Cat on the Scent (4 page)

“He's hardly my best friend.” Archie cleared his throat. “What are you implying?”

“Gentlemen, Van Allen's books are open. I have known him all my life.” Jim Sanburne wanted to get this meeting over with.

“Means you've known Archie all his life, too. You have my sympathy,” Vane-Tempest catcalled, tired of Archie's oversensitivity. A few people laughed. Sarah elbowed her husband to stop.

“You know, if I weren't an elected official, I'd smash your face in.” Archie clenched his fists, surprising people. He had a temper but he was taking offense where only leavening humor was intended.

“That's quite enough.” Mim rose, facing the gathering. “We need more information. If we ask the state for another study it will be at their convenience and our expense. We are perfectly capable of identifying water sources ourselves. Once we have done that we can formulate our own plan and then present that plan to the state—a preemptive strike, if you will. Archie and Donald, you take the Keswick-Cismont area.”

“Wait a minute. We have to vote on this.” Archie's face changed from red to pale white.

“Call to question,” Miranda said.

“There's no motion on the floor,” Jim said.

“I move that the county commissioners identify all possible water sources in Albemarle County before our next meeting.” BoomBoom succinctly put forth the motion.

“I second the motion,” Vane-Tempest said.

“Call to question,” Miranda repeated.

“All those in favor say aye.” Jim cast his gaze over the room.

“Aye,” came the resounding reply.

“Opposed.”

“Me,” Archie said. “I've got enough work to do.”

“If you want to be reelected to the county commission you'd better change your attitude,” Mim warned. Coming from her it was no idle threat.

As the meeting broke up, BoomBoom pushed her way to the back. “Harry, don't forget you're going to Lifeline with me Thursday night.”

“I know.” Harry showed no enthusiasm.

“Eight at the church.”

“Eight.”

“Ha-ha,”
Mrs. Murphy giggled.
“BoomBoom's got her.”

“She promised. Poor Mom. She got caught on that one.”
Tucker thought it was funny, too, for Lifeline was a group that looked inward, a spiritual awakening larded with lots of psychobabble. Harry was going to hate every minute, but she'd been horn-swoggled into it in front of her friends last fall and now that a new cycle of Lifeline was starting, she had to make good on her promise.

Miranda bustled out, surrounded by her church friends. They sang in the choir at the Church of the Holy Light. “See you tomorrow, Harry.”

“Bright and early.” Harry smiled.

Fair caught up to her and leaned down. “Do you think someone has paid Archie off to be so obstructionist? It doesn't make sense. He's so touchy.”

“He's opposed to anything that will allow more people to move into the area. A reservoir would do that. At least, I think that's what's going on. He's saying one thing but doing another.”

Fair smiled at his ex-wife's shrewd observation, but wondered what had happened to Archie Ingram, never the most likeable man but always a principled one.

BoomBoom, her back to Harry, was talking to Blair about his Porsche.

Sir H. Vane-Tempest and Sarah hurried by, glancing over their shoulders. Archie was in slow pursuit. They escaped out the front door as Ridley Kent bagged Archie, demanding to know when the next meeting would be.

“I don't know.” Archie shoved him aside.

Don Jackson, together with Jim Sanburne, caught up with Archie. “Jesus, Arch, what's the matter with you?”

“Nothing. These studies will take forever. I'll be an old man before we come to any conclusion, and the state will do whatever they want, which would be the rape of Albemarle County, her natural resources, her extraordinary beauty, and her historical value.”

“Can't be that bad.” Jim frowned, worried for Arch, who had a promising political future if he could learn to control his temper.

“It will take forever. Christ, some of us will be pushing up daisies.” Then he stormed out the door.

“He's scared,”
Mrs. Murphy said to her friends. They could smell the fear, too.

5

Harry shot mail into the brass mailboxes as Mrs. Murphy sat on the ledge underneath the top section of boxes. The bottom section contained the big boxes, big enough for Murphy to sit in. Harry hummed to herself as Miranda played with the computer at the right side of the open counter.

As much as Miranda hated computers, the tiny post office had finally received one and Miranda had applied herself to the instructions that came with it. Being a bright woman, she had figured the machine out but she didn't like it. The green letters on the screen, a touch fuzzy, hurt her eyes.

Also, every time the power fritzed out, which happened often in the country, down went the computer. She could figure much faster with her trusty scale. No matter what the computer said she still double-checked with the scale.

Both women, early risers, came to work at seven. Usually, by the time residents opened the front door of the post office much of the mail was sorted—except during holidays. In late spring a few love letters filtered in, a few postcards from those taking early vacations, and the bills never stopped. Harry's secret ambition was to burn everyone's bills, announce she'd done it, and see what happened. The night of April 15, when lines curled across the railroad tracks as people hastened to dump their IRS forms in the mail, her ambition flamed beyond disposing of bills—she wanted to tear down every IRS building in America. She figured every other postal worker felt the same.

Low clouds and a light drizzle didn't dampen her mood. The warmth of spring brought out the best in Harry.

A squawk from the computer elicited “I know I did it right, why is it talking to me?” from Miranda.

“Zero out and try it again.”

“I don't feel like it.” Miranda, chin up, strode away from the offending machine.

A knock on the back door awakened Tee Tucker. Before she could bark, Susan Tucker, her breeder, jumped inside. She held her umbrella out the door, shook it vigorously, then closed the door, propping the umbrella to the right of it.

“Gloomy day, girls.”

“Good for my irises,” Mrs. Hogendobber, a passionate gardener, replied.

“Miranda, did you make orange buns again?” Susan sniffed the beguiling scent.

“Indeed, I did, you help yourself.”

Susan gobbled one before Miranda finished her sentence.

“Pig.” Harry laughed at her best friend.

“It's true.” Susan sighed as she licked her lips. “I might as well live up to my billing.” She ate another one.

“She'll ask for a rowing machine next Christmas,”
Mrs. Murphy remarked.

“Won't use it. No one ever uses those things,”
Tucker said.

“BoomBoom uses hers.”
Pewter opened one eye. She'd been snoozing on the chair at the small table in the rear.

“She would.”
Mrs. Murphy stuck her paw in an open mailbox.
“Don't you love the way the clear window on bills crinkles when you touch it?”

“Bite it.”
Pewter egged her on.

“Better not. Mom's still mad at you for your shameless display at the meeting last night.”
Tucker, ever obedient, chided her.

“Hee-hee.”
Mrs. Murphy's whiskers twitched forward.

Susan walked over to scratch her ear. “You were the best part of the water-commission meeting.”

“Say, wasn't Archie a pip?” Mrs. Hogendobber, beyond sixty, although she'd never admit her exact age, used slang from her generation's youth.

“Pip? He was a flaming asshole.” Harry laughed.

“Don't be vulgar, Harry. That's the trouble with you young people. Cursing betrays a paucity of imagination.”

“You're right.” Harry smiled. “How about my saying that Archie was fraught with froth.”

“A firth of froth or a froth of firth?” Susan kissed Murphy's head.

“I like that,”
Murphy purred.

“What's a firth?” Mrs. Hogendobber asked.

“I don't know. It sounded right.” Susan laughed at herself.

“To the dictionary, girls.” Miranda pointed to the old Webster's, its blue-cloth case rubbed shiny, the cardboard sticking out at the corners.

“Is there really such a word?” Harry wondered.

Miranda silently pointed to the Webster's again.

Susan sat down at the table, thumbing through. The orange buns screamed under her nose. She snatched another. “
Firth,
old Scandinavian word meaning an ‘arm of the sea.'”

“The English language is a lifelong study,” Miranda pronounced.

The Reverend Herbert Jones strode up to the big counter, the ladies on the other side. “I smell orange.”

“Come on in,” Harry lifted the divider.

He helped himself to an orange bun. Pewter ate one when no one was looking. It made the cat so full she couldn't move. The humans were surprised that Pewter wasn't begging until Miranda counted the orange buns.

“Susan, did you eat four?”

“Three.”

“Uh-huh.” Miranda sternly reproached the cat with a look.

It had no effect whatsoever.

“This whole water business worries me.” Herb licked his fingers, then found a napkin. “I don't know why Archie is behaving the way he is. He's known about the old study for years.” His voice shot upward. “The various conservation groups in the county are on top of this one. Anyway, there are more-pressing political issues.”

“Like what?”

“Like a new grade school in Greenwood.”

“Yeah, that is pretty important,” Harry agreed.

“That fop Sir H. Vane-Tempest—and if he's a knight or a lord or whatever, I'm John the Baptist—” Herb arched an eyebrow, “called me up and chewed me out for having too much brass on my foraging cap.”

“What?” The three women stared at him.

“Like a fool I agreed to be in this reenactment. Now look, girls,”—he always called them girls, and there was no point in mentioning that might not be desirable—“I'm no fanatic. I agreed to fill out the ranks. He wants me to be one hundred percent accurate, though. He says that no real soldier would have all that brass on his cap because it's just one more thing to keep clean.”

“Exactly what is on your cap?” Miranda asked.

“VA 1st—and then he said I had to wear something called a havelock—it's a piece of white canvas that buttons over the cap. He said it might be hot and a real soldier would want to keep the sun off. I told him I'd spent enough money and if I wasn't one hundred percent accurate that was too bad. He huffed and puffed. Finally I told him he wasn't an American, and far more important, he wasn't a Virginian and he shouldn't tell one born and bred how to dress. My great-granddaddy was
in
the war. His was living high on the hog in England. He sputtered some more and said nationality had nothing to do with it. This was living history.” He shook his head. “Obviously, the man has nothing better to do with his life.”

“What about Ned?” Harry turned to Susan. “Is he getting obsessive?”

“He started out like the Rev.” She smiled at Herb when she said that. “Now he's really into it. Why do you think I'm getting involved?”

“That settles it. I'm going.”
Mrs. Murphy spoke from the depths of the mail cart.

“Fat chance,”
Tucker replied.

“I am too going and I'll tell you why, midget fatso.”

“I'm not fat.”

“You're so low to the ground, how can I tell?”
The tiger cackled.
“I'm going because there were Confederate cats. They were vital to the war effort. We kept mice out of the grain supplies.”

“What about Union cats?”
Pewter, a glorious Confederate gray, said.

“We don't mention them.”

“What are you all talking about?” Susan, sensitive to animals, asked them.

“The reenactment,”
came the reply.

“You know Blair Bainbridge bought everything authentic, not reproductions but real stuff. Must have cost him a fortune,” Herb mused.

“I'd kill for his Porsche.” Harry's eyes clouded over.

“You'd have to.” Susan poked at her. “You can't even afford a new truck.”

“Ain't it awful?” Harry hung her head in mock despair.

“Your ex is going as a cavalry officer. No one can find a jacket large enough for him, so he's wearing a period muslin shirt and gray pants.”

“I hope he's considered the small fact that most of our horses aren't accustomed to continuous gunfire and cannon fire.”

“He mentioned that.” Herb folded his arms across his chest so he wouldn't reach out and grab another orange bun. He was on yet another diet and he'd cheated already.

“I have mixed emotions about Civil War reenactments. I think we're glorifying violence,” Harry said. “I can't help it, I think there's a nasty reactionary undertow to all this.”

“Never thought about it.” Susan wrinkled her brow. “I figured it was what they said, living history. Besides, Ned gets dragged to so many things with me, I have to go along with this.”

“Well, if it's living history, then why aren't we reliving inventing the reaper or the cotton gin? Why are we instead reliving the most horrible thing that's ever happened to this country? Sixty percent of the War Between the States was fought on Virginia soil. You'd think we, of all the people, would have the sense not to glorify it.”

“Maybe it's not over.” Herb stared at the ceiling.

“He hit the nail on the head.”
Mrs. Murphy played with her tail.

6

Later that afternoon the clouds grew darker still.

Deputy Cooper walked through the back door. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Harry answered.

“Where's Miranda?”

“Ran home for a minute.” Harry pointed to a chair. “Sit down.”

“Have you seen Tommy Van Allen?”

“No.”

The two cats, dozing in the canvas mail cart, woke up, sticking their heads over the top.

“He's been missing for two days—two days that we know of—and his plane is missing, too.”

Mrs. Murphy put her paws on the edge of the cart, with rapt attention.

“Cynthia, how could his plane be missing for two days and the airport not realize it?”

“They thought the plane was in Hangar C, the last hangar for repairs. Apparently Tommy had scheduled a maintenance check for Monday morning.”

“How could the plane take off and not return without anyone noticing?”

“I wondered about that myself. The airport closes at midnight. He could have gone off then, and he
is
in the habit of staying a night or two at his destination. Still, it's odd.”

“I know where the plane is!”
Mrs. Murphy shouted.

“Quiet.” Harry shook her finger.

The cat jumped out of the cart and bounded into Cynthia's lap.
“I don't know where Tommy is but I know where the plane is.”

“She's affectionate.” Cynthia scratched her ears.

“Don't waste your breath,”
Pewter advised Mrs. Murphy.

“Do you really know where the plane is?”
Tucker asked.

“Tally Urquhart's old barn. I'll take you there.”

Rain rattled on the windowpane.

Pewter settled back down in the mail cart.
“Wait for a sunny day.”

Mrs. Murphy jumped off Cynthia's lap back into the mail cart, where she rolled over Pewter.
“You don't believe me.”

“I don't care.”

“Sunday night when I came to bed wet—that's when I saw the plane.”
She swatted the inattentive Pewter.

“Temper tantrum.” Harry rose and separated them.

“Has anyone picked up Tommy's mail?” Cooper asked.

“His secretary.” Harry held Mrs. Murphy on her shoulder.

Miranda came through the back door. Cynthia asked her about Tommy.

“He'll show up. It's hard to hide a six-foot-five-inch man,” Miranda advised. “He's done this before.”

“He stopped drinking,” Harry reminded her.

“Maybe he slipped off the wagon.” Miranda frowned.

“I know where the plane is!”
the cat bellowed.

“God, Murphy, you'll split my eardrum.” Harry placed her on the floor.