Рита Браун - Rest In Pieces

“What would I have done?” Orlando asked.

“He wasn’t sure. Remember, his whole life, the plan of many years, was jeopardized when the real Fitz showed up. Ben Seifert used the event to extort more money out of him. He was getting nervous. What if you noticed something, which, unlikely as it may have seemed to you, was not unlikely to him? You knew him before he was Fitz-Gilbert. The impossible was becoming possible,” Cynthia pointed out. “And it turned out you did cause trouble. You recognized the face in the photograph. The face that must have cost a fortune in plastic surgery.”

“What about the earring?” Carol was curious.

“We’ll never really know,” Harry answered. “But I remember Little Marilyn saying that she thought it must have popped off when she took her sweater off in the car, the Range Rover. Tommy had the body in a plastic bag on the front floor, and the sharp part of the earring, the part that pierces one’s ear, probably got stuck on the bag or in a fold of the bag. Given his hurry he didn’t notice. All we do know is that Little Marilyn’s earring showed up in a possum’s nest miles away from where she last remembered wearing it, and there’s no way the animal would have traveled the four miles to her place.”

“Does Little Marilyn know?” Mrs. Hogendobber felt sympathy for the woman.

“She does,” Cynthia told her. “She still doesn’t believe it. Mim does, of course, but then she’ll believe bad about anybody.”

This made everyone laugh.

“Did anyone in this room have a clue that it might be Fitz?” Mrs. Hogendobber asked. “Tommy. I can’t get used to calling him Tommy. I certainly didn’t.”

Neither had anyone else.

“He was brilliant in his way.” Orlando opened a delicate biscuit to butter it. “He knew very early that people respond to surfaces, just as he said. Once he realized that Fitz was losing it, he concocted a diabolically clever yet simple plan to become Fitz. When he showed up at Princeton as a freshman, he was Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. He was more Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton than Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. I remember when I left for Yale my brother said that now I could become a new person if I wanted to. It was a new beginning. In Tommy’s case that was literal.”

Blair took that in, then said, “I don’t believe he ever thought he would have to kill anyone. I just don’t.”

“Not then,” Cynthia said.

“Money changes people.” Carol stated the obvious, except that to many the obvious is overlooked. “He’d become habituated to power, to material pleasures, and he loved Little Marilyn.”

“Love or money,” Harry half-whispered.

“What?” Mrs. Hogendobber wanted to know everything.

“Love or money. That’s what people kill for. . . .” Harry’s voice trailed off.

“Yes, we did have that discussion once.” Mrs. Hogendobber reached for another helping of macaroni and cheese. It was sinfully tasty. “Maybe the road to Hell is paved with dollar bills.”

“If that’s the center of your life,” Blair added. “You know, I read a lot of history. I like knowing other people have been here before me. It’s a comfort. Well, anyway, Marie Antoinette and Louis the Sixteenth became better people once they fell from power, once the money was taken away. Perhaps somebody else would actually become a better person if he or she did have money. I don’t know.”

The Reverend considered this. “I suppose some wealthy people become philanthropists, but it’s usually at the end of their lives when Heaven has not been secured as the next address.”

As the group debated and wondered about this detail or that glimpse of the man they knew as Fitz, Harry got up and put on her parka. “You all, I’ll be back in a minute. I forgot to feed the possum.”

“In another life you were Noah,” Herbie chuckled.

Mrs. Hogendobber cast the Lutheran minister a reproving glare. “Now, Reverend, you don’t believe in past lives, do you?”

Before that subject could flare up, Harry was out the back door, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker tagging along. Pewter elected to stay in the kitchen.

She slid back the barn doors just enough for her to squeeze through to switch on the lights. It was hard to believe that a few hours ago she nearly met her death in this barn, the place that always made her happy.

She shook her head as if to clear the cobwebs. Mostly she wanted to reassure herself she was alive. Mrs. Murphy led the way, and Harry crawled up the ladder, Tucker under her arm, and handed the food to Simon, who was subdued.

Mrs. Murphy rubbed against the little fellow. “You done good, Simon.”

“Mrs. Murphy, that was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. There’s something wrong with people.”

“Some of them,” the cat replied.

Harry watched the two animals and wondered at their capacity to communicate and she wondered, too, at how little we really know of the animal world. We’re so busy trying to break them, train them, get them to do our bidding, how can we truly know them? Did the masters on the plantation ever know the slaves, and does a man ever know his wife if he thinks of himself as superior—or vice versa? She sat in the hay, breathing in the scent, and a wave of such gratitude flushed through her body. She didn’t know much but she was glad to be alive.

Mrs. Murphy crawled in her lap and purred. Tucker, solemnly, leaned against Harry’s side.

The cat craned her head upward and called, “Thanks.”

The owl hooted back, “Forget it.”

Tucker observed, “I thought you didn’t like humans.”

“Don’t. I happen to like the blacksnake less than I like humans.” She spread her wings in triumph and laughed.

The cat laughed with her. “You like Harry—admit it.”

“I’ll never tell.” The owl lifted off her perch in the cupola and swept down right in front of Harry, startling her. Then she gained loft and flew out the large fan opening at the end of the barn. A night’s hunting awaited her, at least until the storm broke.

Harry backed down the ladder, Tucker under her arm. Harry stood in the center of the aisle for a moment. “I’ll never know what got into you two,” she addressed the horses, “but I’m awfully glad. Thank you.”

They looked back with their gentle brown eyes. Tomahawk stayed in one corner of his stall while Gin, sociable, hung her head over the Dutch door.

“And Mrs. Murphy, I still don’t know how the blacksnake came flying out of the loft, followed by you. I guess I’ll never know. I guess I won’t know a lot of things.”

“Put her back up in her place,” Mrs. Murphy suggested, “or she’ll freeze to death.”

“She doesn’t know what you’re talking about.” Tucker scratched at Tomahawk’s stall door and whined. “Is this the one she hid in?” the dog asked the cat.

“Under the shavings in there somewhere.” The tiger’s whiskers swept forward as she joined Tucker in clawing at the door.