Whisker Of Evil

8

Huge carpenter bees buzzed under the eaves of the barn.

“Talk about big butts.” Pewter sniffed as a tiny thread of fresh-chewed wood sprinkled on her black nose.

“They make those holes up there and they’re as round as if they had measured them.” Mrs. Murphy, too, watched the bees, which could have been mistaken for bumblebees except that the carpenter bees’ black bottoms weren’t fuzzy.

Tuesday, the first of June, perfect, a light breeze, low seventies, grass as green as emeralds, produced a euphoria in the animals. Although six o’clock in the evening, the light gilded the weathervane, the barn, the outbuildings, and the neat clapboard house. The sun wouldn’t set until around nine, and the summer twilights lingered, filling the sky with colors of surpassing beauty.

Harry’s three horses, Poptart, Gin Fizz, and Tomahawk, dined on redbud clover, which enlivened the green pastures with dark pink dots. She mixed redbud clover, orchard grass, and a little rye in her fields. This year she experimented with some alfalfa down by the creek bottom, between her farm and that of Blair Bainbridge.

She was out on her old 1958 tractor, bushogging the sides of her long driveway. Once Harry fired up her tractor it was hard to get her to step down. The pop-pop-pop of the upright exhaust pipe thrilled her as much as a Brandenburg Concerto thrilled a music aficionado. Which was not to say that Harry didn’t like Bach. She did. She just liked her tractor’s pops and rumbles better.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter hated the dust this chore stirred up. Furthermore, they’d worked diligently in the post office that day and felt they were entitled to a snooze amidst the lilies that Harry had planted in front of the low boxwoods by the barn. She was going all out on her beautification program since BoomBoom Craycroft—a former adversary turned, if not friend, then warm acquaintance—had gotten a whopping good price on all the stock of a nursery going out of business. The nursery had specialized in only trees and shrubs, no flowers. BoomBoom, Susan Tucker, Miranda Hogendobber, and Harry bought up maples, hickories, crepe myrtles, Italian lilacs, redbuds, dogwoods, a new disease-resistant chestnut, and even some red oaks. The four women divided up the trees and shrubs between them. Harry had lined her drive and farm roads with her bounty. Of course, the girls, as they called themselves, nearly broke their backs putting in all this plant material, but Harry had a drill on the back of her old tractor so she could dig the holes. Then BoomBoom, operating her new tractor, scooped up the trees, and the huge root bundles in a ball of dirt were perched on the front-end loader of her tractor. And throughout March and April, when weather permitted, they got the trees and shrubs in the ground at each of their houses.

As Harry bounced around on the tractor seat covered with remnants of a sheepskin, she thought about how much she loved working outdoors. Even those raw days when the drizzle ran down the back of her neck and the temperature chilled at thirty-six degrees, she loved it.

When she wasn’t puzzling over Barry, her mind returned to her present job—postmistress. Everybody trooped through the post office. She adored seeing everyone she knew, as well as the occasional stranger. But the threat of a new building, more employees, and more rules nagged at her. She and Miranda did as they pleased, and as long as they met the dispatcher in the morning and in the late afternoon, they were just fine. The building was as neat as a pin, the mail sorted and in the boxes by nine most days. And since they knew everyone, they knew who drove by on their way in to work in Charlottesville in the morning. Those people could always expect a wave, a smile. Best of all, Harry’s three four-footed friends worked with her. What if a new post office and new people changed that? She would never work without her animals. It was unnatural. It would make her sick to just hang around with humans all the time.

A large rock outcropping near the drive necessitated a swerve. A groundhog nibbled grass to the side of the outcropping.

As she neared the dirt state road, she pulled over again, because Susan Tucker turned onto the gray stones, number five from the quarry in Staunton. Harry put a load down in April and complained for a month about the expense.

Stopping, Susan rolled down her window. “Looks good. Why don’t you come up the other side—I know you hate to leave a job in the middle of it—and I’ll make supper.”

“You will?”

“I will. Brooks and her dad drove down to Sweet Briar this afternoon.” She pointed to a bag of groceries on the passenger seat of her Audi station wagon. “Voilà.”

“Susan, you are the best!” Harry, who rarely cooked, beamed.

“In fact, give yourself forty-five minutes. You ought to knock a mess of bushogging out by then.”

“Roger.” Harry touched the brim of her straw cowboy hat.

Each year she bought a new Shady Brady and wore it hard. By the end of the year that hat was tired, plus she’d invariably forget to bring it in the house and would leave it in the tack room, where the mice would chew on it.

Tucker, snoring next to the tack trunk in the barn, lifted her head when she heard Susan come down the drive. She roused herself, hoping that Susan had brought along Owen, her corgi brother.

As the two dogs played tag, the bemused cats watched.

“What’s funny about those two is they have no idea they’re shrimps.” Pewter rested her head on her outstretched paw.

“Dwarfs.” Mrs. Murphy accurately described the two corgis, large animals bred down to shortened legs but with the torso and head of larger dogs.

As corgis go, Tucker and Owen were on the large size of the breed. Tee Tucker weighed forty pounds and her brother weighed about forty-six, but he carried a little potbelly. Neither dog was terribly overweight, and both could turn on a dime and give you a nickel’s change. Given that their function was herding cattle, their size and demeanor were perfect for the task. A small dog like a miniature pinscher might not get the respect of the cattle, but a corgi with a stout bark and strong jaws could nip heels, duck or leap sideways, and drive those cattle down the road.

“Murphy, I’ve been thinking about Barry. No, we couldn’t smell another animal, but he had the stench of fear on him. We didn’t talk about that,” Pewter said.

“Hmm.” Mrs. Murphy sat up. “I attributed that to nature. He was afraid of what killed him.”

“Me, too,” Pewter replied.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Well, let’s say a bear grabs him or even takes a swipe so only his throat is touched.”

“Yeah . . .” The tiger nodded, waiting.

“Wouldn’t Barry have thrown his right arm up to protect his throat? That’s the natural human reaction. They have no other defense in that situation and, God knows, the poor things can’t outrun a rabbit.”

“Pewter, you’re right. And there wasn’t a mark on him, at least not that we could see. No dirt on his right arm or bruises or blood. It’s—”

“Unnatural.” Pewter finished her thought for her.

“Even if a huge raptor swooped down on him, he’d still throw his arm up.” Mrs. Murphy considered other possibilities.

“Okay, suppose the bird hit him from behind with his talons balled up. Barry stumbled and somehow fell faceup. Well, he’d have a big knot on the back of his head.”

“Thought you didn’t care much about humans except for Harry and a few of her friends.” Mrs. Murphy taunted Pewter just a bit.

Pewter drawled, “I don’t. But I was thinking about what kind of animal would kill Barry without him having any time to defend himself at all.”

“You’re it!” Tucker roared by, too close for comfort, as she chased her brother.

“Watch it!” Mrs. Murphy swiped at the white rear end.

The possum, Simon, awakened for a night’s foraging, peered out of the hayloft door, open to let the breezes through the hay. “Pipe down.”

The cats looked up at Simon, whom they liked well enough. “Good luck. Tucker’s about to go into her frenzy. Give her another minute and she’ll chase the tail that isn’t there.”

Simon, half-domesticated, had endured every shot and test for EPM, a degenerative, complicated disease that would be passed to the horses, and emerged a remarkably healthy possum, if a disgruntled one.

“I’m not coming down until those two are in the house. They’ll chase me. Tucker forgets her manners when Owen’s around,” Simon grumbled.

As Susan stepped out back to ring the large bell hanging by the screen door, the dogs decided that the prospect of food was more alluring than chasing each other to exhaustion.

“Simon, have a good evening.” Pewter shook herself, then trotted to the screen door.

Pewter was never one to hang back when food was on the table.

Mrs. Murphy called up, “Peppermints in Mom’s barn coat. She forgot to give them to the horses.”

“Thanks!” Simon could taste those candies already.

Harry, hungry, pulled her tractor into the old shed the minute she heard the bell. Johnny Pop, the old John Deere, belched a few times, black puffs of exhaust rising like smoke signals from the exhaust pipe. Harry disengaged the PTO—the power takeoff—a rotating axle that powered attachments. Tomorrow before climbing back on she would dutifully check fluids on her old tractor. She had a mania for maintaining all equipment properly because she assumed she’d never be able to buy any more.

The two friends caught up on their own doings as well as everyone else’s. The animals gratefully ate the chicken that Susan had made for them.

“Susan, no wonder Ned married you.” Harry smiled as Susan put apple crisp before her for dessert.

“Bet he has days when he wonders,” Susan laughed as she sat down to the apple crisp topped with vanilla ice cream. “Oh, ran into Fair, and he said he’s off this coming weekend if we want to go to the furniture stores in Farmville.”

“Do you want to go?”

“Can’t make up my mind. If I go I’m afraid I’ll buy that chest of drawers I keep dreaming about. My husband won’t be happy about it.” She sighed, then smiled as she delivered ice cream and apple crisp to her mouth.

“Let’s wait until we get closer to the weekend. I don’t want to be tempted, either.” Harry savored the crunch of another mouthful of apple crisp. She changed the subject. “Is Mim going to Keeneland this year?”

“She’s waiting for Saratoga.”

“I’d love to go!” Harry adored Saratoga Springs, a beautiful city north of Albany, New York, and the center of the thoroughbred world in August.

“She’s selling this year.”

“She had those two yearlings by, uh, one’s by Fred Astaire and the other is by J. C. Smells, the Pennsylvania horse. But the mares are granddaughters of Secretariat. Everyone wants that blood, especially from the mares.”

“Mim is shrewd. Ran into her, too, and she said you had found Mary Patricia Reines’s class ring. I can’t believe you didn’t call me.”

“I’m sorry.” And Harry was. “I’ve been on overload and I didn’t know who it belonged to when I found it. Took it to Coop only because I found it not far from where I found Barry, poor guy. And she took it to Aunt Tally. It’s a long story about why she took it there instead of to Rick, but, anyway, Big Mim knew. And Mary Pat’s initials are inside the ring plus the date, 1945. Oh, Coop and I came back here after Aunt Tally’s and used Mom’s big magnifying glass. The inscription, which is reversed so you can use the ring for stamping, is Victuri te salutamus.”

“We salute you, Victory?” Susan’s Latin was rusty but serviceable. “Or, we who are about to be victorious salute you?”

“Close enough. The ring is worn but I think it’s Victuri. Could have been Victoria, she who conquers.”

“Victoria, -ae, is conquest, victory,” Susan said. “Easy to remember since it’s first declension. I forget fourth and, well, if you don’t use it you lose it.”

“Men say that, too.”

They burst out laughing.

“Well, victory is feminine but victor is masculine. It’s coming back. Victor, victoria.” Susan polished off the apple crisp. “That’s so good.”

“Is there more?”

“Yes. I shouldn’t, but, well, the thing about temptation is, if you can resist something it’s because it’s not tempting enough.” She walked over to the counter. “What about you?”

“I’m full.”

“I’m never full.”

“Susan, you’ve always been like that. You burn it off.”

“I burned it off until I turned thirty-five. Then my metabolism changed. I don’t know why yours didn’t.”

“Farm work.”

“Thank God you spend part of each day inside at the post office or you’d be rail thin.” She cut another large helping, using Harry’s spatula.

Harry needed more kitchen utensils. Susan made note of that for future presents.

“Didn’t we have fun putting in all those trees?”

“Fun? I about broke my back.”

“I loved it.”

“Harry, you love anything with a motor in it, and you and BoomBoom were in hog heaven. It’s so funny to see BoomBoom in the cab of that eighty-horsepower tractor. I mean, she really is one of the most beautiful, feminine women, and she works at it, too. But let her get in a car or a tractor and, like you, she’s as good as any gearhead. She is a gearhead!”

“I’ve gained a new appreciation for BoomBoom. I think that ordeal we survived at the Clam turned me around.” Harry mentioned the big sports arena at University of Virginia, where they had been pursued by two criminals.

They worked together, fought back, and lived. The cats and dog helped, too.

“I’m glad. Before it slips my mind—where is Mary Pat’s ring?”

“Here.” Harry removed it from her pinkie.

“Rick let you have it? I can’t believe it.”

“I found it. Cooper took it to him first thing Monday morning. They dusted it and examined it and, as you would suspect, my prints, Aunt Tally’s. Obviously, no one expected much, but Rick went through the motions. Rick said I could have it. Coop brought it by on her way home last night. Finders keepers.”

“That’s good luck. Finding a ring is good luck, even if in the end she had bad luck. I guess we’ll never know. Back to our Latin. Finding a dismembered hand is good luck. It means power is coming to you. Victory.” Susan pointed to the tiny inscription on the ring underneath the Episcopal shield.

“Vespasian was sitting in his tent after a battle and his dog brought him a hand. He knew he’d be emperor. 69 A.D., I think. It’s amazing how that Latin does stick in there.” She tapped her head. “That’s why I made Danny and Brooks take it. Danny is still taking it up at Cornell, and, Harry, he called me this morning and says he still doesn’t know what he wants to be. I thought he’d be a lawyer like his dad, but Brooks, you know, I think she’s heading that way. Well, it’s too early to tell. They have to find their own way.”

“You’re a good mother, Susan.”

“Tosh.” Susan waved away the compliment and handed back the ring to Harry. “What a lovely woman she was. Generous to a fault. I always thought she was brave because she never married, and in her generation you married even if you were as ugly as a mud fence.”

“Never thought about it. We were in grade school when she disappeared. It amazes me how sensitive you were to other people even when we were kids.”

“Mary Pat was an original. Remember the time she let us ride on her track? We were nine years old and we thought we were in the homestretch for the Preakness!” Susan glowed.

Harry, content after a full meal, lapsed into nostalgia, “I was on Silly Putty, that gray pony, and you were on Tickles. You won.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Wonder why Mary Pat didn’t marry. She was beautiful and rich. Maybe she figured if she married she’d lose control of her money,” Harry said. “Back then if you weren’t careful or if the trusts weren’t tied up, you did. I mean, women were chattel. And Mary Pat was making money from breeding horses. You could do that then. Maybe she didn’t want to risk losing that money. You know,” she sat upright, “I never did think about it. When you’re a kid you mostly think of yourself and your peers. I thought the world began with me.”

Susan laughed. “I think that’s the way every generation feels until it matures. Mary Pat didn’t marry because she was gay.”

“Mary Pat?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Big Mim told me. I mean in her own way. They were friends. Mim wasn’t direct about it exactly, but I put two and two together.”

“Mary Pat gay? Must have driven men wild. She was gorgeous,” Harry exclaimed.

“So were the women around her. I guess Mary Pat had an eye for a good woman just as she did for a horse.”

“To each her own.”

“That ring looks good on you.”

“I wonder if she was killed because she was gay.” Harry reached for her teacup.

“You don’t know that she was killed. She could have suffered a heart attack and never been found.”

“Right. She and Ziggy Flame had simultaneous heart attacks.” Harry mentioned the great stallion who disappeared along with Mary Pat.

“Ziggy—he was never found, either,” Susan mused.

“Mim said something. You know how smart she is. She said if I found the ring in the creek bed, then Mary Pat is somewhere upstream.”

“Possibly.” Susan cleared the table, walked over, and put her hand on Harry’s shoulder. “When do you want to start looking?”

Harry touched Susan’s hand. “Susan, you know me too well.”

“Cradle friends.”

“How about tomorrow after I get off work? And I’ll ask Fair so he doesn’t fuss.”

“Tomorrow. Meet you here at five-thirty?”

“I’ll burn the wind getting home.” Harry got up to wash the dishes. “Oh, today a tourist all hot to get to Monticello somehow took a wrong turn and wound up at the post office. So Miranda gave her directions. And you know what this lady says as she leaves?”

“No.”

“She says, ‘Crozet’s so ugly even Lot’s wife wouldn’t have looked back.’ ”