“I won’t.”
“I’ll have Officer Cooper drop them by.”
After Rick Shaw’s call, Harry called Rob, and he agreed to “borrow” the first postcard from France that he came across at the main post office. She swore she’d give it back to him by the next day.
Then she remembered she was supposed to interrogate Mrs. Hogendobber. She called Mrs. H., who was surprised to hear from her but agreed on a tea-time get-together.
16
Mrs. Hogendobber served a suspiciously green tea. Little chocolate cupcakes oozing a tired marshmallow center reposed on a plate of Royal Doulton china. Mrs. Hogendobber snapped one up, devouring it at a gobble.
She reminded Harry of a human version of Pewter. Stifling a giggle, Harry reached for a leaking cupcake so as not to appear ungrateful for the sumptuous repast—well, repast.
“I stopped drinking caffeine. Made me testy.” Mrs. H.’s little finger curled when she held her cup. “I purged soft drinks, coffee, even orange pekoe teas from my household.”
Obviously, she had not purged refined sugar.
“I wish I had your willpower,” Harry said.
“Stick to it, my girl, stick to it!” Another chocolate delight disappeared between the pink-lipsticked lips.
Mrs. Hogendobber’s neat clapboard house was located on St. George Avenue, which ran roughly parallel to Railroad Avenue. A sweeping front porch with a swing afforded the large lady a vantage point. A trellis along the sides of the porch, choking with pink tea roses, allowed her to see everything while not being seen. The Good Lord said nothing about spying, so Mrs. Hogendobber spied with a vengeance. She chose to think of it as being curious about her fellow man.
“I’m so glad you agreed to see me,” Harry began.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Uh, well, come to think of it, why not?” Harry smiled, reminding Mrs. H. of when Harry was a cute seven-year-old.
“I’m here to, oh, root around for clues to the murders. The telling detail, thoughts—you’re so observant.”
“You have to get up early in the morning to put one over on me.” Mrs. H. lapped up the compliment, and truthfully, she didn’t miss much. “My late husband, God rest his soul, used to say, ‘Miranda, you were born with eyes in the back of your head.’ I could anticipate his wants and he thought I had special powers. No special powers. I was a good wife. I paid attention. It’s the little things that make a marriage, my dear. I hope you have reviewed your marriage and will reconsider your acts. I doubt there are any men out there better than Fair—only different. They’re all trouble in their unique ways.” She poured herself more tea and opened her mouth but no sound escaped. “Where was I?”
“… trouble in their unique ways.” Harry hardly thought of herself in those terms.
“If you’d kick off those sneakers and buy some nice smocks instead of those jeans, I think he’d come to his senses.”
“Love usually involves losing your senses, not coming to them.”
Mrs. H. pondered this.“Yes … yes.”
Before she could launch on to another tangent, Harry inquired,“What did you think of Maude Bly Modena?”
“I thought she was a Catholic. Italian-looking, you know. The shop proved how shrewd she was. Now I never socialized with her. My social life is the Church, and well, as I said, I think Maude was Catholic.” Mrs. Hogendobber cleared her throat on “Catholic.” “I, like yourself, only knew her for five years. Not a great deal of time but enough to get a feel for a person, I guess. She seemed quite fond of Josiah.”
“Whatdid you feel then?”
The bosom heaved. She was dying to be allowed to wander into the subjective.“I felt that she was hiding something—always, always.”
“Like what?”
“I wish I knew. She didn’t cheat anyone at the shop. I never heard of her shortchanging or overcharging but there was something, oh, not quite right. She spoke very little of her background.” Unlike Mrs. Hogendobber, who fairly galloped down Memory Lane, given half a chance to speak of her past.
“She didn’t tell me much either. I assumed she was discreet. After all, she was a Yankee.”
“Not one of us, my dear, not one of us. Her manners were adequate. She missed the refinements, of course—they all do. But then there’s Mim, who is overrefined, if you ask me.”
“I liked her. I even grew accustomed to the accent.” Uneasiness crept into Harry’s heart. She felt that poor Maude wasn’t here to defend herself and she was sorry for asking about her.
“I couldn’t understand much of what she said. I relied on tone of voice, hand gestures, that sort of thing. I bet she’s from a Mafia family.”
“Why?”
“Well, she was Catholic and Italian.”
“It doesn’t follow that she was from a Mafia family.”
“No, but you can’t prove otherwise.”
Driving home, Harry started to laugh. It was all so horrible and horribly funny. Did a person have to die before you discovered the truth about her? As long as someone is alive the chance exists that whatever you have said about her will get back to her. Therefore, Harry and most of Crozet measured their words. You thought twice before you spoke, especially if you intended to say what you thought.
The other thing Harry learned from Mrs. Hogendobber was the time, occupants, and license plate number of every car that had rolled down St. George Avenue in the last twenty-four hours. The Citizens’ Alert was Mrs. Hogendobber’s opportunity to be rewarded for her natural nosiness.
17
Ned Tucker dreamed of sleeping late on Sunday mornings but the alarm clanged at 6:30 A.M. He opened his eyes, cut off the offending noise, and sat up. The digital clock blinked the time in a turquoise-blue color. It occurred to Ned that a generation of American children wouldn’t know how to tell time with a conventional clock. Then again, they couldn’t add and subtract either. Calculators performed that labor for them.
Harry said she hated digital clocks. They reminded her of little amputees. No hands. Ned smiled, thinking about Harry. Susan turned over and he smiled even more. His wife could sleep through an earthquake, a thunderstorm, you name it. He’d give her an extra forty-five minutes and feed the kids. The chores of fatherhood comforted him. What worried him was the example he set. He didn’t want to be a slave to his job but he didn’t want to be too lazy either. He didn’t want to be too stern but he didn’t want to be too lax. Hedidn’t want to treat his son any differently from his daughter but he knew he did. It was so much easier to love a daughter—but then, that was what Susan said about their son.
A shower and a shave brightened Ned; a cup of coffee popped him in gear. He’d need to awaken Brookie and Dan in twenty minutes to get them up for church. He decided to take what precious quiet time he had and peruse the bills. Everything was more expensive than it should have been and his heart dropped each time he wrote a check. First he scanned his bank statement. A five hundred dollar withdrawal last Monday really woke him up. He made no such withdrawal last Monday and neither did Susan. Anything over two hundred dollars had to be discussed between them. He wanted to crumple the statement but neatly put it aside. Couldn’t contact the bank until tomorrow anyway.
The telephone rang at seven o’clock. Ned picked it up. “Hello.”
“Ned, you’re up as early as I am so I hope I’m not being rude in calling.” Josiah DeWitt, mellow-voiced, sounded serious.
“What can I do for you?” Ned wondered.
“You are, were, Maudie’s lawyer, am I right?”
“Yes.” Ned hadn’t thought of Maude since he got up. Being reminded brought back the uneasiness, the nagging suspicions.
“Since she has no living relatives I’d like to claim the body”—he sighed—“or what’s left of it, and give her a decent burial. It’s not right that she be left to a potter’s field.”
As Josiah was tight as the bark on a tree, Ned was astonished.“I think we can work this out, Josiah,” he said, then added, “But if you’ll allow me, I’ll take up a collection for the interment. We should all pull our weight on this.”