“Sure you can. Buy a pumpkin.”
The neighbors and friends laughed, and Brinkley barked from the car, which set off Tucker in the Volvo.
More cars pulled in.
“Wow. Big day,” Harry noted.
“I’d better go inside and help out Lolly at the cash register,” Hester said. “She’s easily overwhelmed.”
With a pumpkin in the back of the Volvo, Harry smiled all the way home. She glanced in her rearview mirror to see Hester still talking to Cindy and Heidi. Obviously, the good woman hadn’t made it back into her store nor could Cindy get in her car.
Later that evening, Cooper turned in to the driveway to Harry’s farm. The lights were still on. She stopped her SUV at the barn just as Tucker rushed out to greet her. Both Harry’s station wagon and Fair’s truck were parked by the barn.
As Tucker accompanied her, she opened the screened porch door, then knocked on the kitchen door.
Within a minute, Fair, smiling, opened the door. “Hello, neighbor.”
“Hi, Fair. Forgive me for not calling first.”
“Are you just coming home from work?”
“Long day, but you know all about long days.”
He nodded. “Madam is in the living room and I’m on my way to the barn, if you need me.”
Cooper entered the simple well-proportioned room with high ceilings. The fireplace gave off an inviting scent: burning pear-wood. The cats lounged on the back of the sofa.
Harry, board on her lap, was drawing.
Setting that aside on the coffee table, she asked, “Are you still mad at me?”
“No. I got over being mad at you when you showed me the scarecrow at Number 9.”
“Any luck?”
The taller woman shrugged. “No, but I didn’t expect the decorator to come at me with a meat-ax. She was quite nice, actually.”
“Isn’t that weird? I mean, the exact outfit.”
“Yes, it is.”
“So what’s next?”
“Tracking down clients. Rick questioned everyone at Morrowdale the day you and Fair found the body on their property. They were horrified, but no one had driven out that way, so they hadn’t seen it. Everyone on the farm was questioned.” She sat down across from her friend.
“You have a lot of patience,” Harry complimented her. “You’re dogged and determined.”
“I have to be. I live next to you.”
Harry laughed. “Hey, look at my little garden drawing. Maybe I’ll get it right this time.”
“You taught me to plan my garden in the fall or winter, and so I have. Along with trying to focus on this case, I’m going through the possibilities.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“With my garden, I can always use your help. With the case, I live in fear.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“Yes, you are,” Mrs. Murphy said.
“Let’s say you have a way of stumbling onto things like the Number 9 scarecrow today,” said Coop. “What if the killer had been the decorator? Or someone in there observed you studying the scarecrow? Someone involved in this murder. You can’t take chances like that.”
Harry didn’t reply.
“Harry?”
“I know you’re right.”
“Knowing Cooper is right doesn’t mean she’ll stop,” said Pewter.
“We know so little,” said Coop. “This could be a revenge killing. If you dig enough into people’s lives, you eventually find someone who can’t stand them or someone who is unbalanced.”
“Kind of scary,” Harry mumbled.
“Well, it’s almost Halloween.” Pewter giggled.
“I dug down a little deeper.” Cooper crossed one leg over the other, pulled at her anklet to stretch her leg. “Hill loved fly-fishing. Had a two-thousand-dollar fly rod. How can a fishing rod cost that much?”
“Beats me.” Harry held up her hands.
“Me, too. I don’t need one,” Pewter bragged, lifting her head off her arm.
Tucker was astonished at such a bold-faced lie. “What? You can’t fish.”
“I didn’t say I fished. I wait for Mom to open a can of tuna. Now, that’s real fishing.”
Mrs. Murphy laughed at her gray friend.
“Two thousand dollars.” Cooper dropped her crossed leg. “Boxes of flies. He was very organized and had quite a few books on fishing, according to the team that searched his house today. Fishing was his passion in life, so it seems. On his computer we found what you would expect—a list of clients, a list of other accounting firms and legal firms as well as IRS agents for his area. Pretty cut and dried. Oh, one strange thing: Hester Martin’s name. No tagline, nothing, just ‘Hester Martin’ and the farm stand address, phone number, and her email.”
“Did you talk to Hester about him?”
“Drove over earlier today. She said she knew him some. He was a member of the Upper Mattaponi tribe. She seemed a little bit resentful at being questioned. I don’t know. Maybe she was in a bad mood. That was the extent of it.”
“Hester does attend those annual powwows. Every year she says she’s going. Never says why or what happens.” Harry thought a moment. “She’s not a tribe member, but she’s so interested in proper use of the land, I think that’s the real draw.”
Cooper furrowed her brow. “She told me she’s always had an interest in the Virginia tribes. Her mother was a Sessoms, which is a Cherokee name.”
Harry drew a long breath. “That’s right. I think my mother once mentioned it back when I was in fifth grade.”
“How can you remember fifth grade?”
“Because that’s when we learn about the peoples who were here before we came. I loved it.”
“Anyway, that was that. Hester was shocked that such a nice fellow, as she put it, was killed. As far as she knew, he wasn’t a crook. Said Josh Hill always treated her kindly.”
“Coop, did you know there are eleven Virginia tribes?”
“I do now. I started looking this stuff up to see if there might be any connection at all to Hill’s bizarre death. It’s terrible.”
“His murder, sure,” Harry responded.
“No. The way the Virginia tribes are pushed around. The Commonwealth only recognizes eight tribes and the federal government doesn’t recognize Virginia tribes at all. It really stinks.”
“That and much else.” Harry sighed. “I guess the feds didn’t take responsibility until after the 1870s. After all the Indian Wars, they had to do something. And Virginians with Native American blood were denied official status by the federal government. Since the seventeenth century, many Virginia Indians had intermarried with European descendants. Every Sessoms I know has blue eyes, bright blue eyes like Hester. Anyway, this gets the feds out of any form of repayment or protections as near as I can tell.”
“That doesn’t let the Commonwealth off the hook,” Cooper shrewdly said.
“Doesn’t.” Harry returned to the murder. “Well, you know a bit more than yesterday.”
“Just enough to make this more confusing.” Cooper suddenly smiled. “But you know, sooner or later, a picture emerges. You get a feeling. For all the legwork in the world, for all the computer checks and cross-checks, I still rely on that hunch. It will come.”
“Maybe it has something to do with fish. A two-thousand-dollar fly rod.”
“Harry, you can be really awful.”
“I know.”
“So true!” Pewter sat up to give her remark emphasis.
That same evening, glittering stars pierced the night. Looking out the tall, high windows of the old schoolhouse, Hester Martin could vaguely make out the obelisk in the cemetery a mile down the tertiary state road. Occasionally a truck would pass. She thought she heard a coyote.