Rest In Pieces

55

Four bags of sweet feed, four bags of dog crunchies, and four bags of cat crunchies, plus two cases of canned cat food astounded Harry. Blair unloaded his Explorer to her protests that she couldn’t accept such gifts. He told her she could stand there and complain or she could help unload and then make them cocoa. She chose the latter.

Inside, as they sipped their chocolate drinks, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small light-blue box.

“Here, Harry, you deserve this.”

She untied the white satin ribbon. TIFFANY CO. in black letters jumped out at her from the middle of the blue box. “I’m afraid to open this.”

“Go on.”

She lifted the lid and found a dark-blue leather box with TIFFANY written in gold. She opened that to behold an exquisitely beautiful pair of gold and blue-enameled earrings nestled in the white lining. “Oh,” was all she could say.

“Your colors are blue and gold, aren’t they?”

She nodded yes and carefully removed the earrings. She put them in her ears and looked at herself in the mirror. “These are beautiful. I don’t deserve this. Why do you say I deserve this? It’s . . . well, it’s . . .”

“Take them, Mom. You look great,” Murphy advised.

“Yeah, it was bad enough you tried to give back our crunchies. You need something pretty,” Tucker chimed in.

Blair admired the effect. “Terrific.”

“Are you sure you want to give me these?”

“Of course I’m sure. Harry, I’d be lost out here without you. I thought I was hardworking and reasonably intelligent but I would have made a lot more mistakes without you and I would have spent a lot more money. You’ve been helpful to someone you hardly know, and given the circumstances, I’m grateful.”

“What circumstances?”

“The body in the graveyard.”

“Oh, that.” Harry laughed. She’d thought he was talking about BoomBoom. “I don’t mean that quite the way it sounds, Blair, but I’m not worried about you. You’re not killer material.”

“Under the right—or perhaps I should say wrong—circumstances I think anyone could be killer material, but I appreciate your kindness to a stranger. Wasn’t it Blanche DuBois who said, ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’?”

“And it was my mother who said, ‘Many hands make light work.’ Neighbors help one another to make light work. I was glad to do it. It was good for me. I learned that I knew something.”

“What do you mean?”

“I take bush-hogging, knowing when to plant, knowing how to worm a horse, those kinds of things, as a given. Helping you made me realize I’m not so dumb after all.”

“Girls who go to Seven Sisters colleges are rarely dumb.”

“Ha.” Harry exploded with mirth and so did Blair.

“Okay, so there are some dumb Smithies and Holy Jokers but then, there are some abysmal Old Blues and Princeton men too.”

“Have you ever tracked, after a snow?” Harry changed the subject, since she didn’t like to talk about herself or emotions.

“No.”

“I’ve got my father’s old snowshoes. Want to go out?”

“Sure.”

Within minutes the two suited up and left the house. Not much sunlight remained.

“These snowshoes take some getting used to.” Blair picked up a foot.

They trekked into the woods where Harry showed him bobcat and deer tracks. The deer followed air currents. Seeing these things and smelling the air, feeling the difference in temperature along the creek and above it, Blair began to appreciate how intelligent animal life is. Each species evolved a way to survive. If humans humbled themselves to learn, they might be able to better their own lives.

They moved up into the foothills behind Blair’s property. Harry was making a circle, keeping uppermost in her mind that light was limited. She put her hand on his forearm and pointed up. An enormous snowy owl sat in a walnut tree branch.

She whispered, “They rarely come this far south.”

“My God, it’s huge,” he whispered back.

“Owls and blacksnakes are the best friends a farmer can have. Cats too. They kill the vermin.”

Long pink shadows swept down from the hills, like the skirts of the day swirling in one last dance. Even with snowshoes, walking could be difficult. They both breathed harder as they moved out of the woods. At the edge of the woods Harry stopped. Her blood turned as cold as the temperature. She pointed them out to Blair. Snowshoe footprints. Not theirs.

“Hunters?” Blair said.

“No one hunts here without permission. The MacGregors and Mom and Dad were fierce about that. We used to run Angus, and the MacGregors bred polled Herefords. You can’t take the chance of some damn fool shooting your stock—and they do too.”

“Well, maybe someone wanted to track, like we’re doing.”

“He wanted to track all right.” The sharp cold air filled her lungs. “He wanted to track into the back of your property.”

“Harry, what’s wrong?”

“I think we’re looking at the killer’s tracks. Why he wants to come back here I don’t know, but he dumped hands and legs in your cemetery. Maybe he forgot something.”

“He wouldn’t find it in the snow.”

“I know. That’s why I’m really worried.” She knelt down and examined the tracks. “A man, I think, or a heavy woman.” She stepped next to the track and then picked up her snowshoe. “See how much deeper his track is than mine?”

Blair knelt down also. “I do. If we follow these, maybe we’ll find out where he came from.”

“We’re losing the light.” She pointed to the massing clouds tethered to the peaks of the mountains. “And here comes the next snowstorm.”

“Is there an old road back up in here?”

“Yes, there’s an old logging road from 1937, which was the last time this was select-cut. It’s grown over but he might know it. He could take a four-wheel drive off Yellow Mountain Road and hide it on the logging road. He couldn’t take it far but he could get it out of sight, I reckon.”

A dark shadow, like a blue finger, crept down toward them. The sun was setting. The mixture of clear sky and clouds was giving way to potbellied clouds.

“What would anyone want back up here?” Blair rubbed his nose, which was getting cold.

“I don’t know. Come on, let’s get back.”

In the good weather the walk back to Harry’s would have taken twenty minutes but pushing along through the snow they arrived at Harry’s back door in the dark one hour later. Their eyes were running, their noses were running, but their bodies stayed warm because of the exercise. Harry made more cocoa and grilled cheese sandwiches. Blair gratefully accepted the supper and then left to take care of his kittens.

As soon as he left, Harry called Cynthia Cooper.

Cynthia and Harry knew each other well enough not to waste time. The officer came to the point. “You think someone is after Blair?”

“Why else would someone be up there scoping the place?”

“I don’t know, Harry, but then nothing about these murders makes any sense except for the fact that Ben was up to no good. But just what kind of no good we still don’t know. I think Cabell knows, though. We’ll find him. Ben died a far richer man than he lived. Bet that took discipline.”

“What?”

“Not spending the money.”

“Oh, I never thought of that,” Harry replied. “Look, Coop, is there any way you can put someone out in Blair’s barn? Hide someone? Whoever this is doesn’t intend to barge down his driveway. He’ll sweep down from the mountainside.”

“Harry, can you think of any reason, any reason at all, why someone would want to kill Blair Bainbridge?”

“No.”

A long sigh came through the phone. “Me neither. And I like the guy, but liking someone doesn’t mean they can’t be mixed up in monkey business. We called his mother and father—routine, plus I wondered why he didn’t go home for Christmas or why they didn’t come here. His mother was very pleasant. His father wasn’t rude but I could tell there’s tension there. He disapproves of his son. Calls him a dilettante. No wonder Blair didn’t go home. Anyway, there wasn’t much from them. No red flags went up.”

“Will you put a man out there?”

“I’ll go out myself. Feel better?”

“Yes. I owe you one.”

“No, you don’t. Now sleep tight tonight. Oh, you heard about the dead rat present to Mim?”

“Yeah. That’s odd.”

“I can think of about one hundred people who would like to do that.”

“But would they?”

“No.”

“Are you nervous about this? It’s not over yet. I can feel it in my bones.”

A silence from Coop told Harry what she needed to know. Cynthia finally said, “One way or the other, we’ll figure this out. You take care.”

56

The wind lashed across the meadows in the early morning darkness. Even silk long johns, a cotton T-shirt, a long-sleeved Patagonia shirt, and a subzero down jacket couldn’t stave off the bitter cold. Harry’s fingers and toes ached by the time she reached the barn.

Simon was grateful for the food she brought him. He had stayed in last night. Harry even tossed out some raw hamburger for the owl. Given the mice that crept into the barn when the weather became cruel, Harry needn’t have fed the owl. She dined heartily on what the barn itself could supply, a fact that greatly irritated Mrs. Murphy, who believed that every mouse had her name on it.

When the chores were finished and Harry ventured back out, the wind was blowing harder. She couldn’t see halfway across the meadow, much less over to Blair’s. She was glad she had kept the horses in this morning, even if it would mean more mucking chores.

Tucker and Mrs. Murphy followed on her heels, their heads low, their ears swept back.

“If this ever stops I’m asking the owl to look where those prints were,” Tucker said.

“They’re covered now.” Mrs. Murphy blinked to keep out the snow.

“Who knows what she’ll find? She can see two miles. Maybe more.”

“Oh, Tucker, don’t believe everything she says. She’s such a blowhard, and she probably won’t cooperate.”

Both animals scooted through the door when Harry opened it. The phone was ringing inside. It was seven o’clock.

Cynthia’s voice greeted her “hello” with “Harry, all’s well over here.”

“Good. How was Blair?”

“At first he thought it was silly for me to sleep out in the barn but then he came around.”

“Is he awake yet?”

“Don’t see any lights on in the house. That boy’s got to get himself some furniture.”

“We’re waiting for a good auction.”

“Got enough to eat? I think the electricity might go out and the phone lines might come down if this keeps up.”

“Yeah. Can you get out okay?” Harry asked.

“If not, I’ll spend an interesting day with Blair Bainbridge, I guess.” A distant rumble alerted the young policewoman. “Harry, I’ll call you right back.”

She ran outside and strained her ears. A motor, a deep rumble, cut through even the roar of the wind. The snow was blowing so hard and fast now that Cynthia could barely see. She’d parked her cruiser in front of the house. She heard nothing for a moment and then she heard that deep rumble again. She ran as fast as she could through the deep snow but it was no use. Whoever was rolling down the driveway finally saw the police car and backed out. She ran back into the barn and called Harry.

“Harry, if anyone comes down your driveway other than Susan or Mrs. Hogendobber, call me.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. Listen, I’ve got to get out on the driveway before all the tracks are covered. Do as I say. If I’m not back at the barn, call Blair. If he doesn’t pick up, you call Rick. Hear?”

“I hear.” Harry hung up the phone. She patted Tucker and Mrs. Murphy and was very glad for their sharp ears.

Meanwhile, Cynthia struggled through the blinding snow. She thought she knew where she was going until she bumped into an ancient oak. She’d veered to the right off the driveway. She got back on the driveway again and reached the backup tracks. The tread marks were being covered quickly. If only she had a plaster kit, but she didn’t. By the time she got one this would be gone. She knelt on her hands and knees and puffed away a little snow. Wide tires. Deep snow treads. Tires like that could be on any regular-sized pickup truck or large, heavy, family four-wheel drive like a Wagoneer, a Land Cruiser, or a Range Rover. She hunkered down in the snow and smashed her fist into the powder. It flew up harmlessly. Half of the people in Crozet drove those types of vehicles and the other half drove big trucks.

“Damn, damn, damn!” she shouted out loud, the wind carrying away her curses.

On her way back to the barn she slammed into the corner of the house. There’d be no getting out of Foxden today. She hugged the side of the building and slowly made her way to the back porch. She opened the back door, stepped inside the porch, closed the door behind her, and leaned against it. It wasn’t eight yet and she was exhausted. She could no longer see the barn.

She used the dachshund foot scraper and cleaned off her boots. She unzipped her heavy parka and shook off the snow. She hung it on the hook outside the door to the kitchen.

She stepped into the kitchen and dialed Harry. “You okay?”

“Yeah, no one’s coming down my driveway.”

“Okay, here’s the plan. You can’t get to work today. Mrs. Hogendobber will go in if she can even get down the alleyway. Call her.”

“I’ve never missed a day because of weather.”

“You’re missing today,” Cynthia ordered her. “Blair has that Explorer. We’ll pack up his kittens and him and we’re coming over there. I don’t want you alone, or him alone, for a while anyway.”

“Nobody wants me.”

“You don’t know that. I can’t take any chances. So, I’ll get him up and we’ll be over there within the hour.”

57

“What pests.” Mrs. Murphy flicked her tail away from Jingle Bells, the calico, who was madly chasing it.

“Human babies are worse.” Tucker ignored the gray kitty, Noel, who climbed up one side of her body only to slide down the other screaming “Wheee!”

Harry, Blair, and Cynthia busied themselves making drawings of each room of Blair’s house. Then they drew furniture for each room, cut it out, and fiddled with different placements.

“Have you told us everything?” Cynthia asked again.

“Yes.” Blair pushed a sofa with his forefinger. “Doesn’t go there.”

“What about this, and put a table behind it? Then put the lamps on that.” Harry arranged the pieces.

“What about a soured business deal?” Cynthia asked.

“I told you, the only deal I made was to buy Foxden . . . and the tractor at the auction. If something is on my property that is valuable or germane to the case, don’t you think whoever this is would have taken it?”

“I don’t know,” Cynthia said.

“Whoops,” Harry yelled as the lights went out. She ran to the phone and put the receiver to her ear. “Still working.”

The sky darkened and the wind screamed. The storm continued. Fortunately, Harry kept a large supply of candles. They wouldn’t run out.

After supper they sat around the fireplace and told ghost stories. Although the storm slackened, a stiff wind still rattled the shutters on the house. It was perfect ghost story time.

“Well, I’ve heard that Peter Stuyvesant still walks the church down on Second Avenue in New York. You can hear his peg leg tap on the wood. That’s it for me and ghost stories. I was always the kid who fell asleep around the campfire.” Blair smiled.

“There’s a ghost at Castle Hill.” Cynthia mentioned a beautiful old house on Route 22 in Keswick. “A woman appears carrying a candle in one of the original bedrooms. She’s dressed in eighteenth-century clothing and she tells a guest that they ought not to spend the night. Apparently she has appeared to many guests over the last two hundred years.”

“What? Don’t they meet her social approval?” Harry cracked.

“We know their manners won’t be as good,” Blair said. “Socializing has been in one long downward spiral since the French Revolution.”

“Okay.” Cynthia jabbed at Harry. “Your turn.”

“When Thomas Jefferson was building Monticello, he brought over a Scotsman by the name of Dunkum. This highly skilled man bought land below Carter’s Ridge and he built what is now Brookhill, owned by Dr. Charles Beegle and his family, wife Jean, son Brooks, and daughters Lynne and Christina. The Revolutionary War finally went our way and after that Mr. Dunkum built more homes along the foot of the ridge. You can see them along Route Twenty—simple, clean brick work and pleasing proportions. Anyway, as he prospered, less fortunate relatives came to stay with him, one being a widowed sister, Mary Carmichael. Mary loved to garden and she laid out the garden tended today by Jean Beegle. One hot summer day Jean thought she’d run the tractor down the brick path to the mess of vines at the end which had resisted her efforts with the clippers. Jean was determined to wipe them out with the tractor. To her consternation, no sooner did she plunge into the vines than she dropped into a cavity. The tractor didn’t roll over—it just sat in the middle of a hole in the earth. When Jean looked down she beheld a coffin. Needless to say, Jean Beegle burnt the wind getting off that tractor.

“Well, Chuck borrowed a tractor from Johnny Haffner, the tractor man, and together the two men pulled out the Beegles’ tractor. Curiosity got the better of them and they jumped back into the grave and opened the casket. The skeleton of a woman was inside and even a few tatters of what must have been a beautiful dress. A wave of guilt washed over both Chuck and Johnny as they closed up the coffin and returned the lady to her eternal slumbers. Then they filled in the cavity.

“That night a loud noise awakened Jean. She heard someone shout three times. Someone—a voice she didn’t recognize—was calling her. ‘Jean Ritenour Beegle, Jean, come to the garden.’

“Well, Jean’s bedroom didn’t have a window on that side, so she went downstairs. She wasn’t afraid, because it was a woman’s voice. I would have been afraid, I think. Anyway, she walked out into her garden and there stood a tall well-figured woman.

“She said, ‘My name is Mary Carmichael and I died here in 1791. As I loved the garden, my brother buried me out here and planted a rosebush over my grave. When he died the new owners forgot that I was buried here and didn’t tend to my rosebush. I died in the kitchen, which used to be in the basement of the house. The fireplace was large and it was so cold. They kept me down there.’

“Jean asked if there was anything she could do to make Mary happy.

“The ghost replied, ‘Plant a rosebush over my grave. I love pink roses. And you know, I built a trellis, which I put up between the two windows.’ She pointed to the windows facing the garden, which would be the parlor. ‘If it would please you and it does look pretty, put up a white trellis and train some yellow tearoses to climb it.’

“So Jean did that, and she says that in the summers on a moonlit night she sometimes sees Mary walking in the garden.”

As the humans continued their ghost stories, Mrs. Murphy gathered the two kittens around her. “Now, Noel and Jingle, let me tell you about a dashing cat named Dragoon. Back in the days of our ancestors . . .”

“When’s that?” the gray kitten mewed.

“Before we were a country, back when the British ruled. Way back then there was a big handsome cat who used to hang around with a British officer, so they called him Dragoon. Oh, his whiskers were silver and his paws were white, his eyes the brightest green, and his coat a lustrous red. The humans had a big ball one night and Dragoon came. He saw a young white Angora there, wearing a blue silk ribbon as a collar. He walked over to her as other cats surrounded her, so great was her beauty. And he talked to her and wooed her. She said her name was Silverkins. He volunteered to walk Silverkins home. They walked through the streets of the town and out into the countryside. The crickets chirped and the stars twinkled. As they neared a little stone cottage with a graveyard on the hill, the pretty cat stopped.

“‘I’ll be leaving you here, Dragoon, for my old mother lives inside and I don’t want to wake her.’ Saying that, she scampered away.

“Dragoon called after her, ‘I’ll come for you tomorrow.’

“All the next day Dragoon couldn’t keep his mind on his duties. He thought only of Silverkins. When night approached he walked through the town, ignoring the catcalls of his carousing friends. He walked out on the little country path and soon arrived at the stone cottage. He knocked at the door and an old cat answered.

“‘I’ve come to call on Silverkins,’ he said to the old white cat.

“‘Don’t jest with me, young tom,’ the old lady cat snarled.

“‘I’m not jesting,’ said he. ‘I walked her home from the ball last evening.’

“‘You’ll find my daughter up on the hill.’ The old cat pointed toward the graveyard and then shut the door.

“Dragoon bounded up the hill but no Silverkins was in sight. He called her name. No answer. He leapt from tombstone to tombstone. Not a sign of her. He reached the end of a row of human markers and he jumped onto a small square tombstone. It read, ‘Here lies my pretty pet, Silverkins. Born 1699. Died 1704.’ And there on her grave was her blue silk ribbon.”

The kittens screamed at the end of the story.

Harry glanced over at the scared babies. Mrs. Murphy was lying on her side in front of them, eyes half-closed.

“Mrs. Murphy, are you picking on those kittens?”

“Hee hee” was all Mrs. Murphy would say.

58

No goblins bumped in the night; no human horrors either. Harry, Cynthia, and Blair awoke to a crystal-clear day. Harry couldn’t remember when a winter’s day had sparkled like this one.

Perhaps Harry had overreacted. Maybe those tracks belonged to someone looking, illegally, for animals to trap. Maybe the truck or car Cynthia heard coming down Blair’s driveway was simply someone who had lost his way in the snow.

By the time Harry arrived at work she felt a little sheepish about her concerns. Outside the windows she saw road crews maneuvering the big snowplows. One little compact car by the side of the road was being completely covered by snow.

Mrs. Hogendobber bustled around and the two gossiped as they worked. BoomBoom was the first person at the post office. She’d borrowed a big four-wheel-drive Wagoneer from the car dealer just before the storm. She hadn’t bought it yet. “How fortunate to have such a long-term loan,” was Mrs. Hogendobber’s comment.

“Orlando arrives today. The ten-thirty. Blair said he’d pick him up and we’d get together for dinner. Wait until you meet him. He really is special.”

“So’s Fair,” Harry defended her ex. If she’d thought about it she probably would have kept her mouth shut, but that was the trouble: She didn’t think. She said what came into her head at that exact moment.

BoomBoom’s long eyelashes fluttered. “Of course he is. He’s a dear sweet man and he’s been such a comfort to me since Kelly died. I’m very fond of him but well, he is provincial. All he really knows is his profession. Face it, Harry, he bored you too.”

Harry threw the mail she was holding onto the floor. Mrs. Hogendobber wisely came alongside Harry . . . just in case.

“We all bore one another occasionally. No one is universally exciting.” Harry’s face reddened.

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker pricked their ears.

“Oh, come off it. He wasn’t right for you.” BoomBoom derived a sordid pleasure from upsetting others. Emotions were the only coin BoomBoom exchanged. Without real employment to absorb her, her thoughts revolved around herself and the emotions of others. Sometimes even her pleasures became fatiguing.

“He was for a good long time. Now why don’t you pick up your mail and spare me your expertly made-up face.” Harry gritted her teeth.

“This is a public building and I can do what I want.”

Miranda’s alto voice resonated with authority. “BoomBoom, for a woman who proclaims exaggerated sensitivity, you’re remarkably insensitive to other people. You’ve created an uncomfortable situation. I suggest you think on it at your leisure, which is to say the rest of the day.”

BoomBoom flounced off in a huff. Before the day reached noon she would call everyone she knew to inform them of her precarious emotional state due to the personally abusive behavior of Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber, who crudely ganged up on her. She would also find it necessary to call her psychiatrist and then to find something to soothe her nerves.

Mrs. Hogendobber bent over with some stiffness, scooping up the mail Harry had tossed on the floor.

“Oh, Miranda, I’ll do that. I was pretty silly.”

“You still love him.”

“No, I don’t,” Harry quietly replied, “but I love what we were to each other, and he’s worth loving as a friend. He’ll make some woman out there a good companion. Isn’t that what marriage is about? Companionship? Shared goals?”

“Ideally. I don’t know, Harry, young people today want so much more than we did. They want excitement, romance, good looks, lots of money, vacations all the time. When I married George we didn’t expect that. We expected to work hard together and improve our lot. We scrimped and saved. The fires of romance burned brighter sometimes than others but we were a team.”

Harry thought about what Mrs. Hogendobber said. She also listened as Miranda turned the conversation to church gossip. The best soprano in the choir and the best tenor had started a row over who got the most solos. Mrs. Hogendobber interspersed her pearls of wisdom throughout.

At one o’clock Blair brought in Orlando Heguay. The airplane was late, the terminal crowded, but all was well. Orlando charmed Mrs. Hogendobber. Harry thought he was exactly right for BoomBoom: urbane, wealthy, and incredibly attractive. Whether or not he was a man who needed to give a woman the kind of constant attention BoomBoom demanded would be known in time.

As Blair opened his post box a hairy paw reached out at him. He yanked back his hand.

“Scared you,” Mrs. Murphy laughed.

“You little devil.” Blair reached back into his box and grabbed her paw for a minute.

Orlando walked around and then paused before the photograph of the unidentified victim. Studying it intently, he let out a low whistle. “Good God.”

“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Hogendobber said.

Harry walked over to explain why it was on the wall but before she could open her mouth Orlando said, “That’s Tommy Norton.”

Everyone turned to him, ashen-faced. Harry spoke first. “You know this man?”

“It’s Tommy Norton. I mean, the hair is wrong and he looks thinner than when I knew him but yes, if it isn’t Tommy Norton it’s his aging double.”

Miranda dialed Rick Shaw before Orlando finished his sentence.

59

After profuse apologies for disrupting Orlando’s holiday, Rick and Cynthia closed the door to Rick’s office. Blair waited outside and read the newspaper.

“Continue, Mr. Heguay.”

“I met Fitz-Gilbert in 1971. We were not close at school. He had a good friend in New York, Tommy Norton. I met Tommy Norton in the summer of 1974. He worked as a gofer in the brokerage house of Kincaid, Foster and Kincaid. I was seventeen that summer and I guess he was fifteen or sixteen. I worked next door at Young and Fulton Brothers. That convinced me I never wanted to be a stockbroker.” Orlando took a breath and continued. “Anyway, we’d have lunch once or twice a week. The rest of the time they’d work us through lunch.”

“We?” Cynthia asked.

“Tommy, Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton, and myself.”

“Go on.” Rick’s voice had a hypnotic quality.

“Well, there’s not much to tell. He was a poor kid from Brooklyn but very bright and he wanted to be like Fitz and me. He imitated us. It was sad, really, that he couldn’t go to prep school, because it would have made him so happy. They weren’t giving out as many scholarships in those days.”

“Did he ever come up to Andover to visit?”

“Well, Fitz’s parents were killed in that awful plane crash that summer, and the next year, at school, Fitz was really out of control. Tommy and Fitz were close, though, and Tommy did come up at least once that fall. He fit right in. Since I was a year older than Tommy, I lost touch after graduating and going to Yale. Fitz went to Princeton, once he straightened out, and I don’t know what happened to Tommy. Well, I do remember that he worked again at Kincaid, Foster and Kincaid the following summer and so did Fitz.”

“Can you think of anyone else who might know Tommy Norton?” Rick asked.

“The head of personnel in those days was an officious toad named Leonard, uh, Leonard Imbry. Funny name. If he’s still there he might remember Tommy.”

“What makes you think the photograph reconstruction is Norton?” Cynthia thought Orlando, with his dark hair and eyes, was extremely handsome and she wished she were in anything but a police uniform.

“I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it but the reconstruction had Tommy’s chin, which was prominent. The nose was a little smaller maybe, and the haircut was wrong.” He shrugged. “It looked like an older version of that boy I knew. What happened to him? Before I could get the story from the ladies in the post office you whisked me away.”

Cynthia answered. “The man in the photograph was murdered, his face severely disfigured, and his body dismembered. The fingerprints were literally cut off the fingerpads and every tooth was knocked out of his head. Over a period of days people here kept finding body parts. The head turned up in a pumpkin at our Harvest Festival. It was really unforgivable and there are children and adults who will have nightmares for a long time because of that.”

“Why would anyone want to kill Tommy Norton?” Orlando was shocked at the news.

“That’s what we want to know.” Rick made more notes.

“When was the last time you saw Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton?” Cynthia wished she could think of enough questions to keep him there for hours.

“At my graduation from Andover Academy. His voice had deepened but he was still a little slow in developing. I don’t know if I would recognize him today. I’d like to think that I would.”

“You said he attended Princeton—after he straightened out.”

“Fitz was a mess there for a while after his parents died. He was very withdrawn. None of us boys was particularly adept at handling a crisis like that. Maybe we wouldn’t be adept today either. I don’t know, but he stayed in his room playing Mozart’s Requiem. Over and over.”

“But he stayed in school?” Rick glanced up from his notes.

“Where else could they put him? There were no other relatives, and the executor of his parents’ estate was a New York banker with a law degree who barely knew the boy. He got through the year and then I heard that summer of ’75 that he started to come out of his shell, working back at Kincaid, Foster and Kincaid with Tommy. They were inseparable, those two. Then there was the accident, of course. I never heard of any trouble at Princeton but Fitz and I weren’t that close, and anything I did hear would have been through the grapevine, since we’d all gone off to different colleges. He was a good kid, though, and we all felt so terrible for what happened to him. I look forward to seeing him.”

They thanked Orlando, and Blair, too, for waiting. Then Cynthia got on the horn and called Kincaid, Foster and Kincaid. Leonard Imbry still ran personnel and he sounded two years older than God.

Yes, he remembered both boys. Hard to forget after what happened to Fitz. They were hard workers. Fitz was unstable but a good boy. He lost track of both of them when they went off to college. He thought Fitz went to Princeton and Tommy to City College.

Cynthia hung up the phone. “Chief.”

“What?”

“When are Little Marilyn and Fitz returning from the Homestead?”

“What am I, social director of Crozet? Call Herself.” Herself was Rick’s term for Big Marilyn Sanburne.

This Cynthia did. The Hamiltons would be back tonight. She hung up the phone. “Don’t you find it odd that Orlando recognized the photograph, if it is Tommy Norton, and Fitz-Gilbert didn’t?”

“I’m one step ahead of you. We’ll meet them at their door. In the meantime, Coop, get New York to see if anyone in the police department, registrar, anyone, has records on Tommy Norton or Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. Don’t forget City College.”

“Where are you going?” she asked as he took his coat off the rack.

“Hunting.”

60

In just a few days at the Homestead, Little Marilyn knew she’d gained five pounds. The waffles at breakfast, those large burnished golden squares, could put a pound on even the most dedicated dieter. Then there were the eggs, the rolls, the sweet rolls, the crisp Virginia bacon. And that was only breakfast.

When the telephone rang, Little Marilyn, languid and stuffed, lifted the receiver and said in a relaxed voice, “Hello.”

“Baby.”

“Mother.” Little Marilyn’s shoulder blades tensed.

“Are you having a good time?”

“Eating like piggies.”

“You’ll never guess what’s happened here.”

Little Marilyn tensed again. “Not another murder?”

“No, no, but Orlando Heguay—he knows Fitz from prep school—recognized the unidentified murdered man. He said it was someone called Tommy Norton. I hope this is the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for, but Sheriff Shaw, as usual, appears neither hopeful nor unhopeful.”

The daughter smiled, and although her mother couldn’t see it, it was a false smile, a knee-jerk social response. “Thank you for telling me. I know Fitz will be relieved when I tell him.” She paused. “Why did Rick Shaw tell you who the victim was?”

“He didn’t. You know him. He keeps his cards close to his chest.”

“How did you find out?”

“I have my sources.”

“Oh, come on, Mother. That’s not fair. Tell me.”

“This Orlando fellow walked into the post office and identified the photograph. Right there in front of Harry and Miranda. Not that anyone is one hundred percent sure that’s the victim’s true identity, but well, he seems to think it is.”

“The whole town must know by now,” Little Marilyn half-snorted. “Mrs. Hogendobber is not one to keep things to herself.”

“She can when she has to, but no one instructed her not to tell and I expect that anyone would do the same in her place. Anyway, I think Rick Shaw went over there, slipping and sliding in the snow, and had a sit-down with both of them. I gave him the key to Fitz’s office. Rick said he needed to get back in there too. He thought the fingerprint people might have missed something.”

“Here comes Fitz back from his swim. I’ll let you tell him everything.” She handed the phone to her husband and mouthed the word “Mother.”

He grimaced and took the phone. As Mim spun her story his face whitened. By the time he hung up, his hand was shaking.

“Darling, what’s wrong?”

“They think that body was Tommy Norton. I knew Tommy Norton. I didn’t think that photo looked like Tommy. Your mother wants me to come home and talk to Rick Shaw immediately. She says it doesn’t look good for the family that I knew Tommy Norton.”

Little Marilyn hugged him. “How awful for you.”

He recovered himself. “Well, I hope there’s been a mistake. Really. I’d hate to think that was . . . him.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“I think it was 1976.”

“People’s appearances change a lot in those years.”

“I ought to recognize him though. I didn’t think that composite resembled him. Never crossed my mind.

“He had a prominent chin. I remember that. He was very good to me and then we lost track when we went to separate colleges. Anyway, I don’t think boys are good at keeping up with one another the way girls are. You write letters to your sorority sisters. You’re on the phone. Women are better at relationships. Anyway, I always wondered what happened to Tom. Listen, you stay here and enjoy yourself. I’ll drive back to Crozet, if for no other reason than to calm Mother and look at the drawing with new eyes. I’ll fetch you tomorrow. The major roads are plowed. I’ll have no trouble getting through.”

“I don’t want to be here without you, and you shouldn’t have to endure a blast from Mother alone. God forbid she should think our social position is compromised the tiniest bit—the eensiest.”

He kissed her on the cheek. “You stay put, sweetie. I’ll be back in no time. Eat a big dinner for me.”

Little Marilyn knew she wouldn’t change his mind. “I think I’ve already eaten enough.”

“You look gorgeous.”

He changed his clothes and kissed her goodbye. Before he could reach the door the phone rang. Little Marilyn picked up the receiver. Her eyes bugged out of her head.

“Yes, yes, he’s right here.” Little Marilyn, in a state of disbelief, handed the phone to Fitz.

“Hello.” Fitz froze upon hearing Cabell Hall’s voice. “Are you all right? Where are you?”

Little Marilyn started for the suite’s other phone. Fitz grabbed her by the wrist and whispered, “If he hears the click he might hang up.” He returned to Cabell. “Yes, the weather has been bad.” He paused. “In a cabin in the George Washington National Forest? You must be frozen.” Another pause. “Well, if you go through Rockfish Gap I could pick you up on the road there.” Fitz waited. “Yes, it would be frigid to wait, I agree. You say it’s warm in the cabin, plenty of firewood? What if I hiked up to the cabin?” He paused again. “You don’t want to tell me where it is. Cabell, this is ridiculous. Your wife is worried to death. I’ll come and get you and take you home.” He held the receiver away from his ear. “He hung up. Damn!”

“What’s he doing in the George Washington National Forest?” Marilyn asked.

“Says he’d been taking groceries up there for a week before he left. He’s got plenty of food. Went up there because he wanted to think. About what I don’t know. Sounds like his elevator doesn’t go to the top anymore.”

“I’ll call Rick Shaw,” she volunteered.

“No need. I’ll see him after I visit Taxi. She needs to know Cabby’s physically well, if not mentally.”

“Do you know exactly where he is?”

“No. In a cabin not far from Crabtree Falls. The state police can find him though. You stay here. I’ll take care of everything.”

He kissed her again and left.

61

Sheriff Shaw had investigated the theft at Fitz-Gilbert’s office when it was first reported. Now, alone in the office, he sat at the desk. He hoped for a false-bottomed drawer but there wasn’t one. The drawers were filled with beautiful stationery, investment brochures, and company year-end reports. He also found a stack of Playboy magazines. He fought the urge to thumb through them.

Then he got down on his hands and knees. The rug, scrupulously clean, yielded nothing.

The kitchen, however, yielded a bottle of expensive port, wine and scotch, crackers, cheese, and sodas. The coffee maker appeared brand-new.

He again got down on his hands and knees, once he opened the closet door. Again it was clean, except for a tuft of blond hair stuck in the corner on the floor.

Rick placed the hair in a small envelope and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

As he closed the door to the office he knew more than when he walked in, but he still didn’t know enough.

He needed to be methodical and cautious before some high-ticket lawyer smashed his case. Those guys could get Sherman’s March reduced to trespassing.

62

Cynthia Cooper discovered that Tommy Norton had never matriculated at City College of New York. By two in the afternoon her ear hurt, she’d been on the phone so long. Finally she hit pay dirt. In the summer of 1976, a Thomas Norton was committed to Central Islip, one of the state’s mental institutions. He was diagnosed as a hebephrenic schizophrenic. Unfortunately, the file was incomplete and the woman on the other end of the phone couldn’t find the name of his next of kin. She didn’t know who admitted him.

Cynthia was then transferred to one of the doctors, who remembered the patient. He was schizophrenic but with the help of drugs had made progress toward limited self-sufficiency in the last five years. Recently he was remitted to a halfway house and given employment as a clerical worker. He was quite bright but often disoriented. The doctor gave a full physical description of the man and also faxed one for Cynthia.

When the photo rolled out of the office fax she knew they’d found Tommy Norton.

She then called the halfway house and discovered that Tommy Norton had been missing since October. The staff had reported this to the police but in a city of nine million people Tommy Norton had simply disappeared.

She roused Rick on his radio. He was very interested in everything she knew. He told her to meet him at Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton’s house with a search warrant.

63

The pale-orange sun set, plunging the temperature into the low twenties. As Venus rose over the horizon she seemed larger than ever in the biting night air. A violent orange outline ran across the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains, transforming the deep snows into golden waves. So deep was the snow that even the broomstraw was engulfed. A thin crust of ice covered the snow.

Giving Orlando the full tour of Crozet wasn’t possible because many of the side roads remained snowed under. Blair asked his friend’s indulgence as he turned down Harry’s driveway at 5:10 P.M. He’d picked up a round black de-icer for her to try in the water trough and he thought tonight would be a good test. If it didn’t work, Paul Summers at Southern States said he could bring it back and get his money refunded.

“I don’t remember you being the country type.” Orlando reached for a hand strap as the vehicle slowly rocked down the driveway. “In fact, I don’t remember you getting up before eleven.”

“Times change and people change with them.” Blair smiled.

Orlando laughed. “Couldn’t have anything to do with the postmistress.”

“Hmmn” was Blair’s comment.

Orlando, serious for a moment, said, “It’s none of my business but she seems like a good person and she’s easy on the eyes. Fresh-looking. Anyway, after what you’ve been through you deserve all the happiness you can find.”

“I loved Robin but I could keep a distance from her. You know, if we’d gotten married I don’t think it would have lasted. We lived a pretty superficial life.”

Orlando sighed. “I guess I do too. But look at the business I’m in. If you want the clients with deep pockets, you shmooze with them. I envy you.”

“Why?”

“Because you had the guts to get out.”

“I’ll still go on shoots from time to time until I get too wrinkled or they don’t want me anymore. See, you were smarter than I was. You picked a career where age is irrelevant.”

Orlando smiled when the clapboard house and barn came into view. “Clean lines.”

“She has little sense of decoration, so tread lightly, okay? I mean, she’s not a blistering idiot but she hasn’t a penny, really, so she can’t do much.”

“I read you loud and clear.”

They pulled up in front of the barn and the two men got out. Harry was mucking the stalls. Her winter boots bore testament to the task. The doors to the stalls hung open as the used shavings were tossed into the wheelbarrow. At the end of the aisle another wheelbarrow, filled with sweet-smelling shavings, stood. The door to the tack room was open also. Tucker greeted everyone and Mrs. Murphy stuck her head out of the loft opening. An errant sliver of hay dangled on her whisker. When Harry saw the two men she waved and called out, “Hola!” This amused Orlando.

“Who is it?” Simon asked.

“Blair and his friend Orlando.”

“She won’t bring them up here, will she?” The possum nervously paced. “She brought Susan up once and I didn’t think that was right.”

“Because of the earring. That was a special case. They won’t climb up the ladder. The one guy’s too well-dressed, anyway.”

“Shut up down there.” The owl ruffled her feathers, turned around, and settled down while expanding on everyone’s deficiencies.

Down below Orlando admired the barn and the beautiful construction work. The barn had been built in the late 1880’s, the massive square beams prepared to bear weight for centuries to come.

Tucker barked, “Someone’s coming.”

A white Range Rover pulled up next to Blair’s Explorer. Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton opened the door and hurried into the barn.

“Orlando, I’ve been looking at Blair’s for you, and then thought you might be here.”

“Fitz . . . is it really you?” Orlando squinted. “You look different.”

“Fatter, older. A little bald.” Fitz laughed. “You look the same, only better. It’s amazing what the years do to people—inside and outside.”

As the two men shook hands, Harry noticed a bulge, chest-high, in Fitz’s bomber jacket. This wasn’t an ordinary bomber jacket—it was lined with goose down so Fitz could be both warm and dashing.

Tucker lifted her nose and sniffed. “Murphy, Murphy.”

The cat again stuck her head out the opening. “What?”

“Fitz has the stench of fear on him.”

Mrs. Murphy wiggled her nose. A frightened human being threw off a powerful, acrid scent. It was unmistakable, so strong that a human with a good nose—for a human—could even smell it once they had learned to identify it. “You’re right, Tucker.”

“Something’s wrong,” Tucker barked.

Harry leaned down to pat the corgi’s head. “Pipe down, short stuff.”

Mrs. Murphy called down, “Maybe he found another body.” She stopped herself. If he’d found another body he would have said that immediately. “Tucker, get behind him.”

The little dog slunk behind Fitz, who continued to chat merrily with Orlando, Blair, and Harry. Then he changed gears. “What made you think that picture was Tommy Norton?”

Orlando tipped his head. “Looked like him to me. How is it you didn’t notice?”

Fitz unzipped his jacket and pulled out a lethal, shiny .45. “I did, as a matter of fact. You three get against the wall there. I don’t have time for an extended farewell. I need to get to the bank and the airport before Rick Shaw finds out I’m here and I’ll be damned if you’re going to wreck things for me—so.”

As Orlando stood there, puzzled, Tucker sank her teeth up to the gums into Fitz’s leg. He screamed and whirled around, the tough dog hanging on. The humans scattered. Harry ran into one of the stalls, Orlando dove into the tack room, shutting the door, and Blair lunged for the wall phone in the aisle, but Fitz recovered enough to fire.

Blair grunted and rolled away into Gin’s stall.

“You all right?” Harry called. She didn’t see Blair get hit.

“Yeah,” Blair, stunned, said through gritted teeth. The force of being struck by a bullet is as painful as the lead intruding into the flesh. Blair’s shoulder throbbed and stung.

Tucker let go of Fitz’s leg and scrambled to the barn doors, bullets flying after her. Once she wriggled out of the barn she slunk alongside the building. Tucker didn’t know what to do.

Mrs. Murphy, who had been peering down from the loft, ran to the side and peeked through an opening in the boards. “Tucker, Tucker, are you all right?”

“Yes.” Tucker’s voice was throaty and raw. “We’ve got to save Mother.”

“See if you can get Tomahawk and Gin Fizz up to the barn.”

“I’ll try.” The corgi set out into the pastures. Fortunately, the cold had hardened the crust of the snow and she could travel on the surface. A few times she sank into the powder but she struggled out.

Simon, scared, shivered next to Mrs. Murphy.

Down below, Fitz slowly stalked toward the stalls. The cat again peered down. She realized that he would be under the ladder in a few moments.

Harry called out, “Fitz, why did you kill those people?” She played for time.

Mrs. Murphy hoped her mother could stall him, because she had a desperate idea.

“Ben got greedy, Harry. He wanted more and more.”

As Fitz spoke, Orlando, flattened against the wall, moved nearer to the door of the tack room.

“Why did you pay him off in the first place?”

“Ah, well, that’s a long story.” He moved a step closer to the loft opening.

Tucker, panting, reached Tomahawk first. “Come to the barn, Tommy. There’s trouble inside. Fitz-Gilbert wants to kill Mom.”

Tomahawk snorted, called Gin, and they thundered toward the barn, leaving Tucker to follow as best she could.

Inside, the tiger cat heard the hoofbeats. Their pasture was on the west side of the barn. She vaulted over hay bales and called through a space in the siding. “Can you jump the fence?”

Gin answered, “Not with our turn-out rugs in this much snow.”

Simon wrung his pink paws. “Oh, this is awful.”

“Crash the fence then. Make as much noise as you can but count to ten.” Tucker caught up to the horses. “Tucker,” Mrs. Murphy called, “help them count to ten. Got it? Slow.” She spun around and called to Simon over her shoulder. “Help me, Simon.”

The gray possum shuttled over the timothy and alfalfa as quickly as he could. He joined Mrs. Murphy at the south side of the barn. Hay flew everywhere as the cat clawed at a bale.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting the blacksnake. She’s hibernating, so she won’t curl around us and spit and bite.”

“Well, she’s going to wake up!” Simon’s voice rose.

“Worry about that later. Come on, help me get her out of here.”

“I’m not touching her!” Simon backed up.

At that moment Mrs. Murphy longed for her corgi friend. Much as Tucker griped and groaned at Mrs. Murphy, she had the heart of a warrior. Tucker would have picked up the snake in a heartbeat.

“Harry has taken good care of you,” the cat pleaded.

Simon grimaced. “Ugh.” He hated the snake.

“Simon, there’s not a moment to lose!” Mrs. Murphy’s pupils were so large Simon could barely see the gorgeous color of her iris.

A shadowy, muffled sound overhead startled them. The owl alighted on the hay bale. Outside, the horses could be heard making a wide circle. Within seconds they’d be smashing to bits the board fencing by the barn. In her deep, operatic voice the owl commanded, “Go to the ladder, both of you. Hurry.”

Bits of alfalfa wafted into the air as Mrs. Murphy sped toward the opening. Simon, less fleet of foot, followed. The owl hopped down and closed her mighty talons over the sleeping four-foot-long blacksnake. Then she spread her wings and rose upward. The snake, heavy, slowed her down more than she anticipated. Her powerful chest muscles lifted her up and she quietly glided to where the cat and the possum waited. She held her wings open for a landing, flapped once to guide her, and then softly touched down next to Mrs. Murphy. She left the snake, now groggy, at the cat’s paws. She opened her wide wingspan and soared upward to her roost. Mrs. Murphy had no time to thank her. Outside, the sound of splintering wood, neighing, and muffled hoofbeats in the snow told her she had to act. Tucker barked at the top of her lungs.

“Pick up your end,” Mrs. Murphy firmly ordered Simon, who did as he was told. He was now more frightened of Mrs. Murphy than of the snake.

Fitz, distracted for a moment by the commotion outside, turned his head toward the noise. He was close to the loft opening. The cat, heavy snake in her jaws, Simon holding its tail, flung the snake onto Fitz’s shoulders. By now the blacksnake was awake enough to curl around his neck for a moment. She was desperately trying to get her bearings and Fitz screamed to high heaven.

As he did so Mrs. Murphy launched herself from the loft opening and landed on Fitz’s back.

“Don’t do it!” Simon yelled.

The cat, no time to answer, scrambled with the snake underfoot as Fitz bellowed and attempted to rid himself of his tormentors. Mrs. Murphy mercilessly shredded his face with her claws. As she tore away at Fitz she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Blair come hurtling out of the stall.

“Orlando!” Blair called.

No sooner had he hollered for his friend than Harry, having shed her winter parka, moved from Tomahawk’s stall like a streak.

Mrs. Murphy grabbed for Fitz’s right eye.

He fired the gun in the air as the cat blinded him. Instinctively he covered the damaged eye with his right hand, the gun hand, and that fast, Harry hit him at the knees. He went down with an “oomph.” The snake hit the ground with him. Mrs. Murphy gracefully jumped off. Tucker wiggled back into the barn.

“Get his gun hand!” Mrs. Murphy screeched.

Tucker raced for the flailing man. Fitz kicked Harry away and she lurched against the wall with a thud. Blair struggled to keep Fitz down but his one arm dangled uselessly. Orlando crept out of the tack room and, seeing the situation, swallowed hard, then joined the fight.

“Jesus!” Fitz bellowed as the dog bit clean through his wrist, pulverizing some of the tiny bones. His fingers opened and the gun was released.

“Get the gun!” Blair hit Fitz hard with his good fist, striking him squarely in the solar plexus. If he hadn’t been wearing the down bomber jacket, Fitz would have been gasping.

Harry dove for the gun, skidding across the aisle on her stomach. She snatched it as Fitz kicked Blair in the groin. Orlando hung on his back like a tick. Fitz possessed the strength of a madman, or a cornered rat. He raced backward and squashed Orlando on the wall. Tucker kept nipping at his heels.

Fitz whirled around and beheld Harry pointing the gun at him. Blood and clear fluid coursed down from his sightless right eye. He moved toward Harry.

“You haven’t got the guts, Mary Minor Haristeen.”

Blair, panting from the effort and the pain, got between Fitz and Harry while Orlando, flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him, sucked wind like a fish out of water.

Her fur puffed out so she was double her size, Mrs. Murphy balanced herself on a stall door. If she had to, she’d launch another attack. Meanwhile, the blacksnake, half in a daze, managed to slither into Tomahawk’s stall to bury herself in shavings. Simon stuck his head out of the loft opening. His lower jaw hung slack.

“You haven’t got a prayer, Fitz. Give up.” Blair held out his hand to stop the advancing man.

“Fuck off, faggot.”

Blair had been called a faggot so many times it didn’t faze him—that and the fact that the gay men he knew were good people. “Hold it right there.”

Fitz swung at Blair, who ducked.

“Get out of the way, Blair.” Harry held the gun steady and true.

“You’ll never shoot. Not you, Harry.” Fitz laughed, a weird, high-pitched sound.

“Get out of the way, Blair. I mean it.” Harry sounded calm but determined.

Orlando struggled to his feet and ran to the phone. He dialed 911 and haltingly tried to explain.

“Just tell them Harry Haristeen, Yellow Mountain Road. Everybody knows everybody,” she called to Orlando.

“But everybody doesn’t know everybody, Harry. You don’t know me. You didn’t want to know me.” Fitz kept stalking her.

“I liked you, Fitz. I think you’ve gone mad. Now stop.” She didn’t back up as he advanced.

“Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton is dead. He went to pieces.” Fitz laughed shrilly.

Orlando hung up the phone. Blair’s face froze. They couldn’t believe their ears.

“What do you mean?” Orlando asked.

Fitz half-turned to see him with his good eye. “I’m Tommy Norton.”

“But you can’t be!” Orlando’s lungs still ached.

“Oh, but I am. Fitz lost his mind, you know. Off and on, and then finally . . . off.” Fitz, the man they knew as Fitz, waved his hand in the air at “off.” “Half the time he didn’t know his own name but he knew me. I was his only friend. He trusted me. After that car accident we both had to have plastic surgery. A little nose work for him, plus my chin was reduced while his was built up. He emerged looking more like Tommy Norton and I looked more like Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. Once the swelling went down, anybody would have taken us for brothers. And as we were still young men, not fully matured, people would readily accept those little changes when I next met them: the deeper voice, the filled-out body. It was so easy. When he finally lost it completely, the executor and I put the new Tommy in Central Islip. As for my family—my father had left my mother when I was six. She was generally so damned drunk she was glad to be rid of me, assuming she even noticed.”

“The executor! Wasn’t Cabell the executor?” Harry asked.

“Yes. He was handsomely paid and was a good executor. We stayed close after he moved from New York to Virginia. Cabell even introduced me to my wife. He took his cut and all went well. Until ‘Tommy’ showed up.”

A siren wailed in the distance.

“All you rich people. You don’t know what it’s like. Money is worth killing for. Believe me. I’d do it again. Fitz would still be alive if he hadn’t wandered down here looking for me. I guess he was like England’s George the Third—he would suffer years of insanity and then snap out of it. He’d be lucid again. I was easy to find. Little Marilyn and I regularly appear in society columns. Plus, all he would have to do was call his old bank and track down his executor. He was smart enough to do that. As pieces of his past came back to him he knew he was Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. Well, I couldn’t have that, could I? I was better at being Fitz-Gilbert than he was. He didn’t need his money. He would have just faded out again and all that money would have been useless, untouchable.”

The siren howled louder now and Tommy Norton, thinking Harry had grown less vigilant, leapt toward her. A spit of flame flashed from the muzzle of the gun. Tommy Norton let out a howl, deep and guttural, and clutching his knee, fell to the ground. Harry had blown apart his kneecap. Undaunted, he crawled toward her.

“Kill me. I’d rather be dead. Kill me, because if I get to you, I’ll kill you.”

Blair got behind him, putting his knee in Tommy’s back while wrapping his good arm around the struggling man’s neck. “Give it up, man.”

The metal doors of the barn squeaked as they were rolled back. Rick Shaw and Cynthia Cooper, guns drawn, burst into the barn. Behind them stood Tomahawk and Gin Fizz, splinters of the fence scattered in the snow, the fronts of their blankets a mess.

“Did we do a good job?” they nickered.

“The best,” Mrs. Murphy answered, her fur now returning to normal.

Cynthia attended to Blair. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

“I think I’d get there faster if I drove myself in the Explorer.”

“I’ll take you.”

Tommy sat on the floor, blood spurting from his knee and his eye, yet he seemed beyond pain. Perhaps his mind couldn’t accept what had just happened to him emotionally and physically.

“No, you won’t. Both these men need care.” Rick pointed for Orlando to call the hospital and he gave the number. “Tell them Sheriff Shaw is here. On the double.”

As Harry and Blair filled in the officers, Tommy would laugh and correct little details.

“What was Ben Seifert’s connection?” Rick wanted to know.

“Accidental. Stumbled on Cabell Hall’s second set of books, the ones where he accounted for my payments. Cabell is somewhere up in the mountains, by the way. He ran away because he thought I’d kill him, I guess. He’ll come down in good time. Anyway, Ben proved useful. He fed me information on who was near bankruptcy, and I’d buy their land or lend them money at a high interest rate. So I started to pay him off, too, but . . .” Tommy gasped as a jolt of pain finally reached his senses.

Harry walked over to Mrs. Murphy and picked her off the stall door. She buried her face in the cat’s fur. Then she hunkered down to kiss Tucker. Tears rolled down Harry’s cheeks.

Blair put his good arm around her. She could smell the blood soaking through his shirt and his jacket.

“Let’s take this off.” She helped him remove the jacket. He winced. Cynthia came over, while Rick kept his revolver trained on Tommy.

“Still in there.” Cynthia referred to the bullet. “I hope it didn’t shatter any bone.”

“Me too.” Blair was starting to feel woozy. “I think I better sit for a minute.”

Harry helped him to a chair in the tack room.

Orlando stood next to Rick. He stared at this man whom he once knew. “Tom, you passed, you know.”

Tiny bits of patella were scattered on the barn aisle. A faint smile crossed Tom’s features as he fought back his agony. “Yeah, I fooled everybody. Even that insufferable snob, that bitch of a mother-in-law.” A dark pain twisted his face. His features contorted and he fought for control. “I would never have been able to marry Little Marilyn. Fitz-Gilbert could marry her. Tommy Norton couldn’t.”

“Maybe you’re selling her short.” Orlando’s voice was soothing.

“She’s controlled by her mother” was the matter-of-fact reply. “But you know what’s funny? I learned to love my wife. I never thought I could love anybody.” He looked as if he would weep.

“How much was the Hamilton fortune worth?” Sheriff Shaw asked.

“When I inherited it, so to speak, it was worth twenty-one million. With Cabell’s management and my own attention to it, once I came of age it had grown to sixty-four million. There are no heirs. No Hamiltons are left. Before I killed Fitz, I asked if he had children and he said no.” Tommy deliberately did not look at his knee, as if not seeing it would control the pain.

“Who will get the money?” Orlando wanted to know. After all, money is fascinating.

“Little Marilyn. I made sure of that twice over. She’s the recipient of my will and Fitz-Gilbert’s, the one he signed in my office that October day. Trusting as a lamb. It might take a while but one way or the other my wife gets that money.”

“Exactly how did you kill Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton?” Cynthia inquired.

“Ben panicked. Typical. Weak and greedy. I always told Cabell that Ben could never run Allied after Cabell retired. He didn’t believe me. Anyway, Ben was smart enough to get Fitz in his car and out of the bank before he caused an even greater scene or blurted out who he was. He drove him to my office. Ben was prepared to hang around and become a nuisance. I told him to go back to the bank, that Fitz and I would reach some accord. I said this in front of Fitz. Ben left. Fitz was all right for a bit. Then he became angry when I told him about his money. I made so much more with it than he ever could have! I offered to split it with him. That seemed fair enough. He became enraged. One thing led to another and he swung at me. That’s how my office was wrecked.”

“And you stole the office money from yourself?” Cynthia added.

“Of course. What’s two hundred dollars and a CD player, which is what I listed as missing?” Sweat drenched Tommy’s face.

“So, how did you kill him?” She pressed on.

“With a paperweight. He wasn’t very strong and the paperweight was heavy. I caught him just right, I suppose.”

“Or just wrong,” Harry said.

Tommy shrugged and continued. “No matter. He’s dead now. The hard part was cutting up the body. Joints are hell to cut through.”

Rick picked up the questioning. “Where’d you do that?”

“Back on the old logging trail off Yellow Mountain Road. I waited until night. I stored the body in the closet in my office, picked him up, and then took him out on the logging road. Burying the hands and legs was easy until the storm came up. I never expected it to be that bad, but then everything was unexpected.”

“What about the clothes?” Rick scribbled in his notebook.

“Threw them in the dumpster behind Safeway—the teeth too. If it hadn’t rained so hard and that damned dog hadn’t found the hand, nobody would know anything. Everything would be just as it was . . . before.”

“You think Ben and Cabell wouldn’t have given you trouble?” Harry cynically interjected.

“Ben would have, most likely. Cabell stayed cool until Ben turned up dead.” Tom leaned his head against the wall and shook with pain and fatigue. “Then he got squirrely. Take the money and run became his theme song. Crazy talk. It takes weeks to liquidate investments. Months. Although as a precaution I always kept a lot of cash in my checking account.”

“Well, you might have gotten away with murder, and then again you might not have.” Rick calmly kept writing. “But the torso and the head in the pumpkin—you were pushing it, Tommy. You were pushing it.”

He laughed harshly. “The satisfaction of seeing Mim’s face.” He laughed again. “That was worth it. I knew I was safe. Sure, the torso in the boathouse pointed to obvious hostility against Marilyn Sanburne but so what? The pieces of body in the old cemetery—considering what happened to Robin Mangione—was sure to throw you off the track at some point. I copied her murder to make Blair the prime suspect, just in case something should go wrong. I had backup plans to contend with people—not dogs.” He sighed, then smiled. “But the head in the pumpkin—that was a stroke of genius.”

“You ruined the Harvest Fair for the whole town,” Harry accused him.

“Oh, bullshit, Harry. People will be telling that story for decades, centuries. Ruined it? I made it into a legend!”

“How’d you do it? In the morning?” Cynthia was curious.

“Sure. Jim Sanburne and I catalogued the crafts and the produce. Since he was judging the produce, we decided it wouldn’t be fair for him to prejudge it in any way. I planned to put the head in a pumpkin anyway—another gift for Mim—but this was too good to pass up. Jim was in the auditorium and I was in the gym. We were alone after the people dropped off their entries. It was so easy.”

“You were lucky,” Harry said.

Tom shook his head as if trying to clear it. “No, I wasn’t that lucky. People see what they want to see. Think of how much we miss every day because we discount evidence, because odd things don’t add up to our vision of the world as it ought to be, not as it is. You were all easy to fool. It never occurred to Jim to tell Rick that I was alone with the pumpkins. Not once. People were looking for a homicidal maniac . . . not me.”

The ambulance siren drew closer. “My wife saw what she wanted to see. That night I came home from Sloan’s she thought I was drunk. I wasn’t. We had our sherry nightcap and I took the precaution of putting a sleeping pill in hers. After she went to sleep I went out, got rid of that spineless wonder, Ben Seifert, and when I got back I crawled into bed for an hour and she was none the wiser. I pretended to wake up hung over, as opposed to absolutely exhausted, and she accepted it.”

“Then what was the point of the postcards?” Harry felt anger rising in her face now that the adrenaline from the struggle was ebbing.

“Allied National has one of those fancy desk-top computers. So do most of the bigger businesses in Albemarle County, as I’m sure you found out, Sheriff, when you tried to hunt one down.”

“I did,” came the terse reply.

“They’re not like typewriters, which are more individual. By now Cabell was getting nervous, so we cooked up the postcard idea. He thought it would cast more suspicion on Blair, since he didn’t receive one. Although by that time few people really believed Blair had done it. Cabell wanted to play up the guilty newcomer angle and get you off the scent. Not that I worried about the scent. Everyone was so far away from the truth, but Cabell was worried. I did it for fun. It was enjoyable, jerking a string and watching you guys jump. And the gossip mill.” He laughed again. “Unreal—you people are absolutely unreal. Someone thinks it’s revenge. Someone else thinks it’s demonology. I learned more about people through this than if I had been a psychiatrist.”

“What did you learn?” Harry’s right eyebrow arched upward.

“Maybe I reconfirmed what I always knew.” The ambulance pulled into the driveway. “People are so damn self-centered they rarely see anybody or anything as it truly is because they’re constantly relating everything back to themselves. That’s why they’re so easy to fool. Think about it.” And with that his energy drained away. He could no longer hold his head up. Pain conquered even his remarkable willpower.

As the ambulance carried Tommy Norton away, Harry knew she’d be thinking about it for years to come.

64

The fire crackled, arching up the chimney. Outside the fourth storm of this remarkable winter crept to the top of the mountains’ peaks.

Blair, his arm in a sling, Harry, Orlando, Mrs. Hogendobber, Susan and Ned, Cynthia Cooper, Market and Pewter, and the Reverend Jones and Carol gathered before the fire.

While Blair was in the hospital enduring the cold probe to find the bullet, Cynthia had called Susan and Miranda to tell them what happened and to suggest that they bring food to Harry’s. Then she dispatched an officer to Florence Hall’s to break the news to her of her husband’s complicity as gently as possible. The state police might not find Cabell tonight but after the storm they’d flush him out of his cabin.

Orlando had stayed at the farm while Harry had followed the ambulance in the Explorer. He cooked pasta while the friends arrived. Tomorrow night would be time enough for him to see BoomBoom.

Rick organized guards for Norton while the doctors patched him up. He and Cynthia then enjoyed telling the reporters and TV crews how they apprehended this dangerous criminal. Then Rick let Cynthia join her friends.

While the women organized the food, Reverend Jones, after declaring himself a male chauvinist, went out and repaired the fence lines. His version of being a male chauvinist meant doing the chores he thought were hard and dirty. The result was that, behind his back, the women dubbed him the “male chauvinist pussycat.” Market lent him a hand and within forty-five minutes they had replaced the panels and cleaned up the mess. Then they attended to the horses. Fortunately, the blankets had absorbed the damage. Both Tomahawk and Gin Fizz were none the worse for wear and they patiently waited in their stalls with the doors open—in the hurry to get Blair and Tommy to the hospital, no one had thought to put the horses in their stalls and close the doors.

Sitting on the floor, plates in their laps, the friends tried to fathom how something like this could happen. Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker circled the seated people like sharks, should a morsel fall from a plate.

“What about the tracks behind my house?” Blair stabbed at his hot chicken salad.

Cynthia said, “We found snowshoes in Fitz’s—I mean Tommy Norton’s—Range Rover. He dropped the earring back there. There wasn’t anything he could do about that mistake but it was the earring that rattled him. I mean, after the real Fitz initially shocked him. Anyway, he wanted to know how quickly he could get back here in the snow if he had to, if you or Orlando, most likely, proved difficult. He was performing a dry run, I think, or he was hoping to head you off before Orlando got here. He must have been getting pretty shaky knowing about Orlando’s visit. Anything to prevent it would have been worth the risk.”

“What would I have done?” Orlando asked.

“He wasn’t sure. Remember, his whole life, the plan of many years, was jeopardized when the real Fitz showed up. Ben Seifert used the event to extort more money out of him. He was getting nervous. What if you noticed something, which, unlikely as it may have seemed to you, was not unlikely to him? You knew him before he was Fitz-Gilbert. The impossible was becoming possible,” Cynthia pointed out. “And it turned out you did cause trouble. You recognized the face in the photograph. The face that must have cost a fortune in plastic surgery.”

“What about the earring?” Carol was curious.

“We’ll never really know,” Harry answered. “But I remember Little Marilyn saying that she thought it must have popped off when she took her sweater off in the car, the Range Rover. Tommy had the body in a plastic bag on the front floor, and the sharp part of the earring, the part that pierces one’s ear, probably got stuck on the bag or in a fold of the bag. Given his hurry he didn’t notice. All we do know is that Little Marilyn’s earring showed up in a possum’s nest miles away from where she last remembered wearing it, and there’s no way the animal would have traveled the four miles to her place.”

“Does Little Marilyn know?” Mrs. Hogendobber felt sympathy for the woman.

“She does,” Cynthia told her. “She still doesn’t believe it. Mim does, of course, but then she’ll believe bad about anybody.”

This made everyone laugh.

“Did anyone in this room have a clue that it might be Fitz?” Mrs. Hogendobber asked. “Tommy. I can’t get used to calling him Tommy. I certainly didn’t.”

Neither had anyone else.

“He was brilliant in his way.” Orlando opened a delicate biscuit to butter it. “He knew very early that people respond to surfaces, just as he said. Once he realized that Fitz was losing it, he concocted a diabolically clever yet simple plan to become Fitz. When he showed up at Princeton as a freshman, he was Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. He was more Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton than Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. I remember when I left for Yale my brother said that now I could become a new person if I wanted to. It was a new beginning. In Tommy’s case that was literal.”

Blair took that in, then said, “I don’t believe he ever thought he would have to kill anyone. I just don’t.”

“Not then,” Cynthia said.

“Money changes people.” Carol stated the obvious, except that to many the obvious is overlooked. “He’d become habituated to power, to material pleasures, and he loved Little Marilyn.”

“Love or money,” Harry half-whispered.

“What?” Mrs. Hogendobber wanted to know everything.

“Love or money. That’s what people kill for. . . .” Harry’s voice trailed off.

“Yes, we did have that discussion once.” Mrs. Hogendobber reached for another helping of macaroni and cheese. It was sinfully tasty. “Maybe the road to Hell is paved with dollar bills.”

“If that’s the center of your life,” Blair added. “You know, I read a lot of history. I like knowing other people have been here before me. It’s a comfort. Well, anyway, Marie Antoinette and Louis the Sixteenth became better people once they fell from power, once the money was taken away. Perhaps somebody else would actually become a better person if he or she did have money. I don’t know.”

The Reverend considered this. “I suppose some wealthy people become philanthropists, but it’s usually at the end of their lives when Heaven has not been secured as the next address.”

As the group debated and wondered about this detail or that glimpse of the man they knew as Fitz, Harry got up and put on her parka. “You all, I’ll be back in a minute. I forgot to feed the possum.”

“In another life you were Noah,” Herbie chuckled.

Mrs. Hogendobber cast the Lutheran minister a reproving glare. “Now, Reverend, you don’t believe in past lives, do you?”

Before that subject could flare up, Harry was out the back door, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker tagging along. Pewter elected to stay in the kitchen.

She slid back the barn doors just enough for her to squeeze through to switch on the lights. It was hard to believe that a few hours ago she nearly met her death in this barn, the place that always made her happy.

She shook her head as if to clear the cobwebs. Mostly she wanted to reassure herself she was alive. Mrs. Murphy led the way, and Harry crawled up the ladder, Tucker under her arm, and handed the food to Simon, who was subdued.

Mrs. Murphy rubbed against the little fellow. “You done good, Simon.”

“Mrs. Murphy, that was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. There’s something wrong with people.”

“Some of them,” the cat replied.

Harry watched the two animals and wondered at their capacity to communicate and she wondered, too, at how little we really know of the animal world. We’re so busy trying to break them, train them, get them to do our bidding, how can we truly know them? Did the masters on the plantation ever know the slaves, and does a man ever know his wife if he thinks of himself as superior—or vice versa? She sat in the hay, breathing in the scent, and a wave of such gratitude flushed through her body. She didn’t know much but she was glad to be alive.

Mrs. Murphy crawled in her lap and purred. Tucker, solemnly, leaned against Harry’s side.

The cat craned her head upward and called, “Thanks.”

The owl hooted back, “Forget it.”

Tucker observed, “I thought you didn’t like humans.”

“Don’t. I happen to like the blacksnake less than I like humans.” She spread her wings in triumph and laughed.

The cat laughed with her. “You like Harry—admit it.”

“I’ll never tell.” The owl lifted off her perch in the cupola and swept down right in front of Harry, startling her. Then she gained loft and flew out the large fan opening at the end of the barn. A night’s hunting awaited her, at least until the storm broke.

Harry backed down the ladder, Tucker under her arm. Harry stood in the center of the aisle for a moment. “I’ll never know what got into you two,” she addressed the horses, “but I’m awfully glad. Thank you.”

They looked back with their gentle brown eyes. Tomahawk stayed in one corner of his stall while Gin, sociable, hung her head over the Dutch door.

“And Mrs. Murphy, I still don’t know how the blacksnake came flying out of the loft, followed by you. I guess I’ll never know. I guess I won’t know a lot of things.”

“Put her back up in her place,” Mrs. Murphy suggested, “or she’ll freeze to death.”

“She doesn’t know what you’re talking about.” Tucker scratched at Tomahawk’s stall door and whined. “Is this the one she hid in?” the dog asked the cat.

“Under the shavings in there somewhere.” The tiger’s whiskers swept forward as she joined Tucker in clawing at the door.

She knew the snake would be there but nonetheless it always made her jump when she saw one. Harry, curious, opened the door. Now she knew why Tomahawk was in one corner of his stall. He did not like snakes and he said so.

“Here she is.” Tucker stood over the snake.

Harry saw the snake, partially covered by shavings. “Is she alive?” She knelt down and placed her hand behind the animal’s neck. Gently she lifted the snake and only then did she realize how big the reptile was. Harry suffered no special fear of snakes but it couldn’t be said that she wanted to hold one, either. Nonetheless, she felt some responsibility for this blacksnake. The animal moved a bit. Tomahawk complained, so they backed out of the stall.

Mrs. Murphy climbed up the ladder. “I’ll show you.”

Harry racked her brain to think of a warm spot. Other than the pipes under her kitchen sink, only the loft came to mind, so she climbed back up.

The cat ran to her and ran away. Harry watched with amusement. Mrs. Murphy had to perform this act four times before Harry had enough sense to follow her.

Simon grumbled as they passed him, “Don’t you put that old bitch near me.”

“Don’t be a fuss,” the cat chided. She led Harry to the snake’s nest.

“Look at that,” Harry exclaimed. She carefully placed the snake in her hibernating quarters and covered her with loose hay. “The Lord moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform,” she said out loud. Her mother used to say that to her. The Lord performed his or her wonders today with a snake, a cat, a dog, and two horses. Harry had no idea that she’d had more animal help than that, but she did know she was here by the grace of God. Tommy Norton would have shot her as full of holes as Swiss cheese.

As she closed up the barn and walked back to the house, a few snowflakes falling, she recognized that she had no remorse for shooting that man in the kneecap. She would have killed him if it had been necessary. In that respect she realized she belonged to the animal world. Human morality often seems at a variance with Nature.

Fair Haristeen’s truck churned, sliding down the driveway. He hurriedly got out and grabbed Harry in his arms. “I just heard. Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She nodded, suddenly quite exhausted.

“Thank God, Harry, I didn’t know what you meant to me until I, until I . . .” He couldn’t finish his sentence. He hugged her.

She hugged him hard, then released him. “Come on. Our friends are inside. They’ll be glad to see you. Blair was shot, you know.” She talked on and felt such love for Fair, although it was no longer romantic. She wasn’t taking him back, but then he wasn’t asking her to come back. They’d sort it out in good time.

When they walked into the kitchen, a guilty, fat gray cat looked at them from the butcher block, her mouth full. She had demolished an entire ham biscuit, the incriminating crumbs still on her long whiskers.

“Pewter,” Harry said.

“I eat when I’m nervous or unhappy.” And indeed she was wretched for having missed all the action. “Of course, I eat when I’m relaxed and happy too.”

Harry petted her, put her down, and then thought her friends deserved better than canned food tonight. She put ham biscuits on the floor. Pewter stood on her hind legs and scratched Harry’s pants.

“More?”

“More,” the gray cat pleaded.

Harry grabbed another biscuit, plus some turkey Miranda had brought, and placed it on the floor.

“I don’t see why you should get treats. You didn’t do anything,” Mrs. Murphy growled as she chewed her food.

The gray cat giggled. “Who said life was fair?”

Books by Rita Mae Brown with Sneaky Pie Brown

WISH YOU WERE HERE

REST IN PIECES

MURDER AT MONTICELLO

PAY DIRT

MURDER, SHE MEOWED

MURDER ON THE PROWL

CAT ON THE SCENT

SNEAKY PIE’S COOKBOOK FOR MYSTERY LOVERS

PAWING THROUGH THE PAST

CLAWS AND EFFECT

CATCH AS CAT CAN

THE TAIL OF THE TIP-OFF

WHISKER OF EVIL

Books by Rita Mae Brown

THE HAND THAT CRADLES THE ROCK

SONGS TO A HANDSOME WOMAN

THE PLAIN BROWN RAPPER

RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE

IN HER DAY

SIX OF ONE

SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT

SUDDEN DEATH

HIGH HEARTS

STARTING FROM SCRATCH:

A DIFFERENT KIND OF WRITERS’ MANUAL

BINGO

VENUS ENVY

DOLLEY: A NOVEL OF DOLLEY MADISON IN LOVE AND WAR

RIDING SHOTGUN

RITA WILL: MEMOIR OF A LITERARY RABBLE-ROUSER

LOOSE LIPS

OUTFOXED

HOTSPUR

FULL CRY

Don’t miss the new mystery from

RITA MAE BROWN

and

SNEAKY PIE BROWN

Whisker of Evil

Now available in hardcover

from Bantam Books

Please read on for a preview . . .

Whisker of Evil

on sale now

Barry Monteith was still breathing when Harry found him. His throat had been ripped out.

Tee Tucker, a corgi, racing ahead of Mary Minor Haristeen as well as the two cats, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, found him first.

Barry was on his back, eyes open, gasping and gurgling, life ebbing with each spasm. He did not recognize Tucker nor Harry when they reached him.

“Barry, Barry.” Harry tried to comfort him, hoping he could hear her. “It will be all right,” she said, knowing perfectly well he was dying.

The tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy, watched the blood jet upward.

“Jugular,” fat, gray Pewter succinctly commented.

Gently, Harry took the young man’s hand and prayed, “Dear Lord, receive into thy bosom the soul of Barry Monteith, a good man.” Tears welled in her eyes.

Barry jerked, then his suffering ended.

Death, often so shocking to city dwellers, was part of life here in the country. A hawk would swoop down to carry away the chick while the biddy screamed useless defiance. A bull would break his hip and need to be put down. And one day an old farmer would slowly walk to his tractor only to discover he couldn’t climb into the seat. The Angel of Death placed his hand on the stooping shoulder.

It appeared the Angel had offered little peaceful deliverance to Barry Monteith, thirty-four, fit, handsome with brown curly hair, and fun-loving. Barry had started his own business, breeding thoroughbreds, a year ago, with a business partner, Sugar Thierry.

“Sweet Jesus.” Harry wiped away the tears.

That Saturday morning, crisp, clear, and beautiful, had held the alluring promise of a perfect May 29. The promise had just curdled.

Harry had finished her early-morning chores and, despite a list of projects, decided to take a walk for an hour. She followed Potlicker Creek to see if the beavers had built any new dams. Barry was sprawled at the creek’s edge on a dirt road two miles from her farm that wound up over the mountains into adjoining Augusta County. It edged the vast land holdings of Tally Urquhart, who, well into her nineties and spry, loathed traffic. Three cars constituted traffic in her mind. The only time the road saw much use was during deer-hunting season in the fall.

“Tucker, Mrs. Murphy, and Pewter, stay. I’m going to run to Tally’s and phone the sheriff.”

If Harry hit a steady lope, crossed the fields and one set of woods, she figured she could reach the phone in Tally’s stable within fifteen minutes, though the pitch and roll of the land including one steep ravine would cost time.

As she left her animals, they inspected Barry.

“What could rip his throat like that? A bear swipe?” Pewter’s pupils widened.

“Perhaps.” Mrs. Murphy, noncommittal, sniffed the gaping wound, as did Tucker.

The cat curled her upper lip to waft more scent into her nostrils. The dog, whose nose was much longer and nostrils larger, simply inhaled.

“I don’t smell bear,” Tucker declared. “That’s an overpowering scent, and on a morning like this it would stick.”

Pewter, who cherished luxury and beauty, found that Barry’s corpse disturbed her equilibrium. “Let’s be grateful we found him today and not three days from now.”

“Stop jabbering, Pewter, and look around, will you? Look for tracks.”

Grumbling, the gray cat daintily stepped down the dirt road. “You mean like car tracks?”

“Yes, or animal tracks,” Mrs. Murphy directed, then returned her attention to Tucker. “Even though coyote scent isn’t as strong as bear, we’d still smell a whiff. Bobcat? I don’t smell anything like that. Or dog. There are wild dogs and wild pigs back in the mountains. The humans don’t even realize they’re there.”

Tucker cocked her perfectly shaped head. “No dirt around the wound. No saliva, either.”

“I don’t see anything. Not even a birdie foot,” Pewter, irritated, called out from a hundred yards down the road.

“Well, go across the creek then and look over there.” Mrs. Murphy’s patience wore thin.

“And get my paws wet?” Pewter’s voice rose.

“It’s a ford. Hop from rock to rock. Go on, Pewt, stop being a chicken.”

Angrily, Pewter puffed up, tearing past them to launch herself over the ford. She almost made it, but a splash indicated she’d gotten her hind paws wet.

If circumstances had been different, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker would have laughed. Instead, they returned to Barry.

“I can’t identify the animal that tore him up.” The tiger shook her head.

“Well, the wound is jagged but clean. Like I said, no dirt.” Tucker studied the folds of flesh laid back.

“He was killed lying down,” the cat sagely noted. “If he was standing up, don’t you think blood would be everywhere?”

“Not necessarily,” the dog replied, thinking how strong heartbeats sent blood straight out from the jugular. Tucker was puzzled by the odd calmness of the scene.

“Pewter, have you found anything on that side?”

“Deer tracks. Big deer tracks.”

“Keep looking,” Mrs. Murphy requested.

“I hate it when you’re bossy.” Nonetheless, Pewter moved down the dirt road heading west.

“Barry was such a nice man.” Tucker mournfully looked at the square-jawed face, wide-open eyes staring at heaven.

Mrs. Murphy circled the body. “Tucker, I’m climbing up that sycamore. If I look down maybe I’ll see something.”

Her claws, razor sharp, dug into the thin surface of the tree, strips of darker outer bark peeling, exposing the whitish underbark. The odor of fresh water, of the tufted titmouse above her, all informed her. She scanned around for broken limbs, bent bushes, anything indicating Barry—or other humans or large animals—had traveled to this spot avoiding the dirt road.

“Pewter?”

“Big fat nothing.” The gray kitty noted that her hind paws were wet. She was getting little clods of dirt stuck between her toes. This bothered her more than Barry did. After all, he was dead. Nothing she could do for him. But the hardening brown earth between her toes, that was discomfiting.

“Well, come on back. We’ll wait for Mom.” Mrs. Murphy dropped her hind legs over the limb where she was sitting. Her hind paws reached for the trunk, the claws dug in, and she released her grip, swinging her front paws to the trunk. She backed down.

Tucker touched noses with Pewter, who had recrossed the creek more successfully this time.

Mrs. Murphy came up and sat beside them.

“Hope his face doesn’t change colors while we’re waiting for the humans. I hate that. They get all mottled.” Pewter wrinkled her nose.

“I wouldn’t worry.” Tucker sighed.

In the distance they heard sirens.

“Bet they won’t know what to make of this, either,” Tucker said.

“It’s peculiar.” Mrs. Murphy turned her head in the direction of the sirens.

“Weird and creepy.” Pewter pronounced judgment as she picked at her hind toes, and she was right.

Welcome to the charming world of

MRS. MURPHY

Don’t miss these earlier mysteries . . .

THE TAIL OF THE TIP-OFF

When winter hits Crozet, Virginia, it hits hard. That’s nothing new to postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen and her friends, who keep warm with hard work, hot toddies, and rabid rooting for the University of Virginia’s women’s basketball team. But post-game high spirits are laid low when contractor H.H. Donaldson drops dead in the parking lot. And soon word spreads that it wasn’t a heart attack that did him in. It just doesn’t sit right with Harry that one of her fellow fans is a murderer. And as tiger cat Mrs. Murphy knows, things that don’t sit right with Harry lead her to poke her not-very-sensitive human nose into dangerous places. To make sure their intrepid mom lands on her feet, the feisty feline and her furry cohorts Pewter and corgi Tee Tucker are about to have their paws full helping Harry uncover a killer with no sense of fair play. . . .

“You don’t have to be a cat lover to enjoy Brown’s 11th Mrs. Murphy novel. . . . Brown writes so compellingly . . . [she] breathes believability into every aspect of this smart and sassy novel.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

CATCH AS CAT CAN

Spring fever comes to the small town of Crozet, Virginia. As the annual Dogwood Festival approaches, postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen feels her own mating instincts stir. As for tiger cat Mrs. Murphy, feline intuition tells her there’s more in the air than just pheromones. It begins with a case of stolen hubcaps and proceeds to the mysterious death of a dissolute young mechanic over a sobering cup of coffee. Then another death and a shooting lead to the discovery of a half-million crisp, clean dollar bills that look to be very dirty. Now Harry is on the trail of a cold-blooded murderer. Mrs. Murphy already knows who it is—and who’s next in line. She also knows that Harry, curious as a cat, does not have nine lives. And the one she does have is hanging by the thinnest of threads.

“The[se] mysteries continue to be a true treat.”

—The Post Courier (Charleston, SC)

CLAWS AND EFFECT

Winter puts tiny Crozet, Virginia, in a deep freeze and everyone seems to be suffering from the winter blahs, including postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen. So all are ripe for the juicy gossip coming out of Crozet Hospital—until the main source of that gossip turns up dead. It’s not like Harry to resist a mystery, and she soon finds the hospital a hotbed of ego, jealousy, and illicit love. But it’s tiger cat Mrs. Murphy, roaming the netherworld of Crozet Hospital, who sniffs out a secret that dates back to the Underground Railroad. Then Harry is attacked and a doctor is executed in cold blood. Soon only a quick-witted cat and her animal pals feline Pewter and corgi Tee Tucker stand between Harry and a coldly calculating killer with a prescription for murder.

“Reading a Mrs. Murphy mystery is like eating a potato chip. You always go back for more. . . . Whimsical and enchanting . . . the latest expert tale from a deserving bestselling series.”

—The Midwest Book Review

PAWING THROUGH THE PAST

“You’ll never get old.” Each member of the class of 1980 has received the letter. Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, who is on the organizing committee for Crozet High’s twentieth reunion, decides to take it as a compliment. Others think it’s a joke. But Mrs. Murphy senses trouble. And the sly tiger cat is soon proven right . . . when the class womanizer turns up dead with a bullet between his eyes. Then another note followed by another murder makes it clear that someone has waited twenty years to take revenge. While Harry tries to piece together the puzzle, it’s up to Mrs. Murphy and her animal pals to sniff out the truth. And there isn’t much time. Mrs. Murphy is the first to realize that Harry has been chosen Most Likely to Die, and if she doesn’t hurry, Crozet High’s twentieth reunion could be Harry’s last.

“This is a cat-lover’s dream of a mystery. . . . ‘Harry’ is simply irresistible. . . . [Rita Mae] Brown once again proves herself ‘Queen of Cat Crimes.’. . . Don’t miss out on this lively series, for it’s one of the best around.”

—Old Book Barn Gazette

CAT ON THE SCENT

Things have been pretty exciting lately in Crozet, Virginia—a little too exciting if you ask resident feline investigator Mrs. Murphy. Just as the town starts to buzz over its Civil War reenactment, a popular local man disappears. No one’s seen Tommy Van Allen’s single-engine plane, either—except for Mrs. Murphy, who spotted it during a foggy evening’s mousing. Even Mrs. Murphy’s favorite human, postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, can sense that something is amiss. But things really take an ugly turn when the town reenacts the battle of Oak Ridge—and a participant ends up with three very real bullets in his back. While the clever tiger cat and her friends sift through clues that just don’t fit together, more than a few locals fear that the scandal will force well-hidden town secrets into the harsh light of day. And when Mrs. Murphy’s relentless tracking places loved ones in danger, it takes more than a canny kitty and her team of animal sleuths to set things right again. . . .

“Told with spunk and plenty of whimsy, this is another delightful entry in a very popular series.”

—Publishers Weekly

MURDER ON THE PROWL

When a phony obituary appears in the local paper, the good people of Crozet, Virginia, are understandably upset. Who would stoop to such a tasteless act? Is it a sick joke—or a sinister warning? Only Mrs. Murphy, the canny tiger cat, senses true malice at work. And her instincts prove correct when a second fake obit appears, followed by a fiendish murder . . . and then another. People are dropping like flies in Crozet, and no one knows why. Yet even if Mrs. Murphy untangles the knot of passion and deceit that has sent someone into a killing frenzy, it won’t be enough. Somehow the shrewd puss must guide her favorite human, postmistress “Harry” Haristeen, down a perilous trail to a deadly killer . . . and a killer of a climax. Or the next obit may be Harry’s own.

“Leave it to a cat to grasp the essence of the cozy mystery: murder among friends.”

—The New York Times Book Review

MURDER, SHE MEOWED

The annual steeplechase races are the high point in the social calendar of the horse-mad Virginians of cozy Crozet. But when one of the jockeys is found murdered in the main barn, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen finds herself in a desperate race of her own—to trap the killer. Luckily for her, she has an experienced ally: her sage tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy. Utilizing her feline genius to plumb the depths of human depravity, Mrs. Murphy finds herself on a trail that leads to the shocking truth behind the murder. But will her human companion catch on in time to beat the killer to the gruesome finish line?

“The intriguing characters in this much-loved series continue to entertain.”

—The Nashville Banner

PAY DIRT

The residents of tiny Crozet, Virginia, thrive on gossip, especially in the post office, where Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen presides with her tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy. So when a belligerent Hell’s Angel crashes Crozet, demanding to see his girlfriend, the leather-clad interloper quickly becomes the chief topic of conversation. Then the biker is found murdered, and everyone is baffled. Well, almost everyone . . . Mrs. Murphy and her friends Welsh corgi Tee Tucker and overweight feline Pewter haven’t been slinking through alleys for nothing. But can they dig up the truth in time to save their human from a ruthless killer?

“If you must work with a collaborator, you want it to be someone with intelligence, wit, and an infinite capacity for subtlety—someone, in fact, very much like a cat. . . . It’s always a pleasure to visit this cozy world. . . . There’s no resisting Harry’s droll sense of humor . . . or Mrs. Murphy’s tart commentary.”

—The New York Times Book Review

MURDER AT MONTICELLO

The most popular citizen of Virginia has been dead for nearly 170 years. That hasn’t stopped the good people of tiny Crozet, Virginia, from taking pride in every aspect of Thomas Jefferson’s life. But when an archaeological dig of the slave quarters at Jefferson’s home, Monticello, uncovers a shocking secret, emotions in Crozet run high—dangerously high. The stunning discovery at Monticello hints at hidden passions and age-old scandals. As postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen and some of Crozet’s Very Best People try to learn the identity of a centuries-old skeleton—and the reason behind the murder—Harry’s tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy, and her canine and feline friends attempt to sniff out a modern-day killer. Mrs. Murphy and corgi Tee Tucker will stick their paws into the darker mysteries of human nature to solve murders old and new—before curiosity can kill the cat . . . and Harry Haristeen.

“You don’t have to be a cat lover to love Murder at Monticello.”

—The Indianapolis Star

REST IN PIECES

Small towns don’t take kindly to strangers—unless the stranger happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous and seemingly unattached male. When Blair Bainbridge comes to Crozet, Virginia, the local matchmakers lose no time in declaring him perfect for their newly divorced postmistress, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen. Even Harry’s tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy, and her Welsh corgi, Tee Tucker, believe he smells A-okay. Could his one little imperfection be that he’s a killer? Blair becomes the most likely suspect when the pieces of a dismembered corpse begin turning up around Crozet. No one knows who the dead man is, but when a grisly clue makes a spectacular appearance in the middle of the fall festivities, more than an early winter snow begins chilling the blood of Crozet’s Very Best People. That’s when Mrs. Murphy, her friend Tucker, and her human companion Harry begin to sort through the clues . . . only to find themselves a whisker away from becoming the killer’s next victims.

“Skillfully plotted, properly gruesome . . . and wise as well as wickedly funny.” —Booklist

And don’t miss the very first

MRS. MURPHY

mystery . . .

WISH YOU WERE HERE

Small towns are like families. Everyone lives very close together . . . and everyone keeps secrets. Crozet, Virginia, is a typical small town—until its secrets explode into murder. Crozet’s thirty-something postmistress, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, has a tiger cat (Mrs. Murphy) and a Welsh corgi (Tee Tucker), a pending divorce, and a bad habit of reading postcards not addressed to her. When Crozet’s citizens start turning up murdered, Harry remembers that each received a card with a tombstone on the front and the message “wish you were here” on the back. Intent on protecting their human friends, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker begin to scent out clues. Meanwhile, Harry is conducting her own investigation, unaware that her pets are one step ahead of her. If only Mrs. Murphy could alert her somehow, Harry could uncover the culprit before another murder occurs—and before Harry finds herself on the killer’s mailing list.

“Charming . . . Ms. Brown writes with wise, disarming wit.”

—The New York Times Book Review