Whisker Of Evil

16

Morning, ladies,” Rob Collier sang out as he tossed up two large canvas mail sacks in the back. “Thursday and heating up!”

“Morning. I didn’t hear you drive up.” Miranda, who lived across the alleyway, usually heard the big mail truck when it rumbled to the back door.

She felt she had the perfect life, for all she had to do was walk through her garden, cross the gravel alleyway, and unlock the back door. She incurred no commuting costs, and the walk wasn’t far enough to wear out shoe leather.

Harry, on the other hand, drove in from her farm at the base of Yellow Mountain, or, if the weather permitted, she might walk the four miles in just for the delight of it. This morning she drove.

“Any news from the other P.O.s?” Miranda asked.

“Page’s Store closed in Batesville, but the P.O. still rents space there.”

“Page’s Store? Why, that’s been open since 1913.” Miranda gasped, for she enjoyed the store and the whole Page family.

“I know, but time’s a movin’ on. Time flies like an arrow,” Rob said.

“And fruit flies like a banana,” Harry said.

Both Miranda and Rob laughed and shook their heads.

“Mom’s in one of her Looney Tunes moods.” Tucker smiled.

Rob, never one to turn a deaf ear to gossip, announced, “I heard that Dr. Langston told Sugar and Carmen, too, to come in and get tested for rabies.”

Harry, who thought she worked at the nerve center of Crozet, betrayed a flash of irritation. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Sister-in-law. Her best friend works in Dr. Langston’s office.” He enjoyed his scoop. “And Sugar said, ‘The hell with it. He’d be too damned late to do anything.’ But I reckon Carmen will go. She’ll have to emote over it for a time.”

“Rob.” Miranda had to stifle a laugh so her voice didn’t truly carry censure.

“Carmen is all over the map.” He had his hand on the doorknob. “I tell you, that girl is nine miles of bad road. She will get a man in trouble.”

“Rob, I thought most girls could get a man in trouble—especially you.” Harry raised an eyebrow.

“I wish.” He winked and left, the rumble of the big mail truck audible even inside the building.

At eleven the tall, genial Pug Harper stopped by.

Miranda leaned over the counter when the county’s postmaster came through the front door. “Mr. Postmaster, what can we do for you, or is this an inspection?”

Harry gathered up white rigid-plastic mail cartons into which she had folded the large mail sacks and placed them back on the floor, the wooden boards polished smooth from use. “Pug, how are you?”

“Just fine. And no, Miranda, this isn’t an inspection. Crozet’s post office is one of the best run in the county. Make that the state.” He beamed.

Pewter, half asleep in a canvas mail cart, opened one eye. “Laying it on thick.”

Mrs. Murphy, stretched out next to her, replied, “Wonder what’s up.”

Pug noticed the lump in the bottom of the mail cart sway ever so slightly. “Your coworkers are asleep on the job.”

Tucker, dead to the world under the cart, didn’t even lift her head.

“They sorted mail this morning at seven-thirty. You have no idea how productive they are.” Harry laughed.

“And you know, Pug, they have an unerring sense of which letters are bills and which are for real.” Miranda walked to the small table in the rear and picked up a dish covered with a dish towel, returning to the front counter. She lifted up the corner of the dish towel. “Blueberry muffins and oatmeal cookies.”

“Oh, my.” He patted his stomach, bulging somewhat, then gave in, reaching for a blueberry muffin.

As he polished off the muffin, they chitchatted.

BoomBoom sailed in. “Pug, what happened? You couldn’t stand the main post office any longer?”

“I like to come where the women are beautiful.” He winked.

“Here we are. The Three Fates.” BoomBoom leaned against the counter as both Harry and Miranda leaned forward so they were a picture.

“I need my sunglasses,” Pug joked.

BoomBoom retrieved her mail from the brass box. “Girls, guess what?”

“You won the lottery,” Harry responded.

“No. Bill Langston asked me to play golf with him Friday morning.”

“No grass under your feet.”

BoomBoom shrugged. “I’ll let you know what I think after eighteen holes. Bye.” She blew kisses and left.

Pug’s eyes followed her out the front door. He scanned the small parking lot. “Ladies, I’m actually here to tell you we are going to build a new post office right across the street. It’s official.” He pointed out the door, which had a large window in it.

“Where?” Harry flipped up the counter divider and walked to the front door, Miranda right with her.

“We’ll clean all that off there, take the parking lot right up to the barber shop—well, what used to be the old barber shop—and at the back we’ll put in a brand-new post office. Next to it the bank’s building a new branch. As soon as I get the architect’s plans, I’ll bring them by.”

Harry, hiding her lack of enthusiasm, said, “What will happen to this P.O.?”

“Well, I don’t know. As you know, we don’t own this building. I expect whoever rents the space will change the interior to suit.”

“I expect.” Harry didn’t notice two kitty heads pop up out of the mail cart, paws on the side.

“A brand-new building!” Pewter exclaimed.

“Might be nice. Might not. Sounds like too much traffic with the bank, and we’ll be across the street with the elder-care high-rise.” She mentioned the tallest building in town, at six stories.

“Mother won’t like it,” Tucker, finally awake but still immobile, declared. “She doesn’t like change.”

“She’s not that bad.” But Mrs. Murphy had her doubts about the new building, too.

“How big is the proposed post office?”

“Six thousand square feet.” Pug thought this was wonderful.

“My word.” Miranda’s hand flew to her chest. “The two of us will rattle around in there like two peas in a large can.”

“You won’t be alone. We’ll add more workers, plus we’ll also have shifts. There will be three scales at the counter with computers, of course. So at any given time there will be two people in the back sorting, stacking, getting ready for the pickups. We have so many types of mail now, so many new services, which I know you know, and I just read in The Daily Progress”—he mentioned the county’s daily newspaper—“that our growth rate right here in Albemarle County exceeds the population growth of India. Plan ahead!” He returned to the building. “There will be one large garage door in the rear so Rob can back in. It’s going to be very efficient as well as attractive.”

“Who’s going to be the postmaster?” Harry got right to the point.

“I hope you,” Pug said. “No doubt, Harry, our federal government in their wisdom may wish for you to take some extra administrative tests. I think it’s all pretty silly given that you’ve been the postmaster here—I mean, postmistress—ever since you graduated from college. But if there’s any way I can waive some of the paperwork for you, I will.”

“How long before you start building?”

“As soon as we get the permit through the county. August. Southwell Construction will be building it. Naturally we’ll buy our cement and stone from Craycroft Industries, who I bet will give us the best bid. That BoomBoom is a genius at bidding jobs.” BoomBoom’s business had been started by her late husband.

As Pug left, it was as though backwash from a large ocean liner was tossing about a slender craft.

“Damn!” Harry cursed.

“This place is home. A new building might be larger, but it’s going to be antiseptic.” Miranda returned the blueberry muffins and oatmeal cookies to the table.

“I don’t want to manage people.”

“Harry, you’d be good at it.”

“That’s nice of you to say, but I don’t think that I would. I know I fell into this job. But I like it.”

The summer that Harry graduated from Smith College, George Hogendobber, the postmaster in Crozet and Miranda’s husband, died. Harry took the job thinking it would be temporary. The position had first been offered to Miranda, but she was too emotionally distraught to consider a regular job.

Fair breezed through the door. “Distemper.” Then he noticed the expression on Harry and Miranda’s faces. “What’s wrong?”

They told him of Pug’s visit.

“. . . August. And you know what else?” Harry’s voice rose. “He didn’t say anything about Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Fair evenly replied.

“I think it does. I think he’ll wait until we’re ready to move across the street and then tell me my friends can’t work there. And if my cats and dog can’t go where I go, I’m not going. I don’t want any job without my pets.”

“Now, honey, don’t jump the gun,” Fair said soothingly.

“He’s right. Wait and see.” Miranda also sounded comforting.

The two cats and dog said nothing. They observed this exchange with great interest.

“Sorry. I guess I did jump to conclusions.” Harry exhaled deeply. “And I’m glad the raccoon only had distemper.”

Fair held up his hand. “That he did, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t also have rabies. We still need the report from Richmond, and that can take days.”

“Oh, great, half the town will be in a tizz.” Harry threw her hands up in the air.

“Well, you see all the town, not just half. You can tell them the results of my own little lab work.” Fair smiled.

“Where are you coming from, or maybe I should say where are you going?” Harry knew that Thursday mornings Fair operated at his clinic.

“Out to Big Mim’s. She’s culling her broodmares and wants my opinion. Then she’ll make her annual pilgrimage to Lexington, Kentucky, and pick up a few more black-type broodmares. You know Big Mim. But I’ll tell you, she really does have a gift for finding a good mare, and usually at an off time. I think even if Mim hadn’t inherited money, she could have made it herself.”

“Quite true,” replied Miranda, who had known Mim all her life.

“It’s so hard to make money in the horse business,” Harry opined.

“That it is, but some people do—I mean, some people apart from the people who have tons of money made from something else. Tavener has done well. Debbie Easter runs a good operation up there at Albemarle Stud. There are a couple of good folks out there with one or two well-bred stallions. They manage but, you’re right, it is hard. Think of the heartbreak in Kentucky in 2001 when all those foals died. First you fight to save the poor little critter’s life, then lose him or her. You have very little to take to the sales. It’s desperate. I admire anyone who sticks with it in this business.”

“Me, too,” Miranda agreed. “I had no idea it could be so difficult or I guess so emotional.”

Miranda was not a horse person, but in working with Harry she’d learned a little bit. Mostly she learned that Harry loved her three horses and would be happy sleeping out in the stable.

As Fair left to keep his appointment, Carmen Gamble, in her haircutting smock, picked up her mail. “Heard we’ve got rabies.”

“No, we don’t.” Harry went on to explain.

“Well, I know that Barry had rabies.” Carmen pressed her lips together. “And I have to go in and get a test, but Sugar says it won’t do any good. No one bit me.” A flicker of worry passed over her face.

Miranda, who liked Carmen, encouraged her. “Well, honey, it can’t hurt. And since the paper reported that Barry had rabies, people will get all worried. Not that you have a thing to worry about.”

“In a small little column. Like they don’t want us to panic, you know.” Carmen had jumped back to the newspaper report.

“There isn’t any reason to panic. For one thing, Carmen, Barry showed no signs of the disease. I imagine he would have, but he was still normal, for lack of a better word.” Harry wanted to head off a rabies scare.

“He would never listen to me.” A pair of expensive scissors hung from a holder on her belt. “He’d go out and pick up dead things. He’d work without gloves. Like the time he nearly got killed with the old Massey-Ferguson tractor. He had on an old T-shirt and he leaned over the PTO. The only thing that saved him when the shirt got caught, it was so worn it ripped right off him instead of pulling him into the PTO, you know. I mean, people get killed with spreaders and all kinds of stuff. The PTO whirls and sends them right into the tractor attachment. He never listened to anything I ever said.”

“He must have listened to some things, Carmen, as you are so pretty. Men tend to listen,” Miranda warmly said, because she knew Carmen was more upset about Barry than she let on.

“Men think they know everything.”

“Some do. Life usually takes care of them,” Miranda again spoke.

“Took care of Barry.”

“Who had it in for him?” Harry asked.

“Me.” Carmen slapped her mail on the counter. “He must have irritated someone else. Someone more violent. All I ever did was throw a spray bottle at his head. But Barry could stick his nose in the wrong business. Kind of like you, Harry.”

“Gee thanks, Carmen.”

“Well, I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, it came out backward.”

“You’re digging that hole deeper,” Harry, somewhat offended, said.

“Barry would go through my mail. My drawers. He was nosy that way. He didn’t respect privacy. You’re not like that—except you do go through our mail, of course, but you don’t open it.” Carmen dumped junk mail in the trash can as she babbled on. “Barry would even open my glove compartment in the car. I don’t know what he thought he would find.”

“Love letters.” Miranda smiled. “Like I said, you’re very pretty. He was probably nervous.”

“Barry?”

“Yes.” Miranda nodded.

Harry asked, “Do you think he was nosy like that with other people? Like rooting around at St. James Farm?”

“Uh”—she thought a moment—“yeah, I expect he was.”

After Carmen left, Harry said to Miranda, “I wonder what Barry found out.”

“Now, Harry, you know what Fair said: ‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ ” Miranda said sternly.

“Oh, that was about the new post office. This is about murder.” Harry had already jumped to a conclusion, an accurate one.