Officer Cooper rubbed her temples.“Genealogies drive me bats.”
“Our answer rests somewhere with Jefferson’s sisters and brother Randolph, or with one of his grandchildren,” Harry posited. “Do you believe Randolph was simple-minded? Maybe not as bad as Elizabeth.”
“Well, now, she wasn’t simple-minded. Her mind would wander and then she’d physically ramble about aimlessly. She wandered off in February and probably died of the cold. Poor thing. No, Randolph probably wasn’t terribly bright, but he seems to have enjoyed his faculties. Lived in BuckinghamCounty and liked to play the fiddle. That’s about all I know.”
“Miranda, how would you like to be Thomas Jefferson’s younger brother?” Harry laughed.
“Probably not much. Not much. I think we’re done in. Samson’s tomorrow night?”
43
Pewter grumbled incessantly as she walked with Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker to work. The fat cat’s idea of exercise was walking from Market’s back door to the back door of the post office.
“Are we there yet?”
“Will you shut up!” Mrs. Murphy advised.
“Hey, look,” Tucker told everyone as she caught sight of Paddy running top-speed toward them. His ears were flat back, his tail was straight out, and his paws barely touched the ground. He was scorching toward them from town.
“Murph,” Paddy called,“follow me!”
“You’re not going to, are you?” Pewter swept her whiskers forward in anticipation of trouble.
“What’s wrong?” Mrs. Murphy called out.
“I’ve found something—something important.” He skidded to a stop at Harry’s feet.
Harry reached down to scratch Paddy’s ears. Not wanting to be rude, he rubbed against her leg.“Come on, Murph. You too, Tucker.”
“Will you tell me what this is all about?” the little dog prudently asked.
“Well spoken.” Pewter sniffed.
“Larry Johnson and Hayden McIntire’s office.” Paddy caught his breath.“I’ve found something.”
“What were you doing over there?” Tucker needed to be convinced it really was important.
“Passing by. Look, I’ll explain on the way. We need to get there before the workmen do.”
“Let’s go.” Mrs. Murphy hiked up her tail and dug into the turf.
“Hey—hey,” Tucker called, then added after a second’s reflection,“Wait for me!”
Pewter, furious, sat down and bawled.“I will not run. I will not take another step. My paws are sore and I hate everybody. You can’t leave me here!”
Perplexed at the animals’ wild dash toward downtown Crozet, Harry called after them once but then remembered that most people were just waking up. She cursed under her breath. Harry wasn’t surprised, though, by Pewter’s staunch resistance to walk another step, having been quickly deserted by her fitter friends. She knelt down and scooped up the rotund kitty. “I’ll carry you, you lazy sod.”
“You’re the only person I like in this whole wide world,” Pewter cooed.“Mrs. Murphy is a selfish shit. Really. You should spend more time with me. She’s running off with her no-account ex-husband, and that silly dog is going along like a fifth wheel.” The cat laughed.“Why, I wouldn’t even give that two-timing tom the time of day.”
“Pewter, you have a lot on your mind.” Harry marveled that the smallish cat could weigh so much.
As the three animals raced across the neat square town plots, Paddy filled them in.
“Larry and Hayden McIntire are expanding the office wing of the house. I like to go hunting there. Lots of shrews.”
“You’ve got to catch them just right because they can really bite,” Mrs. Murphy interrupted.
“It’s easy to get in and out of the addition,” he continued.
The tidy house appeared up ahead, with its curved brick entranceway splitting to the front door and the office door. The sign, DR. LAWRENCE JOHNSON DR. HAYDEN MCINTIRE, swung, creaking, in the slight breeze.“No workmen yet,” Paddy triumphantly meowed. He ducked under the heavy plastic covering on the outside wall and leapt into the widened window placement. The window had not yet been installed. The newest addition utilized the fireplace as its center point of construction. A balancing, new fireplace was built on the other end of the new room. It matched the old one.
“Hey! What about me?”
“We’ll open the door, Tucker.” Mrs. Murphy gracefully sailed through the window after Paddy and landed on a sawdust-covered floor. She hurried to the door of the addition, which as yet had no lock, although the fancy brass Baldwin apparatus, still boxed, rested on the floor next to it. Mrs. Murphy pushed against the two-by-four propped up against the door. It clattered to the floor and the door easily swung open. The corgi hurried inside.
“Where are you?” Mrs. Murphy couldn’t see Paddy.
“In here,” came the muffled reply.
“He’s crazier than hell.” Tucker reacted to the sound emanating from the large stone fireplace.
“Crazy or not, I’m going in.” Mrs. Murphy trotted to the cavernous opening, the firebrick a cascade of silky and satiny blacks and browns from decades of use. The house was originally constructed in 1824; the addition had been built in 1852.
Tucker stood in the hearth.“The last time we stood in a fireplace there was a body in it.”
“Up here,” Paddy called, his deep voice ricocheting off the flue.
Mrs. Murphy’s pupils enlarged, and she saw a narrow opening to the left of the large flue. In the process of remodeling, a few loose bricks had become dislodged—just enough room for an athletic cat to squeeze through.“Here I come.” She sprang off her powerful haunches but miscalculated the depth of the landing.“Damn.” The tiger hung on to the opening, her rear end dangling over the side. She scratched with her hind claws and clambered up the rest of the way.
“Tricky.” Paddy laughed.
“You could have warned me,” she complained.
“And miss the fun?”
“What’s so important up here?” she challenged him, then, as her eyes became accustomed to the diminished light, she saw he was sitting on it. A heavy waxed oilskin much like the covering of an expensive foul-weather coat, like a Barbour or Dri-as-a-Bone, covered what appeared to be books or boxes.“Can we open this up?”
“Tried. Needs human hands,” Paddy casually remarked although he was ecstatic that his find had produced the desired thrill in Mrs. Murphy.
“What’s going on up there?” Tucker yelped.
Mrs. Murphy stuck her head out of the opening.“Some kind of stash, Tucker. Might be books or boxes of jewelry. We can’t open it up.”
“Think the humans will find it?”
“Maybe yes and maybe no.” Paddy’s fine features now came alongside Mrs. Murphy’s.
“If workmen repoint the fireplace, which they’re sure to do, it’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll look inside here or just pop bricks in and mortar them up.” Mrs. Murphy thought out loud.“This is too good a find to be lost again.”
“Maybe it’s treasure.” Tucker grinned.“Claudius Crozet’s lost treasure!”
“That’s in the tunnel; one of the tunnels,” Paddy said, knowing that Crozet had cut four tunnels through the Blue Ridge Mountains in what was one of the engineering feats of the nineteenth century—or any century. He accomplished his feat without the help of dynamite, which hadn’t yet been invented.
“How long do you think this has been in here?” Paddy asked.
Mrs. Murphy turned to pat the oilskin.“Well, if someone hid this, say, in the last ten or twenty years, they’d probably have used heavy plastic. Oilskin is expensive and hard to come by. Mom wanted one of those Australian raincoats to ride in and the thing was priced about $225, I think.”
“Too bad humans don’t have fur. Think of the money they’d save,” Paddy said.
“Yeah, and they’d get over worrying about what color they were because with fur you can be all colors. Look at me,” Tucker remarked.“Or Mrs. Murphy. Can you imagine a striped human?”