“Yeah, but will he win her back?” the tiger asked.
39
“No.” Sheriff Shaw shook his balding head for emphasis.
“Rick, they have a sound argument.” Mim defended Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber. “You and your staff aren’t familiar with the descendants of Thomas Jefferson or the personal histories of certain of his slaves. They are.”
“The department will hire an expert.”
“The expert is dead.” Mim’s lips pressed tightly together.
“I’ll hire Oliver Zeve,” the frustrated sheriff stated.
“Oh, and how long do you think that will last? Furthermore, he wasn’t exactly interested in pursuing this case, nor was he as interested in the genealogies as Kimball. Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber were working with Kimball already.”
“Fair Haristeen called me this morning and said you both ought to be locked up. I’ll make that three.” He cast his eyes at Mim, who didn’t budge. “He also said that whatever Kimball discovered must be threatening to somebody right now. And you all are obsessed with this Monticello thing.”
“And you aren’t?” Harry fired back.
“Well—well—” Rick Shaw stuck his hands in his Sam Browne belt. “Focused but not obsessed. Anyway, this is my job and I am mindful of the danger to you ladies.”
“I’ll work with them,” Cynthia Cooper gleefully volunteered.
“You women sure stick together.” He slapped his hat against his thigh.
“And men don’t?” Mim laughed.
“Yeah, I bet Fair chewed your ears off because he thinks we’re in danger. He’s being a worrywart.”
“He’s being sensible and responsible.” Rick fought the urge to enjoy another piece of Mrs. Hogendobber’s pie. The urge won out. “Miranda, you ought to go into business.”
“Why, thank you.”
“Does anyone know if there will be a service for Kimball?” Harry inquired.
“His parents removed the body to Hartford, Connecticut, where they live. They’ll bury him there. But that reminds me, Mrs. Sanburne, Oliver wants you to help him plan a memorial service for Kimball here. I doubt anyone will journey to Hartford, and he said he’d like some kind of remembrance.”
“Of course. I’m sure Reverend Jones will assist in this matter also.”
“Well?” Harry had her mind on business.
“Well, what?”
“Sheriff. Please.” She sounded like a clever, pleading child at that moment.
Rick quietly looked at Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber, then at Cynthia, who was grinning in high hopes.“Women.” They’d won. “The Coleses have agreed to allow us access to their libraries. The Berrymans, Foglemans, and Venables too, and I’ve got a list here of names that Kimball drew up. Mim, you’re first on the list.”
“When would you like to start?”
“How about after work today? Oh, and Mim, I need to bring Mrs. Murphy and Tucker along, otherwise I’d have to run them home. Churchill won’t mind, will he?”
Churchill was Mim’s superb English setter, a champion many times over. “No.”
“Pewter too.” Miranda reminded Harry of her visitor.
“Ellie Wood still hasn’t recovered from the pork roast incident. Which reminds me, I think she is distantly related to one of the Eppes of Poplar Forest. Francis, Polly’s son.”
Polly was the family nickname for Maria, Thomas Jefferson’s youngest daughter, who died April 17, 1804, an event which caused her father dreadful grief. Fortunately her son Francis, born in 1801, survived until 1881, but he, along with Jefferson’s other grandchildren, bore the consequences of the president’s posthumous financial disaster.
“We’ll leave not a stone unturned,” Mrs. Hogendobber vowed.
40
That evening, as Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, and Deputy Cooper worked in Mim’s breathtaking cherrywood library, Fair worked out in the stables. Book work soured him. He’d do it diligently if he had to, but he wondered how he’d gotten through Auburn Veterinary College with high honors. Maybe it was easier to read then, but he sure hated it now.
He was floating the teeth of Mim’s six Thoroughbreds, filing down the sharp edges. Because a horse’s upper jaw is slightly wider than the lower one, its teeth wear unevenly, requiring regular maintenance, or at least inspection. If the teeth are allowed to become sharp and jagged, they can cause discomfort to the animal when it has a bit in its mouth, sometimes making it more difficult to ride, and often this situation can cause digestive or nutrition problems because of the animal’s restricted ability to chew and break down its food.
Mim’s stable manager held the horses as Mim sat in a camp chair and chatted. “You made a believer out of me, Fair. I don’t know how I lived without Strongid C. The horses eat less and get more nutrition from their food.” Strongid C was a new wormer that came in pellet form and was added to a horse’s daily ration. This saved the owner those monthly paste-worming tasks that more often than not proved disagreeable to both parties.
“Good. Took me a while to convince some of my clients, but I’m getting good results with it.”
“Horse people are remarkably resistant to change. I don’t know why, but we are.” She pulled a pretty leather crop out of an umbrella stand. “How are the Wheelers doing?”
“Winning at the hunter shows and the Saddlebred shows, as always. You ought to get over there to Cismont Manor, Mim, and see the latest crop. Good. Really good.” He finished with her bright bay. “Now, I happen to think you’ve got one of the best fox hunters in the country.”
She beamed.“I do too. So much for modesty. Warren’s cornered the market on racing Thoroughbreds.”
“What market?” Fair shook his head. The depression, laughingly called a recession, coupled with changes in the tax laws, was in the process of devastating the Thoroughbred business, along with many other aspects of the equine industry. As most congressmen were no longer landowners, they hadn’t a clue as to what they had done to livestock breeders and farmers with their stupid “reforms.”
Mim spun the whip handle around in her hands.“I tell Jim he ought to run for Congress. At least then there’d be one logical voice in the bedlam. Won’t do it. Won’t even hear of it. Says he’d rather bleed from the throat. Fair, have you seen a reasonably priced fox hunter in your travels?”
“Mim, what’s reasonable to you may not be reasonable to me.”
“Quite so.” She appreciated that insight. “I’ll come directly to the point. Gin Fizz and Tomahawk are long in the tooth and you know Harry doesn’t have two nickels to rub together—now.”
He sighed.“I know. She absolutely refused alimony. My lawyer said I was crazy to want to pay. I do her vet work for free and it’s a struggle to get her to go along with that.”
“The Hepworths as well as the Minors have always been prickly proud about money. I don’t know who was worse, Harry’s mother or her father.”
“Mim, I’m—touched that you’d be thinking of Harry.”
“Touched, or amazed?”
He smiled.“Both. You’ve changed.”
“For the better?”
He held up his hands for mercy.“Now, that’s a loaded question. You seem happier and you seem to want to be friendlier. How’s that sound?”
“I wearied of being a bitch. But what’s funny, or not so funny, about Crozet is that once people get an idea about you in their heads, they’re loath to surrender it. Not that I won’t step on toes, I’ll always do that, but I figured out, thanks to a little scare in my life, that life is indeed short. My being so superior made me feel in charge, I guess, but I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t making my husband happy, and the truth is, my daughter detests me underneath all her politeness. I wasn’t a good mother.”
“Good horsewoman though.”
“Thank you. What is there about a stable that pulls the truth out of us?”
“It’s real. Society isn’t real.” He studied Mim, her perfectly coiffed hair, her long fingernails, her beautiful clothes perfect even in the stable. The human animal could grow at any time in its life that it chooses to grow. On the outside she looked the same, but on the inside she was transforming. He felt the same way about himself. “You know, there’s a solid 16.1 1/2 -hand Percheron cross that Evelyn Kerr has. The mare is green and only six, but Harry can bring her along. Good bone, Mim. Good hooves too. Of course, it’s got a biggish, draft-type head, but not roman-nosed, and no feathers on the fetlocks. Smooth gaits.”