“Oh, Coop.” Rick slumped heavily into his chair. “I blame myself for Larry Johnson’s shooting.”
The patrolman held up the cold Coke at the glass window. Cynthia rose, opened the door, took the Coke, and thanked the young officer. She winked at him too, then gave the can to Rick, whose outburst had parched him.
“You couldn’t have known.”
The sheriff’s voice dropped. “When Larry called me about Braxton Fleming, I should have known the other shoe hadn’t dropped. Kimball Haynes wasn’t killed over Samson’s stealing escrow money. I know that now.”
“Hey, the state Samson Coles was in when we arrested him, I would have believed he could have killed anybody.”
“Oh, yeah, he was hot.” Rick gulped down some more soda, the carbonation fizzing down his throat. “He had a lot to lose, to say nothing of his affair with Ansley blowing out the window.”
“Lucinda Coles took care of that at Kimball’s memorial service.”
“Can’t blame her. Imagine how she felt, being put in a social situation with the woman who’s playing around with her husband.”
They sat and stared at each other.
“We’ve got twenty-four hours. If an obit notice doesn’t appear in the papers after that, it’s going to look awfully peculiar.”
“And we’ve got to hold off the reporters without actually lying.” He rubbed his chin. Larry Johnson’s wife had died some years before, and his only son was killed in Vietnam. “Coop, who would place the obituary notice?”
“Probably Mrs. Hogendobber, with Harry’s help.”
“You go over there and enlist their cooperation. See if they can stall a little.”
“Oh, brother. They’ll want to know why.”
“Don’t—don’t even think about it.” He twiddled the can. “I’m going to the hospital. I’m pretty sure we can trust Dr. Ylvisaker and the nurses. I’ll set up a twenty-four-hour vigil, just in case.” He stood up. “I’ve got to go get the rest of the story.”
“I thought he never saw his attacker.”
“He didn’t. Before he passed out he told me this had to do with his partner, Dr. Jim Craig.”
Cooper inhaled sharply.“Dr. Craig was found shot in the cemetery one icy March morning. I remember, when I first came on the force, reading through the files on the unsolved crimes. I wonder how it all fits?”
“We aren’t home yet, but we’re rounding second toward third.”
61
Sunday morning at six-thirty, the air carried little tiny teeth of rain, not a whopping big rain, but a steady one that might lead to harder rain later.
Harry usually greeted the day with a bounce in her step, but this morning she dragged out to the barn. Larry’s murder weighed heavily upon her heart.
She mixed up a warm bran mash, which was Sunday’s treat for the horses, plus a bit of insurance against colic, she believed. She took a scoop of sweet feed per horse, a half-scoop of bran, and mushed it up with hot water and a big handful of molasses. She stirred her porridge together and for an extra treat threw in two quartered apples. Thatalong with as much timothy hay as Gin and Tommy would eat made them happy, and her too. Except for today.
She finished with the horses, climbed the loft ladder, and put out a bag of marshmallows for Simon, the possum. Then she clambered down and decided she might as well oil some tack since she’d fallen behind in her barn chores over these last few crazy weeks. She threw a bridle up on the tack hook, ran a small bucket full of hot water, grabbed a small natural sponge and her Murphy’s Oil Soap, and started cleaning.
Tucker and Mrs. Murphy, feeling her sorrow, quietly sat beside her. Tucker finally laid down, her head between her paws.
She jerked her head up.“That’s the smell.”
“What?” Mrs. Murphy’s eyes widened to eight balls.
“Yes! It’s not a crepe sole, it’s this stuff. I swear it.”
“Eagle’s Rest.” The cat’s long white whiskers swept forward then back as her ears flattened.“But why?”
“Warren must be in on the escrow theft,” Tucker said.
“Or connected to the murder at Monticello.” Mrs. Murphy blinked her eyes.“But how?”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” The tiger’s voice trembled with fear, not for herself, but for Harry.
62
“‘No laborious person was ever yet hysterical,’ ” Harry read aloud. Thomas Jefferson wrote this to his teenage daughter, Patsy, while she studied at the Abbaye Royale de Panthemont in the France of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
“Sensible but not really what a young girl is inclined to wish to hear.” Mrs. Hogendobber, fussy today and low over the loss of her old friend, reset the stakes for her sweet peas one more time as the Sunday sunshine bathed over her. The early morning rains had given way to clear skies.
Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, who had escaped Market one more time, and Tucker watched as the squarely built woman walked first to one side of the garden outline, then to the other. She performed this march every spring, and she turned her corners with all the precision of a Virginia Military Institute cadet on drill.
“The garden will be like last year’s and the year’s before that. The sweet peas go along the alleyway side of her yard.” Pewter licked her paws and washed her pretty face.
“Don’t deny her the pleasure of worrying about it,” Mrs. Murphy advised the gray cat.
“We know who the killer is.” Tucker shadowed Mrs. Hogendobber’s every move, but from the other side of the garden.
“Why didn’t you tell me the instant you got here? You’re hateful.” Pewter pouted.
Mrs. Murphy relished Pewter’s distress for a moment. After all, Pewter lorded it over everybody if she knew something first.“I thought you weren’t interested in human affairs unless food was involved.”
“That’s not true,” the cat yowled.
“Harsh words are being spoken, and on the Sabbath.” Mrs. Hogendobber chastized the two cats. “Harry, what is the matter with your dog? If I walk, she walks. If I stop, she stops. If I stand, she stands and watches me.”
“Tucker, what are you doing?” Harry inquired of her corgi.
“Being vigilant,” the dog responded.
“Against Mrs. Hogendobber?” Mrs. Murphy laughed.
“Practice makes perfect.” The dog turned her back on the cats. Tucker believed that the good Lord made cats first, as an experiment. Then He created the dog, having learned from His mistake.
“Who?” Pewter cuffed Mrs. Murphy, who sat on her haunches and cuffed the gray cat right back. Within seconds a fierce boxing match exploded, causing both humans to focus their attention on the contenders.
“My money’s on Pewter.” Mrs. Hogendobber reached into her voluminous skirt pocket and pulled out a wrinkled dollar bill.
“Mrs. Murphy.” Harry fished an equally wrinkled bill out of her Levi’s.
“Pewter’s bigger. She’ll have more pow to her punch.”
“Murphy’s faster.”
The two cats circled, boxed, then Pewter leapt on the tiger cat, threw her to the ground, and they wrestled. Mrs. Murphy wriggled free of the lard case on top of her and tore across the middle of the garden plot then up a black gum tree. Pewter, close behind, raced to the bottom of the trunk and decided to wait her out as opposed to climbing in pursuit.
“She’ll back down the tree and then shove off over your head,” Tucker told Pewter.
“Whose side are you on?” Mrs. Murphy spat out.
“Entertainment’s.”
Mrs. Murphy backed down just as Tucker had predicted, but then she dropped right on top of the chubby gray and rolled her over. A fulsome hissing and huffing emanated from the competitors. This time it was Pewter who broke and ran straight to Mrs. Hogendobber. Mrs. Murphy chased up to the lady’s legs and then reached around Mrs. H.’s heavy English brogues to swat Pewter. Pewter replied in kind.