“Motorhead. And I read all the car and bike magazines. That was a brand-new Ducati XDiavel. Cost about fifteen thousand dollars. No license plate.”
“That bothers me.” Cooper frowned. “You’d think some traffic cop would have noticed.”
“You would, but then again maybe the killer didn’t ride far. Maybe that bike is in a garage or maybe he towed the bike here in a closed trailer from who knows where, unloaded, did the deed, loaded it back up again. It’s not too far-fetched.”
Cooper had known Harry enough years to appreciate her logic if not her curiosity. “I guess not if you’re determined to kill someone. If only it were his ex-wife,” she ruefully admitted.
“Cooper!”
“It would make this a lot easier.”
Harry changed the subject. “I don’t know why it gets me, but it gets me that my plans are on the drafting table. Like he just stepped out.”
“He did.” Cooper sighed. “He did.”
6
December 30, 2016
Friday
“She doesn’t use her computer that much,” Tucker countered the gray cat. “It’s Fair who will ruin his eyes, with that big screen in his office here and the same kind at work. He checks his patients, he checks medications and X-rays. I’m surprised he doesn’t have a Seeing Eye dog.” Tucker flicked a large left ear.
Bother her ears were large, but her hearing proved excellent.
“You could do it.” Mrs. Murphy sat on Harry’s desk in the tack room so she, too, could view the screen.
“Too low to the ground. He’d trip over me,” Tucker sensibly replied.
“What is she doing?” Pewter could hear click, click, click.
“Jump up and see for yourself,” Mrs. Murphy suggested.
Grumbling, Pewter did rouse herself from the tack trunk, stretch, then leap onto the desktop. As it was an old teacher’s desk from the 1950s, sturdy solid wood, her weight barely registered. The desk had been Harry’s father’s. He didn’t believe in wasting money when used furniture could do the job. Finding a teacher’s desk was easy. He paid fifteen dollars, sanded it smooth, then stained it.
A small bright red propane stove with a glass front kept the tack room warm. Last year, after exhausting research, Harry had bought one, a Swedish model, for no matter what she tried, the room temperature barely got above sixty degrees. The space heaters sucked up electricity like mad, plus they really couldn’t evenly warm the room. The flames at this moment flickered at half-mast. Full blast really threw out the heat. When she went home at night, she’d only leave on the pilot light, but come morning she’d turn up the flame and the room would be perfect in about fifteen minutes. Harry wondered how she’d lived all those years in that miserable cold room. And she knew Gary was a hundred percent right to design space for one in her dream shed. She had just wanted to fuss with him a little bit.
The door to the center aisle, closed, had a large glass window in it. Because Crozet was near the mountains, the sun set earlier than the Farmer’s Almanac listed for central Virginia. She was so wrapped up in her computer she didn’t notice that the sun had set, twilight was deepening at 5:45 PM.
The horses, blankets on, began to doze in their stalls. The doors at both ends were shut as were the hayloft doors up top. Every now and then a big barn door would rattle when the wind hit it. She heard it but paid little attention.
“That’s it.”
Pewter peered at the screen. “Is.”
“Is.” Mrs. Murphy echoed her friend then looked down at a curious Tucker. “The motorcycle. She’s got a picture of it.”
“A beast. This thing is a beast.” Harry whistled. “1262cc. And they make faster bikes but this is their cruiser. Some cruiser.”
“Does look scary. Well, it was scary,” Mrs. Murphy spoke.
“Big Harley?” Tucker, living with a motorhead, had absorbed some of her human’s nomenclature.
“No. It’s a Ducati XDiavel. That’s what the caption says,” Pewter remarked.
“Pewter, you can’t read.” Tucker doubted her report.
“She’s whispering stuff,” Pewter called back. “Stuff like this is for the American market. It’s not the pure Italian bike. She thinks that’s important. She’s scrolled that information three times.”
“She’s falling in love. You know how she is with anything with an engine in it!” Mrs. Murphy laughed.
Harry tapped her fingers on the desktop, rattling against the wood. “Whoever shot Gary knew bikes and could ride them. No license plate. Who the hell is this? Who would think of such a thing?”
“Someone with a lot to lose,” Tucker murmured.
“Or gain,” Mrs. Murphy responded.
Hitting the off button, Harry slumped in her chair. “There can’t be too many of these in all of Virginia. Cooper can get the state DMV records.”
Pewter, shrewd in her own way, brushed against the screen. “But maybe it’s an out-of-state bike. If someone was smart enough to pull this off, I bet they’d be smart enough to know how scarce a XDiavel is.”
Tucker, thinking hard, nodded. “You’ve got a point there.”
“Does his ex-wife ride bikes?” Pewter wondered.
Mrs. Murphy swept her whiskers forward. “The ex–Mrs. Gardner is a big BMW girl. She is a woman who takes her makeup seriously.”
“Why would he marry a woman like that?” Tucker was puzzled.
“He was a lot younger. And she is pretty even now with all that paint on her face.” Mrs. Murphy was fair about it. “I’m not sure men think clearly about these things when they’re young.”