Wish You Were Here. Rest In Pieces. Murder At Monticello

1. WISH YOU WERE HERE

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 inthe P?re 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 noone’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, LittleMarilyn. 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 hecouldn’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 drivea 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 fromtheir 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 Faberg? 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 ofVogue 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 gottenmixed 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 righthand 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 divorc?e 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 wordguilty.

“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 deepinside. 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 boardMim’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 bomb? 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 wroteLook 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 anyonewant 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.“Touch?. 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 movieField 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 placeand 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.

11

The prospect of the weekend lightened Harry’s step as she walked along Railroad Avenue, shiny from last night’s late thunderstorm, which had done nothing to lower the exalted temperature. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, forgiven, scampered ahead.

The moment she caught sight of them, Pewter tore down the avenue to greet them.

“I didn’t know she could move that fast.” Harry whistled out loud.

When Pewter ran, the flab under her belly swayed from side to side. She started yelling half a block away from her friends.“I’ve been waiting outside the store for you!”

Panting, Pewter slid to a stop at Tucker’s feet.

Harry, thinking that the animal had exhausted herself, stooped to pick her up.“Poor Fatty.”

“Lemme go.” Pewter wiggled free.

“What is it?” Mrs. Murphy rubbed against Harry’s legs to make her feel better.

“Maude Bly Modena.” The chartreuse eyes glittered.“Dead!”

“How?” Mrs. Murphy wanted details.

“Train ran over her.”

“In her car, you mean?” Tucker was impatient waiting for Pewter to catch her breath as they continued walking toward the post office.

“No!” Pewter picked up the pace.“Worse than that.”

“Pewter, I’ve never heard you so chatty.” Harry beamed.

Pewter replied.“If you’d pay attention you might learn something.” She turned to Mrs. Murphy.“They think they’re so smart but they only pay attention to themselves. Humans only listen to humans and half the time they don’t do that.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Murphy wanted to say“Get on with it,” but she prudently bit her lip.

“As I was saying, it was worse than that. She was tied to the track, I don’t know where exactly, but when the six o’clock came through this morning, the engineer couldn’t stop in time. Cut her into three pieces.”

“How’d you find out?” Tucker blinked at the thought of the grisly sight.

“Unfortunately, Courtney heard about it first. Market let her come in and open up for the farm trade, the fiveA.M., crew. The Rescue Squad roared by—Rick Shaw too. Officer Cooper, in the second squad car, ran in for coffee. That’s how we found out. Courtney phoned Market and he came right down. There’s some weirdo out there killing people.”

“Like a serial killer, you mean?” Tucker was very concerned for Harry’s safety.

“It’s bad enough that humans kill once.” Pewter sucked in her breath.“But every now and then they throw one who wants to kill over and over.”

Mrs. Murphy murmured,“I liked Maude.”

“I did too.” Tucker hung her head.“Why don’t people kill their sick young like we do? Why do they let them live and cause damage?”

“Well, as I understand it, these psychos”—Pewter had an opinion on everything—“can appear mentally normal.”

“That’s no excuse for the ones they know are nuts from the beginning.” Mrs. Murphy couldn’t cover her distress.

“They think it’s wrong to weed out litters.” Tucker’s claws clicked on the pavement.

“Yeah, they let the sickies grow up and kill them instead.” Pewter laughed a harsh laugh.“No one better come after Courtney or Market. I’ll scratch their eyes out.”

Harry noticed the three animals were attentive to one another.

“Whoever this is has something to cover up,” Mrs. Murphy thought out loud.

“Yes, they have to cover up that they’re demented and they’ll kill again, during a full moon, I bet,” Pewter said.

“No. I don’t mean that.” Mrs. Murphy’s eyes became slits. Tucker had lived with Mrs. Murphy since she was a six-week-old puppy. She knew how the cat thought.“This person is after something—or has something to hide. It might not be a thrill killer.”

“Don’t you find it peculiar that he or she leaves the bodies about? Doesn’t a killer try and bury the body?” Pewter figured that’s what vultures were for, but then, people were different.

“That struck me about Kelly’s body.” Mrs. Murphy ignored a caterpillar, so intense was her concentration.“The killer is displaying the bodies …” Her voice drifted off because Market Shiflett emerged from his store and was waving at Harry.

“Harry, Harry!”

Harry heard the fear in his voice and ran down to the store.“What’s the matter?”

“S’awful, just awful.”

Harry put her arm around him.“Are you all right? Want me to call the Doc?” She meant Hayden McIntire.

Market nodded he was fine.“It’s not me, Harry. It’s another murder—Maude Bly Modena.”

“What?!” Harry’s color fled from her cheeks.

“I’m keeping my girl inside. There’s a monster out there!”

“What happened, Market?” Harry, shocked, put her hand against the store window to steady herself.

“That poor woman was tied to the railroad tracks like in some silent movie. The fellow saw her—the brakeman, I guess, on the morning passenger train—but too late, too late. Oh, that poor woman.” His lower lip trembled.

“Who else knows?” Harry’s mind was moving at the speed of light.

“Why do you ask?” Market was surprised at the question.

“I’m not sure, Market, I … Woman’s intuition.”

“Do you know something?” His voice rose.

“No, I don’t know a damn thing but I’m going to find out. This has to stop!”

“Well”—Market rubbed his chin—“Courtney knows, Rick Shaw and Officer Cooper, and Clai and Diana of the Rescue Squad, of course. Train people know, including the passengers. Train stopped. A lot of people know.”

“Yes, yes.” Her voice trailed off.

“What are you thinking?”

“That I wish so many people didn’t know already. Controlling the information might have been a way to snag a clue.”

“Yeah.” The phone rang inside. “I’ve got to pick that up. Let’s stick together, Harry.”

“You bet.”

Market opened the door and Pewter scooted in, calling her goodbyes over her shoulder.

A miserable Harry unlocked the door to the post office, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker behind.

“Come on.”

Mrs. Murphy looked at Tucker.“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

Tucker replied,“Yes, but we don’t know where.”

“Damn!” Mrs. Murphy fluffed her tail in fury and walked dramatically into the post office.

Tucker followed as Harry picked up the phone and started dialing.“It could be miles and miles from here.”

“I know!” Mrs. Murphy crabbed.“And we’ll lose the scent—if it’s there.”

“It held a little bit the other time. That day was stinky hot too.”

Mrs. Murphy leaned up against the corgi.“I hope so. Buddy-bud, we’re going to have to use our powers to get to the bottom of this. Harry’s smart but her nose is bad. Her ears aren’t too good either. People can’t move very fast. We’ve got to find out who’s doing this so we can protect her.”

“I’ll die before I let anyone hurt Harry!” Tucker barked loudly.

“Susan, there’s been another murder.”

“I’ll be right there,” Susan replied.

She started to dial Fair at the clinic but hung up the phone. It was a knee-jerk reaction to call him.

“Rick Shaw came by for Ned,” Susan said as Harry unlocked the front door. It was 7:30 A.M.

“What’s he want with Ned?”

“He wants him to organize a Citizen’s Alert group. Harry, this is unbelievable. This is Crozet, Virginia, for Pete’s sake, not New York City.”

“Unbelievable or not, it’s happening. Did Rick say anything about Maude?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, was she alive when she was run over?” Harry’s entire body twitched at the thought and a wave of nausea engulfed her.

“I thought of that too. I asked him. He said they didn’t know but they believed not. The coroner would know exactly when she died.”

“If Rick said that, it means she was dead already. I mean, you’d have to be pretty stupid not to tell after a certain point. Did he say anything else?”

“Only that it happened out near the Greenwood tunnel, out on that first part of track.”

Harry said, almost to herself,“What was she doing out that far?”

“God only knows.” Susan sniffed. “What if this—this creature starts after our children?”

“That’s not going to happen. I’m sure of it.”

“How would you know?” A note of anger crept into Susan’s voice.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore your concern for the children, and you should keep the kids in at night. It’s just that—well, I don’t know. A feeling.”

“There’s a madman loose! Tell me what Kelly Craycroft and Maude Bly Modena had in common! Tell me that!”

“If we can figure that out, we might catch the killer.” Command rang through Harry’s voice. She was a born leader, although she never acknowledged it and even avoided groups.

Susan knew Harry had made up her mind.“You aren’t trained in this sort of thing.”

“Neither are you. Will you help me?”

“What do I have to do?”

“The police ask routine questions. That’s fine, because they learn a lot. We need to ask different questions—not just ‘Where were you on the night of … ?’ but ‘How did you feel about Kelly’s Ferrari and how did you feel about Maude’s big success with her store?’ Emotions. Maybe emotions will get us closer to an answer.”

“Count me in.”

“I’ll take Mrs. Hogendobber and Little Marilyn for starters. How about if you take BoomBoom and Mim. No, wait. Let me take BoomBoom. I have my reasons. You take Little Marilyn.”

“Okay.”

Rob sailed through the front door. He dropped the mail sacks like lead when Harry told him the news. He absolutely couldn’t believe this was happening, but who could?

Tucker and Mrs. Murphy overheard Harry reveal the location of the murder.

“We can’t get there by ourselves unless we’re willing to be gone an entire day.”

“Can’t do that.” Tucker pulled at her collar. The metal rabies tag tinkled.

“So, how are we going to get out there? We need Harry to take us in the truck.”

“Half of Crozet will go out there. People have a morbid curiosity,” Tucker observed.

“When she gets in that truck, no matter when, we’d better pitch a fit.”

“Gotcha.”

Mrs. Hogendobber was stopped by Market Shiflett as she ascended the post office steps. She emitted a piercing yell upon hearing the news.

Josiah, crossing the street, hesitated for a split second and then came over to see what was amiss.

“This is the work of the Devil!” Mrs. Hogendobber put her hand on the wall for support.

“It’s shocking.” Josiah tried to sound comforting but he never would like Mrs. Hogendobber. “Come on, Mrs. H., let me help you inside the post office.” He swung open the door.

“When did you hear?” Mrs. Hogendobber’s voice sounded even.

“On the radio this morning.” Josiah fanned Mrs. H., now sitting by the stamp meter. “Would you like me to take you home?” Josiah offered.

“No, I came for my mail and I’m going to get it.” Resolutely, Mrs. Hogendobber stood up and strode to her postal box.

Harry and Josiah followed her as Fair screeched up out front, killing the engine before turning off the key as his foot slipped off the clutch.

“You could have come right through the window,” Mrs. Hogendobber admonished him.

Fair shut the door behind him.“I thought I’d give the taxpayers a break and not do that.”

“This old building could use a rehab.” Josiah turned the key in his box.

“Do you know about that sweet Maude Bly Modena? Murdered! In cold blood.” Mrs. Hogendobber breathed heavily again.

“Now, now, don’t get yourself overexcited,” Josiah warned her.

“Quite right.” Mrs. Hogendobber controlled herself. “So much evil in the land. Still, I never thought it would come home.” She touched her eyebrow, trying to remember. “The last bad thing that happened here—apart from the drunken-driving accidents—why, that would be the robberies at the Farmington Country Club. Remember?”

“That was in 1978.” Harry recalled the incident. “A gang of high-class thieves broke into the homes there and took the silver and the antiques.”

“And left the silver plate.” Mrs. Hogendobber didn’t realize how funny that was and couldn’t understand why, for a moment, Harry, Fair, and Josiah laughed.

“The theft wasn’t funny, Mrs. H.,” Harry explained. “But on top of being robbed, everyone would find out who had good stuff and who didn’t. I mean, it added insult to injury.”

Mrs. Hogendobber found no humor in it and made a harrumphf.“Well, this has been too much for one morning. I bid you adieu.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to see you home?” Josiah offered again.

“No … thank you.” And she was gone.

“Didn’t they find that stuff stashed in a barn in Falling Water, West Virginia?” Fair asked.

“They did, and that was a stupid place to put it too.” Josiah shut his mailbox.

“Why?” Harry asked.

“Putting exquisite pieces like that in a barn. Rodents could chew them or defecate on the furniture. The elements could expand and contract the woods. Just dumb. They knew good stuff from bad but they didn’t know how to take care of it.”

“Maybe they packed them up or crated them.” Fair wasn’t very knowledgeable about antiques.

“No, I remember the TV reports. They showed the inside of the barn.” Josiah shook his head. “No matter, that’s small beer compared to … this.” He walked over to the counter where Fair was leaning. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about you, Harry?” Josiah’s face registered concern.

“I think whoever did this was one of us. Someone we know and trust.”

Josiah instinctively stepped back.“Why do you think that?”

“What’s the killer doing? Flying in and out of Charlottesville to murder his victims? It has to be a local.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be someone from Crozet.” Josiah was offended at the idea.

“Why not? It’s not so strange when you think about it.” Fair ran his fingers through his thick hair. “Something goes wrong between friends or lovers; the hurt person blows. It can happen here. It has happened here.”

Josiah slowly walked to the door and put his hand on the worn doorknob.“I don’t like to think about it. Maybe it will stop now.” He left and for good measure circled around the post office to Mrs. Hogendobber’s house to make sure she arrived home safely.

“What can I do for you?” Harry, even-toned, asked Fair.

“Oh, nothing. I heard on the way to work and I thought I’d see if you were all right. You liked Maude.”

Harry, touched, lowered her eyes.“Thanks, Fair. I did like Maude.”

“We all did.”

“That’s it. That’s what I need to find out. We all liked Maude. We mostly liked Kelly Craycroft. To the eye, everything looks normal. Underneath, something’s horribly wrong.”

“Find the motive and you find the killer,” Fair said.

“Unless he or she finds you first.”

12

Harry paused before knocking on BoomBoom Craycroft’s dark-blue front door. She’d brought the cat and the dog along because when she left for her lunch break the animals carried on like dervishes. First the ficus tree, now this. Must be the heat. She glanced over her shoulder. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, good as gold, sat in the front seat of the truck. The windows, wide open, gave them air but it was too hot to be in the truck. She turned around and opened the truck door.

“Now, you stay here.”

The minute Harry disappeared through the front door of the Craycroft house, that order was forgotten.

BoomBoom’s West Highland white shot around from behind the back of the house.“Who’s here? Who’s here, and you’d better have a good reason to be here!”

“It’s us, Reggie,” Tucker said.

“So it is.” Reggie wagged his tail and touched noses with Tucker. He touched noses with Mrs. Murphy, too, even though she was a cat. Reggie had manners.

“How are you?”

“As good as can be expected.”

“Bad, huh?” Tucker was sympathetic.

“She’s just grim. Never smiles. I wish I could do something for her. I miss him too. He was a lot of fun, Kelly.”

“Do you have any idea what happened? Did he take you places that humans didn’t know about?” Mrs. Murphy asked.

“No. I’m supposed to be a house dog. I’ve seen the concrete plant a few times but that’s it.”

“Did he seem worried recently?”

“No, he was happy as a dog with a bone. Every time he made money he was happy and he made lots of it. Bones to them, I guess. He wasn’t home much but when he was, he was happy.”

Inside, Harry wasn’t getting much from BoomBoom either.

“A nightmare.” BoomBoom snapped open her platinum cigarette case. “And now Maude. Does anyone know if she has people?”

“No. Susan Tucker offered to put up the relatives but Rick Shaw told her that Maude had no siblings and her parents were dead.”

“Who’s going to claim the body?” BoomBoom, having undergone a funeral, was keenly aware of the technical responsibilities.

“I don’t know but I’ll be sure to mention that to Susan.”

“I’ve gone over that last day a thousand times in my head, Harry. I’ve gone over the week before and the week before that and I can’t think of a thing. Not a sign, not a hint, not anything. He kept me separate from the business but I had little interest in it anyway. Concrete and pouring foundations and roadbeds never was my idea of thrills.” BoomBoom lit her dark Nat Sherman cigarette. “If he roughed a man up in business, I wouldn’t know.”

“Kelly might have crossed someone. He was very competitive.” Harry picked up a crystal ashtray with a silver rim around it and felt its perfect proportions.

“He liked to win, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t think he was unfair. At least, he wasn’t with me. Look, Harry, we’ve known each other since we were children. You know for the last few years Kelly and I were almost more like brother and sister than husband and wife, but he was a good friend to me. He was … good.” Her voice got thick.

“I’m so sorry. I wish I could say or do something.” Harry touched her hand.

“You’ve been kind to call on me. I never knew how many friends I had. He had. People have been wonderful—and I can be hard to be wonderful to … sometimes.”

Harry thought to herself that someone was being anything but wonderful. Which one? Who? Why?

BoomBoom mused,“Kelly would have been amazed to see how many people did love him.”

“Perhaps he knows. I’d like to think that.”

“Yes, I’d like to think that too.”

Harry put the ashtray back. She paused.“Have the cops gone over everything? His office?”

“Even his office here at home. The only thing on his desk the day he died was the day’s mail.”

“May I peek in the office? I don’t want to be rude, but I think if there’s anything that we can do to help Rick Shaw, we should. Perhaps if I poke around I’ll find a clue. Even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes.”

“You’ve read too many mysteries sitting there in the post office.” BoomBoom stood up and Harry did also.

“Spy thrillers this year.”

“And for that you went to Smith College?” BoomBoom felt Harry should do more with her life, but who was she to judge? BoomBoom truly was the idle rich.

The walnut paneling glowed in the bright afternoon light. Neatly placed in the middle of an unblemished desk pad bound by red Moroccan leather was Kelly’s mail.

“May I?” Harry didn’t reach for the mail.

“Yes.”

Harry picked it up and rifled through the letters, including the postcard, the beautiful postcard of Oscar Wilde’s tombstone. She replaced the mail as she found it. At that moment she was more concerned with a certain evasiveness BoomBoom displayed toward her. She and BoomBoom got along well enough, but today there was something not right between them.

It wasn’t until later, when she had left BoomBoom and was rumbling past the tiny trailer park on Route 240, that she realized Maude had received a postcard of a beautiful tombstone as well. With the same inscription: “Wish you were here.” My God, someone was telling them, I wish you were dead. It was a sick joke. She put her pedal to the metal.

“Hey, slow down,” Mrs. Murphy said.“I don’t like to drive fast.”

Harry careened into Susan’s manicured driveway, hit the brakes, and vaulted out of the truck. The cat and dog hit the turf too.

Susan stuck her head out the upstairs window.“You’ll kill yourself driving that old truck like that.”

“I found something.”

Susan raced down the stairs and flung open the front door. Harry told Susan what she discovered, swore her to secrecy, and then they called Rick Shaw. He wasn’t there, so Officer Cooper received the information.

Harry hung up the phone.“She didn’t seem very excited about it.”

“They shag so many leads. How’s she to know if this is anything special?” Susan laced her sneakers. “Let’s hope another one doesn’t show up.”

“Damn, I forgot to look.”

“For what?”

“For the postmark on Kelly’s card. Was it from Paris?”

“Let’s go to Maude’s shop and look at the postcard she received.”

Maude’s shop, closed, beckoned the passerby. The window boxes burst with pink and purple petunias. The sidewalk was swept clean.

Susan tried the door.“Locked.”

Harry circled to the back and jimmied a window. The minute she got it open, Mrs. Murphy shot up on the windowsill and gracefully dropped into the shop. Harry followed and Susan handed Tucker to her and then followed herself.

The back room, an avalanche of packing materials, greeted them.

“I didn’t know there were that many plastic peanuts in the world,” Susan observed.

Harry made a beeline for Maude’s rolltop desk in the front room.

“What if someone sees you there?”

“They can report me for breaking and entering.” Harry snatched the mail, which was kept in boxes on the desk. “Found it!” She quickly flipped over the postcard. “Well, there goes that theory.”

“What’s it say?”

“Come here and read it. No one’s going to arrest us.”

Susan joined her.“‘Wish you were here.’ ” She then noticed the postmark. “Oh.” It read Asheville, North Carolina.

Harry slid open the center drawer. A huge ledger book, pencils, erasers, and a ruler rattled. She reached for the ledger book. Sometimes accounting columns tell a story.

Footsteps on the sidewalk made her freeze. She closed the drawer.

“Let’s get out of here,” Susan whispered.

When Harry returned to the post office and relieved Dr. Johnson, she called BoomBoom and asked her to look at the postcard. It was marked PARIS, REPUBLIC OF FRANCE.

Baffled, Harry put down the receiver. Okay, the postmarks confused her. Still, she wasn’t giving up. Those postcards were important. Whoever the killer was, he or she had a sense of humor, maybe even a sense of the absurd. Even the disposition of the corpses was macabre and trashy.

She racked her brain to think of who had a sharp sense of humor: everybody in Crozet except for Mrs. Hogendobber.

The shroud of mortality drew closer. Who could be next? Was she in danger? If only she could discover the link between Kelly and Maude, maybe she’d know that her friends would be safe. But if she discovered that link, she wouldn’t be safe.

13

Harry was taken aback by the number of people milling about the railroad track. Getting there wasn’t easy. People had to drive out to 691 and then cut right on 690. Bob Berryman, Josiah, Market, and Dr. Hayden McIntire glumly stared at the tracks.

When Mrs. Murphy and Tucker sped into the brush, Harry barely noticed.

Harry joined the men. She cast her eyes downward and saw blood spattered everywhere. Flies buzzed on the ground, feasting on what hadn’t soaked up. Even the creosote odor of the railroad ties didn’t blot out the sweltering odor of blood.

Josiah grimaced.“I had no idea that it could be so bad.”

“Considering how many pints of blood are in the human body—” Hayden spoke like a physician.

Berryman, sweating profusely, cut him off.“I don’t want to know.” He backed away to his four-wheel-drive Jeep. Ozzie howled inside, furious that he couldn’t get out. Berryman roared out of there, tearing hunks of earth as he went.

“I didn’t mean to upset him,” Hayden apologized.

“Don’t worry about it.” Market pinched his nose. “Damn, are we ghouls or what?”

“Of course not!” Josiah snapped. “Maybe we’ll find something the police didn’t. How much faith do you have in Rick Shaw? When he reads, his lips move.”

“He’s not that bad,” Harry protested.

“Well, he’s not that good.” Hayden stuck up for Josiah.

Harry swept her eyes along the tracks. The cat and dog rummaged in the high weeds and then burst onto the tracks about one hundred yards west of where she was standing. At least they’re happy, she thought.

“We know one thing,” Harry stated.

“What?” Market pinched his nose again.

“She walked here.”

“How do you know that?” Josiah peered intently at her features.

“Because there’s no sign that the grasses are beaten down. If she’d been dragged there’d be a path even though it rained. A human’s body is literally dead weight.” The smell was getting to Harry and she moved away from the track.

“She could have been carried.” Josiah joined her.

“Have to be a strong man.” Hayden moved off the track too. “Don’t know if the killer is male or female, although men commit over ninety percent of the murders in this country, statistically.”

Josiah replied,“Not exactly. The women are too smart to get caught.”

Market, the last to leave even though the stench turned his stomach, doubted that.“Maude was a good five feet ten inches. The road’s back a stretch. The strongest among us was Kelly. The next strongest is Fair. No one else could have carried her, other than Jim Sanburne, and he has a bum back.”

“A four-wheel-drive could have come up here.” Josiah watched the animals as they moved closer.

“Cooper said no tire tracks,” Market volunteered.

“She walked? So what?” Josiah thrust his hands into his pockets.

“Where was Fair last night?” Hayden asked, none too innocently.

“Ask him,” Harry shot back.

“She walked out here in the middle of the night?” Market was thinking out loud. “Why?”

“She liked her jogging and usually ran along the track,” Harry told them.

“Damn good jogger to get all the way out to Greenwood,” Market said.

“In the middle of the night?” Hayden rubbed his chin.

“Beat the heat,” Josiah offered. “Hey, how about Berryman getting squeamish like that?”

“He wasn’t squeamish in school,” Market recalled. “Hell, I saw the trainer stick a needle in his knee once during a football game. Took a bad hit, you know. Twisted his knee a bit. Anyway, Kooter Ashcomb—”

“I remember him!” Harry smiled.

Kooter was an old man by the time Harry attended Crozet High.

“Yeah, well, Kooter stuck a hypodermic needle right in his knee and drew out the fluid. Played the rest of the game, too.”

“We win?” Harry wondered.

“You bet.” Market folded his arms across his chest. Market liked remembering playing fullback a lot more than he liked the present.

“Back to Maude.” One line of perspiration rolled down the side of Harry’s face. “Did she come out here alone? Did she come out here to meet someone? Did she come out here with someone?”

“I had no idea you were so logical, Harry,” Josiah observed.

“Obvious questions and I’m sure Rick Shaw and company have asked them too.” Harry wiped away the sweat.

“Wish we could find some tracks.” Hayden, not being a hunting man, wouldn’t even know how to look.

In the distance, the finger of a dark thundercloud hooked over the Blue Ridge.

“No tracks if you walk on the train bed.” Harry felt bad. The reality of Maude’s death, the blood, began to press on her head. She felt a throbbing at her temples.

“There’s nothing here”—Josiah’s voice dropped—“except that.” He pointed up to the stained site.

“But there is! There is!” Tucker barked.

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker swarmed over the site of the murder. Harry mistook this for attraction to the blood.

“Get out of there!” she shouted.

“Don’t be mad at them, Harry. They’re only animals,” Market chided her.

“There’s something here! That same smell is here!” Tucker barked.

Harry ran up to the dog and collared her.“You come with me right now!”

Mrs. Murphy ran alongside Harry.“Don’t do that! Come back. Come back and sniff!”

Harry couldn’t go back and it was just as well, because if she’d gotten down on her hands and knees to catch the scent she would also have seen a few strands of Maude’s blood-soaked hair missed by the Sheriff’s Department. That would have done her in.

Tucker and Mrs. Murphy had thoroughly investigated the area around the murder location. Not until they examined the exact site did they catch the faint amphibian odor. No track, no line. But again it was in one place, although this time there was more of it than a dot. There were a few dots, fading fast.

But no one would listen to them and they rode home in disgrace with Harry, who thought the worst of her best friends.

Later that evening the thunderstorm lashed Crozet. Marilyn Sanburne was put out because the power failed and she had a souffl? in the oven. Jim, just back from his business trip, said the hell with it. They could eat sandwiches. He was also being driven wild by the telephone ringing. As the mayor of murder hamlet, as one reporter called it, Jim was expected to say something. He did. He told them to “fuck off,” and Mim screamed, “I hate the ‘f’ word.” She would have left to go visit one of her cronies, but the storm was too intense. Instead, she flounced into her room and slammed the door.

Bob Berryman drove around aimlessly. A huge tree ripped out by the high winds crashed across the road. He avoided hitting it. Shaken, he turned the truck around and drove some more. Ozzie sat next to him wondering what was going on.

14

BoomBoom Craycroft thought the worst of everybody. Much as she tried to keep her emotions to herself they kept spilling over, and since she wouldn’t express her sorrow, what she expressed was anger. Right now she was furious with Susan Tucker and she took a sabbatical on manners.

“I don’t give a good goddam what you think. And I don’t care if whoever killed Maude killed Kelly. I want whoever killed Kelly and I’m going to get him.”

Susan hung her head. To a passerby it would appear she was addressing her golf ball with her five iron, an unusual choice off the tee.“BoomBoom, calm yourself. You were the one who wanted to play golf. You said sitting home would drive you crazy.”

BoomBoom, warming up, swung her wood and dug up a clump of Farmington Country Club turf. If the greensman had been there he would have suffered a coronary. Susan, wordlessly, replaced BoomBoom’s divot, then hit a beauty off the tee.

“Been a woody and you’d be on the green,” BoomBoom advised. “I don’t know why I kept this golf date with you. You do the screwiest things on a golf course.”

“I still beat you.”

“Not today you won’t.” BoomBoom stuck the tee in the ground, put the ball on it, and without a practice swing, socked away. The ball rose with a pleasing loft and then veered left, only to disappear in the rough.

“Shit!” BoomBoom threw her club on the ground. Not satisfied, she stamped on it. “Shit! Fuck! Damn!”

Susan held her breath during the indiscriminate rampage, which concluded with BoomBoom turning her expensive leather golf bag upside down. Balls and gloves fell out of the open zippers. Exhausted from her fury, BoomBoom sat on the ground.

“Honey, it’s the pits.” Susan sat next to her and put her arm around her. “Would you like to go home?”

“No. I hate it there more than I hate it here.” BoomBoom shook when she inhaled. “Let’s play. I feel better when I’m moving. I’m sorry I yelled at you when you were giving me the third degree. I didn’t mind Rick Shaw so much but those grotesque newspeople ought to be horsewhipped. I slammed the door in their faces. I just didn’t want to hear it from you.”

“I am really sorry. Harry and I think if those of us who know one another as friends snoop around we might find something. It’s a horrendous strain and I haven’t helped.”

“You have. I got to scream and holler and throw my bag on the ground. I feel better for it.” She nimbly got up, righted her bag.

Susan picked up the balls.“Here.” She noticed the brand name. “When did you buy these?”

“Last week. Ought to be gold-plated, the expensive buggers. See my initials on them.” She pointed to a red B.B.C. carefully incised into the gleaming white surface.

“How’d you do that?”

“I didn’t. Josiah did. He’s got tools for everything. He cracks me up, buying this gilded junk, making repairs on it, and then selling it to some parvenu for a bundle.”

“He is funny, though.” Susan reached her ball.

BoomBoom waited until Susan was midway into her backswing.“Josiah said Mim has a purse with a lock on it. Isn’t that perfect?” She laughed.

Naturally Susan’s shot was ruined. “Damn you.”

The ball plunked into the water, sending up a plume.

That made BoomBoom temporarily happy. She found her ball, walked around it as though it were a snake, and finally hit it out of the rough. Not a bad shot.

“If you do think of anything, you will tell me?”

“Yes.” BoomBoom picked up her bag. She wouldn’t use golf carts because that defeated the purpose of golf for her. On weekends she’d use one because the club forced her to, and she complained plenty about it. She even pointed out one fat board member at the Nineteenth Hole and declared if he’d get out of his golf cart and walk, he might stop resembling the Michelin tire boy.

Susan peered into the water. The Canada geese peered back at her as they glided by. She carried a ball retriever for this very purpose and with some finesse she liberated her ball from the depths.

“I ought to get one of those.”

“Especially when you’re paying what you’re paying for golf balls.” Susan folded the retriever back and placed it in her bag. She then dropped her ball.

“Why do you think this is the work of one person?” BoomBoom had quieted enough to return to Susan’s earlier question.

“Two gruesome murders—spectacularly gruesome—and within the same week.”

“That’s superficial evidence. The second murderer could be a copycat. The details of Kelly’s murder covered the front page of the paper, the evening news, and God knows what else. A person wouldn’t have to be too clever to figure out that the time is right to settle a score, and goodbye Maude Bly Modena.”

“I never thought of that.”

“I thought of something else too.”

“What?”

“Susan, what if the police aren’t telling us everything? What if they’re holding something back?”

“I never thought of that either.” Susan shuddered.

15

Rick Shaw hunched over another coroner’s report. Normally, the office sank into a stupor on weekends except for the drunk-driving jobs. Not this weekend. People were tense. He was tense, and the damned newspaper was keeping a reporter on his tail. The bird perched in the parking lot after he threw him out of the office.

There was no evidence of sexual abuse. The victim had been dead for two hours before the train ran over her, which the coroner also reported. However, there were no bullet wounds, no bruises on the neck, and no contusions of any sort. Again, there was a tiny trace of cyanide in the hair. Whoever was killing these people with cyanide knew a great deal about chemistry. He or she wasn’t wasting the cyanide. The killer took the victim’s body weight into account.

Rick shook his head and closed the report, then sidled over to Officer Cooper’s desk, where he filched a cigarette from an open pack. Illicit pleasure soon to be replaced by guilt, but not until the cigarette was smoked.

A deep draw soothed him. He’d have to remember to buy a pack of Tic Tacs on the way home or his wife would smell his breath. He studied a map of the county on the wall. The positions of the two bodies were in the same general vicinity, a few miles apart. The killer was most likely a local but not necessarily a Crozet resident. Albemarle County covered 743 square miles and anyone could drive in and out of Crozet fairly easily. Of course, they knew one another out there. A stranger would be reported. No such report. Even a resident of Charlottesville or a friend from out of town would be noticed. No such notice.

The postmistress and Market Shiflett were poised at the hub of social activity. Officer Cooper had mentioned that the postmistress had an idea about postcards. People usually think what they do is relevant, and Mary Minor Haristeen was no exception. He checked out the postcards within an hour of Harry’s call and the postmarks were from different locales.

Still, he decided to call Harry. After a few pleasantries he thanked her for being alert, said he’d examined the postcards and they seemed okay to him.

“Could I have them—temporarily?” Harry asked him.

He considered this.“Why?”

“I want to match them with the inks that I have in the office—just in case.”

“All right, if you promise not to harm them.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll have Officer Cooper drop them by.”

After Rick Shaw’s call, Harry called Rob, and he agreed to “borrow” the first postcard from France that he came across at the main post office. She swore she’d give it back to him by the next day.

Then she remembered she was supposed to interrogate Mrs. Hogendobber. She called Mrs. H., who was surprised to hear from her but agreed on a tea-time get-together.

16

Mrs. Hogendobber served a suspiciously green tea. Little chocolate cupcakes oozing a tired marshmallow center reposed on a plate of Royal Doulton china. Mrs. Hogendobber snapped one up, devouring it at a gobble.

She reminded Harry of a human version of Pewter. Stifling a giggle, Harry reached for a leaking cupcake so as not to appear ungrateful for the sumptuous repast—well, repast.

“I stopped drinking caffeine. Made me testy.” Mrs. H.’s little finger curled when she held her cup. “I purged soft drinks, coffee, even orange pekoe teas from my household.”

Obviously, she had not purged refined sugar.

“I wish I had your willpower,” Harry said.

“Stick to it, my girl, stick to it!” Another chocolate delight disappeared between the pink-lipsticked lips.

Mrs. Hogendobber’s neat clapboard house was located on St. George Avenue, which ran roughly parallel to Railroad Avenue. A sweeping front porch with a swing afforded the large lady a vantage point. A trellis along the sides of the porch, choking with pink tea roses, allowed her to see everything while not being seen. The Good Lord said nothing about spying, so Mrs. Hogendobber spied with a vengeance. She chose to think of it as being curious about her fellow man.

“I’m so glad you agreed to see me,” Harry began.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Uh, well, come to think of it, why not?” Harry smiled, reminding Mrs. H. of when Harry was a cute seven-year-old.

“I’m here to, oh, root around for clues to the murders. The telling detail, thoughts—you’re so observant.”

“You have to get up early in the morning to put one over on me.” Mrs. H. lapped up the compliment, and truthfully, she didn’t miss much. “My late husband, God rest his soul, used to say, ‘Miranda, you were born with eyes in the back of your head.’ I could anticipate his wants and he thought I had special powers. No special powers. I was a good wife. I paid attention. It’s the little things that make a marriage, my dear. I hope you have reviewed your marriage and will reconsider your acts. I doubt there are any men out there better than Fair—only different. They’re all trouble in their unique ways.” She poured herself more tea and opened her mouth but no sound escaped. “Where was I?”

“… trouble in their unique ways.” Harry hardly thought of herself in those terms.

“If you’d kick off those sneakers and buy some nice smocks instead of those jeans, I think he’d come to his senses.”

“Love usually involves losing your senses, not coming to them.”

Mrs. H. pondered this.“Yes … yes.”

Before she could launch on to another tangent, Harry inquired,“What did you think of Maude Bly Modena?”

“I thought she was a Catholic. Italian-looking, you know. The shop proved how shrewd she was. Now I never socialized with her. My social life is the Church, and well, as I said, I think Maude was Catholic.” Mrs. Hogendobber cleared her throat on “Catholic.” “I, like yourself, only knew her for five years. Not a great deal of time but enough to get a feel for a person, I guess. She seemed quite fond of Josiah.”

“Whatdid you feel then?”

The bosom heaved. She was dying to be allowed to wander into the subjective.“I felt that she was hiding something—always, always.”

“Like what?”

“I wish I knew. She didn’t cheat anyone at the shop. I never heard of her shortchanging or overcharging but there was something, oh, not quite right. She spoke very little of her background.” Unlike Mrs. Hogendobber, who fairly galloped down Memory Lane, given half a chance to speak of her past.

“She didn’t tell me much either. I assumed she was discreet. After all, she was a Yankee.”

“Not one of us, my dear, not one of us. Her manners were adequate. She missed the refinements, of course—they all do. But then there’s Mim, who is overrefined, if you ask me.”

“I liked her. I even grew accustomed to the accent.” Uneasiness crept into Harry’s heart. She felt that poor Maude wasn’t here to defend herself and she was sorry for asking about her.

“I couldn’t understand much of what she said. I relied on tone of voice, hand gestures, that sort of thing. I bet she’s from a Mafia family.”

“Why?”

“Well, she was Catholic and Italian.”

“It doesn’t follow that she was from a Mafia family.”

“No, but you can’t prove otherwise.”

Driving home, Harry started to laugh. It was all so horrible and horribly funny. Did a person have to die before you discovered the truth about her? As long as someone is alive the chance exists that whatever you have said about her will get back to her. Therefore, Harry and most of Crozet measured their words. You thought twice before you spoke, especially if you intended to say what you thought.

The other thing Harry learned from Mrs. Hogendobber was the time, occupants, and license plate number of every car that had rolled down St. George Avenue in the last twenty-four hours. The Citizens’ Alert was Mrs. Hogendobber’s opportunity to be rewarded for her natural nosiness.

17

Ned Tucker dreamed of sleeping late on Sunday mornings but the alarm clanged at 6:30 A.M. He opened his eyes, cut off the offending noise, and sat up. The digital clock blinked the time in a turquoise-blue color. It occurred to Ned that a generation of American children wouldn’t know how to tell time with a conventional clock. Then again, they couldn’t add and subtract either. Calculators performed that labor for them.

Harry said she hated digital clocks. They reminded her of little amputees. No hands. Ned smiled, thinking about Harry. Susan turned over and he smiled even more. His wife could sleep through an earthquake, a thunderstorm, you name it. He’d give her an extra forty-five minutes and feed the kids. The chores of fatherhood comforted him. What worried him was the example he set. He didn’t want to be a slave to his job but he didn’t want to be too lazy either. He didn’t want to be too stern but he didn’t want to be too lax. Hedidn’t want to treat his son any differently from his daughter but he knew he did. It was so much easier to love a daughter—but then, that was what Susan said about their son.

A shower and a shave brightened Ned; a cup of coffee popped him in gear. He’d need to awaken Brookie and Dan in twenty minutes to get them up for church. He decided to take what precious quiet time he had and peruse the bills. Everything was more expensive than it should have been and his heart dropped each time he wrote a check. First he scanned his bank statement. A five hundred dollar withdrawal last Monday really woke him up. He made no such withdrawal last Monday and neither did Susan. Anything over two hundred dollars had to be discussed between them. He wanted to crumple the statement but neatly put it aside. Couldn’t contact the bank until tomorrow anyway.

The telephone rang at seven o’clock. Ned picked it up. “Hello.”

“Ned, you’re up as early as I am so I hope I’m not being rude in calling.” Josiah DeWitt, mellow-voiced, sounded serious.

“What can I do for you?” Ned wondered.

“You are, were, Maudie’s lawyer, am I right?”

“Yes.” Ned hadn’t thought of Maude since he got up. Being reminded brought back the uneasiness, the nagging suspicions.

“Since she has no living relatives I’d like to claim the body”—he sighed—“or what’s left of it, and give her a decent burial. It’s not right that she be left to a potter’s field.”

As Josiah was tight as the bark on a tree, Ned was astonished.“I think we can work this out, Josiah,” he said, then added, “But if you’ll allow me, I’ll take up a collection for the interment. We should all pull our weight on this.”

“I’d be most grateful.” Josiah did sound relieved. “Do you know of anyone who might have a plot, who could help us out there?”

“I’ll ask Herbie Jones. He’ll know.” Herbie Jones was the minister at Crozet Lutheran Church.

“Do we even know what denomination Maude was?” Josiah asked.

“No, but Herb has always had a wide embrace. I don’t think he’d mind if she were a Muslim. Would you like me to inquire about a service also?”

“Yes—I think we should. And one more thing, Ned: I’d like to run her store and buy it when that’s feasible. I don’t know what paperwork will be involved but Maudie built a good business. It was her love, you know. I’ll keep it up in her honor, and for the profit too. She’ll come back to haunt me if I don’t make a profit.”

“She left her estate to the M.S. Foundation, so we will need to negotiate with them.”

“Really?” Josiah was consumed with interest but refrained from boring in.

“She had a brother who died from the disease.”

“You know more about Maude than any of us.” Josiah was envious.

“Not really. But I’ll do what I can. It would be wonderful to keep the shop going and I can’t see that the M.S. Foundation has the personnel or the desire to come out here to Crozet and sell packing materials. I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you.”

“No, Josiah, thank you. I wish Maude could know what good friends she had.” And he thought to himself that good friend or not, Josiah was quick to see a way to make more money.

18

A persistent owl hooted in the distance. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker padded in the moonlight toward Maude Bly Modena’s store. Tucker, restless, jauntily moved along, her tail wagging. They’d be back long before Harry woke up, so Tucker treated herself to small sniffs and explorations along the way.

As they approached the building Mrs. Murphy stiffened. Tucker stopped in her tracks.

“There’s someone in there,” Mrs. Murphy whispered.“Let me jump up on the window box. Maybe I can see who it is. You come sit by the front door. If he runs out, you can trip him.”

Tucker quickly hopped up the steps and lay flat against the door. The only sound was the click-click of her claws and the tinkle of her rabies tag.

Mrs. Murphy tiptoed the length of the window box. She pressed her face against the glass panes. She couldn’t see clearly because whoever it was had crawled under the desk.

Mrs. Murphy carefully dropped onto the earth.“S-s-st, come on.”

They circled to the back as Mrs. Murphy explained why she couldn’t see.

“I can’t smell anything with the windows and door closed but we can pick up the scent by the back door or by a window.”

Tucker, nose to the ground, needed no encouragement. She hit the trail by the back door.“I got him.”

Before Mrs. Murphy could put her nose down to identify the scent the back door opened. Tucker crouched down and tripped the man coming out as Mrs. Murphy, claws at the ready, leaped onto his back. He stifled a shout, dropping his letters, which scattered in the light evening breeze.

He thrashed around but couldn’t reach Mrs. Murphy, who was far more agile than he. Tucker sank her fangs clean into his ankle.

He yowled. A few houses down, a light clicked on in an upstairs bedroom. The man gathered up the letters as Mrs. Murphy jumped off and scurried up a tree. Tucker scooted around the corner of the house and they both watched Bob Berryman run with a limp down the back alleyway. In a few moments they heard the truck start up and peel out onto St. George Avenue.

Mrs. Murphy backed down the tree. She liked climbing up much more than she liked coming down. Tucker waited at the base.

“Bob Berryman!” Tucker couldn’t believe it.

“Let’s go inside.” Mrs. Murphy trotted to the back door, which Bob had left open in his haste to escape his attackers.

Tucker, head down, followed this trail. Berryman had entered through the back door. He passed through the storage room and went directly to and under the desk. He stopped at no other place. Tucker, intent on the scent, bumped her head into the back of the desk.

Mrs. Murphy, close behind her, laughed.“Look where you’re going.”

“Your eyes are better than mine,” Tucker growled.“But my nose is golden, cat. Remember that.”

“So, golden nose, what was he doing under the desk?” Mrs. Murphy snuggled in next to Tucker.

“His hands slid over the sides, the top, and the back.” She followed the line.

Mrs. Murphy, pupils open to the maximum, stared.“A secret compartment.”

“Yeah, but how’d he get it open?”

“I don’t know, but he’s a clumsy man. It can’t be that hard.” Mrs. Murphy stood on her hind legs and gently batted the sides of the desk.

A loud slam scared the bejesus out of both of them. They shot out from under the desk. Mrs. Murphy’s tail looked like a bottlebrush. The hair on the back of Tucker’s neck bristled. No other sound assailed their sensitive ears.

Mrs. Murphy, low to the ground, whiskers to the fore, slowly, one paw at a time, headed for the back room. Tucker, next to her, also crouched as low as she could, which was pretty low. When they reached the storage room they saw that the door was closed.

“Oh, no!” Tucker exclaimed.“Can you reach the doorknob?”

Mrs. Murphy stretched her full length. She could just get her paws on the old ceramic doorknob but she couldn’t turn it the whole way. She exhausted herself trying.

Finally, Tucker said,“Give up. We’re in for the night. Once people start moving about I’ll set up a howl that will wake the dead.”

“Harry will be frantic.”

“I know but there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re already in her bad graces for our work at the railroad tracks. Boy, are we in for it now.”

“No, she won’t be mad.”

“I hope not.”

Mrs. Murphy leaned against the door catching her breath.“She loves us. We’re all she’s got, you know. I hate to think of Harry searching for us. It’s been a terrible week.”

“Yeah.”

“If we’re stuck here we might as well work.”

“I’m game.”

19

Pewter, hovering over the meat case, first heard Tucker howl. The sound was distant but she was sure it was Tucker. A huge roll of Lebanon baloney, her favorite, beckoned. Courtney lifted the scrumptious meat from the case. Sandwich duty occupied her morning. By 7:00 A.M. the farm crowd had wiped out the reserve she’d made up Sunday night.

“Gimme some! Gimme some! Gimme some!” Pewter hooked a corner of the roll with a claw.

“Stop that.” Courtney smacked her paw.

“I’m hungry!” Pewter reached up again and Courtney cut her a hunk. Buying off Pewter was easier than disciplining her.

The cat seized the fragrant meat and hurried to the back door. Her hunger overwhelmed her curiosity but she figured she could eat, and listen at the same time. Another protracted howl convinced her the miserable dog was Tucker. She returned to Courtney, was severely tempted by the Lebanon baloney, summoned her willpower, and rubbed against Courtney’s legs, then hustled to the back door. She needed to perform this identical routine three times before Courtney opened the back door for her. Pewter knew that humans learned by repetition, but even then you could never be sure they were going to do what you asked them. They were so easily distracted.

Once free from the store Pewter sat, waiting for another howl. Once she heard it she loped through the backyards, and came out into the alleyway. Another howl sent her directly to the back door of Maude Bly Modena’s shop.

“Tucker!” Pewter yelled.“What are you doing in there?”

“Just get me out. I’ll tell you everything later,” Tucker pleaded.

Mrs. Murphy hollered behind the door:“Are there any humans around?”

“In cars. We need a walker.”

“Pewter, if you run back to the store do you think you could get Courtney or Market to follow you?” Mrs. Murphy asked.

“Follow me? I can barely get them to open and close the door for me.”

“What if you grabbed Mrs. Hogendobber on her way to the post office? She’s around the corner.” Tucker wanted out.

“She doesn’t like cats. She wouldn’t pay attention to me.”

“She’ll come down the alleyway. She walks it no matter what the weather. You could try,” Mrs. Murphy said.

“All right. But while I’m waiting for that old windbag … What is it that Josiah calls her?”

“A ruthless monologist,” Mrs. Murphy answered her, peeved that Pewter was insisting on a chat.

“Well, while I’m waiting why don’t you tell me what you’re doing in there?”

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker unfolded the adventure but only after swearing Pewter to secrecy. Under no circumstances was she to hint of any of this to Bob Berryman’s dog, Ozzie.

“There she is!” Pewter called to them.“Let’s try. Howl, Tucker.”

Pewter thundered over to Mrs. Hogendobber. She circled her. She flopped on her back and rolled over. She meowed and pranced. Mrs. Hogendobber observed this with some amusement.

“Come on, Pruneface! Get the message,” Pewter screeched. She moved toward Maude’s shop and then returned to Mrs. Hogendobber.

Tucker emitted a piercing shriek. Mrs. Hogendobber halted her stately progress. Pewter ran around her legs and back toward Maude’s shop, where Tucker let out another shriek. Mrs. Hogendobber started for the shop.

“I got her! I got her!” Pewter raced for the door.“Keep it up!”

Tucker barked. Mrs. Murphy meowed. Pewter ran in circles in front of the door.

Mrs. Hogendobber stood. She thought deeply. She put her hand on the doorknob, thought some more, and then opened the door.

“Gangway!” Tucker charged out of the door and hurried around the side of the house to relieve her bladder. Mrs. Murphy, with more bladder control, came out and rubbed Mrs. Hogendobber’s legs in appreciation.

“Thank you, Mrs. H.,” Mrs. Murphy purred.

“What were you doing in there?” Mrs. Hogendobber said out loud.

Tucker ran around and sat next to Pewter. She gave the gray cat a kiss.“I love you, Pewter.”

“Okay, okay.” Pewter appreciated the emotion but wasn’t overfond of sloppy kisses.

“Come on. Mom’s got to be at work by now.” Mrs. Murphy pricked up her ears.

The three small animals chased one another down the alleyway as Mrs. Hogendobber followed, deeply curious as to why Mary Minor Haristeen’s cat and dog were trapped inside Maude’s shop.

Harry hadn’t sorted the mail. She hadn’t properly thanked Rob for the French postcard he’d smuggled to her. She’d burned the telephone wires calling everyone she could think of who might have seen her animals.

The sight of Mrs. Murphy and Tucker along with Pewter and Mrs. Hogendobber puffing up the steps astonished her. Tears filled her eyes as she flung open the door.

Mrs. Murphy leaped into her arms and Tucker jumped up on her. Harry sat on the floor to hug her family. She hugged Pewter too. This enthusiasm was not extended to Mrs. Hogendobber, but Harry did get up and shake her hand.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hogendobber. I’ve been worried sick. Where’d you find them?”

“In Maude Bly Modena’s store.”

“What?” Harry was incredulous.

“We found a secret compartment! And Bob Berryman stole letters!” Tucker’s excitement was so great that she wiggled from stem to stern.

“Tucker bit the shit out of his ankle,” Mrs. Murphy added.

“Inside the store?”

“Yes. The door was shut and they couldn’t get out. I was walking down the alleyway—my morning constitutional on my way to see you—and I heard a ruckus.”

“You would have waddled right on by if it weren’t for me,” Pewter corrected her.

“What on earth were my girls doing in Maude Bly Modena’s shop?” Harry put her hands to her temples. “Mrs. Hogendobber, do you mind going back there with me?”

Mrs. Hogendobber would like nothing better.“Well, if you think it’s proper. Perhaps we should call the sheriff first.”

“He could arrest Mrs. Murphy and Tucker for breaking and entering.” Harry realized the instant the joke was out of her mouth that Mrs. Hogendobber wouldn’t get it. “Let me call Market over to mind the office.”

Market happily agreed and said he’d even sort the mail. He, too, wanted to read other people’s mail. It was an irresistible temptation.

The crepe myrtle bloomed along the alleyway. Bumblebees laden with pollen buzzed around the two women.

“I was right here when I heard Tucker.”

“Ha!” Pewter sarcastically remarked.

Harry followed Mrs. Hogendobber, who recounted in minute detail her every step to the door.

“… and I turned the knob—it wasn’t locked—and out they came.”

And in they ran too.“Come on!”

“Me, too.” Pewter followed.

“Girls! Girls!” Harry vainly called.

Mrs. Hogendobber, thrilled at the possibility of entering, said,“We’ll have to get them.”

Harry entered first.

Mrs. Hogendobber, hot on her heels, stopped for a second in front of the huge bags of plastic peanuts piled to the ceiling.“My word.”

Harry, already in the front room, exclaimed,“Where are they?”

Mrs. Murphy stuck her head out from under the desk.“Here!”

Mrs. Hogendobber, now in the room, saw this.“There.” She pointed.

Harry got down on her hands and knees and crawled under the desk. Pewter, grumbling, had to get out, as there wasn’t room for all of them.

Mrs. Murphy sat in front of the secret compartment that she had opened the night before. A small button alongside the thin molding on the seam was the key.“Right here. Look!”

Harry gasped,“There’s a secret compartment here!”

“Let me see.” Mrs. Hogendobber, negotiating gravity, hunkered down on her hands and knees. Tucker moved so she could see.

“Right here.” Harry flattened against the side of the desk the best she could and pointed.

“I declare!” Mrs. Hogendobber, excited, gasped. “What’s in there?”

Harry reached in and handed over a large ledger and a handful of Xeroxed papers.“Here.”

Mrs. Hogendobber backed up on all fours and sat in the middle of the floor.

Harry backed out and joined her.“There’s another ledger in the desk.” She got up and opened the middle drawer. It was still there.

“A second set of books! I wonder who she was filching from.”

“The IRS, most likely.” Harry sat down next to Mrs. Hogendobber, who was flipping through the books.

“I used to keep Mr. H.’s books, you know.” She laid the two ledgers side by side, her sharp eyes moving vertically down the columns. The hidden ledger was on her left. “My word, what a lot of merchandise. She was a better sales woman than any of us knew.” Mrs. Hogendobber pointed to the righthand book. “See here, Harry, the volume—and the prices.”

“I can’t believe she would get fifteen thousand dollars for seventy bags of plastic peanuts.”

This gave Mrs. Hogendobber pause.“It does seem unlikely.”

Harry took a page off the large pile of Xeroxed papers. They were the letters of Claudius Crozet to the Blue Ridge Railroad. Scanning them, she realized they involved the building of the tunnels.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Hogendobber couldn’t tear her eyes away from the accounting books.

“Claudius Crozet’s letter to the Blue Ridge Railroad.”

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Hogendobber looked up from her books.

“I don’t know.”

Harry had to get back to work.“Mrs. Hogendobber, would you do something if I asked you? It isn’t dishonest but it’s … tricky.”

“Ask.”

“Xerox these letters and the accounting books. Then we’ll turn it all over to Rick Shaw but we won’t tell him we have copies. I want to read these letters and I think, with your training, you may find something in the accounting books that the sheriff would miss. If he knows we’re studying the information he might take that as a comment on his abilities.”

Without hesitation, Mrs. Hogendobber agreed.“I’ll call Rick after I’ve completed the job. I’ll tell him about the animals. About us coming back here. And that’s all I’ll tell him. Where can I Xerox without drawing attention to myself? This is a great deal of work.”

“In the back room at the post office. I can buy some extra paper and reset the meter. No one will know if you don’t come out of the back room. As long as I put in the ink and the paper, I’m not cheating Uncle Sam.”

“Maude Bly Modena sure was.”

20

Ned Tucker was informed by Barbara Apperton at Citizen’s National Bank that the withdrawal from his account was correct and had been made with his credit card after hours. Ned fulminated. Barbara said she’d get a copy of the videotape, since these transactions were recorded. That way they’d both find out who used the credit card. Mrs. Apperton asked if the credit card was missing and Ned said no. He said he’d be down at the bank tomorrow.

The missing five hundred dollars wouldn’t break the Tucker family but it was unwelcome news when Ned was paying the bills.

Troubled by this small mystery on top of the grotesque ones, Susan entered the post office only to witness Rick Shaw grilling Harry.

“You can’t prove where you were Friday night or in the wee hours Saturday morning?” The sheriff stuck his thumbs in his Sam Browne belt.

“No.” Harry patted Mrs. Murphy, who watched Rick with her golden eyes.

Susan came alongside the counter. Rick kept at it.“No one was with you on the nights of the two murders?”

“No. Not after eleven P.M. on the night of Maude’s murder. I live alone now.”

“This doesn’t look good, with your animals in Maude Bly Modena’s shop. Just what are you up to and what are you hiding?”

“Nothing.” This wasn’t exactly true, because under the counter, neatly placed in a large manila envelope, were the Claudius Crozet letters. Mrs. Hogendobber had smuggled the copies of the accounting books to her home.

“You’re telling me your cat and dog entered the shop without your opening the door?” Rick’s voice dripped disbelief.

“Yes.”

“Bob Berryman let us in,” Mrs. Murphy said but no one listened to her.

“Buzz off, Shaw,” Tucker growled.

“You don’t leave town without telling me, Miz Haristeen.” Rick slapped the counter with his right palm.

Susan intruded.“Rick, you can’t possibly believe that Harry’s a murderer. The only people who can prove where they were in the middle of the night are the married ones faithful to their spouses.”

“That leaves out much of Crozet,” Harry wryly noted.

“And the ones who are together can lie for each other. Maybe this isn’t the work of one person. Maybe it’s a team.” Susan hoisted herself up on the counter.

“That possibility hasn’t escaped me.”

Harry put her mouth next to Mrs. Murphy’s ear. “What were you doing in Maude’s shop, you devil?”

“I told you.” Mrs. Murphy touched Harry’s nose.

“She’s telling you something,” Susan observed.

“That she wants some kitty crunchies, I bet.” Harry smiled.

“Don’t take this so lightly,” Rick warned.

“I’m not.” Harry’s face darkened. “But I don’t know what to do about this, any more than you do. We’re not stupid, Rick. We know the murderer is someone close to home, someone we know and trust. No one’s sleeping soundly anymore in Crozet.”

“Neither am I.” Rick’s voice softened. He rather liked Harry. “Look, I’m not paid to be nice. I’m paid to get results.”

“We know.” Susan crossed her legs under her. “We want you to and we’ll help you in any way that we can.”

“Thanks.” Rick patted Mrs. Murphy. “What were you doing in there, kitty cat?”

“I told you,” Mrs. Murphy moaned.

After Rick left, Susan whispered,“How did they get in the shop?”

Harry sighed.“I wish I knew.”

That night, after a supper of cottage cheese on a bed of lettuce sprinkled with sunflower seeds, Harry pulled out the postcards and her mother’s huge magnifying glass. She shone a bright light over the card to Kelly and placed the card Rob lent her next to it. The inks were different colors. The true Paris postmark was a slightly darker shade. Also, the lettering of the cancellation stamp on Kelly’s postcard was not precisely flush. This was also the case for the lettering on Maude’s postcard. The “A” in Asheville was out of line the tiniest bit. She switched off the light.

The postcards were a signal. She remembered when Maude received hers. She didn’t act like a woman under the threat of death. She was irritated that the sender hadn’t signed his or her name.

The floorboards creaked as Harry paced over them. What did she know? She knew the killer was close at hand. She knew the killer had a sense of humor and was perhaps even sporting, since he or she had fired a warning shot, so to speak. She knew the mangling of the bodies was designed to throw people off the scent. Just why, she wasn’t sure. The mess might have been to disguise the method of murder or it might have been to keep people from looking elsewhere, but why and for what? Or worse, it could have been a sick joke.

The other thing she knew was that Claudius Crozet was important to Maude. Tomorrow she was determined to call Marie, the secretary at the concrete plant, to find out if Kelly ever mentioned the famous engineer. She fixed a stiff cup of coffee—a spoon could stand up in the liquid—and sat down at the kitchen table to read the letters.

By one in the morning she was ravenous and wished that someone would figure out a way to fax a pizza. She ate more cottage cheese and kept reading. Crozet wrote in detail about the process of cutting the tunnels. The boring for the tunnels proceeded around the clock in three eight-hour shifts for eight solid years. The Brooksville tunnel proved extremely dangerous. The rock, seemingly sound, was soft as the men bit deeper into the mountain. Cave-ins and rockslides dumped on their heads like hard rain.

The physical difficulties occasionally paled beside the human ones. The tunnel rats were men of Ireland, but from two different parts of the Emerald Isle. The men of Cork disdained the Fardowners, the men of Northern Ireland. One bitter night, on February 2, 1850, a riot shook Augusta County. The militia was called out to separate the warring factions and the jail burst at the seams with bloodied Irishmen. By the next morning both sides agreed that they’d only desired a little fight and the authorities accepted that explanation. After breaking a few bones and sitting out the night in jail, the men got along just fine.