Рита Браун - Claws And Effect

"You can make that decision later," Miranda wisely counseled.

Mim glanced over her shoulder at the fallen man. "I loved him. I don't care who knows it. I loved him. He was the only man I ever truly loved, and I threw him aside. For what?"

"Those were different times. We did what we were told." Miranda tugged.

Mim turned to Cynthia. "I don't know if you know what love is but I did. If you do fall in love, don't lose it. Don't lose it because someone tells you he isn't a suitable husband."

"I won't, Mrs. Sanburne." Coop asked Miranda, "What car?"

"Hers. I'll drive. Ask Harry to bring my car home later."

"Yes." Coop helped fold Mim into the passenger seat. Her eyes were glassy. She looked ahead without seeing.

Miranda turned on the ignition, found the seat controls, moved the seat back, then reached over to grasp Mim's left hand. "It's going to be a long, long night, honey. I don't know how to use that thing." She indicated the built-in telephone. "But if you call Jim or Marilyn, I'll tell them we're having a slumber party. Just leave it to me."

Wordlessly, Mim dialed her home number, handing the phone to Miranda.

As they drove back down the drive, they passed the coroner driving in.

Tucker, nose to the ground, sniffed around the body. Rick noticed and shooed her away. The cats climbed into the two-horse trailer tack room.

Although the night was dark they could see well enough. No spent shells glittered on the floor of the trailer. A plastic bucket, red, with a rag and a brush in it sat on the floor of the small tack room. The dirty bridle still hung on the tack hook, a bar of glycerin soap on the floor.

"Guess he was going to clean his bridle and saddle before going home," Pewter speculated.

"I don't smell anything but the horse and Larry. No other human was in here." Mrs. Murphy spoke low. "Although Tucker is better at this than we are."

Tucker, chased off again by Rick, hopped into the tack room. "Nothing."

"Check in here," Pewter requested.

With diligence and speed, the corgi moved through the trailer. "Nothing."

"That's what we thought, too." Mrs. Murphy jumped out of the open tack room door, breaking into a run away from the parking lot and the barns.

"Where's she going?" Tucker's ears stood straight up.

Pewter hesitated for a second. "We'd better find out."

Harry didn't notice her pets streaking across the paddock. She and Susan walked over to Larry's body.

"I'll kill whoever did this!" Harry started crying.

"I didn't hear that." Rick sighed, for he, too, admired the older man.

"He brought me into this world." Susan cried, too. "Of all people, why Larry?"

"He got too close." Coop, not one to usually express an opinion unsolicited, buttoned up her coat.

"This is my fault." A wave of sickening guilt washed over the sheriff. "I asked him to keep his eyes and ears open at the hospital and he did. He sure did."

"If only we knew. Boss, he kind of said something at Harry's breakfast today. He'd had a little bit to drink, a little loud. He said-" She thought a moment to try and accurately quote him. "'Yes,' he said, 'I'll catch up with you tomorrow.'"

"Who heard him?" Rick was glad when Tom Yancy pulled up. He trusted the coroner absolutely.

"Everyone," Harry answered for her. "It wasn't like he had a big secret. He didn't say it that way. He was happy, just-happy and flushed."

"Harry, I want a list of everyone who was at your breakfast this morning," Rick ordered.

"Yes, sir."

"Go sit in the car to get warm and write it out. Susan, help her. A sharp pencil is better than a long memory." He pointed toward Susan's station wagon.

The two women walked back to Susan's vehicle as Tom Yancy bent down over the body. He, too, was upset but he was professional. His old friend Dr. Larry Johnson would have expected nothing less of him.

Mrs. Murphy stopped on a medium-sized hill about a quarter of a mile from the barn.

"What?" Tucker, whose eyes weren't as good in the dark, asked.

"Two places the killer could stand. On top of the barn. On top of this hill-or he could have been flat on his stomach."

"How do you figure that?" Pewter asked.

"Powder burns. No powder burns or Tucker would have mentioned it. He had to have been killed with a high-powered rifle. With a scope-easy."

"Shooting from here would be easier than climbing on the roof of one of the barns," Pewter suggested. "And the killer could hide his car."

The three animals stared behind them where an old farm road meandered into the woods.

"It would have been simple. Hide the car, walk to here. Wait for your chance. Someone who knew his routine." Tucker appreciated Mrs. Murphy's logic.

"Yeah. And it's hunting season. People carry rifles, handguns. There's nothing unusual about that." Pewter ruffled her fur. She wasn't a kitty who enjoyed the cold.

"We'd better go back before Harry starts worrying." Mrs. Murphy lifted her head to the sky. The stars shone icy bright as they only do in the winter. "Whoever this guy is, he's able to move quickly. He was at the breakfast. He heard Larry. I guarantee that."

"Do you think it's the same person who hit Mother over the head?" Pewter asked.

"Could be." Mrs. Murphy loped down the hill.

"That doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling." Tucker felt a sinking pit in her stomach.

26

The fire crackled in Miranda's fireplace, the Napoleon clock on the mantel ticked in counter rhythm to the flames. Mim reclined on the sofa, an afghan Miranda had knitted decades ago wrapped over her legs. A cup of hot cocoa steamed on the coffee table. Miranda sat in an overstuffed chair across from Mim.

"I hope he didn't suffer."

"I don't think he did." Miranda sipped from her big cup of cocoa. She enjoyed cocoa at night or warm milk and hoped the substance might soothe her friend a little bit.

"Miranda, I've been a fool." Mim's lovely features contracted in pain.

Mim could pass for a woman in her middle forties and often did. Rich, she could afford every possible procedure to ensure that beauty. She'd grown distant and haughty with the years. She was always imperious, even as a child. Giving orders was the breath of life to Mim. She had to be in the center of everything and those who knew and loved her accepted it. Others loathed it. The people jockeying for power in their groups, the developer ready to rip through the countryside, the errant politician, promising one thing and delivering another or nothing, Mim was anathema to them.

Her relationship with her daughter alternated between adversarial and cordial, depending on the day, for Mim was not an effusive mother. Her relationship with her son, married and living in New York City, had transformed from adulation to fury to coldness to gradual acceptance of him. The fury erupted because he married an African-American model and that just wasn't done by people of Mim's generation. But Stafford displayed that independence of spirit exhibited and prized by his mother. Over time and with the help of Mary Minor Haristeen, a friend to Stafford, Mim confronted her own racism and laid it to rest.