Mrs. H. grabbed the black telephone that had served her well since 1954. The click, click, click as the rotary dial turned would allow a sharp-eared person to identify the number being called.
“Harry, Wesley Randolph died last night.”
“What? I thought Wesley was so much better.”
“Heart attack.” She sounded matter-of-fact. By this time she’d seen enough people leave this life to bear it with grace. One positive thing about Wesley’s death was that he’d been fighting leukemia for years. At least he wouldn’t die a lingering, painful death. “Someone from the farm must have given the information to the press the minute it happened.”
“I just saw Warren Sunday afternoon. Thanks for telling me. I’ll have to pay my respects after work. See you in a little bit.”
Now, telling a friend of another friend’s passing doesn’t fall under the heading of gossip, but that day at work Harry sloshed around in it.
The first person to alert Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber to the real story was Lucinda Coles. Luckily Mim Sanburne was picking up her mail, so they could cross-fertilize, as it were.
“—everywhere.” Lucinda gulped a breath in the middle of her story about Ansley Randolph. “Warren, in a state of great distress, naturally, was finally reduced to calling merchants to see if by chance Ansley had stopped by on her rounds. Well, he couldn’t find her. He called me and I said I didn’t know where she was. Of course, I had no idea the poor man’s father had dropped dead in the library.”
Mim laid a trump card on the table. “Yes, he called me too, and like you, Lulu, I hadn’t a clue, but I had seen Ansley at about five that afternoon at Foods of All Nations. Buying a bottle of expensive red wine: Medoc, 1970, Château le Trelion. She seemed surprised to see me”—Mim paused—“almost as if I had caught her out . . . you know.”
“Uh-huh.” Lucinda nodded in the customary manner of a woman affirming whatever another woman has said. Of course, the other woman’s comment usually has to do with emotions, which could never actually be qualified or quantified—that being the appeal of emotions. They both acknowledged a tyranny of correct feelings.
“She’s running around on Warren.”
“Uh-huh.” Lucinda’s voice grew in resonance, since she, as a victim of infidelity, was also an expert on its aftermath. “No good will come of it. No good ever does.”
After those two left, BoomBoom Craycroft dashed in for her mail. Her comment, after a lengthy discussion of the slight fracture of her tibia, was that everybody screws around on everybody, and so what?
The men approached the subject differently. Mr. Randolph’s demise was characterized by Market as a response to his dwindling finances and the leukemia. It was hard for Harry to believe a man would have a heart attack because his estate had diminished, thanks to his own efforts, from $250 million to $100 million, but anything was possible. Perhaps he felt poor.
Fair Haristeen lingered over the counter, chatting. His idea was that a life of trying to control everybody and everything had ruined Wesley Randolph’s health. Sad, of course, because Randolph was an engaging man. Mostly, Fair wanted Harry to pick which movie they would see Friday night.
Ned Tucker, Susan’s husband, took the view that we die when we want to, therefore Père Randolph was ready to go and nobody should feel too bad about it.
By the end of the workday speculation had run the gamut. The last word on Wesley Randolph’s passing, from Rob Collier as he picked up the afternoon mail, was that the old man was fooling around with his son’s wife. The new medication Larry Johnson had prescribed for his illness had revved up his sex drive. Warren walked in on the tryst and his father died of a heart attack from the shock.
As Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber locked up, they reviewed the day’s gossip. Mrs. Hogendobber dropped the key in her pocket, inhaled deeply, and said to Harry, “I wonder what they say about us?”
“Gossip lends to death a new terror.” Harry smirked.
19
“You know, if I ever get tired of home, I’ll come live in your barn,” Paddy promised.
“No, you won’t,” Simon, the possum, called down from the hayloft. “You’ll steal my treasures. You’re no good, Paddy. You were born no good and you’ll die no good.”
“Quit flapping your gums, you overgrown rat. When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.” Paddy washed one of his white spats.
A large black cat permanently wearing a tuxedo and spats, Paddy was handsome and knew it. His white bib gleamed, and despite his propensity for fighting, he always cleaned himself up.
Mrs. Murphy sat on a director’s chair in the tack room. Paddy sat in the chair opposite her while Tucker sprawled on the floor. Simon wouldn’t come down. He hated strange animals.
The last light of day cast a peachy-pink glow through the outside window. The horses chatted to one another in their stalls.
“I wish Mom would come home,” Tucker said.
“She’ll be at Eagle’s Rest a long time.” Mrs. Murphy knew that calling upon the bereaved took time, plus everyone else in Crozet would be there.
“Funny how the old man dropped.” Paddy started cleaning his other forepaw. “They’re already digging his grave at the cemetery. I walked through there on my rounds. His plot’s next to the Berrymans’ on one side and the Craigs’ on the other.”
Tucker walked to the end of the barn, then returned. “The sky’s bloodred over the mountains.”
“Another deep frost tonight too,” Paddy remarked. “Just when you think spring is here.”
“Days are warming up,” Mrs. Murphy noted. “Dr. Craig. Wasn’t that Larry Johnson’s partner?”
Paddy replied, “Long before any of us were born.”
“Let me think.”
“Murph.” Tucker wistfully stood on her hind legs, putting her front paws on the chair. “Ask Herbie Jones, he remembers everything.”
“If only humans could understand.” Mrs. Murphy frowned, then brightened. “Dr. Jim Craig. Killed in 1948. He took Larry into his practice just like Larry took in Hayden McIntire.”
Paddy stared at his former wife. When she got a bee in her bonnet, it was best to let her go on. She evidenced more interest in humans than he did.
“What set you off?”
The tiger cat glanced down at her canine companion. “Paddy said he walked through the cemetery. The Randolphs are buried between the Berrymans and the Craigs.”
Tucker wandered around restlessly. “Another unsolved murder.”
“Ah, one of those spook tales they tell you when you’re a kitten to scare you,” Paddy pooh-poohed. “Old Dr. Craig is found in his Pontiac, motor running. Found at the cemetery gates. Yeah, I remember now. His grandson, Jim Craig II, tried to reopen the case years back, but nothing came of it.”
“Shot between the eyes,” Mrs. Murphy said. “His medical bag stolen but no money.”
“Well, this town is filled with weirdos. Somebody really wanted to play doctor.” Paddy giggled.
“In 1948,” Mrs. Murphy triumphantly recalled the details told to her long ago by her own mother, Skippy, “The town smothered in shock because everyone loved Dr. Craig.”