The Big Cat Nap

by Rita Mae Brown

  “It’s Barbara.” Yancy mentioned his wife.

  “Ah, yes, mother of the bride.” Victor whistled, then added, “Good luck, Yancy. Fair, I’m going to tempt your wife.”

  Harry had walked by with a few other vestry-board members.

  “She tempts me daily.” Fair smiled.

  “WRX STI. Great deal.” Victor started to move in Harry’s direction.

  “You’ll torture her,” Fair rejoined.

  “I know.” Victor left as the three other men watched.

  Yancy turned to Latigo and got down to brass tacks. “Do natural disasters greatly affect your business?”

  “Yes,” Latigo replied seriously. “Any disruption affects insurance, but I don’t have the kind of massive claims that life insurers or property insurers do in situations like floods or tornadoes. In ways, auto insurance is pretty cut-and-dried because we have the blue book to value our cars and trucks.”

  Yancy, drink in left hand, slid his right hand into his pants pocket, jingled keys. “Because I buy some crops ahead of harvest, like futures trading, I factor in weather. Not that you can predict anything with accuracy, but large changes like El Niño, stuff like that, I factor it in. Every little thing can affect harvest for good or for ill. ’Course, I don’t think there ever was insurance for corn worms.” He took a sip.

  Fair listened with interest to Latigo’s reply. “As you know, the government does offer some insurance for crops—”

  Yancy interrupted. “Better than nothing, I suppose, but I’d hate to depend on it.”

  “Me, too. The payment is always inadequate to the damage, and there’s plenty of people who will tell you the same thing about auto insurance. We undervalue their cars, undervalue repairs, use less-skilled labor. The funny thing is, NHTSA—the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration—hasn’t had an update on wheels since 1974. Back then wheels were steel. So we’ve got some seriously outmoded standards.”

  “Well, that just might make it easier for you to be dishonest,” Yancy impolitely answered.

  Stiffening slightly, Latigo said, “I’ll assume the ‘you’ applies to the industry and not me personally. Actually, what creates problems is people expecting the government to take care of them. Well, if wheel standards are damned near forty years old, isn’t it clear either they don’t care, or they don’t know enough to care, or they’re too venal to care? I know that safety standards are vastly different for a steel wheel than for one made primarily of aluminum. When my field agents assess damage and repair costs, I can tell you they’re far more accurate than any federal goon ever is.”

  “Didn’t know about that,” Yancy simply replied.

  “People have no idea, no idea at all.” Latigo laughed derisively.

  “The technology changes so rapidly. How can you keep up with it? I know the government can’t.” Fair was curious.

  “Fair, let me tell you something.” Latigo, one inch shorter than Fair’s six foot five, looked level at him. “What’s changed is computers running cars. Engines haven’t changed. Alternators haven’t changed. Fan belts haven’t changed. The internal-combustion engine is about perfect. Materials change. Oh, maybe the angle of setting an engine under the hood will change, but a piston is a piston.”

  “Never thought of it that way,” the vet replied.

  “I have a garage full of great cars. My Porsche 911 is a little bit of heaven. I have a gorgeous old restored DeSoto. Walt Richardson restored it, actually. I have my own muscle cars, and for my wife I bought a 1957 Thunderbird in aqua and white. I love cars, I love engines, and I love insuring them. What I don’t love is my industry being demonized, made into a target.”

  Yancy was thoughtful. “If I have one misshapen grape in a bunch, someone will call Albemarle’s health inspector on me. I wasn’t kidding when I said the Navy looks good again.”

  Fair, dangling his longneck bottle, asked, “Latigo, what would you say is the real purpose of insurance?”

  Right back at him, Latigo said, “To spread risk. We’ve had forms of insurance since the second millennium B.C., and the purpose is always to spread risk.”

  Just then Harry trotted up to her husband, pulling him away from Yancy and Latigo.

  “Honey, you’re a little flushed. Do I look that good to you?” Fair teased.

  “Victor Gatzembizi is the devil himself. Twenty-seven thousand dollars for the WRX STI. The loan would be about twenty-three thousand if I went to the bank. Of course, I’m not even thinking about it. Given all that Nick put in it, that’s an incredible price. Fantastic car. Great reviews in the car mags. He’s ruined my day.”

  “No, he hasn’t. He has given you something to think about. You love cars.”

  “Twenty-seven thousand dollars with a blown tractor to repair? Hell.” Harry looked confused, sad, a little angry all at once.

  “There is the tractor.” Fair sighed. “That’s farming. One thing after another.”

  “What would I ever do with a pocket rocket?” She looked up at him imploringly.

  “For one, you’d enjoy yourself. You only go ’round once.”

  Aunt Tally reposed in a comfortable chair under a tree. At one hundred she deserved that. Her friend Inez Carpenter, DVM, two years younger, sat next to her. Big Mim rushed and fluttered about, being her usual imperious self. Her daughter accepted all the happy hugs from those who now knew she was pregnant. Blair—no cigars this time—handed out Zippo lighters with the Stars and Stripes on the chrome casing.

  “I want you prepared when the baby comes. You’ll need to light your cigar.” Blair gave Fair and Victor each a lighter, then gave one to Reverend Jones, and he joined them.

  “Thanks, Blair,” Herb said. His flame flared up high. “But if I use this thing, I’ll burn my eyebrows off.”

  Blair took the lighter back and showed the reverend how to adjust the flame.

  After the food, everyone sat for a bit to let it settle.

  Mark Catron had played the clarinet for the Charlotte Philharmonic Orchestra before moving to Albemarle County. Now he stood up and, using his bugle, he blew them to order. Mark could play anything.

  Reverend Jones stood next to the trumpeter with the bright blue eyes. “All right. We’re ready to divide up for the capture-the-flag teams. If you all look at the ticket you were given when you got in the food line, it will have a number on it.”

  There was a rustle as people searched for their tickets. Purses opened and shut. Men fished in their back pockets.

  “Odd numbers are the blue team. Even numbers are the red team. You’ll have tails in your color, like in flag football. BoomBoom Craycroft will hand out the blues; Alicia Palmer, the reds. The timekeeper is Susan Tucker. She has the whistle. When the air horn blows once, play. Blows twice, stop. Our referees, Harry Haristeen and Craig Newby, will be wearing referee shirts and blowing the standard whistle.”

  Harry and Craig appeared in shirts with vertical black-and-white stripes.

  Is there an American who doesn’t love playing capture the flag on Flag Day? The whole crowd repaired to the area outside the inner quad, the cemetery anchoring its far side. This giant rectangle had been marked with lime to the dimensions of a football field.

  At one end was a red flag the size of an American flag. At the other end, a blue flag, also large. Each team lined up opposite its colored flag.

  Each team was given time to elect their captains. Aunt Tally kept the stopwatch after people moved her chair to the field’s edge. Susan held the air horn to signal quarter- and halftimes.

  Both elected team captains were popular high school seniors at Western Albemarle High School.

  “Is everybody ready?” Reverend Jones called out in his deep voice.

  “Ready,” the captains responded.

  Reverend Jones raised his hand, dropped it.

  Harry blew the whistle at the exact moment. The chaos began. If a red ventured into blue territory and his or her flag was snatched, the person had to go behind the oppos
ing team’s end line, in purgatory.

  Pewter haughtily strolled to the cemetery wall, jumping up to observe the silly game. The three St. Luke’s cats joined her.

  People yelled, screamed encouragement to teammates. Onlookers clapped and shouted.

  Fifteen minutes into it, the air horn blew, signaling the end of the first quarter. The teams had two minutes to catch their breath and rethink strategy.

  Already, half of each team was behind the opposing end line. One of the peculiar rules of capture the flag was that you were set free if someone from your team slapped your hand. Given that the liberator was in enemy territory with a small team flag stuffed in a waistband, the liberator risked becoming a prisoner, too. If one had speed, it was pretty easy to run up and grab the team colors, which hung out two feet from a four-inch-wide waistband. It was like a donkey tail.

  The captured reds now lay down on the field. One had to lie down with feet touching the end line and reach out to hold the ankle of the person in front. In this way the captives formed a human chain. It was all within the rules. The closer the chain stretched to the fifty-yard line, the greater the chance that someone would be able to free the captives. They’d then rejoin the game, giving them an obvious advantage if the other team’s players were still held prisoner.

  The whistle blew; play resumed. The faster players remained free. The intensity grew. The sidelines erupted.

  “Humans invent some funny games, don’t they?” Cazenovia mused.

  Mrs. Murphy sauntered down, jumped up on the stone wall at a distance from Pewter but within speaking range of the Lutheran cats.

  “I’m not speaking to you,” Pewter huffed.

  “Good. You’re a bloody bore.”

  “I resent that,” Pewter snapped.

  “Come on, you two. We want to enjoy the day,” Lucy Fur, with authority, spoke.

  Pewter jumped down into the cemetery just as the reds were freed, their chain having grown longer so it was easier to have a free player touch a captured player without being captured herself. A huge roar went up. “I hate them all,” she grumbled. The gray cat walked to the far side of the cemetery, toward the large old stately tombstones.

  Mrs. Murphy moved closer to Elocution, Cazenovia, and Lucy Fur to chat.

  Pewter sat for a moment on the back side of the large Trumbull tombstone, a huge recumbent lamb on top of it. She sniffed. Sniffed again.

  “Hmm.” She walked around the tombstone—and stopped cold.

  Leaning against the carved family remembrance, bolt upright, was a young man, eyes staring into space. Dead as a doornail.

  “Hey! Hey!” Pewter shouted.

  Of course, the other cats paid no attention, so she tore through the graveyard and screeched to a halt at the bottom of the wall. “There’s a dead man in here.”

  “They’re all dead.” Cazenovia laughed.

  “But someone is leaned up against a tombstone!” Pewter panted.

  Mrs. Murphy jumped down and ran to her friend, anger forgotten. The two cats hurried around the Trumbull monument.

  Mrs. Murphy put a paw on the dead man’s leg, looked intently at what she could see of the corpse. “No wound. No blood. How did he die?”

  Pewter also stared at the body. “Could he have been strangled?”

  “His eyes would be bloodshot,” Mrs. Murphy replied.

  Pewter wailed, “Why does everything happen to me?”

  No point in arguing, so the tiger just nodded. The two cats raced across the well-tended graveyard.

  As they sailed over the stone wall, Mrs. Murphy called over her shoulder to the three cats, “Dead body at the Trumbull monument.”

  This was too good to be true. Cazenovia, Elocution, and Lucy Fur hopped down to run in the opposite direction.

  Calling out before she reached Harry, Mrs. Murphy hollered, “Tucker. Tucker, I need you.”

  All the commotion surrounding the game drowned out her voice.

  The two cats reached the dog, and Mrs. Murphy rapidly filled her in on their discovery.

  “I was the one who found the body,” Pewter corrected the tiger, who had said “we.”

  Stifling the urge to smack the gray cat, Mrs. Murphy simply agreed, then ordered, “Tucker, take Mom’s hand. Pewter, you and I need to get behind each leg, stand on our hind legs, and push. Sooner or later, she’ll get it.”

  Tucker, on her hind legs, grabbed Harry’s hand gently in her mouth. The two kitties started pushing. Standing just inside the limed sidelines, Harry resisted them.

  “Guys.” Harry shook off Tucker.

  Fair, amused by their antics, returned his attention to the evenly matched game. The contestants were now showing the effects of hard running.

  “Mother, pay attention!” Mrs. Murphy screeched as loud as she could.

  Tucker barked, taking Harry’s hand again, leading her a few steps.

  “What is wrong with you all?”

  Arms across his massive chest, Fair looked down at the animals. He could read their behavior better than most humans could. Not that Harry was oblivious to their methods of communicating, she just had never been accused of being overly sensitive.

  “Honey, I’ll follow them. You can’t leave your ref duties.”

  “Damn, these people are hard work.” Tucker allowed herself a brief complaint.

  Looking at the dog, Pewter unleashed her claws. “It’s refreshing to hear you not defend Mom for once. You’re always sticking up for her.”

  “I love her, although at this moment I’m loving her a little less,” the dog replied.

  “They’re all idiots, even her.” Pewter retracted her claws, since Harry had taken advantage of a time-out and called to BoomBoom to fill in.

  She handed off her ref’s shirt to BoomBoom and followed the threesome. “I’ll be right back.”

  The cats ran ahead, occasionally stopping and looking back. Tucker followed them. The animals hoped this would encourage the two people to move faster.

  The cats jumped on the stone wall. Tucker raced to the iron gate, wiggling underneath.

  Fair lifted his wife up on the stone wall.

  “I can climb,” she said.

  “You can, but why deny your husband the pleasure of feeling your body?”

  “Oh, you big, strong thing.”

  This playfulness abruptly ended when they rounded the Trumbull monument. Gathered there were all the cats. Tucker barked once for good measure.

  Harry’s hand flew to her mouth. It was Bobby Foltz.

  Fair was smart enough not to touch the body, but he knelt down for a closer look. “Dead, obviously.”

  He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his cellphone. Although not on call this weekend, he knew that certain of his clients preferred only him and would fuss if they couldn’t reach him—hence, he carried the damned phone. He dialed the sheriff’s department.

  “Honey, what would you rather do?” Fair, once finished, asked his wife, whose curiosity was now overtaking shock. “Stay with the body or go tell the reverend to move people into the inner quad?”

  “You’re a medical person. You stay. I’ll go.” She hurried back through the graveyard, looking over her shoulder. “Tucker, come on.”

  Harry filled in the reverend with the news as the blue team came within a whisker of winning.

  Reverend Jones said to Harry, “Let them finish the game. It will be much easier to move everyone in. I have to present the trophy anyway.” He paused. “This is just terrible. What in the world is going on?”

  Harry then ran along the sidelines to go and ask BoomBoom to help after the game.

  As Reverend Jones had anticipated, herding people into the stunning inner quad after the game proved easy. Tucker was a big help, snapping at people’s heels. The corgi did this respectfully. Harry was too distracted to call her off.

  Once in the inner quad, Herb presented the trophy to the triumphant blues, then said, voice commanding, “We’ve had a bit of an accident. I ask that yo
u all go home, and, Craig, as people leave, please have them sign a—Susan, get a notebook from the supply room. Have them sign the notebook with their name and the names of their family members. I’m sorry to do this, folks, but all of this will be clear later. We need a record of who was here today, as best as we can get one.”

  The crowd grumbled in confusion, and then sirens split the air.

  Cooper had intended to come to the celebration but was delayed, thanks to an accident on the old bypass. Fortunately it wasn’t serious. She’d picked up Fair’s call and informed Marcie, the dispatcher. Rick would arrive shortly after her, she hoped.

  As people left, the murmur became a roar, especially when they saw Coop’s vehicle fly down to the reverend’s garage. She hit the brakes and jumped out.

  Cool in a crisis, BoomBoom continued to move people along. She glanced back at Harry. “Whatever happened must be big.”

  Harry simply nodded.

  Susan stood at one end of the quad with the notebook. She, too, quizzically looked at Harry, who made the wrap sign with her forefinger.

  Thanks to the vestry-board members’ expert people-management skills, the place was cleared out in twenty minutes. By that time, Harry had run back to the graveyard.

  Standing on the big quad looking down, BoomBoom asked Alicia, Susan, Craig, and Reverend Jones, “What’s going on? Should we go down there?”

  Herb grimaced slightly. “No. Let’s wait up here for the sheriff. There’s always the danger of evidence being trampled.”

  “What do you mean? Evidence of what?” Alicia inquired in an even voice.

  “There’s a dead man propped up at the Trumbull tombstone. Let’s wait here. If Rick needs us or wants us, he’ll let us know.”

  “Of all times and all places,” BoomBoom blurted out. “No wonder Harry’s face looked so white.”

  Staring into the dead man’s eyes, Cooper wasn’t saying anything. She was puzzled by the disposition of the body.

  “I can’t disturb him. We’ve got to wait for the team.” She checked her watch. “Dammit to hell.”

  “Neat work. No marks,” Fair observed.

  “No marks that we can see. It is remotely possible that he sat there and had a heart attack.”