Cat of the Century (10 page)

“I hope not.” Harry smiled.

“If only I could live forever,” Inez said wistfully. “I find this earth fascinating. I don’t want to leave.” She took another deep drag. “You’ll never know how I struggled to give up this habit. Used to smoke a pack a day when I was practicing. At this point, why bother? Your sentiments.” She nodded to Harry.

Harry returned to the subject at hand. “Do you know the candidates or elected officials that Mariah backed?”

“No. I’ll ask Flo. They’re at loggerheads about that, too. Flo’s Democrat. Mariah, Republican.”

“Have they ever agreed on anything? Charity, perhaps?”

Inez’s head perked upward slightly. “Why do you say that?”

“They’re community leaders; leaders are always involved in some kind of charity. It’s easy to steal from charities. For instance, you create a special need, like funding wheelchairs for indigent children. And when money comes in for your wheels-for-kids, you do supply wheelchairs. With lots of publicity. You then run all your expenses through the 501(c)3 corporation, a charitable nonprofit. You can live like a king. You can also create another corporation, and the wheels-for-kids makes gifts and loans to it.”

“How do you know about this?”

“Had some dealings with the Brothers of Love on the mountain.”

“Up next to Swannanoa.” Inez cited a place just to the south of Route 250, below the Skyline Drive on- and off-ramp. “It may well be one of the most interesting places in Virginia, as it was founded, in a sense, to study religions without judgment, perhaps a century ago.”

“Right.”

“The Brothers of Love are crooked?” Inez was shocked.

“Some were. It’s been straightened out.”

“I’m happy to hear that. I—well, I don’t want to get off track here. You think Mariah might have set up a charity?”

“Just a thought.”

“I’ll investigate. If she had, I’d think I’d know about it. Board members are merciless in pressing other board members about some special project.”

Harry excused herself for a moment to go upstairs to the bathroom. She’d imbibed far too much tea.

Mrs. Murphy jumped onto Inez’s lap.
“There’s blood mixed into the manure. Tucker said so.”

Tucker, on the floor, said,
“If only you could learn what we’re saying.”

“I still think you’re making it up.”
Pewter rolled over to her left side.
“You just want me to be jealous because I didn’t come along.”

“Pewter, I’ve read astronomy books over Harry’s shoulder. I don’t remember learning that you are the center of the universe.”
Mrs. Murphy flashed her Cheshire cat smile.

“Hateful fleabag,”
Pewter insulted her friend.

“Oh la,”
Mrs. Murphy sassed, which further inflamed Pewter.

Harry returned to the kitchen.

Inez was enjoying her nicotine hit as the cigarette burned down. “Both Flo and Mariah are totally devoted to William Woods and both were in Kansas City at the American Royal horse show in 1984, when Skywalk and Imperator went head to head in the five-gaited class. They were often at important events, not together, but there.”

“I don’t know much about Saddlebreds, but I really loved the Shelbyville show, and that Shortro is a dream.”

“Good minds. Good mouths. Well, Skywalk, trained and ridden by Mitch Clark, and Imperator with Don Harris in the irons, were like the Yankees versus the Dodgers in the old days. Electricity. I was there, too. That is the extent of Flo and Mariah’s confluence in the horse world. As to fund-raising—for, say, rebuilding a historic place or something like that—they were often involved.”

“I see. Inez, if Mariah did have a special charity, would Flo have supported it?”

“Depends on the charity. That’s why I think Mariah’s disappearance is related to something else. Politics—as I mentioned, politics usually brings out the worst in people.”

“I’m beginning to think politics is a platform for extreme egotism,” Harry mused. “One stokes greed, the other fuels ego—the desire for power over others.”

“Got that right, Snookums.” Inez used the old term from Fanny Brice’s radio show, then realized Harry had never heard of it.
“The Baby Snooks Show.”

“Pardon?”

“
Baby Snooks
was Fanny Brice’s radio show. Screamingly funny. You saw
Funny Girl,
I’m sure.”

“A revival. Wish I could have seen it with Barbra Streisand.”

“Barbra Streisand started out singing at the Bon Soir on West Eighth Street in the Village.”

“Inez, is there anything you don’t know?”

Inez laughed. “When you’re ninety-eight, you’ve lived a lot, plus
I’m blessed with a sharp memory…. I have so many interests. Is there anything I don’t know? Lots. I don’t know why the human animal so likes to destroy things—living things—and I don’t know where Mariah is.” Her voice lowered.

“I’m so sorry, Inez. As chairman of the alumnae board, this lands in your lap.”

“I’m worried, Harry.” She paused and half-whispered, “Deeply worried.”

“I’ll help in any way I can.”

“I know you will. I wanted to talk to you about the problems on the board before we got here. You often have unconventional solutions. Little did I know when I made that phone call that it would be something big when we got here. You have a good mind, and you aren’t misled by sentiment. That’s uncommon, really. You don’t let emotion cloud your thinking.”

“Thank you, Inez. Do you think Aunt Tally is in danger?”

A long pause followed. “It’s possible. She has an unerring ability to stir a hornet’s nest.”

The animals had been listening.

“The blood in the manure pile,”
Tucker said.
“Let’s get out of here and go back there.”

Mrs. Murphy replied sensibly,
“Tucker, a blizzard is developing. There’s more than a foot of snow on the ground already. The manure pile is covered and frozen. You know that. We couldn’t dig into it if we had to.”

Pewter, finally drawn into this, said,
“I didn’t see the manure pile, but it sounds as though it’s in plain view.”

“In the back, but it’s not hard to find,”
Mrs. Murphy answered.
“A manure pile is not a likely place to actually kill someone, though. For one thing, if the killer and Mariah made noise, a student might have heard it; the horses certainly would have. I bet Mariah was killed—if indeed she was—somewhere else. As the manure pile was fresh on the top, it would have been pretty easy to dump her there, pull the fresh manure over the body. Or the attack could have started there if the attacker was able to silence her in some fashion. I don’t know; right now it makes no sense.”

“You don’t know if the blood you smelled was hers, Tucker.”
Pewter was now sorry she hadn’t gone to the barns.
“And your idea means whoever put the body there would have to be lucky that the pile wasn’t frozen.”

“Or they knew the maintenance routine.”
Tucker sat still.
“If only we could get Mom back there.”

“That’s not going to be anytime soon.”
Mrs. Murphy looked toward the window.

Whiteout.

T
he wind whipped the heavy snows sideways at times. The mercury hung at twenty-two degrees but threatened to go lower as the night of March 25 deepened. By six, the time of the celebration, the auditorium held the students who lived on campus and most of the faculty and staff. The over-eighty alumnae had been bused in. All the alumnae board, except for Mariah, sat in the front row on the right of the center aisle. The elderly graduates sat on the left. The auditorium was half-full. There was no way those living far away could fight the storm. As it was, the students would be walking back to their residence halls holding hands in a chain. Losing one’s way in a whiteout was easy, far easier than one would suspect. All people in cold climates knew stories of farmers frozen to death not ten yards from the barn door.

Harry left her three animal companions in the house. None of them had minded. She sat toward the front. Big Mim and Little Mim sat directly below the podium. Inez sat next to Jahnae Barnett and Aunt Tally on the stage.

Jahnae spoke, lovingly sketching the university’s history. It was founded in 1870, five years after the end of The War Between the States, in response to the needs of female children orphaned by the conflict. Sixty-one years later, Tally Urquhart graduated. The Great
Depression was two years old; Germany was rearming. Dismal though things might be, sound entered movies, and people flocked to theaters to forget their troubles. Professional sports provided another bright spot. It might have been the Great Depression, but the young were ever hopeful. This applied to the class of 1931 and to Inez’s class, 1933.

Then as now, one of the hallmarks of William Woods was the lifelong friendships forged during the students’ two years. William Woods became a four-year institution years after Tally and then Inez had graduated. At this, Jahnae introduced Inez, providing a bit of her history.

Inez could always command an audience. “I first met Tally Urquhart in 1931, my freshman year, in the stable. She said, ‘Put your hands down.’

“I was riding a hunter but with Saddle Seat hands. From that day to this, my oldest and dearest friend has spoken her mind, usually without honey-coating her thoughts. She was right. My hands needed to come down.

“As you can imagine, we’ve lived through a great deal. We’re still here. I will always be grateful to William Woods for the superior education I received at a time when not many women managed to achieve a higher education nor were encouraged to do so. Most of our classmates are gone now, but we have maintained vibrant friendships. I hope this one lasts another eighty years and then some, but failing that, we’ll make the most of what time we have left.

“Without further ado, Tally Urquhart.”

To thunderous applause, Inez took her seat next to Jahnae, who leaned over to congratulate her.

Using her gold-headed cane from Inez, Tally reached the podium without hobbling. Given Tally’s short stature, Jahnae had arranged for a low podium. Tally wanted to stand. No chair for her.

Aunt Tally’s eyes, still quite good, swept the audience, lingering on her niece and grand-niece; then she cast her eyes at Harry. Taking a deep breath, she addressed the assembled.

“Thank you for braving a Missouri spring to be here.” She paused
for the ripple of laughter, then continued, “You know how old I am. A woman who will tell her age will tell anything. I intend to do just that.

“I applaud your good sense in attending William Woods. I look back on my time here with untrammeled joy. I know I speak for Inez, too, for all the Grande Dames. The rest of our classmates have gone on. I miss them. This will happen to you many decades from now, the good-byes to those who sustained you in life. You go on. You retain their wisdom. You try to incorporate their best qualities into your behavior.

“One professor stands out in my mind—a wonderful, wonderful history professor, Chuck Jones. He used to tell us over and over again—to the point where Inez and I could look at each other, wink, and then repeat—‘Trust your instincts and don’t expect life to be logical.’ He told us the truth.

“I will now try to live up to what I learned here, to what life has taught me, and to my own instincts. I will tell you the truth as best I know it.

“The first truth really is to trust your instincts. How easy that sounds. How difficult in practice. Why? Because all religion and government want to do is take you away from you. This isn’t to say that organized religion is bad, only that it has strayed far away from spirit and is now part and parcel of the political structure. I guess the leaders of the various churches have forgotten Christ’s words, ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.’

“As to the United States government, at the federal level it is a disaster. At the state level it can be intrusive. At the local level it often works very well. The further a politician is removed from those who are governed, the more mistakes he or she makes. And we have no statesmen, only politicians, hence the disasters that will accumulate and intensify until you become involved, which is to say fight back. Remember—in fact, tattoo this on the inside of your eyelids—Jefferson’s quote that every American should hold sacred: ‘That government is best which governs least.’

“Never ever believe that laws will solve a problem. The law allows what honor forbids. A problem will be solved only by people, not by a piece of paper.”

She caught her breath, smiled, then continued, “So much for the so-called big issues. Now to life.

“Never hope more than you work.

“Animals never make a virtue out of boredom, best you don’t, either.

“Don’t get addicted to the struggle. If that statement doesn’t make sense now, it will over time.

“There are some people you can’t satisfy even if you blow a fan on them in hell. Ditch ’em. If that person is your boss, start looking for another job.

“Corruption is like a lily—brush against it, however lightly, and some of the pollen smears on you. Therefore choose your friends and your employers wisely. When the day comes that some of you start your own businesses and hire employees, concern yourself more with that person’s character than their résumé. This gets back to the first thing I said: Trust your instincts.