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

“Quit flapping your gums, you overgrown rat. When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.” Paddy washed one of his white spats.

A large black cat permanently wearing a tuxedo and spats, Paddy was handsome and knew it. His white bib gleamed, and despite his propensity for fighting, he always cleaned himself up.

Mrs. Murphy sat on a director’s chair in the tack room. Paddy sat in the chair opposite her while Tucker sprawled on the floor. Simon wouldn’t come down. He hated strange animals.

The last light of day cast a peachy-pink glow through the outside window. The horses chatted to one another in their stalls.

“I wish Mom would come home,” Tucker said.

“She’ll be at Eagle’s Rest a long time.” Mrs. Murphy knew that calling upon the bereaved took time, plus everyone else in Crozet would be there.

“Funny how the old man dropped.” Paddy started cleaning his other forepaw.“They’re already digging his grave at the cemetery. I walked through there on my rounds. His plot’s next to the Berrymans’ on one side and the Craigs’ on the other.”

Tucker walked to the end of the barn, then returned.“The sky’s bloodred over the mountains.”

“Another deep frost tonight too,” Paddy remarked.“Just when you think spring is here.”

“Days are warming up,” Mrs. Murphy noted.“Dr. Craig. Wasn’t that Larry Johnson’s partner?”

Paddy replied,“Long before any of us were born.”

“Let me think.”

“Murph.” Tucker wistfully stood on her hind legs, putting her front paws on the chair.“Ask Herbie Jones, he remembers everything.”

“If only humans could understand.” Mrs. Murphy frowned, then brightened.“Dr. Jim Craig. Killed in 1948. He took Larry into his practice just like Larry took in Hayden McIntire.”

Paddy stared at his former wife. When she got a bee in her bonnet, it was best to let her go on. She evidenced more interest in humans than he did.

“What set youoff?”

The tiger cat glanced down at her canine companion.“Paddy said he walked through the cemetery. The Randolphs are buried between the Berrymans and the Craigs.”

Tucker wandered around restlessly.“Another unsolved murder.”

“Ah, one of those spook tales they tell you when you’re a kitten to scare you,” Paddy pooh-poohed.“Old Dr. Craig is found in his Pontiac, motor running. Found at the cemetery gates. Yeah, I remember now. His grandson, Jim Craig II, tried to reopen the case years back, but nothing came of it.”

“Shot between the eyes,” Mrs. Murphy said.“His medical bag stolen but no money.”

“Well, this town is filled with weirdos. Somebody really wanted to play doctor.” Paddy giggled.

“In 1948,” Mrs. Murphy triumphantly recalled the details told to her long ago by her own mother, Skippy,“The town smothered in shock because everyone loved Dr. Craig.”

“Not everyone,” Paddy said.

“Hooray!” Tucker jumped up as she heard the truck coming down the driveway.“Mom’s home.”

“Paddy, come on in. Harry likes you.”

“Yeah, get out of here, useless,” Simon called down from the loft.

The owl poked her head out from under her wing, then stuck it back. She rarely joined in these discussions with the other animals since she worked the night shift.

The dog bounded ahead of them.

The tuxedo cat and the tiger strolled at a leisurely pace to the front door. It wouldn’t do to appear too excited.

“Ever wish we were still together?” Paddy asked.“I do.”

“Paddy, being in a relationship with you was like putting Miracle-Gro on my character defects.” Her tail whisked to the vertical when Harry called her name.

“Does that mean you don’t like me?”

“No. It means I didn’t like me in that situation. Now, come on, let’s get some supper.”

20

The upper two floors of Monticello, not open to the public, served as a haven and study for the long-legged Kimball Haynes. While most of the valuable materials relating to Mr. Jefferson and his homes reposed in the rare books section of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia, the Library of Congress, or the Virginia State Library in Richmond, only a small library existed upstairs at Monticello.

One of Kimball’s pleasures consisted of sitting in the rectangular room above the south piazza, or greenhouse, which connects the octagonal library to Jefferson’s cabinet, the room he used as his private study. Kimball kept a comfortable wing chair there and a private library, which included copies of records that Jefferson or his white employees kept in their own hand. He pored over account books, visitors’ logs, and weather reports for the year 1803. As Mr. Jefferson was serving his first term as president during that year, the records lacked the fullness of the great man’s attention. Peas, tomatoes, and corn were planted as always. A coach broke an axle. The repairs were costly. The livestock demanded constant care. A visitor assigned to a third-floor room in November complained of being frightfully cold, a reasonable complaint, since there were no fireplaces up there.

As the night wore on, Kimball heard the first peepers of spring. He loved that sound better than Mozart. He thumbed the copies blackened by the soil on his hands. Ground-in dirt was an occupational hazard for an archaeologist. He had used these references for years, returning to the rare books collection at the University of Virginia only when he’d scrubbed his hands until they felt raw.

After absorbing those figures, Kimball dropped the pages on the floor and leaned back in the old chair. He flung one leg over a chair arm. Facts, facts, facts, and not a single clue. Whoever was buried in the dirt at Cabin Four wasn’t a tradesman. A tinker or wheelwright or purveyor of fresh fish, even a jeweler, wouldn’t have had such expensive clothing on his back.

The corpse belonged to a gentleman. Someone of the president’s own class. 1803.

Now, Kimball knew that might not be the year of the man’s death, but it couldn’t be far off. Whatever happened politically that year might have some bearing on the murder, but Kimball’s understanding of human nature suggested that in America people rarely killed each other over politics. Murder was closer to the skin.

He recalled a scandal the year before, 1802, that cut Thomas Jefferson to the quick. His friend from childhood, John Walker, accused Jefferson of making improper advances to his wife. According to John Walker, this affair started in 1768, when Thomas Jefferson was not yet married, but Walker maintained that it continued until 1779, seven years after Jefferson had married Martha Wayles Skelton, on January 1, 1772. The curious aspect of this scandal was that Mrs. Walker saw fit to burden her husband with the disclosure of her infidelity only some time after 1784, when Jefferson was in France.

Kimball also remembered that upon Jefferson’s return from France, he and John Walker began to move on separate political paths. Light-Horse Harry Lee, father of Robert E. Lee, later volunteered to mediate between the two former friends. As Light-Horse Harry loathed Thomas Jefferson, the result of this effort was a foregone conclusion. Things went from bad to worse with James Thomson Callender, a vicious tattletale, fanning the flames. It was at this time that the infamous allegations against Jefferson for sleeping with his slave, Sally Hemings, began to make the rounds.

By January of 1805 these stories gained enough currency to cause theNew-England Palladium to castigate Mr. Jefferson’s morals. Apparently, Mr. Jefferson did not stand for family values.

The fur flew. Few cocktails are more potent than politics mixed with sex. Drinks were on the house, literally. Congress wallowed in the gossip. Things haven’t changed, Kimball thought to himself.

To make matters murkier, Jefferson admitted to making a pass at Mrs. Walker. Acting as a true gentleman, Jefferson shouldered all the blame for the affair, which he carefully noted as having occurred before his marriage. In those days, the fellow accepted the stigma, no matter what had really happened. To blame the lady meant you weren’t a man.

Thanks to Jefferson’s virile stance, even his political enemies let the Walker affair go. Everyone let it go but John Walker. Only as Walker lay dying at his estate in Keswick, called Belvoir, did he acknowledge that Jefferson was as much sinned against as sinner. By then it was too late.

The Sally Hemings story, however, did damage the president. A white man sleeping with a black woman created a spectacular conundrum for everyone. A gentleman couldn’t admit such a thing. It would destroy his wife and generate endless jokes at his expense. Let there be one red-haired African American at Monticello and the jig was up, literally. That little word-play ran from Maine to South Carolina in the early 1800s. Oh, how they must have laughed in the pubs. “The jig is up.”

It did not help Mr. Jefferson’s case that some fair-skinned African Americans did appear at Monticello bearing striking resemblance to the master. However, as Kimball recalled, Thomas wasn’t the only male around with Jefferson blood.

So what if a cousin had had an affair with Sally? Bound by the aristocratic code of honor, Jefferson still must remain silent or he would cause tremendous suffering to the rake’s wife. A gentleman always protects a lady regardless of her relation to him. A gentleman could also try to protect a woman of color by remaining silent and giving her money and other favors. Silence was the key.

One thing was certain about the master sleeping with a slave: The woman had no choice but to say yes. In that truth lay lyric heartache sung from generation to generation of black women. Broke the hearts of white women too.

Stars glittered in the sky, the Milky Way smeared in an arc over the buildings as it had centuries ago. Kimball realized this murder might or might not have something to do with Thomas Jefferson’s personal life, but it surely had something to do with a violent and close relationship between a white man and a black woman.

He would go over the slave roster tomorrow. He was too sleepy tonight.

21

The Crozet Lutheran Church overflowed with people who had come to pay their last respects to Wesley Randolph. The deceased’s family, Warren, Ansley, Stuart, and Breton, sat in the front pew. Kimball Haynes, his assistant Heike Holtz, Oliver Zeve and his wife, and the other staff at Monticello came to say goodbye to a man who had supported the cause for over fifty of his seventy-three years.

Marilyn and Jim Sanburne sat in the second pew on the right along with their daughter Marilyn Sanburne Hamilton, alluring in black and available thanks to a recent divorce. Big Mim would apply herself to arranging a more suitable match sometime in the future.

The entire town of Crozet must have been there, plus the out-of-towners who had occasion to know Wesley from business dealings, as well as friends from all over the South.

The Reverend Herbert Jones, his deep voice filling the church, read the Scriptures.

Somber but impressive, the funeral would have been remembered in proportion to Wesley’s services to the community. However, this funeral stuck in people’s memories for another reason.

Right in the middle of Reverend Jones’s fervent denial of death, “For if we believe we are risen in Christ …” Lucinda Payne Coles whispered loud enough for those around her to hear, “You sorry son of a bitch.” Red in the face, she slid out of the pew and walked back up the aisle. The usher swung the door open for her. Samson, glued to his seat, didn’t even swivel his head to follow his wife’s glowering progress.

As the people filed out of the church, Mim cornered Samson in the vestibule.“What in the world was that all about?”

Samson shrugged,“She loved Wesley, and I think her emotions got the better of her.”

“If she loved Wesley, she wouldn’t have marred his funeral. I’m not stupid, Samson. What are you doing to her?” Mim took the position that men wronged women more often than women wronged men. In this particular case she was right.

Samson hissed,“Mim, this is none of your business.” He stalked off, knowing full well she’d never refer a customer to him again. At that moment he didn’t care. He was too confused to care.

Harry, Susan, and Ned observed this exchange, as did everyone else.

“You’re going to get a call tonight.” Susan squeezed her husband’s forearm. “That’s the price of being such a good divorce lawyer.”

“Funny thing is, I hate divorce.” Ned shook his head.

“Don’t we all?” Harry agreed as the source of her former discontent, Fair, joined them.

“Damn.”

“Fair, you always were a man of few words.” Ned nodded a greeting.

“My patients don’t talk,” Fair replied. “You know, something’s really wrong. That’s not like Lulu. She knows her place.”

“It’s going to be a much poorer place now,” Susan wryly noted.

“Mim will wreak vengeance on Samson. Bad enough he told her to bugger off, he did it in public. He’ll have to crawl on his belly over hot coals—publicly—to atone for his sin.” Ned knew how Mim worked. She used her money and her vast real estate holdings as leverage if she felt a pinch in the pocketbook would suffice. When her target was a woman, she generally preferred to cast her into social limbo. But the human is an animal nonetheless, and harsh lessons were learned faster than mild ones. Had Mim been a man, she would have been called a hard-ass, but she’d have been lauded as agood businessman. Since she was a woman, the termbitch seemed to cover it. Unfair, but that was life. Then again, had Mim been a man, she might not have had to teach people quite so many lessons. They would have feared her from the get-go.

Larry Johnson, physician to Wesley and the family, climbed into his car to follow the funeral procession to the family cemetery.

“Hear Warren wouldn’t let anyone sign the death certificate but Larry,” Fair mentioned. “Heard it over at Sharkey Loomis’s stable.”

“That must have been a sad task for Larry. They’d been friends for years.” Harry wondered how it would feel to know someone for fifty, sixty years and then lose them.

“Come on, or we’ll be last in line.” Susan shepherded them to their cars.

22

A hard-driving rain assisted Kimball Haynes. The slashing of the drops against the windowpane helped him to concentrate. It was long past midnight, and he was still bent over the records of births and deaths from 1800 to 1812.

He cast wide his research net, then slowly drew it toward him. Medley Orion, born around 1785, was reported to be a beautiful woman. Her extraordinary color was noted twice in the records; her lovely cast of features must have been delicious. White people rarely noted the physiognomy of black people unless it was to make fun of them. But an early note in a lady’s hand, quite possibly that of Martha, Jefferson’s eldest daughter, stated these qualities.

Martha married when Medley was five or six. She would have seen the woman as a child and as she grew. Usually Martha kept good accounts, but this reference was on a scrap of paper on the reverse of a list penned in tiny, tiny handwriting about different types of grapes.

A flash of lightning seared across the night sky. A crackle, then a pop, sounded out in the yard. The electricity went off.

Kimball had no flashlight. He was wearing his down vest, since it was cold in the room. His hands fingered a square box of matches. He struck one. He hadn’t placed any candles in the room, but then, why would he? He rarely worked late into the night at Monticello.

The rain pounded the windows and drummed on the roof, a hard spring storm. Even in this age of telephones and ambulances, this would be a hateful night in which to fall ill, give birth, or be caught outside on horseback.

The match fizzled. Kimball declined to strike another. He could have felt his way down the narrow stairway, a mere twenty-four inches wide, to the first floor, the public floor of Monticello. There were beeswax candles down there. But he decided to peer out the window. A rush of water and occasional glimpses of trees bending in the wind were all he could make out.

The house creaked and moaned. The day you see, the night you hear. Kimball heard the door hinges rasp in the slight air current sent up by the winds outside. The windows upstairs were not airtight, so a swish of wind snuck inside. The windows themselves rattled in protest at the driving rains. The winds howled, circled, then swept back up in the flues. Occasionally a raindrop or two would trickle down into the fireplace, bringing with it the memory of fires over two hundred years ago. Floorboards popped.

Perhaps in such a hard storm a wealthy person would light a candle to bring some cheer into the room. A fire would struggle in the fireplace because the downdraft was fierce, despite the flue. Still, a bit of light and good cheer would fill the room, and frightened children could be told stories of the Norse and Greek gods, Thor tossing his mighty hammer or Zeus hurtling a bolt of lightning to earth like a blue javelin.

“What would such a storm have been like in Cabin Four?” Kimball wondered. The door would be closed. Perhaps Medley might have had tallow candles. No evidence of such had been found in her cabin, but tallow candles had been found in other digs and certainly the smithy and joinery had them for people who worked after dark. A quilt wrapped around one’s body would help. The fireplaces in the servants’ quarters lacked the refinement of the fireplaces in the Big House, so more rain and wind would funnel down the chimneys, sending dust and debris over the room. At least Medley had a wooden floor. Some cabins had packed-earth floors, which meant on the cold mornings your bare feet would hit frost on the ground. Maybe Medley Orion would hop into bed and pull the covers up on such a night.

Kimball feverishly worked to piece together the bits of her life. This was archaeology of a different sort. The more he knew about the woman, the closer he would come to a solution, he thought. Then he’d double-think and wonder if she might be innocent. Someone was killed in her cabin, but maybe she knew nothing. No. Impossible. The body had to have been buried at night. She knew, all right.

The rain wrapped around Monticello like a swirling silver curtain. Kimball, grateful for the time to sit and cogitate, a man’s word for dream, knew he’d have to keep pressing on. He did realize he needed advice from a woman friend or friends. Compared to men, women rarely killed. What would compel a slave woman to take a man’s life, and a white man’s at that?

23

Imbued with the seriousness of her task, Mim invited Lucinda Coles, Miranda Hogendobber, Port Haffner, Ellie Wood Baxter, and Susan Tucker and Mary Minor Haristeen for youth. Little Marilyn was also present in the capacity of acolyte to Mim in her own role as social priestess. Ansley Randolph would have been invited, but given that Wesley Randolph lay in the ground but a scant three days, that would never do.

When Kimball Haynes asked for assistance, he suffered an embarrassment of riches. Although not as politically canny as Oliver, Kimball possessed a scrap of shrewdness. One doesn’t advance in this world without it. After his night at Monticello in the rainstorm, he thought the wisest policy would be to call Mim Sanburne. After all, she, too, felt some of the heat over what was happening at Monticello. She squeezed money out of turnips. She never turned down a hard job. She knew everybody, which was worth more than knowing everything. To top it off, Mim adored being at the center of activities.

Mim swooned when Kimball called saying that he wanted to get together with her because he thought she might have the key to the problem. He assured her that she had great insight into the female mind. That did it. Mim couldn’t bear having great insight into the female mind without her friends knowing. Hence tonight.

Although furious at Samson, Mim bore no animosity toward Lulu other than that she should not have lost her temper in the middle of a funeral service. Then again, Mim felt some kinship with Lucinda since she was certain Samson was up to no good. Not that Mim wouldn’t use Lucinda to bring Samson to heel if the occasion presented itself. She’d wait and see.

Caviar, chopped eggs and onions, fresh salmon, eleven different kinds of cheese and crackers, sliced carrots, snow peas stuffed with cream cheese, crisp cauliflower, and endive with bacon grease dribbled over it completed the warm-ups, as Mim called them. Lunch dazzled everyone. Mim found a divine recipe for lobster ravioli which proved so enticing, no one even mentioned her diet. Arugula salad and a sliver of melon balanced the palate. Those wishing megacalorie desserts gorged on a raspberry cobbler with a vanilla cream sauce or good old devil’s food cake for the chocolate lovers.

Mim had the fruits flown down from New York City, as she kept an account there with a posh food emporium. Finally, everyone’s mood elevated to the stratosphere. Should anyone require a revitalizing liquid after luncheon, a vast array of spirits awaited them.

Susan chose a dry sherry. She declared that the raw wind cut into her very bones. She knew perfectly well that someone had to stampede for the crystal decanters on the silver trays. Lucinda would die before she’d take the first drink, so Susan figured she’d be the one to save Lulu’s life. Miranda declined alcohol, as did Harry and Ellie Wood, a septuagenarian in splendid health.

“I always feel prosperous on a full stomach.” Mrs. Hogendobber accepted a cup of piping coffee from the maid dressed in black with a starched white apron and cap.

“Mim, you’ve outdone yourself. Hear! Hear!” Lulu held up her glass as the other ladies and Kimball did likewise or tapped their spoons to china cups from Cartier.

“A trifle.” Mim acknowledged the praise. It might have been a trifle to her, but it damn near killed the cook. It wasn’t a trifle to Mim either, but by making light of her accomplishments she added to her formidable reputation. She knew not one lady in the room could have pulled off a luncheon like that, much less at the last minute.

“You know Ansley is comatose with grief.” Port, another dear friend of Mim’s, paused as the maid handed her a brandy the color of dark topaz.

“Really?” Ellie Wood leaned forward. “I had no idea she was that fond of Wesley. I thought they were usually at sixes and sevens.”

“They were,” Port crisply agreed. “She’s comatose with grief because she had to stay home. She made me swear that I would call her the instant we finished and tell her everything, including, of course, what we wore.”

“Oh, dear,” Harry blurted out honestly.

“You have youth, Harry, and youth needs no adornment.” Miranda came to her rescue. Harry lacked all clothes sense. If she had an important date, Susan and Miranda would force her into something suitable. Harry’s idea of dressing up was ironing a crease in her Levi 501s.

“I don’t know.” Susan kidded her schoolmate. “We’re thirty-something, you know.”

“Babies.” Port kicked off one shoe.

“Time to have some.” Mim glared at her daughter. Little Marilyn evaded her mother’s demand.

Kimball rubbed his hands together.“Ladies, once again we are indebted to Mrs. Sanburne. I do believe she’s the glue that holds us together. I knew we couldn’t proceed at Mulberry Row without her leadership in the community.”

“Hear. Hear.” More toasts and teaspoons on china cups.

Kimball continued.“I’m not sure what Mim has told you. I called needing her wisdom once again and she has provided me with you. I must ask your indulgence as I review the facts. The body of a man was found facedown in Cabin Four. The back of his skull bore testimony to one mighty blow with a heavy, sharp object like an ax but probably not an ax, or else the bone fragment would have been differently smashed—or so Sheriff Shaw believes. The victim wore expensive clothes, a large gold ring, and his pockets were full of money. I counted out the coins and he had about fifty dollars in his pockets. In today’s money that would be about five hundred. The remains are in Washington now. We will know when he died, his age, his race, and possibly even something about his health. It’s amazing what they can tell these days. He was found under the hearth—two feet under. And that is all we know. Oh, yes, thecabin was inhabited by Medley Orion, a woman in her early twenties. Her birth year isn’t clearly recorded. The first mention of her is as a child, so we can speculate. But she was young. A seamstress. Now, I want you to cast your minds back, back to 1803, since our victim was killed then or shortly thereafter. The most recent coin in his pocket was 1803. What happened?”

This stark question created a heavy silence.

Lucinda spoke first.“Kimball, we didn’t know that a man was murdered. The papers said only a skeleton was unearthed. This is quite a shock. I mean, people speculated but …”

“He was killed by a ferocious blow to the head.” Kimball directed his gaze toward Lucinda. “Naturally, Oliver didn’t, and won’t, want to attest to the fact that the person was murdered until the report comes back from Washington. It will give all of us at Monticello a bit more time to prepare.”

“I see.” Lucinda cupped her chin in her hand. In her late forties, she was handsome rather than beautiful, stately rather than sweet.

Ellie Wood, a logical soul, speculated.“If he was hit hard, the person would have had to be strong. Was the wound in the front of the skull or the back?”

“The back,” Kimball replied.

“Then whoever did it wanted no struggle. No noise either.” Ellie Wood quickly grasped the possibilities.

“Might this man have been killed by Medley’s lover?” Port inquired. “Do you know if she had a lover?”

“No. I don’t. I do know she bore a child in August of 1803, but that doesn’t mean she had a lover as we understand the concept.” Kimball crossed his arms over his chest.

“Surely you don’t think Thomas Jefferson instituted a breeding program?” Lucinda was shocked.

“No, no.” Kimball reached for the brandy. “He tried not to break up families, but I haven’t found any records to indicate Medley ever had a permanent partner.”

“Did she bear more children?” Little Marilyn finally joined in the conversation.

“Apparently not,” he said.

“That’s very odd.” Puzzlement shone over Susan’s face. “Birth control consisted of next to nothing.”

“Sheepskin. A primitive form of condom.” Kimball sipped the brandy, the best he had ever tasted. “However, the chance of a slave having access to anything that sophisticated is out of the question.”

“Who said her partner was a slave?” Harry threw down the joker.

Mim, not wanting to appear old-fashioned, picked it up.“Was she beautiful, Kimball? If she was, then her partners may indeed have had access to sheep membrane.” Mim implied that Medley therefore would have attracted the white men.

“By what few accounts I can find, yes, she was beautiful.”

Lucinda scowled.“Oh, I hope we can just slide by this. I think we’re opening a can of worms.”

“We are, but somebody’s got to open it.” Mim stood her ground. “We’ve swept this sort of thing under the rug for centuries. Not that I enjoy the process, I don’t, but miscegenation may be a motive for murder.”

“I don’t think a black woman would have killed a man merely because he was white,” Ellie Wood said. “But if she had a black lover, he might be driven to it out of jealousy if nothing else.”

“But what if it was Medley herself?” Kimball’s voice rose with suppressed excitement. “What would drive a slave to kill a rich white man? What would drive a woman of any color to kill a man? I think you all know far better than I.”

Catching his enthusiasm, Port jumped up.“Love. Love can run anyone crazy.”

“Okay, say she loved the victim. Not that I think too many slaves loved the white men who snuck into their cabins.” Harry grew bold. “Even at her most irrational, would she kill him because he walked out on her? How could she? White men walked out on black women every morning. They just turned their backs and poof, they were gone. Wouldn’t she have been used to it? Wouldn’t an older slave have prepared her and said something like, ‘This is your lot in life’?”

“Probably would have said ‘This is your cross to bear.’ ” Miranda furrowed her brow.

Unsettled as Lucinda was by Samson’s infidelity, and she was getting closer and closer to the real truth, she recognized as the afternoon continued that her unhappiness at least had a front door. She could walk out. Medley Orion couldn’t. “Perhaps he humiliated her in some secret place, some deep way, and she snapped.”

“Not humiliated, threatened.” Susan’s eyes lit up. “She was a slave. She’d learned to mask her feelings. Don’t we all, ladies?” This idea rippled across the room. “Whoever this was, he had a hold on her. He was going to do something terrible to her or to someone she loved, and she fought back. My God, where did she get the courage?”

“I don’t know if I can agree.” Miranda folded her hands together. “Does it take courage to kill? God forbids us to take another human life.”

“That’s it!” Mim spoke up. “He must have threatened to take someone else’s life—or hers. What if he threatened to kill Mr. Jefferson—not my stalker theory, mind you, but an explosive rage on the dead man’s part—something erratic?”

“I doubt she’d kill to save her master,” Little Marilyn countered her mother. “Jefferson was an extraordinary human being, but he was still the master.”

“Some slaves loved their masters.” Lucinda backed up Mim.

“Not as many as white folks want to believe.” Harry laughed. She couldn’t help but laugh. While bonds of affection surely existed, it was difficult for her to grasp that the oppressed could love the oppressor.

“Well, then what?” Ellie Wood’s patience, never her strong point, ebbed.

“She killed to protect her true lover.” Port savored her brandy.

“Or her child,” Susan quietly added.

An electric current shot around the room. Was there a mother anywhere in the world who wouldn’t kill for her child?

“The child was born in August 1803.” Kimball twirled the crystal glass. “If the victim were killed after August, he might have known the child.”

“But he might have known the child even before it was born.” Mim’s eyes narrowed.

“What?” Kimball seemed temporarily befuddled.

“What if it were his?” Mim’s voice rang out.

A silence followed this.

Harry then said,“Most men, or perhaps I should say some men, who have enjoyed the favors of a woman who becomes pregnant declare they don’t know if the baby is theirs. Of course they can’t get away with that now thanks to this DNA testing stuff. They sure could get away with it then.”

“Good point, Harry. I say the child was born before he was killed.” Susan held them spellbound. “The child was born and it looked like him.”

“Good God, Susan, I hope you’re wrong.” Lucinda blinked. “How could a man kill his own child to—to savehis face?”

“People do terrible things,” Port flatly stated, for she didn’t understand it either, but then, she didn’t refute it.

“Well, he paid for his intentions, if that’s what they were.” Ellie Wood felt rough justice had been done. “If that’s true, he paid for it, and done is done.”

“‘Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand and their doom comes swiftly.’ Deuteronomy 32:35,” Miranda intoned.

But done was not done. The past was coming undone, and the day of calamity was at hand.

24

“I thought it would take some of the burden off you. You don’t need people at you right now.” Ansley Randolph leaned on the white fence and watched the horses breeze through their morning workout around the track—the Fibar and sand mix kept the footing good year-round. “Not that anything will make you feel better, for a time.”

Pain creased the lines around Warren’s eyes. “Honey, I’ve no doubt that you thought you were doing the right thing, but number one, I am tired of being whipped into shape by Mim Sanburne. Number two, my family’s diaries, maps, and genealogies stay right here at Eagle’s Rest. Some are so old I keep them in the safe. Number three, I don’t think anything of mine will interest Kimball Haynes, and number four, I’m exhausted. I don’t want to argue with anyone. I don’t even want to explain myself to anyone. No is no, and you’ll have to tell Mim.”

Ansley, while not in love with Warren, liked him sometimes. This was one of those times.“You’re right. I should have kept my mouth shut. I suppose I wanted to curry favor with Mim. She gives you business.”

Warren clasped his hands over the top rail of the fence.“Mim keeps a small army of lawyers busy. If I lose her business, I don’t think it will hurt either one of us, and it won’t hurt you socially either. All you have to do is tell Mim that I’m down and I can’t have anything on my mind right now. I need to rest and repair—that’s no lie.”

“Warren, don’t take this the wrong way, but I never knew you loved your father this much.”

He sighed.“I didn’t either.” He studied his boot tips for a second. “It’s not just Poppa. Now I’m the oldest living male of the line, a line that extends back to 1632. Until our sons are out of prep school and college, the burden of that falls entirely on me. Now I must manage the portfolio—”

“You have good help.”

“Yes, but Poppa always checked over the results of our investments. Truth be told, darling, my law degree benefitted Poppa, not me. I read over those transactions that needed a legal check, but I never really paid attention to the investments and the land holdings in an aggressive sense. Poppa liked to keep his cards close to his chest. Well, I’d better learn fast. We’ve been losing money on the market.”

“Who hasn’t? Warren, don’t worry so much.”

“Well, I might have to delay running for the state Senate.”

“Why?” Ansley wanted Warren in Richmond as much as possible. She intended to work nonstop for his election.

“Might look bad.”

“No, it won’t. You tell the voters you’re dedicating this campaign to your father, a man who believed in self-determination.”

Admiring her shrewdness, he said,“Poppa would have liked that. You know, it’s occurred to me these last few days that I’m raising my sons the way Poppa raised me. I was packed off to St. Clement’s, worked here for the summers, and then it was off to Vanderbilt. Maybe the boys should be different—maybe something wild for them like”—he thought—“Berkeley. Now that I’m the head of this family, I want to give my sons more freedom.”

“If they want to attend another college, fine, but let’s not push them into it. Vanderbilt has served this family well for a long time.” Ansley loved her sons although she despised the music they blasted throughout the house. No amount of yelling convinced them they’d go deaf. She was sure she was half deaf already.

“Did you really like my father?”

“Why do you ask me that now, after eighteen years of marriage?” She was genuinely surprised.

“Because I don’t know you. Not really.” He gazed at the horses on the far side of the track, for he couldn’t look at her.

“I thought that’s the way your people did things. I didn’t think you wanted to be close.”

“Maybe I don’t know how.”

Too late now, she thought to herself.“Well, Warren, one step at a time. I got along with Wesley, but it was his way or no way.”

“Yep.”

“I did like what he printed on his checks.” She recited verbatim: “These funds were generated under the free enterprise system despite government’s flagrant abuse of the income tax, bureaucratic hostilities, and irresponsible controls.”

Warren’s eyes misted. “He was tough duty, but he was clear about what he thought.”

“We’ll know even more about that at the reading of the will.”

25

The reading of the will hit Warren like a two-by-four. Wesley had prepared his will through the old prestigious firm of Maki, Kleiser, and Maki. Not that Warren minded. It would be indelicate to have your son prepare your will. Still, he wasn’t prepared for this.

A clause in his father’s will read that no money could ever be inherited by any Randolph of any succeeding generation who married a person who was even one-twentieth African.

Ansley laughed. How absurd. Her sons weren’t going to marry women from Uganda. Her sons weren’t even going to marry African Americans, quadroons, octoroons, no way. Those boys weren’t sent to St. Clements to be liberals and certainly not to mix with the races—the calendar be damned.

Warren, ashen when he heard the clause, sputtered,“That’s illegal. Under today’s laws that’s illegal.”

Old George Kleiser neatly stacked his papers.“Maybe. Maybe not. This will could be contested, but who would do that? Let it stand. Those were your father’s express wishes.” Apparently George thought the proviso prudent, or perhaps he subscribed to the let-sleeping-dogs-lie theory.

“Warren, you aren’t going to do anything about this? I mean, why would you?”

As if in a trance, Warren shook his head.“No—but, Ansley, if this gets out, there go my chances for the state Senate.”

George’s stentorian voice filled the room. “Word of this, uh, consideration will never leave this room.”

“What about the person who physically prepared the will?” Warren put his foot in it.

George, irritated, glided over that remark as he made allowances for Warren’s recent loss. He’d known Warren since infancy, so he knew the middle-aged man in front of him was unprepared to take the helm of the family’s great, though dwindling, fortune. “Our staff is accustomed to sensitive issues, Warren. Issues of life and death.”

“Of course, of course, George—I’m just flabbergasted. Poppa never once spoke of anything like this to me.”

“He was a genteel racist instead of an overt one.” Ansley wanted to put the subject out of her mind and couldn’t see why Warren was so upset.

“And aren’t you?” Warren fired back.

“Not as long as we don’t intermarry. I don’t believe in mixing the races. Other than that, people are people.” Ansley shook off Warren’s barb.

“Ansley, you must promise me never, never, no matter how angry you may become with me or the boys—after all, people do rub one another’s nerves—but you must never repeat what you’ve heard in this room today. I don’t want to lose my chance because Poppa had this thing about racial purity.”

Ansley promised never to tell.

26

But she did. She told Samson.

The early afternoon sun slanted across Blair Bainbridge’s large oak kitchen table. Tulips swayed outside the long windows, and the hyacinths would open in a few days if this welcome warmth continued.

“I’m not surprised,” Samson told Ansley. “The old man made a lifetime study of bloodlines, and to him it would be like crossing a donkey with a Thoroughbred.” Then he smirked. “Of course, who is the donkey and who is the Thoroughbred?”

She held his hand as she sipped her hot chocolate.“It seems so—extreme.”

Samson shrugged. The contents of Wesley’s will held scant interest for him. Another twenty minutes and he would have to hit the road. His stomach knotted up each time he left Ansley. “Say, I’ve got people coming in from California to look at Midale. Think I’ll show them some properties in Orange County too. Awful pretty up thereand not so developed. If I can sell Midale, I’ll have some good money.” He pressed his other hand on top of hers. “Then you can leave Warren.”

Ansley stiffened.“Not while he’s in mourning for his father.”

“After that. Six months is a reasonable period of time. I can set my house in order and you can do the same.”

“Honey”—she petted his hand—“let’s leave well enough alone—for now. Lulu will skin you alive and in public. There’s got to be a way around her, but I haven’t found it yet. I keep hoping she’ll find someone, she’ll make life easier—but she has too much invested in being the wronged woman. And that scene at Big Daddy’s funeral. My God.”

Samson coughed. The knot in his stomach grew tighter.“Just one of those things. She leaned over to whisper in my ear and said she smelled another woman’s perfume. I don’t know what got into her.”

“She knows my perfume, Diva. Anyway, when we’re together I don’t wear any perfume.”

“Natural perfume.” He kissed her hand in his.

She kissed him on the cheek.“Samson, you are the sweetest man.”

“Not to hear my wife tell it.” He sighed and bowed his head. “I don’t know how much longer I can stand it. I’m living such a lie. I don’t love Lulu. I’m tired of keeping up with the Joneses, who can’t keep up with themselves. I’m tired of being trapped in my car all day with strangers and no matter what they tell you they want to buy, they really want the opposite. I swear it. Buyers are liars, as my first broker used to say. I don’t know how long I can hold out.”

“Just a little longer, precious.” She nibbled on his ear. “Was there another woman’s perfume on your neck?”

He sputtered,“Absolutely not. I don’t even know where she came up with that. You know I don’t even look at other women, Ansley.” He kissed her passionately.

As she drew back from the kiss she murmured,“Well, she knows, she just doesn’t know it’s me. Funny, I like Lulu. I call her most every morning. I guess she’s my best friend, but I don’t like her as your wife and I never did. I couldn’t get it, know what I mean? You can sometimes see a couple and know why they’re together. Like Harry and Fair when they were together. Or Susan and Ned—that’s a good pair—but I never felt the heat, I guess you’d say, between Lulu and you. I don’t really feel like I’m betraying her. I feel like I’m liberating her. She deserves the heat. She needs the right man for her—you’re the right man for me.”

He kissed her again and wished the clock weren’t ticking so loudly. “Ansley, I can’t live without you. You know that. I’ll never be as rich as Warren, but I’m not poor. I work hard.”

Her voice low, she brushed his cheek with her lips as she said,“And I want to make sure you don’t join the ranks of the nouveau pauvre. I don’t want your wife to take you to the cleaners. Give me a little time. I’ll think of something or someone.” She leapt out of her chair. “Oh, no!”

“What?” He hurried to her side.

Ansley pointed out the kitchen window. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker merrily raced to the stable.“Harry can’t be far behind, and she’s no dummy.”

“Damn!” Samson ran his hands through his thick hair.

“If you slip out the front door I’ll go out to the stable and head her off. Hurry!” She kissed him quickly. She could hear the heels of his shoes as he strode across the hardwood floors to the front door. Ansley headed for the back screen door.

Harry, much slower than her four-footed companions, had just reached the family cemetery on the hill. Ansley made it to the stable before Harry saw her.

“What’s she doing in Blair’s house?” Tucker asked.

Mrs. Murphy paused to observe Ansley.“High color. She’s het up about something and we know she’s not stealing the silver. She’s got too much of her own.”

“What if she’s a kleptomaniac?” Tucker cocked her head as Ansley walked toward them.

“Nah. But give her a sniff anyway.”

“Hi there, Mrs. Murphy. You too, Tucker,” Ansley called to the animals.

“Ansley, what are you up to?” Tucker asked as she poked her nose toward Ansley’s ankles.

Ansley waved at Harry, who waved back. She reached down to scratch Tucker’s big ears.

“Hi, how nice to find you here.” Harry diplomatically smiled.

“Warren sent me over to look at Blair’s spider-wheel tedder. Says he wants one and maybe Blair will sell it.”

A spider-wheel tedder turns hay for drying and can row up two swathes into one for baling. Three or four small metal wheels that resemble spiderwebs are pulled by a tractor.

“Thought you all rolled up your hay.”

“Warren says he’s tired of looking at huge rolls of shredded wheat in the fields and the middle of them is always wasted. He wants to go back to baling.”

“Be a while.” Harry noted the season.

Ansley lowered her voice.“He’s already planning Thanksgiving dinner for the family. I think it’s how the grief is taking him. You know, if he plans everything, then nothing can go wrong, he can control reality—although you’d think he would have had enough of that with his father.”

“It will take time.” Harry knew. She had lost both her parents some years before.

Mrs. Murphy, on her haunches, got up and trotted off toward the house.“She’s lying.”

“Got that right.” The dog followed, her ears sweeping back for a moment.“Let’s nose around.”

The two animals reached the back door. Tucker, nose straight to the ground, sniffed intently. Mrs. Murphy relied on her eyes as much as her nose.

Tucker picked up the scent easily.“Samson Coles.”

“So that’s it.” Mrs. Murphy walked between the tulips. She loved feeling the stems brush against her fur.“She must really be bored.”

27

The quiet at Eagle’s Rest proved unnerving. Ansley regretted saying how much she loathed the loud music the boys played. Although cacophonous, it was preferable to silence.

Seven in the evening usually meant each son was in his room studying. How Breton and Stuart could study with that wall of reverberating sound fascinated her. They used to compete in decibel levels with the various bands. Finally she settled that by declaring that during the first hour of study time, from six to seven, Stuart could play his music. Breton’s choice won out between seven and eight.

Both she and Warren policed what they called study hall. Breton and Stuart made good grades, but Ansley felt they needed to know how important their schoolwork was to their parents, hence the policing. She told them frequently,“We have our jobs to do, you have your schoolwork.”

Unable, at last, to bear the silence, Ansley climbed the curving stairway to the upstairs hall. She peeked in Breton’s room. She walked down to Stuart’s. Her older son sat at his desk. Breton, cross-legged, perched on Stuart’s bed. Breton’s eyes were red. Ansley knew not to call attention to that.

“Hey, guys.”

“Hi, Mom.” They replied in unison.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Again in unison.

“Oh.” She paused. “Kind of funny not to have Big Daddy yelling about your music, huh?”

“Yeah,” Stuart agreed.

“He’s never coming back.” Breton had a catch in his breath. “I can’t believe he’s never coming back. At first it was like he was on vacation, you know?”

“I know,” Ansley commiserated.

Stuart sat upright, a change from his normal slouch.“Remember the times we used to recite our heritage?” He imitated his grandfather’s voice. “The first Randolph to set foot in the New World was a crony of Sir Walter Raleigh’s. He returned to the old country. His son, emboldened by stories of the New World, came over in 1632, and thus our line began on this side of the Atlantic. He brought his bride, Jemima Hessletine. Their firstborn, Nancy Randolph, died that winter of 1634, aged six months. The second born, Raleigh Randolph, survived. We descend from this son.”

Ansley, amazed, gasped.“Word for word.”

“Mom, we heard it, seems like every day.” Stuart half smiled.

“Yeah. Wish I could hear him again and—and I hate all that genealogy stuff.” Breton’s eyes welled up again. “Who cares?”

Ansley sat next to Breton, putting her arm around his shoulders. He seemed bigger the last time she hugged him.“Honey, when you get older, you’ll appreciate these things.”

“Why is it so important to everyone?” Breton asked innocently.

“To be wellborn is an advantage in this life. It opens many doors. Life’s hard enough as it is, Breton, so be thankful for the blessing.”

“Go to Montana,” Stuart advised. “No one cares there. Probably why Big Daddy never liked the West. He couldn’t lord it over everybody.”

Ansley sighed.“Wesley liked to be the biggest frog in the pond.”

“Mom, do you care about that bloodline stuff?” Breton turned to face his mother.

“Let’s just say I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

They digested this, then Breton asked another question.“Mom, is it always like this when someone dies?”

“When it’s someone you love, it is.”

28

Medley Orion left Monticello in the dispersal after Thomas Jefferson’s death in 1826. Kimball burned up tank after tank of gas as he drove down the winding county roads in search of genealogies, slave records, anything that might give him a clue. A few references to Medley’s dressmaking skills surfaced in the well-preserved diaries of Tinton Venable.

Obsessed with the murder and with Medley herself, Kimball even drove to the Library of Congress to read through the notations of Dr. William Thornton and his French-born wife. Thornton imagined himself a Renaissance man like Jefferson. He raced blooded horses, designed the Capitol and the Octagon House in Washington, D.C., was a staunch Federalist, and survived the burning of Washington in 1814. His efforts to save the city during that conflagration created a bitter enmity between himself and the mayor of Washington. Thornton’s wife, Anna Maria, rang out his praises on the hour like a well-timed church bell. When she visited Monticello in 1802 she wrote: “There is something more grand and awful than convenient in the whole place. A situation you would rather look at now and then than inhabit.”

Mrs. Thornton, French, snob that she was, possessed some humor. What was odd was that Jefferson prided himself on convenience and efficiency.

Kimball’s hunch paid off. He found a reference to Medley. Mrs. Thornton commented on a mint-green summer dress belonging to Martha Jefferson—Patsy. The dress, Mrs. Thornton noted, was sewn by Patsy’s genie, as she put it, Medley Orion. She also mentioned that Medley’s daughter, not quite a woman, was “bright,” meaning fair-skinned, and extraordinarily beautiful like her mother, but even lighter. She further noted that Medley and Martha Jefferson Randolph got along quite well, “a miracle considering,” but Mrs. Thornton chose not to explain that pregnant phrase.

Mrs. Thornton then went on to discuss thoroughly her feelings about slavery—she didn’t like it—and her feelings about mixing the races, which she didn’t like either. She felt that slavery promoted laziness. Her argument for this, although convoluted, contained a kernel of logic: Why should people work if they couldn’t retain the fruits of their labors? A roof over one’s head, food in the stomach, and clothes on one’s back weren’t sufficient motivation for industriousness, especially when one saw another party benefitting from one’s own labor.

Kimball drove so fast down Route 29 on his way home that he received a speeding ticket for his excitement and still made it from downtown Washington to Charlottesville more than fifteen minutes faster than the usual two hours. He couldn’t wait to tell Heike what he had discovered. He would have to decide what to tell Oliver, who grew more tense each day.

29

Kimball Haynes, Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, Mim Sanburne, and Lucinda Coles crammed themselves into a booth at Metropolitain, a restaurant in Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. The Metropolitain combined lack of pretension with fantastic food. Lulu happened to be strolling in the mall when Kimball spotted her and asked her to lunch with the others.

Over salads he explained his findings about Medley Orion and Jefferson’s oldest child, Martha.

“Well, Kimball, I can see that you’re a born detective, but where is this leading?” Mim wanted to know. She was ready to get down to brass tacks.

“I wish I knew.” Kimball cut into a grits patty.

“You all may be too young to have heard an old racist expression.” Mim glanced at the ceiling, for she had learned to despise these sayings. “‘There’s a nigger in the woodpile somewhere.’ Comes from the Underground Railway, of course, but you get the drift.”

Lulu Coles fidgeted.“No, I don’t.”

“Somebody’s hiding something,” Mim stated flatly.

“Of course somebody’s hiding something. They’ve been hiding it for two hundred years, and now Martha Jefferson Randolph is in on it.” Lulu checked her anger. She knew Mim had yanked properties away from Samson because of his outburst at the funeral. Angry as she was at her husband, Lucinda was smart enough not to wish for their net worth to drop. Actually, she was angry, period. She’d peer in the mirror and see the corners of her mouth turning down just as her mother’s had—an embittered woman she swore never to emulate. She was becoming her own mother, to her horror.

Harry downed her Coke.“What Mim means is that somebody is hiding something today.”

“Why?” Susan threw her hands in the air. The idea was absurd. “So there’s a murderer in the family tree. By this time we have one of everything in all of our family trees. Really, who cares?”

“‘Save me, Lord, from liars and deceivers.’ Psalm 120:2.” Mrs. Hogendobber, as usual, recalled a pertinent scripture.

“Forgive me, Mrs. H., but there’s a better one.” Kimball closed his eyes in order to remember. “Ah, yes, here it is, ‘Every one deceives his neighbor, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.’ ”

“Jeremiah 9:5. Yes, it is better,” Mrs. Hogendobber agreed. “I suppose letting the cat out of the bag these many years later wouldn’t seem upsetting, but if it’s in the papers and on television, well—I can understand.”

“Yeah, your great-great-great-great-grandfather was murdered. How do you feel about that?” Susan smirked.

“Or your great-great—how many greats?” Harry turned to Susan, who held up two fingers. “Great-great-grandfather was a murderer. Should you pay the victim’s descendants recompense? Obviously, our society has lost the concept of privacy, and you can’t blame anyone for wanting to keep whatever they can away from prying eyes.”

“Well, I for one would like a breath of fresh air. Kimball, you’re welcome to go through the Coleses’ papers. Maybe you’ll find the murderer there.” Lulu smiled.

“How generous of you. The Coleses’ papers will be invaluable to me even if they don’t yield the murderer.” Kimball beamed.

Mim shifted on the hard bench.“I wonder that Samson has never donated his treasures to the Alderman Library. Or some other library he feels would do justice to the manuscripts and diaries. Naturally, I prefer the Alderman.”

The olive branch was outstretched. Lulu grabbed it.“I’ll work on him, Mim. Samson fears that his family’s archives will be labeled, stuck in a carton, and never again see the light of day. Decades from now, someone will stumble upon them and they’ll be decayed. He keeps all those materials in his temperature-controlled library. The Coleses lead the way when it comes to preservation,” she breathed, “but perhaps this is the time to share.”

“Yes.” Mim appeared enlightened when her entr?e, a lightly poached salmon in dill sauce, was placed in front of her. “What did you order, Lucinda? I’ve already forgotten.”

“Sweetbreads.”

“Me too.” Harry’s mouth watered as the dish’s tempting aroma wafted under her nose.

“What a lunch.” Kimball inclined his head toward the ladies. “Beautiful women, delicious food, and help with my research. What more is there to life?”

“A 16.1-hand Thoroughbred fox hunter that floats over a three-foot-six-inch coop.” The rich sauce melted in Harry’s mouth.

“Oh, Harry, you and your horses. You have Gin Fizz and Tomahawk.” Susan elbowed her.

“Getting along in years,” Mim informed Susan. Mim, an avid fox hunter, appreciated Harry’s desire. She also appreciated Harry’s emaciated budget and made a mental note to see if she could strong-arm someone into selling Harry a good horse at a low price.

Six months earlier the idea of helping the postmistress wouldn’t have occurred to her. But Mim had turned over a new leaf. She wanted to be warmer, kinder, and more giving. It wasn’t easy, overnight, to dump six decades of living a certain way. The cause of this volte-face Mim kept close to her chest, which was, indeed, where it had begun. She had visitedLarry Johnson for a routine checkup. He found a lump. Larry, the soul of discretion, promised not to tell even Jim. Mim flew to New York City and checked into Columbia-Presbyterian. She told everyone she was on her semiannual shopping spree. Since she did repair to New York every spring and then again every fall, this explanation satisfied. The lump was removed and it was cancerous. However, they had caught the disease in time. Her body betrayed no other signs of the cancer. Procedures are so advanced that Mim returned home in a week, had indeed accomplished some shopping, and no one was the wiser. Until Jim walked in on her in the bathtub. She told him everything. He sobbed. That shocked her so badly that she sobbed. She still couldn’t figure out how her husband could be chronically unfaithful and love her so deeply at the same time, but she knew now that he did. She decided to give up being angry at him. She even decided to stop pretending socially that he didn’t have a weakness for women. He was what he was and she was what she was, but she could change and she was trying. If Jim wanted to change, that was his responsibility.

“Earth to Mrs. Sanburne,” Harry called.

“What? I must have been roller-skating on Saturn’s rings.”

“We’re going to help Kimball read through the correspondence and records of Jefferson’s children and grandchildren,” Harry told her.

“I can read with my eyes closed,” Miranda said. “Oh, that doesn’t sound right, does it?”

After lunch Lulu escorted Mim to her silver-sand Bentley Turbo R, a new purchase and a sensational one. Lulu apologized profusely a second time for her outburst during Wesley’s funeral. After Mim’s luncheon she had smothered her hostess in “sorries.” She had also confessed to Reverend Jones and he had told her it wasn’t that bad. He forgave her and he was sure that the Randolphs would too, if she would apologize, which she did. Mim listened. Lulu continued. It was as though she’d pried the first olive out of the jar and the others tumbled out. She said she thought she’d smelled another woman’s perfume on Samson’s neck. She’d been on edge. Later she’d entered his bathroom and found a bottle, new, of Ralph Lauren’s Safari.

“These days you can’t tell the difference between men’s colognes and women’s perfumes,” Mim said. “There is no difference. They put the unguents into different bottles, invent these manly names, and that’s that. What would happen if a man used a woman’s perfume? He’d grow breasts overnight, I guess.” She laughed at her own joke.

Lulu laughed too.“It strikes me as odd that the worst thing you can call a man is a woman, yet they claim to love us.”

Mim arched her right eyebrow.“I never thought of that.”

“I think of a lot of things.” Lulu sighed. “I’m a tangle of suspicions. I know he’s cheating on me. I just don’t know who.”

Mim unlocked her car, paused, and then turned.“Lucinda, I don’t know if that part matters. The whole town knows that Jim has enjoyed his little amours over the years.”

“Mim, I didn’t mean to open old wounds,” Lulu stammered, genuinely distraught.

“Don’t give it a second thought. I’m older than you. I don’t care as much anymore, or I care in a new way. But heed my advice. Some men are swordsmen. That’s the only word I can think of for it. They swash and they buckle. They need the chase and the conquest to feel alive. It’s repetitive, but for some reason I can’t fathom, the repetition doesn’t bore them. Makes them feel young and powerful, I suppose. It doesn’t mean Samson doesn’t love you.”

Tears glistened in Lucinda’s green eyes. “Oh, Mim, if only that were true, but Samson isn’t that kind of man. If he’s having an affair, then he’s in love with her.”

Mim waited to reply.“My dear, the only thing you can do is to take care of yourself.”

30

“If you light another cigarette, then I’ll have to light one too,” Deputy Cynthia Cooper joshed.

“Here.” Sheriff Shaw tossed his pack of Chesterfields at her. She caught them left-handed. “Out at first,” he said.

She tapped the pack with a long, graceful finger, and a slender white cigarette slid out. The deep tobacco fragrance made her eyelids flutter. That evil weed, that scourge of the lungs, that drug, nicotine, but oh, how it soothed the nerves and how it added to the coffers of the great state of Virginia.“Damn, I love these things.”

“Think we’ll die young?”

“Young?” Cynthia raised her eyebrows, which made Rick laugh, since he was already middle-aged.

“Hey, you want another promotion someday, don’t you, Deputy?”

“Just a beardless boy, that Rick Shaw.” She placed the cigarette in her mouth, lighting it with a match from a box of Redbuds.

They inhaled in sweet silence, the blue smoke swirling to the ceiling like a slow whirling dervish of delight.

“Coop, what do you think of Oliver Zeve?”

“He took the news as I expected. A nervous twitch.”

Rick grunted.“His press statement was a model of restraint. But nothing, nothing, will beat Big Marilyn Sanburne advancing her stalker theory. She’s good. She’s really good.” Rick appreciated Mim’s skills even though he didn’t like her. “I’d better call her.”

“Good politics, boss.”

Rick dialed the Sanburne residence. The butler fetched Mim.“Mrs. Sanburne, Rick Shaw here.”

“Yes, Sheriff.”

“I wanted to give you the report from Washington concerning the human remains found at Monticello.” He heard a quick intake of breath. “The skeleton is that of a white male, aged between thirty-two and thirty-five. In good health. The left femur had been broken in childhood and healed. Possibly the victim suffered a slight limp. The victim was five ten in height, which although not nearly as tall as Jefferson’s six foot four, would have been tall for the times, and given the density of bone, he was probably powerfully built. There were no signs of degenerative disease in the bones, and his teeth, also, were quite good. He was killed by one forceful blow to the back of the skull with an as yet undetermined weapon. Death, more than likely, was instantaneous.”

Mim asked,“How do they know the man was white?”

“Well, Mrs. Sanburne, determining race from skeletal remains can actually be a little tricky sometimes. We’re all much more alike than we are different. The races have more in common than they have dissimilarities. You could say that race has more to do with culture than physical attributes. However, forensics starts by considering the bone structure and skeletal proportions of a specimen. Specifically, the amount of projection of the cheekbones, the width of the nasal aperture, and the shape and distance between the eye sockets. Another factor is the amount of projection of the jaw. For instance, a white man’s jaw is generally less prominent than a black man’s is. Prognathism is the term for the way the jaw figures more prominently in the faces of those of African descent. There is also in many white skeletons the presence of an extra seam in the skull, which extends from the top of the nasal arch to the top of the head. Perhaps even more helpful is the amount of curvature in the long bones, especially the femur, of an individual. A white person’s skeleton tends to have more twisting in the neck or head of the femur.”

“Amazing.”

“Yes, it is,” the sheriff agreed.

“Thank you,” Mim said politely, and hung up the phone.

“Well?” Cooper asked.

“She didn’t succumb to the vapors.” Rick referred to the Victorian ladies’ habit of fainting upon hearing unwelcome news. “Let’s run over to Kimball Haynes’s. I want to see him away from Oliver Zeve. Oliver will shut him down if he can.”

“Boss, the director of Monticello isn’t going to obstruct justice. I know that Oliver walks a tightrope up there, but he’s not a criminal.”

“No, I don’t think so either, but he’s so supersensitive about this. He’ll put the crimp on Kimball somehow, and I think Kimball is the one person who can lead us to the killer.”

“I think it’s Medley Orion.”

“How often have I told you not to jump to conclusions?”

“Eleventy million times.” She rolled her big blue eyes. “Still do it though.”

“Still right most of the time too.” He kicked at her as she walked by to stub out her cigarette. “Well, I happen to agree. It was Medley or a boyfriend, father, somebody close to her. If we could just find the motive—Kimball knows the period inside and out and he’s got a feel for the people.”

“Got the bug.”

“Huh?”

“Harry told me that Kimball eats and sleeps this case.”

“Harry—next she’ll have the cat and dog on it too.”

31

The night air, cool and deep, carried stories to Tucker’s nose. Deer followed the warm air currents, raccoons prowled around Monticello, a possum reposed on a branch of the Carolina silver-bell near the terrace which Mrs. Murphy, like Kimball, thought of as a boardwalk. Overhead, bats flew in and out of the tulip poplar, the purple beech, and the eaves of the brick house.

“I’m glad Monticello has bats.” Mrs. Murphy watched the small mammals dart at almost right angles when they wanted.

“Why?” Tucker sat down.

“Makes this place less august. After all, when Thomas Jefferson lived here, it probably didn’t look like this. The trees couldn’t have been this grand. The garbage had to go somewhere—know what I mean?—and it must have been filled with noises. Now there’s a reverential silence except for the shuffling of human feet on the tours.”

“It must have been fun, all the grandchildren, the slaves calling to one another, the clanging in the smithy, the neighing of the horses. I can imagine it, and I can envision a bright corgi accompanying Mr. Jefferson on his rides.”

“Dream on. If he had dogs out with him, they would have been big dogs—coach dogs or hunting dogs.”

“Like Dalmatians?” Tucker’s ears dropped for a moment as she considered her spotted rival.“He wouldn’t have owned Dalmatians. I think he had corgis. We’re good herding dogs and we could have been useful.”

“Then you would have been out with the cattle.”

“Horses.”

“Cattle.”

“Oh, what do you know? Next you’ll say a cat sat by Jefferson’s elbow when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.”

Mrs. Murphy’s whiskers twitched.“No cat would ever have allowed the phrase ‘All men are created equal’ to pass. Not only are all men not created equal, cats aren’t created equal. Some cats are more equal than others, if you know what I mean.”

“He wrote it in Philadelphia. Maybe that affected his brain.” Tucker giggled.

“Philadelphia was a beautiful city then. Parts of it are still beautiful, but it just got too big, you know. All of our cities got too big. Anyway, it’s absurd to plunk an idea like that down on parchment. Men aren’t equal. And we know for sure that women aren’t equal. They weren’t even considered at the time.”

“Maybe he meant equal under the law.”

“That’s a farce. Ever see a rich man go to jail? I take that back. Every now and then a Mafia don gets marched to the slammer.”

“Mrs. Murphy, how could Thomas Jefferson have dreamed of the Mafia? When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, only a million people lived in the thirteen colonies and they were mostly English, Irish, Scottish, and German, and, of course, African from the various tribes.”

“Don’t forget the French.”

“Boy, were they stupid. Had the chance to grab the whole New World and blew it.”

“Tucker, I didn’t know you were a Francophobe.”

“They don’t like corgis. The Queen of England likes corgis, so I think the English are the best.”

“Jefferson didn’t.” The cat’s silken eyebrows bobbed up and down.

“Not fair. George III was mental. The whole history of the world might have been different if he’d been right in the head.”

“Yeah, but you could pick out any moment in history and say that. What would have happened if Julius Caesar had listened to his wife, Calpurnia, on March fifteenth, when she begged him not to go to the Forum? Beware the Ides of March. What would have happened if Catherine the Great’s attempt onher looney-tunes husband’s life had failed and she was killed instead? Moments. Turning points. Every day there’s a turning point somewhere with someone. I think the creation of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals gets my vote as most important.”

Tucker stood up and inhaled.“I pick the founding of the Westminster Dog Show. Say, do you smell that?”

Mrs. Murphy lifted her elegant head.“Skunk.”

“Let’s go back in the house. If I see her, then I’ll chase her and you know what will happen. The odor of skunk in Monticello.”

“I think it would be pretty funny myself. I wonder if Jefferson would like the idea of his home being a museum. I bet he’d rather have it filled with children and laughter, broken pottery and wornout furniture.”

“He would, but Americans need shrines. They need to see how their great people lived. They didn’t have indoor plumbing. Fireplaces were the only source of heat in the winter. No washing machines, refrigerators, stoves, or televisions.”

“The last would be a blessing.” Mrs. Murphy’s voice dripped disdain.

“No telephones, telegraphs, fax machines, automobiles, airplanes …”

“Sounds better and better.” The cat brushed up against the dog.“Quiet except for natural sounds. Just think, people actually sat down and really talked to one another. They were under an obligation to entertain one another with their conversational abilities. You know what people do today? They sit in their living room or family room—isn’t that a dumb word? Every room is a family room—they sit there with the television on and if they talk they talk over the sound of the boob tube.”

“Oh, Mrs. Murphy, they can’t all be that crude.”

“Humph,” the cat replied. She did not consider the human animal the crown of creation.

“I’m surprised you know your history.” Tucker scratched her ear.

“I listen. I know human history and our history and no matter what, I am an Americat.”

“And there is an Ameriskunk.” Tucker scurried to the front door, which was open just enough so she could squeeze in as a fat skunk at the edge of the lawn hastened in the opposite direction.

Mrs. Murphy followed. The two ran to the narrow staircase behind the North Square Room, turned left, and scampered up to Kimball’s makeshift workroom.

Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, and Kimball, now bleary-eyed, had sifted through as much correspondence as they could. Martha Jefferson, the future president’s daughter, married Thomas Mann Randolph on February 23, 1790. Together they produced twelve children, eleven of whom gained maturity and most of whom lived to a ripe old age. The last died in 1882, and that was Virginia Jefferson Randolph, born in 1801. Martha’s children in turn begat thirty-five children. Maria, her sister, had thirteen grandchildren through her son Francis Eppes, who married twice, which brings that generation’s count to forty-eight. They, too, were fruitful and multiplied—not that everyone lived to breed. A few grew to adulthood and never married, but the descendants were plentiful even so.

Mrs. Hogendobber rubbed her nose.“This is like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“But which needle?” Harry joined her chorus.

“Which haystack, Martha or Maria?” Kimball was also wearing down.

“You’d think someone would say something about Medley or her child.” Harry noticed her friends enter the room. “What have you two been up to?”

“Discussion of history,” Mrs. Murphy answered.

“Yeah, deep stuff.” Tucker plopped at her mother’s feet.

“The sad truth is that back then black lives weren’t that important.” Mrs. Hogendobber shook her head.

“There sure are enough references to Jupiter, Jefferson’s body servant, and King and Sally and Betsey Hemings, and well, the list could go on and on. Medley gets a footnote.” Kimball started pulling on his lower lip, an odd habit indicating intense thought.

“What about Madison Hemings? He sure caused a sensation. A dead ringer for Thomas Jefferson with a deep brown tan. He waited on the dinner guests. Bet he gave them a start.” Harry wondered what the real effect must have been upon seeing a young mulatto man in livery who surely shared the president’s blood.

“Born in 1805, and as an old man he said he was Jefferson’s son. Said his mother, Sally, told him.” Kimball abruptly leapt up. “But that could be a desire to be the center of attention. And Jefferson had a wealth of male relatives, each and every one capable of congress with Sally or her pretty sister, Betsey. And what about the other white employees of the plantation?”

“Well, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Martha’s oldest son, who was born in 1792 and lived to 1875, swore that Sally was Peter Carr’s favorite mistress and Sally’s sister, Betsey, was mistress to Sam Carr. Those were Jefferson’s nephews, the sons of Dabney Carr and Martha Jefferson’s youngersister. Wild as rats they were too.” Kimball smiled, imagining the charms of a black purdah with one white sultan, or, in this case, two.

“Wonder if Sally and Betsey thought it was so great?” Harry couldn’t resist.

“Huh”—he blinked—“well, maybe not, but Harry, you can’t remove sexual fantasy from the life of the male. I mean, we all want to imagine ourselves in the arms of a beautiful woman.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry grumbled. “The imagining isn’t so bad, it’s the doing it when one is married. Oh, well, this is an ancient debate.”

He softened.“I get your point.”

“And who slept with Medley?” Mrs. Murphy flicked her tail.“If she was as pretty as she is reputed to have been, she would have turned a white head or two.”

“What a loud purr.” Kimball admired Mrs. Murphy.

“You should hear her burp.” Tucker wagged her nontail, hoping to be noticed.

“Jealous.” Mrs. Hogendobber said matter-of-factly.

“She’s got your number, stumpy.” Mrs. Murphy teased her friend, who didn’t reply because Kimball was petting her.

“Is it me or is there a conspiracy of silence surrounding Medley Orion and her child?” Harry, like a hound, struck a faint, very faint scent.

Both Kimball and Mrs. Hogendobber stared at her.

“Isn’t that obvious?” Kimball said.

“The obvious is a deceitful temptation.” Mrs. Hogendobber, by virtue of working with Harry, picked up the line now too. “We’re overlooking something.”

“The master of Monticello may not have known about whatever Medley was up to or whoever killed that man, but I bet you dollars to doughnuts that Martha did, and that’s why she took Medley. She could easily have been sold off, you know. The family could have ditched this slave if she became an embarrassment.”

“Harry, the Jeffersons did not sell their slaves.” Kimball almost sounded like Mim. It wasn’t true though. Jefferson did sell his slaves, but only if he knew they were going to a good home. Jefferson’s policy demonstrated more concern than many slave owners evidenced, yet the disposal of other humans seemed both callous and mercenary to some of Jefferson’s contemporaries.

“They could have given her away after Thomas died.” Mrs. Hogendobber shifted in her seat, a surge of energy enlivening her thoughts. “One or both daughters protected Medley. Marthaand Maria.”

Kimball threw his hands in the air.“Why?”

“Well, why in the hell did not one family member suggest they pack off Sally and Betsey Hemings? My God, Jefferson was crucified over his alleged affair with Sally. Think about it, Kimball. It may have been two hundred years ago, but politics is still politics and people have changed remarkably little.” Harry nearly shouted.

“A cover-up?” Kimball whispered.

“Ah”—Mrs. Hogendobber held up her forefinger like a schoolmarm—“not a cover-up but pride. If the Hemingses were ‘dismissed,’ shall we say, then it would have been an admission of guilt.”

“But surely keeping them on this hill fed the gossipmongers too,” Kimball exploded in frustration.

“Yes, but Jefferson didn’t buy into it. So if he’s mum, what can they do? They can make up stories. Any newspaper today is full of the same conjecture posing as fact. But if Jefferson levitated above them all in his serene way, then he stole some of their fire. He never sweated in front of the enemy is what I’m saying, and he made a conscious decision not to bag the Hemingses.”

“Harry, those slaves came from his mother’s estate.”

“Kimball, so what?”

“He was a very loyal man. After all, when Dabney Carr, his best friend, died young, he created the family cemetery for him, and would lean on his grave and read to be close to him.”

Harry held up her hands as if asking for a truce,“Okay. Okay, then try this. Sally and Betsey’s mother, Betty Hemings, was half white. The skinny from the other slaves was that her father was an English sea captain. Thomas Jefferson freed Bob and James, Sally and Betsey’s brothers, in 1790. Except for another daughter, Thenia, who was acquired by James Monroe, all the Hemingses stayed at Monticello. They had a reputation for being good workers and for being intelligent. Sally was never set free, but her daughter was, by Jefferson, in 1822. At least, that’s what I’m getting out of all these papers.”

“I know all that,” Kimball fretted.

“I don’t.” Mrs. Hogendobber made a sign indicating for Harry to continue.

“Jefferson made provision for Sally’s sons Madison and Eston to be freed upon reaching the age of twenty-one. Now, he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think these people could earn a living. It would be cruel to send them into the world otherwise. Right?”

“Right.” Kimball paced.

“And the lovers of Sally and Betsey maynot have been the Carr brothers. The slaves said that John Wayles took Sally as, what should I say, his common-law wife, after his third wife died, and that Sally had six children by him. John Wayles was Martha Jefferson’s brother, T.J.’s brother-in-law. Jefferson took responsibility, always, for any member of his family. He loved Martha beyond reason. His solicitude makes sense in this light. Of course, others said that John Wayles was the lover ofBetty Hemings, so that Sally and Betsey would have been Martha’s cousins. Guess we’ll never really know, but the point is, Sally and Betsey had some blood tie, or deep-heart tie, to T.J.”

Kimball sat back down. He spoke slowly.“That does make sense. It would force him into silence, too, concerning the paternity slanders.”

“John Wayles wasn’t equipped to handle this kind of scrutiny. Jefferson was.” Mrs. Hogendobber hit the nail on the head. “And even though they hurt Jefferson, the slandermongers, they couldn’t really abridge his power.”

“Why not?” Kimball was perplexed.

“And flush out all those white jackrabbits in the briar patch?” Mrs. Hogendobber laughed. “The question is not which southern gentlemen slept with slave women, the question is which ones did not.”

“Oh, I do see.” Kimball rubbed his chin. “The Yankees could fulminate properly, but the Southerners shut up and rolled right over, so to speak.”

“Hell, yes, they wouldn’t have nailed Jefferson to the cross for their own sins.” Harry laughed. “The Northerners could do the nailing, but they never could quite catch him to do it. He was far too smart to talk and he always sheltered those weaker than himself.”

“He had broad, broad wings.” Mrs. Hogendobber smiled.

“And where does that leave Medley Orion?” Kimball stood up and paced again.

“She may or may not have been related to the Hemingses. Obviously, from the description of her as ‘bright,’ she was one quarter white if not half white. And her lover was white. The lover is the key. He was being protected,” Harry said.

“I disagree. I think it’s Medley who was being protected. I can’t prove it, but my woman’s intuition tells me the victim was Medley’s white lover.”

“What?” Kimball stopped in his tracks.

“The Jeffersons extended their grace to many people: to Wayles if he was the amour of Betty Hemings or her daughter, Sally; to the Carrs if they were involved. The corpse in Cabin Four wasn’t a family member. His absence or death would have been noted somewhere. Someone had to make an explanation for that. Don’t you see, whoever that man is—or was, I should say—once the Jeffersons found out, they didn’t like him.”

She paused for breath and Kimball butted in.“But to countenance murder?”

Mrs. Hogendobber dropped her head for a second and then looked up.“There may be worse sins than murder, Kimball Haynes.”

32

Warren Randolph buttoned his shirt as Larry Johnson leaned against the small sink in the examining room. Larry was tempted to tell Warren it had taken his father’s death to force him into this checkup, but he didn’t.

“The blood work will be back within the week.” Larry closed the file with the plastic color code on the outside. “You’re in good health and I don’t anticipate any problems, but”—he wagged his finger—“the last time you had blood drawn was when you left for college. You come in for a yearly checkup!”

Warren sheepishly said,“Lately I haven’t felt well. I’m tired, but then I can’t sleep. I drag around and forget things. I’d forget my head if it weren’t pinned to my shoulders.”

Larry put his hand on Warren’s shoulder. “You’ve suffered a major loss. Grief is exhausting and the things that pop into your mind—it’ll surprise you.”

Warren could let down his guard around the doctor. If you couldn’t trust your lifelong physician, whom could you trust? “I don’t remember feeling this bad when Mother died.”

“You were twenty-four when Diana died. That’s too young to understand what and whom you’ve lost, and don’t be surprised if some of the grieving you’ve suppressed over your mother doesn’t resurface now. Sooner or later, it comes out.”

“I got worried, you know, about the listlessness. Thought it might be the beginning of leukemia. Runs in the family. Runs? Hell, it gallops.”

“Like I said, the blood work will be back, but you don’t have any other signs of the disease. You took a blow and it will take time to get back up.”

“But what if I do have leukemia like Poppa?” Warren’s brow furrowed, his voice grew taut. “It can take you down fast… .”

“Or you can live with it for years.” Larry’s voice soothed. “Don’t yell ‘ouch’ until you’re hurt. You know, memory and history are age-related. What you call up out of your mind at twenty may not be what you call up at forty. Even if what you remember is a very specific event in time, say, Christmas 1968, how you remember it will shift and deepen with age. Events are weighted emotionally. It’s not the events we need to understand, it’s the emotions they arouse. In some cases it takes twenty or thirty years to understand Christmas of 1968. You are now able to see your father’s life as a whole: beginning, middle, and end. That changes your perception of Wesley, and I guarantee you will think a lot about your mother too. Just let it go through you. Don’t block it. You’ll be better off.”

“You know everything about everybody, don’t you, Doc?”

“No”—the old man smiled—“but I know people.”

Warren glanced up at the ceiling, pushing back his tears.“Know what I thought about driving over here today? The damnedest thing. I remembered Poppa throwing the newspaper across the room when Reagan and his administration managed that Tax Reform Act of 1986. What a disaster. Anyway, Poppa was fussing and cussing and he said, ‘The bedroom, Warren, the bedroom is the last place we’re free until these sons of bitches figure out how to tax orgasms.’ ”

Larry laughed.“They broke the mold when they made Wesley.”

33

The graceful three-sash windows, copied from Monticello, opened onto a formal garden in the manner of Inigo Jones. The library was paneled in a deep red mahogany and glowed as if with inner light. Kimball sat at a magnificent Louis XIV desk, black with polished ormolu, which Samson Coles’s maternal great-great-great-grandmother was reputed to have had shipped over from France in 1700 when she lived in the Tidewater.

Handwritten diaries, the cursive script elegant and highly individualistic, strained the archaeologist’s eyes. If he stepped away from the documents, the writing almost looked Arabic, another language of surpassing beauty in the written form.

Lucinda, the consummate hostess, placed a pot of hot tea, a true Brown Betty, on a silver tray along with scones and sinful jams and jellies. She pulled a chair alongside him and read too.

“The Coles family has a fascinating history. And the Randolphs, of course, Jefferson’s mother’s family. It’s hard to remember how few people there were even at the beginning of the eighteenth century and how the families all knew one another. Married one another too.”

“You know that America enjoyed a higher rate of literacy during the American Revolution than it does today? That’s a dismal statistic. These early settlers, I mean, even going back to the early seventeenth century, were as a rule quite well educated. That common culture, high culture if you will, at least in the literary sense and the sense of the living arts”—he rubbed the desk to make his point—“must have given people remarkable stability.”

“You could seize your quill and inkwell, scratch a letter to a friend in Charleston, South Carolina, and know that an entire subtext was understood.” Lulu buttered a scone.

“Lulu, what was your major?”

“English. Wellesley.”

“Ah.” Kimball appreciated the rigors of Wellesley College.

“What was a girl to study in my day? Art history or English.”

“Your day wasn’t that long ago. Now, come on, you aren’t even forty.”

She shrugged and grinned. She certainly wasn’t going to correct him.

Kimball, at thirty, hadn’t begun to think about forty. “We’re youth-obsessed. The people who wrote these diaries and letters and records valued experience.”

“The people who wrote this stuff weren’t assaulted on a daily basis with photographs and television shows parading beautiful young women, and men, for that matter. Your wife, hopefully the best woman you could find, did not necessarily have to be beautiful. Not that it hurt, mind you, Kimball, but I think our ancestors were much more concerned with sturdy health and strong character. The idea of a woman as ornament—that was off waiting to afflict us during Queen Victoria’s reign.”

“You’re right. Women and men worked as a team regardless of their level of society. They needed one another. I keep coming across that in my research, Lulu, the sheer need. A man without a woman was to be pitied and a woman without a man was on a dead-end street. Everyone pitched in. I mean, look at these accounts kept by Samson’s great-grandmother—many greats, actually—Charlotte Graff. Nails, outrageously expensive, were counted, every one. Here, look at this account book from 1693.”

“Samson really should donate these to the Alderman’s rare books collection. He won’t part with them, and I guess in a way I can understand, but the public should have access to this information, or scholars at least, if not the public. Wesley Randolph was the same way. I ran into Warren coming out of Larry Johnson’s office yesterday and asked him if he’d ever read the stuff. He said no, because his father kept a lot of it in the huge house safe in the basement. Wesley figured that if there were a fire, the papers would be protected in the safe.”

“Logical.”

Lulu read again.“Whenever I read letters to and from Jefferson women I get totally confused. There are so many Marthas, Janes, and Marys. It seems like every generation has those names in it.”

“Look at it this way. They didn’t know they were going to be famous. Otherwise maybe they would have varied the first names to help us out later.”

Lulu laughed.“Think anyone will be reading about us one hundred years from now?”

“They won’t even care about me twenty minutes after I’m gone—in an archival sense, I mean.”

“Who knows?” She gingerly picked up Charlotte Graff’s account book and read. “Her accounts make sense. I picked up Samson’s ledger the other day because he had laid it out on the desk and forgot to put it away. Couldn’t make head or tails of it. I think the gene pool has degenerated, atleast in the bookkeeping department.” She rose and pulled a massive black book with a red spine out of the lower shelf of a closed cabinet. “You tell me, who does the better job?”

Good-naturedly, Kimball opened the book, the bright white paper with the vertical blue lines such a contrast from the aged papers he’d been reading. He squinted. He read a bit, then he paled, closed the book, and handed it back to Lulu. Not an accounting genius, he knew enough about double-entry bookkeeping to know that Samson Coles was lifting money out of clients’ escrow funds. No broker or real estate agent is ever, everto transfer money out of an escrow account even if he or she pays it back within the hour. Discovery of this abuse results in instant loss of license, and no real estate board in any county would do otherwise, even if the borrower were the president of the United States.

“Kimball, what’s wrong?”

He stuttered,“Uh, nothing.”

“You look pale as a ghost.”

“Too much scones and jam.” He smiled weakly and gathered the papers together just as Samson tooted down the driveway, his jolly red Wagoneer announcing his presence. “Lulu, put this book away before he gets here.”

“Kimball, what’s wrong with you?”

“Put the book back!” He spoke more sharply than he had intended.

Lulu, not a woman given to taking orders, did the exact reverse, she opened the account book and slowly and deliberately read the entries. Not knowing too much about bookkeeping or the concept of escrow even though she was married to a realtor, she was a bit wide of the mark. No matter, because Samson strode into the library looking the picture of the country squire.

“Kimball, my wife has enticed you with scones.”

“Hello, dear.” He leaned over and perfunctorily kissed her on the cheek. His gaze froze on the account book.

“If you two will excuse me, I must be going. Thank you so much for access to these materials.” Kimball disappeared.

Samson, crimson-faced, tried to hide his shock. If he reacted, it would be far worse than if he didn’t. Instead, he merely removed his ledger from Lulu’s hands and replaced it on the lower shelf of the built-in cabinet. “Lulu, I was unaware that my ledger qualified as an archive.”

Blithely she remarked,“Well, it doesn’t, but I was reading over your umpteenth great-grandmother’s accounts from 1693, and they made sense. So I told Kimball to see how the accounting gene had degenerated over the centuries.”

“Amusing,” Samson uttered through gritted teeth. “Methods have changed.”

“I’ll say.”

“Did Kimball say anything?”

Lucinda paused.“No, not exactly, but he was eager to go after that. Samson, is there a problem?”

“No, but I don’t think my ledger is anybody’s business but my own.”

Stung, Lulu realized he was right.“I’m sorry. I’d seen it when you left it out the other day, and I do say whatever pops into my head. The difference between the two ledgers just struck me. It isn’t anybody else’s business but it was—funny.”

Samson left her gathering up the scones and the tea. He repaired to the kitchen for a bracing kick of Dalwhinnie scotch. What to do?

34

Mrs. Murphy, with special determination, squeezed her hindquarters into Mim Sanburne’s post office box. From the postmistress’s point of view, the wall of boxes was divided in half horizontally, an eight-inch ledge of oak being the divider. This proved handy when Harry needed to set aside stacks of mail or continue her refined sorting, as she called it.

As a kitten, Mrs. Murphy used to sleep in a large brandy snifter. She never acquired a taste for brandy, but she did learn to like odd shapes. For instance, she couldn’t resist a new box of tissues. When she was small she could claw out the Kleenex and secrete herself into the box. This never failed to elicit a howl and laughter from Harry. As she grew, Mrs. Murphy discovered that less and less of her managed to fit into the box. Finally, she was reduced to sticking her hind leg in there. Hell on the Kleenex.

Usually the cat contented herself with the canvas mail bin. If Harry, or on rare occasion, Mrs. Hogendobber, wheeled her around, that was kitty heaven. But today she felt like squishing herself into something small. The scudding, frowning putty-colored clouds might have had something to do with it. Or the fact that Market Shiflett had brought over Pewter and three T-bones for the animals. Pewter had caused an unwelcome sensation in Market’s store when she jumped into Ellie Wood Baxter’s shopping cart and sunk her considerable fangs into a scrumptious pork roast.

Harry adored Pewter, so keeping her for the day was fine. The two cats and Tucker gnawed at their bones until weary. Everyone was knocked out asleep. Even Harry and Mrs. H. wanted to go to sleep.

Harry stopped in the middle of another massive catalogue sort.“Would you look at that?”

“Looks like a silver curtain. George and I loved to walk in the rain. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but George Hogendobber was a romantic. He knew how to treat a lady.”

“He knew how to pick a good lady.”

“Aren’t you sweet?” Mrs. Hogendobber noticed Mrs. Murphy, front end on the ledge, back end jammed into Mim’s box. She pointed.

Harry smiled.“She’s too much. Dreaming of white mice or pink elephants, I guess. I do love that cat. Where’s the culprit?” She bent down to see Pewter asleep under the desk, her right paw draped over the remains of her T-bone. The flesh had been stripped clean. “Boy, I bet Ellie Wood pitched a holy fit.”

“Market wasn’t too happy either. Maybe you ought to give him a vacation and take Pewter home tonight. She certainly could use a little outdoor exercise.”

“Good idea. I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m as bad as these guys.”

“Low pressure system. The pollen ought to be a factor soon too. I dread those two weeks when my eyes are red, my nose runs, and my head pounds.”

“Get Larry Johnson to give you an allergy shot.”

“The only person an allergy shot does any good for is Larry Johnson.” She grumbled. “He’ll come by soon to give us a lunch hour today. He’s back working full-time again. Remember when he first retired and he’d come in so you could take time for lunch? That lasted about six months. Then he was back working at his practice Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. Soon it was every morning, and now he’s back to a full schedule.”

“Do you think people should retire?”

“Absolutely not, I mean, unless they want to. I am convinced, convinced, Mary Minor, that retirement killed my George. His hobbies weren’t the same as being responsible to people, being in the eye of the storm, as he used to say. He loved this job.”

“I’m trying to find a business I can do on the side. That way, when I retire, I can keep working. These government jobs are rigid. I’ll have to retire.”

Miranda laughed.“You aren’t even thirty-five.”

“But it goes by so fast.”

“That it does. That it does.”

“Besides, I need money. I had to replace the carburetor in my tractor last week. Try finding a 1958 John Deere carburetor. What I’ve got in there is a hybrid of times. And I don’t know how much longer the truck will hold up, she’s a 1978. I need four-wheel drive—the inside of the house needs to be painted. Where am I going to get the money?”

“Things were easier when you were married. Anyone who doesn’t think a man’s salary helps isn’t very realistic. Divorce and poverty seem to be the same word for most women.”

“Well, I lived just fine on my own before I was married.”

“You were younger then. You weren’t maintaining a house. As you go along in life, creature comforts get mighty important. If I didn’t have my automatic coffee maker, my electric blanket, and my toaster oven, I’d be a crab and a half,” she joked. “And what about my organ that George bought me for my fiftieth birthday? I couldn’t live without that.”

“I want a Toyota Land Cruiser. Never could afford it though.”

“Does Mim have one of those?”

“Along with one of everything else. But yes, she’s got the Land Cruiser and Jim’s got the Range Rover. Little Marilyn has a Range Rover too. Speak of the devil.”

Mim pulled up and sat in the car, trying to decide if the rain would let up. It didn’t, so she made a dash for it. “Whoo,” she said as she closed the door behind her. Neither Harry nor Mrs. Hogendobber informed her of Mrs. Murphy’s slumber. She opened her post box. “A cat’s tail. I have always wanted a cat’s tail. And a cat’s behind. Mrs. Murphy, what are you doing?” she asked as she gently squeezed the feline’s tail.

Mrs. Murphy, tail tweaked, complained bitterly.“Leave me alone. I don’t pull your tail.”

Harry and Miranda laughed. Harry walked over to the cat, eyes now half open.“Come on, sweet pea, out of there.”

“I’m comfortable.”

Sensing deep resistance, Harry placed her hands under the cat’s arms and gently removed her amid a torrent of abuse from the tiger. “I know you’re comfy in there, but Mrs. Sanburne needs to retrieve her mail. You can get back in there later.”

Tucker raised her head to observe the fuss, saw the situation, and put her head down on the floor again.

“You’re a big goddamned help,” the cat accused the dog.

Tucker closed her eyes. If she ignored Mrs. Murphy, the feline usually dropped it.

“Did she read my mail too?” Mim asked.

“Here it is.” Miranda handed it over to Mim, whose engagement diamond, a marquise cut, caught the light and splashed a tiny rainbow on the wall.

“Bills, bills, bills. Oh, just what I always wanted, a catalogue from Victoria’s Secret.” She underhanded it into the trash, looked up, and beheld Harry and Miranda beholding her. “I love my cashmere robe. But this sexy stuff is for your age group, Harry.”

“I sleep in the nude.”

“True confessions.” Mim leaned against the counter. “Heard you all have been helping Kimball Haynes. I guess he told you about the pathology report, or whatever they call those things.”

“Yes, he did,” Miranda said.

“All we have to do is find a thirty-two-year-old white male who may have walked with a slight limp in his left leg—in 1803.”

“That, or find out more about Medley Orion.”

“It is a puzzle.” Mim crossed her arms over her chest. “I spoke to Lulu this morning and she said Kimball spent all of yesterday over there and Samson’s mad at her.”

“Why?” asked Harry innocently.

“Oh, she said he got out of sorts. And she admitted that maybe she should have waited until Samson was home. I don’t know. Those two.” She shook her head.

As if on cue, Samson stamped into the post office with customers from Los Angeles.“Hello there. What luck, finding you here, Mim. I’d like you to meet Jeremy and Tiffany Diamond. This is Marilyn Sanburne.”

Mim extended her hand.“How do you do?”

“Fine, thank you.” Jeremy’s smile revealed a good cap job. His wife was on her second facelift, and her smile no longer exactly corresponded to her lips.

“The Diamonds are looking at Midale.”

“Ah,” cooed Mim. “One of the most remarkable houses in central Virginia. The first to have a flying staircase, I believe.”

Samson introduced the Diamonds to Harry and Miranda.

“Isn’t this quaint?” Tiffany’s voice hit the phony register. “And look, you have pets here too. How cozy.”

“They sort the mail.” Harry didn’t have the knee-jerk response to these kinds of people that Mim did, but she marveled at big city people’s assumption of superiority. If you lived in a small town or the country, they thought, then you must be unambitious or stupid or both.

“How cute.”

Jeremy brushed a few raindrops off his pigskin blazer, teal yet.“Samson’s been telling us about his ancestor, Thomas Jefferson’s mother.”

I bet he has, Harry thought to herself.“Samson and Mrs. Sanburne—Mrs. Sanburne is the chair, actually—have raised money for the current restorations at Monticello.”

“Ah, and say, what about the body in the slave quarters? I know why you look familiar.” He stared at Mim. “You were the lady onWake-up Call with Kyle Kottner. Do you really think the victim was a stalker?”

“Whoever he was, he posed some danger,” she replied.

“Wouldn’t it be ironic, Samson, if he were one of your relatives.” Tiffany sank a small fishhook into Samson’s ego. Her unfortunate obsession with looking young and cute, and her faint hint of superiority, hadn’t dimmed her mind. She’d endured enough of Samson’s genealogical bragging.

Harry stifled a giggle. Mim relished Samson’s discomfort, especially since she hadn’t fully forgiven him for his behavior at Wesley’s funeral.

“Well,” he gulped, “who knows? Instead of living up to the past, I might have to live it down.”

“I’d rather live in the present,” Tiffany replied, although her penchant for attempting to keep her face in the twenty-year distant past stated otherwise.

After they vacated the premises, Mim walked back over and leaned against the counter.“Sharp lady.”

“She’s got Samson’s number, that’s for sure.”

“Harry”—Mim turned to Miranda—“Miranda, have you found anything at all?”

“Just that Medley Orion lived with Martha Jefferson Randolph after 1826. She continued her trade. She had a daughter, but we don’t know her name.”

“What about searching for the victim? Surely the possibility of a limp could give him away. Someone somewhere knew a lame man visited Medley Orion. And he wasn’t a tradesman.”

“It’s baffling.” Miranda leaned on the opposite side of the counter. “But I’ve turned this over and over in my mind and I believe this has something to do with us now. Someone knows this story.”

Mim tapped the counter with her mail.“And if we know, it will upset the applecart.” She grabbed a letter opener off the counter and opened her personal mail. Her eyes widened as a letter fell out of a plain envelope postmarked Charlottesville. Letters were pasted on the paper: “Let the dead bury the dead.” Mim blanched, then read it aloud.

“Already has,” Harry said. “Yeah, the applecart’s upset.”

“I resent this cheap theatric!” Mim vehemently slapped the letter on the counter.

“Cheap or not, we’d better all be careful,” Miranda quietly commented.

35

Ansley, in defiance of Warren, allowed Kimball Haynes to read the family papers. She even opened the safe. After she heard about Lulu’s trouble with Samson, she figured the girls ought to stick together, especially since she didn’t see anything particularly wrong with allowing it.

Reflecting on that later, she realized that she felt a kinship with Lulu since they shared Samson. Ansley knew she got the better part of him. Samson, a vain but handsome man, evidenced a streak of fun and true creativity in bed. As a young man, he was always in one scrape or another. The one told most often was how he got drunk and ran his motorcycle through a rail fence. Stumbling out of the wreckage, he cursed,“Damn mare refused the fence.” Warren had been riding with him that day on his sleek Triumph 750cc.

They must have been wild young bucks, outrageous, still courteous, but capable of anything. Warren lost the wildness once out of law school. Samson retained vestiges of it but seemed subdued in the company of his wife.

Ansley wondered what would happen if and when Lucinda ever found out. She thought of Lucinda as a sister. Conventional emotion dictated that she should hate Lucinda as a rival. Why? She didn’t want Samson permanently. Temporary use of his body was quite sufficient.

The more she thought about why she allowed Kimball access to the papers, the more she realized that Wesley’s death had opened a Pandora’s box. She had lived under that old man’s thumb. So had Warren, and over the years she lost respect for her husband, watching him knuckle under to his father. Wesley had displayed virtues, to be sure, but he was harsh toward his son.

Worse, both men shut her out of the business. She wasn’t an idiot. She could have learned about farming or Thoroughbred breeding, if nothing else. She might have even offered some new ideas, but no, she was trotted out to prospective customers, pretty bait. She served drinks. She kept the wives entertained. She stood on high heels for cocktail partyafter cocktail party. Her Achilles’ tendon was permanently shortened. She bought a new gown for every black-tie fund-raiser on the East Coast and in Kentucky. She played her part and was never told she did a good job. The men took her for granted, and they had no idea how hard it was to be set aside, yet still be expected to behave graciously to people so hideously boring they should never have been born. Ansley was too young for that kind of life. The women in their sixties and seventies bowed to it. Perhaps some enjoyed being a working ornament, the unsung part of the proverbial marital team. She did not.

She wanted more. If she left Warren, he’d be hurt initially, then he’d hire the meanest divorce lawyer in the state of Virginia with the express purpose of starving her out. Rich men in divorce proceedings were rarely generous unless they were the ones caught with their pants down.

Ansley awoke to her fury. Wesley Randolph had crowed about his ancestors, notably Thomas Jefferson, one time too many. Warren, while not as bad, sang the refrain also. Was it because they couldn’t accomplish much today? Did they need those ancestors? If Warren Randolph hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he’d probably be on welfare. Her husband had no get-up-and-go. He couldn’t think for himself. And now that Poppa wasn’t there to tell him how and when to wipe hisass, Warren was in a panic. She’d never seen her husband so distressed.

It didn’t occur to her that he might be distressed because she was cheating on him. She thought that she and Samson were too smart for him.

Nor did it occur to Ansley that a rich man’s life was not necessarily better than a poor man’s, except in creature comforts.

Warren, denied self-sufficiency, was like a baby learning to walk. He was going to fall down many times. But at least he was trying. He pored over the family papers, he studied the account books, he endured meetings with lawyers and accountants concerning his portfolio, estate taxes, death duties, and what have you. Ansley had waited so long for him to be his own man that she couldn’t recognize that he was trying.

She took a sour delight from the look on his face when she told him that Kimball had read through the family papers from the years 1790 to 1820.

“Why would you do a thing like that when I asked you to keep him and everyone else out—at least until I could make a sound decision. I’m still—rocky.” He was more shocked than angry.

“Because I think you and your father have been selfish. Anyway, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.”

He folded his hands as if in prayer and rested his chin on his fingertips.“I’m not as dumb as you think, Ansley.”

“I never said you were dumb,” came the hot retort.

“You didn’t have to.”

Since the boys were in their bedrooms, both parents kept their voices low. Warren turned on his heel and walked off to the stable. Ansley sat down and decided to read the family papers. Once she started, she couldn’t stop.

36

The dim light filtering through the rain clouds slowly faded as the sun, invisible behind the mountains, set. The darkness gathered quickly and Kimball was glad he had driven straight home after leaving the Randolphs’. He wanted to put the finishing touches on his successful research before presenting it to Sheriff Shaw and Mim Sanburne. He was hopeful that he could present it on television too, for surely the media would return to Monticello. Oliver would not be pleased, of course, but this story was too good to suppress.

A knock on the door drew him away from his desk.

He opened the door, surprised.“Hello. Come on in and—”

He never finished his sentence. That fast, a snub-nosed .38 was pulled out of a deep coat pocket and Kimball was shot once in the chest and once in the head for good measure.

37

The much-awaited movie date with Fair turned into an evening work date at Harry’s barn. The rain pattered on the standing-seam tin roof as Fair and Harry, on their knees, laid down the rubberized bricks Warren had given her. She did as her benefactor suggested, putting the expensive flooring in the center of the wash stall, checking the grade down to the drain as she did so. Fair snagged the gut-busting task of cutting down old black rubber trailer mats and placing them around the brick square. They weighed a ton.

“This is Mother’s idea of a hot date.” Mrs. Murphy laughed from the hayloft. She was visiting Simon as well as irritating the owl, but then, everyone and everything irritated the owl.

Tucker, ground-bound since she couldn’t climb the ladder and never happy about it, sat by the wash stall. Next to her was Pewter, on her sleepover visit as suggested by Mrs. Hogendobber. Pewter could climb the ladder into the hayloft, but why exert herself?

“Don’t you think the horses get more attention than we do?” Pewter asked.

“They’re bigger,” Tucker replied.

“What’s that got to do with it?” Mrs. Murphy called down.

“They aren’t as independent as we are and their hooves need constant attention,” Tucker said.

“Is it true that Mrs. Murphy rides the horses?”

“Of course it’s true.” Mrs. Murphy flashed her tail from side to side.“You ought to try it.”

Pewter craned her neck to observe the two horses munching away in their stalls.“I’m not the athletic type.”

“You’re awfully good to help me.” Harry thanked her ex-husband as he groaned, pulling a rubber mat closer to the wall. “Want a hand?”

“I’ve got it,” he replied. “The only reason I’m doing this, Skeezits”—he used her high school nickname—“is that you’d do it yourself and strain something. For better or for worse, I’m stronger.” He paused. “But you have more endurance.”

“Same as mares, I guess.”

“I wonder if the differences between human males and females are as profound as we think they are. Mares made me think of it. The equine spread is narrow, very narrow. But for whatever reason, humans have created this elaborate code of sexual differences.”

“We’ll never know the answer. You know, I’m so out of it, I don’t even care. I’m going to do what I want to do and I don’t much care if it’s feminine or masculine.”

“You always were that way, Harry. I think that’s why I liked you so much.”

“You liked me so much because we were in kindergarten together.”

“I was in kindergarten with Susan, and I didn’t marry her,” he replied with humor.

“Touch?.”

“I happened to think you were special once I synchronized my testosterone level with my brain. For a time there, the gonads took over.”

She laughed.“It’s a miracle anyone survives adolescence. Everything is so magnified and so new. My poor parents.” She smiled, thinking of her tolerant mother and father.

“You were lucky. Remember when I totaled my dad’s new Saab? One of the first Saabs in Crozet too. I thought he was gonna kill me.”

“You had help. Center Berryman is not my idea of a stable companion.”

“Have you seen him since he got out of the treatment center?”

“Yeah. Seems okay.”

“If I was ever tempted by cocaine, Center certainly cured me of that.”

“He came to Mim’s Mulberry Row ceremony at Monticello. One of his first appearances since he got back. He did okay. I mean, what must it have been like to have everyone staring at you and wondering if you’re going to make it? There are those who wish you well, those who are too self-centered to care, those that are sweet but will blunder and say the wrong thing, and those—and these are my absolute faves—those who hope you’ll fall flat on your face. That’s the only way they can be superior—to have the next guy fail. Jerks.” Harry grimaced.

“We became well acquainted with that variety of jerks during our divorce.”

“Oh, Fair, come on. Every single woman between the ages of twenty and eighty fawned over you, invited you to dinner—the poor-man-alone routine. I got it both barrels. How could I toss out my errant husband? All boys stray. That’s the way they’re made. What a load of shit I heard from other women. The men, at least, had the sense to shut up.”

He stopped cutting through the heavy rubber, sweat pouring off him despite the temperature in the low fifties.“That’s what makes life interesting.”

“What”—she was feeling angry just remembering—“dealing with jerks?”

“No—how we each see a slice of life, a degree or two of the circle but not the whole circle. What I was getting while you were getting that was older men like Herbie Jones or Larry Johnson on my case.”

“Herbie and Larry?” Harry’s interest shot into the stratosphere. “What did they say?”

“Basically that we all fall from grace and I should beg your forgiveness. Know who else invited me over for a powwow? Jim Sanburne.”

“I don’t believe it.” She felt oddly warmed by this male solicitude.

“Harry, he’s an unusual man. He said his life was no model but that infidelity was his fatal flaw and he knew it. He really blew me away because he’s much more self-aware than I reckoned. He said he thought he started having affairs when he was young because he felt Mim lorded it over him, his being a poor boy, so to speak.”

“He learned how to make money in a hurry.” Harry always admired self-made people.

“Yeah, he did, and he didn’t use a penny of her inheritance either. Fooling around was not just his way to get even but a way to restore his confidence.” Fair sat down for a minute. Tucker immediately came over and sat in his lap.

“Oh, Tucker, you’re always sucking up to people,” accused Pewter, who was the original brown-noser the minute the refrigerator door opened.

“Pewter, you’re jealous,” Mrs. Murphy teased.

“No, I’m not,” came the defensive reply.“But Tucker is so—so obvious. Dogs have no subtlety.”

“Pewter, you’re just a chatty Cathy.” Harry reached over and stroked her chin.

“Gag me,” Tucker said.

“Why do you think you fooled around?” Harry thought the question would shake her, but it didn’t. She was glad it was finally out there even if it did take three years.

“Stupidity.”

“That’s a fulsome reply.”

“Don’t get testy. I was stupid. I was immature. I was afraid I was missing something. The rose not smelled, the road not taken. That kind of crap. I do know, though, that I still had a lot of growing-up to do even after we were married—I spent so much of my real youth with my nose in a textbook that I missed a lot of the life experiences from which a person grows. What I was missing was me.”

Harry stopped putting in the brick and sat down, facing him.

He continued.“With a few exceptions like wrecking the Saab, I did what was expected of me. Most of us in Crozet do, I guess. I don’t think I knew myself very well, or maybe I didn’t want to know myself. I was afraid of what I’d find out.”

“Like what? What could possibly be wrong with you? You’re handsome, the best in your field, and you get along with people.”

“I ought to come over here more often.” He blushed. “Ah, Harry, haven’t you ever caught yourself driving down Garth Road or waking up in the middle of the night, haven’t you ever wondered what the hell you were doing and why you were doing it?”

“Yes.”

“Scared me. I wondered if I was as smart as everyone tells me I am. I’m not. I’m good in my field, but I can sure be dumb as a sack of hammers about other things. I kept running into limitations, and since I was raised to believe I shouldn’t have any, I ran away from them—you, me. That solved nothing. BoomBoom was an exercise in terrible judgment. And the one before her—”

Harry interrupted.“She was pretty.”

“Pretty is as pretty does. Anyway, I woke up one morning and realized that I’d smashed my marriage, I’d hurt the one person I loved most, I’d disappointed my parents and myself, and I’d made a fool of myself to others. Thank God I’m in a business where my patients are animals. I don’tthink any people would have come to me. I was a mess. I even thought about killing myself.”

“You?” Harry was stunned.

He nodded.“And I was too proud to ask for help. Hey, I’m Fair Haristeen and I’m in control. Six-foot-four men don’t break down. We might kill ourselves working, but we don’t break down.”

“What did you do?”

“Found myself at the good reverend’s house on Christmas Eve. Christmas with Mom and Dad, oh, boy. Grim, resentful.” He shook his head. “I flew out of that house. I don’t know. I showed up at Herb’s and he sat down and talked to me. He told me that no one’s a perfect person and I should go slow, take a day at a time. He didn’t preach at me either. He told me to reach out to people and not to hide myself behind this exterior, behind a mask, you know?”

“I do.” And she did.

“Then I did something so out of character for me.” He played with the edge of the rubber matting. “I found a therapist.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, I really did, and you’re the only person who knows. I’ve been working with this guy for two years now and I’m making progress. I’m becoming, uh, human.”

The phone cut into whatever Fair would have said next. Harry jumped up and walked into the tack room. She heard Mrs. Hogendobber almost before she picked up the phone. Mrs. H. told her that Kimball Haynes had just been found by Heike Holtz. Shot twice. When he didn’t show up for a date or answer his phone, she became worried and drove out to his place.

Harry, ashen-faced, paused for a moment.“Fair, Kimball Haynes has been murdered.” She returned to Mrs. H. “We’ll be right over.”

38

A tea table filled with tarts and a crisp apple pie aroused the interest of Tucker, Mrs. Murphy, and Pewter. The humans at that moment were too upset to eat. Mrs. Hogendobber, a first-rate baker, liked to experiment with recipes before taking them to the Church of the Holy Light for suppers and benefits. The major benefit was to Harry, who was used as the guinea pig. If Harry ever stopped doing her high-calorie-burning farm chores, she’d be fat as a tick. Mrs. H. had planned to bring the treats to work tomorrow, but everything was up in the air.

“That bright young man. He had everything to live for.” Miranda wiped her eyes. “Why would anyone kill Kimball?”

Fair sat next to her on one side of the sofa, Harry on the other.

Harry patted her hand. An awkward gesture, but it suited Mrs. Hogendobber, who was not a woman given to hugs or much public display of affection.“I don’t know, but I think he stuck his nose too far in somebody’s business.”

Mrs. Hogendobber lifted her head.“You mean over this Monticello murder?”

“Not exactly. I don’t know what I mean.” Harry sighed.

Fair’s baritone filled the room. “Crozet is a town filled with secrets, generations deep.”

“Isn’t every town full of secrets? The precepts for living don’t seem to take into account true human nature.” Harry smelled the apple pie. Pewter crouched, making ready to spring onto the teacart. “Pewter, no.”

“Nobody else is going to eat it,” the cat sassed her.“Why waste good food?”

Her anger rising because Pewter not only refused to budge but wiggled her haunches again for the leap, Harry rose and chased the cat away from the cart. Pewter ran a few steps away and then sat down defiantly.

“You’re pushing it,” Mrs. Murphy warned her.

“What’s she going to do? Smack pie in my face?” Pewter wickedly crept closer to the sweet-laden cart.

“Listen, let’s eat some of this before Pewter wears me out.” Harry sliced three portions of pie, the rich apple aroma deliciously filling the room as the knife opened up the heart of the pie.

“Oh, Miranda, this is beautiful.” Harry handed out three plates. She sat down to eat, but Pewter’s creeping along toward the cart disturbed the peacefulness, which had been disturbed enough. Giving up, she cut a small slice for the two cats and a separate one for Tucker.

“You spoil those animals,” said Mrs. Hogendobber.

“They’re great testers. If they won’t eat something, you know it’s bad—not that your pastries could ever fall into that category.”

“Many times I wished I weren’t such a baker.” She patted her stomach.

They enjoyed the pie until their thoughts returned to Kimball. As they talked, Harry got up and poured coffee for everyone. She often felt better if she could move around. Harry’s mother used to say she had ants in her pants, which wasn’t true, but she thought better if she walked about.

“Super. The best, Mrs. H.,” Fair congratulated her.

“Thank you,” she replied listlessly, then a tear fell again. “I hate crying. I keep thinking that he never had the chance to be married or to have children.” She placed her cup on the coffee table. “I’m calling Mim. Surely she’s heard.”

Harry, Fair, and the animals watched as she dialed and Mim came on the line. A long conversation followed, but as Mim did most of the talking, Miranda’s audience could only guess.

“She’s right here. Let me ask her.” Mrs. Hogendobber put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Mim wants us to meet with the sheriff tomorrow. Oliver Zeve has already been questioned. Noon?”

Harry nodded in the affirmative.

Miranda continued.“That’s fine. We’ll see you at your place, then. Can we bring anything? All right. Bye.”

“Take her some of this pie,” Fair suggested.

“I think I will.” She remained by the phone. “Sheriff Shaw is doing a what-do-you-call-it, ballistics check? They’re hoping to trace the gun.”

“Fat chance.” Harry put her face in her hands.

“Maybe not.” Fair thought out loud. “What if the killer acted in haste?”

“Even if he acted in haste, I bet he’s not that stupid—or she,” Harry countered. “And to make matters worse, the rains washed out any chance of making a mold from tire tracks.”

“And washed out the scent too,” Tucker mourned.

“This is so peculiar.” Mrs. Hogendobber joined them on the davenport.

“We need to go through the papers that Kimball read. I’m sure that Rick Shaw has already thought of that, but since we’re somewhat familiar with the period and the players of that day, maybe we could help.”

“And expose yourselves to risk? I won’t have it,” Fair said flatly.

“Fair, you didn’t give me orders when we were married. Don’t start now.”

“When we were married, Mary Minor, your life was not in danger. If you don’t have the sense to see where this is leading, I do! There’s a man dead because he uprooted something. If he found it, chances are you’ll find it, especially given your disposition toward investigation.”

“Unless the killer removes the evidence.”

“If that’s possible,” Mrs. Hogendobber said to Harry. “This may be a matter of going over those records and diaries and putting two and two together. It may not be one document—then again, it may.”

“And I am telling you two nitwits”—Fair’s voice rose, making Tucker prick up her ears—“what Kimball Haynes found may be something of current interest. In his research he might have stumbled over something that’s dangerous to someone right now. It’s very hard to believe that Kimball would have been killed over a murder in 1803.”

“You’ve got a point there,” Mrs. Hogendobber agreed, but she felt uneasy, deeply uneasy.

“I’m going through those papers.” Harry was as defiant as Pewter had been. The gray cat watched in astonishment. Mrs. Murphy, privy to a few Mr.-and-Mrs. scenes, was less astonished.

“Harry, I forbid it!” He slammed his hand on the coffee table.

“Don’t do that,” Tucker barked, but she didn’t want her mother in danger either.

“Settle down, you two, just settle down.” Mrs. Hogendobber leaned back on the sofa. “We know for certain that Kimball read through Mim’s family histories, and the Coleses’. Don’t know if he got the Randolphs’ yet. Anyone else?”

“He kept a list. We’d better get that list or get Rick to let us photocopy it.” Harry, mad at Fair, was still glad he cared, although she was confused as to why that should make her so happy. Harry was slow that way.

Fair crossed his arms over his chest.“You aren’t listening to a word I’m saying. Let the police handle it.”

“I am listening, but I liked Kimball. We were also helping him piece together the facts on this thing. If I can help catch whoever did him in, I will.”

“I liked him too, but not enough to die for him, and that won’t bring him back.” Fair spoke the truth.

“You can’t stop me.” Harry’s chin jutted out.

“No, but I can go along and help.”

Mrs. Hogendobber clapped.“Bully for you!”

“What do you think, Tucker?” Mrs. Murphy picked up her tail with a front paw.

“He’s still in love with her.”

“That’s obvious.” Pewter lay down, far more interested in the pastries than human emotions.

“Yeah, but will he win her back?” the tiger asked.

39

“No.” Sheriff Shaw shook his balding head for emphasis.

“Rick, they have a sound argument.” Mim defended Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber. “You and your staff aren’t familiar with the descendants of Thomas Jefferson or the personal histories of certain of his slaves. They are.”

“The department will hire an expert.”

“The expert is dead.” Mim’s lips pressed tightly together.

“I’ll hire Oliver Zeve,” the frustrated sheriff stated.

“Oh, and how long do you think that will last? Furthermore, he wasn’t exactly interested in pursuing this case, nor was he as interested in the genealogies as Kimball. Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber were working with Kimball already.”

“Fair Haristeen called me this morning and said you both ought to be locked up. I’ll make that three.” He cast his eyes at Mim, who didn’t budge. “He also said that whatever Kimball discovered must be threatening to somebody right now. And you all are obsessed with this Monticello thing.”

“And you aren’t?” Harry fired back.

“Well—well—” Rick Shaw stuck his hands in his Sam Browne belt. “Focused but not obsessed. Anyway, this is my job and I am mindful of the danger to you ladies.”

“I’ll work with them,” Cynthia Cooper gleefully volunteered.

“You women sure stick together.” He slapped his hat against his thigh.

“And men don’t?” Mim laughed.

“Yeah, I bet Fair chewed your ears off because he thinks we’re in danger. He’s being a worrywart.”

“He’s being sensible and responsible.” Rick fought the urge to enjoy another piece of Mrs. Hogendobber’s pie. The urge won out. “Miranda, you ought to go into business.”

“Why, thank you.”

“Does anyone know if there will be a service for Kimball?” Harry inquired.

“His parents removed the body to Hartford, Connecticut, where they live. They’ll bury him there. But that reminds me, Mrs. Sanburne, Oliver wants you to help him plan a memorial service for Kimball here. I doubt anyone will journey to Hartford, and he said he’d like some kind of remembrance.”

“Of course. I’m sure Reverend Jones will assist in this matter also.”

“Well?” Harry had her mind on business.

“Well, what?”

“Sheriff. Please.” She sounded like a clever, pleading child at that moment.

Rick quietly looked at Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber, then at Cynthia, who was grinning in high hopes.“Women.” They’d won. “The Coleses have agreed to allow us access to their libraries. The Berrymans, Foglemans, and Venables too, and I’ve got a list here of names that Kimball drew up. Mim, you’re first on the list.”

“When would you like to start?”

“How about after work today? Oh, and Mim, I need to bring Mrs. Murphy and Tucker along, otherwise I’d have to run them home. Churchill won’t mind, will he?”

Churchill was Mim’s superb English setter, a champion many times over. “No.”

“Pewter too.” Miranda reminded Harry of her visitor.

“Ellie Wood still hasn’t recovered from the pork roast incident. Which reminds me, I think she is distantly related to one of the Eppes of Poplar Forest. Francis, Polly’s son.”

Polly was the family nickname for Maria, Thomas Jefferson’s youngest daughter, who died April 17, 1804, an event which caused her father dreadful grief. Fortunately her son Francis, born in 1801, survived until 1881, but he, along with Jefferson’s other grandchildren, bore the consequences of the president’s posthumous financial disaster.

“We’ll leave not a stone unturned,” Mrs. Hogendobber vowed.

40

That evening, as Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, and Deputy Cooper worked in Mim’s breathtaking cherrywood library, Fair worked out in the stables. Book work soured him. He’d do it diligently if he had to, but he wondered how he’d gotten through Auburn Veterinary College with high honors. Maybe it was easier to read then, but he sure hated it now.

He was floating the teeth of Mim’s six Thoroughbreds, filing down the sharp edges. Because a horse’s upper jaw is slightly wider than the lower one, its teeth wear unevenly, requiring regular maintenance, or at least inspection. If the teeth are allowed to become sharp and jagged, they can cause discomfort to the animal when it has a bit in its mouth, sometimes making it more difficult to ride, and often this situation can cause digestive or nutrition problems because of the animal’s restricted ability to chew and break down its food.

Mim’s stable manager held the horses as Mim sat in a camp chair and chatted. “You made a believer out of me, Fair. I don’t know how I lived without Strongid C. The horses eat less and get more nutrition from their food.” Strongid C was a new wormer that came in pellet form and was added to a horse’s daily ration. This saved the owner those monthly paste-worming tasks that more often than not proved disagreeable to both parties.

“Good. Took me a while to convince some of my clients, but I’m getting good results with it.”

“Horse people are remarkably resistant to change. I don’t know why, but we are.” She pulled a pretty leather crop out of an umbrella stand. “How are the Wheelers doing?”

“Winning at the hunter shows and the Saddlebred shows, as always. You ought to get over there to Cismont Manor, Mim, and see the latest crop. Good. Really good.” He finished with her bright bay. “Now, I happen to think you’ve got one of the best fox hunters in the country.”

She beamed.“I do too. So much for modesty. Warren’s cornered the market on racing Thoroughbreds.”

“What market?” Fair shook his head. The depression, laughingly called a recession, coupled with changes in the tax laws, was in the process of devastating the Thoroughbred business, along with many other aspects of the equine industry. As most congressmen were no longer landowners, they hadn’t a clue as to what they had done to livestock breeders and farmers with their stupid “reforms.”

Mim spun the whip handle around in her hands.“I tell Jim he ought to run for Congress. At least then there’d be one logical voice in the bedlam. Won’t do it. Won’t even hear of it. Says he’d rather bleed from the throat. Fair, have you seen a reasonably priced fox hunter in your travels?”

“Mim, what’s reasonable to you may not be reasonable to me.”

“Quite so.” She appreciated that insight. “I’ll come directly to the point. Gin Fizz and Tomahawk are long in the tooth and you know Harry doesn’t have two nickels to rub together—now.”

He sighed.“I know. She absolutely refused alimony. My lawyer said I was crazy to want to pay. I do her vet work for free and it’s a struggle to get her to go along with that.”

“The Hepworths as well as the Minors have always been prickly proud about money. I don’t know who was worse, Harry’s mother or her father.”

“Mim, I’m—touched that you’d be thinking of Harry.”

“Touched, or amazed?”

He smiled.“Both. You’ve changed.”

“For the better?”

He held up his hands for mercy.“Now, that’s a loaded question. You seem happier and you seem to want to be friendlier. How’s that sound?”

“I wearied of being a bitch. But what’s funny, or not so funny, about Crozet is that once people get an idea about you in their heads, they’re loath to surrender it. Not that I won’t step on toes, I’ll always do that, but I figured out, thanks to a little scare in my life, that life is indeed short. My being so superior made me feel in charge, I guess, but I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t making my husband happy, and the truth is, my daughter detests me underneath all her politeness. I wasn’t a good mother.”

“Good horsewoman though.”

“Thank you. What is there about a stable that pulls the truth out of us?”

“It’s real. Society isn’t real.” He studied Mim, her perfectly coiffed hair, her long fingernails, her beautiful clothes perfect even in the stable. The human animal could grow at any time in its life that it chooses to grow. On the outside she looked the same, but on the inside she was transforming. He felt the same way about himself. “You know, there’s a solid 16.1 1/2 -hand Percheron cross that Evelyn Kerr has. The mare is green and only six, but Harry can bring her along. Good bone, Mim. Good hooves too. Of course, it’s got a biggish, draft-type head, but not roman-nosed, and no feathers on the fetlocks. Smooth gaits.”

“Why is Evelyn selling the horse?”

“She’s got Handyman, and when she retired she thought she’d have more time, so she bought this young horse. But Evelyn’s like Larry Johnson. She’s working harder in retirement than before.”

“Why don’t you talk to her? Sound her out for me? I’d like to buy the mare if she suits and then let Harry pay me off over time.”

“Uh—let me buy the mare. In fact, I wish I’d thought of this myself.”

“We can share the expense. Who’s to know?” Mim swung her legs under the chair.

41

The night turned unseasonably cool. The Reverend Jones built a fire in his study, his favorite room. The dark green leather chairs bore testimony to years of use; knitted afghans were tossed over the arms to hide the wear. Herb Jones usually wrapped one around his legs as he sat reading a book accompanied by Lucy Fur, the young Maine coon cat he’d brought home to enliven Elocution, or Ella, his older first cat.

Tonight Ansley and Warren Randolph and Mim Sanburne joined him. They were finishing up planning Kimball’s memorial service.

“Miranda’s taking care of the music.” Mim checked that off her list. “Little Marilyn’s hired the caterer. You’ve got the flowers under control.”

“Right.” Ansley nodded.

“And I’m getting a program printed up.” Warren scratched his chin. “What do you call it? It’s not really a program.”

“In Memoriam,” Ansley volunteered. “Actually, whatever you call it, you’ve done a beautiful job. I had no idea you knew so much about Kimball.”

“Didn’t. Asked Oliver Zeve for Kimball’s r?sum?.”

Mim, without looking up from her list, continued checking off jobs.“Parking.”

“Monticello, or should I say Oliver, is taking care of that?”

“Well, that’s it, then.” Mim put down her pencil. She could have afforded any kind of expensive pencil, but she preferred a wooden one, an Eagle Mirado Number 1. She carried a dozen in a cardboard container, the sale carton, wherever she journeyed. Carried a pencil trimmer too.

The little group stared into the fire.

Herb roused himself from its hypnotic powers.“Can I fetch anyone another drink? Coffee?”

“No thanks,” everyone replied.

“Herb, you know people’s secrets. You and Larry Johnson.” Ansley folded her hands together. “Do you have any idea, any hunch, no matter how wild?”

Herb glanced up at the ceiling, then back at the group.“No. I’ve gone over the facts, or what we know as the facts, in my mind so many times I make myself dizzy. Nothing jumps out at me. But even if Kimball or the sheriff uncover the secret of the corpse at Monticello, I don’t know if that will have anything to do with Kimball’s murder. It’s tempting to connect the two, but I can’t find any link.”

Mim stood up.“Well, I’d better be going. We’ve pulled a lot together on very short notice. I thank you all.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry about the circumstances, much as I like working with everyone.”

Warren and Ansley left about ten minutes later. Driving the dark, winding roads kept Warren alert.

“Honey …” Ansley watched for deer along the sides of the road—the light would bounce off their eyes. “Did you tell anyone that Kimball read the Randolph papers?”

“No, did you?”

“Of course not—make you look like a suspect.”

“Why me?”

“Because women rarely kill.” She squinted into the inky night. “Slow down.”

“Do you think I killed Kimball?”

“Well, I know you sent that letter with the cut-out message to Mim.”

He decelerated for a nasty curve.“What makes you think that, Ansley?”

“SawThe New Yorker in the trash in the library. I hadn’t read it yet, so I plucked it out and discovered where your scissors had done their work.”

He glowered the rest of the way home, which was only two miles. As they pulled into the garage he shut off the motor, reached over, and grabbed her wrist.“You’re not as smart as you think you are. Leave it alone.”

“I’d like to know if I’m living with a killer.” She baited him. “What if I get in your way?”

He raised his voice.“Goddammit, I played a joke on Marilyn Sanburne. It wasn’t the most mature thing to do, but it was fun considering how she’s cracked the whip over my head and everyone else’s since year one. Just keep your mouth shut.”

“I will.” Her lips clamped tight, making them thinner than they already were.

Without letting go of her wrist he asked,“Did you read the papers? The blue diary?”

“Yes.”

He released her wrist.“Ansley, every old Virginia family has its fair share of horse thieves, mental cases, and just plain bad eggs. What’s the difference if they were crooked or crazy in 1776 or today? One doesn’t air one’s dirty laundry in public.”

“Agreed.” She opened the door to get out, and he did the same on the driver’s side.

“Ansley.”

“What?” She turned from her path to the door.

“Did you really think, for one minute, that I killed Kimball Haynes?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.” Wearily she reached the door, opened it, and without checking behind her, let it slam, practically crunching Warren’s nose in the process.

42

Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, and Deputy Cooper exhausted themselves reading. Mim’s connection to Thomas Jefferson was through the Wayles/Coolidge line. Ellen Wayles Randolph, his granddaughter, married Joseph Coolidge, Jr., on May 27, 1825. They had six children, and Mim’s mother was related to a cousin of one of those offspring.

Slender though it was, it was a connection to the Sage of Monticello. Ellen maintained a lively correspondence with her husband’s family. Ellen, the spark plug of Maria’s—or Polly’s—children, inherited her grandfather’s way with words just as her older brother, called Jeff, inherited his great-grandfather’s, Peter Jefferson’s, enormous frame and incredible strength.

One of the letters casually mentioned that Ellen’s younger brother, James Madison Randolph, had fallen violently in love with a great beauty and seemed intent upon a hasty marriage.

Harry read and reread the letter, instantly conceiving an affection for the effervescent author.“Miranda, I don’t remember James Madison Randolph marrying.”

“I’m not sure. Died young though. Just twenty-eight, I think.”

“These people had such big families.” Deputy Cooper wailed as the task had begun to overwhelm her. “Thomas Jefferson’s mother and father had ten children. Seven made it to adulthood.”

Miranda pushed back her half-spectacles. When they slid down her nose again she took them off and laid them on the diary before her.“Jane, his favorite sister, died at twenty-five. Elizabeth, the one with the disordered mind, also died without marrying. The remainder of Thomas’s brothers and sisters bequeathed to Virginia and points beyond quite a lot of nieces and nephews for Mr. Jefferson. And he was devoted to them. He really raised his sister Martha’s children, Peter and Sam Carr. Dabney Carr, who married Martha, was his best friend, as you know.”

“Another Martha?” Cynthia groaned. “His wife, sister, and daughter were all named Martha?”

“Well, Dabney died young, before thirty, and Thomas saw to the upbringing of the boys,” Miranda went on, absorbed. “I am convinced it was Peter who sired four children on Sally Hemings. A stir was caused when Mr. Jefferson freed, or manumitted, one of Sally’s daughters, Harriet, quite the smashing beauty. That was in 1822. You can understand why the Jefferson family closed ranks.”

Officer Cooper rubbed her temples.“Genealogies drive me bats.”

“Our answer rests somewhere with Jefferson’s sisters and brother Randolph, or with one of his grandchildren,” Harry posited. “Do you believe Randolph was simple-minded? Maybe not as bad as Elizabeth.”

“Well, now, she wasn’t simple-minded. Her mind would wander and then she’d physically ramble about aimlessly. She wandered off in February and probably died of the cold. Poor thing. No, Randolph probably wasn’t terribly bright, but he seems to have enjoyed his faculties. Lived in BuckinghamCounty and liked to play the fiddle. That’s about all I know.”

“Miranda, how would you like to be Thomas Jefferson’s younger brother?” Harry laughed.

“Probably not much. Not much. I think we’re done in. Samson’s tomorrow night?”

43

Pewter grumbled incessantly as she walked with Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker to work. The fat cat’s idea of exercise was walking from Market’s back door to the back door of the post office.

“Are we there yet?”

“Will you shut up!” Mrs. Murphy advised.

“Hey, look,” Tucker told everyone as she caught sight of Paddy running top-speed toward them. His ears were flat back, his tail was straight out, and his paws barely touched the ground. He was scorching toward them from town.

“Murph,” Paddy called,“follow me!”

“You’re not going to, are you?” Pewter swept her whiskers forward in anticipation of trouble.

“What’s wrong?” Mrs. Murphy called out.

“I’ve found something—something important.” He skidded to a stop at Harry’s feet.

Harry reached down to scratch Paddy’s ears. Not wanting to be rude, he rubbed against her leg.“Come on, Murph. You too, Tucker.”

“Will you tell me what this is all about?” the little dog prudently asked.

“Well spoken.” Pewter sniffed.

“Larry Johnson and Hayden McIntire’s office.” Paddy caught his breath.“I’ve found something.”

“What were you doing over there?” Tucker needed to be convinced it really was important.

“Passing by. Look, I’ll explain on the way. We need to get there before the workmen do.”

“Let’s go.” Mrs. Murphy hiked up her tail and dug into the turf.

“Hey—hey,” Tucker called, then added after a second’s reflection,“Wait for me!”

Pewter, furious, sat down and bawled.“I will not run. I will not take another step. My paws are sore and I hate everybody. You can’t leave me here!”

Perplexed at the animals’ wild dash toward downtown Crozet, Harry called after them once but then remembered that most people were just waking up. She cursed under her breath. Harry wasn’t surprised, though, by Pewter’s staunch resistance to walk another step, having been quickly deserted by her fitter friends. She knelt down and scooped up the rotund kitty. “I’ll carry you, you lazy sod.”

“You’re the only person I like in this whole wide world,” Pewter cooed.“Mrs. Murphy is a selfish shit. Really. You should spend more time with me. She’s running off with her no-account ex-husband, and that silly dog is going along like a fifth wheel.” The cat laughed.“Why, I wouldn’t even give that two-timing tom the time of day.”

“Pewter, you have a lot on your mind.” Harry marveled that the smallish cat could weigh so much.

As the three animals raced across the neat square town plots, Paddy filled them in.

“Larry and Hayden McIntire are expanding the office wing of the house. I like to go hunting there. Lots of shrews.”

“You’ve got to catch them just right because they can really bite,” Mrs. Murphy interrupted.

“It’s easy to get in and out of the addition,” he continued.

The tidy house appeared up ahead, with its curved brick entranceway splitting to the front door and the office door. The sign, DR. LAWRENCE JOHNSON DR. HAYDEN MCINTIRE, swung, creaking, in the slight breeze.“No workmen yet,” Paddy triumphantly meowed. He ducked under the heavy plastic covering on the outside wall and leapt into the widened window placement. The window had not yet been installed. The newest addition utilized the fireplace as its center point of construction. A balancing, new fireplace was built on the other end of the new room. It matched the old one.

“Hey! What about me?”

“We’ll open the door, Tucker.” Mrs. Murphy gracefully sailed through the window after Paddy and landed on a sawdust-covered floor. She hurried to the door of the addition, which as yet had no lock, although the fancy brass Baldwin apparatus, still boxed, rested on the floor next to it. Mrs. Murphy pushed against the two-by-four propped up against the door. It clattered to the floor and the door easily swung open. The corgi hurried inside.

“Where are you?” Mrs. Murphy couldn’t see Paddy.

“In here,” came the muffled reply.

“He’s crazier than hell.” Tucker reacted to the sound emanating from the large stone fireplace.

“Crazy or not, I’m going in.” Mrs. Murphy trotted to the cavernous opening, the firebrick a cascade of silky and satiny blacks and browns from decades of use. The house was originally constructed in 1824; the addition had been built in 1852.

Tucker stood in the hearth.“The last time we stood in a fireplace there was a body in it.”

“Up here,” Paddy called, his deep voice ricocheting off the flue.

Mrs. Murphy’s pupils enlarged, and she saw a narrow opening to the left of the large flue. In the process of remodeling, a few loose bricks had become dislodged—just enough room for an athletic cat to squeeze through.“Here I come.” She sprang off her powerful haunches but miscalculated the depth of the landing.“Damn.” The tiger hung on to the opening, her rear end dangling over the side. She scratched with her hind claws and clambered up the rest of the way.

“Tricky.” Paddy laughed.

“You could have warned me,” she complained.

“And miss the fun?”

“What’s so important up here?” she challenged him, then, as her eyes became accustomed to the diminished light, she saw he was sitting on it. A heavy waxed oilskin much like the covering of an expensive foul-weather coat, like a Barbour or Dri-as-a-Bone, covered what appeared to be books or boxes.“Can we open this up?”

“Tried. Needs human hands,” Paddy casually remarked although he was ecstatic that his find had produced the desired thrill in Mrs. Murphy.

“What’s going on up there?” Tucker yelped.

Mrs. Murphy stuck her head out of the opening.“Some kind of stash, Tucker. Might be books or boxes of jewelry. We can’t open it up.”

“Think the humans will find it?”

“Maybe yes and maybe no.” Paddy’s fine features now came alongside Mrs. Murphy’s.

“If workmen repoint the fireplace, which they’re sure to do, it’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll look inside here or just pop bricks in and mortar them up.” Mrs. Murphy thought out loud.“This is too good a find to be lost again.”

“Maybe it’s treasure.” Tucker grinned.“Claudius Crozet’s lost treasure!”

“That’s in the tunnel; one of the tunnels,” Paddy said, knowing that Crozet had cut four tunnels through the Blue Ridge Mountains in what was one of the engineering feats of the nineteenth century—or any century. He accomplished his feat without the help of dynamite, which hadn’t yet been invented.

“How long do you think this has been in here?” Paddy asked.

Mrs. Murphy turned to pat the oilskin.“Well, if someone hid this, say, in the last ten or twenty years, they’d probably have used heavy plastic. Oilskin is expensive and hard to come by. Mom wanted one of those Australian raincoats to ride in and the thing was priced about $225, I think.”

“Too bad humans don’t have fur. Think of the money they’d save,” Paddy said.

“Yeah, and they’d get over worrying about what color they were because with fur you can be all colors. Look at me,” Tucker remarked.“Or Mrs. Murphy. Can you imagine a striped human?”

“It would greatly improve their appearance,” Paddy purred.

Mrs. Murphy, mind spinning as the fur discussion flew on, said,“We’ve got to get Larry over here.”

“Fat chance.” Paddy harbored little hope for human intelligence.

“You stay here with your head sticking out of the hole. Tucker and I will get him over here. If we can’t budge him, then we’ll be back, but don’t you leave. Okay?”

“You were always good at giving orders.” He smiled devilishly.

Mrs. Murphy landed in the hearth and took off for the door, Tucker close behind. They crossed the lawn, stopping under the kitchen window, where a light glowed. Larry was fixing his cup of morning coffee.

“You bark, I’ll jump up on the windowsill.”

“Not much of a windowsill,” Tucker observed.

“I can bank off it, if nothing else.” And Mrs. Murphy did just that as Tucker yapped furiously. The sight of this striped animal, four feet planted on a windowpane and then pushing off, jolted Larry wide awake. The second thud from Mrs. Murphy positively sent him into orbit. He opened his back door and, seeing the culprits, thought they wanted to join him.

“Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, come on in.”

“You come out,” Tucker barked.

“I’ll run in and right out.” Mrs. Murphy flew past Larry, brushing his legs in the process, turned on a dime, and ran back out through his legs.

“What’s the matter with you two?” The old man enjoyed the spectacle but was perplexed.

Again Mrs. Murphy raced in and raced out as Tucker ran forward, barked, and then ran a few steps away.“Come on, Doc. We need you!”

Larry, an intelligent man as humans go, deduced that the two animals, whom he knew and valued, were highly agitated. He grabbed his old jacket, slapped his porkpie hat on his head, and followed them, fearing that some harm had come to another animal or even a person. He’d heard about animals leading people to the site of an injured loved one, and a flash of fear ran through him. What if Harry’d been hurt on her way in to work?

He followed them into the addition. He stopped after walking through the door as Mrs. Murphy and Tucker dashed to the fireplace.

“Howl, Paddy. He’ll think you’re trapped or something.”

Paddy sang at his loudest,“‘Roll me over in the clover/Roll me over/Lay me down and do it again.’ ”

Tucker giggled as Mrs. Murphy leapt up to join Paddy, although she refrained from singing the song. Larry walked into the fireplace and beheld Paddy, his head thrown back and warbling for all he was worth.

“Got stuck up in there?” Larry looked around for a ladder. Not finding one, he did spy a large spackling compound bucket. He lifted it by the handle, discovering how heavy it was. He lugged it over to the hearth, positioned it under the opening, where both cats now meowed piteously, and carefully stood on it. He could just see inside.

He reached for Paddy, who shrank back.“Now, now, Paddy, I won’t hurt you.”

“I know that, you silly twit. Look.”

“His eyes aren’t good in the dark, plus he’s old. They’re worse than most,” Mrs. Murphy told her ex.“Scratch on the oilskin.”

Paddy furiously scratched away, his claws making tiny popping noises as he pulled at the sturdy cloth.

“Squint, Larry, and look real hard,” Mrs. Murphy instructed.

As if he understood, Larry shielded his eyes and peered inside.“What the Sam Hill?”

“Reach in.” Mrs. Murphy encouraged him by back-stepping toward the treasure.

Larry braced against the fireplace with his left hand, now besmirched with soot, and reached in with his right. Mrs. Murphy licked his fingers for good measure. He touched the oilskin. Paddy jumped off and came to the opening. Mrs. Murphy tried to nudge the package, but it was too heavy. Larry tugged and pulled, succeeding in inching the weighty burden forward until it wedged into the opening. Forgetting the cats for a moment, he tried to pull out the oilskin-covered bundle, but it wouldn’t fit. He poked at the bricks around the hole and they gave a bit. Cautiously he removed one, then two and three. These bricks had been left that way on purpose. The two kitty heads popped out of the new opening. Larry squeezed the package through and almost fell off the bucket because it was soheavy. He tottered and jumped off backward.

“Not bad for an old man,” Tucker commented.

“Let’s see what he’s got.” Mrs. Murphy sailed down. Paddy came after her.

Larry, on his knees, worked at the knot on the back side of the package. The three animals sat silent, watching with intent interest. Finally, victorious, Larry opened the oilskin covering. Inside lay three huge, heavy volumes, leather-bound. With a trembling hand Larry opened the first volume.

The bold, black cursive writing hit Larry like a medicine ball to the chest. He recognized the handwriting and in that instant the man he had admired and worked with came alive again. He was reminded of the fragrance of Jim’s pipe tobacco, his habit of running his thumbs up and down under his braces, and his fervent belief that if he could cure human baldness, he’d be the richest doctor on the face of the earth. Larry whispered aloud, “‘The Secret Diaries of a Country Doctor, Volume I, 1912, by James C. Craig, M.D., Crozet, Virginia.’ ”

Seeing his distress, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker sat next to him, pressing their small bodies against his own. There are moments in every human life when the harpoon of fate rips into the mind and a person has the opportunity to perceive the world afresh through his own pain. This was such a moment for Larry, and through his tears he saw the two furry heads and reached out to pet them, wondering just how many times in this life we are surrounded by love and understanding and are too self-centered, too human-centered to know what the gods have given us.

44

A warm southerly breeze filled breasts with the hope that spring had truly arrived. Snowstorms could hit central Virginia in April, and once a snowstorm had blanketed the fields in May, but that was rare. The last frost generally disappeared mid-April, although days warmed before that. Then the wisteria would bloom, drenching the sides of buildings, barns, and pergolas with lavender and white. This was Mrs. Murphy’s favorite time of the year.

She basked in the sun by the back door of the post office along with Pewter and Tucker. She was also basking in the delicious satisfaction of delivering to Pewter the news about the books in the hiding place. Pewter was livid, but one good thing was that her brief absence had allowed Market to overcome his temper and to make peace with Ellie Wood Baxter. The gray cat was now back in his good graces, but if she had to hear the words“pork roast” one more time, she would scratch and bite.

The alleyway behind the buildings filled up with cars since the parking spaces in the front were taken. On one of the first really balmy days of spring, people always seem motivated to buy bulbs, bouquets, and sweaters in pastel colors.

Driving down the east end of the alleyway was Samson Coles. Turning in on the west end was Warren Randolph. They parked next to each other behind Market Shiflett’s store.

Tucker lifted her head, then dropped it back on her paws. Mrs. Murphy watched through eyes that were slits. Pewter could not have cared less.

“How are you doing with the Diamonds?” Warren asked as he shut his car door.

“Hanging between Midale and Fox Haven.”

Warren whistled,“Some kind of commission, buddy.”

“How you been doing?”

Warren shrugged.“Okay. It’s hard sometimes. And Ansley—I asked her for some peace and quiet, and what does she do but let Kimball Haynes go through the family papers. ’Course he was a nice guy, but that’s not the point.”

“I didn’t like him,” Samson said. “Lucinda pulled the same stunt on me that Ansley pulled on you. He should have come to me, not my wife. Smarmy—not that I wished him dead.”

“Somebody did.”

“Made your mind up about the campaign yet?” Samson abruptly changed the subject.

“I’m still debating, although I’m feeling stronger. I just might do it.”

Samson slapped him on the back.“Don’t let the press get hold of Poppa’s will. Well, you let me know. I’ll be your ardent supporter, your campaign manager, you name it.”

“Sure. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.” Warren headed for the post office as Samson entered Market’s by the back door. With remarkable self-control Warren acted as though not a thing was wrong, but he knew in that instant that Ansley had betrayed his trust and was betraying him in other respects too.

It never crossed Samson’s mind that he had spilled the beans, but then, he was already spending the commission money from the Diamond deal in his mind before he’d even closed the sale. Then again, perhaps the trysting and hiding were wearing thin. Maybe subconsciously he wanted Warren to know. Then they could get thepretense over with and Ansley would be his.

45

Since Kimball had kept most of his private papers in his study room on the second floor of Monticello, the sheriff insisted that nothing be disturbed. But Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber knew the material and had been there recently with Kimball, so he allowed them, along with Deputy Cooper, to make certain nothing had been moved or removed.

Oliver Zeve, agitated, complained to Sheriff Shaw that lovely though the three ladies might be, they were not scholars and really had no place being there.

Shaw, patience ebbing, told Oliver to be grateful that Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber knew Kimball’s papers and could decipher his odd shorthand. With a curt inclination of the head Oliver indicated that he was trumped, although he asked that Mrs. Murphy and Tucker stay home. He got his way on that one.

Shaw also had to pacify Fair, who wanted to accompany“the girls,” as he called them. The sheriff figured that would put Oliver over the edge, and since Cynthia Cooper attended them, they were safe, he assured Fair.

Oliver’s frazzled state could be explained by the fact that for the last two days he had endured network television interviews, local television interviews, and encampment by members of the press. He was not a happy man. In his discomfort he almost lost sight of the death of a valued colleague.

“Nothing appears to have been disturbed.” Mrs. Hogendobber swept her eyes over the room.

Standing over his yellow legal pad, Harry noticed some new notes jotted in Kimball’s tight scribble. She picked up the pad. “He wrote down a quote from Martha Randolph to her fourth child, Ellen Wayles Coolidge.” Harry mused. “It’s curious that Martha and her husband named their fourth child Ellen Wayles even though their third child was also Ellen Wayles—she died ateleven months. You’d think it’d be bad luck.”

Mrs. Hogendobber interjected,“Wasn’t. Ellen Coolidge lived a good life. Now, poor Anne Cary, that child suffered.”

“You talk as though you know these people.” Cynthia smiled.

“In a way we do. All the while we worked with Kimball, he filled us in, saving us years of reading, literally. Lacking telephones, people wrote to one another religiously when they were apart. Kind of wish we did that today. They left behind invaluable records, observations, opinions in their letters. They also cherished accurate judgments of one another—I think they knew one another better than we know each other today.”

“The answer to that is simple, Harry.” Mrs. H. peeked over her shoulder to examine the legal pad. “They missed the deforming experience of psychology.”

“Why don’t you read what he copied down?” Cooper whipped out her notebook and pencil.

“This is what Martha Randolph said: ‘The discomfort of slavery I have borne all my life, but its sorrows in all their bitterness I never before perceived.’ He wrote below that this was a letter dated August 2, 1825, from the Coolidge papers at U.V.A.”

“Who is Coolidge?” Cooper wrote on her pad.

“Sorry, Ellen Wayles married a Coolidge—”

Cooper interrupted.“That’s right, you told me that. I’ll get the names straight eventually. Does Kimball make any notation about why that was significant?”

“Here he wrote, ‘After sale of Colonel Randolph’s slaves to pay debts. Sale included one Susan, who was Virginia’s maid,’ ” Harry informed Cynthia. “Virginia was the sixth child of Thomas Mann Randolph and Martha Jefferson Randolph, the one we call Patsy because that’s what she was called within the family.”

“Can you give me an abbreviated history course here? Why did the colonel sell slaves, obviously against other family members’ wishes?”

“We forgot to tell you that Colonel Randolph was Patsy’s husband.”

“Oh.” She wrote that down. “Didn’t Patsy have any say in the matter?”

“Coop, until a few decades ago, as in our lifetime, women were still chattel in the state of Virginia.” Harry jammed her right hand in her pocket. “Thomas Mann Randolph could do as he damn well pleased. He started out with advantages in this life but proved a poor businessman. He became so estranged from his family toward the end that he would leave Monticello at dawn and return only at night.”

“He was the victim of his own generosity.” Mrs. Hogendobber put in a good word for the man. “Always standing notes for friends and then,pfft.” She flipped her hand upside down like a fish that bellied up. “Wound up in legal proceedings against his own son, Jeff, who had become the anchor of the family and upon whom even his grandfather relied.”

“Know the old horse expression ‘He broke bad’?” Harry asked Cooper. “That was Thomas Mann Randolph.”

“He wasn’t the only one now. Look what happened to Jefferson’s two nephews Lilburne and Isham Lewis.” Mrs. Hogendobber adored the news, or gossip, no matter the vintage. “They killed a slave named George on December 15, 1811. Fortunately their mother, Lucy, Thomas Jefferson’s sister, had already passed away, on May 26, 1810, or she would have perished of the shame. Anyway, they killed this unfortunate dependent and Lilburne was indicted on March 18, 1812. He killed himself on April tenth and his brother Isham ran away. Oh, it was awful.”

“Did that happen here?” Cooper’s pencil flew across the page.

“Frontier. Kentucky.” Mrs. Hogendobber took the tablet from Harry. “May I?” She read. “Here’s another quote from Patsy, still about the slave sale. ‘Nothing can prosper under such a system of injustice.’ Don’t you wonder what the history of this nation would be like if the women had been included in the government from the beginning?—Women like Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison and Martha Jefferson Randolph.”

“We got the vote in 1920 and we still aren’t fifty percent of the government,” Harry bitterly said. “Actually, our government is such a tangled mess of contradictions, maybe a person is smart to stay out of it.”

“Oh, Harry, it was a mess when Jefferson waded in too. Politics is like a fight between banty roosters,” Mrs. Hogendobber noted.

“Could you two summarize Jefferson’s attitude about slavery? His daughter surely seems to have hated it.” Cooper started to chew on her eraser, caught herself, and stopped.

“The best place to start is to read hisNotes on Virginia. Now, that was first printed in 1785 in Paris, but he started writing before that.”

“Mrs. Hogendobber, with all due respect, I haven’t the time to read that stuff. I’ve got a killer to find with a secret to hide and we’re still working on the stiff from 1803, excuse me, the remains.”

“The corpse of love,” Harry blurted out.

“That’s how we think of him,” Miranda added.

“You mean because he was Medley’s lover, or you think he was?” Cooper questioned her.

“Yes, but if she loved him, she had stopped.”

“Because she loved someone else?” Cynthia, accustomed to grilling, fell into it naturally.

“It was some form of love. It may not have been romantic.”

Cynthia sighed. Another dead end for now.“Okay. Someone tell me about Jefferson and slavery. Mrs. Hogendobber, you have a head for dates and stuff.”

“Bookkeeping gives one a head for figures. All right, Thomas Jefferson was born April 13, 1743, new style calendar. Remember, everyone but the Russians moved up to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian. By the old style he was born on April 2. Must have been fun for all those people all over Europe and the New World to get two birthdays, so to speak. Well, Cynthia, he was born into a world of slavery. If you read history at all, you realize that every great civilization undergoes a protracted period of slavery. It’s the only way the work can get done and capital can be accumulated. Imagine if the pharaohs had had to pay labor for the construction of the pyramids.”

“I never thought of it that way.” Cynthia raised her eyebrows.

“Slaves have typically been those who were conquered in battle. In the case of the Romans, many of their slaves were Greeks, most of whom were far better educated than their captors, and the Romans expected their Greek slaves to tutor them. And the Greeks themselves often had Greek slaves, those captured from battles with otherpoleis, or city-states. Well, our slaves were no different in that they were the losers in war, but the twist for America came in this fashion: The slaves that came to America were the losers in tribal wars in Africa and were sold to the Portuguese by the leaders of the victorious tribes. See, by that time the world had shrunk, so to speak. Lower Africa had contact with Europe, and the products of Europe enticed people everywhere. After a while other Europeans elbowed in on the trade and sailed to South America, the Caribbean, and North America with their human cargo. They even began to bag some trophies themselves—you know, if the wars slowed down. Demand for labor was heavy in the New World.”

“Mrs. Hogendobber, what does this have to do with Thomas Jefferson?”

“Two things. He grew up in a society where most people considered slavery normal. And two—and this still plagues us today—the conquered, the slaves, were not Europeans, they were Africans. They couldn’t pass. You see?”

Cynthia bit her pencil eraser again.“I’m beginning to get the picture.”

“Even if a slave bought his or her way to freedom or was granted freedom, or even if the African started as a free person, he or she never looked like a Caucasian. Unlike the Romans and the Greeks, whose slaves were other European tribes or usually other indigenous Caucasian peoples, a stigma attached to slavery in America because it was automatically attached to the color of the skin—with terrible consequences.”

Harry jumped in.“But he believed in liberty. He thought slavery cruel, yet he couldn’t live without his own slaves. Oh, sure, he treated them handsomely and they were loyal to him because he looked after them so well compared to many other slave owners of the period. So he was trapped. He couldn’t imagine scaling down. Virginians then and today still conceive of themselves as English lords and ladies. That translates into a high, high standard of living.”

“One that bankrupted him.” Mrs. Hogendobber nodded her head in sadness. “And saddled his heirs.”

“Yeah, but what was most interesting about Jefferson, to me anyway, was his insight into what slavery does to people. He said it destroyed the industry of the masters while degrading the victim. It sapped the foundation of liberty. He absolutely believed that freedom was a gift from God and the right of all men. So he favored a plan of gradual emancipation. Nobody listened, of course.”

“Did other people have to bankrupt themselves?”

“You have to remember that the generation that fought the Revolutionary War, for all practical purposes, saw their currency devalued and finally destroyed. The only real security was land, I guess.” Mrs. Hogendobber thought out loud. “Jefferson lost a lot. James Madison struggled with heavy debt as well as with the contradictions of slavery his whole life, and Dolley was forced to sell Montpelier, his mother’s and later their home, after his death. Speaking of slavery, one of James’s slaves, who loved Dolley like a mother, gave her his life savings and continued to live with her andwork for her. As you can see, the emotions between the master or the mistress and the slave were highly complex. People loved one another across a chasm of injustice. I fear we’ve lost that.”

“We’ll have to learn to love one another as equals,” Harry solemnly said. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ ”

“History. I hated history when I was in college. You two bring it to life.” Cynthia praised them and their short course on Jefferson.

“It is alive. These walls breathe. Everything that everyone did or did not do throughout the course of human life on earth impacts us. Everything!” Mrs. Hogendobber was impassioned.

Harry, spellbound by Mrs. Hogendobber, heard an owl hoot outside, the low, mournful sound breaking the spell and reminding her of Athena, goddess of wisdom, to whom the owl was sacred. Wisdom was born of the night, of solitary and deep thought. It was so obvious, so clearly obvious to the Greeks and those who used mythological metaphors for thousands of years. She just got it. She started to share her revelation when she spied a copy of Dumas Malone’s magisterial series on the life of Thomas Jefferson. It was the final volume, the sixth,The Sage of Monticello.

“I don’t remember this book being here.”

Mrs. Hogendobber noticed the book on the chair. The other five volumes rested in the milk crates that served as bookcases.“It wasn’t.”

“Here.” Harry opened to a page which Kimball had marked by using the little heavy gray paper divider found in boxes of teabags. “Look at this.”

Cynthia and Mrs. Hogendobber crowded around the book, where on page 513 Kimball had underlined with a pink highlighter,“All five of the slaves freed under Jefferson’s will were members of this family; others of them previously had been freed or, if able to pass as white, allowed to run away.”

“‘Allowed to run away’!” Mrs. Hogendobber read aloud.

“It’s complicated, Cynthia, but this refers to the Hemings family. Thomas Jefferson had been accused by his political enemies, the Federalists, of having an affair of many years’ duration with Sally Hemings. We don’t think he did, but the slaves declared that Sally was the mistress of PeterCarr, Thomas’s favorite nephew, whom he raised as a son.”

“But the key here is that Sally’s mother, also a beautiful woman, was half white to begin with. Her name was Betty, and her lover, again according to oral slave tradition as well as what Thomas Jefferson Randolph said, was John Wayles, Jefferson’swife’s brother. You see the bind Jefferson was in. For fifty years that man lived with this abuse heaped on his head.”

“Allowed to run away,” Harry whispered. “Miranda, we’re on second base.”

“Yeah, but who’s going to come to bat?” Cooper scratched her head.

46

The Coleses’ library yielded little that they didn’t already know. Mrs. Hogendobber came across a puzzling reference to Edward Coles, secretary to James Madison and then the first governor of the Illinois Territory. Edward, called Ned, never married or sired children. Other Coleses carried on that task. But a letter dated 1823 made reference to a great kindness he performed for Patsy. Jefferson’s daughter? The kindness was not clarified.

When the little band of researchers left, Samson merrily waved them off after offering them generous liquid excitements. Lucinda, too, waved.

After the squad car disappeared, Lucinda walked back into the library. She noticed the account book was not on the bottom shelf. She had not helped Harry, Miranda, and Cynthia go over the records because she had an appointment in Charlottesville, and Samson had seemed almost overeager to perform the niceties.

She scanned the library for the ledger.

Samson, carrying a glass with four ice cubes and his favorite Dalwhinnie, wandered in, opened a cabinet door, and sat down in a leather chair. He clicked on the television, which was concealed in the cabinet. Neither he nor Lulu could stand to see a television sitting out. Too middle class.

“Samson, where’s your ledger?”

“Has nothing to do with Jefferson or his descendants, my dear.”

“No, but it has a lot to do with Kimball Haynes.”

He turned up the sound, and she grabbed the remote out of his hand and shut off the television.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” His face reddened.

“I might ask the same of you. I hardly ever reach you on your mobile phone anymore. When I call places where you tell me you’re going to be, you aren’t there. I may not be the brightest woman in the world, Samson, but I’m not the dumbest either.”

“Oh, don’t start the perfume accusation again. We settled that.”

“What is in that ledger?”

“Nothing that concerns you. You’ve never been interested in my business before, why now?”

“I entertain your customers often enough.”

“That’s not the same as being interested in my business. You don’t care how I make the money so long as you can spend it.”

“You’re clever, Samson, much more clever than I am, but I’m not fooled. You aren’t going to sidetrack me about money. What is in that ledger?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why didn’t you let those women go through it? Kimball read it. That makes it part of the evidence.”

He shot out of his chair and in an instant towered over her, his bulk an assault against her frailty without his even lifting a hand. He shouted.“You keep your mouth shut about that ledger, or so help me God, I’ll—”

For the first time in their marriage Lucinda did not back down.“Kill me?” she screamed in his face. “You’re in some kind of trouble, Samson, or you’re doing something illegal.”

“Keep out of my life!”

“You mean get out of your life,” she snarled. “Wouldn’t that make it easier for you to carry on with your mistress, whoever she is?”

Menace oozed from his every pore.“Lucinda, if you ever mention that ledger to anyone, you will regret it far more than you can possibly understand. Now leave me alone.”

Lucinda replied with an icy calm, frightening in itself.“You killed Kimball Haynes.”

47

The squad car, Deputy Cooper at the wheel, picked up an urgent dispatch. She swerved hard right, slammed the car into reverse, and shot toward Whitehall Road.“Hang on, Mrs. H.”

Mrs. Hogendobber, eyes open wide, could only suck in her breath as the car picked up speed, siren wailing and lights flashing.

“Yehaw!” Harry braced herself against the dash.

Vehicles in front of them pulled quickly to the side of the road. One ancient Plymouth puttered along. Its driver also had a lot of miles on him. Coop sucked up right behind him and blasted the horn as well. She so astonished the man that he jumped up in his seat and cut hard right. His Plymouth rocked from side to side but remained upright.

“That was Loomis McReady.” Mrs. Hogendobber pressed her nose against the car window, only to be sent toward the other side of the car when Cynthia tore around a curve. “Thank God for seat belts.”

“Old Loomis ought not to be on the road.” Harry thought elderly people ought to take a yearly driver’s test.

“Up ahead,” Deputy Cooper said.

Mrs. Hogendobber grasped the back of the front seat to steady herself while she looked between Harry’s and Cynthia’s heads. “It’s Samson Coles.”

“Going like a bat out of hell, and in his Wagoneer too. Those things can’t corner and hold the road.” Harry felt her shoulders tense.

“Look!” Mrs. Hogendobber could now see, once they were out of another snaky turn, that a car in front of Samson’s sped even faster than his own.

“Holy shit, it’s Lucinda! Excuse me, Miranda, I didn’t mean to swear.”

“Under the circumstances—” Miranda never finished that sentence because a second set of sirens screeched from the opposite end of the road.

“You’ve got them now,” Harry gloated.

As soon as Lucinda saw Sheriff Rick Shaw’s car coming toward her, she flashed her lights and stopped. Cooper, hot on Samson’s tail, slowed since she thought he’d brake, but he didn’t. He swerved around Lulu’s big brown Wagoneer on the righthand side, one set of wheels grinding into a runoff ditch. Beaver Dam Road lay just ahead, and he meant to hang a hard right.

Sheriff Shaw stopped for Lucinda, who was crying, sobbing, screaming,“He’ll kill me! He’ll kill me!”

“Ladies, this is dicey,” Cooper warned as she, too, plowed into the runoff ditch to the right of Lucinda. The squad car tore out huge hunks of earth and bluestone before reaching the road again.

Samson gunned the red Wagoneer toward Beaver Dam, which wasn’t a ninety-degree right but a sharp, sharp reverse thirty-degree angle heading northeast off Whitehall Road. It was a punishing turn under the best of circumstances. Just as Samson reached the turn, Carolyn Maki, in her black Ford dually, braked for the stop sign. Samson hit his brakes and sent his rear end skidding out from underneath him. He overcorrected by turning hard right. The Wagoneer flipped over twice, finally coming to rest on its side. Miraculously, the dually remained untouched.

Carolyn Maki opened her door to assist Samson.

Cooper screeched to a stop next to the truck and leapt out of the squad car, gun in hand.“Get back in the truck,” she yelled at Carolyn.

Harry started to open her door, but the strong hand of Mrs. Hogendobber grasped her neck from behind.“Stay put.”

This did not prevent either one of them from hitting the automatic buttons to open the windows so they could hear. They stuck their heads out.

Cooper sprinted to the car where Samson clawed at the driver’s door, his head pointing skyward as the car rested on its right side. Oblivious of the minor cuts on his face and hands, he thrust open the door and crawled out head first, only to stare into the barrel of Cynthia Cooper’s pistol.

“Samson, put your hands behind your head.”

“I can explain everything.”

“Behind your head!”

He did as he was told. A third squad car pulled in from Beaver Dam Road, and Deputy Cooper was glad for the assistance.“Carolyn, are you okay?”

“Yes,” a wide-eyed Carolyn Maki called from her truck.

“We’ll need a statement from you, and one of us will try to get it in a few minutes so you can go home.”

“Fine. Can I get out of the truck now?”

Cooper nodded yes as the third officer frisked Samson Coles. The wheels of his Jeep were still spinning.

Carolyn walked over to Mrs. Hogendobber and Harry, now waiting outside the squad car.

Harry heard Sheriff Shaw’s voice on the special radio. She picked up the receiver, the coiled cord swinging underneath. “Sheriff, it’s Harry.”

“Where’s Cooper?” came his gruff response.

“She’s holding Samson Coles with his hands behind his head.”

“Any injuries?”

“No—unless you count the Wagoneer.”

“I’ll be right there.”

The sheriff left Lucinda Coles with one of his deputies. He was less than half a mile away, so he arrived in an instant. He strode purposefully over to Samson.“Read him his rights.”

“Yes, sir,” Cooper said.

“All right, handcuff him.”

“Is that necessary?” Samson complained.

The sheriff didn’t bother to respond. He sauntered over to the Wagoneer and stood on his tiptoes to look inside. Lying on the passenger side window next to the earth was a snub-nosed .38.

48

“Copious in his indignation, he was.” Miranda held the attention of her rapt audience. She had reached the point in her story where Samson Coles, being led away to the sheriff’s car, hands cuffed behind his back, started shouting. He didn’t want to go to jail. He hadn’t done anything wrong other than chase his wife down the road with his car, and hasn’t every man wanted to bash his wife’s head in once in a while? “Wasn’t it Noel Coward who wrote, ‘Women are like gongs, they should be struck regularly’?”

“He said that?” Susan Tucker asked.

“Private Lives,” Mim filled in. Mim was sitting on the school chair that Miranda had brought around for her from the back of the post office. Larry Johnson, who hadn’t told anyone about the diaries, Fair Haristeen, and Ned Tucker stood while Market Shiflett, Pewter next to him, sat on the counter. Mrs. Hogendobber paced the room, enacting the details to give emphasis to her story. Tucker paced with her as Mrs. Murphy sat on the postage scale. When Miranda wanted verification she would turn to Harry, also sitting on the counter, and Harry would nod or say a sentence or two to add color.

The Reverend Jones pushed open the door, come to collect his mail.“How much did I miss?”

“Almost the whole thing, Herbie, but I’ll give you a private audience.”

Herb was followed by Ansley and Warren Randolph. Mrs. Hogendobber was radiant because this meant she could repeat the adventure anew with theatrics. Three was better than one.

“Oscar performance,” Mrs. Murphy laconically commented to her two pals.

“Wish we’d been there.” Tucker hated to miss excitement.

“I’d have thrown up. Did I tell you about the time I threw up when Market was taking me to the vet?” Pewter remarked.

“Not now,” Mrs. Murphy implored the gray cat.

When Mrs. Hogendobber finished her tale for the second time, everyone began talking at once.

“Did they ever find the murder weapon? The gun that killed Kimball Haynes?” Warren asked.

“Coop says the ballistics proved it was a snub-nosed .38-caliber pistol. It was unregistered. Frightening how easy it is to purchase a gun illegally. The bullets matched the bore of the .38 they found in Samson’s car. It had smashed the passenger window to bits. Must have had it on the seat next to him. Looks like he really was going to do in Lulu. Looks like he’s the one that did in Kimball Haynes.” Miranda shook her head at such violence.

“I hope not.” Dr. Johnson’s calm voice rang out. “Everyone has marital problems, and Samson’s may be larger than most, but we still don’t know what happened to set this off. And we don’t know if he killed Kimball. Innocent until proven guilty. Remember, we’re talking about one of Crozet’s own here. We’d better wait and see before stringing him up.”

“I didn’t say anything about stringing him up,” Miranda huffed. “But it’s mighty peculiar.”

“This spring has been mighty peculiar.” Fair edged his toes together and then apart, a nervous habit.

“Much as I like Samson, I hope this settles the case. Why would he kill Kimball Haynes? I don’t know.” Ned Tucker put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “But we would sleep better at night if we knew the case was closed.”

“Let the dead bury the dead.” The little group murmured their assent to Ned’s hopes.

No one noticed that Ansley had turned ghostly white.

49

Samson Coles denied ever having seen the snub-nosed .38. His lawyer, John Lowe, having argued many cases for the defense in his career, could spot a liar a mile away. He knew Samson was lying. Samson refused to give the sheriff any information other than his name and address and, in a funny reversion to his youth, his army ID number. By the time John Lowe reached his client, Samson was the picture of sullen hostility.

“Now, Samson, one more time. Why did you threaten to kill your wife?”

“And for the last time, we’d been having problems, real problems.”

“That doesn’t mean you kill your wife or threaten her. You’re paying me lots of money, Samson. Right now it looks pretty bad for you. The report came back on the gun. It was the gun that killed Kimball Haynes.” John, not averse to theatrics himself, used this last stunner, which was totallyuntrue—the ballistics results hadn’t come back yet—in hopes of blasting his client into some kind of cooperation. It worked.

“No!” Samson shook. “I never saw that gun before in my life. I swear it, John, I swear it on the Holy Bible! When I said I was going to kill her, I didn’t mean I really would, I wouldn’t shoot her. She just pushed all my buttons.”

“Buddy, you could get the chair. This is a capital-punishment state, and I wasn’t born yesterday. You’d better tell me what happened.”

Tears welled up in Samson’s eyes. His voice wavered. “John, I’m in love with Ansley Randolph. I spent money trying to impress her, and to make a long story short, I’ve been dipping into escrow funds which I hold as the principal broker. Lucinda saw the ledger—” He stopped because his whole body was shaking. “Actually, she showed it to Kimball Haynes when he was over to read the family histories and diaries, you know, to see if there was anything that could fit into the murder at Monticello. There wasn’t, of course, but I have accounts beginning in the last decades of the seventeenth century, kept by my maternal grandmother of many greats, Charlotte Graff. Kimball read those accounts, meticulously detailed, and Lucinda laughed that she couldn’t make sense out of my books but how crystal clear Granny Graff’s were. So Lucinda gave Kimball my ledger to prove her point. He immediately saw what I’d been doing. I kept two columns, you know how it’s done. That’s the truth.”

“Samson, you have a high standing in Crozet. To many people’s minds that would be more than sufficient motive to kill Kimball—to protect that standing as well as your livelihood. Answer me. Did you kill Kimball Haynes?”

Tears gushing down his ruddy cheeks, Samson implored John,“I’d rather lose my license than my life.”

John believed him.

50

Obsessed by his former partner’s diaries, Dr. Larry Johnson read at breakfast, between patients, at dinner, and late into the night. He finished volume one, which was surprisingly well written, especially considering he’d never thought Jim a literary man.

References to the grandparents and great-grandparents of many Albemarle County citizens enlivened the documents. Much of volume one centered on the effects of World War I on the returning servicemen and their wives. Jim Craig was then fairly new to the practice of medicine.

Z. Calvin Coles, grandfather to Samson Coles, returned from the war carrying a wicked dose of syphilis. Mim’s paternal line, the Urquharts, flourished during the war, as they invested heavily in armaments, and Mim’s father’s brother, Douglas Urquhart, lost his arm in a threshing accident.

All the patients treated, from measles to bone cancer, were meticulously mentioned as well as their character, background, and the history of specific diseases.

The Minors, Harry’s paternal ancestors, were prone to sinus infections, while on her mother’s side, the Hepworths, they either died very young or made it into their seventies and beyond—good long innings then. Wesley Randolph’s family often suffered a wasting disease of the blood which killed them slowly. The Hogendobbers leaned toward coronary disorders, and the Sanburnes to gout.

Jim’s keen powers of observation again won Larry’s admiration. Being young when he joined Jim Craig’s practice, Larry had looked up to his partner, but now, as an old man, he could measure Jim in the fullness of his own experience. Jim was a fine doctor and his death at sixty-one was a loss for the town and for other doctors.

With eager hands Larry opened volume two, dated February 22, 1928.

51

Jails are not decorated in designer colors. Nor is the privacy of one’s person much honored. Poor Samson Coles listened to stinking men with the DTs hollering and screaming, bottom-rung drug sellers protesting their innocence, and one child molester declaring that an eight-year-old had led him on. If Samson ever doubted his sanity, this “vacation” in the cooler reaffirmed that he was sane—stupid perhaps, but sane.