Once the iced tea was poured and the herbed turkey sandwiches—along with extra turkey for the cats and dog—served, the two women sat down.
“Tucker found a bone.” Harry jumped right in.
“That’s what you said.” Miranda pushed over a jar of her homemade herbed mayonnaise should Harry want more.
“Did I?”
“When you called.” Miranda shook her head.
“I’m getting forgetful.” Harry frowned.
Miranda reassured her. “You have a lot on your mind and it’s a good mind. Don’t worry, you’re not losing your memory.”
Mrs. Murphy stoutly spoke up. “I worked hard this morning. More food, please.”
“Here, Murphy.” Harry gave her another morsel of turkey.
“Big Mim’s calling a gathering. She wants everyone at her house tomorrow evening.”
“About this?”
“No. Mim’s too smart to be that obvious. We are all to get there at six to go over details for Herb’s anniversary. He’ll come over at seven-thirty. You know Mim. She’ll find out as much as she can this way. It will appear spontaneous.”
“I don’t think Big Mim ever had a spontaneous moment.”
“Before you were born.” Miranda winked.
“Is that what happens, Miranda? I mean, as we go along in life there’s no time to be free, to just pick up and go.”
“And where would you go?”
Harry laughed. “I don’t know.” She dropped more turkey for each critter, then grew serious. “I know that bone was Mary Pat’s. I just know it.”
“My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Miranda quoted Second Corinthians, Chapter 12, Verse 9.
“What made you think of that?”
“I don’t know. It popped into my head. Happens to me a lot. Eventually I figure it out.” She dabbed the napkin at the corners of her mouth, light-pink lipstick transferring to the napkin. “I trust in the Good Lord’s messages.”
“Which reminds me, how was church today?”
“Wonderful, even if Ruthie Dalsky did forget her robe. She never sings off-key, so what’s a choir robe compared to that?” The ice cubes tinkled as she lifted the tall glass. “Harry, I think the Good Lord brought Alicia back for a reason and I think she’ll stay. She’ll move back.”
“You think she killed Mary Pat and will come to get justice?”
“No. I don’t know what I think. It’s a feeling.”
“Well,” Harry exhaled, “my feeling is, whatever my pets found will be in Tuesday’s newspaper.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No.”
“I helped,” Pewter boasted.
“Eat your turkey, turkey.” Mrs. Murphy tapped her with her right paw.
“If they find Ziggy Flame it will be a different—mmm, not a solution to all this, exactly, but a different take than if they don’t. Because if Ziggy isn’t up there with Mary Pat, then I believe she was killed because of him.” Harry thought out loud.
“Isn’t it you who says people are killed for love or money—not horses?”
“Ziggy, at the time of Mary Pat’s death, was just proving himself at stud. Had he lived he would have been worth a fortune. It’s funny, Miranda, I feel like I’m walking in a fog and I can see shapes up ahead but I can’t quite make out what they are. I know I’m getting closer. I know that if Mary Pat is up there, more than her bones will be pried loose. Someone is going to break.”
“It takes them longer, but they do figure things out,” Pewter said between chews.
“We haven’t figured it out yet, Pewts. We just know that the murders are related.” Mrs. Murphy reached up, her claws digging into the tablecloth.
“Murphy!” Harry rapped her paw but gave her another piece of turkey nonetheless. Then she gave Pewter and Tucker a piece, as well.
“If that is Mary Pat, someone is going to be pretty darn nervous,” Tucker said.
While Harry and Miranda visited with each other, Fair was glued to his computer. What he was finding was extremely interesting, and he kicked himself for not thinking of it earlier.
45
Newcomers to the country take some time to adjust to the pace of life. It’s not so much that it’s slower but that it often begins before sunup. If a person’s work is physical—like that of a farmer, a carpenter, a stone mason—folks from the North may think such a worker is lazy. Instead of working fast, the Southern worker keeps a slower but steady pace. It’s not until the Northerner labors in the heat that he or she can appreciate the wisdom of this approach.
Blair Bainbridge, when he first moved to Crozet from New York City, suffered the normal prejudices about Virginians. Being a gentleman, he kept them to himself. As years passed, he began to understand that people worked very hard but they didn’t make a show about it. He also began to understand that showing off your knowledge was not a good thing. The point was to bring people together, to be inclusive, not to set yourself above others. Even Mim Sanburne, for all her imperiousness, rarely tried to make someone else look stupid. As for Little Mim, her graciousness in the face of unpleasantness astonished him. In fact, the worse it got, the more gracious Little Mim became. That this was the ultimate social revenge had not yet occurred to him. Nor had it occurred to him that if he married Little Mim, there would still be things the family would never say in front of him. This was not because Mim, Jim, or Little Mim disdained Blair but rather because it took twenty years, at least, to comprehend the mere basics of manners and mores of Dixie. Just as aristocrats in old France had learned from birth how to move, how to address people, the various courtesies, and, above all, their own genealogy, so, too, did Southerners, regardless of station. It was bred in the bone.
Harry at six in the morning was inspecting the new beaver dam. She didn’t want to disturb their work, but if she ever could, she’d like to build a pond on this site with a small spillway below to the creek. Nature leeched out some of the water, but the beavers constructed a formidable dam, their lodges dotting the rough pond created by their effort. A blue heron and a green kingfisher worked the waters.
Green kingfishers are native to southern Texas and the tropics, not Virginia, but there was a beauty right on Harry’s farm. No doubt the shining fellow hadn’t read the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds.
On seeing the green kingfisher, his white collar immaculate, Harry made a mental note to call Nancy King, a friend who was an avid bird-watcher.
Insects buzzed around, squirrels romped, a doe with twin fawns raised her head from grazing to observe Harry and her companions. The doe often jumped into the large paddocks to graze with the horses. Sugar and Barry’s mares chatted contentedly under wide spreading oaks.
Crossing below the beaver dam, Harry scrambled up the creek bed. Trotting to the three-board fence line between her property and Blair’s, she put one hand on the top board and vaulted over, thrilled that she could do it. She’d been good at gymnastics in school.
Pewter scooted underneath. Mrs. Murphy, pretending to be one of the hunters, leapt between the lower board and the second board in the fence. Tucker, like Pewter, squeezed under.
They walked to the top of a low rise midway between the property line and Blair’s lovely farmhouse. The old Jones family graveyard, neatly set off by a wrought-iron fence with a curly filigree above the gate, promised peace when the end came. Bryson Jones, Herb’s impractical but beloved uncle, rested here, along with all the Joneses through the mid–eighteenth century. The married daughters over the centuries rested here, too. Surnames of Lamont, Taliaferro—pronounced Tolliver—and Sessoms slept with the Joneses. Sessoms is a Cherokee name, and the marriage of a Jones daughter to a Sessoms in the late eighteenth century became a cherished family story.