“Choir practice,” Susan said.
“I hope I have as much energy as she does at her age,” Aysha said admiringly. “And just what is her age?”
“Mentally or physically?” Susan rocked her cart back and forth.
“Mother says she’s got to be in her sixties, because she was in high school when mother was in eighth grade,” Aysha volunteered.
Of course, Ottoline the raving bitch never said anything nice about anyone unless it reflected upon her own perceived glory, so Aysha’s recounting was a bogus edition of Mrs. Gill’s true thoughts.
As if on cue, Ottoline sashayed down the aisle in the opposite direction from which she had left. She dumped items in the cart, nodded curtly to Harry and Susan, only to continue down the aisle, calling over her shoulder, “Aysha, I’m pressed for time.”
“Yes, Mumsy.” Then she lowered her voice. “Had a fight with the decorator today. She’s in a bad mood.”
“I thought she’d just redecorated,” Susan said.
“Two years ago. Time flies. She’s into a neutral palette this time.”
“Better than a cleft palate,” Harry joked.
“Not funny,” Aysha sniffed.
“Oh, come on, Aysha.” Harry couldn’t stand it when Aysha or anyone behaved like a humorless Puritan.
Apart from the occasional lapse into correctness, Harry thought Aysha had turned out okay except for her unfortunate belief that she was an aristocrat. It was a piteous illusion, since the Gills had migrated to Albemarle County immediately following World War I. To make matters worse, they had migrated from Connecticut. Despite her Yankee roots, Aysha flounced around like a Southern belle. Her new husband, not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree when it came to women, bought it. He called her “lovegirl.” God only knows what she called him. Newlyweds were pretty disgusting no matter who they were.
Susan asked, “Aysha, you’ve heard about this Threadneedle virus. Tomorrow’s the big day. You worried?”
“Oh, heavens no.” She laughed, her voice lilting upward before she lowered it. “But my Norman, he’s been to meetings about it. The bank is really taking this seriously.”
“No kidding.” Harry grabbed a few more cans of dog food.
“You can imagine if accounts were mixed up, although Norman says he believes the real target is Federated Investments in Richmond and this whole thing is a cover to get everyone in an uproar while they, or whoever, strikes FI.”
“Why FI?” Susan asked the logical question.
“They’ve been having such hard times. New chairman, shake-ups, and hundreds of people have been let go. Who better but an FI employee to devise a scheme with computers as the weapon? Norman says that by August 2 FI will be in a bigger tangle than a fishing line.”
“Ladies!” Fair, framed by a sale sign for charcoal briquets, waved from the end of the aisle.
Aysha smiled at Fair, then looked at Harry to pick up telltale signs of emotion. Harry smiled, too, and waved back. She liked her ex.
“Well, I’d better push on, forgive the pun.” Susan headed out. “Danny will be the youngest coronary victim in Crozet if I don’t get back with this food.”
“Me too.”
“Harry, are you cooking?” Aysha couldn’t believe it.
Harry pointed to her cart. “Tucker and Mrs. Murphy.”
“Give them my best.” Aysha moved in the other direction, her laughter tinkling as she went.
Ottoline, hands on hips, appeared at aisle’s end. “Will you hurry up?”
Harry reached the end of the aisle, where Fair waited for her. He was pretending to buy charcoal at a discount.
“How you doin’?”
“Fine, what about you?”
“Seeing more shin splints than I can count. Too many trainers are overworking their young horses on this hard ground.” Shin splints, or bucked shins, are a common problem among young racehorses.
Harry owned three horses, one of which, still a bit new to her, had been given to her by Fair and Mim. Lately, Mim had warmed to Harry. In fact, the haughty Mrs. Sanburne seemed to have softened considerably over the past couple of years.
“We’re doing pretty good at home. Come on by and let’s ride up Yellow Mountain.”
“Okay.” Fair eagerly accepted. “Tomorrow’s a mess, but the day after? I’ll swing by at six. Ought to have cooled off a little by then.”
“Great. Who do you want to take out?”
“Gin Fizz.”
“Okay.” She started off knowing that the cat and dog would be crabby from waiting so long.
“Uh, heard you and Blair Bainbridge were up at Ash Lawn yesterday. I thought he was out of town.” Fair prayed he would be going out of town again soon—like tomorrow.
“He finished up that shoot and instead of stopping by to see his folks, he came directly home. He’s pretty tired, I think.”
“How can you get tired wearing clothes and twirling in front of the camera?”
Harry refused to be drawn into this. “Damned if I know, Fair, no one’s ever asked me to model.” She wheeled away. “See you day after tomorrow.”
4
“Get out the shovels,” Hairy called to Mrs. Hogendobber as she trooped through the back door just as Rob Collier, the mail delivery man, was leaving by the front door.
He ducked his head back in. “Morning, Mrs. H.”
“Morning back at you, Rob.” She beheld the mammoth bags of mail on the floor. “What in the world?”
“Heck of a way to start August.”
As the big mail truck backed out of the driveway, the two women, transfixed by the amount of mail, just stared. “Oh, hell, I’ll get the mail cart and start on bag one.”
“I’ll be right back.” Mrs. Hogendobber hurried out the door and returned in less than five minutes, enough time for Harry to upend the big canvas bag and enough time for Mrs. Murphy to crash full force into the pile, sending letters and magazines scattering. Then she rolled over and bit some envelopes while scratching others.
“Death to the bills!”the cat hollered. She spread all four paws on the slippery pile, looked to the right, then to the left, before springing forward with a mighty leap, sending mail squirting out from under her.
“Get a grip, Murph.” Harry had to laugh at the tiger’s merry show.
“Here’s what I think of the power company.” She seized a bill between her teeth and crunched hard. “Take that. And this is for every lawyer in Crozet.” She pulled her right paw over a windowpane bill, leaving five parallel gashes.
Tucker joined the run, but not being as agile as Mrs. Murphy, she could only run through the mail and shout, “Look at me!”
“All right, you two. This is the only post office in America where people get mail with teeth marks on it. Now, enough is enough.”
Mrs. Hogendobber opened the back door just as Pewter was entering through the animal door. “Hey, hey, wait a minute.”
Mrs. Murphy sat down in the mail debris and laughed as her fat friend swung toward her. Mrs. Hogendobber laughed too.
“Very funny. “Pewter, incensed, wriggled out.
“Everyone’s loony tunes this morning.” Harry bent over to tidy the mess but thought the cat had the right idea. “What is that incredible smell?”
“Cinnamon buns. We need sustenance. Now, I was going to wait and bring these over for our break, but Harry, we’ll be working through that.” She checked the big old railroad clock on the wall. “And Mim will be here in an hour.”
“Mim will have to come back.” Harry threw letters in the mail cart and wheeled it to the back side of the mailboxes. “Unless you’ve got some scoop, turn on the radio.” Harry winked as she snatched a hot cinnamon bun and started the sorting.
“I’m not listening to country and western this morning.”
“And I don’t want to be spiritually uplifted, Miranda.”
“Don’t fuss.” Mrs. Hogendobber clicked on the dial.
The announcer bleated the news. “—an eight-million-dollar loss for this quarter, the worst in FI’s sixty-nine-year history. One thousand five hundred employees, twenty-five percent of the famed company’s work force, have been let go—”