“Hey, I don’t know. This is all new to me.” Harry sat down, suddenly tired.
“Divorce is a process of detachment, most especially detachment from his ability to affect you.”
“He sure as hell can affect me when he doesn’t send the check.”
Maude’s eyes rolled. “Playing that game, is he? Probably trying to weaken you or scare you so you’ll accept less come judgment day. My ex tried it, too. I suppose they all do or their lawyers talk them into it and then when they have a moment to reflect on what a cheap shot it is—if they do—they can wring their hands and say, ‘It wasn’t my idea. My lawyer made me do it.’ You hang tough, kiddo.”
“Yeah.” Harry would, too. “Not to change the subject, but are you still jogging along the C and O Railroad track? In this heat?”
“Sure. I try and go out at sunrise. It really is beastly hot. I passed Jim this morning.”
“Jogging?” Harry was incredulous.
“No, I passed him as I ran back into town. He was out with the sheriff. Horrible as Kelly’s death was, I do think Jim is getting some kind of thrill out of it.”
“I doubt this town has had much excitement since Crozet dug the tunnels.”
“Huh?” Maude’s eyes brightened.
“When Claudius Crozet finished the last tunnel through the Blue Ridge. Well, actually, the town was named for him after that. Just a figure of speech. You have to realize that those of us who went to grade school here learned about Claudius Crozet.”
“Oh. That and Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, I guess. Virginia’s glories seem to be in the past, as opposed to the present.”
“I guess so. Well, let me take this big Jiffy bag and some colored paper and get out of your hair and get Mrs. Murphy out of your best basket.”
“I love a good chat. How about some tea?”
“No thanks.”
“Little Marilyn was in today, all atwitter. She needed tiny baskets for her mother’s yacht party.” Maude burst out laughing and so did Harry.
Big Marilyn’s yacht was a pontoon boat that floated on the ten-acre lake behind the Sanburne mansion. She adored cruising around the lake and she especially liked terrorizing her neighbors on the other side. Between her pontoon boat and her bridge night with the girls, Mim kept herself emotionally afloat, forgive the pun.
She’d also gone quite wild when she redecorated the house for the umpteenth time and made over the bar so that it resembled a ship. There were little portholes behind the bar. Life preservers and colorful pennants graced the walls, as well as oars, life vests, and very large saltwater fish. Mim never caught a catfish, much less a sailfish, but she commissioned her decorators to find her imposing fish. Indeed they did. The first time Mrs. Murphy beheld the stuffed trophies she swooned. The idea of a fish that big was too good to be true.
Mim also had DRYDOCK painted over the bar. The big golden letters shone with dock lights she had cleverly installed. Throw a few fishnets around, a bell, and a buoy, and the bar was complete. Well, it was really complete when Mim inaugurated it with a slosh of martinis for her bridge girls, the only other three women in Albemarle County she remotely considered her social equals. She’d even had matchbooks and little napkins made up with DRYDOCK printed on them, and she was hugely pleased when the girls noticed them as they smacked their martini glasses onto the polished bar.
Mim enjoyed more success in getting the girls to the bar than she did in getting them to her pontoon boat, which also had gold letters painted along the side: Mim’s Vim. With the big wedding coming up, Mim knew she had the bargaining card to get her bridge buddies on the boat, where she could at last impress them with her abilities as captain. It wasn’t satisfying to do something unless people saw you do it. If the bridge girls wanted good seats at the wedding, they would board Mim’s Vim. Mim could barely wait.
Little Marilyn could happily wait, but being the dutiful drudge that she was, she appeared in Maude’s shop to buy baskets as favors, baskets that would be filled with nautical party favors for the girls.
“Have you ever seen Mim piloting her yacht?” Harry howled.
“That captain’s cap, it’s too much.” Maude was doubled over just thinking about it.
“Yeah, it’s the only time she removes her tiara.”
“Tiara?”
Harry giggled. “Sure, the Queen of Crozet.”
“You are wicked.” Maude wiped her eyes, tearing from laughter.
“If you’d grown up with these nitwits, you’d be wicked too. Oh, well, as my mother used to say, ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.’ Since I know Mim, I know what to expect.”
Maude’s voice dropped. “I wonder. I wonder now if any of us know what to expect?”
6
The coroner’s report lay opened on Rick Shaw’s desk. The peculiarity in Kelly’s body was a series of scars on the arteries into his heart. These indicated tiny heart attacks. Kelly, fit and forty, wasn’t too young for heart attacks, but these would have been so small he might not have noticed when they occurred.
Rick reread the page. The skull, pulverized, yielded little. If there had been a bullet wound there’d be no trace of it. When the men combed through the mixer no bullets were found.
Much of the stomach was intact. Apart from a Big Mac, that yielded nothing.
There was a trace of cyanide in the hair samples. Well, that was what killed him but why would the killer mutilate the body? Finding the means of death only provoked more questions.
Rick smacked together the folder. This was not an accidental death but he didn’t want to report it as a murder—not yet. His gut feeling was that whoever killed Kelly was smart—smart and extremely cool-headed.
Cynthia Cooper knocked.
“Come in.”
“What do you think?”
“I’m playing my cards close to my chest for a bit.” Rick slapped the report. He reached for a cigarette but stopped. Quitting was hell. “You got anything?”
“Everybody checks out. Marie Williams was right where she said she was on Monday night, and so was BoomBoom, if we can believe her servants. BoomBoom said she thought her husband was out of town on business and she was waiting for him to call. Maybe, maybe not. But was she alone? Fair Haristeen said he was operating late that evening, solo. Everyone else seems to have some kind of alibi.”
“Funeral’s tomorrow.”
“The coroner was mighty quick about it.”
“Powerful man. If the family wants the body buried by tomorrow, he’ll get those tissue samples in a hurry. You don’t rile the Craycrofts.”
“Somebody did.”
7
BoomBoom held together throughout the service at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church at the crossroads called Ivy. An exquisite veil covered her equally exquisite features.
Harry, Susan, and Ned discreetly sat in a middle pew. Fair sat on the other side of the church, in the middle. Josiah and Mim, both elegantly dressed in black, sat near the pulpit. Bob Berryman and his wife, Linda, were also in a middle pew. Old Larry Johnson, acting as an usher, spared Maude Bly Modena a social gaffe by keeping her from marching down the center aisle, which she was fixing to do. He firmly grabbed her by the elbow and guided her toward a rearward pew. Maude, a Crozet resident for five years, didn’t merit a forward pew, but Maude was a Yankee and often missed such subtleties. Market and Courtney Shiflett were in back, as were Clai Cordle and Diana Farrell of the Rescue Squad.