Cazenovia, thinking about all this and remembering the conversations women had with Poppy, piped up, “Who was number one if Penny is number two?”
“Dr. Wylde.” Lucy Fur stated this with conviction.
“But he wouldn’t have been blackmailed.” Mrs. Murphy felt sure of this. “He’d stood up to death threats before. I don’t think he was number one.”
“Little Mim,” Pewter declared.
“More likely, but I don’t know.” Mrs. Murphy flicked the tip of her tail. “What I do know is that the other women who have been paying off have not gone to Rick. Herb knows those of his parish. He can’t be the only minister hearing their stories. The other thing is that Harry will blunder right into it. We’ve got two of our people to protect.”
30
“Why don’t you buy your own car?” Susan grumbled as she drove her Audi station wagon from the vestry-board meeting. “Here it is Saturday, a perfect day for chores and errands, and I’m hauling your little white butt around.”
“Too much money.” Harry affected a prudent and pious tone.
“Your husband will buy you a car if you want one.”
“It seems…” She thought for a moment. “Excessive.”
“So I drive out to your farm, pick you up, bring you to St. Luke’s, and now we’re cruising around because you want to enjoy how great my wagon rides. I’ve spent three dollars in gas just picking you up.”
“I’ll pay you.” Harry wrinkled her nose. “Besides, I take you places in my truck. And I just discovered my truck needs a new alternator, so it’s in the shop. You can drop me off on the way home.”
“Your F-150 that was foaled in 1978? It’s not a bad ride. Better than your dually. That thing will rattle your teeth.”
Harry nodded. “It may suck up gas, but it hauls the rig, hauls the flatbed. I can do a lot of farm chores with that, and it saves me buying another tractor. Blair lends me his big eighty-horsepower. I thought I might could buy it when he and Little Mim moved to Rose Hill, but he took the tractor. Good thing, because she was still using that old Massey Ferguson from the seventies, the one where the gears would lock up and you’d fly along. Scared the poop out of me when I saw it.”
“What is that old Massey Ferguson in horsepower?”
“One twenty.”
“Mercy.” Even though not a farmer, Susan, like most people in the area, had an appreciation of the equipment, maintenance, skill, and time it took to produce any crop.
Now that she and Harry were partners in the timber tract, she was learning a lot and she loved it.
“So, what’s your gas mileage?”
“I tell you this every time we go out.” Susan noticed a maple tree downtown in high orange-red color.
The trees and bushes in town usually peaked before the ones in the country, because town temperature was often five or more degrees higher due to building density, more asphalt roads, and more car and furnace emissions.
“Twenty-five miles to the gallon on the open road. Sometimes twenty-eight,” Tucker piped up, since she’d heard it so many times.
Susan patiently repeated these same numbers to Harry.
“Pretty good for an engine this big, machine this heavy.”
“You’re not old enough to get Alzheimer’s; maybe you have Halfzheimer’s,” Susan teased her.
“I remember. I like to hear you say it,” Harry teased her back.
“Funny, Ned took Owen to the office today, and I miss my little guy. We spend most every waking moment together.”
“Corgi love.” Tucker smiled.
“Don’t make me throw up.” Pewter faked a gag.
“Hairball! Hairball alert!” Mrs. Murphy jumped away in mock disgust.
“Better than a worm-hanging-out-of-your-butt alert.” Pewter’s pupils narrowed for a second.
“I have never had a worm emerge from my nether regions.” Mrs. Murphy was incensed.
“Oh, puh-leese Louise.” Pewter drew out the word. “I’ve seen spaghetti strings out of that anus.”
“Never!” Mrs. Murphy cuffed the gray cat, who slapped her right back.
“Get me out of here,” Tucker whined as she tried to climb into the passenger seat up front.
“No, Tucker.” Harry turned. “You two, stop it. If I have to crawl back there, there will be big trouble in River City. You hear me?”
“I hear you, but I’m not listening.” Pewter whacked Mrs. Murphy again.
Mrs. Murphy leapt onto the rotund kitty. Since Susan had put the seats down, the two now rolled all the way to the hatchback door.
“Susan, if you pull over, I’ll settle this.”
“Oh, let them have at it.”
“You’ll have blood in your car.”
“Harpy!” Pewter snarled.
“Liar!” Mrs. Murphy scratched.
The lightbulb switched on in Tucker’s brain, and she called out above their mutual insults, “What I want to know, Pewter, is what are you doing studying Mrs. Murphy’s anus?”
This produced the desired effect. Both cats stopped screaming and clawing.
Pewter disentangled herself from the tiger cat, huffed up to full blowfish proportion, and jumped sideways toward the corgi. “Death to dogs!”
“Don’t think about it.” Tucker, bracing herself, snarled.
“Harry will put you in mincemeat pie when I’m done shredding.” Her chartreuse eyes, pupils full to the max, glittered with fury.
Mrs. Murphy, who should have known better, leapt on Pewter from behind, and the two rolled back to the hatchback door again.
“All right!” Harry turned to Susan. “Let me settle this.”
Susan pulled off High Street into a bank parking lot. “They’ll scratch you.”
“They’d better not if they know what’s good for them.”
Harry opened her door. Hearing it slam, the cats perceived the situation. They parted, retreating to opposite sides of the back, and began grooming.
Harry flipped up the hatchback. “Just what in the hell do you two think you’re doing?” No feline response brought forth a human torrent. “It’s a privilege to ride in this station wagon. It’s a privilege to visit Cazenovia, Lucy Fur, and Elocution. And it’s a privilege to cruise around town. If I hear one squeak, one snarl, one ugly meow, you two worthless cats are never riding in this station wagon again. Worthless. You haven’t caught one mouse in the barn, and I know they are there.”
Mrs. Murphy replied, “We have a deal with the tack-room mice. They aren’t destructive. They’re—”
Pewter interrupted. “She hasn’t a clue.”
“You shut up, fatty screw loose. You’re the reason we’re in this predicament.”
“Me! Me!” Pewter stood up.
“Don’t you dare.” Harry grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, shaking her lightly, the way her feline mother would have done.
Releasing the gray cannonball, Harry peered intently at Mrs. Murphy, pointing her index finger right at her. All three animals knew what that meant. The next gesture would be a little smack on the fanny.
Harry shut the hatchback, returned to the front. “Susan, how do people with children do it? You had two.”
“Animals are more intelligent.” Susan laughed good-naturedly.
Harry wheeled around as if to catch the cats off guard. “I’m watching you.”
Silence.
They drove east on High Street. “How about I turn down by Fifth Street and I’ll pick up 64?”
“How about we cruise by Woolen Mills first?”
“What’s in Woolen Mills?”
“Mike McElvoy’s house.” Before Susan could protest, Harry rapidly said, “When we were at the Poplar Forest ball, Mike and Noddy came by. The usual small talk, and she kidded about his work shed. Said he’d spent as much money on that as she did remodeling the kitchen.”
“And?”
“She said it’s where he buries the bodies.”
“Harry, that’s a figure of speech.”
“Well, we can at least peek in it. Susan, remember Tazio told us he’s antiabortion, and might I remind you, Tazio is still in jail. What’s a drive by?”