"I'm glad you have decisively reached that conclusion. Now how about the other one?"
"You're right"-her voice dropped, then rose again-"you are. But you know, I look around and I think I know everyone and they know me and then I remember that we still don't know who Charly Ashcraft's illegitimate child is, nor the mother, and that's a mystery of what, twenty years? I think about that and I think about other things and, well, I can't stand it. I can't stand not knowing things. Poor Fair, I drive him crazy."
Charly Ashcraft, the handsomest boy in Harry's high school class, had fathered two illegitimate children before he graduated from high school. The first one was never identified, nor was the young woman who was the mother. The second one was known to live out of town, but the unknown first child remained one of those mysteries that would every now and then crop up in conversations. Charly himself had been shot a few days before his twentieth high school reunion in a pure revenge killing. Many thought he had it coming.
"Forget Charly's child," Susan firmly said. "It's not possible to know everything about everybody."
"You're right, you know, and that kind of scares me. Do I even know myself? Does anybody?"
"Yes. If you want to learn, time teaches you."
"H-m-m."
Susan pulled into her driveway. "Think about what I've said."
"I will. I always think about what you tell me even if I don't agree."
Susan cut the motor. "And Harry, for God's sake, don't run around and tell people that H.H. and Mychelle were killed because they were lovers."
"I wouldn't do that."
"I guess you wouldn't but you did give me a jolt when you went straight for Tazio like that."
"She can take it."
"Why do you say that?"
"I've gotten to know her a little bit by being on the guild with her. She's tough."
"You know what bothers me?"
"What?"
"I don't think those murders have one thing to do with an illicit romance. I don't know why but I just don't. I'd feel better if they did. But I have this weird sensation that all this is about something else, something way out of our league."
As Susan rarely said things like that, Harry paid attention. She was usually the one with hunches, dragging Susan along.
"Could be."
"And because we can't imagine it, it's dangerous. I think what you don't know can hurt you."
"So you do think the murders are related?" Harry couldn't hide the note of triumph in her voice.
"Yes, I do, and once you've killed two people, what's a third?"
25
The basketball game that evening was a subdued affair made even more dolorous by a poor performance. UVA lost by seven points.
Mychelle's body had only been found that morning, but the story was already on the television news. Those not watching the news soon heard about it from their neighbors on the bleachers. People, being the curious creatures that they are, walked by the broom closet and stopped to stare. A few were disappointed that blood wasn't smeared on the floor.
Even Matthew Crickenberger, ever ebullient, was quiet. He handed out drinks as always but didn't have the heart to blow his noisemakers. BoomBoom dispiritedly shook her blue and orange pennant a few times but that was about it.
Fred Forrest, too shaken by Mychelle's murder, didn't attend the game.
After the game, Harry sprinted to her truck. She had talked with Fair on the phone earlier. Both of them decided this wasn't the night for him to take Harry and BoomBoom out for a drink.
The lights of the university receded as she rolled down Route 250 passing Farmington Country Club on the right, Ednam subdivision on the left. About a mile from Ednam the old Rinehart estate reposed on the left. Subdivisions like Flordon and West Leigh were tucked back into the folds of the land but much of it remained open. A sparkle of light here or there testified to a cozy home, a plume of smoke curling up out of the chimneys.
Harry loved leaving Charlottesville, rolling into the quiet of the countryside. She'd shift her eyes right and left searching for the reflection off a deer's eyes or a raccoon. Seeing that greenish glare, she'd slow down.
Then she reached the intersection of Route 250, which curved left toward Waynesboro and then Staunton. She took the right into Crozet, new subdivisions dotting the way into town. She passed the old food processing plant, currently empty and a cause for sadness. She passed the tidy row of small houses on the north side of the road. A tricky little curve ahead kept her alert. The supermarket was on the right and the old, still-intact train station perched on her left.
When she reached the intersection with the flashy new gas station she turned left. A blessed absence of traffic allowed her to poke along. She could see the lights on in Tracy Raz's apartment. He'd renovated the top floor of the old bank building, which he was buying. Closemouthed, he wouldn't tell anyone what he planned to do with the building but, knowing Tracy, it would be interesting. He hadn't even told Miranda, whose curiosity was reaching a fever pitch.
When she finally pulled into the long driveway to the farm she felt oddly happy. She loved her little part of the world and most of the people in it. She knew people's grandparents and parents, she knew their children, she knew their kith and kin including the ones not worth knowing. She knew their pets and their peculiarities-both the pets' and the people's. She knew who had the oldest walnut tree, the best apple orchard, who put up the best Christmas decorations, who was generous, who was not. She knew who liked the color red and who liked blue, who had money, who didn't, and who lied about what they did have. She knew who could ride and who couldn't, who could shoot and who couldn't. She knew the frailties of ego and body. She'd seen the ambitious rise, the lazy fall, and drink and drugs claim their fair share of souls. She'd watched the ebb and flow of gossip about any one person and had been a victim of it herself, divorce being a spectator sport. She'd seen undeserving people prosper occasionally and the deserving brought low through no fault of their own. She knew chaos was like a chigger. You couldn't see the little blighter but the next thing you knew, there it was under your skin biting the hell out of you.
Murder was chaos. Apart from the immorality of it, it offended her sense of order and decorum. Furthermore, a murder acted like cayenne pepper on her system, it speeded her up. It inflamed her own ego. How dare someone do this? And what really nibbled at her was the fact that whoever did thought they were smarter than other people. She flat-out hated that. She would not be outsmarted.
When she pulled up to the back door, she saw three pairs of eyes staring out from the kitchen window. She heard Tucker barking a welcome.
She sprinted to the door, walked through the screened-in porch, opened the door to the kitchen and a rapturous welcome.
"My little angels."
"Mom!" came the chorus.
"Kids, I'm going to figure out what's going on around here. We'll show 'em."
"She never learns." Tucker's ears drooped for a moment.
"And we do double duty. Her senses are so dull, without us she would have been dead a long time ago," Pewter complained.
"And so would we," Mrs. Murphy forcefully said. "She saved me from a sure death at the SPCA and she took care of you, too, Pewter. She talked Market Shiflett into giving you a home when he found you abandoned under the Dumpster. The fact that you ate him out of his convenience store is another matter. She saved us both. Where she goes, we go."
Pewter, chagrined, replied, "You're absolutely right. One for all and all for one."
Tucker laughed. "You all are so original."
As Tucker had been a gift to Harry from Susan Tucker, she didn't feel saved but she still felt lucky. Harry loved her and Tucker loved Harry, devotedly.
"Aren't we chatty tonight?" Harry picked up Murphy, kissing her forehead, and then she picked up Pewter, kissing her, too.