Pawing Through the Past (5 page)

“Fair, I can’t take your money.”

“A late divorce settlement.” He shrugged. “Now do you want the F250 or the F350 dually?”

“I’d better stick to the F250 HD.”

“Doing it my way it’s twelve hundred more for the dually. So you have everything you’ve ever wanted—your half-ton and a dually,” Art said. “Big F350 in red with a beige interior just like the 250 here. And those extra wheels in the back are what you need when you’re hauling weight.”

“Deal!” She shook his hand.

“Red.” Fair slapped his baseball cap against his thigh. “I bet Art a hundred bucks you’d buy another blue truck.”

“Gotcha.” Art smiled.

“Hey, wait.” Harry ran into the barn, returning with a paper. “Here’s the figures on the horses. I measured them tonight.”

“Damn, I knew I forgot something. I’ll drop off the alfalfa cubes tomorrow.”

“Fair.”

“Huh?”

“You’re a good man.” She put her hand behind his neck, drew him down, and kissed him.

“What about me?”

“How could I forget?” She kissed Art, too.

“All right, buddy, drive this back.” Art shepherded Fair to the Jeep. Art would drive back in the F250. “You can pick up your dually tomorrow unless you want me to send it to Cavalier Camper for the fifth wheel.”

“That’s a good idea,” Harry agreed.

As they drove off, Pewter asked Mrs. Murphy,
“How’d he know she’d never part with her father’s truck?”

Tucker called from the ground,
“He’s very sensitive.”

“But it’s metal,”
Pewter protested, finding the emotion around the 1978 truck silly.

“Metal but it has so many memories.”

“A cruise down Memory Lane.”
Tucker walked back toward the house.

“If she got this worked up over a truck, what’s she going to be like at her high-school reunion?”
Pewter gingerly stepped onto the back bumper and thence to the ground.

7

“A big smile. There. Cover of
People
magazine.” Dennis Rablan clicked away, his black Nikon camera covering his face. “Boom, get your face closer to the steer. You, too, Charlie, get in there.”

“Yuk.” Charlie grimaced. “I didn’t like this the first time we did it, twenty years ago.”

“Least it’s not a horse’s ass,” Harry quipped. She had been conned by Susan to help with the first superlative shoot.

“No, I’ve got Boom for that.”

“You know, Charlie,” she hissed through clenched teeth, “you won Best Looking but you sure didn’t win Best Personality and you never will.”

“Like I care.” He beamed to the camera.

Susan stood to the side holding up a reflector, which the steer distrusted. Crouched beside the large animal were Fair Haristeen on one side and Blair Bainbridge, equally tall, on the other.

Although Blair was a professional model, Charlie Ashcraft held his own. He was a strikingly handsome man, with curly, glossy black hair, bright blue eyes, and a creamy tan. At six foot one with a good body, he bowled women over. He knew it. He used it. He abused it. He left a trail of broken hearts, broken marriages, and broken promises behind him. Despite that, women still fell for him even when they knew his history. His arrogance added fuel to the fire. He was loathed by those not under his spell, which was to say most men.

Her shoulders ached, her deltoids especially, as Harry held the silver reflector behind Denny Rablan. She thought,
How like BoomBoom to take her own photo first. No matter what, her visage will be plastered all over the gym.
Instead she said, “Denny, I’m putting this down for a minute.” The heat was giving her a headache, or was it the reunion itself? She wasn’t sure she had improved with the passage of time.

Click. He said without looking at her, “Okay. All right, take a break, especially Hercules here.”

Fair stepped up and put a small grain bucket in front of Hercules, whose mood improved considerably.

Marcy Wiggins in her candy-apple red Taurus GL drove down the farm lane followed by Chris Sharpton and Bitsy Valenzuela in Bitsy’s Jaguar XJR, top down.

“Oh no, are we late?” Chris wailed, opening the car door.

“No, we’re taking a break. Harry’s arms are tired,” BoomBoom answered.

“I’ll hold the reflector,” Chris eagerly volunteered.

“Great. You’ve got a job.” Harry handed her the floppy silver square.

“Boom, you look fabulous—professional makeup job, I bet,” Bitsy cooed.

“Oh . . .” BoomBoom Craycroft had no intention of answering that question.

Charlie glided over. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“You have, too.” Bitsy laughed. “I met you at the Foxfield Races. My husband is E. R. Valenzuela, the president of 360° Communications here in town. You let me know if you need a cell phone in your car, you hear now?”

“Foxfield, well, that is a distracting environment.” He smoothed his hair, which sprang back into curls. “I had no idea E.R. had such good taste in women.”

Then brazenly, Charlie swept his eyes from the top of Chris’s head to her toes. “A model’s body. Tall and angular. Have I ever told you how much I like that?”

“Yes.” She laughed. “Every time you see me.”

He beamed at each lady in turn. Marcy turned beet red. “I’ll call you the three Amuses. Good, huh?”

“Brilliant.” Chris’s eyelids dropped a bit, then flickered upward.

“God, Charlie, I hope you don’t say that to my husband.” Marcy swallowed hard.

“Do you know what I say to any woman’s husband? ‘If you don’t treat her right, some other man will. Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you can relax. A woman’s got to be won over each and every day.’” He smiled from ear to ear.

“Good Lord,” Marcy whispered.

“I think I’ll help Boom,” Bitsy brightly said as she skipped past her friend.

Bitsy wiped the shine from BoomBoom’s nose, adding a dab of lipstick to her mouth.

Denny clapped his hands, which disturbed Hercules, who let out a bellow. “Let’s go.”

Harry, arms crossed, watched Charlie stoop down, Hercules on one side and BoomBoom on the other.

“Harry, why don’t you take away this bucket?” BoomBoom pointed at the bucket.

“You crippled?” Harry turned on her heel, striding to her old Ford truck. “
Adios.
”

“You’re not going to kiss me good-bye?” Charlie called out. He puckered his lips.

“I wouldn’t kiss you if you were the last man on earth,” Harry said, as Susan’s jaw nearly dropped to her chest.

“Hey, I love you, too.”

“Charlie, is this a command performance?” Marcy asked, voice wavering.

He winked at her, then called after Harry, “I understand you called me a body part at the reunion meeting.”

“I should have called you an arrogant, empty-headed, vainglorious idiot. ‘Asshole’ showed a lack of imagination.” She smiled a big fake smile, her head throbbing.

“You’ve been divorced too-o-o long,” he said in a singsong voice.

She stopped in her tracks. Fair’s face froze. Susan covered her eyes, peeking out through her fingers. BoomBoom squared her shoulders, ready for the worst.

“You know what, Charlie? My claim to fame is that I’m one of seven women in Albemarle County who haven’t gone to bed with you.”

“There’s still time.” He laughed as Marcy Wiggins’ face registered dismay.

“You’ll die before I do.” Harry turned, heading back to the truck.

This icy pronouncement caught everyone off guard. Charlie laughed nervously. Dennis took over, rearranging the principals except for Hercules, who was firmly planted close to the grain.

Then Charlie yelled after her, “I knew you sent that letter about me not growing old.”

“Dream on.” Harry kept walking. “I wouldn’t waste the postage.”

“Susan, you aren’t going, too?” BoomBoom’s voice, drenched in irritation, cut through Hercules’ bellow as he cried for his grain bucket. Susan left with Harry.

Susan leaned over to Harry as they walked away. “You got a wild hair or what?” she said,
sotto voce.

“I don’t really know. Just know I can’t take any more.” Harry rubbed her temples. “Susan, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I have no patience anymore. None. And I’m sick and tired of beating around the bush. Hell with it.”

“M-m-m.”

“I don’t want to be rude but I’m fresh out of tolerance for the fools of this life.”

“Your poor mother will be spinning in her grave. All the years of cotillion, the Sunday teas.”

Harry put her hand on the chrome door handle of the 1978 truck. “Here’s what I don’t get: where is the line between good manners and supporting people in their bullshit? I’m not putting up with Charlie for one more minute.” She opened the door but didn’t climb inside. “I’ve turned a corner. I’m not wearing that social face anymore. Too much time. Too much suppressed anger. If people are going to like me they can like me as I am. Treat me right and I’ll treat you right.”

“Within reason.”

“Well . . . yes.” Harry reluctantly conceded.

Susan breathed in the moist air. The heat had finally returned and with it the flies. “I know exactly how you feel. I’m not brave enough to act on it yet.”

“Of course you are.”

“No. I have a husband with a good career and two teenagers. When the last one graduates from college—five more years—” She sighed, “Then I expect I’ll be ready.”

“Tempus fugit.”
Harry hopped in the truck. “Charlie Ashcraft has not one redeeming virtue. How is it that someone like him lives and someone good dies? Aurora Hughes was a wonderful person.”

“Pity. He is the most divine-looking animal.” Susan shrugged.

“Handsome is as handsome does.”

“Tell that to my hormones,” Susan countered.

They both laughed and Harry drove home feeling as if the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders. She wasn’t sure why. Was it because she had erupted at BoomBoom? At Charlie? Or because she had gotten tired and left, instead of standing there feeling like a resentful martyr? She decided she wasn’t going to help with any other senior superlative photographs and she wasn’t even sure she’d go through with her own. Then she thought better of it. After all, it would be really mean-spirited not to cooperate. They were all in this together. Still, the thought of BoomBoom hovering around . . . Of course, knowing Boom, she’d put off Harry’s shot until last and then photograph her in the worst light. Harry thought she’d better call Denny at the studio tomorrow.

After the chores, she played with Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker. They loved to play hide ’n’ seek.

The phone rang at nine
P.M
.

“Har?”

“Susan, don’t tell me you just got home.”

“No. I just heard this instant—Charlie Ashcraft was shot dead in the men’s locker room at the Farmington Country Club.”

“What?”

“Right between the eyes with a .38.”

“Who did it?”

“Nobody knows.”

“I can think of a dozen who’d fight for the chance.”

“Me, too. Queer, though. After just seeing him.”

“Bet BoomBoom’s glad she got the photograph first,” Harry shot from the hip.

“You’re awful.”

“No, I’m your best friend. I’m supposed to say anything in the world to you, ’member?”

“Then let me say this to
you
. Don’t be too jolly. Think about what you said this afternoon. We have no idea of who he’s slept with recently. That’s for starters. He was gifted at hiding his amours for a time, anyway. I’m all for your cleansing inside but a little repression will go a long way right now.”

“You’re right.”

After she hung up the phone she told Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, who listened with interest.

“A jilted husband finally did what everyone else has wanted to do,”
Tucker said.

“Tucker, you have the sweetest eyes.” Harry stroked the soft head.

“Weren’t there any witnesses?”
Mrs. Murphy asked.

“Right between the eyes.”
Pewter shook her head.

8

Farmington Country Club glowed with the patina of years. The handmade bricks lent a soft paprika glow to the Georgian buildings in the long summer twilight. As the oldest country club in Albemarle County, Farmington counted among its members the movers and shakers of the region as well as the totally worthless whose only distinguishing feature was that they had inherited enough money to stay current on their dues. The median age of members was sixty-two, which didn’t bode well for Farmington’s future. However, Farmington rested secure in its old golf course with long, classic fairways. The modern golf courses employed far too many sharp doglegs and par 3’s because land was so expensive.

Charlie Ashcraft, a good golfer, had divided his skills between Farmington and its challengers, Keswick and Glenmore. At a seven handicap he was much in demand as a partner, carrying pounds of silver from tournaments. He also carried away Belinda Harrier when he was only seventeen and she was thirty and had won the ladies’ championship. That was the first clue that Charlie possessed unusual powers of persuasion. Charlie’s parents fetched him from the Richmond motel to which they had fled and Belinda’s husband promptly divorced her. Her golf game went to pot as did Belinda.

Rick Shaw, sheriff of Albemarle County, and his deputy, the young and very attractive Cynthia Cooper, knew all this. They had done their homework. Cynthia was about twenty years younger than Rick. The age difference enhanced their teamwork.

The men’s locker room had been cordoned off with shiny plastic yellow tape. The employees of the club, all of whom had seen enough wild stuff to write a novel, had to admit this was the weirdest of the weird.

The locker room, recently remodeled, had a general sitting room with the lockers and showers beyond that. The exterior door faced out to the parking lot. An interior door was about thirty feet from the golf shop with a stairway in between which first rose to a landing and continued into the men’s grill, forbidden to women. If a man walked through the grill he would wind up in the 19th Hole, the typical sort of restaurant most clubs provide at the golf course.

Getting in and out of the men’s locker room would have been easy for Charlie’s killer. As the golfers had come and gone, the only people around would have been those who’d been dressing for dinner in the main dining room or down in the tavern way at the other end of the huge structure. There would be little traffic in and out of the locker room. The housekeeping staff cleaned at about eleven at night, checking again at eight in the morning since the locker rooms never closed.

Charlie Ashcraft had been found by a local attorney, Mark DiBlasi. The body remained as Mark had found him, sitting upright, slumped against locker 13. Blood was smeared on the locker. Charlie’s head hadn’t slumped to the side; blood trickled out of his ears but none came from his eyes or his mouth. It was a clean shot at very close range; a circle of powder burn at the entry point signified that. The bullet exited the back of his head, tore into the locker door, and lodged in the opposite wall.

Mark DiBlasi had been dining with his mother and wife when he left the main dining room to fetch his wallet from his locker. He’d played golf, finished at six-thirty, showered, and closed his locker, but forgot his wallet, which was still in his golf shorts. The moment he saw Charlie he called the sheriff. He then called the club manager. After that he sat down and shook like a leaf.

“Mark, forgive me. I know this is trying.” Cooper sat next to him on a bench. “You think you came back here at eight?”

“Yes.” Mark struggled for composure.

“You noticed no one.”

“Nobody.”

She flipped through her notebook. “I think I’ve gotten everything. If I have other questions I’ll call you at the office. I’m sorry your dinner was disturbed.” She called to Rick, “Any questions?”

Rick wheeled around. “Mark, who was Charlie’s latest conquest?”

Mark blushed and stammered a moment. “Uh—anyone new and pretty?”

Rick nodded. “Go on. I know where to find you. If you think of anything, call me.”

“Will do.” Mark straightened his tie as he hurried out.

“He’ll have nightmares,” Cynthia remarked.

“H-m-m.” Rick changed the subject. “Charlie’s four ex-wives. We’ll start there.”

“They all moved away, didn’t they?”

“Yeah.” He whistled as he walked through the men’s locker room to fix the layout in his mind.

A knock on the door revealed Diana Robb, head of the Crozet Rescue Squad. “Ready?”

“I didn’t hear the siren,” Cynthia said.

“Didn’t hit it. I was coming back from the hospital when you called, not more than a mile away.” She looked at Charlie as she walked back into the lockers. “Neat as a pin. Even his tie is straight.”

“Mark DiBlasi found him.”

Diana called over her shoulder, “Hey guys, bring in the gurney and the body bag.” Her two assistants scurried back out for the equipment.

“Mark said he was warm when he found him,” Rick informed her.

“Fresh kill.”

“We’ve already dusted. He’s ready to go.” Cynthia watched as the gurney was rolled in; the quarters were a bit tight.

“Put on your gloves and let’s lift him up, carry him out to the sitting room,” Diana directed. “Sucker’s going to be heavy.”

“Any ideas?” Cynthia asked Diana.

“Too many.”

“Yeah, that seems to be the problem.” Rick smiled.

“I do know this.” Diana wiggled her fingers in the thin rubber gloves over which she pulled on a pair of heavier gloves. “Charlie always was a snob. If you didn’t have money you had to have great bloodlines. There were no poor people involved.”