“Both women used you as their architect.”
She leveled her eyes at Harry’s. “Both had to put up with Mike McElvoy, too.” She sighed. “He’s not going to kill anyone. He’d be killed first.”
“You never know.”
When Harry left, she drove straight to Poplar Forest. On the way she told her four-legged friends of the conversation with Tazio. They appeared interested. At Jefferson’s summer home, Robert Taney told Harry she could come inside, but she declined. The killer just couldn’t have been that stupid to go back into the house with Melvin Rankin in there. They may have lurked in some part of the house, initially slipping by Melvin when he was elsewhere, but they surely wouldn’t go back in after the dirty deed. Harry felt certain about that.
“Let’s see if we can find the rats.” Mrs. Murphy bounced across the lawn, tail to the vertical.
The three trotted around the house to the south portico.
Tucker called out in a loud voice, “Randolph, come on out.”
“Randolph, Sarah.” Pewter meowed.
Mrs. Murphy, hearing footsteps above, said, “They can’t come out from the west window. People are up there.”
“Drat!” Tucker sat down, looking around.
A minute later a deep voice called from the west side of the arcade under the south portico. “You again.”
Two bright dark eyes appeared by the edge of the arcade. Then two more. The rats, half obscured, could duck back in if people walked outside. The last thing they needed was someone squealing about rats. They belonged here more than the humans, those two-legged twits.
“Did you find a bloody towel last Saturday?” Mrs. Murphy drove right to the point.
“What’s it to you?” Randolph twitched his whiskers.
“Our mother thinks—well, her friend in prison thinks—maybe the killer used a towel. The lady in prison is a nice lady. The one killed was nasty. Think of her as rat poison. But if we can’t find the real killer, our friend may well spend the rest of her life behind bars.”
“You ask a lot of questions, and you don’t bring treats.” Randolph stalled, sorry that he and Sarah had initially offered information about the cigarette without exacting a price.
“Wait.” Mrs. Murphy, lightning-fast, ran to the truck.
The open windows were high, but she jumped into the truck bed, onto the cab roof, then insinuated herself through the open window. She clamped her jaws around a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, Harry’s favorite candy, and leapt out the window onto the ground below.
“Fast,” Sarah observed. “We’d better remember that.”
Randolph boasted, “We’re almost as big as she is.”
Mrs. Murphy dropped the candy before Randolph.
“These are good!” He pushed it toward his spouse. “Half for you, my sweet. You’re sweeter than the candy.”
Pewter looked nauseated at this, but Tucker shot her a “behave” look.
“Your mother doesn’t smoke, does she?” Sarah was hopeful.
“No, sorry.” Mrs. Murphy prayed the candy would do the trick.
“We found a bloody towel, soaked, under the front steps.”
“Could we have it?” Tucker panted expectantly.
Randolph laughed. “We ate it, you ninny.”
“Tasty. Fresh.” Sarah licked her lips as she admired the bright waxed candy wrapper, just waiting to rip into it.
“Ah” Tucker understood. “We hoped to use it as evidence. It was the murdered woman’s blood.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Randolph, Sarah, are you sure you didn’t see anyone?” Mrs. Murphy felt desperate, wanting to help Tazio because she liked the architect but mostly doing this for Brinkley.
“Only other thing we found was the cigarette. We knew someone was in the house besides Melvin. But it’s nothing to us. And we have to be careful.”
“Yes, you do.” Pewter finally opened her mouth.
“Why didn’t you tell us about the towel in the first place?”
“I don’t put all my cards on the table first time I talk to someone,” Randolph sensibly replied.
“Thank you. You’ve been a big help.” Mrs. Murphy meant that, but if Tucker could have carried the towel back to the truck, what a victory that would have been.
It wouldn’t have proven Tazio’s innocence, but it would have been one more piece to fit into the puzzle.
Once all were back in the truck, Harry closed the windows, turned on the ancient AC since the day had begun to warm, and drove away.
“You know, buddies, Carla and Penny must have had some secrets worth killing for, but I can’t think of any beyond paying off Mike. And we don’t know that. Think. If he did take money, he wouldn’t have put it in the bank. Too obvious. If it was a sex thing, his word against theirs. He knows construction. I wonder if he’s hidden things, like the rat stuff Robert Taney showed us when we walked through.” She turned on the radio, low. “Maybe I’d better go over Tazio’s blueprints. And then, if there’s something in the blueprints that looks promising, maybe I’d better see if I can get into the houses. Course, if you know what you’re doing, you can create all kinds of hiding places.”
“Why would he hide something at one of their houses?” Pewter, like the others, felt disappointment over the towel.
As if understanding the gray cat, Harry said, “He’d hide it in his truck or, more likely, his home.”
Seeing Tazio’s state had spurred Harry onward.
“I hope she doesn’t break into his house.” Tucker’s brown eyes showed deep worry.
“For once, I agree with her.” Mrs. Murphy watched the road, looking for cats walking about houses or sleeping in windows. “The stakes are high and Tazio is a friend. Whatever Mom does, I’m doing it with her.”
Harry reached to the center of the bench seat. “Hey, where’s my Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup?”
No one uttered a peep.
At a stoplight Harry looked on the floor. If the animals had eaten her candy, the wrapper would be shredded. Not a trace. “I can’t believe that. Someone reached into my truck and stole my Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup!”
29
Saturday, October 4, was glorious with sunshine and radiated with the first flush of color, which would peak in about a week. Oaks blushed orange, yellow, russet; maples screamed scarlet. Zinnias stood huge and colorful. Willows bent over in yellow.
Herb called an emergency vestry-board meeting. The spectacular weather provoked him to keep a tight rein on it, because he wanted to be outside himself.
At eight in the morning, Harry, Susan, Folly, BoomBoom, and Nolan Carter showed up, so Herb had his quorum. Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker also attended, but the exhaustive discussion of the furnace choices drove the animals down the hall, the thick carpet pleasing underfoot.
Elocution demonstrated how to hit the wall with four feet and do a flip. Cazenovia and Lucy Fur also performed this acrobatic feat, and Mrs. Murphy got the hang of it. Pewter observed but declined the opportunity.
“Come on, Pewts, it’s fun.” Mrs. Murphy hit the wall again, four clear pawprints on the light-beige paint.
Pawprints covered both sides of the hallway wall, because the three Lutheran cats practiced their skills daily. Herb pretended not to see all the marks, because then he’d have to kneel down to clean them. He could bend down just fine. It was the getting up that ached.
“Nolan, oil’s your business. I would expect you to vote for the oil furnace as opposed to a heat pump,” Herb genially teased him, although all were preoccupied with recent events.
Nolan, whose waist was expanding but not yet fat, stroked a neat Vandyke, which looked good on him. “Tell you what, there are two sides to this issue. The first is always what is cost-effective over the long run. The second is what provides the most efficient heat.” He laid his palm flat on the big report that Tazio had prepared before the Poplar Forest fund-raiser horror. “A heat pump works great until it becomes bitter cold, down in the teens. Then your electric bill skyrockets and, for whatever reason, the heat is insufficient.”