Pay Dirt. Murder, She Meowed. Murder On The Prowl

Mrs. Murphy opened one eye. She heard the slam of the car door. A second slam lifted her head. Usually Susan cruised out to Harry’s alone. Escaping her offspring saved her mental health. The back screen door opened. Susan walked in, her beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, Brooks, following behind. No escape today.

“Toodle-oo,” Susan called out.

Pewter, irritated at being awakened, snarled, “I have never heard anything so insipid in my life.”

Mrs. Murphy rested her head back down on her paw. “Crab.”

“Well, that’s just it, Murphy, I was having the best dream of my life and now—vanished.” Pewter mourned the loss.

“Hi, Murphy.” Susan scratched behind the cat’s delicate ears.

“Oh, look, Pewts is underneath the kitchen table.” Brooks, who loved cats, bent down to pet Pewter. Her auburn hair fell in a curtain across her face.

“What I endure,” the gray cat complained; however, she made no effort to leave, so the complaint was pro forma.

“I’m organizing,” Harry called from the bedroom.

“God help us all.” Susan laughed as she walked into the chaos. “Harry, you’ll be up all night.”

“I couldn’t stand it anymore. It takes me five minutes to find a pair of socks that match and”—she pointed to a few pathetic silken remnants—“my underwear is shot.”

“You haven’t bought new lingerie since your mother died.”

Harry plopped on the bed. “As long as Mom bought the stuff, I didn’t have to—anyway, I can’t stand traipsing into Victoria’s Secret. There’s something faintly pornographic about it.”

“Oh, bull, you just can’t stand seeing bra sizes bigger than your own.

“I’m not so bad.”

Susan smiled. “I didn’t say you were, I only hinted that you are a touch competitive.”

“I am not. I most certainly am not. If I were competitive, I’d be applying my art history degree somewhere instead of being the postmistress of Crozet.”

“I seem to remember one vicious field hockey game our senior year.

“That doesn’t count.”

“You didn’t like BoomBoom Craycroft even then,” Susan recalled.

“Speaking of jugs … I hear she seduced my ex-husband wearing a large selection of lingerie.”

“Who told you that?”

“She did, the idiot.”

Susan sat down on the opposite side of the bed because she was laughing too hard to stand up.

“She did! Can you believe it? Told me all about the black lace teddy she wore when he came out to the farm on a call,” Harry added.

Pharamond Haristeen, “Fair,” happened to be one of the best equine vets in the state.

“Mom, Pewter’s hungry,” Brooks called from the kitchen.

Tucker, having raced back, pushed open the screen door and hurried over to Susan only to sit on her foot. As it was Susan who bred her and gave her to Harry, she felt quite close to the auburn-haired woman.

“Pewter’s always hungry, Brooks; don’t fall for her starving kitty routine.”

“Shut up,” Pewter called back, then purred and rubbed against Brooks’s leg.

“Mom, she’s really hungry.”

“Con artist.” Walking back to the kitchen, Harry sternly addressed the cat, who was frantically purring. “If they gave Academy Awards to cats, you would surely win ‘best actress.’

“I am so-o-o-o hungry,” the cat warbled.

“If I could use the electric can opener, I’d feed you just to shut you up.” Mrs. Murphy sat up and swept her whiskers forward, then back.

Harry, arriving at the same conclusion, grabbed a can of Mariner’s Delight. “What’s up?”

“We’re having a family crisis.” Brooks giggled.

“No, we’re not.”

“Mom.” Brooks contradicted her mother by the tone of her voice.

“I’m all ears.” Harry ladled out the fishy-smelling food. Pewter, blissfully happy, stuck her face in it. Mrs. Murphy approached her food with more finesse. She liked to pat the edge of her dish with her paw, sniff, then take a morsel in her teeth, carefully chewing it. She believed this was an aid to digestion, also keeping her weight down. Pewter gobbled everything. Calorie Kitty.

“I hate my teachers this year, especially Home Room.” Brooks dropped on a brightly painted kitchen chair.

“Miss Tucker, you were not invited to sit down.” Susan put her hands on her hips.

“Mom, it’s Harry. I mean, it’s not like I’m at Big Mim’s or anything.” She referred to Mim Sanburne, a fierce enforcer of etiquette.

“Practice makes perfect.”

“Please have a seat.” Harry invited her to the seat she already occupied.

“Thank you,” Brooks replied.

“Just see that you don’t forget your manners.”

“Fat chance.” Brooks laughed at her mother.

They strongly resembled each other, and despite their spats, a deep love existed between mother and daughter.

Danny, Susan’s older child, was also the recipient of oceans of maternal affection.

Brooks abruptly got up and dashed outside.

“Where are you going?”

“Back in a flash.”

Susan sat down. “I ask myself daily, sometimes hourly, whatever made me think I could be a mother.”

“Oh, Susan.” Harry waved her hand. “Stop trolling for compliments.”

“I’m not.”

“You know you’re a good mother.”

Brooks reappeared, Saturday newspaper in hand, and placed it on the table. “Sorry.”

“Oh, thanks. I didn’t get out to the mailbox this morning.” She took the rubber band off the folded newspaper. The small white envelope underneath the rubber band contained the monthly bill. “I don’t know why I pay for this damned paper. Half the time it isn’t delivered.

“Well, they delivered it today.”

“Hallelujah. Well—?” Harry shrugged. “What’s the family crisis?”

“We’re not having a family crisis,” Susan replied calmly. “Brooks doesn’t like her teachers, so we’re discussing—”

“I hate my teachers, and Mom is getting bent out of shape. Because she graduated from Crozet High, she wants me to graduate from Crozet High. Danny graduates this year. That ought to be enough. Batting five hundred, Mom,” Brooks interrupted.

Harry’s eyes widened. “You can’t drop out, Brooks.”

“I don’t want to drop out. I want to go back to St. Elizabeth’s.”

“That damned snob school costs an arm and a leg.” Susan looked up at Pewter, who was eating very loudly. “That cat sounds like an old man smacking his gums.”

Pewter, insulted, whirled around to face Susan, but she only proved the statement as little food bits dangled from her whiskers.

Susan smiled. “Like an old man who can’t clean his mustache.”

“Ha!” Mrs. Murphy laughed loudly.

“She really does look like that,” Tucker agreed as she sat on the floor under the counter where Pewter chowed down. In case the cat dropped any food, Tucker would vacuum it up.

“Hey, I’ve got some cookies,” Harry said.

“Thank you, no. We ate a big breakfast.”

“What about coffee, tea?”

“No.” Susan smiled.

“You don’t think you can get along with your teachers or overlook them?” Harry switched back to the subject at hand.

“I hate Mrs. Berryhill.”

“She’s not so bad.” Harry defended a middle-aged lady widowed a few years back.

“Gives me heaves.” Brooks pretended to gag.

“If it’s that bad, you aren’t going to learn anything.”

“See, Mom, see—I told you.”

“I think it’s important not to bail out before you’ve given it a month or two.”

“By that time I’ll have failed French!” She knew her mother especially wanted her to learn French.

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Go on, be dramatic.” Harry poked at Susan’s arm while encouraging Brooks.

“We needalittle drama around here.” Tucker agreed with Harry.

“I won’t learn a thing. I’ll be learning-deprived. I’ll shrink into oblivion—”

Harry interrupted, “Say, that’s good, Brooks. You must be reading good novels or studying vocabulary boosters.”

Brooks smiled shyly, then continued. “I will be disadvantaged for life, and then I’ll never get into Smith.”

“That’s a low blow,” said Susan, who had graduated from Smith with Harry.

“Then you’ll marry a gas station attendant and—”

“Harry, don’t egg her on. She doesn’t have to pay the bills.”

“What does Ned say?” Harry inquired of Susan’s husband, a lawyer and a likable man.

“He’s worried about the money, too, but he’s determined that she get a good foundation.”

“St. Elizabeth’s is a fine school even if I do think they’re a bunch of snobs,” Harry said forthrightly. “Roscoe Fletcher is doing a good job. At least everyone says he is. I can’t say that I know a lot about education, but remember last year’s graduating class put two kids in Yale, one in Princeton, one in Harvard.” She paused. “I think everyone got into great schools. Can’t argue with that.”

“If I’m going to spend that much money, then I should send her to St. Catherine’s in Richmond,” Susan replied to Harry.

“Mom, I don’t want to go away from home. I just want to get out of Crozet High. I’ll be away soon enough when I go to college. Smith, Mom, Smith,” she reminded her mother.

“Well—” Susan considered this.

“Call Roscoe Fletcher,” Harry suggested. “Brooks has only been in school for two weeks. See if he’ll let her transfer now or if she’ll have to wait for the second semester.”

Susan stood up to make herself a cup of tea.

“I asked you if you wanted tea,” Harry said.

“I changed my mind. You want some?”

“Yeah, sure.” Harry sat back down.

“I already called Roscoe. That officious bombshell of a secretary of his, April Shively, took forever to put me through. It’s a contradiction in terms, bombshell and secretary.” She thought a moment, then continued. “Of course, he said wondrous things about St. Elizabeth’s, which one would expect. What headmaster won’t take your money?”

“He has raised a lot of money, at least, that’s what Mim says.” Harry paused, “Mim graduated from Madeira, you know. You’d think she would have gone to St. Elizabeth’s. Little Mim didn’t graduate from St. Elizabeth’s either.”

“Mim is a law unto herself,” Susan replied.

“Miranda will know why Big Mim didn’t go there.”

“If she chooses to tell. What a secret keeper that one is.” Susan loved Miranda Hogendobber, being fully acquainted with her quirks. Miranda’s secrets usually involved age or the petty politics of her various civic and church organizations.

“The big question: Can Brooks get in?”

“Of course she can get in,” Susan replied in a loud voice. “She’s carrying a three point eight average. And her record was great when she was there before, in the lower school.”

“What about Danny? Will he be jealous?”

“No,” Brooks answered. “I asked him.”

Harry took her cup of tea as Susan sat back down.

“I just bought that Audi Quattro,” Susan moaned. “How can I pay for all of this?”

“I can work after school,” Brooks volunteered.

“I want those grades to stay up, up, up. By the time you get into college, you might have to win a scholarship. Two kids in college at the same time—when I got pregnant, why didn’t I space them four years apart instead of two?” She wailed in mock horror.

“Because this way they’re friends, and this way Danny can drive Brooks everywhere.”

“And that’s another thing.” Susan smacked her hand on the table. “They’ll be going to different after-school activities. He won’t be driving her anywhere.”

“Mom, half my friends go to St. Elizabeth’s. I’ll cop rides.”

“Brooks, I am not enamored of the St. Elizabeth’s crowd. They’re too—superficial, and I hear there’s a lot of drugs at the school.”

“Get real. There’s a lot of drugs at Crozet High. If I wanted to take drugs, I could get them no matter where I went to school.” She frowned.

“That’s a hell of a note,” Harry exclaimed.

“It’s true, I’m afraid.” Susan sighed. “Harry, the world looks very different when you have children.”

“I can see that,” Harry agreed. “Brooks, just who are your friends at St. Elizabeth’s?”

“Karen Jensen. There’s other kids I know, but Karen’s my best friend there.”

“She seems like a nice kid,” Harry said.

“She is. Though she’s also older than Brooks.” Susan was frustrated. “But the rest of them are balls-to-the-wall consumers. I’m telling you, Harry, the values there are so superficial and—”

Harry interrupted her. “But Brooks is not superficial, and St. E isn’t going to make her that way. It didn’t before and it won’t this time. She’s her own person, Susan.”

Susan dipped a teaspoon in her tea, slowly stirring in clover honey. She hated refined sugar. “Darling, go visit Harry’s horses. I need a private word with my best bud.”

“Sure, Mom.” Brooks reluctantly left the kitchen, Tucker at her heels.

Putting the teaspoon on the saucer, Susan leaned forward. “It’s so competitive at that school, some kids can’t make it. Remember last year when Courtney Frere broke down?”

Trying to recall the incident, Harry dredged up vague details. “Bad college-board scores—was that it?”

“She was so afraid she’d disappoint her parents and not get into a good school that she took an overdose of sleeping pills.

“Now I remember.” Harry pressed her lips together. “That can happen anywhere. She’s a high-strung girl. She got into, uh, Tulane, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Susan nodded her head. “But it isn’t just competitive between the students, it’s competitive between the faculty and the administration. Sandy Brashiers is still fuming that he wasn’t made upper-school principal.”

“Politics exists in every profession. Even mine,” Harry calmly stated. “You worry too much, Susan.”

“You don’t know what it’s like being a mother!” Susan flared up.

“Then why ask my opinion?” Harry shot back.

“Because—” Susan snapped her teaspoon on the table.

“Hey!” Tucker barked.

“Hush, Tucker,” Harry told her.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” Harry grabbed the spoon out of Susan’s hand. “If she hates it, you take her out of there. If she falls in with the wrong crowd, yank her out.”

“This little detour could destroy her grade-point average.”

“Well, she’ll either go to a lesser college than our alma mater or she can go to a junior college for a year or two to pull her grades back up. Susan, it isn’t the end of the world if Brooks doesn’t do as well as you wish—but it’s a hard lesson.”

“I don’t think Mrs. Berryhill is that bad.”

“We aren’t fifteen. Berryhill’s not exactly a barrel of laughs even for us.”

Susan breathed deeply. “The contacts she makes at St. Elizabeth’s could prove valuable later, I suppose.”

“She’s a good girl. She’ll bloom where planted.”

“You’re right.” Susan exhaled, then reached over for the folded paper. “Speaking of the paper, let’s see what fresh hell the world is in today.”

She unfolded the first section of the paper, the sound of which inflamed Mrs. Murphy, who jumped over from the counter to sit on the sports section, the living section, and the classifieds.

“Murphy, move a minute.” Harry tried to pull the living section out from under the cat.

“I enjoy sitting on the newspaper. Best of all, I love the tissue paper in present boxes, but this will do.”

Harry gently lifted up Mrs. Murphy’s rear end and pulled out a section of paper as the tail swished displeasure. “Thank you.”

“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Murphy grumbled as Harry let her rear end down.

“Another fight in Congress over the federal budget,” Susan read out loud.

“What a rook.” Harry shrugged. “Nobody’s going to do anything anyway.”

“Isn’t that the truth? What’s in your section?”

“Car wreck on Twenty-ninth and Hydralic . Officer Crystal Limerick was on the scene.”

“Anything in there about Coop?” She mentioned their mutual friend who was now a deputy for the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Department.

“No.” Harry flipped pages, disappointed that she didn’t find what she was looking for.

“You’ve got the obit section, let’s see who went to their reward.”

“You’re getting as bad as Mom.”

“Your mother was a wonderful woman, and it’s one’s civic duty to read the obituary column. After all, we must be ready to assist in case—”

She didn’t finish her sentence because Harry nipped open the section of the paper to the obituary page suddenly shouting, “Holy shit!”

3

“I just spoke to him yesterday.” Susan gasped in shock as she read over Harry’s shoulder the name Roscoe Harvey Fletcher, forty-five, who died unexpectedly September 22. She’d jumped up to see for herself.

“The paper certainly got it in the obit section quickly.” Harry couldn’t believe it either.

“Obit section has the latest closing.” Susan again read the information to be sure she wasn’t hallucinating. “Doesn’t say how he died. Oh, that’s not good. When they don’t say it means suicide or—”

“AIDS.”

“They never tell you in this paper how people die. I think it’s important.” Susan snapped the back of the paper.

” ‘The family requests donations be made to the Roscoe Harvey Fletcher Memorial Fund for scholarships to St. Elizabeth’s… .’ What the hell happened?” Harry shot up and grabbed the phone.

She dialed Miranda’s number. Busy. She then dialed Dr. Larry Johnson. He knew everything about everybody. Busy. She dialed the Reverend Herbert Jones.

“Rev,” she said as he picked up the phone, “it’s Mary Minor.”

“I know your voice.”

“How did Roscoe die?”

“I don’t know.” His voice lowered. “I was on my way over there to see what I could do. Nobody knows anything. I’ve spoken to Mini and Miranda. I even called Sheriff Shaw to see if there had been a late-night accident. Everyone is in the dark, and there’s no funeral information. Naomi hasn’t had time to select a funeral home. She’s probably in shock.”

“She’ll use Hill and Wood.”

“Yes, I would think so, but, well—” His voice trailed off a moment, then he turned up the volume. “He wasn’t sick. I reached Larry. Clean bill of health, so this has to be an accident of some kind. Let me get over there to help. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Sorry,” Harry apologized for slowing him down.

“No, no, I’m glad you called.”

“Nobody called me.”

“Miranda did. If you had an answering machine you’d have known early on. She called at seven a.m., the minute she saw the paper.”

“I was in the barn.”

“Called there, too.”

“Maybe I was out on the manure spreader. Well, it doesn’t matter. There’s work to be done. I’ll meet you over at the Fletchers’. I’ve got Susan and Brooks with me. We can help do whatever needs to be done.”

“That would be greatly appreciated. See you there.” He breathed in sharply. “I don’t know what we’re going to find.”

As Harry hung up the phone, Susan stood up expectantly. “Well?”

“Let’s shoot over to the Fletchers’. Herbie’s on his way.”

“Know anything?” They’d been friends for so long they could speak in shorthand to each other, and many times they didn’t need to speak at all.

“No.”

“Let’s move ‘em out.” Susan made the roundup sign.

Tucker, assisted by Brooks, sneaked into the roundup. She lay on the floor of the Audi until halfway to Crozet. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, both livid at being left behind, stared crossly as the car pulled out of the driveway.

Once at the Fletchers’ the friends endured another shock. Fifty to sixty cars lined the street in the Ednam subdivision. Deputy Cynthia Cooper directed traffic. This wasn’t her job, but the department was shorthanded over the weekend.

“Coop?” Harry waved at her.

“Craziest thing I’ve ever heard of,” the nice-looking officer said.

“What do you mean?” Susan asked.

“He’s not dead.”

“WHAT?” all three humans said in unison.

Tucker, meanwhile, wasted no time. She walked in the front door, left open because of the incredible number of friends, acquaintances, and St. Elizabeth’s students who were paying condolence calls. Tucker, low to the ground, threaded her way through the humans to the kitchen.

Brooks quickly found her friends, Karen Jensen and Jody Miller. They didn’t know anything either.

As Harry and Susan entered the living room, Roscoe held up a glass of champagne, calling to the assembled, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated!” He sipped. “Bierce.”

“Twain,” Sandy Brashiers corrected. He was head of the English department and a rival for Roscoe’s power.

“Ambrose Bierce.” Roscoe smiled but his teeth were clenched.

“It doesn’t matter, Roscoe, you’re alive.” Naomi, a handsome woman in her late thirties, toasted her husband.

April Shively, adoringly staring at her florid boss, clinked her glass with that of Ed Sugarman, the chemistry teacher.

“Hear, hear,” said the group, which contained most of Harry’s best friends, as well as a few enemies.

Blair Bainbridge, not an enemy but a potential suitor, stood next to Marilyn, or Little Mini, the well-groomed daughter of Big Mini Sanburne.

“When did you get home?” Harry managed to ask Blair after expressing to Roscoe her thanks for his deliverance.

“Last night.”

“Hi, Marilyn.” She greeted Little Mim by her real name.

“Good to see you.” It wasn’t. Marilyn was afraid Blair liked Harry more than herself.

Fair Haristeen, towering above the other men, strode over to his ex-wife, with whom he was still in love. “Isn’t this the damnedest thing you’ve ever seen?” He reached into the big bowl of hard candies sitting on an end table. Roscoe always had candy around.

“Pretty weird.” She kissed him on the cheek and made note that Morris “Maury” McKinchie, Roscoe Fletcher’s best friend, was absent.

Meanwhile Tucker sat in the kitchen with Winston, the family English bulldog, a wise and kind animal. They had been exchanging pleasantries before Tucker got to the point.

“What’s going on, Winston?”

“I don’t know,” came the grave reply.

“Has he gone to doctors in Richmond or New York? Because Harry heard from Herb Jones that he was healthy.”

“Nothing wrong with Roscoe except too many women in his life.”

The corgi cocked her head. “Ah, well,” she said,“aprank, I guess, this obit thing.”

“Roscoe now knows how many people care about him. If people could attend their funerals, they’d be gratified, I should think,” Winston said.

“Never thought of that.”

“Umm.” Winston waddled over to the backdoor, overlooking the sunken garden upon which Naomi lavished much attention.

“Winston, what’s worrying you?”

The massive head turned to reveal those fearsome teeth. “What if this is a warning?”

“Who’d do a thing like that?”

“Tucker, Roscoe can’t keep it in his pants. I’ve lost count of his affairs, and Naomi has reached the boiling point. Shealwayscatches him. After many lies, he does finally confess. He promises never to do it again. Three months, six months later—he’s off and running.”

“Who?”

“The woman?” The wrinkled brow furrowed more deeply. “April, maybe, except she’s so obvious even the humans get it. Let’s see, a young woman from New York , I forget her name. Oh, he’s made a pass at BoomBoom, but I think she’s otherwise engaged. You know, I lose count.”

“Bet Naomi doesn’t,” the little corgi sagely replied.

4

That evening a heavy fog crept down Yellow Mountain . Harry, in the stable, walked outside to watch a lone wisp float over the creek. The wisp was followed by fingers spreading over the meadow until the farm was enveloped in gray.

She shivered; the temperature was dropping.

“Put on your down vest, you’ll catch your death,” Mrs. Murphy advised.

“What are you talking about, Miss Puss?” Harry smiled at her chatty cat.

“You, I’m talking about you. You need a keeper.” The tiger sighed, know ing that the last person Harry would take care of would be herself.

Tucker lifted her head. Moisture carried good scent. “That bobcat’s near.”

“Let’s get into the barn then.” The cat feared her larger cousin.

As the little family plodded into the barn, the horses nickered. Darkness came as swiftly as the fog. Harry pulled her red down vest off a tack hook. She flipped on the light switch. Having stayed overlong at Roscoe Fletcher’s to celebrate, she was now behind on her farm chores.

Tomahawk, the oldest horse in the barn, loved the advent of fall. A true foxhunting fellow, he couldn’t wait for the season to begin. Gin Fizz and Pop tart, the younger equines, perked their ears.

“That old bobcat is prowling around.” Mrs. Murphy leapt onto the Dutch door, the top held open by a nickel-plated hook.

Tomahawk gazed at her with his huge brown eyes. “Mean, that one.”

Two bright beady black eyes appeared at the edge of the hayloft. “What’s this I hear about a bobcat?”

“Simon, I thought you’d still be asleep,” Tucker barked.

The opossum moved closer to the edge, revealing his entire light gray face. “You-all make enough noise to wake the dead.Anyminute now and Flatface up there will swoop down and bitterly chastise us.”

Simon referred to the large owl who nested in the cupola. The owl disliked the domesticated animals, especially Mrs. Murphy. There was also a black snake who hibernated in the hayloft, but she was antisocial, even in summertime. A cornucopia of mice kept the predators fat and happy.

The hayloft covered one-third of the barn, which gave the space a lighter, airier feeling than if it had run the full length of the structure. Harry, using salvaged lumber, had built a hay shed thirty yards from the barn. She had painted it dark green with white trim; that was her summer project. Each summer she tried to improve the farm. She loved building, but after nailing on shingles in the scorching sun, she had decided she’d think long and hard before doing that again.

Mrs. Murphy climbed the ladder to the hayloft. “Fog is thickaspea soup.”

“Doesn’t matter. I can smell her well enough.” Simon referred to the dreaded bobcat.

“Maybe so, but she can run faster than anyone here except for the horses.”

“I’m hungry.”

“I’ll get Mom to put crunchies in my bowl. You can have that.”

Simon brightened. “Goody.”

Mrs. Murphy walked the top beam of the stalls, greeting each horse as she passed over its head. Then she jumped down on the tall wooden medicine chest standing next to the tack-room door. From there it was an easy drop to the floor.

Harry, having fed the horses, knelt on her hands and knees in the feed room. Little holes in the wooden walls testified to the industry of the mice. She lined her feed bins in tin, which baffled them, but they gobbled every crumb left on the floor. They also ate holes in her barn jacket, which enraged her.

“Mother, you aren’t going to catch one.”

“Murphy, do something!”

The cat sat next to Harry and patted the hole in the wall. “They’ve got a system like the New

York subway.”

“You’re certainly talkative,” Harry commented.

“Andyou don’t understand a word I’m saying.” The cat smiled. “I’m hungry.”

“Jeez, Murphy, lower the volume.”

“Food, glorious food—” She sang the song from Oliver.

Tucker, reposing in the tack room, hollered, “You sing about as wellasI do.”

“Thanks. I could have lived my whole life without knowing that.”

Her entreaties worked. Harry shook triangular crunchies out of the bag, putting the bowl on top of the medicine cabinet so Tucker wouldn’t steal the food.

“Thanks,” Simon called down, showing his appreciation.

“Anytime.” Murphy nibbled a few mouthfuls to satisfy Harry.

“I suppose Pewter will be hungry.” Harry checked her watch. “She’s not an outdoor girl.” She laughed.

“If she gets any fatter, you’ll need to buy a red wagon so you can haul her gut around,” Mrs. Murphy commented.

Harry sat on her old tack trunk. She glanced around. While there were always chores to be done, the regular maintenance ones were finished: feed, water, muck stalls, clean tack, sweep out the barn.

As soon as the horses finished eating, she would turn them out. With the first frost, usually around mid-October, she would flip their schedule. They’d be outside during the day and in their stalls at night. In the heat of summer they stayed inside the barn during the day; it was well ventilated from the breeze always blowing down the mountain. Kept the flies down, too.

She got up, her knees cracking, and walked to the open barn door. “You know, we could have an early frost.” She returned to Fizz’s stall. “I wonder if we should get on the new schedule now.”

“Go ahead. If there are a couple of hot days, we’ll come inside during the day. We’re flexible.”

“Let’s stay inside.” Poptart ground his sweet feed.

“Who wants to argue with the bobcat? I don’t,” Tomahawk said sensibly.

Harry cupped her chin with her hand. “You know, let’s go to our fall schedule.”

Hooray!” the horses called out.

“Nighty night,” she called back, turning off the lights.

Although the distance between the stable and the house couldn’t have been more than one hundred yards, the heavy fog and mist soaked the three friends by the time they reached the backdoor.

The cat and dog shook themselves in the porch area. Harry would pitch a fit if they did it in the kitchen. Even Harry shook herself. Once inside she raced to put on the kettle for tea. She was chilled.

Pewter, lounging on the sofa, head on a colorful pillow, purred, “I’m glad I stayed inside.”

“You’realwaysglad you stayed inside,” Tucker answered.

Harry puttered around. She drank some tea, then walked back into her bedroom. “Oh, no.” In the turmoil of the day, she’d rushed out with Susan and Brooks, forgetting the mess she had left behind. The contents of her bureau drawers lay all over her bed. “I will not be conquered by underpants.”

She gulped her tea, ruthlessly tossing out anything with holes in it or where the fabric was worn thin. That meant she had only enough socks left for half a drawer, one satin bra, and three pairs of underpants.

“Mom, you need to shop,” said Mrs. Murphy, who adored shopping although she rarely got the opportunity for it.

Harry beheld the pile of old clothes. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”

“You can’t wear these things. They’re tired,” Pewter, now in the middle of the pile, told her. “I’m tired, too.”

“You didn’t do anything.” Murphy laughed.

Harry stomped out to the pantry, returning armed with a big scissors.

“What’s she going to do?” Pewter wondered aloud.

“Make rags. Mother can’t stand to throw anything out if it can be used for something. She’ll cut everything into squares or rectangles and then divide the pile between the house and the barn.”

“The bras, too?”

“No, I think those are truly dead,” Mrs. Murphy replied.

“Harry is a frugal soul,” Pewter commented. She herself was profligate.

“She has to be.” Tucker cleaned her hind paws, not easy for a corgi. “That post office job pays for food and gas and that’s all. Luckily, she inherited the farm when her parents died. It’s paid for, but she doesn’t have much else.Alittle savings and a few stocks her father left her, but he wasn’t a financial wizard either. Her one extravagance, if you can call it that, is the horses. ‘Course, they help in ‘mowing’ the fields.”

“Humans are funny, aren’t they?” Pewter said thoughtfully. “Big Mim wallows in possessions, and Harry has so little. Why doesn’t Mim give things to Harry?”

“You forget, she gave her Poptart. She and Fair went halfsies on it.”

“I did forget. Still, you know what I mean.”

Tucker shrugged. “They’re funny about things. Things mean a lot to them. Like bones to us, I guess.”

“I couldn’t care less about bones. Catnip is another matter,” the tiger said gleefully, wishing for a catnip treat.

“Ever see that T-shirt? You know, the one thatsays’He who dies with the most toys wins’?” Pewter, snuggling in the new rag pile, asked.

“Yeah. Samson Coles used to wear it—before he was disgraced by dipping into escrow funds.” Tucker giggled.

“Stupid T-shirt,” Mrs. Murphy said briskly. “When you’re dead, you’re dead. You can’t win anything.”

“That reminds me. The bobcat’s out there tonight,” Tucker told Pewter.

“I’m not going outside.”

“Weknow that.” Mrs. Murphy swished her tail. “Wonder if the Fletchers will find out who put that phony obituary in the paper? If they don’t, Mother will. You know how nosy she gets.”

The phone rang. Harry put down her scissors to pick it up. “Hi.”

Blair Bainbridge’s deep voice had a soothing quality. “Sorry I didn’t call on you the minute I got home, but I was dog tired. I happened to be down at the cafe when Marilyn ran in to tell me about Roscoe dying. We drove over to his house, and I—”

“Blair, it’s okay. She’s crazy about you, as I’m sure you know.”

“Oh, well, she’s lonesome.” Since he was one of the highest paid male models in the country, he knew perfectly well that women needed smelling salts in his presence. All but Harry. Therefore she fascinated him.

“Susan and I are riding tomorrow after church if you want to come along.”

“Thanks. What time?”

“Eleven.”

He cheerfully said, “I’ll see you at eleven, and, Harry, I can tack my own horse. Who do you want me to ride?”

“Tomahawk.”

“Great. See you then. ‘Bye.”

” ‘Bye .”

The animals said nothing. They knew she was talking to Blair, and they were divided in their opinions. Tucker wanted Harry to get back with Fair. She knew it wasn’t unusual for humans to remarry after divorcing. Pewter thought Blair was the better deal because he was rich and Harry needed help in that department. Mrs. Murphy, while having affection for both men, always said that Mr. Right hadn’t appeared. Be patient.

The phone rang again.

“Coop. How are you?”

“Tired. Hey, don’t want to bug you, but did you have any idea who might have put that false obit in the papers?”

“No.”

“Roscoe says he hasn’t a clue. Naomi doesn’t think it’s quite as funny as he does. Herb doesn’t have any ideas. April Shively thinks it was Karen Jensen since she’s such a cutup. BoomBoom says Maury McKinchie did it, and he’ll use our reactions as the basis for a movie. I even called the school chaplain, Father Michael. He was noncommittal.”

“What do you mean?”

Father Michael, the priest of the Church of the Good Shepherd between Crozet and Charlottesville, had close ties to the private school. Although nondenominational for a number of years, St. Elizabeth’s each year invited a local clergyman to be the chaplain of the school. This exposed the students to different religious approaches. This year it was the Catholics’ turn. Apart from a few gripes from extremists, the rotating system worked well.

“He shut up fast,” Coop replied.

“That’s weird.”

“I think so, too.”

“What does Rick think?” Harry referred to Sheriff Shaw by his first name.

“He sees the humor in this, but he wants to find out who did it. If kids were behind this, they need to learn that you can’t jerk people around like that.”

“If I hear of anything, I’ll buzz.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t work too hard, Coop.”

“Look who’s talking. See you soon. ‘Bye.”

Harry hung up the phone and picked up the small throw-out pile. Then she carefully divided the newly cut rags, placing half by the kitchen door. That way she would remember to take them to the barn in the morning. She noticed it was ten at night.

“Where does the time go?”

She hopped in the shower and then crawled into bed.

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker were already on the bed.

“What do you guys think about Roscoe’s fake obituary?” she asked her animal friends.

Like many people who love animals, she talked to them, doing her best to understand. They understood her, of course.

“Joke.” Pewter stuck out one claw, which she hooked into the quilt.

“Ditto.” Tucker agreed. “Although Winston said Naomi is furious with him. Mad enough to kill.”

“Humans are boring—” Pewter rested her head on an outstretched arm.

“See, you think like I do.” Harry wiggled under the blankets. “Just some dumb thing. For all I know, Roscoe did it himself. He’s not above it.”

“Winston said Roscoe’s running the women. Can’t leave them alone.” Tucker was back on her conversation with the bulldog.

“Maybe this isn’t a joke.” Mrs. Murphy, who had strong opinions about monogamy, curled on Harry’s pillow next to her head.

“Oh, Murphy, it will all blow over.” Tucker wanted to go to sleep.

5

The woody aroma of expensive tobacco curled up from Sandy Brashiers’s pipe. The leather patches on his tweed jacket were worn to a perfect degree. His silk rep tie, stripes running in the English direction, left to right, was from Oxford University Motor Car Club. He had studied at Oxford after graduating from Harvard. A cashmere V neck, the navy underscoring the navy stripe in the tie, completed his English-professor look.

However, the Fates or Sandy himself had not been kind. Not only was he not attached to a university, he was teaching high-school English, even if it was at a good prep school. This was not the future his own professors or he himself had envisioned when he was a star student.

He never fell from grace because he never reached high enough to tumble. Cowardice and alcohol already marred his good looks at forty-two. As for the cowardice, no one but Sandy seemed to know

why he hung back when he was capable of much more. Then again, perhaps even he didn’t know.

He did know he was being publicly humiliated by headmaster Roscoe Fletcher. When the ancient Peter Abbott retired as principal of the upper school at the end of last year’s term, Sandy should have automatically been selected to succeed Abbott. Roscoe dithered, then dallied, finally naming Sandy principal pro tern. He declared a genuine search should take place, much as he wished to promote from within.

This split the board of directors and enraged the faculty, most of whom believed the post should go to Sandy. If Roscoe was going to form a search committee each time a position opened, could any faculty member march assuredly into administration?

Fortunately for Brooks Tucker, she knew nothing of the prep school’s politics. She was entranced as Mr. Brashiers discussed the moral turpitude of Lady Macbeth in the highly popular Shakespeare elective class.

“What would have happened if Lady Macbeth could have acted directly, if she didn’t have to channel her ambition through her husband?”

Roger Davis raised his hand. “She would have challenged the king right in his face.”

“No way,” pretty Jody Miller blurted before she raised her hand.

“Would you like to expand on that theme after I call on you?” Sandy wryly nodded to the model-tall girl.

“Sorry, Mr. Brashiers.” She twirled her pencil, a nervous habit. “Lady Macbeth was devious. It would be out of character to challenge the king openly. I don’t think her position in society would change that part of her character. She’d be sneaky even if she were a man.”

Brooks, eyebrows knit together, wondered if that was true. She wanted to participate, but she was shy in her new surroundings even though she knew many of her classmates from social activities outside of school.

Sean Hallahan, the star halfback on the football team, was called on and said in his deep voice, “She’s devious, Jody, because she has to hide her ambition.”

This pleased Sandy Brashiers, although it did not please Jody Miller, who was angry at Sean. Ten years ago the boys rarely understood the pressures on women’s lives, but enough progress had been made that his male students could read a text bearing those pressures in mind.

Karen Jensen, blond and green-eyed, the most popular girl in the junior class, chirped, “Maybe she was having a bad hair day.”

Everyone laughed.

After class Brooks, Karen, and Jody walked to the cafeteria—or the Ptomaine Pit, as it was known. Roger Davis, tall and not yet filled out, trailed behind. He wanted to talk to Brooks. Still awkward, he racked his brain about how to open a conversation.

He who hesitates is lost. Sean scooted by him, skidding next to the girls, secure in his welcome.

“Think the president’s wife is Lady Macbeth?”

The three girls kept walking while Jody sarcastically said, “Sean, how long did it take you to think of that?”

“You inspire me, Jody.” He cocked his head, full of himself.

Roger watched this from behind them. He swallowed hard, took two big strides and caught up.

“Hey, bean,” Sean offhandedly greeted him, not at all happy that he might have to share the attention of three pretty girls.

If Roger had been a smartass kid, he would have called Sean a bonehead or something. Sean was bright enough, but his attitude infuriated the other boys. Roger was too nice a guy to put someone else down, though. Instead he smiled and forgot what he was going to say to Brooks.

Luckily, she initiated the conversation. “Are you still working at the car wash?”

“Yes.”

“Do they need help? I mean, I’d like to get a job and—” Her voice faced away.

“Jimbo always needs help. I’ll ask him,” Roger said firmly, now filled with a mission: to help Brooks.

Jimbo C. Anson, as wide as he was tall, owned the car wash, the local heating-fuel company, and a small asphalt plant that he had bought when the owner, Kelly Craycroft, died unexpectedly. Living proof of the capitalist vision of life, Jimbo was also a soft touch. Brooks would be certain to get that after-school job.

Brooks was surprised when she walked through the backdoor of her house that afternoon to find her mother on the phone with Roger. He’d already gotten her the job. She needed to decide whether to work after school, weekends, or both.

After Brooks profusely thanked Roger, she said she’d call him back since she needed to talk to her mother.

“I guess you do.” Susan stared at her after Brooks hung up the phone.

“Mom, St. Elizabeth’s is expensive. I want to make money.”

“Honey, we aren’t on food stamps. At least, not yet.” Susan sighed, loath to admit that the few fights she ever had with Ned were over money.

“If I can pay for my clothes and stuff, that will help some.”

Susan stared into those soft hazel eyes, just like Ned’s. Happy as she was to hear of Brooks’s willingness to be responsible, she was oddly saddened or perhaps nostalgic: her babies were growing up fast. Somehow life went by in a blur. Wasn’t it just yesterday she was holding this beautiful young woman in her arms, wondering at her tiny fingers and toes?

Susan cleared her throat. “I’m proud of you.” She paused. “Let’s go take a look at the car wash before you make a decision.”

“Great.” Brooks smiled, revealing the wonders of orthodontic work.

“Yeehaw!” came a holler from outside the backdoor.

“I’m here, too,” Tucker barked.

Neither Mrs. Murphy nor Pewter was going to brazenly advertise her presence.

The Tuckers’ own corgi, Tee Tucker’s brother, Owen Tudor, raced to the backdoor as it swung open. Their mother had died of old age that spring. It was now a one-corgi household.

“Tucker.” Owen kissed his sister. He would have kissed the two cats except they deftly sidestepped his advances.

“I didn’t hear your truck,” Susan said.

“Dead. This time it’s the carburetor.” Harry sighed. “One of these years I will buy a new truck.”

“Andthe cows will fly,” Pewter added sardonically.

“Mom might win the lottery.” Tucker, ever the optimist, pricked up her ears.

“Need a ride home?” Susan offered.

“I’ll walk. Good for me and good for the critters.”

“It’s not good for me,” Pewter objected instantly. “My paws are too delicate.”

“You’re too fat,” Mrs. Murphy said bluntly.

“I have big bones.”

“Pewter—” Tucker started to say something but was interrupted by Susan, who reached down to pet her.

“Why don’t you all hop in the car, and we’ll go to the car wash? Brooks took a job there, but I want to check it out. If you go with me, I’ll feel better.”

“Sure.”

Everyone piled into the Audi. Mrs. Murphy enjoyed riding in cars. Pewter endured it. The two dogs loved every minute of it, but they were so low to the ground the only way they could see out the window was to sit on human laps, which were never in short supply.

They waved to Big Mim in her Bentley Turbo R, heading back toward Crozet.

Mrs. Murphy, lying down in the back window, watched the opulent and powerful machine glide by. “She’s still in her Bavarian phase.”

“Huh?” Tucker asked.

“Capswith pheasant feathers, boiled wool jackets. For all I know she’s wearing lederhosen, or one of those long skirts that weigh a sweet ton.”

“You know, if I were German, I’d be embarrassed when Americans dress like that,” Pewter noted sagely.

“If I were German, I’d be embarrassed if Germans dressed like that,” Owen Tudor piped up, which made the animals laugh.

“You-all are being awfully noisy,” Harry chided them.

“They’re just talking,” Brooks protested.

“If animals could talk, do you know what they’d say?” Susan then told them: “What’s to eat? Where’s the food? Can I sleep with it? Okay, can I sleep on it?”

“I resent that,” Mrs. Murphy growled.

“Who cares?” Pewter airily dismissed the human’s gibe.

“What else can they do but joke about their betters? Low self-esteem.” Owen chuckled.

“Yeah, and whoever invented that term ought to be hung at sundown.” Mrs. Murphy, not one given to psychologizing, put one paw on Harry’s shoulder. “In fact, the idea that a person is fully formed in childhood is absurd. Only a human could come up with that one.”

“They can’t help it,” Tucker said.

“Well, they could certainly shut up about it,” Mrs. Murphy suggested strongly.

“BoomBoom Craycroft can sure sling that crap around.” Tucker didn’t really dislike the woman, but then again, she didn’t really like her either.

“You haven’t heard the latest!” Pewter eagerly sat up by Brooks in the backseat.

“What?” The other animals leaned toward the cat.

“Heard it at Market’s.”

“Well!” Mrs. Murphy imperiously prodded.

“AsIwassaying before I was so rudely interrupted—”

“I did not interrupt you.” Tucker was testy.

Owen stepped in. “Shut up, Tucker, let her tell her story.”

“Well, BoomBoomwasbuying little glass bottles and a mess of Q-Tips, I mean enough Q-Tips to clean all the ears in Albemarle County. So Market asks, naturally enough, what is she going to do with all this stuff. Poor guy, next thing you know she launches into an explanation about fragrance therapy. No kidding. How certain essences will create emotional states or certain smells will soothe human ailments. She must have blabbed on for forty-five minutes. I thought I would fall off the counter laughing at her.”

“She’s off her nut,” Owen said.

“Market asked for an example.” Pewter relished her tale. “She allowedashow she didn’t have any essence with her but, for instance, if he felt a headache coming on, he should turn off the lights, sit in a silent room, and put a pot of water on the stove with a few drops of sage essence. It would be even better if he had a wood-burning stove. Then he could put the essence of sage in the little humidifier on top.”

“Essence of bullshit,” Mrs. Murphy replied sardonically.

“Will you-all be quiet? This is embarrassing. Susan will never let you in her car again,” Harry complained.

“All right by me,” Pewter replied saucily, which made the animals laugh again.

Brooks petted Pewter’s round head. “They have their own language.”

“You know, that’s a frightening thought.” Susan glanced at her daughter in the rearview mirror, surrounded as she was by animals. “My Owen and poor dear departed Champion Beatitude of Grace—”

“Just call her Shortstop. I hate it when Susan uses Mom’s full title.” Owen’s eyes saddened.

“Shewas achampion. She won more corgi firsts than Pewter and Murphy have fleas,” Tucker said.

Murphy swatted at Tucker’s stump. “If you had a tail, I would chew it to bits.”

“I saw you scratching.”

“Tucker, that was not fleas.”

“Whatwasit then, your highness? Eczema? Psoriasis? Hives?”

“Shut up.” Mrs. Murphy bopped her hard.

“That is enough!” Harry twisted around in the front passenger seat and missed them because the car reached the entrance to the brand-new car wash, and the stop threw her forward.

Roger dashed out of the small glass booth by the entrance to the car-wash corridor.

“Hi, Mrs. Tucker.” He smiled broadly. “Hi, Brooks. Hi, Mrs. Haristeen . . . and everybody.”

“Is Jimbo here?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

A car pulled up behind them, and one behind that. Roscoe Fletcher squirmed impatiently in the second car.

“Roger, I want to zip through this extravaganza.” Susan reached in her purse for the $5.25 for exterior wash only.

“Mom, let’s shoot the works.”

“That’s eleven ninety-five.”

“I’ll contribute!” Harry fished a five out of her hip pocket and handed it to Roger.

“Harry, don’t do that.”

“Shut up, Suz, we’re holding up traffic.”

“Here’s the one.” Brooks forked over a one-dollar bill.

“Okay then, a little to the right, Mrs. Tucker. There, you’ve got it. Now put your car in neutral and turn off the radio, if you have it on. Oh, and roll up the windows.”

She rolled up the driver’s side window as Roger picked up a long scrub brush to scrub her headlights and front grille while Karen Jensen worked the rear bumper. She waved.

“Hey, I didn’t know Karen worked here. Jody, too.” She saw Jody putting on mascara as she sat behind the cash register.

“Brooks, don’t you dare open that window,” Susan commanded as she felt the belt hook under the left car wheel. They lurched forward.

“Hey, hey, I can’t see!” Pewter screeched.

“Early blindness,” Mrs. Murphy said maliciously as the yellow neon light flashed on, a bell rang, and a wall of water hit them with force.

Each cleansing function—waxing, underbody scrub and coat, rinsing—was preceded by a neon light accompanied by a bell and buzzer noise. By the time they hit the blowers, Pewter frothed at the mouth.

“Poor kitty.” Brooks petted her.

“Pewter, it really is okay. We’re not in any danger.” Mrs. Murphy felt bad that she had tormented her.

The gray kitty shook.

“Last time I take her through a car wash.” Harry, too, felt sorry for the cat’s plight.

They finally emerged with a bump from the tunnel of cleanliness. Susan popped the car in gear and parked it in a lot on the other side of the car wash.

As she and Brooks got out to meet with Jimbo Anson, Harry consoled Pewter, who crawled into her lap. The other animals kept quiet.

A light rap on the window startled Harry, she was so intent on soothing the cat.

“Hi, Roscoe. You’re right, it is like a Broadway show with all those lights.”

“Funny, huh?” He offered her a tiny sweet, a miniature strawberry in a LaVossienne tin, French in origin. “Just discovered these. Les Fraises Bonbon Fruits pack a punch. Go on and try one.”

“Okay.” She reached in and plucked out a miniature strawberry. ” Whooo.”

“That’ll pucker those lips. Naomi is trying to get me to stop eating so much sugar but I love sweetness.” He noticed Brooks and Susan in the small office with Jimbo Anson. “Has she said anything about school?”

“She likes it.”

“Good, good. You been to the vet?”

“No, we’re out for a family drive.”

“I can’t remember the times I’ve seen you without Mrs. Murphy and Tucker. Now you’ve got Pewter, too. Market said she was eating him out of house and home.”

“No-o-o,” the cat wailed, shaken but insulted.

“Hey, Pewter, we’ll get even. We can pee on his mail before Mom stuffs it in his box,” Murphy sang out gaily. “Or we could shred it to bits, except the bills. Keep them intact.”

St. Elizabeth’s mail was delivered directly to the school. Personal mail was delivered to the Crozet post office.

“Yeah.” Pewter perked up.

“Good to see you, the animals, too.” He waved and Harry hit the button to close the window.

Then she called after him, “Where’d you get the strawberry drops?”

“Foods of All Nations,” he replied.

She noticed Karen Jensen making a face after he passed by. Roger laughed. “Kids,” Harry thought to herself. Then she remembered the time she stuck Elmer’s Glue in the locks of her most unfavorite teacher’s desk drawer.

After ten minutes Susan and Brooks returned to the car.

Brooks was excited. “I’ll work after school on Monday ‘cause there’s no field hockey practice, and I’ll work Saturdays. Cool!”

“Sounds good to me.” Harry held up her hand for a high five as Brooks bounced into the backseat.

Susan turned on the ignition. “This way she won’t miss practice. After all, part of school is sports.”

“Can we go home now?” Pewter cried.

“Roscoe must live at this place,” Susan said lightly as they pulled out of the parking lot.

6

Little squeaks behind the tack-room walls distracted Harry from dialing. She pressed the disconnect button to redial.

Mrs. Murphy sauntered into the tack room, then paused, her ears swept forward. “What balls!”

“Beg pardon?” Pewter opened one chartreuse eye.

“Mouse balls. Can you hear them?”

Pewter closed her eye. “Yes, but it’s not worth fretting over.”

Harry, finger still on the disconnect button, rested the telephone receiver on her shoulder. “What in the hell are they doing, Murphy?”

“Having a party,” the tiger replied, frustrated that she couldn’t get at her quarry.

Harry lifted the receiver off her shoulder, pointing at the cat with it. “I can’t put down poison. If you catch a sick mouse, then you’ll die. I can’t put the hose into their holes because I’ll flood the tack room. I really thought you could solve this problem.”

“If one would pop out of there, I would.” The cat, angry, stomped out.

“Temper, temper,” Harry called out after her, which only made things worse.

She redialed the number as Murphy sat in the barn aisle, her back to Harry and her ears swept back.

“Hi, Janice. Harry Haristeen.”

“How are you?” the bright voice on the other end of the line responded.

“Pretty good. And you?”

“Great.”

“I hope you’ll indulge me. I have a question. You’re still editing the obituary page, aren’t you?”

“Yep. Ninety-five cents a line. Five dollars for a photo.” Her voice softened. “Has, uh—”

“No. I’m curious about how Roscoe Fletcher’s obituary appeared in the paper.”

“Oh, that.” Janice’s voice dropped. “Boy, did I get in trouble.”

“Sorry.”

“All I can tell you is, two days ago I received a call from Hallahan Funeral Home saying they had Roscoe’s body as well as the particulars.”

“So I couldn’t call in and report a death?”

“No. If you’re a family member or best friend you might call or fax the life details, but we verify death with the funeral home or the hospital. Usually they call us. The hospital won’t give me cause of death either. Sometimes family members will put it in, but we can’t demand any information other than verification that the person is dead.” She took a deep breath. “And I had that!”

“Do you generally deal with the same people at each of the funeral homes?”

“Yes, I do, and I recognize their voices, too. Skip Hallahan called in Roscoe’s death.”

“I guess you told that to the sheriff.”

“Told it to Roscoe, too. I’m sick of this.”

“I’m sorry, Janice. I made you go over it one more time.”

“That’s different—you’re a friend. Skip is being a bunghole, I can tell you that. He swears he never made the call.”

“I think I know who did.”

“Tell me.”

“I will as soon as I make sure I’m right.”

7

The high shine on Roscoe Fletcher’s car surrendered to dust, red from the clay, as he drove down Mim Sanburne’s two-mile driveway to the mansion Mim had inherited from her mother’s family, the Urquharts.

He passed the mansion, coasting to a stop before a lovely cottage a quarter mile behind the imposing pile. Cars parked neatly along the farm road bore testimony to the gathering within.

Raising money for St. Elizabeth’s was one of Little Mini’s key jobs. She wanted to show she could be as powerful as her mother.

Breezing through Little Mim’s front door, Roscoe heard Maury McKinchie shout, “The phoenix rises from the ashes!”

The members of the fundraising committee, many of them alumnae, laughed at the film director’s quip.

“You missed the resurrection party, my man.” Roscoe clapped McKinchie on the back. “Lasted until dawn.”

“Every day is a party for Roscoe,” April Shively, stenographer’s notebook nipped open at the ready, said admiringly.

April, not a member of the committee, attended all meetings as the headmaster’s secretary, which saved the committee from appointing one of its own. It also meant that only information deemed important by Roscoe made it to the typed minutes. Lastly, it gave the two a legitimate excuse to be together.

“Where were you this time?” Irene Miller, Jody’s mother, asked, an edge of disapproval in her voice since Maury McKinchie missed too many meetings, in her estimation.

“New York.” He waited until Roscoe took a seat then continued. “I have good news.” The group leaned toward him. “I met with Walter Harnett at Columbia. He loves our idea of a film department. He has promised us two video cameras. These are old models, but they work fine. New, this camera sells for fifty-four thousand dollars. We’re on our way.” He beamed.

After the applause, Little Mini, chair of the fundraising committee, spoke. “That is the most exciting news! With preparation on our part, I think we can get approval from the board of directors to develop a curriculum.”

“Only if we can finance the department.” Roscoe folded his hands together. “You know how conservative the board is. Reading, writing, and arithmetic. That’s it. But if we can finance one year— and I have the base figures here—then I hope and believe the positive response of students and parents will see us through the ensuing year. The board will be forced into the twentieth century”—he paused for effect—“just as we cross into the twenty-first.”

They laughed.

“Is the faculty for us?” Irene Miller asked, eager to hitch on to whatever new bandwagon promised to deliver the social cachet she so desired.

“With a few notable exceptions, yes,” Roscoe replied.

“Sandy Brashiers,” April blurted out, then quickly clamped her mouth shut. Her porcelain cheeks flushed. “You know what a purist he is,” she mumbled.

“Give him an enema,” Maury said, and noted the group’s shocked expression. “Sorry. We say that a lot on a film shoot. If someone is really a pain in the ass, he’s called the D.B. for douche bag.”

“Maury.” Irene cast her eyes down in fake embarrassment.

“Sorry. The fact remains, he is an impediment.”

“I’ll take care of Sandy,” Roscoe Fletcher smoothly asserted.

“I wish someone would.” Doak Mincer, a local bank president, sighed. “Sandy has been actively lobbying against this. Even when told the film department would be a one-year experimental program, totally self-sufficient, funded separately, the whole nine yards, he’s opposed—adamantly.

“Has no place in academia, he says.” Irene, too, had been lobbied.

“What about that cinematographer you had here mid-September? I thought that engendered enthusiasm.” Marilyn pointed her pencil at Roscoe.

“She was a big hit. Shot film of some of the more popular kids, Jody being one, Irene.”

“She loved it.” Irene smiled. “You aren’t going to encounter resistance from parents. What parent would be opposed to their child learning new skills? Or working with a pro like Maury? Why, it’s a thrill.”

“Thank you.” Maury smiled his big smile, the one usually reserved for paid photographers.

He had enjoyed a wonderful directing career in the 1980s, which faded in the ’90s as his wife’s acting career catapulted into the stratosphere. She was on location so much that Maury often forgot he had a wife. Then again, he might have done so regardless of circumstances.

He had also promised Darla would lecture once a year at St. Elizabeth’s. He had neglected to inform Darla, stage name Darla Keene. Real name Michelle Gumbacher. He’d cajole her into it on one of her respites home.

“Irene, did you bring your list of potential donors?” Little Mim asked. Irene nodded, launching into an intensely boring recitation of each potential candidate.

After the meeting Maury and Irene walked out to his country car, a Range Rover. His Porsche 911 was saved for warm days.

“How’s Kendrick?” he inquired about her husband.

“Same old, same old.”

This meant that all Kendrick did was work at the gardening center he had built from scratch and which at long last was generating profit.

She spied a carton full of tiny bottles in the passenger seat of the Rover. “What’s all that?”

“Uh”—long pause—“essences.”

“What?”

“Essences. Some cure headaches. Others are for success. Not that I believe it, but they can be soothing, I suppose.”

“Did you bring this stuff back from New York?” Irene lifted an eyebrow.

“Uh—no. I bought them from BoomBoom Craycroft.”

“Good God.” Irene turned on her heel, leaving him next to his wildly expensive vehicle much favored by the British royals.

Later that evening when Little Mim reluctantly briefed her mother on the meeting—reluctant because her mother had to know everything—she said, “I think I can make the film department happen.”

“That would be a victory, dear.”

“Don’t be so enthusiastic, Mother.”

“I am enthusiastic. Quietly so, that’s all. And I do think Roscoe enjoys chumming with the stars, such as they are, entirely too much. Greta Garbo. That was a star.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And Maury—well, West Coast ways, my dear. Not Virginia.”

“Not Virginia,” a description, usually whispered by whites and blacks alike to set apart those who didn’t measure up. This included multitudes.

Little Mim bristled. “The West Coast, well, they’re more open-minded.”

“Open-minded? They’re porous.”

8

“What have you got to say for yourself?” A florid Skip Hallahan glared at his handsome son.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Sean muttered.

“Don’t talk to me. Talk to him!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fletcher.”

Roscoe, hands folded across his chest, unfolded them. “I accept your apology, but did you really think phoning in my obituary was funny?”

“Uh—at the time. Guess not,” he replied weakly.

“Your voice does sound a lot like your father’s.” Roscoe leaned forward. “No detentions. But—I think you can volunteer at the hospital for four hours each week. That would satisfy me.”

“Dad, I already have a paper route. How can I work at the hospital?”

“I’ll see that he does his job,” Skip snapped, still mortified.

“If he falters, no more football.”

“What?” Sean, horrified, nearly leapt out of his chair.

“You heard me,” Roscoe calmly stated.

“Without me St. Elizabeth’s doesn’t have a prayer,” Sean arrogantly predicted.

“Sean, the football season isn’t as important as you learning: actions have consequences. I’d be a sorry headmaster if I let you off the hook because you’re our best halfback … because someday you’d run smack into trouble. Actions have consequences. You’re going to learn that right now. Four hours a week until New Year’s Day. Am I clearly understood?” Roscoe stood up.

“Yes, sir.”

“I asked you this before. I’ll ask it one last time. Were you alone in this prank?”

“Yes, sir,” Sean lied.

9

A ruddy sun climbed over the horizon. Father Michael, an early riser, enjoyed his sunrises as much as most people enjoyed sunsets. Armed with hot Jamaican coffee, his little luxury, he sat reading the paper at the small pine breakfast table overlooking the church’s beautifully tended graveyard.

The Church of the Good Shepherd, blessed with a reasonably affluent congregation, afforded him a pleasant albeit small home on the church grounds. A competent secretary, Lucinda Payne Coles, provided much-needed assistance Mondays through Fridays. He liked Lucinda, who, despite moments of bitterness, bore her hardships well.

After her husband, Samson, lost all his money and got caught with his pants down in the bargain in an extramarital affair, Lucinda sank into a slough of despond. She applied when the job at the church became available and was happily hired even though she’d never worked a day in her life. She typed adequately, but, more important, she knew everyone and everyone knew her.

As for Samson, Father Michael remembered him daily in his prayers. Samson had been reduced to physical labor at Kendrick Miller’s gardening business. At least he was in the best shape of his life and was learning to speak fluent Spanish, as some of his coworkers were Mexican immigrants.

Father Michael, starting on a second cup of coffee—two lumps of brown sugar and a dollop of Devonshire cream—blinked in surprise. He thought he saw a figure sliding through the early-morning mist.

That needed jolt of caffeine blasted him out of his seat. He grabbed a Barbour jacket to hurry outside. Quietly he moved closer to a figure lurking in the graveyard.

Samson Coles placed a bouquet of flowers on Ansley Randolph’s grave.

Father Michael, a slightly built man, turned to tiptoe back to the cottage, but Samson heard him.

“Father?”

“Sorry to disturb you, Samson. I couldn’t see clearly in the mist. Sometimes the kids drink in here, you know. I thought I could catch one in the act. I am sorry.”

Samson cleared his throat. “No one visits her.”

“She ruined herself, poor woman.” Father Michael sighed.

“I know. I loved her anyway. I still loved Lucinda but … I couldn’t stay away from Ansley.” He sighed. “I don’t know why Lucinda doesn’t leave me.”

“She loves you, and she’s working on forgiveness. God sends us the lessons we need.”

“Well, if mine is humility, I’m learning.” He paused. “You won’t tell her you saw me here, will you?”

“No.”

“It’s just that … sometimes I feel so bad. Warren doesn’t visit her grave, and neither do the boys. You’d think at least once they’d visit their mother’s grave.”

“They’re young. They think if they ignore pain and loss, it will fade away. Doesn’t.”

“I know.” He turned, and both men left the graveyard, carefully shutting the wrought iron gate behind them.

At the northwest corner of the graveyard a massive statue of the Avenging Angel seemed to follow them with his eyes.

“I just so happen to have some of the best Jamaican coffee you would ever want to drink. How about joining me for a cup?”

“I hate to trouble you, Father.”

“No trouble at all.”

They imbibed the marvelous coffee and talked of love, responsibility, the chances for the Virginia football team this fall, and the curiousness of human nature as evidenced by the false obituary.

A light knock on the backdoor got Father Michael out of his chair. He opened the door. Jody Miller, one of his parishioners, wearing her sweats as she was on her way to early-morning field hockey practice, stood in the doorway, a bruise prominent on her cheek and a red mark near her eye that would soon blacken.

“Father Michael, I have to talk to you.” She saw Samson at the table. “Uh—”

“Come on in.”

“I’ll be late for practice.” She ran down the back brick walkway as Father Michael watched her with his deep brown eyes. He finally closed the door.

“Speaking of curious.” Samson half smiled. “Everything is so important at that age.”

It was.

Five minutes after Samson left, Skip Hallahan pulled into Father Michael’s driveway with Sean in the passenger seat. Reluctantly, Sean got out.

“Father!” Skip bellowed.

Father Michael stuck his head out the backdoor. “Come in, Skip and Sean, I’m not deaf, you know.”

“Sorry,” Skip mumbled, then launched into Sean’s misdeed before he’d taken a seat.

After Skip ranted for a half hour, Father Michael asked him to leave the room for a few minutes.

“Sean, I can see the humor in calling in the obituary. I really can. But can you see how you’ve upset people? Think of Mrs. Fletcher.

“I’m getting the idea,” Sean replied ruefully.

“I suggest you call on Mrs. Fletcher and apologize. I also suggest you call Janice Walker, editor of the obituary page at the paper, and apologize, and lastly, write a letter of apology and send it to ‘Letters to the Editor.’ After that, I expect the paper will take your route away from you.” The good priest tried to prepare him for retaliation.

Sean sat immobile for a long time. “All right, Father, I will.”

“What possessed you to do this? Especially to your headmaster.”

“Well, that was kind of the point.” Sean suppressed a smile. “It wouldn’t have been nearly as funny if I’d called in, uh, your obituary.”

Father Michael rapped the table with his fingertips. “I see. Well, make your apologies. I’ll calm down your father.” He stood up to summon Skip Hallahan.

Sean stood also. “Thanks, Father.”

“Go on. Get out of here.” The priest clapped the young man on the back.

10

Every hamlet and town has its nerve centers, those places where people congregate to enjoy the delights of gossip. Not that men admit to gossiping: for them it’s “exchanging information.”

A small group of men stood outside the post office on the first Monday in October in buttery Indian-summer sunshine. The Reverend Herbert Jones, Fair Haristeen, Ned Tucker, Jim Sanburne—the mayor of Crozet—and Sandy Brashiers spoke forcefully about the football teams of Virginia, Tech, William and Mary, and, with a shudder, Maryland.

“Maryland’s the one to beat, and it hurts me to say that,” the Reverend Jones intoned. “And I never will say it in front of John Klossner.”

John, a friend of Herb’s, graduated from Maryland and never let his buddies forget it.

Another one of the “in” group, Art Bushey—absent this morning—had graduated from Virginia Military Institute, so there was no reason for argument there. Poor VMI’s team couldn’t do squat, a wretched reality for those who loved the institution and a sheer joy for those who did not.

“This is the year for Virginia, Herb. I don’t care how hot Maryland has been up to now.” Sandy Brashiers crossed his arms over his chest.

“Say, why aren’t you in school today?” Herb asked.

“I’ve worked out a schedule with King Fletcher, so I don’t go in until noon on Mondays.” Sandy breathed in. “You know, I love young people, but they’ll suck you dry.”

“Too young to know what they’re asking of us.” Fair toed the gravel. “Now before we get totally off the subject, I want to put in a good word for William and Mary.”

“Ha!” Jim Sanburne, a huge man in his middle sixties, almost as tall as Fair but twice as broad, guffawed.

“Give it up, Fair.” Ned laughed.

“One of these days the Tribe will prevail.” Fair, an undergraduate alumnus, held up the Victory V.

“How come you don’t root for Auburn? That’s where you went to veterinary school,” Sandy said.

“Oh, I like Auburn well enough.”

Harry, from the inside, opened the door to the post office and stood, framed in the light. “What are you guys jawing about? This is government property. No riffraff.”

“Guess you’ll have to go, Fair,” Ned said slyly.

The other men laughed.

“We’re picking our teams for this year.” Jim explained the reasoning behind each man’s choice.

“I pick Smith!”

“Since when does Smith have a football team?” Sandy Brashiers asked innocently.

“They don’t, but if they did they’d beat VMI,” Harry replied. “Think I’ll call Art Bushey and torment him about it.”

This provoked more laughter. Mrs. Murphy, roused from a midmorning catnap, walked to the open doorway and sat down. She exhaled, picked up a paw, and licked the side of it, which she rubbed on her face. She liked football, occasionally trying to catch the tiny ball as it streaked across the television screen. In her mind she’d caught many a bomb. Today football interested her not a jot. She ruffled her fur, smoothed it down, then strolled alongside the path between the post office and the market. She could hear Harry and the men teasing one another with outbursts of laughter. Then Miranda joined them to even more laughter.

Mrs. Murphy had lived all her life on this plot of Virginia soil. She watched the news at six and sometimes at eleven, although usually she was asleep by then. She read the newspapers by sitting right in front of Harry when she read. As near as she could tell, humans lived miserable lives in big cities. It was either that or newspapers worked on the Puritan principle of underlining misery so the reader would feel better about his or her own life. Whatever the reason, the cat found human news dull. It was one murder, car wreck, and natural disaster after another.

People liked one another here. They knew one another all their lives, with the occasional newcomer adding spice and speculation to the mix. And it wasn’t as though Crozet never had bad things happen. People being what they are, jealousy, greed, and lust existed. Those caught paid the price. But in the main, the people were good. If nothing else they took care of their pets.

She heard a small, muffled sob behind Market Shiflett’s store. She trotted to the back. Jody Miller, head in hands, was crying her heart out. Pewter sat at her sneakers, putting her paw on the girl’s leg from time to time, offering comfort.

“I wondered where you were.” Murphy touched noses with Pewter, then stared at the girl.

Jody’s blackening eye caught her attention when the girl removed her hands from her face. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, blinking through her tears. “Hello, Mrs. Murphy.”

“Hello, Jody. What’s the matter?” Murphy rubbed against her leg.

Jody stared out at the alleyway, absentmindedly stroking both cats.

“Did shesayanything to you?”

“No,” Pewter replied.

“Poor kid. She took a pounding.” Mrs. Murphy stood on her hind legs, putting her paws on Jody’s left knee for a closer look at the young woman’s injury. “This just happened.”

“Maybe she got in a fight on thewayto school.”

“She has field hockey practice early in the morning—Brooks does, too.”

“Oh, yeah.” Pewter cocked her head, trying to capture Jody’s attention. “Maybe her father hit her.”

Kendrick Miller possessed a vicious temper. Not that anyone outside of the family ever saw him hit his wife or only child, but people looked at him sideways sometimes.

The light crunch of a footfall alerted the cats. Jody, still crying, heard nothing. Sandy Brashiers, whose car was parked behind the market, stopped in his tracks.

“Jody!” he exclaimed, quickly bending down to help her.

She swung her body away from him. The cats moved out of the way. “I’m all right.”

He peered at her shiner. “You’ve been better. Come on, I’ll run you over to Larry Johnson. Can’t hurt to have the doctor take a look. You can’t take a chance with your eyes, honey.”

“Don’t call me honey.” Her vehemence astonished even her.

“I’m sorry.” He blushed. “Come on.”

“No.”

“Jody, if you won’t let me take you to Dr. Johnson, then I’ll have to take you home. I can’t just leave you here.”

The backdoor of the post office swung open, and Harry stepped out; she had heard Jody’s voice. Miranda was right behind her.

“Oh, dear,” Miranda whispered.

Harry came over. “Jody, that’s got to hurt.”

“I’m all right!” She stood up.

“That’s debatable.” Sandy was losing patience.

Miranda put a motherly arm around the girl’s shoulders. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“She got pastedaway,“Pewter offered.

“I suggested that I take her to Larry Johnson—to be on the safe side.” Sandy shoved his hands into his corduroy pockets.

Jody balefully implored Miranda with her one good eye. “I don’t want anyone to see me.”

“You can’t hide for two weeks. That’s about how long it will take for your raccoon eye to disappear.” Harry didn’t like the look of that eye.

“Now, Jody, you just listen to me,” Miranda persisted. “I am taking you to Larry Johnson’s. You can’t play Russian roulette with your health. Mr. Brashiers will tell Mr. Fletcher that you’re at the doctor’s office so you won’t get in trouble at school.”

“Nobody cares about me. And don’t call Mr. Fletcher. Just leave him out of it.”

“People care.” Miranda patted her and hugged her. “But for right now you come with me.”

Encouraged and soothed by Miranda, Jody climbed into the older woman’s ancient Ford Falcon.

Harry knitted her eyebrows in concern. Sandy, too. Without knowing it they were mirror images of one another.

Sandy finally spoke. “Coach Hallvard can be rough, but not that rough.”

“Maybe she got into a fight with another kid at school,” Harry said, thinking out loud.

“Over what?” Pewter asked.

“Boys.Drugs. PMS.” Mrs. Murphy flicked her tail in irritation.

“You can be cynical.” Pewter noticed a praying mantis in the crepe myrtle.

“Not cynical. Realistic.”

Tucker waddled out of the post office. Fast asleep, she had awak ened to find no one in the P.O.“What’s going on?”

“High-school drama.” The cats rubbed it in.“And yonmissed it.”

Larry Johnson phoned Irene Miller, who immediately drove to his office. But Jody kept her mouth shut … especially in front of her mother.

Later that afternoon, Janice Walker dropped by the post office. “Harry, you ought to be a detective! How did you know it was Sean Hallahan? When you called me back yesterday to tell me, I wasn’t sure, but he came by this morning to apologize. He even took time off from school to do it.”

“Two and two.” Harry flipped up the divider between the mail room and the public area. “He sounds like his dad. He can be a smartass, and hey, wouldn’t it be wild to do something like that? He’ll be a hero to all the kids at St. Elizabeth’s.”

“Never thought of it that way,” Janice replied.

“You know, I was thinking of calling in BoomBoom Craycroft’s demise.” Harry’s eyes twinkled.

Janice burst out laughing. “You’re awful!”

11

Roscoe glanced out his window across the pretty quad that was the heart of St. Elizabeth’s. Redbrick buildings, simple Federal style, surrounded the green. Two enormous oaks anchored either end, their foliage an electrifying orange-yellow.

Behind the “home” buildings, as they were known, stood later additions, and beyond those the gym and playing fields beckoned, a huge parking lot between them.

The warm oak paneling gave Roscoe’s office an inviting air. A burl partner’s desk rested in the middle of the room. A leather sofa, two leather chairs, and a coffee table blanketed with books filled up one side of the big office.

Not an academic, Roscoe made a surprisingly good headmaster. His lack of credentials bothered the teaching staff, who had originally wanted one of their own, namely Sandy Brashiers or even Ed Sugarman. But Roscoe over the last seven years had won over most of them. For one thing, he knew how to raise money as he had a “selling” personality and a wealth of good business contacts. For another, he was a good administrator. His MBA from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania stood him in good stead.

“Come in.” He responded to the firm knock at the door, then heard a loud “Don’t you dare!”

He quickly opened the door to find his secretary, April, and Sandy Brashiers yelling at each other.

April apologized. “He didn’t ask for an appointment. He walked right by me.”

“April, stop being so officious.” Sandy brushed her off.

“You have no right to barge in here.” She planted her hands on her slim hips.

Roscoe, voice soothing, patted her on her padded shoulder. “That’s all right. I’m accustomed to Mr. Brashiers’s impetuosity.”

He motioned for Sandy to come in while winking at April, who blushed with pleasure.

“What can I do for you, Sandy?”

“Drop dead” was what Sandy wanted to say. Instead he cleared his throat. “I’m worried about Jody Miller. She’s become withdrawn, and this morning I found her behind the post office. She had a bruised cheek and a black eye and refused to talk about it.”

“There is instability in the home. It was bound to surface in Jody eventually.” Roscoe did not motion for Sandy to sit down. He leaned against his desk, folding his arms across his chest.

“A black eye counts for more than instability. That girl needs help.”

“Sandy,” Roscoe enunciated carefully, “I can’t accuse her parents of abuse without her collaboration. And who’s to say Kendrick hit her? It could have been anybody.”

“How can you turn away?” Sandy impulsively accused the florid, larger man.

“I am not turning away. I will investigate the situation, but I advise you to be prudent. Until we know what’s amiss or until Jody herself comes forward, any accusation would be extremely irresponsible.”

“Don’t lecture me.”

“Don’t lecture me.”

“You don’t give a damn about that girl’s well-being. You sure as hell give a damn about her father’s contributions to your film project—money we could use elsewhere.”

“I’ve got work to do. I told you I’ll look into it.” Roscoe dropped his folded arms to his sides, then pointed a finger in Sandy’s reddening face. “Butt out. If you stir up a hornet’s nest, you’ll get stung worse than the rest of us.”

“What’s that shopworn metaphor supposed to mean?” Sandy clenched his teeth.

“That I know your secret.”

Sandy

blanched. “I don’t have any secrets.”

Roscoe pointed again. “Try me. Just try me. You’ll never teach anywhere again.”

Livid, Sandy slammed the door on his way out. April stuck her blond-streaked head back in the office.

Roscoe smiled. “Ignore him. The man thrives on emotional scenes. The first week of school he decried the fostering of competition instead of cooperation. Last week he thought Sean Hallahan should be censured for a sexist remark that I think was addressed to Karen Jensen—‘Hey, baby!’ ” Roscoe imitated Sean. “Today he’s frothing at the mouth because Jody Miller has a black eye. My God.”

“I don’t know how you put up with him,” April replied sympathetically.

“It’s my job.” Roscoe smiled expansively.

“Maury McKinchie’s on line two.”

“Who’s on line one?”

“Your wife.”

“Okay.” He punched line one. “Honey, let me call you back. Are you in the office?”

Naomi said she was, her office being in the building opposite his on the other side of the quad. He then punched line two. “Hello.”

“Roscoe, I’d like to shoot some football and maybe field hockey practice … just a few minutes. I’m trying to pull together dynamic images for the alumni dinner in December.”

“Got a date in mind?”

“Why don’t I just shoot the next few games?” The director paused. “I’ve got footage for you to check. You’ll like it.”

“Fine.” Roscoe smiled.

“How about a foursome this Saturday? Keswick at nine?”

“Great.”

Roscoe hung up. He buzzed April. “You handled Sandy Brashiers very well,” he told her.

“He gives me a pain. He just pushed right by me!”

“You did a good job. Your job description doesn’t include tackling temporary principals and full-time busybodies.”

“Thank you.”

“Remind me to tell the coaches that Maury will be filming some football and hockey games.”

“Will do.”

He took his finger off the intercom button and sat in his swivel chair, feeling satisfied with himself.

12

Harry sorted her own mail, tossing most of it into the wastebasket. She spent each morning stuffing mailboxes. By the time she got to her own mail, she hadn’t the patience to wade through appeals for money, catalogs, and flyers. Each evening she threw a canvas totebag jammed with her mail onto the bench seat of the old Ford truck. On those beautiful days when she walked home from work, she slung it over her shoulder.

She’d be walking for the next week regardless of weather because not only was the carburetor fritzed out on the truck, but a mouse had nibbled through the starter wires. Mrs. Murphy needed to step up her rodent control.

Harry dreaded the bill. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep up with expenses. She lived frugally, keeping within a budget, but no matter how careful her plans, telephone companies changed rates, the electric company edged up its prices, and the county commissioners lived to raise Albemarle taxes.

She often wondered how people with children made it. They’d make it better if they didn’t work for the postal service, she thought to herself.

Gray clouds, sodden, dropped lower and lower. The first big raindrop splattered as she was about two miles from home. Tee Tucker and Mrs. Murphy moved faster. Pewter, with a horror of getting wet, ran ahead.

“I’ve never seen that cat move that fast,” Harry said out loud.

A dark green Chevy half-ton slowly headed toward her. She waved as Fair braked.

“Come on, kids,” she called as the three animals raced toward Fair.

As if on cue the clouds opened the minute Harry closed the passenger door of the truck.

“Hope you put your fertilizer down.”

“Back forty,” she replied laconically.

He slowed for another curve as they drove in silence.

“You’re Mary Sunshine.”

“Preoccupied. Sorry.”

They drove straight into the barn. Harry hopped out and threw on her raincoat. Fair put on his yellow slicker, then backed the truck out, parking at the house so Pewter could run inside. He returned to help Harry bring in the horses, who were only too happy to get fed.

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker stayed in the barn.

“These guys look good.” Fair smiled at Gin Fizz, Tomahawk, and Poptart.

“Thanks. Sometimes I forget how old Tomahawk’s getting to be, but then I forget how old I’m getting to be.”

“We’re only in our thirties. It’s a good time.”

She scooped out the sweet feed. “Some days I think it is. Some days I think it isn’t.” She tossed the scoop back into the feed bin. “Fair, you don’t have to help. Lucky for me you came along the road when you did.”

“Many hands make light work. You won’t be riding tonight.”

The rain, like gray sheets of iron, obscured the house from view.

“The weatherman didn’t call for this, nor did Miranda.”

“Her knee failed.” He laughed. Miranda predicted rain according to whether her knee throbbed or not.

She clapped on an ancient cowboy hat, her rain hat. “Better make a run for it.”

“Whydon’t you put me under your raincoat?” Mrs. Murphy asked po litely.

Hearing the plaintive meow, Harry paused, then picked up the kitty, cradling her under her coat.

“Ready, steady, GO!” Fair sang out as he cut the lights in the barn.

He reached the backdoor first, opening it for Harry and a wet Tucker.

Once inside the porch they shook off the rain, hung up their coats, stamped their feet, and hurried into the kitchen. A chill had descended with the rain. The temperature plunged ten degrees and was dropping still.

She made fresh coffee while he fed the dog and cats.

Harry had doughnuts left over from the morning.

They sat down and enjoyed this zero-star meal. It was better than going hungry.

“Well—?”

“Well, what?” She swallowed, not wishing to speak with her mouth full.

“What’s the matter?”

She put the rest of her glazed doughnut on the plate. “Jody Miller had a black eye and wouldn’t tell anyone how she got it. The kid was crying so hard it hurt to see her.”

“How’d you find out?”

“She cut classes and was sitting on the stoop behind Market’s store.”

“I found her first.” Pewter lifted her head out of the food bowl.

“Pewter, you’re such an egotist.”

“Look who’s talking,” the gray cat answered Mrs. Murphy sarcastically. “You think the sun rises and sets on your fur.”

“Miranda carried her over to Larry Johnson’s. She stayed until Irene arrived. Irene wasn’t too helpful, according to Miranda, a reliable source if ever there was one.”

“Jody’s a mercurial kid.”

“Aren’t they all?”

“I suppose.” He got up to pour himself another coffee. “I’m finally warming up. Of course, it could be your presence.”

“I’m going to throw up.” Pewter gagged.

“You don’t have a romantic bone in your body,” Tucker complained.

“In fact, Pewter, no one can see the bones in your body.”

“Ha, ha,” the gray cat said dryly.

“Do you think it would be nosy if I called Irene? I’m worried.”

“Harry, everyone in Crozet is nosy, so that’s not an issue.” He smiled. “Besides which, you and Miranda found her.”

“I found her,” Pewter interjected furiously.

“You are not getting another morsel to eat.” Harry shook her finger at the gray cat, who turned her back on her, refusing to have anything to do with this irritating human.

Harry picked up the old wall phone and dialed. “Hi, Irene, it’s Mary Minor.” She paused. “No trouble at all. I know Miranda was glad to help. I was just calling to see if Jody’s all right.”

On the other end of the line Irene explained, “She got into a fight with one of the girls at practice—she won’t say which one—and then she walked into chemistry class and pulled a D on a pop quiz. Jody has never gotten a D in her life. She’ll be fine, and thank you so much for calling. ‘Bye.”

‘Bye.” Harry hung up the receiver slowly. “She doesn’t know any more than I do. She said the girls got into a fight at field hockey practice, and Jody got a D on a pop quiz in chemistry.”

“Now you can relax. You’ve got your answer.”

“Fair”—Harry gestured, both hands open—“there’s no way that vain kid is going to walk into chemistry class with a fresh shiner. Jody Miller fusses with her makeup more than most movie stars. Besides, Ed Sugarman would have sent her to the infirmary. Irene Miller is either dumb as a stick or not telling the truth.”

“I vote for dumb as a stick.” He smiled. “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. If Jody Miller lied to her mother, it’s not a federal case. I recall you fibbing to your mother on the odd occasion.”

“Not very often.”

“Your nose is growing.” He laughed.

Harry dialed Ed Sugarman, the chemistry teacher. “Hi, Ed, it’s Mary Minor Haristeen.” She paused a moment. “Do I need chemistry lessons? Well, I guess it depends on the kind of chemistry you’re talking about.” She paused. “First off, excuse me for butting in, but I want to know if Jody Miller came to your class today.”

“Jody never came to class today,” Ed replied.

“Well—that answers my question.”

“In fact, I was about to call her parents. I know she was at field hockey practice because I drove by the field on my way in this morning. Is something wrong?”

“Uh—I don’t know. She was behind Market’s store this morning sporting a black eye and tears.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. She’s a bright girl, but her grades are sliding …” He hesitated. “One sees this often if there’s tension in the home.”

“Thanks, Ed. I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”

“You haven’t disturbed me.” He paused for a moment and then said as an aside, “Okay, honey.” He then returned to Harry. “Doris says hello.”

“Tell Doris I said hello also,” Harry said.

Harry bid Ed good-bye, pressed the disconnect button, and thought for a minute.

“Want to go to a movie?”

“I’m not going out in that.”

The rain pounded even harder on the tin roof. “Like bullets.”

“I rented The Madness of King George. We could watch that.”

“Popcorn?”

“Yep.”

“If you’d buy a microwave, you could pop the corn a lot faster.” He read the directions on the back of the popcorn packet.

“I’m not buying a microwave. The truck needs new starter wires—the mice chewed them—needs new tires, too, and I’m even putting that off until I’m driving on threads.” She slapped a pot on the stove. “And it needs a new carburetor.”

After the movie, Fair hoped she’d ask him to stay. He made comment after comment about how slick the roads were.

Finally Harry said, “Sleep in the guest room.”

“I was hoping I could sleep with you.”

“Not tonight.” She smiled, evading hurting his feelings. Since she was also evading her own feelings, it worked out nicely for her, temporarily, anyway.

The next morning, Fair cruised out to get the paper. The rain continued steady. He dashed back into the kitchen. As he removed the plastic wrapping and opened the paper, an eight-by-ten-inch black-bordered sheet of paper, an insert, fell on the floor. Fair picked it up. “What in the hell is this?”

13

“Maury McKinchie, forty-seven, died suddenly in his home October third,” Fair mumbled as he read aloud Maury’s cinematic accomplishments and the fact that he lettered in football at USC. He peered over Mrs. Murphy, who jumped on the paper to read it herself.

Both humans and the cat stood reading the insert. Pewter reposed on the counter. She was interested, but Murphy jumped up first. Why start the day with a fight? Tucker raced around the table, finally sitting on her mother’s foot.

“What’s going on?” Tucker asked.

“Tucker, Maury McKinchie is dead,” Mrs. Murphy answered her.

“Miranda,” Harry said when she picked up the phone, “I’ve just seen it.”

“Well, I just saw Maury McKinchie jog down the lane between my house and the post office not ten minutes ago!”

“This is too weird.” Harry’s voice was even. “As weird as that rattail hair of his.” She referred to the short little pony tail Maury wore at the nape of his neck. Definitely not Virginia.

“He wore a color-coordinated jogging suit. Really, the clothes that man wears.” Miranda exhaled through her nostrils. “Roscoe was jogging with him.”

“Guess he hasn’t read the paper.” Harry laughed.

“No.” She paused. “Isn’t this the most peculiar thing. If Sean’s behind this again, he realized he can’t phone in an obituary anymore. It can’t be Sean, though—his father would kill him.” She thought out loud.

“And he lost his paper route. Fired. At least, that’s what I heard,” Harry added.

“Bombsaway!” Pewter launched herself from the counter onto the table and hit the paper, tearing it. Both cats and paper skidded off the table.

“Pewter!” Fair exclaimed.

“Aha!” Mrs. Hogendobber exclaimed when she heard Fair’s voice in the background. “I knew you two would get back together,” she gloated to Harry.

“Don’t jump the gun, Miranda.” Harry gritted her teeth, knowing a grilling would occur at the post office.

“See you at work,” Miranda trilled.

14

“Not another prank!” the Reverend Herbert Jones said when he picked up his mail, commenting on the obituary insert in his paper that morning.

“A vicious person with unresolved authority-figure conflicts,” BoomBoom Craycroft intoned. “A potent mixture of chamomile and parsley would help purify this tortured soul.”

“Disgusting and not at all funny,” Big Mini Sanburne declaimed.

“A sick joke,” Lucinda Payne Coles said, picking up her mail and that of the Church of the Good Shepherd.

“Hasn’t Maury been working with you on the big alumni fundraising dinner?” Harry inquired.

“Yes,” Little Mim replied.

“What’s going on at St. Elizabeth’s?” Harry walked out front.

“Nothing. Just because Roscoe and Maury are associated with the school doesn’t make the school responsible for these—what should I call them—?” Little Mim flared.

Her mother, awash in navy blue cashmere, tapped Little Mim’s hand with a rolled-up magazine.

“Premature death notices.” Mim laughed. “Sooner or later they will be accurate. Sean Hallahan has apologized to everyone involved. At least, that’s what his father told me. Who has the paper route? That’s the logical question.”

Marilyn sniffed. Her mother could get her goat faster than anyone on earth. “Roger Davis has the paper route.”

“Call his mother,” Mim snapped. “And … are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Whoever is writing these upsetting things knows a lot about both men.”

“Or is a good researcher,” Herb’s grave voice chimed in.

“Don’t look at me,” Harry joked. “I never learned how to correctly write in footnotes. You have to do that to be a good researcher.”

“Don’t be silly. You couldn’t have graduated from Smith with honors without learning how to do footnotes.” Big Mim unrolled the magazine, grimaced at the photo of an exploded bus, and rolled it back up again. “I’ll tell you what’s worse than incorrect footnotes … lack of manners. Our social skills are so eroded that people don’t write thank-you notes anymore … and if they did, they couldn’t spell.”

“Mother, what does that have to do with Roscoe’s and Maury’s fake obits?”

“Rude. Bad manners.” She tapped the magazine sharply on the edge of the counter.

“Hey!” Little Mim blurted, her head swiveling in the direction of the door.

Maury McKinchie pushed through, beheld the silence and joked, “Who died?”

“You,” Harry replied sardonically.

“Ah, come on, my last movie wasn’t that bad.”

“Haven’t you opened your paper?” Little Mim edged toward him.

“No.”

Herb handed the insert to Maury. “Take a look.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Maury whistled.

“Who do you think did this?” Miranda zoomed to the point.

He laughed heartily. “I can think of two ex-wives who would do it, only they’d shoot me first. The obit would be for real.”

“You really don’t have any idea?” Herb narrowed his eyes.

“Not a one.” Maury raised his bushy eyebrows as well as his voice.

Big Mim checked her expensive Schaffhausen watch. “I’m due up at the Garden Club. We vote on which areas to beautify today. A big tussle, as usual. Good-bye, all. Hope you get to the bottom of this.”

” ‘Bye ,” they called after her.

Maury, though handsome, had developed a paunch. Running would remove it, he hoped. Being a director, he had a habit of taking charge, giving orders. He’d discovered that didn’t work in Crozet. An even bigger shock had befallen him when Darla became the breadwinner. He was searching for the right picture to get his career back on track. He flew to L.A. once a month and burned up the phone and fax lines the rest of the time.

“Mother wants to create a garden around the old railroad station. What do you bet she gets her way?” Little Mim jumped to a new topic. There wasn’t anything she could do about the fake obituary anyway.

“The odds are on her side.” Harry picked up the tall metal wastebasket overflowing with paper.

“I can do that for you.” Maury seized the wastebasket. “Where does it go?”

“Market’s new dumpster,” Miranda said.

“Take me one minute.”

As he left, Little Mim said, “He’s a terrible flirt, isn’t he?”

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Harry advised.

“I didn’t say he bothered me.”

Maury returned, placing the wastebasket next to the table where people sorted their mail.

“Thank you,” Harry said.

He winked at her. “My pleasure. You can say you’ve encountered an angel today.”

“Beg pardon?” Harry said.

“If I’m dead, I’m living uptown, Harry, not downtown.” He laughed and walked out with a wave.

Susan Tucker arrived just as Miranda had begun her third degree on the subject of Fair staying over.

“Miranda, why do you do this to me?” Harry despaired.

“Because I want to see you happy.”

“Telling everyone that my ex-husband spent the night isn’t going to make me happy, and I told you, Miranda, nothing happened. I am so tired of this.”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Mrs. Hogendobber coyly quoted Shakespeare.

“Oh, pul -lease.” Harry threw up her hands.

Susan, one eyebrow arched, said, “Something did happen. Okay, maybe it wasn’t sex, but he got his foot in the door.”

“And his ass in the guest room. It was raining cats and dogs.”

“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Murphy, lounging in the mail cart, called out.

“All right.” Harry thought the cat wanted a push so she gave her a ride in the mail cart.

“I love this. …” Murphy put her paws on the side of the cart.

“Harry, I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

“For what’s going on with you and Fair.”

“NOTHING!”

Her shout made Tucker bark.

Pewter, hearing the noise, hurried in through the back animal door. “What’s the matter?”

“Mrs. H. and Susan think Mom’s in love with Fair because he stayed at the house last night.”

“Oh.” Pewter checked the wastebasket for crumbs. “They need to stop for tea.”

Susan held up her hands. “You are so sensitive.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Harry fired back.

“I guess I would.”

“Harry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Miranda, genuinely contrite, walked over to the small refrigerator, removing the pie she’d baked the night before.

Pewter was ecstatic.

Harry sighed audibly. “I want his attention, but I don’t think I want him. I’m being perverse.”

“Maybe vengeful is closer to the mark.” Miranda pulled no punches.

“Well—I’d like to think I was a better person than that, but maybe I’m not.” She glanced out the big front window. “Going to be a nice day.”

“Well, my cherub is playing in the field hockey game, rain or shine,” Susan said. “Danny’s got football practice, so I’ll watch the first half of Brooks’s game and the last half of Danny’s practice. I wish I could figure out how to be in two places at the same time.”

“If I get my chores done, I’ll drop by,” Harry said. “I’d love to see Brooks on the attack. Which reminds me, got to call and see if my truck is ready.”

“I thought you didn’t have the money to fix it,” Susan said.

“He’ll let me pay over time.” As she was making the call, Miranda and Susan buzzed about events.

“Miranda, do you think these false obituaries have anything to do with Halloween?” Harry asked as she hung up the phone.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s only the first week of October.” Tucker thought out loud. “Hallow een is a longwayaway.”

“What about all those Christmas catalogs clogging the mail?” Pewter hovered over the pie.

“Humans like to feel anxious,” Tucker declared.

“Imagine worrying about Christmas now. They might not live to Christmas,” Mrs. Murphy cracked.

The other two animals laughed.

“You know what I would do if I were one of them?” Pewter flicked off the dishcloth covering the pie. “I’d go to an Arab country. That would take care of Christmas.”

“Take care of a lot else, too,” Mrs. Murphy commented wryly.

Miranda noticed in the nick of time. “Shoo!”

Harry grabbed the phone. “Hello, may I have the obituary department?”

Miranda, Susan, the two cats, and the dog froze to listen.

“Obituary.”

“Janice, have you heard about the insert?”

“Yes, but it’s only in the papers of one route, Roger Davis’s route. I can’t be blamed for this one.”

“I wouldn’t want to be in Roger Davis’s shoes right now,” Harry said.

15

“I didn’t do it.” Roger, hands in his pants pockets, stared stubbornly at the headmaster and the temporary principal.

“You picked up the newspapers from the building atRio Road?” Sandy questioned.

“Yes.”

“Did you go through the papers?” Roscoe asked.

“No, I just deliver them. I had no idea that death notice on Mr. McKinchie was in there.”

“Did anyone else go with you this morning? Like Sean Hallahan?”

“No, sir,” Roger answered Roscoe Fletcher. “I don’t like Sean.”

Sandy took another tack. “Would you say that you and Sean Hallahan are rivals?”

Roger stared at the ceiling, then leveled his gaze at Sandy. “No. I don’t like him, that’s all.”

“He’s a bit of a star, isn’t he?” Sandy continued his line of reasoning.

“Good football players usually are.”

“No, I mean he’s really a star now for putting the false obituary in the paper, Mr. Fletcher’s obituary.”

Roger looked from Sandy to Roscoe, then back to Sandy. “Some kids think it was very cool.”

“Did you?” Roscoe inquired.

“No, sir,” Roger replied.

“Could anyone have tampered with your papers without you knowing about it?” Roscoe swiveled in his chair to glance out the window. Children were walking briskly between classes.

“I suppose they could. Each of us who has a route goes to pick up our papers … they’re on the landing. We’ve each got a spot because each route has a different number of customers. We’re supposed to have the same number, but we don’t. People cancel. Some areas grow faster than others. So you go to your place on the loading dock and pick up your papers. All I do is fold them to stick them in the tube. And on rainy days, put them in plastic bags.”

“So someone could have tampered with your pile?” Roscoe persisted.

“Yes, but I don’t know how they could do it without being seen. There are always people at the paper. Not many at that hour.” He thought. “I guess it could be done.”

“Could someone have followed after you on your route, pulled the paper out of the tube and put in the insert?” Sandy liked Roger but he didn’t believe him. “One of your friends, perhaps?”

“Yes. It would be a lot of work.”

“Who knows your paper route?” Roscoe glanced at the Queen Anne clock.

“Everyone. I mean, all my friends.”

“Okay, Roger. You can go.” Roscoe waved him away.

Sandy opened the door for the tall young man. “I really hope you didn’t do this, Roger.”

“Mr. Brashiers, I didn’t.”

Sandy

closed the door, turning to Roscoe. “Well?”

“I don’t know.” Roscoe held up his hands. “He’s an unlikely candidate, although circumstances certainly point to him.”

“Damn kids,” Sandy muttered, then spoke louder. “Have you investigated the Jody Miller incident further?”

“I spoke to Coach Hallvard. She said no fight occurred at practice. I’m going to see Kendrick Miller later today. I wish I knew what I was going to say.”

16

Rumbling along toward St. Elizabeth’s, Harry felt her heart sink lower and lower. The truck repairs cost $289.16, which demolished her budget. Paying over time helped, but $289 was $289. She wanted to cry but felt that it wasn’t right to cry over money. She sniffled instead.

“There’s got to bea wayto make more money,” Mrs. Murphy whispered.

“Catnip,” Pewter replied authoritatively. “She could grow acres of catnip, dry it, and sell it.”

“Not such a bad idea—could you keep out of the crop?”

“Could you?” Pewter challenged.

They pulled into the school parking lot peppered with Mercedes Benzes, BMWs, Volvos, a few Porsches, and one Ford Falcon.

The game was just starting with the captains in the center of the field, Karen Jensen for St. Elizabeth’s and Darcy Kelly for St. Anne’s Belfield from Charlottesville.

Roscoe had pride of place on the sidelines. Naomi squeezed next to him. April Shively sat on Roscoe’s left side. She took notes as he spoke, which drove Naomi wild. She struggled to contain her irritation. Susan and Miranda waved to Harry as she climbed up to them. Little Mim sat directly behind Roscoe. Maury, flirtatious, amused her with Hollywood stories about star antics. He told her she was naturally prettier than those women who had the help of plastic surgery, two-hundred-dollar haircuts, and fabulous lighting. Little Mim began to brighten.

Pretty Coach Renee Hallvard, her shiny blond pageboy swinging with each stride, paced the sidelines. St. Anne’s won the toss. While Karen Jensen trotted to midfield, the other midfielder, Jody Miller, twirled her stick in anticipation.

Irene and Kendrick Miller sat high in the stands for a better view. Kendrick had requested that he and Roscoe get together after the game. His attendance was noted since he rarely turned up at school functions, claiming work kept him pinned down.

People commented on the fact that Sean Hallahan and Roger Davis weren’t at the game. Everyone had an opinion on that.

St. Anne’s, a powerhouse in field hockey and lacrosse, worked the ball downfield, but Karen Jensen, strong and fast, stole the ball from the attacker in a display of finesse that brought the Redhawk supporters to their feet.

Brooks, an attacker, sped along the side, then cut in, a basic pattern, but Brooks, slight and swift, dusted her defender to pick up Karen’s pinpoint pass. She fired a shot at the goalie, one of the best in the state, who gave St. Anne’s enormous confidence.

The first quarter, speedy, resulted in no score.

“Brooks has a lot of poise under pressure.” Harry was proud of the young woman.

“She’s going to need it,” Susan predicted.

“Quite a game.” Miranda, face flushed, was remembering her days of field hockey for Crozet High in 1950.

The second quarter the girls played even faster and harder. Darcy Kelly drew first blood for St. Anne’s. Karen Jensen, jogging back to the center, breathed a few words to her team. They struck back immediately with three razor-sharp passes resulting in a goal off the stick of Elizabeth Davis, Roger’s older sister.

At halftime both coaches huddled with their girls. The trainers exhausted themselves putting the teams back together. The body checks, brutal, were taking their toll.

Sandy Brashiers, arriving late, sat on the corner of the bleachers.

“Jody’s playing a good game.” Roscoe leaned down to talk low to Sandy. “Maybe this will be easier than I thought.”

“Hope so,” Sandy said.

“Roscoe,” Maury McKinchie teased him, “what kind of headmaster are you when a kid puts your obituary in the paper?”

“Looks who’s talking. Maury, the walking dead,” Roscoe bellowed.

“Only in Hollywood,” Maury said, making fun of himself. “Oh, well, I’ve made a lot of mistakes on all fronts.”

Father Michael, sitting next to Maury, said, “To err is human, to forgive divine.”

“To err is human, to forgive is extraordinary.” Roscoe chuckled.

They both shut up when Mrs. Florence Rubicon, the aptly, or perhaps prophetically, named Latin teacher, waved a red-and-gold Redhawks pennant and shouted, “Carpe diem—”

Sandy shouted back, finishing the sentence, “Quam minimum credula postero .” Meaning “Don’t trust in tomorrow.”

Those who remembered their Latin laughed.

A chill made Harry shiver.

“Cold?” Miranda asked.

“No—just”—she shrugged—“a notion.”

The game was turning into a great one. Both sides cheered themselves hoarse, and at the very end Teresa Pietro scored a blazing goal for St. Anne’s. The Redhawks, crestfallen, dragged off the field, hurt so badly by the defeat that they couldn’t rejoice in how spectacularly they had played. It would take time for them to realize they’d participated in one of the legendary field hockey games.

Jody Miller, utterly wretched because Teresa Pietro had streaked by her, was stomping off the field, her head down. Her mother ran out to console her; her father stayed in the stands to talk to people and to wait for Roscoe, besieged, as always.

When Maury McKinchie walked over to soothe her, she hit him in the gut with her stick. He keeled over.

Irene, horrified, grabbed the stick from her daughter’s hand. She looked toward Kendrick, who had missed the incident.

Coach Hallvard quickly ran over. Brooks, Karen, Elizabeth, and Jody’s other teammates stared in disbelief.

“Jody, go to the lockers—NOW,” the coach ordered.

“I think she’d better come home with me,” Irene said tightly.

“Mrs. Miller, I’ll send her straight home. In fact, I’ll drive her home, but I need to talk to her first. Her behavior affects the entire team.”

Jody, white-lipped, glared at everyone, then suddenly laughed. “I’m sorry, Mr. McKinchie. If only I’d done that to Teresa Pietro.”

Maury, gasping for breath, smiled gamely. “I don’t look anything like Teresa Pietro.”

“Are you all right?” Coach Hallvard asked him.

“Yes, it’s the only time I’ve been grateful for my spare tire.”

Coach Hallvard put her hand under Jody’s elbow, propelling her toward the lockers.

Roscoe turned around to look up to Kendrick, who was being filled in on the incident. He whispered to his wife, “Go see what you can do for Maury.” Then he said to April, hovering nearby, “I think you’d better go to the locker room with Coach Hallvard and the team, right?”

“Right.” April trotted across the field, catching up with Naomi, who pretended she was happy for the company.

Father Michael felt a pang for not pursuing Jody the morning she came to see him. He was realizing how much she had needed him then.

Brooks, confused like the rest of her teammates, obediently walked back to the locker room while the St. Anne’s team piled on the bus.

Mrs. Murphy, prowling the bleachers now that everyone was down on the sidelines, jerked her head up when she caught a whiff, a remnant of strong perfume.

“Ugh.” Pewter seconded her opinion.

They watched Harry chat with her friends about the incident as Roscoe glided over to Kendrick Miller. Sandy Brashiers also watched him, his eyes narrow as slits.

The two men strolled back to the bleachers, not thinking twice about the cats sitting there.

Kendrick glanced across the field at a now upright Maury attended by Irene and Naomi. “He’s got both our wives buzzing around him. I guess he’ll live.”

Roscoe, surprised at Kendrick’s cool response, said, “Doesn’t sound as if you want him to—”

Kendrick, standing, propped one foot on the bleacher higher than the one he was standing on. “Don’t like him. One of those dudes who comes here with money and thinks he’s superior to us. That posture of detached amusement wears thin.”

“Perhaps, but he’s been very good to St. Elizabeth’s.”

Quickly Kendrick said, “I understand your position, Roscoe, you’d take money from the devil if you had to. You’re a good businessman.

“I’d rather be a good headmaster,” Roscoe replied coolly. “I was hoping you could illuminate me concerning Jody.”

“Because she hit Maury?” His voice rose. “Wish I’d seen it.”

“No, although that’s an issue now. She skipped school the other day with a black eye. She said she got it in practice, but Coach Hallvard said, no, she didn’t and as far as she knew there were no fights after practice. Does she roughhouse with neighborhood kids or—?”

“Do I beat her?” Kendrick’s face darkened. “I know what people say behind my back, Roscoe. I don’t beat my daughter. I don’t beat my wife. Hell, I’m not home enough to get mad at them. And yes—I have a bad temper.”

Roscoe demurred. “Please, don’t misunderstand me. My concern is the well-being of every student at St. Elizabeth’s. Jody, a charming young girl, is, well, more up and down lately. And her grades aren’t what they were last year.”

“I’ll worry about it when the first report card comes out.” Kendrick leaned on his knee.

“That will be in another month. Let’s try to pull together and get those grades up before then.” Roscoe’s smile was all mouth, no eyes.

“You’re telling me I’m not a good father.” Kendrick glowered. “You’ve been talking to my bride, I suppose.” The word “bride” dripped with venom.

“No, no, I haven’t.” Roscoe’s patience began to erode.

“You’re a rotten liar.” Kendrick laughed harshly.

“Kendrick, I’m sorry I’m wasting your time.” He stepped down out of the bleachers and left a furious Kendrick to pound down and leave in the opposite direction.

Sandy Brashiers awaited Roscoe at the other end. “He doesn’t look too happy.”

“He’s an ass.” Roscoe, sensitive and tired, thought he heard implicit criticism in Sandy’s voice.

“I waited for you because I think we need to have an assembly or small workshop about how to handle losing. Jody’s behavior was outrageous.”

Roscoe hunched his massive shoulders. “I don’t think we have to make that big a deal out of it.”

“You and I will never see eye to eye, will we?” Sandy said.

“I’ll handle it,” Roscoe said sternly.

A pause followed, broken by Sandy. “I don’t want to make you angry. I’m not trying to obstruct you, but this gives us a chance to address the subject of winning and losing. Sports are blown out of proportion anyway.”

“They may be blown out of proportion, but they bring in alumni funds.” Roscoe shifted his weight.

“We’re an institution of learning, not an academy for sports.”

“Sandy, not now. I’m fresh out of patience,” Roscoe warned.

“If not now, when?”

“This isn’t the time or place for a philosophical discussion of the direction of secondary education in general or St. Elizabeth’s in particular.” Roscoe popped a hard strawberry candy in his mouth and moved off in the direction of the girls’ locker room. Perhaps April had some information for him. He noticed that Naomi had shepherded Maury toward the quad, so he assumed she would be serving him coffee, tea, or spirits in her office. She had a sure touch with people.

The cats scampered out from under the bleachers, catching up with Harry, who was in the parking lot calling for them.

17

Late that night the waxing moon flitted between inky boiling clouds. Mrs. Murphy, unable to sleep, was hunting in the paddock closest to the barn. A sudden gust of wind brought her nose up from the ground. She sniffed the air. A storm, a big one, was streaking in.

Simon, moving fast for him, ran in from the creek. Overhead Flatface swooped low, banked, then headed out to the far fields for one more pass before the storm broke.

“That’s it for me.” Simon headed to the open barn door. “Besides, bobcat tracks in the creekbed.”

“Good enough reason.”

“Are you coming in?”

“In a minute.” She watched the gray animal with the long rat tail shuffle into the barn.

A light wind rustled the leaves. She saw the cornstalks sway, then wiggle in Harry’s small garden by the corner of the barn. This proved a handy repository for her “cooked” manure. A red fox, half grown, sashayed out the end, glanced over her shoulder, beheld Mrs. Murphy, put her nose up, and walked away.

Mrs. Murphy loved no fox, for they competed for the same game.

“You stay out of my corn rows,” she growled.

“You don’t own the world,” came the belligerent reply.

A lone screech froze both of them.

“She’s a killer.” The fox flattened for a minute, then got up.

“You’re between a storm and a bobcat. Where’s your den?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Don’t tell me, but you’d better hike to it fast.” A big splat landed on the cat. She thought about the fox’s predicament. “Go into the shavings shed until the storm blows over and the bobcat’s gone. Just don’t make a habit of it.”

Without a word the fox scooted into the shavings shed, burrowing down in the sweet-smelling chips as the storm broke overhead.

The tiger cat, eyes widened, listened for the bobcat. Another more distant cry, like a woman screaming, told her that the beast headed back to the forest, her natural home. Since the pickings were so good in the fall—lots of fat mice and rats gorged on fallen grain plus fruits left drying on the vine—the bobcat ventured closer to the human habitation.

The wind stiffened, the trees gracefully bent lower. The field mouse Mrs. Murphy patiently tracked wanted to stay dry. She refused to poke her nose out of her nest.

More raindrops sent the cat into the barn. She climbed the ladder. Simon was arranging his sleeping quarters. His treasures, spread around him, included a worn towel, one leather riding glove, a few scraps of newspaper, and a candy bar that he was saving for a rainy day, which it was.

“Simon, don’t you ever throw anything out?”

He smiled. “My mother said I was a pack rat, not a possum.”

The force of the rain, unleashed, hit like a baseball bat against the north side of the barn. Flatface, claws down, landed in her cupola. She glanced down at the two friends, ruffled her feathers, then shut her eyes. She disdained earthbound creatures.

“Flatface,” Simon called up to her, “before you go to sleep, how big is the bobcat?”

“Big enough to eat you.” She laughed with a whooing sound.

“Really, how big?” he pressed.

She turned her big head nearly upside down. “Thirty to forty pounds and still growing. She’s quick, lightning-quick, and smart. Now, if you two peons don’t mind, I’m going to sleep. It’s turning into a filthy night.”

Mrs. Murphy and Simon caught up on the location of the latest beaver dam, fox dens, and one bald eagle nest. Then the cat told him about the false obituaries.

“Bizarre, isn’t it?”

Simon pulled his towel into his hollowed-out nest in the straw. “People put out marshmallows to catch raccoons. Us, too. We love marshmallows. Sure enough, one of us will grab the marshmallow. If we’re lucky, the human wants to watch us. If we’re unlucky, we’re trapped or the marshmallow is poisoned. I think a human is putting out a marshmallow for another human.”

Mrs. Murphy sat a long time, the tip of her tail slowly wafting to and fro. “It’s damned queer bait, Simon, telling someone he’s dead.”

“Not just him—everyone.”

18

The storm lashed central Virginia for two days, finally moving north to discomfort the Yankees.

Harry’s father said storms did Nature’s pruning. The farm, apart from some downed limbs, suffered little damage, but a tree was down on the way to Blair Bainbridge’s house.

On Saturday, Harry borrowed his thousand-dollar power washer. Merrily she blasted the old green-and-yellow John Deere tractor, her truck, the manure spreader, and, in a fit of squeaky-clean mania, the entire interior of the barn. Not a cobweb remained.

The three horses observed this from the far paddock. By now they were accustomed to Harry’s spring and fall fits.

Other humans feeling those same urges worked on Saturday. Miranda aired her linens as she planted her spring bulbs. She’d need the rest of Sunday to finish the bulbs.

The Reverend Jones stocked his woodpile and greeted the chimney sweep by touching his top hat. A little superstition never hurt a pastor.

Fair Haristeen decided to run an inventory on equine drugs at the clinic only to repent as the task devoured the day.

BoomBoom Craycroft, adding orange zest to her list of essences, peeled a dozen of them.

Susan Tucker attacked the attic while Ned edged every tree and flower bed until he thought his fillings would fall out of his teeth from the vibrations of the machine.

Big Mim supervised the overhaul of her once-sunk pontoon boat.

Little Marilyn transferred the old records of St. Elizabeth’s benefactors to a computer. Like Fair, she was sorry she had started the job.

Sandy Brashiers made up the questions for a quiz on Macbeth.

Jody Miller worked at the car wash with Brooks, Karen, and Roger.

Because of the storm, the car wash was jam-packed. The kids hadn’t had time for lunch, so Jody took everyone’s order. It was her turn to cross Route 29 and get sandwiches at the gas station-deli on the southwest corner. The Texaco sat between the car wash and the intersection. If only that station had a deli, she wouldn’t have to cross the busy highway.

Jimbo Anson slipped her twenty-five dollars for everyone’s lunch, his included, as they were famished.

As the day wore on, the temperature climbed into the mid-sixties. The line of cars extended out to Route 29.

Roscoe Fletcher, his Mercedes station wagon caked in mud, patiently waited in line. He had turned off Route 29 and moved forward enough to be right in front of the Texaco station. The car wash was behind the gas station itself, so the kids did not yet know their headmaster was in line and he didn’t know how many cars were in front of him. The car stereo played The Marriage of Figaro. He sang aloud with gusto.

The line crept forward.

Jody headed down to the intersection. Five minutes later she dashed back into the office.

“Where’s the food?” Roger, hungry, inquired as he reached in for another dry towel.

She announced, “Mr. Fletcher is in line! He hasn’t seen me yet. I’ll go as soon as he gets through the line.”

“I’ll starve by then,” Roger said.

“He’ll be cool.” Karen stuck her head in the door as Roger threw her a bottle of mag washer for aluminum hubcaps.

“Maybe—but I don’t want a lecture. I know I was wrong to hit Mr. McKinchie.” Her voice rose. “I’ve had about all the help I can stand. I was wrong. Okay. I apologized. Guess you don’t want to see him either.” She pointed at Roger, who ignored her.

“Well, he’s past the Texaco station. You’d better hide under the desk,” Karen yelled. “Jeez, I think everyone in the world is here today.” She heard horns beeping out on Route 29. Irene Miller had pulled in behind Roscoe, then Naomi Fletcher in her blue Miata. BoomBoom Craycroft, car wafting fragrances, was just ahead of him.

Roger waved up another car. He bent his tall frame in two as the driver rolled down the window. “What will it be?”

“How about a wash only?”

“Great. Put it in neutral and turn off your car radio.”

The driver obeyed instructions while Karen and Brooks slopped the big brushes into the soapy water, working off the worst of the mud.

“Hey, there’s Father Michael.” Karen noticed the priest’s black old-model Mercury. “You’d think the church would get him a better car.” She yelled so Jody, scrunched under the desk, could hear her.

“It runs,” Brooks commented on the car.

“How many are in the line now?” Roger wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm as Jimbo walked down to the intersection to direct drivers to form a double line. He needed to unclog the main north-south artery of Charlottesville.

“Number twenty-two just pulled in,” Brooks replied.

“Unreal.” Karen whistled.

Roscoe rolled down his window, flooding the car wash with Mozart. He was three cars away from his turn.

“You-all should learn your Mozart,” he called to them. “Greatest composer who ever lived.”

His wife shouted from her car, “It’s the weekend, Roscoe. You can’t tell them what to do.”

“Right!” Karen laughed, waving at Naomi.

“I bet you listen to Melissa Etheridge and Sophie B. Hawkins,” Roscoe said as he offered her strawberry hard candy, which she refused.

“Yeah.” Karen turned her attention to the car in front of her. “They’re great. I like Billy Ray Cyrus and Reba McEntire, too.”

Irene rolled her window down. “Where’s Jody?”

“She went to the deli to get our lunches, and I hope she hurries up!” Roger told a half-truth.

“What about Bach?” Roscoe sang out, still on his music topic.

“The Beatles,” Karen answered. “I mean, that’s like rock Bach.”

“No, Bill Haley and the Comets are like rock Bach,” Roscoe said as he sucked on the candy in his mouth. “Jerry Lee Lewis.”

The kids took a deep breath and yelled and swung their hips in unison, “Elvis!”

By the time Roscoe put his left tire into the groove, everyone was singing “Hound Dog,” which made him laugh. He noticed Jody peeking out of the office. The laughter, too much for her, had lured her from under the desk.

He pointed his finger at her. “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.”

She laughed, but her smile disappeared when her mother yelled at her. “I thought you were at the deli?”

“I’m on my way. We’re backed up,” she said since she’d heard what Roger told her mother.

“Mr. Fletcher, shut your window,” Karen advised as the station wagon lurched into the car wash.

“Oh, right.” He hit the electric button, and the window slid shut with a hum.

As the tail end of the Mercedes disappeared in a sheet of water, the yellow neon light flashed on and Karen waved Irene on. “He’s so full of shit,” she said under her breath.

BoomBoom hollered out her window, “Stress. Irene, this is too much stress. Come meet me at Ruby Tuesday’s after the car wash.”

“Okay,” Irene agreed. Her left tire was in the groove now. “I want the works.” Irene handed over fifteen dollars. Karen made change.

Roger, at the button to engage the track, waited for Roscoe to finish. The light telling him to put through the next vehicle didn’t come on. Minutes passed.

“I’m in a hurry.” Irene tried to sound pleasant.

“It’s been like this all day, Mrs. Miller.” Karen smiled tightly.

Brooks looked down the line. “Maybe Mr. Fletcher’s out but the light didn’t come on. I’ll go see.”

Brooks loped alongside the car wash, arriving at the end where the brown station wagon, nose out, squatted. The tail of the vehicle remained on the track. The little metal cleats in the track kept pushing the car.

Brooks knocked on the window. Roscoe, sitting upright, eyes straight ahead, didn’t reply.

“Mr. Fletcher, you need to move out.”

No reply. She knocked harder. Still no reply.

“Mr. Fletcher, please drive out.” She waited, then opened the door. The first thing she noticed was that Mr. Fletcher had wet his pants, which shocked her. Then she realized he was dead.

19

It wasn’t funny, but Rick Shaw wanted to laugh. Mozart blared through the speakers, and the car’s rear end shone like diamonds after endless washings.

Naomi Fletcher, in shock, had been taken home by an officer.

Diana Robb, a paramedic with the rescue squad, patiently waited while Sheriff Shaw and Deputy Cooper painstakingly examined the car.

Jimbo Anson turned off the water when Rick told him it was okay.

Roger Davis directed traffic around the waiting line. He was relieved when a young officer pulled up in a squad car.

“Don’t go yet,” Tom Kline told Roger. “I’ll need your help.”

Obediently, Roger continued to direct traffic onto the Greenbrier side street. He wanted to comfort Brooks for the shock she had suffered, but that would have to wait.

Rick said under his breath to Coop, “Ever tell you about the guy who died on the escalator over in Richmond? I was fresh out of school. This was my first call as a rookie. No one could get on or off until cleared, and the store didn’t turn off the motor. People were running in place. Super aerobics. ‘Course the stiff rolled right up to the step-off, where his hair caught in the steps. By the time I reached him, he was half scalped.”

“Gross.” She knew that Rick wasn’t unfeeling, but a law enforcement officer sees so much that a protective shell develops over emotions.

“Let’s have the boys take photos, bag the contents of the station wagon.” He reached in and, with his gloves on, snapped off the stereo. “Okay, we’re done,” he called over his shoulder to Diana Robb and Cooper behind him.

“Sheriff, what do you think?” the paramedic asked him.

“Looks like a heart attack. He’s the right age for it. I’ve learned over the years, though, to defer to the experts. Unless Mrs. Fletcher objects, we’ll send the body to Bill Moscowitz—he’s a good coroner.

“If you don’t stop smoking those Chesterfields, I’ll be picking you up one of these days.”

“Ah, I’ve stopped smoking so many times.” He should have taken his pack out of his pocket and left it in the unmarked car; then she wouldn’t have noticed. “Drop him at the morgue. I’ll stop by Naomi’s, so tell Bill to hold off until he hears from me.” He turned to Coop. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, Roscoe’s obituary was in the paper, remember?”

He rubbed his chin, the light chestnut stubble already appearing even though he’d shaved at six this morning. “We thought it was a joke.”

“Boss, let’s question a few people, starting with Sean Hallahan.”

He folded his arms and leaned against the green unmarked car. “Let’s wait—well, let me think about it. I don’t want to jump the gun.”

“Maury McKinchie’s obituary was stuffed in the paper as well.”

“I know. I know.” He swept his eyes over the distressed Irene Miller and BoomBoom. Father Michael had administered the last rites. In the corner of his eye the lumpish figure of Jimbo Anson loomed. “I’d better talk to him before he runs to Dunkin’ Donuts and eats another dozen jelly rolls.” Jimbo ate when distressed. He was distressed a lot.

He half whispered, “Coop, take the basics from these folks, then let them go. I think BoomBoom is going to code on us.” He used the medic slang word for “die.”

Rick straightened his shoulders and walked the thirty yards to Jimbo.

“Sheriff, I don’t know what to do. Nothing like this has ever happened to me. I just feel awful. Poor Naomi.”

“Jimbo, death always upsets the applecart. Breathe deeply.” He clapped the man on the back. “That’s better. Now you tell me what happened.”

“He went through the car wash, well I mean, I didn’t see him, the kids were up front, and when the car didn’t roll off she, I mean Brooks, ran around to see if the pedal hadn’t released on the belt and, well, Roscoe was gone.”

“Did you see him at all?”

“No, I mean, not until I came back with Brookie. Kid had some sense, I can tell you. She didn’t scream or cry. She ran to my office, told me Roscoe was dead, and I followed her to there.” He pointed.

“That’s fine. I may be talking to you again, but it looks like a heart attack or stroke. These things happen.”

“Business was great today.” A mournful note crept into his voice.

“You’ll be able to reopen before long. I’m going to impound the car, just routine, Jimbo. You won’t have to worry about the vehicle being parked here.”

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

Rick clapped him on the back again and walked into the air-conditioned office—the day had turned unusually hot—where Brooks, Jody, and Karen sat. Cooper was already there.

“Sheriff, we were establishing a time line.” Coop smiled at the three young women.

“One thirty, about,” Brooks said.

“Mr. Anson said you showed presence of mind,” Rick complimented Brooks.

“I don’t know. I feel so bad for Mr. Fletcher. He helped me get into St. Elizabeth’s after the semester started.”

“Well, I’m not the Reverend Jones but I do believe that Roscoe Fletcher is in a better place. Much as you’ll miss him, try to think of that.”

“Jody, did you notice anything?” Coop asked.

“No. He said ‘hi’ and that was it. Karen and Brooks scrubbed down his bumpers. I think Roger pressed the button to send him in.”

“Where is Roger?” Rick said.

“Directing traffic,” Karen replied.

“Good man to have around.”

This startled the two girls, who had never thought of Roger as anything other than a tall boy who was quiet even in kindergarten. Brooks was beginning to appreciate Roger’s special qualities.

“Was there anything unusual about Mr. Fletcher or anyone else today?”

“No.” Karen twirled a golden hair around her forefinger.

“Girls, if anything comes to mind, call me.” He handed around his card.

“Is something wrong, something other than the fact that Mr. Fletcher is dead?” Brooks inquired shrewdly.

“No. This is routine.”

“It’s weird to be questioned.” Brooks was forthright.

“I’m sorry you all lost Mr. Fletcher. I know it was a shock. I have to ask questions, though. I don’t mean to further upset you. My job is to collect details, facts, like little pieces of a mosaic.”

“We understand,” Karen said.

“We’re okay,” Brooks fibbed.

“Okay then.” He rose and Coop also handed her card to the three girls.

As she trudged across the blacktop to motion Roger fromGreenbrier

Drive, she marveled at the self-possession of the three high school girls. Usually, something like this sent teenage girls into a crying jag. As far as she could tell, not one tear had fallen, but then BoomBoom, never one to pass up the opportunity to emote, was crying enough for all of them.

20

Johnny Pop, the 1958 John Deere tractor, rolled through the meadow thick with goldenrod. Tucker pouted by a fallen walnut at the creek. Mrs. Murphy sat in Harry’s lap. Tucker, a trifle too big and heavy, envied the tiger her lap status.

As the tractor popped by, she turned and gazed into the creek. A pair of fishy eyes gazed right back. Startled, Tucker took a step back and barked, then sheepishly sat down again.

The baking sun and two days of light winds had dried out the wet earth. Harry, determined to get one more hay cutting before winter, fired up Johnny Pop the minute she thought she wouldn’t get stuck. She couldn’t hear anything, so Mrs. Hogendobber startled her when she walked out into the meadow.

Tucker, intent on her bad mood, missed observing the black Falcon rumbling down the drive.

Miranda waved her arms over her head. “Harry, stop!”

Harry immediately nipped the lever to the left, cutting off the motor. “Miranda, what’s the matter? What are you doing out here on gardening day?”

“Roscoe Fletcher’s dead—for real, this time.”

“What happened?” Harry gasped.

Mrs. Murphy listened. Tucker, upon hearing the subject, hurried over from the creek.

Pewter was asleep in the house.

“Died at the car wash. Heart attack or stroke. That’s what Mim says.”

“Was she there?”

“No. I forgot to ask her how she found out. Rick Shaw told Jim Sanburne, most likely, and Jim told Mim.”

“It’s ironic.” Harry shuddered.

“The obit?”

Harry nodded. Mrs. Murphy disagreed. “It’s not ironic. It’s murder. Wait and see. Cat intuition.”

21

Sean Hallahan pushed a laundry cart along a hallway so polished it reflected his image.

The double doors at the other end of the corridor swung open. Karen and Jody hurried toward him.

“How’d you get in here?” he asked.

Ignoring the question, Jody solemnly said, “Mr. Fletcher’s dead. He died at the car wash.”

“What?” Sean stopped the cart from rolling into them.

Karen tossed her ponytail. “He went in and never came out.”

“Went in what?” Sean appeared stricken, his face white.

“The car wash,” Jody said impatiently. “He went in the car wash, but at the other end, he just sat. Looks like he died of a heart attack.

“Are you making this up?” He smiled feebly.

“No. We were there. It was awful. Brooks Tucker found him.”

“For real,” he whispered.

“For real.” Jody put her arm around his waist. “No one’s going to think anything. Really.”

“If only I hadn’t put that phony obituary in the paper.” He gulped.

“Yeah,” the girls chimed in unison.

“Wait until my dad hears about this. He’s going to kill me.” He paused. “Who knows?”

“Depends on who gets to the phone first, I guess.” Karen hadn’t expected Sean to be this upset. She felt sorry for him.

“We came here first before going home. We thought you should know before your dad picks you up.”

“Thanks,” he replied, tears welling in his eyes.

22

Father Michael led the assembled upper and lower schools of St. Elizabeth’s in a memorial service. Naomi Fletcher, wearing a veil, was supported by Sandy Brashiers with Florence Rubicon, the Latin teacher, on her left side. Ed Sugarman, the chemistry teacher, escorted a devastated April Shively.

Many of the younger children cried because they were supposed to or because they saw older kids crying. In the upper school some of the girls carried on, whipping through boxes of tissues. A few of the boys were red-eyed as well, including, to everyone’s surprise, Sean Hallahan, captain of the football team.

Brooks reported all this to Susan, who told Harry and Miranda when they joined her at home for lunch.

“Well, he ate too much, he drank too much, and who knows what else he did—too much.” Susan summed up Roscoe’s life.

“How’s Brooks handling it?” Harry inquired.

“Okay. She knows people die; after all, she watched her grandma die by inches with cancer. In fact, she said, ‘When it’s my time I want to go fast like Mr. Fletcher.’

“I don’t remember thinking about dying at all at her age,” Harry wondered out loud.

“You didn’t think of anything much at her age,” Susan replied.

“Thanks.”

“Children think of death often; they are haunted by it because they can’t understand it.” Miranda rested her elbows on the table to lean forward. “That’s why they go to horror movies—it’s a safe way to approach death, scary but safe.”

Harry stared at Miranda’s elbows on the table. “I never thought of that.”

“I know I’m not supposed to have my elbows on the table, Harry, but I can’t always be perfect.”

Harry blinked. “It’s not that at all—it’s just that you usually are—perfect.”

“Aren’t you sweet.”

“Harry puts her feet on the table, she’s so imperfect.”

“Susan, I do not.”

“You know what was rather odd, though?” Susan reached for the sugar bowl. “Brooks told me Jody said she was glad Roscoe was dead. That she didn’t like him anyway. Now that’s a bit extreme even for a teenager.”

“Yeah, but Jody’s been extreme lately.” Harry got up when the phone rang. Force of habit.

“Sit down. I’ll answer it.” Susan walked over to the counter and lifted the receiver.

“Yes. Of course, I understand. Marilyn, it could have an impact on your fundraising campaign. I do suggest that you appoint an interim headmaster immediately.” Susan paused and held the phone away from her ear so the others could hear Little Mim’s voice. Then she spoke again. “Sandy Brashiers. Who else? No, no, and no,” she said after listening to three questions. “Do you want me to call anyone? Don’t fret, doesn’t solve a thing.”

“She’ll turn into her mother,” Miranda predicted as Susan hung up the receiver.

“Little Mim doesn’t have her mother’s drive.”

“Harry, not only do I think she has her mother’s drive, I think she’ll run for her father’s seat once he steps down as mayor.”

“No way.” Harry couldn’t believe the timid woman she had known since childhood could become that confident.

“Bet you five dollars,” Miranda smugly said.

“According to Little Mim, the Millers are divorcing.”

“Oh, dear.” Miranda hated such events.

“About time.” Harry didn’t like hearing of divorce either, but there were exceptions. “Still, there is no such thing as a good divorce.”

“You managed,” Susan replied.

“How quickly you forget. During the enforced six months’ separation every married couple and single woman in this town invited my ex-husband to dinner. Who had me to dinner, I ask you?”

“I did.” Miranda and Susan spoke in chorus.

“And that was it. The fact that I filed for the divorce made me an ogre. He was the one having the damned affair.”

“Sexism is alive and well.” Susan apportioned out seven-layer salad, one of her specialties. She stopped, utensils in midair. “Did either of you like Roscoe Fletcher?”

“De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” Miranda advised.

“Speak nothing but good about the dead,” Harry translated although it was unnecessary. “Maybe people said that because they feared the departed spirit was nearby. If they gave you trouble while alive, think what they could do to you as a ghost.”

“Did you like Roscoe Fletcher?” Susan repeated her question.

Harry paused. “Yes, he had a lot of energy and good humor.”

“A little too hearty for my taste.” Miranda found the salad delicious. “Did you like him?”

Susan shrugged. “I felt neutral. He seemed a bit phony sometimes. But maybe that was the fundraiser in him. He had to be a backslapper and glad-hander, I suppose.”

“Aren’t we awful, sitting here picking the poor man apart?” Miranda dabbed her lipstick-coated lips with a napkin.

The phone rang again. Susan jumped up. “Speaking of letting someone rest in peace, I’d like to eat in peace.”

“You don’t have to answer it,” Harry suggested.

“Mothers always answer telephones.” She picked up the jangling device. “Hello.” She paused a long time. “Thanks for telling me. You’ve done the right thing.”

Little Mim had rung back to say St. Elizabeth’s had held an emergency meeting by conference call.

Sandy Brashiers had been selected interim headmaster.

23

Late that afternoon, a tired Father Michael bent his lean frame, folding himself into the confessional.

He usually read until someone entered the other side of the booth. The residents of Crozet had been particularly virtuous this week because traffic was light.

The swish of the fabric woke him as he half dozed over the volume of Thomas Merton, a writer he usually found provocative.

“Father, forgive me for I have sinned,” came the formalistic opening.

“Go on, my child.”

“I have killed and I will kill again.” The voice was muffled, disguised.

He snapped to attention, but before he could open his mouth, the penitent slipped out of the booth. Confused, Father Michael pondered what to do. He felt he must stay in the booth for the confessional hours were well-known—he had a responsibility to his flock—but he wanted to call Rick Shaw immediately. Paralyzed, he grasped the book so hard his knuckles were white. The curtain swished again.

A man’s voice spoke, deep and low. “Father forgive me for I have sinned.”

“Go on, my child,” Father Michael said as his mind raced.

“I’ve cheated on my wife. I can’t help myself. I have strong desires.” He stopped.

Father Michael advised him by rote, gave him a slew of Hail Marys and novenas. He kept rubbing his wristwatch until eventually his wrist began to hurt. As the last second of his time in the booth expired, he bolted out, grabbed the phone, and dialed Rick Shaw.

When Coop picked up the phone, he insisted he speak to the sheriff himself.

“Sheriff Shaw.”

“Yes.”

“This is Father Michael. I don’t know”—sweat beaded on his forehead; he couldn’t violate what was said in the confessional booth—“I believe a murder may have taken place.”

“One has, Father Michael.”

The priest’s hands were shaking. “Oh, no. Who?”

“Roscoe Fletcher.” Rick breathed deeply. “The lab report came back. He was poisoned by malathion. Not hard to get around here, so many farmers use it. It works with the speed of light so he had to have eaten it at the car wash. We’ve tested the strawberry hard candy in his car. Nothing.”

“There couldn’t be any mistake?”

“No. We have to talk, Father.”

After Father Michael hung up the phone, he needed to collect his thoughts. He paced outside, winding up in the graveyard. Ansley Randolph’s mums bloomed beautifully.

A soul was in peril. But if the confession he had heard was true, then another immortal soul was in danger as well. He was a priest. He should do something, but he didn’t know what. It then occurred to him that he himself might be in danger—his body, not his soul.

Like a rabbit who hears the beagle pack, he twitched and cast his eyes around the graveyard to the Avenging Angel. It looked so peaceful.

24

His shirtsleeves rolled up, Kendrick Miller sat in his favorite chair to read the paper.

Irene swept by. “Looking for your obituary?” She arched a delicate eyebrow.

“Ha ha .” He rustled the paper.

Jody, reluctantly doing her math homework at the dining-room table so both parents could supervise, reacted. “Mom, that’s not funny.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“Who knows, maybe your obituary will show up.” She dropped her pencil inside her book, closing it.

“If it does, Jody, you’ll have placed it there.” Irene sank gracefully onto the sofa.

Jody grimaced. “Sick.”

“I can read it now: ‘Beloved mother driven to death by child— and husband.’ “

“Irene . . .” Kendrick reproved, putting down the paper.

“Yeah, Mom.”

“Well”—she propped her left leg over an embroidered pillow— “I thought Roscoe Fletcher could have sold ice to Eskimos and probably did. He was good for St. Elizabeth’s, and I’m sorry he died. I was even sorrier that we were all there. I would have preferred to hear about it rather than see it.”

“He didn’t look bad.” Jody opened her book again. “I hope he didn’t suffer.”

“Too quick to suffer.” Irene stared absently at her nails, a discreet pale pink. “What’s going to happen at St. Elizabeth’s?”

Kendrick lifted his eyebrows. “The board will appoint Sandy Brashiers headmaster. Sandy will try to kill Roscoe’s film-course idea, which will bring him into a firefight with Maury McKinchie, Marilyn Sanburne, and April Shively. Ought to be worth the price of admission.

“How do you know that?” Jody asked.

“I don’t know it for certain, but the board is under duress. And the faculty likes Brashiers.”

“Oh, I almost forgot. Father Michael can see us tomorrow at two thirty.”

“Irene, I have landscaping plans to show the Doubletree people tomorrow.” He was bidding for the hotel’s business. “It’s important.”

“I’d like to think I’m important. That this marriage is important,” Irene said sarcastically.

“Then you pay the bills.”

“You turn my stomach.” Irene swung her legs to the floor and left.

“Way to go, Dad.”

“You keep out of this.”

“I love when you spend the evening at home. Just gives me warm fuzzies.” She hugged herself in a mock embrace.

“I ought to—” He shut up.

“Hit me. Go ahead. Everyone thinks you gave me the shiner.”

He threw the newspaper on the floor. “I’ve never once hit you.”

“I’ll never tell,” she goaded him.

“Who did hit you?”

“Field hockey practice. I told you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Fine, Dad. I’m a liar.”

“I don’t know what you are, but you aren’t happy.”

“Neither are you,” she taunted.

“No, I’m not.” He stood up, put his hands in his pockets. “I’m going out.”

“Take me with you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to stay home with her.”

“You haven’t finished your homework.”

“How come you get to run away and I have to stay home?”

“I—” He stopped because a determined Irene reentered the living room.

“Father Michael says he can see us at nine in the morning,” she announced.

His face reddening, Kendrick sat back down, defeated. “Fine.”

“Why do you go for marriage counseling, Mom? You go to mass every day. You see Father Michael every day.”

“Jody, this is none of your business.”

“If you discuss it in front of me, it is,” she replied flippantly.

“She’s got a point there.” Kendrick appreciated how intelligent his daughter was, and how frustrated. However, he didn’t know how to talk to her or his manipulative—in his opinion—wife. Irene suffocated him and Jody irritated him. The only place he felt good was at work.

“Dad, are you going to give St. E’s a lot of money?”

“I wouldn’t tell you if I were.”

“Why not?”

“You’d use it as an excuse to skip classes.” He half laughed.

“Kendrick”—Irene sat back on the sofa—“where do you get these ideas?”

“Contrary to popular opinion, I was young once, and Jody likes to—” He put his hand out level to the floor and wobbled it.

“Learned it from you.” Jody flared up.

“Can’t we have one night of peace?” Irene wailed, unwilling to really examine why they couldn’t.

“Hey, Mom, we’re dysfunctional.”

“That’s a bullshit word.” Kendrick picked his paper up. “All those words are ridiculous. Codependent. Enabler. Jesus Christ. People can’t accept reality anymore. They’ve invented a vocabulary for their illusions.”

Both his wife and daughter stared at him.

“Dad, are you going to give us the lecture on professional victims?”

“No.” He buried his nose in the paper.

“Jody, finish your homework,” Irene directed.

Jody stood up. She had no intention of doing homework. “I hated seeing Mr. Fletcher dead. You two don’t care. It was a shock, you know.” She swept her books onto the floor; they hit with thuds equal to their differing weights. She stomped out the front door, slamming it hard.

“Kendrick, you deal with it. I was at the car wash, remember?”

He glared at her, rolled his paper up, threw it on the chair, and stalked out.

Irene heard him call for Jody. No response.

25

“You cheated!” Jody, angry, squared off at Karen Jensen.

“I did not.”

“You didn’t even understand Macbeth. There’s no way you could have gotten ninety-five on Mr. Brashiers’s quiz.”

“I read it and I understand it.”

“Liar.”

“I went over to Brooks Tucker’s and she helped me.”

Jody’s face twisted in sarcasm. “She read aloud to you?”

“No. Brooks gets all that stuff. It’s hard for me.”

“She’s your new best friend.”

“So what if she is?” Karen tossed her blond hair.

“You’d better keep your mouth shut.”

“You’re the one talking, not me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re weirding out.”

Jody’s eyes narrowed. “I lost my temper. That doesn’t mean I’m weirding out.”

“Then why call me a cheater?”

“Because”—Jody sucked in the cool air—“you’re on a scholarship. You have to make good grades. And English is not your subject. I don’t know why you even took Shakespeare.”

“Because Mr. Brashiers is a great teacher.” Karen Jensen glanced down the alleyway. She saw only Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, strolling through Mrs. Hogendobber’s fall garden, a riot of reds, rusts, oranges, and yellows.

Taking a step closer, Jody leaned toward her. “You and I vowed to—”

Karen held up her hands, palms outward. “Jody, chill out. I’d be crazy to open my mouth. I don’t want anyone to know I went to bed with a guy this summer, and neither do you. Just chill out.”

Jody relaxed. “Everything’s getting on my nerves … especially Mom and Dad. I just want to move out.”

Karen noticed the tiger cat coming closer. ‘ ‘Guess everyone feels that way sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Jody replied, “but your parents are better than mine.”

Karen didn’t know how to answer that, so she said, “Let’s go in and get the mail.”

“Yeah.” Jody started walking.

Pewter and Murphy, now at the backdoor of the post office, sat on the steps. Pewter washed her face. Mrs. Murphy dropped her head so Pewter could wash her, too.

“Didn’t you think the newspaper’s write-up of Roscoe’s deathwasstrange?” Murphy’s eyes were half closed.

“You mean the bit about an autopsy and routine investigation?”

“If he died of a heart attack, why a routine investigation? Mom better pump Coop when she sees her—and hey, she hasn’t been in to pick up her mail for the last two days.”

“Nothing in there but catalogs.” Pewter took it upon herself to check out everyone’s mailbox. She said she wasn’t being nosy, only checking for mice.

Shouting in the post office sent them zipping through the animal door.

They crossed the back section of the post office and bounded onto the counter. Both Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber were in the front section as were Jody, an astonished Samson Coles, and Karen Jensen. Tucker was at Harry’s feet, squared off against Jody. The animals had arrived in the middle of an angry scene.

“You’re the one!”

“Jody, that’s enough,” Mrs. Hogendobber, aghast, admonished the girl.

Samson, his gravelly voice sad, said quietly, “It’s all right, Miranda.”

“You’re the one sleeping with Mom!” Jody shrieked.

“I am not having an affair with your mother.” He was gentle.

“Jody, come on. I’ll ride you home.” Karen tugged at the tall girl’s sleeve, at a loss for what to do. Her friend exploded when Samson put his arm around her shoulders, telling her how sorry he was that the headmaster had died.

“You cheated on Lucinda—everyone knows you did—and then Ansley killed herself. She drove her Porsche into that pond because of you . . . and now you’re fucking my mother.”

“JODY!” Mrs. Hogendobber raised her voice, which scared everyone.

Jody burst into tears and Karen pushed her out the front door. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hogendobber and Mr. Coles. I’m sorry, Mrs. Haristeen. She’s, uh …” Karen couldn’t finish her thought. She closed the door behind her.

Samson curled his lips inward until they disappeared. “Well, I know I’m the town pariah, but this is the first time I’ve heard that I caused Ansley’s death.”

A shocked Miranda grasped the counter for support. “Samson, no one in this town blames you for that unstable woman’s unfortunate end. She caused unhappiness to herself and others.” She gulped in air. “That child needs help.”

“Help? She needs a good slap in the face.” Pewter paced the counter.

Tucker grumbled. “Stinks of fear.”

“They can’t smell it. They only trust theireyes. Why,I don’t know—their eyes are terrible.” Mrs. Murphy, concerned, sat at the counter’s edge watching Karen force Jody into her car, an old dark green Volvo.

“We’d better call Irene,” Harry, upset, suggested.

“No.” Samson shook his head. “Then the kid will think we’re ganging up on her. Obviously, she doesn’t trust her mother if she thinks she’s having an affair with me.”

“Then I’ll call her father.”

“Harry, Kendrick’s no help,” Mrs. Hogendobber, rarely a criticizer, replied. “His love affair with himself is the problem in that family. It’s a love that brooks no rivals.”

This made Harry laugh; Miranda hadn’t intended to be funny, but she had hit the nail on the head.

Samson folded his arms across his chest. “Some people shouldn’t have children. Kendrick is one of them.”

“We can’t let the child behave this way. She’s going to make a terrific mess.” Miranda added sensibly, “Not everyone will be as tolerant as we are.” She tapped her chin with her forefinger, shifting her weight to her right foot. “I’ll call Father Michael.”

Samson hesitated, then spoke. “Miranda, what does a middle-aged priest know of teenage girls . . . of women?”

“About the same as any other man,” Harry fired off.

“Touche,” Samson replied.

“Samson, I didn’t mean to sound nasty. You’re probably more upset than you’re letting on. Jody may be a kid, but a low blow is a low blow,” Harry said.

“I could leave this town where people occasionally forgive but never forget. I think about it, you know, but”—he jammed his hands in his pockets—“I’m not the only person living in Crozet who’s made a mistake. I’m too stubborn to turn tail. I belong here as much as the next guy.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m sitting in judgment.” Miranda’s hand fluttered to her throat.

“Me neither.” Harry smiled. “It’s hard for me to be open-minded about that subject, thanks to my own history … I mean, BoomBoom Craycroft of all people. Fair could have picked someone—well, you know.”

“That was the excitement for Fair. That BoomBoom was so obvious.” Samson realized he’d left his mail on the counter. “I’m going back to work.” He scooped his mail up before Pewter, recovering from the drama, could squat on it. “What I really feel bad about is tampering with the escrow accounts. That was rotten. Falling in love with Ansley may have been imprudent, but it wasn’t criminal. Betraying a responsibility to clients, that was wrong.” He sighed. “I’ve paid for it. I’ve lost my license. Lost respect. Lost my house. Nearly lost Lucinda.” He paused again, then said, “Well, girls, we’ve had enough soap opera for one day.” He pushed the door open and breathed in the crisp fall air.

Miranda ambled over to the phone, dialed, and got Lucinda Coles. “Lucinda, is Father Michael there?”

He was, and she buzzed the good woman through.

“Father Michael, have you a moment?” Miranda accurately re peated the events of the afternoon.

When she hung up, Harry asked, “Is he going to talk to her?”

“Yes. He seemed distracted, though.”

“Maybe the news upset him.”

“Of course.” She nodded. “I’m going to clean out that refrigerator. It needs a good scrub.”

“Before you do that, there’s a pile of mail for Roscoe Fletcher. Why don’t we sort it out and run it over to Naomi after work?”

The two women dumped the mail out on the work table in the back. A flutter of bills made them both feel guilty. The woman had lost her husband. Handing over bills seemed heartless. Catalogs, magazines, and handwritten personal letters filled up one of the plastic boxes they used in the back to carry mail after sorting it out of the big canvas duffel bags.

A Jiffy bag, the end torn, the gray stuffing spilling out, sent Harry to the counter for Scotch tape.

Tucker observed this. She wanted to play, but the cats were hashing over the scene they’d just witnessed. She barked.

“Tucker, if you need to go to the bathroom, there’s the door.”

“Can’t we walk, just a little walk? You deserve a break.”

“Butterfingers.” Harry dropped the bag. The tiny tear in the cover opened wider.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter stopped their gabbing and jumped down.

“Yahoo!” Mrs. Murphy pounced on the tear and the gray stuffing burst out.

” Aachoo .” Pewter sneezed as the featherlight stuffing floated into the air.

“I’ve got it!” Mrs. Murphy crowed.

Pewter pounced, both paws on one end of the bag, claws out as the tiger cat ripped away at the other corner, enlarging the tear until she could reach into the bag with her paw.

If Mrs. Murphy had been a boxer, she would have been hailed for her lightning hands.

Lying flat on her side, she fished in the Jiffy bag with her right paw.

“Anything to eat?”

“No, it’s paper, but it’s crisp and crinkly.”

The large gray cat blinked, somewhat disappointed. Food, the ultimate pleasure, was denied her. She’d have to make do with fresh paper, a lesser pleasure but a pleasure nonetheless.

“You girls are loony tunes.” Tucker, bored, turned her back. Paper held no interest for her.

“Hooked it. I can get it out of the bag. I know I can.” Murphy yanked hard at the contents of the package, pulling the paper partways through the tear.

“Look!” Pewter shouted.

Mrs. Murphy stopped for a second to focus on her booty. “Wow!” She yanked harder.

Tucker turned back around thanks to the feline excitement. “Give it to Mom. She needs it.”

Mrs. Murphy ripped into the bag so fast the humans hadn’t time to react, and the cat turned a somersault to land on her side, then put her paw into the bag. Her antics had them doubled over.

However funny she was, Mrs. Murphy was destroying government property.

“Mom, we’re rich!” Mrs. Murphy let out a jubilant meow.

Harry and Miranda, dumbfounded, bent over the demolished bag.

“My word.” Miranda’s eyes about popped from her head. She reached out with her left hand, fingers to the floor, to steady herself.

The humans and animals stared at a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills, freshly minted.

“We’d better call Rick Shaw. No one sends that much money in the mail.” Harry stood up, feeling a little dizzy.

“Harry, I don’t know the law on this, but we can’t open this packet.”

“I know that,” Harry, a trifle irritated, snapped.

“It’s not our business.” Miranda slowly thought out loud.

“I’ll call Ned.”

“No. That’s still interfering in the proper delivery of the mail.”

“Miranda, there’s something fishy about this.”

“Fishy or not, we are employees of the United States Postal Service, and we can’t blow the whistle just because there’s money in a package.”

“We sure could if it were a bomb.”

“But it’s not.”

“You mean we deliver it?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Murphy’s whiskers drooped.“Weneed that money.”

26

Naomi Fletcher called Rick Shaw herself. She asked Miranda and Harry to stay until the sheriff arrived.

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker languished in the cab of the truck. When the sheriff pulled in with Cooper at his side, the animals set up such a racket that Cynthia opened the truck door.

“Bet you guys need to go to the bathroom.”

“Sure,” they yelled over their shoulders as they made a beeline for the front door.

“You’d better stop foraminute,” Tucker advised the cats.

“I’m not peeing in public. You do it,” the tiger, insulted, replied.

“Fine.” The corgi found a spot under a tree, did enough to convince Cynthia that she had saved the interior of Harry’s truck, then hurried to the front door.

Once inside they huddled under the coffee table while Cynthia dusted the bag and the bills for prints.

After an exhaustive discussion Rick told Roscoe Fletcher’s widow to deposit the money in her account. He could not impound the cash. There was no evidence of wrongdoing.

“There are no assumptions in my job, only facts.” He ran his right hand through his thinning hair.

Naomi, both worried and thrilled, for the sum had turned out to be seventy-five thousand dollars, thanked the sheriff and his deputy for responding to her call.

Rick, hat in hand, said, “Mrs. Fletcher, brace yourself. The story will be out in the papers tomorrow. A coroner’s report is public knowledge. Bill Moscowitz has delayed writing up the autopsy report for as long as he can.”

“I know you’re doing your best.” Naomi choked up.

Harry and Miranda, confused, looked at each other and then back at Rick.

Naomi nodded at him, so he spoke. “Roscoe was poisoned.”

“What!” Tucker exclaimed.

“I told you,” Mrs. Murphy said.

“Don’t be so superior,” Pewter complained.

“Naomi, I’m sorry, so very sorry.” Mrs. Hogendobber reached over and grasped Naomi’s hand.

“Who’d want to kill him?” Pewter’s long white eyebrows rose.

“Someone who failed algebra?” Mrs. Murphy couldn’t resist.

“Hey, where’s Tucker?” Pewter asked.

Tucker had sneaked off alone to find Winston, the bulldog.

Harry said, “I’m sorry, Naomi.”

Naomi wiped her thin nose with a pink tissue. “Poisoned! One of those strawberry drops was poison.”

Cooper filled in the details. “He ingested malathion, which usually takes just minutes to kill someone.”

Harry blurted out, “I ate one of those!”

“When?” Rick asked.

“Oh, two days before his death. Maybe three. You know Roscoe … always offering everyone candy.” She felt queasy.

“Unfortunately, we don’t know how he came to be poisoned. The candy in his car was safe.”

• • •

They squeezed back into Harry’s truck, the cats on Miranda’s lap. Tucker, between the two humans, told everyone what Winston had said. “Naomi cries all the time. She didn’t kill him. Winston’s positive.”

“There goes the obvious suspect in every murder case.” Pewter curled up on Miranda’s lap, which left little room for Mrs. Murphy.

“You could move over.”

“Gosit on Harry’s lap.”

“Thanks, I will, you selfish toad.”

Tucker nudged Murphy. “Winston said Sandy Brashiers is over all the time.”

“Why?” Pewter inquired.

“Trying to figure out Roscoe’s plans for this school year. He left few documents or guidelines, and April Shively is being a real bitch—according to Winston.”

“Secretariesalwaysfall in love with their bosses,” Pewter added noncha lantly.

“Oh, Pewter.” Murphy wrinkled her nose.

“They do!”

“Even if she was in love with him, it doesn’t mean she’d be an obstructionist— good word, huh?” Tucker smiled, her big fangs gleaming.

“I’m impressed, Tucker.” The tiger laughed. “Of course she’s an obstruc tionist. April doesn’t like Sandy. Roscoe didn’t either.”

“Guess Sandy’s in for a rough ride.” Pewter noticed one of Herb Jones’s two cats sitting on the steps to his house. “Look at Lucy Fur. She always shows off after her visit to the beauty parlor.”

“That long hair is pretty, but can you imagine taking care of it?” Mrs. Murphy, a practical puss, replied.

“I don’t know what this world is coming to.” Miranda shook her head.

“Poison is the coward’s way to kill someone.” Harry, still shaken from realizing she had eaten Roscoe’s candies, growled, “Whoever it was was chickenshit.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Miranda frowned.

“The question is, where did he get the poison and is there a tin of lethal candies out there waiting for another innocent victim?” Harry stroked Murphy, keeping her left hand on the wheel.

“We know one thing,” Miranda pronounced firmly. “Whoever killed him was close to him … if malathion kills as fast as Coop says it does.”

“Close and weak. I mean it. Poison is the coward’s weapon.”

In that Harry was half right and half wrong.

27

A light wind from the southeast raised the temperature into the low seventies. The day sparkled, leaves the color of butter vibrated in the breeze, and the shadows disappeared since it was noon.

Harry, home after cub hunting early in the morning, had rubbed down Poptart, turned her out with the other two horses, and was now scouring her stock trailer. Each year she repacked the bearings, inspected the boards, sanded off any rust, and repainted those areas. Right now her trailer resembled a dalmatian, spots everywhere. She’d put on the primer but didn’t finish her task before cub hunting started, which was usually in September. Cubbing meant young hounds joined older ones, and young foxes learned along with the young hounds what was expected of them. With today’s good weather she’d hoped to finish the job.

Blair lent her his spray painter. As Blair bought the best of everything, she figured she could get the job done in two hours, tops. She’d bought metallic Superman-blue paint from Art Bushey, who gave her a good deal.

“That stuff smells awful.” Tucker wrinkled her nose at the paint cans.

“She’s going to shoot the whole afternoon on this.” Pewter stretched. “I’ll mosey on up to the house.”

“Wimp. You could sleep under the maple tree and soak up the sunshine,” Mrs. Murphy suggested.

“Don’t start one of your outdoor exercise lectures about how we felines are meant to run, jump, and kill. This feline was meant to rest on silk cushions and eat steak tartare .”

“Tucker, let’s boogie.” Mrs. Murphy shook herself, then scampered across the stable yard.

“I’m not going, and don’t you come back here and make up stories about what I’ve missed,” Pewter called after them.“AndI don’t want to hear about the bobcat either. That’s a tall tale if I ever heard one.” Then she giggled. ” ‘ Cept they don’t have tails.” By now she was heading toward the house, carrying on a conversation with herself. “Oh, and if it isn’t the bobcat, then it’s the bear and her two cubs. And if I hear one more time about how Tucker was almost drug under by an irate beaver while crossing the creek … next they’ll tell me there’s an elephant out there. Fine, they can get their pads cut up. I’m not.” She sashayed into the screened-in porch and through the open door to the kitchen. ” Mmm.” Pewter jumped onto the counter to gobble up crumbs of Danish. “What a pity that Harry isn’t a cook.”

She curled up on the counter, the sun flooding through the window over the sink, and fell fast asleep.

The cat and dog trotted toward the northwest. Usually they’d head to the creek that divided Harry’s land from Blair Bainbridge’s land, but as they’d seen him this morning when he brought over the paint sprayer on his way to cubbing, they decided to sprint in the other direction.

“Pewter cracks me up.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.

“Me, too.” Tucker stopped and lifted her nose. “Deer.”

“Close?”

“Over there.” The corgi indicated a copse of trees surrounded by high grass.

“Let’s not disturb them. It’s black-powder season, and there’s bound to be some idiot around with a rifle.”

“I don’t mind a good hunter. They’re doing us a favor. But the other ones …” The dog shuddered, then trotted on. “Mom and Blair didn’t have much tosayto each other, did they?”

“Shewasin a hurry. So was he.” Mrs. Murphy continued, “Sometimes I worry about her. She’s getting set in her ways. Makes it hard to mesh with a partner, know what I mean?”

“She likes living alone.Allthat time I wanted Fair to come back, which he’s tried to do—I really think she likes being her own boss.”

“Tucker, she was hardly your typical wife.”

“No, but she made concessions.”

“So did he.” Mrs. Murphy stopped a moment to examine a large fox den. “Hey, you guys run this morning?”

“No,” came the distant reply.

“Next week they’ll leave from Old Greenwood Farm.”

“Thanks.”

“Since when did you get matey with foxes?” Tucker asked. “I thought you hated them.”

“Nah, only some of them.”

“Hypocrite.”

“Stickin-the-mud. Remember what Emerson said,Afoolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’ “

“Where are we going?” Tucker ignored Murphy’s reference.

“Here, there, and everywhere.” Mrs. Murphy swished her tail.

“Goody.” The dog loved wandering with no special plan.

They ran through a newly mown hayfield. Grasshoppers flew up in the air, the faint rattle of their wings sounding like thousands pf tiny castanets. The last of the summer’s butterflies swooped around. Wolf spiders, some lugging egg sacs, hurried out of their way.

At the end of the field a line of large old hickories stood sentinel over a farm road rarely used since the Bowdens put down a better road fifty yards distant.

“Race you!” the cat called over her shoulder as she turned left on the road heading down to a deep ravine and a pond.

“Ha!” The dog bounced for joy, screeching after the cat.

Corgis, low to the ground, can run amazingly fast when stretched out to full body length. Since Mrs. Murphy zigged and zagged when she ran, Tucker soon overtook her.

“I win!” the dog shouted.

“Only because I let you.”

They tumbled onto each other, rolling in the sunshine. Springing to their feet, they ran some more, this time with the tiger soaring over the corgi, dipping in front of her and then jumping her from the opposite direction.

The sheer joy of it wore them out. They sat under a gnarled walnut at the base of a small spring.

Mrs. Murphy climbed the tree, gracefully walking out on a limb. “Hey, there’sacar over that rise.”

“Noway.”

“Wanna bet?”

They hurried up and over the small rise, the ruts in the road deeper than their own height. Stranded in the middle of the road was a 1992 red Toyota Camry with the license plates removed. As they drew closer they could see a figure in the driver’s seat.

Tucker stopped and sniffed. “Uh-oh.”

Mrs. Murphy bounded onto the hood and stared, hair rising all over her body. Quickly she jumped off. “There’s a dead human in there.”

“How dead?”

“Extremely dead.”

“That’s what I thought. Who is it?”

“Given the condition of the body, your guess isasgoodasmine. But itwasonce a woman. There’s a blue barrette in her hair with roses on it, little yellow plastic roses.”

“We’d better go get Mom.”

Mrs. Murphy walked away from the Camry and sat on the rise. She needed to collect her thoughts.

“Tucker, it won’t do any good. Mother won’t know what we’re telling her. The humans don’t use this road anymore. It might be days, weeks, or even months before anyone finds this, uh, mess.”

“Maybe by that time she’ll be bones.”

“Tucker!”

“Just joking.” The dog leaned next to her dear friend. “Trying to lighten the moment. After all, you don’t know who it is. I can’t see that high up. Humans commit suicide, you know. Could be one of those things. They like to shoot themselves in cars or hotel rooms. Drugs are for the wimps, I guess. I mean, how many ways can they kill themselves?”

“Lots ofways.”

“I never met a dog that committed suicide.”

“How could you? The dog would be dead.”

“Smartass.“Tucker exhaled. “Guess we’d better go back home.”

On the way across the mown hayfleld Murphy said out loud what they both were thinking. “Let’s hope it’sasuicide.”

They reached the farm in twenty minutes, rushing inside to tell Pewter, who refused to believe it.

“Then come with us.”

“Murphy, I am not traipsing all over creation. It’s soon time for supper. Anyway, what’s a dead human to me?”

“You’d think someone would report a missing person, wouldn’t you?” Tucker scratched her shoulder.

“So many humans live alone, they aren’t missed for a long time. And she’s been dead a couple of weeks,” Murphy replied.

28

Puce-faced Little Marilyn, hands on hips, stood in the middle of Roscoe Fletcher’s office, as angry as April Shively.

“You hand those files over!”

Coolly, relishing her moment of power, April replied, “Roscoe told me not to release any of this information until our Homecoming banquet.”

Little Mim, a petite woman, advanced on April, not quite petite but small enough to be described as perky. ‘ ‘I am chair of the fundraising committee. If I am to properly present St. Elizabeth’s to potential donors, I need information. Roscoe and I were to have our meeting today and the files were to be released to me.”

“I don’t know that. It’s not written in his schedule book.” April shoved the book across his desk toward Marilyn, who ignored it.

Marilyn baited her. “I thought you knew everything there was to know about Roscoe.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Take it any way you like.”

“Don’t you dare accuse me of improper conduct with Roscoe! People always say that. They say it behind my back and think I don’t know it.” Her words were clipped, her speech precise.

“You were in love with him.”

“I don’t have to answer that. And I don’t have to give you this file either.”

“Then you’re hiding something. I will convene the board and request an immediate audit.”

“What I’m hiding is something good!” She sputtered. “It’s a large donation by Maury McKinchie for the film department.”

“Then show it to me. We’ll celebrate together.” Little Mim reached out her left hand, with the pinkie ring bearing the crest of the Urquharts.

“No! I take his last words to me as a sacred duty.”

Exasperated, tired, and ready to bat April silly, Little Mim left, calling over her shoulder, “You will hear from a lawyer selected by the board and from an accounting firm. Good or bad, we must know the financial health of this institution.”

“If Roscoe were alive, you wouldn’t talk to me this way.”

“April, if Roscoe were alive, I wouldn’t talk to you at all.”

29

Little Mim was as good as her word. She convened an emergency board meeting chaired by Sandy Brashiers. Sandy had the dolorous duty of telling the group that he believed April had removed files from Roscoe’s office: she refused to cooperate even with Sheriff Shaw. The suspicion lurked in many minds that she might have taken other items, perhaps valuable ones like Roscoe’s Cartier desk clock.

Alum bigwigs blew like bomb fragments. Kendrick Miller called Ned Tucker at home, asking him to represent the board. Ned agreed. Kendrick then handed State Senator Guyot his mobile phone to call the senior partner of a high-powered accounting firm in Richmond, rousing him from a tense game of snooker. He, too, agreed to help the board, waiving his not inconsiderable fee.

Maury McKinchie, the newest member of the board, suggested this unsettling news not be discussed until the Homecoming banquet. He made no mention of his large bequest.

Sandy Brashiers then made a motion to dismiss April from her post.

Fair Haristeen, serving his last year on the board, stood up. “We need time to think this over before voting. April is out of line, but she’s overcome by grief.”

“That doesn’t give her the right to steal school records and God knows what else.” Sandy leaned back in his chair. Underneath the table he tapped his foot, thrilled that revenge was so quickly his.

“Perhaps one of us could talk to her,” Fair urged.

“I tried.”

“Marilyn,” Maury folded his hands on the table, “she may resent you because you’re a strong supporter of Sandy.”

“I am,” Little Mim said forthrightly, as Sandy tried not to grin from ear to ear. “We have put our differences behind us.”

“I don’t want to open a can of worms—after all that has happened—but there had been tension inside the administration, two camps, you might say, and we all know where April’s sympathies rest,” Fair said.

“As well as her body,” Kendrick said, a bit too quickly.

“Come on, Kendrick!” Fair was disgusted. “We don’t know that.”

“I’m sorry,” Kendrick said, “but she’s grieving more than Naomi.”

“That’s inappropriate!” Maury banged the table, which surprised them all.

“She spent more time with him than his wife did.” Kendrick held up his hands before him, palms outward, a calm-down signal.

“Who then will bell the cat?” Sandy returned to business, secretly loving this uproar.

No one raised a hand. An uncomfortable silence hung over the conference room.

Finally Maury sighed. “I can try. I have little history with her, which under the circumstances seems an advantage. And Roscoe and I were close friends.” Little Mini smiled wanly. “Thank you, Maury, no matter what the consequences.” “Hear, hear!”

Sandy noticed the lights were on in the gymnasium after the meeting adjourned. He threw on his scarf and his tweed jacket, crossing the quad to see what activity was in progress. He couldn’t remember, but then he had a great deal on his mind.

Ahead of him, striding through the darkness, was Maury McKinchie, hands jammed into the pockets of an expensive lambskin jacket.

“Maury, where are you going?”

“Fencing exhibition.” Maury’s voice was level but he had little enthusiasm for Sandy Brashiers.

“Oh, Lord, I forgot all about it.” Sandy recalled the university fencing club was visiting St. Elizabeth’s hoping to find recruits for the future. One of Coach Hallvard’s pet projects was to introduce fencing at the secondary-school level. It was her sport. She coached field hockey and lacrosse, and had even played on the World Cup lacrosse team in 1990, but fencing was her true love.

Sandy jogged up to Maury. “I’m starting to feel like the absentminded professor.”

“Goes with the territory,” came the flat reply.

“I know how you must feel, Maury, and I’m sorry. Losing a friend is never easy. And I know Roscoe did not favor me. We were just—too different to really get along. But we both wanted the best for St. Elizabeth’s.”

“I believe that.”

“I’m glad you’re on the board. We can use someone whose vision and experience is larger than Albemarle County. I hope we can work together.”

“Well, we can try. I’m going to keep my eye on things, going to try to physically be here, too—until some equilibrium is achieved.

Both men sidestepped the volatile question of a film department. And neither man yet knew that Roscoe had been poisoned, which would have cast a pall over their conversation.

Sandy smiled. “This must seem like small beer to you—after Hollywood.”

Maury replied, “At least you’re doing something important: teaching the next generation. That was one of the things I most respected about Roscoe.”

“Ah, but the question is, what do we teach them?”

“To ask questions.” Maury opened the gym door for Sandy.

“Thank you.” Sandy waited as Maury closed the door.

The two men found places in the bleachers.

Sean Hallahan was practicing thrusts with Roger Davis, not quite so nimble as the football player.

Karen Jensen, face mask down, parried with a University of Virginia sophomore.

Brooks and Jody attacked each other with epees.

Jody flipped up her mask. “I want to try the saber.”

“Okay.” Coach Hallvard switched Roger and Sean from saber to epee, giving the girls a chance at the heavier sword.

“Feels good,” Jody said.

Brooks picked up the saber, resuming her position. Jody slashed at her, pressing as Brooks retreated.

Hallvard observed this burst of aggression out of the corner of her eye. “Jody, give me the saber.”

Jody hesitated, then handed over the weapon. She walked off the gym floor, taking the bleacher steps two at a time to sit next to Maury.

“How did you like it?” he asked her.

“Okay.”

“I never tried fencing. You need quick reflexes.”

“Mr. McKinchie.” She lowered her voice so Sandy Brashiers wouldn’t hear. His attention was focused on the UVA fencers. “Have you seen the BMW Z3, the retro sports car? It’s just beautiful.”

“It is a great-looking machine.” He kept his eyes on the other students.

“I want a bright red one.” She smiled girlishly, which accentuated her smashing good looks.

He held his breath for an instant, then exhaled sharply. She squeezed his knee, then jumped up gracefully and rejoined her teammates.

Karen Jensen flipped up her face mask, glaring at Jody, who glared right back. “Did you give out already?”

“No, Coach took away my saber.”

Roger, in position, lunged at Brooks. “Power thighs.”

“Sounds—uh—” Brooks giggled, not finishing her sentence.

“You never know what’s going to happen at St. E’s.” With Sean in tow, Karen joined them. “At least this is better than shooting those one-minute stories. I hated that.”

“If it’s not sports, you don’t like it,” Jody blandly commented on Karen’s attitude.

“Took too long.” Karen wiped her brow with a towel. “All that worrying about light. I thought our week of film studies was one of the most boring things we ever did.”

“When did this happen?” Brooks asked.

“First week of school,” Karen said. “Lucky you missed it.”

“That’s why Mr. Fletcher and Mr. McKinchie are, I mean, were, so tight,” Sean said. ” ‘Cause Mr. Fletcher said if we are to be a modern school, then we have to teach modern art forms.”

“Stick with me, I’ll make you a star.” Jody mimicked the dead headmaster.

“Mr. McKinchie said he’d try to get old equipment donated to the school.”

“I didn’t think it was boring,” Sean told Brooks.

“Mr. Fletcher said we’d be the only prep school in the nation with a hands-on film department,” Karen added. “Hey, see you guys in a minute.” She left to talk to one of the young men on the fencing team. Sean seethed.

“She likes older men,” Jody tormented him.