The Purrfect Murder

She’d been to the office only once since Will was shot, and that seemed like it had been years ago during the day, seconds ago during the night. Time confused her. Somehow it seemed absurd, marking time. Everything seemed absurd and empty without Will, but she forced herself to not lose those threads that bind a life. Bills will come in and must be paid. Keep on keeping on.

Margaret Westlake sat at the front desk area, which had a sliding-glass window. She looked up from a schedule book, where she had written the names of doctors filling in for Will until a permanent solution could be found.

Surprised to see his widow, she jumped out of her chair and gave Benita a big hug.

“I came by to see how you girls are doing; you’ve all been so good to come by the house every day.”

Hearing Benita’s voice, Sophie Denham came out of an examining room, and Kylie Kraft came up the hallway, folders in hand.

After exchanging kisses and some tears, Benita said to the three women, “I thought perhaps I could help with outstanding accounts. I know all of Will’s patients were devoted to him, but his passing might encourage a few to delay their payment. So I thought I’d go over those accounts if you have them separated out. If not, I can separate them out. I have a rough idea of the system.”

Margaret replied, “You and I are on the same wavelength. I’ve been working on it.”

Benita looked at Kylie and said, “Since there is more time, you might go over the codes. I know the insurance companies send updated discs, if I remember what Will said. Used to make him mad every time they’d jack up a procedural cost… well, anyway.” She paused because she didn’t want to cry again. “Things can get confusing. You might just check from the last updated disc forward to make sure nothing has been misbilled. Is that a real word?”

“Is now.” Sophie, glad she was a nurse, had no patience for the bookkeeping aspect of medicine.

Kylie replied, “I’m not the coder. I’m trying to learn it, though.”

“Ah, well, you do what you’re doing, then,” Benita replied. Margaret punched buttons on the computer, then handed Benita the two sheets that printed out.

“Mmm.” Benita was surprised at some of the names. “Carla Paulson.” She shook her head. “Two hundred one dollars and twenty-nine cents. Margaret, I think best not to bill second notice. I have some idea of what Jurgen is going through.”

“That marriage wasn’t quite what yours was, Benita.”

“I’d heard that.” Benita noted that Carla’s bill was a simple checkup as well as a mammogram. “Why is the mammogram on our bill?” She touched her forehead. “Forgot. That machine cost more than our house, but it’s about paid for itself, hasn’t it?”

“People don’t want to go to the hospital or even hospital adjuncts. Here they’re with their personal physician, trusting him and Sophie. It’s faster, more pleasant. He can read the mammogram right in front of them. If something needs to be done, it can be scheduled right then and there. You know Dr. Wylde never dallied if he thought there was any possibility of—how did he always put it—‘ugly cells.” “ Margaret felt a knot in her voice. ”He knew just how to put things so a woman felt confident no matter what.“

“He was a sensitive man.” Benita put her hand over Margaret’s.

“We’ll get through this. And I will make a decision about this office within a month. You all don’t have to worry about anything.”

“I know.” Margaret cast her eyes down, then up, and looked out the glass partition. “If we stay here, if another doctor buys the practice, we’ll work with him, but it will never be the same. Dr. Wylde kept us laughing the whole day. He was the only doctor I know who could tell a woman she had breast cancer or cervical cancer and make her laugh. Very few women left here in tears, and you know how adamant he was about counseling if a woman was going to get a termination.”

“Yes, I do.”

Will did not discuss his patients’ illnesses with his wife, as he was scrupulous about all things pertaining to confidentiality, but they talked about everything else.

Laughter had drawn her to Will in the first place. Both of them came from working-class families, very good families; both were working their way through college with the help of scholarships. Will wasn’t the handsomest man, but he was the funniest, kindest man she had ever met. Benita, being beautiful, had college boys running out of every frat house on campus when she’d walk by. But Will won her.

After they completed undergraduate school, she worked to put him through med school. He never once cheated on her, even if he was inclined, because he remembered the sacrifices, her staying up with him when he needed coffee or extra help to study. This struggle brought them so close to each other. It also made Harvey Tillach’s accusation all the more unpalatable. They accepted each other’s foibles—her blind passion for golf, his irritating habit of thinking he could fix either of the cars if something went wrong. Mostly, they laughed. When the children came, all four of them would be laughing.

She tried to remember the laughter.

“Do you want me to send out a second notice?” Margaret returned to the list.

“Yes. These two patients are way past a second notice.”

“Money troubles.” Margaret had seen and heard it all.

“Perhaps they could pay over time.” Benita’s eyebrows lifted a little.

“Worth a try. This one”—she pointed to Star Gurdrun—“is seventeen, and her parents—who agreed, mind you—are punishing us.”

“Well, give it a try. You know, with a name like Star, that kid doesn’t have a chance.”

“I know.” Margaret grinned.

Kylie came back in. “What is this? Found it on an examining table.”

Margaret slipped on her glasses, which hung from a chain around her neck. “Banamine.”

A voice called from the back. “Mine. Left it on the table when I heard Benita’s voice.”

“Since when are you taking Banamine, Sophie?”

“Since I grew four legs and ate hay.” She appeared and snatched the bottle from Kylie, but with humor. “Duke is a little ouchy. He’s getting on, you know.”

“I know the feeling.” Benita smiled. “I haven’t seen Duke in forever.”

Sophie reached into her smock pocket, withdrawing a photo of a sleek chestnut Thoroughbred. “My baby. You know, Dr. Haristeen said he is the youngest sixteen-year-old he has ever examined.”

Benita eyed the large bottle. “I might try some of that myself.”

She stayed another hour at the office, going over items with Margaret, who, as her job demanded, was on top of every little detail.

Before leaving, Benita asked, “Margaret, do you and the girls know who has had procedures and who has not?”

Margaret answered, “We do. We don’t tell tales out of school. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know.”

“Fear?”

Margaret shook her head vigorously. “No. The nuts will go after the doctors, not us, until we get organized enough to go after them.” Anger filled her voice, but then she quelled it. “When I see someone come in for their third termination, it makes my blood boil. Termination is not birth control. It’s a last resort. There are women out there who are so flagrantly irresponsible I want to slap their faces. Like to slap their boyfriends and husbands, too.”

“It’s an imperfect world, Margaret, filled with imperfect people.

I’m one of them, although my imperfections aren’t centered around sexual irresponsibility.“

Margaret changed the subject. “Isn’t it just awful about Tazio?”

“Rather incomprehensible. She’s such a nice girl.”

“Nice girls can do terrible things.”

27

Neither Harry nor Fair ate big suppers. A big breakfast sent them on their way and then a good lunch kept them rolling. All a big supper did was turn to fat because you couldn’t work it off.

She’d thrown together a nice salad with small bits of the leftover grilled chicken that was Fair’s triumph over the weekend. The scent of grilled chicken sent Pewter into a frenzy.

“Me! Me!” She stood on her hind legs, petting Harry’s calves.

“Oink. Oink,” Tucker grunted.

“Shut up, tailless wonder.” Pewter dropped back on her haunches and swiped at the corgi, who ducked in time.

“Dear God, give me patience, but hurry,” Harry grumbled, putting some chicken in three separate bowls on the floor.

Pewter whirled toward the bowl, her hind legs skidding out.

Once she gained traction, she sped past Mrs. Murphy and Tucker.

“Amazing how fast that fat cat can move when food’s the temptation.” Harry put her hands on her hips just as the big vet truck rumbled down the long dirt drive.

As Fair walked through the door, she set a glass of tonic water with a wedge of lime and four ice cubes by his plate; one for her, too. Both of them swore the quinine in the tonic kept them from getting leg cramps. Lately, medical researchers doubted this, but Harry doubted that medical researchers ever put in a full day’s work on a farm, especially in punishing heat.

Although it was almost October, the days could simmer but the nights brought relief. Then it would turn in a heartbeat, the mercury hanging in the low sixties, soon to drop into the fifties, and with November the plunge would continue. Nature always granted Virginia a respite with Indian summer, though, a few days or even a week of a return to temperatures in the mid-sixties to seventies. Indian summer, beautiful as it was with the fall foliage, tinged hearts with melancholy. It would soon vanish, to be followed by the hard frosts of winter, denuded trees, and a palette of beige, gray, black, silver, and, finally, white.

“Beautiful girl.” He kissed her on the cheek, washed his hands at the sink, and sat down.

Harry took her seat and they ate their salad, caught up on the day’s doings. They’d talked about the cigarette butt on the floor of the building adjacent to Will Wylde’s, so she told him she’d called Cooper about Folly smoking Virginia Slims. She didn’t tell of her conversation with Folly. A secret was a secret with Harry.

“Doesn’t it look barren without the sunflowers?” he said after he’d registered her report.

“You know, it really does, but those boys did a good job.”

The original plan was for Harry, Fair, and their friends to harvest the sunflowers. Eventually Harry realized that, while they could do the labor, this was only her first crop. Fearing she’d damage those big, rich heads, she broke down and hired a crew recommended to her by Waynesboro Nurseries, the same company that had put in Benita’s maples. Granted, labor cut into the profit, but there was very little waste. They got it all up in two days, Monday and today.

“I thought I’d make more.” She put down her fork for a minute. “I mean, I would have, but—”

“Harry, you did the right thing. If nothing else, you saved Miranda’s back. Our friends are very good to us, but sometimes it’s best not to ask for favors.”

“You’re right, but she’s on her hands and knees in her garden, remember. As it is, we made three thousand dollars.”

“Whenever you balance the books, if you wind up in the black, that’s good.” The slightly bitter taste of mesclun burst on his tongue. “These greens are so crisp.”

“Fresh out of the garden. The battle with the bugs.” She grinned. “I won this year.”

“You won because we policed the garden.” Pewter lifted her head from her bowl.

“What a liar you are.” Tucker laughed. “All you did was sleep under the walnut tree with your face pointed in the direction of the garden.”

“The barn swallows, tree swallows, and purple martins ate the bugs,” Mrs. Murphy reported. “Maybe even the blue jay ate a few, worthless though he is.”

“He’s funny. He imitates the call of a red-shouldered hawk, scares the other birds, then swoops down to eat, undisturbed. They figure it out, come back, and remonstrate with him.” Tucker studied birds, although in a different fashion from the cats, whose motives were murderous.

“People, a lot of them, don’t realize that blue jays will mimic other birds. They know that mockingbirds do it, but they forget about the jays. With his versatile voice, he can get close to the hawk notes.”

‘Voice isn’t as smooth. You know, their throats are different from ours. They can make two different sounds at the same time. We can’t,“ Tucker mused.

“Humans can talk out of both sides of their mouth at the same time,” Pewter added sarcastically, then looked at Mrs. Murphy’s empty bowl. “You sure ate in a hurry.”

“So you couldn’t steal my food,” Mrs. Murphy forthrightly replied.

“What is this, assassinate Pewter’s reputation day? Tucker calls me a liar, you say I steal food. I ought to box both your ears.”

Neither animal took the bait, remaining silent. Miffed, Pewter stuck her face back in her ceramic bowl to lick it since she’d gobbled up everything.

Harry and Fair finished their light supper. As he did the dishes, she turned on the TV in the living room.

“Thought I’d look at the weather before finishing the rest of the chores. Less light now.”

“I’ve been so busy I haven’t heard the weather or the news.”

“No candidate yet for office manager, chief factotum?”

“No. You know who I’d like to hire is Margaret Westlake. Don’t know what will happen to Will’s practice, so I thought I’d wait a bit to talk to her.”

“Don’t you think she’ll go with another human doctor?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about Kylie Kraft?”

“She’s a nurse. Might know some office management. Anyway, Kylie goes through boyfriends liked toothpicks. Too much drama and you don’t need that in the office.”

“That she does.” Harry patiently waited for the weather.

“She done them wrong.” Fair wiped his hands dry and walked into the living room.

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker also watched the news.

“She’s in her late twenties.” Harry lukewarmly defended Kylie.

He shook his head. “She’s got a mean streak where men are concerned.” He dropped his arm over her shoulder. “You crack me up.”

“Why?”

“You are out of the gossip loop. By the time I hear it, it’s old news, but I hear it.”

“I hear some things—but not too much.” She watched the world news; a picture of car-bomb debris in Baghdad, bodies everywhere, flashed before their eyes. “They can all kill one another for all I care.”

“Harry,” he chided her gently.

“I mean it. For thousands of years those tribes and religious factions have hated one another. We aren’t going to solve it. It’s civil war. They’ll kill one another until they can’t stand it anymore, just like what happened in the English Civil War and just like what happened here. When people become that irrational, only overwhelming pain brings them back to their senses.”

He sighed. “I wish you were wrong.”

“I wish I were, too.” She slipped her arm around his waist. “Hell, we’re killing one another, too. Even though I didn’t see her, the vision of Carla with blood all over her gown—ugh.”

“Isn’t it odd that humans will kill over an idea or for money?” Tucker cocked her head to one side.

“They don’t,” Pewter swiftly replied. “That’s the cover for the real reason.”

“Which is?” Tucker queried.

“The pantry. All wars start in the pantry.”

Conversation stopped as the local news came on and there was Little Mim, mikes thrust in front of her.

“My opposition to abortion came from my own experience. I don’t regret not sharing that experience. We are all entitled to a private life. Now that mine has been so vilely exposed, I want to go on the record to tell you all, this outing, if you will, and the murder of Dr. Wylde has changed my mind. I will support reproductive control. I will fight this violent fanaticism with all I have in me as Crozet’s vice mayor, and I know I can count on the support of the mayor. I want to say to every woman out there who may be considering a termination, think it over. It’s one of the biggest decisions you will ever make. If there’s any way you can keep the baby, do.”

She fielded a few more questions, said, “Thank you,” and walked back toward the small city offices to the waiting arms of her husband.

Big Mim stood next to Jim.

The newscaster, Dinny Suga, turned to face the camera, then read from a paper handed to her. She looked into the lens and, rephrasing the bulletin, said, “We have a missing-persons report. Mrs. Penelope Lattimore is reported missing by her husband—”

“What in the hell is going on?” Fair exploded, his voice overriding Suga’s report.

“I saw Penny this morning. How can she be missing?”

Fair turned to her. “This morning?”

“Keswick Country Club. I stopped by.”

“Harry, usually an adult, unless impaired, has to be missing for at least twenty-four hours before a report is filed. Something is very wrong here.”

“You mean if Penny’s disappearance made the news, they fear the worst?”

“Yes. Obviously, we’re supposed to be on the lookout for her, but she’s more than missing, I’m afraid.”

28

Harry was shocked at Tazio’s appearance when she walked into the area reserved for prison visitors. Unlike big prisons, where people sat on either side of glass, speaking through phones, they sat opposite each other, with a low table between them and a guard at the door.

“Harry.” Tazio reached across the table and the two women touched hands.

“Are you all right?”

“I don’t know. I can’t eat and I can’t sleep.”

“Is the food that bad?”

“Too much starch, sugar, and salt. I just can’t stomach it.”

“Brinkley is fine, but he misses you.”

Tazio wiped away a tear. “You don’t realize how much you love a dog until you’re separated from him. Brinkley and I are together all day, every day. He’s my shadow, my friend, my best friend, corny as that sounds.”

“Not to me it doesn’t. Miranda baked gingerbread. The other guard is cutting it up to make sure it doesn’t have a saw in it.” Harry smiled ruefully. “God knows if you’ll get any of it. Smelled so delicious that I almost tore into it myself on the way down here, and you can imagine how undisciplined Pewter was.”

“I miss them, too.”

“Out in the truck with the windows cracked, although it’s coolish today, finally. October is one of my favorite months, but Friday isn’t my favorite day.” Harry folded her hands, placing them on top of the table.

“Sure puts everyone else in a good mood, because at five, they’re off. The weekend starts the minute they leave the job.”

“You and I don’t have those kind of jobs.”

“Miss that, too.” She tried to make general conversation. “Why don’t you like Fridays?”

“Execution day for the better part of European history. Considered the devil’s day.” Harry noted the expression on Tazio’s thinning features. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I am accused of murder.” She expelled air with force. “I feel like I’m in a bad dream.”

“Big Mim is raising your bail from friends.”

She ruefully snorted. “Guess I know what I’m worth.”

“A lot, apparently.” Harry’s voice was soft, then she continued, “Are you being treated okay? Are the other prisoners okay?”

“Harry, they are exactly what you think they are: drug addicts supporting their habits by prostitution. There’s no one in here for big crimes, other than myself. And you know what’s really weird? I guess it’s not so weird, since people always form a pecking order, but the top of the top is considered armed robbery. I’m accused of murder so I’m lower on the totem pole, but the poor girls in there who are strung out on smack, coke, crank, you name it, they’re on the bottom. They don’t have much to do with me, but they aren’t ugly.”

“That’s a relief.”

“I even like some of the women. Poor things, if they didn’t have bad luck they wouldn’t have any luck at all.”

“Good luck will be coming your way. We’re working on it.”

“Harry, I have replayed that night in my mind over and over again. I can’t think of any detail I neglected to report. Ned keeps counseling me to relax, dream a little. He says sometimes stray bits of information might float up. He thinks because of the shock I’ve blocked things.”

“Possible. In fact, I bet he’s right.”

She shook her head. “I still can’t think of anything except that I heard a footfall, steps away from me, but…” She shrugged.

“What about odors? Perfume, cologne, liquor, I don’t know… uh, cigar smoke?”

“The smell of blood was overpowering.”

“Plus everything else that comes out of the body.”

“That, too. I have thought of one thing, though—not a memory but a note, like a missing note in a line of music.” As Harry leaned forward, Tazio said, “The sheriff said that the way Carla’s throat was slashed would indicate a right-handed person.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If the killer came up behind her, grabbed her by the chin, pulled her head back, and exposed her neck, that cut would be left to right. They’d be right-handed.” She sighed. “I’m grasping at straws. It really doesn’t make any difference.”

“Ned said the coroner’s report from Bedford County indicated she was slashed from the front and she had made no attempt to defend herself.”

“Harry, when someone’s throat is cut, the blood shoots out like a fountain. Wouldn’t whoever did it be drenched in blood? They couldn’t jump aside until the job was done. Blood had to spray over something—clothing, their face, depending on their height.”

Harry sat upright. “God.”

“So I think whoever approached her—someone she knew or someone innocent-looking—had the knife hidden, perhaps in a towel, a bag, even an instrument case like for a trumpet. If he had a towel, he could have used it to wipe himself off.”

“I don’t know if it will make a difference, but who knows. Details finally add up to a picture. Have you told Ned?”

“No. I won’t see him until tomorrow, Saturday.”

“Do you mind if I tell him?”

“No.”

“May I tell Coop? She knows more about these things than either of us.”

“No, I don’t mind. It’s curious, isn’t it?”

“The men wore white tie, and the blood would be noticeable on the pique front and the tie. Most of the women wore bright dresses; it would show. Might not show on a black dress.”

“But you’d smell it.”

“I don’t know. A lot of folks have lost their sense of smell, thanks to the ragweed and goldenrod plus smoking and pollution, but surely one of us would have gotten a whiff. You’re right, Taz, whoever killed Carla had a way to either avoid the blood or clean up.”

“Could have gone into a Porta-John.”

“Hard to change in there. Not impossible, but the killer would have had to stash his clothes somewhere. He couldn’t carry a bundle of clothing under his arm and kill her, go to a John, and hope there wasn’t a line. Not likely.”

“A person walking to the parking lot wouldn’t seem out of place.”

“No, they wouldn’t. They could have slipped back into the house, though that’s less likely with Melvin there.”

“So either they changed or got rid of the bloody towel, if they had one. Stuck it in the car.”

“I don’t know, but I’ll swing back to Poplar Forest and nose around outside. Open to the public, so I can’t very well charge inside. Taz, I’m sorry. We’ll get you out of here. Another week and I think we’ll make bail. You’d be surprised at how many people are chipping in.”

Her eyes misted over. “I’m lucky. I have good friends.”

“You are a good friend.” Harry changed the subject. “Herb’s called a vestry-board meeting. Marvin’s back but I don’t know if he’s going to be there, because Penny’s been missing since Tuesday. Penny, according to her husband, could go off on a shopping toot and forget to call, but she’d call if she would be late getting home.”

Tazio’s eyes widened. “Another client of mine. Harry, what’s going on? Penny and Carla were friends, sort of”

“I don’t know. Could be she’s fine or she’s not fine. If she had a stroke she might not be able to tell people who she is. What if she fell over at a mall? Someone could have stolen her purse. You never know. Stranger things have happened.”

Tazio twisted her fingers together nervously. “She’d be in a hospital. Given the call of her disappearance, someone at the hospital would notify the sheriff. No, Harry, something is wrong.”

“Both women used you as their architect.”

She leveled her eyes at Harry’s. “Both had to put up with Mike McElvoy, too.” She sighed. “He’s not going to kill anyone. He’d be killed first.”

“You never know.”

When Harry left, she drove straight to Poplar Forest. On the way she told her four-legged friends of the conversation with Tazio. They appeared interested. At Jefferson’s summer home, Robert Taney told Harry she could come inside, but she declined. The killer just couldn’t have been that stupid to go back into the house with Melvin Rankin in there. They may have lurked in some part of the house, initially slipping by Melvin when he was elsewhere, but they surely wouldn’t go back in after the dirty deed. Harry felt certain about that.

“Let’s see if we can find the rats.” Mrs. Murphy bounced across the lawn, tail to the vertical.

The three trotted around the house to the south portico.

Tucker called out in a loud voice, “Randolph, come on out.”

“Randolph, Sarah.” Pewter meowed.

Mrs. Murphy, hearing footsteps above, said, “They can’t come out from the west window. People are up there.”

“Drat!” Tucker sat down, looking around.

A minute later a deep voice called from the west side of the arcade under the south portico. “You again.”

Two bright dark eyes appeared by the edge of the arcade. Then two more. The rats, half obscured, could duck back in if people walked outside. The last thing they needed was someone squealing about rats. They belonged here more than the humans, those two-legged twits.

“Did you find a bloody towel last Saturday?” Mrs. Murphy drove right to the point.

“What’s it to you?” Randolph twitched his whiskers.

“Our mother thinks—well, her friend in prison thinks—maybe the killer used a towel. The lady in prison is a nice lady. The one killed was nasty. Think of her as rat poison. But if we can’t find the real killer, our friend may well spend the rest of her life behind bars.”

“You ask a lot of questions, and you don’t bring treats.” Randolph stalled, sorry that he and Sarah had initially offered information about the cigarette without exacting a price.

“Wait.” Mrs. Murphy, lightning-fast, ran to the truck.

The open windows were high, but she jumped into the truck bed, onto the cab roof, then insinuated herself through the open window. She clamped her jaws around a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, Harry’s favorite candy, and leapt out the window onto the ground below.

“Fast,” Sarah observed. “We’d better remember that.”

Randolph boasted, “We’re almost as big as she is.”

Mrs. Murphy dropped the candy before Randolph.

“These are good!” He pushed it toward his spouse. “Half for you, my sweet. You’re sweeter than the candy.”

Pewter looked nauseated at this, but Tucker shot her a “behave” look.

“Your mother doesn’t smoke, does she?” Sarah was hopeful.

“No, sorry.” Mrs. Murphy prayed the candy would do the trick.

“We found a bloody towel, soaked, under the front steps.”

“Could we have it?” Tucker panted expectantly.

Randolph laughed. “We ate it, you ninny.”

“Tasty. Fresh.” Sarah licked her lips as she admired the bright waxed candy wrapper, just waiting to rip into it.

“Ah” Tucker understood. “We hoped to use it as evidence. It was the murdered woman’s blood.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Randolph, Sarah, are you sure you didn’t see anyone?” Mrs. Murphy felt desperate, wanting to help Tazio because she liked the architect but mostly doing this for Brinkley.

“Only other thing we found was the cigarette. We knew someone was in the house besides Melvin. But it’s nothing to us. And we have to be careful.”

“Yes, you do.” Pewter finally opened her mouth.

“Why didn’t you tell us about the towel in the first place?”

“I don’t put all my cards on the table first time I talk to someone,” Randolph sensibly replied.

“Thank you. You’ve been a big help.” Mrs. Murphy meant that, but if Tucker could have carried the towel back to the truck, what a victory that would have been.

It wouldn’t have proven Tazio’s innocence, but it would have been one more piece to fit into the puzzle.

Once all were back in the truck, Harry closed the windows, turned on the ancient AC since the day had begun to warm, and drove away.

“You know, buddies, Carla and Penny must have had some secrets worth killing for, but I can’t think of any beyond paying off Mike. And we don’t know that. Think. If he did take money, he wouldn’t have put it in the bank. Too obvious. If it was a sex thing, his word against theirs. He knows construction. I wonder if he’s hidden things, like the rat stuff Robert Taney showed us when we walked through.” She turned on the radio, low. “Maybe I’d better go over Tazio’s blueprints. And then, if there’s something in the blueprints that looks promising, maybe I’d better see if I can get into the houses. Course, if you know what you’re doing, you can create all kinds of hiding places.”

“Why would he hide something at one of their houses?” Pewter, like the others, felt disappointment over the towel.

As if understanding the gray cat, Harry said, “He’d hide it in his truck or, more likely, his home.”

Seeing Tazio’s state had spurred Harry onward.

“I hope she doesn’t break into his house.” Tucker’s brown eyes showed deep worry.

“For once, I agree with her.” Mrs. Murphy watched the road, looking for cats walking about houses or sleeping in windows. “The stakes are high and Tazio is a friend. Whatever Mom does, I’m doing it with her.”

Harry reached to the center of the bench seat. “Hey, where’s my Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup?”

No one uttered a peep.

At a stoplight Harry looked on the floor. If the animals had eaten her candy, the wrapper would be shredded. Not a trace. “I can’t believe that. Someone reached into my truck and stole my Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup!”

29

Saturday, October 4, was glorious with sunshine and radiated with the first flush of color, which would peak in about a week. Oaks blushed orange, yellow, russet; maples screamed scarlet. Zinnias stood huge and colorful. Willows bent over in yellow.

Herb called an emergency vestry-board meeting. The spectacular weather provoked him to keep a tight rein on it, because he wanted to be outside himself.

At eight in the morning, Harry, Susan, Folly, BoomBoom, and Nolan Carter showed up, so Herb had his quorum. Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker also attended, but the exhaustive discussion of the furnace choices drove the animals down the hall, the thick carpet pleasing underfoot.

Elocution demonstrated how to hit the wall with four feet and do a flip. Cazenovia and Lucy Fur also performed this acrobatic feat, and Mrs. Murphy got the hang of it. Pewter observed but declined the opportunity.

“Come on, Pewts, it’s fun.” Mrs. Murphy hit the wall again, four clear pawprints on the light-beige paint.

Pawprints covered both sides of the hallway wall, because the three Lutheran cats practiced their skills daily. Herb pretended not to see all the marks, because then he’d have to kneel down to clean them. He could bend down just fine. It was the getting up that ached.

“Nolan, oil’s your business. I would expect you to vote for the oil furnace as opposed to a heat pump,” Herb genially teased him, although all were preoccupied with recent events.

Nolan, whose waist was expanding but not yet fat, stroked a neat Vandyke, which looked good on him. “Tell you what, there are two sides to this issue. The first is always what is cost-effective over the long run. The second is what provides the most efficient heat.” He laid his palm flat on the big report that Tazio had prepared before the Poplar Forest fund-raiser horror. “A heat pump works great until it becomes bitter cold, down in the teens. Then your electric bill skyrockets and, for whatever reason, the heat is insufficient.”

BoomBoom interjected, “Plus you feel the air from the vents. It’s below body temperature, so it always feels cold.”

“Yes, it does.” He nodded. “However, how many days does the temperature sink like that?” He held up his hands, questioning. “A total of three weeks in the winter. Granted, you might not be as comfortable as you’d like during those three weeks, but you have fireplaces and that helps.”

“Smells great, too.” Harry used her fireplaces throughout the cold, plus she had a wood-burning stove in the basement, which worked wonders in keeping costs down. She kept the door to the basement open; the big stove was equipped with a blower, and the warm air curled up the stairs and throughout the house. She kept her thermostat at sixty-seven degrees, but the old frame house remained toasty.

Depend on Harry to find the least expensive way to do something without compromising value.

“What about oil prices?” Susan asked the obvious, pressing question.

“They’re going to stay erratic, and it’s not just the Middle East.” Nolan leaned back on the big sofa. “As long as Nigeria is unstable and they blow up oil fields, it’ll cost us. That’s a high-grade oil, some of the best in the world. The short answer is: beware.”

“Puts you in a spot,” Folly said.

“Folly”—he turned to her—“it’s more than a spot. I have elderly people on fixed incomes. They won’t be able to pay their heating bills.

If I don’t deliver, they’ll freeze. What do I do? Hurt myself or be a good Samaritan? And it’s going to get worse.“

“You are a good Samaritan, Nolan,” Herb praised him.

“I think, at this time, go with the heat pump. The system she’s selected here should be good for at least thirty years. By that time there has to be better technology available.”

“Nolan, why couldn’t we put in the oil furnace and burn ethanol?” BoomBoom liked technical problems.

“No, no.” He shook his head. “I know that’s hyped as the answer. Someone touts a new technology as the answer and then it isn’t. We’ve got real problems, and I don’t see any shortcuts, despite what the press tells you. Get the heat pump.”

Herb scanned the gathered. “What do you think? Shall we vote on it?”

“I move we vote to buy the heat-pump system selected by Tazio,” Harry said.

“I second the motion.” BoomBoom knew her Robert’s Rules of Order.

“All in favor signify by raising your right hand and saying, ”Aye.“ ” Herb knew them, too. “The ayes have it.” He chuckled because it was unanimous. “Now for the next question. Do we just do here or do we replace the church system, as well?”

A silence followed this. No one wished to scoot the budget into the red, but all realized if they put it off it would cost more later, possibly as much as twenty-five percent more.

Folly had been quieter than usual, but she did smile warmly at Harry, who was glad that she, herself, didn’t carry heavy secrets.

While this discussion unfolded, the cats and corgi played soccer with a canvas frog jammed full with aromatic catnip.

When Pewter got the frog, she inhaled deeply, her pupils enlarged, then she batted the frog and rolled over.

Tucker liked the catnip aroma, but it didn’t have the same effect on her.

After ten minutes of this, the cats were silly. They flopped on their sides and giggled, the frog now between Cazenovia’s paws.

The cats’ giggling—little puffs of expelled air—made Tucker giggle, too. She expelled air, too, but it came out with a bit more force and sounded like, “Ho.”

Most people don’t think that animals can laugh, but cats, dogs, and horses can.

Elocution, on her side, reached out to snag the frog.

“No you don’t.” Cazenovia sank her claws in the canvas with a pleasing crunch sound.

“Did I tell you Mom visited Tazio yesterday?” Mrs. Murphy said to Lucy Fur.

“No, how is she?” Lucy asked.

“Going downhill, Mom thinks. Said she looked worn, thin, just drawn out.” Pewter supplied the information.

“But the big news is, the two rats that live in Poplar Forest destroyed evidence,” Tucker exclaimed.

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker eagerly related how Randolph and Sarah had eaten the bloody towel, as well as how Sarah “smoked” the Virginia Slims.

Lucy Fur licked one paw, then sat up, eyes still large. “Poppy could be in danger.”

“You’re not supposed to tell.” Cazenovia sat up, too.

“We can tell. Poppy can’t tell.”

“What did he do?” Pewter loved Herb, as did they all.

“He didn’t do anything,” Lucy Fur announced firmly. “Letters. Some of his parishioners received threatening letters, and when Will was killed they came to him. Others came when Little Mim stepped forward about her own past.”

“Great day.” Tucker sighed.

“Why didn’t he go to Rick straightaway?” Pewter thought this very strange.

“He can’t. He’s a minister, and if a person confesses to him, that information is sacred. He has been carrying this around, knowing what could happen.” Cazenovia thought her poppy very brave.

“Do you know what was in the letters?” Pewter had a good idea.

“Sure. We all sat there during these tearful confessions. The first letters asked for money, not huge sums, but then the sums escalated. After Will was shot, they really skyrocketed,” Lucy Fur informed them.

Elocution, head more clear now, added, “Greedy.”

Cazenovia, her long calico hair lustrous, worried. “Penny Lattimore came in Tuesday. Her latest letter from Jonathan Bechtal—supposedly from him, anyway—reminded her she was number two on the list if she didn’t pay up. She decided she had to go to Rick and she’d have to tell her husband. She asked Poppy to go with her.”

“Did he?” Mrs. Murphy wanted to be certain of her facts.

“He did. I guess the hard part was telling Marvin that she’d had an affair; the abortion was due to that. Whatever became of that talk, I don’t know.” Elocution took a deep breath. “I do know that Rick and Coop have taken her into protective custody. Even Marvin doesn’t know where she is. They’ve put out this story that she’s missing to see if they can flush out the blackmailer.” Lucy Fur eyed the front of the house.

“Well, that might work,” Pewter said.

“Might,” Cazenovia agreed but qualified it. “But what we’re worried about is, what if the blackmailer figures out that some of his victims have confessed to Poppy? He’ll come after him.”

“I hope not.” Tucker’s voice rose. “Mom thinks that Mike McElvoy may have killed Carla. But if you think about it, he could be part of this. He’s against abortion—Tazio told Mom that—but he presents himself as a reasonable person. So he makes money twice, first through his job, if he has been inventing problems at these construction sites and getting paid off, then through this.”

“I don’t know.” Mrs. Murphy inhaled, for the catnip scent remained strong. “Mike would have to have his hands on Will Wylde’s records and he’d have had to set up Jonathan Bechtal.”

“Set up? Jonathan confessed.” Cazenovia thought that was that.

“I think that Jonathan Bechtal is being used as a cat’s paw, forgive the expression.” Mrs. Murphy’s tiger coat glistened. “Is he a fanatic? Obviously. Does he expect to get out in a few years’ time to enjoy whatever money he and whoever have extorted from the patients? Maybe. But even if he isn’t in this for the money, I’m willing to bet one of my nine lives that he believes the money goes to Love of Life, all the money. If he finds out otherwise, it could get ugly for whoever is on the outside.”

“Mike McElvoy would be that person. And he might have a way into Will’s records if he’s a computer whiz.” Elocution was considering all that had been said.

“He’s up to no good, but is it that bad?” Tucker had learned that Mrs. Murphy eventually found the right path.

Cazenovia, thinking about all this and remembering the conversations women had with Poppy, piped up, “Who was number one if Penny is number two?”

“Dr. Wylde.” Lucy Fur stated this with conviction.

“But he wouldn’t have been blackmailed.” Mrs. Murphy felt sure of this. “He’d stood up to death threats before. I don’t think he was number one.”

“Little Mim,” Pewter declared.

“More likely, but I don’t know.” Mrs. Murphy flicked the tip of her tail. “What I do know is that the other women who have been paying off have not gone to Rick. Herb knows those of his parish. He can’t be the only minister hearing their stories. The other thing is that Harry will blunder right into it. We’ve got two of our people to protect.”

30

“Why don’t you buy your own car?” Susan grumbled as she drove her Audi station wagon from the vestry-board meeting. “Here it is Saturday, a perfect day for chores and errands, and I’m hauling your little white butt around.”

“Too much money.” Harry affected a prudent and pious tone.

“Your husband will buy you a car if you want one.”

“It seems…” She thought for a moment. “Excessive.”

“So I drive out to your farm, pick you up, bring you to St. Luke’s, and now we’re cruising around because you want to enjoy how great my wagon rides. I’ve spent three dollars in gas just picking you up.”

“I’ll pay you.” Harry wrinkled her nose. “Besides, I take you places in my truck. And I just discovered my truck needs a new alternator, so it’s in the shop. You can drop me off on the way home.”

“Your F-150 that was foaled in 1978? It’s not a bad ride. Better than your dually. That thing will rattle your teeth.”

Harry nodded. “It may suck up gas, but it hauls the rig, hauls the flatbed. I can do a lot of farm chores with that, and it saves me buying another tractor. Blair lends me his big eighty-horsepower. I thought I might could buy it when he and Little Mim moved to Rose Hill, but he took the tractor. Good thing, because she was still using that old Massey Ferguson from the seventies, the one where the gears would lock up and you’d fly along. Scared the poop out of me when I saw it.”

“What is that old Massey Ferguson in horsepower?”

“One twenty.”

“Mercy.” Even though not a farmer, Susan, like most people in the area, had an appreciation of the equipment, maintenance, skill, and time it took to produce any crop.

Now that she and Harry were partners in the timber tract, she was learning a lot and she loved it.

“So, what’s your gas mileage?”

“I tell you this every time we go out.” Susan noticed a maple tree downtown in high orange-red color.

The trees and bushes in town usually peaked before the ones in the country, because town temperature was often five or more degrees higher due to building density, more asphalt roads, and more car and furnace emissions.

“Twenty-five miles to the gallon on the open road. Sometimes twenty-eight,” Tucker piped up, since she’d heard it so many times.

Susan patiently repeated these same numbers to Harry.

“Pretty good for an engine this big, machine this heavy.”

“You’re not old enough to get Alzheimer’s; maybe you have Halfzheimer’s,” Susan teased her.

“I remember. I like to hear you say it,” Harry teased her back.

“Funny, Ned took Owen to the office today, and I miss my little guy. We spend most every waking moment together.”

“Corgi love.” Tucker smiled.

“Don’t make me throw up.” Pewter faked a gag.

“Hairball! Hairball alert!” Mrs. Murphy jumped away in mock disgust.

“Better than a worm-hanging-out-of-your-butt alert.” Pewter’s pupils narrowed for a second.

“I have never had a worm emerge from my nether regions.” Mrs. Murphy was incensed.

“Oh, puh-leese Louise.” Pewter drew out the word. “I’ve seen spaghetti strings out of that anus.”

“Never!” Mrs. Murphy cuffed the gray cat, who slapped her right back.

“Get me out of here,” Tucker whined as she tried to climb into the passenger seat up front.

“No, Tucker.” Harry turned. “You two, stop it. If I have to crawl back there, there will be big trouble in River City. You hear me?”

“I hear you, but I’m not listening.” Pewter whacked Mrs. Murphy again.

Mrs. Murphy leapt onto the rotund kitty. Since Susan had put the seats down, the two now rolled all the way to the hatchback door.

“Susan, if you pull over, I’ll settle this.”

“Oh, let them have at it.”

“You’ll have blood in your car.”

“Harpy!” Pewter snarled.

“Liar!” Mrs. Murphy scratched.

The lightbulb switched on in Tucker’s brain, and she called out above their mutual insults, “What I want to know, Pewter, is what are you doing studying Mrs. Murphy’s anus?”

This produced the desired effect. Both cats stopped screaming and clawing.

Pewter disentangled herself from the tiger cat, huffed up to full blowfish proportion, and jumped sideways toward the corgi. “Death to dogs!”

“Don’t think about it.” Tucker, bracing herself, snarled.

“Harry will put you in mincemeat pie when I’m done shredding.” Her chartreuse eyes, pupils full to the max, glittered with fury.

Mrs. Murphy, who should have known better, leapt on Pewter from behind, and the two rolled back to the hatchback door again.

“All right!” Harry turned to Susan. “Let me settle this.”

Susan pulled off High Street into a bank parking lot. “They’ll scratch you.”

“They’d better not if they know what’s good for them.”

Harry opened her door. Hearing it slam, the cats perceived the situation. They parted, retreating to opposite sides of the back, and began grooming.

Harry flipped up the hatchback. “Just what in the hell do you two think you’re doing?” No feline response brought forth a human torrent. “It’s a privilege to ride in this station wagon. It’s a privilege to visit Cazenovia, Lucy Fur, and Elocution. And it’s a privilege to cruise around town. If I hear one squeak, one snarl, one ugly meow, you two worthless cats are never riding in this station wagon again. Worthless. You haven’t caught one mouse in the barn, and I know they are there.”

Mrs. Murphy replied, “We have a deal with the tack-room mice. They aren’t destructive. They’re—”

Pewter interrupted. “She hasn’t a clue.”

“You shut up, fatty screw loose. You’re the reason we’re in this predicament.”

“Me! Me!” Pewter stood up.

“Don’t you dare.” Harry grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, shaking her lightly, the way her feline mother would have done.

Releasing the gray cannonball, Harry peered intently at Mrs. Murphy, pointing her index finger right at her. All three animals knew what that meant. The next gesture would be a little smack on the fanny.

Harry shut the hatchback, returned to the front. “Susan, how do people with children do it? You had two.”

“Animals are more intelligent.” Susan laughed good-naturedly.

Harry wheeled around as if to catch the cats off guard. “I’m watching you.”

Silence.

They drove east on High Street. “How about I turn down by Fifth Street and I’ll pick up 64?”

“How about we cruise by Woolen Mills first?”

“What’s in Woolen Mills?”

“Mike McElvoy’s house.” Before Susan could protest, Harry rapidly said, “When we were at the Poplar Forest ball, Mike and Noddy came by. The usual small talk, and she kidded about his work shed. Said he’d spent as much money on that as she did remodeling the kitchen.”

“And?”

“She said it’s where he buries the bodies.”

“Harry, that’s a figure of speech.”

“Well, we can at least peek in it. Susan, remember Tazio told us he’s antiabortion, and might I remind you, Tazio is still in jail. What’s a drive by?”

“Nothing I guess, unless you swing the shotgun out the window.” She exhaled. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things.”

“Because I’m your best friend. Because you love me.”

Susan smiled. “I do, but you drive me crazy.”

“Not a far putt.”

They both laughed uproariously.

“Yeah, well.” Susan shrugged.

“I love you, too.” Harry waited a beat, then whirled around again. “I’m watching.”

“Two-legged toad. You’ll get back trouble before I do,” Pewter sassed, but her anger toward Mrs. Murphy ebbed.

“Miss Hemorrhoid,” Mrs. Murphy added, a devilish glint to her eyes.

Triumphantly, the gray cat sang out, “Now who’s talking about anuses.”

Mrs. Murphy froze, considered another retaliatory attack, but thought better of it, for Harry meant what she said.

The two-story frame house, painted a Williamsburg blue with white trim, came into view. It was at the end of the street, which afforded a bit more quiet, not that Woolen Mills was particularly noisy. It was a pleasant neighborhood, the only drawback being when the winds changed at the city sewage-treatment plant.

“Hey, those boxwoods are gorgeous.” Susan noted the boxwoods lining the walkway to the front porch.

“English. Tight as a tick.” Harry craned her neck to see the shed. “Slow down.”

“I’m going five miles an hour,” Susan dryly replied.

As she turned in the small cul de sac, Harry caught sight of the shed at the rear of the verdant lawn. “Hey, that is nice, and he has a gravel drive up to it. He could do all kinds of things there, and who would notice?”

“Presumably Noddy?”

“Naw.” Harry shook her head. “If he’s there working away or using a computer or something, she’d be busy herself.”

“Where did I read that Internet porn sites have become a big problem in marriage?” Susan tried to recall the magazine as she drove out of the cul de sac.

“You’d think it would be better than hiring prostitutes.”

“That’s not the point,” Susan, more thoughtful on these matters than Harry, replied. “The point is that instead of communicating with his wife or his girlfriend, a man watches porn sites with those icons of physical perfection. Empty sex.”

“That’s probably true. I’ve never seen a porn site.” Harry turned to Susan. “Who has the time to sit down and watch a computer or TV? You know, I didn’t watch one baseball game all the way through this summer, and I love my Orioles.”

“You and I are in the minority. Americans squander millions of hours in front of the TV. I read somewhere that it totals eight years of a life. And then there’s the computer screen. It’s sad and frightening.”

“Here’s what I don’t get. Why do men watch porn when there’s a living, breathing woman in the next room?”

“Because they aren’t communicating, like I said. That is one thing I will give Ned. He’ll talk. Oh, I might have to goad him into it or charm him, but he will. It’s one of the reasons we’ve weathered some of the storms we have.” She picked up speed. “He’s a good man.”

“That he is.” Harry was quiet, looked in the back again with a glare, then returned her attentions to Susan. “Fair communicates better than I do. I don’t know. I can’t get the words out. Hell, most of the time, I don’t even know what I’m feeling.”

“I know.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That those of us who know you and love you know that speaking about your emotions isn’t your forte. But when you must face them, you do. Course, it takes a damned disaster.”

She replied ruefully, “I don’t understand how I can be smart in one area and just dumb as a sack of hammers in another.”

“We’re all like that. You’ve seen me struggle with math. If it weren’t for you, I’d never have gotten through geometry and algebra in high school.”

“I love math. There’s always an answer.”

“Exactly.” Susan smiled broadly. “Emotions aren’t clear-cut like that. But don’t you find, as you get older, that you improve in the area where you’re, say, not so gifted?”

“Kinda.” Harry changed the subject, since she never could think what to say about her emotional reticence. “If I had the money, do you know what car I would buy? If practicality weren’t an issue?”

“A big Mercedes?”

“They are stupendous. But that’s still practical. I’d buy a Porsche 911 C4.” Animation filled her body. “Oh, that sweet, short throw between gears, the top note of the engine. God, I love it.”

“Gearhead.”

“I am, but you know, so is BoomBoom.”

“Wonder why she never bought a Porsche?”

“She switched to Mercedes because of BMW’s iDrive. She likes big cars, so Porsches are too small. But now Mercedes has Command system, just as ridiculous as iDrive. Bet she does buy a Porsche next.” Harry shook her head. “The Germans may well be the most intelligent people on the face of the earth when it comes to engineering, music, and I would have to say war, but they do tend to overcomplicate.

“War. How can you say that?”

“Look at what they accomplished since Frederick the Great. Their fatal mistake was not learning the painful lesson of World War One.”

“Which was?”

“Germany can’t fight a war on two fronts, and Germany can never defeat the United States.”

“Ah.” Susan liked history, although modern history fascinated her less than the eighteenth century, her favorite time. “But have we learned anything from World War One and World War Two?”

“I think we did. The real question is, did we learn anything from Vietnam?”

“God, Harry, I hope so.”

They drove along, thinking about these issues. These two dear friends, born with lively minds, might delight in daily doings and local events, but they could and did consider larger issues. Chances are, the Founding Fathers and Mothers would see in them a vindication of their hopes for an enlightened citizenry. What else the Founding Fathers and Mothers might think of the times was anybody’s guess.

“Susan, I have got to get into that shed.” Harry was allowing her desperation to free Tazio and to pin the crimes on Mike to muddy her usually clear head.

“Don’t you dare.” Susan’s voice rose.

“There might be evidence.”

“If that man is a killer, you’re putting yourself in grave danger, forgive the pun.”

“You’d do it for me.”

“I’d like to think I would.” Susan turned onto the ramp heading west onto 64.

“Tazio deserves it. She’s not close like you and I are close, but she deserves help.”

“Let Paul do it. Tell him.”

“Susan, I can’t do that and you know it. Paul wouldn’t be any good at something like this.”

“You may be right about that, but, Harry, don’t even think about it. If you’re that worried, send Cooper or Rick there.”

“Can’t do that without compelling evidence of either corruption or murder or both. I have to find some evidence. We know Carla loathed him. We know he’s antiabortion.”

“That’s hardly enough to convict a man, and being antiabortion doesn’t make him Bechtal’s accomplice. I beg you, don’t do this.”

As they rode in silence, everyone in that Audi station wagon knew that Harry would not listen to Susan’s good sense.

31

Sunday, October 5, nourished under the stationary high-pressure system that had ushered in the heartbreakingly beautiful weather of yesterday. The sky, intense blue, domed an emerald-green Virginia quickening to the accelerated pace of fall.

Harry dutifully sat in church with her equally dutiful husband. She soon forgot to be antsy, because Herb gave a sermon based on Mark, Chapter 10, Verse 16.

“And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.”

The good reverend expounded on this theme. How do we nurture one another, comfort one another, walk through life together?

She hoped she could remember not just what he said but also how he said it in his deep, resonant voice, because she wanted to repeat it word for word to Miranda. He would return to the sentence from Mark as a refrain. She was pretty sure she could remember that.

As the service ended and the choir sang, the parishioners marched out to where Herb, as was his custom, stood at the front door, shaking everyone’s hand, inquiring as to their health and welfare before sending them on their way. Such a simple act—putting his hand upon them—bound them all closer together. When she felt his warm hand shake hers, his left hand touch her shoulder, she realized with a thud that Herb had been practicing what he had been preaching for decades.

She left him, warmed as well as wondering how she could miss something so obvious. She determined to try to be more like Herb. Given her focus on task, this would be a challenge.

“Honey, give me a minute. I have to catch up on Zenaida.”

As Fair nodded, turning to talk to other congregants, she raced over to the woman in charge of food for the October 25 St. Luke’s reunion. Harry promised four bushels of Silver Queen corn, harvested in August and put in cold storage. She worried it might not be enough and that the corn might not be as tasty as she’d hoped. Silver Queen should be eaten the second it’s plucked off the stalk. However, good yellow corn was still being harvested in the southernmost counties of Virginia, and she wondered if she should purchase some as a backup.

Harry noticed while she and Zenaida spoke that Fair, lively and laughing, was talking with Susan and Ned. His countenance changed for a moment, becoming concerned.

He is the most empathetic man, she thought to herself, then returned to corn. “If it has to be Silver Queen, I expect I can get it sent up from Georgia. Florida? Want me to call around?”

“That gets pricey.” Zenaida furrowed her gray brows. “Yellow will do.”

“I’ll pick up a couple of ears from the refrigeration plant and do a test run. With any luck, we might be okay.”

“Good. Do that first.” Zenaida, easy to work with, smiled underneath her burgundy velvet hat.

Ladies still wore hats to service at St. Luke’s. Harry usually plucked whatever complemented her outfit, but if she felt like spiting whoever sat behind her—an un-Christian action—in summer she’d wear a broad-brimmed hat with flowers. Since she spent most of her day wearing a baseball hat, she felt denuded without something on her head.

When she rejoined Fair and they walked back to his truck, she asked, “How are Susan and Ned?”

“Fine. Susan told me how badly our two little girls behaved yesterday.”

“They still aren’t speaking.”

“Ned said they’ve made bail. Big Mim will have all the money together. He’ll go down Tuesday.”

“Oh, thank God.” Harry’s right hand flew to her breast. “Does Paul know?”

“Ned called him this morning before Mass. The paperwork this takes.” He furrowed his brow. “Ned was telling me and all I could dunk of is that it doesn’t matter what profession one’s in, we’re drowning in paperwork.”

“Wasteful.” She wrinkled her nose.

“It is that, but on the other hand, it creates a lot of paper-pushing jobs, which means fewer people are unemployed, more people are paying mortgages and have a stake in the system, hence political stability.”

“Aren’t you smart.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it.

“Just realistic. He said Little Mim has come through the firestorm and he thinks, although she’s lost the support of groups like Love of Life, she’s gained more from others. He thinks she can run for governor maybe in six or eight years.”

“He wants it first.”

“He did, but this first year down in Richmond has been a real eye-opener for him. I would guess any first-timer to politics faces entrenched interests and even more entrenched egos. Given his touch of idealism, it’s hard for him.”

“There’s where Little Mim shines. She inherited her mother’s hardness. But Big Mim does have a vision, and I suppose it’s progressive. Just no illusions about how you get things done.”

“She’s an honorable woman, but she knows you crack eggs to make an omelet.” He smiled.

“I’m proud of Little Mim.” Harry waited as he opened the door for her. “Any word on Penny Lattimore?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Ned called Rick, who said they hadn’t heard from her.”

“I hope she’s not dead. This scares me. When someone like Penny disappears, it’s…” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Events were spinning out of control, and apart from Tazio’s bail, she perceived little progress.

“I don’t know how much more of this our little community can stand.” He echoed her worry.

32

Monday felt like the freight train that pulls all those cars behind it. Harry stoked the engine. She’d whipped through her basic farm chores like the proverbial tornado and then she gathered up her buddies—the cats still on the outs with each other—cranked up the F-150 enhanced by a new alternator, and drove to Woolen Mills.

At two-thirty in the afternoon, she figured Mike would be on a job site, Noddy would be at the office, and she could sneak into his shed.

Mike could come and go as he pleased, as long as he got to the job sites on his list for that week. She didn’t factor his flexible schedule into her plans.

She parked the truck down the street. Most of the neighbors worked. A few dogs barked, but quiet reigned.

She carefully walked up the front walk, flanked by those beautiful English boxwoods, then ducked between them. As she did, the peculiar odor of the plant rubbed on her. The cats and dogs scooted through, as well.

She walked around the shed, hoping there’d be a door in the back, but there wasn’t. She tried the only door. Locked. No surprise.

However, she had a thin file, a cigarette lighter, and a pocketknife. She kept the lighter in the truck, because she’d learned that sometimes you need to light a candle, burn off the end of a rope.

Given that the house sat at the end of the road and the shed reposed on the back of the lawn, she didn’t worry about anyone seeing her.

The lock, although simple, resisted her clumsy attempts at picking with the file. Exasperated, she opened the long blade from the pocketknife, wedged it in, and began slowly urging the tongue of the lock to move it back. Sweating, cursing, she finally managed to press it back after fifteen minutes, and she swung open the door, closing it behind her.

“Wow,” she exclaimed as she admired the organized work space, tools hung up on Peg-Board, nails in jars, all marked in a row. The gun parts fascinated her. He’d know how to procure a silencer, she was certain, but a hunch wasn’t hard evidence. Still, it spurred her on. At the back of the work space rested a large red metal toolbox, about four feet high. She pulled open one drawer. Again, every implement was clean, carefully laid in place.

She walked around the space. Nothing indicated wrongdoing. She tried the door to the office. Fortunately, it was unlocked. The cats scooted in first. Once inside the room, she unlocked the window, in case she needed to make a quick escape.

“She’s more curious than we are,” Pewter grumbled. “And not as smart.”

Tucker sat inside by the office door, which Harry had closed, watching, listening with those marvelous ears.

Harry opened Mike’s desk drawers, checked the shelves. She checked her watch. Three forty-five. The trip to Woolen Mills from Crozet had taken forty minutes, thanks to traffic. She picked up the pace. She rapped on the walls. She located the studs, but nothing sounded as though it was filled with treasure. She hoped to hear that thunk.

She rolled the chair away and pulled back the heavy rubber mat. The trapdoor ring, black, caught her eye. Eagerly, she pulled it upright, tugged, and the door swung up, a musty smell rising with it.

“Aha.” She climbed down, the cats readily following her, since they climbed the wall ladder at the barn daily. Harry pulled the string on the overhead light, which revealed rows of boxes. She began opening them.

She found the jewelry, the money, and the panties. “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!”

As she put the lids back on, closed up the metal box, too, they heard Tucker barking in the toolshed.

“Dumb dog.” Pewter’s eyes widened.

Mrs. Murphy quickly said, “Pewter, jump on a shelf.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“Mike!” Tucker warned.

“Shut up, Tucker.” Mrs. Murphy commanded, but it was too late.

As Mike ran toward his shed, Harry climbed up the ladder. But before she could reach the window, Mike blasted into the room.

Without a word, he hit her hard across the face.

Tucker jumped out from behind the door and bit his leg. He shook the dog off, grabbed a heavy coffee mug, and slammed Harry on the side of the head.

It didn’t knock her out, but it made her woozy. He quickly kicked her down the hole, climbing down after her. Even the cats jumping on his back didn’t stop him. He stuffed his handkerchief in her mouth, whipped off his belt, and wrapped it around her hands behind her back.

He climbed back up, slammed the door down, pulled the rubber mat over it, and rolled the chair back on the mat. He had forgotten to switch off the light, although no one would see it.

He tried to catch Tucker, but those long fangs and her quick maneuvers prevented that. Instead, he shut the door behind him, leaving the dog inside.

He hurried back to the house. He didn’t know what he was going to do; Noddy would be home soon. She left work at four every day because she went into the office at seven-thirty in the morning.

“Lick her face,” Mrs. Murphy ordered Pewter.

The two cats licked, their rough tongues providing what a facialist would term “exfoliation.”

Harry’s eyes fluttered. She grunted a little. “Damn, my head hurts.”

“Tucker,” Mrs. Murphy meowed as loudly as she could. “Only bark if someone comes back.”

They heard the claws click across the boards then soften as the dog walked on the heavy mat.

“I drew blood.” Tucker wished she could have reached his throat.

“So did he,” Pewter called up.

“Is she all right?”

“Cut on her forehead and temple. A lump is coming up, but she’s all right. We have to get the handkerchief out of her mouth so she doesn’t choke on it.”

“I will, Murphy, I will,” Pewter said.

The mighty little dog sat down, deeply worried. Their only prayer was that Mike wouldn’t shoot. Too many people in the neighborhood would hear him, even if he closed the trapdoor. A gun makes a smart report. He probably wouldn’t slash her throat in his shed, because of the mess. He would have to get Harry out after Noddy was asleep.

All three of the animals figured that out, and so did Harry.

She struggled to free her hands from the belt. The cats bit on it. They might be able to bite through enough of it to weaken it, but it would take maybe a half hour, maybe an hour.

Fair called her cell. She didn’t answer. He called home. He called the barn. Finally, he called Susan.

“Susan, is Harry with you?”

“No.”

“It’s four-thirty. She’s a creature of habit, and on Mondays she’d be putting back bedding in the stalls she stripped and aired out yesterday. I think she’s done what you predicted. She’s not answering her cell. Something’s wrong.”

“I’ll call Coop.”

“Good. I’m going to Mike’s.”

Susan gave him directions, and it took him until five-thirty to get there, because of rush-hour traffic. Fortunately, most of it was heading west, but there was enough to make him truly worry.

Fair saw Harry’s truck parked on the street, and he hoped he was in time. He was so scared he wasn’t even mad at her.

He parked, hurried out, but didn’t go up the walk, because Susan had told him where the shed was.

Tucker barked, “Fair! It’s Fair.”

Dogs and cats can identify footfalls and tire sounds, but humans can’t.

Hearing the corgi, Fair ran. The door was locked. He slammed his shoulder against it and broke it down.

Mike heard the dog, then saw Fair. Noddy ran to the back kitchen window, too.

“What is Fair Haristeen doing?” She put her hand on the doorknob.

He covered her hand. “You stay here.”

He ran outside just as Fair, who now could hear his wife and the cats, reached the desk. Frantically, Fair kicked the chair back, pulled the mat off, and flipped up the trapdoor as Mike barreled through the shed door.

Tucker cunningly hid behind the office door. As Mike opened the door, ready to brain Fair with a crowbar he’d snatched off his workroom wall, the corgi sank his fangs all the way into Mike’s calf.

Fair spun on his heels and hit Mike with a right cross, using all his weight and six feet five inches. Mike’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell clean backward, half out the door.

The crowbar hit the floor with a heavy clunk.

Noddy ran in after him, shocked at what she saw.

“Noddy, stay right there.” Fair scared her. “The police will be here in a minute. Don’t try to run.”

“Why?” She hadn’t a clue.

Fair slid down the ladder like a fireman and quickly undid the belt, which the cats had worked on.

“He was going to kill me,” Harry, shaken, gasped, but she kept possession of herself.

Fair spied the handkerchief on the floor and knew what Mike had done. “How’d you get the handkerchief out of your mouth?”

“The cats pulled it out, or I’d be dead. It was slipping back in my throat.”

Fair picked up Mrs. Murphy in one arm, Pewter in the other, and kissed their heads, then kissed his wife. Noddy had crept to the opened trapdoor and knelt down.

“Don’t shut that, Noddy.”

“I didn’t even know it was here,” she, bug-eyed, answered Fair.

“Help her out, will you?” Fair boosted Harry up.

Noddy gently lifted her out.

Mike rolled over, shook his head, spit out some teeth, just as Fair came up behind Harry.

Lightning-fast, Fair put his knee on Mike’s back, yanked his arms behind him, and used his own belt to tie him up. Then he kicked him over, as Noddy grimaced.

“You killed Carla, and Penny, too, didn’t you?”

“They found Penny?” Noddy slumped in the office chair.

“No,” Fair told her. “Not yet.”

Even though her head was splitting, Harry thought she had never heard a sound so sweet as Cooper’s squad-car siren, followed by another.

Within minutes Cooper and Rick hurried into the shed.

“Down there.” Harry pointed to the opened trapdoor.

“Penny?” Noddy feared the worst.

“No. No bodies, Noddy, but enough to send your husband down the river for a long, long time.”

She put her head in her hands and wept.

“Did you know?” Fair asked.

She shook her head no, as Rick bent over and dropped down into the space.

Cooper read Mike his rights.

Another squad car arrived, and the officer stood patiently in the office doorway.

Rick’s head popped up, his hands on the floor. “Doak, cordon the place off. I want everything photographed, cataloged, tabulated. There’s enough here to convict him.”

“For murder?” Dooley hoped.

“For theft, extortion, and maybe even rape. With luck, murder will follow.”

“Rape,” Noddy wailed.

“I didn’t kill anybody!” Mike’s broken teeth made him suck in air. He shut his mouth in a hurry after he spoke.

“That’s what they all say.” Cooper wanted to kick the rest of his teeth in.

After Harry provided what information she could, she and Fair left.

“Ride with me. We can come back for your truck tomorrow.”

A grateful and chastened Harry cuddled the cats and dog. As Fair drove them home, she said in a small voice, “I’m sorry. If you hadn’t saved me he would have killed me tonight.”

“Susan told me about your drive by. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where you were. She called Coop.”

“I’m sure he’s Bechtal’s outside man. I just know. Crazy ass, to do what he did to those women. He had money, he had jewels, you wouldn’t believe what he had down there.”

“He almost had you.”

“I thought about that, too.” She rubbed her temple, then winced. “You know, these cats and dog would have died to save me.”

“I know.” Tears came into Fair’s eyes.

“I was a fool.”

“Yes,” he quietly said. “And you were very, very lucky.”

“Well, maybe we can celebrate that.” She sighed, feeling both guilty and vindicated.

Not quite.

33

“Mother!” Brinkley put his paws on Tazio’s shoulders and kissed her face as she bent her knees slightly to greet him.

Paul had wanted to go to the prison with Ned, and Big Mim thought that was fine. She could do with a day in the stables herself.

However, through Ned. Tazio had asked that Paul stay at work. She wanted to wash the stink of the prison off her, fix her hair, girly herself up.

Ned brought Brinkley.

On the drive home, Ned provided all the details he had of Mike McElvoy’s arrest.

“Did he confess to the murders?”

“No. He swears he’s innocent.” Ned couldn’t help the irritation that crept into his voice. “So, kid, we’re still not out of the woods yet, and it will be expensive.”

“At least I’m out of jail. How can I ever thank Big Mim for going to people and raising bail?”

“By being yourself. She likes you. Well, she’d have to, wouldn’t she?” He smiled. “There is one thing.”

“What? A building?”

“Big Mim has wanted to create an orangery for years. Never got around to it. Perhaps you might surprise her with plans.”

Her eyes brightened, for Tazio had never designed an orangery.

Always up to a new challenge, she said, “I will. Wonder if I can create a misting system that won’t be intrusive.”

Ned smiled broadly this time, because he knew Tazio was on her way back to the Tazio they all knew. This experience had bruised a sensitive soul.

Given what she considered her state of ugliness, it took Tazio two full hours to prepare herself. Then she hopped in her wheels—with Brinkley, the happiest dog in America, in the passenger seat—and drove to the stables.

Paul, in a back paddock, heard the engine. He quietly slipped the halter off the yearling, closed the gate, and burned the wind running to the parking lot, the halter flapping all the while, for he had forgotten to hang it up.

Tazio had no sooner taken three steps from the car than Paul smothered her in an embrace. Then she cried and cried. She’d known she loved him, even though she’d kept that to herself. But she hadn’t known how much.

He cried, too.

Brinkley, respectfully seated, wagged his tail because he knew they weren’t sad tears.

“I love you,” Tazio simply said.

Big Mim, who had just come out of the house to walk into the garden, saw them out of the corner of her eye. She thought she’d wait a little before going down there, but she did see Paul drop to one knee, take Tazio’s right hand in his. She looked up to heaven and thought, truly the Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.

After Tazio agreed to marry Paul, the two of them, holding hands, walked up from the stables to the big house. Tazio wanted to thank Big Mim.

Big Mim waved from the garden as she saw them coming, took off her gardening apron, and opened her arms.

“Thank you. Thank you,” Tazio cried again.

Paul did, too.

Big Mim managed to hold it in, but she swallowed hard. “You’ll be cleared. Wait until you read today’s papers.”

Paul wiped his eyes with his hand, straightened his shoulders, and spoke with his seductive accent. “Mrs. Sanburne, Tazio has granted me the honor to become my wife.”

“Marvelous!” Big Mim kissed Tazio and Paul. “You couldn’t have chosen a better partner, nor a more beautiful woman. You are a lucky man.”

Paul beamed and Tazio said, “I’m pretty lucky, too.”

Big Mim held Tazio’s hands in hers, enthusiasm in her voice. “I know you two have a lot to do, people to call, but, Tazio, you have got to read this. Come on.”

In the kitchen, Tazio sat down and Gretchen made her coffee. Big Mim put the front page in front of Tazio as Paul sat next to her.

“Oh, my God.” Tazio enunciated each word slowly. “Oh, my God.” As she read, her breathing grew stronger and she couldn’t stop interjecting phrases throughout.

“Isn’t that the most incredible thing you have ever read?” Paul said as she put the paper down and picked up the coffee cup.

“Harry could have been murdered.”

“Would have.” Big Mim enjoyed her third cup today—one too many, but what the hell.

“He’s claiming innocence. That will slow the process, but how many murderers confess?” Gretchen couldn’t help but throw that in.

“State prosecutor will get him.” Big Mim hoped so, anyway. “Sixty-two thousand dollars in cash and all that jewelry. And he cataloged every single woman he had taken money, jewelry, and panties from. It’s so bizarre. Why catalog?”

“Possession.” Tazio, with insight, said, “He still felt he possessed them.”

“The panties. How can anyone live that down?” Gretchen laughed.

“He’ll be living it down in jail. And maybe this time he’ll be the victim.” Tazio felt a flash of genuine hate for Mike.

“Noddy will bring him soap on a rope so he doesn’t have to bend over in the shower.” Gretchen laughed.

“Gretchen.” Big Mim pretended to be scandalized.

“Noddy will divorce him if she has a grain of sense.” Tazio shook her head.

“I can’t imagine the humiliation she feels.” Paul glanced at the article again.

“He was probably complicit in Will’s murder, but it will take a great deal of work to prove it. The rub is proving he killed Carla. He was absent from his table, but so were others.” Big Mim folded her hands on her lap. “Rick will crack it. I have faith in him.”

34

Mike McElvoy, in the cell next to Jonathan Bechtal’s, talked to him over the days. When he was talking to him, he listened to Jonathan’s delusions about being the hammer arm of God.

Neither man particularly liked the other.

A week had passed since Mike’s arrest. Noddy refused to visit him. The guard gave him the daily papers. Each day his shame deepened—not guilt but shame.

“You’re cooked.” Jonathan cheerfully read the papers, too.

“Shut up.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up, you pervert. What do you do with those panties? Jerk off into them?” Mike ignored this. “Couldn’t get enough from your wife. She’s dumped you, too.”

“Shut up. No one visits you.”

Jonathan’s face darkened. His beard, now straggly since he wasn’t allowed any grooming implements, made him look fiercer. “My angel can’t visit me. No one must know.”

“Married, is she?” Mike crossed his arms over his chest.

“You shut your filthy mouth. She’s a pure, sweet angel. She’s not married. She’ll never marry. She’s married to our great cause of saving lives. They’ll kill me eventually, but I die a martyr. I die for the unborn.”

“She’ll open her legs before your body is cold.” Mike could give as good as he got.

Jonathan slammed up against the cell bars between them. “I’ll strangle you if you get near enough.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

As it was Monday, the usual medley of drunks from the weekend had been released. Only the two of them were incarcerated.

Jonathan, clever in his way, lowered his anger and his voice. “Why didn’t you take the money and the jewelry and run?”

Mike got up, pacing. “Never thought I’d be caught. Every one of those women had something to hide. Affairs. Drinking or drug problems. The usual. I’d drop a few knowing hints, looks, and wait for a guilty flush. You’d be surprised how easy it can be. And you know, a few wanted it. Bored with their husbands.”

“You shouldn’t sleep with a woman if you don’t love her, if you don’t marry her.” Jonathan truly was a Puritan.

“You say. You miss a lot, buddy.” Mike smiled sarcastically. “Why didn’t you run? You might have gotten away with it. Killed more doctors.”

“I wanted to be caught. I wanted to be heard.”

“People think you’re nuts.”

Jonathan’s anger welled up again; he forced it down. “Saving lives, that’s crazy now. You said you were a member of Love of Life. What’s the matter with you?”

“I do think it’s murder.” Mike paused. “And I didn’t kill anyone.”

“I did,” Jonathan solemnly declared. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

“You helped it along.” Mike started to say, “And you hurt our cause,” but he didn’t, because they’d had that discussion before, at high decibel level.

“I’d do it again. We planned it. We gathered a lot of money for the cause, and my angel is keeping it. Love of Life doesn’t know of our great plan to shut down every abortion clinic and doctor in America. Those were my letters after I was in jail. I’d written them before. My angel thought of that so we’d get even more money for our cause. Killing Will would open their bank accounts to us. It would scare the money right out of them. We’d get everything out of those murdering women.”

“One of them turned out to be braver than you thought.” Mike meant Little Mim.

“God will take care of her in His own way and in His own time.” Jonathan, at first elated that a fellow traveler was in the cell next to him, had soured as he got to know Mike. “He’ll take care of you, too.”

“When you go before St. Peter, you’ll have bigger sins to confess than I do. I didn’t kill anybody. And now that Penny Lattimore has come out of hiding, I hope she’ll tell the sheriff that, yes, I put the touch on her, but I never threatened to kill her. I underestimated the sheriff. Pretending that Penny had disappeared scared some of the other women you’d blackmailed into going to him. At least that’s what I think. And I never, ever, threatened to kill Carla or Penny.”

“She’ll die.” Jonathan tightened his lips.

“We’ll all die.”

“She’s number two.”

Mike, stupid in some ways and no fool in others, pretended not to be galvanized by this information. “Carla was number one.”

“Was?”

“Refused to pay?”

“She paid, but after I was in jail she got hysterical. Carla got hysterical when Will was shot. My angel said you would have thought Carla’d been shot. Murdering woman.”

“Your angel?”

“My angel is doing God’s work. God speaks to me and I speak to her. As you know, God doesn’t speak to women. Carla had an abortion. She was a murdering woman. The only way these killers can atone for their monstrous sins is to give money to our cause so we can save more children. If they don’t, they die. My angel took care of Carla.”

“Why does your angel keep the money?” Mike pretended not to care that he’d just heard who killed Carla, even though he could not identify the woman.

“Idiot! How would it look if large sums of cash were handed to the treasurer? Love of Life won’t put the doctors out of business. Too scared. No real fire for the task. We need the money to complete our work. I’ll die, and my angel will have her revenge.”

Mike leaned back on his bunk. How could he get to Rick without Jonathan knowing? The man never seemed to sleep. If Mike asked the guard anything, Jonathan would know. But he’d heard from this fanatic’s own lips that his angel/accomplice had killed Carla.

There wasn’t but so much Mike could do about his crimes, but he could at least clear himself of murder. In an odd way he was glad he’d been caught, because he would have killed Harry. And killing was never his intention.

35

Rick walked with Coop across Jackson Park toward the courthouse downtown on Thursday, October 16. “What do you make of it?”

“He’s trying to save his skin.”

“Yes, but it is plausible.”

“Then we’d better put security on Penny Lattimore.”

“Marvin is rich enough to hire his own. I’ll call him. Remember, if we go over budget I have to face the commissioners; you don’t.”

“If I did, I’d wear a low-cut dress and show cleavage. Works every time.”

Rick laughed. “How would I know? I’ve never had the privilege.”

She laughed, too. “Really. They’ve done studies to show that when men think of sex they can’t think.”

“They needed to do studies for that?”

“Is pretty silly, isn’t it? How many thousands of years have we known what we are?”

Rick pulled out a cigarette, stopping to light it. He handed it to her for a puff. “Best damned things.”

“I used the five dollars I won from you when Jonathan Bechtal turned himself in.”

“You used more than that.” He took it back, inhaling deeply. “Murder is a sin and a crime, but I’ll be forced, on Judgment Day, to answer for leading you to cigarettes.”

“I smoke one a day.”

“You’ll smoke more.” He closed his eyes in pleasure after another long, long drag. “Well, we have a fascinating situation on our hands.”

“What’s funny is that Mike’s panty fetish has people more in an uproar than the murders.”

“New news.” Then Rick smiled wryly. “And it’s all about sex. That’s a lot more interesting than crimes committed over ideology, money, property. Sex makes everyone perk up.”

“Does, doesn’t it?”

“Lorenzo must have called.”

“You know,” she paused, “he did. I’ve seen him once for lunch, on my day off, and I like him. More than that I don’t know.”

“But you know if you’re attracted to him. You can’t invent that. Either it’s there or it isn’t.”

“Sex.” Coop smiled. “I think that’s why it’s so difficult for women to understand men like Mike. Intellectually we know why he did what he did, but emotionally it doesn’t compute. Never will.”

“Let me let you in on a little secret: it doesn’t compute with a lot of men, either. I find Mike more disgusting than Jonathan Bechtal. Bechtal is a fanatic, a lunatic. Mike abused public trust as well as abusing women. He’s a liar, a thief, in my mind a rapist, and a corrupt official. Anything that breaks down trust in government, to me, is a sin. And God knows, there’s a lot of it out there.”

“I agree. Without trust you have nothing in any kind of relationship. You know what I see now that I didn’t see before? I see the trust that Harry has with her pets and they have with her. Those animals may well have saved her life.”

“They did.” Rick’s cell rang and he flipped it open, listened intently, flipped it shut. “Come on, partner.”

She followed him at a run.

Closing the squad car door behind her, Coop breathlessly asked, “Penny?”

“No.” He hit the sirens and roared off. “Mike.”

They reached the jail. Mike’s crumpled body lay on its side in the outdoor exercise area. His bloodshot eyes testified to strangulation even before Rick knelt down to examine the bruises on his neck.

The guard, Sam Demotta, stood helplessly next to the body. “I turned my back for a minute. Chief, honestly. I heard a gurgle and Jonathan had his hands around his throat. I couldn’t stop him. I blew my whistle. By the time Tom got here, Mike was toast.”

“Snitch,” was all Rick said as he rose, heading toward the cell block.

Coop followed.

No need to explain the judgment reserved for snitches in prison, or the armed forces, for that matter.

Smugly sitting on his bunk, Jonathan did not rise to greet them.

Rick said, “You kill him?”

“I did.”

“Would you like to give me a reason?”

“Oh,” Jonathan airily commented, “I tossed him a few morsels, knowing he’d run to you when he could, and that way I had reason to kill him. He was a pervert. He deserved to die.”

Coop said, “Couldn’t you have killed him without tossing him morsels?”

“I could.” Jonathan spoke patiently, as though to a dim-witted child. “But it’s boring in here. This helped pass the time, and he deserved to die. It’s God’s will, you know.”

The two law-enforcement officers walked outside the cell block, shutting the door behind them.

“Jesus Christ, he’s crazy. He’ll get off because he’s crazy!” Coop uttered in total despair.

“He knows it, too. He’ll be spared the death sentence and spend the rest of his worthless life in a high-security mental ward.” Rick appreciated the twisted prisoner’s intelligence. “And there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. But I am going to do something he doesn’t like, even if we have to strap him down, and I bet we will.”

He did, too. One hour later, Sam Demotta had the honor of cutting off Jonathan’s beard, then shaving him. Tom had to hold his jaw tight, but they did it. A few cuts appeared on Jonathan’s good-looking face.

“I should have done that when we first arrested him,” Rick declared. “All right. I want photographs and, Sam, the best one better be in tomorrow’s paper. I’ll call them right now.”

“They won’t run it,” Coop told him as they hurried to the jail office. “Newspapers always use their own photographer.”

“They’ll use this, because I am going to tell them that the prisoner is far too dangerous for anyone to be near him and he has killed again.”

The next day, Friday, October 17, the newspapers, the television news, and the radio carried the story of Mike McElvoy’s murder.

The photo in the paper startled Benita Wylde. She remembered where she’d seen Jonathan Bechtal.

36

Benita, good with names and faces, remembered that she had once seen someone who looked like Jonathan Bechtal talking to Kylie Kraft outside Will’s office. Benita had gone by to drop off a salad for Will since he was being careful about his eating habits.

She also remembered that when Kylie came back into the office after only minutes outside, she made a crack about men not understanding that no means no. Given Kylie’s ever-changing string of boyfriends, Benita had discounted it.

However, Kylie had seen the photo in the paper, too. Taking no chances, she was at the airport one half hour after seeing the picture.

By the time Rick and Cooper reached Kylie’s apartment, she was gone. Her clothes and furniture remained. Cooper checked the bathroom; her makeup bag was gone.

Cooper found a pack of Virginia Slims, which they put in a plastic bag.

They put an alert out for her car, which was found at the Charlottesville Airport parking lot. However, her name did not appear on any flights.

Either she had been picked up by a friend or she stole a car from the parking lot. That wouldn’t be evident until the owner returned to an empty space days or maybe weeks later.

At nine-fifteen that morning, Rick and Cooper interrogated Jonathan Bechtal.

“Do you know Kylie Kraft?”

“No.”

“Did she tell you to kill Dr. Wylde?”

“No,” he answered Rick.

“Was Dr. Wylde on to her stealing the records?”

“How would I know?”

The only flicker of emotion in Bechtal’s face came when Rick said, “She left town in a hurry with all the money you’d raised.”

Rick didn’t know that. He was baiting Bechtal. But he was reasonably certain it was true.

When Bechtal said nothing, Cooper slyly mentioned, “She will continue your work.”

A beatific look infused his face. Again he said nothing.

Rick and Cooper ended their interrogation and left the jail. Once in the car, Rick started the motor. Before he pulled out, he reached into a dash cubbyhole, extracting two dollars and fifty cents. “Here.”

“What’s this for?”

“Half and half. I bet a woman. You bet a man.”

She smiled. “We’ll get her.”

“Might take years, but she’ll make a mistake. They always do.”

“Do you think she’s a true believer?”

He pulled out of the parking lot. “I don’t know. If she is, she’s in some ways more frightening than he is. And smarter.”

“True.”

“Still,” he smiled, “I have this vision of her in a beautiful hacienda in Uruguay or an opulent seaside house in Chile, living high on the hog.”

“And?”

“There’s a revolution.” He laughed.

“Probably not in those two countries, but she’ll tip her hand and we’ll get her. She killed a woman; she orchestrated the death of a doctor.”

“And she’s a nurse. You know, I never connected with that. Carla was killed by someone who understood anatomy, understood what happens when you slit a jugular. Somehow, she got out of the way of that mighty gusher.”

“I’d like to know how.” Cooper stared out the window at clouds massing up in the west.

“Well, when she turns up, wherever she turns up, we’ll find out.”

“At least Mike didn’t kill Carla. That’s some comfort to his widow.”

“Cold comfort,” Rick grunted.

Cooper turned to look at his profile. “If nothing else, this showed Little Mim’s mettle, and I bet there are women—we’ll never know who—who talked to their husbands or friends and resolved their burden about their past. Some good came of it.”

“We can hope.”

“Smoke?” she asked.

“Have you ever known me to refuse?”

She reached for the hardpack she’d slid in her front pocket, fishing out a long cigarette. “Coffin nail, just for you.”

He quickly glanced at it. “Dunhill Mild.”

“It’s true, you’re corrupting me.”

“Damn,” was all he said, as she held a match for him when they reached a stoplight.

“If you have no objection, I’ll drive out to Harry’s and give her the scoop.”

“That is one lucky woman.” He inhaled. “What are we going to do about her? She’s a damned nuisance, and one of these days she’s going to get herself or one of us killed, I swear.”

“Ask her to join the force.”

Rick laughed. “That will be the day. I’d sooner ask Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker. In fact, they demonstrate more sense than she does.”

“They’ve saved her on more than one occasion.”

He rode along, silent for a while. “We use German shepherds. Why not a corgi and two cats?”

Cooper related this to Harry as she cleaned tack in the barn.

“Guess he’s mad at me.”

“Do you blame him?” Cooper’s eyebrows raised.

“I did find a criminal. Okay, Mike wasn’t the killer, but he sure was guilty of plenty of other stuff.”

“Paid for it,” Cooper tersely replied. “Harry, you’ve got to be more careful. You can’t just go do these things on a whim.”

“It wasn’t a whim. Well, okay. It was.”

“I can’t believe she admitted it!” Pewter listened to the mice behind the tack trunk.

“There. That’s finished.” Harry hung the tack on the half-round bridle holder on the wall. “Come on in the house. I’ll make you some Silver Queen.”

“Where’d you get Silver Queen in October?”

“I bought four bushels in August and put them in cold storage—you know the refrigeration plant downtown? Anyway, we tested two last night and they’re still really good.”

“Four bushels?” Cooper asked as they left the barn, Simon looking out from the open top barn door in the hayloft.

“For the St. Luke’s reunion.”

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker tagged along.

“Saturday after this; that’s always such a wonderful day, isn’t it?” Cooper smiled.

As they passed under the wide branches of the walnut tree, Matilda, swinging by her tail, dropped.

She just missed Harry, who was walking behind Cooper, and landed right on Pewter.

“Death from the skies,” Matilda hissed.

Pewter screamed so loudly that everyone jumped. Matilda slithered toward the barn. Time to go in, because she knew in her bones that tonight would be the first frost.

“God!” Cooper exclaimed.

“She was going to wrap herself around my throat. She’s a wicked, wicked snake.” Pewter, beside herself, babbled on.

“Every now and then she does that,” Harry laconically replied.

“Why is she in the tree?”

“Birds’ eggs in the spring and summer—birds, period. She’s fast when she wants to be. Look how fast she’s heading toward the barn.”

Harry knelt down to pet Pewter, who was recovering.

“Big baby.” Mrs. Murphy giggled.

“Shut up.” Pewter crawled into Harry’s arms, allowing herself to be carried into the house.

The women chatted as the corn boiled.

“Sometimes things do fall out of the sky. Sometimes we miss things.” Cooper was still surprised at Matilda’s bomber act. “If we hadn’t shaved Bechtal, who knows? And we should have done that right away. We only had a high-school photograph of him, no beard. He’d erased most everything about his life.”

“Criminals fall into two camps: dumber than posts or extremely intelligent.” Yep.

“I’m reasonably intelligent, but…” Harry didn’t finish.

“You’d be lost without us.” Mrs. Murphy smiled, then hopped on the kitchen counter to gaze out the window.

Mrs. Murphy knew they’d been very lucky this time. She and Pewter had used up one of their nine lives, and it was uppermost in her mind that Harry had only one.

Dear Reader,

I keep forgetting to mention that four books equal one year. Each mystery represents a season. I thought it was obvious, which it is to cats, but I overestimate human intelligence sometimes. You’d think after all these years with my typist that I’d figure out how dim they are.

I will give my human credit for a green thumb. She can grow anything and I reward her for her crop of fresh catnip by not shredding the furniture.

This isn’t to say I don’t love my human and like some others. I do, but the poor things are so limited. Can’t see in the dark for squat. No claws. No fangs. Slow as molasses when running. Climb with difficulty. Besotted with ideologies that don’t correspond to reality. It’s a wonder they’ve survived, and really, they only began to flourish after we cats chose to assist them. Think what would have happened to the granaries of Rome if cats hadn’t guarded them? But as usual, humans are so drastically self-centered, they ignore what we’ve done. They ignore dog contributions, too, although we all know dogs aren’t as intelligent as cats. In some ways they are well suited to be companions to humans since dogs believe what humans tell them.

Not me. I know the emperor has no clothes; a pity, since naked humans are ghastly!

TaTa,

Sneaky Pie

About the Authors

RITA MAE BROWN is the bestselling author of several books. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and poet, she lives in Afton, Virginia. Her website is www.ritamaebrown.com.

SNEAKY PIE BROWN, a tiger cat born somewhere in Albemarle County, Virginia, was discovered by Rita Mae Brown at her local SPCA. They have collaborated on fifteen previous Mrs. Murphy mysteries: Wish You Were Here; Rest in Pieces; Murder at Monticello; Pay Dirt; Murder, She Meowed; Murder on the Prowl; Cat on the Scent; Pawing Through the Past; Claws and Effect; Catch as Cat Can; The Tail of the Tip-Off; Whisker of Evil; Cat’s Eyewitness; Sour Puss; and Puss ‘n Cahoots, in addition to Sneaky Pie’s Cookbook for Mystery Lovers.