Murder on the Prowl (12 page)

25

“You cheated!” Jody, angry, squared off at Karen Jensen.

“I did not.”

“You didn't even understand
Macbeth
. There's no way you could have gotten ninety-five on Mr. Brashiers's quiz.”

“I read it and I understand it.”

“Liar.”

“I went over to Brooks Tucker's and she helped me.”

Jody's face twisted in sarcasm. “She read aloud to you?”

“No. Brooks gets all that stuff. It's hard for me.”

“She's your new best friend.”

“So what if she is?” Karen tossed her blond hair.

“You'd better keep your mouth shut.”

“You're the one talking, not me.”

“No, I'm not.”

“You're weirding out.”

Jody's eyes narrowed. “I lost my temper. That doesn't mean I'm weirding out.”

“Then why call me a cheater?”

“Because”—Jody sucked in the cool air—“you're on a scholarship. You have to make good grades. And English is not your subject. I don't know why you even took Shakespeare.”

“Because Mr. Brashiers is a great teacher.” Karen Jensen glanced down the alleyway. She saw only Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, strolling through Mrs. Hogendobber's fall garden, a riot of reds, rusts, oranges, and yellows.

Taking a step closer, Jody leaned toward her. “You and I vowed to—”

Karen held up her hands, palms outward. “Jody, chill out. I'd be crazy to open my mouth. I don't want anyone to know I went to bed with a guy this summer, and neither do you. Just chill out.”

Jody relaxed. “Everything's getting on my nerves . . . especially Mom and Dad. I just want to move out.”

Karen noticed the tiger cat coming closer. “Guess everyone feels that way sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Jody replied, “but your parents are better than mine.”

Karen didn't know how to answer that, so she said, “Let's go in and get the mail.”

“Yeah.” Jody started walking.

Pewter and Murphy, now at the backdoor of the post office, sat on the steps. Pewter washed her face. Mrs. Murphy dropped her head so Pewter could wash her, too.

“Didn't you think the newspaper's write-up of Roscoe's death was strange?”
Murphy's eyes were half closed.

“You mean the bit about an autopsy and routine investigation?”

“If he died of a heart attack, why a routine investigation? Mom better pump Coop when she sees her—and hey, she hasn't been in to pick up her mail for the last two days.”

“Nothing in there but catalogs.”
Pewter took it upon herself to check out everyone's mailbox. She said she wasn't being nosy, only checking for mice.

Shouting in the post office sent them zipping through the animal door.

They crossed the back section of the post office and bounded onto the counter. Both Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber were in the front section as were Jody, an astonished Samson Coles, and Karen Jensen. Tucker was at Harry's feet, squared off against Jody. The animals had arrived in the middle of an angry scene.

“You're the one!”

“Jody, that's enough,” Mrs. Hogendobber, aghast, admonished the girl.

Samson, his gravelly voice sad, said quietly, “It's all right, Miranda.”

“You're the one sleeping with Mom!” Jody shrieked.

“I am not having an affair with your mother.” He was gentle.

“Jody, come on. I'll ride you home.” Karen tugged at the tall girl's sleeve, at a loss for what to do. Her friend exploded when Samson put his arm around her shoulders, telling her how sorry he was that the headmaster had died.

“You cheated on Lucinda—everyone knows you did—and then Ansley killed herself. She drove her Porsche into that pond because of you . . . and now you're fucking my mother.”

“JODY!” Mrs. Hogendobber raised her voice, which scared everyone.

Jody burst into tears and Karen pushed her out the front door. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Hogendobber and Mr. Coles. I'm sorry, Mrs. Haristeen. She's, uh . . .” Karen couldn't finish her thought. She closed the door behind her.

Samson curled his lips inward until they disappeared. “Well, I know I'm the town pariah, but this is the first time I've heard that I caused Ansley's death.”

A shocked Miranda grasped the counter for support. “Samson, no one in this town blames you for that unstable woman's unfortunate end. She caused unhappiness to herself and others.” She gulped in air. “That child needs help.”

“Help? She needs a good slap in the face.”
Pewter paced the counter.

Tucker grumbled.
“Stinks of fear.”

“They can't smell it. They only trust their eyes. Why, I don't know—their eyes are terrible.”
Mrs. Murphy, concerned, sat at the counter's edge watching Karen force Jody into her car, an old dark green Volvo.

“We'd better call Irene,” Harry, upset, suggested.

“No.” Samson shook his head. “Then the kid will think we're ganging up on her. Obviously, she doesn't trust her mother if she thinks she's having an affair with me.”

“Then I'll call her father.”

“Harry, Kendrick's no help,” Mrs. Hogendobber, rarely a criticizer, replied. “His love affair with himself is the problem in that family. It's a love that brooks no rivals.”

This made Harry laugh; Miranda hadn't intended to be funny, but she had hit the nail on the head.

Samson folded his arms across his chest. “Some people shouldn't have children. Kendrick is one of them.”

“We can't let the child behave this way. She's going to make a terrific mess.” Miranda added sensibly, “Not everyone will be as tolerant as we are.” She tapped her chin with her forefinger, shifting her weight to her right foot. “I'll call Father Michael.”

Samson hesitated, then spoke. “Miranda, what does a middle-aged priest know of teenage girls . . . of women?”

“About the same as any other man,” Harry fired off.

“Touché,” Samson replied.

“Samson, I didn't mean to sound nasty. You're probably more upset than you're letting on. Jody may be a kid, but a low blow is a low blow,” Harry said.

“I could leave this town where people occasionally forgive but never forget. I think about it, you know, but”—he jammed his hands in his pockets—“I'm not the only person living in Crozet who's made a mistake. I'm too stubborn to turn tail. I belong here as much as the next guy.”

“I hope you don't think I'm sitting in judgment.” Miranda's hand fluttered to her throat.

“Me neither.” Harry smiled. “It's hard for me to be open-minded about that subject, thanks to my own history . . . I mean, BoomBoom Craycroft of all people. Fair could have picked someone—well, you know.”

“That was the excitement for Fair. That BoomBoom was so obvious.” Samson realized he'd left his mail on the counter. “I'm going back to work.” He scooped his mail up before Pewter, recovering from the drama, could squat on it. “What I really feel bad about is tampering with the escrow accounts. That was rotten. Falling in love with Ansley may have been imprudent, but it wasn't criminal. Betraying a responsibility to clients, that was wrong.” He sighed. “I've paid for it. I've lost my license. Lost respect. Lost my house. Nearly lost Lucinda.” He paused again, then said, “Well, girls, we've had enough soap opera for one day.” He pushed the door open and breathed in the crisp fall air.

Miranda ambled over to the phone, dialed, and got Lucinda Coles. “Lucinda, is Father Michael there?”

He was, and she buzzed the good woman through.

“Father Michael, have you a moment?” Miranda accurately repeated the events of the afternoon.

When she hung up, Harry asked, “Is he going to talk to her?”

“Yes. He seemed distracted, though.”

“Maybe the news upset him.”

“Of course.” She nodded. “I'm going to clean out that refrigerator. It needs a good scrub.”

“Before you do that, there's a pile of mail for Roscoe Fletcher. Why don't we sort it out and run it over to Naomi after work?”

The two women dumped the mail out on the work table in the back. A flutter of bills made them both feel guilty. The woman had lost her husband. Handing over bills seemed heartless. Catalogs, magazines, and handwritten personal letters filled up one of the plastic boxes they used in the back to carry mail after sorting it out of the big canvas duffel bags.

A Jiffy bag, the end torn, the gray stuffing spilling out, sent Harry to the counter for Scotch tape.

Tucker observed this. She wanted to play, but the cats were hashing over the scene they'd just witnessed. She barked.

“Tucker, if you need to go to the bathroom, there's the door.”

“Can't we walk, just a little walk? You deserve a break.”

“Butterfingers.” Harry dropped the bag. The tiny tear in the cover opened wider.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter stopped their gabbing and jumped down.

“Yahoo!”
Mrs. Murphy pounced on the tear and the gray stuffing burst out.

“Aachoo.”
Pewter sneezed as the featherlight stuffing floated into the air.

“I've got it!”
Mrs. Murphy crowed.

Pewter pounced, both paws on one end of the bag, claws out as the tiger cat ripped away at the other corner, enlarging the tear until she could reach into the bag with her paw.

If Mrs. Murphy had been a boxer, she would have been hailed for her lightning hands.

Lying flat on her side, she fished in the Jiffy bag with her right paw.

“Anything to eat?”

“No, it's paper, but it's crisp and crinkly.”

The large gray cat blinked, somewhat disappointed. Food, the ultimate pleasure, was denied her. She'd have to make do with fresh paper, a lesser pleasure but a pleasure nonetheless.

“You girls are loony tunes.”
Tucker, bored, turned her back. Paper held no interest for her.

“Hooked it. I can get it out of the bag. I know I can.”
Murphy yanked hard at the contents of the package, pulling the paper partway through the tear.

“Look!”
Pewter shouted.

Mrs. Murphy stopped for a second to focus on her booty.
“Wow!”
She yanked harder.

Tucker turned back around thanks to the feline excitement.
“Give it to Mom. She
needs
it.”

Mrs. Murphy ripped into the bag so fast the humans hadn't time to react, and the cat turned a somersault to land on her side, then put her paw into the bag. Her antics had them doubled over.

However funny she was, Mrs. Murphy was destroying government property.

“Mom, we're rich!”
Mrs. Murphy let out a jubilant meow.

Harry and Miranda, dumbfounded, bent over the demolished bag.

“My word.” Miranda's eyes about popped from her head. She reached out with her left hand, fingers to the floor, to steady herself.

The humans and animals stared at a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills, freshly minted.

“We'd better call Rick Shaw. No one sends that much money in the mail.” Harry stood up, feeling a little dizzy.

“Harry, I don't know the law on this, but we can't open this packet.”

“I know that,” Harry, a trifle irritated, snapped.

“It's not our business.” Miranda slowly thought out loud.

“I'll call Ned.”

“No. That's still interfering in the proper delivery of the mail.”

“Miranda, there's something fishy about this.”

“Fishy or not, we are employees of the United States Postal Service, and we can't blow the whistle just because there's money in a package.”

“We sure could if it were a bomb.”

“But it's not.”

“You mean we deliver it?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh.”
Mrs. Murphy's whiskers drooped.
“We need that money.”

26

Naomi Fletcher called Rick Shaw herself. She asked Miranda and Harry to stay until the sheriff arrived.

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker languished in the cab of the truck. When the sheriff pulled in with Cooper at his side, the animals set up such a racket that Cynthia opened the truck door.

“Bet you guys need to go to the bathroom.”

“Sure,”
they yelled over their shoulders as they made a beeline for the front door.

“You'd better stop for a minute,”
Tucker advised the cats.

“I'm not peeing in public. You do it,”
the tiger, insulted, replied.

“Fine.”
The corgi found a spot under a tree, did enough to convince Cynthia that she had saved the interior of Harry's truck, then hurried to the front door.

Once inside they huddled under the coffee table while Cynthia dusted the bag and the bills for prints.

After an exhaustive discussion Rick told Roscoe Fletcher's widow to deposit the money in her account. He could not impound the cash. There was no evidence of wrongdoing.

“There are no assumptions in my job, only facts.” He ran his right hand through his thinning hair.

Naomi, both worried and thrilled, for the sum had turned out to be seventy-five thousand dollars, thanked the sheriff and his deputy for responding to her call.

Rick, hat in hand, said, “Mrs. Fletcher, brace yourself. The story will be out in the papers tomorrow. A coroner's report is public knowledge. Bill Moscowitz has delayed writing up the autopsy report for as long as he can.”

“I know you're doing your best.” Naomi choked up.

Harry and Miranda, confused, looked at each other and then back at Rick.

Naomi nodded at him, so he spoke. “Roscoe was poisoned.”

“What!”
Tucker exclaimed.

“I told you,”
Mrs. Murphy said.

“Don't be so superior,”
Pewter complained.

“Naomi, I'm sorry, so very sorry.” Mrs. Hogendobber reached over and grasped Naomi's hand.

“Who'd want to kill him?”
Pewter's long white eyebrows rose.

“Someone who failed algebra?”
Mrs. Murphy couldn't resist.

“Hey, where's Tucker?”
Pewter asked.

Tucker had sneaked off alone to find Winston, the bulldog.

Harry said, “I'm sorry, Naomi.”

Naomi wiped her thin nose with a pink tissue. “Poisoned! One of those strawberry drops was poison.”

Cooper filled in the details. “He ingested malathion, which usually takes just minutes to kill someone.”

Harry blurted out, “I ate one of those!”

“When?” Rick asked.

“Oh, two days before his death. Maybe three. You know Roscoe . . . always offering everyone candy.” She felt queasy.

“Unfortunately, we don't know how he came to be poisoned. The candy in his car was safe.”

         

They squeezed back into Harry's truck, the cats on Miranda's lap. Tucker, between the two humans, told everyone what Winston had said.
“Naomi cries all the time. She didn't kill him. Winston's positive.”

“There goes the obvious suspect in every murder case.”
Pewter curled up on Miranda's lap, which left little room for Mrs. Murphy.

“You could move over.”

“Go sit on Harry's lap.”

“Thanks, I will, you selfish toad.”

Tucker nudged Murphy.
“Winston said Sandy Brashiers is over all the time.”

“Why?”
Pewter inquired.

“Trying to figure out Roscoe's plans for this school year. He left few documents or guidelines, and April Shively is being a real bitch—according to Winston.”

“Secretaries always fall in love with their bosses,”
Pewter added nonchalantly.

“Oh, Pewter.”
Murphy wrinkled her nose.

“They do!”

“Even if she was in love with him, it doesn't mean she'd be an obstructionist—good word, huh?”
Tucker smiled, her big fangs gleaming.

“I'm impressed, Tucker.”
The tiger laughed.
“Of course she's an obstructionist. April doesn't like Sandy. Roscoe didn't either.”

“Guess Sandy's in for a rough ride.”
Pewter noticed one of Herb Jones's two cats sitting on the steps to his house.
“Look at Lucy Fur. She always shows off after her visit to the beauty parlor.”

“That long hair is pretty, but can you imagine taking care of it?”
Mrs. Murphy, a practical puss, replied.

“I don't know what this world is coming to.” Miranda shook her head.

“Poison is the coward's way to kill someone.” Harry, still shaken from realizing she had eaten Roscoe's candies, growled, “Whoever it was was chickenshit.”

“That's one way to put it.” Miranda frowned.

“The question is, where did he get the poison and is there a tin of lethal candies out there waiting for another innocent victim?” Harry stroked Murphy, keeping her left hand on the wheel.

“We know one thing,” Miranda pronounced firmly. “Whoever killed him was close to him . . . if malathion kills as fast as Coop says it does.”

“Close and weak. I mean it. Poison is the coward's weapon.”

In that Harry was half right and half wrong.