Рита Браун - Probable Claws

“You might be right but I wouldn’t want to test those waters,” Harry quietly replied.

“Why not?” Raynell wondered.

“There’s a dead man in that ground. Who knows why. If the authorities find out maybe it means those big companies played hardball then and they would now.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Raynell blurted out. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just big companies are so powerful why bother to kill? Anyway, it’s just a skull.”

“For now.” Felipe folded his arms across his chest.

“Buy a Times-Dispatch, ” Lisa counseled.

As Raynell turned to go back to her office, a small spider dashed across the floor. “Lisa, we need Orkin!”

“Why?”

“A spider.”

“Raynell, if I called Orkin every time I saw a spider or a stinkbug, I’d blow our budget.”

Raynell grimaced, did not reply, headed to her office as Lisa shook her head. “Really. Would blow the budget.”

“That would be interesting on the annual budget: spiders, stinkbugs, water bugs.” Harry looked down at her buddies. “Come on, freeloaders. See you, Lisa.”

The four left Nature First, walked down the hall to Over the Moon.

Harry pulled open the door. “How can you keep your floors clean with all the snow outside?”

Anne de Vault pointed to a mop leaning beside the door just a bit out of sight. “Woman power.”

“Keep you in shape but then you always are.” Harry walked up to the sales counter, cats and Tucker in tow.

Anne might once in her life have carried one extra pound but that would be it. Willowy or lean, depending on your vocabulary, would best describe her.

“You’re too kind. I have a wonderful book by Harold Evans, Do I Make Myself Clear? Put it on your pile?”

“Sure.” Harry could rarely resist a good book. “Have you seen the work at Nature First?”

Anne nodded. “Lisa Roudabush pops in every day to say hi, look at what’s new.”

Another customer, a woman in her twenties, knelt to pull a book off a shelf.

“I suggested that Lisa visit Sandy McAdams at Daedalus. He would have vintage books, some hand bound, to augment her research at his used bookstore. Not only can he find you anything, he remembers everything. Everything. Knocks me out.”

“He is a wonder,” Harry agreed. “So no new books on fashion or biography? I loved the one on LouLou de la Falaise. Boy that was expensive, too.”

“Big book. Anytime a book is oversize it’s more money, plus the paper was very high grade. Lisa sticks to environmental books, animal books. What you would expect. She’d never buy a fashion book. Most of what I sell or anyone sells today is cheap paper, by the way, thermographed. Awful, really, but cheap.” Anne returned to a favorite theme, cheapness of things.

“Doesn’t hold up.”

“Doesn’t hold up because Tucker chews it,” Pewter tattled.

“I don’t know if spiders poop, but I hope the teacup spider poops on you!” She bared her teeth.

“Will you two stop?” Harry glared, then returned to Anne. “They were noisy at Nature First.”

“Harry, they’re usually noisy. Forgot. Lisa loves books about dinosaurs. She’s like a kid.”

“Well, I recall she had some in her pile just after Christmas. I thought maybe I’d get her a book. I love to give books.”

Anne advised, “Even if someone receives a book about something different, not a special interest, I think it feeds their curiosity.”

“That’s a good idea. Let me get that book, paperback, about Von Humboldt. Susan will be intrigued.”

“Bottom left shelf.”

Harry, Tucker with her, found the book. The cats sat behind the counter.

“Did you ever see Jurassic Park ?” Harry asked. “Given Gary’s collection of tiny rubber dinosaurs, Lisa’s interest, maybe we should watch it again.”

“No,” Anne emphatically said. “Those little raptor dinosaurs in the kitchen were horrible.”

“Made me want to keep the lights on,” Harry agreed.

“Not a bad idea.” Anne nodded. “Who knows what’s out there?”

“I know Gary came in here. He’d tell me what was new on the table.”

“Glad you dropped in.”

“Me, too.” Harry walked outside.

23

March 20, 1787

Tuesday

Lowering clouds, clearly seen from the huge arched panel windows in St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, promised cold, snow, or sleet. The windows, a daring design by Charles West, started at four feet off the floor, soaring to top stories, nearly to the high ceiling. The back part of the church contained a balcony. The effect was one of grandeur, soaring hope. The cost for glass proved outrageous, but it did look sensational.

The exterior of St. Luke’s, the stonework, had been finished for months now. Interior work took longer. The two-story buildings at the ends of the arched walkways from the main building echoed the main building. They would contain offices, housing for visitors, perhaps even some students of the faith. The pastor’s house, clapboard as opposed to stone, at a distance from the church itself, sent up smoke from the large fireplace in the parlor. Men continued to work in the home, finishing touches. They could work faster if warm.

The interior of the church at this moment was not warm. Given the size of the space, two enormous fireplaces proved necessary. One heated the front of the church, placed in the right corner, and one at the rear, in the left corner. The balcony also had a small fireplace, which would keep the choir and those in the balcony reasonably warm. This tapped into the main flue from the left fireplace.

The large panel windows, three sections cleverly made to look like one, could be tipped outward in hot weather. Charles sited the church for the wind flow off the Blue Ridge Mountains. Although not trained as an architect, studying the buildings in the mid-Atlantic, a few from the late-seventeenth century, gave him a freedom he would not have felt in his native England. However, living with castles, churches, abbeys, and stables, some built right after the Norman Conquest, provided a useful education. He grew up with structures made to last, and he hoped to create a church that would last long into the future of this New World.

As it was, St. Luke’s was anchored to the past with the arches recalling monks walking from the cloisters. The proportions of the church carried a hint of Norman grandeur, but the interior was quite modern.

Charles designed pews to be as comfortable as possible. They would be topped off with long cushions. Most of the carpentry work was complete. Pulling his scarf a bit tighter around his neck, he stood with Rachel, who helped sort out decisions and copy his drafts, for her hand was good. However, no one’s hand could match Charles’s. His penmanship would have put a royal clerk to shame, and he could imitate anything.

“The organ will sound heavenly.” She smiled as Frank Ix sanded down the pulpit one more time.

“Cost a fortune. The men to install will demand a high wage. Rooms will be ready for them. We will pay, for no one here can do what those Germans can do.” Charles crossed his arms across his chest. “This is not a thriving congregation, as you know. They have given so much. I have never met a group of people so united in their faith, so determined that their children should be brought up Lutheran.”

“And neither of us were.” She slipped her arm through his because she liked being close to him, but he would warm her hand even though it was gloved.

“I did as I was told. Trudged to chapel at Harrow, same at Oxford. Never really thought about it. For my father, church was another social obligation. A way to stand above, since as a baron, he would be called upon to contribute and seated in front in the family pew, which has been there since the fourteenth century.”