The possum slid down the ladder. He hurried outside the barn and then stopped.
“Come on, Simon. It’s okay,” Tucker encouraged him.
Emboldened by the smell and halfway trusting Harry, the gray creature followed in Mrs. Murphy’s footsteps. He sat near Harry and when she poured out the syrup he gleefully leapt toward it with such intensity that Harry took a step backward.
Watching him greedily eat the frozen syrup reminded Harry that life ought to be a feast of the senses. Living with the mountains and the meadows, the forest and the streams, Harry knew she could never leave this place, because the country nourished her senses. City people drew their energy from one another. Country people drew their energy, like Antaeus, from the earth herself. Small wonder that the two types of humans could not understand each other. This deep need for solitude, hard physical labor, and the cycle of the seasons removed Harry from the opportunity for material success. She’d never grace the cover of Vogue or People. She’d never be famous. Apart from her friends no one would even know she existed. Life would be a struggle to make ends meet and the older she got the harsher the struggle. She knew that. She accepted it. Standing in the snow, surrounded by the angelic tranquillity, guarded by the old mountains of the New World, watching Simon eat his syrup, cat and dog next to her, she was grateful that she knew where she belonged. Let others make a shout in the world and draw attention to themselves. She regarded them as conscripts of civilization. Her life was a silent rebuke to the grabbing and the getting, the buying and the selling, the greediness and lust for power that she felt infected her nation. Americans died in sordid martyrdom to money. Indeed, they were dying for it in Crozet.
She poured out more syrup into the snow, watching it form lacy shapes, and wished she had heated chocolate squares and mixed the two together. She reached down and scooped up a graceful tendril of hard syrup. It tasted delicious. She poured more for Simon and thought that Jesus was wise in being born in a stable.
54
“We need a pitchfork.” Harry, using her broom, jabbed at the mail on the floor. “I don’t remember there being this much late mail last year.”
“That’s how the mind protects itself—it forgets what’s unpleasant.” Mrs. Hogendobber was wearing her new earrings, which were very becoming. The radio crackled; Miranda walked over, tuned it, and turned up the volume. “Did you hear that?”
“No.” Harry pushed the mail-order catalogues across the floor with her broom. Tucker chased the broom.
“Another storm to hit tomorrow. My lands, three snowstorms within—what’s it been—ten days? I don’t ever recall that. Well now, maybe I do. During the war we had a horrendous winter—’44, I think, or was it ’45?” She sighed. “Too many memories. My brain needs to find more room.”
Mim, swathed in chinchilla, swept through the front door. A gust of wind blew in snow around her feet. “How was it?” She referred to Christmas.
“Wonderful. The service at the church, well, those children in the choir outshone themselves.” Miranda glowed.
“And you, out there all alone?” Mim stamped the snow from her feet as she addressed Harry.
“Good. It was a good Christmas. My best friends gave me certificates to Dominion Saddlery.”
“Oh.” Mim’s eyebrows shot upward. “Nice friends.”
Mrs. Hogendobber tilted her head, earrings catching the light. “How about these goodies? Harry gave them to me.”
“Very nice.” Mim appraised them. “Well, Jim gave me a week at the Greenbrier. Guess I’ll take it in February, the longest month of the year,” she joked. “My daughter framed an old photo of my mother, and she gave me season’s tickets to the Virginia Theater. Fitz gave me an auto emergency kit and a Fuzzbuster.” She smiled. “A Fuzzbuster, can you imagine? He said I need it.” Her face changed. “And someone gave me a dead rat.”
“No.” Mrs. Hogendobber stopped sorting mail.
“Yes. I am just plain sick of all this. I sat up last night by myself in Mother’s old sewing room, the room I made my reading room. I’ve gone over everything so many times I’m dizzy. A man is killed. We don’t know him or anything about him other than that he was a vagrant or a vagabond. Correct?”
“Correct.”
Mim continued: “Then Benjamin Seifert is strangled and dumped in Crozet’s first tunnel. I even thought about the supposed treasure in the tunnels, but that’s too far-fetched.” She was referring to the legend that Claudius Crozet had buried in the tunnels the wealth he received from his Russian captor. The young engineer, an officer in Napoleon’s army, was seized during the horrendous retreat from Moscow and taken to the estate of a fabulously wealthy aristocrat. So useful was the personable engineer, building many devices for the Russian, that when prisoners were finally freed, he bestowed upon Crozet jewels, gold, and rubies. Or so they said.
Harry spoke. “And now Cabell has . . .” She clicked her fingers in the air to indicate disappearance.
Mim waved a dismissive hand. “Two members of the same bank. Suspicious. Maybe even obvious. What isn’t so obvious is why am I a target? First the”—she grimaced—“torso in the boathouse. Followed by the head in the pumpkin when my husband was judging. And then the rat. Why me? I can’t think of any reason why, other than petty spite and envy, but people aren’t killed for that.”
Harry weighed her words. “Did Ben or Cabell have access to your accounts?”
“Certainly not, even though Cabell is a dear friend. No check goes out without my signature. And of course I studied my accounts. As a precaution I’m having my accountant audit my own books. And then”—she threw up her hands—“that earring. Well, Sheriff Shaw acted as though my daughter was a criminal. Forgive me, Harry, but a possum with an earring doesn’t add up to evidence.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Harry concurred.
“So . . . why me?”
“Maybe you should review your will.” Miranda was blunt.
This knocked Mim back. But she didn’t lash out. She thought about it. “You don’t mince words, do you?”
“Mim, if you think this is somehow directed at you, then you may be in danger,” Mrs. Hogendobber counseled. “What would someone want of you? Money. Do you own land impeding a developer? Are you in the way of anything that converts to profit? Do you have business ventures we don’t know about? Is your daughter your sole beneficiary?”
“When Marilyn married I settled a small sum upon her as a dowry and to help them with their house. She will, of course, inherit our house and the land when Jim and I die and I’ve created a trust that jumps a generation, so most of the money will go to her children should she have them. If not, then it will go to her and she’ll have to pay oodles of taxes. My daughter isn’t going to kill me for money, and she wouldn’t bother with a banker.” Mim was forthright.
“What about Fitz?” Harry blurted out.
“Fitz-Gilbert has more money than God. You don’t think we let Marilyn marry him without a thorough investigation of his resources.”
“No.” Harry’s reply was tinged with regret. She’d have hated for her parents to do that to the man she loved.
“A shirttail cousin?” Miranda posited.
“You know my relatives as well as I do. I have one surviving aunt in Seattle.”
“Have you talked to the sheriff and Coop about this?” Harry asked.
“Yes, and my husband too. He’s hiring a bodyguard to protect me. If one can ever get through the snow. And another storm is coming.” Mim, not a woman easily frightened, was worried. She headed for the door.
“Mim, your mail.” Miranda reached into her box and held it out to her.
“Oh.” Mim took the mail in one Bottéga Veneta–gloved hand and left.