Nine Lives To Die

“What if I run out of the car?” Pewter maliciously considered this route in the back of the now almost empty Volvo. It had been a long, long day, with their human busy handing out food she could keep and nosing into other people’s business.

“I’d chase you.” Tucker solemnly vowed.

“Ha.” Pewter swished her tail.

Nose-to-nose, Mrs. Murphy threatened her fellow feline, “You aren’t going anywhere. We’re almost done with this run, and I want to go home.” The tiger cat then turned to Tucker. “Don’t set her off.”

Ears drooping, Tucker flopped down in the back of the Volvo station wagon.

Harry, by herself, had been dropping off food and clothing since eleven, the time she usually finished her farm chores. With one stop left, she peered upward out the windshield, then Harry reached over to pet Mrs. Murphy, who had come up to sit in the passenger seat.

The twisting road climbed toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. The sky threatened, charcoal gray. Harry turned left onto another snow-packed dirt road, followed the ridge, then turned right down a narrow drive that was at least plowed. She finished by 3:30.

——

At 3:30 Arden Higham labored in the small office at St. Cyril’s. Friday was her regular bookkeeping day. With the end of the year looming, the demands escalated. Arden wanted to keep up with it all.

Jessica Hexham had the same idea. Walking in, she said, “It’s a zoo out there. I’ll be doing the church books until midnight.”

“Lord, I hope not. If you’ll be here to midnight, I’ll be here until two in the morning. You’re faster than I am.” She twirled a pencil. “Traffic?”

“Yes, and it’s snowing again. When is this going to end? Hardly any last winter, and now, boom.” Jessica shook her head.

Arden’s cell rang. “Hello.”

“Mom, where’s Dad?” her son, Tyler, said. “I’ve been waiting forty-five minutes.”

“Did you call him?” she asked, looking over at Jessica.

“Of course I called him.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Jessica just walked in and said traffic is a problem.”

Arden folded her phone, said to Jessica, “I’ve got to go. Lou didn’t pick up Tyler. And he hasn’t returned Tyler’s calls. That’s not like Lou, so he’s held up somewhere where his cell isn’t working.”

“Sometimes the service goes down in weather like this.” Jessica sat down.

“That it does. I’m afraid I’ll have to come in tomorrow.”

“Well, drive carefully. You never know what the other guy will do.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” Arden threw together her hat, coat, scarf. “You know, since Pete’s death, Lou has been forgetful.”

“Well, these things affect people different ways,” Jessica sympathized. “I think it’s harder for men—the death of a friend, someone they love. They can’t fix it.”

“As it is, Lou and Tyler pluck my last nerve. Lou can’t get it through his thick skull that Tyler is not athletic—” At this thought, she stopped and wrapped the hand-knit scarf around her neck. “The holidays wear me down anyway. I feel like sending out invitations to my nervous breakdown.”

“Hold on, girl.” Jessica smiled at her.

“I will.” As Arden sailed out of the room, she looked at the large wall calendar.

Friday the thirteenth.

With her deliveries done, Harry walked to her barn as the first snowflake twirled down.

“Perfect timing.”

The three animals and one human checked each stall, filled the water buckets, two to a stall, then Harry tightened her scarf, headed out the back of the barn, and started bringing in horses from the pastures. Night came so early, and this night would prove cold and long. The inside of the barn usually stayed warm enough for the water buckets not to freeze. Each horse wore a blanket, sized for him or her. However, Harry couldn’t figure out how to keep them from pulling the straps off from one another’s blankets. Horses loved this game, often accompanied by mock fighting, running about, and squealing. Though generally quiet animals, when they snorted, whinnied, and smacked their lips they did so with brio.

After half an hour, everyone was inside a deeply bedded stall, with clean water, an extra flake of hay to keep them busy. The big feeding came in the morning. If anyone needed a little help to keep the weight on, Harry also gave them grain at night.

By the time she’d put up Shortro, the last one to come in and always a gentleman about it, a new thin white shroud already covered the existing snow.

Walking into the heated tack room, she unwound her scarf, hanging it over a saddle. Her Carhartt Detroit jacket she laid across a saddle rack. She sank into the chair behind the desk.

“I’m tired.”

“Low pressure,” Tucker informed her. The weather made the corgi tired, too.

On the saddle pads by the old riding helmet, Pewter was already asleep. Mrs. Murphy, curled up next to her, began to doze off. The wall clock read 5:50. The sun had set, darkness gathered. Flatface, a huge great horned owl, stirred in the cupola above the hayloft. The blacksnake Matilda hibernated in her special hay bale up there, and Simon the possum also woke up. He felt the snow coming, double-checked his treasures, for he hoarded everything from candy wrappers to broken tack. He waddled to the edge of the hayloft to see what Harry was doing in the tack room. She usually left treats. His bright eyes missed nothing, including the one lone mouse who zipped out from behind the hay bales stacked in the aisle for tomorrow’s feeding.

“She’s in there, you know,” Simon warned, but do mice ever listen to advice offered by possums?

“She won’t hurt me.” The little fellow stopped near a small hole the mice had made at the outside corner of the tack room. They had pathways between each of the stalls. Cleverly hidden behind a trunk inside the tack room was another door. All the mice could come and go as they pleased. It must have been mice that designed the glorious sewers of Paris. Who better to create tunnels?

“The cats are there,” Simon warned.

Face upturned to him, the mouse simply replied, “They’re worthless,” then wiggled into the hole.

Harry didn’t know a small furry fellow walked by her boots under the desk, emerged on the other side, looked at the sleeping cats, then zipped for the back of the tack trunk.

Checking that day’s delivery list, Harry thought that aside from her three pets, she was alone. One is never truly alone on a farm. If nothing else, there’s always a spider within three feet of you.

Tucker raised her head, let out a low bark. “Coop’s here.”

This woke Pewter. “Will you kindly shut up?”

“It’s my job to announce any person or animal who comes onto this property.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

Harry heard the motor cut off, then the barn door open. She stepped outside the tack room. “Damn, it’s gotten even colder,” she said.

Cooper entered and sat down. “Supposed to get into the teens tonight. Maybe a foot of snow.”

“Everything okay at your place?” Harry inquired, making sure, for Cooper wasn’t a country girl, although she was learning.

“Got the generator hooked up in case. The fireplaces help, too. I keep promising myself that I’m going to install a wood-burning stove in the basement like you have, but I never get around to it.”

“Saves a boatload of money.” Harry changed the subject. “I can make a pot of tea.”

A nearby hotplate, rarely used, did work.

Cooper answered, “No, thank you. Harry, you know the Highams?”

“Socially. She plays cards with us. Why?”

“Arden Higham, sounding worried, reported that her husband, Lou, didn’t pick up their son from school. He hasn’t answered calls. She’s called his friends and coworkers, and they said they hadn’t heard from him. He left the office early to run some errands and said he’d pick up Tyler. He wouldn’t be back at the office. She’s asked us to look for him.”

“Like a missing person?”

“No one is using that terminology just yet. The man’s only been gone for a few hours, and it is Christmastime and it is snowing.”

“Right.”

“Ever hear of any home trouble?”

Harry shook her head. “Like I said, I only know them socially, and things seem to be fine. The kid’s at the gawky stage and just a whiz with computers. I can’t imagine he’d run out on her and Tyler. Probably Lou’s lost his cellphone or he’s tied up somewhere.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you concerned? Do you know something I don’t?”

Cooper teased her. “I know a lot you don’t. I’m not concerned. Yet.”

“Call me if I can help.” Harry felt something run over her foot. She looked down in time to see a tail disappear. “A mouse.”

Cooper reached inside her back pants pocket, rising to do so, retrieved a folded-over sheet of yellow paper, which she put on the desk in front of Harry. “A Christmas mouse. Here. Read my notes and tell me what you think.”

Harry scanned the page. “Peter Vavilov. Well-off. Aggressive. Local. High school star athlete back in the late eighties. Community leader. Member of many nonprofits, such as Silver Linings, Red Cross, Cancer Fund, MS Foundation, et cetera. Church: St. Cyril’s. Wife. Two sons. Well liked.”

“Right?” Coop lifted her eyebrows.

“Right. He was a good fund-raiser.” Harry then continued reading. “No mistresses. Especially concerned with sports and youth.”

“No pretty young things on the side?”

Harry thought for a moment. “I rarely saw Peter around any woman other than Charlene or women at fund-raisers. Never heard any talk about Pete in that way.”

“Can you think of anything else?”

“First, tell me what you mean by writing that he was aggressive.”

Cooper crossed one leg over the other. “When I would question people, that word came up again and again. He was aggressive as a football player. He was aggressive in advertising Fords, competitive with other dealerships, especially other Ford dealerships, like in Richmond. Can you think of an old feud?” the police officer asked. “Maybe someone hated him?”

“No.” Harry felt a tingling sensation at the back of her neck. “I thought Pete died of a heart attack. Why these questions?”

“Curious.” Cooper looked at the two cats. “So peaceful. Hey, that helmet has seen better days.” She rose, picked up the riding helmet.

Tucker barked. “Put that down. You don’t really want it.”

The cats opened their eyes. Mrs. Murphy sat up.

Pewter, also now on her feet, reached up for the helmet but too late. Cooper turned it over and the buckle bracelet fell out.

“Good place to hide your jewelry. Who’d think to look?” The tall blonde woman bent over, picked up the golden object, handing it to Harry.

“Oh, no!” Mrs. Murphy wailed. “There goes our Christmas gift.”

“I didn’t put the bracelet there,” Harry said, surprised. “It’s not my bracelet.” She studied the well-made piece. “Really pretty. Really expensive. It seems familiar somehow.”

Leaning over Harry, Cooper commented, “My grandmother had one sort of like that. Way back when, lots of women wore buckle rings and buckle bracelets or ones with a simple golden knot.”

“That’s probably why it looks familiar. How did it wind up in my old helmet?”

“Couldn’t have been in the lining?”

“Coop, I would have felt it. It’s good luck, a found treasure.”

“Guess you would’ve noticed it in there. Well, it’s yours now.”

“I’ll clean it up and wear it.”

“Now what do we do?” Pewter asked.

Tucker sighed. “The usual. Hope that Fair buys a present and puts our names on it.”

After Cooper left, Harry reviewed her friend’s numerous questions. Something was most definitely amiss.