13
Dead as a doornail, Harry called to Fair as she hung up the phone.
"What?" He stuck his blond head in the tackroom.
"The monks found Brother Thomas dead in front of the statue, which is still crying blood. That was Susan."
"Poor Susan." Fair worried that Susan was on emotional overload.
"She's sad, of course, but he was eighty-two and she said he had a premonition. I think she's okay."
Mrs. Murphy pricked her ears. "So that's who it was."
Tucker grimaced. "Poor fellow. Frozen like that."
Pewter helpfully remarked, "Freeze-dried. You know, there are people who freeze-dry their pets or deer heads. It's an alternative to taxidermy."
When both Mrs. Murphy and Tucker stared at her, she turned her back and licked her paw.
"Think it hurt to die like that?" Harry wondered aloud.
"How does it feel when you get cold? It stings, throbs. Yes, it hurt, but maybe by the end he was so disoriented he didn't feel much." Fair hoped that was what happened, as he brushed hay off his sleeves. "Why would he go out there in this weather?"
"Because of the tears. He wanted to see it again." Harry finished wiping off a steel bit, the chamois soft in her hands.
"I guess." Fair pulled his leather gloves off, revealing red fingertips.
"I'm going back up there."
"Now?"-
"No, daylight. After all, I saw the tears first."
"Stay out of this."
"Aha!"
"What? Aha what?" He blew on his fingertips.
"You think it wasn't a natural death."
He clapped his hands together, the fingers stinging. "For God's sake, Harry."
"You told me to stay out of it. You only say that if I'm, uh..." She groped for the word.
"Nosy."
"I prefer curious."
"Call it what you will; you stick your nose in places where it doesn't belong. This is one of them."
"Now, Fair, Susan, and I did see the apparition. The cats and Tucker saw it, too. It was unnerving."
"Couldn't smell, though. Too cold and too high up." Tucker heard that tone in Harry's voice and knew nothing would stop her.
"I'm sure the testimony of Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker will comfort the monks greatly. You keep away from Afton. For one thing, Harry, they've suffered a loss, and you don't go snooping in those circumstances."
"There will be a service. They'll have to blast the ground out. Frozen solid. Guess they'll have to thaw him out, too, or bury him in a kneeling position, which isn't so bad."
"Harry, you think of—"
"Practical things." She completed his sentence.
"Graphic."
"Fair, do you think I think like a man?"
Accustomed to these abrupt shifts and the land mines that usually accompanied them, he stalled. There are some questions a woman asks that can't be answered by a man, no matter how he answers them, without a fight or a fulsome discussion. "Why do you ask that?"
"Susan said that to me. Actually, I've heard that since I was a child. You know that."
He rubbed his hands together. "You think logically. That's not specific to gender, despite cultural stereotypes."
She was relieved. "It doesn't bother you that I'm not... oh, you know."
"What?"
"I'm not frilly or gushy."
"If it's never bothered me before, why would it bother me now?"
"Good answer." Mrs. Murphy giggled.
"She wants more than that," Pewter wisely noted.
"Well, BoomBoom is feminine. Her body is very feminine. Mentally she's not really girly. Kind of middle of the road."
"Harry, I'm not going there."
"All right. All right. I will say for BoomBoom that she's no coward, that's for sure." Harry put another bridle on the four-pronged hook hanging from the ceiling. She rubbed it. "Wonder what it's like for her to have someone in town as beautiful or maybe even more beautiful than she is."
"Alicia?" He placed a bridle on the opposite prong, then reached for a sponge. "There's close to twenty years between them—fifteen or twenty, I guess. They get on like a house on fire. Maybe the age difference lowers Boom's natural competitiveness."
"I really like Alicia."
"I do, too." He smiled. "I liked her when I was in grade school. She didn't put on airs, she spoke to me as if I was an adult."
"I know why you like her," she teased.
"Only you, Skeezits." He called her by her childhood nickname.
"Really?"
"Really." Why did he have to keep proving himself to her? he wondered. But, then, most guys wondered the same thing, so he didn't feel alone.
"Miranda brought over her chicken corn soup. Want some when we finish the chores?"
"Did she bring over corn bread, too?"
"She did."
"Call her and see if she'll come out and have dinner with us; after all, she made it." He laughed.
"Date with Tracy."
"Tell you what, I'll make brownies." He glanced at the old large clock on the wall. "Half an hour."
"That's a deal." She loved brownies—anything chocolate.
The minute Fair left the tackroom, she wiped down a rein with one hand while dialing with the other.
"BoomBoom." Harry proceeded to tell BoomBoom what she'd just heard from Susan. Then she asked her to go to the top of the mountain with her. She knew BoomBoom would do it.
When she hung up the phone, she was thrilled with herself; she had a partner in crime. Harry liked doing things with people, and BoomBoom suggested that Alicia come, too. Three of them would deflect some of Fair's criticism—not that she'd tell him. Of course, he'd find out, but it might take a day or two.
She hummed to herself as she inhaled the odor of Horsemen's One Step, a whitish paste in a bucket. When she'd strip down her bridles, once a year, she'd wash them with harsh castile soap, rinse with pure water, then dip them in a light oil and hang them outside over a bucket to drip-dry. In the cold she used Horseman's One Step, which kept the leather supple after she cleaned it.
"Don't let me forget to put out candies for Simon," Harry cheerfully instructed her animals.
Simon, the half-tame possum, loved his candies.
Harry would occasionally put out little bits of raw beef for the huge owl in the cupola, but the owl was such a mighty hunter she needed little augmentation; Simon, on the other hand, was lazy as sin.
She chirped and chatted to her pets.
"She's going to get into trouble." Pewter shook her head.
"Never a good sign when she gets all bubbly like this," Tucker agreed.
"Then we'd better all hope that the Blessed Virgin Mother really can work miracles." Mrs. Murphy sighed.
14
BoomBoom sank into a snowdrift up to mid-calf. Shaking off her foot, she gingerly stepped ahead, hoping for more-solid ground. She sank again.
Alicia, also struggling, with a royal blue scarf over her mouth to ward off the bitter cold, couldn't help but laugh.
Harry, head down, pressed forward, slipping on the new powder over the compacted snow, which was like a layer cake with thin sheets of ice between the snow.
Tucker stayed immediately behind Harry. The cats, left at home, would exact their revenge for this slight.
A blush touched the snow. This Monday morning a thin mauve line appeared on the distant eastern horizon.
The three women, accustomed to rising early, rendezvoused at BoomBoom's house, drove to the top of the mountain, and parked BoomBoom's truck at the cleared parking lot of the Inn at Afton Mountain. They were hiking into the monastery the back way, which from the parking lot was only a quarter of a mile. However, the property covered over two thousand acres, and the statue of the Virgin Mary stood a good mile and a half from the property's northernmost edge.
It was a testimony to each woman's spirit that she elected to do this. Then again, Harry could talk a dog off a meat wagon.
The wind blew snow down the back of Alicia's neck, tiny cold crystals working their way behind her scarf. It occurred to her that this adventure prevented them from doing anything about Christmas. She felt overwhelmed at Christmas. When she lived in Hollywood, her staff decorated everything, and her husband—it didn't matter which one—wrote the check. This Christmas she was going to face it with Fred and Doris, who could always lift her spirits.