Рита Браун - The Big Cat Nap

“It will do me no good to tell you to be careful.”

In her own way, Harry was being careful. She didn’t tell Susan what her hunch was, because she was afraid it would set her friend off and, also, she was far from sure. Why cast a shadow on a seemingly good person until one was sure?

So Harry changed the subject, a favorite tactic. “Yancy Hampton is coming back to check out my ginseng in July, when the little berries show up. Do you know in some places ginseng is bringing five hundred dollars a pound! Growers in New York get that—not all of them, but they’re averaging between three hundred and four hundred dollars a pound.”

Drily, Susan said, “Yancy isn’t going to offer you that.”

“I know.” Harry shifted into fourth gear. “I have both cultivated and wild ginseng down by the creek. Ginseng loves it there, with all the shade and moisture.”

“Takes ginseng a long time to produce seeds, doesn’t it?” Susan remembered sitting down at the creek with Harry as children, dipping their toes in the cold water.

“Three to four years. But, remember, my wild ginseng is well established. The cultivated stuff I planted last year—well, I have a wait on that.”

Susan changed the subject. “Ever miss the P.O.?”

“All the time. Really was Crozet’s hub.”

“Yeah. The new building is big, clean, and light, but you can’t hang out there like we could at the old P.O. George Hogendobber used to give us licorice sticks. Who would have ever thought you’d graduate from Smith College and become our postmistress?”

“Not me. I thought I was filling in until I found my real job and the postmaster general found a real postmistress.”

“You never talk about it.” Susan looked at her friend’s profile.

“What’s to say? The new building outgrew me, I guess. Couldn’t take Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, or Tucker to work. Those two cats could roll the mail carts as well as I could.” Harry smiled. “Everything’s changed, Susan. Sometimes I feel old. I know I’m not, but … oh, I don’t know.”

“We have memory now. We can compare things. Couldn’t do that at age six.”

Harry thought about that. “Change is life, I guess.”

“It is.” Susan took a breath as Harry shifted around a curve, sliding nicely. “Show-off.”

“Couldn’t help it.” Harry laughed. “Ever go into the café at Fresh?”

“Couple of times. He’s done a nice job. Sometimes I see friends. Sometimes I don’t. I think Yancy hoped it would be a central place, but who goes into an organic market? People with some money. Nobody poor can pay those prices.”

“Got that right. I really don’t like Yancy. Can’t put my finger on exactly why he rubs me the wrong way.”

“Me, too.”

“You play golf with Barbara. You like her.”

“I do. But she’s a nervous type. And she never talks about him. Not one word, which I think is a bit strange. It’s not as if you and I and the rest of us don’t occasionally discuss our significant others.”

“Or insignificant others.”

“That, too.”

They were still laughing when Harry pulled in front of the barn.

“Why didn’t you take me?” Tucker asked as the two women disembarked. Harry leaned down to pick up the cigarette lighter, reminding herself to call Victor, since it must be his.

“ ’Cause you rolled in horse poop,” Pewter helpfully suggested.

“Do you know, Pewter, when you talk, your belly sways from side to side?”

“Do you know, Tucker, when I’m behind you, tailless thing, I see things I’d rather not?”

H arry and Susan had just set foot in the kitchen when the wall phone rang.

Harry picked it up. “Hello.”

“You’ll never guess,” Franny breathlessly spoke. “They found my tires.”

“Where?”

Susan helped herself to iced tea, then moved next to Harry to hear better.

“A warehouse at Zion Crossroads.”

At the junction of I-64 and Route 250 in Louisa County was Zion Crossroads. For so many years it had been sleepy and nondescript, but in the last ten, it had morphed into a hotbed of business, food, and gas. I-64 could carry one all the way to St. Louis if traveling west. Then it turned into I-70, rolling through until the Rockies. Even those drivers on a short hop to Richmond pulled in, grabbed a Coca-Cola or coffee, and stretched their legs.

The old lumberyard was still there, but to the locals it seemed yet another storage business appeared every day. Good for the coffers of Louisa County.

Susan offered Harry a sip as she got her ear close to the receiver.

“Susan’s with me. A real eavesdropper.” Harry smiled. “How did they find the goods?”

“Well, Rick put out a report, went all over. Computers really are amazing, and one of the girls at the cash register at McDonald’s remembered a semi stopping. Nothing unusual there, but she looked out as the driver pushed up the big door in the back and two men jumped out. She saw the tires. Didn’t think anything of it. An officer from the Louisa County Sheriff’s Department mentioned to her that the storage units popping up were great places for contraband. She’d read about the robbery in the paper, remembered it, and told the officer. Anyway, they managed to convince the U-Store-It owner to open the bigger units.”

“Thought they had a double lock. The storage key plus the unit owner’s key.”

“Harry, they do, but we all know those units aren’t that hard to break in to. The storage owner checked his books first, discounting anyone he personally knew, then cut the locks off the others. Presto! Bingo!”

“Isn’t that something? So whose name was on the unit?”

“That’s just it. False name. Paid cash. We can hope they come back at some point to remove the tires, when the contraband is not so hot, but that presupposes no one will talk. A big hope.”

“True.”

Susan said into the receiver, “When do you get your tires back?”

“Don’t know, but they’re in Albemarle County now, wherever Rick puts stolen goods. Bet he had to rent a big unit. I can’t imagine the sheriff’s department routinely has enough space for stolen goods as large as mine. But isn’t that something? One alert citizen. I’m going out there and giving that girl a new set of tires.”

“What a nice thing to do.” Harry was always impressed by Franny, who unfailingly did the right thing.

“Anyway, couldn’t help myself. Had to call my group support buddy.”

“We’ll celebrate after this week’s meeting.” Harry took another sip of Susan’s cold tea. “Franny, do you know where totaled cars go?”

“To auto heaven, where else?”

“Smarty. I assume that when a vehicle is written off as totaled by the insurance company, it’s towed to a salvage yard and the insurance company owns it.”

“Makes sense, but insurance isn’t my field. I just know I pay too damned much for all my policies.”

“It’s cheaper to die. Then again, maybe it isn’t. Isn’t the average cost of a funeral seven thousand dollars?”

“Now, why do you know that? Harry, you’re ghoulish. I don’t want to know the cost of the average wedding.”

“Twenty thousand,” Susan called into the phone.

“That can’t be right.” Franny was horrified.

“I think it is,” Susan replied. “ ’Course, in Albemarle, it’s probably more.”

“Is your daughter in love?” Franny asked.

Susan’s daughter, Brooks, was still in college.

“No, but Ned and I are planning ahead. We don’t want to be bankrupted when the time comes. Thank God our other child is a son.”