Рита Браун - Pay Dirt

"You know, I had hoped it wasn't her." Cynthia softly closed the trunk lid.

"Me too." Susan sadly agreed.

"It looks bad, but—" Harry lost her voice in the heat, then regained it. "But she'll get a fair trial. We can't convict her over a motorcycle helmet."

"I can tell you, the Commonwealth's Attorney will sure try," Cynthia said.

Susan patted Harry's shoulder. "It's hard to accept."

They climbed down the ladder, Mrs. Murphy first, and filled in the expectant Mrs. Hogendobber.

" Well?"Tucker inquired.

" Motorcyclegear in the trunk . "The cat, dejected, licked Tucker's ear. Grooming Tucker or even Harry made her feel useful if not better.

"Oh, dear" was all Mrs. Hogendobber could say.

Pewter clambered down to join them. " Kerry's going to be stamping out license plates ."

41

Norman Cramer's funeral was as subdued as Hogan Freely's was grand. Aysha, disconsolate, had to be propped up by her mother, immaculate in black linen. Ottoline couldn't bear Aysha's grief, but as she and her daughter were the center of attention, she appeared as noble as she knew how. Although part of it was an act, part of it wasn't, for Ottoline lived for and through her daughter.

The residents of Crozet, stunned at this last murder, sat motionless in the pews. Laura Freely wasn't there, which was proper, as she was in deep mourning. Reverend Jones spared everyone the fluff about how death releases one to the kingdom of glory. Right now no one wanted to hear that. They wanted Kerry McCray tried and sentenced. If hanging were still in the penal code, they'd have demanded to see her swing. Even those who at first gave her the benefit of the doubt were swayed by the money in her account, and the motorcycle gear in her attic.

Mrs. Hogendobber constantly told people the courts decide, not public opinion. No one listened. Susan, as Ned's wife, was particularly circumspect. Harry said little. She couldn't shake the feeling that the other shoe hadn't yet dropped.

She sat in the fourth pew in the front right side of the church, the pews being assigned on the basis of when your family had arrived in Albemarle County. The Minors settled here over two centuries ago. In fact, one of the Minors founded Crozet's Lutheran church and was buried in the old graveyard behind it. The Hepworths, her mother's family, were Church of England, and they held down their own front-line pew in the Tidewater.

She sat there even when the service ended and the congregation filed out. She scrutinized their faces in an unobtrusive way. Harry scanned for answers. Anyone could be in on this. She imagined each person killing the biker, then Hogan, and finally Norman. What kind of person could do that? Then she imagined Kerry's face. Could she kill?

Probably anyone could kill to defend oneself or one's family or friends, but premeditated murder, cold-blooded murder? No. She could so easily picture Kerry bursting into fury and killing Norman or Aysha, but she couldn't imagine her tracking him down or hiding in the back seat of his car, popping up, asking him to pull over, and then choking the life out of him with a rope. It didn't fit.

She walked outside. The overcast sky promised rain but had yet to deliver. Blair and Fair were waiting for her.

"You two a team or something?"

"We thought we might go to the cemetery together. It will keep us from squabbling, now, won't it?" Fair shrugged his shoulders.

"Are you two up to something?"

"What a distrustful thing to say," Blair mildly replied. "Yes, we're up to being gendemen. I think we both are ashamed of how we acted at Mim's. We've decided to present a united front in public and spare you further embarrassment."

"Remarkable." Harry dully got in the car.

42

Labor Day marked the end of summer. The usual round of barbecues, parties, tubing down the James River, golf tournaments, and last-minute school shopping crammed the weekend.

Over two weeks had passed since Norman was strangled. Kerry McCray, her defense in the hands of Ned Tucker, was freed on $100,000 bail, raised by her much older brother, Kyle, who lived in Colorado Springs. He was shocked when informed of events, but he stuck by his sister. Kerry, ordered by Ned to keep her mouth shut, did just that. Kyle took a leave of absence from his job to stay with her. He feared Kerry would be badly treated. He swore on a month of Sundays that the motorcycle gear was his. When it came back from the lab, no blood or powder burns had been found on it. Most people said he was lying to save his sister's skin, ignoring the fact that in the early seventies he'd had a motorcycle.

The sun set earlier each day, and Harry, much as she loved the soft light of fall and winter, found the shorter days hectic. So often she woke up in the dark and came home in the dark. She had to do her farm chores no matter what.

Fair and Blair took polite turns asking her out. Sometimes it was too much attention. Mrs. Hogendobber told her to enjoy every minute of it.

Cynthia Cooper and Rick Shaw relaxed a little bit. Cynthia hinted that as soon as schedules could be coordinated, they had a person who could sink Kerry's ship.

Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and even Pewter racked their brains to think if there was a missing link, but no one could find it. Even if the humans could have understood the truth about scent, which never falters—one's scent is one's scent—and even if they could have understood that Kerry's scent was not on the murder weapon, chances were they would have discounted it. Humans tend to validate only those senses they perceive. They ignore any other species' reality, and, worse, they blot out any conflicting evidence. Humans need to feel safe. The two cats and dog were far wiser on that score. No one is ever safe. So why not live as much as you can?

The avalanche of mail at the post office on Tuesday following the holiday astonished Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber.

"Fall catalogues," Harry moaned. "After a while they get heavy."

Little Marilyn walked through the front door and up to the counter. "You must hate holidays."

"Nah." Harry shook her head. "It's these catalogues."

"You know what I've been doing?" She put her purse on the counter. "I've been rereading the letters Kerry and Aysha and I sent to one another when we were abroad and the letters Aysha sent to me when I returned home. I can't find anything unbalanced in Kerry's letters. It's what you would expect of two young women right out of college. We wrote about where we went, what we read, who we met, and who we were dating. I guess I've been searching for some kind of answer to how someone I've known so long could be a murderer." She rested her head on her hand. "No answers. Of course, I still have a shoebox left. Maybe there will be something in there."

"Would you mind if I read them too?"

"Harry, that's private correspondence." Miranda frowned.

"That's why I'm asking. Marilyn can always say no."

"I'd be happy for you to read them. Maybe you'll catch something I've missed. You know how the keys you're looking for are always the ones right under your nose. You wanted to see the stamps anyway."

"In that case, would you mind if I joined you?" Mrs. Hogendobber invited herself, and, naturally, Little Marilyn said she wouldn't mind at all.

Two cups of coffee and a slice each of Mrs. Hogendobber's cherry pie later, the ladies sat in Little Marilyn's living room surrounded by shoeboxes. Mrs. Murphy squeezed herself into one where she slept. Tucker, head on her paws, dozed on the cool slate hearth.

"See, nothing special."

"Except that everyone expresses themselves well."

Harry added, "My favorite was the letter where Aysha said you should lend her a thousand dollars because you have it to lend."