Probable Claws

6

December 30, 2016

Friday

“She’ll ruin her eyes,” Pewter predicted.

“She doesn’t use her computer that much,” Tucker countered the gray cat. “It’s Fair who will ruin his eyes, with that big screen in his office here and the same kind at work. He checks his patients, he checks medications and X-rays. I’m surprised he doesn’t have a Seeing Eye dog.” Tucker flicked a large left ear.

Bother her ears were large, but her hearing proved excellent.

“You could do it.” Mrs. Murphy sat on Harry’s desk in the tack room so she, too, could view the screen.

“Too low to the ground. He’d trip over me,” Tucker sensibly replied.

“What is she doing?” Pewter could hear click, click, click.

“Jump up and see for yourself,” Mrs. Murphy suggested.

Grumbling, Pewter did rouse herself from the tack trunk, stretch, then leap onto the desktop. As it was an old teacher’s desk from the 1950s, sturdy solid wood, her weight barely registered. The desk had been Harry’s father’s. He didn’t believe in wasting money when used furniture could do the job. Finding a teacher’s desk was easy. He paid fifteen dollars, sanded it smooth, then stained it.

A small bright red propane stove with a glass front kept the tack room warm. Last year, after exhausting research, Harry had bought one, a Swedish model, for no matter what she tried, the room temperature barely got above sixty degrees. The space heaters sucked up electricity like mad, plus they really couldn’t evenly warm the room. The flames at this moment flickered at half-mast. Full blast really threw out the heat. When she went home at night, she’d only leave on the pilot light, but come morning she’d turn up the flame and the room would be perfect in about fifteen minutes. Harry wondered how she’d lived all those years in that miserable cold room. And she knew Gary was a hundred percent right to design space for one in her dream shed. She had just wanted to fuss with him a little bit.

The door to the center aisle, closed, had a large glass window in it. Because Crozet was near the mountains, the sun set earlier than the Farmer’s Almanac listed for central Virginia. She was so wrapped up in her computer she didn’t notice that the sun had set, twilight was deepening at 5:45 PM.

The horses, blankets on, began to doze in their stalls. The doors at both ends were shut as were the hayloft doors up top. Every now and then a big barn door would rattle when the wind hit it. She heard it but paid little attention.

“That’s it.”

Pewter peered at the screen. “Is.”

“Is.” Mrs. Murphy echoed her friend then looked down at a curious Tucker. “The motorcycle. She’s got a picture of it.”

“A beast. This thing is a beast.” Harry whistled. “1262cc. And they make faster bikes but this is their cruiser. Some cruiser.”

“Does look scary. Well, it was scary,” Mrs. Murphy spoke.

“Big Harley?” Tucker, living with a motorhead, had absorbed some of her human’s nomenclature.

“No. It’s a Ducati XDiavel. That’s what the caption says,” Pewter remarked.

“Pewter, you can’t read.” Tucker doubted her report.

“She’s whispering stuff,” Pewter called back. “Stuff like this is for the American market. It’s not the pure Italian bike. She thinks that’s important. She’s scrolled that information three times.”

“She’s falling in love. You know how she is with anything with an engine in it!” Mrs. Murphy laughed.

Harry tapped her fingers on the desktop, rattling against the wood. “Whoever shot Gary knew bikes and could ride them. No license plate. Who the hell is this? Who would think of such a thing?”

“Someone with a lot to lose,” Tucker murmured.

“Or gain,” Mrs. Murphy responded.

Hitting the off button, Harry slumped in her chair. “There can’t be too many of these in all of Virginia. Cooper can get the state DMV records.”

Pewter, shrewd in her own way, brushed against the screen. “But maybe it’s an out-of-state bike. If someone was smart enough to pull this off, I bet they’d be smart enough to know how scarce a XDiavel is.”

Tucker, thinking hard, nodded. “You’ve got a point there.”

“Does his ex-wife ride bikes?” Pewter wondered.

Mrs. Murphy swept her whiskers forward. “The ex–Mrs. Gardner is a big BMW girl. She is a woman who takes her makeup seriously.”

“Why would he marry a woman like that?” Tucker was puzzled.

“He was a lot younger. And she is pretty even now with all that paint on her face.” Mrs. Murphy was fair about it. “I’m not sure men think clearly about these things when they’re young.”

Pewter quoted Harry’s work partner from the old Crozet post office. The wonderful Mrs. Miranda Hogendobber was now in her late seventies although she wasn’t advertising. “Miranda always said, ‘Marry in haste. Repent in leisure.’ ”

They giggled as Harry rose, flicked off the lights, turned the stove down to the pilot light, pulled on her beat-up Carhartt Detroit work coat with the wool flannel lining, rummaged for her gloves. “Let’s go, kids.”

As she opened the tack room door to the center aisle the cold hit her. It wasn’t that bad in the barn, probably mid-forties. Being in a warm place, then stepping outside, the cold was so noticeable, it took time to adjust.

Simon, the possum, peeked over the side of the hayloft. His nest, hollowed out of a hay bale, backed to the west which helped blunt the cold, even though the barn was closed up. Remnants of old blankets and towels kept him warm, plus he could fluff up the hay and snuggle in his blanket surrounded by sweet-smelling hay.

“I’m going to eat fallen grain. Too nasty to go out.”

“See you tomorrow,” Mrs. Murphy called up to her odd-looking friend.

“Try to get her to bring some cookies, will you? Anything with molasses in it.”

“We’ll try,” Tucker promised.

Harry slid open the barn doors, squeezed through as did the animals. “Great day!”

She’d been so focused on her bike research she hadn’t gotten up to look around. Three inches of snow had fallen thick and fast, blown sideways by a stiff wind.

The four ran to the porch door but the animals allowed Harry to go first. She’d make a trail for them that would be easy for them to walk in.

Harry stomped her boots on the porch, then wiped her feet on the rug and opened the kitchen door, grateful for the warmth. Even dashing that short distance, her cheeks were red, cold. The dog and cats shook their paws.

Hanging her coat on a peg by the door, she walked into the living room, knelt down, started crumpling paper. Then she built a good log pile, starting with a square of logs, the center open. She put the paper in that center, crisscrossed logs on top of the square, remained on her knees, jammed fatback under the newspapers. She stood up, brushed off her pants’ knees, plucked up a box of long matches, struck one, knelt down and touched the flame to the papers.

“You know, it’s work building a good fire,” Tucker noted.

“Well, she won’t turn up the thermostat. The wind will drop the indoor temperature. This way we’ll stay nice and cozy.” Pewter loved her creature comforts.

“Did the weatherman predict a storm?” Mrs. Murphy didn’t remember that.

“ No,” Tucker replied.

“Well, we’ve got one,” Pewter announced.

A big diesel motor rumbled, drew louder, then cut off. The outside porch door opened and closed, the kitchen door opened. Fair stepped into the kitchen, breathed deeply.

Harry walked over to kiss her husband. “Glad there weren’t any traffic problems.”

“There will be.” He removed his coat. “I think I got out just in time.”

She made him a hot cup of ginger tea, sat across from him at the kitchen table, the same table her parents had used.

“Are you hungry?”

“A little.” He put his hands around the cup.

“I’ll warm up the potpie.”

“Food like that makes winter, mmm, almost desirable.” He smiled. “How was your day?”

She filled him in then finally got to the Ducati XDiavel.

“Remember my old Norton?” He sipped, felt a little jolt when the ginger hit.

“Sure do.” She then cited all the stats on the powerful Ducati motorcycle.

“Well, tell Cooper. ’ Course, she may have already researched that herself.”

“Fair, this murder was well thought out and I so adored that man. Seeing him crumple like that, losing such a talented, kind person, I feel awful and really angry.”

“That’s natural. He was a wonderful man and he adored you as well. However, you are not a law enforcement officer.” Fair stopped his lecture right there.

“Don’t worry.”

“Ha!” all three animals said at once.

“What torments me is what did he do to anyone? Nothing that we know about. You’d think something would have leaked out over the years. He wasn’t rich, comfortable but not rich. He was well known in his field but he wasn’t, what, a star? He would get good designing jobs but he never rubbed in his success. Anyway, there’s enough work and money in this county to go around. I can’t think he had an outraged competitor. No debts that any of us heard about and no political stuff. He’d vote but politics bored him. I certainly never heard him in an argument. Usually, he’d shrug his shoulders. He was a social drinker. Never once heard him talk about drugs and, well, he wasn’t the type. He was a good man.”

“Yes, he was.” Fair took a deep breath. “Maybe it’s middle-age. Maybe it was always around me but I didn’t notice before. But, honey, what I see are good people getting screwed every day.”

“Screwed, yes. Murdered, no.”