Рита Браун - Sour Puss

Mrs. Murphy inhaled the tang of a working barn, the best perfume in the world. She passed Matilda, the enormous blacksnake, curled up in her hole in a hay bale. Mrs. Murphy gave Matilda and her hay bale a wide berth. This year her eggs, next to her own snake apartment, seemed fatter than last year's. Like most farmers, Harry knew that her best friends apart from the domesticated animals were owls, blacksnakes, bats, honeybees, praying mantises, most spiders, swallowtails, and purple martins. Each of these creatures rid the premises of pests, whether small rodents or insects. The bees kept things pollinated. Abundance rests on the wings of bees.

Mrs. Murphy got along with most of these creatures, but Matilda gave her the willies. She hopped from hay bale to hay bale until she sat on top of the carefully stacked, sweet-smelling mass.

"You asleep yet?"

"Fat chance with your big mouth."Flat-face glared down at her.

"Any eggs up there?"Mrs. Murphy liked owlets.

"No. I can have babies more than once a year, you know. I'll raise a ferocious brood when I'm good and ready."

"Better to plan these things,"Mrs. Murphy agreed. She harbored a great secret, which was that a few years ago, when Harry took her in to be spayed, the vet—not Marty, of course—spayed the wrong cat. But they had shaved her belly before mixing up patients, both tiger cats.

"All the crops that Harry has planted will bring flying and crawling pests from everywhere. The grapes alone will keep the day birds chubby. And wait until the sunflowers lift their heavy heads; won't be for a while, but those seeds bring bugs and bad birds.We both know who the bad birds are. There will be so much to do."Flatface forgot about having owlets.

"Thought you hunted at night."

"If someone tasty shows up during the day, I can be roused."She laughed her deep "Hoo hoo, hoo hoo hoo."

"The crows will be a problem."

"You and Pewter will be on duty for them. They are very intelligent. You have to give them that."

Mrs. Murphy sniffed, "Pewter has the attention span of a gnat. Worse, she's obsessed with the blue jay."

"A most arrogant bird, besotted with his plumage and his topknot."Flatface sighed, then changed the subject. "Thought I might pick up something juicy this morning once the storms passed, but my protein sources are still holed up," she said.

Mrs. Murphy moved to the subject she truly wanted to discuss. "You didn't happen to fly over the peach orchard?"

"Yes."

"I heard a truck maybe five minutes before I saw you. Did you see it or who was in it?"

"White truck with a gold lily painted on it."

"Hy Maudant,"Mrs. Murphy exclaimed.

Later that day, the contents of Toby's computer, finally transcribed, reached Rick Shaw's desk with a thud.

Cooper looked up. "Can you imagine how many trees died for that?"

"Very funny." Rick sighed, fished out a Camel, and lit up despite the "No Smoking" signs that the county government felt compelled to post in every county government building.

"Let me help." She rolled her chair next to his. They started reading.

"Sure a lot of chemical equations," Rick mumbled.

"Soil stuff. Sugars in the grapes. That kind of thing."

"How do you know that?" Rick asked, surprised.

"Took organic chem in college."

"Why?" He was incredulous.

"I liked it."

"I thought people only took that under pain of death or to get into med school."

"Always knew I wanted to go into this field. Thought it would help me read toxicology reports, stuff like that. It does, too."

"Anything unusual?"

"Pretty much what you'd expect from Toby." The distinctive, inviting odor of tobacco enticed her to bum one of Rick's Camels.

Rick's phone rang, he picked it up, listened, then hung up. "Ballistics. The bullet in Professor Forland was from Toby's gun."

Startled for a moment, Cooper said, "Well, that's not what you'd expect from Toby."

31

The next day winds swept down from the northwest, and the temperature cooled dramatically. At ten-thirty in the morning, the mercury hung at forty-eight degrees.

Harry and BoomBoom walked through the little sunflower shoots, the grapevines tiny little dots showing—and the hay fields. Both women wore canvas Carhartt jackets.

BoomBoom turned her back to the wind. "May."

"At least we aren't in Utah. It's snowing there." Harry was glad she wore gloves.

Tucker tagged along, but the cats thought the toasty kitchen was the only place to be.

Gorgeous, immense cumulus clouds majestically rolled overhead. From white to cream to dove gray with slashes of slate, the cloud billowed.

"Feels like rain later." BoomBoom flipped up the collar on her jacket. "Well, you can't be bored living in central Virginia if you like observing the weather." She continued walking along the row of Italian sunflowers. "These little shoots can bear the chill. Sunflowers are tough."

"So are we." Harry smiled. "Sorry you missed Mim's party."

"Me, too. Alicia and I were in Richmond at a fund-raiser for the Virginia Horse Council." She pulled out her gloves now that the wind stiffened. "Fund-raising is the second-oldest profession."

"With none of the pleasure of the first." Harry gleefully kicked a little clod of earth.

"Do you think they like it, really?"

Harry shrugged. "It's a job. I suppose there are some pleasurable moments. I mean, people usually don't keep on doing something they hate."

"I don't know. I'm not sitting in judgment, mind you, but I don't know. There's probably a sense of power over men but disgust, too. Their need is so overwhelming; men are such fools about it."

"Yeah. But I think we need sex just as much, only we're taught to suppress it."

"Some women suppress it so much it vanishes." BoomBoom swished the air with her hand. "The older I get, Harry, the more I know about some things and the less I know about others. At least, I've learned not to make grand statements except when it comes to things like horses."

"I'm waiting."

"Whenever I doubt there's a God, I look at horses." BoomBoom gazed at the foals with their mothers.

Harry smiled broadly. "Don't forget corgis."

Both women laughed as they headed toward the barn, the limbs on the trees swaying, the birds sticking close to home.

"So you didn't hear what happened at the redbud party?" Harry enjoyed testing this out.

"No." BoomBoom stopped and looked right at Harry. "What did I miss?"

"Here's a blow-by-blow description." Harry laughed at her turn of phrase, then lunched in.

When Harry finished, BoomBoom, voice slightly raised, said, "You are so evil. Youcould have told me the minute I got out of the truck."

"More fun to wait. I knew no one had gotten to you or you would have said something."

"Do I have to beg to find out what the fight was about?"

"No. I had to wait until this morning. Fair doesn't get angry often, but when he does he takes a while to cool down. How they reached this point I don't know. All I know is Fair says that Arch told him he didn't deserve me. Fair agreed. Then Arch told him he'd cheat again, used the phrase we've all heard: 'the leopard doesn't change his spots.' Fair told him that would never happen. Arch said something worse. Don't know what, but Fair said, 'Go screw yourself, because you're not going to screw my wife.'"

BoomBoom, astonished, gasped, "Fair said that? That is so unlike him."

"Shocked me, too."

"I guess." BoomBoom drew out "guess."

"It's all pretty embarrassing. Fair left early yesterday morning to call on Big Mim. He also sent a large bouquet. He called me after he left. Mim was lovely about it, of course. Aunt Tally was still there. She didn't go home in that awful rainstorm. Well, she kissed Fair and told him she hadn't had that much fun in years and he was perfectly right to defend his wife's honor."