“They’re going to scratch me and I’ve got on a new pair of nylons.”
“Shut up, Mrs. Hogendobber, we aren’t going to touch your nylons,” Pewter crabbed at her, though relishing the attention too.
“’Fraidy-cat,” Mrs. Murphy taunted.
“Of what, a skinny alley cat? Dream on.” Another left jab.
“Fatty, fatty, two by four, can’t get through the bathroom door!” Mrs. Murphy catcalled.
“That is so childish and gross.” Pewter twirled on her rear end and stalked off.
“Hey, you started it, bungbutt,” Mrs. Murphy yelled at her.
“Only because you had to get high and mighty about who the killer is. Why should I care? It’s human versus human. I’m not a candidate for the graveyard.”
“You don’t know,” Mrs. Murphy sang out.“It’s Warren Randolph.”
“No!” The gray cat spun around and ran right up to Mrs. Murphy.
“We’re pretty sure.” She nodded toward Tucker.
As Tucker padded over to fully inform Pewter, Mrs. Hogendobber and Harry laughed at the animals.
“Spring, wondrous spring—not a season associated with sorrows, but we’ve had plenty of them.” Miranda blinked hard, then consulted her garden blueprint. “Now, Harry, what were you telling me about Patsy Jefferson Randolph before these little scamps put on such an adorable show?”
“Oh, just that her father might not have known how to talk to young women. But she was said to be a lot like him, so I guess it wasn’t so bad. The younger sister never was as close, although she loved him, of course.”
“Must have been quite an education for Patsy, being in an expensive French school. When was that now? Refresh my memory.”
“You’ve been studying Patsy’s and Polly’s children. I’ve been studying Thomas Jefferson’s brothers and sister and his own children. Otherwise you’d have these dates cold. Let’s see. I think she enrolled at Panthemont in 1784. Apparently there were three princesses there also and they wore royal blue sashes. Called the American among them ‘Jeffy.’ ”
“How fortunate Patsy was.”
“She didn’t feel that way when she had to read Livy. Of course, I didn’t either. Livy and Tacitus just put me into vapor lock.” Harry made a twisting motion at her temple, as though locking something.
“I stopped at Virgil. I didn’t go to college or I would have continued. What else about Patsy?”
“Mrs. Hogendobber, you know I’d help you. I feel silly sitting here while you figure out your garden.”
“I’m the only one who can figure it out. I’d like to stop those Japanese beetles before they start.”
“Don’t plant roses, then.”
“Don’t be absurd, Harry, one simply cannot have a garden without roses. The beetles be damned. If you’ll pardon my French.” She smiled a sly smile.
Harry nodded.“Okay, back to Panthemont. Patsy conceived a desire to be a nun. It was a Catholic school. That put her father’s knickers in a twist and he paid the bill for both Patsy and her sister in full on April 20, 1789, and yanked those kids out of there. Pretty funny. Oh, yeah, something I forgot. Sally Hemings, who was about Patsy’s age, traveled to France with her as her batman, you might say. What do you call a batman for a lady?”
“A lady’s maid.”
“Oh, that’s easy enough. Anyway, I’ve been thinking that the experience of freedom, the culture of France, and being close to Patsy like that in a foreign country must have drawn the two together. Kind of like how Jefferson loved Jupiter, his man, who was also his age. They’d been together since they were boys.”
“The self on the other side of the mirror,” Miranda said with a dreamy look in her eye.
“Huh?”
“Their slaves who were their ladies’ maids and batmen. They must have been alter egos. I never realized how complex, how deep and tangled the emotions on both sides of that mirror must have been. And now the races have drifted apart.”
“Ripped apart is more like it.”
“Whatever it is, it isn’t right. We’re all Americans.”
“Tell that to the Ku Klux Klan.”
“I’d be more inclined to tell them to buy a better brand of bedsheet.” Miranda was in fine fettle today. “You know, if you listen to the arguments of these extremist groups or the militant right wing, there’s a kernel of truth in what they say. They have correctly pinpointed many of our society’s ills, and I must give them credit for that. At least they’re thinking about the society in which they live, Harry, they aren’t indulging in mindless pleasures, but their solutions—fanatical and absurd.”
“But simple. That’s why their propaganda is so effective and then I think, too, that it’s always easier to be against something than to be for something new. I mean, we never have lived in a community of true racial equality. That’s new and it’s hard to sell something new.”
“I never thought of that.” Mrs. H. cupped her chin in her hand and decided at that instant to shift the sweet peas to the other side of the garden.
“That’s what makes Jefferson and Washington and Franklin and Adams and all those people so remarkable. They were willing to try something brand new. They were willing to risk their lives for it. What courage. We’ve lost it, I think. Americans have lost their vision and their appetite for struggle.”
“I don’t know. I remember World War Two clearly. We didn’t lack courage then.”
“Miranda, that was fifty years ago. Look at us now.”
“Maybe we’re storing up energy for the next push toward the future.”
“I’m glad one of us is an optimist.” Harry, by virtue of her age, had never lived through an American epoch in which people pulled together for the common good. “There’s another thing, by the way. Sally and Betsey Hemings were like sisters to Medley Orion, although she was younger than they were. Apparently they were three beautiful women. It must have been fun to sit outside in the twilight, crickets chirping, and listen to Sally’s tales of France before the Revolution.”
Pewter meanwhile disagreed with Mrs. Murphy and Tucker over Warren Randolph as murderer. She countered that a man with that much money doesn’t have to kill anyone. He can hire someone to do it for him.
Mrs. Murphy rejoined that Warren must have slipped a stitch somewhere along the line.
Pewter’s only response was“Gross.”
“Regardless of what you think, I don’t want Mother to get in trouble.”
“She’s not going to do anything. She doesn’t know that Warren’s the killer,” Pewter said.
The sweet purr of the Bentley Turbo R caught their attention. Mim got out of the car.“Miranda, have you spoken to Sheriff Shaw about Larry’s obituary notice and funeral?”
Miranda, stake in hand poised midair, looked as though she were ready to dispatch a vampire.“Yes, and I find it mighty peculiar.”
Mim’s crocodile loafers fascinated Mrs. Murphy as she crossed the lawn to join Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber.
“Those are beautiful,” the tiger cat admired.
“Piddle. It’s a big skink, that’s all.” Pewter compared the exotic crocodile skin to that of a sleek lizard indigenous to Virginia.
As the three women consulted, worried, and wondered about Rick Shaw’s request, Harry noticed that Mrs. Murphy was stalking Mim’s shoes. She bent down to scoop up her cat, but Mrs. Murphy scooted just out of reach.
“Slowpoke,” the cat taunted.
Harry did not answer but gave the cat a stern look.
“Don’t get her in a bad mood, Murph,” Tucker pleaded.
In reply, Mrs. Murphy flattened her ears and turned her back on Tucker as Mim strode over to her Bentley to retrieve her portable phone. Miranda walked into her house. After ten minutes of phone calls, which left Harry reduced to putting in the garden stakes, Miranda reappeared.
“No, no, and no.”
Mim’s head jerked up. “Impossible.”
Miranda’s rich alto boomed. “Hill and Woods does not have the body. Thacker Funeral Home, ditto, and I even called places in western Orange County. Not a trace of Larry Johnson, and I don’t mind telling you that I think this is awful. How can the rescue squad lose a body?”