“She does,” Alicia said with conviction. “She’s going to stick by him; she’ll try to come up with alibis. Just wait until this goes to court.”
“How can she do that?” Harry threw up her hands.
Quietly, Reverend Jones replied, “How can she not? We have thousands of years of written history extolling women who put their love for a man before the common welfare. She was being a ‘good wife.’ ” He looked at the celebrants intently.
Harry plowed right in. “It’s one thing if infidelity occurs, but it’s quite another if you know your husband or son or daughter is killing people. How can what she’s doing be construed as good?”
“It’s a confusing issue. Standards are shifting,” Alicia wisely stated. “Personally, I don’t know what I’d do. I mean, do any of us know until it happens to us?”
“She’ll run the empire when he goes to jail.” Franny shrugged.
“Well, it’s entirely possible she’ll be on the carpet, too. How much did she know? Is she an accessory?” Cooper knew all too well how these things worked.
“This will drag on and drag on,” said Franny. In the meantime, Harry’s got a Subaru WRX STI, because I doubt anyone is going to think to take it back at the moment. Safe and Sound owns it, right?” She laughed.
“Guess they do,” Harry replied.
“Well, make hay while the sun shines,” Franny enjoined her.
“That’s just what I’ve been doing.” Harry swept her arm to indicate the cut hay fields, to much laughter.
Just then, the blue jay returned. The light on the iced-tea pitcher, mirrored almost, fooled him, and he flew smack into it, falling between the glasses and the sugar and lemon.
For a fat girl, Pewter burned the wind jumping on that table.
She’d just put her paw on the bird’s plump chest when Harry scooped her up.
“That’s my bird. I’ve waited years for that monster!”
Fair picked up the bird, stroking its head, feeling its neck. “Not broken.”
A bright black eye opened. The blue jay moved his head.
Pewter wriggled in Harry’s arms, her rage escalating.
“Get your tail out of the cake icing.” BoomBoom gingerly picked up the tail.
“Mine. That bird is mine!” Pewter reached out.
“No,” Fair said, as he plucked a baked oat off a muffin and put it into the bird’s beak. Then he threw the blue jay up. A flutter of wings and the thief landed on his branch.
Swallowing the oat, he stared straight down at the distraught gray cat. “Ha.”
“I will kill you,” Pewter vowed. “I don’t care how long it takes. I will kill you.”
Mrs. Murphy walked over to her emotional friend, leaned on her shoulder, and said, “Pewts, don’t you worry. Someday that blue jay will get his. You know that crime doesn’t pay.”
Dear Reader,
I sometimes worry that readers mistake my characters for me. For what it’s worth, I’m pretty middle-of-the-road and am appalled at the entrenched dishonesty, self-centeredness, and lack of concern for our citizens that I perceive in Washington. That loss of confidence and belief knows no party, really. I think most of us are stunned.
In the interests of clarity, I am not Harry, although we share a love of farming and nature. In most other respects, we are markedly different. Still, Harry and I both live in central Virginia, where people are not liberal. They aren’t to the right of Genghis Khan, either. Sure, a few are, but most are not. By and large, the residents of Virginia adhere to Jefferson’s ideaclass="underline" “That government is best which governs least.”
Thank you for keeping up with Sneaky Pie and the Crozet family. My hope is that Sneaky Pie will run for president. I trust her; she’s sensible and reliable.
As for me, I’m doing my best to keep body and soul together, as are you. No matter what folly humans are committing, the great blue heron flying in front of a sun setting behind the Blue Ridge Mountains restores me. I hope you have something equal to such beauty in your life.
Always and ever,
Rita Mae Brown
Dear Reader
Cats do like riding in cars and trucks, but we need to learn to do it as kittens. If I’m not looking out the dash, I like to get up in the rear window.
This story interests me because of zooming around with my human. I’ve even ridden in her lap when she drives the tractor. Not often, as it’s a rough ride, but I do like the view from high up.
Pewter, on the other hand, only goes along for the ride because she’s afraid she’ll miss something. If she gets scared, she makes a mess. She should just stay home.
Hope all is well where you are.
Yours,
Sneaky Pie
Dear Reader
She’s full of poop, not me! I can ride with the best of them.
Sincerely, honestly, truthfully,
Pewter
Dedicated to
Mrs. Harriet Phillips, Ph.D.
A Smith graduate, a wonderful mother,
and a steadfast friend.
I don’t know what I’d do without her.
Acknowledgments
Erica Eversman tops the list, but she tops my list always. The Automotive Education & Policy Institute is hers (www.autoepi.org). This good woman drove all the way from Akron, Ohio, to stay in my barn, calling it headquarters despite no air-conditioning or Internet service. She soldiered on in punishing heat, brought me all manner of hard copy, and had the incredible patience to explain just what’s at stake with this issue.
We are so accustomed to seeing any of the Big Three auto manufacturers as the bad guys. In this case, they are not. For one thing, they don’t want you to die in their vehicles. Let’s leave it at that.
Thanks seem inadequate for all that this tall, blonde smarty has done for me and by extension for all Americans, although you may not know about it. Erica and others are fighting the good fight for auto safety.
Mrs. Donna Packard, Academic & Professional Services, always prepares my manuscripts. For this mystery, she actually researched some agriculture questions. Nothing like a last-minute call. She came through, but then Donna always does, whether it’s for her profession, her children, her husband, or her friends.
Thanking a jewelry store—well, is there a woman who doesn’t love a good jewelry store? Keller & George has served Charlottesville for well over one hundred years. Bill Liebenrood of Keller & George, whom I think of as the Big Cheese, asked me to kill him off in this book so he wouldn’t have to go to work anymore. Only Bill. I like him so much I just couldn’t do it, but perhaps in subsequent books I can make him suffer.
I am especially grateful to Bill and Gayle Lowe for their kindness to me during a spectacular reversal in my life. It didn’t help them, or Keller & George, either, but they handled it with their good humor and grace, and I am forever in their debt.
Wherever you live, I hope you are surrounded by good people, as I am here in central Virginia. You see people in business circumstances, social, and it’s pleasant. But when the you-know-what hits the fan, I am overcome with just how helpful and genuinely caring people are. Even better, how they are all busting with ideas, many of which find their way into Sneaky’s books.
Lucky cat. Lucky me.
Ever and always,