Whisker of Evil

by Rita Mae Brown

  Harry didn’t want to argue with Herb, but she couldn’t imagine those two leaving the high life in New York. Then again, this was decades in the future. God willing.

  “Having Little Mim and Blair at Rose Hill makes sense.” Harry agreed with that part of Herb’s scenario.

  “My old family place will be put back on the market.”

  Blair’s farm had originally been the old Jones homestead, a designation of some importance in these parts. No one ever wanted the homeplace to wind up in the hands of others, but more often than not such places did because the originating family couldn’t afford the upkeep.

  “Yes.” Harry’s voice dropped. A new neighbor was not necessarily an appetizing prospect, most particularly since she liked the old one.

  “Well, I have a thought. I believe Blair would give you good terms.”

  “Oh, Herb, I’d love to have the land, but I can’t afford all of it.”

  “I’d like to have the homeplace back, and my retirement isn’t too far in the future. If, and I mean if, the time comes that you and I should approach Blair, I think we could work something out. I can’t farm all that land, but you can. If you can buy the lion’s share of the land, I’ll keep, say, maybe twenty or fifty acres, whatever, with the cemetery. You take the rest.”

  She had one hand on each cat, and her hands rested on them. “That would be wonderful,” she whispered. “Wonderful.”

  “Blair likes you very much.”

  “And I like him.”

  “And I think both Big Mim and Tally would help us all structure a deal that we could live with and perhaps even thrive on.” He smiled broadly. “Those women have two of the best business heads in the state of Virginia. If Tally had been a man she’d have run R. J. Reynolds or Liggett & Myers, I mean it. She was born in the wrong era. As it was she built her farm into something special and spread her risk. Tally played the stock market, too, and she taught Big Mim. As you know, Mim’s mother was the society type. She didn’t care about making money, only spending it.”

  “You know, I’m so excited by the idea that I can’t breathe.” Harry took a deep breath. “And I’d have a holy neighbor.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Herb laughed. “Well, let’s you and I keep our ears to the ground, and don’t tell Miranda or Susan. We’ve got to keep this just between us.”

  “Agreed.” She petted the kitties. “Why don’t I give them some goodies on the way out?”

  “Hooray.” The two vacated her lap and hurried toward the small kitchen.

  Walking to the kitchen, Herb said, “This new carpet is the best thing. When you think of all the meetings the Parish Guild had about it—it was worth it.”

  “Like walking on air.”

  Driving back to her farm, the sunshine golden and fine, Harry wondered how she could get the money to buy that land. She’d get it somehow, if she had to work three jobs. The chance to buy land that you know doesn’t come along but so often. Then she remembered describing to Herb where she’d found Barry, by the creek.

  She needed to go back to the creek, but first she’d change her clothes and take along Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker. Their senses were better than hers, and she had the good sense to know it.

  4

  A cool wind current snaked alongside Potlicker Creek. The wind flowed up and over a small hillock covered with mountain laurel, then dropped down to the lowland again.

  Harry, a creature of the outdoors, felt it on her skin. She breathed deeply. Ofttimes she could smell deer scent or plant pollen odors on these currents. As the scent warmed, it would rise to her nostrils depending on the temperature during the day. There were days in winter when the scent stuck right on the ground. Even with the stronger aromas overhead, Tucker usually knew who and what had passed along the ground. The two cats did, as well, but since their sight was superior to either Harry’s or Tucker’s, they usually relied on that sense first.

  “Why are we back here? Wasn’t once bad enough?” Pewter grumbled as she again examined the area where Barry Monteith had been discovered.

  “Mom’s got a notion.” Tucker moved upstream, the clear water revealing rounded rocks underneath or pools of deep water where rockfish dozed in the early afternoon.

  “Always means trouble.” Pewter slapped at a mayfly zooming in front of her.

  “Missed,” Tucker, out of Pewter’s range, said.

  “As if you ever caught a bug.” The gray cat turned her back on the dog, the feline version of the cold shoulder.

  Mrs. Murphy walked alongside Harry. Like her human, she, too, overflowed with curiosity. Unlike her human, she had a much better sense of danger.

  “You know, I didn’t feel so bad at the time, but I feel bad now,” Harry said to Mrs. Murphy. “What could have killed Barry? The only thing I can think of would be an eagle. There’d be no ground tracks, no fur, and one slash with those talons could open up any one of us, although it would have to hit him just right to slice the jugular. People don’t realize how strong or how fast birds are. A bluejay going at top speed can hurt you. Of course, the question is, why would an eagle want to kill a human?”

  “I will kill that bluejay in the lilac bushes. I hate him,” Pewter snarled, the vision of her nemesis arousing her ire.

  “He is pretty awful,” Mrs. Murphy agreed as Pewter joined them.

  “Mom, there are eagles around now. Most of them are down along the James River, but bald eagles are making a comeback and they are scary.” Tucker respected large raptors, and if she saw a shadow on the ground she looked up, prepared to fight.

  “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.” Harry shook her head. “I’m wasting my time and yours.”

  “I could be sleeping.” Pewter agreed with her.

  A snort through nostrils behind them, downwind, caused all four to wheel around.

  “You’re on my turf,” an old buck challenged them.

  Mrs. Murphy and Pewter immediately huffed up, standing sideways. The tiger cat let out a ferocious growl.

  “Pipsqueak.” He lowered his head.

  “Big enough to scratch your eyes out.” Mrs. Murphy stood her ground.

  “Damn.” Harry simply exhaled.

  Usually deer will flee from a human, but occasionally a buck or a doe with a fawn will become aggressive. They could do damage.

  Tucker, flat on the ground, hind end bunched up ready to spring, bared her fangs.

  The buck charged toward the cats, who spat and scratched. He was so nimble he soared clean over them as Tucker sprang toward him. The path was narrow; mountain laurel rolled down almost to the creek at this point. Harry leapt sideways into the creek, her shoes hitting the stones, rolling a large one. She lost her footing, falling into the water.

  Tucker, furious, ran at the stag, leaping up at him. The large animal swung his head low at the dog, but the corgi had been bred to herd large animals. She dodged, then nipped the shiny cloven hooves. This upset the stag. He kicked out, but the beautiful and brave little canine easily avoided the blow. She circled the stag, confusing him, then she nipped again and again. She was relentless and much faster than the stag anticipated.

  “You leave us alone!” Tucker barked.

  Mrs. Murphy stalked the stag, although Tucker had the situation under control.

  “Climb a tree, Mom!” Pewter advised, taking her own advice.

  Harry, wet, picked up a rock and aimed it at the enraged animal. She hit him hard on the side just as Tucker landed another painful nip. The stag leapt gracefully over the mountain laurel, flying away from Tucker, who chased the stag all the way to a meadow filled with buttercups.

  She returned to cheers.

  Harry, still standing in the creek, praised her. “You are the best dog in the world.”

  “Who does he think he is?” Tucker, adrenaline still pumping, puffed out her snowy chest.

  “I’m glad you’re my friend.” Mrs. Murphy rushed up to the corgi and rubbed across her chest.

  Pewter
remained in the tree. A prudent sort, she thought it best to wait for a few minutes just in case the stag decided to return.

  Harry bent over to wash her hands, since the rock she’d plucked out had a muddy clump on the bottom. A shiny flash caught her eye. She reached down, but the water distorted her depth perception and she missed. She slowly reached again and grabbed it.

  Pewter backed down the tree as Harry put a small gold school ring in her palm. A shield with a cross, an inscription in Latin underneath, the ring was distinctive.

  “What the . . . ?” She peered but couldn’t make out the inscription. The writing was reversed and quite tiny. She thought the first word started with a V. The shield looked like the shield for the Episcopal Church. Inside in larger script were the initials M. P. R. and, underneath, 1945. A 10K stamp rested to the left of the M, far enough away not to draw the eye from the prettily engraved letters and numbers.

  “Must have been under the rock,” Pewter opined.

  “Gives me an idea.” Mrs. Murphy, fur finally flattening down, paced alongside the creek bank. She wanted Harry to come out of the water. If need be, Mrs. Murphy could and would swim, but she didn’t like it. One hideously hot and humid day last summer she put her front paws in her water bowl, to everyone’s amazement.

  Harry stepped out of the creek, her work boots sloshing, her pant legs stuck to her calves. She bent down so her friends could see the ring. Living close to animals since birth, Harry naturally shared with them; more, she trusted them. These small predators, her dearest companions, had survived the millennia just as her species had. In her mind, they were all winners, and you learn from winners.

  “Old,” Pewter said.

  “Strange. Strange to be here where we found Barry.” Tucker could only smell watery smells on the ring.

  “But it gives me an idea,” Mrs. Murphy repeated.

  “Which is?” Tucker’s large brown eyes looked straight into Mrs. Murphy’s electric green eyes.

  “The creek. Whatever killed Barry could have carried him a distance, even a mile or two, just picked him up and carried him. Barry wouldn’t be wet or dirty, which he wasn’t.”

  “Have to be strong.” Pewter considered Mrs. Murphy’s idea. “And if something carried him, there’d have been blood over his chest. He wasn’t carried. Whatever attacked him hit him hard and he dropped and died. That’s what I think.”

  “Lots of strong animals around here. Just chased one,” Tucker replied.

  “That’s true, although deer don’t kill and carry.” Pewter knew enough to know that even prey animals could act out of character sometimes. One never knew, and best to be on guard.

  “A bear could do it. A forty-pound bobcat could do it if he had to, or a coyote, or a big wild dog.” Tucker thought out loud.

  “Or a human.” Mrs. Murphy was beginning to get a bad feeling about this.

  5

  Aunt Tally had been shrinking with age. As a young woman she towered over her female peers, but now in her nineties her five-foot-eight-inch frame had contracted to five feet four inches, the national average, and if there was one thing Aunt Tally hated it was being average.

  Mim, her niece, sat next to her at the end of the sturdy kitchen table in Aunt Tally’s wonderful old Virginia kitchen, the wood-burning cooking stove still in use as well as an expensive Aga, a convection stove known only to the cognoscenti. The Aga was the pride of Aunt Tally’s cook, Loretta Young. Loretta affected the demeanor of the actress she was named for, which was quite a novelty in a cook.

  As it was Sunday, Loretta was down at Big Mim’s to assist with the Sunday dinner. Gretchen, the majordomo of that house, loathed Loretta. Jim had slyly placed a boxing bell on the side leg of the dining-room table. He intended to hit it with a small hammer, thereby amusing his family and guests and serving notice on the two battling broads, as he put it, to settle down, at least until dinner was served.

  Big Mim had driven out to pick up her aunt, who didn’t want to go to Dalmally until the last minute. She declared it took her all that extra time to just pull her face up off the floor.

  Cynthia Cooper, Harry, Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker arrived just as Tally had applied her peach lipstick. They hadn’t known Aunt Tally was going to Dalmally. They were now all huddled around the table.

  “I found this in the creek not far from where I found Barry.” Harry reached into her pocket and removed the ring, which she’d wrapped in her handkerchief. She’d shown it to Cooper before, and both women decided to go straight to Aunt Tally.

  “Mmm.” Tally picked up her magnifying glass as Mim’s face registered recognition.

  “Holy Cross, Aunt Tally.”

  “I know that,” Tally snapped. “I want to see what’s inside. M.P.R. 1945.”

  Mim’s face turned white. “Mary Patricia Reines.”

  “What?” The nonagenarian’s light-blue eyes opened wide. “Mary Pat’s been missing since 1974.” She turned to Deputy Cooper. “You should know.”

  “That was before my time, Miss Urquhart. It must be an inactive file.”

  “Inactive? Unsolved is more like it.” Aunt Tally’s white eyebrows drew together.

  “This is Mary Pat’s high-school ring. She wore it on her left pinkie. I’d know it anywhere.” Mim, hands shaking, put the ring down. “Exactly where did you find this?”

  “In Potlicker Creek where the dirt road heads toward the mountains, the road that goes over to Augusta County ’cept no one uses it. Can’t really get through anymore. Well, you could on a horse.” Harry amended her statement.

  “Potlicker Creek? Where you found Barry Monteith, you say?” Big Mim had heard about that because Sheriff Shaw called once the body had been removed. He notified the Sanburnes for two reasons. One, Jim was mayor of Crozet. Two, Big Mim ran this end of the county and it wouldn’t do to get on her bad side.

  “Downstream a little bit. I fell in the creek and picked up a rock to throw at a rogue stag. Tucker chased him off.”

  Aunt Tally plucked up the ring from the table where her niece had placed it as though it were a hot coal. “Worn. Wonder if it’s been tumbling around in that creek for all this time.”

  “It was pretty much worn when she disappeared,” Mim quietly said. “She wore it every day since her graduation in 1945 and it’s ten-karat gold, thin as it is. Oh, dear, but this stirs up memories. Aunt Tally, if you will forgive me, I’m going to drink some roped coffee.” Mim, slender and elegant, pushed away from the table and walked over to the counter where a huge, gleaming automatic coffeemaker, shipped over from Italy, kept a perfect brew steaming. “Can I fix anyone else a shot?”

  “I’ll have one.” Aunt Tally leaned back in the ladderback chair.

  “Just coffee for me, thanks,” Cooper said.

  “You aren’t on duty, are you? No uniform,” Big Mim noted.

  “No, but I’ll stick to coffee.”

  “Harry, tea for you?” Mim clicked on the electric teapot.

  “Thank you.”

  Big Mim opened a cabinet, pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, and poured a shot into two large mugs of coffee. No point in using single malt in coffee. Some folks used bourbon, others rum, or even a flavored brandy, but Mim and her aunt stuck to good scotch. She placed the mugs on the table along with sweet cream and brown sugar. She poured a plain mug for Cooper just as the teapot clicked off—perfect timing. Then she put down a few treats for the animals and sat down herself.

  “I dimly remember Mary Pat’s disappearance, but I was in grade school,” Cooper commented.

  “Me, too. She bred Ziggy Flame, a big flaming chestnut thoroughbred—beautifully bred, I remember that. The mare was one of the Aga Khan’s best mares, a daughter of Almahoud. His sire was Tom Fool, used to stand at Greentree Stud in Kentucky, one of the greats.”

  Big Mim smiled. “Harry, what a memory.”

  “If I could recite bloodlines my mother would give me a quarter,” Harry replied. “But I don’t remember much more than tha
t.”

  “Mary Pat, a beautiful woman, inherited pots of money. Her parents were killed at the beginning of World War Two when the Germans sank a passenger ship that had left Lisbon. They’d been caught in Europe when war broke out and were trying to get home. Obviously, she was still a minor, so the executor of the will administered the estate. That was Randy Jenkins, and he did a good job. Mary Pat graduated from Holy Cross, studied at Hollins, graduated, and came back to run St. James Farm. She wanted to breed horses and she did. She disappeared in 1974 along with Ziggy Flame, not a trace of either one ever found until now,” Big Mim recounted. “We’d been friends since childhood. She was older than I, but even when I was small she was a friend, like a big sister.”

  “No suspects?” Cooper knew she’d give up her Sunday. She would head right back to the station and search for Mary Patricia Reines’s file.

  “Oh, Marshall Kressenberg, a stable hand and exercise rider, was a suspect, but only because he was on the farm when she disappeared. They got along all right. Sam Berryhill, her farm manager, was a suspect, but he’d been in Middleburg so that ruled him out. Let’s see, he died in ’88. Her entire estate except for a couple of broodmares passed to Alicia Palmer, who became the prime suspect. They never could pin it on Alicia.” Aunt Tally filled in details.

  Cooper interrupted. “The actress?”

  “Yes.” Big Mim picked up the conversation. “She had a good career, married again and again and again. She lives in Santa Barbara and, as you know, occasionally comes back to St. James, which she maintains just as Mary Pat left it—except for renting out the stables and training track to Barry Monteith and Sugar Thierry. Alicia’s not really a horse person.”

  “Graveyard of old movie stars, Santa Barbara,” Aunt Tally giggled. She remembered Santa Barbara when Ronald and Benita Colman owned San Ysidro Ranch. Aunt Tally had spent many a lovely weekend there in her youth, and it was quite a wild youth, lasting well into her fifties.

  “Her horses were sold at auction. A big breeder in Maryland bought most of them. I remember Humphrey Finney was the auctioneer. The progeny of her stable are still on the tracks today. Mary Pat knew what she was doing.” Big Mim sighed, for she had loved Mary Pat. “And she bred back that mare to Tom Fool. Ziggy disappeared just as his career was burgeoning but, thank God, the bloodlines survived. When the broodmare band was dispersed, Ziggy’s mother was bought by a breeder in Kentucky. Forget the name. Out of that breeding came Ziggy Dark Star, Flame’s full brother, a year younger, who had a stud career. Never raced, or if he did I never heard about it. He was in Maryland. Of course, Mary Pat was gone by then, so she didn’t know just how good her breeding program was.”