The Tail of the Tip-Off (14 page)

24

S
usan and Harry munched their doughnuts in Susan's station wagon, the cats and dogs in the rear seat, a beach towel on the leather to protect it.

“I am not driving down to the Clam.”

“Didn't ask.” Harry wrinkled her nose.

“That shows some good judgment for a change,” Susan replied in a singsong voice.

“We could go over to Tazio's office. See if she's there.”

“Something tells me this has nothing to do with the church guild.”

“Coop left with her. Come on, Susan. Just cruise by. You don't have to stop.”

As it wasn't far out of the way, Susan drove by Tazio's office. She'd converted the old barbershop just south of the railroad overpass. Tazio's big truck sat in the parking lot.

“She's done a great job on that old building.”

Just then Tazio and Brinkley opened the door, turned to shut it.

Harry rolled down her passenger window. “Taz!”

Tazio turned to wave. “Hey.”

Susan pulled up next to Tazio's truck since Harry was half hanging out the station wagon window letting in the cold air.

“Tazio, any luck?” Harry asked as Susan parked next to the truck.

“With Coop?”

“Hi,”
the animals called to Brinkley who responded in turn.

“This is my brother, Owen.”
Tucker introduced the corgi.

As the animals chatted so did the people.

“—empty.” Tazio pulled her scarf tighter around her neck as she walked to her truck. “Makes me wonder, though. What if Mychelle told other people she was seeing me Monday? She was whispering about it, as you well know, but being emotionally obvious, if you know what I mean. Someone out there might think I know more than I know—which is nothing.”

“If Cooper thought you were in danger, she'd tell you,” Susan sensibly reassured the architect.

“I'll cut to the chase.” Harry opened the door, got out so she could stand face-to-face with Tazio.

This irritated Susan who now had to twist her neck and lean over even farther.

“What chase?”

“Did you sleep with H.H.?”

“Harry, I can't believe you asked me that!” The pretty woman's voice rose.

“No time to pussyfoot.” Harry lamely defended herself.

“I can't believe it, either.” Susan agreed with the disgruntled Tazio. “On second thought, I can. She's capable of anything including bad manners—rarely happens but she is capable.”

“Come on, you all. Two people are dead. You're fretting over manners?” Harry crossed her arms over her chest.

“No.” Tazio folded her arms over her chest, too.

“Then it was Mychelle.” Harry leaned back against the station wagon.

“You don't know that.” Tazio was again surprised.

“No, but that's my guess. A crime of passion.”

“Anne Donaldson might have wanted to kill him but she's not the type.” Susan gave up and got out of her car. “I don't believe it.”

“Susan, why would anyone else want to kill H.H. and then Mychelle? There is no other motive. They weren't stealing money. We'd have seen it. People can't have money without spending it. Actually, this is America. We don't even need to have money and we spend it. So I can't think that's behind it. Drugs?” She threw up her hands. “What's left? Sexual revenge?”

“You can't jump to conclusions like that and really, Harry, you're usually more thoughtful,” Susan chided her. “There could be other reasons. As I've said before, the murders may not even be related.”

“What other reasons?” A frosty breath spiraled upward when Tazio spoke.

“I don't know. Someone could have made a bad business deal with H.H. Something we know nothing about, something even his wife knows nothing about. Maybe Mychelle had a boyfriend she crossed. The murders don't have to be related. There really are coincidences in this world.” Susan put her hands in her pockets. “What if one of H.H.'s ex-girlfriends flew into a rage when he left Anne for Mychelle? Well, we think it was Mychelle. Why didn't he dump his wife for her, the ex, I mean? People do crazy things.”

Harry stubbornly stuck to her guns. “If that's the case, then I am right. The murders are related.”

As the humans argued, Brinkley proudly told the little pack in the station wagon,
“I carry Tazio's plans. She doesn't have to get up from her chair. I can carry blueprints without making a tooth mark.”

“What about slobber?”
an unimpressed Pewter said.

“I don't slobber,”
Brinkley replied.

“Tucker does.”
Pewter felt like being a pill.

“I do not.”

“She does not,”
Owen grumbled.
“Corgis don't slobber.”

“He's right. They nip your heels. Very big on herding.”
Mrs. Murphy wrapped her tail around her. It was growing colder in the vehicle.
“Death from the ankles down.”

Finally, Harry and Susan climbed back in the car.

“I'll see you at the board meeting. And Harry, how could you even think I would sleep with H.H.? I still can't believe you asked me that.”

“He wasn't that bad looking.”

“Not my type.”

“Okay, I'm sorry. I was kind of rude.”

“Kind of!” Susan exclaimed.

“Like you haven't done worse.” Harry flopped back against the seat. “See you.” She waved to Tazio who put Brinkley in the cab of the truck. Then Harry rolled up the window.

“I may have done worse to you but not to an acquaintance.”

“I apologized.”

“With no enthusiasm. I am taking you back to your truck. I am not driving you anywhere else. I will not risk more social embarrassment.”

“Sure. Get your doughnuts and forget your best friend. I know how you are.”

The animals snuggled up to one another, although Mrs. Murphy kept her ears cocked in case the humans said anything of importance.

“My advice to you is to concentrate on other things.”

“I told you this was about sexual revenge. I'm going to tell Cooper, too.”

“She'll be thrilled.”

“You can be so sarcastic.”

“Oh, and you are beauty, truth, and light. You're bored, Harry. When you get bored you get into trouble. I have half a mind to call your ex-husband and tell him just what I think.”

“Of what?”

“Of you.”

“You think I'm terrific.” A raffish grin appeared on Harry's lips, glossy with lip protector.

“So modest.”

“Don't call Fair.”

“Make up your mind.”

This was a subject of fruitful contention. Fair wanted his ex-wife back. She had forgiven him at last. They'd been divorced four years. She loved him but she didn't think she was in love with him one day and then the next day she thought she was.

Harry scrunched down in the seat. “Oh Susan, why is life so damned complicated?”

“It just is. Even here in Crozet. But you have to be fair, forgive the pun. If there's someone out there for you, go look. If you want Fair, then just do it. Get it over with. Take him back and make a life again.”

“That's what everyone wants me to do.”

“I never said I did.”

“Actually, you haven't, for which I am grateful.”

“Are you confused?”

“No.”

“Then let him go if you don't want him. It will be easier than watching him fall in love without you letting him go.”

Harry sat upright, her head sharply turning in Susan's direction. “What do you know that I don't?”

“Nothing. I really don't. But people can only wait so long. He's repented. He's been respectful. I don't think he will have another episode like the one that, well, you know. He got it out of his system.” Susan held up her right hand for Harry to shut up since her mouth had opened wide. “Listen. I'm telling you what I observe and what I think. I'm not telling you to take him back. But make up your mind. Just damn well do it. Fish or cut bait.”

Harry exhaled, blowing the hair on her forehead up. “I hate this.”

“Oh, come on, it's not as bad as when your marriage broke up.”

“That's true.”

“We aren't getting any younger, you know. Forty sure draws closer.”

“So what?” Harry replied.

“You're a pretty girl. You need a partner. Life is just better with the right person. I ought to know. I married Ned when I was nineteen, nineteen years ago, and it was one of the smartest things I ever did.”

“Ned is pretty wonderful, although he may not be so wonderful once the campaign starts. Maybe you can paint on a smile.”

“I'll manage.”

“Guess you will. You usually do. But here's the thing, Susan. I can respond to other men. Remember when Diego from Uruguay visited here? He started my motor. If I can feel that way about another man I don't know if I'm doing the right thing getting tied down again. Maybe this time I'll be the unfaithful one . . .”

“Revenge?”

“I've been through the revenge fantasies. I'm over it. I'm even over not trusting him. I'm just”—she shrugged—“stuck.”

“Love changes over time. It can't be like when you were first together. The fire burns more steadily. It's better, I think. If you're looking for that falling-in-love high, no, you won't find that with Fair. But what you have is genuine.”

“There are advantages to getting back together permanently with Fair. He knows me and I know him. He has his work here and I have mine. I'm not leaving Crozet. I don't care how alluring another man is. I can't imagine not living here.”

“Maybe you should take a year off? Rent the farm and live somewhere else. Just to experience it.”

“I lived in Northampton, Massachusetts. College was great but I belong here, right here in dowdy Crozet.”

“The town's not much,” Susan agreed. “Of course, central Virginia is one of the most beautiful places on earth.”

“Right, and think about this. Suppose I rented a place in—in—I got one, Montana? I haul my horses out there. I'm not living without my horses. I take the kitties and Tucker. To do what? Think great thoughts? I have no great thoughts. I don't even have medium-sized thoughts.”

“I'm glad you have decisively reached that conclusion. Now how about the other one?”

“You're right”—her voice dropped, then rose again—“you are. But you know, I look around and I think I know everyone and they know me and then I remember that we still don't know who Charly Ashcraft's illegitimate child is, nor the mother, and that's a mystery of what, twenty years? I think about that and I think about other things and, well, I can't stand it. I can't stand not knowing things. Poor Fair, I drive him crazy.”

Charly Ashcraft, the handsomest boy in Harry's high school class, had fathered two illegitimate children before he graduated from high school. The first one was never identified, nor was the young woman who was the mother. The second one was known to live out of town, but the unknown first child remained one of those mysteries that would every now and then crop up in conversations. Charly himself had been shot a few days before his twentieth high school reunion in a pure revenge killing. Many thought he had it coming.

“Forget Charly's child,” Susan firmly said. “It's not possible to know everything about everybody.”

“You're right, you know, and that kind of scares me. Do I even know myself? Does anybody?”

“Yes. If you want to learn, time teaches you.”

“H-m-m.”

Susan pulled into her driveway. “Think about what I've said.”

“I will. I always think about what you tell me even if I don't agree.”

Susan cut the motor. “And Harry, for God's sake, don't run around and tell people that H.H. and Mychelle were killed because they were lovers.”

“I wouldn't do that.”

“I guess you wouldn't but you did give me a jolt when you went straight for Tazio like that.”

“She can take it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I've gotten to know her a little bit by being on the guild with her. She's tough.”

“You know what bothers me?”

“What?”

“I don't think those murders have one thing to do with an illicit romance. I don't know why but I just don't. I'd feel better if they did. But I have this weird sensation that all this is about something else, something way out of our league.”

As Susan rarely said things like that, Harry paid attention. She was usually the one with hunches, dragging Susan along.

“Could be.”

“And because we can't imagine it, it's dangerous. I think what you don't know
can
hurt you.”

“So you do think the murders are related?” Harry couldn't hide the note of triumph in her voice.

“Yes, I do, and once you've killed two people, what's a third?”

25

T
he basketball game that evening was a subdued affair made even more dolorous by a poor performance. UVA lost by seven points.

Mychelle's body had only been found that morning, but the story was already on the television news. Those not watching the news soon heard about it from their neighbors on the bleachers. People, being the curious creatures that they are, walked by the broom closet and stopped to stare. A few were disappointed that blood wasn't smeared on the floor.

Even Matthew Crickenberger, ever ebullient, was quiet. He handed out drinks as always but didn't have the heart to blow his noisemakers. BoomBoom dispiritedly shook her blue and orange pennant a few times but that was about it.

Fred Forrest, too shaken by Mychelle's murder, didn't attend the game.

After the game, Harry sprinted to her truck. She had talked with Fair on the phone earlier. Both of them decided this wasn't the night for him to take Harry and BoomBoom out for a drink.

The lights of the university receded as she rolled down Route 250 passing Farmington Country Club on the right, Ednam subdivision on the left. About a mile from Ednam the old Rinehart estate reposed on the left. Subdivisions like Flordon and West Leigh were tucked back into the folds of the land but much of it remained open. A sparkle of light here or there testified to a cozy home, a plume of smoke curling up out of the chimneys.

Harry loved leaving Charlottesville, rolling into the quiet of the countryside. She'd shift her eyes right and left searching for the reflection off a deer's eyes or a raccoon. Seeing that greenish glare, she'd slow down.

Then she reached the intersection of Route 250, which curved left toward Waynesboro and then Staunton. She took the right into Crozet, new subdivisions dotting the way into town. She passed the old food processing plant, currently empty and a cause for sadness. She passed the tidy row of small houses on the north side of the road. A tricky little curve ahead kept her alert. The supermarket was on the right and the old, still-intact train station perched on her left.

When she reached the intersection with the flashy new gas station she turned left. A blessed absence of traffic allowed her to poke along. She could see the lights on in Tracy Raz's apartment. He'd renovated the top floor of the old bank building, which he was buying. Closemouthed, he wouldn't tell anyone what he planned to do with the building but, knowing Tracy, it would be interesting. He hadn't even told Miranda, whose curiosity was reaching a fever pitch.

When she finally pulled into the long driveway to the farm she felt oddly happy. She loved her little part of the world and most of the people in it. She knew people's grandparents and parents, she knew their children, she knew their kith and kin including the ones not worth knowing. She knew their pets and their peculiarities—both the pets' and the people's. She knew who had the oldest walnut tree, the best apple orchard, who put up the best Christmas decorations, who was generous, who was not. She knew who liked the color red and who liked blue, who had money, who didn't, and who lied about what they did have. She knew who could ride and who couldn't, who could shoot and who couldn't. She knew the frailties of ego and body. She'd seen the ambitious rise, the lazy fall, and drink and drugs claim their fair share of souls. She'd watched the ebb and flow of gossip about any one person and had been a victim of it herself, divorce being a spectator sport. She'd seen undeserving people prosper occasionally and the deserving brought low through no fault of their own. She knew chaos was like a chigger. You couldn't see the little blighter but the next thing you knew, there it was under your skin biting the hell out of you.

Murder was chaos. Apart from the immorality of it, it offended her sense of order and decorum. Furthermore, a murder acted like cayenne pepper on her system, it speeded her up. It inflamed her own ego. How dare someone do this? And what really nibbled at her was the fact that whoever did thought they were smarter than other people. She flat-out hated that. She would not be outsmarted.

When she pulled up to the back door, she saw three pairs of eyes staring out from the kitchen window. She heard Tucker barking a welcome.

She sprinted to the door, walked through the screened-in porch, opened the door to the kitchen and a rapturous welcome.

“My little angels.”

“Mom!”
came the chorus.

“Kids, I'm going to figure out what's going on around here. We'll show 'em.”

“She never learns.”
Tucker's ears drooped for a moment.

“And we do double duty. Her senses are so dull, without us she would have been dead a long time ago,”
Pewter complained.

“And so would we,”
Mrs. Murphy forcefully said.
“She saved me from a sure death at the SPCA and she took care of you, too, Pewter. She talked Market Shiflett into giving you a home when he found you abandoned under the Dumpster. The fact that you ate him out of his convenience store is another matter. She saved us both. Where she goes, we go.”

Pewter, chagrined, replied,
“You're absolutely right. One for all and all for one.”

Tucker laughed.
“You all are so original.”

As Tucker had been a gift to Harry from Susan Tucker, she didn't feel saved but she still felt lucky. Harry loved her and Tucker loved Harry, devotedly.

“Aren't we chatty tonight?” Harry picked up Murphy, kissing her forehead, and then she picked up Pewter, kissing her, too.

“Human kisses.”
Pewter grimaced.

As Pewter wriggled out of Harry's arms, Murphy kissed the human back, her rough tongue making Harry giggle. Then she put Murphy down and knelt to kiss Tucker. Harry loved her animals and, if truth be told, she probably loved them more than people.

As for her declaration that she would figure out what was going on, she might have been a little less cocky if she had been sitting in on Mychelle Burns's autopsy.