Furmidable Foes

20

June 6, 2019

Thursday

“That’s why I tried a horseshoe garden.” Mags stood in the open part of the horseshoe, clipped bluegrass filling it.

At the round end Harry, Susan, Janice, and Pamela admired Mags’s design and hard work.

“Edging it in English boxwood, that dark green with foxglove in front of that was a wonderful idea.” Harry praised her.

“Boxwood stays green, too.” Pamela wore her garden shoes, a nice espadrille that helped cushion the ground.

“Well, I wanted color contrast, hence the foxglove and the iris in front of them. Trying to organize the height. My spring garden is by the house, so I can see those snowdrops come up and the crocuses from the warmth of the kitchen. This I’d like to be late spring, some summer.” Mags expansively swept her arm over the large area, which showed off her magic engagement ring from way back when.

“Love those salvias. You’ve really thought this through.” Susan complimented her.

“Look at the robins over there. I’ll grab one.” Pewter dreamed on, for any robin could see that fat cat crawling through the grass.

“You can’t kill a bird when visiting.” Mrs. Murphy knew Pewter couldn’t catch a bird, but she went along with the illusion.

Pamela glanced from the horseshoe garden to the English yews, on each side of the garden entrance. A five-foot-high plant under each yew set off the trunks. Three-inch white flowers, impressive, hung down from toothed leaves like trumpets.

“Your jimsonweed is spectacular.”

“Oh, I can’t kill it so I decided to enjoy the flowers.” Mags shrugged.

“You do need to be careful with jimson,” Susan warned.

“Of course she is, Susan. The stuff grows all over the place. I don’t worry until the seed pods burst. There’s some way at the back of the pastures at home before you get into the walnut groves. Fenced off and far from the fence,” Harry advised. “Why am I telling you? You know.”

“It can make you crazy.” Janice laughed.

“Oh, Jan, you don’t need any help.” Mags teased her. “So you think this, some shade, mostly sun, will work?” Mags asked.

“I don’t see why not. You have a good watering system. And I see roses about to bloom back up at the house. Roses really are tough.” Harry admired this flower.

“How about the climbing roses on the pillars at Montpelier? I’ve studied the maps of Madison’s gardens. I expect Dolley had a lot to do with the planning.” Mags loved Montpelier.

“Allyson Whalley would know.” Pamela named the curator of horticulture at the preserved home and grounds. “Or Clayton.”

“Which reminds me. Pamela, congratulations,” Harry said to the elegant, older woman.

“What did Pamela do?” Janice wondered.

“Her work in the Piedmont Environmental Council put another one thousand twenty-four acres under permanent conservation easement.”

“Pamela, why didn’t you say something?” Janice exclaimed, not realizing as she was not born and bred in these parts that you didn’t brag. It just wasn’t done.

“Many of us worked to preserve the land. The agricultural resources alone are vital to our understanding of the times,” Pamela demurred. “The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a dynamic partner, worked with us. Everyone worked very hard and now Montpelier has almost two-thirds of the original property under protection.”

“Remarkable.” Mags folded her hands together, diamonds again gleaming.

“Did Kevin pick out that engagement ring?” Harry admired it.

“He has always had good taste. Even when we were young.”

“He married you.” Susan smiled. “Ned needs help. So I tell Harry what I want. She tells Fair, who tells Ned. Helps to have a best girl friend.”

“We know,” Janice and Mags said in unison.

“Took each of us working on our husbands to get the start-up money for Bottoms Up.” Mags looked down at her ring. “Janice told Olaf who told Kevin I was considering selling my ring to get the cash.”

“That got the first olive out of the jar.” Janice laughed. “And now Bottoms Up makes more than Kevin’s nursery.”

“Not more than Olaf’s investment business,” Mags filled in. “I guess no one makes more money than those guys. Hey, before I forget, tell us about finding more bones. I swear, there are too many skeletons around here.”

“And that isn’t counting what’s in people’s closets,” Pamela remarked.

“I found the bones!” Pewter bellowed.

“Pewter.” Harry looked crossly at her, then matter-of-factly described the discovery.

“Susan and I share a timber tract. She owns it, I manage it. We climbed up the side of Taliaferro’s Mountain, the one immediately behind my farm. It’s overgrown. Anyway, a still was tucked up in a brambly area.”

“Whatever for?” Janice innocently asked.

“Looking inside, we saw the apparatus for making home liquor.” Harry shrugged. “This part of Virginia is famous for country waters, what Yankees call moonshine. Susan and I happened to stumble across a still.”

“I found bones!” Pewter squalled.

“Pewter.” Harry shook her finger in a determined face.

Susan watched her dog, Owen, sit next to the gray cat while he curled his lip. “The skull and rib cage shook us a bit.”

Mags’s eyebrows rose. “Small wonder.” She took a breath. “Those moonshiners will kill one another. I think the theft of the beer in our truck might be their work. Deflect attention.”

Janice crossed her arms over her chest. “Like the authorities were getting too close? Get them off track?”

“Works for everything else,” Mags cynically but truthfully noted.

“No idea who the dead man was?” Pamela inquired.

“Not yet,” Susan answered. “Might not be anyone from here. Ned says there is a network for moonshine and marijuana.”

“They’ll make weed legal,” Mags predicted, “but never moonshine.”

“Why?” Janice thought the whole thing foolish.

“It’s easier to hide a still than acres of marijuana. So legalize weed, get more taxes. No way are those country boys going to pay taxes on their liquor. They’ve eluded the feds for generations. It’s a matter of family pride for some.” Mags seemed resigned to the status quo.

“Every now and then someone gets caught,” Susan added. “But in the main, not many. A country boy will always outsmart a city boy.”

“Well, I, for one, am upset that this was on our timber tract. We’ll be questioned even though Sheriff Shaw knows we know nothing.” Harry sounded confident.

“Harry, to protect Ned’s reputation, the feds will need to wear us out.” Susan sounded dolorous.

“I’ll take care of them!” Pewter promised.

“I’m sure the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms marshals will be terrified,” Tucker quickly added. “What would work would be to get Pirate to pee on them.”

“I couldn’t do that!” The youngster was horrified.

“If someone threatened our mother, you could,” Mrs. Murphy sternly replied.

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to belabor this, but I’m going back up there to snoop around. I know that land better than any federal agent, better than Sheriff Shaw. If there’s something there, even a dropped bottle cap, I’ll find it.”

Pamela advised, “Harry, be prudent. Those people kill. One man is dead already. He may have been killed or not but you don’t know.”

“She’s right.” Mags seconded the thought. “Let the sheriff do it.”

Harry did not argue, but she didn’t agree to stay away either.

This was not lost on the animals or Susan.

“You know, there’s supposed to be a ghost at Castle Hill in the house. People have seen it. Sara Lee Barnes told me.” Susan informed them all and all of them knew Sara Lee, a reliable source.

Pamela, as an afterthought, said, “I wonder about the ghost. Do you all believe in ghosts?”

A silence followed this, but as they sat in the rattan chairs on the screened-in back porch, tea at the ready, their host spoke up. “I do.”

“I do, too,” Harry agreed, then shrugged. “We don’t know but so much.”

“Such as?” Janice pushed.

“Well, if you think about it, we aren’t even certain about male and female.”

“Oh, I am,” Janice roared.

They all talked at once. Good talk. Good ideas. Invigorating arguments. What friends do.

“The ghost at Castle Hill is supposed to be a woman from what, the Revolutionary period?” Janice threw that out.

“You know, okay, this is whoo whoo, but I wonder if there isn’t a ghost where we buried those bones, under the red oak? Is she hanging around?” Harry lowered her voice.

“Well, what would she want?” Mags challenged Harry.

“Her necklace.” Harry came right back.

This gave them all a moment.

Then Susan said, “Harry, that’s creepy.”

“Susan, the whole thing is creepy. Think about it. She’s got a broken neck for starters.”

“Maybe she wasn’t rich. Maybe she stole the pearls or maybe she was a mistress and the wife killed her,” Mags pitched in.

“Have to be a strong woman to break a neck,” Janice posited.

“They were stronger back then than we are now.” Susan clearly stated a fact. “Look how they worked.”

“Even the rich?” Janice wasn’t giving up.

“Some. Probably others were not, but take a cook, slave or free. Think of how big her forearms would have been from kneading all that dough. Or a laundress. The women who had to work had powerful bodies. And the women who drove coaches to show off, or rode, had to have some strength. So a woman could have broken her neck.”

“But a woman would have taken the necklace and earrings.” Janice was close to the truth.

“You’re probably right.” Susan nodded. “So she wants her pearls and diamonds back?”

Harry held up her hands, palms upward. “I don’t know. It was just an idea.”

“And those bones at the still, well, maybe there’s another ghost,” Susan wondered.

Janice dismissed this. “It’s all too creepy.”

And it was.