Рита Браун - Claws And Effect

"Yeah," she answered back. "But why can't we create the position? If we ask for it now either as a fait accompli or charge the city council to create a referendum, it's a lot easier than waiting until November."

"Oh, ladies, all you have to do is tell Jim your idea and he'll appoint her. You know the city council will back him up. Besides, no one wants to see a knock-down-drag-out between father and daughter-not that Jim would fight, he won't. But we all know that Little Mim hasn't much chance. Your solution is a good one, Harry. Good for everybody. The day will come when Jim can't be mayor and this way we'd have a smooth transition. You go talk to Jim Sanburne," Miranda encouraged her.

"Maybe I should talk to Mim first." Harry drained her teacup.

"There is that," Susan said, "but then Jim hears it first from his wife. Better to go to him first since he is the elected official and on the same day call on her. She can't be but so mad."

"You're right." Harry looked determined, scribbling the idea on her napkin.

The phone rang. They sat for a moment.

"I'll get it." Mrs. Murphy jumped onto the counter, knocking the wall phone receiver off the hook.

"Her latest trick." Harry smiled, got up, and picked up the phone. "Hello." She paused. "Coop, I can't believe it." She paused again. "All right. Thanks." She turned to her friends, her face drained white. "Larry Johnson has been shot."

"Oh my God." Miranda's hands flew to her face. "Is he-?" She couldn't say the word.

25

The revolving blue light from Rick's squad car cast a sad glow over the scene. Cynthia stood with him behind the three barns at Twisted Creek Stables. The parking lot for trailers and vans was placed behind the barns, out of sight. Those renting stalls could use the space for their rigs.

Larry Johnson, who lived in town, boarded his horse here. He'd always boarded horses, declaring he wasn't a farm boy and he wasn't going to start now. He'd boarded his horses ever since he started his practice after the war.

Facedown in the grass, one bullet in his back, another having taken off part of the back of his skull, he'd been dead for hours. How long was hard to say, since the mercury was plummeting. He was frozen stiff.

He would have lain there all night if Krystal Norton, a barn worker, hadn't come to the back barn to bring up extra feed. She thought she heard a motor running behind the barn, walked outside, and sure enough, Larry's truck was parked, engine still humming. She didn't notice him until she was halfway to the truck to cut the motor.

"Krystal," Cynthia sympathetically questioned, "what's the routine? What would Larry have done after the hunt breakfast?"

"He would drive to the first barn, unload his horse, put him in his stall, and then drive back here, unhitch his trailer, and drive home in his truck."

"And he'd unloaded his horse?"

"Yes." Krystal wiped her runny nose; she'd been sobbing both from shock and because she loved Dr. Johnson. Everybody did.

"Nobody noticed that he hadn't pulled out?" Cynthia led Krystal a few steps away from the body.

"No. We're all pretty busy. There's people coming and going out of this hack barn all the time." She used the term "hack barn," which meant a boarders' barn.

"You didn't hear a pop?"

"No."

"Sometimes gunfire sounds like a pop. It's not quite like the movies." Coop noticed a pair of headlights swerving into the long driveway and hoped it was the whiz kids, as she called the fingerprint man, the photographer, and the coroner.

"We crank up the radio." Krystal hung her head, then looked at the deputy. "How can something like this happen?"

"I don't know but it's my job to find out. How long have you worked here?"

"Two years."

"Krystal, go on back to the barn. We'll tell you when you can go home but there's no need to stand out here in the cold. This has been awful and I'm sorry."

"Is there some-some deranged weirdo on the loose?"

"No," Cynthia replied with authority. "What there is is a cold-blooded killer who's protecting something, but I don't know what. This isn't a crime of passion. It's not a sex crime or theft. I don't believe you are in danger. If you get worried though, you call me."

"Okay." Krystal wiped her nose again as she walked back into the barn.

The headlights belonged to Mim Sanburne's big-ass Bentley. She slammed the door and sprinted over to Larry Johnson. She knelt down to take him up in her arms.

The sheriff, gently but firmly, grabbed her by the shoulders. "Don't touch him, Mrs. Sanburne. You might destroy evidence."

"Oh God." Mim sank to her knees, putting her head in her hands. She knelt next to the body, saw the piece of skull missing, the hole in his back.

Rick motioned Coop to come on over fast.

Cynthia's long legs covered the distance between the barn and the parking lot quickly. She knelt down next to Mim. "Miz Sanburne, let me take you back to your car."

"No. No. I want to stay with him until they take him away."

Another pair of headlights snaked down the driveway. Miranda Hogendobber stepped out of her Ford Falcon, which still ran like a top. Behind her in Susan's Audi station wagon came Susan, Harry, and the two cats and dog.

Rick squinted into the light. "Damn."

Coop, voice low, whispered, "They can help." She tilted her head toward Mim.

"Help with what?" Mim cried. "He's gone! The best man God ever put on this earth is gone."

Miranda hurried over, acknowledged Rick, and then knelt down next to Mim. She shuddered when she saw Larry's frozen body. "Mim, I'm going to take you to my place."

"I can't leave him. I left him once, you know."

Miranda did know. Friends since birth, they shared the secrets of their generation, secrets hardly suspected by their children or younger friends who always thought the world began with their arrival.

Taking a deep breath, Miranda put her cheek next to Mim's. "You did what you had to do, Mimsy. And your mother would have killed you."

"I was a coward!" Mim screamed so loud she scared everyone.

Susan and Harry hung back. They wouldn't come forward until Miranda got Mim out of there.

"Make a wide circle so the humans don't notice," Mrs. Murphy told Pewter and Tucker. "We need to inspect the body before other humans muck it up."

"I'm not big on dead bodies." Pewter turned up her nose.

"It's not like he's been moldering out here for days," Murphy snapped. "Follow me."

The three animals walked in a semicircle, reaching the back of the two-horse trailer. They scrunched under the trailer, wriggling out by the body but careful not to move too quickly.

"Come on, Mim, you can't stay here. This can't get in the papers. I'll take care of you." Miranda struggled to lift up Mim, who was dead weight even though she was elegant and thin. Coop gently held Mim's right arm, pulling her up along with Miranda's efforts.

"I don't care. I don't care who knows."