“I’m not going, and don’t you come back here and make up stories about what I’ve missed,” Pewter called after them.“AndI don’t want to hear about the bobcat either. That’s a tall tale if I ever heard one.” Then she giggled. ” ‘ Cept they don’t have tails.” By now she was heading toward the house, carrying on a conversation with herself. “Oh, and if it isn’t the bobcat, then it’s the bear and her two cubs. And if I hear one more time about how Tucker was almost drug under by an irate beaver while crossing the creek … next they’ll tell me there’s an elephant out there. Fine, they can get their pads cut up. I’m not.” She sashayed into the screened-in porch and through the open door to the kitchen. ” Mmm.” Pewter jumped onto the counter to gobble up crumbs of Danish. “What a pity that Harry isn’t a cook.”
She curled up on the counter, the sun flooding through the window over the sink, and fell fast asleep.
The cat and dog trotted toward the northwest. Usually they’d head to the creek that divided Harry’s land from Blair Bainbridge’s land, but as they’d seen him this morning when he brought over the paint sprayer on his way to cubbing, they decided to sprint in the other direction.
“Pewter cracks me up.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.
“Me, too.” Tucker stopped and lifted her nose. “Deer.”
“Close?”
“Over there.” The corgi indicated a copse of trees surrounded by high grass.
“Let’s not disturb them. It’s black-powder season, and there’s bound to be some idiot around with a rifle.”
“I don’t mind a good hunter. They’re doing us a favor. But the other ones …” The dog shuddered, then trotted on. “Mom and Blair didn’t have much tosayto each other, did they?”
“Shewasin a hurry. So was he.” Mrs. Murphy continued, “Sometimes I worry about her. She’s getting set in her ways. Makes it hard to mesh with a partner, know what I mean?”
“She likes living alone.Allthat time I wanted Fair to come back, which he’s tried to do—I really think she likes being her own boss.”
“Tucker, she was hardly your typical wife.”
“No, but she made concessions.”
“So did he.” Mrs. Murphy stopped a moment to examine a large fox den. “Hey, you guys run this morning?”
“No,” came the distant reply.
“Next week they’ll leave from Old Greenwood Farm.”
“Thanks.”
“Since when did you get matey with foxes?” Tucker asked. “I thought you hated them.”
“Nah, only some of them.”
“Hypocrite.”
“Stickin-the-mud. Remember what Emerson said,Afoolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’ “
“Where are we going?” Tucker ignored Murphy’s reference.
“Here, there, and everywhere.” Mrs. Murphy swished her tail.
“Goody.” The dog loved wandering with no special plan.
They ran through a newly mown hayfield. Grasshoppers flew up in the air, the faint rattle of their wings sounding like thousands pf tiny castanets. The last of the summer’s butterflies swooped around. Wolf spiders, some lugging egg sacs, hurried out of their way.
At the end of the field a line of large old hickories stood sentinel over a farm road rarely used since the Bowdens put down a better road fifty yards distant.
“Race you!” the cat called over her shoulder as she turned left on the road heading down to a deep ravine and a pond.
“Ha!” The dog bounced for joy, screeching after the cat.
Corgis, low to the ground, can run amazingly fast when stretched out to full body length. Since Mrs. Murphy zigged and zagged when she ran, Tucker soon overtook her.
“I win!” the dog shouted.
“Only because I let you.”
They tumbled onto each other, rolling in the sunshine. Springing to their feet, they ran some more, this time with the tiger soaring over the corgi, dipping in front of her and then jumping her from the opposite direction.
The sheer joy of it wore them out. They sat under a gnarled walnut at the base of a small spring.
Mrs. Murphy climbed the tree, gracefully walking out on a limb. “Hey, there’sacar over that rise.”
“Noway.”
“Wanna bet?”
They hurried up and over the small rise, the ruts in the road deeper than their own height. Stranded in the middle of the road was a 1992 red Toyota Camry with the license plates removed. As they drew closer they could see a figure in the driver’s seat.
Tucker stopped and sniffed. “Uh-oh.”
Mrs. Murphy bounded onto the hood and stared, hair rising all over her body. Quickly she jumped off. “There’s a dead human in there.”
“How dead?”
“Extremely dead.”
“That’s what I thought. Who is it?”
“Given the condition of the body, your guess isasgoodasmine. But itwasonce a woman. There’s a blue barrette in her hair with roses on it, little yellow plastic roses.”
“We’d better go get Mom.”
Mrs. Murphy walked away from the Camry and sat on the rise. She needed to collect her thoughts.
“Tucker, it won’t do any good. Mother won’t know what we’re telling her. The humans don’t use this road anymore. It might be days, weeks, or even months before anyone finds this, uh, mess.”
“Maybe by that time she’ll be bones.”
“Tucker!”
“Just joking.” The dog leaned next to her dear friend. “Trying to lighten the moment. After all, you don’t know who it is. I can’t see that high up. Humans commit suicide, you know. Could be one of those things. They like to shoot themselves in cars or hotel rooms. Drugs are for the wimps, I guess. I mean, how many ways can they kill themselves?”
“Lots ofways.”
“I never met a dog that committed suicide.”
“How could you? The dog would be dead.”
“Smartass.“Tucker exhaled. “Guess we’d better go back home.”
On the way across the mown hayfleld Murphy said out loud what they both were thinking. “Let’s hope it’sasuicide.”
They reached the farm in twenty minutes, rushing inside to tell Pewter, who refused to believe it.
“Then come with us.”
“Murphy, I am not traipsing all over creation. It’s soon time for supper. Anyway, what’s a dead human to me?”
“You’d think someone would report a missing person, wouldn’t you?” Tucker scratched her shoulder.
“So many humans live alone, they aren’t missed for a long time. And she’s been dead a couple of weeks,” Murphy replied.
28
Puce-faced Little Marilyn, hands on hips, stood in the middle of Roscoe Fletcher’s office, as angry as April Shively.
“You hand those files over!”
Coolly, relishing her moment of power, April replied, “Roscoe told me not to release any of this information until our Homecoming banquet.”
Little Mim, a petite woman, advanced on April, not quite petite but small enough to be described as perky. ‘ ‘I am chair of the fundraising committee. If I am to properly present St. Elizabeth’s to potential donors, I need information. Roscoe and I were to have our meeting today and the files were to be released to me.”
“I don’t know that. It’s not written in his schedule book.” April shoved the book across his desk toward Marilyn, who ignored it.
Marilyn baited her. “I thought you knew everything there was to know about Roscoe.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Take it any way you like.”
“Don’t you dare accuse me of improper conduct with Roscoe! People always say that. They say it behind my back and think I don’t know it.” Her words were clipped, her speech precise.
“You were in love with him.”
“I don’t have to answer that. And I don’t have to give you this file either.”
“Then you’re hiding something. I will convene the board and request an immediate audit.”
“What I’m hiding is something good!” She sputtered. “It’s a large donation by Maury McKinchie for the film department.”