“He’s not that bad,” Harry protested.
“Well, he’s not that good.” Hayden stuck up for Josiah.
Harry swept her eyes along the tracks. The cat and dog rummaged in the high weeds and then burst onto the tracks about one hundred yards west of where she was standing. At least they’re happy, she thought.
“We know one thing,” Harry stated.
“What?” Market pinched his nose again.
“She walked here.”
“How do you know that?” Josiah peered intently at her features.
“Because there’s no sign that the grasses are beaten down. If she’d been dragged there’d be a path even though it rained. A human’s body is literally dead weight.” The smell was getting to Harry and she moved away from the track.
“She could have been carried.” Josiah joined her.
“Have to be a strong man.” Hayden moved off the track too. “Don’t know if the killer is male or female, although men commit over ninety percent of the murders in this country, statistically.”
Josiah replied, “Not exactly. The women are too smart to get caught.”
Market, the last to leave even though the stench turned his stomach, doubted that. “Maude was a good five feet ten inches. The road’s back a stretch. The strongest among us was Kelly. The next strongest is Fair. No one else could have carried her, other than Jim Sanburne, and he has a bum back.”
“A four-wheel-drive could have come up here.” Josiah watched the animals as they moved closer.
“Cooper said no tire tracks,” Market volunteered.
“She walked? So what?” Josiah thrust his hands into his pockets.
“Where was Fair last night?” Hayden asked, none too innocently.
“Ask him,” Harry shot back.
“She walked out here in the middle of the night?” Market was thinking out loud. “Why?”
“She liked her jogging and usually ran along the track,” Harry told them.
“Damn good jogger to get all the way out to Greenwood,” Market said.
“In the middle of the night?” Hayden rubbed his chin.
“Beat the heat,” Josiah offered. “Hey, how about Berryman getting squeamish like that?”
“He wasn’t squeamish in school,” Market recalled. “Hell, I saw the trainer stick a needle in his knee once during a football game. Took a bad hit, you know. Twisted his knee a bit. Anyway, Kooter Ashcomb—”
“I remember him!” Harry smiled.
Kooter was an old man by the time Harry attended Crozet High.
“Yeah, well, Kooter stuck a hypodermic needle right in his knee and drew out the fluid. Played the rest of the game, too.”
“We win?” Harry wondered.
“You bet.” Market folded his arms across his chest. Market liked remembering playing fullback a lot more than he liked the present.
“Back to Maude.” One line of perspiration rolled down the side of Harry’s face. “Did she come out here alone? Did she come out here to meet someone? Did she come out here with someone?”
“I had no idea you were so logical, Harry,” Josiah observed.
“Obvious questions and I’m sure Rick Shaw and company have asked them too.” Harry wiped away the sweat.
“Wish we could find some tracks.” Hayden, not being a hunting man, wouldn’t even know how to look.
In the distance, the finger of a dark thundercloud hooked over the Blue Ridge.
“No tracks if you walk on the train bed.” Harry felt bad. The reality of Maude’s death, the blood, began to press on her head. She felt a throbbing at her temples.
“There’s nothing here”—Josiah’s voice dropped—“except that.” He pointed up to the stained site.
“But there is! There is!” Tucker barked.
Mrs. Murphy and Tucker swarmed over the site of the murder. Harry mistook this for attraction to the blood.
“Get out of there!” she shouted.
“Don’t be mad at them, Harry. They’re only animals,” Market chided her.
“There’s something here! That same smell is here!” Tucker barked.
Harry ran up to the dog and collared her. “You come with me right now!”
Mrs. Murphy ran alongside Harry. “Don’t do that! Come back. Come back and sniff!”
Harry couldn’t go back and it was just as well, because if she’d gotten down on her hands and knees to catch the scent she would also have seen a few strands of Maude’s blood-soaked hair missed by the Sheriff’s Department. That would have done her in.
Tucker and Mrs. Murphy had thoroughly investigated the area around the murder location. Not until they examined the exact site did they catch the faint amphibian odor. No track, no line. But again it was in one place, although this time there was more of it than a dot. There were a few dots, fading fast.
But no one would listen to them and they rode home in disgrace with Harry, who thought the worst of her best friends.
Later that evening the thunderstorm lashed Crozet. Marilyn Sanburne was put out because the power failed and she had a soufflé in the oven. Jim, just back from his business trip, said the hell with it. They could eat sandwiches. He was also being driven wild by the telephone ringing. As the mayor of murder hamlet, as one reporter called it, Jim was expected to say something. He did. He told them to “fuck off,” and Mim screamed, “I hate the ‘f’ word.” She would have left to go visit one of her cronies, but the storm was too intense. Instead, she flounced into her room and slammed the door.
Bob Berryman drove around aimlessly. A huge tree ripped out by the high winds crashed across the road. He avoided hitting it. Shaken, he turned the truck around and drove some more. Ozzie sat next to him wondering what was going on.
14
BoomBoom Craycroft thought the worst of everybody. Much as she tried to keep her emotions to herself they kept spilling over, and since she wouldn’t express her sorrow, what she expressed was anger. Right now she was furious with Susan Tucker and she took a sabbatical on manners.
“I don’t give a good goddam what you think. And I don’t care if whoever killed Maude killed Kelly. I want whoever killed Kelly and I’m going to get him.”
Susan hung her head. To a passerby it would appear she was addressing her golf ball with her five iron, an unusual choice off the tee. “BoomBoom, calm yourself. You were the one who wanted to play golf. You said sitting home would drive you crazy.”
BoomBoom, warming up, swung her wood and dug up a clump of Farmington Country Club turf. If the greensman had been there he would have suffered a coronary. Susan, wordlessly, replaced BoomBoom’s divot, then hit a beauty off the tee.
“Been a woody and you’d be on the green,” BoomBoom advised. “I don’t know why I kept this golf date with you. You do the screwiest things on a golf course.”
“I still beat you.”
“Not today you won’t.” BoomBoom stuck the tee in the ground, put the ball on it, and without a practice swing, socked away. The ball rose with a pleasing loft and then veered left, only to disappear in the rough.
“Shit!” BoomBoom threw her club on the ground. Not satisfied, she stamped on it. “Shit! Fuck! Damn!”
Susan held her breath during the indiscriminate rampage, which concluded with BoomBoom turning her expensive leather golf bag upside down. Balls and gloves fell out of the open zippers. Exhausted from her fury, BoomBoom sat on the ground.
“Honey, it’s the pits.” Susan sat next to her and put her arm around her. “Would you like to go home?”
“No. I hate it there more than I hate it here.” BoomBoom shook when she inhaled. “Let’s play. I feel better when I’m moving. I’m sorry I yelled at you when you were giving me the third degree. I didn’t mind Rick Shaw so much but those grotesque news-people ought to be horsewhipped. I slammed the door in their faces. I just didn’t want to hear it from you.”
“I am really sorry. Harry and I think if those of us who know one another as friends snoop around we might find something. It’s a horrendous strain and I haven’t helped.”