Рита Браун: Catch As Cat Can

“Nah, just half a million.” He laughed, then thought a moment. “Give me two weeks on the woodpecker. You've hit me at a good time.”

“Great.” She gave him a high five and picked up her brood to head to O'Bannon's. “See you at the parade.”

3

With the exception of the interstates, the roads in Virginia were paved-over Indian trails. They twisted through the mountains, leveled out along the riverbeds and streams, proving a joy to those fortunate enough to own sports cars.

Harry, on the other hand, was the proud owner of two trucks. One truck, a dually F350, was expensive to run due to its big engine but she needed the power to pull her horse trailer. Thanks to a long-term loan she could afford the payments. She had three years left.

For everyday use she drove her old 1978 Ford half-ton, ran like a top, was cheap to operate and repair.

Today she curled around the hills and valleys in the old Superman-blue Ford, the two cats and Tucker cheerfully riding in the cab, commenting on the unfolding countryside.

Don Clatterbuck's business rested just past the intersection with Route 240 on Whitehall Road. The O'Bannon Salvage yard was located east of town on that same Route 240, tucked off the highway so as not to offend intensely aesthetic souls. To further promote good community relations, the O'Bannon brothers had put up a high, solid, paled fence around the four acres, a considerable expense. A large, pretty, hand-painted sign swayed on a wrought iron post at the driveway, right by the big double gate. A black background with white lettering read “O'Bannon Salvage,” and a red border completed the sign. What made everyone notice the salvage yard, though, wasn't the sign but the black wrecker's ball hanging from a crane positioned next to the sign. Each morning Sean or Roger opened the heavy chain-link fence gate and each evening they locked it, the wrecker's ball and crane standing like a skeletal sentinel.

As the postmistress of Crozet and born and bred there, Harry knew every side street and every resident, too. There was no shortcut to O'Bannon's. She'd have to go through town. Don had aroused her curiosity. She wanted to see Sean's improvements.

She no sooner turned east than she passed the supermarket and spied Miranda Hogendobber, her coworker and friend, in the parking lot. Her paper bags of groceries were perched on the hood of the Ford Falcon, an antique that Miranda used daily, seeing no reason to spend money on a new car if the old one operated efficiently.

Miranda seemed upset. Harry turned into the parking lot, found a space, and hurried over to her friend, the animals behind her.

“Oh, Harry, I'm so glad to see you. Look. Would you look!” Miranda pointed to her tires, hubcaps missing. “I've never had anything like this happen—and at the supermarket.”

“It's all right, Mrs. Hogendobber.” Mrs. Murphy rubbed against her leg, feeling certain this would calm the lady.

“What's the big noise about a hubcap?” Pewter shrugged.

“Car's from 1961. How can she replace them?” Tucker replied.

“The car runs fine without hubcaps.” Pewter struggled to understand human reactions, since she often felt they missed the point.

“You know how she is. Everything has to be just so. Not a weed in her garden. She doesn't want to cruise around with her lug nuts showing, you'll pardon the expression.” Murphy circled Miranda, rubbing on the opposite leg.

“Did you call the sheriff?”

“No. I just walked out this very minute.” Miranda, crestfallen, stepped back to view her naked wheels again.

“Tell you what, you stay here and I'll run over to the pay phone.” Harry started to move away, then stopped. “Do you have anything that needs to go into the freezer? I can take it home for you.”

“No.”

Harry called the sheriff's office and before she hung up the phone to rejoin Miranda, Cynthia Cooper, a deputy with the sheriff's department, pulled into the lot.

“That was fast.” Harry smiled at the young, attractive deputy.

“Just around the corner at the firehouse going over the parade route for the thousandth time.”

“Look.” Miranda pointed to her car as Cynthia, notebook in hand, walked over.

“That's just heinous.” Cynthia put her arm around Miranda. “Do you have any idea how much they're worth?”

“Not a clue.” Miranda's pink lips, shiny with lipstick, pursed together.

“That's probably why someone stole them. Because they're hard to find. They must be worth something,” Harry thought out loud.

“Why can't she put on new hubcaps?” Pewter, irritated, wanted to get on the road again.

“Not the same.” Tucker sniffed the wheels hoping for human scent but the perpetrator had pried off the hubcaps with something other than his hands.

“Piffle,” the gray cat yawned.

“Are we keeping you up?” Harry noticed the large yawn accompanied by a tiny gurgle. “Why don't you go back and sleep in the truck?”

“Ha, ha,” Mrs. Murphy laughed.

“Aren't we the perfect puss?” Pewter growled at the tiger cat.

“Don't start. I'd like to have one Saturday where you two don't fight.” Tucker sat between the two cats.

“Tell you what, while I write this up, Harry, pick up the mobile in the squad car and call O'Bannon's. Ask Sean if he has any Falcon hubcaps.”

“Funny, I was just on my way over there.” Harry trotted over to the squad car, slipped behind the wheel, and dialed on the mobile unit. She punched in the numbers feeling envious. She'd love a mobile phone herself but thought it too expensive. “Hi, Sean, Harry.”

“How you doing, Harry?”

“I'm just fine but Mrs. Hogendobber isn't. Someone this very minute stole the hubcaps off her Ford Falcon. Coop's here at the scene of the crime, if you will, and she told me to call you. You wouldn't have any Ford Falcon hubcaps, would you?”

“Yeah,” Sean's voice lowered. “I just bought them from the dude who must have stolen them. Dammit.”

“We'll be right over.” Harry clicked the end button on the phone. “Hey, Coop. He's got them.”

“My hubcaps?” Miranda's hand fluttered to her throat.

“He said he just bought them off someone. If they aren't yours it's an odd coincidence. I said we'd be right over.”

“Mrs. Hogendobber, do you feel settled enough to drive your car over there? I'll follow in the squad car.”

“Of course I feel settled enough.” Miranda couldn't believe the deputy thought she was that ruffled by the theft.

“I'll tag along, too, if you don't mind.” Harry picked up Pewter, who was wandering in the direction of the supermarket. “I was going that way anyway.”

“Fine.” Cynthia opened the door to the squad car.

Mrs. Murphy sat in Harry's lap as she backed out of the parking space. “First the woodpecker, now the hubcaps. What next?”

“Extinction by death ray.” Pewter giggled.

4

Like ants at a picnic.” Mrs. Murphy marveled at the humans, about twenty, walking through lots of elaborate broken columns, pediments, sarcophagi all neatly divided according to function.

The short drive to the building was dotted with large terra-cotta, stone, and ceramic pots. Next to the stone lot was a marble lot with large sheets of roseate marble that must have come from an old hotel lobby, smaller pieces of veined green marble, a bar top perhaps, which rested next to jet-black marble, again all neatly stacked. The largest outdoor lot was filled with rubble from stone walls, building foundations, some blocks hewn square and others natural.

The indoor rooms of the main building contained wooden cornices, fireplace mantels, pilasters, handblown glass, hand-hammered nails, a cornucopia of treasures.