Рита Браун - Hiss Of Death

Harry didn’t know how she’d handle that. She knew what she faced wasn’t nearly as bad as what so many of the others had. Still, she felt it: the slide in energy; the gusts of irritability, which she took pains to hide; and sometimes the sorrow of it. Yes, she was doing great, in good shape, but the idea that her body had fooled her troubled her.

She’d repeat over and over to herself the mantra of her support group: I have cancer; cancer doesn’t have me.

The long rays of late-afternoon sun brushed the barn, the fields, the old handblown glass in the windowpanes. Harry thought of this as soft light, almost liquid light, and like most country people, she felt one of the compensations for winter’s harshness was the magical quality of the light, no matter what the time. But now, mid-spring, one waited for late afternoon.

“Coop,” Tucker barked, for she heard Coop’s truck turn off the road far away, onto the gravel farm drive.

Coop pulled up next to the barn.

Harry stood up, dropping a handful of persistent weeds into the blue muck bucket. Dusting off her knees, she walked toward the tall blonde just stepping out of her truck.

“Hey, neighbor.”

Coop smiled. “The place looks great.”

“Thank you. I couldn’t stand looking at those weeds one more minute.”

“You’re much better about weeding than I am.” Coop sighed. “Got a minute?”

“Of course. Come on in and let me wash up.” Harry peeled off her gardening gloves, putting them on a high shelf inside the screened-in porch, because if Tucker could reach them, she ran off with them.

In the kitchen, as clean as possible, given that she’d been gardening, Harry asked, “Your pleasure, madam?”

“Iced tea, if you have it.”

“Sounds like just the thing.”

Harry reached into the big double-door fridge and grabbed the handle of a full jar of unsweetened tea. Heavier than she thought, for she was weaker than she realized, she had to use both hands to get it to the counter.

Coop noticed, rose, and poured the tea. “You’ll come back.”

Frustrated, Harry plucked out a lemon from a bowl on the counter and sliced it. “I know. If I weren’t going to Heavy Metal, it would be even worse. It comes, then goes. I don’t mean it comes out of nowhere. I’ve noticed a definite schedule. Exhaustion after radiation. That turns into tiredness the next day, and each day away from the treatment, I improve. And it’s the same way for, I don’t know, strength. But the effects last longer. One last treatment. Really, Coop, I’ve been lucky.”

Coop put the jar back in the fridge, and they both walked to the rough-hewn kitchen table.

The cats jumped up on the counter to eat from their large crunchie bowl. Harry filled it once a day, doing the same for Tucker.

“Brought you this.” Coop plucked a small jar of potassium tablets out of her back jeans pocket.

“Good you did before you sat down.” Harry opened the jar, for Coop had slit the plastic covering. She knew Harry’s grip hadn’t been as strong since the treatments.

“What!” Both cats looked up.

Before any of the animals could respond, Harry popped a vitamin into her mouth.

“Oh, no,” Tucker wailed.

“Tucker, calm yourself.”

The three animals stared in horror, waiting for Harry to keel over.

As the two humans chatted, Pewter finally said, “Maybe it’s not the same smell.”

“It is!” both Tucker and Mrs. Murphy shouted, which brought quite a rebuke from Harry.

Fifteen minutes passed.

“She’s fine,” Pewter pronounced.

“Maybe it takes a long time,” Tucker worried.

“We ate them,” Pewter rightly said.

“Our systems are different.” Mrs. Murphy stopped eating, baffled.

“It is the same smell,” Tucker insisted.

“Obviously, there’s something we don’t know.” Mrs. Murphy intently watched Harry.

“Maybe it was used in combination with something lethal, or maybe it’s the way you take it,” Pewter logically offered.

“The problem is, anyone can buy this stuff.” Tucker lay down by Harry’s chair. “We can’t isolate the killer through the smell.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Mrs. Murphy, as curious as any cat, hated not knowing something as much as Harry did.

The two humans talked, unaware of the concerned conversation swirling around them.

“Did you know that rottweilers are being studied to understand long lives?” Harry pushed a piece of paper toward Coop. “Fair showed me this at breakfast.”

“Huh.” Coop read that a thirteen-year-old rottweiler is the equivalent of a one-hundred-year-old human.

“The study comes out of the Cancer Foundation in West Lafayette, Indiana. Isn’t that something? The old rottweilers escaped cancer, renal failure, all that stuff. It will be fascinating to see what’s discovered.”

“On the subject of long lives, I came by to drop off your potassium and to talk about short lives.” She then conveyed Dr. Isadore Wineberg’s conclusion.

“He’s right, but, Coop, is it possible that Thadia killed Paula? She had some provocation in her own mind, at least, and the scarab fit into her bracelet. Then someone kills her.”

“Anything is possible.” Cooper squeezed more lemon into her tea.

“Cory’s spectacular demise supports Izzy’s idea that Cory is at the center of all this.”

“Well, he’s paid for it.”

“Which means someone is still out there.” Harry thought. “Any other clues you’re willing to share?”

“No. Well, there is one thing, and it’s a long shot. The fire at Pinnacle Records. Paula rented a file cabinet there, so her records were destroyed. Big Al said she went in a few days before she died. They have to sign in and sign out. She deposited a file in the cabinet. They’re locked. It probably has no bearing at all on the deaths, but it’s all we’ve got.”

“No. You have the yellow cylinders. Paula had one. Cory had one.”

“Right. I’ve thought of everything. Too small for organs. Really too small for the amounts of cocaine that would make one rich. I’d estimate the cylinder might hold eight thousand to ten thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine if wrapped in plastic, compressed.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Not in that business, Harry.” Coop finished her tea, got up, poured more for her and Harry. “More lemon?”

“No, thanks.”

“I don’t think Cory would be dumb enough to risk his license for ten thousand dollars a pop.”

“But if he had a thing going for years, it sure would add up.”

“It would. But the longer you deal, the higher your chances of being found out. If Cory or Paula had something to do with drugs, they’d go for hundreds of thousands, millions. Then it would be worth the risk.”

“I guess.”

“I thought about stealing expensive sperm from high-priced stallions. Now, could they do it? Neither one could handle a stallion and collect from the animal. They’d be injured or dead.”

“True enough, but they could steal it from someone who had. Particularly if the straws were in liquid nitrogen and stored to be shipped the next day. The problem with that theory is that whoever was missing the straws of sperm would report them missing immediately.”

“No such reports.” Coop put her fingers together like a steeple. “And how would they even know the value of a stallion’s semen? That’s not the answer.”

“No.”

“Then I thought about shipping organs,” Coop said. “But the cylinder isn’t big enough. There is a huge black market for organs.”

“I didn’t know that.”