Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here

Rita Mae Brown

WISH YOU WERE HERE

A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bantam hardcover edition published December 1990

Bantam mass market edition / November 1991

Bantam mass market reissue / April 2004

Published by Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc. New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved

Copyright © 1990 by American Artists, Inc.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-1071

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Bantam Books, New York, New York.

Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN 0-553-89861-2 Published simultaneously in Canada

Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Cast of Characters

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Afterword

Books by Rita Mae Brown

Previews of The Mrs. Murphy Series

Copyright Page

Dedicated to the memory of Sally Mead

Director of the Charlottesville-Albemarle

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Acknowledgments

Gordon Reistrup helped me type and proofread, and Carolyn Lee Dow brought me lots of catnip. I couldn’t have written this book without them.

Cast of Characters

Mary Minor Haristeen (Harry), the young postmistress of Crozet, whose curiosity almost kills the cat and herself.

Mrs. Murphy, Harry’s gray tiger cat, who bears an uncanny resemblance to authoress Sneaky Pie and who is wonderfully intelligent!

Tee Tucker, Harry’s Welsh corgi, Mrs. Murphy’s friend and confidant; a buoyant soul

Pharamond Haristeen (Fair), veterinarian, being divorced by Harry and confused by life

BoomBoom Craycroft, a high-society knockout who carries a secret torch

Kelly Craycroft, BoomBoom’s husband

Mrs. George Hogendobber (Miranda), a widow who thumps her own Bible!

Bob Berryman, misunderstood by his wife, Linda

Ozzie, Berryman’s Australian shepherd

Market Shiflett, owner of Shiflett’s Market, next to the post office

Pewter, Market’s fat gray cat, who, when need be, can be pulled away from the food bowl

Susan Tucker, Harry’s best friend, who doesn’t take life too seriously until her neighbors get murdered

Ned Tucker, a lawyer and Susan’s husband

Jim Sanburne, mayor of Crozet

Big Marilyn Sanburne (Mim), queen of Crozet and a awful snob

Little Marilyn Sanburne, daughter of Mim, and not as dumb as she appears

Josiah Dewitt, a witty antiques dealer sought out by Big Marilyn and her cronies

Maude Bly Modena, a smart transplanted Yankee

Rick Shaw, Albemarle sheriff

Cynthia Cooper, police officer

Hayden McIntire, town doctor

Rob Collier, mail driver

Paddy, Mrs. Murphy’s ex-husband, a saucy tom

Author’s Note

Mother is in the stable mucking out stalls, a chore she richly deserves. I’ve got the typewriter all to myself, so I can tell you the truth. I would have kept silent, but that fat toad Pewter pushed her way onto the cover of Starting from Scratch. She took full credit for writing the book. Granted, Pewter’s ego is in a gaseous state, ever-expanding, but that act of feline self-advertisement was more than I could bear.

Let me set the record straight. I am seven years old and for the duration of my life I have assisted Mother in writing her books. I never minded that she failed to mention the extent of my contribution. Humans are like that, and since they’re such frail creatures (can you call fingernails claws?), I let it go. Humans are one thing. Cats are another, and Pewter, one year my junior, is not the literary lion she is pretending to be.

You don’t have to believe me. Let me prove it to you. I am starting a kitty crime series. Pewter has nothing to do with it. I will, however, make her a minor character to keep peace in the house. This is my own work, every word.

I refuse to divulge whether this novel is a roman à clef. I will say only that I bear a strong resemblance to Mrs. Murphy.

Yours truly,

SNEAKY PIE

1

Mary Minor Haristeen, Harry to her friends, trotted along the railroad track. Following at her heels were Mrs. Murphy, her wise and willful tiger cat, and Tee Tucker, her Welsh corgi. Had you asked the cat and the dog they would have told you that Harry belonged to them, not vice versa, but there was no doubt that Harry belonged to the little town of Crozet, Virginia. At thirty-three she was the youngest postmistress Crozet had ever had, but then no one else really wanted the job.

Crozet nestles in the haunches of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The town proper consists of Railroad Avenue, which parallels the Chesapeake Ohio Railroad track, and a street intersecting it called the Whitehall Road. Ten miles to the east reposes the rich and powerful small city of Charlottesville, which, like a golden fungus, is spreading east, west, north, and south. Harry liked Charlottesville just fine. It was the developers she didn’t much like, and she prayed nightly they’d continue to think of Crozet and its three thousand inhabitants as a dinky little whistle stop on the route west and ignore it.

A gray clapboard building with white trim, next to the rail depot, housed the post office. Next to that was a tiny grocery store and a butcher shop run by “Market” Shiflett. Everyone appreciated this convenience because you could pick up your milk, mail, and gossip in one central location.

Harry unlocked the door and stepped inside just as the huge railroad clock chimed seven beats for 7:00 A.M. Mrs. Murphy scooted under her feet and Tucker entered at a more leisurely pace.

An empty mail bin invited Mrs. Murphy. She hopped in. Tucker complained that she couldn’t jump in.

“Tucker, hush. Mrs. Murphy will be out in a minute—won’t you?” Harry leaned over the bin.

Mrs. Murphy stared right back up at her and said, “Fat chance. Let Tucker bitch. She stole my catnip sockie this morning.”

All Harry heard was a meow.

The corgi heard every word. “You’re a real shit, Mrs. Murphy. You’ve got a million of those socks.”

Mrs. Murphy put her paws on the edge of the bin and peeped over. “So what. I didn’t say you could play with any of them.”

“Stop that, Tucker.” Harry thought the dog was growling for no reason at all.

A horn beeped outside. Rob Collier, driving the huge mail truck, was delivering the morning mail. He’d return at four that afternoon for pickup.

“You’re early,” Harry called to him.

“Figured I’d cut you a break.” Rob smiled. “Because in exactly one hour Mrs. Hogendobber will be standing outside this door huffing and puffing for her mail.” He dumped two big duffel bags on the front step and went back to the truck. Harry carried them inside.

“Hey, I’d have done that for you.”

“I know,” Harry said. “I need the exercise.”

Tucker appeared in the doorway.

“Hello, Tucker,” Rob greeted the dog. Tucker wagged her tail. “Well, neither rain nor sleet nor snow, et cetera.” Rob slid behind the wheel.

“It’s seventy-nine degrees at seven, Rob. I wouldn’t worry about the sleet if I were you.”

He smiled and drove off.

Harry opened the first bag. Mrs. Hogendobber’s mail was on the top, neatly bound with a thick rubber band. Rob, if he had the time, put Mrs. Hogendobber’s mail in a pile down at the main post office in Charlottesville. Harry slipped the handful of mail into the mail slot. She then began sorting through the rest of the stuff: bills, enough mail-order catalogues to provide clothing for every man, woman, and child in the United States, and of course personal letters and postcards.

Courtney Shiflett, Market’s fourteen-year-old daughter, received a postcard from Sally McIntire, away at camp. Kelly Craycroft, the handsome, rich paving contractor, was the recipient of a shiny postcard from Paris. It was a photo of a beautiful angel with wings. Harry flipped it over. It was Oscar Wilde’s tombstone in the Père Lachaise cemetery. On the back was the message “Wish you were here.” No signature. The handwriting was computer script, like signatures on letters from your congressperson. Harry sighed and slipped it into Kelly’s box. It must be heaven to be in Paris.

Snowcapped Alps majestically covered a postcard addressed to Harry from her lifelong friend Lindsay Astrove.

Dear Harry—

Arrived in Zurich. No gnomes in sight. Good flight. Very tired. Will write some more later.

Best,

LINDSAY

It must be heaven to be in Zurich.

Bob Berryman, the largest stock trailer dealer in the South, got a registered letter from the IRS. Harry gingerly put it in his box.

Harry’s best friend, Susan Tucker, received a large package from James River Traders, probably those discounted cotton sweaters she’d ordered. Susan, prudent, waited for the sales. Susan was the “mother” of Tee Tucker, named Tee because Susan gave her to Harry on the seventh tee at the Farmington Country Club. Mrs. Murphy, two years the dog’s senior, was not amused, but she came to accept it.

A Gary Larsen postcard attracted Harry’s attention. Harry turned it over. It was addressed to Fair Haristeen, her soon-to-be-ex-husband, but not soon enough. “Hang in there, buddy” was the message from Stafford Sanburne. Harry jammed the postcard in Fair’s box.

Crozet was still small enough that people felt compelled to take sides during a divorce. Perhaps even New York City was that small. At any rate, Harry reeled from fury to sorrow on a daily basis as she watched former friends choose sides, and most were choosing Fair.

After all, she had left him, thereby outraging other women in Albemarle County stuck in a miserable marriage but lacking the guts to go. That was a lot of women.

“Thank God they didn’t have children,” clucked many tongues behind Harry’s back and to her face. Harry agreed with them. With children the goddamned divorce would take a year. Without, the limbo lasted only six months and she was two down.

By the time the clock struck eight the two duffel bags were folded over, the boxes filled, the old pine plank floor swept clean.

Mrs. George Hogendobber, an evangelical Protestant, picked up her mail punctually at 8:00 A.M. each morning except Sunday, when she was evangeling and the post office was closed. She fretted a great deal over evolution. She was determined to prove that humans were not descended from apes but, rather, created in God’s own image.

Mrs. Murphy fervently hoped that Mrs. Hogendobber would prove her case, because linking man and ape was an insult to the ape. Of course, the good woman would die of shock to discover that God was a cat and therefore humans were off the board entirely.

That large Christian frame was lurching itself up the stairs. She pushed open the door with her characteristic vigor.

“Morning, Harry.”

“Morning, Mrs. Hogendobber. Did you have a good weekend?”

“Apart from a splendid service at the Holy Light Church, no.” She yanked out her mail. “Josiah DeWitt stopped by as I came home and gave me his sales pitch to part with Mother’s Louis XVI bed, canopies and all. And on the Sabbath. The man is a servant of Mammon.”

“Yes—but he knows good stuff when he sees it.” Harry flattered her.

“H-m-m, Louis this and Louis that. Too many Louis’s over there in France. Came to a bad end, too, every one of them. I don’t think the French have produced anyone of note since Napoleon.”

“What about Claudius Crozet?”

This stopped Mrs. Hogendobber for a moment. “Believe you’re right. Created one of the engineering wonders of the nineteenth century. I stand corrected. But that’s the only one since Napoleon.”

The town of Crozet was named for this same Claudius Crozet, born on December 31, 1789. Trained as an engineer, he fought with the French in Russia and was captured on the hideous retreat from Moscow. So charmed was his Russian captor that he promptly removed Claudius to his huge estate and set him up with books and engineering tools. Claudius performed services for his captor until Frenchmen were allowed to return home. They say the Russian, a prince of the blood, rewarded the young captain with jewels, gold, and silver.

Joining Napoleon’s second run at power proved dangerous, and Crozet immigrated to America. If he had a fortune, he carefully concealed it and lived off his salary. His greatest feat was cutting four railroad tunnels through the Blue Ridge Mountains, a task begun in 1850 and completed eight years later.

The first tunnel was west of Crozet: the Greenwood tunnel, 536 feet, and sealed after 1944, when a new tunnel was completed. Over the eastern portal of the Greenwood tunnel, carved in stone, is the legend: C. CROZET, CHIEF ENGINEER; E. T. D. MYERS, RESIDENT ENGINEER; JOHN KELLY, CONTRACTOR. A.D. 1852.

The second tunnel, Brooksville, 864 feet, was also sealed after 1944. This was a treacherous tunnel because the rock proved soft and unreliable.

The third tunnel was the Little Rock, 100 feet long and still in use by the C O.

The fourth was the Blue Ridge, a long 4,723 feet.

Unused tracks ran to the sealed tunnels. They built things to last in the nineteenth century, for none of the rails had ever warped.

Crozet was reputed to have hidden his fortune in one of the tunnels. This story was taken seriously enough by the C O Railroad that they carefully inspected the discontinued tunnels before sealing them after World War II. No treasure was ever found.

Mrs. Hogendobber left immediately after being corrected. She passed Ned Tucker, Susan’s husband, on his way in. They exchanged pleasantries. Tee Tucker, barking merrily, rushed out to greet Ned. Mrs. Murphy climbed out of the mail bin and jumped onto the counter. She liked Ned. Everyone did.

He winked at Harry. “Well, have you been born again?”

“No, and I wasn’t born yesterday either.” She laughed.

“Mrs. H. was unusually terse this morning.” He grabbed a huge handful of mail, most of it for the law office of Sanburne, Tucker, and Anderson.

“Count your blessings,” Harry said.

“I do, every day.” Ned smiled. Escaping a tirade of salvation on this hot July morning was just one blessing and Ned was a happy enough man to know there’d be many more. He stooped to rub Tucker’s ears.

“You can rub mine, too,” Mrs. Murphy pleaded.

“He likes me better than you.” Tucker relished being the center of attention.

“Don’t you love the sounds they make?” Ned kept scratching. “Sometimes I think they’re almost human.”

“Can you believe that?” Mrs. Murphy licked her front paws. Being human, the very thought! Humans lacked claws, fur, and their senses were dismal. Why, she could hear a doodlebug burrow in the sand. Furthermore, she understood everything humans said in their guttural way. They rarely understood her or other animals, much less one another. To get a reaction out of even Harry, who she confessed she did love, she had to resort to extravagant behavior.

“Yeah, I don’t know what I’d do without my kids. Speaking of which, how’re yours?”

Ned’s eyes darted for a moment. “Harry, I’m beginning to think that sending Brookie to private school was a mistake. She’s twelve going on twenty, and a perfect little snob too. Susan wants her to return to St. Elizabeth’s in the fall but I say we yank her out of there and pack her back to public middle school with her brother. There she has to learn how to get along with all different kinds of people. Her grades fell and that’s when Susan decided she was going to St. Elizabeth’s. We went through public school, we learned, and we turned out all right.”

“It’s a tough call, Ned. They weren’t selling drugs in the bathroom when you were in school.”

“They were by the time we got to Crozet High. You had the good sense to ignore it.”

“No, I didn’t have the money to buy the stuff. Had I been one of those rich little subdivision kids—like today—who’s to say?” Harry shrugged.

Ned sighed. “I’d hate to be a child now.”

“Me too.”

Bob Berryman interrupted. “Hey!” Ozzie, his hyper Australian shepherd, tagged at his heels.

“Hey, Berryman,” Harry and Ned both called back to him out of politeness. Berryman’s personality hovered on simmer and often flamed up to boil.

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker said hello to Ozzie.

“Hotter than the hinges of hell.” Berryman sauntered over to his box and withdrew the mail, including the registered letter slip. “Shit, Harry, gimme a pen.” She handed him a leaky ballpoint. He signed the slip and glared at the IRS notice. “The world is going to hell in a handbasket and the goddamned IRS controls the nation! I’d kill every one of those sons of bitches given half the chance!”

Ned walked out of the post office waving goodbye.

Berryman gulped some air, forced a smile, and calmed himself by petting Mrs. Murphy, who liked him although most humans found him brusque. “Well, I’ve got worms to turn and eggs to lay.” He pushed off.

Bob’s booted feet clomped on the first step as he closed the front door. As she didn’t hear a second footfall, Harry glanced up from her stamp pads.

Walking toward Bob was Kelly Craycroft. His chestnut hair, gleaming in the light, looked like burnished bronze. Kelly, an affable man, wasn’t smiling.

Wagging his tail, Ozzie stood next to Bob. Bob still didn’t move. Kelly arrived at the bottom step. He waited a moment, said something to Bob which Harry couldn’t hear, and then moved up to the second step, whereupon Bob pushed him down the steps.

Furious, his face darkening, Kelly scrambled to his feet. “You asshole!”

Harry heard that loud and clear.

Bob, without replying, sauntered down the steps, but Kelly, not a man to be trifled with, grabbed Bob’s shoulder.

“You listen to me and you listen good!” Kelly shouted.

Harry wanted to move out from behind the counter. Good manners got the better of her. It would be too obvious. Instead she strained every fiber to hear what was being said. Tucker and Mrs. Murphy, hardly worried about how they’d look to others, bumped into each other as they ran to the door.

This time Bob raised his voice. “Take your hand off my shoulder.”

Kelly squeezed harder and Bob balled up his fist, hitting him in the stomach.

Kelly doubled over but caught his breath. Staying low, he lunged, grabbing Bob’s legs and throwing him to the pavement.

Ozzie, moving like a streak, sank his teeth into Kelly’s left leg. Kelly hollered and let go of Bob, who jumped up.

“No” was all Bob had to say to Ozzie, and the dog immediately obeyed. Kelly stayed on the ground. He pulled up his pants leg. Ozzie’s bite had broken the skin. A trickle of blood ran into his sock.

Bob said something; his voice was low. The color ran out of Kelly’s face.

Bob walked over to his truck, got in, started the motor, and pulled out as Kelly staggered to his feet.

Jolted by the sight of blood, Harry shelved any concern about manners. She opened the door, hurrying over to Kelly.

“Better put some ice on that. Come on, I’ve got some in the refrigerator.”

Kelly, still dazed, didn’t reply immediately.

“Kelly?”

“Oh—yeah.”

Harry led him into the post office. She dumped the ice out of the tray onto a paper towel.

Kelly was reading his postcard when she handed him the ice. He sat down on the bench, rolled up his pants leg, and winced when the cold first touched his leg. He stuck his mail in his back pocket.

“Want me to call Doc?” Harry offered.

“No.” Kelly half smiled. “Pretty embarrassing, huh?”

“No more embarrassing than my divorce.”

That made Kelly laugh. He relaxed a bit. “Hey, Mary Minor Haristeen, there is no such thing as a good divorce. Even if both parties start out with the best of intentions, when the lawyers get into it, the whole process turns to shit.”

“God, I hope not.”

“Trust me. It gets worse before it gets better.” Kelly removed the ice. The bleeding had stopped.

“Keep it on a little longer,” Harry advised. “It will prevent swelling.”

Kelly replaced the makeshift ice pack. “It’s none of my business, but you should have ditched Fair Haristeen years ago. You kept hanging in there trying to make it work. All you did was waste time. You cast your pearls before swine.”

Harry wasn’t quite ready to hear her husband referred to as swine, but Kelly was right: She should have gotten out earlier. “We all learn at our own rates of speed.”

He nodded. “True enough. It took me this long to realize that Bob Berryman, ex–football hero of Crozet High, is a damned wimp. I mean, pushing me down the steps, for chrissake. Because of a bill. Accusing me of overcharging him for a driveway. I’ve been in business for myself for twelve years now and no one’s accused me of overcharging.”

“It could have been worse.” Harry smiled.

“Oh, yeah?” Kelly glanced up quizzically.

“Could have been Josiah DeWitt.”

“You got that right.” Kelly rolled down his pants leg. He tossed the paper towel in the trash, said, “Harry, hang in there,” and left the post office.

She watched him move more slowly than usual and then she returned to her tasks.

Harry was re-inking her stamp pads and cleaning the clogged ink out of the letters on the rubber stamps. She’d gotten to the point where she had maroon ink on her forehead as well as all over her fingers when Big Marilyn Sanburne, “Mim,” marched in. Marilyn belonged to that steel-jawed set of women who were honorary men. She was called Big Marilyn or Mim to distinguish her from her daughter, Little Marilyn. At fifty-four she retained a cold beauty that turned heads. Burdened with immense hours of leisure, she stuck her finger in every civic pie, and her undeniable energy sent other volunteers to the bar or into fits.

“Mrs. Haristeen”—Mim observed the mess—“have you committed a murder?”

“No—just thinking about it.” Harry slyly smiled.

“First on my list is the State Planning Commission. They’ll never put a western bypass through this country. I’ll fight to my last breath! I’d like to hire an F-14 and bomb them over there in Richmond.”

“You’ll have plenty of volunteers to help you, me included.” Harry wiped, but the ink was stubborn.

Mim enjoyed the opportunity to lord it over someone, anyone. Jim Sanburne, her husband, had started out life on a dirt farm, and fought and scratched his way to about sixty million dollars. Despite Jim’s wealth, Mim knew she had married beneath her and she was a woman who needed external proof of her social status. She needed her name in the Social Register. Jim thought it foolish. Her marriage was a constant trial. It was to Jim, too. He ran his empire, ran Crozet because he was mayor, but he couldn’t run Mim.

“Well, have you reconsidered your divorce?” Mim sounded like a teacher.

“No.” Harry blushed from anger.

“Fair’s no better or worse than any other man. Put a paper bag over their heads and they’re all the same. It’s the bank account that’s important. A woman alone has trouble, you know.”

Harry wanted to say, “Yes, with snobs like you,” but she shut up.

“Do you have gloves?”

“Why?”

“To help me carry in Little Marilyn’s wedding invitations. I don’t want to befoul them. Tiffany stationery, dear.”

“Wait a minute, here.” Harry rooted around.

“You put them next to the bin,” Tucker informed her.

“I’ll take you to the bathroom in a minute, Tucker,” Harry told the dog.

“I’ll knock them on the floor. See if she gets it.” Mrs. Murphy nimbly trotted the length of the counter, carefully sidestepping the ink and stamps, and with one gorgeous leap landed on the shelf, where she pushed off the gloves.

“The cat knocked your gloves off the shelf.”

Harry turned as the gloves hit the floor. “So she has. She must know what we’re saying.” Harry smiled, then followed Big Marilyn out to her copen-blue Volvo.

“Sometimes I wonder why I put up with her,” Mrs. Murphy complained.

“Don’t start. You’d be lost without Harry.”

“She is good-hearted, I will admit, but Lord, she’s slow.”

“They all are,” Tucker agreed.

Harry and Mim returned carrying two cardboard boxes filled with pale cream invitations.

“Well, Harry, you will know who is invited and who isn’t before anyone else.”

“I usually do.”

“You, of course, are invited, despite your current, uh, problem. Little Marilyn adores you.”

Little Marilyn did no such thing but no one dared not invite Harry, because it would be so rude. She really did know every guest list in town. Because she knew everything and everybody, it was shrewd to keep on Harry’s good side. Big Marilyn considered her a “resource person.”

“Everything is divided up by zip code and tied.” Mim tapped the counter. “And don’t pick them up without your gloves on, Harry. You’re never going to get that ink off your fingers.”

“Promise.”

“I’ll leave it to you, then.”

No sooner had she relieved Harry of her presence than Josiah DeWitt appeared, tipping his hat and chatting outside to Mim for a moment. He wore white pants and a white shirt and a snappy boater on his head, the very image of summer. He pushed open the door, touched the brim of his hat, and smiled broadly at the postmistress.

“I have affixed yet another date with the wellborn Mrs. Sanburne. Tea at the club.” His eyes twinkled. “I don’t mind that she gossips. I mind that she does it so badly.”

“Josiah—” Harry never knew what he would say next. She slapped his hand as he reached into one of the wedding invitation boxes. “Government property now.”

“That government governs best which governs least, and this one has its tentacles into every aspect of life, every aspect. Terrifying. Why, they even want to tell us what to do in bed.” He grinned. “Ah, but I forgot you wear a halo on that subject now that you’re separated. Of course, you wouldn’t want to be accused of adultery in your divorce proceeding, so I shall assume yours is virtue by necessity.”

“And lack of opportunity.”

“Don’t despair, Harry, don’t despair. Anyway, you got a great nickname out of ten years of marriage . . . although Mary suits you now, because of the halo.”

“You’re awful sometimes.”

“Rely on it.” Josiah flipped through his mail and moaned, “Ned has given me the compliment of an invoice. Lawyers get a cut of everything, don’t they?”

“Kelly Craycroft calls you Moldy Money.” Harry liked Josiah because she could devil him. Some people you could and others you couldn’t. “Don’t you want to know why he calls you Moldy Money?”

“I already know. He says I’ve got the first dollar I ever made and it’s moldering in my wallet. I prefer to think that capital, that offspring of business, is respected by myself and squandered by others, Kelly Craycroft in particular. I mean, how many paving contractors do you know who drive a Ferrari Mondial? And here, of all places.” He shook his head.

Harry had to agree that owning a Ferrari, much less driving one, was on the tacky side. That’s what people did in big cities to impress strangers. “He’s got the money—I guess he can spend it the way he chooses.”

“There’s no such thing as a poor paving contractor, so perhaps you’re right. Still”—his voice lowered—“so hopelessly flashy. At least Jim Sanburne drives a pickup.” He absentmindedly slapped his mail on his thigh. “You will tell me, of course, who is and who isn’t invited to Child Marilyn’s wedding. I especially want to know if Stafford is invited.”

“We all want to know that.”

“What’s your bet?”

“That he isn’t.”

“A safe bet. They were so close as children, too. Really devoted, that brother and sister. A pity. Well, I’m off. See you tomorrow.”

Through the glass door Harry watched Susan Tucker and Josiah engage in animated conversation. So animated that when finished, Susan leaped up the three stairs in a single bound and flung open the door.

“Well! Josiah just told me you’ve got Little Marilyn’s wedding invitations.”

“I haven’t looked.”

“But you will and no time like the present.” Susan opened the door by the counter and came around behind it.

“You can’t touch that.” Harry removed her gloves as Tucker joyfully jumped on Susan, who hugged and kissed her. Mrs. Murphy watched from her shelf. Tucker was laying it on pretty thick.

“Wonderful doggie. Beautiful doggie. Gimme a kiss.” Susan saw Harry’s hands. “Well, you can’t touch the envelopes either, so for the next fifteen minutes I’ll do your job.”

“Do it in the back room, Susan. If anyone sees you we’re both in trouble. Stafford will be in the one-double-oh zip codes and I think he’s in one-double-oh two three, west of Central Park.”

Susan called over her shoulder on her way to the back room: “If you can’t live on the East Side of Manhattan, stay home.”

“The West Side’s really nice now.”

“It’s not here. Can you believe it?” Susan hollered from the back room.

“Sure, I believe it. What’d you expect?”

Susan came out and put the box under the counter. “Her own son. She’s got to forgive him sometime.”

“Forgiveness isn’t a part of Big Marilyn Sanburne’s vocabulary, especially when it impinges on her exalted social standing.”

“This isn’t the 1940’s. Blacks and whites do marry now and the miscegenation laws are off the books.”

“How many mixed marriages do you know in Crozet?”

“None, but there are a few in Albemarle County. I mean, this is so silly. Stafford’s been married for six years now and Brenda is a stunning woman. A good one, too, I think.”

“Are you going to have lunch with me? You’re the only one left who will.”

“It just seems that way because you’re oversensitive right now. Come on, you’d better get out of here before someone else zooms through the door. You know how crazy Mondays are.”

“Okay, I’m ready. My relief pitcher just pulled in.” Harry smiled. It was nice having old Dr. Larry Johnson to cover the post office from 12:00 to 1:00 so she could take a lunch hour. It was also handy when she had errands to run during business hours. All she had to do was give him a call.

Dr. Johnson held the door for Harry, Susan, and the animals.

“Thank you, Dr. Johnson. How are you today?” Harry appreciated his gentlemanly gesture.

“I’m doing just fine, thank you.”

“Good afternoon, Doctor,” Susan said as Mrs. Murphy and Tucker greeted him with a chorus of purrs and yips.

“Hi, Susan. Good afternoon, Mrs. Murphy. And to you, too, Tee Tucker.” Dr. Johnson reached down to pet Harry’s buddies. “Where are you ladies headed?”

“We’re just trotting up to Crozet Pizza for subs. Thanks for holding down the fort.”

“My pleasure, as always. Have a good lunch,” the retired doctor called after them.

Harry, Susan, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker strolled down the shimmering sidewalk. The heat felt like a thick, moist wall. They waved at Market and Courtney Shiflett, working in the grocery store. Pewter, Market’s chubby gray cat, indulged in a flagrant display of her private parts right there in the front window. On seeing Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, she said hello. They called back to her and walked on.

“I can’t believe she’s let herself go to pot like that,” Mrs. Murphy whispered to Tucker. “All those meat tidbits Market feeds her. Girl has no restraint.”

“Doesn’t get much exercise either. Not like you.”

Mrs. Murphy accepted the compliment. She had kept her figure just in case the right tom came along. Everyone, including Tucker, thought she was still in love with her first husband, Paddy, but Mrs. Murphy was certain she was over him. Over in capital letters. Paddy wore a tuxedo, oozed charm, and resented any accusation of usefulness. Worse, he ran off with a silver Maine coon cat and then had the nerve to come back thinking Mrs. Murphy would be glad to see him after the escapade. Not only was she not glad, she nearly scratched his eye out. Paddy sported a scar over his left eye from the fight.

Harry and Susan ordered huge subs at Crozet Pizza. They stayed inside to eat them, luxuriating in the air conditioning. Mrs. Murphy sat in a chair and Tucker rested under Harry’s chair.

Harry bit into her sandwich and half the filling shot out the other end. “Damn.”

“That’s the purpose of a submarine sandwich. To make us look foolish.” Susan giggled.

Maude Bly Modena came in at that moment. She started to walk over to takeout, then saw Harry and Susan. She ambled over for a polite exchange. “Use a knife and fork. What’d you do to your hands?”

“I was cleaning stamps.”

“I, for one, don’t care if my first class is blurred. Better than having you look like Lady Macbeth.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Harry replied.

“I’d stay and chew the fat, ladies, but I’ve got to get back to the shop.”

Maude Bly Modena had moved to Crozet from New York five years ago. She opened a packing store—cartons, plastic peanuts, papers, the works—and the store was a smash. An old railroad lorry sat in the front yard and she would put floral displays and the daily store discounts on the lorry. She knew how to attract customers and she herself was attractive, in her late thirties. At Christmastime there were lines to get into her store. She was a sharp businesswomen and friendly, to boot, which was a necessity in these parts. In time the residents forgave her that unfortunate accent.

Maude waved goodbye as she passed the picture window. Harry and Susan waved in return.

“I keep thinking Maude will find Mr. Right. She’s so attractive.”

“Mr. Wrong’s more like it.”

“Sour grapes.”

“Am I like that, Susan? I hope not. I mean, I could rattle off the names of bitter divorced women and we’d be here all afternoon. I don’t want to join that club.”

Susan patted Harry’s hand. “You’re too sensitive, as I’ve said before. You’ll cycle through all kinds of emotions. For lack of a better term, sour grapes is one of them. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

Harry squirmed in her seat. “I feel as if there’s no coating on my nerve endings.” She settled in her chair. “You’re right about Maude. She’s got a lot going for her. There ought to be someone out there for her. Someone who would appreciate her—and her business success too.”

Susan’s eyes danced. “Maybe she’s got a lover.”

“No way. You can’t burp in your kitchen but what everyone knows it. No way.” Harry shook her head.

“I wonder.” Susan poured herself more Tab. “Remember Terrance Newton? We all thought we knew Terrance.”

Harry thought about that. “Well, we were teenagers. I mean, if we had been adults, maybe we’d have picked up on something. The vibes.”

“An insurance executive we all know goes home, shoots his wife and himself. My recollection is the adults were shocked. No one picked up on anything. If you can keep up your facade, people accept that. Very few people look beneath the surface.”

Harry sighed. “Maybe everyone’s too busy.”

“Or too self-centered.” Susan drummed the table with her fingers. “What I’m getting at is that maybe we don’t know one another as well as we think we do. It’s a small-town illusion—thinking we know each other.”

Harry quietly played with her sub. “You know me. I think I know you.”

“That’s different. We’re best friends.” Susan polished off her sandwich and grabbed her brownie. “Imagine being Stafford Sanburne and not being invited to your sister’s wedding.”

“That was a leap.”

“Like I said, we’re best friends. I don’t have to think in sequence around you.” Susan laughed.

“Stafford sent Fair a postcard. ‘Hang in there, buddy.’ Come to think of it, that’s what Kelly said to me. Hey, you missed it. Kelly Craycroft and Bob Berryman had a fight, fists and all.”

“You wait until now to tell me!”

“So much else has been going on, it slipped my mind. Kelly said it was about a paving bill. Bob thinks he overcharged him.”

“Bob Berryman may not be Mr. Charm but that doesn’t sound like him, to fight over a bill.”

“Hey, like I said, maybe we don’t really know one another.”

Harry picked tomatoes out of her sandwich. They were the culprits; she was sure the meat, cheese, and pickles would stay inside without those slimy tomatoes. She slapped the bread back together as Mrs. Murphy reached across the plate to hook a piece of roast beef. “Mrs. Murphy, that will do.” Harry used her commanding mother voice. It would work at the Pentagon. Mrs. Murphy withdrew her paw.

“Maybe we should rejoice that Little Marilyn’s made a match at last,” Susan said.

“You don’t think that Little Marilyn bagged Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton by herself, do you?”

Susan considered this. “She’s got her mother’s beauty.”

“And is cold as a wedge.”

“No, she isn’t. She’s quiet and shy.”

“Susan, you’ve liked her since we were kids and I never could stand Little Marilyn. She’s such a momma’s baby.”

“You drove your mother wild.”

“I did not.”

“Oh, yeah, how about the time you put your lace underpants over her license plate and she drove around the whole day not knowing why everyone was honking at her and laughing.”

“That.” Harry remembered. She missed her mother terribly. Grace Minor had died unexpectedly of a heart attack four years earlier, and Cliff, her husband, followed within the year. He couldn’t make a go of it without Grace and he admitted as much on his deathbed. They were not rich people by any means but they left Harry a lovely clapboard house two miles west of town at the foot of Little Yellow Mountain and they also left a small trust fund, which paid for taxes on the house and pin money. A house without a mortgage is a wonderful inheritance, and Harry and Fair were happy to move from their rented house on Myrtle Street. Of course, when Harry asked Fair to leave, he complained bitterly that he had always hated living in her parents’ house.

“Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton is ugly as sin, but he’s never going to need food stamps and he’s a Richmond lawyer of much repute—at least that’s what Ned says.”

“Too much fuss over this marriage. You marry in haste and repent in leisure.”

“Don’t be sour.” Susan’s eyes shot upward.

“The happiest day of my life was when I married Pharamond Haristeen and the next happiest day of my life was when I threw him out. He’s full of shit and he’s not going to get any sympathy from me. God, Susan, he’s running all over town, the picture of the wounded male. He has dinner every night with a different couple. I heard that Mim Sanburne offered her maid to do his laundry for him. I can’t believe it.”

Susan sighed. “He seems to relish being a victim.”

“Well, I sure don’t.” Harry practically spat. “The only thing worse than being a veterinarian’s wife is being a doctor’s wife.”

“That’s not why you want to divorce him.”

“No, I guess not. I don’t want to talk about this.”

“You started it.”

“Did I?” Harry seemed surprised. “I didn’t mean to. . . . I’d like to forget the whole thing. We were talking about Little Marilyn Sanburne.”

“We were. Little Marilyn will be deeply hurt if Stafford doesn’t show up, and Mim will die if he does—her event-of-the-year marriage marred by the arrival of her black daughter-in-law. Life would be much simpler if Mim would overcome her plantation mentality.” Susan drummed the table again.

“Yeah, but then she’d have to join the human race. I mean, she’s emotionally impotent and wants to extend her affliction universally. If she changed her thinking she might have to feel something, you know? She might have to admit that she was wrong and that she’s wounded her children, wounded and scarred them.”

Susan sat silent for a moment, viewing the remnants of the once-huge sub. “Yeah—here, Tucker.”

“Hey, hey, what about me?” Mrs. Murphy yelled.

“Oh, here, you big baby.” Harry shoved over her plate. She was full.

Mrs. Murphy ate what was left except for the tomatoes. As a kitten, she once ate a tomato and vowed never again.

Harry strolled back to the post office, and the rest of the day ran on course. Market dropped by some knucklebones. Courtney picked up the mail while her dad talked.

After work Harry walked back home. She liked the two-mile walk in the mornings and afternoons. Good exercise for her and the cat and the dog. Once home, she washed her old Superman-blue truck, then weeded her garden. She cleaned out the refrigerator after that and before she knew it, it was time to go to bed.

She read a bit, Mrs. Murphy curled up by her side with Tucker snoring at the end of the bed. She turned out her light, as did the other residents of Crozet ensconced behind their high hedges, blinds, and shutters.

It was the end of another day, peaceful and perfect in its way. Had Harry known what tomorrow would bring, she might have savored the day even more.

2

Mrs. Murphy performed a somersault while chasing a grasshopper. She never could resist wigglies, as she called them. Tucker, uninterested in bugs, cast a keen eye for squirrels foolish enough to scamper down Railroad Avenue. The old tank watch, her father’s, on Harry’s wrist read 6:30 A.M. and the heat rose off the tracks. It was a real July Virginia day, the kind that compelled weathermen and weatherwomen on television to blare that it would be hot, humid, and hazy with no relief in sight. They then counseled the viewer to drink plenty of liquids. Cut to a commercial for, surprise, a soft drink.

Harry reflected on her childhood. At thirty-three she wasn’t that old but then again she wasn’t that young. She thought the times had become more ruthlessly commercial. Even funeral directors advertised. Their next gimmick would be a Miss Dead America contest to see who could do the best work on the departed. Something had happened to America within Harry’s life span, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but something she could feel, sharply. There was no contest between God and the golden calf. Money was God, these days. Little pieces of green paper with dead people’s pictures on them were worshipped. People no longer killed for love. They killed for money.

How odd to be alive in a time of spiritual famine. She watched the cat and dog playing tag and wondered how her kind had ever drifted so far away from animal existence, that sheer delight in the moment.

Harry did not consider herself a philosophical woman, but lately she had turned her mind to deeper thoughts, not just to the purpose of her own life but to the purpose of human life in general. She wouldn’t even tell Susan what zigzagged through her head these days, because it was so disturbing and sad. Sometimes she thought she was mourning her lost youth and that was at the bottom of this. Maybe the upheaval of the divorce forced her inward. Or maybe it really was the times, the cheapness and crass consumerism of American life.

Mrs. George Hogendobber, at least, had values over and above her bank account, but Mrs. Hogendobber vainly clung to a belief system that had lost its power. Right-wing Christianity could compel those frightened and narrow-minded souls who needed absolute answers but it couldn’t capture those who needed a vision of the future here on earth. Heaven was all very fine but you had to die to get there. Harry wasn’t afraid to die but she wouldn’t refuse to live either. She wondered what it must have been like to live when Christianity was new, vital, and exciting—before it had been corrupted by collusion with the state. That meant she would have had to have lived before the second century A.D., and as enticing as the idea might be, she wasn’t sure she could exist without her truck. Did this mean she’d sell her soul for wheels? She knew she wouldn’t sell her soul for a buck, but machines, money, and madness were tied together somehow and Harry knew she wasn’t wise enough to untangle the Gordian knot of modern life.

She became postmistress in order to hide from that modern life. Majoring in art history at Smith College on a scholarship had left her splendidly unprepared for the future, so she came home upon graduation and worked as an exercise rider in a big stable. When old George Hogendobber died, she applied for the post office job and won it. Odd, that Mrs. Hogendobber had had a good marriage and that Harry was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the opposite sex. She wondered if Mrs. Hogendobber knew something she didn’t or if George had simply surrendered all hope of individuality and that was why the marriage had worked. Harry had no regrets about her job, small though it might seem to others, but she did have regrets about her marriage.

“Mom’s pensive this morning.” Mrs. Murphy brushed up against Tucker. “Divorce stuff, I guess. Humans sure make it hard on themselves.”

Tucker flicked her ears forward and then back. “Yeah, they seem to worry a lot.”

“I’ll say. They worry about things that are years away and may never happen.”

“I think it’s because they can’t smell. Miss a lot of information.”

Mrs. Murphy nodded in agreement and then added, “Walking on two legs. Screws up their backs and then it affects their minds. I’m sure that’s the source of it.”

“I never thought of that.” Tucker saw the mail driver. “Hey, I’ll race you to Rob.”

Tucker cheated and tore out before Mrs. Murphy could reply. Furious, Mrs. Murphy shot off her powerful hindquarters and stayed low over the ground.

“Girls, girls, you come back here.”

The girls believed in selective hearing and Tucker made it to the mail truck before Mrs. Murphy, but the little tiger jumped into the vehicle.

“I won!”

“You did not,” Tucker argued.

“Hello, Mrs. Murphy. Hello, Tucker.” Rob was pleased at the greeting he’d received.

Harry, panting, caught up with the cat and the dog. “Hi, Rob. What you got for me this morning?”

“The usual. Two bags.” He rattled around in the truck. “Here’s a package from Turnbull and Asser that Josiah DeWitt has to sign and pay for.” Rob pointed out the sum on the front.

Harry whistled. “One hundred and one dollars duty. Must be a mess of shirts in there. Josiah has to have the best.”

“I was reading somewhere, don’t remember where, that the mark-up in the antiques business can be four hundred percent. Guess he can afford those shirts.”

“Try to get him to pay for anything else.” Harry smiled.

BoomBoom Craycroft, Kelly’s pampered wife, drove east, heading toward Charlottesville. BoomBoom owned a new BMW convertible with the license plate BOOMBMW. She waved and Harry and Rob waved back.

Rob gazed after her. BoomBoom was a pretty woman, dark and sultry. He came back to earth. “Today I’ll carry the bags in, miss. You can save women’s liberation for tomorrow.”

Harry smiled. “Okay, Rob, butch it up. I love a man with muscles.”

He laughed and hauled both bags over his shoulders as Harry unlocked the door.

After Rob left, Harry sorted the mail in a half hour. Tuesdays were light. She settled herself in the back room and made a cup of good coffee. Tucker and Mrs. Murphy played with the folded duffel bag and by the time Harry emerged from the back room, Mrs. George Hogendobber was standing at the front door and the duffel was moving suspiciously. Harry didn’t have the time to pull Mrs. Murphy out. She unlocked the front door and as Mrs. Hogendobber came in, Mrs. Murphy shot out of the bag like a steel ball in a pinball machine.

“Catch me if you can!” she called to Tucker.

The corgi ran around in circles as Mrs. Murphy jumped on a shelf, then to the counter, ran the length of the counter at top speed, hit the wall with all four feet and shoved off the wall with a half turn, ran the length of the counter, and did the same maneuver in the opposite direction. She then flew off the counter, ran between Mrs. Hogendobber’s legs, Tucker in hot pursuit, jumped back on the counter, and then sat still as a statue as she laughed at Tucker.

Mrs. Hogendobber gasped, “That cat’s mental!”

Harry, astonished at the display of feline acrobatics, swallowed and replied, “Just one of her fits—you know how they are.”

“I don’t like cats myself.” Mrs. H. drew herself up to her full height, which was considerable. She had the girth to match. “Too independent.”

Yes, many people say that, Harry thought to herself, and all of them are fascists. This was a cherished assumption she would neither divulge nor purge.

“I forgot to tell you to watch Diane Bish Sunday night on cable. Such an accomplished organist. Why they even show her feet, and last Sunday she wore silver slippers.”

“I don’t have cable.”

“Oh, well, move into town. You shouldn’t be out there at Yellow Mountain alone, anyway.” Mrs. Hogendobber whispered, “I hear Mim dumped off the wedding invitations yesterday.”

“Two boxes full.”

“Did she invite Stafford?” This sounded innocent.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Hogendobber couldn’t hide her disappointment.

Josiah came in. “Hello, ladies.” He focused on Mrs. Hogendobber. “I want that bed.” He frowned a mock frown.

Mrs. Hogendobber was not endowed with much humor. “I’m not prepared to sell.”

Fair came in, followed by Susan. Greetings were exchanged. Harry was tense. Mrs. Hogendobber seized the opportunity to slip away from the determined Josiah. Across the street Hayden McIntire, the town physician, parked his car.

Josiah observed him and sighed, “Ah, my child-ridden neighbor.” Hayden had fathered many children.

Fair quietly opened his box and pulled out the mail. He wanted to slip away, and Harry, not using the best judgment, called him back.

“Wait a minute.”

“I’ve got a call. Cut tendon.” His hand was on the doorknob.

“Dammit, Fair. Where’s my check?” Harry blurted out from frustration.

They had signed a settlement agreement whereby Fair was to pay $1,000 a month to Harry until the divorce, when their joint assets would be equally divided. While not a wealthy couple, the two had worked hard during their marriage and the division of spoils would most certainly benefit Harry, who earned far less than Fair. Fortunately, Fair considered the house rightfully Harry’s and so that was not contested.

She felt he was jerking her around with the money. Typical Fair. If she didn’t do it, it didn’t get done. All he could concentrate on was his equine practice.

For Fair’s part, he thought Harry was being her usual nagging self. She’d get the goddamned check when he got around to it.

Fair blushed. “Oh, that, well, I’ll get it off today.”

“Why not write it now?”

“I’ve got a call, Harry!”

“You’re ten days late, Fair. Do I have to call Ned Tucker? I mean, all that does is cost me lawyer’s fees and escalate hostilities.”

“Hey,” he yelled, “calling me out in front of Susan and Josiah is hostile enough!” He slammed the door.

Josiah, transfixed by the domestic drama, could barely wipe the smile off his face. Having avoided the pitfalls of marriage, he thoroughly enjoyed the show couples put on. Josiah never could understand why men and women wanted to marry. Sex he could understand, but marriage? To him it was the ball and chain.

Susan, not transfixed, was deeply sorry about the outburst, because she knew that Josiah would tell Mim and by sunset it would be all over town. The divorce was difficult enough without public displays. She also guessed that Fair, good passive-aggressive personality that he was, was playing “starve the wife.” Husbands and their lawyers loved that game . . . and quite often it worked. The soon-to-be-ex wife would become dragged down by the subtle battering and give up. Emotionally the drain was too much for the women, and they would kiss off what they had earned in the marriage. This was made all the more difficult because men took housework and women’s labor for granted. No dollar value was attached to it. When the wife withdrew that labor, men usually didn’t perceive its value; instead they felt something had been done to them. The woman was a bitch.

After the sting wore off, Susan knew Fair would immediately set about to find another woman to love, and the by-product of this love would mean that the new wife would do the food shopping, juggle the social calendar, and keep the books. All for love.

Did Susan do this for Ned? In the beginning of the marriage, yes. After five years and two kids she had felt she was losing her mind. She balked. Ned was ripshot mad. Then they got to talking, really talking. She was fortunate. So was he. They found common ground. They learned to do with less so they could hire help. Susan took a part-time job to bring in some money and get out of the house. But Susan and Ned were meant for each other, and Harry and Fair were not. Sex brought them together and left them together for a while, but they weren’t really connected emotionally and they certainly weren’t connected intellectually. They were two reasonably good people who needed to free themselves to do what came next, and sadly, they weren’t going to free themselves without anger, recrimination, and dragging their friends into it.

Susan’s thoughts were abruptly short-circuited.

A siren echoed in the background, growing louder until the Crozet Rescue Squad ambulance flashed down the road, effectively ending the Harry versus Fair reverberation. They all ran out in front of the post office.

Harry, without thinking, touched Josiah’s arm. “Not old Dr. Johnson.” He had been her childhood physician and was becoming stooped and frail.

“He’ll live to be one hundred. Don’t worry.” Josiah patted her hand.

The ambulance turned south on the Whitehall Road, also known as Route 240.

Big Marilyn Sanburne’s Volvo sped to Shiflett’s Market. She stopped and slammed the door of her car.

She thumped over to the group. “I damn near got run off the road by the Rescue Squad. They probably scare to death as many people as they save.”

“Amen,” Josiah agreed. He started to leave.

Harry called him back. “Josiah, you’ve got to sign and pay for a Turnbull and Asser package.”

“It came.” He beamed and then the glow went into remission. “How much?”

“One hundred and one dollars,” Harry answered.

Josiah bore the blow. “Well, some things one cannot postpone from motives of economy. Consider the people I am compelled to meet.”

“Di and Fergie,” Harry solemnly intoned.

In fact, Josiah was in the vicinity of the Royals whilst in London buying up George III furniture before taking a hovercraft across the channel to acquire more of his beloved Louis XV.

Mim wheeled on Josiah, her constant escort whenever she could dump husband Jim. “Still dining out on that story.”

“My dear Mim, I merely do business with royalty. You know them as friends.” An allusion to the obscure Romanian countess much touted by Big Marilyn, who, when she was eighteen, paraded the European beauty about Crozet.

In the late fifties, Mim had looted Europe for Fabergé boxes and George III furnishings, her favorite period. Jim Sanburne didn’t know what he was getting into when he married Mim—but then, who does? In Paris, Mim encountered a friend of the countess who told her the woman was a bakery assistant from Prague, albeit a beautiful one. Whoever she was, she was smart enough to outwit Mim, and Mrs. Sanburne did not take kindly to a reminder, nor did she appreciate the fact that the countess seduced Jim—but then, he was an easy lay. She made him pay for that indiscretion.

Pewter thundered out of the market as a customer opened the door. She was so fat that when she ran, her stomach wobbled from side to side.

Susan giggled. “Someone ought to put that cat on a diet.” She diverted the topic of conversation but didn’t mind Mim’s moment of discomfort.

Pewter stood on her hind legs and scratched the post office door. “Let me in.”

Harry opened the door for her as the humans kept talking outside. Pewter burst into the P.O., filled with importance. Even Mrs. Murphy paid attention to her.

“Guess what?” The gray whiskers swept forward and Pewter leaped onto the counter—not easy for her, but she was so excited she made it in one try.

Tucker craned her head upward. “I wish you’d come down here and tell your tale.”

Pewter brushed aside the corgi’s request. “Market got a call from Diana Farrell, of the Rescue Squad. You know Market does duty on weekends sometimes and they’re friends.”

“Get to the point, Pewter.” Mrs. Murphy swished her tail.

“If that’s your attitude, I’m leaving. You can find out from someone else.”

“Don’t go,” Tucker pleaded.

“I am. I am most certainly going. I know when I’m not wanted.” Pewter was in a real huff. She puffed her tail, and as Harry opened the door to come in she ran out.

“You’re so rude,” Tucker complained.

“She’s a windbag.” Mrs. Murphy did not feel like apologizing.

Josiah was paying out money and grumbling.

“She may be chatty,” Tucker said, “but if she ran over here in this blistering heat, it had to be something big.”

Mrs. Murphy knew Tucker was right, but she said nothing and curled up on the counter instead. Tucker, out of sorts, whined for Harry to open the door beside the counter. Harry did and Tucker lay down on her big pillow under the counter.

An hour passed with people coming and going. Maude Bly Modena opened her copy of Vogue and she and Harry read their horoscopes.

Maude declared that there were only twelve horoscope readings. Whatever the horoscope was for your sign, it would be moved to the next sign tomorrow. So if you were a Scorpio, your reading would move to Sagittarius the following day, and Libra’s reading would then be yours. It took twelve days to complete the cycle. When Harry giggled with disbelief, Maude said people don’t remember their horoscopes from one day to the next. They’d never remember twelve days’ worth.

Maude said that instead of remembering an entire reading, remember the phrase “Opposite sex interested and shows it.” That phrase will move through each sign in succession.

By the time Maude finished, Harry was laughing so hard she didn’t care if Maude’s theory was true or not. The important thing was that it was fun and Harry needed to know she could still have fun. Divorce was not the end of the world.

Harry’s projection for August was “Revise routine. Rebuild for future. Important dates: 7th, 14th, and 29th.” Important for what, this stellar prophecy declined to reveal. Harry swore she’d test Maude’s theory after Maude left. She clipped the horoscope but within fifteen minutes it had gotten mixed up with postal patron notices.

Little Marilyn Sanburne came in and cooed about her wedding, sort of. With Little Marilyn a coo came from the more obscure regions of her throat. Harry pretended to be interested but personally felt Little Marilyn was making a huge mistake. She couldn’t even get along with herself, much less anyone else.

A full hour passed before Market Shiflett pushed through the door.

“Harry, I would have come over sooner but it’s been bedlam—sheer bedlam.” He wiped his brow.

“Are you all right?” Harry noticed he looked peaked. “Can I get you something?”

He waved no, and then leaned up against the counter to steady himself. “Diana Farrell called me. Kelly Craycroft—at least they think it’s Kelly Craycroft—was found dead about ten this morning.”

Tucker jumped up. “See, Mrs. Murphy? I told you she knew something big.”

Mrs. Murphy realized her mistake but couldn’t do a damn thing about it now.

“My God, how?” Harry was stunned. She thought maybe a heart attack. Kelly was at that dangerous age for a man.

“Don’t rightly know. The body’s all tore up. Found him in one of the big cement grinders. He’s not even in one piece. Diana said that if he was shot in the head or any other part of the body, they’d never know. Sheriff’s Department has impounded the mixer. Guess they’ll search for some lead in there. You know, Kelly was always climbing to the top of that mixer to show it to people.”

“Murder—you’re talking about murder.” Harry’s eyes widened.

“Well, hell, Harry, a big strong man like Kelly don’t just fall into a cement mixer. Someone pushed him in.”

“Maybe it isn’t him. Maybe it’s some drunk or—”

“It’s him. Ferrari parked right there. Didn’t show up at the office. Since his car was there, everyone figured he was on the grounds somewhere. They didn’t really know until one of the men started up the grinder and it sounded funny.”

Harry shuddered at the thought of what that poor fellow saw when he looked into the mixer.

“He wasn’t a saint but who is? He couldn’t have made anyone mad enough to kill him.”

“Made someone mad enough.” Market exhaled. He didn’t like the news, but there was something special about being the messenger of such tidings and Market was not a man immune to those few moments of privileged status. “Thought you ought to know.”

As he turned to leave, Harry called out, “Your mail.”

“Oh, yeah.” Market fished out the mail in his box and left.

Harry sat down on the stool behind the counter. She needed to order her mind. Then she went to the phone and rang up Appalachia Equine. Fair was out, so she left a message for him to call her pronto. Then she dialed Susan.

“Doodle, doodle, doodle.” Susan answered the phone. She’d grown tired of “Hello.”

“Susan!”

Susan knew from the sound of Harry’s voice that something was amiss. “What’s wrong?”

“Kelly Craycroft’s body was found in a cement mixer. Market just told me, and he said it was murder.”

“Murder?!”

3

Rick Shaw, Albemarle County sheriff, hitched up the broad Sam Browne belt. His gun felt even heavier in this stinking heat and it didn’t help that he’d put on a pound or two in the last eighteen months. Before he became sheriff he had been more active but now he spent too much time behind his desk. His appetite did not diminish, however, and he began to think that the red tape he had to wade through actually increased his appetite through frustration. The sheriff who preceded him died fat as a tick. This was not a happy thought.

This was not a happy case. Rick had grown accustomed to the vileness of men. He’d seen shoot-outs, drunken knife fights, and corpses of people who had been bludgeoned to death. The traffic accidents weren’t much better but at least they weren’t premeditated. Albemarle County suffered about two murders a year, usually domestic. This was different, and he sensed it the minute he stepped out of the car.

Officer Cynthia Cooper had arrived on the scene first. A tall young woman with sense as well as experience, she had cordoned off the area. The fingerprint team was on the way but Rick didn’t hope for much there. The staff at Craycroft Concrete stood in the sun, too hot to be standing around like that but they were dazed.

Someone was screaming somewhere, and according to Officer Cooper, Kelly’s wife was at home, sedated. He regretted that and would have to have a word with Hayden McIntire, the doctor. Sedating should be done after the questioning, not before.

A BMW screeched through the entrance. Kelly Craycroft’s wife vaulted from her seat and raced for the mixer.

“BoomBoom!” Rick hollered at her.

BoomBoom soared over the cordoning and roughly pushed her way past Diana Farrell of the Rescue Squad. Clai Cordle, another nurse and squad member, couldn’t stop her either.

Cynthia Cooper made a flying tackle but it was a second too late and BoomBoom was climbing up the ladder to the opening of the mixer.

“He’s my husband! You can’t keep me from my husband!”

“You don’t want to see that, girl.” Rick moved his bulk as quickly as he could.

Cynthia scurried up the ladder and grabbed BoomBoom’s ankle but not before the raven-haired woman lifted her head over the side of the mixer. Immobile for a second, she fell back into Cynthia Cooper’s arms in a dead faint, nearly knocking the young policewoman off the ladder.

Rick reached up and held Cynthia around the waist as Diana ran over to help. They got BoomBoom to the ground.

Diana broke open the amyl nitrite.

Cynthia snatched it from her hand. “All she’s got are these few moments before this hits her again. Let her have them.”

Rick cleared his throat. He hated this. He also hated that BoomBoom might throw up when she came to and he fervently hoped she wouldn’t. Blood and guts were one thing. Vomit was another.

BoomBoom moaned. She opened her eyes. Rick held his breath. She sat up and swallowed. He exhaled. She wasn’t going to throw up. She wasn’t even going to cry.

“He looks like something in the Cuisinart.” BoomBoom’s voice sounded flat.

“Don’t think about it,” Officer Cooper advised.

“I’ll remember the sight for the rest of my natural life.” BoomBoom struggled to her feet. She swayed a bit and Rick steadied her. “I’m all right. Just . . . give me a minute.”

“Why don’t we go over to the office. The air conditioning will help.”

Officer Cooper and BoomBoom walked over to the small office and Rick motioned to Diana and Clai to get the body pieces out of the mixer. “Don’t let BoomBoom see the bag.”

“Keep her inside,” Diana requested.

“Do what I can but she’s a wild one. Been that way since she was a kid.” Rick took off his hat and entered the office.

Marie Williams, Craycroft Concrete’s secretary, sobbed. At the sight of BoomBoom she emitted a wail.

BoomBoom stared at her in disgust. “Pull yourself together, Marie.”

“I loved him. I just loved him. He was the best man in the world to work for. He’d bring me roses on Secretary’s Day. He’d give me time off when Timmy was sick. Didn’t dock my pay.” A fresh outburst followed this.

BoomBoom hit the chair with a thump. Behind her a huge poster of a sitting duck slurping a drink, bullet holes in the wall behind him, gave the room a festive air. If Marie kept this up she’d throw her in the mixer. BoomBoom loathed displays of emotion. Circumstances did not alter her opinion on this.

“Mrs. Williams, why don’t you come into Mr. Craycroft’s office with me. Maybe you can explain his daily routine. We can’t touch anything until the prints men come in.”

“I understand.” Marie shuffled off with Officer Cooper, shutting the door behind her.

“You don’t really know if that’s my husband in there.” BoomBoom’s voice didn’t sound normal.

“No.”

She leaned back in the chair. “It is, though.”

“How do you know?” Rick’s voice was gentle but probing.

“I feel it. Besides, his car is parked here and Kelly was never far from that car. Loved it more than anything, even me, his wife.”

“Do you have any idea how this could have happened?”

“Apart from someone pushing him into the mixer, no.” Her eyes glittered.

“Enemies?”

“Pharamond Haristeen—well, that’s old. They aren’t enemies anymore.”

Rick knew the story of Fair making a pass at BoomBoom at last year’s Hunt Club ball. Much liquor had been consumed but not enough for people to forget the overture. He’d need to question Fair. Emotions, like land mines, could explode when you least expected them to . . . years after an event. It wouldn’t be impossible for Fair to be a murderer, only improbable. “What about business troubles?”

BoomBoom smiled a wan smile. “Kelly had the Midas touch.”

Rick smiled back at her. “All of central Virginia knows that.” He paused. “Perhaps he got into a disagreement over a bill or a paving bid. People get crazy about money. Anything, anything at all that comes to mind.”

“Nothing.”

Rick placed his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll have Officer Cooper drive you home.”

“I can drive.”

“No, you can’t. For once you’ll do as I say.”

BoomBoom didn’t argue. She felt shakier than she wanted to admit. In fact, she’d never felt so terrible in her life. She loved Kelly, in her vague fashion, and he loved her in return.

Rick glanced up to see how the body removal was progressing. It wasn’t easy. Even Clai Cordle, stomach of iron, was green around the gills.

Rick opened the door, blocking BoomBoom’s view. “Clai, Diana, hold up a minute, will you? Officer Cooper’s going to run BoomBoom home.”

“Okay.” Diana suspended her labors.

“Officer Cooper.”

“Yo,” Cynthia called out, then opened the door.

“Carry BoomBoom home, will you?”

“Sure.”

“Find anything in there?”

Marie followed behind Officer Cooper. “Everything’s filed and cross-filed, first alphabetically and then under subject matter. I did it myself.”

As BoomBoom and Officer Cooper left, Rick went into the small, clean office with Marie.

“He believed in ‘a place for everything and everything in its place,’ ” Marie whimpered.

Rick scanned the top of Kelly’s desk. A silver-framed portrait of BoomBoom was on the right-hand corner. A Lamy pen, very bulky, was placed on a neat diagonal over Xeroxed papers.

Rick leaned over, careful not to touch anything, and read the top sheet.

My Whig principles have been strengthened by the Mexican War. It broke out just as I was preparing to depart for Europe; my trunks were actually ready; that and the Oregon question, made me unpack them. Now my son is in it. Some pecuniary interest is at stake, the political horizon is clouded and I am forced to wait until all this ends. Since I have had my surfeit of war, I am for peace; but at this time I am still more so. Peace, peace rises at the top of all my thoughts and the feeling makes me twice a Whig. As soon as things are settled I cross the Atlantic. I might do it now, of course, but I do not wish to go for only a few months and my stay might now be curtailed by events.

Very respectfully, Y’r most obed’t.

C. CROZET

“I don’t recall Kelly being interested in history.”

Marie shrugged. “Me neither, but he’d get these whims, you know.”

Rick put his thumb under the heavy belt again, taking some of the weight off his shoulder and waist. “Crozet was an engineer. Maybe he wrote about paving or something. Built all our turnpikes, you know. Route 240, too, if I remember Miss Grindle’s teachings in fourth grade.”

“What a witch.” Marie had had Miss Grindle too.

“Never had any disciplinary problems at Crozet Elementary when Miss Grindle was there.”

“From the War Between the States until the Korean War.” Marie half giggled, then caught herself. “How can I laugh at a time like this?”

“Need to. Your emotions will be a roller coaster for a while.”

Tears welled up in Marie’s eyes. “You’ll catch him, won’t you? Whoever did this?”

“I’m gonna try, Marie. I’m gonna try.”

4

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Susan peered into Harry’s face.

“You know I have to.”

Not paying her condolences to BoomBoom would have been a breach of manners so flagrant it would be held against Harry forever. Not actively held against her, mind, just remembered, a black mark against her name in the book. Even if she had more good marks than bad, and she hoped that she did, it didn’t pay to play social percentages in Crozet.

It wasn’t just facing the jolt of a shocking death that caught Harry; it was having to face the entire social spectrum. Since asking Fair to leave, Harry had kept pretty much to herself. Of course, Fair would be at the Craycrofts’. Even if his big truck was not parked in the driveway she knew he’d be there. He was well brought up. He understood his function at a time like this.

The gathered Crozet residents would not only be able to judge how BoomBoom held up during the hideous crisis, but they’d also be able to judge the temperature of the divorce, a crisis of a different sort. Behaving bravely was tremendously important in Crozet. Stiff upper lip.

Harry often thought if she wanted a stiff upper lip she’d grow a moustache.

“Are you going to leave me here?” Tee Tucker asked.

“Yeah, what about me?” Mrs. Murphy wanted to know.

Harry looked down at her friends. “Susan, either we take the kids or you’ll have to run me back home.”

“I’ll run you home. Really isn’t proper to take the animals to the Craycrofts’, I guess.”

“You’re right.” Harry shooed Mrs. Murphy and Tucker out the post office door and locked it behind her.

Pewter, lounging in the front window of Market’s store, yawned and then preened when she saw Mrs. Murphy. Pewter’s countenance radiated satisfaction, importance, and power, however momentary.

Mrs. Murphy seethed. “A fat gray Buddha, that’s what she thinks she is.”

Tucker said, “You like her despite herself.”

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker glanced at each other during the ride home.

Tucker rolled her eyes. “Humans are crazy. Humans and ants—kill their own kind.”

“I’ve had a few thoughts along those lines myself,” Mrs. Murphy replied.

“You have not. Stop being cynical. It isn’t sophisticated. You’ll never be sophisticated, Mrs. Murphy. You came from Sally Mead’s SPCA.”

“You can shut up any time now, Tucker. Don’t take your bad mood out on me just because we have to go home.”

Once in the house, Mrs. Murphy hopped on a chair to watch Susan and Harry drive off.

“You know what I found out at Pewter’s?” Tucker asked.

“No.”

“That it smelled like an amphibian over behind the cement mixer.”

“How would she know? She wasn’t there.”

“Ozzie was,” Tucker matter-of-factly replied.

“When did you find this out?” the cat demanded.

“When I went to the bathroom. I thought I’d go over and chat with Pewter to try and smooth over your damage.” Tucker enjoyed chiding Mrs. Murphy. “Anyway, when Bob Berryman stopped by the store, Ozzie told me everything. Said it smelled like a big turtle.”

“That makes no sense,” Mrs. Murphy paced on the back of the chair. “And just what was Ozzie doing over there, anyway?”

“Didn’t say. You know, Murph, a tortoise scent is very strong.”

Not to people. The tiger thought.

“Ozzie said Sheriff Rick Shaw and the others walked over the scent many times. Didn’t wrinkle their noses. How they can miss that smell I’ll never know. It’s dark and nutty. I’d like to go over there and have a sniff myself.” Tucker began trotting up and down the living room rug.

“It probably has nothing to do with this . . . mess.” Mrs. Murphy thought a minute. “But on the other hand . . .”

“Want to go?” Tucker wagged her tail.

“Let’s go tonight when Harry’s asleep.” Mrs. Murphy was excited. “If there’s a trace, we’ll pick it up. We can’t leave now. Harry’s upset. If she comes back from the Craycrofts’ and finds us gone it will make her even more upset.”

“You’re right,” the dog concurred. “Let’s wait until she’s asleep.”

Cars lined the long driveway into the imposing Craycroft residence.

Josiah and Ned parked people’s cars for them. Susan and Harry pulled up.

Josiah opened Harry’s door. “Hello, Harry. Terrible, terrible,” was all the normally garrulous fellow could say.

When Harry walked into the house she found enough food to feed the Sandanistas, and was glad she’d brought flowers for the table. She was not glad to see Fair but damned if she’d show it.

BoomBoom sat in a huge damask wing chair by the fireplace. Drained and drawn, she was still beautiful, made more so, perhaps, by her distress.

Harry and BoomBoom, two years apart in school, were never close but they got along—until last year’s Hunt Club ball. Harry put it out of her mind. She had heard the gossip that BoomBoom wanted to catch Fair, and the reverse. Were men rabbits? Did you snare them? Harry never could figure out the imagery many women used in discussing the opposite sex. She didn’t treat her men friends any differently than her women friends and Susan swore that was the source of her marital difficulties. Harry would rather be a divorcée than a liar and that settled that.

BoomBoom raised her eyes from Big Marilyn Sanburne, who was sitting next to her, dispensing shallow compassion. Her eyelids flickered for a split second and then she composed herself and held out her hand to Fair, who had just walked up to her.

“I’m so sorry, BoomBoom. I . . . I don’t know what to say.” Fair stumbled verbally.

“You never liked him anyway.” BoomBoom astonished the room, which was filled with most of Crozet.

Fair, befuddled, squeezed her hand, then released it. “I did like him. We had our differences but I did like him.”

BoomBoom accepted this and said, “It was correct of you to come. Thank you.” Not kind, not good, but correct.

Harry received better treatment. After extending her sympathy she went over to the bar for a ginger ale and to get away from Fair. What rotten timing that they had arrived so close together. The heat and the smoldering emotion made her mouth dry. Little Marilyn Sanburne poured a drink for her.

“Thanks, Marilyn.”

“This is too awful for words.”

Harry, ungenerously, thought that it might be too awful for a number of reasons, one being that Little Marilyn’s impending wedding was eclipsed, temporarily at least, by this event. Little Marilyn, not having been in the limelight, just might learn to like it. Her marriage was the one occasion when her mother wouldn’t be the star, or so she thought.

“Yes, it is.”

“Mother’s wretched.” Little Marilyn sipped a stiff shot of Johnny Walker Black.

Mim’s impeccable profile betrayed no outward sign of wretchedness, Harry thought to herself. “I’m sorry,” she said to Little Marilyn.

Jim Sanburne blew into the living room. Mim joined him as he walked over to BoomBoom, whispered in her ear, and patted her hand.

Difficult as it was, he toned down his volume level. When finished with BoomBoom he hauled his huge frame around the room. Working a room, second nature to Jim, never came easily to his wife. Mim expected the rabble to pay court to her. It galled her that her husband sought out commoners. Commoners do vote, though, and Jim liked getting reelected. Being mayor was like a toy to him, a relaxation from the toils of expanding his considerable wealth. Since God rewarded Mim and Jim with money, it seemed to her that lower life forms should realize the Sanburnes were superior and vote accordingly.

Perhaps it was to Marilyn’s credit that she grasped the fact that Crozet did not practice equality . . . but then, what community did? For Mim, money and social position meant power. That was all that mattered. Jim, absurdly, wanted people to like him, people who were not listed in the Social Register, people who didn’t even know what it was, God forbid.

A tight smile split her face. An outsider like Maude Bly Modena would mistake that for concern for Kelly Craycroft’s family. An insider knew Mim’s major portion of sympathy was reserved for herself, for the trial of being married to a super-rich vulgarian.

Harry didn’t know what possessed her. Maybe it was the suppressed suffering in the Craycroft house, or the sight of Mim grimly doing her duty. Wouldn’t everyone be better off if they bellowed fury at God and tore their hair? This containment oddly frightened her. At any rate she stared Little Marilyn right in those deep blue eyes and said, “Marilyn, does Stafford know you’re getting married?”

Little Marilyn, thrown, stuttered, “No.”

“We aren’t close, Marilyn. But if I never do anything else for you in your life let me do this one thing: Ask your brother to your wedding. You love him and he loves you.” Harry put down her ginger ale and left.

Little Marilyn Sanburne, face burning, said nothing, then quickly sought out her mother and father.

Bob Berryman’s hand rested on the doorknob of Maude’s shop. She had turned the lights out. No one could see them, or so they thought.

“Does she suspect?” Maude whispered.

“No,” Berryman told her to reassure her. “No one suspects anything.”

He quietly slipped out the back door, keeping to the deep shadows. He had parked his truck blocks away.

Pewter, out for a midnight stroll, observed his exit. She made a mental note of it and of the fact that Maude waited a few moments before going upstairs to her apartment over the shop. The lights clicked on, giving Pewter a tantalizing view of the bats darting in and out of the high trees near Maude’s window.

That night Mrs. Murphy and Tucker tried to distract Harry from her low mood. One of their favorite tricks was the Plains Indian game. Mrs. Murphy would lie on her back, reach around Tucker, and hang on like an Indian under a pony. Tucker would yell, “Yi, yi, yi,” as though she were scared, then try to dump her passenger. Harry laughed when they did this. Tonight she just smiled.

The dog and cat followed her to bed and when they were sure she was sound asleep they bolted out the back door, which contained an animal door that opened into a dog run. Mrs. Murphy knew how to throw the latch, though, and the two of them loped across the meadows, fresh-smelling with new-mown hay.

There wasn’t a car on the road.

About half a mile from the concrete plant Mrs. Murphy spied glittering eyes in the brush. “Coon up ahead.”

“Think he’ll fight?” Tucker stopped for a minute.

“If we have to make a detour, we might not get back by morning.”

Tucker called out, “We won’t chase you. We’re on our way to the concrete plant.”

“The hell you won’t,” the raccoon snarled.

“Honest, we won’t.” Mrs. Murphy sounded more convincing than Tucker.

“Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. Give me a head start. I might believe you then.” With that the wily animal disappeared into the bushes.

“Let’s go,” Mrs. Murphy said.

“And let’s hope he keeps his promise. I’m not up for a fight with one of those guys tonight.”

The raccoon kept his word, didn’t jump out at them, and they arrived at the plant within fifteen minutes.

The dew held what scent there was on the ground. Much had evaporated. Gasoline fumes and rock dust pervaded. Human smells were everywhere, as was the scent of wet concrete and stale blood. Tucker, nose to the ground, kept at it. Mrs. Murphy checked out the office building. She couldn’t get in. No windows were open; there were no holes in the foundation. She grumbled.

A tang exploded in Tucker’s nostrils. “Here!”

Mrs. Murphy raced over and put her nose to the ground. “Where’s it go?”

“It doesn’t.” Tucker couldn’t fathom this. “It’s just a whiff, like a little dot. No line. Like something spilled.”

“It does smell like a turtle.” The cat scratched behind her ears.

“Kinda.”

“I’ve never smelled anything quite like it—have you?”

“Never.”

5

Even Mrs. George Hogendobber’s impassioned monologue on the evils of this world failed to rouse Mrs. Murphy and Tucker. Before Mrs. Hogendobber had both feet through the front door she had declared that Adam fell from grace over the apple, then man broke the covenant with God, a flood cleansed us by killing everyone but Noah and family, Moses couldn’t prevent his flock from worshipping the golden calf, and Jezebel was on every street corner, to say nothing of record covers. These pronouncements were not necessarily in historical order but there was a clear thread woven throughout: We are by nature sinful and unclean. This, naturally, led to Kelly Craycroft’s death. Mrs. H. sidestepped revealing exactly how Hebrew history as set down in the Old Testament culminated in the extinction of a paving contractor.

Harry figured if Mrs. Hogendobber could live with her logical lacunae, so could she.

Tossing her junk mail in the wastebasket, Mrs. Hogendobber spoke exhaustingly of Holofernes and Judith. Before reaching their gruesome biblical conclusion she paused, a rarity in itself, walked over to the counter, and glanced over. “Where are the animals?”

“Out cold. Lazy things,” Harry answered. “In fact, they were so sluggish this morning that I drove them to work.”

“You spoil those creatures, Harry, and you need a new truck.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Josiah entered as Harry uttered the word guilty.

“I knew it was you all along.” He pointed at Harry. The soft pink of his Ralph Lauren polo shirt accented his tan.

“You shouldn’t joke about a thing like that.” Mrs. Hogendobber’s nostrils flared.

“Oh, come now, Mrs. Hogendobber, I’m not joking about the Craycroft murder. You’re oversensitive. We all are. It’s been a terrible shock.”

“Indeed it has. Indeed it has. Put not thy faith in worldly things, Mr. DeWitt.”

Josiah beamed at her. “I’m afraid I do, ma’am. In a world of impermanence I take the best impermanence I can find.”

A swirl of color rose on Mrs. Hogendobber’s beautifully preserved cheeks. “You’re witty and sought-after and too clever by half. People like you come to a bad end.”

“Perhaps, but think of the fun I’ll have getting there, and I really can’t see that you’re having any fun at all.”

“I will not stand here and be insulted.” Mrs. Hogendobber’s color glowed crimson.

“Oh, come on, Mrs. H., you don’t walk on water,” Josiah coolly replied.

“Exactly! I can’t swim.” Her color deepened. She felt the insult keenly; she would never think of comparing herself to Jesus. She turned to Harry. “Good day, Harry.” With forced dignity, Mrs. Hogendobber left the post office.

“Good day, Mrs. Hogendobber.” Harry turned to the howling Josiah. “She has absolutely no sense of humor and you’re too hard on her. She’s quite upset. What seems a trifle to you is major to her.”

“Oh, hell, Harry, she bores you every bit as much as she bores me. Truth?”

Harry wasn’t looking for an argument. She was conversant with Mrs. Hogendobber’s faults and the woman did bore her to tears, but Mrs. Hogendobber was fundamentally good. You couldn’t say that about everybody.

“Josiah, her values are spiritual and yours aren’t. She’s overbearing and narrow-minded about religion but if I were sick and called her at three in the morning, she’d be there.”

“Well”—his color was brighter now, too—“I hope you know I would come over too. You only have to ask. I value you highly, Harry.”

“Thank you, Josiah.” Harry wondered if he valued her at all.

“Did I tell you I am to be Mrs. Sanburne’s walker for the funeral? It’s not Newport but it’s just as important.”

Josiah often escorted Mim. They had their spats but Mim was not a woman to attend social gatherings without clinging to the arm of a male escort, and Jim would be in Richmond on the day of Kelly’s funeral. Josiah adored escorting Mim; unlike Jim, he placed great store on status, and like Mim he needed much external proof of that status. They’d jet to parties in New York, Palm Beach, wherever the rich congregated. Mim and Josiah thought nothing of a weekend in London or Vienna if the guest list was right. What bored Jim about his wife thrilled Josiah.

“I dread the funeral.” Harry did, too.

“Harry, try Ajax.”

“What?”

Josiah pointed to her hands, still discolored from cleaning the stamps two days ago.

Harry held her hands up. She’d forgotten about it. Yesterday seemed years away. “Oh.”

“If Ajax fails, try sulfuric acid.”

“Then I won’t have any hands at all.”

“I’m teasing you.”

“I know, but I have a sense of humor.”

“Darn good one too.”

The late afternoon sun slanted across the crepe myrtle behind the post office. Mrs. Murphy stopped to admire the deep-pink blossoms glowing in the hazy light. Harry locked the door as Pewter stuck her nose out from behind Market’s store. Courtney could be heard calling her from inside.

“Where are you going?” the large cat wanted to know.

“Maude’s,” came Tucker’s jaunty reply.

Pewter, dying to confide in someone, even a dog, that she had seen Bob Berryman sneak out of Maude’s shop, switched her tail. Mrs. Murphy was such a bitch. Why give her the advantage of hot news, or at least warm news? She decided to drop a hint like a leaf of fragrant catnip. “Maude’s not telling all she knows.”

Mrs. Murphy’s head snapped around. “What do you mean?”

“Oh . . . nothing.” Pewter’s delicious moment of torment was cut short by the appearance of Courtney Shiflett.

“There you are. You come inside.” She scooped up the cat and took her back into the air-conditioned store.

Harry waved at Courtney and continued on her way to Maude Bly Modena’s. She thought about going in the back door but decided to go through the front. That would give her the opportunity to see if anything new was in the window. Beautiful baskets spilling flowers covered the lorry in the front yard. Colorful cartons full of seed packets were in the window. Maude advertised that packing need not be boring and anything that would hold or wrap a present was her domain. She carried a good stock of greeting cards too.

Upon seeing Harry through the window, Maude waved her inside. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker trotted into the store.

“Harry, what can I do for you?”

“Well, I was cutting up the newspaper to send Lindsay a clipping about Kelly’s death and then I decided to send her a CARE package.”

“Where is she?”

“Heading toward Italy. I’ve got an address for her.”

Mrs. Murphy nestled into a basket filled with crinkly paper. Tucker stuck her nose into the basket. Crinkly sounds pleased the cat, but Tucker thought, Give me a good bone, any day. She nudged Mrs. Murphy.

“Tucker, this is my basket.”

“I know. What do you think Pewter meant?”

“A bid for attention. She wanted me to beg her for news. And I’m glad that I didn’t.”

As the two animals were discussing the finer points of Pewter’s personality, Harry and Maude had embarked on serious girl talk about divorce, a subject known to Maude, who endured one before moving to Crozet.

“It’s a roller coaster.” Maude sighed.

“Well, this would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to see him all the time and if he’d take a little responsibility for what happened.”

“Don’t expect the crisis to change him, Harry. You may be changing. I think I can say that you are, even though we haven’t known each other since B.C. But your growth isn’t his growth. Anyway, my experience with men is that they’ll do anything to avoid emotional growth, avoid looking deep inside. That’s what mistresses, booze, and Porsches are all about.” Maude removed her bright red-rimmed glasses and smiled.

“Hey, I don’t know. This is all new to me.” Harry sat down, suddenly tired.

“Divorce is a process of detachment, most especially detachment from his ability to affect you.”

“He sure as hell can affect me when he doesn’t send the check.”

Maude’s eyes rolled. “Playing that game, is he? Probably trying to weaken you or scare you so you’ll accept less come judgment day. My ex tried it, too. I suppose they all do or their lawyers talk them into it and then when they have a moment to reflect on what a cheap shot it is—if they do—they can wring their hands and say, ‘It wasn’t my idea. My lawyer made me do it.’ You hang tough, kiddo.”

“Yeah.” Harry would, too. “Not to change the subject, but are you still jogging along the C and O Railroad track? In this heat?”

“Sure. I try and go out at sunrise. It really is beastly hot. I passed Jim this morning.”

“Jogging?” Harry was incredulous.

“No, I passed him as I ran back into town. He was out with the sheriff. Horrible as Kelly’s death was, I do think Jim is getting some kind of thrill out of it.”

“I doubt this town has had much excitement since Crozet dug the tunnels.”

“Huh?” Maude’s eyes brightened.

“When Claudius Crozet finished the last tunnel through the Blue Ridge. Well, actually, the town was named for him after that. Just a figure of speech. You have to realize that those of us who went to grade school here learned about Claudius Crozet.”

“Oh. That and Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, I guess. Virginia’s glories seem to be in the past, as opposed to the present.”

“I guess so. Well, let me take this big Jiffy bag and some colored paper and get out of your hair and get Mrs. Murphy out of your best basket.”

“I love a good chat. How about some tea?”

“No thanks.”

“Little Marilyn was in today, all atwitter. She needed tiny baskets for her mother’s yacht party.” Maude burst out laughing and so did Harry.

Big Marilyn’s yacht was a pontoon boat that floated on the ten-acre lake behind the Sanburne mansion. She adored cruising around the lake and she especially liked terrorizing her neighbors on the other side. Between her pontoon boat and her bridge night with the girls, Mim kept herself emotionally afloat, forgive the pun.

She’d also gone quite wild when she redecorated the house for the umpteenth time and made over the bar so that it resembled a ship. There were little portholes behind the bar. Life preservers and colorful pennants graced the walls, as well as oars, life vests, and very large saltwater fish. Mim never caught a catfish, much less a sailfish, but she commissioned her decorators to find her imposing fish. Indeed they did. The first time Mrs. Murphy beheld the stuffed trophies she swooned. The idea of a fish that big was too good to be true.

Mim also had DRYDOCK painted over the bar. The big golden letters shone with dock lights she had cleverly installed. Throw a few fishnets around, a bell, and a buoy, and the bar was complete. Well, it was really complete when Mim inaugurated it with a slosh of martinis for her bridge girls, the only other three women in Albemarle County she remotely considered her social equals. She’d even had matchbooks and little napkins made up with DRYDOCK printed on them, and she was hugely pleased when the girls noticed them as they smacked their martini glasses onto the polished bar.

Mim enjoyed more success in getting the girls to the bar than she did in getting them to her pontoon boat, which also had gold letters painted along the side: Mim’s Vim. With the big wedding coming up, Mim knew she had the bargaining card to get her bridge buddies on the boat, where she could at last impress them with her abilities as captain. It wasn’t satisfying to do something unless people saw you do it. If the bridge girls wanted good seats at the wedding, they would board Mim’s Vim. Mim could barely wait.

Little Marilyn could happily wait, but being the dutiful drudge that she was, she appeared in Maude’s shop to buy baskets as favors, baskets that would be filled with nautical party favors for the girls.

“Have you ever seen Mim piloting her yacht?” Harry howled.

“That captain’s cap, it’s too much.” Maude was doubled over just thinking about it.

“Yeah, it’s the only time she removes her tiara.”

“Tiara?”

Harry giggled. “Sure, the Queen of Crozet.”

“You are wicked.” Maude wiped her eyes, tearing from laughter.

“If you’d grown up with these nitwits, you’d be wicked too. Oh, well, as my mother used to say, ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.’ Since I know Mim, I know what to expect.”

Maude’s voice dropped. “I wonder. I wonder now if any of us know what to expect?”

6

The coroner’s report lay opened on Rick Shaw’s desk. The peculiarity in Kelly’s body was a series of scars on the arteries into his heart. These indicated tiny heart attacks. Kelly, fit and forty, wasn’t too young for heart attacks, but these would have been so small he might not have noticed when they occurred.

Rick reread the page. The skull, pulverized, yielded little. If there had been a bullet wound there’d be no trace of it. When the men combed through the mixer no bullets were found.

Much of the stomach was intact. Apart from a Big Mac, that yielded nothing.

There was a trace of cyanide in the hair samples. Well, that was what killed him but why would the killer mutilate the body? Finding the means of death only provoked more questions.

Rick smacked together the folder. This was not an accidental death but he didn’t want to report it as a murder—not yet. His gut feeling was that whoever killed Kelly was smart—smart and extremely cool-headed.

Cynthia Cooper knocked.

“Come in.”

“What do you think?”

“I’m playing my cards close to my chest for a bit.” Rick slapped the report. He reached for a cigarette but stopped. Quitting was hell. “You got anything?”

“Everybody checks out. Marie Williams was right where she said she was on Monday night, and so was BoomBoom, if we can believe her servants. BoomBoom said she thought her husband was out of town on business and she was waiting for him to call. Maybe, maybe not. But was she alone? Fair Haristeen said he was operating late that evening, solo. Everyone else seems to have some kind of alibi.”

“Funeral’s tomorrow.”

“The coroner was mighty quick about it.”

“Powerful man. If the family wants the body buried by tomorrow, he’ll get those tissue samples in a hurry. You don’t rile the Craycrofts.”

“Somebody did.”

7

BoomBoom held together throughout the service at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church at the crossroads called Ivy. An exquisite veil covered her equally exquisite features.

Harry, Susan, and Ned discreetly sat in a middle pew. Fair sat on the other side of the church, in the middle. Josiah and Mim, both elegantly dressed in black, sat near the pulpit. Bob Berryman and his wife, Linda, were also in a middle pew. Old Larry Johnson, acting as an usher, spared Maude Bly Modena a social gaffe by keeping her from marching down the center aisle, which she was fixing to do. He firmly grabbed her by the elbow and guided her toward a rearward pew. Maude, a Crozet resident for five years, didn’t merit a forward pew, but Maude was a Yankee and often missed such subtleties. Market and Courtney Shiflett were in back, as were Clai Cordle and Diana Farrell of the Rescue Squad.

The church was covered in flowers, signifying the hope of rebirth through Christ. Those who could, also gave donations to the Heart Fund. Rick had to tell BoomBoom about the tiny scars on the arteries and she chose to believe her husband had suffered a heart attack while inspecting equipment and fallen in. How the mixer could have been turned on was of no interest to her, not today anyway. She could absorb only so much. What she would do when she could really absorb events was anybody’s guess. Better to bleed from the throat than to cross BoomBoom Craycroft.

8

Life must go on.

Josiah showed up at the post office with a gentleman from Atlanta who’d flown up to buy a pristine Louis XV bombé cabinet. Josiah liked to bring his customers down to the post office and then over to Shiflett’s Market. Market smiled and Harry smiled. Customers exclaimed over the cat and dog in the post office and then Josiah would drive them back to his house, extolling the delights of small-town life, where everyone was a character. Why anyone would believe that human emotions were less complex in a small town than in a big city escaped Harry but urban dwellers seemed to buy it. This Atlanta fellow had “sucker” emblazoned across his forehead.

Rob came back at eleven. He’d forgotten a bag in the back of the mail truck and if she wouldn’t tell, neither would he.

Harry sat down to sort the mail and read the postcards. Courtney Shiflett received one from one of her camp buddies who signed her name with a smiling face instead of a dot over the “i” in “Lisa.” Lindsay Astrove was at Lake Geneva. The postcard, again brief, said that Switzerland, crammed with Americans, would be much nicer without them.

The mail was thin on postcards today.

Mim Sanburne marched in. Mrs. Murphy, playing with a rubber band on the counter, stopped. When Harry saw the look on Mim’s face she stopped sorting the mail.

“Harry, I have a bone to pick with you and I didn’t think that the funeral was the place to do it. You have no business whatsoever telling Little Marilyn whom to invite to her wedding. No business at all!”

Mim must have thought that Harry would bow down and say “Yes, Mistress.” This didn’t happen.

Harry steeled herself. “Under the First Amendment, I can say anything to anybody. I had something I wanted to say to your daughter and I did.”

“You’ve upset her!”

“No, I’ve upset you. If she’s upset she can come in here and tell me herself.”

Suprised that Harry wasn’t subservient, Big Marilyn switched gears. “I happen to know that you read postcards. That’s a violation, you know, and if it continues I shall tell the postmaster at the head office on Seminole Trail. Have I made myself clear?”

“Quite.” Harry compressed her lips.

Mim glided out, satisfied that she’d stung Harry. The satisfaction wouldn’t last long, because the specter of her son would come back to haunt her. If Harry was brazen enough to speak to Little Marilyn, plenty of others were speaking about it too.

Harry turned the duffel bag upside down. One lone postcard slipped out. Defiantly she read it: “Wish you were here,” written in computer script. She flipped it over and beheld a gorgeous photograph, misty and evocative, of the angel in an Asheville, North Carolina, cemetery. She turned it over and read the fine print. This was the angel that inspired Thomas Wolfe when he wrote Look Homeward, Angel.

She slipped it in Maude Bly Modena’s box and didn’t give it a second thought.

9

A pensive Pharamond Haristeen drove his truck back from Charlottesville. Seeing BoomBoom had rattled him. He couldn’t decide if she was truly sorry that Kelly was dead. The zing had fled that marriage years ago.

No armor existed against her beauty. No armor existed against her icy blasts, either. Why wouldn’t a woman like BoomBoom be sensible like Harry? Why couldn’t a woman like Harry be electrifying like BoomBoom?

As far as Fair was concerned, Harry was sensible until it came to the divorce. She threw him out. Why should he pay support until the settlement was final?

It came as a profound shock to Fair when Harry handed him his hat. His vanity suffered more than his heart but Fair seized the opportunity to appear the injured party. The elderly widowed women in Crozet were only too happy to side with him, as were single women in general. He moped about and the flood of dinner invitations immediately followed. For the first time in his life, Fair was the center of attention. He rather liked it.

Deep in his heart he knew his marriage wasn’t working. If he cared to look inward he would discover he was fifty percent responsible for the failure. Fair had no intention of looking inward, a quality that doomed his marriage and would undoubtedly doom future relationships as well.

Fair operated on the principle “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but emotional relationships weren’t machines. Emotional relationships didn’t lend themselves to scientific analysis, a fact troubling to his scientifically trained mind. Women didn’t lend themselves to scientific analysis.

Women were too damned much trouble, and Fair determined to live alone for the rest of his days. The fact that he was a healthy thirty-four did not deter him in this decision.

He passed Rob Collier on 240 heading east. They waved to each other.

If the sight of BoomBoom at her husband’s funeral wasn’t enough to unnerve Fair, Rick Shaw had zeroed in on him at the clinic, asking questions. Was he under suspicion? Just because two friends occasionally have a strained relationship doesn’t mean that one will kill the other. He said that to Rick, and the sheriff replied with “People have killed over less.” If that was so, then the world was totally insane. Even if it wasn’t, it felt like it today.

Fair pulled up behind the post office. Little Tee Tucker stood on her hind legs, nose to the glass, when she heard his truck. He walked over to Market Shiflett’s store for a Coca-Cola first. The blistering heat parched his throat, and castrating colts added to the discomfort somehow.

“Hello, Fair.” Courtney’s fresh face beamed.

“How are you?”

“I’m fine. What about you?”

“Hot. How about a Co-Cola?”

She reached into the old red bin, the kind of soft-drink refrigerator used at the time of World War II, and brought out a cold bottle. “Here, unless you want a bigger one.”

“I’ll take that and I’ll buy a six-pack, too, because I am forever drinking Harry’s sodas. Where’s your dad?”

“The sheriff came by and Dad went off with him.”

Fair smirked. “A new broom sweeps the place clean.”

“Sir?” Courtney didn’t understand.

“New sheriff, new anything. When someone takes over a job they have an excess of enthusiasm. This is Rick’s first murder case since he was elected sheriff, so he’s just busting his . . . I mean, he’s anxious to find the killer.”

“Well, I hope he does.”

“Me too. Say, is it true that you have a crush on Dan Tucker?” Fair’s eyes crinkled. How he remembered this age.

Courtney replied quite seriously, “I wouldn’t have Dan Tucker if he was the last man on earth.”

“Is that so? He must be just awful.” Fair picked up his Cokes and left. Pewter scooted out of the market with him.

Tucker ran around in circles when Fair stepped into the post office with Pewter on his heels. Maude Bly Modena rummaged around in her box, while Harry was in the back.

“Hi, Maudie.”

“Hi, Fair.” Maude thought Fair a divine-looking man. Most women did.

“Harry!”

“What?” The voice filtered out from the back door.

“I brought you some Cokes.”

“Three hundred thirty-three”—the door opened—“because that’s what you owe me.” Harry appreciated his gesture more than she showed.

Fair shoved the six-pack across the counter.

Pewter hollered, “Mrs. Murphy, where are you?”

Tucker walked over and touched noses with Pewter, who liked dogs very much.

“I’m counting rubber bands. What do you want?” Mrs. Murphy replied.

Harry grabbed the Cokes off the counter. “Mrs. Murphy, what have you done?”

“I haven’t done anything,” the cat protested.

Harry appealed to Fair. “You’re a veterinarian. You explain this.” She pointed to the rubber bands tossed about the floor.

Maude leaned over the counter. “Isn’t that cute? They get into everything. My mother once had a calico that played with toilet paper. She’d grab the end of the roll and run through the house with it.”

“That’s nothing.” Pewter one-upped her: “Cazenovia, the cat at Saint Paul’s Church, eats communion wafers.”

“Pewter wants on the counter.” Fair thought the meow meant that. He lifted her onto the counter, where she rolled on her back and also rolled her eyes.

The humans thought this was adorable and fussed over her. Mrs. Murphy, boiling with disgust, jumped onto the counter and spat in Pewter’s face.

“Jealousy’s the same in any language.” Fair laughed and continued to pet Pewter, who had no intention of relinquishing center stage.

Tucker moaned on the floor. “I can’t see anything down here.”

Mrs. Murphy walked to the edge of the counter. “What are you good for, Tee Tucker, with those short stubby legs?”

“I can dig up anything, even a badger.” Tucker smiled.

“We don’t have any badgers.” Pewter now rolled from side to side and purred so loudly the deaf could appreciate her vocal abilities. The humans were further enchanted.

“Don’t push your luck, Pewter,” Tucker warned. “Just because you’ve got the big head over knowing what happened before we did doesn’t mean you can come in here and make fun of me.”

“This is the most affectionate cat I’ve ever seen.” Maude tickled Pewter’s chin.

“She’s also the fattest cat you’ve ever seen,” Mrs. Murphy growled.

“Don’t be ugly,” Harry warned the tiger.

“Don’t be ugly.” Pewter mocked the human voice.

Mrs. Murphy paced the counter. A mail bin on casters rested seven feet from the counter top. She gathered herself and arched off the counter, smack into the middle of the mail bin, sending it rolling across the floor.

Maude squealed with delight and Fair clapped his hands together like a boy.

“She does that all the time. Watch.” Harry trotted up behind the now-slowing cart and pushed Mrs. Murphy around the back of the post office. She made choo-choo sounds when she did it. Mrs. Murphy popped her head over the side, eyes big as eight balls, tail swishing.

“Now this is fun!” the cat declared.

Pewter, still being petted by Maude, was soured by Mrs. Murphy’s audacious behavior. She put her head on the counter and closed her eyes. Mrs. Murphy might be bold as brass but at least Pewter behaved like a lady.

Maude leafed through her mail as she rubbed Pewter’s ears. “I hate that!”

“Another bill? Or how about those appeals for money in envelopes that look like old Western Union telegrams? I really hate that.” Harry continued to push Mrs. Murphy around.

“No.” Maude shoved the postcard over to Fair, who read it and shrugged his shoulders. “What I hate is people who send postcards or letters and don’t sign their names. For instance, I must know fourteen Carols and when I get a letter from one of them, if the return address isn’t on the outside I haven’t a clue. Not a clue. Every Carol I know has two-point-two children, drives a station wagon, and sends out Christmas cards with pictures of the family. The message usually reads ‘Season’s Greetings’ in computer script, and little holly berries are entwined around the message. What’s bizarre is that their families all look the same. Maybe there’s one Carol married to fourteen men.” She laughed.

Harry laughed with her and pretended to look at the postcard for the first time while she rocked Mrs. Murphy back and forth in the mail bin and the cat flopped on her back to play with her tail. Mrs. Murphy was putting on quite a show, doing what she accused Pewter of doing: wanting to be the center of attention.

Harry said, “Maybe they were in a hurry.”

“Who do you know going to North Carolina?” Fair asked the logical question.

“Does anyone want to go to North Carolina?” Maude’s voice dropped on “want.”

“No,” Harry said.

“Oh, North Carolina’s all right.” Fair finished his Coke. “It’s just that they’ve got one foot in the nineteenth century and one in the twenty-first and nothing in between.”

“You do have to give them credit for the way they’ve attracted clean industry.” Maude thought about it. “The state of Virginia had that chance. You blew it about ten years ago, you know?”

“We know.” Fair and Harry spoke in unison.

“I was reading about Claudius Crozet’s struggle with the state of Virginia to finance railroads. He foresaw this at the end of the 1820’s, before anything was happening with rail travel. He said Virginians should commit everything they had to this new form of travel. Instead they batted his ideas down and rewarded him with a pay cut. Naturally, he left, and you know what else? The state didn’t do a thing about it until 1850! By that time New York State, which had thrown its weight behind railroads, had become the commercial center of the East Coast. If you think where Virginia is placed on the East Coast, we’re the state that should have become the powerful one.”

“I never knew that.” Harry liked history.

“If there’re any progressive projects, whether commercial or intellectual, you can depend on Virginia’s legislature to vote ’em down.” Maude shook her head. “It’s as if the legislature doesn’t want to take any chances at all. Vanilla pudding.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Fair agreed with her. “But on the other hand, we don’t have the problems of those places that are progressive. Our crime rate is low except for Richmond. We’ve got full employment here in the country and we live a good life. We don’t get rich quick but we keep what we’ve got. Maybe it isn’t so bad. Anyway, you moved here, didn’t you?”

Maude considered this. “Touché. But sometimes, Fair, it gets to me that this state is so backward. When North Carolina outsmarts us and enjoys the cornucopia, what can you think?”

“Where’d you learn about railroads?”

“Library. There’s a book, a long monograph really, on Crozet’s life. Not having the benefit of being educated in Crozet, I figured I’d better catch up, so to speak. Pity the railroad doesn’t stop here anymore. Passenger service stopped in 1975.”

“Occasionally it does. If you call up the president of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and request a special stop—as a passenger and descendent of Claudius Crozet—they’re supposed to stop for you right next to the post office here at the old depot.”

“Has anyone tried it lately?” Maude was incredulous.

“Mim Sanburne last year. They stopped.” Fair smiled.

“Think I’ll try it,” Maude said. “I’d better get back to my shop. Keep thy shop and thy shop keeps thee. ’Bye.”

Pewter lolled on the counter as Harry put the Cokes in the small refrigerator in the back. Mrs. Murphy stayed in the mail bin hoping for another ride.

“Are these a peace offering?” Harry shut the refrigerator door.

“I don’t know.” And Fair didn’t. He’d gotten in the habit, over the years, of picking up Cokes for Harry. “Look, Harry, can’t we have a civil divorce?”

“Everything is civil until it gets down to money.”

“You hired Ned Tucker first. Once lawyers get into it, everything turns to shit.”

“In 1658 the Virginia legislature passed a law expelling all lawyers from the colony.” Harry folded her arms across her chest.

“Only wise decision they ever made.” Fair leaned against the counter.

“Well, they rescinded it in 1680.” Harry breathed in. “Fair, divorce is a legal process. I had to hire a lawyer. Ned’s an old friend.”

“Hey, he was my friend too. Couldn’t you have brought in a neutral party?”

“This is Crozet. There are no neutral parties.”

“Well, I got a Richmond lawyer.”

“You can afford Richmond prices.”

“Don’t start with money, goddammit.” Fair sounded weary. “Divorce is the only human tragedy that reduces to money.”

“It’s not a tragedy. It’s a process.” Harry, at this point, would be bound to contradict or correct him. She half knew she was doing it but couldn’t stop.

“It’s ten years of my life, out the window.”

“Not quite ten.”

“Dammit, Harry, the point is, this isn’t easy—and it wasn’t my idea.”

“Oh, don’t pull the wounded dove with me. You were no happier in this marriage than I was!”

“But I thought everything was fine.”

“As long as you got fed and fucked, you thought everything was fine!” Harry’s voice sank lower. “Our house was a hotel to you. My God, if you ran the vacuum cleaner, angels would sing in the sky.”

“We didn’t have money for a maid,” he growled.

“So it was me. Why is your time more valuable than my time? Jesus Christ, I even bought you your clothes, your jockey shorts.” For some reason this was significant to Harry.

Fair, quiet for a moment to keep from losing his temper, said, “I make more money. If I had to be out on call, well, that’s the way it had to be.”

“You know, I don’t even care anymore.” Harry unfolded her arms and took a step toward him. “What I want to know is, were you, are you, sleeping with BoomBoom Craycroft?”

“No!” Fair looked wounded. “I told you before. I was drunk at the party. I—okay, I behaved as less than a gentleman . . . but that was a year ago.”

“I know about that. I was there, remember? I’m asking about now, Fair.”

He blinked, steadied his gaze. “No.”

As the humans recriminated, Tucker, tired of being on the floor, out of the cat action, said, “Pewter, we went over to Kelly Craycroft’s concrete plant.”

Alert, Pewter sat up. “Why?”

“Wanted to sniff for ourselves.”

“How can Mrs. Murphy smell anything? She’s always got her nose up in the air.”

“Shut up.” Mrs. Murphy stuck her head over the mail bin.

“How uncouth.” Pewter pulled back her whiskers.

“I was talking to Tucker, but you can shut up too. I’ll kill two birds with one stone.”

“Why were you telling me to shut up? I didn’t do anything.” Tucker was hurt.

“I’ll tell you later,” the tiger cat replied.

“It’s no secret. Ozzie’s probably blabbed it over three counties by now—ours, Orange, and Nelson. Maybe the whole state of Virginia knows, since Bob Berryman delivers those stock trailers everywhere and Ozzie goes with him,” Tucker yipped.

“Nine states.” Mrs. Murphy knew Tucker was going to tell.

“Tell me. What did Ozzie blab and why did you go to the concrete plant?” Pewter’s pupils enlarged.

“Ozzie said there was a funny smell. And there was.” Tucker liked this turnabout.

Pewter scoffed, “Of course, there was a funny smell, Tucker. A man was ground into hamburger meat and the day sweltered at ninety-seven degrees. Even humans can smell that.”

“It wasn’t that.” Mrs. Murphy crawled out of the mail bin, disappointed that Harry had lost interest and was giving her full attention to Fair.

“Rescue Squad smells.” Pewter was fishing.

“Smelled like a turtle.”

“What?” The fat cat swept her whiskers forward.

Mrs. Murphy jumped up on the counter and sat next to Pewter. Since Tucker was going to yap she might as well be in the act. “It did. By the time we got there most of the scent was gone but there was this slight amphibian odor.”

Pewter wrinkled her nose. “I did hear Ozzie say something about a turtle, but I didn’t pay too much attention. There was so much going on.” She sighed.

“Ever smell ‘Best Fishes’?” Pewter’s mind returned to food, her favorite topic. “Now that’s a good smell. Mrs. Murphy, doesn’t Harry have any treats left?”

“Yes.”

“Think she’ll give me one?”

“I’ll give you one if you promise to tell us anything you hear about Kelly Craycroft. Anything at all. And I promise not to make fun of you.”

“I promise.” The fat chin wobbled solemnly.

Mrs. Murphy jumped off the counter and ran over to the desk. The lower drawer was open a crack. She squeezed her paw in it and hooked out a strip of dried beef jerky. She picked it up and gave it to Pewter, who devoured it instantly.

10

Bob Berryman laughed loudly during the movie Field of Dreams. He was alone. Apart from Bob, Harry and Susan didn’t know anyone else in the theater. Charlottesville, jammed with new people, was becoming a new town to them. No longer could you drive into town and expect to see your friends. Not that the new people weren’t nice—they were—but it was somewhat discomforting to be born and raised in a place and suddenly feel like a stranger.

The new residents flocked to the county in such numbers that they couldn’t be absorbed quickly enough into the established clubs and routines. Naturally, the new people created their own clubs and routines. Formerly, the four great social centers—the hunt club, the country club, the black churches, and the university—provided stability to the community, like the four points of a square. Now young blacks drifted away from the churches, the country club had a six-year waiting list for membership, and the university was in the community but not of the community. As for the hunt club, most of the new people couldn’t ride.

The road system couldn’t handle the newcomers either. The state of Virginia was dickering about paving over much of the countryside with a bypass. The residents, old and new, were bitterly opposed to the destruction of their environment. The Highway Department people would be more comfortable in a room full of scorpions, because this was getting ugly. The obvious solution, of improving the central corridor road, Route 29, or even elevating a direct road over the existing route, did not occur to the powers-that-be in Richmond. They cried, “Expensive,” while ignoring the outrageous sums they’d already squandered in hiring a research company to do their dirty work for them. They figured the populace would direct their wrath at the research company, and the Highway Department could hide behind the screen. The Republican party, quick to seize the opportunity to roast the reigning Democrats, turned the bypass into a political hot potato. The Highway Department remained obstinate. The Democrats, losing power, began to feel queasy. It was turning into an interesting drama, one in which political careers would be made and unmade.

Harry believed that whatever figure was published, you should double it. For some bizarre reason, government people could not hold the line on spending. She observed this in the post office. The regulations, created to help, just made things so much worse that she ran her post office as befitted the community, not as befitted some distant someone sitting on a fat ass in Washington, D.C. The same was true for the state government. They wouldn’t travel the roads they’d build; they wouldn’t have their hearts broken because beautiful farmland was destroyed and the watershed was endangered. They’d have a nice line on the map and talk to the governor about traffic flow. Every employee would justify his or her position by complicating the procedure as much as possible and then solving the complications.

Meanwhile the citizens of Albemarle County would be told to accept the rape of their land for the good of the counties south of them, counties that had contributed heavily to certain politicians’ war chests. No one even considered the idea of letting people raise money themselves for improving the central corridor. Whatever the extra cost would be, compared to a bypass, Albemarle would pay for it. Self-government—why, the very thought was too revolutionary.

Harry, raised to believe the government was her friend, had learned by experience to believe it was her enemy. She softened her stance only with local officials whom she knew and to whom she could talk face-to-face.

One good thing about newcomers was, they were politically active. Good, Harry thought. They’re going to need it.

She and Susan batted these ideas around at the Blue Ridge Brewery. Ice-cold beer on a sticky night tasted delicious.

“So?”

“So what, Susan?”

“You’ve been sitting here for ten minutes and you haven’t said a thing.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Lost track of time, I guess.”

“Apparently.” Susan smiled. “Come on, what gives? Another bout with Fair?”

“You know, I can’t decide who’s the bigger asshole, him or me. What I do know is, we can’t be in the same room together without an argument. Even if we start out on friendly terms . . . we end up accusing each other of . . .”

Susan waited. No completion of Harry’s sentence was forthcoming. “Accusing each other of what?”

“I asked him if he’d slept with BoomBoom.”

“What?” Susan’s lower lip dropped.

“You heard me.”

“And?”

“He said no. Oh, it went on from there. Every mistake I’d made since we dated got thrown in my face. God, I am so bored with him, with the situation”—she paused—“with myself. There’s a whole world out there and right now all I can think of is this stupid divorce.” Another pause. “And Kelly’s murder.”

“Fortunately the two are not connected.” Susan took a long draft.

“I hope not.”

“They aren’t.” Susan dismissed the thought. “You don’t think they are either. He may not have been the husband you needed, but he’s not a murderer.”

“I know.” Harry pushed the glass away. “But I don’t know him anymore—and I don’t trust him.”

“Ever notice how friends love you for what you are? Lovers try to change you into what they want you to be.” Susan drank the rest of Harry’s beer.

Harry laughed. “Mom used to say, ‘A woman marries a man hoping to change him and a man marries a woman hoping she’ll never change.’ ”

“Your mother was a pistol.” Susan remembered Grace’s sharp wit. “But I think men try to change their partners, too, although in a different way. It’s so confusing. I know less about human relationships the older I get. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. I thought I was supposed to be getting wiser.”

“Yeah. Now I’m full of distrust.”

“Oh, Harry, men aren’t so bad.”

“No, no—I distrust myself. What was I doing married to Pharamond Haristeen? Am I that far away from myself?”

Back home, Mrs. Murphy prowled.

Tucker, in her wicker basket, lifted her head. “Sit down.”

“Am I keeping you awake?”

“No,” the dog grumbled. “I can’t sleep when Mommy’s away. I’ve seen other people take their dogs to the movies. Muffin Barnes sticks her dog in her purse.” Muffin was a friend of Harry’s.

“Muffin Barnes’s dog is a chihuahua.”

“Zat what he is?” Tucker, stiff-legged, got out of the basket. “Wanna play?”

“Ball?”

“No. How about tag? We can rip and tear while she isn’t here. Actually, we should rip and tear. How dare she go away and leave us here. Let’s make her pay.”

“Yeah!” Mrs. Murphy’s eyes lit up.

An hour later, when Harry flipped the lights on in the living room, she exclaimed, “Oh, my God!”

The ficus tree was tipped over, soil was thrown over the floor, and soiled kittyprints dotted the walls. Mrs. Murphy had danced in the moist dirt before hitting the walls with all four feet.

Harry, furious, searched for her darlings. Tucker hid under the bed in the back corner against the wall, and Mrs. Murphy lay flat on the top shelf of the pantry.

By the time Harry cleaned up the mess she was too tired to discipline them. To her credit, she understood that this was punishment for her leaving. She understood, but was loath to admit that the animals trained her far better than she trained them.