Рита Браун - Murder On The Prowl

Luckily, she initiated the conversation. "Are you still working at the car wash?"

"Yes."

"Do they need help? I mean, I'd like to get a job and—" Her voice faced away.

"Jimbo always needs help. I'll ask him," Roger said firmly, now filled with a mission: to help Brooks.

Jimbo C. Anson, as wide as he was tall, owned the car wash, the local heating-fuel company, and a small asphalt plant that he had bought when the owner, Kelly Craycroft, died unexpectedly. Living proof of the capitalist vision of life, Jimbo was also a soft touch. Brooks would be certain to get that after-school job.

Brooks was surprised when she walked through the backdoor of her house that afternoon to find her mother on the phone with Roger. He'd already gotten her the job. She needed to decide whether to work after school, weekends, or both.

After Brooks profusely thanked Roger, she said she'd call him back since she needed to talk to her mother.

"I guess you do." Susan stared at her after Brooks hung up the phone.

"Mom, St. Elizabeth's is expensive. I want to make money."

"Honey, we aren't on food stamps. At least, not yet." Susan sighed, loath to admit that the few fights she ever had with Ned were over money.

"If I can pay for my clothes and stuff, that will help some."

Susan stared into those soft hazel eyes, just like Ned's. Happy as she was to hear of Brooks's willingness to be responsible, she was oddly saddened or perhaps nostalgic: her babies were growing up fast. Somehow life went by in a blur. Wasn't it just yesterday she was holding this beautiful young woman in her arms, wondering at her tiny fingers and toes?

Susan cleared her throat. "I'm proud of you." She paused. "Let's go take a look at the car wash before you make a decision."

"Great." Brooks smiled, revealing the wonders of orthodontic work.

"Yeehaw!" came a holler from outside the backdoor.

"I'm here, too," Tucker barked.

Neither Mrs. Murphy nor Pewter was going to brazenly advertise her presence.

The Tuckers' own corgi, Tee Tucker's brother, Owen Tudor, raced to the backdoor as it swung open. Their mother had died of old age that spring. It was now a one-corgi household.

"Tucker." Owen kissed his sister. He would have kissed the two cats except they deftly sidestepped his advances.

"I didn't hear your truck," Susan said.

"Dead. This time it's the carburetor." Harry sighed. "One of these years I will buy a new truck."

"And the cows will fly," Pewter added sardonically.

"Mom might win the lottery." Tucker, ever the optimist, pricked up her ears.

"Need a ride home?" Susan offered.

"I'll walk. Good for me and good for the critters."

"It's not good for me," Pewter objected instantly. "My paws are too delicate."

"You're too fat," Mrs. Murphy said bluntly.

"I have big bones."

"Pewter—" Tucker started to say something but was interrupted by Susan, who reached down to pet her.

"Why don't you all hop in the car, and we'll go to the car wash? Brooks took a job there, but I want to check it out. If you go with me, I'll feel better."

"Sure."

Everyone piled into the Audi. Mrs. Murphy enjoyed riding in cars. Pewter endured it. The two dogs loved every minute of it, but they were so low to the ground the only way they could see out the window was to sit on human laps, which were never in short supply.

They waved to Big Mim in her Bentley Turbo R, heading back toward Crozet.

Mrs. Murphy, lying down in the back window, watched the opulent and powerful machine glide by. "She's still in her Bavarian phase."

"Huh?" Tucker asked.

"Caps with pheasant feathers, boiled wool jackets. For all I know she's wearing lederhosen, or one of those long skirts that weigh a sweet ton."

"You know, if I were German, I'd be embarrassed when Americans dress like that," Pewter noted sagely.

"If I were German, I'd be embarrassed if Germans dressed like that," Owen Tudor piped up, which made the animals laugh.

"You-all are being awfully noisy," Harry chided them.

"They're just talking," Brooks protested.

"If animals could talk, do you know what they'd say?" Susan then told them: "What's to eat? Where's the food? Can I sleep with it? Okay, can I sleep on it?"

"I resent that," Mrs. Murphy growled.

"Who cares?" Pewter airily dismissed the human's gibe.

"What else can they do but joke about their betters? Low self-esteem." Owen chuckled.

"Yeah, and whoever invented that term ought to be hung at sundown." Mrs. Murphy, not one given to psychologizing, put one paw on Harry's shoulder. "In fact, the idea that a person is fully formed in childhood is absurd. Only a human could come up with that one."

"They can't help it," Tucker said.

"Well, they could certainly shut up about it," Mrs. Murphy suggested strongly.

"BoomBoom Craycroft can sure sling that crap around." Tucker didn't really dislike the woman, but then again, she didn't really like her either.

"You haven't heard the latest!" Pewter eagerly sat up by Brooks in the backseat.

"What?" The other animals leaned toward the cat.

"Heard it at Market's."

"Well!" Mrs. Murphy imperiously prodded.

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted—"

"I did not interrupt you." Tucker was testy.

Owen stepped in. "Shut up, Tucker, let her tell her story."

"Well, BoomBoom was buying little glass bottles and a mess of Q-Tips, I mean enough Q-Tips to clean all the ears in Albemarle County. So Market asks, naturally enough, what is she going to do with all this stuff. Poor guy, next thing you know she launches into an explanation about fragrance therapy. No kidding. How certain essences will create emotional states or certain smells will soothe human ailments. She must have blabbed on for forty-five minutes. I thought I would fall off the counter laughing at her."

"She's off her nut," Owen said.

"Market asked for an example." Pewter relished her tale. "She allowed as how she didn't have any essence with her but, for instance, if he felt a headache coming on, he should turn off the lights, sit in a silent room, and put a pot of water on the stove with a few drops of sage essence. It would be even better if he had a wood-burning stove. Then he could put the essence of sage in the little humidifier on top."

"Essence of bullshit," Mrs. Murphy replied sardonically.

"Will you-all be quiet? This is embarrassing. Susan will never let you in her car again," Harry complained.

"All right by me," Pewter replied saucily, which made the animals laugh again.

Brooks petted Pewter's round head. "They have their own language."

"You know, that's a frightening thought." Susan glanced at her daughter in the rearview mirror, surrounded as she was by animals. "My Owen and poor dear departed Champion Beatitude of Grace—"

"Just call her Shortstop. I hate it when Susan uses Mom's full title." Owen's eyes saddened.

"She was a champion. She won more corgi firsts than Pewter and Murphy have fleas," Tucker said.

Murphy swatted at Tucker's stump. "If you had a tail, I would chew it to bits."

"I saw you scratching."

"Tucker, that was not fleas."

"What was it then, your highness? Eczema? Psoriasis? Hives?"

"Shut up." Mrs. Murphy bopped her hard.

"That is enough!" Harry twisted around in the front passenger seat and missed them because the car reached the entrance to the brand-new car wash, and the stop threw her forward.

Roger dashed out of the small glass booth by the entrance to the car-wash corridor.

"Hi, Mrs. Tucker." He smiled broadly. "Hi, Brooks. Hi, Mrs. Haristeen . . . and everybody."

"Is Jimbo here?"

"Yes, ma'am."

A car pulled up behind them, and one behind that. Roscoe Fletcher squirmed impatiently in the second car.