The Tail Of The Tip-Off

1

A gray sleety drizzle rattled against the handblown windowpanes in the rectory at St. Luke's Lutheran Church. As if in counterpoint, a fire crackled in the large but simple fireplace, the mantel adorned by a strip of dentil carving. The hands of that carver had turned to dust in 1797.

The members of the Parish Guild were seated in a semicircle around the fireplace, at a graceful coffee table in the middle. As anyone knows, serving on a board or a committee is a dubious honor. Most people recognize their duty in time to avoid it. However, the work must be done and some good folks bow their heads to the yoke.

Mary Minor Haristeen had succumbed to the thrill of being elected, of being considered responsible, by the congregation. This thrill thinned as the tangle of tasks presented themselves in meeting after meeting. She liked the physical problems better than the people problems. Fixing a fallen drainspout was within her compass of expertise. Fixing a broken heart, offering succor to the ill, well, she was learning.

The good pastor of St. Luke's, the Reverend Herbert C. Jones, excelled at both the people problems and teaching. He gladly gave of himself to any board member, any parishioner. As he'd baptized Mrs. Haristeen, nicknamed Harry, he felt a special affection for the good-looking woman in her late thirties. It was an affection bounteously returned, for Harry loved the Rev, as she called him, with all her heart.

Although the guild was bickering at this exact moment, it'd be fair to say that every member loved the Reverend Jones. It would be also fair to say that most of them liked-if not loved-Harry. The one exception being BoomBoom Craycroft who sort of liked her and sort of didn't. The feeling was mutual.

Like large white confetti, papers rested on the coffee table along with mugs. The aroma of coffee and hot chocolate somewhat dissipated the tension.

"We just can't go off half-cocked here and authorize an expenditure of twelve thousand dollars." Tazio Chappars crossed her arms over her chest. She was an architect and a young, attractive woman of color, with an Italian mother and an African-American father.

"Well, we have to do something," Herb said in his resonant, hypnotic voice.

"Why?" Tazio, combative, shifted in her seat.

"Because the place looks like hell," Harry blurted out. "Sorry, Rev."

"Quite all right. It does." Herb laughed.

Hayden McIntyre, the town's general practitioner, was a fleshy man with an air of command if not a touch of arrogance. He slipped his pencil out from behind his ear and began scribbling on the budget papers which had been handed out at the beginning of the meeting. "Let's try this. I am not arguing replacing the carpet in the rectory. We've put this off for four years now. I remember hearing arguments pro and con when I first came on board. This is one of the loveliest, most graceful churches in the Piedmont and it should reflect that." An appreciative murmur accompanied this statement. "I've broken this down into three areas of immediate need. First the sacristy: must be done." He held up his hand as Tazio opened her mouth. "It must. I know what you're going to say."

"No you don't." Her hazel eyes brightened. "Well, okay, maybe you do. Pick up the carpet and sand the floors."

"Tazio, we've been over that. We can't do that because the floorboards are so thin they can't take it." Matthew Crickenberger, head of Charlottesville's largest construction firm, clapped his hands together softly for emphasis. "Those floorboards are chestnut. They've been doing their job since 1797 and frankly they're tired and we can't really replace them. If you think the bill for new carpeting is high, wait until you see the bill for chestnut flooring even if we could find it. Mountain Lumber up there off Route 29 might be able to scare some up and give us a preacher's price, but we're still talking about thousands and thousands of dollars. Chestnut is as rare as hen's teeth and we'd need a great deal of it." He glanced down at his notes. "Six thousand square feet if we were to replace everything now under carpet and this doesn't factor in the other areas currently in use but not quite ready for recarpeting."

Tazio exhaled, flopping back in her chair. She wanted everything just so but she didn't have to foot the bill. Still, it rankled to have a vision amputated because of a small pocketbook. Such was an architect's fate.

"Hayden, you had a plan?" Herb pushed the meeting along. No one wanted to be late to the basketball game and this discussion was eating up time.

"Yes," he smiled, "what people see first is the sacristy. If we can't come to an arrangement among us, can we at least agree to go ahead with that? The cost would be about four thousand."

"If we are going to have the place ripped up, then let's just get it over with. We know we have to do this." BoomBoom, gorgeous as always, shimmered in her teal suede dress.

"I agree. We'll find the money someplace."

"We'd better find the money first or we'll have to answer to the congregation in the church, in the supermarket, and"-Matthew winked at Harry-"in the post office."

Harry, the postmistress, sheepishly smiled. "And you know my partner in crime, Miranda, is a member of the Church of the Holy Light, so she won't bail me out."

The little gathering laughed. Miranda Hogendobber, who was a good thirty years older than Harry, quoted Scriptures with more ease than the Reverend Jones and while she tolerated other faiths she felt the charismatic church to which she belonged truly had the best path to Jesus.

As the humans batted around the cost, the need, and the choice of color for the carpeting, Harry's three dear friends lurked in the hallway outside the large room.

Mrs. Murphy, a most intelligent tiger cat, listened to the intensifying sleet. Her sidekick, a large round gray cat named Pewter, was getting fidgety waiting for the meeting to end. Tucker, the corgi, patient and steady as only a good dog can be, was happy to be inside and not outside.

The Christ cats-as Herb's two cats were called by the other animals-had escorted Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker around. They'd gossiped about every animal in the small Virginia town of Crozet, but as the meeting was entering its second hour, they'd finally exhausted that topic.

Cazenovia, the elder of the two cats, nestled down, her fluffy tail around her nose. A large calico, she had aged gracefully. The young foundling which Herb had taken in a few years ago, Elocution, had grown into a sleek pretty cat. A touch of Siamese in her, she never stopped talking.

"-tuna breath!" Elocution uttered this insult. "How can you stand it?"

"She doesn't." Mrs. Murphy giggled.

They'd been discussing the blue jay who tormented Pewter. He also tormented Mrs. Murphy but with less enthusiasm, probably because he couldn't get a rise out of the tiger.

"Oh, I will snap his neck like a toothpick someday. You take my word for it," Pewter promised.

"How thrilling," Cazenovia purred.

"And un-Christian," Tucker chuckled.

"Well, we are cats," Pewter sniffed.

"That's right. Our job is to rid the world of vermin," Elocution agreed. "Blue jays are beyond vermin. They're avian criminals. Picking up stones and dropping them on neighbors' eggs. Dropping you-know-what on freshly waxed cars. Do it on purpose. They'll sit in a tree and wait until the job is finished and then swoosh." Elocution glanced up at the rat-a-tat on the window. "Not today."

"Why don't blue jays go south in the winter?" Pewter mused. "Robins do."

"Life in our barn is too good, that's why. Harry puts out birdhouses and gourds and then she plants South American maize for the ground birds, cowpeas, and bipolar lespedeza. The winter might be cold but she serves up all kinds of seeds for those dumb birds."

"Birds are descended from flying reptiles," Elocution announced with vigor. "That alone should warn us off."

"What in the world is going on in there?" Tucker listened as Matthew Crickenberger raised his voice about labor costs.

"Say, have I shown you how I can open the closet where Herb stores the communion wafers?" Elocution puffed out her chest.

"Elo, don't do that," Cazenovia warned.

"I'm just going to prove that I can do it."

"They'll believe you. They don't need a demonstration."

"I wouldn't mind," Pewter laconically replied.

"Thanks, Pewter." Cazenovia cast her a cold golden eye.

"Come on." Elocution, tail held high, bounded down the hall.

The others followed, Cazenovia bringing up the rear. "I know I'll get in trouble for this," the old girl grumbled.

Elocution skidded at the turn in the hall where it intersected with another hall traversing the width of the rectory, itself an old building constructed in 1834.

Pewter whispered to Mrs. Murphy, "I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry."

"I know, but you'd think the Rev would put a bowl of crunchies out somewhere. And I don't smell anything edible."

"Me neither," the mighty but small dog whispered, "and I have the best nose."

"Here." Elocution stopped in front of a closet under the stairwell that ascended to the second story. "You all stay here."

"Elocution, this really isn't necessary," Cazenovia sighed.

Ignoring her, the shiny cat hopped up the stairs then slipped halfway through the banisters. Lying on her side she could reach the old-fashioned long key which protruded from the keyhole. She batted at it, then grabbed it with both paws, expertly turning the key until the lock popped.

"Oh, that is impressive." Pewter's eyes widened.

"The best part is, Herbie will flay Charlotte for leaving it unlocked." Elocution laughed.

Charlotte was Herb's secretary, second in command.

As the lock opened, Elocution gave a tug and Pewter, quick to assist, pulled at the bottom of the door with her paw. The door swung open revealing bottles of red wine and a shelf full of communion wafers in cracker boxes with cellophane wrappers. Elocution knocked one on the floor then squeezed her slender body all the way through the banisters, dropping to the floor. Within a second she'd sliced the cellophane off the box, and using one extended claw, she opened the tucked-in end.

The odor of wafers, not unlike water crackers, enticed Pewter.

"Elocution, I knew you were going to do this," Cazenovia fretted.

"Well, the box is open. We can't let it go to waste." The bad kitty grabbed a wafer and gobbled it down.

Temptation. Temptation. Pewter gave in.

Cazenovia suffered a moment. "They're ruined now. The humans can't eat them." She, too, flicked out wafers.

Tucker, being a canine after all, rarely worried about the propriety of eating anything. Her nose was already in the wafer box.

Mrs. Murphy allowed herself the luxury of a nibble. "Kind of tasteless."

"If you eat enough of them you get a bready taste, but they are bland." Cazenovia's statement revealed she'd been in the communion wafers more than once.

"Does this mean we're communicants?" Pewter paused.

"Yes," Mrs. Murphy answered. "We're communicats."

"What if I'm not a Lutheran? What if I'm a Muslim cat?"

"If you were a Muslim cat you wouldn't be living in Crozet." Tucker laughed.

"You don't know. This is America. We have everything," Pewter rejoined.

"Not in Crozet." Cazenovia wiped her mouth with her paw. "You've got Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Catholics. More or less the same thing and I know Herb would have a fit, a total fit, if he knew I'd said that, but fortunately he doesn't know what I or any other cat in this universe has to say." She took a deep breath. "Then you've got the Baptists busily fighting among themselves these days and then the charismatic churches and that's it."

"Let's open a Buddhist shrine. Shake 'em up a little." Elocution hiccuped. She'd eaten too many wafers too quickly.

"No. We build a huge statue of a cat with earrings like in ancient Egypt. Oh, I can hear the squeals now about paganism." Mrs. Murphy laughed as the others laughed with her.

Tucker swiveled her ears. "Hey, gang, meeting's breaking up. Let's get out of here."

"Help me push this back in the closet and close the door," Elocution said with urgency.

Cazenovia knocked the box in as though it were a hockey puck. Tucker, larger than the cats, pushed against the door. It closed in an instant. They scrambled out of there. Luckily for them, the doors to the meeting room weren't yet open. They made it back in the nick of time.

"-tomorrow afternoon," Matthew told Tazio.

"I'll be in the office."

"I know you're disappointed about the chestnut flooring but, well." Matthew shrugged.

"I guess I'm a perfectionist. That's what they say back at the office and on the sites, only they say it a lot more directly there." She smiled.

"You've got a lot on your plate, young lady." Hayden McIntyre joined them. "Your design for the new sports complex is just the most ingenious thing. Is that the right word?"

"As long as it's a good word." Tazio picked up her coat hanging in the hall.

"I know H.H. has none for me." Matthew shrugged.

"He'll get his shot." Hayden shrugged right back.

Tazio pointedly did not comment on the animosity between Matthew and H. H. Donaldson, head of a rival construction firm. The bad blood had been made worse when Matthew won the bid to construct Tazio's new stadium. She had hoped H.H. would win the bid because she especially liked him, but she could work just fine with Matthew.

Herb walked out with Harry and BoomBoom. "I sure appreciate you girls coming on over here. You're a welcome addition to the guild."

Both women had just begun their first terms, which lasted three years.

"I'm learning a lot," Harry said.

"Me, too."

"Look at these little angels." Harry knelt down to pet all the cats and Tucker.

"If she only knew." Elocution giggled.

"Don't be so smug," Cazenovia chided her. "Humans don't know what we're talking about but they know smug."

"I don't know what I'd do without those two." Herb smiled benevolently. "They help write the sermons, they keep an eye on the parishioners, they leave little pawprints on the furniture."

"I'm sure they've left them on the carpets, too." BoomBoom liked cats.

"Well, that they have but I can hardly blame them for wearing those carpets out. Fortunately we are a well-attended church, but it does put wear and tear on the building." Herb checked his watch. "Game's in an hour. You all going?"

"Yes," the two women said in unison.

"Well, I'll see you there. I'd better go through the building and shut some of the doors. On these cold nights it saves on the heat bill. Gotta save it where I can."

As he headed down the hall, Mrs. Murphy urged Harry, "Come on, Mom, let's get out of here!"

Cazenovia and Elocution hurried into the meeting room, flopping themselves on the sofa with a great show of nonchalance. Too great a show.

"See you, Rev," Harry called out as she tossed on her coat, opening the door for her pets and BoomBoom.

"Whew," Pewter breathed as she stepped outside into the nasty weather.

2

The soon-to-be-replaced basketball stadium loomed out of the sea of asphalt like a giant white clam. That such unparalleled ugliness could be part of the University of Virginia, one of the most beautiful sites in America, was a dismal curiosity. Good thing that Mr. Jefferson was dead, for if he caught sight of the Clam he'd perish on the spot.

Harry had a new wool blanket which she fluffed up on the seat of her old truck with another older blanket for the cats and dog to snuggle in. The three friends would curl up together, burrowing in the blankets and keeping one another toasty, but not before they complained.

"I hate this!" Mrs. Murphy's eyes narrowed as Harry sprinted through the sleet to the stadium.

"I'd rather be here than there. I can stand the stomping and hollering. It's that buzzer." Pewter completed two circles then lay down.

Tucker, ears forward, listened as people laughed in the bad weather, opened umbrellas, slipped in the sleet which was beginning to accumulate. "It must be hard not to have fur. Think of the money they have to spend on raincoats. Gore-Tex stuff costs a fortune. Barbour coats, too. That's the stuff that really works. But think how awful it must feel to get cold water on naked skin. Poor humans."

Fred Forrest, the county building code inspector, walked by the truck. His hands were in his coat pockets, his perpetual frown in place.

"Think Herb found the desecrated communion wafers yet?" Pewter giggled, a high-pitched little infectious giggle.

"Can you imagine kneeling at the communion rail and being given a wafer with fang marks in it?" Mrs. Murphy joined in the giggles.

"I ate all mine. Did you two really just bite some?" Tucker snuggled in next to the cats who loved her thick fur.

"Oh sure. That's half the fun." Pewter's sides shook.

Tucker laughed, too. "Gee, I wish I could take communion."

"Have to go to catechism first," Pewter saucily replied. "Of course, we have already done cattychism."

They nearly fell off the bench seat laughing.

"Know what else?" Mrs. Murphy, in the spirit, said. "Have you ever noticed how when they say the Lord's Prayer it sounds like 'Lena shot us into temptation'?"

"You're terrible." The small but powerful dog pretended to be horrified.

"God gave us a sense of humor. That means we're supposed to use it," Pewter resolutely declared.

"Yeah, Miranda has a sense of humor and she's religious. I mean, she was pretty close to being a religious nut there for a while," Tucker thoughtfully said of the older woman whom she dearly loved.

"She needs it. Working at the post office you'd be loony tunes without a sense of humor," Mrs. Murphy said.

"Why?"

"Tucker, it's a federal building. That means it belongs to the American people and anyone can come and go. If you work for the post office you have to deal with whoever walks through that door. It's not like a lawyer's office or doctor's office where they can throw you out if you don't belong," the pretty tiger cat explained.

"They can throw you out if you're a nuisance," Tucker rejoined.

"There go half the people in Crozet." Pewter led the others in another giggle fit.

Inside the Giant Clam, whose real name was University Hall, usually referred to as "U-Hall," people settled down to enjoy themselves. Perhaps they wouldn't get giggle fits like Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, but they were primed for a good time.

Just coming in out of the weather produced a feeling of well-being.

Tonight's opponent, Clemson, was in a rebuilding year so the UVA women's basketball team wasn't too stressed. Yet those were the very opponents that Coach Ryan worried about. Never take anyone for granted. Prepare for each and every game.

Harry believed in Coach Ryan and her philosophy, as did many of the season-ticket holders. Harry sat behind the home team's bench about halfway up the first section, a seat she renewed every year. Harry had little in the way of discretionary income and her three horses took up most of that, but her basketball seat meant a great deal to her.

Her ex-husband and friend, Fair Haristeen, DVM, sat next to her in his seasonal seat. Next to him sat Jim Sanburne, the mayor of Crozet, and his wife, Big Mim, the Queen of Crozet. On Mim's other side sat her aunt Tally, well into her nineties and fanatically determined not to miss a basketball game-or anything else for that matter.

In the row directly behind them sat Matthew Crickenberger and his family, his wife and two boys aged ten and twelve. To the left of Matthew sat the Tuckers: Ned, Susan, and Brooks. Danny, their son, was in his first year at Cornell, so his seat had been taken by Hayden McIntyre's new partner in the practice, Bill Langston. However, Bill was just moving into Crozet, so he wouldn't be at the games until next week. Hayden, a thoughtful man despite his directness which is never seen as thoughtful in the South, had purchased the seat from the Tuckers, hoping it would help ease the young, unmarried doctor into the community. He'd asked Deputy Cynthia Cooper to the game tonight but she had to work the late shift at the Sheriff's Department.

Tracy Raz, Miranda's beau, reffed the game with Josef P. The P stood for Pontiakowski-a bit difficult for the inhabitants of such an English place as Charlottesville, so everyone called him "Josef P."

Miranda sat opposite her friends on the other side of the basketball court. She had a very good seat provided by the school for the spouse or friend of the referee. She particularly enjoyed it because she could observe her buddies.

She watched them screaming and hollering because Clemson pulled themselves together and it turned into a tight, fast-paced game. She saw H. H. Donaldson, his wife, Anne, a professor at UVA, and their twelve-year-old daughter, Cameron, who sat in front of Harry, H.H. being one seat to her right, all stand up and clap and stomp in unison to cheer on Virginia. Fred Forrest bellowed the loudest. As he was rows behind Harry and friends, his volume disturbed them little. His assistant at work, Mychelle Burns, a petite, pixieish African-American, was with him. She hollered as much as Fred.

In his late thirties, H.H. was a driven man. Like Fred, H.H. plumbed new depths at sporting events. If Hayden McIntyre was direct, H.H. was plain rude at times. Everyone chalked this up to the fact that he had been born on the wrong side of the tracks and had a chip on his shoulder. Anne and Cameron were lovely, which helped to mitigate H.H.'s mouth.

"Go inside! Go inside!" H.H. yelled at the top of his not inconsiderable lungs.

BoomBoom Craycroft sat two rows behind Harry. She was thrilled the game was close because next to her sat Blair Bainbridge and his date, Little Mim Sanburne. BoomBoom hadn't ever dated Blair, a handsome international model, but she figured she'd get around to it. BoomBoom felt she was entitled to any man whom she found marginally interesting. Since she believed most men were interested in her, and most were, she moved on her own schedule. Now that Blair was dating Little Mim, BoomBoom's nose was out of joint. It wasn't so much that she had to have him, it was just that she hadn't had him. To make matters worse, she didn't have a date for the game because she figured Blair would be there. She hadn't realized his relationship with Little Mim was proceeding. Up until the Clemson game, Big Mim, Little Mim's mother, hadn't paid much attention, either. She was now.

The Clemson center, Jessie Raynor, a six-foot-three-inch girl, was well coordinated-a lot of times those big people aren't. She shot straight up in the air over the head of the girl guarding her, Tammy Girond, and with a flick of the wrist dropped a three-pointer right through the net.

"Oh no!" Harry screamed along with the other Virginia fans.

Tie ball game.

Tracy and Josef, both dripping with sweat, had run as far and as hard as the girls. It had been a clean game up until now, when Tammy, in frustration, pushed Jessie, the Clemson forward, flat on her face.

Josef blew his whistle. He called a personal foul on Tammy Girond. She doubled up her fist in his face and he threw her out of the game. Everyone was on their feet, both benches, all the spectators.

Jessie walked to the foul line and sunk both of her shots.

Tracy Raz tossed the ball to Frizz Barber, so named because of her hair, as she waited behind the end line.

With six seconds left on the clock, the moment was drenched in tension. Frizz quickly passed to her teammate Jenny Ingersoll. The Clemson players, woman-to-woman on defense, bottled up the Virginia players. Jenny, with time leaking out, dribbled two steps to her right, the Clemson player guarding her closely. Then she stopped, spun left and lifted both feet up off the ground, taking her shot. It bounced high off the rim. Jessie Raynor, hands high over her head, jumped up, snagging the ball. The buzzer sounded. End of game.

The Clemson bench emptied, the girls piling on top of one another. What an upset!

The noise from the crowd diminished as though someone had turned down the volume dial on the radio. The Virginia players, crestfallen, crossed the court with Coach Ryan. She shook the hand of the Clemson coach as the girls shook the hands of their now-recovered opponents. Respect reflected on the Virginia players' faces. They'd never take Clemson for granted again. They'd just learned the wisdom of Coach Ryan exhorting them to never, ever underestimate an opponent.

The crowd finally remembered their manners and politely applauded the Clemson team. As the players retired to the locker rooms, quiet fans filed out.

It was mid-season. The teams in the conference were all getting better, together. As the crowd shuffled down the circular halls, they discussed the toughness of Clemson and their thoughts on UVA's next game.

Josef P., still in his ref's striped shirt, sprinted out into the parking lot to his car. He opened the door and pulled out a gym bag and as he turned to run back through the sleet, Fred Forrest stopped him. He was by himself, as Mychelle had hurried to her car on the other side of the lot.

"You cost us the game, asshole!"

Matthew Crickenberger, passing on the way to his car, stopped. "Hey, that's enough of that."

"Don't you tell me what to do. You're the last person who should tell me what to do," Fred sneered.

"What are you going to do, Fred, fine me for being off a quarter of an inch on an access ramp?" Matthew said but with some geniality.

Josef shivered in the sleet as Fred stepped in his path. H.H. came up, having sent his family to the station wagon.

"I'll do whatever I want!" Fred, adrenaline still pumping after the game, shouted. "You'd better remember that." He pointed his finger at H.H. "You, too. Bunch of rich assholes. And you, asshole"-Fred suffered from an attenuated vocabulary-"make a call like that in a playoff and you're dead."

"Go on," Matthew said to Josef as he stepped in front of Fred to block him from taking a swing at Josef. "For Chrissake, Fred, it's only a game."

Josef ran, shivering, back to U-Hall. By now a crowd had gathered around, including Harry, BoomBoom, Fair, Big Mim, Jim, Little Mim, Blair, and others. Aunt Tally sulked in Big Mim's Bentley but her niece refused to allow her to stand in the worsening weather.

The animals, awakened by the slamming of doors, watched. They heard bits and snatches of the fuss, which was a row down from their truck.

Then Fred surveyed his audience. "It's not just a game. Basketball is life." He spit on the ground next to H.H.'s shoe.

"Crude." Blair towered over Fred.

"Drop dead," Fred snarled up at the handsome face.

"It's bad sportsmanship, Fred, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself." H.H. was disgusted.

"Who are you to talk? You crawled over the old Miller and Rhoads building when Matthew wasn't there. Trying to figure out how to run with the big dogs."

H.H., a little raw on the subject of competition with Matthew, swung at Fred, hitting him square in the gut.

Fred doubled over. Fair Haristeen, strong as an ox, quickly grabbed H.H. from behind, and walking him backwards, pulled him to the family station wagon.

Fred, helped to his feet by Matthew, screamed after him, "I will get you! You'd better be perfect because I'm going to make your life miserable!"

"That's enough, Fred." Matthew was disgusted with the wiry middle-aged inspector.

"Asshole," Fred snarled at Matthew then stalked off.

"What a jerk!" Little Mim shook her head, scattering snowflakes. The sleet was turning to snow.

"Don't use slang, dear, it's so common," her mother, wrapped in mink, her second best coat for winter, said sotto voce.

"Oh, Mother." Little Mim turned her shoulder to her mother, slipped her hand in Blair's. "Let's go to Oxo, shall we?"

Mim glared as her daughter sauntered off. Then she turned to Harry standing next to her. "Think twice before having children."

"I'll be sure to be married first." Harry tried to lighten the moment.

"There is that." Big Mim exhaled, then looked skyward. "We'd better all get home before the sleet that's underneath all this turns to ice."

"Already has, honeybun, already has." Big Jim returned his attention to his wife after watching Fair deposit a resisting H.H. in his car.

"Really, Little Mim shouldn't be out in this. The roads will only get worse."

"Blair took his four-wheel-drive, honeybun. He'll get her home safe and sound."

Big Mim said nothing but headed to the Bentley, her husband in tow. She'd have a word with her daughter tomorrow.

Fair rejoined Harry and BoomBoom, an interesting moment since one was his ex-wife and the other his ex-lover. Life in a small town is filled with such moments and everyone either adjusts to them or gets out. If you got in a huff and declared yourself not on speaking terms, you'd soon wind up with no one to talk to and that would never do. People had to accommodate the messiness of life.

"Ladies, can I take you both out for a drink?"

"No, thanks, I want to get home before the roads get worse. Mim's right and I know I sound like a wuss, but I hate it when it gets like this." Harry bowed out.

"Me, too," BoomBoom agreed.

Fair, disappointed because he'd wanted to see Harry, said, "Next game. Rain check or rather, sleet check." He laughed.

Harry thought a moment. "Why not?"

BoomBoom replied. "Yes, I think it would be-fun."

BoomBoom's affair with Fair Haristeen had occurred during his separation from Harry, or so she declared. It provoked Harry to file for the divorce. Fair, then in his early thirties, had been going through a crisis. Whether it was midlife, masculinity, or whatever, it was a crisis and it cost him his marriage, something he deeply regretted. BoomBoom, not one to take relationships with men seriously, tired of the tall, blond, handsome vet soon enough. Her conventional beauty and flirtatiousness always brought her another man, or men, which was perhaps why she didn't take relationships seriously. Oh, she always wanted to be on the arm of either a handsome man or a rich one, preferably both, but she never thought of men as much more than a means to an end; that end being comfort, luxury, and hopefully pleasure.

As she matured into her late thirties, she was starting to rethink this position.

Harry, on the other hand, had given her heart and soul to Fair. When the relationship unraveled she was devastated. It took her years to recover, although on the surface she seemed okay. Naturally, Fair's apology and desire to win her back helped this process but she was in no hurry to return to him. She was wondering if maybe BoomBoom didn't have the right attitude about men: use them before they use you. Yet it wasn't really in Harry's nature to be that way about people, and at the bottom of it she didn't differentiate between men and women. People were people and morals didn't come in neatly wrapped gender packages. Living an upright life was difficult for anybody. Once she realized that she did forgive Fair, she wasn't sure she could ever be in love with him again.

She rather hoped she would fall in love again, if not with Fair then with somebody, but somehow it didn't seem so important as it once was. Losing Fair turned out to be one of the best things that had ever happened to her. She was forced to fall back on her own internal resources, to question conventional wisdom.

As each party repaired to their vehicle, Miranda and Tracy Raz emerged from the gym. Tracy, freshly showered after the game, had his arm tightly wrapped around his treasure, Miranda.

Harry waved to them. "See you tomorrow."

Seeing Miranda happy made her happy. She now knew that's what love really was, joy in another person's existence.

She certainly took joy in Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, who greeted her as she opened the door to the 1978 Ford truck.

"Some game, huh, Mom?" Tucker wagged her nonexistent tail.

"We heard the word 'asshole' quite a lot," Pewter giggled; she'd had the giggles all day.

"'Cause Fred Forrest is one." Mrs. Murphy pronounced judgment. "Karma."

"You ate a communion wafer and you believe in karma?" Tucker feigned shock as Harry closed the door, started the engine and the heater.

"You all are so talkative. Must have missed me." Harry smiled.

"We're having a religious discussion," Pewter answered. "Can you believe in ideas from different religions?"

"No, that's what Tucker's talking about. Probably suffering a spasm of guilt after eating so many communion wafers. Dogs are such pigs." Mrs. Murphy paused. "I said 'karma' because Fred Forrest will sow what he has reaped."

"She must be a very Holy Dog." Pewter leaned against the corgi.

3

The snow fell steadily but roads were passable the next day thanks to the new yellow snowplows the state had purchased. The major arteries had multiple plows continually pushing the snow off into ever-growing banks. Even the smaller roads like Routes 250 and 240, the main roads into Crozet, had at least one major machine keeping them clear.

Then, too, just about everyone out in the country owned a four-wheel-drive vehicle. It was folly not to have one. Those huge gas-guzzling boats so out of place in the city were a godsend in the country.

Rob Collier, delivering the mail sacks from the main post office on Route 29 in Charlottesville, stamped his feet. "Not bad."

Harry glanced up at the big clock, which read seven-thirty.

"Hello!" Miranda breezed in through the back door. "Rob, you're out bright and early."

"I always am. Hey, I hear you all may be getting a new building."

Miranda waved him off. "I've heard that since 1952."

"Might do it this time. You girls are getting cramped in here." He tipped his baseball hat and left.

"That would be nice, a bigger place to play in," Mrs. Murphy thought.

"Leave well enough alone. Why spend the money?" Tucker replied.

"Because the way human government works is they have to spend the money, otherwise they'll squander it somewhere else. Talk about stupid. Every department has its budget and the money has to be spent. Humans are crazy," said Pewter.

As if picking up on Pewter's sentiment about humans being crazy, Harry pulled the mailbags back behind the mailboxes. "Did Josef tell Tracy about what happened in the parking lot?"

"Indeed he did. What's the matter with Fred? There's no call for acting like that."

"You should have seen H.H. and Matthew when he threatened to take it out on them. And every other word out of his mouth was 'asshole.' I couldn't believe it." Harry's voice rose.

"Wasn't it a good game, though?"

"Better if we'd won." Harry flipped up the divider in the counter between the public area and the work area. "Look at it come down. I think it's going to be a bigger storm than the weatherman says."

"Have you ever noticed once we get on the other side of New Year's the weather does change? Winter."

"Yeah. Well, the chores have to get done no matter what the weather. God bless the person who invented thermal underwear."

"It's my feet and hands that get cold. I just hate that." Miranda rubbed her hands together.

The main topics of conversation for the morning were the weather and the basketball game.

Big Mim opened the door at eleven. "I'm late. Did I miss anything?"

She usually appeared when the doors opened in the morning.

"No. Weather and b-ball. That's the buzz." Harry leaned over the counter.

Behind her the cats slept on the chair at the small kitchen table. Tucker was curled up on her big beanbag.

"It's just us girls." Mim sounded conspiratorial. "Tell me, what do you think about my daughter dating Blair?"

"Uh," Harry stalled.

"It's wonderful." Miranda came up next to Harry. "Mim, dear, how about a cup of coffee or a hot chocolate?"

"No, thanks. I want to run a few errands while I can get around. If this keeps up, the snow is going to outrun the snowplows."

"It certainly looks like it."

"You really think it's a good pairing?"

"It's not what we think. It's what they think," Miranda replied.

"But he's a model. What kind of prospects does a man like that have now that he's getting older? I know he makes a good living, but, well-"

"He's bright enough. He'll find something to do. He's made some shrewd investments. Remember, he's got Tetotan Partnership."

"Oh, that. All those wells in western Albemarle County. Well, that may pan out for him and that may not. I've heard about the water table until I'm blue in the face and I've heard about the new reservoir being built for thirty years and it's not built yet. Kind of like the rumors about a new post office."

"Oh, you heard that, too?" Harry said.

"These rumors recur like malaria. The one thing I will say for Blair is when he first went into Tetotan he had the brains to have H. Vane Tempest for a partner and H. Vane doesn't make too many mistakes. Of course, Blair made the mistake."

Mim alluded to an affair that Blair had with his former partner's wife about three years ago.

"Nobody's perfect," Harry lightheartedly replied just as Herb burst through the door.

At one time in her life, Harry might have been censorious about an affair but she'd grown up. She realized quite literally that nobody is perfect, including herself.

"Ladies. Oh, Harry, before I forget, quick meeting about the flooring. Won't take long. Tomorrow night, weather permitting."

"Fine."

Pewter opened one eye. "Wonder if he found the wafers?"

"Don't ask. Don't tell." Mrs. Murphy rolled on her side.

"Wasn't that a contretemps in the parking lot last night?" Herb shook his head. "And Fred will get them. Remember when I extended the gardening shed next to the garage? A fourteen-by-ten building and he said it wasn't up to code. He cost me five hundred dollars. He's impossible. I wouldn't give you a nickel for H.H.'s or Matthew's peace of mind until Fred gets over this."

"Or is mollified," Big Mim sarcastically said.

"That's the problem. He can't be mollified. He takes offense at any kindness. Everything is a bribe in his mind. And Matthew's finishing up a big project and about to start another. H.H. is busy, too. There will be hell to pay, forgive the expression." He smiled a lopsided smile.

"There's a game Friday. Let's see what happens then," Miranda said.

"Well, that's the whole thing, isn't it? Intimidation." Herb slipped the key in his brass mailbox. "He's intimidated Josef."

"He won't intimidate Tracy." Miranda winked.

"Fred lives and breathes women's basketball ever since his daughter played for UVA," Harry mentioned. "Guess she's doing pretty good as assistant coach out at University of Missouri."

"He can just move to Columbia." Miranda laughed, mentioning the location of the University of Missouri.

"Say, anyone met Hayden McIntyre's new partner?" Herb asked.

"I think he flies in today." Harry looked out the window. "Then again, he might not be here until tomorrow."

"That's my guess. I bet there are people tied up in airports along the East Coast. The Right Coast." Miranda smiled.

"As opposed to the Left Coast." Harry enjoyed batting ideas and phrases with Miranda.

"Gold Coast. That's Florida." Herb sorted his mail.

Big Mim opened her mailbox. Like Herb she pitched unwanted advertisements and junk mail into the wastebasket.

"Mim, that was a three-pointer." Herb teased her.

As he left, Pewter whispered, "He hasn't found it. He would have said something."

"We're safe. He'll never know it was us." Mrs. Murphy wished she could be there when he did find the chewed-up wafer box.

"He might not know but Mom could figure it out." Tucker had confidence in Harry's deductive abilities.

"Never. She'd never believe she had pagan pets." Mrs. Murphy laughed so loud she rolled off the chair and embarrassed herself to the hilarity of the others.

As she was picking herself up off the floor, trying to salvage her dignity, H.H. walked in.

"Ladies."

"Hi, H.H.," they replied.

He opened his box, took out his mail, then came to the counter, propping both elbows on it. "Miranda, I'm on the horns of a dilemma. Just can't make up my mind."

The older woman came over to the other side of the counter, her dark orange sweater casting a warm light on her face. "Well, you could flip a coin."

"Works for me." Harry laughed.

He tilted his head, light streaks of gray already appearing at his temples. "This dilemma is bigger than that. It's not so much right and wrong. I'd hope I'd choose right. It's more like," he paused, "right versus right."

"Ah yes, that is difficult." Miranda rapped her fingertips on the counter. "'Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind.'?" She stopped short. "Have a better one: 'And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord,' Isaiah, chapter eleven, verse two."

"I knew you'd dispense your wisdom."

"Not my wisdom. The Good Book's."

Harry folded an empty mail sack. "If there were a TV game show on biblical knowledge, Miranda would win."

"Go on." She waved off Harry.

"I believe she's right." H.H. spoke to Miranda. "I'll reflect on what you've quoted."

"I can quote." Harry grinned.

"This I've got to hear." H.H. squared his mail, tapping it on the counter.

"'Between two evils I choose the one I haven't tried before.' Mae West."

H.H. laughed as he headed for the door. "I'll tell that to Anne."

"You are awful." Miranda shook her head as the door clicked shut.

"Hey, if you're going to dispense virtue, I'll dispense vice just to keep things equal."

"How about vice versa?" Miranda winked.

"Touché." Harry laughed.

4

The darkness troubled Harry far more than the cold. On the winter solstice the sun set behind the mountains at four-fifteen in the afternoon. She took comfort in the fact that sunset had now inched forward to about four thirty-five. Of course, with the driving snow she couldn't see the sun but there was always that moment on a snowy, rainy, or cloudy day when the filtered light failed and the underside of clouds turned wolf gray followed by navy blue.

She'd finished her barn chores as another half inch of snow covered the ground. She hated to be idle; this was the perfect time to pull out everything in the odds-and-ends drawer in the kitchen. She carefully spread a newspaper on the counter, opened the drawer, gazed into the turmoil, and plucked out a tailor's measuring tape. She reached in again. This time a fistful of rubber bands was her reward. It was fun, a real grab bag.

Even the neatest person, and Harry came close to qualifying, had to have a junk drawer. Before she could scoop up all the pencils needing sharpening, the phone rang.

"Hello, Joe's Poolroom. Eightball speaking."

"Harry, that is so corny," Susan replied.

"You call your best friend corny?"

"Someone has to. Now will you shut up? I've got scoop."

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, lounging on the kitchen counter just behind the newspaper, perked up their ears. It was plenty exciting considering there were rubber bands to steal, pencils to roll onto the floor, but Harry's alertness was promising on this snowy evening.

"Tell."

"H.H. walked out on Anne."

"What?"

"She's over at Little Mim's crying her eyes out. Cameron's with her and being a great support to her mother."

"Who told you?"

"Little Mim. She thought Anne should talk to Ned. Before Ned could get to the phone she told me everything. I could hear Anne crying. It really is awful. What an SOB. He could have waited until spring."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"It's easier to take bad news when the weather's good."

"If that's the case then why did T. S. Eliot write 'April is the cruelest month'?"

"Because he's from St. Louis. I'm sure it is there," Susan puffed into the receiver. "Then he became more English than the English. I knew there was a reason I took all those poetry classes at school. See, you did it again. You got me off the track. I hate that."

"I didn't do anything, Susan. God, apart from being a good lawyer your husband has to be a saint to put up with you. And is he talking to Anne?"

"On the other line."

"I'm surprised you aren't glued to his side trying to catch anything she might say."

"He'd never let me do that. You know that." Susan's voice registered disappointment.

"Are you smoking?"

"Why do you ask that?" said the woman holding a Churchill cigar in her hand.

"I heard you puffing."

"Oh-well-yes. Harry, I am not going to put on weight this winter. Every damned winter I pack on five pounds and then I turned thirty-five and the next thing I knew it was seven pounds. So I am smoking this big, fat cigar. The little ones are too harsh. Big ones are smoother."

"Can't you take diet pills?"

"All they do is make you go to the bathroom. They don't really work and the ones that do work the FDA took off the market because they damaged something, your liver. Hell, I wouldn't take enough to damage my liver. I just don't want the extra baggage in the winter which is then so hard to drop in the spring. Maybe that's why April is the cruelest month. A girl starts thinking about how she'll look in her bathing suit."

"Susan Tucker."

"See, I've solved a literary mystery."

"Now back to the real mystery. Why did H.H. leave Anne?"

"That." A long pause followed. "He was having yet another affair."

"Ah, I am sorry to hear that. Did she say who or did Little Mim?"

"No, but I have a feeling it's not one of his usual casual romps."

"Ugh."

As Harry and Susan had been friends since infancy they could speak to one another in shorthand and often they didn't need to speak at all.

"You got that right. Once the tears have wrung you dry, anger sweeps in like the north wind. Let's hope he comes to his senses. Everybody feels temptation. You wouldn't be human, right?"

"Yes," Harry reluctantly agreed.

"Victory means you turn away from it. God, I sound like my father. But it is true. And H.H. has a lovely, sweet twelve-year-old daughter to consider. That's such a great age, too."

"You don't think it could be BoomBoom, do you?"

"Harry, every time someone has an affair in this town it isn't with BoomBoom."

"You're right. Half the town is female."

"Oh pulease. Will you get over it?"

A long silence followed.

Finally Harry muttered, "I am. Almost. I am."

"Good. I love you like beans, Harry, like my second skin, but this has gone on long enough. I don't want my best friend to turn into some embittered woman, and besides, it was a relationship that didn't really go anywhere. He's paid his dues."

"I guess we all have and I know it's snippy to say something like that about BoomBoom but she's so, uh, sultry. Men just eat that up. If I live to be one hundred and ten I will never figure out why they go after women who are so obvious. Is there another word? I'd like to think some of them are attracted to sophistication."

"Some are. They made Grace Kelly a star."

"Women made Grace Kelly a star."

"Harry, you are being argumentative. Very few actors become megastars unless they appeal to both sexes."

"You're right. Okay then, Smart One, Sage of Crozet, who is today's Grace Kelly?" A hint of triumph crept into Harry's pleasant speaking voice, once heard never forgotten.

"Well, how about Gwyneth Paltrow? Cate Blanchett?"

"You know, they are impressive but it's not fair to compare someone to a vanished goddess or even a living one like Sophia Loren."

"And now back to something you just said, that half the town is female. You recall that?"

"Yes."

"How do you know some women aren't lusting after BoomBoom?"

"I don't." Harry laughed. "But she's not lusting back. Oh, I would love it, I mean love it in capital letters if BoomBoom were a lesbian. What a blessed relief." She thought a moment. "Hey, I usually don't think of that, you know, someone being gay, but what if H.H. left Anne for a man? He's always fooling around. Maybe it's a cover-up or a way to run away from his true orientation. You think?"

"Not likely."

"Yeah, but it would be juicy. Heterosexual scandal is a little trite. I mean, there's so much of it."

"You kill me. Anyway, if H.H. were gay, we'd know. You can always tell with men. It's a lot easier than with women. Some women."

"True, but who? Not gay, I mean who is he sleeping with?"

"Who knows? It's not like he doesn't meet a lot of women. Many of his clients are good-looking, often married, since he's usually building houses. 'Course now he's switched to large commercial projects."

"He hopes to switch to large commercial projects. He's not in Matthew Crickenberger's class," Harry commented.

"In time, he could be."

"True. You're saying he meets bank officers and corporate types. I'm sure many of them are good-looking women. Have you ever noticed how many successful people are good-looking?"

"I have. They may not be drop-dead gorgeous but they make the most of what they have. That bespeaks intelligence. You really can't succeed if you don't look good."

"I'm sure there's some animal reason for it."

"Is she going to say something about us?" Pewter wondered.

"Don't know." Mrs. Murphy listened to the conversation although it was hard to hear Susan.

The animals wished Harry would buy a modern phone system with a speaker switch. Reconstructing the other half of a conversation called for kitty creativity and logic.

Harry felt sorry for Anne. "If there's anything I can do, let me know. I mean, you'll know before I do. It's such a terrible feeling, that moment when you find out."

"The wonder of it is that Anne didn't know before now."

"People don't know what they don't want to know," Harry said.

"Maybe I'm blind." Susan's voice faltered a moment.

"Not Ned. He's true blue." Harry's brightened. "I have some idea what Anne's going through, although it was a little different for me. Fair said he had to 'find' himself. Where do people get these dreadful phrases? Anyway, he found himself BoomBoom. But you know, I think he fooled around before. It's so easy for an equine vet to do it, you know? All those wonderful farm calls. But it's water over the dam." She paused. "Did Anne catch him red-handed?"

"I don't know. If I find out anything more, I will call. Little Mim said that Anne and Cameron would spend the night at her place. It's not a good night to drive anyway. Might not be a good morning to come in to work. Well, Miranda can open the P.O. for you."

"I can get in."

"We'll see, but don't be a hero."

"All right. Thanks for telling me. If I don't see you tomorrow I'll see you at the game Friday night," Harry added. "Wonder if the Donaldsons will be there. That little Cameron loves basketball."

"If all else fails, I'll take Anne and Cameron," Susan said with authority.

"Good idea. 'Bye."

Harry hung up the phone. Through her kitchen window, she saw the big owl that lived in the barn fly in the cupola, a flutter of wings in the snowy darkness, just enough motion to catch her eye.

The phone rang again.

Thinking it was Susan with a callback, Harry picked up. "Yes, boss."

"I like that."

"Herb, sorry, I thought it was Susan."

"Just me."

"Just you is very fine. What can I do for you?"

"Given the weather I've canceled the meeting tomorrow but I managed to contact everyone by phone and get a voice vote."

"Clever."

He paused a moment. "Well?"

"I'm on your team."

"It certainly saves time, doesn't it? You sit there in those meetings and hear who shot John." Herb used the Southern expression that means everyone gives their opinion whether relevant or not. In fact, one person can hold conflicting opinions all by himself-not that that ever stopped anyone from giving them out. "Here it is. Everyone, even Tazio Chappars, has come around to putting down carpet over all the needed areas."

"How did you do that?"

"Matthew Crickenberger said he'd pay for it through his company, using his construction discount, and we could pay it back over two years with no interest. You know, he does a lot for the community. Except for his foreman, I think most of his workers are illiterate. He's giving them good salaries, a chance to learn. I'll say an extra prayer for him."

"I will, too." Harry paused. "This has nothing to do with the carpet but I just heard that H. H. Donaldson left Anne."

Herb didn't immediately reply. "I'd hoped it wouldn't come to that."

"The Donaldsons are Episcopalians." Harry wondered how Herb knew anything concerning their marriage.

"True enough."

"You sure have good resources."

"Reverends have our own pipeline, missy." Herb sighed.

"Guess you do. Maybe H.H. will wake up."

"Yes. Speaking of which, I am very glad to see you and BoomBoom working together. Forgiveness is at the center of Christ's message."

"I don't deserve much credit. I've dragged it out long enough and you're the second person to push me today. Susan was the first."

"She's a true friend. There are people who go through this life without true friends. That must be hell. Real hell."

"Yes."

"All right, that's my sermon for the day." He laughed.

"You forget, I get them on a daily basis from Miranda."

"Oh my, Miranda, now, what a Lutheran she would have made." He chuckled. "She's another friend, and every time I see her with Tracy I have to smile. Life is full of miracles and love finds you when you least expect it. A kind of emotional roulette." Herb lost his wife five years back to a heart attack.

"Funny, isn't it?"

"Life?"

"Yeah."

5

On Friday, Harry walked through the lawn at the University of Virginia, the snow covering the undulating quad between the Rotunda and the statue of blind Homer. Footprints crisscrossed the deep snow. Walking directly behind her, since it would be difficult for them to plow ahead, trudged Mrs. Murphy, a crabby Pewter, and a very happy Tucker.

"I don't need exercise."

"Pewter, you need a personal trainer." Tucker poked her nose at the rotund gray kitty.

"Whose idea was this?" Pewter ignored the comment.

"Mine," Mrs. Murphy replied. "How was I to know she'd want a twilight stroll? I thought she'd just take a little spin, then drive over to the Clam."

"What's she care about UVA for? She graduated from Smith." Pewter's pads tingled from the cold.

"Beauty. The lawn is one of the most beautiful spaces in North America," Tucker rightly surmised.

"In spring," Pewter grumbled.

"Ah, but the snow's blue, the dome of the Rotunda is changing shades with the dying light. Smoke's curling low from the chimneys. Could be 1840," Tucker imagined.

"A poetic pooch." Mrs. Murphy stopped a moment and let the dog walk by her. She rubbed along Tucker's side.

Harry led them back to her truck, parked on the side of the road, never a good idea at the university, but her luck held. "In."

They needed no encouragement, quickly nestling in their blankets.

Snowplows swept away enough of the accumulation so people could drive and park at the Clam. Best to go slow.

Harry, arriving forty-five minutes early, parked close to the main entrance. She'd picked up a Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper, on her walk. She cut the lights but kept the motor running for heat. She thought she'd use some of the time to read and to try and organize her errands for the weekend.

She opened the paper and saw a half-page ad from H. H. Donaldson that read, "Trash the Terrapins." Tonight's opponent was Maryland. Two pages later a quarter-page ad showing a turtle, hands up, surrendering to a Cavalier, sword at his throat, had been purchased by Matthew Crickenberger.

Incidentally, or not so incidentally, an article ran in the paper about the bidding war for the sports complex, how and why, according to the writer, Crickenberger won the prize. In one word: experience.

The other firms barely garnered a mention, but Donaldson versus Crickenberger held the reader's interest. Harry thought she learned more from this article than from the terse report in Charlottesville's The Daily Progress.

Although she liked H.H., she had to agree with the writer that Matthew did have more experience with these massive, highly technical projects. Despite H.H.'s competitive bid, his lack of experience at this level would probably have run up the bill. Matthew prided himself on bringing in projects on time and on budget. A project like a new arena would take a year to build and in that year the price of materials could rise. He tried to fold that into the bid as well as weather delays. It didn't hurt, either, that he'd helped to build the Clam originally, back when he was a grunt.

Matthew believed a lowball bid to win the project would only bring misery to all parties if something went wrong. It usually did and time is money. Every delay costs. As a young man working for other people he'd seen men come to blows over escalating costs. He'd seen banks call in loans, ruining people.

H.H., less prudent, relied on a bit of luck. Lady Luck did take a shine to him. This did not always endear him to others.

Harry finished the paper just as Fair rapped on the window. She smiled, folded the paper, fluffed up the blankets for the "kids," then cut the motor.

"Hey." She hugged him as she stepped outside. "I'm surprised so many people showed up."

"UVA b-ball." He smiled as he appreciated the dedicated fans.

As they headed toward the main entrance, tickets in hand, friends and neighbors also streamed toward the glass doors. Miranda, wrapped in a long fuchsia alpaca coat, stood out against the snow. They caught up with her.

Little Mim and Blair waved as did Big Mim and Jim. The Crickenbergers were there in force. Herb was there with Charlotte, the church secretary, her teenage son in tow.

Tracy was waiting at the doors for Miranda. Fred Forrest brushed by him without a word. In fact, he wasn't talking to anyone. He didn't even acknowledge his assistant, Mychelle, out that night with a bunch of girlfriends. He pushed through the crowd making one student bump into the wall fire extinguisher. "In Case of Fire: Break Glass." The student, irritated, pretended to rap the back of Fred's head with the small hammer on a chain. Fred, oblivious, kept pushing people out of his way.

Harry noticed Tazio Chappars with a man she didn't recognize. The architect didn't seem especially interested in women's basketball so Harry wondered why she was here. Perhaps to please the nice-looking fellow with her, or maybe the pressure had become too great and she decided to root for the home team along with everyone else.

What surprised everyone was the sight of H.H. escorting his wife and daughter as though nothing had happened. When everyone took their seats, Little Mim glanced down at Susan as if to say, "I'll tell you later."

Susan, of course, leaned down immediately to relay this to Harry. BoomBoom rushed in late and Harry remembered that Fair said he'd take them both out after the game.

"Oh well," she thought to herself. "Maybe I'll learn something."

The usual array of Virginia baseball caps, pennants, and Styrofoam swords were in evidence along with coolers small enough to fit under the seats. They contained beer and stronger spirits and were certainly not encouraged by the school administration. But most folks didn't bother with a cooler, they just slipped a flask in their pocket.

The businessmen, Matthew in particular, handed out drinks. His cooler was jammed with goodies. People, usually buoyant at these contests, often remembered later. Business could be won through such small gestures.

Fred Forrest, five rows behind Matthew, was out of the mix due to his location. After his behavior, he would have been out anyway.

Tracy and Josef traveled around the Atlantic Coast Conference to officiate. Both men enjoyed just watching a game but also watching other men officiate. Refereeing was a thankless job, but no sport could really operate without unbiased officiating.

The game, unlike the Clemson one, was rather tedious. Virginia dominated Maryland. At one point after a brief discussion with Andrew Argenbright, one of Coach Ryan's assistants, the coach took most of her first-string players off the court and put in underclassmen. Experience gained on the court during battle is worth a great deal to an emerging player.

At one point, sophomore Latitia Hall, sister of senior center Mandy Hall, and hopefully a future star, lobbed one from the middle of the court in a perfect arc which dropped through the rim, barely shaking the net.

The crowd stood up and cheered. People blew their noisemakers, waved their Styrofoam swords, their blue and orange pennants. Harry felt a cold breeze whizz near her left ear. She turned around to see who blew a noisemaker close to her, but everyone behind her was hollering or puffing on noisemakers.

As the game ended and people filed out, Little Mim climbed over a row to reach Susan. Blair joined Harry, Fair, and BoomBoom. Harry waved to Miranda and Tracy on the opposite side of the court. They returned the wave.

By the time the group of friends had reached the parking lot, Susan had the latest on the H.H. drama.

The cats and dog, noses pressed against the driver's side window, couldn't wait for Harry. Herb passed them and rapped his fingers on the window.

"Guess he still doesn't know." Pewter put both her paws on the window as a greeting to the pastor.

"Maybe he's gotten over it," Tucker thought out loud.

"No way." Pewter smiled big as Herb smiled back and then headed toward his old car, on its fourth set of tires. He'd need new tires soon or a new car.

"He'll find out before the first Sunday in February. He needs them for communion."

"Maybe not, Murphy. Maybe he has an extra stash in the church itself. Bet Elocution and Cazenovia don't get in there very often, because Elo eats the flowers on the altar," Pewter said.

"That's true." Mrs. Murphy laughed. "But if those two wanted to get into the church I bet they'd find a way. They're pretty smart."

Fred stomped by them.

"What an old grouch," Tucker noted.

"Humans get the lives they deserve." Pewter then quickly added, because she knew there'd be an uproar, "Short of war or famine or stuff like that."

Before the last word was out of her mouth, H.H., shepherding Anne and Cameron, was three vehicles away. He jerked his head up, sweat poured down his face, his eyes rolled back in his head, and his knees collapsed. He dropped down in a heap.

Anne knelt down. Then she screamed for help.

Tucker noticed Fred turn. He saw who it was and hesitated for a moment. With reluctance he walked over to Anne.

"Help me!"

"Daddy, Daddy, wake up!" Cameron was on her knees shaking her father.

Harry, Fair, Susan, and Ned heard the commotion. Susan's daughter, Brooks, was with her friends, behind her parents. Matthew and Sandy, his wife, sprinted toward the fallen man. From the other side of the parked cars, Tracy hurried up.

Fair bent over, took H.H.'s pulse. None.

"Matt, help me get his coat off."

Matthew and Fair stripped the heavy winter coat off H.H., Fair straddled him and pressed hard on his heart. He kept at it, willing H.H.'s heart to beat, but it wouldn't.

Tracy looked gravely at Jim, who'd just reached them. He already had his cell phone out.

"Ambulance to U-Hall. Second row from the main entrance. Hurry!" Jim called the rescue unit closest to the university. As mayor of Crozet, he knew everybody in an official capacity.

The ambulance was there within five minutes.

Fair, sweat rolling off him, kept working on H.H.'s chest. He stood up when the rescue team arrived.

Little Mim had the presence of mind to wrap her arms around Anne because she didn't know exactly what the woman would do. Big Mim held Cameron.

They all watched in complete dismay as John Tabachka, head of the ambulance squad, quietly said, "He's gone."

Herb knelt down, placing his hand on H.H.'s head. "Depart in peace, thou ransomed soul. May God the Father Almighty, Who created thee; and Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, Who redeemed thee; and the Holy Ghost, Who sanctified thee, preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth, even forevermore. Amen."

"Amen." Everyone bowed their heads.

"Amen," the animals said.

6

Fair and Ned Tucker accompanied the corpse to the morgue. Ned, as the family lawyer, wished to spare Anne further distress. Fair thought Ned might need some bolstering.

Little Mim and Susan Tucker took Anne and Cameron to their home in the Ednam subdivision just west of the Clam on Route 250.

Each person, after ascertaining if they could do anything, finally went home.

A subdued Harry flipped on the light in the kitchen. She made a cup of cocoa, feeding her pets treats as she sipped. She felt miserable.

Ned felt miserable, too. He'd never witnessed an autopsy. Fair had. All living creatures fascinated him, how they functioned, how they were put together. He often thought that an autopsy was a way to honor life. How could anyone view a horse's heart or a cat's musculature without marveling at the beauty of it? Any chance he had to learn, he seized. The human animal was complex in some ways and quite simple in others. For instance, humans had simple dentition. Sharks, by contrast, had a mouthful of really complicated teeth.

Tom Yancy, the coroner, had been called by John Tabachka and had everything ready. Anne had insisted on an immediate autopsy. Grief stricken and shocked as she was, she wanted to know exactly how her young husband had died.

Yancy for his part was only too happy to comply. By the time he got to a body it had usually been in the cooler or worse.

Even laid out on the gleaming stainless steel table, H.H. was a handsome man, a man in seemingly good physical condition.

Yancy knew him, of course, but not well. Tom Yancy and Marshall Wells, the assistant coroner, often knew many of the corpses they examined.

"Ned, stand back." Yancy looked up at him as he pulled on his rubber gloves. "If you faint I don't want you falling on the body. Occasionally, organs will, uh, be under pressure. They may somewhat pop out, the brain especially. It sounds grotesque but it really isn't. After all, the inside of the body is experiencing light and air for the first time. If you can't take it, leave the room."

"I will." Ned felt nervous. He didn't want to disgrace himself, but he wasn't sure he would be up to the process.

Yancy's blue eyes met Fair's. "Put on a coat, will you? Just in case I need you."

Fair lifted a doctor's white coat off the peg against the door. He, too, put on thin latex gloves.

"All right, gentlemen, let us closely inspect the outside before we get to the inside." Yancy measured H.H. "Here." He handed Ned a clipboard, thinking having a task would help the lawyer. "Height, six feet one-half inch. Race, Caucasian. Weight, one hundred and eighty-five pounds. Age, I'd say between thirty-three and thirty-six. Of course, I know he is thirty-six because I knew H.H. and we have his driver's license, but you can still tell age by teeth. Not as well as we once could thanks to advances in dentistry, but they wear down." He opened H.H.'s mouth, pointing to the slight irregularity on the surface of those molars not capped. "Fillings can help us. Silver fillings have a shorter life span than gold."

"Remember Nicky Weems with his gold front tooth?" Fair recalled a man, old when Fair was a teenager, who flashed a gold grin.

"Used a lot before World War Two. Expensive but prized. It's still good stuff. Now, dentists, the advanced ones, use ceramics, and who knows what they'll come up with next? The stuff doesn't even discolor."

All the while he was talking, Yancy carefully felt over the body. "His temperature has dropped a few degrees."

"When does a body go into rigor mortis?" Ned was becoming interested. He was beginning to realize one could read a body like a book.

Of course, it's better to read it while it's still alive.

"Depends. On a blistering hot August day a corpse can go through the stages of death, light death, if you will, to advanced death, in a matter of hours. Putrefaction can begin rapidly especially on battlefields where the temperatures can be over one hundred degrees because of the guns. Gettysburg was a real mess, I can tell you. July." He shook his head. "And the little muscles go into rigor first. But on a temperate day, say sixty degrees to seventy, a corpse exposed to the elements, no rain, will begin to stiffen in two to three hours. Unless"-he held up his hand-"a person has ingested strychnine. By the time they are finished with their convulsions, which are so severe all the ATP in the muscles is depleted, they're in rigor. It's a horrible, horrible way to die. That and rabies. ATP is a molecule that releases energy for muscle contraction. When it's used up, so are you."

Yancy returned to H.H.'s head. He brushed back the nice-looking man's straight hair, cut in the old Princeton style. He checked his eyes, nose, ears.

Then he felt at the base of his neck, running his fingers upward to the ears. Fair, standing just a step to the left of him, squinted for a moment. Yancy, too, stopped.

"What's this?"

Fair bent over. "Looks like a hornet sting without the swelling."

The door opened. Kyle Rogers, the photographer, stepped in. "Sorry. I got here as soon as I could. The roads are okay, but-" He realized Yancy was intent so he shut up.

As Kyle removed his coat, taking his camera out of his trusty carry bag, even Ned was drawn closer to the body.

Ned kept telling himself that this was no longer H.H. H.H.'s soul had gone to its reward. The toned body on the slab before him was a husk. But while H.H. had bid goodbye to that husk, it was hard for his friends to do so.

"Kyle, get a close-up of this right now." A note of urgency crept into Yancy's voice.

Kyle, all of twenty-five, quietly snapped away.

Yancy glanced over at Fair as he reached onto his tray of implements, what he called his "tool kit." He pulled out a calibrated probe so fine it was thinner than a needle. He leaned down and expertly inserted this into what looked like the sting. "Penetration, an inch and a quarter." He pulled out the probe. "No bleeding."

"No discoloration," Fair said in a low voice. "It's as though he were hit with a microdart."

"Yes." Yancy drew out the word.

"I was in the row behind him. If he'd been hit with a dart I would have noticed." Fair thought a moment. "I hope I would have noticed."

"Odd, how every scene is different when you try to reconstruct it in your mind. The most commonplace object takes on new significance." Yancy plucked up his scalpel. "All right." He cut a Y, with the top of the Y looking like a large necklace, the bottom going directly to the pubic bone.

Ned gulped.

"The first cut is the hardest." Fair's voice had a steady reassuring quality.

Kyle worked quietly.

Ned blinked and as Yancy began removing and weighing organs he got ahold of himself. The science of it took over and H.H. as a person began to recede from view.

After weighing the heart, Yancy expertly opened the stilled pump. He pointed to Fair, and Ned even came over to look. "See the scarring?"

"Ah," Ned exclaimed because he could see tiny, tiny scars, tissue different from the striations around it.

"Cocaine. I'll know from the blood tests if he used any within forty-eight hours."

"I think that part of H.H.'s life is long past." Fair defended H.H., who had enjoyed a wild youth.

"That's just it. It's never truly over because everything you do leaves its mark on the body."

"So The Portrait of Dorian Gray is the truth?" Ned held the clipboard tightly.

"In a fashion, yes." Yancy intently studied the heart. "Left ventricle contracted. M-m-m, right ventricle normal."

"He died of a heart attack?" Ned was furiously writing on the clipboard.

"Ultimately we all die when our hearts stop beating. No, I wouldn't say he died of a heart attack. It's just that the left ventricle is not relaxed. Something . . ." Yancy's voice trailed off as he studied the stilled heart, blood seeping through the ventricles. He snipped tissue samples from the heart as well as the other organs. Intent, Yancy was in a world of his own, not conversing again until he was sewing up the body.

As Yancy and Fair washed up, Ned took a last look at H.H., a sheet covering him, as he was rolled into the cooler. H.H.'s body would soon be prepared for its last journey.

"Kyle, get those photographs on Sheriff Shaw's desk as fast as you can."

"Yes, sir." Kyle packed up his gear and left.

The coroner folded his arms across his chest. "Gentlemen, H. H. Donaldson did not die a natural death. The blood work will certainly help me pinpoint what was used to kill him because I can't tell from this exam what poison was used."

"Poisoned?" Ned gasped.

"Absolutely." He hung up his lab coat. "One looks for the classic symptoms, like the odor of bitter almonds for arsenic. Certain types of internal bleeding, the condition of the gums." He paused. "None of those changes are present in H.H.'s body, except the abnormality in his left ventricle. I'm willing to bet you the poison was delivered by whatever pierced his neck but-" He held up his hands.

"My God." Fair shook his head. "I can't believe it."

"Well, I'm sure he had enemies. A man can't go through life without gathering them, and if a man doesn't have a few enemies, then I really don't trust him. Know what I mean?"

"An enemy is one thing. An enemy who kills you is quite another." Ned's jaw set.

"We'd better go to Anne." Fair dropped his eyes to the floor then looked up at the ceiling. He hated this.

Yancy put his hand on Fair's big forearm. "Simply tell her there are irregularities. Wait until-" He stopped mid-sentence, walked to the phone in the lab, and dialed the Sheriff's Department.

"Coop, is Rick there?"

"No." The young deputy, usually a regular at basketball games, answered. She'd pulled extra duty thanks to the weather.

"Can you come over here a minute?" He explained why.

As the Sheriff's Department wasn't far from the coroner's office, Coop managed to get there despite the snow within twenty minutes.

Yancy rolled H.H. out of the cooler and pulled off the sheet. Wordlessly he pointed to the mark on his neck. "Kyle will have the photos on Rick's desk in an hour or however fast he can work. I'll have my report faxed over within the hour, minus all the lab work, obviously. Deputy, I believe he was murdered."

She exhaled. Cynthia Cooper, a tall, good-looking blonde, could make decisions swiftly. She pulled out her cell phone.

"Sheriff, I'm sorry to disturb you at home. I'm going to seal off the Clam. I need as many people as we can round up."

After speaking to Rick, whom she genuinely admired, she walked back and inspected the mark one more time. "Yancy, how soon before the blood work comes back?"

"I'll put a rush on it, but you never know. Normally it takes three to four weeks. Like I said, I'll beg for promptness."

"I was at the game," Fair said. "I can show you where H.H. sat, where he fell."

"Me, too," Ned volunteered.

"Good." She smiled tightly. "It's going to be a long night."

"I'm used to it," Fair replied.

Ned halted a moment as they opened the door. "What about Anne?"

Cooper turned to Yancy. "Will you call the Donaldson house? I'm sure someone is with her."

"Little Mim and my wife," Ned said.

"Well, one of them will probably answer the phone." Cooper weighed her words. "Just tell Little Mim or Susan that Anne can go ahead with funeral plans. Don't tell them more than that. Not even your wife. Rick will talk to Anne tomorrow."

"If you cordon off the Clam people will know something's not right," Ned sensibly observed.

"That's true, but it's eleven-thirty now. How many people are going to be out tonight? And if they are, they won't know what we're doing. We've got a little window of time. Let's use it."

7

The phone felt clammy in Susan's hand as her husband informed her Anne could go ahead with funeral plans. She and Ned had been married nineteen years. She knew Ned inside out. She wasn't getting the whole story or even half the story and she knew it.

She hung up the wall phone in Anne's high-tech kitchen. Anne and Little Mim sat at the table. Cameron had finally gone to bed. The adults were thankful the child could sleep.

"Anne, you can make arrangements." Susan's voice sounded strangled to her.

"Tomorrow." Little Mim, not the warmest person, genuinely wanted to spare Anne further distress.

"Yes." Anne's nostrils flared, she blinked. "It doesn't seem real."

"No, it doesn't," Little Mim agreed.

"Let me fix you some Plantation Mint tea, a big teaspoon of honey, and a pinch of whiskey. It's very soothing." Susan turned on the stove. "What about you, Marilyn?"

Little Mim nodded. "Yes."

"I guess there are women crying all over the county," Anne quietly said.

Little Mim and Susan looked at each other.

"Tea will be ready in a minute."

"You thought I didn't know." Anne shrugged. "I knew. I just didn't always know who or where. After a while I didn't really care." She grasped the table's edge with both hands. "And that's that."

"This is a terrible shock." Little Mim rose to help Susan with the tea. "Think about the good times."

"I will. Every time I walk into my little greenhouse H.H. built for me, I smile."

Anne was a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia's famous architecture department. Her breadth of knowledge was impressive for she had minored in chemistry. Plants represented whole worlds to her from their carbon chain all the way to their utilization in re-creations of eighteenth-century gardens.

The three women drank their tea.

"Honey, do you think you can sleep?" Susan refilled Anne's cup.

"If I drink this second cup, yes." Anne smiled wanly.

"Good. I'll stay here tonight," Little Mim announced.

"I'd feel better if you did." Anne placed the cup in the gold-rimmed saucer.

"Me, too," Susan volunteered. "Tomorrow will be overwhelming as people start to pour in. You rest. Little Mim and I can take care of things."

"But I must arrange the funeral. And Cameron." Anne's lower lip quivered.

"It might be best if Cameron could stay at a friend's house. Someone she could play with and talk to," Susan advised.

"Yes. Once my mother and mother-in-law arrive the drama will intensify." Anne stood up, picked up her cup and saucer, taking them to the sink. "Polly Bance's youngest is Cameron's age."

"I'll call Polly first thing in the morning." Little Mim reached for Susan's cup.

Anne leaned against the sink then turned around. "Guest room on this level. Another upstairs."

"Don't worry about us."

"You're good to do this for me."

"Anne, you'd do it for either of us," Susan replied.

Anne blinked, the tears came and the two friends hugged her, crying themselves.

8

Murder." The word escaped Harry's lips in a cloud of breath. She dropped the flake of hay she was tossing into Tomahawk's stall, bent over to pick it up.

Pewter, warming herself in the tack room, called out to Mrs. Murphy up in the hayloft. "What did she say?"

"Murder. H. H. Donaldson was murdered." Mrs. Murphy hung her head down over the center aisle. "Come out here and you'll hear better."

Tucker, at Harry's heels, walked back to the animal door located at the bottom center of the tack room door, a wooden door with a glass window on top. A screen door, inside that, was open inside the tack room. In summer the process was reversed.

The dog cocked her head, her large ears catching the sounds of Pewter jumping off a folded horse blanket.

Just as the gray cat poked through the animal door, Tucker grabbed her by the back of the neck. "Gotcha!"

Pewter rolled over on her back, grasping the dog's face with all four sets of claws. "You think."

Susan, who had just walked into the barn a moment ago, stepped over the rolling ball of fur, cat and dog. "It's one nonstop party with those two."

Susan, having left the Donaldson house this morning, Anne securely in the care of her mother and sister, received a phone call from Little Mim at eight this morning. Sheriff Rick Shaw had just paid a visit, and Little Mim called the second he was out her door.

"I came straight over. Actually I would have stayed on with Anne but Marcia Dudley"-she named Anne's mother-"took over. In no uncertain terms. She's a perfect ass. I don't know how Anne can stand her."

"Susan, the phone would have been faster." Harry was digesting the information.

"I wanted to see you. I always feel better if I'm with you." Susan held up her hands helplessly.

"Come on."

"Where?"

"We're going to the Clam."

"Ned and Fair were there until four in the morning along with the entire Sheriff's Department. I haven't even seen Ned. He called on the cell phone. He said he's going to bed. I said I was driving over to you. Poor Fair had a morning call, too." Susan paused. "A vet's life."

"Yes, it's his weekend to be on call." Harry quickly tidied up the barn. She'd fed everyone at the crack of dawn, as was her routine, and her horses-Tomahawk, Gin Fizz, and Poptart, her youngest-were turned out. Although a crisp, cold day, it would probably warm into the low forties. The horses stayed out in the light and would be brought back at sunset.

She liked to have their stalls cleaned, water buckets scrubbed and refilled, their rations of hay in the stalls, crimped oats in their feeders. She fed half their rations in the morning and half in the evening.

Susan had walked in just as Harry finished filling the water buckets.

"We'll never get into the Clam," Susan predicted.

"You have no faith. Come on." Harry flung open the barn doors, the sunlight on the snow, brilliant.

"Hurry," Pewter and Tucker called up to Mrs. Murphy, climbing headfirst down the ladder.

As Harry started to close the door, Mrs. Murphy hit the center aisle. "Wait for me."

Harry, hearing her cat, held the door open a crack as the tiger cat scooted through. Then she closed it.

"Your car or my truck?"

"We'll fit better in the station wagon." Susan lifted up the hatch for the three animals to jump in.

Although the temperature was climbing, now up to thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, the road remained treacherous because of the patches of black ice, the worst because you couldn't see it. A trip that would normally take twenty minutes on a good day took forty-five minutes today.

Finally they turned into the parking lot. Yellow tape still cordoned off where H.H. had fallen, but no tape barred the doors into the structure.

The sheriff's squad car along with other cars were parked at the back entrance by the large Dumpster.

Once inside the building, they didn't hit more yellow tape until reaching the basketball court. The doors were shut.

"Damn," Susan said.

"Faith." Harry circled around the court, checking every door at the main level. Then she herded everyone up the stairs to the next level for another door check. She found one that wasn't locked. Quietly they slipped inside.

Rick was seated below at the timekeeper's table, alone.

A door closed and Harry caught a glimpse of a uniformed person carrying a small carton.

Boldly, she walked down the steps to the floor. Susan followed. The cats slunk down and Tucker, too, crept close to the steps.

"When we get to the floor, check every row," Mrs. Murphy ordered. "Check out everything."

The seats were built along solid rows and unlike a high school football stadium there was no walking under the stands.

"Where does Mom sit?" Tucker asked.

"I don't know but let's start sweeping. She might show us."

"Harry and Susan, what in the hell are you doing here?" Rick, a study in irritation, looked up from the timetable of events in front of him.

"I thought we could help. H.H. sat in front of me."

"I know that. Fair was here. And your husband, too, as you well know."

"Yes, sir," Susan sheepishly replied.

"You're tired. Want me to get you some coffee?" Harry had that solicitous tone to her voice.

"If I drink any more coffee, you'll peel me off the scoreboard." He rose as the women walked to the table. "Go on, get out of here."

"Well, let me go to my seat. Susan, too. Maybe it will help."

Not awaiting a reply, she bounded up the steps. Susan stayed riveted to the spot.

"Good." Mrs. Murphy trotted toward Harry, who sat down.

"H.H. sat right there."

"I know that, goddammit!" He saw Tucker, then spied the cats, all working their way toward Harry but on different rows. "Not them. Thank God, we've already combed this place. You'd pollute the site. Do you know that? You could destroy valuable evidence."

"But I haven't and their senses are sharper than ours. Who knows what they'll find?"

"I can hardly wait to put them on the county payroll." His voice dripped sarcasm, but he didn't blow up. In the past, Harry's two cats and the corgi had sometimes turned up clues or even body parts. It was quite strange.

Susan, in an effort to deflect his wrath, murmured, "You must be very tired. We hoped we might be able to help because at least we got a good night's sleep."

He sat down again, defeated. "All right. Harry, come down here. Since you're here, I might as well make use of you."

Gleefully, she returned to Rick, whose badge reflected the light. "Yes, sir."

"Sit down."

Both Harry and Susan sat in the folding metal chairs at the table.

"Tell me what you saw."

Each woman succinctly described H.H.'s death as they saw it. He was in the parking lot, he stared up at the sky, jerked his head straight up, then dropped.

"Anything unusual during the game?"

They both shook their heads.

"All right." He held up his hand. "Now think. Who disliked H.H.?"

"Fred Forrest. He got ugly after the Clemson game. Yelled at H.H."

"Uh-huh." Rick had had this described to him by Fair. "What about a consistent enemy?"

Both women shrugged.

"You mean like someone who got mad over a building? A disgruntled client?"

"Yeah, or what about someone next to the building? You know when he put in that shopping center up on 29 North they were all screaming and hollering." He rubbed his eyes.

"I don't know any of those people, the ones in the subdivision now next to the shopping center," Harry replied.

"Well, I hate to mention this"-Susan's voice was low, conspiratorial-"but he left Anne the day before the game, yet they were back together at the game. Maybe the woman, whom we don't know-"

Harry interrupted, something she rarely did. "Oh, I bet we know her all right, we just don't know her identity at this moment."

"Right. Well, what if she killed him? The girlfriend?" Susan finished her thought.

"Uh-huh." Rick listened noncommittally. "Seems there was a string of girlfriends over the years."

Harry's dark eyebrows shot upward. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Maybe the girlfriend flew into a rage because he backed out."

Rick put his elbow on the table, resting his forehead on his hand. "Now look, you two, we have swept up every crumb, every piece of paper, every sticky gob of bubble gum. I am tired. I appreciate your help, but-and I mean you, Harry, because you're the worst-spare me your interference." Harry started to protest. He held up his left hand. "If H.H. has been murdered, and I won't commit to that until I have those lab sheets, but if he has been murdered, then whoever did this is walking around out there. Whoever it is is an incredibly intelligent person. This was not a crime of passion although passion may have inspired it. This was methodical, well thought out, ingenious, and committed in front of about six hundred people. And no one saw a goddamned thing."

"Or we saw it and didn't know we saw it," Harry, with no intention of obeying the sheriff, replied. She wasn't going to openly cross him but, after all, H.H. had been smack in front of her, one seat to the right. Her natural curiosity was as aroused as her ego. How dare the murderer? "Will you tell us what killed H.H. when you get the lab report?" Harry pushed her luck.

"Don't put your nose into it. Now will you pick up Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker and leave me in peace?" he grumbled, his voice low.

"Yes, sir." Harry whistled.

The three walked toward her from their various places, Mrs. Murphy bounding over the seats.

Rick looked down at the three animals, coats shining, in perfect health. "Keep her out of trouble."

"We will," came the chorus, which made him laugh.

He needed a laugh.

As they walked around the outside corridor, Mrs. Murphy complained, "Nada."

"Old food, old smells." Tucker had so hoped she'd find something.

"I didn't find anything except a little trickle of water on the top row. Guess the roof leaks a tiny bit," Pewter said.

"Are you sure it was water?" Mrs. Murphy's whiskers swept forward.

"I'm sure. Like I said, I didn't find anything."

9

Harry, I am not driving you up there." Susan shut the door to her station wagon with great determination.

"Oh come on, Susan, we're halfway there. If you take me home in a snit, then I've got to drive all the way back up 29." She mentioned Route 29 simply by its number.

"I knew I shouldn't have gone into the Clam with you. Now Sheriff Shaw is half-pissed at me and Ned will hear about it. I don't much feature a lecture from him." She sighed.

Ned Tucker, a good and gentle man, would not be thrilled with the news that his wife was meddling.

The animals, in the back, kept quiet. No reason to further irritate Susan.

"Don't you have any shopping to do?"

"Harry, that is so transparent. It isn't worthy of you."

As Susan drove out of the parking lot, Harry sullenly stared out the window.

"Groceries. You always need groceries. There's that expensive delicatessen up there. Expensive coffees. Fresh rutabaga."

"Rutabaga?"

Harry laughed. "Just wanted to see if you were listening."

Susan turned left onto Route 29. "I hate you, Harry. You get me to do things I would never do."

"That's what friends are for."

"Great, then you come home with me and let Ned tear you a new one."

"What a pretty way to talk." Harry smiled, her spirits restored.

"It's the truth. He doesn't get mad very often but when he does, watch out."

"All the more reason not to go home right now." Harry paused. "Ever notice how when you're wiped out you get these weird energy surges, and then there are times when your mind just goes blank? Zero. Clean slate."

"Mine does that on a daily basis," Susan mused. "Children will do that to you." She considered her statement. "It's not so much the big problems, you know, 'Mom, I wrecked the car.' It's the constant interruptions, although I must say with Dan at Cornell I have only one interrupter who interrupts less as she gets older. I don't remember my mother working as hard as I do teaching children good manners."

"It was good to see Danny over Christmas vacation. College is good for him."

Danny, a smart boy, was excelling at Cornell University, but he found upstate New York a lot colder than Virginia.

"He's a man now, although it's hard for me to see that. I mean intellectually I know it but emotionally I think he's my little boy and I am determined, determined not to be one of those mothers who won't let go."

"You'll be cool."

"If you're going to have children you'd better do it soon."

"It just happens. I'm not planning anything."

"That doesn't sound like you. That sounds almost, almost irresponsible."

"Oh, Susan, you know what I mean. Like you don't want to be one of those mothers who cling, I don't want to be one of those women who start blathering about the clock ticking. If I have a child, I do, and if I don't, I don't. Not to change the subject, but do you have any idea who might have wanted to see H. H. Donaldson dead?"

"Sneak."

"What?"

"You just can't stand to talk about anything personal, can you?"

"I just did." Harry's voice rose. "I told you exactly what I thought about having children but what I didn't tell you is I think you are a wonderful mother and I wouldn't be half as good a mother as you are."

"Why, thank you."

"Susan, who hated H.H.?"

"I told Rick what I thought."

"Kind of. But we don't burden the sheriff with idle gossip or unsubstantiated ideas. However, we can happily burden each other with them. So?" Harry wasn't exactly deluding herself but she wasn't accurate, either. She did discuss half-baked ideas with the sheriff.

Susan shrugged. "I can't think of anyone. Can you?"

"If we retraced his movements over the last few days maybe we'd figure it out."

"I am not spending my Saturday retracing H. H. Donaldson's-Damn, I missed the turn."

"Go up one light and turn left and come around."

"They didn't put in a very good turn lane, did they?" Susan griped.

"Not if you aren't looking for it. I try to avoid coming up 29 so I missed it, too."

Susan finally drove into the shopping center, a very attractive one built as a U, with a supermarket anchoring one end of the U and a big discount store anchoring the other. Smaller specialty shops were in between these large stores.

Businesses were in operation although the discount store was not quite completed. A large sign was in place with a banner underneath counting the days until it would open. Eleven days.

Harry tapped the window of the tailgate. "I won't be very long."

"Okay." The cats settled down for a snooze. Tucker watched Harry's every move.

"I didn't realize how big this was." Susan swept her eyes over the New Gate shopping center, painted muted shades of gray with splashes of red. "H.H. probably could have moved up to a bigger structure like the new stadium."

"This is pretty straightforward stuff. I'd like to think he could but Matthew's been around a long time. Even as a grunt Matthew worked on commercial or state projects like the Clam. He says the trick is not just finding the right subcontractors or whatever, he says it's the bidding. That's where you make it or break it. I'm learning a lot working with him on the Parish Guild."

"I learned a lot on the guild, period. What I learned is that 'consensus' is a magic word. Sounds so good. So hard to get. And why does everyone have to agree anyway?"

"Well, at least we've solved the recarpeting crisis."

"Hallelujah."

"Save that for church." Harry peered in the window of the discount store. "Huge."

"Gargantuan. You don't notice it from the parking lot but it goes straight back."

"I guess they'll stack up a lot of toilet paper." Harry laughed. "I know I can save money shopping at these behemoths, but I can't stand it. I get disoriented. And there's so much to buy I wind up straying off my list. 'Oh, that looks good.' The next thing I know I'm standing in line and the bill is four hundred ninety-nine dollars."

"Not five hundred?"

"Haven't you ever noticed that in the discount stores everything always comes to ninety-nine?"

Susan laughed. "I guess. Well, what are you looking for?"

"I don't know. Wanted to see what H.H. was building. Hey, that's Rob." She saw Rob Collier who delivered mail to the post office on weekdays. She waved.

He saw her, walked over to the front door and unlocked it. "Harry. Hello, Susan. Come on in."

"What are you doing here?"

"Working on Saturdays and Sundays. They're paying time and a half. I figured I'd better make hay while the sun shines." He slipped a screwdriver back into his tool belt. "Well, what do you think?"

"It's so well lit."

"Just putting on the finishing touches. I'm building shelves. This place will open its doors right on schedule despite everything. Poor guy. Keeling over of a heart attack like that. He's two years younger than I am. Makes you think." Rob shook his head.

"Yes, it does," Susan said.

"Rob, was H.H. a good contractor?"

Rob nodded. "No cutting corners. Do it right the first time. No bull. He talked to everyone straight. Kept his cool, too. That creep-if you weren't ladies I'd say something worse-Fred Forrest would come by every single day or he'd send his assistant. Fred's got a hair across his ass." Rob again shook his head, lowered his voice. "In fact she's here now."

"What would they fuss over?"

"Oh, Harry, you wouldn't believe it. That SOB would whip out his ruler, unfold it, and check stupid stuff like the gap between the doorjamb and the door. Anything. Fred lives to find fault and he couldn't find much. That's why H.H. would push everyone, 'Do it right the first time.'?"

Raised voices in the background drew their attention.

A young African-American woman, late twenties, wearing a hard hat, armed with a clipboard, strode out the door, Peter Gianakos in hot pursuit. He was soon back in the building.

He focused on Rob before focusing on the two women. "Bitch." He then saw, really saw, Harry and Susan. "I'm sorry, ladies. I'm a little hot under the collar."

"What's the problem?"

"Mychelle Burns has decided that our handicapped access to the men's bathroom is one degree off in grade. First of all, it's not. Secondly, to shave a degree off costs time and money. Do you know what a handicapped access costs us? That one you see out there on the sidewalk is eight thousand dollars." Peter let his arms flop against his sides.

"Why so much?" Susan was curious.

"It could be even more if it were a switchback but this one we could put in right off the curb. It cost so much because you have to taper the sides. You can't have ninety-degree sides. Let me tell you, concrete work ain't cheap. And the guardrails are heavy pipe. The stuff could hold back an elephant."

"I had no idea."

"No one does, ma'am. Not until they have to build something the public will use. It's bad enough just building a house."

"What are you going to do?" Harry felt bad for Peter.

"The first thing I'm going to do is count to ten. Next, I'm bringing in the laser measurer and I am ninety-nine percent sure that grade will be perfect. Code perfect. Then I will call Fred Forrest and ask him to come out and use the laser measurer." His voice was acidic. "If the high-and-mighty Fred doesn't want to come by, I guess I'll let Mychelle use it. Christ, she's a chip off the old block. And since neither one of them can even hammer a nail, I will hold my tongue although even an idiot can use a laser measurer."

"Peter," a man called from the back.

"Sorry to dump on you. Harry, Susan, it's good to see you."

"Give my regards to your wife," Susan said as he left.

Harry waited a beat then whispered to Rob, "Maybe Mychelle wants a payoff?"

Rob frowned. "Well, I'm here on the weekends and at night. I don't think that's going on. I could be wrong. I think Fred's drunk on power. She's a carbon copy."

As Susan and Harry cruised back down 29, Susan said, "Harry, I wouldn't have thought of under-the-table payoffs."

"I know. You're such a straight arrow."

"So was H.H."

"I think he was." Harry noticed that the snow piled on the side of the road was already grungy. "And I do think Fred is drunk on power. Rob's got him pegged. You see that kind of personality in a lot of professions but especially in government jobs. I should know, I have one."

"Maybe you should bring a whip to the post office."

"They'd get an entirely different idea." Harry laughed.

"Pervert." Susan laughed, too.

10

Unless inherited, wealth rarely falls into anyone's lap. People who make lots of money work harder, work longer hours, and almost always love what they do.

Matthew Crickenberger was no exception. His office in downtown Charlottesville was a series of three old town houses built in the 1820s. He'd bought them, renovating the insides while keeping the exteriors untouched.

The middle house boasted a lovely walnut door with a graceful fan over the top, the glass panes handblown. Inside, a small lobby where coats and umbrellas could be hung opened onto a larger reception area with a receptionist in the center. All along the right wall behind glass was a temperature-controlled miniature South American rain forest, imitation Colombian artifacts placed among the plants. One, a carved stone, peeped out of a rippling pool.

Matthew, utilizing Anne Donaldson's botanical skills, had paid over one hundred thousand dollars to create this. Apart from being a shrewd political move, hiring Anne, the wife of his rival, was also economical. Why bring in an expert from Miami University or elsewhere when Anne could do the job?

Brightly colored birds chattered in the thick canopy of plants, a rich green. Little salamanders and all manner of amazing insects lazed about.

At one time, Matthew purchased a pair of monkeys but they made an infernal racket and were donated to the Washington Zoo.

Hopping in and out of the elongated pond were bright little frogs, some yellow, some green with bands. They feasted on the tiny beetles and ants crawling about.

The rain forest wall never failed to dazzle a first-time visitor. Even those with constant access to Matthew admired the flora and fauna.

Not only was this Matthew's pet project, it was his hobby. He adored researching rain forest habitat and gave generously to those environmental groups trying to save these vital ecological areas.

He had visited Colombia once a year until it became too dangerous. He had sailed on the Amazon, too, but he liked the Colombian rain forests best.

People wondered if he went there to buy cocaine but Matthew appeared to have no interest in drugs. He drank at parties but wasn't much of a drinker.

His brother, Lloyd, had fought with Special Forces in Vietnam. He'd tell his big brother, Matthew, about the magic of the rain forest. Lloyd died at thirty-two of a stroke, way too young.

Matthew always said his hobby kept him close to Lloyd.

From the receptionist's desk one hallway headed into the left building, one into the right.

Matthew's office was at the end of the left hall, a hall lined with prints of macaws, toucans, and other aviary exotica.

His office, door always open, boasted a beautiful ebony Louis XVI desk. The walls were painted a lobster bisque, the woodwork a creamy eggshell. Against one wall stood an antique drafting table. Tazio Chappars leaned over the blueprints with him.

"-here." He pressed his index finger on a second-story window. "If we switch these to revolving windows we can entice fresh air into the structure."

"And additional cost."

"I'll get my guys to research that." He smiled. At least she didn't blast his suggestion. His experience with architects was that most were prima donnas.

She checked the large man's wristwatch she wore. "Oh, dear."

He checked his. "Here. Before I forget." He walked to his desk chair, picked up a small carpet sample and returned, handing it to her. "Tell Herb to give this to Charlotte. She can start thinking about fabrics to re-cover her office chair."

"The cost. The Parish Guild will have another long meeting." Tazio grimaced.

"No they won't. What's the most it can cost? Five yards. She's not going to pick embroidered satin." He inhaled. "A hundred dollars a yard if she goes wild. The most it will cost is five hundred dollars." He held up his hand to quell the protest. "I'll pay for it. I'll bet you she goes down to the Second Yard and finds a nice something for twenty dollars a yard. She deserves it." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm thinking about time."

"Pardon?" She noticed his countenance.

"Time. As in my life."

"H.H.?"

"Well, yeah. If it happened to H.H. it can happen to any of us. He took great care of himself and poof." He snapped his fingers. "Gone before forty."

"Pretty shocking." She was thirty-five herself.

"H.H. and I got along just fine, for competitors. He was a good builder. A little outspoken. A little hotheaded but a good builder."

A wave of sadness swept over Tazio's attractive face. "Such a waste. To die so young."

"Shame it couldn't have been Fred Forrest." The corner of his lip curled upward.

She hesitated. She loathed Fred but she didn't want to show it. "You know what I think about Fred?"

"No. Tell me."

"He works too hard at being unlikable."

Matthew blinked, his blue eyes focusing on her. "Perceptive."

"He doesn't want us to know who he really is."

"I never thought of that."

"You've known him for a long time."

"Over forty years. We both started out in construction. In fact, he and I worked on the Barracks Road shopping center the summer we were in junior high school. That ought to tell you how long ago." He smiled, citing a shopping center first built in 1957. "And one day the building inspector at the time, Buelleton Landess-there's a name for you-cussed out Fred. Up one side and down the other. And you know, Fred said, 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.' So he did, when he graduated from Lane High School. And he missed the biggest building boom Albemarle County ever had. Could have made a fortune. Fool."

"Hindsight."

"No balls, forgive the expression." Matthew smiled again.

"Well, I'd better head out."

"Nice to see you."

"Same here." She slipped her arm into her navy leather coat lined with sheep's wool, dyed to match. "I'll give Charlotte the carpet sample."

Matthew walked her to the door, wishing he were a younger man.

As Tazio drove away she thought that Matthew was easy to work with-which was a good thing. They'd be working closely together in the future on the new university sports complex.

And she also noted that it didn't seem to have occurred to Matthew that Fred Forrest didn't want people to know him. His nastiness was calculated. But then her observations on life taught her that people of color had to look more closely at white people than white people looked at themselves. Simple survival, really.

11

Preparing a sermon vexed Herb even though he'd been doing it all of his adult life. He'd jot down a few notes throughout the week and then each Saturday morning he'd settle into his office at the rectory to pull those notes together. Sometimes he'd work in his study at home but he often found his mind would wander. He'd pull a book off the shelf and hours would pass. He'd learn a great deal about Francis I of France or trout fishing but he hadn't written a word of his sermon.

As it was the second Sunday after Epiphany, he wanted to expand on the theme of discovery, of finding that which you have been seeking.

Cazenovia, her fluffy tail languidly swaying, sat on the desk. She closed her eyes and was soon swaying slightly in rhythm with her tail. Was the tail wagging the cat or the cat the tail?

Elocution slept in front of the fireplace, framed by an old mantel with delicate scrollwork carved on it.

Each morning the cats would cross the small quad from the house to the rectory. Bound by a brick wall three feet high, the complex exuded a peacefulness and a purpose of peace.

Not having to pay a mortgage proved a blessing for Herb. He'd saved from his modest salary and was considering buying a cottage as a retreat for himself. Herb was drawn to the Charleston, South Carolina, area, and he thought when the time came, he'd find something there. Escaping the worst of winter's depredations appealed to him, especially this Saturday afternoon, for the sky was a snarling gray, the temperature dropping back from its high in the mid-forties. He rose from his desk to look out the window toward the northwest. The clouds, much darker in that direction, promised another storm.

"Oh well, at least the cold will kill some of the larvae. We'll suffer fewer bugs come summer."

His rich, resonant voice caused Elocution to open one eye. She closed it again.

He opened the dark blue hymnal on his desk. He'd selected his biblical passages, the ones open to him from the church year readings, organized for centuries. Picking just the right mix of hymns appealed to him and he often wished as he hummed to himself that Miranda Hogendobber were a Lutheran. With that angelic voice the choir would surely improve.

"Yes, this is perfect." He reached over to pet Cazenovia as he sung the first stanza of Hymn 47:

"O Christ, our true and only Light,

Illumine those who sit in night;

Let those afar now hear Thy voice,

And in Thy fold with us rejoice."

He cleared his throat. "Cazzie, that was written in 1630 by Johann Heermann, six stanzas. Isn't it glorious how such gifts come down to us?"

"True, true," Cazzie agreed with him but wished Herb could appreciate the gifts of the cats who'd kept Johann Heermann company.

Many times Cazenovia, Elocution, Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker discussed the outrageous self-centeredness of human beings. Good as they might be as individuals, they assumed the world revolved around them, blinded by their arrogance to the extraordinary contributions of other creatures to this life.

Herb hummed some more. For all his nervousness about writing his sermon, he cherished his Saturdays in the rectory. He had it all to himself.

The large square carriage clock on the mantelpiece ticked.

"Two-thirty! How did it get to be two-thirty?"

Just then the wind stirred the bare branches of the majestic walnut tree by his office. The tree looked as if it were dancing, its black arms moving against the backdrop of racing clouds.

"Fast," was all that Cazenovia said.

"Low pressure. That's why I've been sleepy." Elocution opened her eyes, stretched fore and aft, and walked over to the window, a large one with a deep sill. She jumped up. "Fifteen minutes before it snows. Want to time it?"

The older cat checked the clock. "What do I get if I win?"

"My catnip sockie."

"That old thing?" Cazenovia nonetheless added, "Two thirty-seven on the clock. What do you want of mine?"

"Two bites of your special chow."

Being older, the large calico cat was on a senior diet and Elocution liked the taste of Cazzie's food better than her own.

"All right."

A rap on the front door drew all their eyes.

"Bother," Herb muttered but he rose, walking to the door, the two cats marching behind him. He opened the door and Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker raced in.

"Did he find it? Did he?" Pewter's hair was puffed out because it was cold outside.

"Not yet." Cazenovia wanted to hear his shouts but she didn't want to be too close, either.

"Isn't communion tomorrow?" Tucker just knew the blowup would occur when they were all there and she, like Cazenovia, didn't want to be too much in evidence because she was the evidence.

"No. We had communion on Epiphany Sunday. We won't have it again until the first Sunday in February." Elocution used "we" since she felt she and Cazenovia were part of the service.

"Rats." Pewter was disappointed.

"Haven't got any." Cazenovia followed the humans into the office as did the other animals.

"You should see Pope Rat, that huge fellow over at the salvage yard." Tucker loathed that rat.

"Yeah, he could start the bubonic plague all by himself." Pewter hated him, too.

"Wrong kind of rat," Mrs. Murphy advised them. "A European type of rat caused the plague. Pope Rat is American."

Cazenovia checked the time when they all gathered in the office. It was two forty-five.

The humans sat opposite one another in the two wing chairs flanking the fireplace, a long low coffee table made from an old ship's door between them.

"Rev, I just wanted to drop off the books I borrowed," Harry said.

"I know that, I know that, but I'd like a little company on this gloomy day. Started out sunny enough."

"Finished your sermon?" She knew his routine.

"Half. You'll like it because it's about discovery and I start with the discovery of the New World. Actually it's been discovered successively over the centuries. And by New World, I mean North America, not Iceland or Greenland."

"Can't wait." She placed the books on the table.

An extra one was on the pile. "What's this? The Voyage of the Narwhal."

"You'll love it. Apart from being an incredible story, it's well written."

"Oh yes, she wrote Ship Fever. I'm sure I'll like this. Thank you, Harry." His eyes scanned his shelves. He stood up. "While I'm thinking of it, let me give you that book about Byzantium I mentioned the other day at the P.O." If he were blind, he could have found his books, he knew their placement so well. He tapped the spine with his forefinger then slid out the book, returning to his chair and placing it before Harry.

"Fat book."

"You need it for these cold, dark nights." He sighed. "Coffee? Tea?"

"I win!" Elocution shouted.

The clock read two fifty-two.

"Elo, control yourself." Herb laughed, not knowing his youngest cat, who was only two, had just won her bet as the first large snowflake twirled by the window.

Cazenovia explained the bet to the other animals while the humans talked.

"When do they start laying the carpets?"

"Wednesday, if all goes well. But hopefully this week no matter what. It should take two full days. We couldn't have done this without Matthew." He rubbed the old carpet with his shoe. "In a way I agree with Tazio, it'd be so handsome to have the floors done and, say, a nice Oriental carpet in here but there's too much traffic."

"Even in your office?"

"If I sand the floors in here the dust will be everywhere so I might as well just rip it up and do the wall-to-wall thing. It will be just fine." He changed the subject. "Called on Anne Donaldson this morning. She's pretty broken up."

The Donaldsons weren't Lutherans but Crozet was a small enough town that everyone knew everyone else and Herb, quite naturally, paid his respects.

"I dropped by, too. I must have just missed you. Susan and I were out running errands and-"

"Where's Susan? I saw your truck but no Susan."

"Oh well, we started out in her car. We went to the Clam and then I wanted to go up to the New Gate shopping center and she ran out of time. She dropped me back home and I realized I hadn't returned your books, so I'm here. Before the storm. The clouds were hanging on the mountains." She looked out the window. "Aha."

Herb looked at Harry, whom he had known for most of her life. Her curiosity was both a good and a bad quality. She had a lively mind, read voraciously and indiscriminately, but she could also get herself into trouble. She wasn't always as smart as she thought she was. If Harry had gone to the Clam and then up to New Gate shopping center, it meant something was up.

Herb decided not to tip his hand. "Forget something at the Clam?"

"No, I just wanted to review events and, my luck, Rick Shaw was sitting at the timekeeper's table. So much for my sneaking around."

Herb had his answer. "Harry, hear me out."

The tone of his voice made her sit up straight. "Yes, sir."

"I know you. Everyone in this town knows you. Their cats and dogs know you. You are as curious as a cat and you think you're a detective. Because of your curiosity I know H.H.'s demise might be, shall we say, suspicious? There's nothing in the paper. Anne said nothing to me. The sheriff hasn't been by but I know you. You took yourself to where he died and then to the shopping center he was building. Am I correct?"

"Well-" She'd promised Rick not to tell.

"I thought so." He crossed his arms over his chest. "Who else knows?"

"Fair and Ned because they went back to the Clam Friday night. They were there all night with Rick and his crew."

"I see." Herb softened somewhat. "They won't tell. What provoked this? I mean, what led Rick to believe H.H. was killed?"

"The autopsy. It was done while the body was still warm, perfect conditions, I guess."

"How?"

"Well, I don't think anyone knows, but there was something odd at the autopsy. I don't know what it was. When the lab tests come back the sheriff will know for certain if it was murder."

"He wasn't shot. He wasn't stabbed. He wasn't run over. That leaves poison." Herb made a steeple out of his fingers, leaning forward. "Who knows you were at the Clam?"

"Rick."

"Pass anyone in the halls?"

"No. It was really quiet."

"The only place you can hide a car is at the service entrance. Did you?"

"No. It was Susan's station wagon."

"Harry." He was upset.

"Well?" She held up her palms in supplication.

"And then you went up to the New Gate shopping center. Who saw you there?"

"The men working to finish the discount store. Rob Collier's moonlighting. Uh, Peter Gianakos is the foreman. I don't know the other guys. Oh, the assistant building code inspector, Mychelle Burns. She and Peter were at it so maybe she noticed me and maybe she didn't. Uh-"

"Harry"-his voice lowered-"the murderer, if there is one, thinks that no one knows yet."

"Not necessarily. Rick had his crew at the Clam. The person might know that."

"But it is not public knowledge at this point and Sheriff Shaw's wily. He could have told people at the auditorium that this was strictly routine. They may or may not have believed him but late Friday night no one is there. The roads did not invite cruising around. By Saturday morning, okay, a few more people might have noticed the squad car and other official vehicles, but still, it's not public knowledge and no one is talking about it because our phones would be off the hook. People are all saying he dropped dead of a heart attack. People in their twenties can drop dead of a heart attack. There hasn't been word one about a questionable death. So-"

"You were stupid, Mom. I love you but you blew it." Mrs. Murphy hopped into Harry's lap.

The animals sat, faces upturned to Harry.

"I've got an audience here." She half-laughed.

"My point, but you've got an audience that may be dangerous. The killer may now know that you know."

"Oh, Rev, maybe he's not a local." Harry was hoping against hope.

"Sure, he flew through bad weather, rented a car, went to the basketball game, then killed H.H. in the parking lot." Herb stopped a moment, digesting just how H.H. could get poisoned. "The murderer knows you, Harry."

A chill edged down Harry's spine. "Yeah, yeah, I guess he does."

"And you've dragged Susan into it."

Harry now felt really wretched. "Damn, I am such an ignorant ass." She glanced out the window then back to Herb. "Sorry."

"I say worse when no one's around."

"That's the truth." Cazenovia corroborated his admission.

"What can I do?"

"Hope that killing H.H. has settled his score. Whatever that score might be."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, her voice faint.

But the score wasn't settled. The killer had every intention of putting more points on the board.

12

Someone else was running ahead of the storm. A yellow Lab, perhaps eight months old, abandoned by its humans, hungry and frightened, was looking for a place to hide. An expensive house under construction, set back on fields west of Beaverdam Road, held promise. He loped up to the rear, checking the doors. He moved around counterclockwise until he reached the garage, where the automatic door had not yet been installed. Shivering, the thin fellow ducked in.

Within a few minutes Tazio Chappars, the architect for this edifice, turned down the drive. She wanted to check it before the storm's battering to make certain every window was double-locked. She'd hurried from Matthew's office.

As she parked her half-ton truck, a forest-green Silverado, she opened the front door with the key. Methodically, she started at the top floor, working her way down. She set the thermostat at sixty degrees Fahrenheit. The foreman had it at forty-eight degrees. Much too low, she thought. Satisfied, she locked the front door from the inside, passed through the mudroom off the kitchen, and opened the door into the garage.

The dog, tired, didn't run. He wagged his bedraggled tail. "Will you help me? I'm very hungry. I'll be your friend for life. I'll love you and protect you if you'll help me."

Tazio's mouth dropped open. "You poor guy."

Lowering his head, still wagging his tail, he came to her, sat down and offered his right paw. "You're very pretty."

"No collar." She shook her head, for she knew a bit about dogs. Labs weren't wanderers like hounds on scent. "Buddy, I need you like a hole in the head."

"You do need me. You just don't know it." He smiled shyly.

Struggling with herself, she reached down to pat the broad head. "I can at least get you to the vet. Come on."

"Whatever you say, ma'am." He obediently followed.

She had a folded canvas in the bed of the truck and a couple of old towels behind the seat. She shook out the canvas, placing it on the seat, then she toweled off the dirty, thin dog. "I can count every rib. Goddamn, what's wrong with people?"

"I got too big. I had too much energy so they put me in the car, drove up from Lynchburg, and dropped me along Route 250. I've been moving for two weeks and the weather's been bad. No one would help me."

"Come on."

He hopped in, curled up, grateful for the warmth and the attention. "I won't make a sound."

She punched in the numbers for information on her cell phone mounted beneath the dash. A small speaker was in the upper left-hand corner of the driver's side so she could keep both hands on the wheel after she dialed. She asked for the number of the vet right outside of Crozet, Dr. Shulman.

A pleasant receptionist, Sharon Cortez, answered. She recognized Taz's voice from the Pilates class they took together.

"Hi, I know a storm is coming, but-"

Hearing the distress in Tazio's voice, Sharon said simply, "Where are you?"

"Ten to fifteen minutes from your door."

"We'll be here."

The Lab went willingly into Dr. Shulman's office although the medicine smells weren't enticing. Humans missed most of the pungency.

"Tazio, what have you here?" The handsome bearded veterinarian bent down to run his hands over the dog's frame.

"I found him in the garage at the Lindsay house. I don't think this fellow has had a meal in a long time."

"Just what he could catch and with this weather that wouldn't be much." Dr. Shulman checked the dog's eyes, ears, opened his mouth. "Not quite a year, I'd say eight or nine months." He took a small stool swab, checked under the microscope. "Okay, no tapeworms, which should come as no surprise. No fleas or ticks thanks to the cold. Tapeworms come from infected fleas, so the cold has been useful. Given what he must have gone through he's in pretty good shape. We'll get some muscle and pounds on him in no time."

As Dr. Shulman quietly gave orders, Sharon gathered up some cans of food, a large bag of dry food, a brush, a collar, a leash, and a dog bed. Then he closed the door and efficiently gave the dog a barrage of shots.

"Dr. Shulman, I-" Tazio stuttered.

"Oh, don't worry. You just pay for the exam and the shots. I've given him his basic shots. Put his rabies tag on the collar. You can buy a commercial dog food, certainly, but given the weather the stores will be crowded so I thought maybe you'd best take some home. This will get you started."

"Oh, that's fine, but-" She picked up the collar.

"You know"-he knelt down to clean out the sweet dog's ears-"Mindy Creighton came in today. She had to say goodbye to Brinkley. He was almost twenty years old." Dr. Shulman fought a little mist in his eyes. "She left his collar, leash, and bed, asking me to give them to someone who might need them. Said she just couldn't bear to bring them back home. So next time you see her, thank her, not me."

"I thought I'd pay to get this boy back on his feet and find a good home for him."

"No! I want you." The Lab put his head under her hand.

Dr. Shulman smiled slightly. "Well, you'll need these things until you do and-uh-Tazio, I should tell you that Labrador retrievers are excellent companions. They are used to lead the blind because they're so rock steady."

"I'll put signs up describing him. Someone might be searching for him."

Dr. Shulman looked down at the dog and, when Tazio's head was turned, he winked.

Sharon had already put the rabies tag on the collar, a bright royal blue. She placed it around the dog's neck. "Perfect." Then she tidied the papers at the front desk. "All right now. What shall we call this fellow?"

Tazio, knowing an ambush when she saw one, nevertheless smiled, "Brinkley Two. Seems only right."

"I think so." And she wrote down the name in black ink, block letters.

"Sharon, I guess you heard about H. H. Donaldson?"

"Sure did." Sharon glanced up from her paperwork. "I shed not a tear." A note of sarcasm was inflected in her voice. She looked up again. "I'm one of H.H.'s castoffs." She waved her hand. "Oh, it was years ago but it still stings a little."

"I'm sorry. I had no idea."

"I didn't broadcast it." She handed Tazio the papers with the day written down, the list of shots given, and when the dog would need boosters. "But it's weird-now I don't care."

"Could be the shock."

Sharon shrugged. "Maybe. I feel sorry for his little girl. And Anne. She's a nice lady."

"I guess I put my foot in it." Tazio blushed.

"No you didn't. I just felt like casting a weight off my shoulders. You're still relatively new here, Tazio. This place is full of secrets."

"I guess any small town is."

"Got that right." Sharon smiled, then stood up to pat Brinkley's head. "You're going to love this dog. Trust me."

With a weak little voice, Tazio half-protested. "I work too many hours to have a pet."

"I will never let you down," Brinkley vowed to the architect. "Not with my last breath."

On the way home, Taz thought she'd better brave the supermarket. Just in case the storm lasted. The first flakes were falling. She pulled in next to Harry's truck just as Harry put two large bags of groceries into the seat.