Tail Gait

April 13, 2015

Bumping along, the old John Deere tractor called Johnny Pop emitted the noise from its exhaust pipe that gave it its name. Harry could always think better when she was outside doing a chore. The crevices on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains had not yet escaped winter, but the sides flashed the first blush of red in the swelling leaf buds. She often wondered about that color when the sun hit the buds just before they opened. Why the red color and not green? She made a note to look that up when she returned to the farmhouse.

Red, the color of blood, dark if flowing from a vein, gorgeous red if spurting from an artery. One can’t grow up in the country and not have seen cuts, wounds, or even worse. She wondered if Ginger had been covered in blood.

Turning the tractor around, she headed back toward the barn, a quarter of a mile away. She saw Cooper stepping out of a squad car, by the barn.

Tucker, the corgi, sat at the tall officer’s feet. The intrepid dog trusted the deputy because Cooper always smelled safe.

The cats were sprawled in the tack room office. They paid no attention to the crunch of tires, the closing of a door, or the pop-pop of the tractor pulling up outside. Harry cut the motor. The John Deere let one last loud report, almost like gunfire.

Harry climbed down as Tucker walked over to her.

“Hey, what are you doing out here at this time of day?”

Cooper leaned against the door. “Aunt Tally called. She said her sidesaddle was missing, and she proceeded to inform me of the value.”

“So Rick sent you out here?” asked Harry, mentioning the sheriff.

“Aunt Tally’s important,” Cooper simply answered. “They’ve got a team on Saturday’s murder. I could be spared, the reason being that I can get along with Aunt Tally. Few can. Also, she knows everybody, their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents.”

“That’s a fact.” Harry nodded, as Aunt Tally was now 102. Surely, she’d be the first human to reach two hundred years.

“Turns out that her great-niece took the saddle to her house to clean it up. One problem solved.” Cooper brushed her hands together. “And Aunt Tally had no idea why Professor Ginger McConnell would be shot.”

“Come on and have a cup of tea with me,” Harry invited Cooper. “I could use a pickup.”

“You know, I could use one too.”

So different in backgrounds, the two women walked up the old brick path across the lawn to the screened-in porch door. Tucker hurried in to accompany them. The cats would miss extra treats, plus the chat between the humans. Already Tucker relished dispensing information only she had. That would irritate Pewter to no end.

In the kitchen, Harry asked, “Constant Comment? A green tea? I even have white teas, and if you want a real bomb wake-up I have my Yorkshire Gold.”

“Yorkshire. I don’t know why I’m sleepy today.”

“Low pressure. Be raining mid-afternoon, one of those soaking, steady April rains.” Harry pulled out two small silver tea balls, into which she put the correct amount of leaves. If you’re going to make a cup of tea, do it properly. She then opened a cabinet door with a squeak, lifted out an old Brown Betty teapot, beloved of her mother.

A few minutes later, cup finally in hand, Cooper sipped the restorative beverage. “You’ve known the professor since childhood?”

Sitting opposite her, Harry remarked, “And I thought this was a social call.”

“It is. You, Fair, Miranda, Aunt Tally, all of you born and bred around these parts, you know everyone and sometimes have insights I don’t.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is until you think you can be an amateur detective.”

“Me? I wouldn’t think of it!”

They both let that fat fib sit on the table. Below the table, even Tucker stifled a small bark.

“You didn’t study with him,” said Susan. “You were at Smith. Can you think of anyone who would want to kill Ginger McConnell?”

Harry leaned forward. “No, but Ginger bore the brunt of displeasure, that’s the only way I know how to describe it, when the push for clarity about Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with the slave Sally Hemings began to make news. The debate grew fiercer. I remember the uproar beginning in the eighties. Might be off a year or two, but the controversy kept going until DNA settled it, more or less.”

“And?”

“Well, Ginger publicly said and was quoted in papers—even national papers—saying what any true historian would say, ‘No line of inquiry should be shut down for ulterior considerations.’ It was that word ulterior that was the match in the tinderbox.”

“You mean for those who denied the possibility of a relationship between the two?” Cooper’s eyebrows raised.

“No, both sides. The racists, naturally, blew a fuse. Maybe racists is the wrong word. They didn’t think of themselves that way, they thought of themselves as defending the honor of a great man, while others didn’t want to think about it. The descendants of Jefferson’s liaison with Hemings thought they were being accused of seeking monetary gain. It was such a mess, but Ginger kept his hand on the tiller. He wouldn’t cave to pressure from either side. He kept insisting we must collect and study all the evidence. Personally, he believed Hemings was Jefferson’s mistress, but he never publicly said this. He truly believed no line of inquiry should be shut down.” Harry added, “Today is Jefferson’s birthday, by the way. April thirteenth, 1743.”

Cooper held up her cup to clink Harry’s, a toast of tea.

“Did he ever explain to you what he meant by ulterior?”

“He did. To Ginger, anything other than seeking the truth meant an ulterior motive. He was quite strict that way. Maybe a little too strict.” She drained her cup, thought for a moment. “Do you think someone killed the professor over that? Now?”

“No. Well, let me back up a minute. Could a nutcase become inflamed reviewing that old issue? Sure. A nutcase can find a reason to kill you if you wear cargo pants. You never know.”

“How was he killed?”

“High-caliber handgun. Two shots. Chest.”

“Dear God!” Harry’s hand covered her own heart. “Fair and I were going to go see Trudy, but Reverend Jones said to wait. He would tell us when she was ready. In the meantime, I know Trudy’s friends and her daughters are doing all that can be done. The house has to be opened, and people have to come by, you know.”

Cooper sighed. “I know. Back to his work. We’ve interviewed colleagues. We have heard all their descriptions of his research. Most of them too technical, really, but that’s why they do what they do. How would you characterize his work?”

“Let me think a minute. He had such a wide-ranging mind. He’d talk about most anything, but his area of expertise was the Revolutionary War and the years immediately following. Not political stuff like the collapse of the Articles of Confederation followed by the Constitutional Convention, but economic growth in the Mid-Atlantic, especially Virginia road building, movement of goods, population growth, which also included a swelling slave population. Remember we hadn’t outlawed bringing in people from Africa yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“In 1807 congress finally agreed to no more slave importation after 1808. No more slave ships. I add that the North had slaves, too.”

“That I knew, but let me back up here. His focus was on the average person?”

Harry smiled. “Now, Coop, you know there are no average people, especially in Virginia, and especially on the day of Jefferson’s birth.”

“Right.”

“It’s obvious you think that Professor McConnell’s murder has something to do with his work.”

Cooper sighed again. “We have to consider every possibility just as Ginger would. This was a historical issue. No obvious deep-seated family troubles. You can only cover them up so much. No heated jealousy among his colleagues, many of whom are also retired. Professor Brinsley Sims kept up a close working relationship with him. Sims has been helpful. Nothing that Professor McConnell worked on had any bearing on a corporation’s profits. It wasn’t like he was investigating something that could be tied to climate change.” She shrugged. “But you don’t kill someone on the golf course without a powerful motive.”

“Could this have something to do with golf?”

Cooper shook her head. “I know people get mad enough to kill, but still—”

“It’s a game that’s good for business,” Harry shrewdly commented, “especially for older women, women who went to school before Title Nine, can’t pull together like Nelson Yarbrough and his football teammates, but if they play golf, they can go out and hit with their corporate bosses and coworkers. They’ll learn the rudiments of teamwork. Maybe I should say teamwork as defined by men.”

“Hadn’t thought of that.” Cooper rested her hand on her chin. “Harry, would you make me another cup of tea? I am just dragging my ass. This one cup helped a little.”

“Sure. I could use a second one too.”

As Harry boiled water, Mrs. Murphy pushed through the animal doors, followed by Pewter.

Pewter got straight to the point. “Are they eating anything? I don’t smell anything.”

“No,” the dog replied.

“Can’t you beg?” Pewter encouraged the dog.

“No.” Tucker was in no mood to humor the cat, whom she considered a conceited pest.

Mrs. Murphy leapt onto the kitchen counter to tap at a cabinet. “This will work.”

As the steam spiraled out of the teapot snout, Harry opened the cabinet, tossed down some dried treats. “How about some cookies?” she asked Cooper.

The police officer considered this. “What kind of cookies?”

“Picky, picky. Shortbread cookies? The real kind.”

“I would love a cookie.”

With cookies on the plate and fresh cups of tea, they returned to discussing Professor McConnell.

“Did he enjoy retirement?” Cooper asked.

Harry immediately replied, “He never truly retired. The university, as a mark of esteem and gratitude, allowed him to keep his office, and he did have office hours. He didn’t teach anymore, but he would confer with students, help them with studies, and he would give a special lecture if asked. Trudy always said, ‘Thank God.’ He’d have driven her mad underfoot.”

“Wives always say that, don’t they?”

“Sure seems to be the case.” Harry smiled. “Ginger’s old students like Paul Huber, Nelson Yarbrough, and Marshall Reese would drop in on him, as well as other professors. He was constantly busy. No, Ginger really didn’t retire.”

“I guess the worst thing you can do is to stop working, if you love your work, that is.” Cooper bit into a delicious thick shortbread cookie. “I love these things. Okay, do you know what he was working on when he died?”

“At Reverend Jones’s dinner, Ginger mentioned renewing his study of The Albemarle Barracks, reviewing old church records, land acquisitions, and agricultural growth. He thought of it as a peek into everyday life. He also tried to find old family Bibles.”

“Why family Bibles?”

“We didn’t have a census in this country until 1790. Anything you want to know before that, you need family Bibles or maybe court records if someone had a suit brought against them or was arrested. That’s it.” She thought for a moment. “Church records, baptisms, burials, and marriages. Many a priest and pastor kept records, and, I almost forgot, enlistment records for militias. Remember, we didn’t have a standing army.”

“I knew about the standing army but not about the census. I can see that he’d need to visit people and places. Isn’t a lot of this on the Internet by now?”

“The public record, not family Bibles or church records. And Virginia still carries the mark of 1865. Thousands and thousands of records, family or public, were burned all across the state after Appomattox.”

“Why?”

“People feared that after losing the war the men who fought for the Confederacy could be hanged as traitors. I don’t think we can ever truly appreciate the chaos experienced then, and it would be even more chaotic if one had been a slave. Now you are free. Free to do what? Run, stay? Where could a man or woman hope to make a life for themselves, a life free of threat? But most of the records earlier than that were saved. Too far back to cause harm in 1865, 1866.”

“Weren’t soldiers also in fear of being branded traitors to the Crown during the Revolutionary War?”

“Coop, sure. If we’d lost, the trees would have been filled with hanged men. As it was, if you were a Continental soldier caught carrying a message, you were hanged. We returned the favor. You know, Coop, we’ve become narcotized by violence. Two huge World Wars, endless violence on television and in films, we forget that the Revolutionary War was no sure thing and it could be brutal.”

“War. Going on, as we speak, in other places.”

“I’m beginning to think that to kill is to be human,” said Harry. “Not a happy thought,” she paused, “especially when I think of Ginger.”

Cooper glanced at the large clock on the wall. “Well, I am awake. I don’t know if I’ve learned anything that can help me find who killed Ginger McConnell, but I’ve learned a lot.” The lean woman smiled at her neighbor and friend.

“You’re just starting in this. Murder is usually easy, at least that’s what you’ve told me, because it generally signals someone losing their self-control. Drugs and drink may help there, or if they’re standing over the corpse with a gun, a knife, or a brickbat.”

“That’s what worries me about this one,” said Cooper. “Premeditated murders are a lot harder to solve. This is premeditated.”

Harry walked Cooper to the screened-in porch door.

“Thought of one more thing,” said Harry. “It isn’t much, but Mother once told me that Ginger had to break up a romance between his daughter and a football player. Lots of emotion.”

“Name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Thanks again for the tea.” Cooper made a mental note to ask some of the old football players if they remembered.

As Cooper drove off, Harry said out loud, “Maybe it’s better to die a swift death than to linger with some horrible malady.” Then she caught herself. “How can I even think that about Ginger?”

“Needless suffering is cruel,” Tucker remarked. “Think of those deer and bear who are wounded, and it takes them days or weeks to die. That’s cruel. You’ve got to finish off your game.”

“I hardly think a professor emeritus of history is fair game,” Mrs. Murphy drily noted.