Catch as Cat Can (2 page)

2

What do you think?” Harry leaned over the heavy wooden table where Don Clatterbuck studied the recently deceased pileated woodpecker.

“I can do it. Sure can.” His smile revealed teeth stained by chewing tobacco, a habit learned from his maternal grandfather, Riley “Booty” Mawyer, who was old but still farming.

She folded her arms across her chest. “Lots?”

“Not for you.” He smiled again.

“Well—?”

“Oh, how about a hundred dollars and you give my card out when foxhunting starts again? At the meets.”

“Really?” Harry knew she was getting a good deal because stuffing birds was more difficult than stuffing deer heads.

“Yeah. We go back a ways, Skeezits.” He called her by a childhood nickname.

“Guess we do.” She smiled back and pointed to coffee tables, the tops covered with old license plates, some dating back to the 1920s. “These are good. You ought to carry them up to Middleburg and put them in those expensive shops there.”

His shop, a converted garage, overflowed with hides, knives to cut leather, and a heavy-duty sewing machine to sew leather, though usually he employed hand tools even for sewing. Donald repaired tack, leather chairs, car upholstery, even leather skirts and high-fashion stuff.

He made a decent living from that and his taxidermy but he also exhibited a creative streak. The license-plate-covered coffee tables were his latest idea.

“Not satisfied. I want to make some using the color for design. The old New York plates used to be orange so what if I used orange and, say, the old California plates, black. I don't know. Something different.”

“These are good. The ones right here. Where do you get these cool old plates?”

“Yard sales mostly. Junkyards. Scratchin'.”

As they'd known one another since they were toddlers, they employed a shorthand. Scratchin' meant he'd scratch up stuff like a chicken scratches up grubs. Many of Harry's friends did this, as they all had known one another all their lives. In the case of the older generation, this shorthand contracted into orders. The Virginia way was that older people gave orders, young people carried them out. “Worship of youth is for other parts,” as Virginians said. And what any true Virginian would never say was that those “other parts” of the country didn't count.

Another fundamental of Virginia life was that society was ruled by women. The entire state was a matriarchy, carefully concealed, of course. It would never do for men to know they were being directed, guided, cajoled, or sometimes openly threatened to do what the Queen wanted, the Queen being the reigning woman of every locality.

What the men never told the women was that they knew that. Hunting, fishing, and golf provided a respite from the continual improvements of the ladies. Despite the occasional irritations, interruptions, and exhaustion of pleasing women, Virginia men bore this burden for reasons they did not share with those same women. The men felt they were bigger, stronger, and more inclined to fight, which also meant they could protect those who were smaller, weaker, and who needed them. They declined to let the women know that those ladies needed them or that they knew full well what the ladies were doing.

The system worked most times. When it didn't there was hell to pay.

Harry and Don, in their late thirties, actually believed they weren't part of this dance. Of course they were, and in time they'd understand just how much they'd been influenced by their elders and by the very ethos of Virginia.

“You're the craftsman.” She smiled.

“I get by.” He wiped his hand across his chin, leaving a faint streak of light brown stain, as he'd been coloring calfskin before Harry came into his shop.

“You've always done good work. I don't know where you get your ideas. I remember the Homecoming float with the stallion that bucked. I still don't know how you built that bucking horse. No one's ever topped that.”

“Wasn't bad.” He grinned.

“Where do you get all this stuff?” She pointed to a broken pediment, good stone, too; a huge pile of ancient license plates; an old gas pump, the kind with a whirling ball on the top; a massive enameled safe with a central lock like a pilot's wheel; and a beautiful old Brewster phaeton, badly in need of repair but an example of the coach builder's art.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter sat in the cracked, deep green leather of the phaeton seat. The body of the coach itself was dark green enamel with red and gold piping, quite lovely even if faded and cracked.

“O'Bannon's.”

“The salvage yard? I haven't been there since the old man died.”

“Opened up four acres in the back. The boys are good businessmen. Sean really runs the business and Roger runs the garage, old cars. He still spends half his time at the stock-car races. You ought to go over there.” Don carefully put the woodpecker into a large freezer he had for game. “They've even got a caboose on the old railroad siding. Must have been fun in the old days when businesses all had railroad sidings.”

“When did Sean expand?” Harry asked, knowing Sean O'Bannon was the older of the two brothers and seemed more commanding than Roger.

“He started about a month after his dad died. Said he could never get his father to see how the business could grow. He borrowed some money from the bank. It's a big expansion.”

“Thought I knew everything.” She scratched her head.

“You gonna be another Big Mim?” Don laughed, naming Mim Sanburne, in her late sixties although not broadcasting her age. Mim was wealthy, beautiful, imperious, and prepared to rule Crozet and all of Virginia if permitted to do so—and even if not permitted. She had to know everything.

“Thanks,” Harry dryly replied.

“Mom likes to give orders as much as Mim, secretly,”
Pewter giggled.

Murphy disagreed with her companion.
“I don't think so. I think she likes to go her own way but if she has to work in a group of humans she wants to get the job done. Mother doesn't want to hear a lot of personal stuff about people's lives—girl talk. Hates it.”

“I think she could run Crozet every bit as much as Big Mim.”

“She has the ability but not the desire.”
Mrs. Murphy sat up and thought how civilized it would be to travel in a phaeton on a perfect spring day such as this.

“Don't forget Little Mim.”
Tucker, who had been inspecting every item on the floor of the shop, walked over.

“True.”
Pewter considered the social and political ambitions of Mim's sole daughter.
“She's vice-mayor now, too.”

Jim Sanburne, husband to Mim, father to Little Mim, was mayor and had been mayor since the middle of the 1960s. His daughter challenged him for the mayoralty in the last city election but they compromised and she became vice-mayor, appointed by her father, approved by the City Council. Had she gone through with the campaign it would have divided the community. This way harmony was preserved and she was mayor-in-training.

“Go over to O'Bannon's,” Don suggested. “Artists go there. Not just motorheads. BoomBoom Craycroft is there once a week, sifting through scrap metal.”

“What?”

“She's welding artistic pieces. Says it grounds her.”

“Give me a break.” Harry grimaced. “BoomBoom can't stick to anything and every new activity is her salvation and ought to be yours, too. Well, at least she's out of her group therapy phase.”

“Ready for the Dogwood Festival next weekend? Our mid-April rites of spring?” He changed the subject.

“No.” She pursed her lips. “Damn that Susan. She suckers me every time.”

“What do you have to do this time?”

“Parade coordinator.”

“Yeah?”

“Means I have to line everyone up at the starting place, Crozet High School, space them correctly, use the bullhorn, and get them marching. It's easy enough until you consider who's marching in the parade. The clash of egos—our version of
Clash of the Titans
.”

Don laughed. “BoomBoom especially. Your favorite person.”

Harry started laughing so hard she couldn't talk. “She's leading a delegation of disease-of-the-week. I forget which disease.”

“Last year it was MS.”

BoomBoom Craycroft, a beautiful woman and an ambitious one, each year selected a charity. She would then lead this group in the annual parade, a celebration of spring and Crozet. It wasn't just that she wished to perform good deeds and help the sick, she also wanted to be the center of attention. She was too old to be the head majorette for the high school, obviously, so this was her venue.

“I suppose we wouldn't laugh so hard if we had whatever illness it was but I can't help it. I really can't. I think she should lead a contingent for breast reduction.” Harry giggled. BoomBoom carried a lot of freight upstairs.

Don gasped. “Don't do that.”

“Spoken just like a man. You twit.” She made a gun out of her thumb and forefinger and “shot” him. She walked over to the huge safe. “Got your millions in there?”

“Nah, just half a million.” He laughed, then thought a moment. “Give me two weeks on the woodpecker. You've hit me at a good time.”

“Great.” She gave him a high five and picked up her brood to head to O'Bannon's. “See you at the parade.”

3

With the exception of the interstates, the roads in Virginia were paved-over Indian trails. They twisted through the mountains, leveled out along the riverbeds and streams, proving a joy to those fortunate enough to own sports cars.

Harry, on the other hand, was the proud owner of two trucks. One truck, a dually F350, was expensive to run due to its big engine but she needed the power to pull her horse trailer. Thanks to a long-term loan she could afford the payments. She had three years left.

For everyday use she drove her old 1978 Ford half-ton, ran like a top, was cheap to operate and repair.

Today she curled around the hills and valleys in the old Superman-blue Ford, the two cats and Tucker cheerfully riding in the cab, commenting on the unfolding countryside.

Don Clatterbuck's business rested just past the intersection with Route 240 on Whitehall Road. The O'Bannon Salvage yard was located east of town on that same Route 240, tucked off the highway so as not to offend intensely aesthetic souls. To further promote good community relations, the O'Bannon brothers had put up a high, solid, paled fence around the four acres, a considerable expense. A large, pretty, hand-painted sign swayed on a wrought iron post at the driveway, right by the big double gate. A black background with white lettering read “O'Bannon Salvage,” and a red border completed the sign. What made everyone notice the salvage yard, though, wasn't the sign but the black wrecker's ball hanging from a crane positioned next to the sign. Each morning Sean or Roger opened the heavy chain-link fence gate and each evening they locked it, the wrecker's ball and crane standing like a skeletal sentinel.

As the postmistress of Crozet and born and bred there, Harry knew every side street and every resident, too. There was no shortcut to O'Bannon's. She'd have to go through town. Don had aroused her curiosity. She wanted to see Sean's improvements.

She no sooner turned east than she passed the supermarket and spied Miranda Hogendobber, her coworker and friend, in the parking lot. Her paper bags of groceries were perched on the hood of the Ford Falcon, an antique that Miranda used daily, seeing no reason to spend money on a new car if the old one operated efficiently.

Miranda seemed upset. Harry turned into the parking lot, found a space, and hurried over to her friend, the animals behind her.

“Oh, Harry, I'm so glad to see you. Look. Would you look!” Miranda pointed to her tires, hubcaps missing. “I've never had anything like this happen—and at the supermarket.”

“It's all right, Mrs. Hogendobber.”
Mrs. Murphy rubbed against her leg, feeling certain this would calm the lady.

“What's the big noise about a hubcap?”
Pewter shrugged.

“Car's from 1961. How can she replace them?”
Tucker replied.

“The car runs fine without hubcaps.”
Pewter struggled to understand human reactions, since she often felt they missed the point.

“You know how she is. Everything has to be just so. Not a weed in her garden. She doesn't want to cruise around with her lug nuts showing, you'll pardon the expression.”
Murphy circled Miranda, rubbing on the opposite leg.

“Did you call the sheriff?”

“No. I just walked out this very minute.” Miranda, crestfallen, stepped back to view her naked wheels again.

“Tell you what, you stay here and I'll run over to the pay phone.” Harry started to move away, then stopped. “Do you have anything that needs to go into the freezer? I can take it home for you.”

“No.”

Harry called the sheriff's office and before she hung up the phone to rejoin Miranda, Cynthia Cooper, a deputy with the sheriff's department, pulled into the lot.

“That was fast.” Harry smiled at the young, attractive deputy.

“Just around the corner at the firehouse going over the parade route for the thousandth time.”

“Look.” Miranda pointed to her car as Cynthia, notebook in hand, walked over.

“That's just heinous.” Cynthia put her arm around Miranda. “Do you have any idea how much they're worth?”

“Not a clue.” Miranda's pink lips, shiny with lipstick, pursed together.

“That's probably why someone stole them. Because they're hard to find. They must be worth something,” Harry thought out loud.

“Why can't she put on new hubcaps?”
Pewter, irritated, wanted to get on the road again.

“Not the same.”
Tucker sniffed the wheels hoping for human scent but the perpetrator had pried off the hubcaps with something other than his hands.

“Piffle,”
the gray cat yawned.

“Are we keeping you up?” Harry noticed the large yawn accompanied by a tiny gurgle. “Why don't you go back and sleep in the truck?”

“Ha, ha,”
Mrs. Murphy laughed.

“Aren't we the perfect puss?”
Pewter growled at the tiger cat.

“Don't start. I'd like to have one Saturday where you two don't fight.”
Tucker sat between the two cats.

“Tell you what, while I write this up, Harry, pick up the mobile in the squad car and call O'Bannon's. Ask Sean if he has any Falcon hubcaps.”

“Funny, I was just on my way over there.” Harry trotted over to the squad car, slipped behind the wheel, and dialed on the mobile unit. She punched in the numbers feeling envious. She'd love a mobile phone herself but thought it too expensive. “Hi, Sean, Harry.”

“How you doing, Harry?”

“I'm just fine but Mrs. Hogendobber isn't. Someone this very minute stole the hubcaps off her Ford Falcon. Coop's here at the scene of the crime, if you will, and she told me to call you. You wouldn't have any Ford Falcon hubcaps, would you?”

“Yeah,” Sean's voice lowered. “I just bought them from the dude who must have stolen them. Dammit.”

“We'll be right over.” Harry clicked the end button on the phone. “Hey, Coop. He's got them.”

“My hubcaps?” Miranda's hand fluttered to her throat.

“He said he just bought them off someone. If they aren't yours it's an odd coincidence. I said we'd be right over.”

“Mrs. Hogendobber, do you feel settled enough to drive your car over there? I'll follow in the squad car.”

“Of course I feel settled enough.” Miranda couldn't believe the deputy thought she was that ruffled by the theft.

“I'll tag along, too, if you don't mind.” Harry picked up Pewter, who was wandering in the direction of the supermarket. “I was going that way anyway.”

“Fine.” Cynthia opened the door to the squad car.

Mrs. Murphy sat in Harry's lap as she backed out of the parking space.
“First the woodpecker, now the hubcaps. What next?”

“Extinction by death ray.”
Pewter giggled.