Pawing Through the Past (6 page)

9

The post office buzzed the next morning. As it was the central meeting point in town, each person arrived hopeful that someone would have more news than they had. Everyone had an opinion, that much was certain.

“Can’t go sleeping with other men’s wives without expecting trouble,” Jim Sanburne, mayor of Crozet and husband of Mim, announced.

As Jim, in his youth, had indulged in affairs, the elegant Mim eyed him coldly. “Well said.”

“This is getting good.”
Mrs. Murphy, whiskers vibrating, perched on the counter between the mailroom and the public room.

Pewter, next to her, licked her paw, then absentmindedly forgot to wash herself. Tucker, mingling out with the people, believed she could smell guilt and anger.

“Will even one person lament his death?” Mim asked.

Jim Sanburne rubbed his chin. “Whoever he was carrying on with at the time, I reckon.”

The Reverend Herb Jones growled, “He was a rascal, no doubt. But, then again, he was a young man in his prime—never forget redemption.”

Miranda nodded her head in agreement with the Reverend.

“Something wrong with that boy.” The massive Jim leaned over the counter so close that Pewter decided to rub against his arm to make him feel loved.

“Male version of nymphomania,” Big Mim said as her daughter, Little Mim, blinked, surprised at her mother’s bold-ness.

Fair, who’d walked in the door, picked up the word “nymphomania.” “I came just in time.”

Marcy Wiggins and Chris Sharpton also pushed open the door. Fair stepped aside. The small space was getting crowded.

Chris shyly blinked. “It’s so shocking. I mean, we were all watching the superlative shoot and then this.”

“Chris, don’t waste your time feeling sorry for that s.o.b.,” Susan Tucker told her. “You didn’t know him well enough to be one of his victims—yet. He would have tried.”

“Charlie should have been shot years ago,” Fair laconically said, then turned solemn. “But still you never think something like this would happen to someone you know.”

Noticing the look on Marcy’s face, Harry added, “We’re not as cold as you might think, Marcy. But ask E.R. about Charlie’s past. He upset too many applecarts without giving a thought to what he was doing to people’s lives. He remained unacquainted with responsibility for his entire life.”

“Oh,” Marcy replied, looking not at all comforted.

“‘The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.’ Proverbs. Twelfth chapter, fifteenth verse,” Mrs. Hogendobber quoted. “Charlie Ashcraft was told many times in many ways by many people that he had to change his habits. He didn’t. Someone changed them for him; not that that’s right. No one has the right to take a life. That power belongs only to God.”

“Tucker, smell anything?”
Murphy called down.

“No, although Jim Sanburne has dog pee on his shoe. Bet Mim’s dog got him and he doesn’t even know it,”
the corgi gleefully reported.
“Of course, I haven’t sniffed everyone yet. There’s too much coming and going.”

BoomBoom flounced through the door, breathlessly put her tiny hand to her heart. “Can you believe it? Right after our superlative shoot.”

“Aren’t you glad you shot yours first?” Harry dryly commented. “As it is we’ll have two people missing in our shoots. This way you would have had three.”

“Harry, I can’t believe you said that.” BoomBoom folded her arms across her chest. “Do you really think I would be more concerned about our senior superlative photographs than a man’s life?”

“In a word, yes.” Harry also folded her arms across her chest.

“This is getting good,”
Pewter purred with excitement.

“Our classmate is dead,” BoomBoom nearly shrieked. “After that damned letter you sent.”

“I didn’t send that stupid letter!” Harry lowered her voice instead of raising it.

“Harry would never do anything like that,” Fair curtly said.

“She likes to stir the pot.”

“Look who’s talking.” Harry squared off at BoomBoom.

“Pipe down,” Big Mim commanded. “You aren’t solving anything. This is about Charlie’s murder, not your history with one another.” She turned to her ex-husband. “If every man in Crozet were shot for infidelity, who would be left?”

“Now, honey, let sleeping dogs lie.” His
basso profundo
voice rumbled.

“It’s not sleeping dogs we’re talking about,” Mim snapped.

Little Marilyn tugged at the ends of her white linen jacket and suppressed a smile.

“We’re all upset.” Herb smoothed the waters. “After all, every one of us here, with the exception of the two lovely young additions to our community”—he nodded toward Chris and Marcy—“has known Charlie since childhood. Yes, he was flawed, but is there anyone standing here who is perfect?”

A subdued quiet fell over the room.

“I’m perfect,”
Pewter warbled as the humans looked at her.

“Oh la!”
Mrs. Murphy laughed.

“Girls, this is serious.”
The corgi frowned.
“You know sooner or later the murderer will pop up and what if he pops up here?!”

“You’ve got a point,”
Mrs. Murphy, stretching fore and aft, agreed.

“Doesn’t change the fact that I am perfect.”

“Harry, what do you feed them?” Chris lightheartedly said, which broke the tension in the room.

The chatter again filled the room but the acrimony level died down.

Herb leaned over to Harry. “What’s this letter business?”

“I’ll show you.” She walked back to the small table where she’d left three days’ worth of mail. She returned, handing it over the counter.

He read it. “Could mean a lot of things.”

“Exactly,” Harry agreed.

“But it is creepy,” BoomBoom intruded.

“Now it is, but we’re viewing it through the lens of Charlie’s death,” Herb sensibly replied.

Fair put one elbow on the counter divider. “I wouldn’t make too much of this unless something else happens—something, uh, dark.”

Chris joined in as Marcy was tongue-tied and uncomfortable. “I agree, but reunions are such loaded situations. All those memories.”

“My memories are pretty wonderful.” Fair winked at Harry, who blushed.

“You were the class ahead. Our memories might be different.” BoomBoom sighed.

“I thought you had a great time—a great senior year,” Harry said.

“I did.”

“Well, then, Boom, what are you talking about?”

Mrs. H., fearing another spat, left the Sanburnes and Marcy Wiggins to go back behind the divider. “Let me tell you about memory. It plays tricks on you. The further I get from my youth the better it looks and then some sharp memory will startle me, like stepping on a nail. It might be a fragrance or a ring around the moon at midnight, but then I remember the swirling emotions—the confusion—and you know, I’m quite glad to be old.”

“You’re not old,” Fair gallantly said.

Jim, overhearing, agreed. “We’re holding up pretty good, Miranda, and of course, my bride”—he smiled broadly—“is as beautiful as the day I married her.”

As the friends and neighbors applauded, Marcy slipped outside.

“Odd.”
Tucker noticed as did Chris, who also walked outside.

“Marcy?”
Mrs. Murphy knew her friend’s mind.

“Yes . . . such a little person with such a heavy burden.”
The dog put her paws on the windowsill.

Jim checked his gold watch. “Meeting at town hall.” He kissed Mim on the cheek. “Home for dinner.”

One by one the old friends left the post office.

“When’s the next shoot?” Harry asked BoomBoom as she slipped the key into her mailbox. She was beginning to regret her anger at the high-school shoot and she really regretted saying she’d outlive Charlie even though she loathed him.

“Saturday.”

“Who is it?”

“Bonnie Baltier and Leo Burkey. She’s driving down from Warrenton and he’s coming over from Richmond. I promised them dinner as a reward.”

“Better do the shoot soon. I mean, you never know who else will die.” Harry rolled the full mail cart over to the counter.

“That’s ghoulish,” BoomBoom indignantly replied.

“You’re right.” Harry sighed. “But I couldn’t resist. I mean I could keel over right here. We’re all so . . . fragile.”

“Prophesy.” Fair raised an eyebrow and Harry whitened.

“Don’t say that. That’s worse.” BoomBoom, an emotional type, crossed herself.

“I didn’t say it was a prophecy. I said
prophesy
.”

“I’m a little jangled.” Boom’s beautiful face clouded over.

“Your affair with Charlie was in high school,” Harry snapped. “That’s too far back to be jangled.”

“That is uncalled for, Harry, and you’re better than that,” Miranda chided.

“Don’t know that I am.” Harry stuck her jaw out.

“Charlie Ashcraft was a big mistake. That was obvious even in high school. But I had to make the mistake first.” Boom’s face was pink. “I know you think little of me, Harry Haristeen, and not without just cause. I’ve apologized to you before. I can’t spend my life apologizing. I am not promiscuous. I do not go around seducing every man I see and furthermore when my husband died my judgment was flawed. I did a lot of things I wouldn’t do today. When are you ever going to let it go?”

Harry, amazed, blurted out, “It’s easy to be gracious now—I even believe you. But it wasn’t your marriage that hit the rocks.”

“That was my fault.” Fair finally spoke up. He’d been too stunned to speak.

“Why don’t you three go out back and settle this?” Miranda saw more people pulling into the parking lot. “I know this is federal property and you have a right to be here, but really, go out back.”

“All right.” Harry stomped out, slamming the back door behind her.

“I think we’re on duty.”
Mrs. Murphy jumped down, then scooted across the back room.

Pewter followed. Tucker walked out the front door when Fair held the door for BoomBoom. She tagged at their heels as they walked between Market Shiflett’s store and the post office to the parking area in the rear.

In the parking lot by the alleyway they stood mutely staring at one another for a moment.

“Come on, Mom, get it out. Get it over with,”
Mrs. Murphy advised.

“I’m being a bitch. I know it.” Harry finally broke the silence.

Fair said, “Some wounds take a long time to heal. And I am sorry, truly sorry. Harry, I was scared to death that I was missing something.” He paused. “But if I hadn’t made such a major mistake I wouldn’t have known what a fool I was. Maybe other people can learn without as much chaos, but I don’t think I could have grown if I hadn’t gone through that time. The sorrow of it is, I dragged you through it, too.”

Harry leaned against the clapboard side of the post office, the wood warm on her back. All three animals turned their faces up to her. She looked down at them, opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“Go on,”
Mrs. Murphy encouraged her.

Harry picked up the tiger cat, stroking her. “I don’t guess there is another way to learn. I don’t know if it’s worse being the one who goes or the one who stays. Does that make sense?”

“It does, sort of,” BoomBoom replied. “We’re so different, Harry, that if this hadn’t happened we still wouldn’t be best friends. I’m driven by my emotions, and you, well, you’re much more logical.”

“I apologize for my rude remarks. And I accept your apology.”

“Mom is growing up at last.”
Tucker felt quite proud of her human.

Before more could be said, Mrs. Hogendobber opened the back door. “Cynthia Cooper here to see all three of you.”

They trooped back in, feeling a bit sheepish.

Cynthia noticed their demeanor and after a few pleasantries she asked them about the shoot, if they noticed anything un-usual about Charlie, if they had any specific ideas.

Each person confirmed what the other said. Nothing was different. Charlie was Charlie.

Cooper stuck her notepad in her back hip pocket. “Harry, I need to see you alone.” She shepherded Harry out to the squad car. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter watched through the window. They could clearly see from their perch on the divider.

“What’s going on?”
Tucker, intently staring out the window, asked.

“Mother is frowning, talking, and using her hands a lot.”

“I can see that. I mean what is
really
going on?”
the dog snipped.

“H-m-m.”
Pewter blinked, not pleased with the turn of events.

The air-conditioning hummed in the squad car. Empty po-tato chip bags lay on the seat. Harry removed them to the floor.

“Whatever possessed you to tell Charlie Ashcraft he’d die before you’d sleep with him?”

“Coop, I don’t know. I was mad as hell.”

“Well, it doesn’t look good. Because of that outburst I have to consider you a suspect. It was a dumb thing to say.”

“Yeah . . .” Harry bent over, picked up the potato chip bags, and folded them lengthwise. “I hated that guy. But you know perfectly well I didn’t kill him.”

“Can you account for your whereabouts from six-thirty to eight last night?”

“Sure. I was on the farm.”

“Can anyone corroborate this?” Cooper wrote in her steno pad.

“Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker.”

“That’s not funny, Harry. You really are a suspect.”

“Oh come on, Cynthia.”

“You are a member of the country club. It wouldn’t have been difficult for you.”

“No, I’m not,” Harry quickly spoke. “Mom and Dad were but after they died I couldn’t afford the dues. I’m allowed to go to the club once a month, which I usually do with Susan if she needs a tennis partner.”

“But your presence at the club wouldn’t seem unusual. Everyone knows you.”

“Coop, let me tell you: there are old biddies, male and female, who have nothing better to do than cast the searching eye. If I had been there, you can be sure someone would have reported me because I’ve already played with Susan this month. I’ve used up my allotted time.”

Cynthia flipped her book closed. “Do you think you could kill?”

“Sure, I could. In self-defense.”