Cat of the Century (22 page)

She was having this discussion tonight with Simon the possum, up in the hayloft. A frost was already on the ground when Harry had put out molasses icicles before retiring at 10:00
P
.
M
. Harry was usually in bed by then, but the terrible news about the discovery of Mariah had kept her restless.

Simon lived for sweets—molasses icicles in winter and fat white marshmallows in summer. Harry also put out Jolly Ranchers for him. He had to peel off the cellophane. Harry would watch him and giggle. Sometimes the possum would look up at her as if to say,
“Why don’t you take the cellophane off?”

Harry inspired confidence in animals; she had the gift. That wasn’t to say that wild ones would come up to her, but they didn’t usually run right away. Foxes would stop to stare, perhaps exchange a few words, which Harry couldn’t understand. Birds, especially hawks, shadowed her, and Flatface, the owl, would often call out a friendly “hoo hoo” on sight.

At this moment, Mrs. Murphy was telling Simon about the blood of the lamb and the Angel of Death and how the firstborn in the house without the mark died. She was trying to explain Passover.

“Oh, the poor lamb,”
Simon commented.

“Doesn’t get much credit.”
Mrs. Murphy snuggled in the hay.

On a night like tonight, when the thermometer read twenty-nine degrees, it was cold, but with a little hay around her, Mrs. Murphy’s thick fur and undercoat kept her warm enough.

Pewter, on the other hand, hated being cold. Currently the gray cat was sprawled full length on the sofa, the huge heavy logs Fair had put in the fireplace before going upstairs burning slowly. The fireplaces and the wood-burning stove in the basement went a long way toward reducing heating bills. They tried to keep the electric bills down by turning the lights on in only the room they were occupying. Harry’s mother had drummed that into her head, and during her first year of marriage to Fair, Harry trailed behind him, switching off lights. When he saw the difference in the bill those eighteen years ago, he got the message. Today, the savings were much greater.

Mrs. Murphy, not born when Harry and Fair were first married, had heard about it nonetheless. Given the excellent state of her eyes, she didn’t need much electric light, but that was when she realized that, while humans enjoyed good vision, their night vision was dreadful. No wonder they got scared, and no wonder their conception of evil
always involved darkness. Didn’t they call the devil “the Prince of Darkness”?

“Then what happened?”
Simon gnawed on the molasses.

“Pharaoh set them free, and they made it to the Red Sea. But Ramses repented of his generosity, so he came after them with his army.”

“Went back on his word. That’s a bad thing.”
Simon, a Southern possum, knew that your word was your bond.

“Well, Moses arrived at the Red Sea, so he had water in front of him and Pharaoh barreling down on him from behind. I guess Ramses would have killed all of them or maybe just killed some and enslaved the others again. Anyway, it was not an appetizing prospect. So Moses threw open his arms, and the Red Sea parted.”

“Huh?”
Simon’s jaw hung slack.

“The sea opened, and the Jews hurried along the path. Well, Pharaoh rode right in after them, and he was halfway through the open path when the last of the former slaves set foot on dry ground and the sea closed.”

Simon’s eyes grew moist.
“Those poor horses.”
Then he whispered,
“I hope they didn’t hear.”
He nodded to indicate the sleeping horses below.

Shortro, the gray Saddlebred who had just turned four, flopped on his side, snoring at full throttle.

“How can you sleep with that racket?”
Mrs. Murphy peered over the side to see the horses.

“You get used to it. He’s good company, Shortro.”

“I’m going home. I didn’t hunt much this evening. Lost the impulse. Hunting’s good when the moon waxes.”

“Tomorrow night”
—Simon meant the night of April 12—
“it will be one big party. Feels like rain, though. That will keep most everyone holed up.”

Mrs. Murphy backed down the ladder to the hayloft, then took a moment to hop on one of the large tack trunks containing extra horse blankets outside Shortro’s stall. There he was, on his side, eyes closed, lips moving with each gargantuan snore. The young gelding had a clear conscience, for he could sleep at the drop of a hat.

The sleek cat slipped through the animal door into the tack room, where the mice were carrying sweet-feed grains behind the old small tack trunk there.

“Clean this up,”
she warned.

“Will”
came the reply, and the fat fellow disappeared behind the trunk, his long tail staying in sight for an extra moment.

Just to be sure, Mrs. Murphy walked outside and checked the feed room. Harry rarely forgot to close the lid on the zinc-lined feed containers, which were big enough for a person to stand in. But, as always, some grain was scattered on the floor as well as under the buckets in the stalls. Sweet feed smelled delicious.

Satisfied, the cat exited through the animal door by the big sliding outside doors. The hayloft door was shut, or she would have waved to Simon. Flatface the owl flew directly into the cupola. In summer, she often swooped through the hayloft, which pleased the owl because it gave Simon a start.

With the trees denuded except for the conifers, Mrs. Murphy could see almost out to the mailbox. A rumble stopped her. A pair of headlights—close together, like those on a Jeep Wrangler—came into view. The vehicle, which she couldn’t see very well, stopped. The headlights switched off. However, she heard the motor hum, then she saw the vehicle back out a ways and turn around. She barely saw the lights switch back on before the vehicle made the turn two hundred yards from the state road, a two-lane dirt road along this section. A mile north, the road became paved; a mile south, the old road intersected a crossroads, which was also paved. Harry was grateful that her part of the road remained gravel. It kept the traffic down, as people didn’t use it much for shortcuts.

By now it was 3:45
A
.
M
. The moon had moved along in the sky. Perhaps the driver had been coming home from a late night of partying or a late night at work and made a wrong turn. Still, Mrs. Murphy didn’t like it. Her view was that if humans were up late, they were loaded on something. Or there was trouble in their personal life. Cats were nocturnal. Humans were not.

She pushed through the animals’ opening in the outdoor porch door, which in summer was screened, then through the main door into the kitchen.

Inez, who couldn’t sleep, was drinking more tea, sitting in front of her laptop.

Mrs. Murphy brushed against Inez’s leg.

“Your fur is cold.” Inez reached down to pet Mrs. Murphy’s head, which displayed the “M” that some tiger cats had.

Cats and some humans believed an “M” on the top of a tiger cat’s head meant the cat was descended from the cat who stayed with the Virgin Mary and Jesus. The cat slept in the manger in Bethlehem. So they were marked as Mary’s cats.

Mrs. Murphy jumped onto a chair adjacent to Inez’s. She did not get on the table. She kept company with Inez until Fair came down the steps from the bedroom at 5:30
A
.
M
. She could hear water running in the pipes under the sink, so she knew Harry was up, as well.

“Are you all right?” Fair asked, as he tightened the tie on his robe around him.

“No. I can’t sleep. I’m wasting time researching municipal bonds. Then I switched over to various theories about why people murder.”

Fair pressed the red button on the electric coffeepot. Harry had set up coffee the night before. She drank tea, but she made good coffee. He was grateful.

He sat down across from Inez. “You need to go to bed.”

Ignoring this suggestion, Inez put down her mechanical pencil. She’d been filling up a red and black notebook with bits of information from her computer. “I know.”

“Turn off the computer,” he suggested gently.

She did. “I wonder how long it will be before the authorities tell us how Mariah died.”

“And when.” Fair got up as the coffeepot beeped.

“You know, this forensics stuff is not as easy as they make it look on TV.”

“Won’t be ‘TV fast,’ but I bet the forensics experts will get the information out fast enough. Otherwise, they look inadequate.”

“You’d think they’d suppress it. You know, fears of a killer walking Fulton’s streets.”

He shook his head. “Better to keep people informed, ask for their help via tips, quell panic. As there’s only one body, hopefully people
haven’t hit their panic button yet. And since the victim is a middle-aged woman, it would appear the students are safe.”

“God knows, I hope so.” Inez’s eyes fluttered, her head dropped.

Fair put his filled mug back on the counter, gently woke her, and walked her back to the bedroom. She sat on the bed, her head bobbing again. He lifted her legs, laid her flat, and pulled a wool throw over her. He kissed her on the cheek and returned to the kitchen.

A
unt Tally’s long mahogany dining-room table was covered with neat piles of papers. Inez sat across from Aunt Tally, while Liz Filmore sat at the head of the table.

Each woman had her year-to-date investments printed out, along with graphs. As a point of comparison, Liz included a month-by-month breakdown from last year, also with colored graphics. In front of her she had copies of each woman’s portfolio plus a small lined notebook, a wafer-thin computer, and a pencil.

Harry was over at Little Mim’s. She didn’t wish to intrude. Aunt Tally probably wouldn’t have cared, but Liz might have. As Aunt Tally and Inez rarely compared investment strategies and notes, Liz had suggested they go through everything together. They liked the idea, even though Aunt Tally had never been much for learning about how her money was invested. Of late, she was making a stab at it.

“Flip to page three.” Liz waited until each woman turned to the correct page. “Look at the pie-shaped graphic and compare it with last year’s.” She leaned toward Aunt Tally, pointing with her pencil to the red wedges on the paper. “That’s the proportion of your earnings differing from last year.”

“Down,” Aunt Tally said grimly.

“Yes.” Liz tapped the eraser end of the pencil on the page. “But only
twelve percent. The market lost thirty-five percent in value. You’re way ahead of the game. You, too, Inez.”

Inez, good at things like this, mentioned, “Liz, a twelve percent loss in value is still twelve percent. While I applaud you running a better race than the market, I do have some suggestions.”

A frown crossed Liz’s face but was quickly replaced by a neutral façade. What could a ninety-eight-year-old vet teach her?

Plenty.

“Tell me.” Liz tried to inject eagerness in her voice.

“I suggest you sell my Delta Petroleum stocks and, with the proceeds, buy the short-term notes offered by the state of California.”

Aunt Tally exploded, “California can’t even pay its state workers, and you want to buy municipal bonds?”

Inez held up her hands, palms toward Aunt Tally. “Debt issue makes sense, Blossom. I don’t trust for a shining minute the stock-market rebound.”

Liz piped up. “Money-market funds—”

Before she could finish, Inez crisply replied, “I don’t trust that, either. California is an ungodly mess, but the tax advantages to shifting money to the notes remains attractive.”

Aunt Tally rapped the floor with her cane. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Ordinary stock earnings—say, like those for Georgia-Pacific—are taxed at a higher rate than municipal bonds. Any form of government note carries tax advantages. It offers high earnings in other areas like stocks and real estate.”

“But don’t I want what will earn me the most income?” Aunt Tally, listening to Inez at this moment, wished she hadn’t been so passive about her money.

“You have to mix it up,” Inez explained patiently. “Or you’ll lose most of your gains to taxes.”

“That’s unfair!”

“Indeed. That’s why for years I’ve urged you to ride herd on your brokers. Liz has what you call your play money. Scott and Stringfellow has the real money.”

Liz, clever, knew not to cast aspersions at Scott & Stringfellow.
It would look as though she was trying to get all of Aunt Tally’s money into her small firm.

“They are very good,” Liz demurred.

The meeting wore on for another hour. Mostly it was productive.

As Liz gathered up her papers, she said, “This was better than wasting time on the murders. We’ve said all there is to say to one another about that. It’s time to get back to business.”

“It is,” Inez agreed.

“It’s still hard to put it out of one’s mind.” Aunt Tally leaned on her cane to rise.

“I wish we’d hear some results from the forensics lab,” Liz grumbled. “Our state has such a great lab.”

“I’m sure Missouri can’t be far behind,” Inez said. “It’s April thirteenth. Mariah was only found on Friday, April tenth, and it
was
a holiday weekend.”