible! The empty coffin, so to speak, must have sent her into the stratosphere."

"It was a jolt."

He swiveled to face her better but didn't move his legs much. "Damned queer."

"Harry is convinced this is linked to Nordy's murder. Linked to the Virgin Mary's bleeding eyes. In fact, she said, 'The eyes have it.'"

"These inspirations spare her the legwork, don't they?"

"She's not averse to legwork, boss, but she isn't a professional. She misses things. She gets to third base without touching first or second, but you have to admit, she gets a hit at bat."

He exhaled in a sort of agreement, "Well, I guess that's better than being born on third base and thinking you've hit a triple."

His first concern was protecting the public. His next concern was procedure. If he didn't touch each base on his way to home plate, a lawyer, not even a clever one, would blow all that hard work to smithereens. Harry worried him with her meddling because she endangered herself and others and because she could muck up a carefully built case.

They smoked in silence, then Cooper broke it. "How's Pete holding up?"

"Good. He's a strong man. The other on-air reporters are nervous. He's doing a lot of hand-holding and he's interviewing for a replacement. He said he feels ghoulish but it's necessary. The station is understaffed as it is. I can sure appreciate that problem."

"At least that's a profitable business."

"Yeah, right. We're public servants, and some days I really feel the servant part."

"Think there is any connection between Nordy's death and the statue, the monastery?"

"I can't disregard any possibility. Nordy was making a big name for himself with that story. Pete and I watched everything Nordy did up there, as well as the footage he didn't use. He didn't come out and say the tears were false, only that they were an unexplained phenomenon. He was respectful. I can't disregard the Virgin Mary angle, but for the life of me, I can't find one thing that computes."

"I can't, either. A man in his eighties dies while praying before a statue on a night so bitterly cold even Satan with his built-in heating unit wouldn't be walking around. Andrew, Mark, and Prescott thaw him out, wash the body, prepare him for burial. They put him in the coffin, nail down the lid—all this is testimony." She held up her small notebook that she kept in her purse. "He's afforded a simple service in keeping with the order. Susan and her family attend. They throw earth on the grave and that's that. I also talked with Brother Handle, the head honcho. He said Brother Thomas was well loved. 'So why would someone steal his body?' I asked." She drew in another long drag. "He did say that the body was possibly sold to a medical school. But who would do such a thing? Surely not one of the brothers. He didn't believe so, either, but selling to a medical school was his one idea. He's wound tighter than a piano wire, by the way, and the whole place is overrun by people crying, praying in front of the statue. You wouldn't believe it."

"Is she really crying blood?"

"I took a sample and sent it off to the lab. Shouldn't take long even with all they have to do."

Coop heard a rat-a-tat on the windowpanes outside Rick's office. She stood up to look. "Damn. It's going to be another long day."

He swung his legs down, got up, peered out his office window. "Where'd that come from? I watched the Weather Channel this morning as well as the weatherman on Channel Twenty-nine."

"Who knows." Her voice was mournful as the ice pellets struck the window harder.

He sat back down. "If we find Brother Thomas's body, that will tell us something."

"The dead tell all their secrets if you know how to ask."

26

Knowing that a woman in a position of authority might be disquieting to the Greyfriars, Rick briefly interviewed each brother.

Brother Handle agreed to this because Brothers Frank and Prescott impressed on him how bad it would look if he didn't cooperate. It would appear that the Greyfriars had something to hide.

Rick made the questions brief. He knew from many years of experience that he had to piece together this case, each bit of evidence, each person questioned, a tiny square of information in what would become an intelligible mosaic. He had queried Brother Mark about the last time he saw Thomas's body then switched gears, asking him about Nordy.

Brother Mark, head down, sat opposite him. "I loathed him. I tried to like him. I prayed. Still hated him."

"Even at Michigan State?"

"Especially. He swaggered, humiliated me in front of my dates. We were in the same fraternity but he was a year ahead of me."

"I see. What about printing and selling fake I.D.s?" Rick surprised him with this information.

Mark raised his head. "His idea. I was weak and went along with it."

"Made a lot of money?"

"Yes." He brightened, although wary of the Sheriff. He wondered just why Rick had dug so deep into his own past. "We made over fifteen thousand dollars in one semester. One semester!"

"And you got busted. He didn't."

"Nordy's father could pull strings. Mine could only pull on the bottle," he said with rancor.

"That's when you, uh, took a nosedive."

"Puree." Mark used an expression for a total loss.

"That's a good one. Puree is worse than toast?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me what happened next."

"Drugs. Couldn't hold a job. If I hadn't found God I'd be in jail or dead. I was this far"—he held up his thumb and forefinger close together—"from becoming a career criminal."

"What happened?"

"I woke up in the middle of Beverly Street in Staunton on a cold night. A doctor was dragging me out of the road and she said, 'Son, you can go into rehab or you can find God. I'll help you either way' "

"And she did?"

"I went to a clinic in North Carolina, not expensive or anything. I detoxed. I found God and I found the Greyfriars. But every day I have to work on myself."

"Could you have killed Nordy?"

Mark half-smiled. "The thought occurred to me. I suppose I could have, but even though I couldn't stand him, nah." He shrugged. "I pray harder."

Rick checked his watch. "You've been helpful. One last question. Do you fit in here? Is this the place for you?"

"Yeah. I'm surrounded by dinosaurs. I know they make fun of me behind my back, but," he shrugged again, "I ignore them. I miss Brother Thomas. He taught me stuff. I could talk to him, and even though he was eighty-two he could use the computer as easily as I can. He said if he made it to eighty-three he was going to build his own computer. He even knew he could specify what he wanted from ASUS, the company in California."

"You lost me." Rick closed his notebook.

"ASUS. They build motherboards. Brother Thomas really was going to build his own computer with a motherboard he helped design."

"I can see why you miss him."

"No one here even knows what a motherboard is."

"Bet Nordy did."

"Yeah, but he'd kind of have to know. Every now and then I'd use one of the computers here and fire him an e-mail." He cupped his chin in his hand. "Funny, he really pissed me off, but I'm going to miss him. I never thought someone my age would die, you know?"

"Well, Brother Mark, you've had the great good fortune not to be in a war. Your generation has been spared. If it were 1943 or 1970, a lot of your running buddies would be dead. You might be dead. When you say your prayers, pray for them, for those that went before."

Mark blinked. "I will. And I know the Blessed Virgin Mother weeps for them."

27

Harry remarked to Susan as they drove the rig back from a foxhunt, "I am in the best mood. The best mood."

"Good, because when you get home you know those two cats will have shredded something." Susan smiled. The bracing day had improved her spirits, too.

She was right. When Susan dropped her off she walked inside to behold two silk lamp shades slit open, shredded. Then Harry went down to the basement to fetch a jar of orange marmalade and found the birdseed bags that Mrs. Murphy and Pewter had ripped open when she last left them alone in the house.

Tucker, quick to defend herself, told Harry in no uncertain terms that she would never shred silk lamp shades, nor would she spill seed upon the ground like the Biblical Onan although Onan wasn't spilling birdseed.

"Brownnoser," Mrs. Murphy growled at the dog.

"No impulse control." Tucker walked away from the cat, her claws clicking on the kitchen heart-pine boards.

"Why are you so happy? You got left behind today, too," Pewter complained.

"We are not supposed to go to foxhunts. Sometimes Mom will let me sleep in the cab of the truck but we really aren't supposed to go. You know that."

"Tucker, I might know it but I don't agree with it." The tiger cat swatted at the corgi.

The phone rang. Miranda informed Harry that Big Mim had just been told by her daughter that Blair Bainbridge proposed to her on Thanksgiving Day. Big Mim had mixed emotions but put a good face on it. Mim called Miranda to talk it out.

Then the phone rang again.

"Susan, you must have just gotten to the house. What's up?"

"Harry, you and I are both country girls. Today's hunt pulled me out of my torpor. My mind's working again and I'm ready to fight the world."

"I'm ready, too." Harry liked hearing the energy in Susan's voice.

"Here's what I think. G-Uncle Thomas is laid in the coffin, three brothers see him. According to Brother Mark, the lid was nailed down, he's buried. Right?"

"Right."

"All the brothers attend the brief entombment, as do I."

"Right."

"The coffin is heavy. No suspicions. Still with me?"

"Always and ever."

"All right, then. Either Brother Andrew and Mark are lying through their teeth, which I don't discount, or someone removes the body before everyone gets to the cemetery, putting in three bags of potting soil. Something was in his coffin."

"You're right." Harry had already considered this.

"So what do they do with him? None of the brothers left the grounds that night. At least not that anyone knows. No car was taken, and only a few brothers have access to the keys. G-Uncle Thomas was taken somewhere and dumped or reburied. It would be a hard job to rebury him. I figure all this happened within one night, in darkness. He can't be far. How far can you drag a body in bitter cold and snow? I'm willing to bet my great-uncle is within a mile's radius of his grave, or should I say his intended grave."

"Susan, you're on to something." Harry encouraged her, glad that her friend didn't sound as anxious or troubled as she had been in the last few weeks.

"If we find him, maybe we can find out what happened to him."

"We're country girls. If anyone can find him, we can. The cats and dogs can help. We have to be careful. We can't blow through the joint, know what I mean? We'll have to work up from the ravines."

"Thought of that, too. I say we go in from behind the Inn at Afton Mountain just before dawn. Work up to within sight of the Virgin Mary, then work around in a southwest arc. Since it's Sunday the brothers will be in service and prayer, at least early in the morning. We have a shot at it, and we can be out of there before attracting notice. We'll have to work in sections. We can't do it all in one day."

"Great idea." Harry paused a moment. "But, Susan, if we do find him, do you really want to see old Uncle Thomas like, well, like however we find him?"

"I tell myself the soul has left the body. Whatever we find is a husk. And I tell myself that he deserves better. He deserves a decent Christian burial after a lifetime of service to the best of Jesus' teachings."

"You're right," Harry agreed.

"I feel this foreboding. Harry, I feel like he's calling to me. I have a debt to clear, but I don't know what it is."

28

Looking east from the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a thin gray line separated the horizon from the frozen earth. The band expanded until the faintest touch of rose diffused the bottom to cast a pinkish glow on the dark earth.

Harry, Susan, Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, Tucker, and Owen, Susan's corgi, paused to watch the blush of dawn before they plunged into the ravine behind the monastery.

The early morning, still as the tomb and clear, promised a cold day but a bright one. The winter solstice, ten days ahead, brought soft light.

Harry marveled at how the light changed with each season. Winter's light, soft and alluring, offered a contrast to the cold.

The two dogs scrambled down the ravine. The cats picked their way over the fallen branches and the jutting rocks. Pewter, never one for vigorous exercise, grumbled with each obstacle.

"You could have stayed in the car up at Afton Inn." Mrs. Murphy tired of the stream of complaints.

"And miss everything! If we find Brother Thomas you'll need my powers of observation."

"If we find Brother Thomas, you'll throw up. It will be like one big hairball," Mrs. Murphy said as she leapt over a large oak branch, the place where it had torn from the tree a different color.

"I will not." Pewter elected to go around the tree branch. "I don't rejoice in these things. Not like the dogs. Carrion eaters. They love it."

"Dogs can be gross." Mrs. Murphy couldn't imagine eating anything decayed or rolling in it.

"And Tucker brags about her nose." Pewter wrinkled hers.

"She has a good nose. Rot smells like an enticing dinner to her. I don't get it, either. I mean, you and I have good noses, but that's one scent we don't like. Humans, either. I guess buzzards like it, though."

"Ever notice how birds who tear flesh have upper beaks that curve down—sort of? Think of Flatface, not just buzzards." Pewter mentioned the large horned owl living in the barn at home.

"Yes. Ever notice how buzzards don't have feathers on their necks?" Mrs. Murphy answered her own question. "They can stick their entire head inside some really dead animal, but their necks won't get sticky, weighted down. They can keep clean that way, I suppose, and they can fly, too. If a buzzard was pasted over with goo, it'd be harder to fly."

"Practical. Crabs are carrion eaters, too. So why do they have eyes on stalks?" Pewter liked crabmeat, so long as she didn't think about what the crab had eaten.

"To look goofy." The tiger laughed.

Harry's eyes followed the dogs. On the one hand, she hoped they did find Brother Thomas. On the other, she didn't. She had a strong stomach, but still.

Susan, silent, trudged along. The snow shone deep blue in the boulder cracks and fissures. The rim of the sun crested the horizon, but down in the deepest part of the ravine neither she nor Harry could see it.

"How upset is she?" Tucker asked her brother.

"Pretty upset, but once she made up her mind to do something about it, she settled down," Owen replied. "She can't understand why he would disappear. She fears the worst, too."

"Murder," Tucker flatly said, as she slid down an icy bank, then nimbly jumped over a narrow rivulet feeding into a strong running creek.

"Ever notice how humans have to find reasons for things? They can't relax unless they invent a reason. Susan couldn't accept that one human kills another just to kill. Has to be a reason."

"Usually is. In civilian life. War's different. A human gets used to killing then, I guess." Tucker hoped she'd never face a war. "They get used to killing and it doesn't matter. If it's a religious war, then they really want to kill one another." She sighed. "If this thinned the herd it might be good, but all they do is turn around and breed in more and more numbers. They don't learn much."

"Don't learn much from their own history and don't learn doodley-squat from us."

"I don't care. I care about Harry, but since there's nothing I can do for the rest of them, they'll hang on their own hook."

"It's strange to love an animal that's so stupid, isn't it?" Owen stopped, lifting his nose. "Mmm."

"Could be deer. Far away" Tucker, too, inhaled the faint, very faint, sweet odor of decay.

The cats joined them as Mrs. Murphy, feeling full of herself, dashed along, zigzagging, leaning over anything in her path, sending ground-nester birds and little finches in bushes skyward.

Pewter, not to be outdone, also hurried down the slopes. She jumped over the rivulet and bounded up the steep side of the ravine.

Within minutes the four animals reached the top.

Tucker lifted her head, her nose skyward, then dropped it, facing southeast. "Down there."

Owen repeated his sister's motions. "Stronger now."

Pewter hesitated a moment, looked at Mrs. Murphy, who giggled at her. Without one peep, she followed the dogs. Damned if she was going to be called a wimp.

The two humans lagged a quarter of a mile behind, the rough terrain more difficult for them to negotiate. Both women sweated although the mercury clung to twenty-eight degrees in the ravines, nudging upward on the ridges as the sun was climbing. The eastern horizon was a flare of pink, peach, and scarlet, quickly fanning out westward. The colors of sunrise never seemed to linger as did those of sunset, or so Harry thought.

As Harry and Susan reached the top of the ridge, they heard the two dogs barking. Startled buzzards flew overhead.

"Hope no one hears that," Susan fretted.

"We're far enough away from the monastery," Harry reassured her. "And they're in services, so hopefully they'll be chanting or singing or doing whatever monks do." Harry swept her eyes along the line of the ridge, then down. The sight of Tucker and Owen gleefully pulling on a dismembered arm stopped her cold. "Susan, you might want to stay up here."

Susan, reaching her, saw the same spectacle. "No."

"Mine!" Tucker raced with Brother Thomas's arm, which she'd found behind a large boulder.

"You didn't find it, I did." Owen raced after her, both dogs enjoying the game, oblivious to how awful this appeared to the humans. The cats didn't much like it, either.

"One arm. Where's the rest of him?" Pewter asked.

"Mmm." Mrs. Murphy sat, watching the dogs carry on, one at each end of the arm now. Tucker had the hand; Owen, growling, pulled on the bone sticking out from the other end where the forearm once connected to the elbow.

"Coyote?" Pewter noticed that what remained of the flesh was gray.

"Or dogs. Wild or domestic. Chances are they've torn poor old Brother Thomas all to hell. Buzzards got at him, too. We'll be picking up pieces until the cows come home."

"Be funny if someone's beloved golden retriever brought home a foot, wouldn't it? That's one human who would pass out." Pewter couldn't resist thinking of the shocked person.

"Best foot forward." Mrs. Murphy trotted past the dogs, who continued to tug at the arm. "Come on, Pewter. Let's keep moving. We'll find more of him."

As Harry reached the dogs she sharply said, "Leave it!"

Obediently, Tucker dropped her end. "Spoilsport."

Hearing Susan shout at him, Owen also dropped the arm. "I was only playing."

"Don't touch it, Susan. No prints." Harry was glad the morning had proved so cold. The arm, thawed and frozen a few times during the last days, would become more pungent once the temperature climbed.

"I won't. I suppose it's my great-uncle's arm, but I can't say for sure." She wasn't as disgusted by the sight as she thought she would be. At least not yet.

"Over here," Mrs. Murphy yowled as she pushed down into a large boulder crevice where Brother Thomas's head and most of his torso had been stuffed. Coyotes or dogs had pulled off the limbs, but whoever wedged the old man in the crevice jammed him in there, placing large stones on the torso.

Harry reached the body first. "Goddammit!" she exploded.

Birds had plucked out Brother Thomas's eyes. They'd also been pulling at his hair, for birds like long hair—human, horsehair, the hair from the end of a cow's tail—to weave into their nests.

Susan stopped. She could take seeing her great-uncle's arm, but this was pretty bad. "Oh, Harry."

"Don't look. It's him, all right."

"We found him." Pewter puffed out her gray chest, although she was disgusted at the sight.

"Why not leave him in his pine box?" Tucker joined the cats.

"Because someone was smart enough not to take the chance he'd be exhumed. Obviously, Tucker, there's something to find in the body," Mrs. Murphy replied.

Owen, leaving the treasure, walked over to the cats. "So tasty."

"Whoever is behind this knows something about bodies. If the corpse is exposed, maybe the method of murder will evaporate. I don't know. The coroner has his work cut out for him, but there has to be a reason why Brother Thomas wasn't left in his box. Think about it." Mrs. Murphy ignored the "so tasty" remark.

"I am. I don't like any of this, and I really don't like that Harry's smack in the middle of it." Pewter wanted to go home now.

"She's not patient. She acts on impulse," Tucker observed, wanting to tug at Brother Thomas's remains. "She thinks about these things. She gets part of the answer, but she rushes in, you know?"

"They're both in it." Owen's big brown eyes looked at Susan, who was white as a sheet.

"You going to puke?" Harry also noticed Susan's pallor.

"No," Susan snapped. "It's horrible. For God's sake, Harry, how can you be so cold-blooded?"

Harry backed away from the body, going to her friend and putting her arm around Susan's shoulders. "The soul is with his Maker. This isn't really your great-uncle. It's like an old corn husk, Susan. We attach importance to it, but Thomas is gone."

A light lingering scent lured Tucker and Owen to the back of the large boulders. They sniffed around where coyotes had marked.

"They'll be back." Owen hated coyotes.

"Yes, but we'll be out of here and so will what's left of the human." Tucker, like Mrs. Murphy, was trying to think things through. ".And when whoever is behind this learns that we've found the body, it will be dangerous." The strong, small dog sat down. "I'm trying to put the pieces together, no pun intended."

Owen chuckled. "Some of these pieces aren't going to be found. They're in coyote and buzzard bellies."

"Can't talk to the coyotes, even if we found the ones that did this." Tucker watched as Harry punched numbers on her cell phone.

"If all four of us were together we might could." Mrs. Murphy used the old Southern expression.

"Only way I'm talking to a coyote is if I'm high up in a tree." Pewter spit out the word "coyote."

"You've got a point there, Pewter. They'd kill us the minute we turned our backs." Mrs. Murphy hated the marauders as much as her gray feline companion did.

"Can't get a signal. Susan, I'll try from the top of the ridge. Come on with me. We aren't going to forget this site."

Once on the ridge, Harry reached Cynthia Cooper, who told Harry to mark a trail but to get out of there.

"Why?"

"Because neither you nor Susan is armed. Because you're probably safe, but what if whoever dumped Brother Thomas were to come back? It's a long shot, but I want you and Susan out of there. You've got your pocketknife on you, don't you?"

"Always do," Harry answered.

"Make slash marks where you can, bend twigs. We'll meet you at the parking lot. I mean it, Harry."

"All right, Coop. All right."

Back at the parking lot, the humans and animals waited.

"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." Susan burst into tears as she quoted First Thessalonians, Chapter 5, Verse 21.

"What makes you think of that? It's usually Miranda who quotes the Bible."

"When I spoke to Thomas about my fears—you know, about Ned—that's what he said to me. I don't even know why I blabbed it. Not his business."

"He was wise and loving. You probably made him feel good by confiding in him."

Later, when Harry called Miranda, Miranda did, in fact, quote scripture. "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil and canst not look on iniquity."

Gave Harry a shiver to hear the quote from Habakkuk, Chapter 1, Verse 13.

Gave Cooper and Rick a shiver when the law called back on the sample Coop had dropped off from the statue. Type O human blood.

29

Meticulously laid out on the stainless-steel table, with channels along the sides to capture any fluids should they escape the corpse, were the pieces of Brother Thomas.

Sheriff Shaw and Deputy Cooper watched Tom Yancy and his assistant, Marshall Wells, inspect the remains. Tom used long tweezers to pluck out a fiber or a bone splinter.

"What we're seeing, Rick, is consistent with animals ripping over a body." He pointed with the tweezers to part of the femur still attached to the hip socket. "The bone is cracked open, chewed. You can clearly see the teeth marks here."

"Dogs, coyotes, most all carnivores love bone marrow," Marshall said.

"What about vultures?" Rick viewed sights like Brother Thomas as a matter of course.

Didn't mean he liked it, though.

"Yes. They've been at him."

Coop remarked, "Tom, any idea if he suffered trauma before death?"

"Well, his skull is intact. Upper jaw still attached. Lower one gone. No broken bones around the shoulder. Too late to tell about the arms, of course. There's just enough left of his liver and a scrap of kidney here that I can get a sample. If he was poisoned there might be a trace, depending on the poison."

Rick cracked his knuckles. "Sorry. Bad habit."

"Not as bad as smoking." Tom reached into the body cavity to lift up a tiny piece of kidney, which Marshall snipped.

"No signs of stabbing?" Coop couldn't imagine why his body had been dragged into the ravine and stuffed between and under large rocks.

"No."

"If he'd been hit up with a hypodermic needle, something to put him down, too late for the mark?" Rick wondered.

Tom touched some fragments of one arm; the other hadn't been found. "Not much chance. If the body had been intact, possibly, Rick, because the cold helped us. Yes, we've had a few warm days, enough for him to blow up and give off scent, which brought in nature's garbage collectors, but the cold returned with a vengeance. I don't have much arm here. Most of the flesh has been chewed off. Marshall and I examined the torso, used magnifiers; no obvious puncture except for fang marks. Some of those needles barely leave a trace."

"Hmm, let's say something appears in the kidney tissues or the liver. What would be your first choice?" Rick asked.

"You mean to kill him?" Yancy put down the long tweezers on a stainless-steel tray. "First of all, Rick, he may not have been killed where he was found. That's one possibility. He could have been, say, poisoned at another location, taken to the statue, placed in a kneeling position. His body would be losing warmth and it was colder than a witch's tit; he'd freeze up in less than three hours. Not much body fat on him. I'd estimate about nine percent, given his age and what I know of his people. The Bland Wades get painfully thin starting in their sixties. He was quite thin. Of course, he could have been praying, hard as it is for me to believe, on that bitter night. He could have just let himself go. People can will themselves to die."

"No. I don't think he willed it." Rick shook his head.

"All right, then. Let's say he did go to pray" Tom Yancy shrugged. "He's lost in communion with the Lord, and someone comes up behind him. He's down on his knees. Now, if his neck were broken this would be an easy call. It's not. So either someone reached around and knocked him out with, say, chloroform, or they shot him with the same stuff the vet uses to put down old Rover when his time has come. There's always morphine and heroin, too. Or, my last thought here, he was smothered." Tom moved up toward the head and neck. "There would be bruising on the neck, even now. There isn't. But if he were smothered, at this point I wouldn't know, because the eyeballs are gone." He paused, then continued, "If someone is choked to death or smothered in a less violent way, the eyeballs are bloodshot, red." He pressed his lips together. "I don't have much to go on, but we've got pieces of a body. That's a start, and we will invite poor old Brother Thomas to tell us as much as possible."

"Any idea how long it will be before we hear from Richmond?" Rick hoped the state lab, one of the nation's best, would be quick.

Tom shook his head. "Rick, it's less than two weeks before Christmas. People are killing themselves in greater numbers than usual or they're flaming out on the highway. There's always some damned fool who drinks himself to death and the family won't believe what the county coroner tells them, so off goes John Whiskey Doe to the state's pathology lab. Christmas is a nightmare. I'll do what I can to push them along."

"You knew Brother Thomas; what did you think of him?" Coop asked.

Tom folded his arms over his lab coat. "I'd see the old fellow occasionally at the hardware store, sometimes at the huge nursery over there in Waynesboro, the one where Jimmy Binns used to do such good work. Now, that man could design anything."

Yancy mentioned a retired gentleman who had a gift for landscaping.

"Ever see him, mmm, at the bank?" Rick picked up on Coop's direction of thought.

"No. Can the brothers have personal money?" Tom wondered.

Marshall, a Catholic, said, "Depends on the order. For the Greyfriars, if the money is family money it can be in a trust. The order can't touch it, but the brother can still have use of it. Trusts and wills can be both creative and binding." He added, "Had to study the monastic orders in parochial school. Always liked the Cistercians."

"Coop, check with Susan about this, will you?" Rick turned to his favorite officer.

"Okay."

Rick returned to Tom. "I'd see him at Jeffrey Howe's nursery, Mostly Maples. You couldn't help but notice him in his gray robe with the white hood. Unfailingly pleasant."

"I never heard him even say 'darn.' " Tom gazed down on the pieces of what had been a good man. "Rick, why anyone would harm him, I don't know. That's your job. Mine is to find out what I can from what's left."

"While I'm here," Rick glanced at the large wall clock, "anything else come back on Nordy Elliott?"

"Alcohol in the bloodstream. Not above the legal limit. A healthy male. Death was straightforward."

"And painful." Coop grimaced.

"Extremely, but it was swift. One blinding pain, and I mean blinding, and it was over." Tom Yancy sighed. "Nordy wasn't on earth nearly as long as Brother Thomas, but he certainly piled up the enemies. And here's Brother Thomas, who, as far as we know, didn't have any."

"He had one," Rick said.

"A lethal one," Coop added.

30

Lips white, face purple with rage, Brother Handle strained for self-control. "He walked out of the coffin!"

"Your angina, Brother, remember your angina," Brother Andrew softly spoke as Brothers Prescott and Mark trembled on either side of him.

"Damn my angina. You put him in his coffin and you nailed shut the lid."

"I nailed shut the lid," Brother Mark squeaked.

"Well, you did a damned poor job of it." Brother Handle ran his right hand over his head, feeling his tonsure.

"Brother, this is painful and difficult for all of us, but we will get to the bottom of it." Brother Prescott, as second in command, knew how to handle the boss, but he'd never seen the boss this distressed.

Brother Handle paced in front of the three standing men. As he did, the knotted rope at his waist swayed with each step. "In all my years, all my years, not just as a brother, I have never encountered anything so disgusting, so bizarre, so vile, so disgusting." He stopped, since he was repeating himself.

Brother Handle veered close to out of control, but he still weighed his words.

"It's beyond imagining." Brother Prescott's voice sounded more soothing than usual.

"Things happen for a reason. This is the will of God," Brother Mark stupidly whined.

"This has nothing to do with the will of God, you impertinent young pup. This is an effort on someone's part to destroy our order!" He stopped in front of the slight young man, almost nose to nose. "Destroy our order! First we have a statue bleeding from the eyes. Every half-wit, every fool disappointed in love, every person suffering from illness has dragged themselves up this mountain to pray before the statue. Nordy Elliott, that insufferable reporter, hung around like a blowfly. He's dead and now this!"

"The tears of Our Lady are a sign." Brother Mark's lower lip quivered.

"Oh, they're a sign, all right," Brother Handle glowered. "A sign that your mental wattage is about fifteen. Fifteen-watt Mark." He smacked his hands together. "Weeping icons and statues have been part of Catholic lore for centuries, whether they're found in Carpathia or California!"

The loud clap made Brother Mark jump back and Brother Andrew wince.

"It is possible those tears are—"

Before Brother Prescott could finish, Brother Handle said, "Manufactured? That is what you were going to say, isn't it?"

"No," Brother Prescott responded with some heat, which surprised the others. "No, I wasn't going to say that. They truly might be a sign."

"Oh, bullshit! You're as weak-minded as this idiot." Brother Handle turned, striding toward the large open fireplace in his office, the main source of heat. A small radiator rested under the window, but Brother Handle kept expenses down by utilizing the fireplace. "In Brisbane, Australia, a small statue has been weeping blood and rose-scented oil. In 1992, a six-inch statue of porcelain wept type O blood in Santiago, Chile. All hoaxes, whether proven or not." He pointed his forefinger at Brother Mark. "A true believer does not need physical manifestation of God. And that's the end of it."

Brother Andrew, in his former life, dealt with extreme emotions regularly. One can't be a physician without seeing the best and worst of people. He didn't like seeing Brother Mark browbeaten by the Prior. He didn't fear Brother Handle. "I, too, doubt the miraculous aspect of the tears, Brother Handle. I'm sure if we tore apart the statue we'd find some simple explanation."

"You can't do that!" Brother Mark cried, tears surging down his face. "She weeps out of sympathy for our sins and suffering. She weeps to bring us back to faith. People need signs."

Brother Andrew turned to him. "She'll never run out of things to weep about, the world being what it is." He turned back to Brother Handle. "This event has brought a most welcome boost to our treasury. Brother Frank has been almost jolly of late—for him." Brother Handle turned, his back to the fire, to fully face the doctor as Andrew continued. "It's not just the offerings that visitors have given us; the sales in the shops have skyrocketed. People mail in donations. If anything, we should perhaps be more organized as to how we present this economic—if not truly spiritual— miracle. Tearing apart the statue, even if we could do so without destroying it, serves no useful purpose. Let sleeping dogs lie."

A long silence followed, then the head of the order spoke, voice lower, less emotional. "I take your point. However, if it hasn't occurred to you, it certainly has occurred to me that if these tears are exposed as a fake, a ploy to bring more money into the order, heads will roll. Even though I knew nothing, should this prove a hoax I will be held accountable. The order will be discredited. The buck stops here. I have to take responsibility." He paused again, then spoke, an edge to his voice rarely heard by the others. "I've called you here hoping for an explanation of the desecration of Brother Thomas. I lost my temper. I'm sorry. If any of you removed that body, tell me now. I will forgive you if you tell me the truth." He looked searchingly from face to face. No one responded. "Then I have to conclude that either one or all three of you are lying to me, or that someone in our order has something very big to hide. Big enough to toss away a corpse, big enough to kill."

"Brother Handle," Brother Prescott was scandalized, "what would anyone have to hide? And what would Brother Thomas have to do with it if there were something to hide?"

Brother Handle stepped toward them, silhouetted by the huge fireplace, the glow of the fire enlarging him. "Haven't you asked yourselves what is it that Brother Thomas did?"

"Fixed everything. I miss him already." Brother Andrew sadly smiled.

"He was an example of what we should be." Brother Mark finally found his voice again after being harangued. "He was gentle, forbearing, ready to help. He was patient. He taught me so much. He loved our Blessed Virgin Mother with all his heart and soul."

"Hmm." Brother Handle just wanted to smack this kid. Instead, he all said was "Hmm." He looked to Brother Prescott.

"He knew this place before any of us climbed Afton Mountain. He knew the grounds, the physical plant, the people who went before us," Brother Prescott thoughtfully remarked.

"Exactly." Brother Handle's eyes burned into the three men.

"What do you mean?" Brother Andrew, middle-aged although still younger than both Brother Handle and Brother Prescott, inquired.

"I mean if something had happened before any of us came to this place, Brother Thomas would have known. Secrets. He knew every inch of plumbing, every part of the buildings that had been repaired. It's safe to say, really, he knew every joint and joist."

"But that was his job, his gift." Brother Andrew shrugged.

"Indeed it was. And if Our Lady of the Blue Ridge had been jimmy-rigged to cry bloody tears, I think it's safe to say that Brother Thomas would have figured out how it was done—if he hadn't done it himself."

"No!" Brother Mark cried anew. "He would never do anything like that."

"You're young," Brother Handle acidly replied.

"Why?" Brother Mark sobbed.

"I don't know." Brother Handle's jaw was set hard.

"Well, maybe he thought he could bring in more money, he could lift us out of our struggle." Brother Prescott folded his hands behind his back. "He would create something to provide a steady income, more or less."

"Yes, I've thought of that, too." Brother Handle half-turned toward the fire. "Yet that wasn't really his way." He laughed for a moment. "Now, Brother Frank, yes, I could see that. Not that he would, but as our treasurer he bears a great burden. Brother Thomas belonged to the 'consider the lilies of the field' school of finance."

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow," Brother Prescott began to quote the famous lines from the Bible, which indicate that the lilies neither toil nor sweat nor fret about the Internal Revenue Service demolishing their gains.

"We know the passage." Brother Andrew allowed himself a flash of anger.

"While we are quoting, allow me to mention Psalm One Hundred Twenty." Brother Handle opened his hand, his fingers together as he pointed at the three men. "Save me, Lord, from liars and deceivers."

"I resent that." Brother Prescott stood up for himself at last. "I have served this order and I have served you for nearly twenty years. I am not a liar. I am not a deceiver. I want to get to the bottom of this as badly as you do."

Unmoved, Brother Handle again clasped his hands together in front of him. "I hope that is so, Brother Prescott, I hope that is so. But you three last touched the body of Brother Thomas. So to you I must look for answers."

"He was in the chapel." Brother Mark's voice rose. "Anyone could have come in if they were careful, pried open the lid, and taken him."

"Not anyone. A brother. A member of this order!" Brother Handle remarked. "Now that Brother Thomas has been found, perhaps modern science will discover what happened to him while he prayed before the statue." But Brother Handle's voice filled with anger. "I will find and punish any and all involved."

"Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord." Brother Mark was very close to being disrespectful.

Brother Handle advanced on him, enunciating with clarity, " 'Vengeance is mine, and recompense for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly' Remember your Deuteronomy? Well, I am the instrument of that vengeance."

31

Harry, I'm putting you to a lot of trouble," Susan apologized as she fumed in stop-and-go traffic around Virginia Commonwealth University.

The closer they approached the area of Richmond known as the Fan, the heavier the traffic became, as did the pelting rain just this side of ice.

The cats and dogs slept in the sheepskin beds in the back of the station wagon.

"You'd do the same for me."

Susan, eyes glued to traffic, growled as a Subaru WRX Sti skidded in front of her. "Idiot! Ever notice how the people in the smallest cars drive the worst?"

"That's a great car for the money. One second slower than a Porsche Boxster from zero to sixty. However, it's pretty much a kid's car, as are most little cars." Harry shrugged. "Kids are always in a hurry."

"In this weather!"

"You're sounding middle-aged and we aren't forty yet," Harry admonished her with a grin.

"Damned close. Boy, I hope Danny and Brooks don't drive like this when I'm not in the car."

"Who knows what they do or who they do it with—but whatever, if the Fates are kind, they'll live. As it is, they have pretty good sense. I attribute that to you, of course."

"Of course." Susan turned right onto a tree-lined street of lovely old town houses. "Here we are."

"Where's here?" Pewter opened her eyes.

"The Fan," Owen obligingly answered as the motor cut off.

"That tells me a whole hell of a lot," Pewter grumbled.

Mrs. Murphy stretched, as did Tucker, both hoping they'd be allowed to go with the two women.

"Come on." Susan opened the door.

Harry reached behind her seat, pulling out a towel. When they stepped through the front door of the house, which had been divided into rental flats, Harry knelt down to wipe off each set of paws.

Pewter pulled hers back, shaking them after being wiped off. "I can do it myself."

The carpeted stairs muffled their footsteps as they climbed four flights to the top floor. Susan opened the lock.

"What a pretty room," Harry exclaimed.

The animals immediately inspected the place.

"It is. The rents they get, though." Susan dropped the key back in her jeans pocket. "I'll give you the tour. Two bedrooms. You can see this one is his office." She paused a minute. "Where did he get that etched-glass table? That must have cost a fortune. He didn't tell me about that."

"Susan, it didn't cost five hundred dollars. Places like Pottery Barn carry stuff like this. Actually, the way he's pulled this together surprises me. I never thought of Ned as a particularly aesthetic kind of person. I guess I think of him as a fishing buddy for Herb." She smiled.

"Considering we had a budget of six thousand dollars for everything, and I squeezed to get that, the place isn't bad. I put together the living room, faux Parish-Hadley"—she smiled as she mentioned the famous, conservative New York interior design firm—"but the rest of it really reflects what he wants. I haven't been down here in two weeks. He's gotten a lot done. I guess I'm a little surprised, too, at how modern it is. Lots of glass and chrome, or what passes for chrome."

"Now don't you feel better?"

"Sort of."

"Susan, use your head. If the man were having an affair, or contemplating an affair, would he give you a key to his Richmond apartment?" Harry pointed to the law books and research papers already piling up on the industrial shelving. "He's hitting the tarmac running. He has to hire a staff, he has to get up to speed on all the issues before the Senate. And he has to be available to folks back home or he'll be a one-term guy."

"Well, dammit, Harry, something's not right."

"Maybe so, but I'm telling you, this isn't some kind of love nest."

"Doesn't mean it won't turn into one."

Harry threw up her hands in defeat to Susan's stubbornness. "Show me the rest of the apartment."

The bedroom, simple, also had books stacked next to the bed and a good reading lamp on the black lacquer nightstand. The kitchen, though small, boasted Corian countertops, one with a large inset butcher block for chopping. The place exuded a charm, aided by the light—what there was of it today—flooding through the large skylight over the living room and a smaller one over the kitchen. The glass-paned windows fronting the street helped, too, and the ones in the back overlooked a small garden.

"No women have been here," Tucker pronounced after a thorough search, nose touching furniture.

"Only Ned's scent," Owen concurred. "Danny's, too; he came down yesterday to help his dad. He had his finals early so he could come home. Danny has a four-point-oh, you know. They're supposed to be Christmas shopping today."

Pewter giggled, humor restored, "A present for Dad, a present for Mom, a present for Brooks, a present for me, hmm, another present for me."

"Want to leave Ned a note?" Harry suggested.

"Sure." Susan scribbled a few lines, putting the paper on the refrigerator, held with a magnet extolling the virtues of a local insurance company.

"Where's Ned's computer?" It occurred to Harry that the etched desk, set up for a computer, lacked same.

"He and Danny went to buy one today. Ned said he's not doing it without Danny."

"Smart. Do you want to do any Christmas shopping while we're in Richmond?"

"No. Do you?"

"No. Can't believe you're passing up a shop-a-thon."

"I've done enough spending."

"How about stopping at the tack shop in Manakin-Sabot? There're actually two tack shops there. The one we always go to and a kind of Western one across the street. We could call Mary Robertson and see if she or Ronnie Thornton could make it for lunch. Or Ginny Perrin." Harry began to mentally go through the list of her Deep Run Hunt friends who lived in the area.

"It's Tuesday. They're hunting," Susan said.

"They may have started out, but I bet they're coming back in. Getting nasty out there. By the time we reach them they'll be in the stables cleaning up."

"Let's call them when we can all relax and enjoy one another's company," Susan suggested.

"Hey, there's another tack shop in Manakin-Sabot. Makes it three. We can go to the first two, and then there's the one around the corner from Mary Robertson's farm."

"Harry, what do you need? What's the tack shop kick?"

"A new martingale. We could hit up the shops in Manakin-Sabot, then go up to Horse Country in Warrenton, then on to Marshall and then Middleburg and—"

"Sure. I'd burn a tank of gas while you grieved in each shop about how expensive everything is. You'd compare all the martingales, buy none, then after Christmas go buy one. Harry, you need to change your attitude about money just like I guess I need to change my attitude about Ned. If you say he isn't cheating, I reckon he isn't." She stopped, staring up at the rain on the skylight. "Still, something's... mmm." She shrugged.

"I don't have any money."

"And whose fault is that?" Susan, as only an old friend who has watched for years can do, let her have it. "You farted around in the post office. You never tried to develop outside income. You really took an economic nosedive when you divorced Fair, and now you have a chance to work together and you're tanking that."

Harry stiffened. "I don't want to work for him. It would be different if I were a vet."

As their voices became stronger, the animals filed in to watch.

"I understand that, but if you don't have money, that's your choice. You were born with many advantages, as was I. Neither of us was born rich but we weren't poor, we received excellent educations, we're white—which is still an advantage in this world— and, okay, we're women, that's a hurdle to overcome in some situations but a real plus in others. What's your excuse?"

Furious, Harry's face flushed. "I don't need an excuse. I never made money the center of my life."

"The hell you didn't. All you talk about is not having it. That's like an alcoholic in Alcoholics Anonymous. No, they aren't drinking anymore, but alcohol, its absence, is central to their life. Wake up and smell the coffee."

"Damn you!" Harry's lips compressed, she sputtered, then controlled herself. "At least make me a cup of coffee if you're going to be a pure-D bitch."

"Gladly." Susan poured water into the coffeemaker. She ground whole beans kept in the freezer. As the brew percolated, she leaned against the counter, arms crossed over her chest. "Who else is going to tell you the truth?"

"No one. Even Miranda will sugarcoat it," Harry admitted. "I hate it when you're right. I just hate it."

"I love you. You're my sister, the sister I never had. I want you to be happy and you can only be happy if you're productive. That's your nature. Other people need love. I'm not saying you don't need love, but you need to be doing something, you need a task, a goal."

"That's true." Harry opened the fridge. "Least Ned has half-and-half. If I'm going to drink coffee I need real cream or half-and-half."

"Almost ready."

The reassuring aroma of coffee filled the kitchen. Susan poured them each a large mug. They perched on stools at the counter between the living room and the small kitchen.

"I've been an ass."

"No, you haven't. You've been avoiding the big issues, and you know why I can recognize it? I have, too."

"Susan, you've raised two children, worked nonstop for every good cause in the county and the state. You're perfect. Almost." Harry wryly smiled.

"Don't you feel sometimes like you're looking in a pair of binoculars? Pretend the binoculars see into the future. I look and it's blank."

A long sigh escaped Harry. "Yeah."

"But I have a good life. I know I have a good life, but I feel..." Susan couldn't find the words; she turned her hands palms upward.

"I know. That's why I like solving problems. I've done something. I guess I've held the blankness off."

"Do you regret not having children?"

"When I see you with your children, I do. When I see other people with those little consumer parasites, no." Harry laughed.

"What do we do now?"

"I don't know. I guess we grow old disgracefully."

"I don't want to grow old. I don't even want to turn forty." Susan tried to sound funny, but she meant it down to her bones.

"You know, Susan, it's funny, but I don't give a rat's ass. It's not the age thing, it's exactly what you said: I don't have a purpose. And I didn't take money seriously, which I truly believe is a woman's fault. We aren't raised to be responsible that way. We're raised to take care of other people, not the pocketbook."

"Lot of truth to that."

They drank their coffee, sat quietly, and then Harry said, "Since we found Great-Uncle Thomas, I've been reading about the Carmelite order on which the Afton monastery is modeled. Back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, people, including the Carmelites themselves, believed in a mythology about the order. They believed that the sons of the prophets, the Old Testament prophets, belonged to the Essenes one thousand years before Christ. They lived on Mt. Carmel. One thousand years later, some of these holy men were present at St. Peter's first sermon on Pentecost. He converted them to Christianity and they built a chapel on Mt. Carmel in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

"According to the myth, the Virgin Mary and the Apostles enrolled in the order.

"Clearly this is all made up, but that didn't prevent people from believing it. Over the centuries the order would relax, then suffer a cleaning paroxysm. Discipline would be restored. But throughout, many believed the story about Mary. My point is twofold." She smiled. "Do I sound like a lawyer?"

"More like a professor."

"Ah, well, anyway, here's where I'm going: this order has a long and rich history, and the Blessed Virgin Mary is at the center of it. My other thought is, what do we believe now that is as patently false as the stories about the Essenes, the sons of the prophets, Mary, and the Apostles? That's where we're coming a cropper, see? We can't see what's real. We literally can't see what's in front of our eyes."

"As in your life and my life?"

"Right."

"As in my great-uncle Thomas and Nordy Elliott meeting their Maker?"

"Right. It's in front of our eyes, but our belief system is so strong, we are so invested in it, that we can't see."

"I see," Susan replied, then had to laugh. "I mean, I get your point but I don't see. Not yet."

"Another thing. I didn't tell you. I didn't tell anyone if that will make you feel better. You've been worried. Crazy things are happening all around us."

"And?"

"Fair has given me until Christmas Eve to answer with a yes or no concerning his often-repeated marriage proposal." She stared down at the coffee cup.

Susan straightened in the chair. "That is news!"

32

A cavern of snow faced Harry, Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker at the soapstone quarry in the northeastern corner of Nelson County. The quarry was so deep that snow in the bottom didn't completely melt until the end of April. In the mid-eighteenth century the quarry brought prosperity to the small community of Schuyler. Like everything else in Virginia, the profits disappeared after 1865. Two generations after the war, the quarry boomed. Its fortunes shot upward and plunged down many times over the twentieth century. Despite the varying demand for soapstone and other types of stone, the quality of the product remained what it had always been: high.

"Imagine digging stone with pickaxes," Iggy Monroe said as he walked alongside Harry, the animals, and Bo Newell, who had introduced her to Iggy "Before white men, the Indians didn't even have iron picks and shovels. Harder work for them." His beat-up work boots sank into the snow as he led Harry to the main road down into the open mines. "This stone is so special because it makes the best wood-burning stoves in the world. Perfect material."

"It conducts heat," Bo added. "Evenly."

"This grade of soapstone conducts it in an even manner without cracking," Iggy added. "You don't get the exterior heat that an iron stove throws off. An iron stove can turn red-hot on you. Not going to happen with this."

"You can carve it?" Harry inquired.

"Yeah, better in slabs, though."

"But you can carve it into statues and stuff, you can cut into it to make signs?"

"Kind of a waste. If you want to make signs, use slate."

"Isn't soapstone a little oily?" Bo inquired.

"Yes."

"Could it leak liquid?"

"No, not if the stove is properly built."

"I'm not being very clear. When I mean, Mr. Monroe, is, if there were a vein of iron ore inside the stone, might the stone ooze iron ore—you know, a rusty liquid coming out of a crack?"

He shook his head. "No. There's no iron ore in this. We'd have hit a seam by now, and you can see"—he swept his hand toward the cavern—"there haven't been any iron seams for over two hundred and fifty years."

"Would it be possible to drill up through the stone and run liquid through it?"

"Sure, but you can do that with most any stone, even marble, which is dense and tight. The soapstone isn't a good candidate for that."

After chatting a few more minutes with Mr. Monroe and saying good-bye to Bo, Harry and the animals returned to her truck. As she drove the winding asphalt road back toward Route 29, she turned on the old radio, frowned at the static, then clicked it off.

"Babies, someone has worked on the statue of Our Blessed Virgin Mother. There's not one doubt in my mind. And whoever did it was smart. They knew enough to bury their little line beneath the frost line." She thought longer. "It'll freeze above the frost line when it's bitterly cold. Hmm."

"If someone planned a miracle, you can bet they considered that and figured it out, too," Tucker sagely noted.

"If she's right. It's still possible this is a miracle." Pewter sat next to the dog. "Not that I think it is, but you need an argument."

"Can't believe you admit being contentious." Mrs. Murphy was jubilant.

"I admit a lot of things." Pewter slightly tossed her head, then laughed. "On rare occasions."

Harry had the bit between her teeth. "Heat tape? Oh, that would take too much room. Could someone keep a pipe warm off a battery? Wonder if there's another way to create tears without drilling up through Mary." She absentmindedly reached for Mrs. Murphy, sitting closest to her. "And how could someone work on that statue without being detected? If my idea is right, drilling up through her, that would take time. How would someone get away with it? And it would have to be done in the summer. Damn."

"She's about to go into a tizzy." Pewter listened to the note of frustration in Harry's alto voice.

"If she's right, about the drilling, it points in one direction, doesn't it?" Mrs. Murphy didn't like the direction.

"Brother Thomas." Harry said what Mrs. Murphy was thinking. "It's not possible. Why would he do something like that? I can't believe it." She exhaled a blast of air from her nostrils.

Unable to contain herself, she drove to Susan's just as Susan was coming out her driveway. She stopped as Harry pulled alongside her, pressing a button. The automatic window whined as it slid down.

Harry rolled down her window.

"Harry, I'm going up to Afton."

"Why?"

"The report just came in from the lab in Richmond. My g-uncle had traces of chloroform in his body and," she paused, her anger rising, her voice trembling, "morphine. He was killed with an overdose of morphine."

"Oh, Susan." Harry's eyes widened. "But wait. Wait. Don't go up there, Susan. Not yet. It's not safe. Come on, turn around, let me tell you what I've dug up"—she didn't think about that being a pun—"and we can formulate a plan."

"Why isn't it safe? I'm going up there to tear that goddamned Prior a new one!"

"No. Don't. Calm down. Uncle Thomas is dead, and so is Nordy Elliott. Okay We didn't care about Nordy like we cared about Uncle Thomas, but, Susan, those deaths were connected. I know it. I just know it. You don't want your name on the list."

Susan felt the cold air on her left cheek. "All right."

Once in Susan's kitchen, the two sat down at the wooden table. Susan poured a cup of tea for each of them.

"Look, Susan, I have no idea what's going on up there. The usual motivations for murder don't seem to apply, or if they do, I haven't figured them out. Love, sex, and money seem in short supply."

"I'm not sure about the money." Susan stared into Harry's eyes. "When G-Uncle was here for Thanksgiving, he told me he had willed me the Bland Wade tract, all fifteen hundred acres of it."

"Jeez Louise."

"Worth a great deal of money both as real estate and for timber."

"I'll say." Harry, like most Southerners, loved the land and felt one could never own enough.

"He said that the monastery life was dying. But I don't know as he would have given it to the Greyfriars anyway. In his way, he had a sense of family, even though he was separate from us much of the time."

"Who knows?"

"Ned. Brooks. Danny. The will hasn't been read yet, so I don't know if Brother Handle knows."

"Fifteen hundred acres in Albemarle County might be pretty good motivation to kill someone—if you thought it was coming to you."

"Me?" Susan's hand flew to her heart.

"No, silly, Brother Handle."

"Now I'm doubly upset. Rick is going to ask me all kinds of questions. I'll be a suspect."

"That's his job. He's been sheriff a long time. He's got a sense of who kills and who doesn't, according to the circumstances."

"That's reassuring," Susan said sarcastically.

"Relax."

"Easy for you to say."

"Look, something is going on on top of that mountain. We need to find out what the hell it is."

"Look what happened to Nordy. Maybe he found out."

33

When Nordy Elliott got up that morning, he didn't know he was going to die." Herb Jones's deep voice filled his office, a simple, beautiful room, windows overlooking the exquisite quad of St. Luke's Lutheran Church.

His two cats, Elocution and Cazenovia, lounged on the back of the leather sofa, eyes open, appearing to drink in every word.

"Keep going, Poppy, it's good," Cazenovia, the long-haired calico, encouraged him.

"He rose, as do we all, filled the time with the daily chores, then drove to work. How could any of—no, wait, that's not right." He stopped, scribbled on his papers.

"Yo ho."

"I'm in the office, Harry. Come on in."

She trooped in, shedding her coat as she walked down the hallway, hanging it on a peg just outside his door. Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker accompanied her.

"Rev, you look divine in your spectacles."

"Very funny." He removed his glasses, got up from his chair, and walked to the sofa. "Before I sit down, coffee, tea, sherry?"

"Nothing for me."

"Well, I need fortification. This service for Nordy—" He shook his head. "Can't find the right tone."

"Didn't his parents ship his body back to, where was it, Michigan?"

Herb poured himself a small glass of port, then joined Harry. The four cats squeezed around the two humans, while Tucker plopped in front of the fireplace filled with crackling applewood.

"I think so. Pete thought we should have a small service for those who knew him. But I hardly knew the man. A pushy sort." Herb shrugged. "I don't want to stand up there and mouth platitudes."

"You could never do that," Elocution praised him.

"He's the only reason Mom comes to church. She wants to hear Herb's sermons." Mrs. Murphy noted the large walnut trees outside the window. The birds fluttered on the branches, because Herb had placed a large bird feeder in the tree nearest the window.

"Maybe Pete can help," Harry suggested.

"Pete wasn't overfond of him." Herb smiled slightly.

"Everyone was a launching pad for Nordy's career, especially Pete, I guess."

"I suppose a reporter needs to be aggressive, have a big ego, but I think Pete thought Nordy wasn't half as smart as Nordy thought he was." Herb sipped the delicious fortified spirits. "God bless the people who invented port."

"Dionysus."

"Wine."

'Well, isn't port fortified wine?"

'It's a balance of wine, which is fruit, after all, and brandy. Port, at its best, is regal," Herb answered.

'You feel about port the way I feel about orange pekoe tea." She smiled. "When it's right, it lifts me right up." She snuggled down in the deep leather cushions, where many a rear end had parked over the decades. "Aren't you going to ask me why I've come calling?"

"You'll tell me when you're ready, but I know it isn't about any issues before the vestry board."

"How do you know that?"

"You're usually armed with papers or you're in tandem with Tazio Chappars."

"Don't you want to worm it out of me?" she teased him. "Take your mind off the eulogy."

"Nordy." He leaned on the large curved arm, a needlepoint pillow behind his back. "Pete may have sold him short. Nordy was like a terrier, he wouldn't give up. I suppose I could comment on his persistence. Persistent in more areas than his career, too, so I've heard."

"True enough, but he was barking up the wrong tree with BoomBoom—to continue your terrier image."

"Terriers are mental," Tucker flatly stated.

"They're just scrappy, Tucker, not considered and reasonable like you," Elocution purred.

"But some have tails." Pewter giggled.

"The good ones don't." Tucker barked.

"Tucker, you're not part of this discussion," Harry reprimanded her corgi.

"You don't have to listen to Pewter's insults," the dog said.

"A simple observation isn't an insult." Pewter's voice was syrupy.

"You all can talk all you want, but if any cat opens the closet containing the communion wafers, there will be a serious blessing," Herb's voice rumbled.

Harry laughed. "People will be telling the story of the cats eating the communion wafers when we're all resting in the graveyard." She stopped as the word "graveyard" prompted her toward her subject. "The real reason I'm here, apart from enjoying your company, is to ask you about the Greyfriars. You probably know the men up there better than the rest of us do."

"Some."

"Over the years you've formed an opinion of the Prior, of Brother Prescott and Andrew and poor old Thomas."

"I have."