“Who’s going to be the postmaster?” Harry got right to the point.
“I hope you,” Pug said. “No doubt, Harry, our federal government in their wisdom may wish for you to take some extra administrative tests. I think it’s all pretty silly given that you’ve been the postmaster here—I mean, postmistress—ever since you graduated from college. But if there’s any way I can waive some of the paperwork for you, I will.”
“How long before you start building?”
“As soon as we get the permit through the county. August. Southwell Construction will be building it. Naturally we’ll buy our cement and stone from Craycroft Industries, who I bet will give us the best bid. That BoomBoom is a genius at bidding jobs.” BoomBoom’s business had been started by her late husband.
As Pug left, it was as though backwash from a large ocean liner was tossing about a slender craft.
“Damn!” Harry cursed.
“This place is home. A new building might be larger, but it’s going to be antiseptic.” Miranda returned the blueberry muffins and oatmeal cookies to the table.
“I don’t want to manage people.”
“Harry, you’d be good at it.”
“That’s nice of you to say, but I don’t think that I would. I know I fell into this job. But I like it.”
The summer that Harry graduated from Smith College, George Hogendobber, the postmaster in Crozet and Miranda’s husband, died. Harry took the job thinking it would be temporary. The position had first been offered to Miranda, but she was too emotionally distraught to consider a regular job.
Fair breezed through the door. “Distemper.” Then he noticed the expression on Harry and Miranda’s faces. “What’s wrong?”
They told him of Pug’s visit.
“. . . August. And you know what else?” Harry’s voice rose. “He didn’t say anything about Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Fair evenly replied.
“I think it does. I think he’ll wait until we’re ready to move across the street and then tell me my friends can’t work there. And if my cats and dog can’t go where I go, I’m not going. I don’t want any job without my pets.”
“Now, honey, don’t jump the gun,” Fair said soothingly.
“He’s right. Wait and see.” Miranda also sounded comforting.
The two cats and dog said nothing. They observed this exchange with great interest.
“Sorry. I guess I did jump to conclusions.” Harry exhaled deeply. “And I’m glad the raccoon only had distemper.”
Fair held up his hand. “That he did, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t also have rabies. We still need the report from Richmond, and that can take days.”
“Oh, great, half the town will be in a tizz.” Harry threw her hands up in the air.
“Well, you see all the town, not just half. You can tell them the results of my own little lab work.” Fair smiled.
“Where are you coming from, or maybe I should say where are you going?” Harry knew that Thursday mornings Fair operated at his clinic.
“Out to Big Mim’s. She’s culling her broodmares and wants my opinion. Then she’ll make her annual pilgrimage to Lexington, Kentucky, and pick up a few more black-type broodmares. You know Big Mim. But I’ll tell you, she really does have a gift for finding a good mare, and usually at an off time. I think even if Mim hadn’t inherited money, she could have made it herself.”
“Quite true,” replied Miranda, who had known Mim all her life.
“It’s so hard to make money in the horse business,” Harry opined.
“That it is, but some people do—I mean, some people apart from the people who have tons of money made from something else. Tavener has done well. Debbie Easter runs a good operation up there at Albemarle Stud. There are a couple of good folks out there with one or two well-bred stallions. They manage but, you’re right, it is hard. Think of the heartbreak in Kentucky in 2001 when all those foals died. First you fight to save the poor little critter’s life, then lose him or her. You have very little to take to the sales. It’s desperate. I admire anyone who sticks with it in this business.”
“Me, too,” Miranda agreed. “I had no idea it could be so difficult or I guess so emotional.”
Miranda was not a horse person, but in working with Harry she’d learned a little bit. Mostly she learned that Harry loved her three horses and would be happy sleeping out in the stable.
As Fair left to keep his appointment, Carmen Gamble, in her haircutting smock, picked up her mail. “Heard we’ve got rabies.”
“No, we don’t.” Harry went on to explain.
“Well, I know that Barry had rabies.” Carmen pressed her lips together. “And I have to go in and get a test, but Sugar says it won’t do any good. No one bit me.” A flicker of worry passed over her face.
Miranda, who liked Carmen, encouraged her. “Well, honey, it can’t hurt. And since the paper reported that Barry had rabies, people will get all worried. Not that you have a thing to worry about.”
“In a small little column. Like they don’t want us to panic, you know.” Carmen had jumped back to the newspaper report.
“There isn’t any reason to panic. For one thing, Carmen, Barry showed no signs of the disease. I imagine he would have, but he was still normal, for lack of a better word.” Harry wanted to head off a rabies scare.
“He would never listen to me.” A pair of expensive scissors hung from a holder on her belt. “He’d go out and pick up dead things. He’d work without gloves. Like the time he nearly got killed with the old Massey-Ferguson tractor. He had on an old T-shirt and he leaned over the PTO. The only thing that saved him when the shirt got caught, it was so worn it ripped right off him instead of pulling him into the PTO, you know. I mean, people get killed with spreaders and all kinds of stuff. The PTO whirls and sends them right into the tractor attachment. He never listened to anything I ever said.”
“He must have listened to some things, Carmen, as you are so pretty. Men tend to listen,” Miranda warmly said, because she knew Carmen was more upset about Barry than she let on.
“Men think they know everything.”
“Some do. Life usually takes care of them,” Miranda again spoke.
“Took care of Barry.”
“Who had it in for him?” Harry asked.
“Me.” Carmen slapped her mail on the counter. “He must have irritated someone else. Someone more violent. All I ever did was throw a spray bottle at his head. But Barry could stick his nose in the wrong business. Kind of like you, Harry.”
“Gee thanks, Carmen.”
“Well, I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, it came out backward.”
“You’re digging that hole deeper,” Harry, somewhat offended, said.
“Barry would go through my mail. My drawers. He was nosy that way. He didn’t respect privacy. You’re not like that—except you do go through our mail, of course, but you don’t open it.” Carmen dumped junk mail in the trash can as she babbled on. “Barry would even open my glove compartment in the car. I don’t know what he thought he would find.”
“Love letters.” Miranda smiled. “Like I said, you’re very pretty. He was probably nervous.”
“Barry?”
“Yes.” Miranda nodded.
Harry asked, “Do you think he was nosy like that with other people? Like rooting around at St. James Farm?”
“Uh”—she thought a moment—“yeah, I expect he was.”