The Tail of the Tip-Off

by Rita Mae Brown

  Tazio quietly said, “Fred, you must have an idea who killed her.”

  The normal color returned to his face. “No. I don’t have any ideas. Sick. Makes me sick. You make me sick.” He turned his eyes again to Matthew.

  “Sex or drugs,” Matthew simply said, his voice almost victorious in tone.

  “She didn’t do drugs. I’d have known. Can’t hide that.”

  “You can for a while, but I agree, Fred, sooner or later it comes out just like alcoholism leaks out.”

  Tazio noticed the surveyor’s tape flutter as a little wind kicked up.

  “She was a good girl!” Fred’s eyes looked haunted.

  “That leaves sex.” Matthew shrugged. “Hey, she wasn’t my favorite and neither are you, Fred, but I do hope Sheriff Shaw finds her killer. I’m just glad it wasn’t you—if you’re telling the truth.”

  “Never forgive you for this,” Fred vowed.

  “Do I care? You’re as likely a candidate as anyone else. You were around her all the time. You’re married. She’s not. Younger. You’re older. Hey, it’s not such a far putt.”

  “I don’t cheat on my wife,” Fred, angry still but in control, answered. “You do. Matthew, you’re a lying sack of shit. Always was. Always will be.” He pointed his finger at Tazio. “He’ll be on you like a duck on the fly.”

  “I resent that.” Matthew took a step toward the slighter man.

  “Maybe you were the one? Huh?” Fred stuck Matthew right back.

  “Not my type.”

  Fred paused a moment. “That’s true. For once you told the truth.”

  “But I’ll tell you who was sleeping with Mychelle. H.H.,” Matthew said.

  “Know that for a fact?” Fred didn’t want to believe that since he hadn’t liked H.H., either.

  “Two and two make four.”

  “Prove it,” Fred immediately responded.

  “She could meet him at his construction sites. Nothing untoward about that. Right? She maybe got inconvenient. He dumps her. She kills him. Anne kills her or maybe Anne killed them both. Justice is served.”

  “You are so full of it.” Fred laughed loudly.

  “Okay. Your version then.”

  “I don’t have a version. I don’t know.” Fred looked at Tazio. “Maybe she told you something. Women talk.”

  “No, Fred, we don’t all talk. I knew her from the job and that was it.”

  “Yeah,” Brinkley supported Tazio. He would have agreed with her no matter what.

  Fred waited a few moments. “Matthew, you shut your filthy mouth. Remember that.”

  As he strode away Matthew chuckled to Tazio, “Buffoon.”

  * * *

  28

  The pale sunlight illuminated the thin, low clouds, lining the bottoms with gold. Thicker clouds hovered on the horizon, their majestic curling tops hinting at another change in the weather.

  Cooper questioned Sharon Cortez at Dr. Shulman’s office, but sensitive to the social currents of country life, the two women went back to the operating room. The stainless steel table, the sink, everything shone. The operating table was the color of the low afternoon clouds.

  Dr. Shulman’s wife, Barbara, took over the reception duties while Sharon was in the back. Apart from a squad car being parked out front, no one need know what was going on and Barbara was quick to point out that Deputy Cooper was a great friend to animals.

  The light, changing fast, threw shadows onto the floor.

  “Now, Sharon, I have to ask these questions. Everything you tell me I’ll tell Rick, as you know, but that’s as far as it goes.”

  “What if there’s a trial?” Sharon was no fool.

  “I’ll give you a heads up. Your question tells me you know why I’m here.”

  “Good police work.” Sharon ruefully smiled.

  “Some. Want to tell me about your relationship with H.H.?”

  Sharon ran her finger along the rounded lip of the operating table. “Started a year and a half ago. Ended at Easter.”

  “Were you in love with him?”

  “Oh.” She hesitated, glanced out the window, then said, “I was. I hate to admit it, but I was.”

  “He must have been special.”

  “I guess that was it, Coop, he made me feel special. He didn’t mind spending money on a girl, you know what I mean? He’d never see me without bringing flowers or earrings, something. He bought me a gorgeous leather coat, three-quarter length so you know that wasn’t cheap, and anything I wanted done around my little house, he did it. Of course, he could fix anything. His business, I guess.” She shrugged.

  “Were you angry when you broke up?”

  “Yes. He broke it off. Said his marriage couldn’t take the strain and he loved his daughter.”

  “You were never tempted to wreck it for him? To call Anne? To take your revenge?”

  “Sure. All that ran through my mind. Couldn’t do it.” Sharon curled her fingers inward, then relaxed them. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to hurt him, I did. But you know, I couldn’t do that to his kid.”

  “That speaks well of you.”

  “Thanks, but if I’d had a grain of sense I’d never have gotten involved with a married man. It’s a sucker play.”

  “I’m not sure that sex and love are amenable to logic.” Cooper smiled.

  “I think they are. I think it’s like alcohol if you’re an alcoholic. No one puts a gun to your head and says, ‘Take that drink.’ Same with attraction. You don’t have to give in to it.” Sharon put her hands in her pockets. “That’s what I think. I was stupid. And you know why I was stupid? Not just because he was married but because I knew he played around.”

  “Did you know any of the other women?”

  “Not well. But, sure. And I suppose you’ve questioned them, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “Any of them look like killers to you?” Sharon sarcastically said.

  “Looks are deceiving.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Sharon looked outside the window again. “Front coming in. See it?”

  Cooper walked to the window. “Bet the warm weather will march right out with it, too. Jeez, it’s been a hell of a winter and there’s three months to go.”

  “We’ve had the peepers come out in February.”

  “Sharon, this isn’t going to be that kind of year,” Cooper remarked. “But I admire your positive attitude. Tell me, can you think of anyone who would like to kill H.H.?”

  “Sure. All the women he wined, dined, and ditched. But they didn’t. I mean, how often do women kill?”

  “I don’t know because I think women are much smarter about it than men. I don’t think they get caught. But having said that, I think women don’t kill as often.”

  Sharon snorted, “Right. We get some poor sap to do it for us.”

  Cooper turned from the window. “Mychelle Burns.”

  Sharon lifted her shoulders. “Nada.”

  “What about Paula Zeifurt?”

  “Oh, Paula. She brings her Yorkie here. Isn’t she one of Anne’s friends?”

  “Uh-huh.” Cooper nodded her head.

  Sharon whistled. “That’s cutting it close. You know, it really pisses me off, excuse my French. I would have liked to have been special. Truly special and not just one more filly passing through the stable.”

  “You said he made you feel special.”

  “He did, the bastard!”

  “Then you were at the time.” Cooper thought for a minute. “Some people deal with stress by drinking or drugging or running away. H.H. needed the excitement of an affair. That was his avocation.”

  “You’re probably right. Maybe it was my avocation, too.”

  “Well, I’m not a moralist, I’m just a law enforcement officer, but it seems to me we make life awfully hard for people. We expect them to be perfect. I don’t know one perfect person on this earth.”

  “I’m not a candidate.” Sharon smiled, her good humor returning somewhat.

/>   “One last question. You must have stuff in here that can kill people. Like the stuff you use to euthanize a dog, for instance?”

  “Yes. But for a human you’d need a lot. What I’m saying is you couldn’t administer the dose surreptitiously.”

  “Thanks.” Cooper shook her hand and left waving goodbye to Barbara who called after her.

  “The Opera Guild is performing Verdi next week. You ought to go.”

  “Thanks, Barbara. I’ll try.” And much as Cooper appreciated the offer she thought she’d seen enough tears for the time being.

  * * *

  29

  The January thaw ended at six on Tuesday evening. Harry got home at five-fifteen, thrilled to be able to blast out of the post office so early. She brought in Tomahawk, Poptart, and Gin Fizz and put on their blankets, leading each to her or his stall.

  The barn doors facing the drive were wide open. The chill became persistent. When she walked to the doors she noticed a scattering of low clouds with darker cirrus clouds high above. She smelled the moisture in the air and rolled the barn doors shut.

  She swept out the center aisle. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter argued in the tack room over the most efficient way to lure the mice out from behind the walls. Tucker sat in the aisleway. If her mother would avoid some pet project, like sewing a rip in a blanket, she and the cats could be snug in the house in another twenty minutes. Tucker loved being in the barn but hearing the herbivores munch hay made her long for her bowl of boiled hamburger mixed with crunchies, the hamburger juice poured over the goodies. Harry liked to prepare special dishes for her animals about once a week. The rest of the time she used high-quality commercial foods but she thought the canned cat foods contained too much ash. Once she brought home fresh crabmeat for the cats and Pewter passed out from overeating. Harry, horrified, paid much more attention to the rotund gray kitty’s portions after that.

  A blade of wind slipped behind the cracks of the big doors as Harry hadn’t shut them tight. She dropped the bolt to secure them.

  Harry double-checked each stall, then she hung up her broom.

  Simon peeped over the hayloft.

  “You’ll be happy to know I remembered you.” Harry smiled up at the endearing creature.

  She walked into the tack room, reaching into a brown paper bag. Out came the marshmallows. She returned to the center aisle, tossing about five up into the loft. Joyfully, Simon scrambled for his special treats.

  “Thank you! Thank you!”

  “Do shut up,” the owl grumbled.

  The phone jingled in the tack room. Harry stepped back inside, closing the door behind her. The tack room was cozy as it had a long strip of baseboard heat. When the barn was originally built back in 1840, a huge wood-burning stove sat in the center of the tack room on the herringbone-patterned brick floor. Fortunately, no sparks spiraling out of the chimney ever landed back into the hayloft. The efficient potbellied cast-iron stove was ripped out in 1964 and replaced by baseboard heat when Harry’s mother and father rewired and replumbed the barn.

  Her father, a practical man, had run all the wire through narrow galvanized metal tubes. That way dust wouldn’t collect on the wires, creating a potential fire hazard, and the metal tubing also ensured the mice wouldn’t gnaw through. Once a month Harry lifted off the baseboard cover to clean the unit, a long string of flat squares placed closely together. She’d kneel down, wipe down everything, wipe down the cover, then pop it back on.

  She kept the thermostat at sixty-five degrees. Since she usually wore many layers plus her old red down vest, sixty-five was a toasty temperature.

  She lifted the receiver off the back wall phone. “Yes.”

  Susan launched right in. “The you-know-what has hit the fan big time.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Fred Forrest called, his term, mind you, an emergency press conference, at the county office. He says he has to halt construction of the new sports complex until he examines the steel bearing I-beams called for in the blueprints. He says he is not convinced they can bear the load for which they are intended.”

  “Load of what?”

  “The roof.”

  “What a mess.”

  “It gets better. While one TV crew, the one from Channel 29, was interviewing Fred, another mobile unit sandbagged Matthew at the site. At the site! He had no idea what was going on. Not a hint of warning. All he could say was the county had raised no objection before. The design and materials had passed all criteria, et cetera. And then, I mean these guys had a wild hair, let me tell you. They got footage of Tazio just as she was leaving her office.”

  “What did Tazio say?”

  Susan chuckled. “She was great. She and Brinkley invited the crew into her office. In they trooped. She unrolled the blueprints. She opened the file cabinet. Pulled out all the paperwork with Fred’s or Mychelle’s signature on it, right? Close-ups of signatures. Close-ups of the plan’s acceptance papers. I don’t know what you call that.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I know what you mean.”

  “She’s cool, collected. She asks the interviewer why Fred is questioning plans he, himself, had approved. She says she would comply with any additional studies, nothing could be more important than safety and so forth. Then she brings up the issue of cost and delay, mentioning how important this structure is going to be to the university and really the entire Atlantic Coast Conference as the newest sports complex. Certainly this will spur other institutions to upgrade their facilities. I’m telling you, that woman could be a politician. I hope Little Mim was watching.”

  Little Mim, a Republican, was vice-mayor of Crozet. Her father, a Democrat, was the mayor. It made for interesting times.

  “Did the TV interviewer bring up Mychelle’s death?”

  “You bet. To both Fred and Tazio. Did they think Mychelle’s death was related to the sports complex project.”

  “Is that how the question was worded?”

  “Oh, Harry, I don’t remember the exact phrases but watch the eleven o’clock news if you can stay awake.”

  “Try to remember.”

  “What the heck is going on?” Tucker, like the cats, sat attentive, ears pricked forward.

  “S-h-h,” the cats said.

  Susan hummed a minute, collecting her thoughts. “Not word for word but the question was something like, ‘Do you think the murder of your assistant might be related to your new findings?’ Not word perfect but close.”

  “And?”

  “Fred said he didn’t know.”

  “Tazio?”

  “The question was leading. Uh, ‘Isn’t your relationship with the county building inspector sometimes adversarial?’ ‘No,’ she said. Then they hit her with Mychelle’s death. Could it be related to these new questions about the worthiness of her design? That kind of thing. Again, she was amazingly cool and she said, ‘I don’t see how it could be.’ And someone obviously had pumped those guys because they asked about Mychelle wanting a meeting with Tazio Monday morning. Tazio said that wasn’t uncommon and, in fact, she had been looking forward to it and was shocked when she received the dreadful news. I mean the goddamned interviewer all but accused her of having a hand in Mychelle’s murder. Sensationalism.”

  “Jacks up the ratings. They don’t care if they ruin careers and lives.”

  “But you would have been proud of Tazio.”

  “How do we know she isn’t involved?”

  “Harry, you have a suspicious mind.”

  “Well—maybe. Why don’t you call Tazio and see if she needs emotional support or anything? You’re good at that.”

  “She doesn’t have our network. We should both call her.” Susan meant Tazio hadn’t grown up with all of them and was a newcomer. “What are you going to do? I know you’re up to something.” Susan hoped Harry would tell her.

  “I’m going to eat macaroni and cheese. Then I am going to call Coop to see if she can pull up on the computer all those buildings Mychelle had i
nspected in the last two years. Pull up the paperwork.”

  “Clever girl.”

  “Actually, I bet Coop’s already thought of it.”

  “Are you really going to make macaroni and cheese?”

  “Yes.”

  “Microwave?”

  “No. Never tastes as good. Cold rolled back on us. Have you been outside? I need macaroni and cheese.”