Whisker Of Evil

45

Newcomers to the country take some time to adjust to the pace of life. It’s not so much that it’s slower but that it often begins before sunup. If a person’s work is physical—like that of a farmer, a carpenter, a stone mason—folks from the North may think such a worker is lazy. Instead of working fast, the Southern worker keeps a slower but steady pace. It’s not until the Northerner labors in the heat that he or she can appreciate the wisdom of this approach.

Blair Bainbridge, when he first moved to Crozet from New York City, suffered the normal prejudices about Virginians. Being a gentleman, he kept them to himself. As years passed, he began to understand that people worked very hard but they didn’t make a show about it. He also began to understand that showing off your knowledge was not a good thing. The point was to bring people together, to be inclusive, not to set yourself above others. Even Mim Sanburne, for all her imperiousness, rarely tried to make someone else look stupid. As for Little Mim, her graciousness in the face of unpleasantness astonished him. In fact, the worse it got, the more gracious Little Mim became. That this was the ultimate social revenge had not yet occurred to him. Nor had it occurred to him that if he married Little Mim, there would still be things the family would never say in front of him. This was not because Mim, Jim, or Little Mim disdained Blair but rather because it took twenty years, at least, to comprehend the mere basics of manners and mores of Dixie. Just as aristocrats in old France had learned from birth how to move, how to address people, the various courtesies, and, above all, their own genealogy, so, too, did Southerners, regardless of station. It was bred in the bone.

Harry at six in the morning was inspecting the new beaver dam. She didn’t want to disturb their work, but if she ever could, she’d like to build a pond on this site with a small spillway below to the creek. Nature leeched out some of the water, but the beavers constructed a formidable dam, their lodges dotting the rough pond created by their effort. A blue heron and a green kingfisher worked the waters.

Green kingfishers are native to southern Texas and the tropics, not Virginia, but there was a beauty right on Harry’s farm. No doubt the shining fellow hadn’t read the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds.

On seeing the green kingfisher, his white collar immaculate, Harry made a mental note to call Nancy King, a friend who was an avid bird-watcher.

Insects buzzed around, squirrels romped, a doe with twin fawns raised her head from grazing to observe Harry and her companions. The doe often jumped into the large paddocks to graze with the horses. Sugar and Barry’s mares chatted contentedly under wide spreading oaks.

Crossing below the beaver dam, Harry scrambled up the creek bed. Trotting to the three-board fence line between her property and Blair’s, she put one hand on the top board and vaulted over, thrilled that she could do it. She’d been good at gymnastics in school.

Pewter scooted underneath. Mrs. Murphy, pretending to be one of the hunters, leapt between the lower board and the second board in the fence. Tucker, like Pewter, squeezed under.

They walked to the top of a low rise midway between the property line and Blair’s lovely farmhouse. The old Jones family graveyard, neatly set off by a wrought-iron fence with a curly filigree above the gate, promised peace when the end came. Bryson Jones, Herb’s impractical but beloved uncle, rested here, along with all the Joneses through the mid–eighteenth century. The married daughters over the centuries rested here, too. Surnames of Lamont, Taliaferro—pronounced Tolliver—and Sessoms slept with the Joneses. Sessoms is a Cherokee name, and the marriage of a Jones daughter to a Sessoms in the late eighteenth century became a cherished family story.

Leaning against a spectacular oak, Harry thought about three of her contemporaries gone to eternal rest—Barry, Sugar, and Jerome. She didn’t like to dwell on her own demise, but under the circumstances it was hard not to think about it.

“Tucker, ever notice that skulls are grinning?”

“Can’t say that I’ve thought about it,” the corgi replied seriously, the slanting rays of the early sun burnishing her coat red-gold.

“Don’t,” Pewter, sitting on a flat long slab, said. “Morbid.”

Just then a fat caterpillar, green with spiky outgrowths, traversed over her tail, all those caterpillar feet in her fur. Pewter jumped straight up, flipping the caterpillar onto another flat slab tombstone.

Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker laughed.

“Mighty Puss!” Murphy mocked her.

“Oh, shut up.” Pewter turned her back on them all, picked up her tail, and licked the fur back down.

The sky, a brilliant blue, promised a spectacular day.

Harry exhaled through her nose. “Up and at ’em.”

“Is she going to cut hay today?” Tucker wondered.

“Think so, but at the moment,” Mrs. Murphy paused as Harry opened the gate and headed toward Blair’s, “she’s going to pay a social call. Pewter, are you coming?”

“No, I’m going to stay here and commune with nature,” came the haughty reply.

“Oh, I thought the caterpillar was more nature than you could handle.” The tiger bounded out of the graveyard along with Tucker.

“I’ll show them. Bunch of snots. I’m not afraid of a caterpillar. It felt creepy, that’s all. Too many chubby legs, and there’s sticky stuff on the feet. O-o-o.” She wrinkled her nose as she turned to watch her family skip toward the farmhouse.

Her nemesis, the bluejay, zoomed into the oak, shrieked, squawked, shook the branches, and then, conceit to the max, floated down to perch on top of a vertical tombstone not four feet from Pewter, who was nursing her pride.

“Where’d you put the caterpillar, idiot cat?”

Pewter’s pupils widened. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking at your sorry self,” the jay whistled.

“I’m not sorry. I’m sitting here amongst the dead, which provokes me to philosophical musings.” She wished that the hateful bird were even six inches closer. She knew she’d nab him for sure then.

“Don’t make me regurgitate!” The bluejay’s topknot stood straight up as he laughed, which sounded like “queedle, queedle,” the little happy sound jays make.

“Actually, I didn’t think your range would be this far. There’s plenty to eat at our place.”

“I fly from one state to the other if I feel like it. Bluejays migrate, you know. Life’s too good here, so I stay. Course, right now it’s getting a little exciting, what with Tucker finding Mary Pat’s thigh bone. All the wild animals and birds are talking about it.”

“I helped, you know.” Pewter puffed out her chest, as did the jay. They looked like odd mirrors of each other.

“Queedle, queedle,” the jay’s beak clacked.

“I did!”

“Pewter, you’d run the other way if you saw a dead anything.”

“Bull! I picked up a dead pileated woodpecker, and I’ve seen plenty of dead old things.” She stopped for a moment as she inched a tad closer. “The smell. Hate the smell. Tucker, of course, loves it, but dogs are—well, I don’t have to explain.”

As birds have a sharp sense of smell, the jay shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me one way or t’other. I’m not a carrion eater so I don’t much care, but the crows, now, they’ll tell you that the eyes and the tongue are the greatest delicacy. Whenever a large mammal dies, they hurry to get there before the buzzards.” He slicked down his handsome crest for a moment. “I love acorns and seeds. I bury them, you know.”

“You don’t remember where you buried them.”

He cocked his head. “Sometimes I do forget. Tell you what, whoever planted Mary Pat up there on that high ridge didn’t forget.”

“Don’t know if it’s Mary Pat for sure.” Pewter scooted a tiny bit closer.

“It is. We birds can get the word out faster than you guys. And I’ll tell you something else, fatty: No Ziggy Flame up there. I bet you Ziggy was right under the human noses all the time.”

A thin tongue of breeze licked the distinctive pin-oak leaves.

“That was before my time, but everyone says that Ziggy was charismatic and bright, a bright chestnut. I don’t think anyone could hide him. Not for long. He wasn’t under their noses.” Pewter refuted the jay.

“You know, if you fly over those high pastures there are old trails, and some will take you east, some west. But the most interesting one, considering what’s going on, is the one that will take you right down into Greenwood and Route 250. Whoever killed Mary Pat could have hidden Ziggy, then walked him down to Greenwood, loaded him on a trailer, and been out of town before you can say ‘caterpillar.’ ”

“Guess that’s one of the reasons—the disappearance of Ziggy Flame—that Alicia wasn’t as solid a suspect as the cops hoped she was.” Pewter swished her tail. Since the caterpillar had crawled on it, she felt like other things were crawling over her. “I mean, the woman inherited everything but a couple of broodmares. Ziggy Flame was hers. Why steal him?”

The jay gurgled, then spoke clearly. “Throw everyone off the track.”

“Do you think Alicia Palmer killed Mary Pat?”

He shrugged, fluffed out his feathers. “I don’t know Alicia, but one human’s pretty much like any other. They’re killers by nature.”

Pewter didn’t dispute this. The human predatory drive seemed out of proportion to their needs. “Harry’s different.”

The bluejay liked to needle Pewter, but Harry did seem closer to animals than most humans. He decided not to disparage Pewter’s favorite human. He watched as Blair opened the back door of his farmhouse. “Aren’t you going to join them?”

“No.”

“What if a whole bag of tent caterpillars fell on you?”

Pewter shuddered. “Ugh.” Then she leapt at the bluejay, who simply flew straight up, circled, and dive-bombed her.

“Fat cat!”

“I will get you,” Pewter spat as he circled her one more time, then sped away.

Harry, like the Sanburnes, recognized that Blair was from other parts. But much as it cut against the grain, she decided to come straight to the point with him. This denied her the pleasure of coming to the point by those decreasing concentric circles that gathered in a wealth of information. That information might appear extraneous, but in good time it was always money in the bank. The other reason she shied away from this was she would go straight to the point only with a dear friend. Such communication was a sign of love and respect. Much as she liked Blair, he wasn’t as close to Harry as Susan, Miranda, or Herb.

After Harry and Blair exchanged ideas about Carmen’s disappearance, the strange events going on, Amy Wade’s settling in at the post office, and other sundry things, Harry thought she might as well get to it.

“More tea?” Blair offered.

“No, thank you. I’ve overstayed my welcome as it is. I know you’ve got a lot to do.”

“Not as much as you.” He smiled.

“The shed is wonderful. I can’t thank you enough for your help, and the fence posts are a godsend.”

“Harry, you’ve bailed me out of so many things. If it weren’t for you, I don’t think my cattle would be looking as good as they do.”

“Oh, Blair, you would have learned sooner or later.”

Harry had built him a cattle chute, which made worming, giving shots, and tagging so much easier. Blair had been trying to catch his cattle one by one in the field.

“I hope you will forgive me for being direct.”

He leaned forward, his sensitive eyes welcoming. “You know I think it saves time.” Saving time is quite a virtue among Northerners.

“That it does. As you know, this is the old Jones place, and you’ve done a beautiful job restoring the cemetery. Herb can’t keep up with that and his duties, too.”

“Thank you.”

“Actually, I should tell you that he and I have spoken and he’s asked me to broach this subject.” She took a deep breath. “Blair, should you sell this place for any reason, Herbie and I would like to buy it together. We’d work with you any way we can because, as you know, neither one of us is exactly cash heavy.”

A broad smile crossed Blair’s face, a face instantly recognizable to anyone who read magazines or looked through clothing catalogs. “No kidding.”

“We celebrate his thirty years at St. Luke’s next month on the seventeenth. I reckon he’ll retire sometime in the next ten years, maybe even the next five. He’d like to live in the farmhouse. And I’d like to farm the bottomland.”

“I see. Is the next question about my intentions regarding Little Mim?” Blair, in his sweet way, tried to be Southern by saying intentions.

“Actually, no.” Harry exhaled, relieved that she had spoken about the land. “I don’t think that’s my business.”

“Harry, you really are different, you know that?”

“No.”

“Trust me. You are. You are the strangest combination of curiosity and rectitude. You can’t resist being a detective, but you don’t want to pry into someone’s personal life.”

She flashed her crooked smile. “If I thought you were a murderer, I’d pry.”

“Oh, Harry.” He tapped the table with his knife. “I didn’t want to fall in love with Little Mim. I thought she was just another spoiled, empty, rich snob, but I was wrong. She’s not. And becoming vice-mayor has brought her out of herself and out from under her mother’s shadow. She’s a remarkable lady.”

“She is.” Harry, while not feeling especially close to Little Mim, could appreciate her good qualities.

“Aunt Tally is for me. Jim and I get along great, but the mother—oh, she’s not thrilled about my line of work, and she thinks I’ll fall prey to temptation. All those female models. Since most of them are anorexic or bulimic, I’m not attracted one bit!” He laughed.

“Big Mim’s much better about you than she used to be.”

“I guess. I do wonder how much longer I can model. I think I’m about due for a big life change.”

“Me, too.”

“Well, you’ve already started on yours. It’s weird to go into the post office and not see you.”

“Weird for me, too. I don’t know what comes next. I have to sift through dreams and reality.”

“Your dream?”

“To farm.”

“The reality?” His eyebrows raised.

“You can’t make a thin dime.”

“Bet if you found the right crop or crops you could.”

“That’s one of the things I have to think about. Like ginseng—it’s a good cash crop. Soybeans can be, too. All kinds of things are going through my head, although I’m caught up in what’s been happening around here.”

“I guess we all are in one way or another.” He laid his knife across his plate. “Harry, I promise you I will give you and Herb first option, should I sell. And I will be as fair as I can.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you want to tell Herb or should I?”

“I will, since he spoke to me in confidence. Which means we should keep this between ourselves,” she said warmly. “If you do sell this wonderful old place, I hope you don’t leave Crozet. I’ve grown to like you very much. We all have.”

“Thank you. I feel the same way about you. If I move from here it will be to Dalmally or—and this is my hope—over to Rose Hill. Aunt Tally could use us over there, and Little Mim would be a tiny bit farther away from her mother.”

“I hope you don’t expect Aunt Tally not to meddle.” Harry laughed.

“No, but she’s not as bad.”

As Harry walked out the back door to leave, she and Blair shook hands on the first-option deal. A piece of paper was only as good as the person who signed it. A handshake staked your reputation on it.