"No. Not really," Susan replied.
"Anyone seen Coop?" Harry shot a load of mail into her ex-husband's mailbox.
"No. Working overtime with all this." Susan looked on the back of a white envelope. "Why would anyone send a letter without a return address, the mail being what it is. No offense to you, Harry, or you, Miranda."
"None taken." Harry folded one sack, now emptied. "Maybe they get busy and forget."
At eight on the dot, Marilyn Sanburne stood at the front door just as Miranda unlocked it.
"Good morning. Oh, Miranda, where did you get that sweater? The cranberry color compliments your complexion."
"Knitted it myself." The older woman smiled. "We've got so much mail-well, there's some mail in your box but you'd better check back this afternoon, too."
"Fine." Little Mim pulled out her brass mailbox key, opened the box, pulling out lots of mail. She quickly flipped through it, then loudly exclaimed, "A letter from Blair."
"Great." Harry spoke quickly because Little Mim feared Harry had designs on the handsome model herself, which she did not.
"I also wanted you ladies to be the first to know that I've rented the old brick pharmacy building and it's going to be my campaign headquarters."
"That's a lot of space," Harry blurted out.
"Yes." Little Mim smiled and bid them good-bye.
They watched as she got into her car and opened Blair's letter. She was so intent upon reading it that she didn't notice her mother pull up next to her.
Mim parked, emerged well-dressed as always, and walked over to the driver's side of her daughter's car. Little Mim didn't see her mother, so Big Mim rapped on the window with her forefinger.
Startled, Little Mim rolled down the window. "Mother."
"Daughter."
A silence followed. Little Mim had no desire to share her letter, and she wasn't thrilled that her mother saw how engrossed she was in it.
Shrewdly, she jumped onto a subject. "Mother, I've rented the pharmacy."
"I know."
"How do you know?"
"Zeb Berryhill called your father and wondered if he would be upset and your father said he would not. In fact, he was rather looking forward to a challenge. So that was that."
"Oh." Little Mim, vaguely disappointed, slipped the letter inside her coat. She was hoping to be the talk of the town.
"It must be good."
"Mother, I have to have some secrets."
"Why? Nobody else in this town does," said the woman who had secrets going back decades.
"Oh, everyone has secrets. Like the person who killed Hank Brevard."
"M-m-m, there is that. Well, I'm off to a Piedmont Environmental Council meeting. Happy Valentine's Day."
"You, too, Mumsy." Little Mim smiled entirely too much.
As she drove off, Big Mim entered the post office just as Dr. Buxton pulled into the parking space vacated by her daughter. At that moment her irritation with her daughter took over the more pressing gossip of the day.
"Girls," Mim addressed them, "I suppose you've heard of Marilyn's crackbrained plan to oppose her father."
"Yes," came the reply.
"Not so crackbrained," Pewter sassed.
Bruce walked in behind her, nodded hello to everyone, opened his box, and almost made it out the door before Miranda remembered his package. "Dr. Buxton, wait a minute. I've got a Jiffy bag for you."
"Thanks." He joined Mim at the divider.
She placed her elbows on the divider. "Bruce, what's going on at the hospital? The whole episode is shocking."
"I don't know. He wasn't the most pleasant guy in the world but I don't think that leads to murder. If it did a lot more of us would be dead." He looked Big Mim right in the eye.
"Was that your attempt at being subtle?" She bridled when people didn't properly defer to her.
"No. I'm not subtle. I'm from Missouri, remember?"
"Two points." Murphy jumped onto the divider, Pewter followed.
"Let me out," Tucker asked Harry, because she wanted to be right out there with Bruce and Mim.
"Crybaby." Harry opened the swinging door and the corgi padded out to the public section.
"You and Truman." Mim rapped the countertop with her long fingernails.
"Here we go." Miranda slid the bag across the counter.
"Ah." He squeezed the bag, examined the return address, which was his office at the hospital. "Huh," he said to himself but out loud. He flicked up the flat red tab with his fingernail, pulling it to open the top. He shook the bag and a large bloody scalpel fell out. "What the hell!"
11
Coop placed the scalpel in a plastic bag. Rick turned his attention to Dr. Bruce Buxton, not in a good mood.
"Any ideas?"
"No." Bruce's lower jaw jutted out as he answered the sheriff.
"Oh, come on now, Doc. You've got enemies. We've all got enemies. Someone's pointing the finger at you and saying, 'He's the killer and here's the evidence.'"
Bruce, a good four inches taller than Rick, squared his shoulders. "I told you, I don't know anyone who would do something like this and no, I didn't kill Hank Brevard."
"Wonder how many patients he's lost on the table?" Pewter, ever the cynic, said.
"He probably lost more due to bedside manner than incompetence," Mrs. Murphy shrewdly noted.
"He's not scared. I can smell fear and he's not giving off the scent." Tucker sniffed at Bruce's pants leg.
"You don't have to stop. You can still sort the mail. But first tell me where you saw the bag," the sheriff asked Harry, Miranda, and Susan, now stuck because she had dropped in to help. He had interviewed Mim first so that she could leave.
"I saw it first," Tucker announced.
"You did not. I did," Pewter contradicted the bright-eyed dog.
"They don't care. If you gave these humans a week they wouldn't understand that we first noticed something peculiar." Murphy flopped on her side on the shelf between the upper and lower brass mailboxes.
"I saw the bag." Harry, feeling a chill, rolled up her turtleneck, which she had folded down originally. "Actually, Mrs. Murphy sniffed it out. Because she noticed it, I noticed it."
"What a surprise." Mrs. Murphy's long silken eyebrows twitched upward.
"Look, Sheriff, I've got to be at the hospital scrubbed up in an hour." Bruce impatiently shifted his weight from foot to foot.
"When will you be finished?" Rick ignored Bruce's air of superiority.
"Barring complications, about four."
"I'll see you at your office at four then."
"There's no need to make this public, is there?" Bruce's voice, oddly light for such a tall man, rose.
"No."
"No need to tell Sam Mahanes unless it turns out to be the murder weapon and it won't."
Coop, sensitive to inflections and nuance, heard the suppressed anger when Bruce mentioned Sam Mahanes.
"Why are you so sure that isn't the murder weapon?" she asked.
"Because I didn't kill him."
"The scalpel could still be the murder weapon," she persisted.
"I heard that Hank was almost decapitated. You'd need a broad, long, sharp blade for that work. Which reminds me, the story was on all the news channels and in the paper. The hospital will be overrun with reporters. Are you sure you want to see me in my office?"
Rick replied, "Yes."
What Rick didn't say was that he wanted hospital staff to know he was calling upon Dr. Buxton. While there he would question other workers.
He couldn't be certain that the killer worked in the hospital. What he could be certain of was that the killer knew the layout of the basement.
Still, he hoped his presence might rattle some facts loose or even rattle the killer.
"Well, I'll see you at four." Bruce left without saying good-bye.
"Harry, what are you looking at?" Rick pointed at her.
"You."
"And?"
"You're good at reading people," she complimented him.
Surprised, he said, "Thanks"-took a deep breath-"and don't start poking your nose in this."
"I'm not poking my nose into it. I work here. The scalpel came through the mail." She threw up her hands.