Both Harry and BoomBoom waved as they trotted to their respective seats, the animals with them.
Harry closed her eyes. "I swear I felt something whizz by the left side of my face. It may not be important . . . but sitting here, I, yes, I remember a whizz, kind of."
"The whoosh you felt, it could have just been a noisemaker unfurling." Boom turned to Harry from her seat.
"I didn't turn around. My focus was on the game." She threw up her hands. "But then why wasn't there a dart or a metal point in his neck?"
"H.H. pulled it out?"
"That I would have seen. No." Harry shook her head.
"What if the killer jabbed his neck when we were leaving or even in the parking lot then pocketed the knife or needle or whatever?" BoomBoom mimicked a quick jab.
Pewter had returned to the hairline crack in the wall. She sniffed. The trickle of water continued, no doubt from melting snow. Pewter could smell the dampness.
As the humans left she scampered after them. They carefully walked along the circular hall in the direction of the main entrance. Tucker stopped, lifted her nose.
Mrs. Murphy stopped, too. "Oh."
"I smell it, too." Pewter, eyes large with excitement, followed the dog now in front of a locked door.
Tucker put her nose to the ground. "Blood. Fresh."
The two cats inhaled deeply. "Very, very fresh."
"There are other smells. This must be a broom closet." Tucker processed the information her incredible nose was compiling. "Disinfectant. Soap, bar soap. I can smell water, not much, but there must be a sink in there. But the blood, yes, quite strong and human. Oh, and perfume."
The cats crowded at the door, curling their upper lips toward their noses to direct more scent into their nostrils. Yes, a hint of perfume.
"The janitor could have cut himself." Pewter lifted her nose for fresher air. "Guess it would be a feminine janitor. One who favors floral perfume."
"Pewter, there's a great deal of blood. Someone is dying."
"Or dead," Mrs. Murphy grimly responded.
Tucker cocked her head, swiveling her ear to catch any sound at all. "Not yet. I can hear the human breathe, ragged."
"Mother, someone is hurt. Hurt bad!" Mrs. Murphy screamed.
"Help!" Pewter hollered.
"Help!" Tucker added, her bark frantic.
Harry stopped, turning toward them. "Come on."
"Help!" they all bellowed.
Harry turned to BoomBoom. "Ever since Tucker took to chasing that rat at O'Bannon's Salvage yard she imagines she is the world's greatest ratter. 'Course, she never caught the rat in the first place."
"Help!"
"That's it!" Harry strode back, reached down, picking up a cat in each arm. "I have had about enough of this." She charged out of the building, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter wriggling. BoomBoom hurried in front of them.
She opened the door for Harry to toss the cats in the Expedition. They jumped up and down as though on pogo sticks. Pewter screamed her head off.
BoomBoom, now in the driver's seat, tried to soothe them. "There, there, she'll be right back."
"Oh, BoomBoom, you have no idea what's wrong," Mrs. Murphy cried.
Harry ran back into the building where Tucker was making a fuss. As it was Saturday no one was around to pay attention to the dog. The girls were still at practice.
Seeing Harry, Tucker stood on her hind legs, scratching at the door.
"Get a grip," Harry furiously commanded.
"You've got to open this door!"
Harry, as if understanding, placed her hand on the doorknob. Locked. "That's one rat that will live another day."
"No, no, someone is dying in there. I can hear them breathe. I know that sound! I know the-"
"Tucker, we are going to have a Come to Jesus meeting right here if you don't behave." She bent down, grabbing Tucker and carrying the twenty-eight-pound whimpering dog to the car.
"They are so upset." BoomBoom worried that they might be sick.
"Spoiled is more like it." Harry shut the door to the passenger side. "I apologize."
Tears welled up in the dog's brown eyes. "Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, I tried."
"You're the best dog, Tucker, the very best dog." Mrs. Murphy licked Tucker's face as Pewter rubbed against her white chest.
"I feel so terrible. That person is dying."
19
The day faded. A sliver of white creamy cloud snaked over the Blue Ridge Mountains, with rich, deep gray-blue clouds filling the sky above. When the sun set, the white transformed to scarlet, brilliantly offsetting the mountains. So unusual was the sight that Harry, pitchfork in hand, at the manure pile mostly unfrozen thanks to the sudden thaw, stopped to appreciate the panorama.
The manure pile, contained in a pit housed by three sides of pressure-treated two-by-fours, was step one in Harry's mulch process. Once the manure and shavings cooked for a year, she'd take the front-end loader of the tractor and move it all to the second pit. If the year had had a lot of moisture, the pile would be ready to use and sell. She made a little pin money selling a pickup-truck load for thirty dollars. If it had been a drought year, she waited another year for the mixture to properly cook.
The best fertilizer was goose, duck, or chicken manure if you could find someone to haul it and spread it. But it was expensive by Harry's standards-sometimes as high as eighteen dollars a ton-so she used it sparingly on the few trouble spots she had in her own garden. Her pastures, lush in all but the worst droughts, displayed the effects of her management.
She'd built two such pits for her neighbor, Blair. He had cattle so his mulch/manure was pretty good, too. She tended it for him since he was on the road quite a bit. Their deal was that she could haul out six pickup loads each year which she then mixed into her own piles.
The steam climbed upward as she turned the pile. The temperature skidded with the sunset. There'd be a hard frost tonight.
Mrs. Murphy, fluffed out against the encroaching cold, sat on the corner of the pit, above it all.
"You know, the birds pick through here. You don't need to spend money buying special feeds for them."
"You're a good companion, Mrs. Murphy." Harry observed the scarlet sky deepen to a blood red with mauve tendrils snaking through the color.
"Thank you. I have other ideas on saving money. Feed Pewter less." She could say this without an accompanying yowl because Pewter was in the kitchen consoling Tucker, utterly morose because she couldn't help the injured human.
"Beautiful." She scratched the cat behind the ears. "Why would anyone watch television when they can see this? The human race would rather watch something made up than something real. Sometimes I wonder why I'm human. Really, Murphy, I find my own species bizarre."
"'Stupid' is closer to the mark." The cat inhaled the peaty odor of pit mingled with the sharp tang of cooling air. A silent large figure flew out of the barn cupola. The owl began her first foray of the evening. She circled Harry and Murphy, banked, then headed toward the creek.
"Damn, she is big. She gets bigger every year." Harry respected the predator; her huge claws, balled up, could knock a person off balance. If the claws were unleashed the owl could slice open flesh as easily as a butcher with a knife.
"And haughty."
"Who said that?" the owl, who had keen hearing, called as she soared away from the barn. "Who-o-o. You-ou-ou, Mrs. Murphy. Groundling."
"I cannot tell a lie. It was I."
"You two must be talking to one another," said Harry, who half-believed they were. She grew up in the country and knew animals could communicate. She just didn't realize how effectively they did.
"Come on, Mom, time to close up the barn. Head to the house."
Harry carried her pitchfork back to the toolshed. She checked the outside water troughs to make sure the heaters, built especially for that purpose, were floating. It was a great luxury not to chop ice in the morning. These small units either dropped to the bottom of the trough or floated, depending on the brand. Plugged into an electrical outlet, they could keep the water temperature above freezing. Horses appreciated that because they didn't want to drink ice-cold water. Less water consumption meant greater chances of colic or impaction. Harry didn't feed pellets which she thought added to winter digestive problems. She only fed lots and lots of high-quality hay-she swore by it and her horses stayed happy and healthy, no gut problems.