Рита Браун - The Tail Of The Tip-Off

The doors at both ends of the center-aisle barn were shut tight, but they still slapped and banged. The stall doors to the outside Dutch doors were locked, top and bottom, but wind secreted itself between the frames, causing them to shake with each blast.

Inside, Harry's breath spiraled out as she spread a light dusting of lime over the wet spots. She'd clean out the soiled bedding, expose the wet spots and lime them, then let them dry and come back just before sundown to pull bedding over them. Once a week, usually Saturday morning, she'd strip down each stall so it would air out. Then she'd put a generous helping of fresh wood shavings over it. She liked straw because she could make a better compost out of it for her garden, but soiled straw was heavy and strained her back with each successive full pitchfork. Also, straw was getting expensive; more expensive still were peanut hulls. Some people even tried shredded newspapers. The good thing about Crozet, among other fine qualities, was the availability of small sawmills. She could find a suitable grade of wood shavings without any trouble, for a reasonable cost. Toss a little mix of cedar shavings in each stall and the barn smelled wonderful.

She couldn't prove it but Harry believed those cedar shavings helped keep down the parasites, not that she had to worry about parasites in this weather.

Though proud of her barn system, her farm management, Harry wouldn't brag about her accomplishments. She figured the shine on her horses' coats and their happy attitudes spoke to anyone with horse sense. As to the rest of it, if a person drove down the long road to the farm they would behold a tidy, neat, well-loved farm no matter what the season.

Over the years she'd dug two new wells at each end of the farm to accommodate watering troughs. In time she hoped to purchase one of those irrigation systems with pipes interspersed with wheels. The system would roll at a timed rate of speed over the pastures. It was moving sculpture, a beautiful sight to her eyes. Beautiful price, too.

Droughts had begun to visit central Virginia. Not each year, but three years out of ten, say. She needed a good hay crop. An irrigation system could be a blessing.

Harry tried to think ahead, to plan, but no matter how well she planned Mother Nature surprised her. So did people.

She climbed the ladder to the hayloft. Mrs. Murphy followed her. Pewter adamantly remained in the tack room. Mouse patrol, she fibbed. Tucker stayed down in the aisle.

Harry tiptoed to Simon's den. Fast asleep on an old white towel, each time he exhaled the small stalks of hay wavered. She put down a bowl with graham crackers soaked in honey. Simon loved sweets. His water bowl was clean.

Of course, he could drink water out of the horse buckets. The barn stayed warm enough for the water not to freeze over. Sometimes if the mercury dropped into the single digits the buckets would freeze, but if the temperature stayed in the twenties or low thirties outside, the temperature inside usually kept above freezing. The heat coming off those large horse bodies helped, too.

Harry smiled as she peeped over at the possum. She'd even managed last spring to trap him-which he hated-but she took him to the vet where he received every shot possible. He was an extremely healthy possum, no carrier of EPM, a malady affecting first birds, then possums as carriers, and finally horses. Much as she adored Simon, Harry had to see to the health of her horses, hence the shots. He avoided her for weeks after that. No matter how many times the pets told him the traumatic visit had been for his own good, he stayed furious. He finally got over it in June, once again showing himself to Harry, taking small treats from her hand.

By the time Harry climbed back down it was eight-thirty A.M. She'd knocked out her barn chores. She couldn't do anything outside. She felt good about life. Harry loved getting her chores done in a timely and orderly fashion.

The phone rang in the tack room. She picked it up. Tucker sat at her feet.

A muffled male voice hissed. "Curiosity killed the cat. Mind your own business."

Click.

She stood there with the receiver in her hand. "Shit."

"What a pretty thing to say," Pewter sarcastically meowed.

"I've just been warned off," Harry said aloud.

"I knew it! I knew this would happen," Tucker worriedly said.

"It will only make her more determined." Mrs. Murphy hopped onto a saddle on a saddle rack.

Harry took off her barn coat. The tack room, toasty, invited one to sit down, inhale the aroma of the stable.

"Too bad she doesn't have caller ID," Pewter, who was interested in technology, said.

"That's the truth. On a day like today I bet whoever called didn't go to a phone booth." Tucker swiveled her left ear toward the wall. She could hear the mice whispering.

"That voice was familiar but he must have had a cloth over the phone or something to disguise it. But damn, I know that voice!" She threw her work gloves on the floor. "I am a perfect ass."

"Don't be too hard on yourself, Mom," Tucker sympathized.

The slender woman pulled over the director's chair from the desk. She dropped down into it, lifting her feet up to rest on her tack trunk, a present from her father for her twelfth birthday. He'd built it from glowing cherrywood, carving her initials in a diamond shape on the front.

Harry observed her audience, which included the mice, although she couldn't hear them nor did she know they'd gathered around their semicircular hole partially hidden by that very tack trunk. "Think about it. How can you have an affair in Crozet? You can't even sneeze without someone saying 'Gesundheit.' There are only a few ways I figure a man or a woman for that matter can have an affair. Tucker, you look so interested."

Tucker, her head cocked, was drinking in every word. "I am. Dogs don't have affairs so the concept alone fascinates me."

"What is it that dogs have?" Pewter sniggered.

"Sex."

"How crude, Tucker." Pewter, on the saddle rack below Mrs. Murphy-they were in a vertical line-had to laugh.

"Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, so you need to be able to hide in plain sight assuming the affairee is a person living in Albemarle County. If your paramour lives somewhere else that's easier. Too easy. A doctor has plenty of opportunities to get away with it. A private office, hospital rooms, all those nurses. Pretty easy. Anyone in a nine-to-five job, not so easy, but anyone who is self-employed, more chances. H.H. ran a construction firm. I suppose he could enjoy trysts in an unfinished building after the workers left but he'd have to drag a bed in there or a futon. Scratch that. He has an office. A real possibility, although a wife can cruise by and most wives would have a key. Still, that's possible. The other thing is that a lot of construction sites, the bigger ones, have trailers, an on-site office. That would be real easy. Yeah, I can see that. And the last possibility, open to anyone, not just H.H., would be sneaking in and out of the paramour's house or apartment assuming she's unmarried. If she's married, it's got to be the office or the trailer. No way could he take a woman to the club or to a motel. Not in this county."

"Mother, have you contemplated an affair? You've certainly thought this out." Mrs. Murphy's long whiskers swept forward then back as she, too, listened to the mice.

"What do you want, pussycat?"

"For you to behave," the tiger replied.

Harry laughed. She liked conversing with her animals although she didn't know what they were saying. "Next issue. What kind of woman? H.H. wasn't attracted to tarts. I've known him all his life. He liked well-groomed women, nice looking. He wasn't the handsomest guy around nor the richest, so he wasn't going to get, say, a BoomBoom but he could certainly attract, m-m-m, a nice-looking secretary. Maybe someone he met socially. He didn't have much free time. What self-employed person does? He liked kayaking." She thought. "No. We'd know. I'm sure. There aren't but so many women on the reservoir."