Mrs. Murphy sat down, curling her tail around her. "I've got a proposition for you, Rodger."
"What proposition?" Tucker's ears pointed up. "Why didn't you tell me?"
" 'Cause I've been cooking it." Mrs. Murphy turned back to Rodger. "There's a chance your barn mice know what's in Orion's stall."
"Why not ask the horses?" Tucker asked.
"I did." Rodger flicked his tail for a minute. "They didn't remember anything, not even Orion, and he's the oldest, being twelve. 'Course, it could be that whatever is in there was buried in summertime years back. The foxhunters are always turned out in the far pastures in summer, so only the mice and I would have been here. I don't remember anything, but summers I go up and rest in the big house because of the air conditioning."
"If you made a deal with the mice, maybe they'd talk to us." Mrs. Murphy kept to her agenda.
"What kind of deal?"
"Not to catch them."
"I can't do that. Mim will be furious if I don't deliver mice to the tack room. She asks Chark every day if Pusskin and I have done our duty."
"She's real fussy," Pusskin added.
"I thought of that." Mrs. Murphy wanted to bat Pusskin. She tried to make her meow sound pleasant. "What I propose is that you catch field mice and deliver them to the tack room. The humans don't know the difference."
Rodger rubbed his whiskers with his forepaw. He wrinkled his brow. A wise old fellow, he wanted to consider the ramifications of such a bargain. "It will work for a time, Murphy, but as the grain goes down and the barn mice population doesn't decrease, the humans will figure out something's wrong. I don't want Pusskin or me to get the boot."
"Mim would never do that," Tucker rightly surmised.
"I'd like to think that." Rodger knew other cats who were out of work or worse because they got lazy. "But even if she let us stay, she might bring in another cat, and I don't want to be bothered with that. This is my barn."
"What if we asked the barn mice not to show themselves?" Mrs. Murphy tried to figure out a solution. "At least so the humans wouldn't see them. You know how they get about mice."
"Seeing is bad enough. It's the grain I'm worried about," Rodger said sensibly.
"Can't they get by on what the horses throw on the ground? You know, horses are the sloppiest eaters," Pusskin chimed in. Not a bad idea for a slow kitty, Mrs. Murphy admitted.
"Less food. More safety," Rodger purred. "It's a trade-off. Worth a try, I suppose, but Murphy, why do you care what's in Orion's stall?"
"Don't say curiosity," Tucker warned.
Mrs. Murphy breathed in the crisp air. Her head felt quite as clear as the air around her. "I think the murders aren't over, and I think whatever's in Orion's stall might be part of the answer."
"If humans kill one another, that's their business," Pusskin, not a major fan of the human race, hissed.
"But what if this puts Mim in danger? Think about that." Mrs. Murphy reached out with a paw to Pusskin as though she were going to cuff her. "Something has happened in her barn. Something that goes back a few years at least. Mickey Townsend pulled a gun on Coty Lamont in the middle of the night. Coty was in Orion's stall, digging. Mickey makes him cover it back up, then takes him away. Coty's truck wasn't here. He'd walked in from somewhere and Mickey snuck up on him. Pretty peculiar. The next day Coty Lamont is dead in the back of the pickup, a knife through the heart and another playing card on it, the Queen of Spades. That's what Cynthia Cooper told my mom when they had supper night before last." She took a breath.
Pusskin blurted out, "That means Mickey's the killer."
"Maybe yes and maybe no. Addie has a kilo of cocaine in her safe deposit box that she says belonged to Nigel Danforth."
"Oh, no!" Rodger and Pusskin exclaimed together.
"She told Rick Shaw. Now she's in deep doo-doo." Tucker felt the same urgency that her best friend did. "And I don't think she would have told him, but Mom and Mrs. Hogendobber forced her to do it. I reckon we haven't heard the end of it because Addie was supposed to deliver the kilo to Linda Forloines, and what's Linda going to do when it doesn't show up?"
"So Addie might be in danger?" Rodger liked Addie.
"Anybody might be in danger, especially if I'm right about there being a secret in Orion's stall. What if, by pure accident, Mim stumbles on the truth? You can't expose your owner to that kind of danger. I know you aren't house cats, but Mim is fair and she takes care of you. And"—Mrs. Murphy lowered her voice—"what would have happened if she hadn't rescued you all from the SPCA? There are too many kittens, and no matter how good a job the SPCA does—well, you know."
The animals remained silent for some time after that grim reminder.
Finally Rodger spoke, firmly. "It's a debt of honor. We'll do our best for Mim. Pusskin?"
"Whatever you say, darling."
He filled his red chest, licked the side of Pusskin's pretty face, then said, "Let's parlay with the mice."
The mice were partying in the walls of the tack room. Mim had insulated the tack room so there was plenty of space between the two walls, filled with warm insulation, easy for mice to get in and out of because they burrowed from the stall next door. By this time they had created many entrances and exits, driving Rodger Dodger to distraction because even if he and Pusskin divided to cover holes, they'd still miss the mice.
The raucous squeaking stopped when the mice heard and smelled the approaching cats.
"Must be an army of them," the head mouse, a saucy female, warned.
Rodger put his pink nose at the entrance to one of the holes. "Loulou, it's Rodger and Pusskin. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, the corgi from over by Yellow Mountain, are with us."
"The post office animals," Loulou replied, her high-pitched voice clear and piercing.
"How do they know that?" Mrs. Murphy wondered.
"We know everything. Besides, we have cousins at Market Shiflett's store. Pewter's too fat to run anyone down."
Murphy giggled. So did Tucker.
"Loulou, I've come with an offer you should consider."
A moment of silence was followed by a wary Loulou. "We're all ears."
"Do you know what's buried in Orion's stall?"
"As the oldest mouse, I do," Loulou swiftly replied. "But I'm not telling you."
Rodger kept his temper in check, but Pusskin complained, "She's a real smartass."
Mrs. Murphy whispered for her to shut up.
"Loulou, I don't expect something for nothing. Pusskin and I agree not to catch any barn mice for a year"—that last part was Rodger's own flourish—"if you agree not to let the humans see you. Otherwise they'll think Pusskin and I are lazing about and we'll get in hot water, and Mim might try to bring in another cat. You can understand our position, can you not?"
"Yes."
"Well, a year of freedom for the information—and try not to breed too much, will you?"
"It's an open shot to the feed room. The humans will see us." Loulou was playing for time as the excited chatter in the background proved.
"There's plenty of grain under the horses' feed buckets. Just don't show your faces in the barn during the day, and if you hear a human coming at night, duck for cover. Otherwise, we'll all be in a real bad situation."
"I'll get back to you," Loulou replied.
The three cats and the dog patiently waited. Harry walked by on her way to the John. "What are you all doing?"
"High-level negotiations," Mrs. Murphy informed her.
"Sometimes you're so cute." Harry smiled and continued on her way.
"Whew." Tucker sighed. "She could have screwed up the whole deal."
"Yeah, the last thing we want any of them to see is this entrance here with all of us sitting around like bumps on a log." Rodger shifted his weight from one haunch to the other.