Whisker of Evil (23 page)

42

I
wondered when you would show up.” Amy Wade smiled, her light-brown eyes merry. “I thought you were mad at me.”

Izzy Stoltfus usually worked Saturday mornings, but she was so undone by Jerome's murder she had taken a leave of absence. Amy Wade filled in while Pug Harper frantically searched for a permanent Saturday employee.

“No. Just busy and thinking.” Harry was so used to taking her mail home, she'd forgotten her mailbox key ring. “Forgot my key. Will you hand me my mail?”

“You know, there's a rule that we're not supposed to do that, but it sure seems silly here in Crozet.” She slipped her hand into Harry's mailbox, retrieving mail and magazines.

“Mom, your key is with your truck keys,”
Mrs. Murphy reminded her, wondering if Harry would run out in the rain to fetch it should she remember in the first place.

Tavener, Alicia, and Aunt Tally all came in together.

“Hey!” Tavener beamed at Harry. “It's not the same without you.” He quickly spoke to Amy. “But you're doing a good job.”

“Harry left big sneakers to fill.” Amy smiled.

“Has Miranda been in at all?” Aunt Tally shook her umbrella as it continued to rain, soaking and steady.

“To pick up her mail and chat,” Amy answered.

“Bills.” Tavener grimaced.

“Where's Herb?” Harry inquired. “I haven't seen him for two days.”

“Buying a new refrigerator,” Amy informed her. “He's paralyzed by the options.”

“They're as expensive as an old Datsun.” Aunt Tally giggled as she tossed her junk mail in the trash.

“Don't forget, we're planning a big do for July seventeenth. It's Herb's thirtieth anniversary.” Harry suffered a moment of panic because she hadn't yet contacted a band and the good ones booked far in advance.

“He came to St. Luke's just as I left for Los Angeles.” Alicia knew little of the Reverend Jones but liked what she did know.

“Alicia, those were sad circumstances, made all the more dolorous by your vacating central Virginia.” Tavener propped one elbow on the counter. “Just think of the trouble we could have roused up had you stayed.”

“There's still time!” Aunt Tally cracked.

“Miranda!”
The cats and dog ran to Miranda, who entered through the front door.

“My little animals.” She knelt down for hugs and kisses.

“Where's your beau?” Tavener liked Tracy Raz.

“My beau has been traveling throughout the South. Today he's in Nashville.”

“Why?”

“Visiting friends. His expressed reason is he wants to look at small-town development.”

“Nashville isn't a small town.” Tavener laughed.

“No, but he wants to study Franklin, Tennessee. Tracy has this wonderful vision for Crozet. Ever since he bought the old bank building he's wanted to create a town square and who knows what else. I'll be glad when he returns.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Alicia said.

“Bull. Absence makes the eye wander.” Aunt Tally rapped her cane on the floor for emphasis.

The door pushed open. Toby from Carmen's salon, Shear Heaven, said with a wrinkled brow, “We don't know where Carmen is. I called her sister for a phone number in Bermuda, because we're almost out of shampoo, and her sister said they had no relatives in Bermuda. Where's Carmen?”

Aunt Tally rapped her cane on the floor. “Hiding out. She knows more than she's telling.”

Tavener put his arm around Toby's shoulders. “Don't worry. Carmen is just having one of her bad hair days.” He smiled at his little joke, then turned his attention to Aunt Tally. “What could Carmen possibly know?”

“She spent a lot of time out at St. James, Tavener. She's not a dumb girl. She might have picked something up, listened to the boys and just put two and two together.”

Tavener laughed. He didn't want to offend the nonagenarian, but he said, “With all due respect, she's off on a toot or she's found a hot date. We're all a little on edge. Much as I loathed Jerome, his death was a shock. Like I said, we're all on edge, but Carmen has nothing to worry about.”

Aunt Tally simply replied, “I hope you're right.”

43

D
ew glistened on mountain laurel, cockspur hawthorns, spruces, pines, hickories, oaks, and maples. The once-pristine high meadows, now overrun with Virginia creeper, thorns, and baby cedars, still afforded a sweeping view of the lands unfurling to the east. The soil remained damp from recent rains.

Harry's eyes swept over these high acres—elevation about 1,500 feet above sea level—and she figured she could bring them back to good pasture with three years of hard work. While burning enriches the soil, she would never burn this high—too much wind, which shifted constantly. She'd have to rent a bulldozer, knock off the underbrush, carefully rolling it in large piles. Many small burrowing creatures would be thrilled with that. Then she'd fertilize and seed for three years running. The third summer, she'd bring stock back up here for the grass; roots should be strong by then.

She loved pasture management—indeed, any type of agricultural pursuit, just seeing these old high acres of Mary Pat's set her to dreaming.

At eight-thirty in the morning, the light flooded over the trees, shrubs, and vines. A purple finch darted from one shrub to another as a kestrel soared overhead. Industrious spiders, lumbering beetles, and shimmering butterflies added to the activities of the meadow. A deep, narrow creek carried the mountain runoff down to Potlicker Creek.

Harry, Fair, Susan, and Cooper, using old topographical maps, divided the large acreage into manageable one-hundred-acre units. Each would take a corner of one unit and work inward. Given the heavy underbrush in parts, this took perseverance, good boots, and liberal applications of insect repellent.

They'd started at seven this Sunday morning. Being country people, that seemed like a late hour. Harry's relentless curiosity had gotten the better of her and she roped in her friends to make the trek up to the meadow.

Fair drove his truck, followed by Harry in her 1978 Ford. They made it to a small turnaround about a quarter of a mile from the high pastures. Together with Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, they packed in the last quarter mile.

As the humans slowly moved along, the animals stayed together, walking along the westernmost outside stone wall.

“A good stone fence lasts for centuries. Needs a tap or two.”
Mrs. Murphy, like Harry, appreciated value for work and effort.

“Aren't many people who can build a stone fence. Takes a good eye and a strong back.”
Tucker closed her eyes as she pushed through thorns.
“And who can afford it?”

“Mom could do it—the work, I mean.”
Mrs. Murphy stopped to sniff where a long-tailed mouse had scurried into a crevice.
“Cootie,”
she insulted the mouse.

“Domesticated twit,”
came the saucy reply.

“Did you hear that?”
Mrs. Murphy stuck her paw into the crevice.

Pewter joined her.
“Mice go to school to learn how to insult cats.”

“Leave it. We've got a lot to cover.”
Tucker, nose to the ground, pressed on.

“You're lucky I have obligations.”
Mrs. Murphy whapped at the stones, then left the unperturbed mouse, who stuck his head out of his refuge to see the two cats, tails high, moving down the stone line.

“Boy, that gray one is really fat.”
He giggled as his friend came out from his nest in the stone fence.

“I heard that.”
Pewter whirled around and in two pounces almost caught the smart-mouth.

“Pewter,”
Tucker chided.

“Almost!”
the gray called out triumphantly.
“A split second earlier and I'd be enjoying mouse tartare.”

The two mice, who had repaired to the same nest, huddled together until Pewter rejoined her companions.

The younger mouse said,
“Amazing how fat creatures are light on their paws.”

The cats and corgi scrambled over tumbled gray stones as a flash of blue, a skink, sped along the tops.

“It was nice of Cooper to come along, given that she worked late last night.”
Tucker liked Cynthia very much and thought she should have a corgi.

“Susan fixed lunch. Wonder when the humans will take lunch break?”
Pewter hoped a chicken sandwich had been made all for her, no sharing with Mrs. Murphy and Tucker.

“If we do find Mary Pat or some sort of evidence, Cooper needs to be here,”
Mrs. Murphy sagely noted, ignoring Pewter's focus on food.

“Harry won't screw it up,”
Pewter said.

“No, but—well, better that she's here.”
The tiger cat stopped, lifted her head, inhaling the tart odor of deer.

Pewter turned left at the corner, now moving along the southernmost wall.

Mrs. Murphy stopped, sitting on top of a flat stone.
“Let's take a quick breather. This stuff is tough going. So much has grown over the stone. You know, it's wasteful to let a pasture go. Really.”

“Mmm.”
Pewter sat next to her as Tucker climbed up on top where stones had fallen away, giving her an easier climb.

Tucker watched Susan, carrying a long thick stick, swat at underbrush as she fought her way through.
“Well, if no one renting the stables was using this pasture, I guess it cost too much in time and labor to keep it up.”

“Or the farm manager was lazy.”
Pewter noticed a high cloud shaped like an arrowhead move eastward.

“Or the worker was in on it and didn't want people coming up here,”
Mrs. Murphy said.
“Marshall Kressenberg was a groom here when Mary Pat disappeared. He moved to Maryland and has had such success breeding and raising thoroughbreds. That was before our time. If we'd been here and could have smelled him, we'd know.”
She knew she could smell fear, and she believed she could smell guilt.

Both Pewter and Tucker looked at her.
“That's a thought.”

“According to Cooper—at least what I've been able to overhear these last four weeks—the prime suspect was Alicia, but they didn't have enough evidence to charge her. She wasn't here on the exact day Mary Pat disappeared. Everyone else who worked at St. James or who was involved with Mary Pat in one way or the other checked out. Police figured she was missing a minimum of twenty-four hours before she was reported missing by Kressenberg. Well, if Alicia and Marshall were covering for each other, that would work. Alicia's in L.A. Her alibi is airtight. Marshall reports Mary Pat's disappearance late, a day later.”
Mrs. Murphy had given the matter a great deal of thought.

“That doesn't have anything to do with Barry. At least that's one murder out of the way.”
Pewter batted at a bright yellow milk butterfly.

“I think Barry figured out Mary Pat's murder or was close to figuring it out.”
Mrs. Murphy's beautiful green eyes opened wider.
“And as for Carmen, I think you are right. She's guilty. I don't think she killed him, but she's guilty. She did something or said something that exposed him.Think about it.”

Pewter began to feel uneasy.

“Harry found him. Okay, that was fate or bad luck, I reckon, but as usual she's putting her foot right in it. She's got no business up here.”
Tucker fretted over her human's boundless and dangerous curiosity.

Pewter took a deep breath, scanning down the long length of this southernmost fence.
“Didn't the fox give you any direction?”

“No. She said it was a story passed along. Nobody knew any more, but she reported that Mary Pat hadn't been buried deep enough under some stones. Some creature managed to get her hand and part of an arm. At least that's what she'd heard. But she also said there were human remains that had never been found all over the county, some going back before the Revolutionary War.”

Tucker looked at Mrs. Murphy.
“That's comforting.”

They laughed, got up, and started moving again along the stone wall. By the time they reached the easternmost corner, the humans were working in their second quadrant.

“Break time.”
Pewter sat down.

“A corner would be a logical place, wouldn't it?”
Tucker said.
“Easy to remember.”
The corgi used her front paw to wipe away a cobweb that dangled from her eyebrows.
“In case the killer wanted to come back.”

“Gross.”
Pewter made a face.

“
Maybe it would be easier to dig under a corner, because the stones wouldn't give way as easily. Maybe. I don't know that. Of course, some kind of marker like a huge tree is a possibility, too
,” Mrs. Murphy said.

“But the fox said stones?”
Tucker's ears drooped for a second as her tone was questioning.

“Yes, she did,”
Mrs. Murphy answered.

Tucker carefully inspected the inside of the corner and the outside.
“Woodchucks used to be here.”
She squeezed down in the hole, then backed out.
“It's promising. I'll dig a little. You two move up the wall.”

“
I can dig
,” Pewter offered.

“Not as fast as I can. I can ruin a rose garden in fifteen minutes.”
Tucker smiled, then ducked back into the hole, digging her way down to the nesting area.

“Come on, Pewter.”
Mrs. Murphy moved off.

Twenty minutes later a dirty Tucker, with a heavy bone resembling a femur in her mouth, triumphantly raced on top of the wall, leaping over fallen branches and thick entwining vines to reach the cats.

“Tucker!”
Mrs. Murphy shouted with excitement.

“Let's take this over to them.”
Tucker, who had dropped the bone for the cats to inspect, picked it up again.

“First let's see if we can get them here. Then you can lead them straight to the spot,”
Pewter suggested.
“And we won't have to go back and forth through the underbrush.”

The three meowed, yowled, barked, and whined. Eventually Harry made her way over, thinking someone had cornered a snake or upturned a tortoise.

Upon seeing the bone she gasped, then put both fingers in her mouth and whistled.

Fair, Susan, and Cooper hacked their way toward her from their separate directions.

Upon seeing the whitened long fragment, Cooper immediately called Rick on her cell phone.