As she pushed a small package onto the counter, Harry returned to the parking lot, turned on the motor, air-conditioning filling the interior immediately. She sat there for a minute, but before she backed out, Cooper, in a patrol car, pulled into a spot in front of the store next to the post office. This little place carried such healthy hanging baskets, small shrubs in pots, a wide variety for such a small place.
Harry left her Volvo running, no worries about theft, and sprinted through the rain over to Cooper.
“Coop.”
“Get out of the rain.”
“I can sit with you or you can sit with me. I have the kids.”
“I’ll sit with you for a minute, but I need a drink. Want one?”
“No, I’ve got my little cooler in the car as always. I can give you one of those carbonated grapefruit drinks.”
“I’ll take it.” Cooper got out of the squad car, locked it, followed Harry back to the station wagon.
“Coop!” All three animals greeted her.
She turned and smiled. She wanted a dog, but her hours were just terrible. Wouldn’t be fair to the dog. Harry handed her the grapefruit drink, Pompelmo, made by Sanpellegrino.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Oh, a complaint. Some new people who bought near Verulam woke up to see cattle in one of their fields. The wife wanted me to get them out of there before they destroyed her hydrangeas. I said, ‘Ma’am, your hydrangeas are up here at the house.’
“She then complained that I wasn’t taking her problem seriously.” Coop was still feeling the anger. “I handed her my card, pointed out the HQ number, and suggested she call if she was unsatisfied. She blinked, surprised, I think, then said was I going to get the cattle out of her pasture? I replied with the greatest pleasure that no, I was not. She needed to call Animal Control.”
“Good for you, Coop. You’re not a hired farm worker.” She paused, then shifted gears. “Been thinking about Barbara Leader. I know you’ve been checking out hospital records and doctors’ records concerning thallium chloride. I’m assuming since you haven’t told me anything you haven’t found anything unusual.”
“Not yet.”
“I keep coming back to what did she know?” Harry seemed to be deep in thought. “Something about a doctor, another nurse, a hospital administrator. Any of those people could steal drugs and use or sell them, and obviously they wouldn’t be using thallium chloride. It would be one of the opiates.”
Cooper looked at Harry. “Right.”
“Maybe Barbara knew something about another patient, like Governor Holloway, for instance.”
Cooper said, “We thought of that. So far nothing. Politicians of Governor Holloway’s time, their secrets almost always involved extramarital affairs or booze or both. We’ve investigated his past and that of a few of Barbara’s other patients who were high-profile doctors or businessmen. They all drank. It was a big part of the culture, but no one was a raging alcoholic. As for affairs, they indulged, but Governor Holloway did not, or if he did, not a hint of it.”
“It appears that once he married Penny he had no interest in other women,” said Harry. “Millicent would have sniffed that out. Susan’s mother can’t keep a secret.”
“It’s not usually a daughter who ferrets that secret out.” Cooper smiled. “The worst blunder that Governor Holloway appears to have made was his anti-integration stand. Aroused a lot of passion for and against at the time, and I bet there are still people who can get worked up about it. Maybe we’re too young, but I think it’s all water over the dam.”
“For which we can be grateful. I’m glad I didn’t live through it. I mean, we aren’t out of the woods. There’s lots to be done, but not like then. It’s hard to believe people believed that stuff.”
“Believed and screamed about it.” Cooper at that moment wanted a cigarette, which she had given up for the second time this year.
“Anyway, why would a nurse be killed over an old segregation issue?” Harry pondered, then brightened. “Maybe this is something we’ve never dreamed of.”
“I don’t know, Harry. How many ways can you frighten or outrage people so they will kill you?”
“Maybe more than I’d like to consider,” Harry somberly replied as the rain splattered the windshield.
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Harry, animals in tow, turned left into a big development, Old Trail. The first row of commercial buildings matched the homes not in size but in style. Nice balconies jutted out on top of the two-story buildings. She parked in front of a mint-green clapboard-frame building. The rain intensified.
They sat.
“I can’t leave you until the rain slows a little,” Harry announced to her friends, not that they cared. They were happy to be on a ride with her.
Pewter settled down in the leather seat. “She could leave us. Just keep the air-conditioning on.”
“If she keeps the engine running, someone can steal the Volvo,” Tucker said.
“Who would steal a car or wagon? When is the last time a car was stolen in our county?” Pewter huffed for a moment.
“True, but if someone did steal this, we’d be in the wagon,” Mrs. Murphy explained.
“There is that,” the gray cat agreed. “But tell me this, all these new cars have every screen, knob, push-button whatever. So why can’t they build a car that you can turn off the motor, leave, but keep the air-conditioning running?”
“Too expensive to figure out,” Mrs. Murphy replied.
“It seems like everyone everywhere is mired in debt. Aren’t you glad we don’t have to worry about money?” Tucker breathed relief.
“We don’t have bank accounts.” Mrs. Murphy said the obvious.
“I would never go into debt.” Pewter puffed out her gray chest.
Neither Mrs. Murphy nor Tucker would touch that one. A long silence followed.
“You all were chatty,” Harry remarked. “Now cat got your tongue?”
“Ha.” Pewter stuck out her tongue.
For a split second, it occurred to Harry that her cat had understood her. Then she discounted it.
The rain continued, softly now. Harry cracked the windows a bit.
“Not one drop.” Pewter gave her the evil eye. “Not one drop on my fur.”
“I won’t be long, but if it starts to rain harder, I’ll come out and we’ll go home. I can always come back here later.”
Pewter disbelieved the promise, knowing how Harry could become embroiled in conversation. “That’s what she says now.”
Pushing open the clapboard-frame building’s white-painted wooden door, Harry stepped into a pleasant waiting room, framed posters on the walclass="underline" Toulouse-Lautrec, World War I recruiting posters, shipping posters, airline posters from the forties, color stills of the company’s video work, all dramatic, colorful.
An attractive woman, early forties at the most, came out of her office.
“Hello, I’m Mary Minor Haristeen, Harry. I called earlier about revamping my farm website.”
“Yes, of course. Rae Tait. Sit down here. I’ll show you some of our work on the big screen.” She wasted no time pointing to a chair, upholstered in dark beige.
“When I called, I didn’t think you’d work this fast.”
“Well, Mrs. Haristeen, your project intrigued me. Sunflowers. Hay. Organic farming is becoming good business. You need to look at a few sites first. I hope we’re the firm for you, but, well, see for yourself.”