"It is pretty awful." BoomBoom walked behind the counter. "Do you two need help? I'm happy to stay here."
Miranda smiled warmly. "Boom, if you really want to help, we will use you." She pointed to the overflowing mail cart. "Magazines."
"Boom, you are sweet." Alicia walked behind the counter, too. "Many hands make light work."
Aunt Tally glared at her niece for a moment, since this wasn't the type of labor Big Mim was likely to do. "Mimsy I think we should at least help for half an hour."
"Quite right." Big Mim sighed, removed her lush silver fox short-cropped jacket, walked behind the counter, and draped the jacket over the chair in the back.
The six women worked well together, chatting, going over the dreadful event and then drifting away to other subjects like the college basketball season about to begin. They all followed the University of Virginia men's and women's teams.
Susan blew through the door, stopped cold when she beheld the outline, then walked to the counter and, without a word, flipped up the divider, took off her coat, and attacked the large packages that had to be on industrial shelving. The shelves bore letters of the alphabet. If a person's last name began with "A," their large package would go on the "A" section.
"Sorry I'm late. Brooks's car died, so I had to run her to school. Took the opportunity to talk to her physics teacher." She picked up a package to go to the "T" section. "Nordy's death wasn't on the early-morning edition but it ran as a ticker tape, or whatever you call that underneath the picture, by nine. Good God."
"It will all come out in the wash." Aunt Tally sat at the kitchen table in the back where she sorted mail. "Why don't I toss this junk mail and save someone the trouble?"
"It has occurred to us many times." Miranda rolled the cart over to Harry.
"Thanks," Harry said as she continued to shoot mail into the back of the boxes. She checked the clock on the wall. "We're catching up."
The front door opened. A well-dressed woman who had parked her Mercedes SUV in the front came to the counter. Miranda reached the counter just as the woman placed a small, neatly wrapped package on the counter.
"Would you weigh this please?"
"Certainly." Miranda lifted it, placing it on the stainless-steel scale. "First class?"
"Yes." She glanced around. "What's going on here?"
Since Miranda didn't recognize the woman, she figured she either didn't live here, was visiting for the holidays, or had moved in that second. "We've suffered an unfortunate incident."
"What kind of incident?" She removed one of her gloves to reach into her Bottega Veneta purse for cash.
"The local news reporter, Nordy Elliott, was found dead here this morning."
"What?" Her eyes widened.
"That's all we know."
"Nordy Elliott, that terribly attractive young man who does the news?" She paused a moment. "I'm here visiting my son and daughter-in-law, so I watch the local news. Oh, that can't be."
"I'm afraid it is."
"What's this world coming to?" She fished out the amount, which Miranda told her was $3.20. "Before Christmas."
"Do you want this insured?"
"No." The woman noticed the gang in the back. Her eyes narrowed as she recognized Alicia Palmer, then they widened with pleasure. She leaned forward, whispering, "Is that Alicia Palmer?" Miranda nodded, and the woman continued, "Never forget her in War Clouds." She snapped up her change.
"No. Might I ask who is your son?"
She smiled. "Dr. Trey Seddons. He's just taken a position in the radiology department at Martha Jefferson, so I've come up to help him and Beth get settled."
As she left, Big Mim muttered, "Carpetbaggers."
"Now, now," Aunt Tally reprimanded her. "Can't be critical because she doesn't speak the King's English with the same perfection and lilt as do we all here. And carpetbaggers bring in money. Always have and always will."
"I don't mind the money, Aunt Tally, what I mind is they come here and want us to be like them. When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
"What's so great about the Romans?" Pewter wondered.
"Empire lasted a thousand years." Mrs. Murphy loved history.
"Because of the work of dogs, horses, cattle, and you cats. How could they have lived off the grains of Egypt if cats hadn't killed the mice? And how could they have had herds of cattle and sheep if we dogs didn't herd them as well as drive off marauders? And do animals get any credit?" Tucker shook her head.
"I don't want credit. I want tuna." Pewter let out a meow.
Harry knew that tone of voice. She handed her fistful of mail to BoomBoom, standing next to her with her own fistful of mail. "All right."
As Harry opened a can for the cats and a small one of beef for Tucker, Alicia and BoomBoom hummed and chatted. Susan talked to Big Mim, Tally, and Miranda as she shuttled packages to the shelves. Harry stopped for a moment and thought what wonderful friends she had, and then she noticed how Alicia and BoomBoom leaned toward each other; they glowed. Susan was right. She blinked, then thought to herself, "Lucky them."
"These tubes roll off the shelf." Susan stood on a small ladder in the "C" section, where Tazio Chappars's blueprints were placed.
"I know. There's a rubber wedge there, an old doorstop. I put one on each side," Harry informed her.
"I would have thought all this was done by computers. Someone would send the blueprints to Tazio's computer, she would print it and blow it up." BoomBoom liked technology.
"Can," Harry replied. "But Tazio says for the clearest blueprints, you have to get them done the old way. Also, this paper, the stuff in the tube here, stands a beating at construction sites. She says printers, laser printers, can't print out on blueprint paper. Anyway, I don't mind dealing with these. Kind of excites me, thinking of buildings going up."
"You have the building gene," Big Mim quipped.
"Your grandfather had it, too." Aunt Tally, long, long ago, had been passionately in love with Harry's handsome grandfather. She was in her late teens and he was married. People didn't divorce in those days.
"Wish I had the money to indulge it." Harry laughed. "But you know, being back here in the post office today is good for me. I know I've done the right thing. It really was time to move on, and I have got to make money."
"You will." Aunt Tally encouraged her. "Set yourself a goal, stick to it. You're smart as a whip."
"Thank you."
"See, she'll listen to you, Aunt Tally. She doesn't listen to me. I tell her how smart she is." Susan placed the rubber wedges on either side of the tubes.
"Ned have his team together?" Aunt Tally inquired.
"He does. Another three weeks and he's sworn in as our state senator and I will be truly married to an elected politician. I can't tell you how many people he interviewed for the jobs. He needs to have the right people, people who know the drill in Richmond. People who can get along. That's the problem, you know, in any office or wherever: can the people who work together get along? I worry about what this will cost us, too. He has an apartment in Richmond; the miles will pile up on the car when he switches back and forth from here to there. I didn't want him to spend money on an apartment, but he reminded me what happened when both houses fought over the state budget: long, long sessions. He really needs a little place there. And like I said, he really needs a team that can get along."
"We always did." Miranda patted Harry's shoulder as she squeezed behind her and BoomBoom.
"Easier when there's two," Big Mim said, then amended the thought. "If it's the right two."
Big Mim and Aunt Tally worked for an hour. Harry and Miranda were grateful to them, because they knew how out of the ordinary this gesture was and the two women really did help.