“Rob’s hardly ever late,” Miranda noted. “Well, let’s get to it.” She opened the canvas bag and began sorting the mail into the slots.
Harry also sifted through the morass of printed material, a tidal wave of temptations to spend money, since half of what she plucked out of her canvas bag were mail-order catalogues.
“Ahhh!” Miranda screamed, withdrawing her hand from a box.
Mrs. Murphy immediately rushed over to inspect the offending box. She placed her paw in and fished around.
“Got anything?” Tucker asked.
“Yeah.” Mrs. Murphy threw a large spider on the floor. Tucker jumped back as did the two humans, then barked, which the humans did not.
“Rubber.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.
“Whose box was that?” Harry wanted to know.
“Ned Tucker’s.” Mrs. Hogendobber frowned. “This is the work of Danny Tucker. I tell you, young people today have no respect. Why, I could have suffered a heart attack or hyperventilated at the very least. Wait until I get my hands on that boy.”
“Boys will be boys.” Harry picked up the spider and wiggled it in front of Tucker, who feigned indifference. “Oops, first customer and we’re not halfway finished.”
Mim Sanburne swept through the door. A pale yellow cashmere shawl completed her Bergdorf-Goodman ensemble.
“Mim, we’re behind,” Miranda informed her.
“Oh, I know,” Mim airily said. “I passed Rob on the way into town. I wanted to know what you thought of the ceremony at Monticello. I know you told me you liked it, but among us girls, what did you really think?”
Harry and Miranda had no need to glance at each other. They knew that Mim needed both praise and gossip. Miranda, better at the latter than the former, was the lead batter. “You made a good speech. I think Oliver Zeve and Kimball Haynes were just thrilled, mind you, thrilled. I did think that Lucinda Coles had her nose out of joint, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”
Seizing the bait like a rockfish, or small-mouthed bass, Mim lowered her voice. “She flounced around. It’s not as if I didn’t ask her to be on my committee, Miranda. She was my second call. My first was Wesley Randolph. He’s just too ancient, poor dear. But when I asked Lucinda, she said she was worn out by good causes even if it did involve sanitized ancestors. I didn’t say anything to her husband, but I was tempted. You know how Samson Coles feels. The more times his name gets in the paper, the more people will be drawn to his real estate office, although not much is selling now, is it?”
“We’ve seen good times and we’ve seen bad times. This will pass,” Miranda sagely advised.
“I’m not so sure,” Harry piped up. “I think we’ll pay for the eighties for a long, long time.”
“Fiddlesticks.” Mim dismissed her.
Harry prudently dropped the subject and switched to that of Lucinda Payne Coles, who could claim no special bloodlines other than being married to Samson Coles, descended from Jane Randolph, mother to Thomas Jefferson. “I’m sorry to hear that Lucinda backed off from your wonderful project. It truly is one of the best things you’ve ever done, Mrs. Sanburne, and you’ve done so much in our community.” Despite Harry’s mild antipathy toward the snobbish older woman, she was genuine in her praise.
“You think so? Oh, I am so glad.” Big Marilyn clasped her hands together like a child at a birthday party excited over all those unwrapped presents. “I like to work, you know.”
Mrs. Hogendobber recalled her Scripture. “‘Each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.’ ” She nodded wisely and then added, “First Corinthians, 3:13–14.”
Mim liked the outward appearance of Christianity; the reality of it held far less appeal. She particularly disliked the passage about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. After all, Mim was as rich as Croesus.
“Miranda, your biblical knowledge never ceases to amaze me.” Mim wanted to say, “to bore me,” but she didn’t. “And what an appropriate quotation, considering that Kimball will be digging up the foundations of the servants’ quarters. I’m just so excited. There’s so much to discover. Oh, I wish I had been alive during the eighteenth century and had known Mr. Jefferson.”
“I’d rather have known his cat,” Mrs. Murphy chimed in.
“Jefferson was a hound man,” Tee Tucker hastened to add.
“How do you know?” The tiger cat swished her tail and tiptoed along the ledge under the boxes.
“Rational. He was a rational man. Intuitive people prefer cats.”
“Tucker?” Mrs. Murphy, astonished at the corgi’s insight, could only exclaim her name.
The humans continued on, blithely unaware of the animal conversation which was more interesting than their own.
“Maybe you did know him. Maybe that’s why you’re so impassioned about Monticello.” Harry almost tossed a clutch of mail-order catalogues in the trash, then caught herself.
“You don’t believe that stuff,” Mrs. Hogendobber pooh-poohed.
“Well, I do, for one.” Mim’s jaw was set.
“You?” Miranda appeared incredulous.
“Yes, haven’t you ever known something without being told it, or walked into a room in Europe and felt sure you’d been there before?”
“I’ve never been to Europe,” came the dry reply.
“Well, Miranda, it’s high time. High time, indeed,” Mim chided her.
“I backpacked over there my junior year in college.” Harry smiled, remembering the kind people she had met in Germany and how excited she was at getting into what was then a communist country, Hungary. Everywhere she traveled, people proved kind and helpful. She used sign language and somehow everyone understood everyone else. She thought to herself that she wanted to return someday, to meet again old friends with whom she continued to correspond.
“How adventuresome,” Big Marilyn said dryly. She couldn’t imagine walking about, or, worse, sleeping in hostels. When she had sent her daughter to the old countries, Little Marilyn had gone on a grand tour, even though she would have given anything to have backpacked with Harry and her friend Susan Tucker.
“Will you be keeping an eye on the excavations?” Miranda inquired.
“If Kimball will tolerate me. Do you know how they do it? It’s so meticulous. They lay out a grid and they photograph everything and also draw it on graph paper—just to be sure. Anyway, they painstakingly sift through these grids and anything, absolutely anything, that can be salvaged is. I mean, potsherds and belt buckles and rusted nails. Oh, I really can’t believe I am part of this. You know, life was better then. I am convinced of it.”
“Me too.” Harry and Miranda sounded like a chorus.
“Ha!” Mrs. Murphy yowled. “Ever notice when humans drift back in history they imagine they were rich and healthy. Get a toothache in the eighteenth century and find out how much you like it.” She glared down at Tucker. “How’s that for rational?”
“You can be a real sourpuss sometimes. Just because I said that Jefferson preferred dogs to cats.”
“But you don’t know that.”
“Well, have you read any references to cats? Everything that man ever wrote or said is known by rote around here. Not a peep about cats.”