Hiss of Death: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery

by Rita Mae Brown; Sneaky Pie Brown

  They both laughed. Julie knelt down to push the cartridge box back. Harry knelt with her.

  “Think her parents want the bulbs?”

  “No. Julie, if the farm is sold by late summer, the new owner can plant these. If not, I’ll come back and put them in. Do you mind if I take the cylinder home? I’d like Fair to see it.”

  “Not at all. It’s a sure bet I won’t be using it.” Julie inquired, “Is it easy to get one of those?”

  “If you know anyone with a good stallion, it is. And this area is filled with reasonably priced good stallions. Smallwood is just down the road.” Harry cited Phyllis Jones’s establishment, noted for the now-deceased Castle Magic, but his male progeny continued the blood.

  Show people particularly flocked to Smallwood, but central Virginia had something for everyone. After all, Secretariat had been bred right outside Richmond.

  As the two women walked back through the growing grass, the afternoon sun brought the mercury up to sixty-eight degrees. There was a lovely breeze, and Harry felt that tingle, that challenge to figure out a mystery. Why would Paula Benton have a shipping cylinder?

  Toni Enright had tweaked Harry by telling her Dr. Schaeffer was having an affair, but Harry rarely became intrigued by sexual peccadilloes: They were all too common. But this intrigued her.

  Driving rock blared from the speaker system, but it still didn’t drown out all the grunts and heavy breathing. At six in the morning, the serious bodybuilders and athletes hit Heavy Metal Gym. Some people, like Harry, could work out early. Others, needing time for stiff muscles to awaken and warm up, as well as their minds, had to wait until lunch hour or after work. But there’s no way for a hard-core workout at lunch, so those people with a goal beyond simple fitness had to overcome the morning fatigue, much of it mental, to rev up and start moving iron.

  Noddy Cespedes, a former successful bodybuilder now in her forties, walked with Harry between the rows of sweating gym members. “How long before you can perform your usual farm chores, anything that involves lifting?”

  “Three more weeks. No muscle was cut. Well, obviously not. It was breast tissue. Dr. Potter advised giving myself time. The incision is only two inches.”

  “Jennifer took care of Mom,” Noddy stated. “Do what she tells you. But you’re in good shape. You don’t need to work out unless you have specific goals.”

  “I do. I know my radiation, which starts tomorrow, will make me tired. If I can do something new that would help me not lose muscle, I’d like to do that. I need to push myself through this. And once I’m a hundred percent, I will really need to play catch-up on some farm chores. I can’t afford to be weak.”

  The other trainer was Kodiak Jenkins. That was his real name, for his parents were old hippies and thought Kodiak was a great name. It was, but anyone over forty hearing it always took a moment to adjust. Kodiak, also a competitive bodybuilder, stood behind a handsome young fellow on the bench press. When the kid pushed the bar to its height, Kodiak watched carefully. The young man, perhaps late twenties, not well built, already fat around his middle, would be transformed if he stuck to the program. Both trainers respected anyone who worked in an office, anyone going soft, who decided to reverse the inevitable slide to obesity.

  Since Noddy could bench-press two hundred pounds and sported gorgeous triceps in perfect balance with her biceps, the male bodybuilders and athletes listened to her just as they listened to Kodiak. The gleaming trophies in her office bore testimony to her skill.

  One thing both Harry and Noddy had learned about men was that if you prove yourself, the sniping and disrespect usually ends. This is not necessarily the case with other women. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.

  Harry, though well built, had never lifted weights. Her wonderful body came courtesy of tossing sixty-pound alfalfa bales, riding twelve-hundred-pound horses, and sometimes having to hold them—which means you have twelve-hundred pounds in your hands. A farmer’s work develops a strong body, unless that farmer hits the bottle or eats too much fried food. Harry shied away from both, although she sure missed her mother’s fried chicken.

  “What brought you to Heavy Metal instead of a fitness center?” Noddy asked.

  “I’ve seen you in a bikini, and I can’t envision myself in a group of people all wearing leotards. I’m just not the type.” Harry smiled. “You know the one thing that really bothers me? First of all, I feel guilty saying this, because I really loved my grandmother, but the back of her arms got a little flabby. She wasn’t really overweight or anything, but this little swing of flab. I will do whatever it takes to avoid that. I don’t care if I have to do five hundred push-ups a day.”

  “Not that many.” Noddy smiled back. “But if you can work up to one hundred, terrific. Like sit-ups, push-ups you can do anywhere, and I tell you, they work. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you can do one-armed push-ups. I truly believe aging is a disease and you can fight it.”

  “I do, too. My horses taught me that.” Harry watched Jim O’Hanran, a beautifully proportioned man, sixty-three, pull down a frightening load of weights on the lat machine.

  He wore a bandanna around his forehead to soak up the sweat and terry-cloth wristbands for the same purpose.

  Heavy Metal Gym catered to dedicated types. The other gyms in Charlottesville, all good, had tai chi classes, Pilates, all manner of things, as well as special Nautilus cambered weight machines. Again, all wonderful stuff. At Heavy Metal, you pounded York barbells, the best of the best in weights. If a York barbell said twenty pounds, it was twenty pounds, perfectly balanced. One can generally assess a gym by its equipment. Serious: York barbells. Fun and good: everything else.

  Five-K winner Mac Dennison labored under the Smith machine. The decades-old Smith machine focuses on quads, a difficult muscle to work, one requiring total concentration and megawatts of energy. Quad exercises could make you puke, they were so tough.

  Noddy was intrigued by Harry’s statement. “What did horses teach you about aging?”

  “Mother hunted on a dark bay Thoroughbred mare until the mare was twenty-five. That’s old. But Hedy—the mare, Mom named her for Hedy Lamarr—never really aged, because even in the off-season Mom would walk her out, a little trotting. God, how I tried to keep up with my pony, Popsicle. But Hedy never sat down and grew a fat butt. That’s my point.”

  “It’s the truth. Use it or lose it. So tell me this, what’s the long-term goal?”

  Harry hesitated, for she didn’t want to seem vain. “I turned forty last August. No Botox. No face-lift. Can’t afford it, anyway. But I don’t want to sag. Farm chores don’t work your entire body the way you all work here. I walk, bend, throw hay. If I’m going to fight old age, I need more than that. I’ll live with wrinkles. I won’t live with fat.”

  “Harry, I’d love to work with you. We aren’t expensive. This is a basic gym. But will you allow me to call Jennifer? First of all, I like her so much for what she did for Mom. It’d be good for you to talk to her. And I want to make sure I am doing right by you, what medications you might be on, your radiation schedule. Just think what would happen to Crozet if I messed you up.” Noddy laughed.

  “Oh, Noddy, as long as Aunt Tally and Big Mim are upright, Crozet is fine. But sure, go ahead.”

  Noddy walked to her small office, her trophies on the shelf and plaques on the wall. Harry kept in step.

  “I don’t know if you know, but a lot of the doctors and nurses from Central Virginia, Martha Jefferson, and University of Virginia Medical Hospital work out here. I’m sure glad for the money, but with what they spent on construction—especially Central Virginia, since Martha Jefferson and UVA Hospital have run out of land—you’d think they’d build a huge gym for their personnel. Make life easier.”

  “Never thought about that.”

  “Paula Benton was a regular. Can’t believe she died.” Noddy paused. “She’d come in with Annalise Veronese—who is serious, let me tell you—and Toni Enright. No dis
tractions. Those girls hit the iron. Paula would say she needed the energy boost after working with people all day. Annalise says she doesn’t have that problem.”

  • • •

  At that early hour, as Harry and Noddy talked, Annalise Veronese carefully cut into the body of an eighteen-year-old man. Cory Schaeffer assisted. While Annalise had staff, she always called Cory if someone requested an autopsy of a patient who died of cancer. Cory, if his schedule permitted, rarely missed the opportunity to study the disease’s effects. Also, to remind himself of how organs looked at different stages of a human’s life regardless of cause of death. Again, abuse was a factor, but an eighteen-year-old man—those organs should be textbook-perfect, healthy.

  Annalise expertly removed kidney, liver, heart. Cory carefully packed them in large light blue shipping containers. Each of these organs would save someone else’s life. There was a desperate need for them. People died waiting.

  Nothing that could be useful was left. She carefully replaced the skullcap, meticulously pulling the hair over the cut line. The top of a human skull, properly sawed, lifted off just like a cap.

  This young man would be traditionally buried, so that line must not be visible. She also put a tiny little thread through each eyelid, fastening it down, for she’d removed his eyes, again something that would help another human in need. But the last thing a family member needed to see was an empty eye socket if for some reason the lid rolled back. Annalise took no chances.

  Once finished, she left the body on the table. Her assistants would be in within the hour. They would again wipe him down, put him on the gurney, and deposit him in the hospital morgue. For most autopsies, the corpse was carefully washed down before, as well. If foul play was suspected, this couldn’t be done, nor could anything else be done, until law enforcement people had checked the body. Even so, not being doctors, they could and did miss things—a tiny little needle pinprick, for instance.

  Her first year on the job, Annalise performed an autopsy on a healthy man. No apparent cause of death. She found a needle mark at the base of his skull. Someone, with supreme skill, had hit the exact right spot to drive a long, sturdy needle up into his brain.

  Annalise was very observant.

  As she and Cory washed up, she said, “For the last years—ever since the helmet law was passed and the cops cracked down—we’ve had a hard time. There weren’t enough organs for those in need. Now that kids are doing this car surfing, things are picking up.”

  “Yeah. People mourn the kid, of course.” Cory tossed the long rubber gloves into the stainless-steel trash can. “Yet someone else rejoices because they’ve got a chance to live.”

  “I guess it’s the old saw: One man’s loss is another man’s gain. Still, you’d think these kids would have more sense.”

  “Part of human development. Those crazy years between fifteen and twenty. Sixteen seems to be the worst. Kids, especially boys, take really stupid chances.”

  “Never was any good at psychology. Hated taking it, too.” Annalise toweled off. “Not one thing can be quantified, but that’s another discussion. Did you ever think why it’s the boys who die?”

  “Testosterone.”

  “There’s a convenient explanation, but you can’t prove that, either. Besides, Cory, hormonal arguments have been used for about a century and a half to keep women disenfranchised. Let’s not do the same thing to men. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  “No,” he thoughtfully replied. “But three will get you back on the freeway.”

  Laughing, they left the room, stepping into the small anteroom near Annalise’s office. She didn’t need another larger plush office, as did other doctors. Annalise’s patients never set up appointments.

  “I think the reason boys and young men die as foolishly as they do is a man has to prove he’s a man. A woman has nothing to prove. So all one man or a group of boys have to do is taunt one another. You know, he wants to drink white wine and one of the guys at the table says, ‘Would you like a box of tampons with that?’ That sort of thing. So it’s the way men control other men. Make them insecure, and they’ll really do stupid things.” Annalise put her hands on her hips.

  Cory considered this, his handsome features composed. “I agree, but don’t you think you compete with other women?”

  “Sure, but competing for me means I want to win at something. Not proving I’m a woman.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He smiled broadly. “Being beautiful, you have no competition.”

  “Ha!” She kissed him on the cheek.

  “How’s everything else?”

  “Good. It’s been a slow couple of weeks. Not too many harvests. But business is steady.”

  “I’m operating Thursday morning, if you’d like to observe. Do you good to observe living tissue,” Cory invited her.

  “I’ll be there.” Annalise, a circumspect individual, looked around even though she knew no one would be there for another fifteen minutes. “Any more pieces of skull on your desk?”

  Cory had called her about this once he’d settled down. “No. But it worries me.”

  “I’m not happy about it, but if I were you,” she wryly said, “I’d be a lot more worried if it had been a fresh set of male genitals.”

  A sea of asphalt dotted with colored metal gumdrops was how the vast parking lot of Central Virginia Medical Complex might appear to someone with an imaginative streak. To Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, it was just ugly. No grass, rocks, or snakes—although bugs crawled on windshields. Animals burrowed in the greenbelt surrounding all this. Birds flew overhead and made nests in the Bradford pears that lined the streets.

  “Boring,” Pewter complained.

  “She’ll be out soon.” Tucker curled in the fleece-lined bed Harry had put in the back of the Volvo.

  Harry had outfitted the station wagon for her animals’ pleasure as well as her own. She kept the second row of seats down. The XC70 had no third row, a wise decision. With those seats flat down, Harry covered the cargo area with a heavy rubber mat, better to handle those wet, muddy paws. She put down three very cushy beds, fastening them to the mat with small double-eye hooks. She’d put small U-fasteners in the heavy rubber to hold the double-eye hooks. The beds wouldn’t slide, so the thick, heavy-duty carpet on the cargo area would be protected. She could haul the heavy rubber mat out to wash it. Always organized when it came to physical spaces, she felt quite proud of herself. The animals liked it but still rode up front with her.

  “Cool day,” observed Mrs. Murphy, intently watching out the window.

  Happy to make polite conversation, Tucker agreed.

  “If it’s cool, why does Harry put the windows down a crack? I don’t like it,” Pewter grumbled.

  “Fresh air.” Mrs. Murphy noticed a chipmunk shoot across the beltway road.

  “Bother.” Pewter vacated her bed to crawl in with Tucker. “You take up so much space.”

  “It’s my bed, Fatso.”

  “Oh la.” The gray cat ignored this, curling her back to Tucker’s white stomach.

  • • •

  As these edifying conversations were taking place, Harry lay down for her first radiation treatment, the killer beams focusing on the former tumor site marked with ink.

  The process, explained to her in detail, caused no pain, but she needed to remain still on the special table. Staying motionless was more difficult than Harry had anticipated. She wanted to scream and run out of there. The nurse told her the first treatment wouldn’t be so bad. But in case nausea developed, there were drugs for that. A slight possibility existed for burns on her skin, which would be uncomfortable.

  Harry refused drugs. She wanted her mind to be clear. What she’d do down the road, she didn’t know. She’d find out when she got there, but the first treatment was okay, apart from staying still.

  The support group had prepared Harry. Medicine, with its many protocols and restrictions—courtesy of one’s government—could be as baffling as a peasant
landing in the court of Catherine II of All the Russias. There were way too many complications, too many forms to fill out and papers to take home and read. Basically, all the forms boiled down to one thing: letting the hospital off the hook, should something go awry. In turn, the hospital feared gargantuan lawsuits if so much as one bent needle was used or someone was not properly swabbed, according to a potentially litigious patient.

  Harry hated all of that. As she lay on the padded table, oddly grateful for the interlude on a busy day, she felt as though she’d stepped through a door into a prison without walls. Her body no longer belonged to her. The hospital accepted her body and the money in her purse. She was told what to do and when to do it. The insurance companies would try to kill her with paperwork, calls, and the need for intense documentation of every little thing done to her. She pitied Jennifer Potter. If Harry, a patient—well, actually a number—faced towers of paper and constant concerns about liability, what did her surgeon face?

  Harry paid little attention to medicine. Although married to a vet, she exhibited zero curiosity about human medicine. Thrilled with the miracles stem cell treatments did for horses, she didn’t give it a thought for people.

  Yet here she was in the cancer factory. She still didn’t really care. If she hadn’t been married, she wouldn’t submit to radiation. Thanks to his medical knowledge, Fair had insisted, as did Susan, BoomBoom, Alicia, Rev. Jones, Franny, and every single person with whom she came into contact. Part of her felt she’d caved to the pressure. Part of her figured she’d get through it and then everyone would shut up. She’d be forty-one in August; she hoped she had a lot of life left.

  If nothing else, cancer introduced her to her own mortality. Intellectually, she knew she was eventually going to die. Now she knew it emotionally, and it was okay. She didn’t want to go now, but she was a farmer. She’d lived with nature in a way few Americans did anymore. She accepted death, including her own. When that Dark Angel knocked on her door, she prayed she would accompany him with dignity. She resolved during that first radiation session that once done with this, she’d avoid this or any hospital if she was ill and the survival chance was less than fifty percent. If injured, sure, let the doc fix your bones or whatever. Injury is different from illness. She hated being ill. She could put up with injury.