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 newspeople 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.”
“You have. I got to scream and holler and throw my bag on the ground. I feel better for it.” She nimbly got up, righted her bag.
Susan picked up the balls.“Here.” She noticed the brand name. “When did you buy these?”
“Last week. Ought to be gold-plated, the expensive buggers. See my initials on them.” She pointed to a red B.B.C. carefully incised into the gleaming white surface.
“How’d you do that?”
“I didn’t. Josiah did. He’s got tools for everything. He cracks me up, buying this gilded junk, making repairs on it, and then selling it to some parvenu for a bundle.”
“He is funny, though.” Susan reached her ball.
BoomBoom waited until Susan was midway into her backswing.“Josiah said Mim has a purse with a lock on it. Isn’t that perfect?” She laughed.
Naturally Susan’s shot was ruined. “Damn you.”
The ball plunked into the water, sending up a plume.
That made BoomBoom temporarily happy. She found her ball, walked around it as though it were a snake, and finally hit it out of the rough. Not a bad shot.
“If you do think of anything, you will tell me?”
“Yes.” BoomBoom picked up her bag. She wouldn’t use golf carts because that defeated the purpose of golf for her. On weekends she’d use one because the club forced her to, and she complained plenty about it. She even pointed out one fat board member at the Nineteenth Hole and declared if he’d get out of his golf cart and walk, he might stop resembling the Michelin tire boy.
Susan peered into the water. The Canada geese peered back at her as they glided by. She carried a ball retriever for this very purpose and with some finesse she liberated her ball from the depths.
“I ought to get one of those.”
“Especially when you’re paying what you’re paying for golf balls.” Susan folded the retriever back and placed it in her bag. She then dropped her ball.
“Why do you think this is the work of one person?” BoomBoom had quieted enough to return to Susan’s earlier question.
“Two gruesome murders—spectacularly gruesome—and within the same week.”
“That’s superficial evidence. The second murderer could be a copycat. The details of Kelly’s murder covered the front page of the paper, the evening news, and God knows what else. A person wouldn’t have to be too clever to figure out that the time is right to settle a score, and goodbye Maude Bly Modena.”
“I never thought of that.”
“I thought of something else too.”
“What?”
“Susan, what if the police aren’t telling us everything? What if they’re holding something back?”
“I never thought of that either.” Susan shuddered.
15
Rick Shaw hunched over another coroner’s report. Normally, the office sank into a stupor on weekends except for the drunk-driving jobs. Not this weekend. People were tense. He was tense, and the damned newspaper was keeping a reporter on his tail. The bird perched in the parking lot after he threw him out of the office.
There was no evidence of sexual abuse. The victim had been dead for two hours before the train ran over her, which the coroner also reported. However, there were no bullet wounds, no bruises on the neck, and no contusions of any sort. Again, there was a tiny trace of cyanide in the hair. Whoever was killing these people with cyanide knew a great deal about chemistry. He or she wasn’t wasting the cyanide. The killer took the victim’s body weight into account.
Rick shook his head and closed the report, then sidled over to Officer Cooper’s desk, where he filched a cigarette from an open pack. Illicit pleasure soon to be replaced by guilt, but not until the cigarette was smoked.
A deep draw soothed him. He’d have to remember to buy a pack of Tic Tacs on the way home or his wife would smell his breath. He studied a map of the county on the wall. The positions of the two bodies were in the same general vicinity, a few miles apart. The killer was most likely a local but not necessarily a Crozet resident. Albemarle County covered 743 square miles and anyone could drive in and out of Crozet fairly easily. Of course, they knew one another out there. A stranger would be reported. No such report. Even a resident of Charlottesville or a friend from out of town would be noticed. No such notice.
The postmistress and Market Shiflett were poised at the hub of social activity. Officer Cooper had mentioned that the postmistress had an idea about postcards. People usually think what they do is relevant, and Mary Minor Haristeen was no exception. He checked out the postcards within an hour of Harry’s call and the postmarks were from different locales.
Still, he decided to call Harry. After a few pleasantries he thanked her for being alert, said he’d examined the postcards and they seemed okay to him.
“Could I have them—temporarily?” Harry asked him.
He considered this.“Why?”
“I want to match them with the inks that I have in the office—just in case.”
“All right, if you promise not to harm them.”