Rick clapped his hands on his knees. "Well, I'm going over to Mim's to see if she'll let us dig up that stall. Which stall was it?"
Cynthia checked her notes. "Orion's."
"Hallelujah!" Mrs. Murphy declared.
The cold crept into the stable. At first nobody noticed, but as Harry, Miranda, and the two animals stood watching Rick Shaw's team dig into Orion's stall, the chill crept into their bones.
When the sheriffs crew arrived, they surveyed the fourteen-foot-square stall and didn't know where to start, so Tucker began digging at the spot. The humans followed suit because Cynthia Cooper remarked that dogs, thanks to their keen noses, could smell things humans could not.
Mrs. Murphy grew tired of sitting on the center aisle floor, so she climbed into the hayloft where, with Rodger Dodger, Pusskin, and the mice, she gazed down as the humans labored. Spadeful after spadeful of crush-or-run and then clay was carefully piled to the side.
Mim, her shearling jacket pulled tightly around her, joined the humans. "Anything?"
"No," Harry answered.
"You don't think this is some kind of nutty tale on Mickey's part—a wild-goose chase?" she asked.
Rick, arms folded across his chest, replied, "I've got to try everything, Mrs. Sanburne. Don't worry, we'll put everything back just as we found it."
A car pulled up outside, the door slammed, and a haggard Arthur Tetrick strode into the stable. "Mim?" he called out. "Are you out here?"
"Here."
Arthur shouted as he walked up. "I've gotten Chark released! He'll fly home tomorrow. An ambulance will bring up Adelia on Thursday if the doctors agree." He noticed the digging. "What's going on?"
"We don't know exactly," Mim answered.
Harry shivered.
"Why don't you go back to the tack room," Miranda suggested. "You don't have enough meat on your bones to ward off the cold. Not like I do."
"No. I'll walk around a bit." Harry jiggled her legs and walked up and down the aisle. Tucker walked with her.
"You racking up brownie points, Tucker?" the tiger hollered.
"Oh, shut up. You can be so green-eyed sometimes."
That made Rodger Dodger and Pusskin laugh because Mrs. Murphy had beautiful green eyes.
One of the officers hit something hard. "Huh?"
Rick and Cynthia drew closer. "Be careful."
The other two officers carefully pushed their spades into the earth. "Yeah." Another light click was heard.
They worked faster now, each shovelful getting closer until a rib cage appeared.
"Oh, my God!" Mim exclaimed.
"What is it?" Arthur pushed his way to the edge, saw the rib cage and a now partially exposed arm as the men feverishly dug.
Arthur hit the ground with a thud.
"Wuss." Mrs. Murphy turned her nose up.
Charles Valiant appeared far older than his twenty-five years. Dark circles under his eyes marred his handsome appearance. He'd eaten nothing since Addie's fall. Neither Fair nor any of his friends could get him to eat. Boom Boom took a turn with him as did everyone. She spoke passionately of Lifeline, leaving him some literature, but he was far too depressed to respond.
Fair sat with him in the living room of the little cottage on Mim's estate. Harry boiled water for a cup of instant soup. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker quietly lay on the rug.
"Chark, you've got to eat something," Harry pleaded.
"I can't," he whispered.
A knock on the door propelled Fair out of a comfortable old chair. He opened the door. "Arthur."
A subdued Arthur came inside, quickly shutting the door behind him. He forced a smile. "Well, we know one thing."
"What?" Fair's blond stubble made him look like a Viking.
"It can't get any worse."
Harry said nothing for she thought it could indeed get worse, and if the killer weren't apprehended soon, it would.
"Charles, Adelia will be fully recovered before you know it. She'll be home before the week is out. Please eat something so she doesn't worry about you," Arthur reasoned.
"He's right," Fair said.
"Well, I stopped by to see how you're doing." Arthur held out his hand. "I nearly forgot. Congratulations on coming into your inheritance. I know you'll use it wisely."
"Oh," Chark's voice sounded weak, "I'd forgotten all about it."
"This troublesome time will pass. All will be well, Charles. And as for Adelia"—he folded his hands together—"perhaps she is right. She needs to go her own way and be her own person. I truly believe things will work out for the best."
"Thanks, Arthur." Chark shook his hand.
"Well, I'd better be on my way."
"I'll walk you to your car." Harry opened the front door, asking as they walked, "Do they know yet who it was in Orion's stall? I mean conclusively?"
Arthur shook his head. "No, but I think we all know." A strangled cry gurgled in his throat. "To see her like that when I thought never to see her again . . ." He collected himself. "I will advise Mim on an excellent criminal lawyer, of course."
"Why?" Harry innocently asked.
"The body was found on her property. I should think she'll be a suspect and possibly even arrested."
Harry's voice rose. "Has everyone lost their minds? Marylou Valiant was one of her best friends."
"Most murders are committed among people who are family or friends." He held up his hands. "Not that I, for one minute, think that Mim Sanburne murdered her. But right now, Mim is in a vulnerable position. Go inside before you catch your death."
Harry walked back into Chark's cottage, closing the door tightly behind her, and thought about the phrase "catch your death"—as though death were a baseball hurtling through the azure sky.
Mrs. Murphy left the stable at six-thirty in the morning, cutting across the hay fields . . . she needed time to herself to think. She brushed by some rattleweed, causing the odd metallic sound that always startled city people upon first hearing it. The light frost, cool on her pads, would melt by ten in the morning, lingering only in areas of heavy shade or along the creek bottom.
A deep, swift creek divided Harry's farm from Blair Bainbridge's land, property that had once belonged to the family of the Reverend Herbert Jones. Murphy hoped Blair would return soon, because she liked him. As a model he was one of that growing number of Americans who made a lot of money at his job but preferred to live somewhere lovely instead of in a big city. He was often on the road, though.
She stopped at the creek, watching the water bubble and spray over the slick rocks. Mrs. Murphy, never overfond of water, liked it even less when the mercury was below 60°F. She bent over the deep bank, for there were quiet pools, and if she stayed still she could see the small fish that congregated there. She'd watched Paddy, her ex, catch a small-mouth bass once, a performance that must have heated up her ardor for him although now she couldn't understand what she had ever seen in that faithless torn. Still, he was handsome and likable.
A flip of a tail alerted her to the school of fish below. She sighed, then trotted to where Jones's Creek, as it was known, flowed into Swift Run and thence into Meechum's River.
The scent of fallen and still dropping leaves presaged winter. They crunched underfoot, which made hunting field mice a task. She followed the twists and turns of Jones's Creek, admiring the sycamores, their bark distinctive by the contrasts of gray peeling away to beige. She startled ravens picking grain out of a cornfield. They hollered at her, lifted up over her head, circled, and returned after she passed.
Another ten minutes and she reached the connection where the creek poured into Swift Run. A big willow, upturned in last week's rains and wind, had crashed off the far bank into the river. A lone blue heron, a silent sentinel, was poised about fifty yards downstream from the willow.