“Maybe it's not over.” Herb stared at the ceiling.
“He hit the nail on the head.” Mrs. Murphy played with her tail.
6
Later that afternoon the clouds grew darker still.
Deputy Cooper walked through the back door. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Harry answered.
“Where's Miranda?”
“Ran home for a minute.” Harry pointed to a chair. “Sit down.”
“Have you seen Tommy Van Allen?”
“No.”
The two cats, dozing in the canvas mail cart, woke up, sticking their heads over the top.
“He's been missing for two days—two days that we know of—and his plane is missing, too.”
Mrs. Murphy put her paws on the edge of the cart, with rapt attention.
“Cynthia, how could his plane be missing for two days and the airport not realize it?”
“They thought the plane was in Hangar C, the last hangar for repairs. Apparently Tommy had scheduled a maintenance check for Monday morning.”
“How could the plane take off and not return without anyone noticing?”
“I wondered about that myself. The airport closes at midnight. He could have gone off then, and he is in the habit of staying a night or two at his destination. Still, it's odd.”
“I know where the plane is!” Mrs. Murphy shouted.
“Quiet.” Harry shook her finger.
The cat jumped out of the cart and bounded into Cynthia's lap. “I don't know where Tommy is but I know where the plane is.”
“She's affectionate.” Cynthia scratched her ears.
“Don't waste your breath,” Pewter advised Mrs. Murphy.
“Do you really know where the plane is?” Tucker asked.
“Tally Urquhart's old barn. I'll take you there.”
Rain rattled on the windowpane.
Pewter settled back down in the mail cart. “Wait for a sunny day.”
Mrs. Murphy jumped off Cynthia's lap back into the mail cart, where she rolled over Pewter. “You don't believe me.”
“I don't care.”
“Sunday night when I came to bed wet—that's when I saw the plane.” She swatted the inattentive Pewter.
“Temper tantrum.” Harry rose and separated them.
“Has anyone picked up Tommy's mail?” Cooper asked.
“His secretary.” Harry held Mrs. Murphy on her shoulder.
Miranda came through the back door. Cynthia asked her about Tommy.
“He'll show up. It's hard to hide a six-foot-five-inch man,” Miranda advised. “He's done this before.”
“He stopped drinking,” Harry reminded her.
“Maybe he slipped off the wagon.” Miranda frowned.
“I know where the plane is!” the cat bellowed.
“God, Murphy, you'll split my eardrum.” Harry placed her on the floor.
7
The longer days helped Harry finish her chores when she returned home from work. She pulled Johnny Pop, her 1958 John Deere tractor—as good as the day it was built—into the shed.
When she cut the choke the exhaust always popped—one loud crack—which made her laugh. She cleaned stalls, throwing the muck into the manure spreader. Since it was raining she'd have to wait until the ground dried before spreading anything on it.
Harry always put her equipment back in the shed. Her dad had told her that was the only way to do it. Stuff would last for decades if well built and well cared for.
She missed her father and mother. They were lively, hard-working people. As she grew up she realized what good people they really were. They'd had a German shepherd, King, when she was in her teens. King lived to an advanced age and when her mother died, King followed. Harry told herself that one day she'd get another German shepherd but she hadn't gotten around to it, maybe because a shepherd would remind her of her mother and make the loss even more apparent.
Tucker had been given to her as a six-week-old puppy by Susan, one of the best corgi breeders in Virginia. Harry didn't like small dogs but she learned to love the bouncing, tough corgi. Then she decided if she brought in a shepherd puppy it would upset Tucker—another reason to procrastinate.
Actually, the shepherd would upset the cats more. Tucker, outnumbered, might have been happy for another canine on the place.
She dashed back to the barn, rain sliding down the collar of her ancient Barbour. “I've got to rewax this thing.” Water was seeping through the back of the coat.
The phone rang in the tack room. “Hello.”
“Harry, Ridley Kent here. I've agreed to help Archie canvass landowners. I'm looking at a topo map and a flat map. You've got a creek in your western boundary.”
“Yep.”
“Strong creek?”
“In spring, but even in summer it never dries out completely. The water comes down from Little Yellow Mountain.”
“What about springs?”
“There's one at the eastern corner.”
“North or south?”
“Northeastern.”
“Have you ever had your well run dry in a drought?”
“No. Neither did Mom and Dad, and they moved to this farm in the forties.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure.” She hung up the phone.
“Mother, there's an underground spring in the depression in the cornfield,” Tucker told her. “I can hear it.”
Harry rubbed the dog's soft fur. “I don't have any treaties on me.”
The horses, munching hay in their stalls, lifted their heads when Mrs. Murphy jumped on the stall divider from the hayloft. Pewter, on the tack trunk, her favorite spot, watched her nimble friend. She could jump like that if she wanted to but she never wanted to; it jarred her bones.
“Simon's found a quarter,” Murphy announced.
“Don't tell,” a tiny voice complained.
“I don't want your quarter,” Tucker called up as the possum's beady little eyes peered over the hayloft ledge.
Harry looked up at him. “Evening, Simon.”
He blinked, then scurried back to his nest. Simon wouldn't show himself at first but over time he'd learned to trust Harry. That didn't mean he was going to talk to her. You had to be careful about humans.
The rain pounded down.
Harry checked the barometer in the tack room. The needle swung over to stormy. She walked up and down the aisle. She'd filled each water bucket, put out hay, put new salt cubes in the bottoms of their feed buckets. But Harry liked to double-check everything. Then she unplugged the coffeemaker in the tack room, folding up the cord and slipping it in the top drawer of the tall, narrow chest of drawers. She kept bits in those drawers as well as hoof-picks, small flat things. She'd learned her lesson when the mice ruined her first coffeepot by chewing through the cord. They had electrocuted themselves but they could have started a fire in the barn. Since then she ran light cords through a narrow PVC tube that she attached to the wall. This was the only exposed cord.
Harry also kept fire extinguishers at both ends of the barn plus one in the hayloft. Right now she was in less danger of fire than of being blown off the surface of the earth.
She paused at the open doorway. “You know, I'd better close the barn doors.” She walked to the other end and pulled the doors closed. Then she returned to the end of the barn facing the house. “Kids, you with me?”
Three little heads looked up at her. “Yep.”
She pulled the barn doors at that end closed, with a sliver of room for her to squeeze out. Then she ran like mad for the screened porch door. The two cats and the dog jetted ahead of her.
“I hate to get wet,” Pewter yowled.