Muskrats plied their trade, skippers darted on the glassy pools, while blue herons and green herons fished along the banks. Crayfish burrowed to get away from those long, lethal bills. Frogs croaked, turtles slept in the sun.
The late-afternoon warmth lulled everyone except the insects. As the humans would approach, small clouds of tiny black no-see-ums would flare up, occasionally aided by a hornet buzzing by to a football-size gray home hanging overhead from a sycamore limb.
The deer slept in small coverts, the squirrels dozed in their nests, and the groundhogs, already plump, waddled in the small meadows that dotted the woods like green jewels.
The goldfinches and purple finches chirped and darted about along with bluebirds, indigo buntings, and nuthatches. Cultivation was close, and the birds made the most of having the best of both worlds. Then, too, finches are active little creatures with bright black eyes, missing nothing.
The cats ignored the chirping and chatter. Never let a bird know it’s getting to you.
The humans diligently looked for any suspicious sign—a weathered rock pile, a beaten-down mound. Nothing presented itself except for the occasional faded beer can, a few old glass soda bottles from long before they were born. Susan could never resist that stuff and soon she was toting her treasures, begriming herself in the process.
They walked about three miles away from the borders of Aunt Tally’s land before finally turning back.
Harry and Fair each took some of Susan’s finds as she was tottering. They turned off the old path, walked up the narrow deer path, emerging on top of a rolling, low foothill about a mile from Harry’s westernmost border. These three had grown up here. Dropped from a helicopter anywhere between the Afton Gap and Sugar Hollow, they could find their way home.
At the westernmost corner of Harry’s land, where it touched both the land of Blair Bainbridge and Aunt Tally, stood Blair and Little Mim. An old quince tree marked the spot where the three pieces of land touched one another.
Harry waved, little bits of dirt falling on her hair from the brown bottle she carried in her right hand. In her left she had a cobalt-blue medicine bottle. Blair and Little Mim, surprised to see them all, waved back.
Within minutes they were at the old quince tree.
“What are you all doing back here?” Blair said.
“Look!” Susan put down her pop bottle. “Nehi. Now, when was the last time you saw that? Or Yoo-Hoo? And then I’ve got this old Pepsi bottle here. I mean, this one’s even before Joan Crawford took over the company.”
“Joan Crawford ran Pepsi?” Little Mim thought that was odd.
“Yes.” Susan, who avidly read movie-star biographies, supplied the information. “She married the president of Pepsi, and when he died she took over. And look at this blue. Have you ever seen such a blue?” She pointed to the flat-sided cobalt-blue bottle that Harry carried.
“Susan, what do you intend to do with all this?” Little Mim, smiling, wondered.
“Wash them out, put them on my windowsill, and I’ll—”
“Move them because you won’t be able to clean around them,” Harry finished her sentence.
“No, I won’t. I’ll put stuff in to root.”
“I know what this is about,” Fair genially said. “Ned will get so tired of the clutter, he’ll finally build you that little greenhouse you’ve always wanted.”
“Hey, I never thought of that.” Susan brightened, then her smile faded. “No, he won’t. I’m getting the interior of the house painted. You can’t believe how expensive it is. For just three rooms and the trim it’s almost eight thousand dollars.”
“Big rooms,” Harry simply said.
“Hell, Harry, it’s not the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. They aren’t that big.”
“If it were the Hall of Mirrors, Susan, you wouldn’t need to get much painted.”
“Will you shut up.” Susan playfully put her hand over Harry’s mouth, which now had a dirt smear. “Oops.”
“Maybe that’s where the expression ‘Eat dirt’ came from.” Blair laughed.
Harry wiped off her mouth, but a little of the grit lodged between her teeth. “Yuck.”
“Are you checking your borders?” Fair asked Blair.
Little Mim answered for him. “He’s trying to figure out how much land he really has, since this old place was always described as two hundred and thirty acres more or less.”
“Surveying costs so much that folks just approximated and no one at the courthouse much minded. It’s such a nice piece of land.” Harry picked up a blade of grass to chew to get the earthy taste out of her mouth.
“Remember Herbie’s old uncle?” Little Mim recalled a slender gentleman, the last Jones to inhabit the farm.
“Bryson,” Susan said. “He was so courtly.”
“He used to sit up in the family graveyard and read Greek. He had a wonderful faculty for languages but wasn’t much of a farmer or businessman.” Fair had liked the old gentleman.
“Used to drive the Rev crazy because he couldn’t go to seminary and look after the farm, too. You keep the cemetery looking good for Herb,” Harry complimented Blair.
“I enjoy it. I like being outside.” Blair, although one of the highest-paid models in America, was growing weary of flying to locations over the world, dealing with the egos of photographers and other models.
“Harry, I haven’t seen you since Saturday.” Little Mim pushed a lock of hair from her eyes. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Harry shrugged. “I felt terrible for Barry.”
“And they still don’t know what killed him?” Blair put his arm around Little Mim’s shoulders.
“Yancy performed the autopsy.” Fair mentioned the coroner. “Sent off tissue samples to Richmond. I ran into him this afternoon and he hadn’t heard anything back, but sometimes these things can take a month or longer depending on how backed up they are down there.”
“Did he find anything on the body?” Blair, like everyone else, was curious.
“Not that he mentioned. He said Barry had no marks on him except for his throat. And here’s the really strange part: The wound was clean. Clean as if it had been surgically created. No saliva. No bits of rust.” Fair shook his head. “Yancy hopes that something will show up in the blood work.”
“It’s so clean it almost seems premeditated.” Little Mim, intelligent like all the Urquhart clan, pursed her lips.
“By an animal?” Blair handed Harry his kerchief, since she hadn’t removed all the dirt.
“The human animal,” Mrs. Murphy quietly said.
11
A pair of brilliant turquoise eyes peered out of the passenger side of the car. Sissi, a gray tuxedo cat, was irritated that her human, Rose Marie Dunlap, was chatting at the gas pump at the Amoco station.
Sissi accompanied the always well-turned-out Rose Marie on her regular trips from Washington, D. C., to Crozet. She enjoyed riding in the car but she enjoyed arriving at their destination even more, the farm of Rose Marie’s daughter, Beth Marcus.
“I haven’t seen you in ages.” Rose Marie smiled.
“You know it’s been years since I’ve been back here.” Marshall Kressenberg, florid, bent over to shake her hand. “I was coming back from Lexington, Kentucky, and thought I’d stop by to see some of my old running buddies. Course, I should have called first. Everyone’s out and about.” He accented “out and about” the Virginia way, which also sounds Canadian. “You’re looking well.”
And indeed, Rose Marie Dunlap’s appearance—petite, fresh, and healthy—belied her eighty-six years.
“I keep busy. For one thing, Sissi keeps me busy.”
At the sound of her name Sissi meowed, “Let’s go to Beth’s now!”
Marshall laughed as the cat continued to jabber. “Well, I’m so glad to see you.” He opened the door to his truck.