“Who’s going to claim the body?” BoomBoom, having undergone a funeral, was keenly aware of the technical responsibilities.
“I don’t know but I’ll be sure to mention that to Susan.”
“I’ve gone over that last day a thousand times in my head, Harry. I’ve gone over the week before and the week before that and I can’t think of a thing. Not a sign, not a hint, not anything. He kept me separate from the business but I had little interest in it anyway. Concrete and pouring foundations and roadbeds never was my idea of thrills.” BoomBoom lit her dark Nat Sherman cigarette. “If he roughed a man up in business, I wouldn’t know.”
“Kelly might have crossed someone. He was very competitive.” Harry picked up a crystal ashtray with a silver rim around it and felt its perfect proportions.
“He liked to win, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t think he was unfair. At least, he wasn’t with me. Look, Harry, we’ve known each other since we were children. You know for the last few years Kelly and I were almost more like brother and sister than husband and wife, but he was a good friend to me. He was . . . good.” Her voice got thick.
“I’m so sorry. I wish I could say or do something.” Harry touched her hand.
“You’ve been kind to call on me. I never knew how many friends I had. He had. People have been wonderful—and I can be hard to be wonderful to . . . sometimes.”
Harry thought to herself that someone was being anything but wonderful. Which one? Who? Why?
BoomBoom mused, “Kelly would have been amazed to see how many people did love him.”
“Perhaps he knows. I’d like to think that.”
“Yes, I’d like to think that too.”
Harry put the ashtray back. She paused. “Have the cops gone over everything? His office?”
“Even his office here at home. The only thing on his desk the day he died was the day’s mail.”
“May I peek in the office? I don’t want to be rude, but I think if there’s anything that we can do to help Rick Shaw, we should. Perhaps if I poke around I’ll find a clue. Even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes.”
“You’ve read too many mysteries sitting there in the post office.” BoomBoom stood up and Harry did also.
“Spy thrillers this year.”
“And for that you went to Smith College?” BoomBoom felt Harry should do more with her life, but who was she to judge? BoomBoom truly was the idle rich.
The walnut paneling glowed in the bright afternoon light. Neatly placed in the middle of an unblemished desk pad bound by red Moroccan leather was Kelly’s mail.
“May I?” Harry didn’t reach for the mail.
“Yes.”
Harry picked it up and rifled through the letters, including the postcard, the beautiful postcard of Oscar Wilde’s tombstone. She replaced the mail as she found it. At that moment she was more concerned with a certain evasiveness BoomBoom displayed toward her. She and BoomBoom got along well enough, but today there was something not right between them.
It wasn’t until later, when she had left BoomBoom and was rumbling past the tiny trailer park on Route 240, that she realized Maude had received a postcard of a beautiful tombstone as well. With the same inscription: “Wish you were here.” My God, someone was telling them, I wish you were dead. It was a sick joke. She put her pedal to the metal.
“Hey, slow down,” Mrs. Murphy said. “I don’t like to drive fast.”
Harry careened into Susan’s manicured driveway, hit the brakes, and vaulted out of the truck. The cat and dog hit the turf too.
Susan stuck her head out the upstairs window. “You’ll kill yourself driving that old truck like that.”
“I found something.”
Susan raced down the stairs and flung open the front door. Harry told Susan what she discovered, swore her to secrecy, and then they called Rick Shaw. He wasn’t there, so Officer Cooper received the information.
Harry hung up the phone. “She didn’t seem very excited about it.”
“They shag so many leads. How’s she to know if this is anything special?” Susan laced her sneakers. “Let’s hope another one doesn’t show up.”
“Damn, I forgot to look.”
“For what?”
“For the postmark on Kelly’s card. Was it from Paris?”
“Let’s go to Maude’s shop and look at the postcard she received.”
Maude’s shop, closed, beckoned the passerby. The window boxes burst with pink and purple petunias. The sidewalk was swept clean.
Susan tried the door. “Locked.”
Harry circled to the back and jimmied a window. The minute she got it open, Mrs. Murphy shot up on the windowsill and gracefully dropped into the shop. Harry followed and Susan handed Tucker to her and then followed herself.
The back room, an avalanche of packing materials, greeted them.
“I didn’t know there were that many plastic peanuts in the world,” Susan observed.
Harry made a beeline for Maude’s rolltop desk in the front room.
“What if someone sees you there?”
“They can report me for breaking and entering.” Harry snatched the mail, which was kept in boxes on the desk. “Found it!” She quickly flipped over the postcard. “Well, there goes that theory.”
“What’s it say?”
“Come here and read it. No one’s going to arrest us.”
Susan joined her. “‘Wish you were here.’ ” She then noticed the postmark. “Oh.” It read Asheville, North Carolina.
Harry slid open the center drawer. A huge ledger book, pencils, erasers, and a ruler rattled. She reached for the ledger book. Sometimes accounting columns tell a story.
Footsteps on the sidewalk made her freeze. She closed the drawer.
“Let’s get out of here,” Susan whispered.
When Harry returned to the post office and relieved Dr. Johnson, she called BoomBoom and asked her to look at the postcard. It was marked PARIS, REPUBLIC OF FRANCE.
Baffled, Harry put down the receiver. Okay, the postmarks confused her. Still, she wasn’t giving up. Those postcards were important. Whoever the killer was, he or she had a sense of humor, maybe even a sense of the absurd. Even the disposition of the corpses was macabre and trashy.
She racked her brain to think of who had a sharp sense of humor: everybody in Crozet except for Mrs. Hogendobber.
The shroud of mortality drew closer. Who could be next? Was she in danger? If only she could discover the link between Kelly and Maude, maybe she’d know that her friends would be safe. But if she discovered that link, she wouldn’t be safe.
13
Harry was taken aback by the number of people milling about the railroad track. Getting there wasn’t easy. People had to drive out to 691 and then cut right on 690. Bob Berryman, Josiah, Market, and Dr. Hayden McIntire glumly stared at the tracks.
When Mrs. Murphy and Tucker sped into the brush, Harry barely noticed.
Harry joined the men. She cast her eyes downward and saw blood spattered everywhere. Flies buzzed on the ground, feasting on what hadn’t soaked up. Even the creosote odor of the railroad ties didn’t blot out the sweltering odor of blood.
Josiah grimaced. “I had no idea that it could be so bad.”
“Considering how many pints of blood are in the human body—” Hayden spoke like a physician.
Berryman, sweating profusely, cut him off. “I don’t want to know.” He backed away to his four-wheel-drive Jeep. Ozzie howled inside, furious that he couldn’t get out. Berryman roared out of there, tearing hunks of earth as he went.
“I didn’t mean to upset him,” Hayden apologized.
“Don’t worry about it.” Market pinched his nose. “Damn, are we ghouls or what?”
“Of course not!” Josiah snapped. “Maybe we’ll find something the police didn’t. How much faith do you have in Rick Shaw? When he reads, his lips move.”