Murder on the Prowl

by Rita Mae Brown

  “I couldn't stand it anymore. It takes me five minutes to find a pair of socks that match and”—she pointed to a few pathetic silken remnants—“my underwear is shot.”

  “You haven't bought new lingerie since your mother died.”

  Harry plopped on the bed. “As long as Mom bought the stuff, I didn't have to—anyway, I can't stand traipsing into Victoria's Secret. There's something faintly pornographic about it.”

  “Oh, bull, you just can't stand seeing bra sizes bigger than your own.”

  “I'm not so bad.”

  Susan smiled. “I didn't say you were, I only hinted that you are a touch competitive.”

  “I am not. I most certainly am not. If I were competitive, I'd be applying my art history degree somewhere instead of being the postmistress of Crozet.”

  “I seem to remember one vicious field hockey game our senior year.”

  “That doesn't count.”

  “You didn't like BoomBoom Craycroft even then,” Susan recalled.

  “Speaking of jugs . . . I hear she seduced my ex-husband wearing a large selection of lingerie.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “She did, the idiot.”

  Susan sat down on the opposite side of the bed because she was laughing too hard to stand up.

  “She did! Can you believe it? Told me all about the black lace teddy she wore when he came out to the farm on a call,” Harry added.

  Pharamond Haristeen, “Fair,” happened to be one of the best equine vets in the state.

  “Mom, Pewter's hungry,” Brooks called from the kitchen.

  Tucker, having raced back, pushed open the screen door and hurried over to Susan only to sit on her foot. As it was Susan who bred her and gave her to Harry, she felt quite close to the auburn-haired woman.

  “Pewter's always hungry, Brooks; don't fall for her starving kitty routine.”

  “Shut up,” Pewter called back, then purred and rubbed against Brooks's leg.

  “Mom, she's really hungry.”

  “Con artist.” Walking back to the kitchen, Harry sternly addressed the cat, who was frantically purring. “If they gave Academy Awards to cats, you would surely win ‘best actress.'”

  “I am so-o-o-o hungry,” the cat warbled.

  “If I could use the electric can opener, I'd feed you just to shut you up.” Mrs. Murphy sat up and swept her whiskers forward, then back.

  Harry, arriving at the same conclusion, grabbed a can of Mariner's Delight. “What's up?”

  “We're having a family crisis.” Brooks giggled.

  “No, we're not.”

  “Mom.” Brooks contradicted her mother by the tone of her voice.

  “I'm all ears.” Harry ladled out the fishy-smelling food. Pewter, blissfully happy, stuck her face in it. Mrs. Murphy approached her food with more finesse. She liked to pat the edge of her dish with her paw, sniff, then take a morsel in her teeth, carefully chewing it. She believed this was an aid to digestion, also keeping her weight down. Pewter gobbled everything. Calorie Kitty.

  “I hate my teachers this year, especially Home Room.” Brooks dropped onto a brightly painted kitchen chair.

  “Miss Tucker, you were not invited to sit down.” Susan put her hands on her hips.

  “Mom, it's Harry. I mean, it's not like I'm at Big Mim's or anything.” She referred to Mim Sanburne, a fierce enforcer of etiquette.

  “Practice makes perfect.”

  “Please have a seat.” Harry invited her to the seat she already occupied.

  “Thank you,” Brooks replied.

  “Just see that you don't forget your manners.”

  “Fat chance.” Brooks laughed at her mother.

  They strongly resembled each other, and despite their spats, a deep love existed between mother and daughter.

  Danny, Susan's older child, was also the recipient of oceans of maternal affection.

  Brooks abruptly got up and dashed outside.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back in a flash.”

  Susan sat down. “I ask myself daily, sometimes hourly, whatever made me think I could be a mother.”

  “Oh, Susan.” Harry waved her hand. “Stop trolling for compliments.”

  “I'm not.”

  “You know you're a good mother.”

  Brooks reappeared, Saturday newspaper in hand, and placed it on the table. “Sorry.”

  “Oh, thanks. I didn't get out to the mailbox this morning.” She took the rubber band off the folded newspaper. The small white envelope underneath the rubber band contained the monthly bill. “I don't know why I pay for this damned paper. Half the time it isn't delivered.”

  “Well, they delivered it today.”

  “Hallelujah. Well—?” Harry shrugged. “What's the family crisis?”

  “We're not having a family crisis,” Susan replied calmly. “Brooks doesn't like her teachers, so we're discussing—”

  “I hate my teachers, and Mom is getting bent out of shape. Because she graduated from Crozet High, she wants me to graduate from Crozet High. Danny graduates this year. That ought to be enough. Batting five hundred, Mom,” Brooks interrupted.

  Harry's eyes widened. “You can't drop out, Brooks.”

  “I don't want to drop out. I want to go back to St. Elizabeth's.”

  “That damned snob school costs an arm and a leg.” Susan looked up at Pewter, who was eating very loudly. “That cat sounds like an old man smacking his gums.”

  Pewter, insulted, whirled around to face Susan, but she only proved the statement as little food bits dangled from her whiskers.

  Susan smiled. “Like an old man who can't clean his mustache.”

  “Ha!” Mrs. Murphy laughed loudly.

  “She really does look like that,” Tucker agreed as she sat on the floor under the counter where Pewter chowed down. In case the cat dropped any food, Tucker would vacuum it up.

  “Hey, I've got some cookies,” Harry said.

  “Thank you, no. We ate a big breakfast.”

  “What about coffee, tea?”

  “No.” Susan smiled.

  “You don't think you can get along with your teachers or overlook them?” Harry switched back to the subject at hand.

  “I hate Mrs. Berryhill.”

  “She's not so bad.” Harry defended a middle-aged lady widowed a few years back.

  “Gives me heaves.” Brooks pretended to gag.

  “If it's that bad, you aren't going to learn anything.”

  “See, Mom, see—I told you.”

  “I think it's important not to bail out before you've given it a month or two.”

  “By that time I'll have failed French!” She knew her mother especially wanted her to learn French.

  “Don't be so dramatic.”

  “Go on, be dramatic.” Harry poked at Susan's arm while encouraging Brooks.

  “We need a little drama around here.” Tucker agreed with Harry.

  “I won't learn a thing. I'll be learning-deprived. I'll shrink into oblivion—”

  Harry interrupted, “Say, that's good, Brooks. You must be reading good novels or studying vocabulary boosters.”

  Brooks smiled shyly, then continued. “I will be disadvantaged for life, and then I'll never get into Smith.”

  “That's a low blow,” said Susan, who had graduated from Smith with Harry.

  “Then you'll marry a gas station attendant and—”

  “Harry, don't egg her on. She doesn't have to pay the bills.”

  “What does Ned say?” Harry inquired of Susan's husband, a lawyer and a likable man.

  “He's worried about the money, too, but he's determined that she get a good foundation.”

  “St. Elizabeth's is a fine school even if I do think they're a bunch of snobs,” Harry said forthrightly. “Roscoe Fletcher is doing a good job. At least everyone says he is. I can't say that I know a lot about education, but remember last year's graduating class put two kids in Yale, one in Princeton, one in Harv
ard.” She paused. “I think everyone got into great schools. Can't argue with that.”

  “If I'm going to spend that much money, then I should send her to St. Catherine's in Richmond,” Susan replied to Harry.

  “Mom, I don't want to go away from home. I just want to get out of Crozet High. I'll be away soon enough when I go to college. Smith, Mom, Smith,” she reminded her mother.

  “Well—” Susan considered this.

  “Call Roscoe Fletcher,” Harry suggested. “Brooks has only been in school for two weeks. See if he'll let her transfer now or if she'll have to wait for the second semester.”

  Susan stood up to make herself a cup of tea.

  “I asked you if you wanted tea,” Harry said.

  “I changed my mind. You want some?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Harry sat back down.

  “I already called Roscoe. That officious bombshell of a secretary of his, April Shively, took forever to put me through. It's a contradiction in terms, bombshell and secretary.” She thought a moment, then continued. “Of course, he said wondrous things about St. Elizabeth's, which one would expect. What headmaster won't take your money?”

  “He has raised a lot of money, at least, that's what Mim says.” Harry paused, “Mim graduated from Madeira, you know. You'd think she would have gone to St. Elizabeth's. Little Mim didn't graduate from St. Elizabeth's either.”

  “Mim is a law unto herself,” Susan replied.

  “Miranda will know why Big Mim didn't go there.”

  “If she chooses to tell. What a secret keeper that one is.” Susan loved Miranda Hogendobber, being fully acquainted with her quirks. Miranda's secrets usually involved age or the petty politics of her various civic and church organizations.

  “The big question: Can Brooks get in?”

  “Of course she can get in,” Susan replied in a loud voice. “She's carrying a three point eight average. And her record was great when she was there before, in the lower school.”

  “What about Danny? Will he be jealous?”

  “No,” Brooks answered. “I asked him.”

  Harry took her cup of tea as Susan sat back down.

  “I just bought that Audi Quattro,” Susan moaned. “How can I pay for all of this?”

  “I can work after school,” Brooks volunteered.

  “I want those grades to stay up, up, up. By the time you get into college, you might have to win a scholarship. Two kids in college at the same time—when I got pregnant, why didn't I space them four years apart instead of two?” She wailed in mock horror.

  “Because this way they're friends, and this way Danny can drive Brooks everywhere.”

  “And that's another thing.” Susan smacked her hand on the table. “They'll be going to different after-school activities. He won't be driving her anywhere.”

  “Mom, half my friends go to St. Elizabeth's. I'll cop rides.”

  “Brooks, I am not enamored of the St. Elizabeth's crowd. They're too—superficial, and I hear there's a lot of drugs at the school.”

  “Get real. There's a lot of drugs at Crozet High. If I wanted to take drugs, I could get them no matter where I went to school.” She frowned.

  “That's hell of a note,” Harry exclaimed.

  “It's true, I'm afraid.” Susan sighed. “Harry, the world looks very different when you have children.”

  “I can see that,” Harry agreed. “Brooks, just who are your friends at St. Elizabeth's?”

  “Karen Jensen. There's other kids I know, but Karen's my best friend there.”

  “She seems like a nice kid,” Harry said.

  “She is. Though she's also older than Brooks.” Susan was frustrated. “But the rest of them are balls-to-the-wall consumers. I'm telling you, Harry, the values there are so superficial and—”

  Harry interrupted her. “But Brooks is not superficial, and St. E isn't going to make her that way. It didn't before and it won't this time. She's her own person, Susan.”

  Susan dipped a teaspoon in her tea, slowly stirring in clover honey. She hated refined sugar. “Darling, go visit Harry's horses. I need a private word with my best bud.”

  “Sure, Mom.” Brooks reluctantly left the kitchen, Tucker at her heels.

  Putting the teaspoon on the saucer, Susan leaned forward. “It's so competitive at that school, some kids can't make it. Remember last year when Courtney Frere broke down?”

  Trying to recall the incident, Harry dredged up vague details. “Bad college-board scores—was that it?”

  “She was so afraid she'd disappoint her parents and not get into a good school that she took an overdose of sleeping pills.”

  “Now I remember.” Harry pressed her lips together. “That can happen anywhere. She's a high-strung girl. She got into, uh, Tulane, wasn't it?”

  “Yes.” Susan nodded her head. “But it isn't just competitive between the students, it's competitive between the faculty and the administration. Sandy Brashiers is still fuming that he wasn't made upper-school principal.”

  “Politics exists in every profession. Even mine,” Harry calmly stated. “You worry too much, Susan.”

  “You don't know what it's like being a mother!” Susan flared up.

  “Then why ask my opinion?” Harry shot back.

  “Because—” Susan snapped her teaspoon on the table.

  “Hey!” Tucker barked.

  “Hush, Tucker,” Harry told her.

  “What's the worst that can happen?” Harry grabbed the spoon out of Susan's hand. “If she hates it, you take her out of there. If she falls in with the wrong crowd, yank her out.”

  “This little detour could destroy her grade-point average.”

  “Well, she'll either go to a lesser college than our alma mater or she can go to a junior college for a year or two to pull her grades back up. Susan, it isn't the end of the world if Brooks doesn't do as well as you wish—but it's a hard lesson.”

  “I don't think Mrs. Berryhill is that bad.”

  “We aren't fifteen. Berryhill's not exactly a barrel of laughs even for us.”

  Susan breathed deeply. “The contacts she makes at St. Elizabeth's could prove valuable later, I suppose.”

  “She's a good girl. She'll bloom where planted.”

  “You're right.” Susan exhaled, then reached over for the folded paper. “Speaking of the paper, let's see what fresh hell the world is in today.”

  She unfolded the first section of the paper, the sound of which inflamed Mrs. Murphy, who jumped over from the counter to sit on the sports section, the living section, and the classifieds.

  “Murphy, move a minute.” Harry tried to pull the living section out from under the cat.

  “I enjoy sitting on the newspaper. Best of all, I love the tissue paper in present boxes, but this will do.”

  Harry gently lifted up Mrs. Murphy's rear end and pulled out a section of paper as the tail swished displeasure. “Thank you.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Murphy grumbled as Harry let her rear end down.

  “Another fight in Congress over the federal budget,” Susan read out loud.

  “What a rook.” Harry shrugged. “Nobody's going to do anything anyway.”

  “Isn't that the truth? What's in your section?”

  “Car wreck on Twenty-ninth and Hydralic. Officer Crystal Limerick was on the scene.”

  “Anything in there about Coop?” She mentioned their mutual friend who was now a deputy for the Albemarle County Sheriff's Department.

  “No.” Harry flipped pages, disappointed that she didn't find what she was looking for.

  “You've got the obit section, let's see who went to their reward.”

  “You're getting as bad as Mom.”

  “Your mother was a wonderful woman, and it's one's civic duty to read the obituary column. After all, we must be ready to assist in case—”

  She didn't finish her sentence because Harry flipped open the section of the paper to the obituary page suddenly shouting, “Holy shit!
”

  3

  “I just spoke to him yesterday.” Susan gasped in shock as she read over Harry's shoulder the name Roscoe Harvey Fletcher, forty-five, who died unexpectedly September 22. She'd jumped up to see for herself.

  “The paper certainly got it in the obit section quickly.” Harry couldn't believe it either.

  “Obit section has the latest closing.” Susan again read the information to be sure she wasn't hallucinating. “Doesn't say how he died. Oh, that's not good. When they don't say it means suicide or—”

  “AIDS.”

  “They never tell you in this paper how people die. I think it's important.” Susan snapped the back of the paper.

  “‘The family requests donations be made to the Roscoe Harvey Fletcher Memorial Fund for scholarships to St. Elizabeth's. . . .' What the hell happened?” Harry shot up and grabbed the phone.

  She dialed Miranda's number. Busy. She then dialed Dr. Larry Johnson. He knew everything about everybody. Busy. She dialed the Reverend Herbert Jones.

  “Rev,” she said as he picked up the phone, “it's Mary Minor.”

  “I know your voice.”

  “How did Roscoe die?”

  “I don't know.” His voice lowered. “I was on my way over there to see what I could do. Nobody knows anything. I've spoken to Mim and Miranda. I even called Sheriff Shaw to see if there had been a late-night accident. Everyone is in the dark, and there's no funeral information. Naomi hasn't had time to select a funeral home. She's probably in shock.”

  “She'll use Hill and Wood.”

  “Yes, I would think so, but, well—” His voice trailed off a moment, then he turned up the volume. “He wasn't sick. I reached Larry. Clean bill of health, so this has to be an accident of some kind. Let me get over there to help. I'll talk to you later.”

  “Sorry,” Harry apologized for slowing him down.

  “No, no, I'm glad you called.”

  “Nobody called me.”

  “Miranda did. If you had an answering machine you'd have known early on. She called at seven A.M., the minute she saw the paper.”

  “I was in the barn.”

  “Called there, too.”

  “Maybe I was out on the manure spreader. Well, it doesn't matter. There's work to be done. I'll meet you over at the Fletchers'. I've got Susan and Brooks with me. We can help do whatever needs to be done.”