Рита Браун - The Tail Of The Tip-Off

"Herb, I'm thinking about hiring Ned Tucker. Fred hasn't exactly slandered me or libeled me but I think his behavior is pretty damned close to harassment."

"Ned would know."

Both men sat quietly for a moment, all outside sounds muffled in the falling snow.

"Dropped by Anne's on the way over. She's holding up. Cameron cries, she said. She's realizing Daddy isn't coming home from a business trip. It takes a while to sink in and I guess it hits pretty hard when you're a sixth-grader."

"Anne's been through a lot," Herb simply said.

"She's well off. He took care of that. That's some comfort or at least it will be down the road." Matthew folded his hands together. "I've been wrestling with my conscience. I bet you hear that a lot."

"In one form or another."

"You see, Herb, I'm pretty sure I know who H.H. was sleeping with and I can't prove it, but, well, I'm pretty sure. I usually knew who he was sleeping with on the side. He wasn't always as discreet as he might have been. He's damned lucky his wife always looked the other way."

"I see. That would certainly put a new shading on events."

"I suppose I should go to Sheriff Shaw but I don't have definitive proof and I feel, well, not quite right if I don't have it cold. Hearsay."

"He's accustomed to unsubstantiated leads."

"Yes, I guess he is." Matthew downed his second glass of port. "I hate this."

"The snow?"

"The way I feel."

"Ah."

"Aren't you going to ask me?"

"No."

Matthew unfolded his hands then folded them again. "I see I can't abdicate my responsibility for a minute. You aren't going to worm the name out of me so I can feel relieved."

"Right."

Matthew stood up, walked over and tossed another log in the fire. He turned. "Mychelle Burns. For the longest time I thought it was Tazio Chappars. She's elegant, very attractive, very bright. I could understand leaving your wife for Tazio." Matthew shook his head. "If I'd stop off at the Riverside Cafe for lunch and he'd be there, if a pretty girl walked in, H.H. had to send her a beer. He was just that kind of guy. And like I said, he didn't brag, he didn't complain about Anne, but he, well, the way I started to realize it was serious and it was Mychelle was that he pointedly did not pay any attention to her. I'll tell you I was shocked because she wasn't what I expected. If H.H. was going to jeopardize his marriage I always thought it would be for some real babe. Mychelle was attractive, don't get me wrong, but she wasn't a trophy."

"Yes, but they spoke the same language. She understood his work. Anne may have appreciated it, but Mychelle lived and breathed construction. More to it than sex when men get serious."

"His one-day separation must have put both women through hell."

"Put him through it, too."

"I guess. He'd worked hard. He would lose a big chunk of change in a divorce. Then there's the social fallout. Doesn't seem worth it."

"The price of success seems to be that you become somebody else. Maybe he didn't like himself." Herb watched the sparks from the fresh log spiral up the chimney.

Matthew returned to his chair, sitting on the arm now. "Maybe that's why I'm looking forward to Scotland this summer. I need to remember who I am. I promised Sandy we'd go for our fifteenth wedding anniversary. How was I to know I'd get the contract for the sports complex? I almost canceled the vacation. Obviously, there's a lot of money at stake, and then I thought, no, I'll take my computer. I'll stay in touch with Tazio and my foreman, who is both literate and computer literate. As you know, most of my workmen aren't proficient that way. I'm not letting my wife and kids down. And you know, if there's some huge crisis I'll get on a plane, fly home, then fly back. There are options."

"Glad to hear you say that, Matthew." Herb dabbed his mouth with one of the small linen napkins Charlotte had placed on the tray. "You haven't asked for my advice. Do you want it?"

"I do."

"Go to Rick. Tell him just what you told me. He isn't going to think you're a gossip. Two people are dead. If their murders are related, he needs whatever information he can get."

"I know that. I know that." Matthew's voice rose. "But if H.H. and Mychelle . . ." He leaned forward. "Motive. Who has the motive to kill them both? Anne."

"I understand that, but you still have an obligation to talk to the sheriff."

They heard the door open and Charlotte's voice. Then footsteps back to the room.

"Herb, Harry's here. She says she can see you some other time if you're busy."

Herb looked at Matthew.

"I'm done."

"Bring her back." Herb looked back to Matthew. "I'm glad you came."

Harry bounded into the room as both men stood up to greet her. "Hey, Big Mim says we can sled down her hill. There's enough light. Come on."

"Be dark soon." Herb looked at the clouds turning from gray to dark blue.

"Yeah, but she's going to line the hill with torches. Oh, come on. We all need to be a little spontaneous."

"Harry, you're right. Think Mim would mind if I came along? I'll call Sandy. Hey, we'll bring fried chicken. She can stop on her way out of town."

"Go on, Daddy," Cazenovia encouraged Herb.

Harry threw her arm around Herb. "Come on, Rev."

"Well-who am I to refuse a lady?"

"All right!" Harry clapped her hands.

Within half an hour they were screaming as they tobogganed down the hill. Little Mim, Blair, Fair, BoomBoom, Miranda, Tracy, Herb, Jim, Ned, Susan, Brooks, Matthew, Sandy, their children, Ted and Matt, Jr., were all there along with the redoubtable Aunt Tally who had more fun than the rest of them put together.

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker stayed in Mim's big house as they visited with her Brittany spaniel. All the animals watched the humans, their noses leaving smeary imprints on the glass.

"If we made them slide down hills in the cold and the snow, they'd say we were cruel." Pewter laughed.

As they watched, Tazio drove up, parked, and she and Brinkley got out, joining the others.

"No fair," Tucker barked.

"What, that Brinkley gets to play in the snow and you don't?" the Brittany asked.

"Yeah."

"You'd whine to be taken on the toboggan. Then you'd wiggle. They'd crash into a tree. Aunt Tally would break a leg and it would be all your fault." Pewter helpfully created a dismal scenario.

"Would not," the corgi pouted.

"Get over yourself," Pewter admonished her.

"Do you think BoomBoom wears a support bra?" Mrs. Murphy wondered.

"Well, of course she does," Pewter replied seriously.

Mrs. Murphy giggled, the Brittany guffawed, and Tucker's mood improved.

"I'd never wear a bra," the corgi declared.

"Four in a row. How awful." Pewter rolled on her back to display her tiny pink bosoms.

"Four bras. How expensive." Mrs. Murphy flopped over onto the gray kitty, she was laughing so hard.

"Tit for tat," the Brittany said, tongue in cheek.

"No, for cat," Mrs. Murphy replied and they all howled with laughter.

36

The pure silence of the snow had a calming effect on Harry, who usually couldn't sit still. "Idle hands do the Devil's work." If she heard it once in her childhood she heard it a thousand times. But occasionally one needed to be idle, to sit still and allow energy to flow back into the soul.

Chores done, Harry took a hot shower and stirred up the fire in the lovely old fireplace in the living room. Her robe, worn at the elbows, the shawl collar frayed, no longer provided as much warmth as it should. She plopped on the sofa, draped her mother's cream-colored alpaca afghan over her legs, plumped up a needlepoint pillow, opened The Masks of God by Joseph Campbell. She plucked this off a pile which contained David Chandler's The Campaigns of Napoleon, Jane Jacobs's Cities and the Wealth of Nations and G. J. Whyte-Melville's Riding Recollections. Harry's tastes encompassed just about everything except for medicine and math, although she'd soldier through the math to solve an engineering or building problem. Her mind was completely open to any and all ideas, which isn't the same as saying her ethics were. But she was willing to entertain different concepts whether they be Muslim, Buddhist, or the difference between Boswell and Gladstone. She wanted to know whatever could be known, which might explain why she couldn't bear a mystery.