Рита Браун - The Litter Of The Law

On the kitchen table, Pewter flopped on her side, her tail gently swaying. She thought this her best angle. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker thought otherwise.

As Harry opened the oven door to pop in a casserole, Pewter lifted her head.

“I know you’re making that for me.” Her voice hit the dulcet-tone register.

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, each curled up in their faux-sheepskin-lined animal beds by the door to the back porch, observed with amusement.

Mrs. Murphy imitated the gray cat’s voice: “I am the most loving kitty in the world.”

Pointedly ignoring this, Pewter again sweetly meowed. “I could use a little tuna until the casserole is ready.”

Harry closed the door, set the timer, then turned to behold the cat, whose head was now raised, tail moving a bit faster. “Does smell good, doesn’t it, Pewts?” Harry said. She caressed the cat’s silken fur.

“I have suffered a terrible shock,” Pewter panted, pushing her head into Harry’s hand. “The sight of a shredded face. Crows devouring human flesh before being impertinent to me. If one of those vile birds had dropped even two feet, I could have leapt up and torn it to bits.”

“You’re laying it on a little thick.” The dog raised her head.

“Shut up, Bubble Butt. If she breaks out the cookies, you owe me big-time.” Pewter rolled onto her back, cocking her head to one side.

“All right.” Harry opened the treat cabinet, counted out two greenies, and gave them to Tucker. Next she opened a bag of cat treats in the shape of fishes. She gave half of these to Pewter, then walked over and gave the rest to Mrs. Murphy.

“You owe me!” Pewter cried in triumph as she gulped her tiny yellow fish.

Harry—unaware of the exchange, it sounded like meows and catcalling to her—walked back to her husband’s small office in the old farmhouse.

“Forty-five minutes,” she told him.

“Huh.” He looked up from the screen. “Okay.”

“Work?”

Fair was the best equine veterinarian in central Virginia.

He smiled sheepishly. “No. That’s the trouble with the Internet. Easy to get sidetracked.”

“And?” She came up behind him, placing her hands on his broad shoulders.

Not an inch of fat on the man.

“Uh, well, I’ve been kind of reading about bizarre murders. This website has examples going back to the eighteenth century. Really weird things, like duels fought in costumes or heads put on London Bridge with fake crowns. I guess that’s political. But here’s one from Wisconsin in the 1850s that caught my eye: A guy would kill men for no particular reason, or at least one no one could find, and he’d put them in a boat, push it out onto Lake Michigan, and set it afire. A Viking funeral. His victims were all men he had admired.”

“Sometimes I wonder when I hear or read these things whether anyone is normal.”

Fair leaned back in his chair. “I guess that’s debatable.” He rolled his chair around to face her, the rollers clicking on the hardwood floor. “I guess I can’t fuss at you. Sometimes I’m a little too curious myself.”

She kissed his cheek. “Makes me feel better,” she said, then headed to the kitchen.

He followed the wonderful aroma of her chicken casserole, her mother’s recipe.

“That scent brings back so many memories,” Harry said. “And, hey, Halloween is what, two and a half weeks away? More memories.”

“Heads in pumpkins,” Pewter blathered.

Tucker listened, then put her head back on her paws. “I thought they were about to discuss food. They’d be much better off focusing on things that matter rather than random corpses.”

The tiger cat silently agreed as she left her own bed to curl up with the corgi.

Both animals felt the chill of premonition.

The day after the grisly discovery, the temperature dropped twenty degrees and rains came. Like all farmers, Harry had a rain plan. There were the chores that one did no matter the weather, and then there were those set aside for downpours.

The tack room in the old barn doubled as her office. If she had fixed up an office in the house, she knew she’d bother Fair or vice versa. The tack room made sense plus she could smell the leather, the horses, and their sweet feed. She liked sitting in the old knotty-pine room, the size of two good stalls, twenty by twenty-four feet. One wall held saddle racks and bridle holders. Under those items rested her personal tack trunk, as well as her husband’s. Each horse stall also had a tack trunk in front of it, carrying items Harry felt should be separated from the main tack room. And each tack trunk hid treats: dried apples, special horse cookies. When a lid was lifted, the nickering started.

At fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature hit the perfect mark for the horses. Most of them were turned out in the rain, which was now steady but soft. Once on the other side of the equinox, Harry switched her schedule, bringing the horses in at night and turning them out during the day. Horses needed to move about.

Pewter, splayed out on Harry’s tack trunk, which was covered with a lush saddle pad, had no such inclination. Tiny snores emitted from her body. Mrs. Murphy, wide awake, sat on the desk surface just inches from her human, who was trolling the Internet and considering seed purchases for the spring. If Harry ordered now, she would benefit with a ten percent discount from Southern States, the large supplier. She would always double-check with Augusta Co-op to see if those prices were better.

Brow furrowed, chin resting on her hand, Harry scrolled through various seed types as the tiger cat peered at the screen, too.

Tucker, knocked out in her plaid bed under the desk, was as oblivious as Pewter.

An old massive teacher’s desk, painted hunter green, a tall wooden file cabinet, and two director’s chairs as well as the wooden teacher’s chair in front of the desk took up the space opposite the saddle wall.

“I can’t believe this,” Harry said to Mrs. Murphy. “They say they’ve developed a winter-resistant Bermuda grass and it’s only $123.50 per hundredweight. First, I don’t believe it. Second, that is an outrageous price. Bermuda grass isn’t as good as alfalfa or orchard grass.”

“Then why use it?” The cat had a practical turn of mind.

Hearing the clear meow, Harry looked into the bright green eyes. “I love you, pussycat.”

“I love you, too,” the cat replied as the attractive forty-one-year-old woman returned to her task.

“It’s the terrible summers we’re having, Murphy. That’s what makes Bermuda grass useful. We now need some kind of forage that can withstand the heat and drought conditions. Unfortunately, it dies in the winter. It looks as though fescue, orchard grass, and timothy die in summer’s searing heat, but they do not. They burn off, or wilt. The pastures are brown, but with a bit of moisture or a snowy winter, those grasses pop back up. Of course, clover really holds water in nodules.” She nattered on, captivated with grass crops, as she had been since she was a tiny girl following her father around the farm.

While not enraptured by grasses, legumes, or corn, the tiger cat proved a good listener. Corn appealed to her because it brought in mice, foxes, and other animals seeking the high calories. Then she remembered the scarecrow and the crows.