Murder At Monticello

MURDER AT

MONTICELLO

Rita Mae Brown

For Gordon Reistrup

because he makes us laugh.

BANTAM BOOKS NEWYORK • TORONTO • LONDON • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND

Cast of Characters

Mary Minor Haristeen (Harry), the young postmistress of Crozet, whose curiosity almost kills the cat and herself

Mrs. Murphy, Harry’s gray tiger cat, who bears an uncanny resemblance to authoress Sneaky Pie and who is wonderfully intelligent!

Tee Tucker, Harry’s Welsh corgi, Mrs. Murphy’s friend and confidant; a buoyant soul

Pharamond Haristeen (Fair), veterinarian, formerly married to Harry

Mrs. George Hogendobber (Miranda), a widow who thumps her own Bible!

Market Shiflett, owner of Shiflett’s Market, next to the post office

Pewter, Market’s fat gray cat, who, when need be, can be pulled away from the food bowl

Susan Tucker, Harry’s best friend, who doesn’t take life too seriously until her neighbors get murdered

Big Marilyn Sanburne (Mim), queen of Crozet

Oliver Zeve, the exuberant director of Monticello, to whom reputation means a lot

Kimball Haynes, energetic young head of archaeology at Monticello. He is a workaholic who believes in digging deeper

Wesley Randolph, owner of Eagle’s Rest, a passionate Thoroughbred man

Warren Randolph, Wesley’s son. He’s trying to step into the old man’s shoes

Ansley Randolph, Warren’s pretty wife, who is smarter than people think

Samson Coles, a well-born realtor who has his eyes on more than property

Lucinda Payne Coles, Samson’s bored wife

Heike Holtz, one of the assistant archaeologists at Monticello

Rick Shaw, Albemarle sheriff

Cynthia Cooper, police officer

Paddy, Mrs. Murphy’s ex-husband, a saucy tom

Simon, an opossum with a low opinion of humanity

Author’s Note

Monticello is a national treasure well served by its current executive director, Daniel P. Jordan. Some of you will recall Mr. Jordan and his wife, Lou, opening Thomas Jefferson’s home to then–President-elect Clinton.

The architectural and landscape descriptions are as accurate as I could make them. The humans are made up, of course, and Oliver Zeve, Monticello’s director in this novel, is not based on Mr. Jordan.

One eerie event took place while I was writing this mystery. In the book, a potsherd of good china is unearthed in a slave cabin. On October 18, 1992, four days after I sent off the first draft of this book to my publisher, an article appeared in The Daily Progress, the newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia. This article described how William Kelso, Monticello’s director of archaeology, found some fine china in the slave quarters believed to have been inhabited by Sally Hemings. These quarters were close to Jefferson’s home. Often slave quarters were distant from the master’s house, so the location of Miss Heming’s cabin is in itself worthy of note. Finding the china bits was life imitating fiction. Who knows, but it fluffed my fur.

My only quibble with Mr. Jordan and the wonderful staff at Monticello is that they aren’t paying attention to the feline contributions to Mr. Jefferson’s life. Who do you think kept the mice from eating all the parchment that Mr. Jefferson used? Then again, my ancestors drove the moles from the garden and the rodents from the stables too. No doubt when the great man wrote the Declaration of Independence he was inspired by a cat. Who is more independent than a cat?

Human Americans are having a fit and falling in it over multiculturalism. Well, how about multispecies-ism? You think the world centers around humans? When history is taught, Americans really ought to give full attention to the contributions of cats, dogs, horses, cattle, sheep, hens—why, just about any kind of domesticated animal and some of the wild too. Where would our Founding Fathers and Mothers be if they hadn’t had wild turkeys to eat? So abandon that human-centric point of view.

For my part, my feline ancestors arrived on Tidewater shores in 1640. The first Americat was a tabby, one Tabitha Buckingham. I am, therefore, F.F.V.—First Felines of Virginia. Of course, I take pride in my heritage, but I believe any kitty who comes to this country is as much an Americat as I am. We’re all lucky to be here.

As for the human concept of the past, let me just say that history is scandal hallowed by time. Fortunately, human beans (I think of you as beans) being what they are, every nation, every country, produces sufficient scandal. If you all ever behaved reasonably, what would I have to write about?

Always,

SNEAKY PIE

1

Laughing, Mary Minor Haristeen studied the nickel in her upturned palm. Over the likeness of Monticello was inscribed our nation’s motto, E Pluribus Unum. She handed the nickel to her older friend, Mrs. Miranda Hogendobber. “What do you think?”

“That nickel isn’t worth a red cent.” Mrs. Hogendobber pursed her melon-tinted lips. “And the nickel makes Monticello appear so big and impersonal when it’s quite the reverse, if you’ll forgive the pun.”

The two women, one in her mid-thirties and the other at an age she refused to disclose, glanced up from the coin to Monticello’s west portico, its windows aglow with candlelight from the parlor behind as the last rays of the early spring sun dipped behind the Blue Ridge Mountains.

If the friends had strolled to the front door of Thomas Jefferson’s house, centered in the east portico, and then walked to the edge of the lawn, they would have viewed a sea of green, the ever-flattening topography to Richmond and ultimately to the Atlantic Ocean.

Like most born residents of central Virginia’s Albemarle County, Harry Haristeen, as she was known, and Miranda Hogendobber could provide a fascinating tour of Monticello. Miranda would admit to being familiar with the estate since before World War II, but that was all she would admit. Over the decades increasing restoration work on the house itself, the dependencies, and gardens, both food and flowering, had progressed to the point where Monticello was the pride of the entire United States. Over a million out-of-town visitors a year drove up the tricky mountain road to pay their eight dollars, board a jitney bus, and swirl around an even twistier road to the top of the hill and thence the redbrick structure—each brick fashioned by hand, each hinge pounded out in a smithy, each pane of glass painstakingly blown by a glassmaker, sweating and puffing. Everything about the house suggested individual contribution, imagination, simplicity.

As the tulips braved the quickening western winds, Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber, shivering, walked around the south side of the grounds by the raised terrace. A graceful silver maple anchored the corner where they turned. When they reached the front they paused by the large doors.

“I’m not sure I can stand this.” Harry took a deep breath.

“Oh, we have to give the devil his due, or should I say her due?” Mrs. Hogendobber smirked. “She’s been preparing for this for six decades. She’ll say four, but I’ve known Mim Sanburne since the earth was cooling.”

“Isn’t this supposed to be the advantage of living in a small town? We know everyone and everyone knows us?” Harry rubbed her tight shoulder muscles. The temperature had dropped dramatically. “Well, okay, let’s brave Mim, the Jefferson expert.”

They opened the door, slipping in just as the huge clock perched over the entrance notched up seven P.M. The day, noted by a weight to the right as one faced the door, read Wednesday. The Great Clock was one of Jefferson’s many clever innovations in the design of his home. Even great minds err, however. Jefferson miscalculated the weight and pulley system and ran out of room to register all the days of the week in the hall. Each Friday the day weight slipped through a hole in the floor to the basement, where it marked Friday afternoon and Saturday. The weight then reappeared in the hall on Sunday morning, when the clock was wound.

Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber had arrived for a small gathering of Albemarle’s “best,” which is to say those whose families had been in Virginia since before the Revolution, those who were glamorous and recently arrived from Hollywood, which Harry dubbed Hollyweird, and those who were rich. Harry fell into the first category, as did Mrs. Hogendobber. As the postmaster—Harry preferred the term postmistress—of the small town of Crozet, Mary Minor Haristeen would never be mistaken for rich.

Marilyn Sanburne, known as Mim or Big Marilyn, clasped and unclasped her perfectly manicured hands. The wife of Crozet’s mayor and one of Albemarle’s richer citizens, she should have been cool as a cucumber. But a slight case of nerves rattled her as she cast her eyes over the august audience, which included the director of Monticello, the exuberant and fun-loving Oliver Zeve. The head of archaeology, Kimball Haynes, at thirty quite young for such a post, stood at the back of the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen”—Mim cleared her throat while her daughter, Little Marilyn, thirty-two, viewed her mother with a skillful show of rapt attention—“thank you all for taking time out from your busy schedules to gather with us tonight on this important occasion for our beloved Monticello.”

“So far so good,” Mrs. Hogendobber whispered to Harry.

“With the help of each one of you, we have raised five hundred thousand dollars for the purpose of excavating and ultimately restoring the servants’ quarters on Mulberry Row.”

As Mim extolled the value of the new project, Harry reflected on the continued duplicity that existed in her part of the world. Servants. Ah, yes, servants—not slaves. Well, no doubt some of them were cherished, beloved even, but the term lent a nice gloss to an ugly reality—Mr. Jefferson’s Achilles’ heel. He was so tremendously advanced in most ways, perhaps it was churlish to wish he had been more advanced about his source of labor. Then again, Harry wondered what would happen if the shoe were on her foot: Would she be able to refuse a skilled labor force? She would need to house them, clothe them, feed them, and provide medical care. Not that any of that was cheap, and maybe in today’s dollars it would add up to more than a living wage. Still, the moral dilemma if one was white, and Harry was white, nagged at her.

Nonetheless, Mim had provided the driving energy behind this project, and its progress was a great personal victory for her. She had also made the largest financial contribution to it. Her adored only son had sped away from Crozet to marry a sophisticated model, a flashy New York lady who happened to be the color of café au lait. For years Mim had refused her son entry to the ancestral mansion, but two years ago, thanks to a family crisis and the soft words of people like Miranda Hogendobber, Big Marilyn had consented to let Stafford and Brenda come home for a visit. Confronting one’s own prejudices is never easy, especially for a person as prideful as Mim, but she was trying, and her efforts to unearth this portion of Monticello’s buried history were commendable.

Harry’s eyes swept the room. A few Jefferson descendants were in attendance. His daughters, Martha and Maria, or Patsy and Polly as they were called within the family, had provided T.J. with fifteen grandchildren. Those surviving out of that generation in turn provided forty-eight great-grandchildren. The names of Cary, Coles, Randolph, Eppes, Wayles, Bankhead, Coolidge, Trist, Meikleham, and Carr were carrying various dilutions of Jefferson blood into the twentieth century and, soon, the twenty-first.

Tracing one’s bloodlines back to the original red-haired resident of Monticello was a bit like tracing every Thoroughbred’s history back to the great sires: Eclipse, 1764; Herod, 1758; and Matchem, 1748.

Nonetheless, people did it. Mim Sanburne herself adamantly believed she was related to the great man on her mother’s side through the Wayles/Coolidge line. Given Mim’s wealth and imperious temperament, no one challenged her slender claim in the great Virginia game of ancestor worship.

Harry’s people had lurched onto Virginia’s shores in 1640, but no intertwining with Mr. Jefferson’s line was ever claimed. In fact, both her mother’s family, the Hepworths, and her father’s seemed content to emphasize hard work in the here and now as opposed to dwelling on a glorious past.

Having fought in every conflict from the French and Indian War to the Gulf crisis, the family believed its contributions would speak for themselves. If anything, her people were guilty of reverse snobbery and Harry daily fought the urge to deflate Mim and her kind.

Once she had overcome her nerves, commanding the spotlight proved so intoxicating to Big Marilyn that she was loath to relinquish it. Finally, Oliver Zeve began the applause, which drowned out Mim’s oratory, although she continued to speak until the noise overwhelmed her. She smiled a tight smile, nodded her appreciation—not a hair out of place—and sat down.

Mim’s major fund-raising victims, Wesley Randolph and his son Warren, Samson Coles, and Center Berryman, applauded vigorously. Wesley, a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson through Thomas’s beloved older daughter, Martha, had been consistently generous over the decades. Samson Coles, related to Jefferson through his mother, Jane Randolph, gave intermittently, according to the fluctuations of his real estate business.

Wesley Randolph, fighting leukemia for the last year, felt a strong need for continuity, for bloodlines. Being a Thoroughbred breeder, this was probably natural for him. Although the cancer was in remission, the old man knew the sands in the hourglass were spinning through the tiny passage to the bottom. He wanted his nation’s past, Jefferson’s past, preserved. Perhaps this was Wesley’s slender grasp on immortality.

After the ceremony Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber returned to Oliver Zeve’s house, where Mrs. Murphy and Tee Tucker, Harry’s tiger cat and Welsh corgi respectively, awaited her. Oliver owned a fluffy white Persian, one Archduke Ferdinand, who used to accompany him to Monticello to work. However, children visiting the shrine sometimes pestered Archduke Ferdinand until he spit and scratched them. Although the archduke was within his feline rights, Oliver thought it best to keep him home. This was a great pity, because a cat will see a national shrine with a sharper eye than a human.

Then, too, Archduke Ferdinand believed in a hereditary nobility that was quite at odds with Jefferson’s point of view.

As of this moment the archduke was watching Mrs. Murphy from a vantage point at the top of the huge ficus tree in Oliver’s living room.

Kimball, who accompanied them, exclaimed, “The female pursues the male. Now, I like that idea.”

Mrs. Murphy turned her head. “Oh, please. Archduke Ferdinand is not my type.”

The Archduke growled, “Oh, and Paddy is your type? He’s as worthless as tits on a boar hog.”

Mrs. Murphy, conversant with her ex-husband’s faults, nonetheless defended him. “We were very young. He’s a different cat now.”

“Ha!” the Archduke exploded.

“Come on, Mrs. Murphy, I think you’re wearing out your welcome.” Harry leaned over and scooped up the reluctant tiger cat who was relishing the archduke’s discomfort.

Oliver patted Harry on the back. “Glad you could attend the ceremony.”

“Well, I’m not. We didn’t see a single thing!” Harry’s little dog grumbled.

Mrs. Hogendobber slung her ponderous purse over her left forearm and was already out the door.

“A lot of goodwill come from Mim’s check.” Kimball smiled as Harry and Mrs. H. climbed into the older woman’s pristine Ford Falcon.

Kimball would have occasion to repent that remark.

2

One of the things that fascinated Harry about the four distinct seasons in central Virginia was the quality of the light. With the advent of spring the world glowed yet retained some of the softness of the extraordinary winter light. By the spring equinox the diffuse quality would disappear and brightness would take its place.

Harry often walked to the post office from her farm on Yellow Mountain Road. Her old Superman-blue pickup, nursed throughout the years, needed the rest. The early morning walk awakened her not just to the day but to the marvelous detail of everyday life, to what motorists only glimpse as they speed by, if they notice at all. The swelling of a maple bud, the dormant gray hornet’s nest as big as a football, the brazen cries of the ravens, the sweet smell of the earth as the sun warmed her; these precious assaults on the senses kept Harry sane. She never could understand how people could walk with pavement under their feet, smog in their eyes, horns blaring, boom boxes blasting, their daily encounters with other human beings fraught with rudeness if not outright danger.

Considered a failure by her classmates at Smith College, Harry felt no need to judge herself or them by external standards. She had reached a crisis at twenty-seven when she heard her peers murmur incessantly about career moves, leveraged debt, and, if they were married, producing the firstborn. Well, at that time she was married to her high school sweetheart, Pharamond Haristeen, D.V.M., and it was good for a while. She never did figure out if the temptations of those rich, beautiful women on those huge Albemarle County farms had weakened her big blond husband’s resolve, or if over time they would have grown apart anyway. They had divorced. The first year was painful, the second year less so, and now, moving into the third year of life without Fair, she felt they were becoming friends. Indeed, she confided to her best girlfriend, Susan Tucker, she liked him more now than when they were married.

Mrs. Hogendobber originally blew smoke rings around Harry’s head over the divorce. She finally calmed down and took up the task of matchmaking, trying to set up Harry with Blair Bainbridge, a divinely handsome man who had moved next door to Harry’s farm. Blair, however, was on a fashion shoot in Africa these days. As a model he was in hot demand. Blair’s absence drew Fair back into Harry’s orbit, not that he was ever far from it. Crozet, Virginia, provided her citizens with the never-ending spectacle of love found, love won, love lost, and love found again. Life was never dull.

Maybe that’s why Harry didn’t feel like a failure, no matter how many potentially embarrassing questions she was asked at those Smith College reunions. Lots of squealing around the daisy chain was how she thought of them. But she jumped out of bed every morning eager for another day, happy with her friends, and contented with her job at the post office. Small though the P.O. was, everybody dropped in to pick up their mail and have a chat, and she enjoyed being at the center of activity.

Mrs. Murphy and Tee Tucker worked there too. Harry couldn’t imagine spending eight to ten hours each day away from her animals. They were too much fun.

As she walked down Railroad Avenue, she noticed that Reverend Herb Jones’s truck was squatting in front of the Lutheran church with a flat. She walked over.

“No spare,” she said to herself.

“They don’t pay him enough money,” Mrs. Murphy stated with authority.

“How do you know that, smarty-pants?” Tucker replied.

“I’ve got my ways.”

“Your ways? You’ve been gossiping with Lucy Fur, and all she does is eat communion wafers.” Tucker said this gleefully, thrilled to prove that Herbie’s new second cat desecrated the sacrament.

“She does not. That’s Cazenovia over at St. Paul’s. You think every church cat eats communion wafers. Cats don’t like bread.”

“Oh, yeah? What about Pewter? I’ve seen her eat a doughnut. ’Course, I’ve also seen her eat asparagus.” Tucker marveled at the gargantuan appetite of Market Shiflett’s cat. Since she worked in the grocery store next to the post office, the gray animal was constantly indulged. Pewter resembled a furry cannonball with legs.

Mrs. Murphy leapt on the running board of the old stepside truck as Harry continued to examine the flat. “Doesn’t count. That cat will eat anything.”

“Bet you she’s munching away in the window when we pass the store.”

“You think I’m stupid?” Mrs. Murphy refused the bet. “But I will bet you that I can climb that tree faster than you can run to it.” With that she was off and Tucker hesitated for a second, then tore toward the tree as Mrs. Murphy was already halfway up it. “Told you I’d win.”

“You have to back down.” Tucker waited underneath with her jaws open for full effect, her white fangs gleaming.

“Oh.” Mrs. Murphy’s eyes widened. Her whiskers swept forward and back. She looked afraid, and the dog puffed up with victory. That fast Mrs. Murphy somersaulted off the tree over the back of the dog and raced to the truck, leaving a furious Tucker barking her head off.

“Tucker, enough.” Harry reprimanded her as she continued toward the P.O. while making a mental note to call Herb at home.

“Get me in trouble! You started it.” The dog blamed the cat. “Don’t yell at me,” Tucker whined to Harry.

“Dogs are dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb,” the cat sang out, tail hoisted to the vertical, then ran in front of Tucker, who, of course, chased her.

Murphy flipped in the air to land behind Tucker. Harry laughed so hard, she had to stop walking. “You two are crazy.”

“She’s crazy. I am perfectly sane.” Tucker, put out, sat down.

“Ha.” Mrs. Murphy again sailed into the air. She was filled with spring, with the hope that always attends that season.

Harry wiped her feet off at the front door of the post office, took the brass keys out of her pocket, and unlocked the door just as Mrs. Hogendobber was performing the same ritual at the back door.

“Well, hello.” They both called to each other as they heard the doors close in opposite ends of the small frame building.

“Seven-thirty on the dot,” Miranda called out, pleased with her punctuality. Miranda’s husband had run the Crozet post office for decades. Upon his death, Harry had won the job.

Never a government employee, Miranda nonetheless had helped George since his first day on the job, August 7, 1952. At first she mourned him, which was natural. Then she said she liked retirement. Finally she admitted she was bored stiff, so Harry politely invited her to drop in from time to time. Harry had no idea that Miranda would relentlessly drop in at seven-thirty each morning. The two discovered over time and a few grumbles that it was quite pleasant to have company.

The mail truck beeped outside. Rob Collier tipped his Orioles baseball cap and tossed the bags through the front door. He delivered mail from the main post office on Seminole Trail in Charlottesville. “Late” was all he said.

“Rob’s hardly ever late,” Miranda noted. “Well, let’s get to it.” She opened the canvas bag and began sorting the mail into the slots.

Harry also sifted through the morass of printed material, a tidal wave of temptations to spend money, since half of what she plucked out of her canvas bag were mail-order catalogues.

“Ahhh!” Miranda screamed, withdrawing her hand from a box.

Mrs. Murphy immediately rushed over to inspect the offending box. She placed her paw in and fished around.

“Got anything?” Tucker asked.

“Yeah.” Mrs. Murphy threw a large spider on the floor. Tucker jumped back as did the two humans, then barked, which the humans did not.

“Rubber.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.

“Whose box was that?” Harry wanted to know.

“Ned Tucker’s.” Mrs. Hogendobber frowned. “This is the work of Danny Tucker. I tell you, young people today have no respect. Why, I could have suffered a heart attack or hyperventilated at the very least. Wait until I get my hands on that boy.”

“Boys will be boys.” Harry picked up the spider and wiggled it in front of Tucker, who feigned indifference. “Oops, first customer and we’re not halfway finished.”

Mim Sanburne swept through the door. A pale yellow cashmere shawl completed her Bergdorf-Goodman ensemble.

“Mim, we’re behind,” Miranda informed her.

“Oh, I know,” Mim airily said. “I passed Rob on the way into town. I wanted to know what you thought of the ceremony at Monticello. I know you told me you liked it, but among us girls, what did you really think?”

Harry and Miranda had no need to glance at each other. They knew that Mim needed both praise and gossip. Miranda, better at the latter than the former, was the lead batter. “You made a good speech. I think Oliver Zeve and Kimball Haynes were just thrilled, mind you, thrilled. I did think that Lucinda Coles had her nose out of joint, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”

Seizing the bait like a rockfish, or small-mouthed bass, Mim lowered her voice. “She flounced around. It’s not as if I didn’t ask her to be on my committee, Miranda. She was my second call. My first was Wesley Randolph. He’s just too ancient, poor dear. But when I asked Lucinda, she said she was worn out by good causes even if it did involve sanitized ancestors. I didn’t say anything to her husband, but I was tempted. You know how Samson Coles feels. The more times his name gets in the paper, the more people will be drawn to his real estate office, although not much is selling now, is it?”

“We’ve seen good times and we’ve seen bad times. This will pass,” Miranda sagely advised.

“I’m not so sure,” Harry piped up. “I think we’ll pay for the eighties for a long, long time.”

“Fiddlesticks.” Mim dismissed her.

Harry prudently dropped the subject and switched to that of Lucinda Payne Coles, who could claim no special bloodlines other than being married to Samson Coles, descended from Jane Randolph, mother to Thomas Jefferson. “I’m sorry to hear that Lucinda backed off from your wonderful project. It truly is one of the best things you’ve ever done, Mrs. Sanburne, and you’ve done so much in our community.” Despite Harry’s mild antipathy toward the snobbish older woman, she was genuine in her praise.

“You think so? Oh, I am so glad.” Big Marilyn clasped her hands together like a child at a birthday party excited over all those unwrapped presents. “I like to work, you know.”

Mrs. Hogendobber recalled her Scripture. “‘Each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.’ ” She nodded wisely and then added, “First Corinthians, 3:13–14.”

Mim liked the outward appearance of Christianity; the reality of it held far less appeal. She particularly disliked the passage about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. After all, Mim was as rich as Croesus.

“Miranda, your biblical knowledge never ceases to amaze me.” Mim wanted to say, “to bore me,” but she didn’t. “And what an appropriate quotation, considering that Kimball will be digging up the foundations of the servants’ quarters. I’m just so excited. There’s so much to discover. Oh, I wish I had been alive during the eighteenth century and had known Mr. Jefferson.”

“I’d rather have known his cat,” Mrs. Murphy chimed in.

“Jefferson was a hound man,” Tee Tucker hastened to add.

“How do you know?” The tiger cat swished her tail and tiptoed along the ledge under the boxes.

“Rational. He was a rational man. Intuitive people prefer cats.”

“Tucker?” Mrs. Murphy, astonished at the corgi’s insight, could only exclaim her name.

The humans continued on, blithely unaware of the animal conversation which was more interesting than their own.

“Maybe you did know him. Maybe that’s why you’re so impassioned about Monticello.” Harry almost tossed a clutch of mail-order catalogues in the trash, then caught herself.

“You don’t believe that stuff,” Mrs. Hogendobber pooh-poohed.

“Well, I do, for one.” Mim’s jaw was set.

“You?” Miranda appeared incredulous.

“Yes, haven’t you ever known something without being told it, or walked into a room in Europe and felt sure you’d been there before?”

“I’ve never been to Europe,” came the dry reply.

“Well, Miranda, it’s high time. High time, indeed,” Mim chided her.

“I backpacked over there my junior year in college.” Harry smiled, remembering the kind people she had met in Germany and how excited she was at getting into what was then a communist country, Hungary. Everywhere she traveled, people proved kind and helpful. She used sign language and somehow everyone understood everyone else. She thought to herself that she wanted to return someday, to meet again old friends with whom she continued to correspond.

“How adventuresome,” Big Marilyn said dryly. She couldn’t imagine walking about, or, worse, sleeping in hostels. When she had sent her daughter to the old countries, Little Marilyn had gone on a grand tour, even though she would have given anything to have backpacked with Harry and her friend Susan Tucker.

“Will you be keeping an eye on the excavations?” Miranda inquired.

“If Kimball will tolerate me. Do you know how they do it? It’s so meticulous. They lay out a grid and they photograph everything and also draw it on graph paper—just to be sure. Anyway, they painstakingly sift through these grids and anything, absolutely anything, that can be salvaged is. I mean, potsherds and belt buckles and rusted nails. Oh, I really can’t believe I am part of this. You know, life was better then. I am convinced of it.”

“Me too.” Harry and Miranda sounded like a chorus.

“Ha!” Mrs. Murphy yowled. “Ever notice when humans drift back in history they imagine they were rich and healthy. Get a toothache in the eighteenth century and find out how much you like it.” She glared down at Tucker. “How’s that for rational?”

“You can be a real sourpuss sometimes. Just because I said that Jefferson preferred dogs to cats.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“Well, have you read any references to cats? Everything that man ever wrote or said is known by rote around here. Not a peep about cats.”

“You think you’re so smart. I suppose you happen to have a list of his favorite canines?”

Tucker sheepishly hung her head. “Well, no—but Thomas Jefferson liked big bay horses.”

“Fine, tell that to Tomahawk and Gin Fizz back home. They’ll be overwhelmed with pride.” Mrs. Murphy referred to Harry’s horses, whom the tiger cat liked very much. She stoutly maintained that cats and horses had an affinity for one another.

“Do you think from time to time we might check out the dig?” Harry leaned over the counter.

“I don’t see why not,” Mim replied. “I’ll call Oliver Zeve to make sure it’s all right. You young people need to get involved.”

“What I wouldn’t give to be your age again, Harry.” Miranda grew wistful. “My George would have still had hair.”

“George had hair?” Harry giggled.

“Don’t be smart,” Miranda warned, but her voice carried affection.

“Want a man with a head full of hair? Take my husband.” Mim drummed her fingers on the table. “Everyone else has.”

“Now, Mim.”

“Oh, Miranda, I don’t even care anymore. All those years that I put a good face on my marriage—I just plain don’t care. Takes too much effort. I’ve decided that I am living for me. Monticello!” With that she waved and left.

“I declare, I do declare.” Miranda shook her head. “What got into her?”

“Who got into her?”

“Harry, that’s rude.”

“I know.” Harry tried to keep her lip buttoned around Mrs. Hogendobber, but sometimes things slipped out. “Something’s happened. Or maybe she was like this when she was a child.”

“She was never a child.” Miranda’s voice dropped. “Her mother made her attend the public schools and Mim wanted to go away to Miss Porter’s. She wore outfits every day that would have bankrupted an average man, and this was at the end of the Depression and the beginning of World War Two, remember. By the time we got to Crozet High, there were two classes of students. Marilyn, and the rest of us.”

“Well—any ideas?”

“Not a one. Not a single one.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Tucker barked. The humans looked at her. “Spring fever.”

3

Fair Haristeen, a blond giant, studied the image on the small TV screen. He was taking an ultrasound of an unborn foal in the broodmare barn at Wesley Randolph’s estate, Eagle’s Rest. Using sound waves to scan the position and health of the fetus was becoming increasingly valuable to veterinarian and breeder alike. This practice, relatively new in human medicine, was even more recent in the equine world. Fair centered the image he wanted, pressed a small button, and the machine spat out the picture of the incubating foal.

“Here he is, Wesley.” Fair handed the printout to the breeder.

Wesley Randolph, his son Warren, and Warren’s diminutive but gorgeous wife, Ansley, hung on the veterinarian’s every word.

“Well, this colt’s healthy in the womb. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

Wesley handed the picture to Warren and folded his arms across his thin chest. “This mare’s in foal to Mr. Prospector. I want this baby!”

“You can’t do much better than to breed to Claiborne Farm’s stock. It’s hard to make a mistake when you work with such good people.”

Warren, ever eager to please his domineering father, said, “Dad wants blinding speed married to endurance. I think this might be our best foal yet.”

“Dark Windows—she was a great one,” Wesley reminisced. “Damn filly put her leg over a divider when we were hauling her to Churchill Downs. Got a big knee and never raced after that. She was a special filly—like Ruffian.”

“I’ll never forget that day. When Ruffian took that moment’s hesitation in her stride—it was a bird or something on the track that made her pause—and shattered the sesamoid bones in her fetlock. God, it was awful.” Warren recalled the fateful day when Thoroughbred racing lost one of its greatest fillies to date, and perhaps one of the greatest runners ever seen, during her match race with Kentucky Derby—winner Foolish Pleasure at Belmont Park.

“Too game to stay down after her leg was set. Broke it a second time coming out of the anesthesia and only would have done it a third time if they’d tried to set the break again. It was the best thing to do, to save her any more pain, putting her down.” Fair added his veterinary expertise to their memory of the black filly’s trauma.

Wesley shook his head. “Damn shame. Damn shame. Would’ve made one hell of a brood mare. Her owners might even have tried to breed her to that colt she was racing against when it happened. Foolish Pleasure. Better racehorse than sire, though, now that we’ve seen his get.”

“I’ll never forget how the general public reacted to Ruffian’s death. The beautiful black filly with the giant heart—she gave two hundred percent, every time. When they put her down, the whole country mourned, even people who had never paid attention to racing. It was a sad, sad day.” Ansley was visibly moved by this recollection. She changed the subject.

“You got some wonderful stakes winners out of Dark Windows. She was a remarkable filly too.” Ansley praised her father-in-law. He needed attention like a fish needs water.

“A few, a few.” He smiled.

“I’ll be back around next week. Call me if anything comes up.” Fair headed for his truck and his next call.

Wesley followed him out of the barn while his son and daughter-in-law stayed inside. Behind the track, over a small knoll, was a lake. Wesley thought he’d go sit there later with his binoculars and bird-watch. Eased his mind, bird-watching. “Want some unsolicited advice?”

“Looks like I’m going to get it whether I want it or not.” Fair opened the back of his customized truck-bed, which housed his veterinary supplies.

“Win back Mary Minor Haristeen.”

Fair placed his equipment in the truck. “Since when are you playing Cupid?”

Wesley, gruff, bellowed, “Cupid? That little fat fellow with the quiver, bow, and arrows, and the little wings on his shoulders? Him? Give me some time and I’ll be a real angel—unless I’m going downtown in the afterlife.”

“Wesley, only the good die young. You’ll be here forever.” Fair liked teasing him.

“Ha! I believe you’re right.” Wesley appreciated references to his wild youth. “I’m old. I can say what I want when I want.” He breathed in. “’Course, I always did. The advantage of being stinking rich. So I’m telling you, go get that little girl you so foolishly, and I emphasize foolishly, cast aside. She’s the winning ticket.”

“Do I look that bad?” Fair wondered, the teasing fading out of him.

“You look like a ship without a rudder’s what you look like. And running around with BoomBoom Craycroft . . . big tits and not an easy keeper.” Wesley likened BoomBoom to a horse that was expensive to feed, hard to put weight on, and often the victim of a breakdown of one sort or another. This couldn’t have been a truer comparison, except in BoomBoom’s case the weight referred to carats. She could gobble up more precious stones than a pasha. “Women like BoomBoom love to drive a man crazy. Harry’s got some fire and some brains.”

Fair rubbed the blond stubble on his cheek. He’d known Wesley all his life and liked the man. For all his arrogance and bluntness, Wesley was loyal, called it like he saw it, and was truly generous, a trait he passed on to Warren. “I think about it sometimes—and I think she’d have to be crazy to take me back.”

Wesley put his arm around Fair’s broad shoulders. “Listen to me. There’s not a man out there who hasn’t strayed off the reservation. And most of us feel rotten about it. Diana looked the other way when I did it. We were a team. The team came first, and once I grew up some I didn’t need those—ah, adventures. I came clean. I told her what I’d done. I asked her to forgive me. Screwing around hurts a woman in ways we don’t understand. Diana was in my corner two hundred percent. Heart like Ruffian. Always giving. Sometimes I wonder how a little poontang could get me off the track, make me hurt the person I loved most in this world.” He paused. “Women are more forgiving than we are. Kinder too. Maybe we need them to civilize us, son. You think about what I’m saying.”

Fair closed the lid over his equipment. “You aren’t the first person to tell me to win back Harry. Mrs. Hogendobber works me over every now and then.”

“Miranda. I can hear her now.” Wesley laughed.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong. Harry was a good wife and I was a fool, but how do you get over that guilt? I don’t want to be with a woman and feel like a heel, even if I was.”

“That’s where love works its miracles. Love’s not about sex, although that’s where we all start. Diana taught me about love. It’s as gossamer as a spiderweb and just as strong. Winds don’t blow down a web. Ever watch ’em?” His hand moved back and forth. “That woman knew me, knew my every fault, and she loved me for me. And I learned to love her for her. The only thing that pleases me about my condition is when I get to the other side, I’m going to see my girl.”

“Wesley, you look better than I’ve seen you look in the last eight months.”

“Remission. Damn grateful for it. I do feel good. Only thing that gets me down is the stock market.” He shivered to make his point. “And Warren. I don’t know if he’s strong enough to take over. He and Ansley don’t pull together. Worries me.”

“Maybe you ought to talk to them like you talked to me.”

Wesley blinked beneath his bushy gray eyebrows. “I try. Warren evades me. Ansley’s polite and listens, but it’s in one ear, out t’other.” He shook his head. “I’ve spent my whole life developing bloodlines, yet I can hardly talk to my own blood.”

Fair leaned against the big truck. “I think a lot of people feel that way . . . and I don’t have any answers.” He checked his watch. “I’m due at Brookhill Farm. You call me about that mare and—and I promise to think about what you said.”

Fair stepped into the truck, turned the ignition, and slowly traveled down the winding drive lined with linden trees. He waved, and Wesley waved back.

4

The old Ford truck chugged up Monticello Mountain. A light drizzle kept Harry alert at the wheel, for this road could be treacherous no matter what the weather. She wondered how the colonists had hauled up and down this mountain using wagons pulled by horses, or perhaps oxen, with no disc brakes. Unpaved during Thomas Jefferson’s time, the road must have turned into a quagmire in the rains and a killer sheet of ice in the winter.

Susan Tucker fastened her seat belt.

“Think my driving’s that bad?”

“No.” Susan ran her thumb under the belt. “I should have done this when we left Crozet.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Mrs. H. pitched a major hissy when she reached into your mailbox and touched that rubber spider that Danny must have stuck in there. Mrs. Murphy pulled it out onto the floor finally.”

“Did she throw her hands in the air?” Susan innocently inquired.

“You bet.”

“A deep, throaty scream.”

“Moderate, I’d say. The dog barked.”

Susan smiled a Cheshire smile. “Wish I’d been there.”

Harry turned to glance at her best friend. “Susan—”

“Keep your eyes on the road.”

“Oh, yeah. Susan, did you put that spider in the mailbox?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now, why would you want to go and do a thing like that?”

“Devil made me do it.”

Harry laughed. Every now and then Susan would do something, disrupt something, and you never knew when or where. She’d been that way since they first met in kindergarten. Harry hoped she’d never change.

The parking lot wasn’t as full as usual for a weekend. Harry and Susan rode in the jitney up the mountain, which became more fog-enshrouded with every rising foot. By the time they reached the Big House, as locals called it, they could barely see their hands in front of their faces.

“Think Kimball will be out there?” Susan asked.

“One way to find out.” Harry walked down to the south side of the house, picking up the straight road that was called Mulberry Row. Here the work of the plantation was carried out in a smithy as well as in eighteen other buildings dedicated to the various crafts: carpentry, nail making, weaving, and possibly even harness making and repair. Those buildings vanished over the decades after Jefferson’s death when, a quarter of a million dollars in debt—roughly two and a half million dollars today—his heirs were forced to sell the place he loved.

Slave quarters also were located along Mulberry Row. Like the other buildings, these were usually constructed of logs; sometimes even the chimneys were made of logs, which would occasionally catch fire, so that the whole building was engulfed in flames within minutes. The bucket brigade was the only means of fire-fighting.

As Harry and Susan walked through the fog, their feet squished in the moist earth.

“If you feel a descent, you know we’ve keeled over into the food garden.” Harry stopped for a moment.

“We can stay on the path and go slow. Harry, Kimball isn’t going to be out here in this muck.”

But he was. Wearing a green oilskin Barbour coat, a necessity in this part of the world, big Wellies on his feet, and a water-repellent baseball hat on his head, Kimball resembled any other Virginia gentleman or gentlewoman on a misty day.

“Kimball!” Harry called out.

“A fine, soft day,” he jubilantly replied. “Come closer, I can’t see who’s with you.”

“Me,” Susan answered.

“Ah, I’m in for a double treat.” He walked up to greet them.

“How can you work in this?” Susan wondered.

“I can’t, really, but I can walk around and think. This place had to function independently of the world, in a sense. I mean, it was its own little world, so I try to put myself back in time and imagine what was needed, when and why. It helps me understand why some of these buildings and the gardens were placed as they are. Of course, the people working under the boardwalks—that’s what I call the terraces—had a better deal, I think. Would you two damsels like a stroll?”

“Love it.” Harry beamed.

“Kimball, how did you come to archaeology?” Susan asked. Most men Kimball’s age graduating from an Ivy League college were investment bankers, commodities brokers, stockbrokers, or numbers crunchers.

“I liked to play in the dirt as a child. This seemed a natural progression.” He grinned.

“It wasn’t one of those quirks of fate?” Harry wiped a raindrop off her nose.

“Actually, it was. I was studying history at Brown and I had this glorious professor, Del Kolve, and he kept saying, ‘Go back to the physical reality, go back to the physical reality.’ So I happened to notice a yellow sheet of paper on the department bulletin board—isn’t it odd that I can still see the color of the flyer?—announcing a dig in Colonial Williamsburg. I never imagined that. You see, I always thought that archaeology meant you had to be digging up columns in Rome, that sort of thing. So I came down for the summer and I was hooked. Hooked on the period too. Come on, let me show you something.”

He led them to his office at the back of the attractive gift shop. They shook off the water before entering and hung their coats on the wooden pegs on the wall.

“Cramped,” Susan observed. “Is this temporary?”

He shook his head. “We can’t go about building anything, you know, and some of what has been added over the years—well, the damage has been done. Anyway, I’m in the field most of the time, so this suffices, and I’ve also stashed some books in the second floor of the Big House, so I’ve a bit more room than it appears. Here, look at this.” He reached into a pile of horseshoes on the floor and handed an enormous shoe to Harry.

She carefully turned the rusted artifact over in her hands. “A toe grab. I can’t make out if there were any grabs on the back, but possibly. This horse had to do a lot of pulling. Draft horse, of course.”

“Okay, look at this one.” He handed her another.

Harry and Susan exclaimed at this shoe. Lighter, made for a smaller horse, it had a bar across the heel area, joining the two arms of the shoe.

“What do you think, Susan?” Harry placed the shoe in her friend’s hands.

“We need Steve O’Grady.” Susan referred to an equine vet in the county, an expert on hoof development and problems and strategies to overcome those problems. He was a colleague of Fair Haristeen, whose specialty was the equine reproductive system. “But I’d say this belonged to a fancy horse, a riding horse, anyway. It’s a bar shoe . . .”

“Because the horse had a problem. Navicular maybe.” Harry suggested a degenerative condition of the navicular bone, just behind the main bone of the foot, the coffin bone, often requiring special shoeing to alleviate the discomfort.

“Perhaps, but the blacksmith decided to give the animal more striking area in the back. He moved the point of contact behind the normal heel area.” Kimball placed his hand on his desk, using his fingers as the front of the hoof and his palm as the back and showed how this particular shoe could alter the point of impact.

“I didn’t know you rode horses.” Harry admired his detective work on the horseshoe.

“I don’t. They’re too big for me.” Kimball smiled.

“So how’d you know this? I mean, most of the people who do ride don’t care that much about shoeing. They don’t learn anything.” Susan, a devout horsewoman, meaning she believed in knowing all phases of equine care and not just hopping on the animal’s back, was intensely curious.

“I asked an expert.” He held out his palms.

“Who?”

“Dr. O’Grady.” Kimball laughed. “But still, I had to call around, dig in the libraries, and find out if horseshoeing has changed that much over the centuries. See, that’s what I love about this kind of work. Well, it’s not work, it’s a magical kind of living in the past and the present at the same time. I mean, the past is ever informing the present, ever with us, for good or for ill. To work at what you love—a heaping up of joys.”

“It is wonderful,” Harry agreed. “I don’t mean to imply that what I do is anything as exalted as your own profession, but I like my job, I like the people, and most of all, I love Crozet.”

“We’re the lucky ones.” Susan understood only too well the toll unhappiness takes on people. She had watched her father drag himself to a job he hated. She had watched him dry up. He worried so much about providing for his family that he forgot to be with his family. She could have done with fewer things and more dad. “Being a housewife and mother may not seem like much, but it’s what I wanted to do. I wouldn’t trade a minute of those early years when the kids were tiny. Not one second.”

“Then they’re the lucky ones,” Harry said.

Kimball, content in agreement, pulled open a drawer and plucked out a bit of china with a grayish background and a bit of faded blue design. “Found this last week in what I’m calling Cabin Four.” He flipped it over, a light number showing on its reverse side. “I’ve been keeping it here to play with it. What was this bit of good china doing in a slave cabin? Was it already broken? Did the inhabitant of the little cabin break it herself—we know who lived in Cabin Four—and take it out of the Big House to cover up the misdeed? Or did the servants, forgive the euphemism, go straight to the master, confess the breakage, and get awarded the pieces? Then again, what if the slave just plain took it to have something pretty to look at, to own something that a rich white person would own, to feel for a moment part of the ruling class instead of the ruled? So many questions. So many questions.”

“I’ve got one you can answer.” Susan put her hand up.

“Shoot.”

“Where’s the bathroom?”

5

Larry Johnson intended to retire on his sixty-fifth birthday. He even took in a partner, Hayden McIntire, M.D., three years before his retirement age so Crozet’s residents might become accustomed to a new doctor. At seventy-one, Larry continued to see patients. He said it was because he couldn’t face the boredom of not working. Like most doctors trained in another era, he was one of the community, not some highly trained outsider come to impose his superior knowledge on the natives. Larry also knew the secrets: who had abortions before they were legal, what upstanding citizens once had syphilis, who drank on the sly, what families carried a disposition to alcoholism, diabetes, insanity, even violence. He’d seen so much over the years that he trusted his instincts. He didn’t much care if it made scientific sense, and one of the lessons Larry learned is that there really is such a thing as bad blood.

“You ever read these magazines before you put them in our slot?” The good doctor perused the New England Journal of Medicine he’d just pulled out of his mailbox.

Harry laughed. “I’m tempted, but I haven’t got the time.”

“We need a thirty-six-hour day.” He removed his porkpie hat and shook off the raindrops. “We’re all trying to do too much in too little time. It’s all about money. It’ll kill us. It’ll kill America.”

“You know, I was up at Monticello yesterday with Susan—”

Larry interrupted her. “She’s due for a checkup.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He shrugged his shoulders in resignation. “But if I don’t say what’s on my mind when it pops into my head, I forget. Whoosh, it’s gone.” He paused. “I’m getting old.”

“Ha,” Mrs. Murphy declared. “Harry’s not even thirty-five and she forgets stuff all the time. Like the truck keys.”

“She only did that once.” Tucker defended her mother.

“You two are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.” Larry knelt down to pet Tucker while Mrs. Murphy prowled on the counter. “Now, what were you telling me about Monticello?”

“Oh, we drove up to see how the Mulberry Row dig is coming along. Well, you were talking about money and I guess I was thinking how Jefferson died in hideous debt and how an intense concern with money seems to be part of who and what we are as a nation. I mean, look at Light-Horse Harry Lee. Lost his shirt, poor fellow.”

“Yes, yes, and being the hero, mind you, the beau ideal of the Revolutionary War. Left us a wonderful son.”

“Yankees don’t think so.” The corner of Harry’s mouth turned upward.

“I liken Yankees to hemorrhoids . . . they slip down and hang around. Once they see how good life is around here, they don’t go back. Ah, well, different people, different ways. I’ll have to think about what you said—about money—which I am spending at a rapid clip as Hayden and I expand the office. Since Jefferson never stopped building, I can’t decide if he possessed great stamina or great foolishness. I find the whole process nerve-racking.”

Lucinda Payne Coles opened the door, stepped inside, then turned around and shook her umbrella out over the stoop. She closed the door and leaned the dripping object next to it. “Low pressure. All up and down the East Coast. The Weather Channel says we’ve got two more days of this. Well, my tulips will be grateful but my floors will not.”

“Read where you and others”—Larry cocked his head in the direction of Harry—“attended Big Marilyn’s do.”

“Which one? She has so many.” Lucinda’s frosted pageboy shimmied as she tossed her head. Little droplets spun off the blunt ends of her hair.

“Monticello.”

“Oh, yes. Samson was in Richmond, so he couldn’t attend. Ansley and Warren Randolph were there. Wesley too. Carys, Eppes, oh, I can’t remember.” Lucinda displayed little enthusiasm for the topic.

Miranda puffed in the back door. “I’ve got lunch.” She saw Larry and Lucinda. “Hello there. I’m buying water wings if this keeps up.”

“You’ve already got angel wings.” Larry beamed.

“Hush, now.” Mrs. H. blushed.

“What’d she do?” Mrs. Murphy wanted to know.

“What’d she do?” Lucinda echoed the cat.

“She’s been visiting the terminally ill children down at the hospital and she’s organized her church folks to join in.”

“Larry, I do it because I want to be useful. Don’t fuss over me.” Mrs. Hogendobber meant it, but being human, she also enjoyed the approval.

A loud meow at the back diverted the slightly overweight lady’s attention, and she opened the door. A wet, definitely overweight Pewter straggled in. The cat and human oddly mirrored each other.

“Fat mouse! Fat mouse!” Mrs. Murphy taunted the gray cat.

“What does that man do over there? Force-feed her?” Lucinda stared at the cat.

“It’s all her own work.” Mrs. Murphy’s meow carried her dry wit.

“Shut up. If I had as many acres to run around as you do, I’d be slender too,” Pewter spat out.

“You’d sit in a trance in front of the refrigerator door, waiting for it to open. Open Sesame.” The tiger’s voice was musical.

“You two are being ugly.” Tucker padded over to the front door and sniffed Lucinda’s umbrella. She smelled the faint hint of oregano on the handle. Lucinda must have been cooking before she headed to the P.O.

Lucinda sauntered over to her postbox, opened it with the round brass key, and pulled out envelopes. She sorted them at the ledge along one side of the front room. The flutter of mail hitting the wastebasket drew Larry’s attention.

Mrs. Hogendobber also observed Lucinda’s filing system. “You’re smart, Lucinda. Don’t even open the envelopes.”

“I have enough bills to pay. I’m not going to answer a form letter appealing for money. If a charity wants money, they can damn well ask me in person.” She gathered up what was left of her mail, picked up her umbrella, and pushed open the door. She forgot to say good-bye.

“She’s not doing too good, is she?” Harry blurted out.

Larry shook his head. “I can sometimes heal the body. Can’t do much for the heart.”

“She’s not the first woman whose husband has had an affair. I ought to know.” Harry watched Lucinda Coles open her car door, hop in while holding the umbrella out, then shake the umbrella, throw it over the back seat of the Grand Wagoneer, slam the door, and drive off.

“She’s from another generation, Mary Minor Haristeen. ‘Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge the immoral and adulterous.’ Hebrews 13:4.”

“I’m going to let you girls fight this one out.” Larry slapped his porkpie hat back on his head and left. What he knew that he didn’t tell them was with whom Samson Coles was carrying on his affair.

“Miranda, are you implying that my generation does not honor the vows of marriage? That just frosts me!” Harry shoved a mail cart. It clattered across the floor, the canvas swaying a bit.

“I said no such thing, Missy. Now, you just calm yourself. She’s older than you by a good fifteen years. A woman in middle age has fears you can’t understand but you will—you will. Lucinda Payne was raised to be an ornament. She lives in a world of charities, luncheons with the girls, and black-tie fund-raisers. You work. You expect to work, and if you marry again your life isn’t going to change but so much. Of course you honored your marriage vows. The pity is that Fair Haristeen didn’t.”

“I kept remembering what Susan used to say about Ned. He’d make her so mad she’d say, ‘Divorce, never. Murder, yes.’ There were a few vile moments when I wonder how I managed not to kill Fair. They passed. I don’t think he could help it. We married too young.”

“Too young? You married Fair the summer he graduated from Auburn Veterinary College. In my day you would have been an old maid at that age. You were twenty-four, as I recall.”

“Memory like a wizard.” Harry smiled, then sighed. “I guess I know what you mean about Lucinda. It’s sad really.”

“For her it’s a tragedy.”

“Humans take marriage too seriously.” Pewter licked her paw and began smoothing down her fur. “My mother used to say, ‘Don’t worry about tomcats. There’s one coming around every corner like a streetcar.’ ”

“Your mother lived to a ripe old age, so she must have known something,” Mrs. Murphy recalled.

“Maybe Lucinda should go to a therapist or something,” Harry thought out loud.

“She ought to try her minister first.” Mrs. Hogendobber walked over to the window and watched the huge raindrops splash on the brick walkway.

“You know what I can’t figure?” Harry joined her.

“What?”

“Who in the world would want Samson Coles?”

6

The steady rain played havoc with Kimball’s work. His staff stretched a bright blue plastic sheet onto four poles which helped keep off the worst of the rain, but it trickled down into the earthen pit as they had cut down a good five feet.

A young German woman, Heike Holtz, carefully brushed away the soil. Her knees were mud-soaked, her hands also, but she didn’t care. She’d come to America specifically to work with Kimball Haynes. Her long-range goal was to return to Germany and begin similar excavations and reconstruction at Sans Souci. Since this beautiful palace was in Potsdam, in the former East Germany, she suffered few illusions about raising money or generating interest for the task. But she was sure that sooner or later her countrymen would try to save what they could before it fell down about their ears. As an archaeologist, she deplored the Russians’ callous disregard for the majority of the fabulous architecture under their control. At least they had preserved the Kremlin. As to how they treated her people, she wisely kept silent. Americans, so fortunate for the most part, would never understand that kind of systematic oppression.

“Heike, go on and take a break. You’ve been in this chill since early this morning.” Kimball’s light blue eyes radiated sympathy.

She spoke in an engaging accent, musical and very seductive. She didn’t need the accent. Heike was a knockout. “No, no, Professor Haynes. I’m learning too much to leave.”

He patted her on the back. “You’re going to be here for a year, and Heike, if the gods smile down upon me, I think I can get you an appointment at the university so you can stay longer than that. You’re good.”

She bent her head closer to her task, too shy to accept the praise by looking him in the eye. “Thank you.”

“Go on, take a break.”

“This will sound bizarre,” she accented the bi heavily, “but I feel something.”

“I’m sure you do,” he laughed. “Chilblains.”

He stepped out of the hearth where Heike was working. The fireplace had been one of the wooden fireplaces which caught fire. Charred bits studded one layer of earth, and they were just now getting below that. Whoever cleaned up after the fire removed as much ash as they could. Two other students worked also.

Heike pawed with her hands, carefully but with remarkable intensity. “Professor.”

Kimball returned to her and quickly knelt down. He was working alongside her now. Each of them laboring with swift precision.

“Mein Gott!” Heike exclaimed.

“We got more than we bargained for, kiddo.” Kimball wiped his hand across his jaw, forgetting the mud. He called to Sylvia and Joe, his other two students working in this section. “Joe, go on up and get Oliver Zeve.”

Joe and Sylvia peered at the find.

“Joe?”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Not a word to anyone, you hear? That’s an order,” he remarked to the others as Joe ran toward the Big House.

“The last thing we want is for the paper to get hold of this before we’ve had time to prepare a statement.”

7

“Why wasn’t I told first?” Mim jammed the receiver of the telephone back on the cradle. She put it back cockeyed so the device beeped. Furious, she smashed the receiver on correctly.

Her husband, Jim Sanburne, mayor of Crozet, six feet four and close to three hundred pounds, was possessed of an easygoing nature. He needed it with Mim. “Now, darlin’, if you will reflect upon the delicate nature of Kimball Haynes’s discovery, you will realize you had to be the second call, not the first.”

Her voice lowered. “Think I was the second call?”

“Of course. You’ve been the driving force behind the Mulberry Row restorations.”

“And I can tell you I’m enduring jealous huffs from Wesley Randolph, Samson Coles, and Center Berryman too. Wait until they find out about this—actually, I’d better call them all.” She paced into the library, her soft suede slippers barely making any sound at all.

“Wesley Randolph? The only reason you and Wesley cross swords is that he wants to run the show. Just arrange a few photo opportunities for his son. Warren is running for state senate this fall.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m not the mayor of Crozet for nothing.” His broad smile revealed huge square teeth. Despite his size and girth, Jim exuded a rough-and-tumble masculine appeal. “Now, sit down here by the fire and let’s review the facts.”

Mim dropped into the inviting wing chair covered in an expensive MacLeod tartan fabric. Her navy cashmere robe piped in camel harmonized perfectly. Mim’s aesthetic sensibilities were highly developed. She was one hundred eighty degrees from Harry, who had little sense of interior design but could create a working farm environment in a heartbeat. It all came down to what was important to each of them.

Mim folded her hands. “As I understand it from Oliver, Kimball Haynes and his staff have found a skeleton in the plot he’s calling Cabin Four. They’ve worked most of the day and into the night to uncover the remains. Sheriff Shaw is there too, although I can’t see that it matters at this point.”

Jim crossed his feet on the hassock. “Do they have any idea when the person died or even what sex the body is?”

“No. Well, yes, they’re sure it’s a man, and Oliver said an odd thing—he said the man must have been rich. I was so shocked, I didn’t pursue it. We’re to keep a tight lip. Guess I’d better wait to call the others but, oh, Jim, they’ll be so put out, and I can’t lie. This could cost contributions. You know how easy it is for that crew to get their noses out of joint.”

“Loose lips sink ships.” Jim, who had been a skinny eighteen-year-old fighting in Korea, remembered one of the phrases World War II veterans used to say. He tried to forget some of the other things he’d experienced in that conflict, but he vowed never to be so cold again in his entire life. As soon as the frosts came, Jim would break out his wired socks with the batteries attached.

“Jim, he’s been dead for a hundred seventy-five to two hundred years. You’re as bad as Oliver. Who cares if the press knows? It will bring more attention to the project and possibly even more money from new contributors. And if I can present this find to the Randolphs, Coleses, and Berrymans as an historic event, perhaps all will yet be well.”

“Well, sugar, how he died might affect that.”

8

Bright yellow tape cordoned off Cabin Four. Rick Shaw puffed on a cigarette. As sheriff of Albemarle County, he’d viewed more than his share of corpses: shotgun suicides, drownings, car accident after car accident, killings by knife, pistol, poison, ax—even a piano bench. People used whatever came to hand. However, this was the oldest body he’d studied.

His assistant, Cynthia Cooper, recently promoted to deputy, scribbled in her small notebook, her ballpoint pen zipping over the blue lines. A photographer for the department snapped photos.

Rick, sensitive to the situation, arrived at six-thirty P.M., well after five P.M., when Monticello closed its doors for the night, allowing for the departure of straggling tourists. Oliver Zeve, arms folded across his chest, chatted with Heike Holtz. Kimball looked up with relief when Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber walked down Mulberry Row. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker trailed behind.

Oliver excused himself from Heike and walked over to Kimball. “What in the hell are they doing here?”

Kimball, nonplussed, stuck his hands in his back pockets. “We’re going to be here some time, people need to be fed.”

“We’re perfectly capable of calling a catering service.” Oliver snapped.

“Yes,” Kimball smoothly replied, “and they’re perfectly capable of babbling this all over town as well as picking up the phone to The Washington Post or, God forbid, The Enquirer. Harry and Miranda can keep their mouths shut. Remember Donny Ensign?”

Kimball referred to an incident four years past when Mrs. Hogendobber served as secretary for the Friends of Restoration. She happened one night to check Donny Ensign’s books. She always did George’s books and she enjoyed the task. As treasurer, Donny was entrusted with the money, obviously. Mrs. H. had a hunch, she never did say what had set her off, but she had quickly realized that Mr. Ensign was cooking the books. She immediately notified Oliver and the situation was discreetly handled. Donny resigned and he continued to pay back a portion of what he had siphoned off until the sum, $4,559.12, was cleared. In exchange, no one reported him to Rick Shaw nor was his name destroyed in the community.

“Yes.” Oliver drew out the word even as he smiled and trotted over to the two women. “Here, let me relieve you lovely ladies of this burden. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’re bringing us food. Kimball thinks of everything, doesn’t he?”

Rick felt a rub against his leg. He beheld Mrs. Murphy. “What are you doing here?”

“Offering my services.” She sat on the toe of the sheriff’s shoe.

“Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber, what a surprise.” A hint of sarcasm entered Rick’s voice.

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic, Sheriff.” Miranda chided him. “We aren’t going to interfere in your case. We’re merely offering nourishment.”

Cynthia hopped out of the site. “Bless you.” She scratched Tucker’s head and motioned for Harry to follow her. Tucker followed also. “What do you make of this?”

Harry peered down at the skeleton lying facedown in the dirt. The back of his skull was crushed. Coins lay where his pockets must have been, and a heavy, crested ring still circled the bones of the third finger on his left hand. Tatters of fabric clung to the bones, a piece of heavily embroidered waistcoat. A bit more of the outer coat remained; the now-faded color must have once been a rich teal. The brass buttons were intact, as were the buckles on his shoes, again quite ornate.

“Mrs. H., come here,” Harry called.

“I don’t want to see it.” Mrs. Hogendobber busily served sandwiches and cold chicken.

“It’s not so bad. You’ve seen far worse at the butcher shop.” Harry deviled her.

“That isn’t funny.”

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker shouldn’t have been in the site, but so much was going on, no one really noticed.

“Smell anything?” The cat asked her companion.

“Old smoke. A cold trail—this fellow’s been dead too long for scenting.” The corgi wrinkled her black nose.

Mrs. Murphy pawed a piece of the skull. “Pretty weird.”

“What?”

“Well, the guy’s had his head bashed, but someone put this big piece of skull back in place.”

“Yeah.” The dog was fascinated with the bones, but then, any bones fascinated Tucker.

“Hey, hey, you two, get out of here!” Harry commanded.