Hiss of Death: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery

by Rita Mae Brown; Sneaky Pie Brown

  Voice low, Harry asked the other two, “What does the group do when someone dies?”

  Toni replied, “We go to the funeral, of course.” She also lowered her voice. “It’s obvious that some of our number won’t be with us for long. We do what we can, and we draw closer together because it’s a reminder to everyone.”

  Franny then added, “Babs Hatcher, as I’m sure you noticed, hasn’t long.”

  “I did, but she seems … settled. I can’t think of another word.”

  Toni nodded. “We’ve lost two of our number in the last year. That’s why we could take you. Luckily, you should be around for a long time, but Babs’s ovarian cancer, well, you know. She’s as prepared as one can be, and she sets an example for everyone else.”

  Harry, who said very little in the group other than what her cancer was, asked, “Toni, have you had cancer?”

  “No. Central Virginia encourages the nurses with oncology experience to be with a group. We all do it, and it’s a part of my job that I love.”

  “Do any doctors ever come by?” Harry inquired.

  “If the group asks, they do. Or if a new treatment is available. The doctor gives us a talk about it. There’s so much happening with new drugs, new ideas, one person can’t keep up with it.”

  “It’s a nice group of people.” Harry turned to Franny. “Thank you for telling me about it.”

  Toni said, “Ladies, I have to go. Harry, I hope we see you again.”

  Before Harry could reply, the next door opened. Laughter spilled out from a conference room into the hall. Thadia Martin walked out.

  “Harry Haristeen? The real Mary Minor Haristeen, attack forward for Crozet High?”

  It took Harry a moment to recognize Thadia. “Thadia, yes, yes, it’s me.”

  Thadia, never one for subtlety, asked, “Are you all right?”

  Obviously, she knew the cancer support group met at the same time as one of her drug rehab groups.

  “I am now.”

  “Good. There are vitamin therapies, you know, that can help people who are recovering from cancer. Well, they can help a lot of things. I get a lot of my people on these new strategies.”

  Toni, shoulders tensed, interrupted, “Thadia, what works for recovering addicts and alcoholics will not necessarily work for cancer survivors.” She forced a professional smile. “With all due respect.”

  Thadia ignored Toni, spoke directly to Harry. “Dr. Schaeffer is really on the cutting edge.”

  Harry quipped, “As a surgeon, I expect he is.”

  Toni pointedly said, “Thadia, if you’ll excuse us.”

  Toni then walked back into the room, hand under Harry’s elbow. She shut the door behind her. Two other group members, in deep discussion, sat together. Franny followed in, too.

  “She’s not your fav.” Harry smiled devilishly.

  Toni scrunched up her face. “No. She’s so damned pushy.”

  Franny supported Toni’s assessment. “That never gets a woman far in these parts, and the wonder of it is that Thadia was born and raised a Virginian.”

  “Some people lack the patience for the dance of politeness.” Harry laughed. “Even back in school, Thadia was a bulldozer. She got away with it as far as she did because she’s pretty.”

  “Amazing she kept her looks after all those years of self-abuse.” Franny folded her arms across her chest.

  Franny changed the subject. “Toni, how’s your rattletrap doing?”

  Toni laughed. “I’m going to trade it in.” She held up her hands when she saw the excitement on Harry’s face. “Don’t know yet, Harry.”

  “Have you seen Alicia’s new Mustang? G-o-rgeous!”

  “As is Alicia,” Franny added. “Before I forget, Toni, who has taken Paula’s place in the evening support group?”

  “Violet Smith. She’s not an oncology nurse, but we’re shorthanded. Everyone is. Here we are, this unbelievable medical complex, and there’s no money for hiring. I’m sure Will”—Toni named the hospital administrator, Will Archer—“can find money for a star, but I’ll give him credit, he hasn’t hired any new doctors. I hope we pull out of this economic nosedive fast.”

  Franny, ever the shrewd businesswoman, simply said, “It’s a W dive.”

  “What?” Harry leaned toward her.

  “They’re calling it a double dip, but that’s not really accurate. It’s a W. First, you go down one side of the W. We come back up a bit, right? Then you go down again and the second side of the W is a hell of a lot worse than the first. The forecasters, the government, no one wants to even hint at it, because that will stall out the tiny recovery we’re experiencing now. Anyway, let’s not talk about that. I can’t stand it. Back to Paula’s group. Are they all right?”

  Toni shrugged. “As best they can be. Here we are, trained to deal with such matters, and she goes.” Toni snapped her fingers. “No one expected that.”

  “She’s missed.” Franny then handed Harry a bag of catnip. “I promised. Sorry, I didn’t have any when you came in to get your tires. Said I would, but sometimes it’s one damn thing after another.”

  “Thank you.” Harry opened the plastic container for a hit of high-powered catnip. “The kids will love it.

  “Toni, did Paula have any enemies?”

  Franny rolled her eyes. “Harry.”

  “Well, Toni worked with her. Who knows what happens at the hospital.”

  “Thadia.” Toni uttered the name.

  “Why?” Harry asked, and now Franny was interested.

  “Oh, the usual drama with her. She came to me after a meeting once—everyone had left, thank God—and she wanted to know what I knew about Paula and Cory Schaeffer. I told her the truth. Nothing. But she went on and on. She was convinced they were having an affair. They weren’t. I think I knew Paula as well as anyone around here, and she wasn’t interested in Cory Schaeffer. For one thing, she wanted time to herself.”

  “The divorce?” Franny said.

  “More or less. She was over it. That’s why she moved here, but she said so many times, ‘I never really took care of me.’ She was focusing on herself—not in a self-centered way, in a healing way. Paula wasn’t having an affair. She didn’t want one, and Cory wasn’t her type. Paula liked manly men. You know, linemen, farmers, garage mechanics.”

  “Strange,” Harry replied, “that Thalia concocted their affair.”

  “I’m telling you, Thadia was fuming. I told her to calm down. If she wasn’t such a chemical mess, I’d have given her a hit of Jack Daniel’s Black.”

  Harry and Franny laughed at this, then Franny said, “Double shot.”

  “She could probably knock back two and keep going,” Harry remarked. “Even in high school, Thadia could drink everyone under the table. I remember once I asked her if she liked Saint Anne’s, and she said, ‘The drugs are better than at Crozet High.’ I mean, she could be funny when she wasn’t vicious.”

  “Chemistry. I hope the day comes when we can identify in childhood those people who are prone to alcoholism and drug addiction.” Toni lowered her voice. “Look, the truth is some people can drink and some can take drugs in moderation. This idea that one toot or toke and you’re captive to the weed or coke is bullshit, and we all know it.” She held up her hands. “Okay. There may be a few people out there who are lost with one swig. People don’t immediately turn into a raging cokehead, so they think they’re all right, so they drink more, they toot more, and then the trouble begins. We all know the road to ruin after that. If we’d just tell people the truth, but you know if a doctor publicly said what I just did, or a sheriff, they’d lose their jobs.”

  “You’re right about that. Nothing should ever disturb American hypocrisy.” Franny deplored the current state not just of affairs but of behavior.

  “Wonder if there was more to Paula setting off Thadia.”

  “Oh, Harry, people are their most irrational about sex and about their children. Thadia kept saying she was going to confront Paula
. I told her to drop it. No good would come of it. Plus, Paula wasn’t sleeping with Cory. End of story.”

  “Ever notice how some people can’t learn?” Franny mused. “Look, I give Thadia credit for cleaning up. Other than that, she’s still a two-legged disaster.”

  “Yeah, but at least we didn’t elect her to public office.” Harry grinned as the other two laughed.

  Less guarded than usual, Toni threw this out: “Actually, Cory is having an affair, but Thadia, who is so crazy about him, has missed it completely.”

  Harry’s jaw dropped. “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “No. It will keep you busy.” Toni slapped her on the back, then left the room.

  “She’s got your number.” Franny laughed.

  Pud and John Benton had selected real estate agent Julie Bendel to market their daughter’s house. The next day, Julie asked Harry to accompany her to the site.

  Julie Bendel, a petite fireball, put a special lock that realtors use on the door. She liked the house, as did Harry, who’d never walked all through it. Even in this difficult market, it would be an easy sell. Paula’s remodeling preserved the integrity of the farmhouse while enhancing it. She kept the old wavy handblown glass in the windows, but upstairs in the main bedroom she’d installed a large skylight, which let the light pour in. Wisely, she’d also installed louvers for the skylight, to shut off the burning sun in the summer. The floors had all been refinished, revealing rich variations in the color of the heart pine. The marble countertops in the kitchen, Paula’s one concession to flashiness, brought the room to life.

  “You okay to go to the barn?” Julie asked Harry.

  “Yeah, I made myself go back there when we packed up the house.”

  “I wanted you to look at this with a horseman’s eyes. You’re conservative with money, and whoever buys this will probably be a middle-income person. I think it’s a great property for horses.”

  “Is.” Harry walked in step with Julie.

  Before reaching the barn, Julie stopped. “The distance from the back door of the house to the barn door is enough to keep the odors at bay but not so far that a trip in bad weather is a mess. I see that as a selling point.”

  “Sounds about right.” Harry mentally measured off the distance, which she figured to be about fifty yards. “But if whoever buys this has good stable practices, it isn’t going to smell, anyway. Keep it really clean, toss a bit of cedar shavings in with your bedding.”

  “I’ll remember that.” Julie pushed back the big sliding doors as they entered the barn. “So?”

  Harry, peering into the stalls, walked along the center aisle. “Packed earth. That’s what most stall bases are, but if the new owner wants to make their life easier, he or she will dig down about a foot and a half, put in various layers of stone, various sizes, I mean, just like a layer cake. The top six inches pack down with masonry sand. Put Equigrid over that. Expensive. Fill it with masonry sand.”

  “Why?”

  “It keeps the horse from digging holes. Takes a lot of time to keep filling them back up, but you have to. If you don’t, it’s not good for a horse to stand on uneven ground. Out in the pasture, an animal can keep moving. In a stall, they can’t. Think what you’d feel like if you stood for six or eight hours with one foot in a hole.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “The rough-hewn heavy oak boards for the stalls and the dividers are great. Originally, marine oil was slapped on them. That’s why they aren’t brittle, even though no horses have been in here for years. If the new owner power-washes everything, lets it dry, then reapplies marine oil, it will be good. The only real expense is the floors, if they want to incur it. You can put down the Equigrid yourself, but it runs around one thousand dollars for a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot stall. The other thing, and this really is important: Have the new owner check the wiring. If it’s old, rewire the whole structure. So many fires are caused by faulty wiring, and there’s nothing more horrible than hearing horses scream as they burn to death.”

  “God, Harry.” Julie’s face registered dismay.

  “Well, one has to think about these things. If you take animals into your care, it should be done properly. I mean, would you have children and not feed them, clothe them, make sure they sleep in safe bedrooms?”

  “After five children, you know the answer.” Julie smiled.

  “I can understand a woman having the first one; it’s the second and the third I question.” Harry poked her.

  “You sort of forget the pain in between the deliveries. Anything else?”

  “No. It’s a serviceable barn, set so the wind hits the back. The fences need painting, but they’re in good order. This is a very attractive holding for a horseman.”

  “Okay. Next. Ready?”

  “Yeah.” Harry followed Julie into the potting shed.

  “Now, she used the old tack room and one stall to make this. How difficult would it be to convert it all back?”

  “The tack room is pretty much undisturbed. All Paula did was take down the saddle racks and bridle brackets. She left the wooden floors and the small baseboard heater. What must come down is that plastic barrier she put up on the stall wall. She also cut a door into the side of the tack room. That should be filled in with heavy oak to match the original wood. If you can’t find rough-hewn oak, they’ll need thick pressure-treated pine.”

  Julie opened the door into the area where Harry found Paula. “Okay?”

  “Julie, I made myself come here. I’m fine.”

  “Sorry.” Julie stepped down into the potting shed. “Earthen floor.”

  “Good. A new owner won’t have to rip anything up if they want to turn this back into a stall, and if they don’t, it’s a nice little shed. You have to remove the glass out of the back stall door, obviously. And if they keep it for a potting shed, no need to fill in the door to the tack room.”

  Paula, a practical person herself, had kept the outside Dutch doors. She pinned back the top one, putting glass into the opening, which helped her force her bulbs, such as hyacinth. Four evenly spaced rows filled the space so the pots received lots of light.

  A two-foot-wide piece of planed pine ran from one end of the stall to the other, facing the back door. As the wood was smooth, Paula could use it as a makeshift desktop. It was here that Harry had found the well-liked nurse.

  “I wonder why she didn’t put shelves under this,” Julie noted.

  “Probably didn’t need them. She had plenty of room, and how many bulbs do you need to force if you aren’t a commercial nursery?” But Julie had piqued Harry’s curiosity, so Harry knelt down to peer under the wide top. “Hey, everyone missed this.”

  Julie knelt down, too. “Looks like an old cartridge box.”

  “It is.”

  On her hands and knees, Harry grabbed the sides to back out with it. “Not heavy.”

  Once out from under, Harry and Julie popped open the wooden box. Most old cartridge boxes had a wooden top the same thickness as the sides. Affixed with a simple latch, it kept the ammunition dry. Given the weight of cartridges, these boxes needed to be sturdy. Artillery ammunition was so heavy it took two men to carry those boxes. Even a Remington box like this, fully loaded, took muscle to move.

  Inside were a few bulbs in Ziploc bags. A white tab marked each bag, identifying the fall bulb.

  “What in the hell is this?” Julie pulled out a yellow cylinder that was more than a foot in length, with perhaps a ten-inch diameter. The thickness of one cylinder wall left a somewhat narrow interior.

  “Here.” Harry took the cylinder and flipped the metal fastenings on each side, designed to keep the top as tight as possible.

  The inside of the cylinder was a thick wall to keep the contents cold.

  “Harry, what is it?”

  “Breeders use this to ship semen. It’s filled with liquid nitrogen, which, as you know, is incredibly cold. The semen is in narrow straws. You overnight it to wherever. Semen loses motility pretty rapidl
y if improperly preserved. When you figure that some stud fees can run a hundred thousand dollars or more, the container is critical.” Harry paused. “Not to belabor it, but Thoroughbred people still use live covers, so they rarely have need of a cylinder. These containers are used by some of the Warmblood breeders, Saddlebreds, quarter horse breeders who are at the top. People want to AI mares, hence the cylinders. The Saddlebred, quarter horse, and various Warmblood registers do not demand a live cover.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “No reason why you would, Julie. I just know about it because of Fair.”

  “Right.”

  At that moment, Harry wished she had her animals with her. Something was off-kilter here. She trusted their senses more than her own.

  “Paula was no horseman.”

  “No, but she was a nurse. Is it possible to ship human semen this way?”

  “Well, I’m sure you could. I don’t know a whole lot about that. Fair and I use the old-fashioned method.”

  At this, both women cracked up, then Julie said, “Always worked for me.” Then she studied the cylinder, holding it in her hands. “Could someone run a business on the sly?”

  “Sending out stolen semen?”

  “Yes. Isn’t it a whole lot of paperwork, tests, endless crap, for a woman who wants to become pregnant without marriage? Or without a man, I should say?”

  “I think it is, but Julie, Paula was not a reproductive specialist. I know people can fool you, but I don’t think she was the type of person to be involved in the black market.”

  “What was her area?”

  “Surgical nurse.”

  “Could you send tissue samples in this?”

  “I don’t see why not, but there’s no reason to use a cylinder used for horses. And given technology, doctors can send pictures of tissue to another doctor halfway around the world.”

  Julie closed the lid. “This business about artificial insemination. Who do you ask for, Brad Pitt?”

  Harry laughed. “I’d ask for Henry Kissinger. Imagine the mind.”