Shaw wrote this down quickly in his small notebook as Coop called for a backup to watch the graveyard.
Harry wanted to make a crack about the graveyard shift but kept her mouth shut. Whenever things were grim her sense of humor kicked into high gear.
“Mr. Bainbridge, you’re not planning on leaving anytime soon, are you?”
“No.”
“Good. I might need to ask you more questions.” Rick leaned against the car. “I’ll call Herbie Jones. It’s his cemetery. Harry, why don’t you go home and eat something? It’s past suppertime and you looked peaked.”
“Lost my appetite,” Harry replied.
“Yeah, me too. You never get used to this kind of thing, you know.” The sheriff patted her on the back.
When Harry walked in the door she picked up the phone and called Susan. As soon as that conversation was finished she called Miranda Hogendobber. For Miranda, being the last to know would be almost as awful as finding the hand.
11
At first light a team of two men began carefully turning over the earth by the tombstone with the harp-playing angel. Larry Johnson, the retired elderly physician, acted as Crozet’s coroner—an easy job, as there was generally precious little to do. He watched, as did Reverend Herbie Jones. Rick Shaw and Cynthia Cooper carefully sifted through the spadefuls of earth the men turned over. Harry and Blair stayed back at the fence. Miranda Hogendobber pulled up in her Falcon, bounded out of the car, and strode toward the graveyard.
“Harry, you called Miranda. Don’t deny it, I know you did,” Rick fussed.
“Well … she has an interesting turn of mind.”
“Oh, please.” Rick shook his head.
“Pay dirt.” One of the diggers pulled his handkerchief up around his nose.
“I got it. I got it.” The other digger reached down and gently extricated a leg.
Miranda Hogendobber reached the hill at that moment, took one look at the decaying leg, wearing torn pants and with the foot still in a sneaker, and passed out.
“She’s your responsibility!” Rick pointed his forefinger at Harry.
Harry knew he was right. She hurried over to Mrs. Hogendobber and, assisted by Blair, hoisted her up. She began to come around. Not knowing what another look at the grisly specimen might do, they remonstrated with her. She resisted but then walked down to Blair’s house supported by the two of them.
The police continued their work and discovered another hand, the fingertip pads also removed, and another leg, which, like its companion, had been cleaved where the thighbone joins the pelvis.
By noon, after sifting and digging for five hours, Rick called a halt to the proceedings.
“Want us to start in on these other graves?”
“As the ground is not disturbed I wish you wouldn’t.” Reverend Jones stepped in. “Let them rest in peace.”
Rick wiped his forehead.“Reverend, I can appreciate the sentiment but if we need to come back up here … well, you know.”
“I know, but you’re standing on my mother.” A hint of reproach crept into Herb’s resonant voice. He was more upset than he realized.
“I’m sorry.” Rick quickly moved. “Go back to work, Reverend. I’ll be in touch.”
“Who would do that?” Herbie pointed to the stinking evidence.
“Murder?” Cynthia Cooper opened her hands, palms up, “Seemingly average people commit murder. Happens every day.”
“No, who would cut up a human being like that?” The minister’s eyes were moist.
“I don’t know,” Rick replied. “But whoever did it took great pains to remove identifying evidence.”
After the good Reverend left, the four law enforcement officials walked a bit away from the smell and conferred among themselves. Where was the torso and where was the head?
They’d find out soon enough.
12
The starch in Tiffany Hayes’s apron rattled as she approached the table. Little Marilyn, swathed in a full-length purple silk robe, sat across from Fitz-Gilbert, dressed for work. The pale-pink shirt and the suspenders completed a carefully thought-out ensemble.
Tiffany put down the eggs, bacon, grits, and various jams.“Will that be all, Miz Hamilton?”
Little Marilyn critically appraised the presentation.“Roberta forgot a sprig of parsley on the eggs.”
Tiffany curtsied and repaired to the kitchen, where she informed Roberta of her heinous omission. At each meal there was some detail Little Marilyn found abrasive to her highly developed sense of decorum.
Hands on hips, Roberta replied to an appreciative Tiffany,“She can eat a pig’s blister.”
Back in the breakfast nook, husband and wife enjoyed a relaxing meal. The brief respite of sun was overtaken by clouds again.
“Isn’t this the strangest weather?” Little Marilyn sighed.
“The changing seasons are full of surprises. And so are you.” His voice dropped.
Little Marilyn smiled shyly. It had been her idea to attack her husband this morning during his shower. Those how-to-please sex books she devoured were paying off.
“Life is more exciting as a blond.” He swept his hand across his forelock. His hair was meticulously cut with short sideburns, close cropped on the sides and back of the head, and longer on the top. “You really like it, don’t you?”
“I do. And I like your suspenders too.” She leaned across the table and snapped one.
“Braces, dear. Suspenders are for old men.” He polished off his eggs. “Marilyn”—he paused—“would you love me if I weren’t, well, if I weren’t Andover-Princeton? A Hamilton? One of the Hamiltons?” He referred to his illustrious family, whose history in America reached back into the seventeenth century.
The Hamiltons, originally from England, first landed in the West Indies, where they amassed a fortune in sugar cane. A son, desirous of a larger theater for his talents, sailed to Philadelphia. From that ambitious sprig grew a long line of public servants, businessmen, and the occasional cad. Fitz-Gilbert’s branch of the family, the New York branch, suffered many losses until only Fitz’s immediate family remained. A fateful airplane crash carried away the New York Hamiltons the summer after Fitz’s junior year in high school. At sixteen Fitz-Gilbert was an orphan.
Fitz appeared to withstand the shock and fight back. He spent the summer working in a brokerage house as a messenger, just as his father had planned. Despite his blue-blood connections, his only real friend in those days was another boy at the brokerage house, a bright kid from Brooklyn, Tommy Norton. They escaped Wall Street on weekends, usually to the Hamptons or Cape Cod.
Fitz’s stoicism impressed everyone, but Cabell Hall, his guardian and trust officer at Chase Manhattan, was troubled. Cracks had begun to show in Fitz’s facade. He totaled a car but escaped unharmed. Cabell didn’t blow up. He agreed that “boys will be boys.” But then Fitz got a girl pregnant,and Cabell found a reputable doctor to take care of that. Finally, the second summer of Fitz’s Wall Street apprenticeship, he and Tommy Norton were in a car accident on Cape Cod. Both boys were so drunk that, luckily for them, they sustained only facial lacerations and bruises when they went through the windshield. Fitz, since he was driving, paid all the medical bills, which meant they got the very best care. But Fitz’s recovery was only physical. He had tempted fate and nearly killed not only himself but his best friend. The result was a nervous breakdown. Cabel checked him into an expensive, quiet clinic in Connecticut.
Fitz had related this history to Little Marilyn before they got married, but he hadn’t mentioned it since.
She looked at him now and wondered what he was talking about. Fitz was high-born, rich, and so much fun. She didn’t remember anywhere in her books being instructed that men need reassurance of their worth. The books concentrated on sexual pleasure and helping a husband through a business crisis and then dreaded male menopause, but, oh, they were years and years away from that. Probably he was playing a game. Fitz was inventive.