Рита Браун: Nine Lives To Die

Once settled in the living room, comfortable in decidedly not-modern décor, Jessica, curious, asked, “So what did happen to your Latin teacher?”

“Nobody knows.” BoomBoom shrugged. “She disappeared after a Friday-night football game. Her car was in the parking lot. Monday, she didn’t come to school.”

“We played the Louisa Dragons that night,” Harry recalled. “Good game. Miss Donleavey never missed a football game.”

“She dated the coach, Mr. Toth,” Susan filled in. “Handsome, handsome, handsome.”

“Coach Toth? That Toth?” Jessica asked. “Silver Linings?” She mentioned a youth organization the coach supported, as did all the husbands of the women in the room. Apart from helping young men, business leaders and former athletes ran Silver Linings. To belong was beneficial to one’s career.

“Jessica, this must be irritating, being in the middle of a bunch of old friends.” Harry handed her a napkin.

“No, it’s fascinating. A vanished Latin teacher.”

“You know the stereotype of the old-maid Latin teacher? Well, not Miss Donleavey. She was voluptuous, raven-haired, so pretty,” BoomBoom noted, herself voluptuous.

“Suspects?” Jessica’s eyebrows raised.

Miranda answered. “At first, people thought it might have been a rival of the coach’s. Men were crazy for her.”

Susan added, “Lots of men were questioned. Everyone had an alibi.”

“Anyone else?” Jessica persisted.

“Esther Mercier. Hated Miss Donleavey, just hated her.” Harry bit into a carrot incised with a tiny trench filled with rich cream cheese.

“In love with Coach Toth.” BoomBoom filled in facts. “An attractive enough woman, but not in Miss Donleavey’s league.”

“What was her first name?” Jessica asked. “Miss Donleavey?”

“Uh, Margaret. It’s funny, but I still have a hard time calling my teachers by their first names. I mean, Coach Toth is always Coach Toth.” Susan smiled. “And eventually he did marry Miss Mercier, one of the math teachers.”

“You’d think someone would have known something. Crozet is still a small place,” Charlene wondered.

“If they did, no one noticed. Crozet, like any place anywhere in the world, is full of secrets that people take to their graves,” Harry remarked. “Miss Donleavey’s kin, all older, are gone. It’s one of those persistent small-town mysteries.”

“Well, people don’t just disappear off the face of the earth.” Alicia twirled a fresh bit of broccoli.

“The Black Dahlia,” BoomBoom countered.

“You’re right, to a degree,” said Alicia. “ ’Course, I wasn’t in Hollywood then. And she didn’t disappear, Sweetie. They never found the killer.”

“You’re right.” BoomBoom got up and walked over to the window, nose almost on the windowpane. “It’s really coming down now. We’d all better head home.”

“Let me help you clean up,” Harry offered.

“A tray of vegetables and a couple of glasses? Anyway, no power, no water. Go on. If your cellphones don’t work you can still text if you have a Droid.”

Arden said, “I hope the Silver Linings fund-raiser isn’t canceled.”

“We’ll cross our fingers.” Charlene crossed hers.

After a long, careful drive, Harry slowly finally drove down her long farm driveway, windshield wipers flipping as fast as they could. She pulled in front of the old white frame farmhouse, cut the motor, the lights with it.

Golden candlelight cascaded over the snow. The frosted windows glowed pale gold, the wavy imperfections of the handblown glass all the more obvious with the candles behind her.

“Mom’s home.” Inside the house, Tucker the corgi barked joyfully.

Pewter flopped on the kitchen table, lifted her head. “About time.”

Mrs. Murphy, the tiger cat, walked alongside Fair, Harry’s husband, as he opened the kitchen door to the porch. He carried a huge flashlight, which he focused on the path to the back porch, screened-in in summer, glassed-in in winter.

“Honey, I’m glad you’re home.” He stepped into the snow.

“Fair, get back inside. I can see.”

He didn’t, of course, kissing her as she hurried onto the porch, Tucker and Mrs. Murphy at her feet.

Pewter considered a welcoming meow when Harry walked into the kitchen, then thought better of it. It’s never wise to indulge humans.

Harry stamped her feet again. “Boy, it’s really snowing.”

“I’ll get the generator going. Just got home myself about ten minutes ago. Buried in paperwork today.”

Hanging up her coat on one of the Shaker pegs inside by the kitchen door, she shook her head free of snow. “Honey, do you have your Droid?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“May I borrow it?”

Fair retrieved the device, which he’d placed on a kitchen counter when he walked into the kitchen, handing it to his wife.

Harry texted Susan: “I won.”

She then recounted her small triumph with her husband, who celebrated with her.

Tucker also laughed, for she knew how frequently Harry lost at cards.

“I shredded a pack of cards once,” Pewter crowed. “Good cards, they had Susan’s initials on them.”

“We know,” both Mrs. Murphy and Tucker replied. “Thanks to you, the girls won’t play cards here,” Tucker added.

“Who cares?” Pewter saucily called down from the table.

“I do,” the intelligent corgi said. “The girls always drop food.”

“Well—” Pewter had no comeback for that.

While the fire blazed, Harry and Fair cuddled on the sofa.

“First big snow of the season. Even though it creates all manner of problems, I do love it.” Fair smiled.

“Any horses at the clinic?” Harry asked. Fair was an equine vet.

“No, which is why I can enjoy the snow. I don’t have to drive back there until the roads are plowed.” He glanced out the window. “They’ll have their work cut out for them.”

“At least the refrigerator is running with the generator, and the stove is on propane gas.”

Fair pulled Harry closer. “I like the candlelight.”

“Me, too, and I like the silence, especially when the fridge cuts off. Say, we got to talking about Miss Donleavey.”

“Haven’t thought of her in years. That was a good game the night she disappeared. We creamed Louisa. And someone got away with murder.”

“Maybe.” Harry’s voice, light, lifted a bit higher.

“Oh, honey, she’s gone forever.”

But she wasn’t.

Snow bits stung Harry as she drove the 80hp tractor outfitted with a snowplow down the long drive. The old, big tractor emanated power. She wished that it had a covered cab, but such a convenience was too expensive when she bought the tractor years ago. It was even more expensive now.

An emergency call had pulled Fair out of bed at four in the morning. Although a foot of snow had fallen by then, his one-ton four-wheel-drive truck managed to crawl through. Now, at seven-thirty in the morning, gray and dark, Harry plowed as snow piled up.

As she approached the secondary state road she could see the snowplows had passed over it at least once. They’d need to come back. Making a big circle, she headed back down her drive. With the wind-driven snow at her back, she felt a bit better.

Harry could take most any weather. Growing up on a farm, farming for most of her life, she was tough. The four years at Smith College were the softest she’d known. Even when she’d worked at the post office in Crozet, she’d come home and do chores, also doing them at dawn before heading east to the small town.