Cat on the Scent (11 page)

21

That evening Harry walked out to the creek dividing her land from Blair Bainbridge's. A soft
squish
accompanied each step. Pewter picked her paws up, periodically shaking them.

“It was much worse the other night,”
Mrs. Murphy nonchalantly remarked.

“I'll have to spend half the night washing my feet.”

“Stick 'em under the faucet,”
the dog joked.

“Never.”
Pewter shook her paws again.

Harry stopped at the creek. The sun was setting, crowning the mountains in pink clouds suffused with gold.

Tucker sat down.

“I'm not sitting down in this,”
Pewter complained.

“You're cranky. Bet you've got a tapeworm.”

“I do not!”
The cat slapped at the dog, who laughed.

“You should talk.”
Mrs. Murphy hated those monthly worm pills but they worked. She knew Tucker sometimes cheated and spit hers out. Then she'd feel bad, Harry would discover evidence of roundworms, and Tucker would really get a dose of medicine.

Harry drank in the sunset and the sound of peepers. She studied her animals; uncanny, as though they knew where the plane was stashed.

It occurred to Harry that whoever deposited Tommy Van Allen's airplane would not be happy to know that she had discovered it. But someone would have eventually done so. She didn't think she'd be in the line of fire.

But Sir H. Vane-Tempest was.

“Just doesn't compute,” she said out loud.

“It's not our problem.”
Pewter felt that suppertime started with sunset. She turned to face the distant house, hoping Harry would take the hint.

Instead Harry climbed the massive walnut tree. Mrs. Murphy joined her, as did Pewter.

“What am I supposed to do?”
the dog whined at the base of the tree.

“Guard us, Tucker,”
Mrs. Murphy said.

“I might have to,”
the dog grumbled,
“and lest you forget, egotist of all time, I ran and chased the bobcat.”

“You did. I really am grateful.”

“How often do humans climb trees?”
Pewter watched Harry swing her legs as she sat on the low, wide branch.

“Not very often. As they get older they don't do it at all, I think,”
Mrs. Murphy answered.
“You see so much more from up here. You'd think they'd want to keep doing it.”

“No claws. Must be hard for them.”
Pewter kept her claws dangerously sharp.

“Everything's hard for them. That's why all their religions are full of fear. You know, hellfire and damnation, that sort of thing.”

“And being plunged into darkness.”
Tucker agreed with the tiger cat.

“If they could see in the dark as well as we do, their gods would be dark gods.”
Mrs. Murphy pitied humans their wide variety of fears.

“If they were bats their gods would be sounds.”
Tucker suffered no religious anxiety. She knew perfectly well that a corgi presided over the universe and she ignored the cats' blasphemous references to a celestial feline.

“How long do you think Harry will live?”
Pewter rubbed against the cobbled trunk of the tree.

Walnuts, beautiful trees, possessed the exact right type of bark for cats to sharpen their claws on—and it was good to rub against, too.

“She's strong. Into her eighties, I should say, maybe as long as Tally Urquhart,”
Murphy replied.

“Then why are humans scared, really? They live much longer than we do.”

“Nah. Just seems longer.”
Tucker giggled.

The cats laughed.

Mrs. Murphy watched Harry hum to herself, swinging her legs as she enjoyed the slow shift of colors from pink to salmon to bloodred shot through with fingers of gray. She truly loved this human and wished Harry could be more like a cat. It would improve her life.

Harry suddenly noticed the animals all observing her.

She burst out laughing. “Hey.”

“Hey back at you,”
they replied.

“Isn't it beautiful?”

“Yes,”
came the chorus.

“It's time for supper.”

“Pewter,”
Mrs. Murphy corrected her.

Pewter fell silent. If she complained she'd probably be stuck out in the walnut tree longer. With luck, Harry's bucolic rapture would pass soon.

“Do you ever worry about who will take care of Mom when we're dead?”
Tucker soberly asked Murphy.

“She'll bring in a puppy and a kitten by the time we're old. We'll train them.”

“I'm not training any kitten,”
Pewter huffed.

“That's because you have nothing to teach the next generation.”

“Aren't we clever?”
Pewter boxed Murphy's ears.

Murphy boxed right back, the two felines moving forward and backward on the heavy branch as Harry laughed at them. Pewter whacked Murphy hard and the tiger slipped. She grabbed at the branch with her front paws but her hind legs dangled over the edge.

“Here.” Harry reached over and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, pulling her up. She put the tiger cat in her lap.

Pewter advanced on Murphy.

“Don't you dare or I'll fall off.” Harry shook her finger at Pewter, who grabbed her finger. She sheathed her claws but her pupils were big so she appeared ferocious.

“Who will open the cans if Harry gets hurt?”
Murphy spit in Pewter's face.

“Now that's enough!” Harry tapped the tiger's head with her index finger.

It didn't hurt but it was irritating.

A sweet purr attracted everyone's attention. A pair of headlights, a mile off, swung into view. Blair pulled into his driveway. He got out of his car, then opened the door for Little Mim.

“Can she see?”
Pewter asked Murphy.

“It's clear enough. She can see that far. Interested, too.”

“Who wouldn't be interested in the Porsche,”
Tucker said.

“She's curious about him.”

“Oh.”
Tucker watched a twig by the creek.
“What was that about Biddy Minor? Miss Tally said curiosity killed him?”

“I don't know. Long before my time. That's way back in our great-grandmothers' time, I guess.”

“You'd think they'd talk about it.”
Pewter backed down the tree. If the others weren't going home, she was. There might be some dried crunchies left in the bowl on the countertop.

“Maybe they did and we didn't hear it. But I don't think Harry's talked about it.”
Mrs. Murphy hopped out of Harry's lap and backed down the walnut also. She talked as she felt for her footing, the slight piercing sound of her claws sinking in bark audible even to the human.
“Maybe she made a passing reference. It would have happened in the twenties, I think.”

“That long ago?”

Murphy reached the bottom as Tucker walked over to her.
“Well, if Biddy was Harry's great-grandfather, you figure he was born in the 1880s, not much later than 1900 for sure.”

“Let's look it up in the family Bible,”
Tucker suggested,
“when she's asleep.”

“Okay.”
Pewter would have agreed to anything just to get to the house.

Harry “skinned the cat,” turning upside down from the branch and dropping to the ground below.

“Very good,”
Murphy praised her.

As they walked back together Harry asked them, “Did you all know about Tommy Van Allen's plane?”

“Yes,”
Mrs. Murphy and Tucker replied.

Pewter said nothing because she hadn't seen it before, even though Mrs. Murphy had told her everything.

Harry smiled at them, oblivious to their answers.

“Smart kids.”

“Sometimes,”
Tucker, more modest than the cats, responded.

“What I don't like about this is it's too close to home.”
Murphy emphasized
home. “Tally Urquhart's only four miles away.”

“It doesn't concern Mom no matter how far away or how close it is.”
Pewter had taken to calling Harry Mom even though she had been raised by Market Shiflett and she occasionally helped out in the store.

“This is a small town. Everything concerns everybody and we led Mom to what may become damaging evidence for someone else. We were stupid.”
Murphy realized her mistake.

“I never thought of that.”
Tucker pressed closer to Harry.

“Me neither. I wish I had.”

“Don't worry until they find a body,”
Pewter said.

“Whoever landed that plane had guts. The fog that night was thick as Mrs. Hogendobber's gravy. Bold ones like that do things other people don't dream of, they take wild chances. Whoever was with Tommy probably killed him, which means I saw the killer. I couldn't tell you one thing about him, though, except that he was shorter than Van Allen. But whoever killed Tommy can't be but so far away.”

“You don't know that.”
Pewter played devil's advocate.

“But I do.”
Mrs. Murphy dashed ahead a few paces.
“What would someone far away have to gain by removing Tommy Van Allen—”

“And removing H. Vane-Tempest,”
Tucker interrupted.

“He's still hanging on.”
Pewter wasn't convinced.

Mrs. Murphy continued her thoughts.
“If Van Allen has some distant relatives who might inherit his construction business, well, it might be someone far away, but I doubt that's the case.”

“Everyone will know when his will is read.”
Pewter shrugged.

“Since no one knows that he's dead yet the will won't be read. His property will stay intact,”
Murphy said, her tail straight out horizontally.

“Someone has to run the business.”
Tucker began to feel uneasy.

“Whoever is vice president of his corporation will. But think about it, it doesn't matter who runs the business. What matters is where the profits go. And they won't go into anyone's pocket until he is legally declared dead.”

“Mrs. Murphy, if the killer stands to profit from Tommy's death then the body must be revealed.”
Pewter was hungry and frustrated. This didn't make a bit of sense to her.

“Exactly.”

“I don't get it,”
Tucker forthrightly said, her voice high.

“Be patient.”
Mrs. Murphy smiled at them as they caught up to walk beside her.
“Whoever killed Tommy is in no hurry. I don't know what Virginia laws say about when you're legally declared dead, but I guarantee you our killer knows. Someone has a great deal to gain by this.”

“Could be love gone sour.”
Pewter searched for a different tack.

“Could be.”
Murphy inhaled the sharp fragrance of the shed bursting with wood shavings.

Pewter was happy they were home.

Tucker was growing more concerned by the minute.
“You're making me nervous.”

“Maybe we're looking at this from the wrong angle.”
Mrs. Murphy bounced through the screen door when Harry opened it. She liked to let Harry open it. It wouldn't do for Harry to know all her tricks.
“Maybe the question is, what do Tommy Van Allen and H. Vane have in common?”

“Nothing,”
Pewter said.

Tucker demurred.
“Plenty.”

The two animals looked at each other as Harry wiped off the kitchen counter and pulled out cans of food.

“They don't have anything in common.”
Pewter defended her position.
“Tommy is young and handsome. H. Vane has got to be in his seventies. The face-lift makes him look a little younger.”

“He had a face-lift?”
Tucker asked.

“I can always tell. The eyes. The faces lose some of their expressiveness—even with the good jobs,”
Pewter authoritatively declared.
“But those two don't have anything in common. Tommy is divorced. H. Vane is happily married, or appears to be. Tommy is wild and boisterous, H. Vane has a stick up his ass.”

“My turn. If you're finished.”

Pewter waited by her food bowl, which said
LOYAL FRIEND
.
“I'm finished, I think.”

“Okay, they're both well-off. H. Vane is beyond well-off. He's Midas. But they can do whatever they want. They belong to the same clubs. They go to the same parties. They both like to fly. And Tommy was going to do the reenactment.”

“Every man in Crozet was going to do that. That's not enough.”
Pewter purred when Harry scooped out tuna.

“Maybe Tommy had an affair with Sarah.”
Tucker buried her face in her food.

They tabled the discussion until after they ate.

Harry whistled, tired of her own whistle, and turned on the radio. She liked the classical station and country and western. She tuned to the classical station out of Lynchburg. She heated the griddle, pulled out two slices of bread and two fat slices of American cheese. She loved cheese sandwiches, dressing them up with mayonnaise and hamburger pickles. Sometimes she'd squirt on ketchup, too.

Tucker finished first, as always.
“Hurry up.”

“You don't savor your food.”
Pewter did, of course.

“It tastes good to me. I don't know why you hover over yours.”

“Tucker, you're such a dog,”
Pewter haughtily replied.

Mrs. Murphy, a slow eater, paused.
“If Tommy slept with Sarah, the question is, did H. Vane know? He certainly seemed friendly enough to Tommy.”

Pewter pitched in her two cents.
“H. Vane would hardly kill Tommy, then get it in the back himself. This is screwy.”