Cat of the Century (16 page)

Apart from being a fine officer, Deputy Cooper was a good friend to Harry, and vice versa. Harry’s best friend, Susan Tucker, was in DeLand, Florida, tending to an ailing aunt. Harry felt alone without her two stalwarts. To make matters worse, Miranda Hogendobber, a surrogate mother to Harry, was in Greenville, South Carolina, because her sister was recuperating from surgery for breast cancer. This, too, was described as “ailing,” to acquaintances. To close friends, only, the word “cancer” was used. The doctors said they got it all, but Miranda was taking no chances. Her sister, Didee, had told her to stay in Crozet, but Miranda would have none of it. Secretly, Didee was glad.

Harry depended on her friends for their insights. She wished they were home.

“Smell that perfume Terri was wearing?”
Tucker asked.

“A heavy musk,”
Mrs. Murphy answered the dog.

“A distaste underlaid it. I’m not sure, but something’s not right. Whether she didn’t want to come out to us, doesn’t like Harry or Inez or Liz, I don’t know, but it was noticeable.”

“I halfway noticed, Tucker, but I didn’t think too much about it.”
They approached the barn.
“There certainly seems to be a lot of drama among this group of women. Well, any group, I reckon.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know. Men aren’t as complicated, that’s all I can figure. They might be devious, lie, or undermine others in a group, but it’s about pecking order. At least, I think it is. The weaker the man, the more sneaky. But women—it’s just too complicated for me.”
She laughed.
“PMS in concert.”

“Harry and her friends aren’t like that.”
Tucker always defended her human.

“No, but think about it: With the exception of Coop, they’ve known one another from birth. Miranda used to babysit Harry. Susan and Harry shared a cradle. Different.”

“Reckon so.”
Tucker pushed open the dog door into the barn.
“Everybody knows her place.”

Mrs. Murphy laughed.
“That’s the great thing about being a cat. I’m not a pack animal. You and Harry are.”

“You’re part of the family. That’s a pack.”

“I’m part of the family, but I figure I’m always number one. No struggle for place.”

“Oh, Murphy.”
Tucker couldn’t understand this.

“Tucker, sweetie, dogs are so literal.”
Mrs. Murphy rubbed her head on the corgi’s. Mrs. Murphy then pushed through the second dog door into the tack room. She hurried to the tack trunk, jumped on top, and peered behind it. A fairly large mouse entrance was there.

“Hey, you all. Crumbs in the aisleway. You know the deal. You can eat the scattered grain from the horse buckets, but you’d better clean it up or Harry will think I’m not doing my job.”

A tiny set of whiskers appeared, a pair of bright eyes, then the whole mouse emerged.
“All right. Anything else?”

“Nope.”

The two friends left the barn, slipped through the dog door in the winter-porch door, cleaned their feet, then pushed through the dog door into the kitchen. Inez, like a teenage girl, was having a sleepover with the Haristeens. She was truly enjoying not having her own house
to manage for a while. Aunt Tally’s hundredth had been a good excuse to tarry, visit, talk about everything under the sun.

Harry and Inez were huddled around Inez’s laptop. The envelope icon popped up. Harry fooled around and photos appeared: two photos of Flo slumped over her desk.

“Inez, this is sick.”

“Sick or a warning?” Inez felt terrible seeing Flo like that.

The loss of Flo affected Inez, even though she was angry at Flo for not telling her up front about her investigation of Mariah. Sometimes you don’t know how much someone means to you until they’re gone. As to Mariah’s vanishing, Inez didn’t know what to think. She liked her well enough, but they’d never clicked the way she had with Flo.

“Before we call anyone—I mean the sheriff, who’s a good guy—let’s wait until my friend Coop comes home tomorrow. I want her to look at this first.”

“Are you sure we should wait a day?” Inez couldn’t look at the photos anymore.

“I think so. If I call the sheriff, you give up your computer. I want to look at this with Coop.”

“If you think it’s best.” Inez breathed deeply. “Whoever left this is part of it. Well, I guess that’s obvious.”

“One day,” Harry said soothingly.

“Harry, one day can be a lifetime.”

Inez flipped her phone shut out of nervousness, then opened it again. “Well, I can at least tell Tally to be alert. I don’t know if she’s in danger, but this is much too close for comfort.”

C
ooper asked to keep Inez’s laptop for a few hours. “We have a geek on the force now. Maybe he can retrieve information. I’ll have it back by supper.”

“Of course.” Inez, back at Aunt Tally’s, had packed her bags. She was returning home to shutter the place, collect some things. She thought it could be done in a day, but she wouldn’t really know until she got into the middle of it. Hopefully, she’d return for good when Flo’s killer was apprehended.

Once Aunt Tally had learned of the pictures and seen them, she’d insisted Inez not be alone. While the centenarian lived alone, too, Little Mim and Blair were on Rose Hill.

Inez, back with her old friend after her sleepover, also wanted to make sure all was well back in Manakin–Sabot and to tell Blanca Drabek what she was doing. Liz Filmore, who had stayed over with Terri, was going to drive Inez home.

As Harry had driven Inez over to Rose Hill, she and Cooper drove back. Cooper wanted to talk to Aunt Tally, but it would wait until she returned later with Inez’s laptop.

Inez, gazing out the window, never failed to be fascinated by the topographical changes as one left the Blue Ridge Mountains. Steep rolling
hills and ridges that led up to the mountains gave way to land with a softer roll. The soil changed, too. The red clay and stone outcroppings yielded to Davis loam; in some spots, rich brown alluvial deposits beckoned. The red clay did not easily yield supremacy, though.

“Thinking?” Liz kept her eyes on the road.

“Nonstop,” Inez, whose light feminine voice had become a touch gravelly with the years, replied. “You?”

“Ditto.”

“And?”

Liz’s brow furrowed. “In a way, I still can’t believe it. Flo was good to me; she shared her knowledge.” Liz half-smiled. “Sometimes more out of irritation than affection.”

Inez hadn’t expected such an insight from Liz. “Well, dear, you can be persistent on your own behalf.”

“I like to think it’s on my clients’ behalf, but,” she paused, “I’ve benefited. Tim and I have been blessed.”

“That means profit.” Inez noticed the volume of trucks taking the exit to Zion Crossroads. “Dear God, how this place has changed. Zion Crossroads.”

“Twenty years ago you couldn’t give it away.”

“Oh, you weren’t sentient twenty years ago.” Inez crossed her arms over her chest, pressed at her elbows, and released.

Made her tight back feel better.

“No, but I listen to those who were.” She accepted the teasing comment. “That’s why I listened to Flo.”

“I did, too. She piloted our board through smooth as well as treacherous financial waters. Always timely with her updates, always willing to listen, always had something interesting to say.”

A tear rolled down Liz’s cheek. “I guess I know it was Mariah who killed her.”

“Innocent until proven guilty, yet she did have a clear motive. You know, Liz, I will never understand why people steal. It takes so much effort, planning, execution. Wouldn’t it be easier to apply that to legitimate business?”

Liz slowed, because the car in front of her had swerved to the right. Its wheel caught the asphalt edge, and the driver overcorrected.

“Wonder what he’s on?”

“Could be exhaustion.”

“That’s the truth. We’re all working ourselves to death, and I really think part of the drug epidemic is to keep awake, keep alert.”

“Or to escape. Wind down. But back to Mariah. It boggles the mind.”

“It does, but you asked why people steal when they could put the effort into honest enterprise. One word, Inez, one word: taxes.”

Inez’s eyes widened; she turned toward Liz. “I never thought of that.”

“I promise you. There will be more and more white-collar crime, drug cartels, more petty cheating. Taxes are out of control. You want to throttle initiative, growth? Raise taxes.”

“History makes that point abundantly clear.” For many reasons, Inez was glad she was at the end of her life, not the beginning; one was that she wouldn’t be crushed during her most productive years by unjust taxation.

“Some days Tim and I swear we’re going to chuck it all and move to Costa Rica.”

“But you’re okay.”

“For now. Do you have any idea how many hours we waste filling out government forms or forms sent to us by Fast Grow,” she named an agricultural giant, “which are generated ultimately to protect against lawsuits?”

“So you think Mariah’s goal was to keep the fruits of her labors?”

“Of course. She’d make a much greater profit by selling the fakes. Sure, she’d pay taxes on that profit, but it wasn’t as though she was taking the risk of selling OxyContin.”

“I see.” Inez viewed the flattening of the land, recalling when, as recently as in her eighties, she’d fly across it on the back of her beloved mare, Countess.

Where did the time go?

Liz pulled down the pea-gravel drive to Inez’s house, passing the clinic and its attached stalls for horses needing intensive care. Behind the main clinic was a wire center-aisle barn with sixteen stalls for
horses requiring other types of care. A covered arena containing a swimming pool for horses was screened by Leyland cypress.

“Business holding?” Liz asked.

“Blanca says it’s fair. She gets serious cases, but people are trying to do their own doctoring on lesser ones. Blame the Internet for that. More lame and sick horses.” Inez sighed. “An owner reads about symptoms that they think their horse has. They may be right, but even if they are, Liz, they don’t understand what may surround the injury. They know nothing about the chemicals in the equine system, the proper amount of red cells in blood, synovial fluid—you name it. Oh, well, I’m bitching and moaning like an old lady.”

“For Tim and me, we’ve seen all these reasonably bright people—lawyers, salespeople, you name it—crash and burn as day traders. Same difference.”

“I can imagine.”

Liz pulled up and parked. “Let me carry your bag.”

“Thank you, dear, and thank you for driving me.”

“My pleasure. I was glad to talk about everything. I mean, I still feel awful, but I know I’m not alone. When Tim gets off the plane tonight, that’s when I’ll burst into tears.”

“I’m sorry.” As Inez unlocked her front door, the faint odor of cinnamon tantalized her nostrils.

Cinnamon-scented pillar candles were in each room, and even unlit, they gave off their distinctive fragrance.

“You’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” Inez smiled at Liz. “I keep forgetting to thank you for tending to my account over the years. I know Flo was your mentor, but I’m sure you’ll go forward. Don’t worry. I won’t close my account.”

“Thank you.” Liz hugged her.

An hour later, Kenda Shindler saw the envelope icon flash on her computer screen at work. She’d been waiting for repair quotes for the
water-heating system in an older classroom building. Anything like that went to the treasurer’s office and to the president’s as well.

She opened her electronic mail to read, “You’ll never catch me. Mariah D’Angelo.”

Inez and all the board members received the same message, except for Liz. Hers read, “You insufferable brownnose. What are you going to do now? Mariah.”

T
he next day Harry sat as a passenger for the first time in her new Volvo station wagon, with Fair driving. Old blankets filled the back so the animals could snuggle up. Eventually, someone would crawl over into the second-row seat. Mrs. Murphy, never one to miss action, bypassed the back and the second seat to sit in Harry’s lap. She liked to watch the road, often commenting on what she observed—not that the humans got it, but it made her feel better.