Murder At Monticello

Mrs. Hogendobber lifted her head. “You mean over this Monticello murder?”

“Not exactly. I don’t know what I mean.” Harry sighed.

Fair’s baritone filled the room. “Crozet is a town filled with secrets, generations deep.”

“Isn’t every town full of secrets? The precepts for living don’t seem to take into account true human nature.” Harry smelled the apple pie. Pewter crouched, making ready to spring onto the teacart. “Pewter, no.”

“Nobody else is going to eat it,” the cat sassed her. “Why waste good food?”

Her anger rising because Pewter not only refused to budge but wiggled her haunches again for the leap, Harry rose and chased the cat away from the cart. Pewter ran a few steps away and then sat down defiantly.

“You’re pushing it,” Mrs. Murphy warned her.

“What’s she going to do? Smack pie in my face?” Pewter wickedly crept closer to the sweet-laden cart.

“Listen, let’s eat some of this before Pewter wears me out.” Harry sliced three portions of pie, the rich apple aroma deliciously filling the room as the knife opened up the heart of the pie.

“Oh, Miranda, this is beautiful.” Harry handed out three plates. She sat down to eat, but Pewter’s creeping along toward the cart disturbed the peacefulness, which had been disturbed enough. Giving up, she cut a small slice for the two cats and a separate one for Tucker.

“You spoil those animals,” said Mrs. Hogendobber.

“They’re great testers. If they won’t eat something, you know it’s bad—not that your pastries could ever fall into that category.”

“Many times I wished I weren’t such a baker.” She patted her stomach.

They enjoyed the pie until their thoughts returned to Kimball. As they talked, Harry got up and poured coffee for everyone. She often felt better if she could move around. Harry’s mother used to say she had ants in her pants, which wasn’t true, but she thought better if she walked about.

“Super. The best, Mrs. H.,” Fair congratulated her.

“Thank you,” she replied listlessly, then a tear fell again. “I hate crying. I keep thinking that he never had the chance to be married or to have children.” She placed her cup on the coffee table. “I’m calling Mim. Surely she’s heard.”

Harry, Fair, and the animals watched as she dialed and Mim came on the line. A long conversation followed, but as Mim did most of the talking, Miranda’s audience could only guess.

“She’s right here. Let me ask her.” Mrs. Hogendobber put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Mim wants us to meet with the sheriff tomorrow. Oliver Zeve has already been questioned. Noon?”

Harry nodded in the affirmative.

Miranda continued. “That’s fine. We’ll see you at your place, then. Can we bring anything? All right. Bye.”

“Take her some of this pie,” Fair suggested.

“I think I will.” She remained by the phone. “Sheriff Shaw is doing a what-do-you-call-it, ballistics check? They’re hoping to trace the gun.”

“Fat chance.” Harry put her face in her hands.

“Maybe not.” Fair thought out loud. “What if the killer acted in haste?”

“Even if he acted in haste, I bet he’s not that stupid—or she,” Harry countered. “And to make matters worse, the rains washed out any chance of making a mold from tire tracks.”

“And washed out the scent too,” Tucker mourned.

“This is so peculiar.” Mrs. Hogendobber joined them on the davenport.

“We need to go through the papers that Kimball read. I’m sure that Rick Shaw has already thought of that, but since we’re somewhat familiar with the period and the players of that day, maybe we could help.”

“And expose yourselves to risk? I won’t have it,” Fair said flatly.

“Fair, you didn’t give me orders when we were married. Don’t start now.”

“When we were married, Mary Minor, your life was not in danger. If you don’t have the sense to see where this is leading, I do! There’s a man dead because he uprooted something. If he found it, chances are you’ll find it, especially given your disposition toward investigation.”

“Unless the killer removes the evidence.”

“If that’s possible,” Mrs. Hogendobber said to Harry. “This may be a matter of going over those records and diaries and putting two and two together. It may not be one document—then again, it may.”

“And I am telling you two nitwits”—Fair’s voice rose, making Tucker prick up her ears—“what Kimball Haynes found may be something of current interest. In his research he might have stumbled over something that’s dangerous to someone right now. It’s very hard to believe that Kimball would have been killed over a murder in 1803.”

“You’ve got a point there,” Mrs. Hogendobber agreed, but she felt uneasy, deeply uneasy.

“I’m going through those papers.” Harry was as defiant as Pewter had been. The gray cat watched in astonishment. Mrs. Murphy, privy to a few Mr.-and-Mrs. scenes, was less astonished.

“Harry, I forbid it!” He slammed his hand on the coffee table.

“Don’t do that,” Tucker barked, but she didn’t want her mother in danger either.

“Settle down, you two, just settle down.” Mrs. Hogendobber leaned back on the sofa. “We know for certain that Kimball read through Mim’s family histories, and the Coleses’. Don’t know if he got the Randolphs’ yet. Anyone else?”

“He kept a list. We’d better get that list or get Rick to let us photocopy it.” Harry, mad at Fair, was still glad he cared, although she was confused as to why that should make her so happy. Harry was slow that way.

Fair crossed his arms over his chest. “You aren’t listening to a word I’m saying. Let the police handle it.”

“I am listening, but I liked Kimball. We were also helping him piece together the facts on this thing. If I can help catch whoever did him in, I will.”

“I liked him too, but not enough to die for him, and that won’t bring him back.” Fair spoke the truth.

“You can’t stop me.” Harry’s chin jutted out.

“No, but I can go along and help.”

Mrs. Hogendobber clapped. “Bully for you!”

“What do you think, Tucker?” Mrs. Murphy picked up her tail with a front paw.

“He’s still in love with her.”

“That’s obvious.” Pewter lay down, far more interested in the pastries than human emotions.

“Yeah, but will he win her back?” the tiger asked.

39

“No.” Sheriff Shaw shook his balding head for emphasis.

“Rick, they have a sound argument.” Mim defended Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber. “You and your staff aren’t familiar with the descendants of Thomas Jefferson or the personal histories of certain of his slaves. They are.”

“The department will hire an expert.”

“The expert is dead.” Mim’s lips pressed tightly together.

“I’ll hire Oliver Zeve,” the frustrated sheriff stated.

“Oh, and how long do you think that will last? Furthermore, he wasn’t exactly interested in pursuing this case, nor was he as interested in the genealogies as Kimball. Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber were working with Kimball already.”

“Fair Haristeen called me this morning and said you both ought to be locked up. I’ll make that three.” He cast his eyes at Mim, who didn’t budge. “He also said that whatever Kimball discovered must be threatening to somebody right now. And you all are obsessed with this Monticello thing.”

“And you aren’t?” Harry fired back.

“Well—well—” Rick Shaw stuck his hands in his Sam Browne belt. “Focused but not obsessed. Anyway, this is my job and I am mindful of the danger to you ladies.”

“I’ll work with them,” Cynthia Cooper gleefully volunteered.

“You women sure stick together.” He slapped his hat against his thigh.

“And men don’t?” Mim laughed.

“Yeah, I bet Fair chewed your ears off because he thinks we’re in danger. He’s being a worrywart.”

“He’s being sensible and responsible.” Rick fought the urge to enjoy another piece of Mrs. Hogendobber’s pie. The urge won out. “Miranda, you ought to go into business.”

“Why, thank you.”

“Does anyone know if there will be a service for Kimball?” Harry inquired.

“His parents removed the body to Hartford, Connecticut, where they live. They’ll bury him there. But that reminds me, Mrs. Sanburne, Oliver wants you to help him plan a memorial service for Kimball here. I doubt anyone will journey to Hartford, and he said he’d like some kind of remembrance.”

“Of course. I’m sure Reverend Jones will assist in this matter also.”

“Well?” Harry had her mind on business.

“Well, what?”

“Sheriff. Please.” She sounded like a clever, pleading child at that moment.

Rick quietly looked at Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber, then at Cynthia, who was grinning in high hopes. “Women.” They’d won. “The Coleses have agreed to allow us access to their libraries. The Berrymans, Foglemans, and Venables too, and I’ve got a list here of names that Kimball drew up. Mim, you’re first on the list.”

“When would you like to start?”

“How about after work today? Oh, and Mim, I need to bring Mrs. Murphy and Tucker along, otherwise I’d have to run them home. Churchill won’t mind, will he?”

Churchill was Mim’s superb English setter, a champion many times over. “No.”

“Pewter too.” Miranda reminded Harry of her visitor.

“Ellie Wood still hasn’t recovered from the pork roast incident. Which reminds me, I think she is distantly related to one of the Eppes of Poplar Forest. Francis, Polly’s son.”

Polly was the family nickname for Maria, Thomas Jefferson’s youngest daughter, who died April 17, 1804, an event which caused her father dreadful grief. Fortunately her son Francis, born in 1801, survived until 1881, but he, along with Jefferson’s other grandchildren, bore the consequences of the president’s posthumous financial disaster.

“We’ll leave not a stone unturned,” Mrs. Hogendobber vowed.

40

That evening, as Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, and Deputy Cooper worked in Mim’s breathtaking cherrywood library, Fair worked out in the stables. Book work soured him. He’d do it diligently if he had to, but he wondered how he’d gotten through Auburn Veterinary College with high honors. Maybe it was easier to read then, but he sure hated it now.

He was floating the teeth of Mim’s six Thoroughbreds, filing down the sharp edges. Because a horse’s upper jaw is slightly wider than the lower one, its teeth wear unevenly, requiring regular maintenance, or at least inspection. If the teeth are allowed to become sharp and jagged, they can cause discomfort to the animal when it has a bit in its mouth, sometimes making it more difficult to ride, and often this situation can cause digestive or nutrition problems because of the animal’s restricted ability to chew and break down its food.

Mim’s stable manager held the horses as Mim sat in a camp chair and chatted. “You made a believer out of me, Fair. I don’t know how I lived without Strongid C. The horses eat less and get more nutrition from their food.” Strongid C was a new wormer that came in pellet form and was added to a horse’s daily ration. This saved the owner those monthly paste-worming tasks that more often than not proved disagreeable to both parties.

“Good. Took me a while to convince some of my clients, but I’m getting good results with it.”

“Horse people are remarkably resistant to change. I don’t know why, but we are.” She pulled a pretty leather crop out of an umbrella stand. “How are the Wheelers doing?”

“Winning at the hunter shows and the Saddlebred shows, as always. You ought to get over there to Cismont Manor, Mim, and see the latest crop. Good. Really good.” He finished with her bright bay. “Now, I happen to think you’ve got one of the best fox hunters in the country.”

She beamed. “I do too. So much for modesty. Warren’s cornered the market on racing Thoroughbreds.”

“What market?” Fair shook his head. The depression, laughingly called a recession, coupled with changes in the tax laws, was in the process of devastating the Thoroughbred business, along with many other aspects of the equine industry. As most congressmen were no longer landowners, they hadn’t a clue as to what they had done to livestock breeders and farmers with their stupid “reforms.”

Mim spun the whip handle around in her hands. “I tell Jim he ought to run for Congress. At least then there’d be one logical voice in the bedlam. Won’t do it. Won’t even hear of it. Says he’d rather bleed from the throat. Fair, have you seen a reasonably priced fox hunter in your travels?”

“Mim, what’s reasonable to you may not be reasonable to me.”

“Quite so.” She appreciated that insight. “I’ll come directly to the point. Gin Fizz and Tomahawk are long in the tooth and you know Harry doesn’t have two nickels to rub together—now.”

He sighed. “I know. She absolutely refused alimony. My lawyer said I was crazy to want to pay. I do her vet work for free and it’s a struggle to get her to go along with that.”

“The Hepworths as well as the Minors have always been prickly proud about money. I don’t know who was worse, Harry’s mother or her father.”

“Mim, I’m—touched that you’d be thinking of Harry.”

“Touched, or amazed?”

He smiled. “Both. You’ve changed.”

“For the better?”

He held up his hands for mercy. “Now, that’s a loaded question. You seem happier and you seem to want to be friendlier. How’s that sound?”

“I wearied of being a bitch. But what’s funny, or not so funny, about Crozet is that once people get an idea about you in their heads, they’re loath to surrender it. Not that I won’t step on toes, I’ll always do that, but I figured out, thanks to a little scare in my life, that life is indeed short. My being so superior made me feel in charge, I guess, but I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t making my husband happy, and the truth is, my daughter detests me underneath all her politeness. I wasn’t a good mother.”

“Good horsewoman though.”

“Thank you. What is there about a stable that pulls the truth out of us?”

“It’s real. Society isn’t real.” He studied Mim, her perfectly coiffed hair, her long fingernails, her beautiful clothes perfect even in the stable. The human animal could grow at any time in its life that it chooses to grow. On the outside she looked the same, but on the inside she was transforming. He felt the same way about himself. “You know, there’s a solid 16.1½-hand Percheron cross that Evelyn Kerr has. The mare is green and only six, but Harry can bring her along. Good bone, Mim. Good hooves too. Of course, it’s got a biggish, draft-type head, but not roman-nosed, and no feathers on the fetlocks. Smooth gaits.”

“Why is Evelyn selling the horse?”

“She’s got Handyman, and when she retired she thought she’d have more time, so she bought this young horse. But Evelyn’s like Larry Johnson. She’s working harder in retirement than before.”

“Why don’t you talk to her? Sound her out for me? I’d like to buy the mare if she suits and then let Harry pay me off over time.”

“Uh—let me buy the mare. In fact, I wish I’d thought of this myself.”

“We can share the expense. Who’s to know?” Mim swung her legs under the chair.

41

The night turned unseasonably cool. The Reverend Jones built a fire in his study, his favorite room. The dark green leather chairs bore testimony to years of use; knitted afghans were tossed over the arms to hide the wear. Herb Jones usually wrapped one around his legs as he sat reading a book accompanied by Lucy Fur, the young Maine coon cat he’d brought home to enliven Elocution, or Ella, his older first cat.

Tonight Ansley and Warren Randolph and Mim Sanburne joined him. They were finishing up planning Kimball’s memorial service.

“Miranda’s taking care of the music.” Mim checked that off her list. “Little Marilyn’s hired the caterer. You’ve got the flowers under control.”

“Right.” Ansley nodded.

“And I’m getting a program printed up.” Warren scratched his chin. “What do you call it? It’s not really a program.”

“In Memoriam,” Ansley volunteered. “Actually, whatever you call it, you’ve done a beautiful job. I had no idea you knew so much about Kimball.”

“Didn’t. Asked Oliver Zeve for Kimball’s résumé.”

Mim, without looking up from her list, continued checking off jobs. “Parking.”

“Monticello, or should I say Oliver, is taking care of that?”

“Well, that’s it, then.” Mim put down her pencil. She could have afforded any kind of expensive pencil, but she preferred a wooden one, an Eagle Mirado Number 1. She carried a dozen in a cardboard container, the sale carton, wherever she journeyed. Carried a pencil trimmer too.

The little group stared into the fire.

Herb roused himself from its hypnotic powers. “Can I fetch anyone another drink? Coffee?”

“No thanks,” everyone replied.

“Herb, you know people’s secrets. You and Larry Johnson.” Ansley folded her hands together. “Do you have any idea, any hunch, no matter how wild?”

Herb glanced up at the ceiling, then back at the group. “No. I’ve gone over the facts, or what we know as the facts, in my mind so many times I make myself dizzy. Nothing jumps out at me. But even if Kimball or the sheriff uncover the secret of the corpse at Monticello, I don’t know if that will have anything to do with Kimball’s murder. It’s tempting to connect the two, but I can’t find any link.”

Mim stood up. “Well, I’d better be going. We’ve pulled a lot together on very short notice. I thank you all.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry about the circumstances, much as I like working with everyone.”

Warren and Ansley left about ten minutes later. Driving the dark, winding roads kept Warren alert.

“Honey . . .” Ansley watched for deer along the sides of the road—the light would bounce off their eyes. “Did you tell anyone that Kimball read the Randolph papers?”

“No, did you?”

“Of course not—make you look like a suspect.”

“Why me?”

“Because women rarely kill.” She squinted into the inky night. “Slow down.”

“Do you think I killed Kimball?”

“Well, I know you sent that letter with the cut-out message to Mim.”

He decelerated for a nasty curve. “What makes you think that, Ansley?”

“Saw The New Yorker in the trash in the library. I hadn’t read it yet, so I plucked it out and discovered where your scissors had done their work.”

He glowered the rest of the way home, which was only two miles. As they pulled into the garage he shut off the motor, reached over, and grabbed her wrist. “You’re not as smart as you think you are. Leave it alone.”

“I’d like to know if I’m living with a killer.” She baited him. “What if I get in your way?”

He raised his voice. “Goddammit, I played a joke on Marilyn Sanburne. It wasn’t the most mature thing to do, but it was fun considering how she’s cracked the whip over my head and everyone else’s since year one. Just keep your mouth shut.”

“I will.” Her lips clamped tight, making them thinner than they already were.

Without letting go of her wrist he asked, “Did you read the papers? The blue diary?”

“Yes.”

He released her wrist. “Ansley, every old Virginia family has its fair share of horse thieves, mental cases, and just plain bad eggs. What’s the difference if they were crooked or crazy in 1776 or today? One doesn’t air one’s dirty laundry in public.”

“Agreed.” She opened the door to get out, and he did the same on the driver’s side.

“Ansley.”

“What?” She turned from her path to the door.

“Did you really think, for one minute, that I killed Kimball Haynes?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.” Wearily she reached the door, opened it, and without checking behind her, let it slam, practically crunching Warren’s nose in the process.

42

Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, and Deputy Cooper exhausted themselves reading. Mim’s connection to Thomas Jefferson was through the Wayles/Coolidge line. Ellen Wayles Randolph, his granddaughter, married Joseph Coolidge, Jr., on May 27, 1825. They had six children, and Mim’s mother was related to a cousin of one of those offspring.

Slender though it was, it was a connection to the Sage of Monticello. Ellen maintained a lively correspondence with her husband’s family. Ellen, the spark plug of Maria’s—or Polly’s—children, inherited her grandfather’s way with words just as her older brother, called Jeff, inherited his great-grandfather’s, Peter Jefferson’s, enormous frame and incredible strength.

One of the letters casually mentioned that Ellen’s younger brother, James Madison Randolph, had fallen violently in love with a great beauty and seemed intent upon a hasty marriage.

Harry read and reread the letter, instantly conceiving an affection for the effervescent author. “Miranda, I don’t remember James Madison Randolph marrying.”

“I’m not sure. Died young though. Just twenty-eight, I think.”

“These people had such big families.” Deputy Cooper wailed as the task had begun to overwhelm her. “Thomas Jefferson’s mother and father had ten children. Seven made it to adulthood.”

Miranda pushed back her half-spectacles. When they slid down her nose again she took them off and laid them on the diary before her. “Jane, his favorite sister, died at twenty-five. Elizabeth, the one with the disordered mind, also died without marrying. The remainder of Thomas’s brothers and sisters bequeathed to Virginia and points beyond quite a lot of nieces and nephews for Mr. Jefferson. And he was devoted to them. He really raised his sister Martha’s children, Peter and Sam Carr. Dabney Carr, who married Martha, was his best friend, as you know.”

“Another Martha?” Cynthia groaned. “His wife, sister, and daughter were all named Martha?”

“Well, Dabney died young, before thirty, and Thomas saw to the upbringing of the boys,” Miranda went on, absorbed. “I am convinced it was Peter who sired four children on Sally Hemings. A stir was caused when Mr. Jefferson freed, or manumitted, one of Sally’s daughters, Harriet, quite the smashing beauty. That was in 1822. You can understand why the Jefferson family closed ranks.”

Officer Cooper rubbed her temples. “Genealogies drive me bats.”

“Our answer rests somewhere with Jefferson’s sisters and brother Randolph, or with one of his grandchildren,” Harry posited. “Do you believe Randolph was simple-minded? Maybe not as bad as Elizabeth.”

“Well, now, she wasn’t simple-minded. Her mind would wander and then she’d physically ramble about aimlessly. She wandered off in February and probably died of the cold. Poor thing. No, Randolph probably wasn’t terribly bright, but he seems to have enjoyed his faculties. Lived in Buckingham County and liked to play the fiddle. That’s about all I know.”

“Miranda, how would you like to be Thomas Jefferson’s younger brother?” Harry laughed.

“Probably not much. Not much. I think we’re done in. Samson’s tomorrow night?”

43

Pewter grumbled incessantly as she walked with Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker to work. The fat cat’s idea of exercise was walking from Market’s back door to the back door of the post office.

“Are we there yet?”

“Will you shut up!” Mrs. Murphy advised.

“Hey, look,” Tucker told everyone as she caught sight of Paddy running top-speed toward them. His ears were flat back, his tail was straight out, and his paws barely touched the ground. He was scorching toward them from town.

“Murph,” Paddy called, “follow me!”

“You’re not going to, are you?” Pewter swept her whiskers forward in anticipation of trouble.

“What’s wrong?” Mrs. Murphy called out.

“I’ve found something—something important.” He skidded to a stop at Harry’s feet.

Harry reached down to scratch Paddy’s ears. Not wanting to be rude, he rubbed against her leg. “Come on, Murph. You too, Tucker.”

“Will you tell me what this is all about?” the little dog prudently asked.

“Well spoken.” Pewter sniffed.

“Larry Johnson and Hayden McIntire’s office.” Paddy caught his breath. “I’ve found something.”

“What were you doing over there?” Tucker needed to be convinced it really was important.

“Passing by. Look, I’ll explain on the way. We need to get there before the workmen do.”

“Let’s go.” Mrs. Murphy hiked up her tail and dug into the turf.

“Hey—hey,” Tucker called, then added after a second’s reflection, “Wait for me!”

Pewter, furious, sat down and bawled. “I will not run. I will not take another step. My paws are sore and I hate everybody. You can’t leave me here!”

Perplexed at the animals’ wild dash toward downtown Crozet, Harry called after them once but then remembered that most people were just waking up. She cursed under her breath. Harry wasn’t surprised, though, by Pewter’s staunch resistance to walk another step, having been quickly deserted by her fitter friends. She knelt down and scooped up the rotund kitty. “I’ll carry you, you lazy sod.”

“You’re the only person I like in this whole wide world,” Pewter cooed. “Mrs. Murphy is a selfish shit. Really. You should spend more time with me. She’s running off with her no-account ex-husband, and that silly dog is going along like a fifth wheel.” The cat laughed. “Why, I wouldn’t even give that two-timing tom the time of day.”

“Pewter, you have a lot on your mind.” Harry marveled that the smallish cat could weigh so much.

As the three animals raced across the neat square town plots, Paddy filled them in.

“Larry and Hayden McIntire are expanding the office wing of the house. I like to go hunting there. Lots of shrews.”

“You’ve got to catch them just right because they can really bite,” Mrs. Murphy interrupted.

“It’s easy to get in and out of the addition,” he continued.

The tidy house appeared up ahead, with its curved brick entranceway splitting to the front door and the office door. The sign, DR. LAWRENCE JOHNSON DR. HAYDEN MCINTIRE, swung, creaking, in the slight breeze. “No workmen yet,” Paddy triumphantly meowed. He ducked under the heavy plastic covering on the outside wall and leapt into the widened window placement. The window had not yet been installed. The newest addition utilized the fireplace as its center point of construction. A balancing, new fireplace was built on the other end of the new room. It matched the old one.

“Hey! What about me?”

“We’ll open the door, Tucker.” Mrs. Murphy gracefully sailed through the window after Paddy and landed on a sawdust-covered floor. She hurried to the door of the addition, which as yet had no lock, although the fancy brass Baldwin apparatus, still boxed, rested on the floor next to it. Mrs. Murphy pushed against the two-by-four propped up against the door. It clattered to the floor and the door easily swung open. The corgi hurried inside.

“Where are you?” Mrs. Murphy couldn’t see Paddy.

“In here,” came the muffled reply.

“He’s crazier than hell.” Tucker reacted to the sound emanating from the large stone fireplace.

“Crazy or not, I’m going in.” Mrs. Murphy trotted to the cavernous opening, the firebrick a cascade of silky and satiny blacks and browns from decades of use. The house was originally constructed in 1824; the addition had been built in 1852.

Tucker stood in the hearth. “The last time we stood in a fireplace there was a body in it.”

“Up here,” Paddy called, his deep voice ricocheting off the flue.

Mrs. Murphy’s pupils enlarged, and she saw a narrow opening to the left of the large flue. In the process of remodeling, a few loose bricks had become dislodged—just enough room for an athletic cat to squeeze through. “Here I come.” She sprang off her powerful haunches but miscalculated the depth of the landing. “Damn.” The tiger hung on to the opening, her rear end dangling over the side. She scratched with her hind claws and clambered up the rest of the way.

“Tricky.” Paddy laughed.

“You could have warned me,” she complained.

“And miss the fun?”

“What’s so important up here?” she challenged him, then, as her eyes became accustomed to the diminished light, she saw he was sitting on it. A heavy waxed oilskin much like the covering of an expensive foul-weather coat, like a Barbour or Dri-as-a-Bone, covered what appeared to be books or boxes. “Can we open this up?”

“Tried. Needs human hands,” Paddy casually remarked although he was ecstatic that his find had produced the desired thrill in Mrs. Murphy.

“What’s going on up there?” Tucker yelped.

Mrs. Murphy stuck her head out of the opening. “Some kind of stash, Tucker. Might be books or boxes of jewelry. We can’t open it up.”

“Think the humans will find it?”

“Maybe yes and maybe no.” Paddy’s fine features now came alongside Mrs. Murphy’s.

“If workmen repoint the fireplace, which they’re sure to do, it’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll look inside here or just pop bricks in and mortar them up.” Mrs. Murphy thought out loud. “This is too good a find to be lost again.”

“Maybe it’s treasure.” Tucker grinned. “Claudius Crozet’s lost treasure!”

“That’s in the tunnel; one of the tunnels,” Paddy said, knowing that Crozet had cut four tunnels through the Blue Ridge Mountains in what was one of the engineering feats of the nineteenth century—or any century. He accomplished his feat without the help of dynamite, which hadn’t yet been invented.

“How long do you think this has been in here?” Paddy asked.

Mrs. Murphy turned to pat the oilskin. “Well, if someone hid this, say, in the last ten or twenty years, they’d probably have used heavy plastic. Oilskin is expensive and hard to come by. Mom wanted one of those Australian raincoats to ride in and the thing was priced about $225, I think.”

“Too bad humans don’t have fur. Think of the money they’d save,” Paddy said.

“Yeah, and they’d get over worrying about what color they were because with fur you can be all colors. Look at me,” Tucker remarked. “Or Mrs. Murphy. Can you imagine a striped human?”

“It would greatly improve their appearance,” Paddy purred.

Mrs. Murphy, mind spinning as the fur discussion flew on, said, “We’ve got to get Larry over here.”

“Fat chance.” Paddy harbored little hope for human intelligence.

“You stay here with your head sticking out of the hole. Tucker and I will get him over here. If we can’t budge him, then we’ll be back, but don’t you leave. Okay?”

“You were always good at giving orders.” He smiled devilishly.

Mrs. Murphy landed in the hearth and took off for the door, Tucker close behind. They crossed the lawn, stopping under the kitchen window, where a light glowed. Larry was fixing his cup of morning coffee.

“You bark, I’ll jump up on the windowsill.”

“Not much of a windowsill,” Tucker observed.

“I can bank off it, if nothing else.” And Mrs. Murphy did just that as Tucker yapped furiously. The sight of this striped animal, four feet planted on a windowpane and then pushing off, jolted Larry wide awake. The second thud from Mrs. Murphy positively sent him into orbit. He opened his back door and, seeing the culprits, thought they wanted to join him.

“Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, come on in.”

“You come out,” Tucker barked.

“I’ll run in and right out.” Mrs. Murphy flew past Larry, brushing his legs in the process, turned on a dime, and ran back out through his legs.

“What’s the matter with you two?” The old man enjoyed the spectacle but was perplexed.

Again Mrs. Murphy raced in and raced out as Tucker ran forward, barked, and then ran a few steps away. “Come on, Doc. We need you!”

Larry, an intelligent man as humans go, deduced that the two animals, whom he knew and valued, were highly agitated. He grabbed his old jacket, slapped his porkpie hat on his head, and followed them, fearing that some harm had come to another animal or even a person. He’d heard about animals leading people to the site of an injured loved one, and a flash of fear ran through him. What if Harry’d been hurt on her way in to work?

He followed them into the addition. He stopped after walking through the door as Mrs. Murphy and Tucker dashed to the fireplace.

“Howl, Paddy. He’ll think you’re trapped or something.”

Paddy sang at his loudest, “‘Roll me over in the clover/Roll me over/Lay me down and do it again.’ ”

Tucker giggled as Mrs. Murphy leapt up to join Paddy, although she refrained from singing the song. Larry walked into the fireplace and beheld Paddy, his head thrown back and warbling for all he was worth.

“Got stuck up in there?” Larry looked around for a ladder. Not finding one, he did spy a large spackling compound bucket. He lifted it by the handle, discovering how heavy it was. He lugged it over to the hearth, positioned it under the opening, where both cats now meowed piteously, and carefully stood on it. He could just see inside.

He reached for Paddy, who shrank back. “Now, now, Paddy, I won’t hurt you.”

“I know that, you silly twit. Look.”

“His eyes aren’t good in the dark, plus he’s old. They’re worse than most,” Mrs. Murphy told her ex. “Scratch on the oilskin.”

Paddy furiously scratched away, his claws making tiny popping noises as he pulled at the sturdy cloth.

“Squint, Larry, and look real hard,” Mrs. Murphy instructed.

As if he understood, Larry shielded his eyes and peered inside. “What the Sam Hill?”

“Reach in.” Mrs. Murphy encouraged him by back-stepping toward the treasure.

Larry braced against the fireplace with his left hand, now besmirched with soot, and reached in with his right. Mrs. Murphy licked his fingers for good measure. He touched the oilskin. Paddy jumped off and came to the opening. Mrs. Murphy tried to nudge the package, but it was too heavy. Larry tugged and pulled, succeeding in inching the weighty burden forward until it wedged into the opening. Forgetting the cats for a moment, he tried to pull out the oilskin-covered bundle, but it wouldn’t fit. He poked at the bricks around the hole and they gave a bit. Cautiously he removed one, then two and three. These bricks had been left that way on purpose. The two kitty heads popped out of the new opening. Larry squeezed the package through and almost fell off the bucket because it was so heavy. He tottered and jumped off backward.

“Not bad for an old man,” Tucker commented.

“Let’s see what he’s got.” Mrs. Murphy sailed down. Paddy came after her.

Larry, on his knees, worked at the knot on the back side of the package. The three animals sat silent, watching with intent interest. Finally, victorious, Larry opened the oilskin covering. Inside lay three huge, heavy volumes, leather-bound. With a trembling hand Larry opened the first volume.

The bold, black cursive writing hit Larry like a medicine ball to the chest. He recognized the handwriting and in that instant the man he had admired and worked with came alive again. He was reminded of the fragrance of Jim’s pipe tobacco, his habit of running his thumbs up and down under his braces, and his fervent belief that if he could cure human baldness, he’d be the richest doctor on the face of the earth. Larry whispered aloud, “‘The Secret Diaries of a Country Doctor, Volume I, 1912, by James C. Craig, M.D., Crozet, Virginia.’ ”

Seeing his distress, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker sat next to him, pressing their small bodies against his own. There are moments in every human life when the harpoon of fate rips into the mind and a person has the opportunity to perceive the world afresh through his own pain. This was such a moment for Larry, and through his tears he saw the two furry heads and reached out to pet them, wondering just how many times in this life we are surrounded by love and understanding and are too self-centered, too human-centered to know what the gods have given us.

44

A warm southerly breeze filled breasts with the hope that spring had truly arrived. Snowstorms could hit central Virginia in April, and once a snowstorm had blanketed the fields in May, but that was rare. The last frost generally disappeared mid-April, although days warmed before that. Then the wisteria would bloom, drenching the sides of buildings, barns, and pergolas with lavender and white. This was Mrs. Murphy’s favorite time of the year.

She basked in the sun by the back door of the post office along with Pewter and Tucker. She was also basking in the delicious satisfaction of delivering to Pewter the news about the books in the hiding place. Pewter was livid, but one good thing was that her brief absence had allowed Market to overcome his temper and to make peace with Ellie Wood Baxter. The gray cat was now back in his good graces, but if she had to hear the words “pork roast” one more time, she would scratch and bite.

The alleyway behind the buildings filled up with cars since the parking spaces in the front were taken. On one of the first really balmy days of spring, people always seem motivated to buy bulbs, bouquets, and sweaters in pastel colors.

Driving down the east end of the alleyway was Samson Coles. Turning in on the west end was Warren Randolph. They parked next to each other behind Market Shiflett’s store.

Tucker lifted her head, then dropped it back on her paws. Mrs. Murphy watched through eyes that were slits. Pewter could not have cared less.

“How are you doing with the Diamonds?” Warren asked as he shut his car door.

“Hanging between Midale and Fox Haven.”

Warren whistled, “Some kind of commission, buddy.”

“How you been doing?”

Warren shrugged. “Okay. It’s hard sometimes. And Ansley—I asked her for some peace and quiet, and what does she do but let Kimball Haynes go through the family papers. ’Course he was a nice guy, but that’s not the point.”

“I didn’t like him,” Samson said. “Lucinda pulled the same stunt on me that Ansley pulled on you. He should have come to me, not my wife. Smarmy—not that I wished him dead.”

“Somebody did.”

“Made your mind up about the campaign yet?” Samson abruptly changed the subject.

“I’m still debating, although I’m feeling stronger. I just might do it.”

Samson slapped him on the back. “Don’t let the press get hold of Poppa’s will. Well, you let me know. I’ll be your ardent supporter, your campaign manager, you name it.”

“Sure. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.” Warren headed for the post office as Samson entered Market’s by the back door. With remarkable self-control Warren acted as though not a thing was wrong, but he knew in that instant that Ansley had betrayed his trust and was betraying him in other respects too.

It never crossed Samson’s mind that he had spilled the beans, but then, he was already spending the commission money from the Diamond deal in his mind before he’d even closed the sale. Then again, perhaps the trysting and hiding were wearing thin. Maybe subconsciously he wanted Warren to know. Then they could get the pretense over with and Ansley would be his.

45

Since Kimball had kept most of his private papers in his study room on the second floor of Monticello, the sheriff insisted that nothing be disturbed. But Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber knew the material and had been there recently with Kimball, so he allowed them, along with Deputy Cooper, to make certain nothing had been moved or removed.

Oliver Zeve, agitated, complained to Sheriff Shaw that lovely though the three ladies might be, they were not scholars and really had no place being there.

Shaw, patience ebbing, told Oliver to be grateful that Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber knew Kimball’s papers and could decipher his odd shorthand. With a curt inclination of the head Oliver indicated that he was trumped, although he asked that Mrs. Murphy and Tucker stay home. He got his way on that one.

Shaw also had to pacify Fair, who wanted to accompany “the girls,” as he called them. The sheriff figured that would put Oliver over the edge, and since Cynthia Cooper attended them, they were safe, he assured Fair.

Oliver’s frazzled state could be explained by the fact that for the last two days he had endured network television interviews, local television interviews, and encampment by members of the press. He was not a happy man. In his discomfort he almost lost sight of the death of a valued colleague.

“Nothing appears to have been disturbed.” Mrs. Hogendobber swept her eyes over the room.

Standing over his yellow legal pad, Harry noticed some new notes jotted in Kimball’s tight scribble. She picked up the pad. “He wrote down a quote from Martha Randolph to her fourth child, Ellen Wayles Coolidge.” Harry mused. “It’s curious that Martha and her husband named their fourth child Ellen Wayles even though their third child was also Ellen Wayles—she died at eleven months. You’d think it’d be bad luck.”

Mrs. Hogendobber interjected, “Wasn’t. Ellen Coolidge lived a good life. Now, poor Anne Cary, that child suffered.”

“You talk as though you know these people.” Cynthia smiled.

“In a way we do. All the while we worked with Kimball, he filled us in, saving us years of reading, literally. Lacking telephones, people wrote to one another religiously when they were apart. Kind of wish we did that today. They left behind invaluable records, observations, opinions in their letters. They also cherished accurate judgments of one another—I think they knew one another better than we know each other today.”

“The answer to that is simple, Harry.” Mrs. H. peeked over her shoulder to examine the legal pad. “They missed the deforming experience of psychology.”

“Why don’t you read what he copied down?” Cooper whipped out her notebook and pencil.

“This is what Martha Randolph said: ‘The discomfort of slavery I have borne all my life, but its sorrows in all their bitterness I never before perceived.’ He wrote below that this was a letter dated August 2, 1825, from the Coolidge papers at U.V.A.”

“Who is Coolidge?” Cooper wrote on her pad.

“Sorry, Ellen Wayles married a Coolidge—”

Cooper interrupted. “That’s right, you told me that. I’ll get the names straight eventually. Does Kimball make any notation about why that was significant?”

“Here he wrote, ‘After sale of Colonel Randolph’s slaves to pay debts. Sale included one Susan, who was Virginia’s maid,’ ” Harry informed Cynthia. “Virginia was the sixth child of Thomas Mann Randolph and Martha Jefferson Randolph, the one we call Patsy because that’s what she was called within the family.”

“Can you give me an abbreviated history course here? Why did the colonel sell slaves, obviously against other family members’ wishes?”

“We forgot to tell you that Colonel Randolph was Patsy’s husband.”

“Oh.” She wrote that down. “Didn’t Patsy have any say in the matter?”

“Coop, until a few decades ago, as in our lifetime, women were still chattel in the state of Virginia.” Harry jammed her right hand in her pocket. “Thomas Mann Randolph could do as he damn well pleased. He started out with advantages in this life but proved a poor businessman. He became so estranged from his family toward the end that he would leave Monticello at dawn and return only at night.”

“He was the victim of his own generosity.” Mrs. Hogendobber put in a good word for the man. “Always standing notes for friends and then, pfft.” She flipped her hand upside down like a fish that bellied up. “Wound up in legal proceedings against his own son, Jeff, who had become the anchor of the family and upon whom even his grandfather relied.”

“Know the old horse expression ‘He broke bad’?” Harry asked Cooper. “That was Thomas Mann Randolph.”

“He wasn’t the only one now. Look what happened to Jefferson’s two nephews Lilburne and Isham Lewis.” Mrs. Hogendobber adored the news, or gossip, no matter the vintage. “They killed a slave named George on December 15, 1811. Fortunately their mother, Lucy, Thomas Jefferson’s sister, had already passed away, on May 26, 1810, or she would have perished of the shame. Anyway, they killed this unfortunate dependent and Lilburne was indicted on March 18, 1812. He killed himself on April tenth and his brother Isham ran away. Oh, it was awful.”

“Did that happen here?” Cooper’s pencil flew across the page.

“Frontier. Kentucky.” Mrs. Hogendobber took the tablet from Harry. “May I?” She read. “Here’s another quote from Patsy, still about the slave sale. ‘Nothing can prosper under such a system of injustice.’ Don’t you wonder what the history of this nation would be like if the women had been included in the government from the beginning?—Women like Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison and Martha Jefferson Randolph.”

“We got the vote in 1920 and we still aren’t fifty percent of the government,” Harry bitterly said. “Actually, our government is such a tangled mess of contradictions, maybe a person is smart to stay out of it.”

“Oh, Harry, it was a mess when Jefferson waded in too. Politics is like a fight between banty roosters,” Mrs. Hogendobber noted.

“Could you two summarize Jefferson’s attitude about slavery? His daughter surely seems to have hated it.” Cooper started to chew on her eraser, caught herself, and stopped.

“The best place to start is to read his Notes on Virginia. Now, that was first printed in 1785 in Paris, but he started writing before that.”

“Mrs. Hogendobber, with all due respect, I haven’t the time to read that stuff. I’ve got a killer to find with a secret to hide and we’re still working on the stiff from 1803, excuse me, the remains.”

“The corpse of love,” Harry blurted out.

“That’s how we think of him,” Miranda added.

“You mean because he was Medley’s lover, or you think he was?” Cooper questioned her.

“Yes, but if she loved him, she had stopped.”

“Because she loved someone else?” Cynthia, accustomed to grilling, fell into it naturally.

“It was some form of love. It may not have been romantic.”

Cynthia sighed. Another dead end for now. “Okay. Someone tell me about Jefferson and slavery. Mrs. Hogendobber, you have a head for dates and stuff.”

“Bookkeeping gives one a head for figures. All right, Thomas Jefferson was born April 13, 1743, new style calendar. Remember, everyone but the Russians moved up to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian. By the old style he was born on April 2. Must have been fun for all those people all over Europe and the New World to get two birthdays, so to speak. Well, Cynthia, he was born into a world of slavery. If you read history at all, you realize that every great civilization undergoes a protracted period of slavery. It’s the only way the work can get done and capital can be accumulated. Imagine if the pharaohs had had to pay labor for the construction of the pyramids.”

“I never thought of it that way.” Cynthia raised her eyebrows.

“Slaves have typically been those who were conquered in battle. In the case of the Romans, many of their slaves were Greeks, most of whom were far better educated than their captors, and the Romans expected their Greek slaves to tutor them. And the Greeks themselves often had Greek slaves, those captured from battles with other poleis, or city-states. Well, our slaves were no different in that they were the losers in war, but the twist for America came in this fashion: The slaves that came to America were the losers in tribal wars in Africa and were sold to the Portuguese by the leaders of the victorious tribes. See, by that time the world had shrunk, so to speak. Lower Africa had contact with Europe, and the products of Europe enticed people everywhere. After a while other Europeans elbowed in on the trade and sailed to South America, the Caribbean, and North America with their human cargo. They even began to bag some trophies themselves—you know, if the wars slowed down. Demand for labor was heavy in the New World.”

“Mrs. Hogendobber, what does this have to do with Thomas Jefferson?”

“Two things. He grew up in a society where most people considered slavery normal. And two—and this still plagues us today—the conquered, the slaves, were not Europeans, they were Africans. They couldn’t pass. You see?”

Cynthia bit her pencil eraser again. “I’m beginning to get the picture.”

“Even if a slave bought his or her way to freedom or was granted freedom, or even if the African started as a free person, he or she never looked like a Caucasian. Unlike the Romans and the Greeks, whose slaves were other European tribes or usually other indigenous Caucasian peoples, a stigma attached to slavery in America because it was automatically attached to the color of the skin—with terrible consequences.”

Harry jumped in. “But he believed in liberty. He thought slavery cruel, yet he couldn’t live without his own slaves. Oh, sure, he treated them handsomely and they were loyal to him because he looked after them so well compared to many other slave owners of the period. So he was trapped. He couldn’t imagine scaling down. Virginians then and today still conceive of themselves as English lords and ladies. That translates into a high, high standard of living.”

“One that bankrupted him.” Mrs. Hogendobber nodded her head in sadness. “And saddled his heirs.”

“Yeah, but what was most interesting about Jefferson, to me anyway, was his insight into what slavery does to people. He said it destroyed the industry of the masters while degrading the victim. It sapped the foundation of liberty. He absolutely believed that freedom was a gift from God and the right of all men. So he favored a plan of gradual emancipation. Nobody listened, of course.”

“Did other people have to bankrupt themselves?”

“You have to remember that the generation that fought the Revolutionary War, for all practical purposes, saw their currency devalued and finally destroyed. The only real security was land, I guess.” Mrs. Hogendobber thought out loud. “Jefferson lost a lot. James Madison struggled with heavy debt as well as with the contradictions of slavery his whole life, and Dolley was forced to sell Montpelier, his mother’s and later their home, after his death. Speaking of slavery, one of James’s slaves, who loved Dolley like a mother, gave her his life savings and continued to live with her and work for her. As you can see, the emotions between the master or the mistress and the slave were highly complex. People loved one another across a chasm of injustice. I fear we’ve lost that.”

“We’ll have to learn to love one another as equals,” Harry solemnly said. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ ”

“History. I hated history when I was in college. You two bring it to life.” Cynthia praised them and their short course on Jefferson.

“It is alive. These walls breathe. Everything that everyone did or did not do throughout the course of human life on earth impacts us. Everything!” Mrs. Hogendobber was impassioned.

Harry, spellbound by Mrs. Hogendobber, heard an owl hoot outside, the low, mournful sound breaking the spell and reminding her of Athena, goddess of wisdom, to whom the owl was sacred. Wisdom was born of the night, of solitary and deep thought. It was so obvious, so clearly obvious to the Greeks and those who used mythological metaphors for thousands of years. She just got it. She started to share her revelation when she spied a copy of Dumas Malone’s magisterial series on the life of Thomas Jefferson. It was the final volume, the sixth, The Sage of Monticello.

“I don’t remember this book being here.”

Mrs. Hogendobber noticed the book on the chair. The other five volumes rested in the milk crates that served as bookcases. “It wasn’t.”

“Here.” Harry opened to a page which Kimball had marked by using the little heavy gray paper divider found in boxes of teabags. “Look at this.”

Cynthia and Mrs. Hogendobber crowded around the book, where on page 513 Kimball had underlined with a pink high-lighter, “All five of the slaves freed under Jefferson’s will were members of this family; others of them previously had been freed or, if able to pass as white, allowed to run away.”

“‘Allowed to run away’!” Mrs. Hogendobber read aloud.

“It’s complicated, Cynthia, but this refers to the Hemings family. Thomas Jefferson had been accused by his political enemies, the Federalists, of having an affair of many years’ duration with Sally Hemings. We don’t think he did, but the slaves declared that Sally was the mistress of Peter Carr, Thomas’s favorite nephew, whom he raised as a son.”

“But the key here is that Sally’s mother, also a beautiful woman, was half white to begin with. Her name was Betty, and her lover, again according to oral slave tradition as well as what Thomas Jefferson Randolph said, was John Wayles, Jefferson’s wife’s brother. You see the bind Jefferson was in. For fifty years that man lived with this abuse heaped on his head.”

“Allowed to run away,” Harry whispered. “Miranda, we’re on second base.”

“Yeah, but who’s going to come to bat?” Cooper scratched her head.

46

The Coleses’ library yielded little that they didn’t already know. Mrs. Hogendobber came across a puzzling reference to Edward Coles, secretary to James Madison and then the first governor of the Illinois Territory. Edward, called Ned, never married or sired children. Other Coleses carried on that task. But a letter dated 1823 made reference to a great kindness he performed for Patsy. Jefferson’s daughter? The kindness was not clarified.

When the little band of researchers left, Samson merrily waved them off after offering them generous liquid excitements. Lucinda, too, waved.

After the squad car disappeared, Lucinda walked back into the library. She noticed the account book was not on the bottom shelf. She had not helped Harry, Miranda, and Cynthia go over the records because she had an appointment in Charlottesville, and Samson had seemed almost overeager to perform the niceties.

She scanned the library for the ledger.

Samson, carrying a glass with four ice cubes and his favorite Dalwhinnie, wandered in, opened a cabinet door, and sat down in a leather chair. He clicked on the television, which was concealed in the cabinet. Neither he nor Lulu could stand to see a television sitting out. Too middle class.

“Samson, where’s your ledger?”

“Has nothing to do with Jefferson or his descendants, my dear.”

“No, but it has a lot to do with Kimball Haynes.”

He turned up the sound, and she grabbed the remote out of his hand and shut off the television.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” His face reddened.

“I might ask the same of you. I hardly ever reach you on your mobile phone anymore. When I call places where you tell me you’re going to be, you aren’t there. I may not be the brightest woman in the world, Samson, but I’m not the dumbest either.”

“Oh, don’t start the perfume accusation again. We settled that.”

“What is in that ledger?”

“Nothing that concerns you. You’ve never been interested in my business before, why now?”

“I entertain your customers often enough.”

“That’s not the same as being interested in my business. You don’t care how I make the money so long as you can spend it.”

“You’re clever, Samson, much more clever than I am, but I’m not fooled. You aren’t going to sidetrack me about money. What is in that ledger?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why didn’t you let those women go through it? Kimball read it. That makes it part of the evidence.”

He shot out of his chair and in an instant towered over her, his bulk an assault against her frailty without his even lifting a hand. He shouted. “You keep your mouth shut about that ledger, or so help me God, I’ll—”

For the first time in their marriage Lucinda did not back down. “Kill me?” she screamed in his face. “You’re in some kind of trouble, Samson, or you’re doing something illegal.”

“Keep out of my life!”

“You mean get out of your life,” she snarled. “Wouldn’t that make it easier for you to carry on with your mistress, whoever she is?”

Menace oozed from his every pore. “Lucinda, if you ever mention that ledger to anyone, you will regret it far more than you can possibly understand. Now leave me alone.”

Lucinda replied with an icy calm, frightening in itself. “You killed Kimball Haynes.”

47

The squad car, Deputy Cooper at the wheel, picked up an urgent dispatch. She swerved hard right, slammed the car into reverse, and shot toward Whitehall Road. “Hang on, Mrs. H.”

Mrs. Hogendobber, eyes open wide, could only suck in her breath as the car picked up speed, siren wailing and lights flashing.

“Yehaw!” Harry braced herself against the dash.

Vehicles in front of them pulled quickly to the side of the road. One ancient Plymouth puttered along. Its driver also had a lot of miles on him. Coop sucked up right behind him and blasted the horn as well. She so astonished the man that he jumped up in his seat and cut hard right. His Plymouth rocked from side to side but remained upright.

“That was Loomis McReady.” Mrs. Hogendobber pressed her nose against the car window, only to be sent toward the other side of the car when Cynthia tore around a curve. “Thank God for seat belts.”

“Old Loomis ought not to be on the road.” Harry thought elderly people ought to take a yearly driver’s test.

“Up ahead,” Deputy Cooper said.

Mrs. Hogendobber grasped the back of the front seat to steady herself while she looked between Harry’s and Cynthia’s heads. “It’s Samson Coles.”

“Going like a bat out of hell, and in his Wagoneer too. Those things can’t corner and hold the road.” Harry felt her shoulders tense.

“Look!” Mrs. Hogendobber could now see, once they were out of another snaky turn, that a car in front of Samson’s sped even faster than his own.

“Holy shit, it’s Lucinda! Excuse me, Miranda, I didn’t mean to swear.”

“Under the circumstances—” Miranda never finished that sentence because a second set of sirens screeched from the opposite end of the road.

“You’ve got them now,” Harry gloated.

As soon as Lucinda saw Sheriff Rick Shaw’s car coming toward her, she flashed her lights and stopped. Cooper, hot on Samson’s tail, slowed since she thought he’d brake, but he didn’t. He swerved around Lulu’s big brown Wagoneer on the right-hand side, one set of wheels grinding into a runoff ditch. Beaver Dam Road lay just ahead, and he meant to hang a hard right.

Sheriff Shaw stopped for Lucinda, who was crying, sobbing, screaming, “He’ll kill me! He’ll kill me!”

“Ladies, this is dicey,” Cooper warned as she, too, plowed into the runoff ditch to the right of Lucinda. The squad car tore out huge hunks of earth and bluestone before reaching the road again.

Samson gunned the red Wagoneer toward Beaver Dam, which wasn’t a ninety-degree right but a sharp, sharp reverse thirty-degree angle heading northeast off Whitehall Road. It was a punishing turn under the best of circumstances. Just as Samson reached the turn, Carolyn Maki, in her black Ford dually, braked for the stop sign. Samson hit his brakes and sent his rear end skidding out from underneath him. He overcorrected by turning hard right. The Wagoneer flipped over twice, finally coming to rest on its side. Miraculously, the dually remained untouched.

Carolyn Maki opened her door to assist Samson.

Cooper screeched to a stop next to the truck and leapt out of the squad car, gun in hand. “Get back in the truck,” she yelled at Carolyn.

Harry started to open her door, but the strong hand of Mrs. Hogendobber grasped her neck from behind. “Stay put.”

This did not prevent either one of them from hitting the automatic buttons to open the windows so they could hear. They stuck their heads out.

Cooper sprinted to the car where Samson clawed at the driver’s door, his head pointing skyward as the car rested on its right side. Oblivious of the minor cuts on his face and hands, he thrust open the door and crawled out head first, only to stare into the barrel of Cynthia Cooper’s pistol.

“Samson, put your hands behind your head.”

“I can explain everything.”

“Behind your head!”

He did as he was told. A third squad car pulled in from Beaver Dam Road, and Deputy Cooper was glad for the assistance. “Carolyn, are you okay?”

“Yes,” a wide-eyed Carolyn Maki called from her truck.

“We’ll need a statement from you, and one of us will try to get it in a few minutes so you can go home.”

“Fine. Can I get out of the truck now?”

Cooper nodded yes as the third officer frisked Samson Coles. The wheels of his Jeep were still spinning.

Carolyn walked over to Mrs. Hogendobber and Harry, now waiting outside the squad car.

Harry heard Sheriff Shaw’s voice on the special radio. She picked up the receiver, the coiled cord swinging underneath. “Sheriff, it’s Harry.”

“Where’s Cooper?” came his gruff response.

“She’s holding Samson Coles with his hands behind his head.”

“Any injuries?”

“No—unless you count the Wagoneer.”

“I’ll be right there.”

The sheriff left Lucinda Coles with one of his deputies. He was less than half a mile away, so he arrived in an instant. He strode purposefully over to Samson. “Read him his rights.”

“Yes, sir,” Cooper said.

“All right, handcuff him.”

“Is that necessary?” Samson complained.

The sheriff didn’t bother to respond. He sauntered over to the Wagoneer and stood on his tiptoes to look inside. Lying on the passenger side window next to the earth was a snub-nosed .38.

48

“Copious in his indignation, he was.” Miranda held the attention of her rapt audience. She had reached the point in her story where Samson Coles, being led away to the sheriff’s car, hands cuffed behind his back, started shouting. He didn’t want to go to jail. He hadn’t done anything wrong other than chase his wife down the road with his car, and hasn’t every man wanted to bash his wife’s head in once in a while? “Wasn’t it Noel Coward who wrote, ‘Women are like gongs, they should be struck regularly’?”

“He said that?” Susan Tucker asked.

“Private Lives,” Mim filled in. Mim was sitting on the school chair that Miranda had brought around for her from the back of the post office. Larry Johnson, who hadn’t told anyone about the diaries, Fair Haristeen, and Ned Tucker stood while Market Shiflett, Pewter next to him, sat on the counter. Mrs. Hogendobber paced the room, enacting the details to give emphasis to her story. Tucker paced with her as Mrs. Murphy sat on the postage scale. When Miranda wanted verification she would turn to Harry, also sitting on the counter, and Harry would nod or say a sentence or two to add color.

The Reverend Jones pushed open the door, come to collect his mail. “How much did I miss?”

“Almost the whole thing, Herbie, but I’ll give you a private audience.”

Herb was followed by Ansley and Warren Randolph. Mrs. Hogendobber was radiant because this meant she could repeat the adventure anew with theatrics. Three was better than one.

“Oscar performance,” Mrs. Murphy laconically commented to her two pals.

“Wish we’d been there.” Tucker hated to miss excitement.

“I’d have thrown up. Did I tell you about the time I threw up when Market was taking me to the vet?” Pewter remarked.

“Not now,” Mrs. Murphy implored the gray cat.

When Mrs. Hogendobber finished her tale for the second time, everyone began talking at once.

“Did they ever find the murder weapon? The gun that killed Kimball Haynes?” Warren asked.

“Coop says the ballistics proved it was a snub-nosed .38-caliber pistol. It was unregistered. Frightening how easy it is to purchase a gun illegally. The bullets matched the bore of the .38 they found in Samson’s car. It had smashed the passenger window to bits. Must have had it on the seat next to him. Looks like he really was going to do in Lulu. Looks like he’s the one that did in Kimball Haynes.” Miranda shook her head at such violence.

“I hope not.” Dr. Johnson’s calm voice rang out. “Everyone has marital problems, and Samson’s may be larger than most, but we still don’t know what happened to set this off. And we don’t know if he killed Kimball. Innocent until proven guilty. Remember, we’re talking about one of Crozet’s own here. We’d better wait and see before stringing him up.”

“I didn’t say anything about stringing him up,” Miranda huffed. “But it’s mighty peculiar.”

“This spring has been mighty peculiar.” Fair edged his toes together and then apart, a nervous habit.

“Much as I like Samson, I hope this settles the case. Why would he kill Kimball Haynes? I don’t know.” Ned Tucker put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “But we would sleep better at night if we knew the case was closed.”

“Let the dead bury the dead.” The little group murmured their assent to Ned’s hopes.

No one noticed that Ansley had turned ghostly white.

49

Samson Coles denied ever having seen the snub-nosed .38. His lawyer, John Lowe, having argued many cases for the defense in his career, could spot a liar a mile away. He knew Samson was lying. Samson refused to give the sheriff any information other than his name and address and, in a funny reversion to his youth, his army ID number. By the time John Lowe reached his client, Samson was the picture of sullen hostility.

“Now, Samson, one more time. Why did you threaten to kill your wife?”

“And for the last time, we’d been having problems, real problems.”

“That doesn’t mean you kill your wife or threaten her. You’re paying me lots of money, Samson. Right now it looks pretty bad for you. The report came back on the gun. It was the gun that killed Kimball Haynes.” John, not averse to theatrics himself, used this last stunner, which was totally untrue—the ballistics results hadn’t come back yet—in hopes of blasting his client into some kind of cooperation. It worked.

“No!” Samson shook. “I never saw that gun before in my life. I swear it, John, I swear it on the Holy Bible! When I said I was going to kill her, I didn’t mean I really would, I wouldn’t shoot her. She just pushed all my buttons.”

“Buddy, you could get the chair. This is a capital-punishment state, and I wasn’t born yesterday. You’d better tell me what happened.”

Tears welled up in Samson’s eyes. His voice wavered. “John, I’m in love with Ansley Randolph. I spent money trying to impress her, and to make a long story short, I’ve been dipping into escrow funds which I hold as the principal broker. Lucinda saw the ledger—” He stopped because his whole body was shaking. “Actually, she showed it to Kimball Haynes when he was over to read the family histories and diaries, you know, to see if there was anything that could fit into the murder at Monticello. There wasn’t, of course, but I have accounts beginning in the last decades of the seventeenth century, kept by my maternal grandmother of many greats, Charlotte Graff. Kimball read those accounts, meticulously detailed, and Lucinda laughed that she couldn’t make sense out of my books but how crystal clear Granny Graff’s were. So Lucinda gave Kimball my ledger to prove her point. He immediately saw what I’d been doing. I kept two columns, you know how it’s done. That’s the truth.”

“Samson, you have a high standing in Crozet. To many people’s minds that would be more than sufficient motive to kill Kimball—to protect that standing as well as your livelihood. Answer me. Did you kill Kimball Haynes?”

Tears gushing down his ruddy cheeks, Samson implored John, “I’d rather lose my license than my life.”

John believed him.

50

Obsessed by his former partner’s diaries, Dr. Larry Johnson read at breakfast, between patients, at dinner, and late into the night. He finished volume one, which was surprisingly well written, especially considering he’d never thought Jim a literary man.

References to the grandparents and great-grandparents of many Albemarle County citizens enlivened the documents. Much of volume one centered on the effects of World War I on the returning servicemen and their wives. Jim Craig was then fairly new to the practice of medicine.

Z. Calvin Coles, grandfather to Samson Coles, returned from the war carrying a wicked dose of syphilis. Mim’s paternal line, the Urquharts, flourished during the war, as they invested heavily in armaments, and Mim’s father’s brother, Douglas Urquhart, lost his arm in a threshing accident.

All the patients treated, from measles to bone cancer, were meticulously mentioned as well as their character, background, and the history of specific diseases.

The Minors, Harry’s paternal ancestors, were prone to sinus infections, while on her mother’s side, the Hepworths, they either died very young or made it into their seventies and beyond—good long innings then. Wesley Randolph’s family often suffered a wasting disease of the blood which killed them slowly. The Hogendobbers leaned toward coronary disorders, and the Sanburnes to gout.

Jim’s keen powers of observation again won Larry’s admiration. Being young when he joined Jim Craig’s practice, Larry had looked up to his partner, but now, as an old man, he could measure Jim in the fullness of his own experience. Jim was a fine doctor and his death at sixty-one was a loss for the town and for other doctors.

With eager hands Larry opened volume two, dated February 22, 1928.

51

Jails are not decorated in designer colors. Nor is the privacy of one’s person much honored. Poor Samson Coles listened to stinking men with the DTs hollering and screaming, bottom-rung drug sellers protesting their innocence, and one child molester declaring that an eight-year-old had led him on. If Samson ever doubted his sanity, this “vacation” in the cooler reaffirmed that he was sane—stupid perhaps, but sane.

He wasn’t so sure about the men in the other cells. Their delusions both fascinated and repelled him.

His only delusion was that Ansley Randolph loved him when in fact she did not. He knew that now. Not one attempt to contact him, not that he expected her to show her face at the correctional institute, as it was euphemistically called. She could have smuggled him a note though—something.

Like most men, Samson had been used by women, especially when he was younger. One of the good things about Lucinda was that she didn’t use him. She had loved him once. He felt the searing pain of guilt each time he thought of his wife, the wife he’d betrayed, his once good name which he had destroyed, and the fact that he would lose his real estate license in the bargain. He’d wrecked everything: home, career, community standing. For what?

And now he stood accused of murder. Fleeting thoughts of suicide, accomplished with a bedsheet, occurred to him. He fought them back. Somehow he would have to learn to live with what he’d done. Maybe he’d been stupid, but he wasn’t a coward.

As for Ansley, he knew she’d fall right back into her routine. She didn’t love Warren a bit, but she’d never risk losing the wealth and prestige of being a Randolph. Not that being a Coles was shabby, but megamillions versus comfort and a good name—no contest. Then, too, she had her boys to consider, and life would be far more advantageous for them if she stayed put.

In retrospect he could see that Ansley’s ambitions centered more on the boys than on herself, although she had the sense to be low-key about them. If she was going to endure the Randolph clan, then, by God, she would have successful and loving sons. Blood, money, and power—what a combination.

He swung his legs over the side of his bunk. He’d turn to pure fat in this place if he didn’t do leg raises and push-ups. One good thing about being in the slammer, no social drinking. He wanted to cry sometimes, but he didn’t know how. Just as well. Wimps get buggered in places like this.

How long he sat there, dangling his legs just to feel some circulation, he didn’t know. He jerked his legs up with a start when he realized he was aptly named.

52

The buds on the trees swelled, changing in color from dark red to light green. Spring, in triumph, had arrived.

Harry endured a spring-cleaning fit each year when the first blush of green swept over the meadows and the mountains. The creeks and rivers soared near their banks from the high melting snow and ice, and the air carried the scent of earth again.

Piles of newspapers and magazines, waiting to be read, were stacked on the back porch. Harry succumbed to the knowledge that she would never read them, so out they went. Clothes, neatly folded, rested near the periodicals. Harry hadn’t much in the way of clothing, but she finally broke down and threw out those articles too often patched and repatched.

She decided, too, to toss out the end table with three legs instead of four. She’d find one of those unfinished-furniture stores and paint a new end table. As she carried it out she stubbed her toe on the old cast-iron doorstop. This had been her great-grandmother’s iron, heated on top of the stove.

“Goddammit!”

“If you’d look where you were going, you wouldn’t run into things.” Tucker sounded like a schoolteacher.

Harry rubbed her toe, took off her shoe, and rubbed some more. Then she picked up the offending iron, ready to hurl it outside. “That’s it!” She joyously called to Mrs. Murphy and Tucker. “The murder weapon. Medley Orion was a seamstress!”

53

Holding the iron aloft, Harry demonstrated to Mim Sanburne, Fair, Larry Thompson, Susan, and Deputy Cooper how the blow would have been struck.

“It certainly could account for the triangular indentation.” Larry examined the iron.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter sat tight against each other on the kitchen table. Although Mrs. Murphy would rather lose fur than admit it—she liked having a feline companion. Pewter did, too, but then, Pewter camped out on the kitchen table, since that’s where the food was placed.

Tucker circled the table. “Smart of Mom to call Big Marilyn.”

“Mim is head of the restoration project.” Mrs. Murphy glanced down at her little friend. “This way, too, Mim can tell Oliver Zeve and Coop can tell Sheriff Shaw. It’s a pretty good theory.”

“I believe you’ve got it.” Larry handed the iron to Mim, who felt its weight.

“One solid blow pushing straight out or slightly upward. People performed so much physical labor back then, she was no doubt strong enough to inflict a fatal blow. We know she was young.” Mim gave the iron to Miranda.

“The shape of this iron would help when pressing lace or all the fripperies and fancies those folks wore.”

“May I borrow the iron to show Rick? If he doesn’t see it with his own eyes, he’ll be skeptical.” Cynthia Cooper held out her hands for the iron.

“Sure.”

“We hear that Samson categorically denies killing Kimball even though that gun was in his car.” Mim hated that Sheriff Shaw didn’t tell her everything. But then, Mim wanted to know everything about everybody, as did Miranda, though for different reasons.

“He’s sticking to his story.”

“Has anyone visited Lulu?” Susan Tucker asked. “I thought about going there this evening.”

“I’ve paid a call.” Mim spoke first, as the first citizen of Crozet, which in essence she was. “She’s terribly shaken. Her sister has flown up from Mobile to attend to her. She wonders how people will treat her now, and I’ve assured her that no blame attaches itself to her. Why don’t you give her a day or two, Susan, and then go over.”

“She loves shortbread,” Mrs. Hogendobber remembered. “I’ll bake some.”

The rest of the group raised their hands and Miranda laughed. “I’ll be in the kitchen till Easter!”

“I’m still not giving up on finding out the real story behind the corpse in Cabin Four.” Harry walked over to the counter to make coffee.

“And I was thinking that I’d read through Dr. Thomas Walker’s papers. He attended Peter Jefferson on his deathbed. Quite a man of many parts, Thomas Walker of Castle Hill. Maybe, just maybe, I can find a reference to treating a broken leg. There was another physician also, but I can’t think of his name off the top of my head,” Larry said.

“We owe it to Kimball.” Harry ground the beans, releasing the intoxicating scent.

“Harry, you never give up.” Fair joined her, setting out cups and saucers. “I hope you all do get to the bottom of the story just so it’s over, but more than anything, I’m glad Kimball’s murderer is behind bars. That had me worried.”

“Does it seem possible that Samson Coles could kill a man in cold blood?” Mim poured half-and-half into her cup.

“Mrs. Sanburne, the most normal-looking persons can commit the most heinous crimes,” stated Deputy Cooper, who ought to know.

“I guess.” Mim sighed.

“Do you think Samson did it?” Pewter asked.

Mrs. Murphy flicked her tail. “No. But someone wants us to think he did.”

“The gun was in his car.” Tucker wanted to believe the mess was over.

The tiger cat’s pink tongue hung out of her mouth for a second. “It’s not over—feline intuition.”

Miranda asked, “Did Kimball ever get to the Randolph papers?”

“Gee, I don’t know.” Harry paused, then walked over to the phone and dialed.

“Hello, Ansley. Excuse me for bothering you. Did Kimball ever get to read your family papers?” She listened. “Well, thanks again. I’m sorry to bother you.” She hung up the phone receiver. “No.”

“We still have a few more stops in duplicating Kimball’s research. Something will turn up.” Mrs. H. tried to sound helpful.

54

“What a wuss,” Mrs. Murphy groaned about Pewter. “It’s too far. It’s too cold. I’ll be so tired tomorrow.”

Tucker’s dog trot ate up the miles. “Be glad she stayed home. She would have sat down and cried before we’d gone two miles. This way we can get our work done.”

Mrs. Murphy, following feline instincts, felt the whole story was not out, not by a long shot. She convinced Tucker to head out to Samson Coles’s estate late at night. The game little dog needed no convincing. Besides, the thrill of finding the books in the fireplace hadn’t worn off. Right now they thought they could do anything.

They cut across fields, jumped creeks, ducked under fences. They passed herds of deer, the does with newborn fawns by their sides. And once, Mrs. Murphy growled when she smelled a fox. Cats and foxes are natural enemies because they compete for the same food.

As Lucinda and Samson’s place was four miles by the path they took, they arrived around eleven o’clock. Lights were on upstairs as well as in the living room.

Massive walnut trees guarded the house. Mrs. Murphy climbed up one and walked out a branch. She saw Lucinda Coles and Warren Randolph through the living room window. She backed down the tree and jumped onto the broad windowsill so she could hear their conversation, since the window was open to allow the cool spring air through the house, a welcome change from the stuffy winter air trapped inside. The cat scarcely breathed as she listened.

Tucker, knowing Mrs. Murphy to be impeccable in these matters, decided to pick up whatever she could by scent.

Lucinda, handkerchief dabbing her eyes, nodded more than she spoke.

“You had no idea?”

“I knew he was fooling around, but I didn’t know it was Ansley. My best friend, God, it’s so typical.” She groaned.

“Look, I know you’ve got enough troubles, and I don’t want you to worry about money. If you’ll allow me, I can organize the estate and do what must be done, along with your regular lawyers, of course. Just don’t act precipitously. Even if Samson is convicted, it doesn’t mean you have to lose everything.”

“Oh, Warren, I don’t know how to thank you.”

He sighed deeply. “I still can’t believe it myself. You think you know someone and then—I guess if the truth be told, I’m more upset about the, uh, affair than the murder.”

“When did you know?”

“Behind the post office. Tuesday. He slipped, made a comment about something only my wife could have known.” He hesitated. “I drove over here one night and cut the lights off. I was going to come in and tell you, and then I chickened out in the middle of it. Well, I saw his car in the driveway. So, like I said, I backed out. I don’t know if it would have made any difference if you’d known a few days ago instead of today.”

“It wouldn’t have saved the marriage.” She cried anew.

“Did he really threaten to kill you?”

She nodded and sobbed.

Warren wrung his hands. “That should make the divorce go faster.” He glanced to the window. “Your cat wants in.”

Mrs. Murphy froze. Lucinda looked up. “That’s not my cat.” That fast Mrs. Murphy shot off the windowsill. “Funny, that looked like Mrs. Murphy.”

“Tucker, vamoose!”

Mrs. Murphy streaked across the front lawn as Tucker, who could run like blazes, caught up with her. The front door opened and Lucinda, curious as well as wanting to forget the pain for a moment, saw the pair. “Those are Harry’s animals. What in the world are they doing all the way over here?”

Warren stood beside her and watched the two figures silhouetted against silver moonlight. “Hunting. You’d be amazed at how large hunting territories are. Bears prowl a hundred-mile radius.”

“You’d think there’d be enough mice at Harry’s.”

55

The crowd had gathered along the garden level at Monticello. Kimball Haynes’s memorial service was held in the land he loved and understood. Monticello, shorn as she is of home life, makes up for it by casting an emotional net over all who work there.

At first Oliver Zeve balked at holding a memorial at Monticello. Enough negative attention, in his mind, had been drawn to the shrine. He brought it before the board of directors, each of whom had ample opportunity to know and care for Kimball. He was an easy man to like. The board decided without much argument to allow the ceremony to take place after public hours. Somehow it was fitting that Kimball should be remembered where he was happiest and where he served to further understanding of one of the greatest men this nation or any other has ever produced.

The Reverend Jones, Montalto looming behind him, cleared his throat. Mim and Jim Sanburne sat in the front row along with Warren and Ansley Randolph, as those two couples had made the financial arrangements for the service. Mrs. Hogendobber, in her pale gold robes with the garnet satin inside the sleeves and around the collar, stood beside the reverend with the choir of the Church of the Holy Light. Although an Evangelical Lutheran, Reverend Jones had a gift for bringing together the various Christian groups in Crozet.

Harry, Susan and Ned Tucker, Fair Haristeen, and Heike Holtz sat in the second row along with Leah and Nick Nichols, social friends of Kimball’s. Lucinda Coles, after much self-torture, joined them. Mim, in a long, agonizing phone conversation, told Lulu that no one blamed her for Kimball’s death and her presence would be a tribute to the departed.

Members of the history and architecture departments from the University of Virginia were in attendance, along with all of the Monticello staff including the wonderful docents who conduct the tours for the public.

The Reverend Jones opened his well-worn Bible, and in his resonant, hypnotic voice read the Twenty-seventh Psalm:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life;

of whom shall I be afraid?

When evildoers assail me,

uttering slanders against me,

My adversaries and foes,

they shall stumble and fall.

Though a host encamp against me,

my heart shall not fear;

Though war rise up against me,

yet I will be confident.

One thing have I asked of the Lord,

that will I seek after;

That I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life—

The service continued and the reverend spoke directly of sufferings needlessly afflicted, of promising life untimely cut down, of the evils that men do to one another, and of the workings of faith. Reverend Jones reminded them of how one life, Kimball Haynes’s, had touched so many others and how Kimball sought to help us touch those lives lived long ago. By the time the good man finished, there wasn’t a dry eye left.

As the people filed out to leave, Fair considerately placed his hand under Lulu’s elbow, for she was much affected. After all, apart from her liking for Kimball and her feelings of responsibility, it was her husband who stood accused of his murder. And Samson sure had a motive. Kimball could have blown the whistle on his escrow theft. Worse, Samson had bellowed that he would kill her.

Ansley stumbled up ahead. High-heeled shoes implanted her in the grass like spikes. Lucinda pulled Fair along with her and hissed at Ansley. “I thought you were my best friend.”

“I am,” Ansley stoutly insisted.

Warren, high color in his cheeks, watched as if waiting for another car wreck to happen.

“What a novel definition of a best friend: one who sleeps with your husband.” Lucinda raised her voice.

“Not here,” Ansley begged through clenched teeth.

“Why not? Sooner or later everyone here will know the story. Crozet is the only town where sound travels faster than light.”

Before a rip-roaring shouting match could erupt, Harry slid alongside Lucinda on the right. Susan ran interference.

“Lulu, you are making a career of disrupting funerals,” Harry chided her.

It was enough.

56

Dr. Larry Johnson, carrying his black Gladstone bag of medical gear, buoyantly swung into the post office. Tucker rushed up to greet him. Mrs. Murphy, splayed on the counter on her right side, tail slowly flicking back and forth, raised her head, then put it back down again.

“I think I know who the Monticello victim is.”

Mrs. Murphy sat up, alert. Harry and Miranda hurried around the counter.

Larry straightened his hand-tied bow tie before addressing his small but eager audience. “Now, ladies, I apologize for not telling you first, but that honor belonged to Sheriff Shaw, and you will, of course, understand why I had to place the next call to Mim Sanburne. She in turn called Warren and Ansley and the other major contributors. I also called Oliver Zeve, but the minute the political calls were accounted for, I zoomed over here.”

“We can’t stand it. Tell!” Harry clapped her hands together.

“Thomas Walker, like any good medical man, kept a record of his patients. All I did was start at the beginning and read. In 1778 he set the leg of a five-year-old child, Braxton Fleming, the eighth child of Rebecca and Isaiah Fleming, who owned a large tract along the Rivanna River. The boy broke his leg wrestling with his older brother in a tree.” He laughed. “Don’t kids do the damnedest things? In a tree! Well, anyway, Dr. Walker noted that it was a compound fracture and he doubted that it would heal in such a manner as to afford the patient full facility with the limb, as he put it. He duly noted the break was in the left femur. He also noted that the boy was the most beautiful child he had ever seen. That aroused my curiosity, and I called down to the Albemarle County Historical Society and asked for help. Those folks down there are just terrific—volunteer labor. I asked them if they’d comb their sources for any information about Braxton Fleming. Seems he trod the course a wellborn young fellow typically trod in those days. He was tutored in Richmond, but then instead of going to the College of William and Mary he enrolled in the College of New Jersey, as did Aaron Burr and James Madison. We know it as Princeton. The Flemings were intelligent. All the surviving sons completed their studies and entered the professions, but Braxton was the only one to go north of the Mason-Dixon line to study. He spent some time in Philadelphia after graduating and apparently evidenced some gift for painting. Well, it was as hard then as now to make a living in the arts, so finally Braxton slunk home. He tried his hand at farming and did enough to survive, but his heart wasn’t in it. He married well but not happily and he turned to drink. He was reputed to have been the handsomest man in central Virginia.”

“What a story!” Mrs. Hogendobber exclaimed.

Larry held up his hands as if to squelch applause. “But we don’t know why he was killed. We only know how, and we have a strong suspect.”

“Dr. J., does anyone know what happened to him? You know, some kind of mention about him not coming home or something?”

“Yes.” He tilted his head and stared at the ceiling. “His wife declared that he took a gallon of whiskey and set out for Kentucky to make his fortune. May 1803. No more was ever heard from Braxton Fleming.”

Harry whistled. “He’s our man.”

Larry stroked Mrs. Murphy under her chin. She rewarded him with important purrs. “You know, Fair and I were talking the other day, and he was telling me about retroviruses in cats and horses. He also mentioned a feline respiratory infection that can pass from mother to child and may erupt ten years later. Feline leukemia is rampant too. Well, Mrs. Murphy, you look healthy enough and I’m glad of it. I hadn’t realized life was so precarious for cats.”

“Thank you,” the cat responded.

“Larry, you must let us know if you find out anything else. What a detective you are.” Praise from Mrs. Hogendobber was high praise indeed.

“Oh, heck, the folks down at the historical society did most of the work.”

He picked up his mail, blew them a kiss, and left, eager to return to Jim Craig’s diaries.

57

Diseases, like rivers, course through human history. What might have happened if Pericles had survived the plague in fifth-century B.C. Athens, or if the Europeans nearly two thousand years later had discovered that the bubonic plague was transmitted to humans by rat fleas?

Mrs. Murphy’s ancestors saved medieval Europe, only to be condemned in a later century as accessories to withcraft, then hunted and killed.

And what might have been Russia’s fate had Alexei, the heir to the throne, not been born with hemophilia, a blood disease passed on by Queen Victoria’s offspring?

One never realizes the blessings of health until they are snatched away.

Medical science, since opening up a cadaver to prove there was such a thing as a circulatory system, became better at identifying diseases. The various forms of cancer no longer were lumped together as a wasting disease but categorized and named as cancer of the colon, leukemia, skin cancer, and so forth.

The great breakthrough came in 1796, when Sir William Jenner created the vaccine for smallpox.

After that, human hygiene improved, preventative medicine improved, and many could look forward to reaching their fourscore and ten years. Yet some diseases resisted human efforts, cancer being the outstanding example.

As Larry read his deceased partner’s diagnoses and prognoses late into each night, he felt like a young man again.

He was pleased to read that Dr. Craig gruffly wrote down, “Young pup’s damned good,” and he was excited as he delved again into the 1940s cases he’d seen himself.

Vividly he recalled the autopsy they performed on Z. Calvin Coles, Samson’s grandfather, in which the old man’s liver was grotesquely enlarged and fragile as tissue paper.

When he prepared to write alcoholism on the death certificate as the cause of death, Jim stayed his hand.

“Larry, put down heart failure.”

“But that’s not what killed him.”

“In the end we all die because our hearts stop beating. Write down alcoholism and you break his wife’s heart and his children’s too.

Through his mentor, Larry had learned how to diplomatically handle unsavory problems such as venereal disease. A physician had to report this to the state health department. This both Dr. Craig and Dr. Johnson did. The individual was to warn former sexual partners of his or her infectious state. Many people couldn’t do it, so Dr. Craig performed the service. Larry specialized in scaring the hell out of the victims in the hope that they would repair their ways.

From Dr. Craig Larry learned how to tell a patient he was dying, a chore that tore him to pieces. But Dr. Craig always said, “Larry, people die as they live. You must speak to each one in his or her own language.” Over the years he marveled at the courage and dignity of seemingly ordinary people as they faced death.

Dr. Craig never aspired to being other than what he was, a small-town practitioner. He was much like a parish priest who loves his flock and harbors no ambition to become a bishop or cardinal.

As Larry read on, he was surprised to learn of the termination of a pregnancy for a young Sweet Briar College junior, Marilyn Urquhart. Dr. Craig wrote: “Given the nervous excitability of the patient, I fear having a child out of wedlock would unhinge this young woman.”

There were secrets Dr. Craig kept even from his young partner. It was part of the old man’s character to protect a lady, no matter what.

The clock read two thirty-five A.M. Larry’s head had begun to nod. He forced his eyes open to read just a bit more, and then they popped wide open.

March 3, 1948. Wesley Randolph came in today with his father. Colonel Randolph seems to be suffering from the habitual ailment of his clan. He hates needles. The son does also, but the old man shamed Wesley into getting blood pulled.

My suspicion, quite strong, is that the colonel has developed leukemia. I sent the blood to U.V.A. for analysis, requesting that they use the new electron microscope.

March 5, 1948. Dr. Harvey Fenton asked me to meet him at the U.V.A. Hospital. When I arrived he asked me of my relation to Colonel Randolph and his son. I replied that relations were cordial.

Dr. Fenton didn’t say anything to my reply. He merely pointed to the electron microscope. A blood sample, underneath, showed an avalanche of white cells.

“Leukemia,” I said. “Colonel Randolph or Wesley?”

“No,” Fenton replied. He slid another sample under the microscope. “Look here.”

I did, and a peculiar shape of cell was prominent. “I’m not familiar with this cell deformation,” I said.

“We’re learning to identify this. It’s a hereditary blood disease called sickle cell anemia. The red blood cells lack normal hemoglobin. Instead, they contain hemoglobin S and the cells become deformed—they look like a sickle. Because of the awkward shape, the hemoglobin S blood cells can’t flow like normal cells and they clog up capillaries and blood vessels. Those traffic jams are extremely painful to the sufferer.

“But there’s a less serious condition in which red blood cells have half normal hemoglobin and half hemoglobin S. Someone with this condition has the sickle cell trait, but he won’t develop the disease.

“However, if he marries someone else with the trait, their children stand a twenty-five percent chance of inheriting the disease. The risk is very high.

“We don’t know why, but sickle cells occur among blacks. Occasionally, but rarely, someone of Greek, Arab, or Indian descent will display the trait. The whole thing is baffling.

“You know all those jokes about Negroes being either lazy or having hookworm?—well, in many cases we’re realizing they had sickle cell anemia.”

I didn’t know what to say, as I have observed since childhood that the white race delights in casting harsh judgments on the black race. So, I looked at the blood sample again.

“Did the Negro from whom you obtained this blood die?”

“The man this blood was drawn from is alive but failing from cancer. He has the trait but not the disease.” Dr. Fenton paused. “This is Colonel Randolph’s blood sample.”

Stunned, I blurted out, “What about Wesley?”

“He’s safe, but he carries the trait.”

As I drove back home I knew I’d have to tell Colonel Randolph and Wesley the truth. The happy portion of the news was that the colonel was in no immediate danger. The unhappy portion of the news is obvious. I wonder what Larry will make of this? I want to take him down to Dr. Fenton to see for himself.

Larry pushed the book away.

Jim Craig was murdered March 6, 1948. He never got to tell Larry anything.

Legs wobbly and eyes bleary from so much reading, Larry Johnson stood up from his desk. He put on his hat and his Sherlock Holmes coat, as he called it. He hadn’t paced the streets of Crozet like this since he tried to walk off a broken heart when Mim Urquhart spurned him for Big Jim Sanburne back in 1950.

As the sun rose, Larry felt his first obligation was to Warren Randolph. He called. Ansley answered, then put Warren on the phone. All the Randolphs were early risers. Larry offered to drive over to see Warren, but Warren said he’d come over to Larry’s later that morning. It was no inconvenience.

What was inconvenient was that Larry Johnson was shot at 7:44 Saturday morning.

58

Harry, Miranda, Mim, Fair, Susan, Ned, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker watched with mounting grief as their dear friend’s body was rolled away under a sheet on a gurney. Deputy Cooper said Larry’s maid, Charmalene, had found him at nine, when she came to work. He was lying in the front hall. He must have opened the door to let in the killer and taken a few steps toward the kitchen, when he was shot in the back. Probably the man never knew what hit him, but this was cold comfort to his friends. The maid said the coffee he’d made was fresh. He’d made more than usual, so maybe he expected company. He was probably awaiting the arrival of his killer, who then ransacked his office. Sheriff Shaw climbed in the back of the ambulance and they sped away.

Tucker, nose to the ground, picked up the scent easily enough, but the killer wore crepe-soled shoes which left such a distinct rubber smell that the dog couldn’t catch a clear human signature. Unfortunately, the ambulance workers trudged over the footprints, for the killer, no fool, tiptoed on the sidewalk and put a foot down hard only in the driveway, probably when disembarking from the car.

“What have you got, Tucker?” Mrs. Murphy, worried, asked.

“Not enough. Not enough.”

“A trace of cologne?”

“No, just this damned crepe-sole smell. And a wet smell—sand.”

The tiger bent her own nose to the task. “Is anyone else doing construction work? There’s always sand involved in construction.”

“Sand on a lot of driveways too.”

“Tucker, we’ve got to stick close to Mom. She’s done enough research to get her in trouble. Whoever the killer is, he’s losing it. Humans don’t kill one another in broad daylight unless it’s passion or war. This was cold-blooded.”

“And hasty,” Tucker added, still straining to place the rubber smell. She decided then and there to hate crepe-soled shoes.

Fair Haristeen read Larry’s notes on a piece of blue-lined white paper as Cynthia Cooper held the paper with tweezers.

“Can you make some sense of this, Fair? You’re a medical man.”

“Yes, it’s a kind of medical shorthand for sickle cell anemia.”

“Don’t only African Americans get that?”

“Mostly blacks are affected, but I don’t think there’s a hundred percent correspondence. It passes from generation to generation.”

Cooper asked, “How many generations back?”

Fair shrugged, “That I can’t tell you, Coop. I’m just a vet, remember.”

“Thanks, Fair.”

“Is there a nut case on the loose in Crozet?”

“That depends on how you define nut case, but it’s safe to say that if the killer feels anyone is closing in on the truth, he’s going to strike.”