Рита Браун - Sour Puss

"Thanks,"Mrs. Murphy called up to her.

"My pleasure,"she called down. "He deserved it"

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Simon wedged themselves next to Harry. All threelicked her hands. Mrs. Murphy then stood on her hind legs to lick her face.

Arch was screaming and sobbing. The worst pain was his eye. The broken legs, the snakebite, the dog, cat, and possum bites hurt, but the blinded eye felt excruciating.

The animals heard Cooper before Harry did, but soon enough she heard the siren, then the stones flying off the squad-car tires as her friend careened down the driveway. More sirens followed.

Harry took a deep breath, wiping away her quiet tears. She wasn't crying from fear but from gratitude. She owed her life to these little friends and to her own fierce desire to fight.

She stood up, shook her head, then knelt back down. She kissed Mrs. Murphy and Pewter. Simon couldn't bear a human kiss, so she ran her forefinger over his head. Then she headed for the ladder. Stooping to pick up the cell phone, she thought again and put it on the floor.

"My gift, Simon. Thank you."

40

Friendship distills the sweetness of life.

Mrs. Murphy listened as the friends below learned more of what had happened. She lay with her belly flat on the wide, low walnut branch, her legs dangling over each side. Nearby, artfully wedged on the picnic-table, Pewter posed, preened, and was so full of the milk of kindness she almost mooed. No one believed her, but they still fed her bits of fried chicken, little clumps of broccoli heads drenched in butter, and succulent bits of honey-cured ham. Tucker, not quite the dramatist, cast soulful eyes as she walked behind BoomBoom, Alicia, Big Mim, Miranda, Cooper, Susan, Fair, and Harry in turn.

"You're going to wear yourself out going from person to person like that,"Mrs. Murphy called down to her.

" Iburn the calories off moving."

"O la!"The tiger laughed as the dog gobbled a large chicken morsel from Big Mim's fingers.

Simon sat at the open loft doors, half-listening to the chatter in Harry's front yard across from him. Mostly he chewed a long raspberry penny-candy stick that Harry had given him. Sweets were Simon's downfall.

Two days had passed since Harry's battle with Arch. Her wrist, wrapped in a bandage, hurt but not enough to stop her.

"So it wasn't a full confession, after all?" Big Mim, who liked to be first to hear any news, had only gotten parts.

When Cooper reached Harry, the first thing she had to do after ascertaining Harry was all right was call for an ambulance. Took another day for Arch to be able and willing to talk.

"He says it is." Cooper passed a plate of corn bread.

"Revenge. A broken heart. I don't buy the broken-heart bit." Susan swept back her sleek pageboy with her right hand. "He'd been without Harry for four years, andit's not like she ever said it would be more than it was."

"Men hear what they want to hear," Alicia simply said. "Sorry, Fair."

"Some truth to it, I expect." He'd been badly shaken by Harry's close call and sick with himself for not seeing the true threat.

"He was so likable." Miranda sought the best in people. She sighed. " 'Be sure your sin will find you out.'" Quoting Numbers, Chapter 32, Verse 23, she then added, "You can't outrun the Lord. Most times you can't outrun the law, either."

"Did you have any idea it was Arch, you and Rick?" BoomBoom put it straight to Cooper.

"Our main suspects were Toby, Rollie, Hy, and Arch bringing up the rear. Toby was the front-runner initially because of his unremitting hostility to the others, his crazed competitiveness. I emphasize crazed. Arch confessed to killing Toby and Hy, but he swears he did not kill Professor Forland."

"It was Toby, then?" Susan asked.

"Yes, I think so. The bullet was from Toby's gun," Cooper replied.

"He rode around town showing off that new gun. He must have been nuts," Boom-Boom said, because she'd heard from Alicia how Toby found his misplaced gun in his truck.

"He never thought we'd find the body." Cooper sipped the best lemonade she'd ever drunk. "By the time we did, well, we're eating. Anyway, the coroner did retrieve the bullet. Then it took a little time to trace it."

"He used a brand-new registered gun," Fair remarked, "a beautiful gun, really. He was either crazy or arrogant. He disguised the grave up in the peach orchard, but earth has a way of rising up or sinking down sooner or later."

"What about Toby losing his gun?" Alicia had witnessed his surprise at finding it.

"Who knows? He probably did, or forgot where he'd put it. Toby had a motive to kill Professor Forland. He didn't find out until Arch sort of told him why he wasn't hired to lecture at Virginia Tech. That's what Arch says. He said he knew Toby would figure it out from their conversation at Patricia and Bill's party. So Toby, precarious as he was, went off his rocker. We'll never know, but he probably asked Professor Forland to swing by on his way out of town or he met him somewhere. We don't know why he buriedForland in your peach orchard. I suspect he killed him near here and went up to the orchard when he checked to see if you were around. Again, we'll never know. He was smart enough not to kill him at Rockland Vineyards. The other two murders we do know about."

"But it does come back to Toby again." Fair would never erase the sight of the murdered man from his mind. It wasn't so horrible as it was unexpected, and sad, too, given Toby's deranged state.

"Yes, it does. Toby, toiling away at his computer, realized quickly that the sharpshooters had been deliberately placed in Harry's peach orchard. His first response was that this was a plot to ruin his grapes. Always his grapes. Then he thought about other vineyards. The more he worked on it, the more he realized, no matter that the sharpshooter had been planted, it couldn't do enough damage in a summer to be a problem to the grapes." Cooper poured herself more lemonade.

"Why would that get him killed?" Boom-Boom was very curious.

"He approached Arch. Not on the best of terms. However, they were on better termsthan Toby and Hy. Toby accused Arch of bringing up the sharpshooters from North Carolina to scare people, hoping some would bail out. He thought Arch and Rollie were going to corner the market and then price-fix. Rollie, before he retired here, and I use 'retire' loosely, engaged in ruthless business practices. He made his fortune crawling over other people. Arch denied this to Toby. But that was the truth."

"Why didn't Arch leave well enough alone?" Big Mim inquired.

"He knew how highly intelligent Toby was. Toby, sooner or later, would figure out the sharpshooters were intended for the Alverta peaches. No, they couldn't destroy the orchard, but they could do some small damage this season, then die in the frost. He knew how much keeping the old variety alive meant to Harry. He would have done more damage to other crops by other means as time went by."

"So he killed Toby with his own gun?" Fair said.

"Yes, but he had the gun at Toby's head and forced him to call you. Arch's anger had escalated from harming peaches to harmingyou. He said each time he saw you, he hated you more. You don't deserve Harry."

Fair put his arm around his wife's waist. "He might be right there."

"Honey, don't be a flatterer." Harry blushed.

"Sweetheart, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I let you down once in the past and I let you down again. I never saw it coming with Arch."

"Fair, none of us did." BoomBoom cared for Fair, always would.

"She's right. Arch could have won an Oscar for his performance." Alicia's bracelet slid down her arm as she lifted her hand for emphasis.

"You would know." Big Mim smiled.

"Everyone was on the wrong track. Fixed on the vineyards and those who own them." Susan found each detail more riveting and dismal simultaneously.