Рита Браун: Catch As Cat Can

A railroad siding ran parallel to the main building. A flatcar filled with heavy stone cornices, lintels, and copings was near the building. Flatbeds delivered materials and perhaps an old car once a week. Behind that was an old red caboose which stayed as yet unrestored.

Sequestered in the rear of the four acres was Roger's garage shop. Fast-growing pines shielded it from view. Dotted around the various outdoor lots were small neat buildings. They looked like garden sheds and contained tools, old tractor parts, and other items needing protection from the elements.

The animals found the debris less fascinating than the humans but occasionally a whiff of a former occupant, another dog or cat, lingered. Such olfactory information was recent, of course. No such signature wafted from shards saved from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Harry was amazed at the salvage yard's transformation into a kind of architectural dumping ground. The last time she had visited, Sean's father, Tiny Tim, who was tight as a tick with his money, jovially presided over the place, one big yard filled with rusting cars. Tim collected old gravestones as he was interested in the stonemasons' carvings. He'd talk about the tombstones, then move to the broader subject of death. Tiny Tim vehemently opposed autopsies. When he died his wife and sons did not request one so no one knew exactly what he died from, but a lifetime of smoking, drinking, and eating anything that didn't eat him first probably did him in.

Sean, long and lean, wore a faded orange canvas shirt tucked into carpenter's pants. Grease was not ground into his hands, no smears of oil or dirt besmirched his shirt. He could have been a greengrocer except for the carpenter's pants.

One wall displayed specialized tools used in restoration: elegant chisels, small hammers, larger ones, tiny butane torches for peeling back layers of leaded paint. The choices were overwhelming and expensive.

Cynthia and Miranda approached the counter.

Sean asked his assistant, Isabella Rojas, to take care of the customer he was serving and he strode across the expanse to greet the two women. “Welcome. I think you're in luck.”

Harry caught up with them, the three animals lagging behind. “This is wonderful.”

“Thanks.” He focused on Miranda. “Mrs. Hogendobber, follow me.”

The humans and animals left the main building, walking about four hundred yards to the rear where thousands of hubcaps, sparkling in the sunlight, hung on wires. They were organized according to car model and year.

The glare from the shiny surfaces caused Mrs. Hogendobber to shield her eyes with her hand. “My word, I had no idea there were this many hubcaps in the world.”

“Let's cruise the outbuildings.” Tucker wagged her nonexistent tail. “Bet they're full of vermin.”

“You're a ratter, are you?” Pewter sashayed, a superior air exuding from her gray fur. “You couldn't catch a comatose mouse.”

“Look who's talking,” the corgi called over her shoulder as she sprinted toward the garage building followed by Mrs. Murphy. A trail of fading beer cans gave evidence of Roger O'Bannon's progress. Sobriety was not a virtue associated with Roger.

Pewter declined. For one thing she really didn't care much about mousing or Roger O'Bannon. Birding was her game and she was still put out that Harry had saved the woodpecker for Don Clatterbuck's skills. She wanted to pull the feathers off. Truth be told, Pewter had never killed a bird but she picked up those who died or fell from the nest. She liked yanking out the feathers. She wouldn't eat one. Pewter wouldn't eat anything that wasn't well cooked except for sushi. Something about the darting and dodging of birds excited her and she dreamed of killing the blue jay housed in the maple tree. One day the arrogant fellow would fly too close, run his mouth too loud. She knew her day would come and she'd end his foul abuse. But for the moment she was content to sit at Harry's feet and listen to the tale of the hubcaps.

“My hubcaps!” Miranda reached for the only set of Ford Falcon hubcaps on the line.

“Now, Mrs. H, if you file a theft report I have to impound the hubcaps as evidence. If you don't file, you can put them right back on your car,” Cynthia counseled her.

“No!” Miranda shook her head in disbelief.

“That's the law.”

“How long will that take?”

“It depends on whether we find the suspect or not. If we do and he comes up for a hearing and then a trial, it could take months—many months.” Cooper sighed, for the clogging of the courts wore her out as well as her sister and brother officers. She often thought to herself that people would be far better off trying to solve problems themselves instead of running to the sheriff's department or a lawyer to do it for them. Somehow Americans had lost the ability to sit down and talk to one another, or so it seemed to her.

“Oh, dear, what will the girls at church say?” Miranda worried about driving around undressed, as it were. “Well . . .”

“Maybe we can solve this together.” Cynthia focused on Sean, now removing the hubcaps from the line. “The obvious question: who sold you the hubcaps?”

“Usually Roger takes care of the car end of the business but he's not here at the moment,” Sean said. “I just happened to be outside when a kid drove up with the hubcaps.”

“Know him?”

“No. Never saw him before in my life. I knew the Falcons were rare so I paid fifty dollars for them, wholesale. I priced them at one hundred and twenty and hung them right on the line. If I'd taken a moment to think about it, I might have realized they were Miranda's but the kid said they came off his grandmother's Falcon that had breathed its last.”

“What did he look like?”

“Slight. Early twenties. Sandy hair, a pathetic attempt at a mustache.” Sean sported a red mustache and closely clipped beard of luxurious density but the curly hair on his head was black and long. He tied it in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Harry called this a dork knob behind his back.

“Any distinguishing features? Do you remember his clothes or his car?”

“1987 GMC truck. Gray. Virginia plates. Uh, a Dallas Cowboys windbreaker maybe as old as the car and—yes, there was one distinguishing feature. His left eye sagged, an old wound. It was half-closed and a small red scar ran from over the eyebrow to below the eye itself.”

“Runny nose? Jumpy?” Cynthia was looking for a fuller picture of the “perp,” as she called him.

“No. Calm. Didn't smell alcohol either.”

Miranda took out her checkbook as Harry held the hubcaps that Sean had handed to her. The older woman fished around in the bottom of her purse. “I've got a pen in here, I know it.”

“Put that away,” Sean chided her gently. “I'm not having you pay for what's yours.”

“But you paid the thief.”

“My problem. I mean it, Miranda. You put that checkbook away right now.”

Cynthia thought a moment. “Why don't we do this? You put the hubcaps back on your car. I'll fill out this report and I'll look for the kid. If Rick Shaw”—she mentioned her boss, the sheriff—“wants to see the evidence, I'll send him to you. I just don't see the point of impounding your hubcaps where they'll sit until God knows when. Just let me handle this.”

“I don't want to get you in trouble.” Miranda appreciated Cynthia Cooper's concern. She had become friends with the young deputy over the last few years.

“A little trouble won't hurt me.” She smiled.

“I'm sorry about this.” Sean genuinely liked Miranda, as did most people in Crozet.

“Times change and it would appear not for the better. You had nothing to do with it.” Miranda smiled back at him.