Rest In Pieces

17

Fitz-Gilbert could have used a secretary to make himself look like a functioning lawyer—which he wasn’t.

It doesn’t do for a man not to go to work, even a very wealthy man, so his office was mostly for show although it had developed into a welcome retreat from his mother-in-law and, occasionally, his wife.

He hadn’t been to the office since the torso appeared in Mim’s boathouse, two days ago.

He opened the door and beheld chaos. His chairs were overturned; papers were scattered everywhere; his file cabinet drawers sat askew.

He picked up the phone and dialed Sheriff Shaw.

18

Finding the remains of a human body, while unpleasant, wasn’t rare. Every year in the state of Virginia hunters stumble across bodies picked clean by birds and scavengers, a few tatters of clothing left clinging to the bones. Occasionally the deceased has been killed by mistake by other hunters; other times an elderly person who suffered from disease or loss of memory simply wandered off in winter and died from exposure. Then, too, there were those tortured souls who walked into the woods to end it all. Murder, however, was not that common.

In the case of this cut-up corpse, Rick Shaw figured it had to be murder. The life of a county sheriff is usually clogged with serving subpoenas, testifying in poaching cases and land disputes, chasing speeders, and hauling drunks into the pokey. Murder added excitement. Not that he thought of it that way, exactly, but as he sat at his cluttered desk his mind moved faster; he concentrated fiercely. It took an unjust death to give him life.

“All right, Cooper.” He wheeled around in his chair, pushing with the balls of his feet. “Give.”

“Give what?”

“You know what.” He stretched out his hand.

Irritated, Cynthia opened her long desk drawer, retrieved a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes, and smacked them in his hand. “You could at least smoke filtered cigarettes.”

“Then I’d smoke two packs a day instead of one. What’s the difference? And don’t think I don’t know that you’re sneaking some.”

When it was put that way, Cooper couldn’t think of a difference. The surface of her desk shone, the grain of the old oak lending solidity to the piece. Papers, neatly stacked in piles, paperweights on top, provided a contrast to Rick’s desk. Their minds contrasted too. She was logical, organized, and reserved. Rick was intuitive, disorganized, and as direct as he could be in his position. She liked the politics of the job. He didn’t. As he was a good twenty years older than she, he’d remain sheriff and she’d be deputy. In time, barring accident, Cynthia Cooper could look forward to being the first woman sheriff of Albemarle County. Rick never thought of himself as a feminist. He hadn’t wanted her in the first place but as the years rolled by her performance won him over. After a while he forgot she was a woman or maybe it didn’t matter. He saw her as his right hand, and turning the department over to her someday was as it should be, not that he was ready to retire. He was too young for that.

The cigarette calmed him. The phones jangled. The small office enjoyed a secretary and a few part-time deputies. The department needed to expand but so far the county officials had passed no funds for that to their overworked sheriff.

One reporter from the local paper had showed up yesterday, and Rick had refused to dwell on the grisly details of the case. His low-key comments had satisfied the reporter for the moment, but Rick knew he’d be back. Rick and Coop hoped they’d have enough answers to forestall a panic or a squadron of reporters showing up from other papers, not to mention the TV.

“You’ve got a feeling about this case, boss?”

“The obvious. Destroying the identity of the corpse was paramount in the killer’s mind. No fingerprints. No clothes on the torso. No head. Whoever this poor guy was, he knew too much. And we’d know too much if we knew who he was.”

“I can’t figure out why the killer would take the trouble to divide up the body. Lot of work. Then he or she would have to bag it so it wouldn’t bleed all over everything, and then drive the parts around to dump them.”

“Could be an undertaker, or someone with mortuary experience. Could have drained the body and then chopped it.”

“Or a doctor,” Cynthia added.

“Even a vet.”

“Not Fair Haristeen. Poor guy, he was a suspect for a bit in Kelly Craycroft’s murder.”

“Well, he did wind up with BoomBoom, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, poor sod.” Cynthia burst out laughing.

Rick laughed too. “That woman, she’s like to run him crazy. Pretty though.”

“Men always say that.” Cynthia smiled.

“Well, I don’t see how you women can swoon over Mel Gibson. What’s so special about him?” Rick stubbed out his cigarette.

“If you knew, you and I would have a lot more to talk about,” Cynthia cracked.

“Very funny.” He reached in the pack to pull out another coffin nail.

“Come on, you just finished one!”

“Did I?” He picked up the ashtray and counted the butts. “Guess I did. This one’s still smoking.” He crushed it again.

“You’re suffering one of your hunches. I know it. Come on, tell.”

He lifted a shoulder and let it fall. He felt a little foolish when he had these hunches because he couldn’t explain or defend them. Men are taught to back up what they say. He couldn’t do that in this case but over time he had learned not to dismiss odd sensations or strange ideas. Often they led him to valuable evidence, valuable insights.

“Come on, boss. I can tell when you’re catching the scent,” Cynthia prodded.

He folded his hands on his desk. “Just this. Dividing up a body makes sense. That doesn’t throw me. The hard rains worked against our killer. That and little Tucker. But really, the odds were that those legs and hands would never have been found. It’s the boathouse that doesn’t compute.”

“He could have tossed the torso in the lake and, when it came up, gaffed it or something and dragged it into the boathouse.” Cynthia stopped to think. “But everyone would have seen this person, male or female, unless it was the dead of night, and you can’t schedule the appearance of waterlogged bodies, now can you?”

“Nope. That’s why it doesn’t compute. That piece of meat was put in the boathouse. No other explanation.”

“Well, if the killer knows the community he would know or see Mim’s pontoon boat at the dock. Nobody goes into the boathouse much unless she has one of her naval sorties planned. It’s as good a place to hide a body as any other.”

“Is it?”

They stared at each other. Then Cynthia spoke. “You think that head’s going to show up?”

“I kinda hope it does and I kinda hope it doesn’t.” He couldn’t fight temptation. He grabbed another cigarette but delayed lighting it. “See if there’s a record for Blair Bainbridge in New York.”

“Okay. Anyone else?”

“We know everyone else. Or we think we do.”

19

The light frost crunched underfoot even though Mrs. Murphy trod lightly. The rain had finally stopped last night and she had risen early to hunt field mice. Tucker, flopped on her side on Harry’s bed, was still sound asleep.

Although the cat’s undercoat was thickening, the stiff wind sent a chill throughout her body. Another month and her coat would be more prepared for the cold. The prospect of running top speed after a rabbit or a mouse thrilled Mrs. Murphy, so what was a little cold? The mice ducked into their holes, which ended the chase, but the rabbits often ran across meadows and through woods. Occasionally she caught a rabbit, but more often a mouse. She’d come alongside and reach over to grab it at the base of the neck if she could. If not she’d bump and roll it. Mrs. Murphy dispatched her conquests rapidly; not for her the torture of batting her prey around until it was torn up and punch-drunk. A swift broken neck ended the business in a split second. Usually she brought the quarry back to Harry.

The frost held the scent. Even so it wasn’t a good day for hunting. She growled once when she smelled a red vixen. Mrs. Murphy and fox competed for the same food, so the cat resented her rival. She also hotly resented that a fox had gotten into the henhouse years ago when she was a kitten and had killed every hen on the property. Feathers fluttered like snowflakes and the images of the pathetic bodies of ten hens and one rooster stayed in her mind. She couldn’t have warned off the predator anyway, because of her youth, but Harry’s dismay at the sight unnerved Mrs. Murphy. After that, Harry no longer kept chickens, which was a pity because, as a kitten, Mrs. Murphy had loved to flatten herself in the grass and watch the yellow chicks peep and run all over the place.

If Tucker wouldn’t be so fussy, Harry could get a big dog, a dog that would live outside, to chase off foxes and those pesky raccoons. A puppy with big paws from the SPCA would grow up to fill the bill. The mere mention of it would send Tucker into a hissy fit.

“Would you tolerate another cat, I ask you?” Tucker would shriek.

“If we had a surplus of mice I guess I’d have to,” Mrs. Murphy would usually reply.

Tucker declared that she could handle a fox. This was a patent lie. She could not. If a fox went to ground she might be able to dig it out but then what would she do with it? Tucker wasn’t a good killer. Corgis were brave dogs—Mrs. Murphy had seen ample proof of that—but Tucker, at least, wasn’t the hunter type. Corgis, bred to herd cattle, were low to the ground so that when a cow kicked, the small dog could easily duck the blow. Tough, resilient, and accustomed to animals much bigger than themselves, corgis could work with just about any large domesticated animal. But hunting wasn’t in their blood, so Mrs. Murphy usually hunted alone.

A meow, deep and mellow in the distance, attracted Mrs. Murphy’s attention. She tensed, and then relaxed when the splendidly handsome figure of her ex-husband slipped out of the woods. Paddy, as always, wore his black tuxedo; his white shirtfront was immaculate but the white spats were dirty. His gorgeous eyes glittered and he bounded up with unbridled enthusiasm to see his ex.

“Hunting, Sugar? Let’s do it together.”

“Thanks, Paddy. I’m better at it alone.”

He sat down and flicked his tail. “That’s what you always say. You know, Murph, you won’t be young and beautiful forever.”

“Neither will you,” came the tart reply. “Still hanging around that silver slut?”

“Oh, her? She got very boring.” Paddy referred to one of his many inamoratas, this one a silver Maine coon cat of extraordinary beauty. “I hate it when they want to know where you’ve been every moment, as well as what you’re thinking at every turn. Give it a rest.” His pink tongue accentuated his white fangs. “You never did that.”

“I was too busy myself to worry about what you were doing.” She changed the subject. “Find anything?”

“Hunting’s not good. Let them get a little hungrier and then we’ll catch a few. The field mice are fat and happy right now.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“Yellow Mountain. I left home in the middle of the night. I’ve got that door, you know—don’t know why Harry doesn’t put one in for you. Anyway, I was going to head toward the first railroad tunnel but it was too far away and the promise of hunting was already dim, so I trotted up the mountain instead.”

“Not much there either?”

“No,” he replied.

“Did you hear, Paddy, about those body parts in the graveyard?”

“Who cares? Humans kill one another and then pretend it’s awful. If it’s so awful, then why do they do it so much?”

“I don’t know.”

“And think about it, Murphy. If the new guy is in his house, why would the killer drag those pieces of body down the driveway? Too risky.”

“Maybe he didn’t know the new man had moved in.”

“In Crozet? You sneeze and your neighbor says God bless you. I think he, or she, parked somewhere within a mile—two legs and two hands aren’t that heavy to carry. Came in off Yellow Mountain Road, up to the old logging road, and walked back through the woods into the pastures up to the cemetery. You wouldn’t have seen the person from your place unless you were in the west meadows. You’re usually out of the west meadows by sunset though, because the horses have been brought in, and this new guy, well, he was a risk but the cemetery is far enough away from the house that he might see someone up there but I doubt if he could have heard anything. Of course, the new guy could have done it himself.”

Mrs. Murphy batted a soggy leaf. “Got a point there, Paddy.”

“You know, people only kill for two reasons.”

“What are they?”

“Love or money.” His white whiskers shook with mirth. Both reasons seemed absurd to Paddy.

“Drugs.”

“Still gets back to money,” Paddy countered. “Whatever this is, it will come to love or money. Harry’s safe, since it hasn’t a thing to do with her. You get so worried about Harry. She’s pretty tough, you know.”

“You’re right. I just wish her senses were sharper. She misses so much. You know, it takes her sometimes ten or twenty seconds longer to hear something and even then she can’t recognize the difference in tire treads as they come down the driveway. She recognizes engine differences though. Her eyes are pretty good but I tell you she can’t tell a field mouse five hundred yards away. Even though her eyes are better in daylight, she still misses the movement. It’s so easy to hear if you just listen and let your eyes follow. At night, of course, she can’t see that well and none of them can smell worth a damn. I just worry how she can function with such weak senses.”

“If Harry were being stalked by a tiger, then I’d worry. Since one human’s senses are about as bad as another’s, they’re equal. And since they seem to be their own worst enemies, they’re well equipped to fight one another. Besides which, she has you and Tucker and you can give her the jump, if she’ll listen.”

“She listens to me—most of the time. She can be quite stubborn though. Selective hearing.”

“They’re all like that.” Paddy nodded gravely. “Hey, want to race across the front pasture, climb up the walnut by the creek, run across the limb, and then jump out to the other side? We can be at your back door in no time. Bet I get there first.”

“Deal!”

They ran like maniacs, arriving at the back porch door. Harry, coffeepot in hand and still sleepy, opened the back door. They both charged into the kitchen.

“Catting around?” She smiled and scratched Mrs. Murphy’s head, and Paddy’s too.

20

A crisp night dotted with bright stars like chunks of diamonds created the perfect Halloween. Each year the Harvest Fair was held at Crozet High. Before the high school was built in 1892, the fair was held in an open meadow across from the train station. The high school displayed the excesses of Victorian architecture. One either loved it or hated it. Since most everyone attending the Harvest Ball had graduated from Crozet High, they loved it.

Not Mim Sanburne, as she had graduated from Madeira, nor Little Marilyn, who had followed in her mother’s spiked-heel steps. No, Crozet High smacked of the vulgate, the hoi polloi, the herd. Jim Sanburne, mayor of Crozet, had graduated from CHS in 1939. He carefully walked up and down rows of tables placed on the football field. Corn, squash, potatoes, wheat sheaves, and enormous pumpkins crowded the tables.

The mayor and his son-in-law had been cataloguing contestant entries that morning. In order to be impartial, Fitz wrote down all the produce entries. Since Jim was judging that category, it wouldn’t do for him to see them early.

The crafts filled the halls inside the school. Mrs. Hogendobber would take a step or two, stop, study, rub her hand on her chin, remove her glasses, put them back on, and say, “Hmmn.” This process was repeated for each display. Miranda took judging the crafts to new levels of seriousness.

The gym, decorated as a witches’ lair, would welcome everyone after the awards. The dance attracted even the lame and the halt. If you breathed you showed up. Rick Shaw and Cynthia Cooper sat in the gym judging costumes. Children scampered about as Ninja Turtles, angels, devils, cowboys, and one little girl whose parents were dairy farmers came as a milk carton. The teenagers, also in costume, tended to stick together, but as the task of decorating for the Harvest Ball fell upon CHS’s students, they heaped glory upon themselves. Every senior class was determined to top the class preceding it. The freshman, sophomore, and junior classes were pledged to help, and on Halloween Day classes were suspended so the decorating could proceed.

As Harry, Susan, and Blair strolled through the displays they admired the little flying witches overhead. The electronics wizards at the school had built intricate systems of wires, operating the witches by remote control. Ghosts and goblins also flew. The excitement mounted because if this was the warm-up, what would the dance be like? That was always the payoff.

Harry and Susan, in charge of the Harvest Ball for their class of 1976, ruefully admitted that these were the best decorations they’d seen since their time. No crepe paper for these kids. The orange and black colors snaked along the walls and the outside tables with Art Deco severity and sensuality. Susan, bursting with pride, accepted congratulations from other parents. Her son Danny was the freshman representative to the decorations committee and it was his idea to make the demons fly. He was determined to outdo his mother and was already well on his way to a chairmanship as a senior. His younger sister had proved a help too. Brookie was already worried about what would happen two years from now when she had the opportunity to be a Harvest Ball class representative. Could she top this? Susan and Ned had sent the kids to private school in Charlottesville for a couple of years, the result being that both were turning into horrid snobs. They had yanked the kids out of the private school, to everyone’s eventual relief.

Blair observed it all in wonder and amusement. These young people displayed spirit and community involvement, something which had been missing at his prep school. He almost envied the students, although he knew he had been given the gift of a superb education as well as impeccable social contacts.

BoomBoom and Fair judged the livestock competition. BoomBoom was formally introduced to Blair by Harry. She took one look at this Apollo and audibly sucked in her breath. Fair, enraptured by a solid Holstein calf, elected not to notice. BoomBoom, far too intelligent to flirt openly, simply exuded radiance.

As they walked away Susan commented, “Well, she spared you the BoomBoom brush.”

“What’s that?” Blair smiled.

“In high school—on these very grounds, mind you—BoomBoom would slide by a boy and gently brush him with her torpedoes. Naturally, the boy would die of embarrassment and joy.”

“Yeah,” Harry laughed. “Then she’d say, ‘Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.’ BoomBoom can be very funny when she puts her mind, or boobs, to it.”

“You haven’t told me what your theme was when you two co-chaired the Harvest Ball.” Blair evidenced little curiosity about BoomBoom but plenty about Harry and Susan, which pleased them mightily.

“The Hound of the Baskervilles.” Susan’s voice lowered.

Harry’s eyes lit up. “You wouldn’t have believed it. I mean, we started working the day school started. The chair and co-chairs are elected the end of junior year. A really big deal—”

Susan interrupted. “Can you tell? I mean, we still remember everything. Sorry, Harry.”

“That’s okay. Well, Susan came up with the theme and we decorated the inside of the school like the inside of a Victorian mansion. Velvet drapes, old sofas—I mean, we hit up every junk shop in this state, I swear . . . that and what parents lent us. We took rolls and rolls of old butcher paper—Market Shiflett’s dad donated it—and the art kids turned it into stone and we made fake walls with that outside.”

“Don’t forget the light.”

“Oh, yeah, we had one of the boys up in the windows that are dark on the second floor going from room to room swinging a lantern. Boy, did that scare the little kids when they looked up. Painted his face too. We even got Mr. MacGregor—”

“My Mr. MacGregor?” Blair asked.

“The very one,” Susan said.

“We got him to lend us his bloodhound, Charles the First, who emitted the most sorrowful cry.”

“We walked him up and down the halls that were not in use and asked him to howl, which he did, dear dog. We really scared the poop out of them when we took him up on the second floor, opened a window, and his piercing howl floated over the grounds.” Susan shivered with delight.

“The senior class dressed like characters from the story. God, it was fun.”

By now they were outside. The Reverend Herbie and Carol Jones waved from among the wheat sheaves. A few people remarked that they’d miss Harry on Tomahawk this year. The local reporter roved around. Everyone was in a good mood. Naturally people talked about the grim discoveries but since it didn’t touch anyone personally—the victim wasn’t someone they knew—the talk soon dissolved into delicious personal gossip. Mim, Little Marilyn, and Fitz-Gilbert paraded around. Mim accepted everyone’s sympathy with a nod and then asked them not to mention it again. Her nerves were raw, she said.

One stalwart soul was missing this year: old Fats Domino, the huge feline who had played the Halloween cat every year for the last fifteen. Fats had finally succumbed to old age, and Pewter had been pressed into service. Her dark-gray coat could almost pass for black in the night and she hadn’t a speck of white on her. She gleefully padded over the tables, stopping to accept pats from her admirers.

Pewter grew expansive in the limelight. The more attention she received, the more she purred. Many people snapped photos of her, and she gladly paused for them. The newspaper photographer grabbed a few shots too. Well, that pesky Tucker had got her name in the papers once, the last time there’d been a murder in Crozet, but Pewter knew she’d be in color on the front page because the Harvest Festival always made the front page. Nor could she refrain from a major gloat over the fact that Mrs. Murphy and Tucker had to stay home, while she was the star of the occasion.

The craft and livestock prizes had been awarded, and now the harvest prizes were being announced. Miranda hurried over to stand behind her pumpkin. The gargantuan pumpkin next to hers was larger, indisputably larger, but Miranda hoped the competition’s imperfect shape would sway Jim Sanburne her way. With so much milling about and chatting she didn’t notice Pewter heading for the pumpkins. Mrs. Hogendobber felt no need to share this moment with the cat.

Mim, Little Marilyn, and Fitz-Gilbert stood off to the side. Mim noticed Harry and Blair.

“I know this Bainbridge fellow attended Yale and St. Paul’s but we don’t really know who he is. Harry ought to be more careful.”

“You never minded Fair as her husband and he’s not a stockbroker.” Little Marilyn was simply making an observation, not trying to start an argument.

“At the time,” Mim snapped, “I was relieved that Harry married, period. I feared she would go the way of Mildred Yost.”

Mildred Yost, a pretty girl in Mim’s class at Madeira, spurned so many beaus she finally ran out of them and spent her life as an old maid, a condition Mim found fearful. Single women just don’t make it to the top of society. If a woman was manless she had better be a widow.

“Mother”—Fitz-Gilbert called Mim “Mother”—“Harry doesn’t care about climbing to the top of society.”

“Whether she cares or not, she shouldn’t marry a person of low degree . . . I mean, once she’s established the fact that she can get married.”

Mim babbled on in this vein, making very little sense. Fitz-Gilbert heard her sniff that being a divorcée teetered on the brink of a shadowy status. Why was Mim so concerned with Harry and who she was dating? he wondered. No other reason than that she felt nothing could go on in Crozet without her express approval. As usual, Mim’s conversation did not run a charitable course. She even complained that the little witches, ghosts, and goblins overhead whirred too much, giving her a headache. The shock of recent events was making her crabbier than usual. Fitz tuned her out.

Danny Tucker, as Hercule Poirot, scooted next to Mrs. Hogendobber. His was the enormous pumpkin.

“Danny, why didn’t you inform me that you grew this . . . fruit?” Mrs. Hogendobber demanded.

“Well, Mom didn’t want to upset you. We all know you want that blue ribbon.”

Pewter arrived to sit between the two huge orange pumpkins, the finalists. Mrs. Hogendobber, talking to Danny, still didn’t notice her. Pewter was insulted.

Jim picked up Miranda’s pumpkin. He quickly put it back down. “These damn things get heavier every year.” Miranda shot him a look. “Sorry, Miranda.”

Pewter smelled pumpkin goo, as though the insides had been removed for pumpkin pie. She sniffed Miranda’s pumpkin.

“See, the cat likes my pumpkin.” Miranda smiled to the crowd.

“I don’t like any pumpkins,” Pewter replied.

“Do I want to pick this one up? I might fall over from the size of it.” Jim smiled but put his large hands around Danny’s pumpkin anyway. The enormous pumpkin was much heavier than the other pumpkin, oddly heavy. He replaced it. Puzzled, he lifted it up again.

Pewter, never able to control her curiosity, inspected the back of the pumpkin. A very neat, very large circle had been cut out and then glued back into place. If one wasn’t searching for it, the tampering could easily be missed.

“Look,” she said with forcefulness.

Danny Tucker was the only human who paid attention to her. He picked up his pumpkin. “Mayor Sanburne, I know my pumpkin’s heavy, but not this heavy. Something’s wrong.”

“That is your pumpkin,” Miranda stated.

“Yes, but it’s too heavy.” Danny picked it up again.

Pewter reached up and swatted the back of the orange globe. This led Danny’s eyes, much sharper than Jim’s or Miranda’s, to the patch job in the back.

“Jim, we’re waiting. We want a winner,” Mim called out impatiently.

“Yes, dear, in a minute,” he replied and the crowd laughed.

Danny pushed the circle and it wiggled. He reached into his jacket, retrieved a pocketknife, and slid it along the cutting line. The glue dislodged easily and he pried out the big circle. “Oh, wow!” Danny saw the back of a head. He assumed one of his buddies had done this as a joke. He reached in, grabbed the head by the hair, and pulled it out. A wave of sweet stink alerted him. This was no joke, no rubber or plastic head. Not quite knowing what to do he held the head away from him, giving the crowd a fine view of the loathsome sight. What was left of the eyes stared straight at them.

Danny, now realizing what he held, dropped the head. It hit the table with a sickening splat.

Pewter jumped away. She ran down to the squashes. If this was what the job of playing Halloween cat entailed, she was resigning.

People screamed. Jim Sanburne, almost by reflex, handed the ribbon to Miranda.

“I don’t want it!” Miranda screamed.

BoomBoom Craycroft fainted dead away. The next thud heard was Blair Bainbridge hitting the ground.

Then Little Marilyn screeched, “I’ve seen that face before!”

21

Therapists in the county agreed to work with the students at Crozet High to help them through the trauma of what they’d seen.

Rick Shaw wondered if they could help him. He disliked the sight of the decayed head himself but not enough to have nightmares over it. When he and Cynthia Cooper collected the head, the first thing they did, apart from holding their noses, was check the open mouth. Not one tooth remained in the head. No dental records.

Cynthia led Little Marilyn away from the sight and asked her to clarify her statement.

“I don’t know him but I think that’s the vagrant who was wandering around maybe ten days ago. I’m not certain as to the date. You see, he passed the post office and I walked to the window and got a good look at him. That’s all I can tell you.” She was shaking.

“Thank you. You’ve had more than your share of this.” Cynthia patted Little Marilyn on the back.

Fitz-Gilbert put his arms around her. “Come on, honey, let’s go home.”

“What about Mother?”

“Your father’s taking care of her.”

Meekly, Little Marilyn allowed Fitz to shepherd her to their Range Rover.

Cynthia stuck her notebook back in her pocket. As Rick was talking to other observers, the press photographer fired off some shots.

Cynthia took statements from Harry, Susan, Herb, Carol, Market, just everyone she could find. She would have interviewed Pewter if she could have. Market held the cat in his arms, each of them grateful for the reassuring warmth of the other.

Holding his wife’s hand, Cabell Hall mentioned to Cynthia that she and Rick might want to call the video stores and have them pull their more gruesome horror movies until things settled down.

“Actually, Mr. Hall, I have no authority to do that but as a prominent citizen you could, or your wife could. People listen to you all.”

“I’ll do it then,” Taxi Hall promised.

It took Cynthia more than an hour to get everyone out of there. Finally, Cynthia and Rick had a moment to themselves.

“Worse than I imagined.” Rick slapped his thighs, a nervous gesture.

“Yeah, I thought we’d find the head, if we found it at all, back in the woods somewhere. It would be something someone would stumble on.”

“You know what we got, Coop?” Rick breathed in the cool night air. “We got us a killer with a sick sense of humor.”

22

Firelight casts shadows, which, depending on one’s mood, can either be friendly highlights on the wall or misshapen monsters. Susan, Harry, and Blair sat before Harry’s fireplace. The best friends had decided that Blair needed some company before he returned to his empty house.

The Harvest Fair had rattled everyone and Harry found another surprise when she opened the door to her house. Tucker, in a fit of pique at being left behind, had demolished Harry’s favorite slippers. Mrs. Murphy told her not to do it but Tucker, when furious, was not a reasonable creature. The dog’s punishment was that she had to remain locked in the kitchen while the adults talked in the living room. To make matters worse, Mrs. Murphy was allowed in the living room with them. Tucker laid her head between her paws and howled.

“Come on, Harry, let her in,” Susan chided.

“Easy for you to say—they weren’t your slippers.”

“Actually, you should have taken her. She finds more clues than anyone.” Susan cast a glance at the alert Mrs. Murphy perched on Harry’s armchair. “And Murphy, of course.”

“Is anyone hungry?” Harry remembered to be a hostess.

“No.” Blair shook his head.

“Me neither,” Susan agreed. “Poor you.” She indicated Blair. “You moved here for peace and quiet and you landed in the middle of murder.”

The muscles in Blair’s handsome face tightened. “There’s no escaping human nature. Remember the men put off the H.M.S. Bounty on Pitcairn Island?”

“I remember the great movie with Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh,” Susan said.

“Well, in real life those Englishmen stranded on that paradise soon created their own version of hell. The sickness was within. The natives—by then they were mostly women, since the whites had killed the men—slit the Englishmen’s throats in the middle of the night while they slept. Or at least historians think they did. No one really knows how the mutineers died, except that years later, when a European ship stopped by, the ‘civilized’ men were gone.”

“Is that by way of saying that Crozet is a smaller version of Manhattan?” Harry reached over and poked the fire with one of the brass utensils left her by her parents.

“Big Marilyn as Brooke Astor.” Susan then added, “Actually, Brooke Astor is a great lady. Mim’s a wannabe.”

“In the main, Crozet is a kinder place than Manhattan, but whatever is wrong with us shows up wherever we may be—on a more reduced scale. Passions are passions, regardless of century and geography.” Blair stared into the fire.

“True enough.” Harry sank back into her seat. “How about Little Marilyn saying she recognized that head?” The memory of the head made Harry queasy.

“A hobo she saw walking down the tracks while she was inside the post office.” Blair added, “I vaguely remember him too. He was wearing old jeans and a baseball jacket. I wasn’t that interested. Did you get a look at him?”

Harry nodded. “I noticed the Mets jacket. That’s about it. However, even if these body parts belong to the fellow, we still don’t know who he is.”

“A student at U.V.A.?”

“God, Susan, I hope not.” Harry allowed Mrs. Murphy to crawl into her lap.

“Too old.” Blair folded his hands.

“It’s a little hard to tell.” Susan also called up the grisly sight.

“Ladies, I think I’ll go home. I’m exhausted and I’m embarrassed that I passed out. This is getting to me, I suppose.”

Harry walked him to the door and bade him goodnight before returning to Susan. Mrs. Murphy had taken over her chair. She lifted up the cat, who protested and then settled down again.

“He was distant tonight,” Susan observed. “Guess it has been right much of a shock. He doesn’t have a stick of furniture in his house, he doesn’t know any of us, and then they find pieces of a body on his land. Now this. There goes his bucolic dream.”

“The only good thing about tonight was getting to see BoomBoom faint.”

“Aren’t you ugly?” Susan laughed at her.

“You have to admit it was funny.”

“Kind of. Fair had the pleasure of reviving her, digging in her voluminous purse for her tranquilizers, and then taking her home. If she gets too difficult I guess he could hit her up with a cc of Ace.”

The thought of BoomBoom dosed with a horse tranquilizer struck Susan as amusing. “I’d say that BoomBoom wasn’t an easy keeper,” she said, using an equine term—quite accurate, too, because BoomBoom was anything but an easy keeper.

“I suppose we have to laugh at something. This is so macabre, what else can we do?” Harry scratched Mrs. Murphy behind the ears.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Are you?” Susan shot back.

“I asked you first.”

“Not for myself,” Susan replied.

“Me neither, because I don’t think it had anything to do with me, but what if I fall into it? For all I know the killer might have buried those body parts in my cemetery.”

“I think we’re all right if we don’t get in the way,” Susan said.

“But what’s ‘in the way’? What’s this all about?”

Mrs. Murphy opened one eye and said, “Love or money.”

23

Sunday dawned frosty but clear. The day’s high might reach into the low fifties but not much more. Harry loved Sundays. She could work from sunup to sundown without interruption. Today she was planning to strip stalls, put down lime, and then cover and bank the sides with wood shavings. Physical labor limbered up her mind. Out in the stable she popped a soothing tape into the boom box and proceeded to fill up the wheelbarrow. The manure spreader was pulled up under a small earthen bank. That way Harry could roll the wheelbarrow to the top of the bank and tip the contents over into the wagon. She and her father had built the ramp in the late sixties. Harry was twelve. She worked so hard and with so much enthusiasm that as a reward her father bought her a pair of fitted chaps. The ramp had lasted these many years and so did the memory of the chaps.

Both of Harry’s parents thought that idle hands did the Devil’s work. True to her roots, Harry couldn’t sit still. She was happiest when working and found it a cure for most ills. After her divorce she couldn’t sleep much, so she would work sometimes sixteen or eighteen hours a day. The farm reflected this intensity. So did Harry. Her weight dropped to 110, too low for a woman of five foot six. Finally, Susan and Mrs. Hogendobber tricked her into going to the doctor. Hayden McIntire, forewarned, slammed shut his office door as they dragged her through it. A shot of B₁₂ and a severe tongue-lashing convinced her that she’d better eat more. He also prescribed a mild sedative so she could sleep. She took it for a week and then threw it out. Harry hated drugs of any sort but her body accepted sleep and food again, so whatever Hayden did worked.

Each year with the repetition of the seasons, the cycle of planting, weeding, harvesting, and winter repairs, it was brought home to Harry that life was finite. Perhaps LIFE in capital letters wasn’t finite but her life was. There would be a beginning, a middle, and an end. She wasn’t quite at the middle yet, but she endured hints that she wasn’t fifteen either. Injuries took longer to heal. Actually, she enjoyed more energy than she’d had as a teenager but what had changed the most was her mind. She’d lived just long enough to be seeing events and human personality types for the second and third time. She wasn’t easily impressed or fooled. Most movies bored her to death, for that reason as well. She’d seen versions of those plots long before. They enthralled a new generation of fifteen-year-olds but there wasn’t anything for her. What enthralled Harry was a job well done, laughter with her friends, a quiet ride on one of the horses. She’d withdrawn from the social whirl after her divorce—no great loss, but she was shocked to find out how little a single woman was valued. A single man was a plus. A single woman, a liability. The married women, Susan excepted, feared you.

Although Fair lacked money he didn’t lack prestige in his field and Harry had been dragged along to banquets, boring dinners at the homes of thoroughbred breeders, and even more boring dinners at Saratoga. It was the same old parade of excellent facelifts, good bourbon, and tired stories. She was glad to be out of it. BoomBoom could have it all. BoomBoom could have Fair too. Harry didn’t know why she’d gotten so mad at Fair the other day. She didn’t love him anymore but she liked him. How could you not like a man you’ve known since you were in grade school and liked at first sight? The sheer folly of his attachment to BoomBoom irritated her though. If he found a sensible woman like Susan she’d be relieved. BoomBoom would suck up so much of his energy and money that eventually his work would suffer. He’d spent years building his practice. BoomBoom could wreck it in one circle of the seasons if he didn’t wake up.

The sweet smell of pine shavings caressed her senses. For an instant Harry picked up the wall-phone receiver. She was going to call Fair and tell him what she really thought. Then she hung it up. How could she? He wouldn’t listen. No one ever does in that situation. They wake up when they can.

She spread fresh shavings in the stalls.

Mrs. Murphy checked out the hayloft. Simon, sound asleep, never heard her tiptoe around him. He’d dragged up an old T-shirt of Harry’s and then hollowed out part of a hay bale. He was curled up in the hollow on the shirt. She then walked over to the south side of the loft. The snake was hibernating. Nothing would wake her up until spring. Overhead the owl also slept. Satisfied that everything was as it should be, Mrs. Murphy climbed back down the ladder.

“Tucker,” she called.

“What?” Tucker lounged around in the tack room.

“Want to go for a walk?”

“Where?”

“Foxden pastures off Yellow Mountain Road.”

“Why there?”

“Paddy gave me an idea the other day and this is the first time I’ve had a chance to look in the daylight.”

“Okay.” Tucker stood up, shook herself, and then trotted out into the brisk air with her companion.

Mrs. Murphy told Tucker Paddy’s idea about someone parking off Yellow Mountain Road on the old logging road and carrying the body parts to the cemetery in a plastic bag or something.

Once in the pastures Tucker put her nose down. Too much rain and too much time had elapsed. She smelled field mice, deer, fox, lots of wild turkeys, raccoons, and even the faint scent of bobcat.

While Tucker kept her nose to the ground Mrs. Murphy cast her sharp eyes around for a glint of metal, a piece of flesh, but there was nothing, nothing at all.

“Find anything?”

“No, too late.” Tucker lifted her head. “How else could the body get to the cemetery? If the murderer didn’t walk through these pastures, then he or she had to go right down Blair’s driveway in front of God and Blair, anyway. Paddy’s right. He came through here. Unless it’s Blair.”

Mrs. Murphy jerked her head around to view her friend full in the face. “You don’t think that, do you?”

“I hope not. Who knows?”

The cat fluffed out her fur and then let it settle down. She headed for home. “You know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think tomorrow at work will be impossible. Lardguts will go on and on and on about the head in the pumpkin. She got her name and her picture in the paper. God help us.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.

24

“. . . and the maggots had a field day, I can tell you that.” Pewter perched on the hood of Harry’s truck, parked behind the post office.

Mrs. Murphy, seated next to her, listened to the un-ending paean of self-praise. Tucker sat on the ground.

“I heard you ran into the squashes,” Tucker called up.

“Of course I did, nitwit. I didn’t want to injure the evidence,” Pewter bragged. “Boy, you should have heard people scream once they realized it was real. A few even puked. Now I watched everyone—everyone—from my vantage point. Mrs. Hogendobber was horrified but has a cast-iron stomach. Poor Danny, was he grossed out! Susan and Ned rushed up to him but he wanted to go to his friends instead. That age, you know. Oh, Big Marilyn, she wasn’t grossed out at all. She was outraged. I thought she’d flip her lid after the corpse in the boathouse but no, she was mad, bullshit mad, I tell you. Fitz stood there with his mouth hanging open. Little Marilyn hollered that she recognized the face, what there was of it. Harry didn’t move a muscle. Stood there like a stone taking it all in. You know how she gets when things are awful. Real quiet and still. Oh, BoomBoom dropped, tits into the sand, and Blair keeled over too. What a night. I knew something was wrong with that pumpkin. I sat next to it. It takes humans so long to see the obvious.” Pewter sighed a superior sigh.

“You were a teeny weeny bit disgusted.” Mrs. Murphy flicked her tail.

Pewter turned her head. She puffed out her chest, refusing to be baited by her dearest friend, who was also a source of torment. “Certainly not.”

A door closed in the near distance. The animals turned, observing Mrs. Hogendobber striding up the alleyway. As she drew near the animals she opened her mouth to speak to them but closed it again. She felt vaguely foolish carrying on a conversation with animals. This didn’t prevent her from talking to herself, however. She smiled at the creatures and walked into the post office.

“Why’d Harry bring the truck?” Pewter asked.

“Wore herself out yesterday,” Tucker replied.

Mrs. Murphy licked the side of her right front paw and rubbed it over her ears. “Pewter, do you have any theories about this?”

“Yeah, we got a real nut case on the loose.”

“I don’t think so.” Mrs. Murphy washed the other paw.

“What makes you so smart?” Pewter snapped.

Mrs. Murphy let that go by. “If a human being has the time to think about a murder he can often make it look like an accident or natural death. If one of them kills in the heat of passion it’s a bullet wound or a knife wound. Right?”

“Right,” Tucker echoed, while Pewter’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“Murphy, we all know that.”

“Then we know it was a hurry-up job and it wasn’t passion. Someone in Crozet was surprised by the dead person.”

“A nasty surprise.” Tucker followed her friend’s thinking. “But who? And what could be so terrible about the victim that he should have had to die for it?”

“When we know that, we’ll know everything,” the cat said in a low voice.

25

The coroner’s conclusions, neatly typed, rested on Rick Shaw’s desk. The deceased was a white male in his early thirties. Identity remained unknown but what was known was that this fellow, who should have been in the prime of life, was suffering from malnutrition and liver damage. Larry Johnson, meticulous in the performance of his duties, added in his bold vertical handwriting that while alcohol abuse might have contributed to the liver damage, the organ could have been diseased for reasons other than alcohol abuse. Then, too, certain medications taken over many years could also have caused liver damage.

Cooper charged into the office. She tossed more paperwork onto the sheriff’s desk. “More reports from Saturday night.”

Rick grunted and shoved them aside. “You haven’t said anything about the coroner’s report.”

“Died of a blow to the head. A child can kill someone with a blow to the head if it’s done right. We’re still in the dark.”

“What about a revenge motive?”

She was tired of kicking around ideas. Dead ends frustrated her. The fax machine hummed. She walked over to it almost absentmindedly. “Boss, come over here.”

Rick joined her and watched as the pages slowly rolled out of the machine. It was Blair Bainbridge’s record.

He had been a suspect in the murder of his lover, an actress. However, he wasn’t a suspect for long. The killer, an obsessed fan, was picked up by the police and confessed. The eerie thing was that the beautiful woman’s corpse had been dismembered.

“Shit,” was Cynthia’s response.

“Let’s go,” was Rick’s.

26

Heavy work gloves protected his hands as Blair righted tombstones, replaced the sod, and rolled it flat. The trees, now barren, surrounded the little cemetery like mournful sentinels. He stopped his labors when he saw the squad car roll down the driveway. He swung open the iron gate and headed down the hill to meet them.

A cool breeze eased off Yellow Mountain. Blair asked Rick Shaw and Cynthia Cooper inside. A couple of orange crates doubled as chairs.

“You know, there are wonderful auctions this time of year,” Coop volunteered. “Check in the classifieds. I furnished my house, thanks to those auctions.”

“I’ll check it out.”

Rick noticed that Blair was growing a thin military moustache. “Another modeling job coming up?”

“How’d you guess?” Blair smiled.

Rick rubbed under his nose. “Well, I’ll get to the point. This isn’t a social call, as I’m sure you’ve surmised. Your records indicate an actress with whom you were involved was brutally murdered and dismembered. What do you have to say?”

Blair blanched. “It was horrible. I thought when the police caught the murderer I’d feel some comfort. Well, I guess I did, in that I knew he wouldn’t kill anyone else, but it didn’t fill the . . . void.”

“Is there anyone in Crozet or Charlottesville who might know of this incident?”

“Not that I know of. I mean, a few people recognized my face from magazines but no one knows me here. Guess that doesn’t look so good for me, huh?”

“Let’s just say you’re an unknown factor.” Rick shifted his weight. The orange crate wasn’t comfortable.

“I didn’t kill anybody. I think I could kill in self-defense or to protect someone I love, but other than that, I don’t think I could do it.”

“What one person defines as self-defense another might define as murder.” Cynthia watched Blair’s handsome features.

“I am willing to cooperate with you in any way. And I’ve refused to talk to the press. They’ll only muck it up.”

“Why don’t you tell me what happened in New York?” Rick’s voice was steady, unemotional.

Blair ran his hands through his hair. “You know, Sheriff, I’d like to forget that. I came here to forget that. Can you imagine what it was like to see that head pulled out of a pumpkin?”

The sheriff softened. “Not pretty for any of us.”

Blair took a deep breath. “I knew Robin Mangione from a shoot we did for Baker and Reeves, the big New York department store. I guess that was three years ago. One thing led to another and, well, we stopped dating other people and got involved. Our work schedules often took us out of town but whenever we were in New York we were together.”

“You didn’t live together?” Rick asked.

“No. It’s a little different in New York than here. In a place like this people get married. In New York, people can be as good as married and yet live in separate apartments for their entire lives. Maybe because of the millions of people, one needs a sense of privacy, of separate space, more than you do here. Anyway, living together wasn’t a goal.”

“What about her goals?” Cooper was suspicious about this living-apart stuff.

“She was more independent than I was, truthfully. Anyway, Robin inspired devotion from men. She could stop traffic. Fame, any kind of fame really, brings good and bad. The flotsam and jetsam of fame is how I think of it, and Robin was sometimes hassled by male admirers. Usually a sharp word from her, or if need be from me, took care of the problem. Except for the guy who killed her.”

“Know anything about him?” Rick asked.

“What you know, except that I watched him at the trial. He’s short, balding, one of those men you could pass on the street and never notice. He sent letters. He called. She changed her number. He’d wait for her outside the theater. I got in the habit of picking her up because he was such a nuisance. He began to threaten. We told the police. With predictable results.” Rick dropped his gaze for a moment while Blair continued: “And one day when I was out of town on a shoot he broke the locks and got into her apartment. She was alone. The rest you know.”

Indeed they did. Stanley Richards, the crazed fan, panicked after he killed Robin. Disposing of a body in New York City would try the imagination of a far more intelligent man than Stanley. So he put her in the bathtub, cut her throat and wrists and ankles, and tried to drain most of the blood out of the body. Then he dismembered her with the help of a meat cleaver. He fed pieces of the body to the disposal but it jammed up on the bone. Finally, desperate, he spent the rest of the night hauling out little bits of body and dumping her east, west, north, and south. The head he saved for the Sheep Meadow, in the middle of Central Park, where in exhaustion he put it down on the grass. A dawn jogger saw him and reported him as soon as he found a cop.

Neither Rick nor Cynthia felt the need to rehash those details.

“Don’t you find it curious that—”

“Curious?!” Blair erupted, cutting off Rick. “It’s sick!”

“Do you have any enemies?” Cynthia inquired.

Blair lapsed into silence. “My agent, occasionally.”

“What’s his name?” Rick had a pencil and pad out.

“Her name. Gwendolyn Blackwell. She’s not my enemy but she broods if I don’t take every job that comes down the pike. That woman would work me into an early grave if I let her.”

“That’s it? No irate husbands? No jilted ladies? No jealous competitor?”

“Sheriff, modeling isn’t as glamorous as you might suppose.”

“I thought all you guys were gay,” Rick blurted out.

“Fifty-fifty, I’d say.” Blair had heard this so many times it didn’t rock his boat.

“Is there anyone you can think of—the wildest connection doesn’t matter—anyone who would know enough to duplicate what happened to Robin?”

Blair cast his deep eyes on Cynthia. It made her heart flutter. “Not one person. I really do think this is a grim coincidence.”

Rick and Cynthia left as baffled as they were when they arrived. They’d keep an eye on Blair, but then they’d keep an eye on everyone.

27

The western half of Albemarle County would soon feel the blade of the bulldozer. The great state of Virginia and its Department of Highways, a little fiefdom, decided to create a bypass through much of the best land in the county. Businesses would be obliterated, pastures uprooted, property values crunched, and dreams strangled. The western bypass, as it came to be known, had the distinction of being outmoded before it was even begun. That and the fact that it imperiled the watershed meant little to the highway department. They wanted the western bypass and they were going to have it no matter who they displaced and no matter how they scarred the environment.

The uproar caused by this high-handed tactic obscured the follow-up story about the head in the pumpkin. Since no one could identify the corpse, interest fizzled. It would remain a good story for Halloweens to come.

The respite was appreciated by Jim Sanburne, mayor, and the civic worthies of Crozet. Big Marilyn refused to discuss the subject, so it withered in her social circle, which was to say the six or seven ladies as snobbish as herself.

Little Marilyn recovered sufficiently to call her brother, Stafford, and invite him home for a weekend. This upset Mim more than the sum of the body parts. It meant she’d have to be sociable with his wife, Brenda.

This projected discomfort, awarded to Little Marilyn in lavish proportions by her mother, almost made the young woman back down and uninvite her brother and his wife. But it was opening hunt, such a pretty sight, and Stafford loved to photograph such events. She kept her nerve. Stafford would be home next weekend.

Weary of the swirl of tempestuous egos, Fitz-Gilbert decided to stay out late that night. First he stopped at Charley’s, where he bumped into Ben Seifert on his way out. Fitz tossed back one beer and then hit the road again. He ran into Fair Haristeen at Sloan’s and pulled up the barstool next to the vet.

“A night of freedom?”

Fair signaled for a beer for Fitz. “You might call it that. What about you?”

“It’s been a hell of a week. You know my office was ransacked. Doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the . . . murder . . . but it was upsetting on top of everything else. The sheriff and his deputy came out, took notes and so forth. Some money was missing, and a CD player, but obviously it’s not at the top of their list. Then Cabell Hall called me to tell me to watch my stock market investments, since the market is on a oneway trip these days—down—and my mother-in-law—oh, well, why talk about her? Oh, I just ran into Ben Seifert at Charley’s. He’s an okay guy, but he’s just burning to succeed Cabell some day. The thought of Ben Seifert running Allied National gives me pause. And then of course there’s my father-in-law. He wants to call out the National Guard.

“Those are my problems. What are yours?” Fitz asked.

“I don’t know.” Fair was puzzled. “BoomBoom’s out with that model guy. She says he asked her to the Cancer Fund Ball but I don’t know. He didn’t seem that interested in her when I met him. I kind of thought he liked Harry.”

“Here’s to women.” Fitz-Gilbert smiled. “I don’t know anything about them but I’ve got one.” He clinked glasses with Fair.

Fair laughed. “My daddy used to say, ‘You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.’ I didn’t know what he was talking about. I do now.”

“Marilyn is great by herself. It’s when she’s in the company of her mother . . .” Fitz-Gilbert wiped froth off his lips. “My mother-in-law can be a whistling bitch. I feel guilty just being here . . . like I slipped my leash. But I’m glad I didn’t get dragged to the Cancer Ball. Marilyn says she can only do but so many a year, and she wanted to get things ready for Stafford and Brenda. Thank God. I need the break.”

Fair changed the subject. “Do you think this new guy likes Harry? I thought guys like that wanted leggy blondes or other guys.”

“Can’t speak for his preferences, but Harry’s a good-looking woman. Natural. Outdoorsy. I’ll never know why you guys broke up, buddy.”

Fair, unaccustomed to exchanging much personal information, sat quietly and then signaled for another beer. “She’s a good person. We grew up together. We dated in high school. We, well, she was more like my sister than my wife.”

“Yeah, but you knew BoomBoom since you were yay-high,” Fitz countered.

“Not the same.”

“That’s the truth.”

“Just what do you mean by that?” Fair felt prickly anxiety creeping up his spine.

“Uh . . . well, I mean that they are so totally different from one another. One’s a quarter horse and the other’s a racehorse.” What he wanted to say was, “One’s a quarter horse and the other’s a jackass,” but he didn’t. “BoomBoom puts lead in your pencil. I’ve seen her start motors that have been stalled for years.”

Fair smiled broadly. “She is attractive.”

“Dynamite, buddy, dynamite.” Fitz, less inhibited than usual, kept on. “But I’d take Harry any day of the week. She’s funny. She’s a partner. She’s a friend. That other stuff—hey, Fair, it gets old.”

“You’re certainly forthcoming,” came the dry reply.

“Nothing’s preventing you from telling me to keep my mouth shut.”

“While we’re on the subject, tell me what you see in Little Marilyn. She’s a miniature of her mother, on her way to being as cold as a wedge, and near as I can tell she’s even slacking off on the charity work. What’s the—”

“Attraction?” Fitz decided not to take offense. After all, he was handing it out so he’d better take it. “The truth? The truth is that I married her because it was the thing to do. Two respectable family fortunes. Two great family names. My parents, had they lived, would have been proud. Superficial stuff, when you get right down to it. And I was kind of wild as a kid. I was ready to settle down. I needed to settle down. What’s strange is that I’ve come to love Marilyn. You don’t know the real Marilyn. When she’s not knocking herself out trying to be superior she’s pretty wonderful. She’s a shy little bug and underneath it there’s a good heart. And what’s so funny is that I think she likes me too. I don’t think she married me for love, any more than I married her for it. She went along with the merger orchestrated by that harridan”—he sputtered the word—“of a mother. Maybe Mim knew more than we did. Whatever the reason, I have learned to love my wife. And someday I hope I can tear her away from this place. We’ll go someplace where the names Sanburne and Hamilton don’t mean diddly.”

Fair stared at Fitz, and Fitz returned the stare. Then they burst out laughing.

“Another beer for my buddy.” Fitz slapped money on the counter.

Fair eagerly grabbed the cold glass. “We might as well get shitfaced.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

By the time Fitz reached home, supper was cold and his wife was not amused. He cajoled her with the tidbit about BoomBoom and Blair attending the Cancer Fund Ball and then poured them each a delicious sherry for a nightcap, a ritual of theirs. By the time they crawled into bed, Little Marilyn had forgiven her husband.

28

Two men argued at the end of an old country road. Heavy cloud cover added to the tension and gloom. Way up in the distance beckoned the sealed cavern of Claudius Crozet’s first tunnel through the Blue Ridge Mountains.

One man clenched his fists and shook them in the face of the other. “You goddamned bloodsucker. I’m not giving you another cent. How was I to know he’d show up? He’s been locked away for years!”

Ben Seifert, being threatened, just laughed. “He showed up in my office, not yours, asshole, and I want something for my pains—a bonus!”

The next thing he knew a brightly colored climbing rope was flipped over his neck and the word bonus was choked right out of him. Strangulation took less than two minutes.

Still furious, the killer viciously kicked the body, breaking some ribs. Then he shook his head, collected his wits, and bent down to pick up the limp corpse. This was an unpleasant task, since the dead man had voided himself.

Cursing, he tossed the body over his shoulder, for he was a strong man, and carried him up to the tunnel. Although it had been sealed after World War II, there was an opening of loose stones which had been dug out by a former Crozet resident. The railroad had overlooked resealing the tunnel.

His brain worked clearly now. He removed the stones with care so as not to tear up his hands and then dragged the body into the tunnel. He could hear the click of little claws as he slammed his unwanted burden on the ground. He walked outside and replaced the stones. Then he picked his way down the hillside, composing himself, brushing off his clothes. People rarely hiked up to the tunnels. With luck it would be months before they found that bastard, if they found him at all.

The problem was Seifert’s car. He searched the seats, trunk, and glove compartment to make certain no note existed, no clue to their meeting. Then he started the engine and drove to the outskirts of town, leaving the car at a gas station. He wiped off the steering wheel, the door handle, everything he’d touched. The car shone when he finished with it. Shrewdly, he’d left his own car three miles away, where the victim had picked him up on Three Chopt Road. That was at one o’clock this morning. It was now four-thirty and darkness would soon enough give way to light.

He jogged the three miles to his own car, parked behind one of the cement trucks at Craycroft Cement. Unless someone walked around the mixer they’d never have seen his car.

He had figured killing his unwanted partner was a possibility, hence the preparation. Not that he had wanted to kill the dumb son of a bitch, but he’d gotten so greedy. He kept bleeding him. That left little choice.

Blackmail rarely ended with both parties wreathed in smiles.

29

The mail slid into the boxes but the magazines had to be folded. Ned Tucker received more magazines than anyone in Crozet. What was even more amazing was that he read them. Susan said it was like living with an encyclopedia.

The morning temperature hovered at thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, so Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker hopped to work at a brisk pace. Harry brought the blue truck only when the weather was filthy or she had errands to run. As she’d done her grocery shopping yesterday, the blue bomb reposed by the barn.

Harry cherished the quiet of her walk and the early hour alone in the post office after Rob Collier dropped off the mail. The repetition of chores soothed her, like a labor’s liturgy. There was comfort in consistency.

The back door opened and closed. Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and even Harry could tell by the tread that it was Mrs. Hogendobber.

“Harry.”

“Mrs. H.”

“Missed you at the Cancer Ball.”

“Wasn’t invited.”

“You could have gone alone. I do sometimes.”

“Not at a hundred and fifty dollars a ticket I can’t.”

“I forgot about that part. Larry Johnson paid for my ticket. He’s quite a good dancer.”

“Who all was there?”

“Susan and Ned. She wore her peach organdy dress. Very becoming. Herbie and Carol. She wore the ice-blue gown with the ostrich feather ruff. You should have seen Mim. She had on one of those gowns Bob Mackie designs for Dynasty.”

“Did she really?”

“I am here to tell you, girl, she did, and that dress must have cost her as much as a Toyota. There isn’t a bugle bead left in Los Angeles, I am sure of it. Why, if you dropped her in that lake of hers she’d attract every fish in it.”

Harry giggled. “Maybe she’d get along better with the fish than she does with people.”

“Let’s see, I said Ned and Susan. Fair wasn’t there. Little Marilyn and Fitz weren’t there either—must be taking a break from the black-tie circuit. Most of the Keswick and Farmington Hunt Clubs showed up, and the country club set too. Wall to wall.” Mrs. Hogendobber picked up a handful of mail and helped to sort.

Mrs. Murphy sat in a mail bin. She had sat so long waiting for a push that she fell asleep. Mrs. Hogendobber’s arrival woke her up.

“What did you wear?”

“You know that emerald-green satin dress I wear at Christmas?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I had it copied in black with gold accents. I don’t look so fat in black.”

“You’re not fat,” Harry reassured her. It was true. She wasn’t fat but she was, well, ample.

“Ha. If I eat any more I’m going to resemble a heifer.”

“How come you haven’t told me that Blair escorted BoomBoom to the ball?”

“If you know it why should I tell you?” Mrs. Hogendobber liked to stand behind the post boxes and shoot the letters in. “Well, he did. Actually, I think she asked him, because the tickets were in her name. The hussy.”

“Did he have a good time?”

“He just looked so handsome in his tuxedo and I like his new moustache. Reminds me of Ronald Colman. BoomBoom dragged him to meet everyone. She was wearing her party face. I guess he had a good time.”

“No dread disease?”

“No. She danced so much I doubt she even had time to tell him of the sorrows of her youth and how awful her parents were.” Miranda didn’t crack a smile when she relayed this observation but her eyes twinkled.

“My, my, doesn’t he have something to look forward to: ‘The Life and Times of BoomBoom Craycroft.’ ”

“Don’t worry about her.”

“I’m not.”

“Harry, I’ve known you since you were born. Don’t lie to me. I remember the day you insisted we call you Harry instead of Mary. Funny that you later married Fair Haristeen.”

“You remember everything.”

“I do indeed. You were four years old and you loved your kitty—now let me see, her name was Skippy. You wanted to be furry like Skippy, so you asked us to call you Hairy, which became Harry. You thought if we called you that, you’d get furry and turn into a kitty. Name stuck.”

“What a great cat Skippy was.”

This aroused Mrs. Murphy from her half-slumberous state. “Not as great as the Murphy!”

“Ha!” Tucker laughed.

“Shut up, Tucker. There was a dog before you, you know. A German shepherd. His photo is on the desk at home, for your information.”

“Big deal.”

“Playtime.” Harry heard the meows and thought Mrs. Murphy wanted a push in the mail bin. Although it wasn’t what the cat was talking about, she happily rolled around in the canvas-bottomed cart.

Mrs. Hogendobber unlocked the front door. She no sooner turned the key than Blair appeared, wearing a heavy red Buffalo-checked jacket over a flannel shirt. He rubbed his boots over the scraper.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hogendobber. I enjoyed our dance last night. You float over the floor.”

Mrs. Hogendobber blushed. “Why, what a sweet thing to say.”

Blair stepped right up to the counter. “Harry.”

“No packages.”

“I don’t want any packages. I want your attention.”

He got Mrs. Hogendobber’s too.

“Okay.” Harry leaned over the other side of the counter. “My full attention.”

“I’ve been told there are furniture and antique auctions on the weekends. Will you tell me which are the good ones and will you go along with me? I’m getting tired of sitting on the floor.”

“Of course.” Harry liked to help out.

Mrs. Murphy grumbled and then jumped out of the mail bin, sending it clattering across the floor. She hopped up on the counter.

“The other request I have is that you accompany me to a dinner party Little Marilyn is giving for Stafford and Brenda tomorrow night. I know it’s short notice but she called this morning to ask me.”

“What’s the dress?” Harry couldn’t believe her ears.

“I’m going to wear a yellow shirt, a teal tie, and a brown herringbone jacket. Does that help?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Hogendobber answered because she knew Harry was hopeless in these matters.

“I’ve never seen you dressed up, Harry.” Blair smiled. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at seven.” He paused. “I looked for you at the Cancer Ball last night.”

Harry started to say that she wasn’t invited but Mrs. Hogendobber leapt into this breach. “Harry had another engagement. She’s kept so busy.”

“Oh. Well, I wanted to dance with you.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “That Craycroft woman is a real motormouth. Never stopped talking about herself. I know it isn’t gallant of me to criticize someone who made such an effort to have me meet people, but jeez”—he let out his breath—“she likes to party.”

Both Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber tried to conceal their delight at this comment.

“BoomBoom knows you’re rich,” Mrs. Murphy piped up. “Plus you’re single, good-looking, and she’s not above driving Fair crazy with you, either.”

“She has a lot to say this morning, doesn’t she?” Blair patted Mrs. Murphy’s head.

“You bet, buster. Stick with me, I’ll give you the scoop on everybody.”

Blair laughed. “Now, Murphy—I mean, Mrs. Murphy; how rude of me—you promised to help me find a friend exactly like you.”

“I’m going to throw up,” Tucker mumbled from the floor.

Blair picked up his mail, got to the door, and stopped. “Harry?”

“What?”

He held up his hands in entreaty. Mrs. Hogendobber kicked Harry behind the counter. Blair couldn’t see this.

“Oh, yes, I’d love to go.”

“Seven tomorrow.” He left, whistling.

“That hurt. I’ll have a bruised ankle tomorrow.”

“You have no sense when it comes to men!” Miranda exclaimed.

“I wonder what got into him?” Harry’s gaze followed him to his truck.

“Yours is not to reason why. Yours is but to do and die.”

Just then Susan sauntered in through the back door. “‘Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred.’ ”

“Blair Bainbridge just asked her to a dinner party at the Hamiltons’ tomorrow night and he wants her to take him to some auctions.”

“Yahoo!” Susan clapped her hands together. “Good work, girl.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Susan, help me with her. She nearly told him she didn’t have a date for the Cancer Ball. She’s going to iron her jeans for the dinner party and think she’s dressed. This calls for action.”

Miranda and Susan looked at each other and then both looked at Harry. Before she knew it, each one grabbed an arm and she was propelled out the back door and thrown into Susan’s car.

“Hey, hey, I can’t leave work.”

“I’ll take care of everything, dear.” Miranda slammed shut the door as Susan cranked the motor.

30

The Allied National Bank overlooked Benjamin Seifert’s tardiness. No one called Cabell Hall to report Ben’s absence. If Ben had found out about such a call the perpetrator wouldn’t have kept his job for long. Often on the run and not the most organized man in the office, Benjamin might have made morning appointments without notifying the secretary. Ben, a bright light at Allied, could look forward to taking over the huge new branch being built on Route 29N in Charlottesville, so no one wanted to get on his bad side. The more astute workers realized that his ambitions extended beyond the new branch at 29N.

When he didn’t phone in after lunch the little group thought it odd. By three, Marion Molnar was worried enough to call his home. No answer. Benjamin, divorced, often stayed out into the wee hours. No hangover lasted this long.

By five, everyone expressed concern. They dialed Rick Shaw, who said he’d check around. Just about the time Marion called, so did Yancey Mills, owner of the little gas station. He recognized Benjamin’s car. He’d figured something was wrong with it and that Benjamin would call in. But it was near to closing time and he hadn’t heard anything and there was no answer at Ben’s house.

Rick sent Cynthia Cooper over to the gas station. She checked out the car. Seemed fine. Neither she nor Rick pressed the panic button but they routinely called around. Cynthia called Ben’s parents. By now she was getting a bit alarmed. If they found no trace of him by morning they’d start looking for him. What if Ben had refused a loan, or the bank had foreclosed, and someone had it in for him? It seemed far-fetched, but then nothing was normal anymore.

31

It was her face reflecting back from the mirror, but Harry needed time to get used to it. The new haircut revealed those high cheekbones, full lips, and strong jaw so reminiscent of her mother’s family, the Hepworths. The clear brown Minor eyes looked back at her too. Like everyone else in Crozet, Harry combined the traits of her parents, a genetic testimony to the roulette of human breeding. The luck held in her case. For others, some of them friends, this wasn’t true. Multiple sclerosis haunted generation after generation of one Crozet family; others never escaped the snares of cancer; still others inherited a marked tendency to drink or drugs. The older she got the luckier she felt.

As she focused on the mirror she recalled her mother seated before this very mirror, paint pots out, lipsticks marshaled like stubby soldiers, powder puffs lurking like peach-colored land mines. Much as Grace Hepworth Minor had harassed, wheedled, and bribed her sole child, Harry steadfastly refused the lure of feminine artifice. She was too young then to articulate her steely rejection of the commercialization of womanness. All she knew was that she didn’t want to do it, and no one could make her. As years sped by, this instinctual rejection was examined. Harry realized that she thought she was clean and neat in appearance, healthy, and outgoing. If a man needed that fake stuff, in her opinion he wasn’t much of a man. She was determined to be loved for herself and not because she’d paid out good money to fit the current definition of femininity. Then again, Harry never felt the need to prove that she was feminine. She felt feminine and that was enough for her. It ought to be enough for him. In the case of Fair it turned out to be enough for a while.

In this respect BoomBoom and Harry represented the two poles of female philosophy. Maybe it was why they never could get along. BoomBoom averaged one thousand dollars each month on her upkeep. She was waxed, dyed, massaged. She was awash in nutrients which took into account her special hormonal needs. At least that’s what the bottles said. She dieted constantly. She thought nothing of flying to New York to shop. Then the bills truly rolled in. One pair of crocodile shoes from Gucci was $1,200. Sleek, up-to-date, and careful to cover any flaws, real or imagined, BoomBoom represented a triumph of American cosmetics, fashion, and elective surgery. Her self-centeredness, fed by this culture, blossomed into solipsism of the highest degree. BoomBoom marketed herself as an ornament. In time she became one. Many men chased after that ornament.

When Harry inspected the new Harry, courtesy of the strong-arm tactics of Miranda and Susan, she was relieved to see a lot of the old Harry. Okay, blusher highlighted those cheeks, lipstick warmed her mouth, but nothing too extreme. No nasty eyeshadow covered her lids. The mascara only accentuated her already long black lashes. She looked like herself, only maybe more so. She was trying to make sense of it, trying to like the simple suede skirt and silk shirt that Susan had forced her to buy upon pain of death. Spending is worse than pain, she thought; it lasts longer.

Too late now. The check had been written, the merchandise carried home. No more time to fret over it anyway because Blair was knocking at the front door.

She opened it.

He studied Harry. “You’re the only woman I know who looks as good in jeans as in a skirt. Come on.”

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker stood on the back of the sofa and watched the humans motor down the driveway.

“What do you think?” Tucker asked the cat.

“She looks hot.” Mrs. Murphy batted Tucker. “Aren’t you glad we don’t have to wear clothes? Wouldn’t you look adorable in a little gingham dress?”

“And you’d have to wear four bras.” Tucker nudged Mrs. Murphy in the ribs, nearly knocking her off the sofa.

That appealed to Mrs. Murphy’s demented sense of humor. She rocketed off the back of the sofa, calling for the dog to chase her. She dashed straight for the wall, enticing Tucker to think that she was trapped, and then hit the wall with all fours, banking off it, sailing right over Tucker’s head while the dog skidded into the wall with a hard bump. Mrs. Murphy performed this maneuver with a demonic sense of purpose. Enraged, Tucker’s feet spun so fast under her that she shook like a speeded-up movie. Around and around they ripped and tore until finally, as Tucker charged under an end table and Mrs. Murphy pranced on top of it, the lamp on the table teetered and tottered, only to wobble on its base and smash onto the floor. The crash scared them and they flew into the kitchen. After a few moments of quiet they ventured out.

“Uh-oh,” Tucker said.

“Well, she needed a new lamp anyway. This one had gray hairs.”

“She’ll blame me for it.” Tucker already felt persecuted.

“As soon as we hear the truck, we’ll hide under the bed. That way she can rant and rave and get it out of her system. She’ll be over it by tomorrow morning.”

“Good idea.”

32

“The meringue tarts.” Little Marilyn triumphantly nodded to Tiffany to serve the dessert.

Little Marilyn practiced nouvelle cuisine. Big Marilyn followed suit, which was the first time mother had imitated daughter. Jim Sanburne complained that nouvelle cuisine was a way to feed people less. Bird food, he called it. Fortunately, Big Marilyn and Jim weren’t invited to the small dinner tonight. Cabell Hall was, though. Fitz continually flattered the important banker, his justification being that three years ago Cabell had introduced him to Marilyn. Little Marilyn’s septic personality had been somewhat sweetened by the absence of her maternal unit, so she, too, showered attention on Cabell and Taxi.

“Tell Blair how you were nicknamed Taxi.” Little Marilyn beamed at the older woman.

“Oh, that. He doesn’t want to hear that.” Taxi smiled.

“Yes, I do.” Blair encouraged her as Cabby watched with affection his wife of nearly three decades.

“Cabell is called Cabby. Fine and good but when the children were little I hauled them to school. I picked them up from school. I carried them to the doctor, the dentist, Little League, dance lessons, piano lessons, and tennis lessons. One day I came home dog tired and ready to bite. My husband, just home from his own hard day, wanted to know how I could be so worn out from doing my duties as a housewife. I explained in vivid terms what I’d been doing all day and he said I should start a local taxi service, as I already ran one for my own children. The name stuck. It’s sexier than Florence.”

“Honey, you’d be sexy if your name were Amanda,” Cabby praised her.

“What’s wrong with the name Amanda?” Brenda Sanburne asked.

“Miss Amanda Westover was the feared history teacher at my prep school,” her husband told her. “She taught Cabell, me—she may have even taught Grandfather. Mean.” Stafford Sanburne and Cabell Hall were both Choate graduates.

“Not as mean as my predecessor at the bank.” Cabell winked.

“Artie Schubert.” Little Marilyn tried to recall a face. “Wasn’t it Artie Schubert?”

“You were too young to remember.” Taxi patted Little Marilyn’s bejeweled hand. “He made getting a loan a most unpleasant process, or so I heard. Cabby and I were still in Manhattan at the time and he was approached by a board member of Allied National to take over the bank. Well, Richmond seemed like the end of the earth—”

Cabby interrupted: “It wasn’t that bad.”

“What happened was that we fell in love with central Virginia, so we bought a house here and Cabby commuted to work every day.”

“Still do. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays I’m at the branch in the downtown mall in Charlottesville. Do you know that in the last ten years or so our growth rate has exceeded that of every other bank in the state of Virginia—by percentage, of course. We’re still a small bank when compared to Central Fidelity, or Crestar, or Nations Bank.”

“Darling, this is a dinner party, not a stockholders’ meeting.” Taxi laughed. “Is it obvious how much my husband loves his job?”

As the guests agreed with Taxi and speculated on how people find the work that suits them, Fitz-Gilbert asked Blair, “Will you be attending opening hunt?”

Blair turned to Harry. “Will I be attending opening hunt?”

Stafford leaned toward Blair. “If she won’t take you, I will. You see, Harry will probably be riding tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you help me get ready in the morning and then you can meet everyone there?” Harry’s voice registered nothing but innocence.

This drew peals of laughter from the others, even Brenda Sanburne, who knew enough to realize that getting ready for a fox hunt can be a nerve-racking experience.

“Nice try, Harry.” Fitz-Gilbert toasted in her direction.

“Now my curiosity’s got the better of me. What time do I have to be at your barn?”

Harry twirled her fork. “Seven-thirty.”

“That’s not so bad,” Blair rejoined.

“If you drink enough tonight it will be,” Stafford promised.

“Don’t even mention it.” Fitz-Gilbert put his hand to his forehead.

“I’ll say. You’ve been getting snookered lately. This morning when I woke up, what a sorry face I saw.” Little Marilyn pursed her lips.

“Did you know, Blair, that Virginia is home to more fox-hunting clubs than any other state in the Union? Nineteen in all—two in Albemarle County,” Cabell informed him. “Keswick on the east side and Farmington on the west side.”

“No, I didn’t know that. I guess there are a lot of foxes. What’s the difference between the two clubs here? Why don’t they have just one large club?”

Harry answered, a wicked smile on her face, “Well, you see, Blair, Keswick Hunt Club is old, old, old Virginia money living in old, old, old Virginia homes. Farmington Hunt Club is old, old, old Virginia money that’s subdivided.”

This caused a whoop and a shout. Stafford nearly choked on his dessert.

Once recovered from this barb, the small group discussed New York, the demise of the theater, a topic creating lively debate, since Blair didn’t think theater was pooping out and Brenda did. Blair told some funny modeling stories which were enlivened by his talent for mimicry. Everyone decided the stock market was dismal so they’d wait out the bad times.

After dessert, the women moved over to the window seat in the living room. Brenda liked Harry. Many white people were likable but you couldn’t really trust them. Even though she knew her but slightly, Brenda felt she could trust Harry. In her odd way, the postmistress was color blind. What you saw with Harry was what you got and Brenda truly appreciated that. Whenever a white person said, “I’m not prejudiced myself . . . ,” you knew you were in trouble.

The men retired to the library for brandy and Cuban cigars. Fitz-Gilbert prided himself on the contraband and wouldn’t divulge his source. Once you smoked a Montecristo, well, there was no looking back.

“One day you’ll spill the beans.” Stafford passed the cigar under his nose, thrilling to the beguiling scent of the tobacco.

Cabell laughed. “When hell freezes over. Fitz can keep a secret.”

“The only reason you guys are nice to me is because of my cigars.”

“That and the fact that you were first oar for Andover.” Stafford puffed away.

“You look more like a wrestler than a first oar.” Blair, too, surrendered to the languor the cigar produced.

“I was skinny as a rail when I was a kid.” Fitz patted his small potbelly. “Not anymore.”

“Ever know Binky Colfax when you were at Andover? My class at Yale.”

“Binky Colfax. Valedictorian.” Fitz-Gilbert flipped through his yearbook and handed it to Blair.

“God, it’s a good thing Binky was an academic.” Blair laughed. “You know, he’s in the administration now. An undersecretary in the State Department. When you remember what a wuss the guy was, it makes me fear for our government. I mean, think of it, all those guys we knew at Yale and Harvard and Princeton and . . .”

“Stanford,” Stafford chipped in.

“Do I have to?” Blair asked.

“Uh-huh.” Stafford nodded.

“. . . Stanford. Well, the nerds went into government or research. In ten years’ time those guys will be the bureaucracy serving the guys that will be elected.” Blair shook his head.

“Do you think every generation goes through this? You pick up the paper one day or you watch the six o’clock news and there’s one of the wieners.” Fitz-Gilbert laughed.

“My father—he was Yale ’49—said it used to scare him to death. Then he got used to it,” Blair said.

Cabby chimed in: “Everyone muddles through. Think how I feel. The guys in my class at Dartmouth are starting to retire. Retire? I remember when all we thought about was getting . . .”

He stopped, as his hostess had stuck her head into the library, hand curled around the door frame. “Are you fellows finished yet? I mean, we’ve solved the problems of the world in the last forty-five minutes.”

“Lonesome, honey?” Fitz called to her.

“Oh, an eensie-weensie bit.”

“We’ll be out in a minute.”

“You know, Fitz, I think we must know a lot of people in common since so many of your schoolmates came to Yale. Someday we’ll have to compare notes,” Blair said.

“Yes, I’d like that.” Fitz, distracted by Little Marilyn, wasn’t paying much attention.

“Yale and Princeton. Yeck.” Stafford made a thumbs-down sign.

“And you went to Stanford?” Blair quizzed him.

“Yes. Finance.”

“Ah.” Blair nodded. No wonder Stafford was making so much money as an investment banker, and no wonder Cabell shone smiles upon him. No doubt these two would talk business over the weekend.

“You were smart not to become a lawyer.” Fitz twirled his cigar, the beautiful, understated band announcing MONTECRISTO. “A lawyer is a hired gun, even if it’s tax law. I’ll never know how I passed the bar, I was so bored.”

“There are worse jobs.” Cabell squinted his eyes from the smoke. “You could be a proctologist.”

The men laughed.

The phone rang. Tiffany called out from the kitchen, “Mr. Hamilton.”

“Excuse me.”

As Fitz picked up the phone, Stafford, Cabell, and Blair joined the ladies in the living room. In a few minutes Fitz-Gilbert joined them too.

“Has anyone seen or heard from Benjamin Seifert?”

“No. Why?” Little Marilyn asked.

“He didn’t go to work today. That was Cynthia Cooper. She’s spent the evening calling his business associates and family. Now she’s calling friends and acquaintances. I told them you were here, Cabby. They’d like to talk to you.”

Cabell left the room to pick up the phone.

“He’s out of the office as much as he’s in it,” Harry volunteered, now that Ben’s boss was out of earshot.

“I told him just last week to watch his step, but you know Ben.” Fitz pulled up a chair. “He’ll show up and I bet the story will be a doozie.”

Harry opened her mouth but closed it. She wanted to say “What if this has something to do with the vagrant’s murder?” What if Ben was the killer and skipped town? Realizing Little Marilyn’s sensitivity to the topic, she said nothing.

Harry had forgotten all about Ben Seifert when Blair dropped her at her door. He promised he’d be there at seven-thirty in the morning. She opened the door and turned on the lights. Only one came on. She walked over to the debris on the floor, the lamp cord yanked out of the wall.

“Tucker! Mrs. Murphy!”

The two animals giggled under the bed but they stayed put. Harry walked into the bedroom, knelt down and looked under the bed, and beheld two luminous pairs of eyes staring back at her.

“I know you two did this.”

“Prove it,” was all Mrs. Murphy would say, her tail swaying back and forth.

“I had a wonderful time tonight and I’m not going to let you spoil it.”

It was good that Harry had that attitude. Events would spoil things soon enough.

33

The earth glittered silvery and beige under its cloak of frost. The sun, pale and low in the sky, turned the ground fog into champagne mist. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker curled up in a horse blanket in the tack room and watched Harry groom Tomahawk.

Blair arrived at seven forty-five. As Harry had already brushed and braided Tomahawk, painted his feet with hoof dressing, and brushed him again, she was ready for a clean-up.

“What time did you get up?” Blair admired her handiwork.

“Five-thirty. Same time I always get up. Wish I could sleep past it but I can’t, even if I go to bed at one in the morning.”

“What can I do?”

Harry shed her garage mechanic overalls to reveal her buff breeches. A heavy sweater covered her good white shirt. Her worn boots, polished, leaned against the tack room wall. Her derby, brushed, hung on a tack hook. Harry had earned her colors with the hunt while she was in high school and her ancient black melton coat with its Belgian-blue collar was carefully hung on the other side of the tack hook.

Harry placed a heavy wool cooler over Tomahawk and tied it at the front. Unhooking the crossties, she led him to his stall. “Don’t even think about rubbing your braids, Tommy, and don’t get tangled up in your cooler.” She gave her horse a pat on the neck. “Tommy’ll be good but I always remind him, just in case,” she said to Blair. “Come on, everything’s done. Let’s get some coffee.”

After a light breakfast, Blair watched Harry replace Tomahawk’s square cooler with a fitted wool dress sheet, put on his leather shipping halter, and load him into her two-horse gooseneck, which, like the truck, was showing its age but still serviceable. He hopped in the cab, camera in his coat pocket, ready for the meet.

He was beginning to appreciate Harry’s make-do attitude as he perceived how little money she really had. False pride about possessions wasn’t one of her faults but pride about making her own way was. She wouldn’t ask for help, and as the blue bomb chugged along he realized what a simple gift it would have been for him to offer the use of his dually to pull her rig. If he had asked politely she might even have let him. Harry was funny. She feared favors, maybe because she lacked the resources to return them, but by Blair’s reckoning she kept her accounts even in her own way.

Opening meet of the hunt brought out everyone who had ever thrown a leg over a horse. Blair couldn’t believe his eyes as Harry pulled into the flat pasture. Horse trailers littered the landscape. There were little tagalongs, two-horse goosenecks, four-horse goosenecks. There were a few semis pulling rigs a family could live in, Imperatore vans with the box built onto the back of the truck, and there was even one of the new Mitsubishi vans, its snub nose exciting both admiration and derision.

Horses, unloaded and tied to the sides of these conveyances, provided splashes of color. Each stable sported its own colors and these were displayed both in the paint jobs of the rigs and on the horses themselves, blanketed in their own special uniforms, the sheets or blankets indicating their allegiances. Harry’s colors were royal-blue and gold, so Tomahawk’s blue wool dress sheet was trimmed in gold and had a braided gold tail cord on the hindquarters. There were coolers and blankets in a myriad of color combinations: hunter-green and red, red and gold, black and red, blue and green, tan and blue, tan and hunter-green, silver and green, sky-blue and white, white and every color, and one cooler was even purple and pink. The purple and pink one belonged to Mrs. Annabelle Milliken, who had ordered a purple and white cooler years ago but the clerk wrote down the wrong colors and Mrs. Milliken was too polite to correct her. After a time everyone became accustomed to the purple and pink combination. Even Mrs. Milliken.

Big Marilyn’s colors were red and gold. Her horse, a shining seal-brown, could have galloped out of a Ben Marshall painting, just as Little Marilyn’s bold chestnut might have trotted out of a George Stubbs.

Harry put on her stock tie, her canary vest, her coat, derby, and deerskin gloves. Using the trailer fender as a mounting block, she swung into the saddle. Blair asked her if she wanted a leg up but she said that she and Tomahawk were used to the do-it-yourself method. Good old Tommy, in a D-ring snaffle, stood quietly, ears pricked. He loved hunting. Blair handed Harry her hunting crop with its long thong and lash just as Jock Fiery rode by and wished her “good hunting.”

As Harry trotted off to hear the words of wisdom from the Joint Masters, Jill Summers and Tim Bishop, Blair found Mrs. Hogendobber. Together they watched the tableau as the Huntsman, Jack Eicher, brought the hounds to the far side of the gathering. Horses, hounds, staff, and field glistened in the soft light. Susan joined the group. She was still struggling with her hairnet, which she dropped. Gloria Fennel, Master of the Hilltoppers, reached in her pocket and gave Susan another hairnet.

Blair turned to Mrs. Hogendobber. “Does everyone ride?”

“I don’t, obviously.” She nodded in the direction of Stafford and Brenda, both of them madly snapping photos. “He used to.”

“Guess I’d better take some lessons.”

“Lynne Beegle.” Mrs. Hogendobber pointed out a petite young lady on a gloriously built thoroughbred. “Whole family rides. She’s a wonderful teacher.”

Before Blair could ask more questions, the staff, which consisted of three Whippers-In, the Huntsman, and the Masters, moved the hounds down to where the pasture dropped off. The field followed.

“The Huntsman will cast the hounds.”

Blair heard a high-pitched “Whooe, whoop whoop, whooe.” The sounds made no sense to him but the hounds knew what to do. They fanned out, noses to the ground, sterns to heaven. Soon a deep-throated bitch named Streisand gave tongue. Another joined her and then another. The chorus sent a chill down Blair’s spine. The animal in him overrode his overdeveloped brain. He wanted to hunt too.

So did Mrs. Hogendobber, as she motioned for him to follow on foot. Mrs. H. knew every inch of the western part of the county. An avid beagler, she could divine where the hounds would go and could often find the best place to watch. Mrs. H. explained to Blair that beagling was much like fox hunting except that the quarry was rabbits and the field followed on foot. Blair gained a new respect for Mrs. Hogendobber. Rough terrain barely slowed her down.

They reached a large hill from which they could see a long, low valley. The hounds, following the fox’s line, streaked across the meadow. The Field Master, the staff member in charge of maintaining order and directing the field, led the hunt over the first of a series of coops—a two-sided, slanted panel, jumpable from both directions. It was a solidly imposing three feet three inches high.

“Is that Harry?” Blair pointed to a relaxed figure floating over the coop.

“Yes. Susan’s in her pocket and Mim isn’t far behind.”

“Hard to believe Mim would endure the discomforts of fox hunting.”

“For all her fussiness that woman is tough as nails. She can ride.” Mrs. Hogendobber folded her arms in front of her. Big Marilyn’s seal-brown gelding seemed to step over the coop. The obstacle presented no challenge.

As the pace increased, Harry smiled. She loved a good run but she was grateful for the first check. They held up and the Huntsman recast the hounds so they could regain the line. Joining her in the first flight were the Reverend Herbert Jones, dazzling in his scarlet frock coat, or “pinks”; Carol, looking like an enchantress in her black jacket with its Belgian-blue collar and hunt cap; Big Marilyn and Little Marilyn, both in shadbelly coats and top hats, the hunt’s colors emblazoned on the collars of their tailed cutaways; and Fitz-Gilbert in his black frock coat and derby. Fitz had not yet earned his colors, so he did not have the privilege of festooning himself in pinks. The group behind them ran up and someone yelled, “Hold hard!” and the followers came to a halt. As Harry glanced around her she felt a surge of affection for these people. On foot she could have boxed Mim’s ears but on a horse the social tyrant didn’t have the time to tell everyone what to do.

Within moments the hounds had again found the line, and giving tongue, they soon trotted off toward the rough lands formerly owned by the first Joneses to settle in these parts.

A steep bank followed a bold creek. Harry heard the hounds splashing through the water. The Field Master located the best place to ford, which, although steep, provided good footing. It was either that or slide down rocks or get stuck in a bog. The horses picked their way down to the creek. Harry, one of the first to the creek, saw a staff member’s horse suddenly plunge in up to his belly. She quickly pulled her feet up onto the skirts of her saddle, just in the nick of time. A few curses behind her indicated that Fitz-Gilbert hadn’t been so quick and now suffered from wet feet.

No time to worry, for once on the other side the field tore after the hounds. Susan, right behind Harry, called out, “The fence ahead. Turn sharp right, Harry.”

Harry had forgotten how evil that fence was. It was like an airplane landing strip but without the strip. You touched down and you turned, or else you crashed into the trees. Tomahawk easily soared over the fence. In the air and as she landed Harry pressed hard with her left leg and opened her right rein, holding her hand away from and to the side of Tommy’s neck. He turned like a charm and so did Susan’s horse right on her heels. Mim boldly took the fence at an angle so she didn’t have to maneuver as much. Little Marilyn and Fitz made it. Harry didn’t look over her shoulder to see who made it after that because she was moving so fast that tears were filling her eyes.

They thundered along the wood’s edge and then found a deer path through the thick growth. Harry hated galloping through woods. She always feared losing a kneecap but the pace was too good and there wasn’t time to worry about it. Also, Tomahawk was handy at weaving in and out through the trees and did a pretty good job keeping his sides, and Harry’s legs, away from the trunks. The field wove its way through the oaks, sweet gums, and maples to emerge on a meadow, undulating toward the mountains. Harry dropped the reins on Tomahawk’s neck and the old boy flew. His joy mingled with her joy. Susan drew alongside, her dappled gray running with his ears back. He always did that. Didn’t mean much except it sometimes scared people who didn’t know Susan or the horse.

A three-board fence, interrupted by a three-foot-six coop, hove into view. Before she knew it Harry had landed on the other side. The pace and the cold morning air burned her lungs. She could see Big Marilyn out of the corner of her left eye. Standing in her stirrup irons with her hands well up her gelding’s neck, Mim urged on her steed. She was determined to overtake Harry. A horse race, and what a place for it! Harry glanced over at Mim, who glanced back. Clods of earth spewed into the air. Susan, not one to drop back, stayed right with them. A big jump with a drop on the other side beckoned ahead. The Field Master cleared it. Mim’s horse inched in front of Tomahawk. Harry carefully dropped behind Mim’s thoroughbred. It wouldn’t do to take a jump in tandem unplanned. Mim soared over with plenty of daylight showing underneath her horse’s belly. Harry let the weight sink into her heels, preparing to absorb the shock of the drop on the other side, and flew over it, though her heart was in her mouth. Those jumps with a drop on the other side made you feel as if you were airborne forever and the landing often came as a jarring surprise.

A steep hill rose before them and they rode up it, little stones clattering underneath. They pulled up at the crest. The hounds had lost the line again.

“Good run.” Mim smiled. “Good run, Harry.”

Mrs. Hogendobber and Blair drove in her Falcon to where she thought the run would go. The old car nosed into a turnaround. She sprang out of the vehicle. “Hurry up!”

Blair, breathing hard, followed her up another large hill, this one with a commanding view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His eyes moved in the direction of her pointing finger.

“That’s the first of Crozet’s tunnels, way up there. This is the very edge of Farmington’s territory.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, there’s a national association that divides up the territory. No one can hunt up in the mountains, too rough really, but on the other side the territory belongs to another hunt, Glenmore, I think. To our north it’s Rappahannock, then Old Dominion; to the east, Keswick and then Deep Run. Think of it like states.”

“I don’t know when I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful. Did the hounds lose the scent?”

“Yes. They’ve checked while the Huntsman casts the hounds. Think of it like casting a net with a nose for fox. Good pack too. As fleet as sound.”

Far, far in the distance she heard the strange cry of a hound.

Down at the check, all heads turned.

Fitz, now winded, whispered to Little Marilyn, “Honey, can we go in soon?”

“You can.”

“This terrain is really pretty rugged. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“I’m not alone and I’m a better rider than you are,” Little Marilyn informed him, somewhat haughtily but still in a whisper.

The Huntsman followed the cry of his lone hound. The pack moved toward the call. The Field Master waited for a moment, then motioned for the field to move off. The sweet roll of earth crunched up. More rock outcroppings challenged the sure-footedness of the horses.

“We’re about out of real estate,” Harry said to Susan. She kept her voice low. It was irritating to strain to hear the hounds and have someone chattering behind you. She didn’t want to bother any of the others.

“Yeah, he’ll have to pull the hounds back.”

“We’re heading toward the tunnel,” Mim stated.

“Can’t go there. And we shouldn’t. Who knows what’s up there? That’s all we need, for a bear or something to jump out of the tunnel and scare the bejesus out of these horses.” Little Marilyn wasn’t thrilled at the prospect.

“Well, we can’t go up there, that’s for sure. Anyway, the Chesapeake and Ohio sealed up the tunnel,” Fitz-Gilbert added.

“Yes, but Kelly Craycroft opened it up again.” Susan referred to Kelly Craycroft’s clever reopening and camouflaging of the tunnel. “Wonder if the railroad did seal it back up?”

“I don’t want to find out.” Fitz’s horse was getting restive.

The cry of the lone hound soon found answers. The pack worked its way toward the tunnel. The Field Master held back the field. The Huntsman stopped. He blew his horn but only some of the hounds returned as they were bidden. The stray hound cried and cried. A few others now joined in this throaty song.

“Letting me down. Those hounds are letting me down,” the Huntsman, shamed by their disobedience, moaned to a Whipper-In who rode along with him to get the hounds back in line.

The Whipper-In flicked the lash at the end of his whip after a straggler, who shuttled back to the pack. “Deer? But they haven’t run deer. Except for Big Lou.”

“That’s not Big Lou up there though.” The Huntsman moved toward the sound. “Well, come along with me and we’ll see if we can’t get those babies back down before they ruin a good day’s hunting.”

The two staff horses picked their way through the unforgiving terrain. They could now see the tunnel. The hounds sniffed and worried at the entrance. A huge turkey vulture flew above them, swooped down on an air current, bold as brass, and disappeared into the tunnel.

“Damn,” the Whip exclaimed.

The Huntsman blew his horn. The Whipper-In made good use of his whip but the animals kept speaking. They weren’t confused; they were upset.

As this had never happened before to the Huntsman in his more than thirty years of hunting, he dismounted and handed his reins to the Whip. He walked toward the entrance. The vulture emerged, another in its wake. The Huntsman noticed hunks of rancid meat dangling from their beaks. He caught a whiff of it too. As he neared the tunnel entrance he caught another blast, much stronger. The hounds whined now. One even rolled over and showed its belly. The Huntsman noticed that some stones had fallen away from the entrance. The odor of decay, one he knew well from life in the country, seeped out of the hole full bore. He kicked at the stones and a section rolled away. The railroad had neglected to reclose the entrance after all. He squinted, trying to see into the darkness, but his nose told him plenty. It was a second or two before he recognized that the dead creature was a human being. He involuntarily stepped back. The hounds whined pitifully. He called them away from the tunnel, swaying a bit as he came out into the light.

“It’s Benjamin Seifert.”

34

A sensuous Georgian tea service glowed on the long mahogany sideboard. Exquisite blue and white teacups, which had been brought over from England in the late seventeenth century, surrounded the service. A Hepplewhite table, loaded with ham biscuits, cheese omelettes, artichoke salad, hard cheeses, shepherd’s pie, and fresh breads commanded the center of the dining room. Brownies and pound cake rounded out the offerings.

Susan had knocked herself out for the hunt breakfast. The excited hum of voices, ordinarily the sign of a successful hunt, meant something different today.

After the Huntsman identified Ben Seifert he rode with the Whip down to the Masters, the Field Master, and the other Whips. They decided to lift the hounds and return to the kennels. Not until everyone was safely away from the tunnel and had arrived at the breakfast did the Masters break the news.

After caring for the hounds, the Huntsman and the Whip who’d accompanied him to the grisly site returned to the tunnel to help Rick Shaw and Cynthia Cooper.

Despite the dolorous news, appetites drove the riders and their audience to the table. The food disappeared and Susan filled up the plates and bowls again. Her husband, Ned, presided over the bar.

Big Marilyn, seated in an apricot-colored wing chair, balanced her plate on her knees. She hated buffets for that very reason. Mim wanted to sit at the table. Herbie and Carol sat on the floor along with Harry, Blair, and BoomBoom, who was making a point of being charming.

Cabell and Taxi arrived late and were told the news by a well-meaning person. They were so shocked they left for home.

Fair hung back at the food table. He noticed the gathering on the floor and brought desserts for everyone, including his ex-wife. Fitz-Gilbert and Little Marilyn joined Mim. Mrs. Hogendobber wouldn’t sit on the floor in her skirt so she grabbed the other wing chair, a soothing mint-green.

“Miranda.” Big Marilyn speared some omelette. “Your views.”

“Shall we judge society by its malcontents?”

“And what do you mean by that?” Big Marilyn demanded before Mrs. Hogendobber could take another breath.

“I mean Crozet will be in the papers again. Our shortcomings will be trumpeted hither and yon. We’ll be judged by these murders instead of by our good citizens.”

“That’s not what I was asking.” Mim zeroed in. “Who do you think killed Ben Seifert?”

“We don’t know that he was murdered yet.” Fitz-Gilbert spoke up.

“Well, you don’t think he walked up to that tunnel and killed himself, do you? He’d be the last person to commit suicide.”

“What do you think, Mim?” Susan knew her guest was bursting to give her views.

“I think when money passes hands it sometimes sticks to fingers. We all know that Ben Seifert and the work ethic were unacquainted with one another. Yet he lived extremely well. Didn’t he?” Heads nodded in agreement. “The only person who would have wanted to kill him is his ex-wife and she’s not that stupid. No, he fiddled in someone’s trust. He was the type.”

“Mother, that’s a harsh judgment.”

“I see no need to pussyfoot.”

“He handled many of our trusts, or at least Allied did, so he knew who had what.” Fitz gobbled a brownie. “But Cabell would have had his hide if he thought for an instant that Ben was dishonest.”

“Maybe someone’s trust was running out.” Carol Jones thought out loud. “And maybe that person expected a favor from Ben. What if he didn’t deliver?”

“Or someone caught him with his hand in the till.” The Reverend Jones added his thoughts.

“I don’t think this has anything to do with Ben and sticky fingers.” Harry crossed her legs underneath her. “Ben’s death is tied to that unidentified body.”

“Oh, Harry, that’s a stretch.” Fitz reached for his Bloody Mary.

“It’s a feeling. I can’t explain it.” Harry’s quiet conviction was unsettling.

“You stick to your feelings. I’ll stick to facts,” Fitz-Gilbert jabbed.

Fair spoke up, defending Harry. “I used to think that way, too, but life with Harry taught me to listen to, well, feelings.”

“Well, what do your deeper voices tell you now?” Mim said “deeper” with an impertinent edge.

“That we don’t know much at all,” Harry said firmly. “That now one of us has been killed and we can’t feel so safe in our sleep anymore because we haven’t one clue, one single idea as to motive. Is this a nut who comes out at the full moon? Is it someone with a grudge finally settling the score? Is this a cover-up for something else? Something we can’t begin to imagine? My deeper voice tells me to keep eyes in the back of my head.”

That shut up the room for a moment.

“You’re right.” Herbie placed his plate on the coffee table. “And I am not unconvinced that there may be some satanic element to this. I’ve not spoken of it before because it’s so disturbing. But certain cults do practice ritual killings and how they dispatch their victims is part of the ritual. We have one corpse dismembered, and, well, we don’t know how Ben died.”

“Do we know how the other fellow died?” Little Marilyn asked.

“Blow to the head,” Ned Tucker informed them. “Larry Johnson performed the autopsy and I ran into him after that. I don’t believe, Herbie, that satanic cults usually bash in heads.”

“No, most don’t.”

“So, we’re back to square one.” Fitz got up for another dessert. “We’re not in danger. I bet you when the authorities examine Ben’s books they’ll find discrepancies, or another set of books.”

“Even if this is over misallocation of funds, that doesn’t tell us who killed him or who killed that other man,” Susan stated.

“These murders do have something to do with Satan.” Mrs. Hogendobber’s clear alto voice rang out. “The Devil has sunk his deep claws into someone, and forgive the old expression, but there will be hell to pay.”

35

Long shadows spilled over the graves of Grace and Cliff Minor. The sun was setting, a golden oracle sending tongues of flame up from the Blue Ridge Mountains. The scarlet streaks climbed heavenward and then changed to gold, golden pink, lavender, deep purple, and finally deep Prussian-blue, Night’s first kiss.

Harry wrapped her scarf around her neck as she watched the sun’s last shout on this day. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker sat at her feet. The aching melancholy of the sunset ripped through her with needles of sorrow. She mourned the loss of the sun; she wanted to bathe in rivers of light. Each twilight she would suspend her chores for a moment, to trust that the sun would return tomorrow like a new birth. And this evening that same hope tugged but with a sharper pull. The future is ever blind. The sun would rise but would she?

No one believes she will die; neither her mother nor her father did. Like a game of tag, Death is “it,” and around he chases, touching people who fall to earth. Surely she would get up at dawn; another day would unfold like an opening rose. But hadn’t Ben Seifert believed that also? Losing a parent, wrenching and profound, felt very different to Harry than losing a peer. Benjamin Seifert graduated from Crozet High School one year ahead of Harry. This time Death had tagged someone close to her—at least close in age.

A terrible loneliness gnawed at Harry. Those tombstones covered the two people who gave her life. She remembered their teachings, she remembered their voices, and she remembered their laughter. Who would remember them when she was gone, and who would hold the memory of her life? Century after century the human race lurched two steps forward and one step back, but always there were good people, funny people, strong people, and their memories washed away with the ages. Kings and queens received a mention in the chronicles, but what about the horse trainers, the farmers, the seamstresses? What about the postmistresses and stagecoach drivers? Who would hold the memory of their lives?

The loneliness filled her. If she could have, she would have embraced every life and cherished it. As it was, she was struggling on with her own.

Harry began to fear the coming years. Formerly, time was her ally. Now she wasn’t so sure. If death could snatch you in an instant, then life had better be lived to the fullest. The worst thing would be to go down in the grave without having lived.

The bite of the night’s air made her fingertips tingle and her toes hurt. She whistled to Tucker and Mrs. Murphy and started back for the house.

Harry was not by nature an introspective person. She liked to work. She liked to see the results of her work. Deeper thoughts and philosophic worries were for other people. But after today’s jolt Harry turned inward, if only for a brief moment, and was suffused with life’s sadness and harmony.