The Big Cat Nap

Rays slanting through mountainsides and steep ravines, the golden late sun pierced the eastern meadows and pastures along the Blue Ridge.

“Why is it that the light before the sun sets is so much richer than at any other time of the day?” Harry wondered aloud to herself.

Her friends had gathered at the farm this Saturday before the Fourth of July to rejoice in her escape, talk about the capture of the two culprits, and, of course, talk about one another.

Fair, like 90 percent of American men, showed off his considerable grilling skills, ably assisted by Reverend Jones. Since the reverend loved to eat, you wanted him helping you. Anyone who likes to eat is usually a good cook.

Cooper brought fresh greens to make a salad. Alicia and BoomBoom brought all the biscuits and also a big cake. Other friends dropped by, had a drink, and left. The place had buzzed, but now it was those closest and dearest, eating, drinking, laughing, and perhaps enjoying the recent scandal of Yancy Hampton being caught falsifying his organic foods.

“It isn’t all that terrible,” Alicia defended him. “So he sells some genetically modified foods. Big deal.”

Franny Howard jumped into the conversation. “False advertising. String him up by his shoelaces.” Franny plopped down with a thud.

“He wears sandals,” BoomBoom quietly replied.

“Jesus boots,” Franny giggled.

“Franny, you’re in a mood.” Cooper pointed to the huge salad bowl.

Franny did get up to investigate.

Trolling along the two picnic tables placed together, she filled her plate and a salad bowl. “I’m happy Harry has solved the crimes and I’m happy my tires are home.”

“Laying rubber, are you?” Fair pointed a long grilling fork at her.

Franny shook her finger. “Don’t go there.”

Reverend Jones, happiest when among his friends, sat down with a long, cool summer drink, into which he had added two raspberries and fresh mint. “Coop, when are you and Rick going to reward our girl here? She apprehended two dangerous men.”

“I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘apprehend,’ but she did bring them to justice, so to speak.”

Harry pointed to the WRX STI. “That car did the trick.”

They knew the details, but all asked to hear it again, so Harry, who couldn’t help herself, spilled all the details once more.

“Nothing about us,” Pewter lazily said, having eaten offerings from the people plus what she could steal.

“Wasn’t much we could do in the car except hang on,” Mrs. Murphy added. “This was one time we couldn’t help her.”

“Wild ride.” Tucker grinned.

On a different branch than Matilda, who reposed higher up now, perched the blue jay, Pewter’s nemesis. Brazenly, the bird swooped down, flew over the table, stopped for a split second, then flew back up into the tree with a morsel of fresh-baked bread.

“Blue jays don’t like bread. They like seeds,” Susan, a birder, said.

Fair laughed. “He hasn’t read Audubon.”

The blue jay then opened his beak, letting the bread drop. “I can do anything. You can’t catch me.”

“Did you see that?” Harry’s mouth fell open.

“Cheeky fellow,” Reverend Jones roared, then held up his hands. “Lord, is this your way of telling us we aren’t the crown of creation?”

“Listen to him.” Pewter sat upright. “He gets it.”

The blue jay jumped off and flew sideways, one wing toward the ground, right in front of the gray cat. Pewter’s whiskers moved with the air current. Then he returned to the table, this time plucking a seed off one of the special biscuits.

Harry, hands on hips, stood up. “What good are you cats? This is your job.”

“You get upset if we kill birds,” Mrs. Murphy fired right back.

The blue jay, sitting a bit too near Matilda, swallowed the seed. Matilda opened her jaws and flicked out her tongue. The saucy bird dropped a few branches below. He wasn’t done yet, but he wanted that juicy seed to settle for a moment.

“You two look lame,” Tucker ever so helpfully said.

“Well, you try to get him.” Pewter was incensed.

“I’m not a cat. Not my job.” The corgi dropped under Fair’s chair.

“We wouldn’t have you,” the gray cat snidely spoke.

As the three animals complained to one another and about one another, the blue jay began to imitate other birds for the joy of irritating everyone.

He was successful.

Ignoring the racket, Reverend Jones asked, “Coop, what have they confessed to?”

“That’s why I drove out here, to find out,” said Franny. “Did Victor and Latigo steal my tires along with their other crimes?” She gleefully shoved divine barbecue into her mouth.

“No,” Cooper replied. “It’s going to take time to crack your case. Is it a large interstate ring or is it local? We’ll get it, Franny, just give us time.”

“Bet you will.” Alicia licked her fingers, while BoomBoom rose to get her a small little wet towel at the end of the table.

“The three remaining mechanics, Jason Brundige, Sammy Collona, and Lodi Pingrey, want to save themselves, and they want to prove they didn’t kill anyone, so they’ve been singing like canaries.”

“Do you think they did kill their co-workers?” Reverend Jones asked the tall deputy.

“No. I’m pretty certain Victor and Latigo did the killing. And that’s what Jason Brundige is saying. The murders weren’t professional grade, if you will, but they were clever, bold, and left no fingerprints. These two thought they were clever by using a different M.O. for each murder. Jason said they killed Bobby together, just like they tried to kill Harry together.”

“The killings were messages to the others,” Harry simply said.

“Yes,” Coop replied.

“Messages about what?” BoomBoom had returned to her place at the table.

“ ‘Shut your mouth. Don’t get greedy.’ The mechanics knew what Victor and Latigo were doing. And they were well paid to shut up.” Cooper swung one leg over the long wooden seat so she now sat at the end of the table facing all of them. “The mechanics received big payoffs to keep quiet about the substandard parts. In return, they received a cut of the action. Now that we have forensics accountants in law enforcement, we can find the holes in anyone’s books eventually. Walt started the ball rolling. He wanted more money to keep silent. Not only did he try to shake down Victor and Latigo, he tried to shake down his co-workers. No love lost there.”

“How much do you think the whole scheme made?” Franny inquired, ever interested in profit.

“Millions. We can only work off percentages—in other words, the cost of genuine manufacturing parts versus the cost of knockoffs—but the profit is huge.”

“So Latigo sent clients to Victor?” Fair finished his steak, thinking he’d done a great job, which he had.

“He did. Both men profited handsomely, obviously. Jason indicated that first Walt got greedy, then Nick and Bobby wanted more. Nick stupidly threatened to tell the media about the Chinese parts, the whole scam. A collision-repair shop is under no obligation to identify whether parts are from the original manufacturer or aftermarket. All Victor had to do was undercut his competition by fifteen percent. Latigo referred everyone to Victor. Both made a lot of money.” Cooper then pointed to Harry. “What really tipped you off? You were ahead of us.”

“When Herb’s truck was declared a total wreck, I knew it had many years left. That’s why I went to the lot and pulled out the radiator. I knew it wasn’t right, because the drill holes to fit it had been altered. They were elliptical, and for that I thank Dabney Farnese. When he came to repair the John Deere, he told me about substandard parts for tractors, especially the holes. He said they were dead giveaway signs, because a substandard replacement part never fit exactly right. The holes had to be altered, and he said those alterations tend to be elliptical instead of perfectly round.

“So that was it? My radiator.” Reverend Jones reached for a cupcake with thick vanilla icing.

“But I became surer about my theory when I drove over to Haldane’s Salvage and Millie Haldane showed me cracked wheels, two of which were on Tara Meola’s Explorer on the lot for scrap. Safe and Sound uses Millie’s salvage yard. That lady knows a whole lot. By the time I left there, I knew, I just knew, but I couldn’t prove that Safe and Sound was behind it. If Tara’s Explorer had had true Ford wheels, there was a chance she might have lived when she veered off the road. The copycat wheels cracked.

“And when Miranda went off the road, it was a wheel problem. She’d had that wheel replaced the year before.”

“Where is Miranda?” Franny loved the older lady.

“Choir practice. Her choir has been asked to sing at the swearing-in ceremony on the Fourth of July at Monticello.” Harry mentioned a moving event at Mr. Jefferson’s home, where people became American citizens.

“What an honor.” Alicia smiled.

“She has a solo, too. That beautiful, beautiful voice,” Reverend Jones added.

“Why did declaring Herb’s truck a total loss alert you?” Franny was curious.

“No investigation when a vehicle is declared totaled. My curiosity must have set off those two. They didn’t want me to go over the truck. I mean, Victor towed the Chevy out of St. Luke’s right away. I should have smelled a rat when he dropped off the WRX STI. He had a tracking device in the car. He knew my every move in that Subaru. I never imagined that. I was really dumb.”

“Well, stubborn is closer to the mark,” BoomBoom said.

“I was too dazzled by the WRX STI. It was easy to track me—you can watch a person’s movements on your phone GPS; hunting guys even get map printouts with their dogs’ trails overlaid on them. That’s what they did to me. When they knew I was in an isolated place where they could get me, they did. They’d obviously shadowed me to Millie’s and knew I was getting close to the truth.”

Reverend Jones thought out loud. “Greed, one of the seven deadly sins. You might have been the fourth victim.”

“Thank God my baby can drive,” Fair said. “She’s the NASCAR type.” He wiped his hand on the wet towel. “They never imagined she could control a car as well as they could.”

“I could have told them that.” BoomBoom smiled. “Reflexes like a cat.”

“Not even close,” Pewter responded.

The blue jay swept down on all those people at the table, making off with more delicious seeds from the tops of some muffins.

“That damned bird!” Franny allowed herself a curse.

Franny, who knew Millie Haldane, asked Harry, “What’d you think of Millie?”

“She’s lonely, you know. She knows a lot. Cooper, I’d pay a call on her or use her for an expert witness once you have a talk with the prosecutor. Actually, I want to see her again, too.”

“A real character.” Franny nodded.

“Look who’s talking.” Susan giggled, then became serious. “Harry, I think our phone call to Vivien Bly tipped them off, too. I mean, tipped them off that you were getting closer. I bet she ran straight to Latigo and told him everything. We should have thought of that. Just because we know he’s a two-timing you-know-what doesn’t mean she doesn’t love him. Maybe she doesn’t know.”

“She does,” Alicia said with conviction. “She’s going to stick by him; she’ll try to come up with alibis. Just wait until this goes to court.”

“How can she do that?” Harry threw up her hands.

Quietly, Reverend Jones replied, “How can she not? We have thousands of years of written history extolling women who put their love for a man before the common welfare. She was being a ‘good wife.’ ” He looked at the celebrants intently.

Harry plowed right in. “It’s one thing if infidelity occurs, but it’s quite another if you know your husband or son or daughter is killing people. How can what she’s doing be construed as good?”

“It’s a confusing issue. Standards are shifting,” Alicia wisely stated. “Personally, I don’t know what I’d do. I mean, do any of us know until it happens to us?”

“She’ll run the empire when he goes to jail.” Franny shrugged.

“Well, it’s entirely possible she’ll be on the carpet, too. How much did she know? Is she an accessory?” Cooper knew all too well how these things worked.

“This will drag on and drag on,” said Franny. In the meantime, Harry’s got a Subaru WRX STI, because I doubt anyone is going to think to take it back at the moment. Safe and Sound owns it, right?” She laughed.

“Guess they do,” Harry replied.

“Well, make hay while the sun shines,” Franny enjoined her.

“That’s just what I’ve been doing.” Harry swept her arm to indicate the cut hay fields, to much laughter.

Just then, the blue jay returned. The light on the iced-tea pitcher, mirrored almost, fooled him, and he flew smack into it, falling between the glasses and the sugar and lemon.

For a fat girl, Pewter burned the wind jumping on that table.

She’d just put her paw on the bird’s plump chest when Harry scooped her up.

“That’s my bird. I’ve waited years for that monster!”

Fair picked up the bird, stroking its head, feeling its neck. “Not broken.”

A bright black eye opened. The blue jay moved his head.

Pewter wriggled in Harry’s arms, her rage escalating.

“Get your tail out of the cake icing.” BoomBoom gingerly picked up the tail.

“Mine. That bird is mine!” Pewter reached out.

“No,” Fair said, as he plucked a baked oat off a muffin and put it into the bird’s beak. Then he threw the blue jay up. A flutter of wings and the thief landed on his branch.

Swallowing the oat, he stared straight down at the distraught gray cat. “Ha.”

“I will kill you,” Pewter vowed. “I don’t care how long it takes. I will kill you.”

Mrs. Murphy walked over to her emotional friend, leaned on her shoulder, and said, “Pewts, don’t you worry. Someday that blue jay will get his. You know that crime doesn’t pay.”