The Purrfect Murder (14 page)

As they broke up to chat before leaving, Harry asked Aunt Tally, “Where's your date?”

“Home in bed. I wore him out.” She plucked the olive out of her martini, popping it into her mouth.

20

P
oplar Forest reflected Jefferson's love of the octagon. The main entrance welcomed the visitor with seven wide steps. Four Tuscan columns, severe in their simplicity, supported a simple pediment with a fanlight in the center and, above that, a balustrade. A simple door with two twelve-paned windows on either side completed the entrance.

Poplar Forest had not been built to inspire awe. This was no Sans Souci nor even a Trianon. The structure reflected the cleansing Palladian ideal. For Jefferson, this strict elegance was to be the externalization of the American political philosophy: a people's nation, not one in thrall to the hereditary principle.

He succeeded.

Harry and Susan wound up coming alone because, at the last minute, Alicia's housekeeper suffered a wicked angina attack and Alicia had rushed her to the hospital. BoomBoom drove over to Alicia's to finish feeding the foals. Although Alicia could and did hire good people, she liked to manage the mares and foals herself. She'd learned so much from Mary Pat those thirty years ago. Mostly, Alicia learned she couldn't live without horses. The longer she stayed in Hollywood, the more films she made, the more acclaim she received, the lonelier she ultimately felt. She came home to the warm estate willed to her by Mary Pat Reines. Alicia, in her mid-fifties, had shed two husbands over the years, so returning to the place of her greatest happiness was easy. When she landed in Crozet, she felt light as a feather.

Harry wished she had Alicia with her today, because the gorgeous star had an original manner of seeing things, things Harry missed.

Formidable as Harry's powers of logic could be, she missed emotional nuance more often than not. The broad strokes, she saw, but the tiny feathered strokes on the emotional canvas, she missed. Alicia missed nothing; Fair missed very little, too.

They'd arrived at seven in the morning, being indulged by the director, Robert Taney, who had known Harry's mother in his youth. Mrs. Minor's great love of history—of telling the stories of the past through the lives of people instead of dates and battles—had inspired him to study history, specializing in architectural history. Thus began the journey that was to culminate in his directorship at Poplar Forest.

Harry and Susan had known it would be best if they got there before the doors opened to the public.

The two women had risen at four-thirty and hit the road at five-fifteen. They were slowed by dense fog in the swales as well as over the Upper James River, but they made it on the button.

Their footfalls echoed in the foyer.

“It's been trying,” Robert admitted.

“Shocking.” Susan glanced at the smooth walls. “Why commit such a heinous act at the fund-raiser? Surely Carla could have been dispatched on another day. Not that I'm countenancing murder.”

Robert, glad that he'd worn a good cotton sweater because of a chill that still permeated the air, nodded. “I know what you mean. It's almost as though she wanted us to fail. After all her work.”

“Tazio didn't kill Carla Paulson.” Harry clasped her hands behind her back. “I know it looks like she did, but she didn't. I think in her shock and confusion, she picked up the knife. But no matter, she didn't kill Carla, and I don't care how it looks. That's why we're here, as you know. If we could look around.” Harry spied a striped shape blurring past her. “How'd you get out?”

Robert saw a gray shape behind him.

Tucker walked in and sat down.
“Hello.”

“I'm sorry. I'll fetch them.” Harry sighed.

“Don't worry about it. We still have the pack rats living here. Maybe those two cats will give them a scare.”

“Pack rats are big. Might be the other way around.”
Tucker giggled.

They left the central room and entered the east bedroom.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, rapt and standing on their hind legs, sniffed at the exposed pack-rat living quarters.

“How'd you all get out?” Harry demanded, for Susan had parked under a tree, leaving the windows open only a crack.

Pewter, without taking her eyes off the pack-rat home, replied,
“We have our ways.”

Mrs. Murphy had learned to open doors by practicing in the old 1978 Ford truck. She'd press down on the indoor latch but not push the door all the way open, lest Harry discover the secret. She also stood on her hind legs on the aftermarket running board and yanked the door handle down. The door would then swing open and Mrs. Murphy would run away. When Harry would return to her truck or walk by, she worried that her memory was failing her, since she was sure she hadn't opened the door.

“We? You don't do a thing. I'm the one who can open the car door,”
the tiger said with slight disgust.

Robert walked over to where the cats stood. “Even the rats are architects here. It's almost like a pink-chambered nautilus, isn't it?” He pointed to successive chambers, each holding treasures. “When we started the restoration in this room, we found all these items. Generations after generations of rats lived here. We left their wealth.” He smiled.

In each chamber, the forage of that generation of rats reposed—in some cases, glittered. An amethyst earring in one chamber dated to about 1821. Bits of paper, orange rind, a few apple seeds, all in neat piles, testified to the expert taste and thievery of the rats. They didn't consider this thievery. If the humans were going to leave things lying around and those items might be useful or pretty, then a rat had every right to liberate it.

“How pretty.” Harry pointed to a pearl stud.

“1890 or thereabouts. Same family.” Robert looked closer. “The human ownership changed, but these fellows are descended from, dare I say, Jefferson's rats.”

“I can kill a rat with one big bite,”
Pewter bragged.

“You can't even catch the blue jay.”
Mrs. Murphy dropped back on all fours.

“Who can? Birds fly. Rats run, and I can run faster than any rat.”
Pewter also dropped to all fours.

A tittering from afar alerted the cats and dog that wild creatures still made Poplar Forest home. They sped off to locate the sound.

“Were the doors locked?” Susan asked.

“No.” Robert walked back to the central room and then into the western bedroom. “We had Melvin here. Melvin Rankin is on our staff. In retrospect, I should have placed two people here for each floor.”

“There's no way you could have known,” Susan said consolingly.

“No, I know that, but still…” He paused. “The staff has worked so very hard. I didn't want to take the night away from them. We had security. I just never imagined…” His voice strengthened again. “But I felt that one of us should be in the house, not a member of the sheriff's department.”

“Why Melvin?” Harry inquired.

“He's a shy fellow. I don't know why—he's a good-looking man, mid-twenties, just out of William and Mary. Anyway, Melvin wasn't up to such a huge party, but he was happy to be in the house, to watch and listen to the music.”

“Did he see anything?” Harry pushed on.

“He thought he heard the front door close. He walked to the door but didn't see anything. Not in the house. He looked out the window and saw Carla walking toward the center of the lawn.”

“Melvin might not have seen anyone because, if the killer stood right up against the front door, well, you wouldn't see him, would you?” To prove her point, Harry opened the front door, stepped outside, closed the door behind her, and flattened herself against it.

Susan looked out one window, Robert the other. They could just see the tip of her boots as she stood inside the recessed doorway. But they knew she was there. Otherwise, they'd have missed her.

She came back in. “Possible.”

“Yes.” Robert nodded.

“Did the sheriff think of this?” Susan wondered.

“Well, no, but he questioned Melvin. The killer could have been in the house. If we go outside and check where both lines of Porta-Johns were, you'll get a better idea.”

Once outside, Robert walked to the east, where the mist was lifting. “We put a line here, out of the way but easy for the company renting them to pick them up.” He strode across the lawn and toward the parking lot. “Another line here, and then we had one single unit behind the platform, for the musicians and if anyone got nervous before their speech.”

“Nervous?” Harry didn't put two and two together.

Susan laughed. “Some people have to wee. You know, they get scared, and, well…”

“Ah, well, I don't give public addresses.”

“You took public speaking in high school. I was there. You were pretty good.” Susan counted the depressions on the grass where the toilets had been. “How many altogether?”

“Twenty-five. I thought that was overkill, but Tazio and Folly declared it wasn't and nothing was worse than waiting in line. They were right: we could have done with thirty. Well, excuse me, twenty-six counting the one behind the platform.”

“Did anyone see Tazio come from the Porta-John?” Harry inquired.

“I don't know. The sheriff hasn't made me privy, excuse the pun, to his information.” Robert sighed.

“Little Mim did,” Susan stated. “Ned asked Tazio if anyone saw her. Remember, she left the table early because she knew the timetable and wanted to be clear of everyone and to be ready for the speeches. Ned checked with Little Mim, who said she did see Tazio as she was entering one green box, Harvey Tillach another. But Harvey came out before Tazio did, since men can, well, go a lot faster than women.”

The Porta-Johns were green.

“She could have waited behind a tree afterward. I suppose she could have gone into the house.” Robert believed Tazio had done the deed.

“We can't dismiss a committee member.” Harry didn't censor herself. “Or even a staff member from the possibility of committing the murder.”

“There's no reason whatsoever for one of my people to do such a terrible thing.” Robert was tetchy.

“Forgive her. She gets like this when she's seized by a notion or a mystery.”

“Huh? I do. I'm sorry, Robert. I can't think of any reason why someone who is part of this incredible project would want to do anything like this, but then, that's the key to solving a crime, isn't it?”

“What?” the attractive, well-turned-out man asked.

“Motive, opportunity, will to kill. If you figure that out, you can almost always find who did it. Motive. Tazio did have a motive, in that she hated Carla—well, hate is a strong word. Carla got on her nerves.”

“It's rather an extreme way to soothe the nerves,” Robert slyly said.

“She had the opportunity,” Susan added.

“Did she have the will to kill?” Harry put her hand on her hip. “No. Emphatically no. She's at the top of her game, she's well respected, she's making very good money, and she's in love with a great-looking, terrific guy who loves her back. She'd have to be certifiably insane to muck that up.”

“Is she impulsive?”

Susan shook her head no as the words came out of Robert's mouth. “If anything she's too controlled. Too cool. It's completely out of character.”

“People do fool you,” Robert replied simply.

“They do, but if Tazio had cut Carla's jugular, given the force of the first pulsations, wouldn't her dress have blood on it?” Harry, ever logical, asked.

“Not if she jumped out of the way fast enough,” Robert came back, although chances were the killer couldn't have gotten out of the way fast enough.

“But she'd have to have some knowledge of how the jugular shoots. I mean, it really shoots, and I know that because my husband is a vet, but he has had to work on people in extreme situations.”

“Harry, most people know if you cut an artery it spurts. They may not know how much and how far the jugular can spurt, but it's not a secret. Whoever killed her faced her, then jumped away.” Susan bought the idea.

“Do they know she wasn't surprised from behind?” Robert rubbed his chin.

“Sheriff Grundy believes she was killed face to face. And she didn't defend herself.” Harry told him what they'd all discussed prior. “She wasn't scared.”

“Not until the knife flashed.” Robert shuddered. “It's too awful.”

“It is, but if you knew Carla you would understand how she could provoke it.” Susan was beginning to wonder where the pets were.

“Isn't the spouse a suspect? I mean, it's usually people we know well who kill us.” Robert was right.

“Jurgen? He was at the table.” Susan had gathered some of the table information from Ned, who, wisely, had called each table head; he knew he wouldn't be getting the napkins with names on them.

“Ah.” Robert seemed disappointed.

“He's rich. He could have paid someone.” Harry couldn't explain why, but she was feeling better, feeling she could clear Tazio with a bit of luck and a lot of hard work.

“And this was a good place. Activity, enough alcohol to raise the spirits and maybe dull the senses. The moon was about full, but in the front of the house the trees provided some cover and there were no artificial lights. It was a good place for someone bold with a plan.” Harry looked around one more time. “Robert, I know we've disrupted you and your routine. Thank you for helping us.”

“Not at all. I want to get to the bottom of this, too. Anything that touches Poplar Forest is critical to me. I love this place. You know,” a wistful note crept into his voice, “I imagine I can hear Jefferson sometimes, the slaves, the horses. Oh, it's silly, but when I'm here alone, I feel them.”

Susan remarked, “At least you said slaves and not servants.”

“Our ancestors put a good face on it.” Robert thought about slavery quite a lot, since he could see so much evidence of those long-ago lives. It hadn't been plowed under or paved over.