Murder at Monticello

by Rita Mae Brown

  11

  The gray of dawn yielded to rose, which surrendered to the sun. The horses fed and turned out, the stalls mucked, and the opossum fed his treat of sweet feed and molasses, Harry happily trotted inside to make herself breakfast.

  Harry started each morning with a cup of coffee, moved her great-grandmother’s cast-iron iron away from the back door—her security measure—jogged to the barn, and got the morning chores out of the way. Then she usually indulged herself in hot oatmeal or fried eggs or sometimes even fluffy pancakes drenched in Lyon’s Golden Syrup from England.

  The possum, Simon, a bright and curious fellow, would sometimes venture close to the house, but she could never coax him inside. She marveled at how Mrs. Murphy and Tucker accepted the gray creature. Mrs. Murphy displayed an unusual tolerance for other animals. Often it took Tucker a bit longer.

  “All right, you guys. You already had breakfast, but if you’re real good to me, I might, I just might, fry an egg for you.”

  “I’ll be good, I’ll be good.” Tucker wagged her rear end since she had no tail.

  “If you’d learn to play hard to get, you’d have more dignity.” Mrs. Murphy jumped onto a kitchen chair.

  “I don’t want dignity, I want eggs.”

  Harry pulled out the number five skillet, old and heavy cast iron. She rubbed it with Crisco after every washing to help preserve its longevity. She dropped a chunk of butter into the middle of the pan, which she placed on low heat. She fetched a mixing bowl and cracked open four eggs, diced a bit of cheese, some olives, and even threw in a few capers. As the skillet reached the correct temperature, the butter beginning to sizzle, she placed the eggs in it. She folded them over once, turned it off, and quickly put the eggs on a big plate. Then she divided the booty.

  Tucker ate out of her ceramic bowl, which Harry placed on the floor.

  Mrs. Murphy’s bowl, “Upholstery Destroyer” emblazoned on its side, sat on the table. She ate with Harry.

  “This is delicious.” The cat licked her lips.

  “Yeah.” Tucker could barely speak, she was eating so fast.

  The tiger cat enjoyed the olives. Seeing her pick them out and eat them first made Harry laugh every time she did it.

  “You’re too much, Mrs. Murphy.”

  “I like to savor my food,” the cat rejoined.

  “Got any more?” Tucker sat down beside her empty bowl, her neck craned upward, should any morsel fall off the table.

  “You’re as bad as Pewter.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You two are chatty this morning.” Harry cheerfully drank her second cup of coffee as she thought out loud to the animals. “Guess being up at Monticello has made me think. What would we be doing if this were 1803? I suppose, getting up at the same time and feeding the horses wouldn’t have changed. Mucking stalls hasn’t changed. But someone would have had to stoke a fire in an open hearth. If a person lived alone, it would have been a lot harder than today. How could anyone perform her chores, cook for herself, butcher meat—well, I guess you could have bought your meat, but only a day at a time unless you had a smokehouse or the meat was salted down. Think about it. And you two, no worm medicine or rabies shots, but then, no vaccines for me either. Clothing must have been itchy and heavy in the winter. Summer wouldn’t have been too bad because the women could have worn linen dresses. Men could take off their shirts. And I resent that. If I can’t take off my shirt, I don’t see why they can.” She carried on this conversation with her two friends as they hung on every word and every mouthful of egg that was shoveled into Harry’s mouth. “You two aren’t really listening, are you?”

  “We are!”

  “Here.” Harry handed Mrs. Murphy an extra olive and gave Tucker a nibble of egg. “I don’t know why I spoil you all. Look at how much you’ve had to eat this morning.”

  “We love you, Mom.” Mrs. Murphy emitted a major purr.

  Harry scratched the tiger cat’s ear with one hand and reached down to perform the same service for Tucker. “I don’t know what I’d do without you two. It’s so easy to love animals and so hard to love people. Men anyway. Your mom is striking out with the opposite sex.”

  “No, you’re not.” Tucker consoled her and was very frustrated that Harry couldn’t understand. “You haven’t met the right guy yet.”

  “I still think Blair is the right guy.” Mrs. Murphy put in her two cents.

  “Blair is off on some modeling job. Anyway, I don’t think Mom needs a man who’s that pretty.”

  “What do you mean by that?” the cat asked.

  “She needs the outdoor type. You know, a lineman or a farmer or a vet.”

  Mrs. Murphy thought about that as Harry rubbed her ears. “You still miss Fair?”

  “Sometimes I do,” the little dog replied honestly. “He’s big and strong, he could do a lot of farmwork, and he could protect Mom if something went wrong, you know.”

  “She can protect herself.” True as this was, the cat also worried occasionally about Harry being alone. No matter how you cut it, most men were stronger than most women. It was good to have a man around the farm.

  “Yeah—but still,” came the weak reply.

  Harry stood up and took the dishes to the porcelain sink. She meticulously washed each one, dried them, and put them away. Coming home to dirty dishes in the sink drove Harry to despair. She turned off the coffeepot. “Looks like a Mary Minor Haristeen day.” This meant it was sunny.

  She paused for a moment to watch the horses groom one another. Then her mind drifted off for a moment and she spoke to her animal friends. “How could Medley Orion live with a body under her fireplace—if she knew? She may not have known a single thing, but if she did, how could she make her coffee, eat her breakfast, and go about her business—knowing? I don’t think I could do it.”

  “If you were scared enough, you could,” Mrs. Murphy wisely noted.

  12

  The old walnut countertop gleamed as Mrs. Hogendobber polished it with beeswax. Harry, using a stiff broom, swept out the back of the post office. The clock read two-thirty, a time for chores and a lull between people stopping in at lunchtime and on their way home from work. Mrs. Murphy, sound asleep in the mail cart, flicked her tail and cackled, dreaming of mice. Tucker lay on her side on the floor, made shiny from the decades of treading feet. She, too, was out cold.

  “Hey, did I tell you that Fair asked me to the movies next week?” Harry attacked a corner.

  “He wants you back.”

  “Mrs. H., you’ve been saying that since the day we separated. He sure didn’t want me back when he was cavorting with BoomBoom Craycroft, she of the pontoon bosoms.”

  Mrs. Hogendobber waved her dust cloth over her head like a small flag. “A passing fancy. He had to get it out of his system.”

  “And so he did,” came Harry’s clipped reply.

  “You must forgive and forget.”

  “Easy for you to say. It wasn’t your husband.”

  “You’ve got me there.”

  Harry, surprised that Mrs. Hogendobber agreed with her so readily, paused a moment, her broom held off the ground. A knock at the back door brought the broom down again.

  “Me,” Market Shiflett called.

  “Hi.” Harry opened the door and Market, who owned the grocery store next door, came in, followed by Pewter.

  “Haven’t seen you today. What have you been up to?” Miranda kept polishing.

  “This and that and who shot the cat.” He smiled, looked down at Pewter, and apologized. “Sorry, Pewter.”

  Pewter, far too subtle to push the dog awake, flicked her fat little tail over Tucker’s nose until the dog opened her eyes.

  “I was dead to the world.” Tucker blinked.

  “Where’s herself?” Pewter inquired.

  “Mail cart, last time I saw her.”

  A gleam in her eye betrayed Pewter’s intentions. She walked to the mail cart and halted. She scrunched down and wiggled her rear end, th
en with a mighty leap she catapulted herself into the mail cart. A holy howl attended this action. Had Mrs. Murphy not been a cat in the prime of her life, had she been, say, an older feline, she surely would have lost her bladder control at such a rude awakening. A great hissing and spitting filled the bin, which was beginning to roll just a bit.

  “Now, that’s enough.” Market hurried over to the mail cart, where he beheld the spectacle of his beloved cat, claws out, rolling around the heavy canvas bag with Mrs. Murphy in the same posture. Tufts of fur floated in the air.

  Harry dashed over. “I don’t know what gets into these two. They’re either the best of friends or like Muslims versus Christians.” Harry reached in to separate the two, receiving a scratch for her concern.

  “You fat pig!” Mrs. Murphy bellowed.

  “Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat,” Pewter taunted.

  “You ought not to make light of religious differences,” Mrs. Hogendobber, faithful to the Church of the Holy Light, admonished Harry. “Cats aren’t religious anyway.”

  “Who says?” Two little heads popped over the side of the cart.

  This moment of peace lasted a millisecond before they dropped back in the cart and rolled over each other again.

  Harry laughed. “I’m not reaching in there. They’re bound to get tired of this sooner or later.”

  “Guess you’re right.” Market thought the hissing was awful. “I wanted to tell you I’ve got a special on cat food today. You want me to save you a case?”

  “Oh, thanks. How about a nice, fresh chicken too?”

  “Harry, don’t tell me you’re going to cook a chicken?” Mrs. Hogendobber held her heart as though this was too much. “What’s this world coming to?”

  “Speaking of that, how about them finding a body up at Monticello?”

  Before either woman could respond, Samson Coles blustered in the front door, so Market repeated his question.

  Samson shook his leonine head. “Damn shame. I guarantee you that by tomorrow the television crews will be camped out at Mulberry Row and this unfortunate event will be blown out of all proportion.”

  “Well, I don’t know. It does seem strange that a body would be buried under a cabin. If the death was, uh, legitimate, wouldn’t the body be in a cemetery? Even slaves had cemeteries.” Market said.

  Both Harry and Mrs. H. knew the body didn’t belong to a slave. So did Mrs. Murphy, who said so loudly to Pewter. They had exhausted themselves and lay together in the bottom of the cart.

  “How do you know that?” the gray cat wondered.

  “Because I saw the corpse,” Mrs. Murphy bragged. “The back of the skull was caved in like a big triangle.”

  “You aren’t supposed to give out the details,” Tucker chided.

  “Oh, bull, Tucker. The humans can’t understand a word I’m saying. They think Pewter and I are in here meowing and you’re over there whining at us.”

  “Then get out of the cart so we can all talk,” Tucker called up. “I saw the body too, Pewter.”

  “Did you now?” Pewter grasped the edge of the cart with her chubby paws and peered over the side.

  “Don’t listen to him. All he wanted was Mrs. Hogendobber’s chicken.”

  “I saw the body as plain as you did, bigmouth. It was lying facedown under the hearth, maybe two feet under where the floor must have been at the time of death. So there.”

  “You don’t say!” Pewter’s eyes widened into big black balls. “A murder!”

  “Good point, Market.” Samson cupped his chin in his hand for a moment. “Why would a body be buried—what did they say, under the fireplace?”

  “Hearth,” the dog called out, but they didn’t pay attention.

  “Maybe the man died in the winter and they couldn’t dig up the frozen ground. But the ground wouldn’t be frozen under the hearth, would it?” Market threw this out. He didn’t necessarily believe it.

  “I thought the people at that time had mausoleums, or something like mausoleums anyway, dug into rock where they’d store bodies until the spring thaws. Then they’d dig the grave,” Miranda added.

  “Did they really?” Market shivered at the thought of bodies being stacked up somewhere like cordwood.

  “Well, they were frozen, I suspect,” Miranda answered.

  “Gruesome.” Samson grimaced. “Has Lucinda come in today?”

  “No,” Harry answered.

  “I can’t keep track of my own wife’s schedule.” His affable tone belied the truth—he didn’t want Lucinda tailing him. He liked to know her whereabouts because he didn’t want her to know his.

  “What’d she think of the Monticello discovery?” Mrs. Hogendobber asked politely.

  “Lucinda? Oh, she didn’t think it would be positive publicity, but she can’t see that it has anything to do with us today.” Samson tapped the countertop, admiring Mrs. Hogendobber’s handiwork. “I hear Wesley Randolph doesn’t like this one bit. He’s overreacting, but then, he always does. Lulu’s interest in history isn’t as deep as mine,” he sighed, “but then, she doesn’t have my connections to Mr. Jefferson. A direct line from his mother, Jane, you know, and then, of course, on my father’s side I’m related to Dolley Madison. Naturally, my interest is keen and Lulu’s people were new. I don’t think they got over here until the 1780s.” He stopped for a second, realized he was unrolling his pedigree to people who could recite it as well as he could. “I digress. Anyway, Lulu reads a good amount. Like me, she’ll be glad when this episode is behind us. We don’t want the wrong kind of attention here in Albemarle County.”

  “Samson, we’re talking about almost two centuries between then and now.” Market chuckled.

  “The past lives on in Virginia, the mother of presidents.” Samson beamed a Chamber of Commerce smile. He couldn’t have known how true was that pronouncement, or how tragic.

  As Samson left, Danny Tucker and Stuart and Breton Randolph boisterously rushed into the post office. Danny looked like his mother, Susan. Stuart and Breton also strongly resembled their mother, Ansley. Every mouth jabbered simultaneously as the teenage boys reached into the mailboxes.

  “Eii—” Danny let out a yell and jerked back his hand.

  “Mousetrap?” Stuart’s sandy eyebrows shot upward.

  “No such luck,” Danny sarcastically replied.

  Breton peeped in the mailbox. “Gross.” He reached in and pulled out a fake eyeball.

  Harry whispered to Mrs. Hogendobber. “Did you do that?”

  “I won’t say I did and I won’t say I didn’t.”

  “Harry, did you put this eyeball in the mailbox?” Danny, accompanied by his buddies, leaned on the counter.

  “No.”

  “Mother’s not fond of rubber eyeballs,” Mrs. Murphy disclosed.

  Reverend Herb Jones walked into the hubbub. “A prayer meeting?”

  “Hi, Rev.” Stuart adored the pastor.

  “Stuart, address Reverend Jones properly,” Miranda ordered.

  “I’m sorry. Hello, Reverend Jones.”

  “I always do what Mrs. H. tells me.” Reverend Jones put his arm around Stuart’s shoulders. “I’d be scared not to.”

  “Now, Herbie . . .” Miranda began to protest.

  Breton, a sweet kid, chimed in. “Mrs. Hogendobber, we all do what you tell us because you’re usually right.”

  “Well . . .” A long, breathless pause followed. “I’m glad you all realize that.” She exploded in laughter and everyone joined in, including the animals.

  “Harry.” Herb put his hand on the counter as he laughed. “Thanks for calling me the other day about my flat tire. Fixed it—now just got another one.”

  “Oh, no,” Harry responded.

  “You need a new truck,” Market Shiflett suggested.

  “Yes, but I need the money, and so far—”

  “No pennies from heaven.” Harry couldn’t resist. This set everyone off again.

  “Reverend Jones, I’ll help you change your tire,” Danny vol
unteered.

  “Me too.” Breton jumped in.

  “Me three.” Stuart was already out the door.

  As they bounded out, Danny flashed his rubber eye back at Harry, who made a cross with her fingers.

  “Good kids, I miss Courtney. She’s loving her first year at college. Still hard to let go.” Market, a widower, sighed.

  “You did a wonderful job with that girl,” Miranda praised him.

  “Too bad you didn’t do better with Lardguts,” Mrs. Murphy called out.

  “Thanks,” Market replied.

  “I resent that,” Pewter growled.

  “Well, back to the salt mines.” Market paused. “Pewter?”

  “I’m coming. I’m not staying here to be insulted by a—a string bean.”

  “Oh, Pewter, where’s your sense of humor?” Tucker padded over to her and gave her a nudge.

  “How do you stand her?” Pewter liked the corgi.

  “I tear up her catnip toys when she’s not looking.”

  Pewter, at Market’s heels, gaily sprang out the door as she thought of a catnip sock shredded to bits.

  Harry and Miranda returned to their chores.

  “You are the culprit. I know it.” Harry giggled.

  “An eye for an eye . . .” Mrs. H. quoted her Old Testament.

  “Yeah, but it was Susan who put the rubber spider in the box, not Danny.”

  “Oh, darn.” The older woman clapped her hands together. She thought, “Well, help me get even.”

  Harry tipped back her head and roared. Miranda laughed too, as did Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, whose laughter sounded like little snorts.

  13

  Samson Coles’s bright red Grand Wagoneer stuck out like a sore thumb on the country roads. The big eight-cylinder engine harnessed to a four-wheel drive was essential to his business. He’d hauled prospective buyers through fields, forded rivers, and rumbled down old farm roads. The roominess inside pleased people, and he was disappointed when Jeep discontinued the boxy vehicle to replace it with a smaller, sleeker model, the Grand Cherokee. The Grand Cherokee suffered from a Roman nose and too much resemblance to the rest of the Jeep line, he thought. The wonderful thing about the old Wagoneer was that no other car looked like it. Samson craved standing apart from the crowd.