Whisker Of Evil

3

After Sunday services, Harry slipped back to Herb’s office. He was just removing his surplice, a rich green color embroidered with gold, signifying the season of Trinity in the ecclesiastical calendar.

“Rev.” She often called him this.

“What can I do for you, honey? Here, sit down.” He motioned to the Chesterfield sofa, and the long sleeve on his black robe, a design unchanged since the Middle Ages, swept with the motion.

“Thanks.” She sank into the old, comfortable leather.

“Heard you had an upsetting day yesterday.” He unzipped his robe from the front, exposing a Hawaiian shirt underneath.

“I can’t believe you gave the sermon in a Hawaiian shirt.” Harry’s brown eyes widened.

“Ned Tucker dared me to do it. Said I could use his new fly rod if I did. I’ll collect after lunch.” He hung his robe on a padded hanger, placing it in the closet. “But don’t tell, now. It will offend some of”—he paused and winked—“the faithful.” He sat opposite her. “Now tell me what’s on your mind.”

She launched right in. She’d known Herb all her life. He’d baptized her, confirmed her, and married her as well as consoled her during and after her divorce.

“. . . not as tough as I thought.”

“Oh, you’re tough, all right.” His deep voice filled the room. “When bad things occur, our minds are focused on what needs to be done. Afterward the emotions flow. Think of when old Mrs. Urquhart died.” He mentioned Mim Sanburne’s mother, Tally Urquhart’s sister. “Mim bore up all through the illness, and that poor woman suffered. And even after the burial, Mim seemed fine, and then three months later she burst into tears at the stable and sobbed for a whole day. Scared Jim to death.” Jim was Mim’s husband and the mayor of Crozet.

“Funny.”

“The mind protects itself. Some people are never strong enough to face emotions. They tuck them further and further in the recesses of their mind, and one day they freeze up. Prayer is a way to thaw out those frozen fears and pains. You thaw them out and the Good Lord gives you the strength to deal with them and the wit to be thankful. You don’t grow up, Harry, until you thank God for your troubles as well as your joys.”

“Mother used to say that.”

“I know.” He smiled broadly, for he highly regarded Harry’s deceased mother.

Harry was like her mother in that she was well-organized and friendly, but she was more taciturn, more skeptical, more like her father in that respect.

“I feel terrible. I feel terrible for Barry.”

Cazenovia and Elocution, Herb’s two cats, had been lounging in the window, cruising the squadrons of robins on the verdant quad lawn. Hearing Harry’s distress, they left their sightseeing to jump in her lap. She rubbed their ears.

“In the prime of life. I hear it was some sort of animal attack.”

“I guess, but apart from his throat—not a mark on him. I could have missed something. I didn’t examine him once he died. I just ran like hell for the phone in Tally’s barn. Sorry to swear, Herb.”

“You’re upset.” Herb waved away the apology. He, himself, could make the air blue on certain occasions.

“I am.” Harry exhaled.

“Tally said she heard there were no animal tracks by the body—other than Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker’s paw prints.”

“No tracks of him crawling, either,” Harry said.

“And his feet weren’t wet?” Herb inquired.

“No.”

“Hmm.” The older man rubbed his clean-shaven chin.

Herb, a very masculine man now in his early sixties with a rumbling bass voice, had been athletic and handsome in his youth, but over the years he’d allowed the pounds to accumulate until now he was portly. His and Harry’s dear friend Miranda Hogendobber had also picked up tonnage over the years, but she’d gone on a sensible diet and in one year’s time had lost thirty pounds. She was now the same size she’d been in high school and looked years younger in the bargain. But, then, Miranda had been inspired by the reappearance of her high-school sweetheart, Tracy Raz, all-state halfback during his years at Crozet High. Herb, on the other hand, had lost his wife and hadn’t found anyone else, so he’d let himself go a bit.

“You’d think there’d be tracks from a heavy animal.”

“Now, Mary Minor, I hear that tone in your voice. Hold your horses.” He held up his hand to stop. “You let our esteemed sheriff and his deputy take care of this, and I bet when the autopsy report comes in this will all be explained. You are cool in a crisis, but under the circumstances you probably did miss things. I know I would, and you did the right thing running for the phone. You couldn’t have done him any good by staying there or by searching the area. Rick did that once he got there.”

“Now that I think about it, I should have recited the Last Rites. Maybe it would have eased him. In extremis, laymen can give the Last Rites, can’t we?”

Herb nodded yes. “You did all you could and you did the right thing. You usually do. Your downfall—well, downfall is too strong a word—your weak spot is curiosity. You’re like Cazenovia and Elocution, just as curious as a cat and you can’t stand not knowing something. Hepworth.” He named her maternal family line, all of whom were known for their curiosity and bright minds.

“I’m glad I called on you.” She smiled. “I guess I’m keeping you from borrowing that rod. It must be special.”

“Special. You should see the reel. Ned paid over a thousand dollars for it.” His forefinger flew to his lips. “Don’t tell Susan. I mean how much it cost.”

“She’ll find out when she pays the bills.”

“No, she won’t. He paid cash. He’s been squirreling away money. And you know she wants to paint the inside of the house. No point in rocking the boat. She’s taking his run for the state senate in good stride.”

“Been a tepid campaign.”

“It will be until September, then the Democratic primary will heat up. Ned’s campaigning hard on expanding the reservoir, environmental responsibility, and building the bypass, which would seem to be a contradiction but I’ve seen the plans he’s got about the bypass. It’s one of the alternative ones. I can’t remember the number.”

“This place has been fighting that bypass since I was in grade school.”

“Well, sugarpie, it’s got to happen. The question is: where?”

“Kind of like the new post office.”

“Yes.” He folded his hands together.

“I don’t think I’m going to like that, any of it. The bypass or the post office.”

“Tell you the truth, I don’t think I’m going to like it, either. I hated it when they built I-64. Sliced in half some of the most beautiful farms in Albemarle County, and in all the counties from Tidewater to St. Louis, Missouri. More traffic. More pollution. More accidents, especially up on Afton Mountain. They can build the road straight as an arrow but they can’t do squat about the fog. People ought to learn to live with nature instead of thinking they can control it. Damned fools.” He stared down at his shining shoe tips for a moment, then looked up. “Now it’s my turn to apologize for my language.”

“I say worse.”

“But you’re not a pastor.”

“The Very Reverend.” She laughed back at him.

“Don’t you forget it.” He laughed back.

“Poppy, we’d like some treats,” Elocution mewed.

“Either she’s agreeing with you or it’s a call for tuna.” Harry ran her fingers along the young cat’s cheek. “With my Pewter it’s always tuna.”

“Elo, just wait a minute. Now that you’re here, Harry, I’d like to ask you something in confidence.”

“Sure.”

“Do you think the relationship between Blair Bainbridge and Little Mim Sanburne is becoming serious?”

“Yes.”

Blair was Harry’s nearest neighbor. Little Mim was the daughter of Jim and Mim Sanburne. She was also the vice-mayor of Crozet. Her father was a Democrat. Little Mim was a Republican. Table talk at Sunday dinners was never dull at the Sanburne house.

“Big Mim is coming around to it. Mim can’t stand anything that isn’t her idea. Jim’s been working on her, wooing her, pitching to her ego. Why watch television when you can watch your friends?”

“That’s why people watch television. They don’t have friends.”

“Harry, that’s a big statement.”

“Well, I mean it. If you’re sitting around watching a simulation of life, you aren’t living. If you’ve got work, friends, things you love to do, and people you love to do them with, you don’t have time to watch TV. I watch the news and the Weather Channel, and half the time I don’t even do that.”

“You might have a point there.”

“I got you off the track. I’m sorry.”

“Well, here’s what I’m turning over in my mind. If a marriage should result from this courtship, I can’t imagine that Little Mim will move out to Blair’s farm, can you?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“It’s a lovely farm but not grand, and Little Mim, like her mother, has been raised in the grand tradition. He’ll move over to Dalmally”—he named the Sanburne estate—“or Mim will buy them something close by, or, and here’s what I think really will happen, they’ll take over and restore Tally’s estate.”

“Tally will cane them to death.” Harry mentioned the cane Tally used for walking, an elegant ebony cane with a sleek silver hound’s head for the handle. She used it to good effect to get her way as well as to find her way.

He shook his head and held up his forefinger. “You watch: Mim will send her future son-in-law to inveigle Tally, and Tally may be in her nineties but she cannot refuse a handsome man. As it is, she adores Blair, and they’ll work out some deal where the newlyweds live in one of the cottages or even in the big house with Tally.”

“The house is in good shape.”

“And so’s the farm, but she’s let the outbuildings go and the back pastures. I foresee that Rose Hill will be restored to former glory and Little Mim will inherit her great-aunt’s estate.”

“But what about Dalmally? When Big Mim should be bumped Upstairs—not that I wish this to occur anytime soon—what happens?”

“First off, the Urquharts live a long time. Mim’s mother died young for an Urquhart, at eighty. Mim will break one hundred, and she’s not going to be moved from Dalmally any more than Tally would be moved from Rose Hill. And when that day does occur, Stafford will come home.” Stafford was Mim’s son, currently living in New York City. Mother and son did not get along very well.

“Never.”

“Oh, yes, he will.”

“His wife is the highest-paid black model in America.”

“She’ll be in her sixties then and she’ll come home with him, I’m telling you. And never forget, Virginia was the first state to elect an African-American governor, Doug Wilder. Stafford’s wife will fit right with the black folks who are making a positive difference. You mark my words.”

Harry didn’t want to argue with Herb, but she couldn’t imagine those two leaving the high life in New York. Then again, this was decades in the future. God willing.

“Having Little Mim and Blair at Rose Hill makes sense.” Harry agreed with that part of Herb’s scenario.

“My old family place will be put back on the market.”

Blair’s farm had originally been the old Jones homestead, a designation of some importance in these parts. No one ever wanted the homeplace to wind up in the hands of others, but more often than not such places did because the originating family couldn’t afford the upkeep.

“Yes.” Harry’s voice dropped. A new neighbor was not necessarily an appetizing prospect, most particularly since she liked the old one.

“Well, I have a thought. I believe Blair would give you good terms.”

“Oh, Herb, I’d love to have the land, but I can’t afford all of it.”

“I’d like to have the homeplace back, and my retirement isn’t too far in the future. If, and I mean if, the time comes that you and I should approach Blair, I think we could work something out. I can’t farm all that land, but you can. If you can buy the lion’s share of the land, I’ll keep, say, maybe twenty or fifty acres, whatever, with the cemetery. You take the rest.”

She had one hand on each cat, and her hands rested on them. “That would be wonderful,” she whispered. “Wonderful.”

“Blair likes you very much.”

“And I like him.”

“And I think both Big Mim and Tally would help us all structure a deal that we could live with and perhaps even thrive on.” He smiled broadly. “Those women have two of the best business heads in the state of Virginia. If Tally had been a man she’d have run R. J. Reynolds or Liggett & Myers, I mean it. She was born in the wrong era. As it was she built her farm into something special and spread her risk. Tally played the stock market, too, and she taught Big Mim. As you know, Mim’s mother was the society type. She didn’t care about making money, only spending it.”

“You know, I’m so excited by the idea that I can’t breathe.” Harry took a deep breath. “And I’d have a holy neighbor.”

“I don’t know about that.” Herb laughed. “Well, let’s you and I keep our ears to the ground, and don’t tell Miranda or Susan. We’ve got to keep this just between us.”

“Agreed.” She petted the kitties. “Why don’t I give them some goodies on the way out?”

“Hooray.” The two vacated her lap and hurried toward the small kitchen.

Walking to the kitchen, Herb said, “This new carpet is the best thing. When you think of all the meetings the Parish Guild had about it—it was worth it.”

“Like walking on air.”

Driving back to her farm, the sunshine golden and fine, Harry wondered how she could get the money to buy that land. She’d get it somehow, if she had to work three jobs. The chance to buy land that you know doesn’t come along but so often. Then she remembered describing to Herb where she’d found Barry, by the creek.

She needed to go back to the creek, but first she’d change her clothes and take along Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker. Their senses were better than hers, and she had the good sense to know it.