The Big Cat Nap (18 page)

“You know, those people can’t be happy. To act out like that, to sleep with battalions of men or women, to send photos of your genitals—I can’t believe anyone who acts that way is truly happy,” Susan mused.

“I’ll never know.” Cooper grinned.

“Hey, girls, there’s still time,” Harry said cheerfully.

They laughed, gossiped, talked about what was left to be done for the Flag Day celebration at St. Luke’s, which would be held next Saturday, June 16, starting early, at ten, in case the heat came up. Harry told them the T-shirts looked great.

“Coop, you need a hobby other than pulling out burdock root. I’d be happy to take you out on the driving range at the club,” Susan offered. “Golf can take you away from the world.”

“That’s what you say. Wasn’t there a book written about golf entitled
A Good Walk Spoiled
?” Harry took her last little sip from the Mason jar.

“Susan, thank you,” said Coop in her dark soprano. “I don’t see how I would ever get the time. As it is, we’re working overtime because we can’t hire any new recruits. The only way the sheriff’s department can hire is if someone retires. I’m not faulting the county. The financial crisis has impacted law enforcement and fire departments all over. I was lucky to get today off, but I’ve worked two weeks straight. And Rick is working too hard, way too hard. I’m worried about him. The constant prodding from the media about the two murders isn’t helping. My boss is a good sheriff and a good man. He wants to find the perp, as do we all, but this is quite an odd case. Like most cases, sooner or later it will crack.”

“I hope so,” Susan forthrightly said. “But Ned declares murder is the easiest crime to commit if you plan carefully.”

“Yes and no.” The deputy stretched out her long legs. “Nine times out of ten the perp is right in front of you. Most murders aren’t premeditated. Sloppy jobs. Well, maybe I shouldn’t say that, but there are professionals, like in every other human activity. Those people
really know how to take someone out. People with big egos can plan a murder, but if they aren’t professionals, they’ll likely slip up.”

“Think the ReNu murders bear that stamp?” Harry asked. “Professional?”

“No. No.” Cooper sat up straight. “But they were committed by someone intelligent.”

“So you believe the two deaths are connected?” Susan ate a cookie, crumbs falling on her thin summer camp shirt.

“I find it unlikely that two mechanics from the same company were killed without a connection.”

“BoomBoom and I went to the drag races last night. I mean, I’ve always wanted to see them, but I was also kind of curious,” Harry confessed.

“Kind of?” Susan’s perfectly plucked eyebrows arched upward.

“We are gearheads.” Harry’s lower lip protruded slightly. “Have you been over to see them?” Harry turned her attention to Coop.

“Rick and I drove over, talked to the owner, walked the track the day after Nick was killed. We haven’t found a link there, either.”

“Well, why would any murders be linked to drag racing?” Susan wondered.

“Endorsements. Someone wants Castrol oil and someone is their competitor?” Harry threw that out.

“Harry, not at this level of racing. Granted, there can always be some sort of personal hatred, and I remind you that Walt didn’t even actually race. The one thought that’s crossed my mind and Rick’s is the possibility of a gambling ring.”

“Among the racers?” Susan found this pretty interesting.

“Perhaps. Or the ring could be tied to larger drag races or NASCAR. Gambling makes millions, just not for the gamblers.”

“Even at the level of Central Virginia Hot Rod Track?” Susan furrowed her brow.

“Depends on how wide the clientele. Yes, even in Waynesboro, a gambling ring could be netting six or seven figures. Once you pay your workers and the setup costs, illegal activity is one hundred percent pure profit.” Coop held up the Mason jar.

“So it is.” Harry sat silently for a long time.

R
osebushes, pink, white, and yellow, filled half of Harry’s truck bed. This Wednesday, June 13, pyracanthas filled the rest of the space. Once these were in the ground at St. Luke’s, she’d return, filling hers and everyone else’s truck bed with hydrangeas in full flower.

She parked near the graveyard at St. Luke’s. Wearing her kid gardening gloves, she quickly unloaded the bushes.

Dee Phillips, Ph.D., had designed the plantings for the peaceful, beautiful grounds. Harry and friends provided the grunt work, which Harry liked okay.

Miranda Hogendobber, using a tape measure, had carefully marked out the proper distance between the plants. Usually Miranda would eyeball it, but since these roses and pyracanthas would go in at
the church
, she wanted the plantings to be just so.

Susan, BoomBoom, and Alicia were digging the holes. A bag of Miracle-Gro, three watering buckets, and three measuring cups lay on the clipped grass. The hose from Herb’s garage had been stretched to the max.

Tucker dashed to the graveyard. The cats jumped on the stone walls to watch the dog sniff tombstones.

“And?”
Pewter asked.

“No one’s been here.”
By this, Tucker meant no dogs had peed on the tombstones.

“Good. Best to respect the dead.”
Mrs. Murphy looked as Elocution, Cazenovia, and Lucy Fur bounded across the emerald green, the colors of their shiny fur made even more vivid by the grass carpet.

“Hooray.”
The cats cheered as they reached the stone wall, all three bounding up, ready for a cat gossip.

“This pink is so soft.” Miranda admired the color as she planted one of the bushes.

“It gave me an idea for the house,” Harry said. “What if I planted roses all along the first fence between the barn and the pastures? I’d start with the deepest pink closest to the barn, and each successive rose would be a lighter shade until the very end, when it would be so pale, almost white.”

Miranda and the others stopped for a moment.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that,” said Alicia, who’d been all over the world. Now she was on her knees, putting in a yellow bush.

“I figure if it doesn’t turn out as I like, I can always rearrange the bushes to a more conventional color scheme. I don’t know. Just sort of hit me.”

“Great idea.” Susan thought maybe she’d try it at home, too, but she wanted to use white roses with slightly different colors deep down on the petal.

“Where are we going to plant the pyracanthas?” BoomBoom asked.

“Dee’s plan, which is in my truck if you want to see the drawings, is to have those on the building walls that Herb can see from his office window. There are a few already there. We have to train them with, uh, espalier. What do you call it?”

“Fish wire and a trellis.” Alicia laughed, since this technique used heavy cord or wire to support the growing branches.

“Right. I didn’t do so well in French,” Harry ruefully remembered.

“Because you hated the teacher,” Susan laughed.

“Every time Mademoiselle Suchet said”—BoomBoom imitated their high school teacher’s high-pitched voice—“
‘Ouvrez la porte
,
’
Harry would stand up and go open the door just to piss her off.”

“Harry?” Miranda chided her. “How could you do that to poor old Mademoiselle Suchet? Poor woman could barely walk, bless her soul.”

“Such a pill!” Harry wrinkled her nose. “I did learn enough to read a menu in a French restaurant.”

As the humans and cats talked and laughed, Tucker, nose to the ground, followed the various human scents throughout the enclosed graveyard. She’d follow one or another, inevitably winding up at a grave with flowers against the headstone. The intrepid dog was surprised by how many people had been to the graveyard in just the last two days.

Lifting her perfect corgi head, she said,
“Lots of traffic in here.”

Elocution responded,
“The whole Petrus family comes once a week since Georgette Petrus passed.”

“Had to be one hundred years old,”
Cazenovia giggled.

“She looked one hundred,”
Lucy Fur chimed in.

“Humans obey strict rules about their dead. Even if the person dies at sea, there are these rules and prayers and ceremony.”
Elocution knew these things because Herb had to provide funeral services—although not at sea, of course.

Pewter saucily tossed her head.
“Wasteful. Think of all the animals that could eat those bodies. What good does all that protein do moldering in a coffin?”

Mrs. Murphy thoughtfully said,
“That’s true if the bodies are relatively young, but old Georgette was so full of drugs. Any animal that ate her would probably die, too.”

They giggled, then Lucy Fur added,
“Poppy reads a lot about other religions. He read this article aloud to us about Parsis in India. I think that’s what you call them. They put their dead up on stilts, kind of on a canvas or something, and vultures come and eat them. It’s part of their religion. Well, the vultures are dying from a rare bird disease, but not from the human bodies which they’ve eaten for centuries. Anyway, the Parsis won’t change their ritual, and without the vultures, all these rotten bodies are lying above people’s heads in the hot Indian sun. It’s crazy.”

Pewter wrinkled her nose.
“Revolting.”
Her eyes brightened.
“Want to hear something really revolting?”

“Can hardly wait,”
Tucker drily replied.

“Years ago at Halloween, I found a severed head in a pumpkin. It hadn’t gone off yet, but the hair was full of pumpkin mush and the mouth spilled out pumpkin seeds.”
Pewter used the old expression “gone off” for the beginnings of decay.

“I was there.”
Mrs. Murphy didn’t remember it quite as Pewter did, since Pewter made herself the center of attention.

“I was there, too,”
Tucker piped up.
“The head was gross.”

“I miss everything,”
Elocution whined.

“You weren’t born yet,”
Cazenovia sniffed.

Reverend Jones walked out from the administrative offices of the church and strolled across the verdant lawn.

“He’s got to lose weight.”
Cazenovia shook her head.

“Good luck.”
Lucy Fur’s whiskers drooped for a moment.
“That man loves to eat. He can sit down and eat a quart of ice cream.”

“He’s a big man.”
Tucker gallantly defended the beloved pastor.

“He doesn’t have to be that big,”
Elocution said.

“Look at these beautiful roses.” Reverend Jones swept his hand toward the gardeners as opposed to the roses.

Miranda smiled. “That honeyed tongue, but I do like to hear it.” The others agreed.

Harry said, “We’ll get this done today and then put the hydrangeas in tomorrow so there will be color for the Flag Day celebration. Actually, as you know, June 14 is tomorrow, but we have to honor the flag on the weekend. It’s the only way St. Luke’s can make it work for everybody.”

“It will be beautiful.”

“If Flag Day were later, all those fabulous crepe myrtles lining the drive into the church would be in full bloom,” BoomBoom noted.

“We’ll think of another party for July.” Herb smiled.

“Did Craig Newby get the flags?” Susan asked about their fellow vestry-board member.

A broad smile filled Reverend Jones’s handsome face. “He found every flag we’ve ever had, starting with Old Glory. Big ones that he’s going to hang off the roofs all around the inner quad. He swears he can do this without harming the gutters. It should look sensational. And, of course, he bought flags on sticks for every attendee. The flags for the graveyard for those who have fought in our wars are provided by the DAR and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. As you know, our parishioners who belong to those organizations knock themselves out.”

“It is impressive.” Miranda nodded. “And let’s not forget the Confederate veterans.”

“They’ll have their flags, too.” Then Reverend Jones focused on
Harry and Susan. “Latigo says he’ll give me eight thousand dollars for my old truck. Victor told me that, yes, he could get it running again but given its age I should just go with a total loss. Latigo arranged it. I guess when you’re the president of a big insurance company, you can do anything. Eight thousand dollars is a lot more than it’s worth.”

“Preacher’s price.” Alicia stood up, dusting off her gloves.

“Special interest for good works,” Harry teased him.

“You all should get deals, then, with all you’re doing. And, Harry, you said you’d come back Friday and mow, so everything will be perfect for Saturday.”

“I’ll be here with my magic zero-turn mower.”

“So what are you going to buy?” BoomBoom wanted to talk trucks.

“Something big enough so you all can haul more plants.” He laughed.

“Come on.” BoomBoom smiled and winked at him. “What do you want?”

“Well, now, I have to take this slow. Check around, check what I can pay per month. I like the new Dodge. Really like the interior. I don’t know. You girls can help me when things settle down.”

Susan watched as the cats leapt off the wall to chase butterflies and one another. “When do things ever settle down in Crozet?”