But Flatface, like Mrs. Murphy and the vixen, was a predator. It was easy for predators to talk to one another honestly.
They discussed Barry Monteith and Sugar Thierry both having rabies.
“Something over there,” Flatface said. “And if it’s over there it may well spread throughout the county.”
“That’s just it. I asked the red vixen if there were any reports among the foxes. She said no, and same for the raccoons and beaver.”
“What about the skunks?”
“It’s difficult to ask them.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.
“I’ll perch in a tree and ask next time I see one.” Flatface, true to the myths, was very wise. “And Sugar had no memory of being bitten?”
“No.”
“The silver-haired bat can bite you and you’d never know it.”
“Fair, Paul, and Tavener helped at St. James when the health department went into the cottages, barns, and outbuildings to look for bats and catch them to test them, but I heard—and this is really strange—there were none.”
Flatface turned her head almost upside down, then right side up. “Ah, that gets the kinks out.”
“There are all those caves in the Shenandoah Valley. I mean not just the Luray Caverns but caves all over. Just right up over these mountains. I know they’re full of bats. If you have any friends over there, maybe they could ask the bats if they know about rabies among them.”
“No owl will go into those caves. Fetid. Why humans do it is beyond me. The air’s not fit to breathe.”
“I thought some of them had fresh air piped in.”
“Mrs. Murphy, never breathe where there are bat rookeries. This is something every owl learns as an owlet. I pass it on to you.” Flatface walked along with Mrs. Murphy for a few paces, her side-to-side rolling gait amusing to the cat, who nonetheless respected how fear-inducing Flatface was in her natural element, the air.
The cat told her about Mary Pat’s remains.
“Ah, well, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. That was a long time ago. Before my time or yours.” Flatface lifted her head, opening her beak. “Storm. Be here within the hour.”
No sooner had she spoken than a light breeze tumbled down the mountains, ruffling Flatface’s feathers and lifting up Mrs. Murphy’s fur.
“If you do hear anything, tell me.” The tiger cat watched as the owl stood to her full height, opening her wings.
Just as Flatface lifted up, she said, “I will. Now, see if you can’t keep Harry from playing detective.”
“I’d be a miracle worker,” Mrs. Murphy called up.
“Hoo, hoo, HA.”
26
Emotions are messengers.” Carmen, her own nails buffed to a high luster, filed down BoomBoom’s. “And I realized that the anger I felt was just covering up the sorrow and the loss. Which meant I had a lot of love, and I can love. I just have to get through this.”
“What are you going to do?” BoomBoom leaned back in the comfortable chair, the light jazz music in the background competing with hair dryers and conversation.
“Review my relationships. Not just the last one but all of my relationships with men. My father. My brothers. I have unrealistic expectations.” She breathed in through her nose, as a thin, colored cigarette was firmly clamped between her lips. “And I like bad boys. I’ll like a nice guy for a while and then I get bored.”
Since this was Carmen’s beauty parlor, she would damned well smoke if she wanted to and she defied the “health Nazis,” as she called them, to stop her.
“Don’t we all?” BoomBoom laughed, her bosom, and the reason she endured her nickname, heaving upward.
“I suppose. And I suppose they have some pretty stupid ideas about us.” Carmen put BoomBoom’s left hand in a slanted bowl so her fingertips would be washed in emollients.
“I know.” BoomBoom, born and raised in the country, did know. Having graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with honors, she was well educated and intelligent. Her major had been English, so if she had not married very well, she could have been taught to do just about anything. However, women as beautiful as BoomBoom always marry well unless they are stone stupid.
Carmen hopped to a variant of her topic: men. “Well, that Dr. Langston is as cute as a bug’s ear. He said these days very few doctors can diagnose rabies or even Lyme disease because they mimic other diseases, and he said another hard one is syphilis. He said they all have some things in common, but I said I was a lot more worried about AIDS, and he said he was, too. These little dots of whatever a virus is can evolve quickly. It’s like they have intelligence.”
“It is strange and frightening.” BoomBoom closed her eyes, her long lashes dark against her suntanned skin.
“Boom,” Carmen’s voice rose.
“What?”
“Want me to shut up? I can go on, I know. And I’m upset over Sugar dying, so I’m blabbing more than usual. I just open my mouth and whatever I’m thinking pops out.”
“I’m thinking, too.”
“Boom,” Carmen lowered her voice to a whisper, “have you ever been truly in love?”
“In high school.” BoomBoom laughed, opening her eyes.
“Who?”
“Charlie Ashcraft. That lasted two months.”
“He was gorgeous, though. Died the death he deserved.” Carmen snapped her mouth shut like a turtle, for Charlie had seduced and abandoned women for all of his thirty-seven years until it finally caught up with him in the men’s locker room at Farmington Country Club. “One has few defenses against such male beauty. People say that about you.”
“Oh, that I have male beauty?” BoomBoom giggled.
“Hey, hold still.” Carmen squeezed BoomBoom’s right hand tighter. “You know what I mean. Men can’t resist you.”
“Men are easy. Now, seducing women, that would be a challenge.”
“Boom!” Carmen pretended to be scandalized, then lowered her voice again. “Would you?”
“I don’t know. All I know is I’m very, very happy alone. Do you know, Carmen, I haven’t been alone since I graduated from college? Even after Kelly died, I had one affair after another. This New Year’s I made a resolution to take a year off. I might go out, I might date someone steadily, but I am not sleeping with him. I’m not making any promises until I arrive at next New Year’s.”
A long, long pause followed, then Carmen dipped BoomBoom’s right hand into another slanting bowl. She reached for a terry-cloth towel, removed BoomBoom’s left hand, rubbed it vigorously. “I don’t think I could do it.”
“Be alone for a year?”
“I’m too scared.”
“Didn’t you just say that emotions are messengers?”
“Yes.”
“Fear is a big, big messenger. Pay attention. If you listen, fear will bring you courage.”
Carmen slathered BoomBoom’s left hand in a thick pink cream. “But when I’m alone, things rattle around in my head. I need someone to love me.”
“You need you to love you. And you know who taught me that without trying?” BoomBoom said as Carmen shook her head. “Harry.”
“Harry?”
“When her marriage broke up, she put her head down and kept working. She didn’t run out and grab the first man who winked at her. And she’s been alone for years now. And she kept her mouth shut. Still does.”