Claws and Effect (6 page)

10

“Oh boy.” Harry closed the post office door behind her just as Rob Collier pulled up to the front door. She hurried through and opened the front door. “Monday, Monday.”

“I've got stuff for you,” he sang out as he hauled canvas bags stuffed with mail.

“Valentine's Day. I forgot.” She grimaced as he tossed two extra bags onto the mailroom floor.

“Just think of all the love in those bags,” he joked.

“You're in a good mood.”

“I already got my Valentine's Day present this morning.”

“No sex talk, Rob, I'm too delicate.”

He grinned at her, hopped back in the big mail truck, and took off in the direction of White Hall, where a small post office awaited him.

“Think Mom got any love letters?”
Tucker tugged at one of the bags.

“I don't think she cares. She has to sort her mail the same as everybody else's,”
Murphy replied.

“Saint Valentine. There ought to be a Saint Catnip or how about a Saint Tuna?”
Pewter, having eaten a large breakfast, was already thinking about lunch at seven-thirty in the morning.
“I bet there wasn't even a real person called Valentine.”

“Yes, there was. He was a third-century martyr killed in Rome on the Flaminian Way under the reign of Claudius. There are conflicting stories but I stick to this one,”
Mrs. Murphy informed her gray friend.

“How do you know all that?”
Pewter irritatedly asked.

“Whatever Harry reads I read over her shoulder.”

“Reading bores me,”
Pewter honestly answered.
“Does it bore you, Tucker?”

“No.”

“Tucker, you can hardly read.”

“Oh yes I can.”
The corgi glared at Murphy.
“I'm not an Afghan hound, you know, obsessed with my appearance. I've learned a few things in this life. But I don't get what a murdered priest has to do with lovers. Isn't Valentine's Day about lovers?”

With a superior air, Murphy lifted the tip of her tail, delicately grooming it, and replied,
“The old belief was that birds pair off on February fourteenth and I guess since that was the day Valentine was murdered somehow that pairing became associated with him.”

“I'm sorry I'm late.” Miranda bustled through the back door. “I overslept.”

Harry, up to her elbows in mail, smiled. “You hardly ever do that.”

They had spoken Sunday about the murder of Hank Brevard and, with that shorthand peculiar to people who have known one another a long time or lived through intense experiences together, they hopped right in.

“Accident?” Miranda placed packages on the shelves, each of which had numbers and letters on them so large parcels could be easily retrieved.

“Impossible.”

“I guess I'm trying to find something—” A rap on the back door broke her train of thought.

“Who is it?” Harry called out.

“Miss Wonderful.”

“Susan.” Harry laughed as her best friend opened the door. “Help us out and make tea, will you? Rob showed up early and I haven't started a pot. What are you doing here this early, anyway?”

Susan washed out the teapot at the small sink in the rear. “Brooks' Volvo is in the shop so I dropped her at school. Danny's off on a field trip so I had to do it.” Dan, her son, would be leaving for college this fall. “I swear that Volvo Ned bought her must be the prototype. What a tank but it's safe.”

“What's the matter with it?” Miranda asked.

“I think the alternator died.” She put tea bags in three cups, then came over to help sort mail until the water boiled. “You'd think most people would have mailed out their Valentine's cards before today.”

“They did, but today”—Harry surveyed the volume of mail—“is just wild. There aren't even that many bills in here. The bills roll in here next week.”

The teakettle whistled. “Okay, girls, how do you want your tea?”

“The usual,” both called out, which meant Harry wanted hers black and Miranda wanted a teaspoon of honey and a drop of cream.

Susan brought them their cups and she drank one, too.

“Murphy, what are you looking at?”

“This Jiffy bag smells funny.”
She pushed it.

Pewter and Tucker joined her.

“Yeah.”
Pewter inhaled deeply.
“Addressed to Dr. Bruce Buxton.”

Puzzled, Tucker cocked her head to the right and then to the left.
“Dried blood. Faint but it smells like dried blood.”

The cats looked at one another and then back to Tucker, whose nose was unimpeachable.

“All right, you guys. No messing with government property.” Harry snatched the bag, read the recipient's name, then placed it on the bookshelves, because it was too large for his brass mailbox. “Ned tell you anything?” she asked Susan.

“No. Client relationship.”

Susan's husband, a trusted and good lawyer, carried many a secret. Tempted though he was at times, he never betrayed a client's thoughts or deeds to his wife.

“Is Bobby Minifee under suspicion?” Miranda put her teacup on the divider between the public space and the work space.

“No. Not really,” Susan replied.

“Anyone seen Coop?” Harry shot a load of mail into her ex-husband's mailbox.

“No. Working overtime with all this.” Susan looked on the back of a white envelope. “Why would anyone send a letter without a return address, the mail being what it is. No offense to you, Harry, or you, Miranda.”

“None taken.” Harry folded one sack, now emptied. “Maybe they get busy and forget.”

At eight on the dot, Marilyn Sanburne stood at the front door just as Miranda unlocked it.

“Good morning. Oh, Miranda, where did you get that sweater? The cranberry color compliments your complexion.”

“Knitted it myself.” The older woman smiled. “We've got so much mail—well, there's some mail in your box but you'd better check back this afternoon, too.”

“Fine.” Little Mim pulled out her brass mailbox key, opened the box, pulling out lots of mail. She quickly flipped through it, then loudly exclaimed, “A letter from Blair.”

“Great.” Harry spoke quickly because Little Mim feared Harry had designs on the handsome model herself, which she did not.

“I also wanted you ladies to be the first to know that I've rented the old brick pharmacy building and it's going to be my campaign headquarters.”

“That's a lot of space,” Harry blurted out.

“Yes.” Little Mim smiled and bid them good-bye.

They watched as she got into her car and opened Blair's letter. She was so intent upon reading it that she didn't notice her mother pull up next to her.

Mim parked, emerged well-dressed as always, and walked over to the driver's side of her daughter's car. Little Mim didn't see her mother, so Big Mim rapped on the window with her forefinger.

Startled, Little Mim rolled down the window. “Mother.”

“Daughter.”

A silence followed. Little Mim had no desire to share her letter, and she wasn't thrilled that her mother saw how engrossed she was in it.

Shrewdly, she jumped onto a subject. “Mother, I've rented the pharmacy.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Zeb Berryhill called your father and wondered if he would be upset and your father said he would not. In fact, he was rather looking forward to a challenge. So that was that.”

“Oh.” Little Mim, vaguely disappointed, slipped the letter inside her coat. She was hoping to be the talk of the town.

“It must be good.”

“Mother, I have to have some secrets.”

“Why? Nobody else in this town does,” said the woman who had secrets going back decades.

“Oh, everyone has secrets. Like the person who killed Hank Brevard.”

“M-m-m, there is that. Well, I'm off to a Piedmont Environmental Council meeting. Happy Valentine's Day.”

“You, too, Mumsy.” Little Mim smiled entirely too much.

As she drove off, Big Mim entered the post office just as Dr. Buxton pulled into the parking space vacated by her daughter. At that moment her irritation with her daughter took over the more pressing gossip of the day.

“Girls,” Mim addressed them, “I suppose you've heard of Marilyn's crackbrained plan to oppose her father.”

“Yes,” came the reply.

“Not so crackbrained,”
Pewter sassed.

Bruce walked in behind her, nodded hello to everyone, opened his box, and almost made it out the door before Miranda remembered his package. “Dr. Buxton, wait a minute. I've got a Jiffy bag for you.”

“Thanks.” He joined Mim at the divider.

She placed her elbows on the divider. “Bruce, what's going on at the hospital? The whole episode is shocking.”

“I don't know. He wasn't the most pleasant guy in the world but I don't think that leads to murder. If it did a lot more of us would be dead.” He looked Big Mim right in the eye.

“Was that your attempt at being subtle?” She bridled when people didn't properly defer to her.

“No. I'm not subtle. I'm from Missouri, remember?”

“Two points.”
Murphy jumped onto the divider, Pewter followed.

“Let me out,”
Tucker asked Harry, because she wanted to be right out there with Bruce and Mim.

“Crybaby.” Harry opened the swinging door and the corgi padded out to the public section.

“You and Truman.” Mim rapped the countertop with her long fingernails.

“Here we go.” Miranda slid the bag across the counter.

“Ah.” He squeezed the bag, examined the return address, which was his office at the hospital. “Huh,” he said to himself but out loud. He flicked up the flat red tab with his fingernail, pulling it to open the top. He shook the bag and a large bloody scalpel fell out. “What the hell!”

11

Coop placed the scalpel in a plastic bag. Rick turned his attention to Dr. Bruce Buxton, not in a good mood.

“Any ideas?”

“No.” Bruce's lower jaw jutted out as he answered the sheriff.

“Oh, come on now, Doc. You've got enemies. We've all got enemies. Someone's pointing the finger at you and saying, ‘He's the killer and here's the evidence.'”

Bruce, a good four inches taller than Rick, squared his shoulders. “I told you, I don't know anyone who would do something like this and no, I didn't kill Hank Brevard.”

“Wonder how many patients he's lost on the table?”
Pewter, ever the cynic, said.

“He probably lost more due to bedside manner than incompetence,”
Mrs. Murphy shrewdly noted.

“He's not scared. I can smell fear and he's not giving off the scent.”
Tucker sniffed at Bruce's pants leg.

“You don't have to stop. You can still sort the mail. But first tell me where you saw the bag,” the sheriff asked Harry, Miranda, and Susan, now stuck because she had dropped in to help. He had interviewed Mim first so that she could leave.

“I saw it first,”
Tucker announced.

“You did not. I did,”
Pewter contradicted the bright-eyed dog.

“They don't care. If you gave these humans a week they wouldn't understand that we first noticed something peculiar.”
Murphy flopped on her side on the shelf between the upper and lower brass mailboxes.

“I saw the bag.” Harry, feeling a chill, rolled up her turtleneck, which she had folded down originally. “Actually, Mrs. Murphy sniffed it out. Because she noticed it, I noticed it.”

“What a surprise.”
Mrs. Murphy's long silken eyebrows twitched upward.

“Look, Sheriff, I've got to be at the hospital scrubbed up in an hour.” Bruce impatiently shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“When will you be finished?” Rick ignored Bruce's air of superiority.

“Barring complications, about four.”

“I'll see you at your office at four then.”

“There's no need to make this public, is there?” Bruce's voice, oddly light for such a tall man, rose.

“No.”

“No need to tell Sam Mahanes unless it turns out to be the murder weapon and it won't.”

Coop, sensitive to inflections and nuance, heard the suppressed anger when Bruce mentioned Sam Mahanes.

“Why are you so sure that isn't the murder weapon?” she asked.

“Because I didn't kill him.”

“The scalpel could still be the murder weapon,” she persisted.

“I heard that Hank was almost decapitated. You'd need a broad, long, sharp blade for that work. Which reminds me, the story was on all the news channels and in the paper. The hospital will be overrun with reporters. Are you sure you want to see me in my office?”

Rick replied, “Yes.”

What Rick didn't say was that he wanted hospital staff to know he was calling upon Dr. Buxton. While there he would question other workers.

He couldn't be certain that the killer worked in the hospital. What he could be certain of was that the killer knew the layout of the basement.

Still, he hoped his presence might rattle some facts loose or even rattle the killer.

“Well, I'll see you at four.” Bruce left without saying good-bye.

“Harry, what are you looking at?” Rick pointed at her.

“You.”

“And?”

“You're good at reading people,” she complimented him.

Surprised, he said, “Thanks”—took a deep breath—“and don't start poking your nose in this.”

“I'm not poking my nose into it. I work here. The scalpel came through the mail.” She threw up her hands.

“Harry, I know you.” He nudged a mailbag with his toe. “All right then, you get back to work. Susan?”

“I dropped in for tea and to help. It's Valentine's Day.”

“Oh, shit.” He slapped his hand to his head.

“Shall I call in roses for your wife?” Miranda volunteered.

Rick gratefully smiled at her. “Miranda, you're a lifesaver. I'm not going to have a minute to call myself. The early days of a case are critical.”

“I'd be glad to do that.” Miranda moved toward the phone as Rick flipped up the divider and walked out the front. “Coop,” he called over his shoulder. “Start on the basement of the hospital today. In case we missed something.”

“Roger,” she agreed as she reached in her pocket for the squad car keys.

They had arrived at the post office in separate cars.

“Any leads?” Harry asked the big question now that Rick was out of the post office.

“No,” Cynthia Cooper truthfully answered. “It appears to be a straightforward case of murder. Brutal.”

“Doesn't that usually mean revenge?” Susan, having read too many psychology books, commented.

“Yes and no.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Many times when the killer harbors an intense hatred for the victim they'll disfigure the body. Fetish killings usually involve some type of ritual or weirdness, say, cutting off the nose. Just weird. This really is straightforward. The choice of a knife means the killer had to get physically close. It's more intimate than a gun but it's hard to get rid of a gun. Even if the killer had thrown it in the incinerator, something might be left. A knife is easy to hide, easy to dispose of, and not so easy to figure out. What I mean by that is, in lieu of the actual weapon, there are a variety of knife types that could do the job. It's not like pulling a .45 slug out of a body. Also, a knife is quiet.”

“Especially in the hands of someone who uses knives for a living.”
Murphy pounced on the third mailbag.

Cynthia, taller than the other women, reached her arms over her head and stretched. She was tired even though it was morning, and her body ached. She hadn't gotten much sleep since the murder.

Miranda hung up the phone, having ordered flowers for Rick's wife. “Did I miss anything? You girls talking without me?”

“No. No suspects,” Harry told her.

“‘Be sure your sin will find you out.' Numbers, thirty-second chapter.” She reached into the third mailbag to discover that Murphy had wriggled inside. “Oh!” She opened the drawstring wider. “You little stinker.”

“Ha. Ha.”
Murphy backed farther into the mass of paper.

“Harry, if I get a day off anytime soon I'm coming out to your place.” Coop smiled.

“Sure. If it's not too cold we can go for a ride. Oh, hey, before you go—and I know you must—have you heard that Little Mim is going to run against her father for the mayor's office?”

“No.” Cynthia's shoulders cracked, she lowered her arms. “They'll be playing happy families at Dalmally.” She laughed.

“Well.” Harry shrugged, since the Sanburnes were a law unto themselves.

“Might shake things up a bit.” Cynthia sighed, then headed for the door.

“I expect they've been shaken up enough already,” Miranda wisely noted.

         

Harry made a quick swing to the hospital to find Larry Johnson. Although semi-retired, he seemed to work just as hard as he had before taking on Dr. Hayden McIntire as a partner.

She spied him turning into a room on the second-floor corridor.

She tiptoed to the room. No one was there except for Larry.

He looked up. “My article for the newsletter.” He snapped his fingers. “It's in a brown manila envelope in the passenger seat of my car. Unlocked.”

Harry looked at the TV bolted into the ceiling, at the hospital bed which could be raised and lowered. Then her attention was drawn to the IVAC unit, an infusion pump, a plastic bag on a pole. A needle was inserted usually into the patient's arm and the machine could be programmed to measure out the appropriate dose of medicine or solution.

“Larry, if I'm ever taken ill you'll be sure to fill my drip with Coca-Cola.”

“Well, that's better than vodka—and I've seen alcohol sneaked into rooms in the most ingenious ways.” He rolled the unit out of the way.

“Got any ideas?” She didn't need to say about the murder.

“No.” He frowned.

“Nosy.”

“I know.” He smiled at her. “I apologize for not running my newsletter article to the post office. I'm a little behind today.”

“No problem.”

She left, found his red car easily, grasped the manila envelope, and drove home. Cindy Green, editor of the newsletter, would pick it up at the post office tomorrow.

If nothing else, the great thing about working at the post office was you were central to everybody.