Although Fair lacked money he didn’t lack prestige in his field and Harry had been dragged along to banquets, boring dinners at the homes of thoroughbred breeders, and even more boring dinners at Saratoga. It was the same old parade of excellent facelifts, good bourbon, and tired stories. She was glad to be out of it. BoomBoom could have it all. BoomBoom could have Fair too. Harry didn’t know why she’d gotten so mad at Fair the other day. She didn’t love him anymore but she liked him. How could you not like a man you’ve known since you were in grade school and liked at first sight? The sheer folly of his attachment to BoomBoom irritated her though. If he found a sensible woman like Susan she’d be relieved. BoomBoom would suck up so much of his energy and money that eventually his work would suffer. He’d spent years building his practice. BoomBoom could wreck it in one circle of the seasons if he didn’t wake up.
The sweet smell of pine shavings caressed her senses. For an instant Harry picked up the wall-phone receiver. She was going to call Fair and tell him what she really thought. Then she hung it up. How could she? He wouldn’t listen. No one ever does in that situation. They wake up when they can.
She spread fresh shavings in the stalls.
Mrs. Murphy checked out the hayloft. Simon, sound asleep, never heard her tiptoe around him. He’d dragged up an old T-shirt of Harry’s and then hollowed out part of a hay bale. He was curled up in the hollow on the shirt. She then walked over to the south side of the loft. The snake was hibernating. Nothing would wake her up until spring. Overhead the owl also slept. Satisfied that everything was as it should be, Mrs. Murphy climbed back down the ladder.
“Tucker,” she called.
“What?” Tucker lounged around in the tack room.
“Want to go for a walk?”
“Where?”
“Foxden pastures off Yellow Mountain Road.”
“Why there?”
“Paddy gave me an idea the other day and this is the first time I’ve had a chance to look in the daylight.”
“Okay.” Tucker stood up, shook herself, and then trotted out into the brisk air with her companion.
Mrs. Murphy told Tucker Paddy’s idea about someone parking off Yellow Mountain Road on the old logging road and carrying the body parts to the cemetery in a plastic bag or something.
Once in the pastures Tucker put her nose down. Too much rain and too much time had elapsed. She smelled field mice, deer, fox, lots of wild turkeys, raccoons, and even the faint scent of bobcat.
While Tucker kept her nose to the ground Mrs. Murphy cast her sharp eyes around for a glint of metal, a piece of flesh, but there was nothing, nothing at all.
“Find anything?”
“No, too late.” Tucker lifted her head. “How else could the body get to the cemetery? If the murderer didn’t walk through these pastures, then he or she had to go right down Blair’s driveway in front of God and Blair, anyway. Paddy’s right. He came through here. Unless it’s Blair.”
Mrs. Murphy jerked her head around to view her friend full in the face. “You don’t think that, do you?”
“I hope not. Who knows?”
The cat fluffed out her fur and then let it settle down. She headed for home. “You know what I think?”
“No.”
“I think tomorrow at work will be impossible. Lardguts will go on and on and on about the head in the pumpkin. She got her name and her picture in the paper. God help us.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.
24
“. . . and the maggots had a field day, I can tell you that.” Pewter perched on the hood of Harry’s truck, parked behind the post office.
Mrs. Murphy, seated next to her, listened to the un-ending paean of self-praise. Tucker sat on the ground.
“I heard you ran into the squashes,” Tucker called up.
“Of course I did, nitwit. I didn’t want to injure the evidence,” Pewter bragged. “Boy, you should have heard people scream once they realized it was real. A few even puked. Now I watched everyone—everyone—from my vantage point. Mrs. Hogendobber was horrified but has a cast-iron stomach. Poor Danny, was he grossed out! Susan and Ned rushed up to him but he wanted to go to his friends instead. That age, you know. Oh, Big Marilyn, she wasn’t grossed out at all. She was outraged. I thought she’d flip her lid after the corpse in the boathouse but no, she was mad, bullshit mad, I tell you. Fitz stood there with his mouth hanging open. Little Marilyn hollered that she recognized the face, what there was of it. Harry didn’t move a muscle. Stood there like a stone taking it all in. You know how she gets when things are awful. Real quiet and still. Oh, BoomBoom dropped, tits into the sand, and Blair keeled over too. What a night. I knew something was wrong with that pumpkin. I sat next to it. It takes humans so long to see the obvious.” Pewter sighed a superior sigh.
“You were a teeny weeny bit disgusted.” Mrs. Murphy flicked her tail.
Pewter turned her head. She puffed out her chest, refusing to be baited by her dearest friend, who was also a source of torment. “Certainly not.”
A door closed in the near distance. The animals turned, observing Mrs. Hogendobber striding up the alleyway. As she drew near the animals she opened her mouth to speak to them but closed it again. She felt vaguely foolish carrying on a conversation with animals. This didn’t prevent her from talking to herself, however. She smiled at the creatures and walked into the post office.
“Why’d Harry bring the truck?” Pewter asked.
“Wore herself out yesterday,” Tucker replied.
Mrs. Murphy licked the side of her right front paw and rubbed it over her ears. “Pewter, do you have any theories about this?”
“Yeah, we got a real nut case on the loose.”
“I don’t think so.” Mrs. Murphy washed the other paw.
“What makes you so smart?” Pewter snapped.
Mrs. Murphy let that go by. “If a human being has the time to think about a murder he can often make it look like an accident or natural death. If one of them kills in the heat of passion it’s a bullet wound or a knife wound. Right?”
“Right,” Tucker echoed, while Pewter’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“Murphy, we all know that.”
“Then we know it was a hurry-up job and it wasn’t passion. Someone in Crozet was surprised by the dead person.”
“A nasty surprise.” Tucker followed her friend’s thinking. “But who? And what could be so terrible about the victim that he should have had to die for it?”