Authors: Rita Mae Brown
As the day progressed the sun appeared. The icicles sparkled and the surface of the snow at times shone like a rainbow, the little crystals reflecting red, yellow, blue, and purple highlights. The Blue Ridge Mountains loomed baby-blue. Wind devils picked up snow in the meadows and swirled it around.
More friends called, including Blair Bainbridge, who said he’d never had so much fun in his life as he did watching the kittens. He said he’d take her to work tomorrow and promised to give her a Christmas present before tomorrow night. He enjoyed being mysterious about it.
Then Susan called. She also loved her earrings. Harry spent too much money on her, but that’s what friends were for. The noise in the background tried Susan’s patience. She gave up and said she’d see Harry tomorrow. She, Ned, and the kids were going outside to make syrup candy in the snow.
Harry thought that was a great idea, and armed with a tin of Vermont maple syrup, she plunged into the snow, now mid-thigh in depth. Mrs. Murphy shot down the path to the barn, covered from yesterday’s snow but at least not over her head.
“Simon,”
the cat called out,
“syrup in the snow.”
The possum slid down the ladder. He hurried outside the barn and then stopped.
“Come on, Simon. It’s okay,”
Tucker encouraged him.
Emboldened by the smell and halfway trusting Harry, the gray creature followed in Mrs. Murphy’s footsteps. He sat near Harry and when she poured out the syrup he gleefully leapt toward it with such intensity that Harry took a step backward.
Watching him greedily eat the frozen syrup reminded Harry that life ought to be a feast of the senses. Living with the mountains and the meadows, the forest and the streams, Harry knew she could never leave this place, because the country nourished her senses. City people drew their energy from one another. Country people drew their energy, like Antaeus, from the earth herself. Small wonder that the two types of humans could not understand each other. This deep need for solitude, hard physical labor, and the cycle of the seasons removed Harry from the opportunity for material success. She’d never grace the cover of
Vogue
or
People
. She’d never be famous. Apart from her friends no one would even know she existed. Life would be a struggle to make ends meet and the older she got the harsher the struggle. She knew that. She accepted it. Standing in the snow, surrounded by the angelic tranquillity, guarded by the old mountains of the New World, watching Simon eat his syrup, cat and dog next to her, she was grateful that she knew where she belonged. Let others make a shout in the world and draw attention to themselves. She regarded them as conscripts of civilization. Her life was a silent rebuke to the grabbing and the getting, the buying and the selling, the greediness and lust for power that she felt infected her nation. Americans died in sordid martyrdom to money. Indeed, they were dying for it in Crozet.
She poured out more syrup into the snow, watching it form lacy shapes, and wished she had heated chocolate squares and mixed the two together. She reached down and scooped up a graceful tendril of hard syrup. It tasted delicious. She poured more for Simon and thought that Jesus was wise in being born in a stable.
54
“We need a pitchfork.” Harry, using her broom, jabbed at the mail on the floor. “I don’t remember there being this much late mail last year.”
“That’s how the mind protects itself—it forgets what’s unpleasant.” Mrs. Hogendobber was wearing her new earrings, which were very becoming. The radio crackled; Miranda walked over, tuned it, and turned up the volume. “Did you hear that?”
“No.” Harry pushed the mail-order catalogues across the floor with her broom. Tucker chased the broom.
“Another storm to hit tomorrow. My lands, three snowstorms within—what’s it been—ten days? I don’t ever recall that. Well now, maybe I do. During the war we had a horrendous winter—’44, I think, or was it ’45?” She sighed. “Too many memories. My brain needs to find more room.”
Mim, swathed in chinchilla, swept through the front door. A gust of wind blew in snow around her feet. “How was it?” She referred to Christmas.
“Wonderful. The service at the church, well, those children in the choir outshone themselves.” Miranda glowed.
“And you, out there all alone?” Mim stamped the snow from her feet as she addressed Harry.
“Good. It was a good Christmas. My best friends gave me certificates to Dominion Saddlery.”
“Oh.” Mim’s eyebrows shot upward. “Nice friends.”
Mrs. Hogendobber tilted her head, earrings catching the light. “How about these goodies? Harry gave them to me.”
“Very nice.” Mim appraised them. “Well, Jim gave me a week at the Greenbrier. Guess I’ll take it in February, the longest month of the year,” she joked. “My daughter framed an old photo of my mother, and she gave me season’s tickets to the Virginia Theater. Fitz gave me an auto emergency kit and a Fuzzbuster.” She smiled. “A Fuzzbuster, can you imagine? He said I need it.” Her face changed. “And someone gave me a dead rat.”
“No.” Mrs. Hogendobber stopped sorting mail.
“Yes. I am just plain sick of all this. I sat up last night by myself in Mother’s old sewing room, the room I made my reading room. I’ve gone over everything so many times I’m dizzy. A man is killed. We don’t know him or anything about him other than that he was a vagrant or a vagabond. Correct?”
“Correct.”
Mim continued: “Then Benjamin Seifert is strangled and dumped in Crozet’s first tunnel. I even thought about the supposed treasure in the tunnels, but that’s too far-fetched.” She was referring to the legend that Claudius Crozet had buried in the tunnels the wealth he received from his Russian captor. The young engineer, an officer in Napoleon’s army, was seized during the horrendous retreat from Moscow and taken to the estate of a fabulously wealthy aristocrat. So useful was the personable engineer, building many devices for the Russian, that when prisoners were finally freed, he bestowed upon Crozet jewels, gold, and rubies. Or so they said.
Harry spoke. “And now Cabell has . . .” She clicked her fingers in the air to indicate disappearance.
Mim waved a dismissive hand. “Two members of the same bank. Suspicious. Maybe even obvious. What isn’t so obvious is why am I a target? First the”—she grimaced—“torso in the boathouse. Followed by the head in the pumpkin when my husband was judging. And then the rat. Why me? I can’t think of any reason why, other than petty spite and envy, but people aren’t killed for that.”
Harry weighed her words. “Did Ben or Cabell have access to your accounts?”
“Certainly not, even though Cabell is a dear friend. No check goes out without my signature. And of course I studied my accounts. As a precaution I’m having my accountant audit my own books. And then”—she threw up her hands—“that earring. Well, Sheriff Shaw acted as though my daughter was a criminal. Forgive me, Harry, but a possum with an earring doesn’t add up to evidence.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Harry concurred.
“So . . . why me?”
“Maybe you should review your will.” Miranda was blunt.
This knocked Mim back. But she didn’t lash out. She thought about it. “You don’t mince words, do you?”
“Mim, if you think this is somehow directed at you, then you may be in danger,” Mrs. Hogendobber counseled. “What would someone want of you? Money. Do you own land impeding a developer? Are you in the way of anything that converts to profit? Do you have business ventures we don’t know about? Is your daughter your sole beneficiary?”
“When Marilyn married I settled a small sum upon her as a dowry and to help them with their house. She will, of course, inherit our house and the land when Jim and I die and I’ve created a trust that jumps a generation, so most of the money will go to her children should she have them. If not, then it will go to her and she’ll have to pay oodles of taxes. My daughter isn’t going to kill me for money, and she wouldn’t bother with a banker.” Mim was forthright.
“What about Fitz?” Harry blurted out.
“Fitz-Gilbert has more money than God. You don’t think we let Marilyn marry him without a thorough investigation of his resources.”
“No.” Harry’s reply was tinged with regret. She’d have hated for her parents to do that to the man she loved.
“A shirttail cousin?” Miranda posited.
“You know my relatives as well as I do. I have one surviving aunt in Seattle.”
“Have you talked to the sheriff and Coop about this?” Harry asked.
“Yes, and my husband too. He’s hiring a bodyguard to protect me. If one can ever get through the snow. And another storm is coming.” Mim, not a woman easily frightened, was worried. She headed for the door.
“Mim, your mail.” Miranda reached into her box and held it out to her.
“Oh.” Mim took the mail in one Bottéga Veneta–gloved hand and left.
A bit later Fitz arrived. He and Little Marilyn had indulged in an orgy of spending. He listed the vast number of gifts with glee and no sense of shame. “But the best is, we’re going to the Homestead for a few days starting tonight.”
“I thought Mim was going to the Greenbrier.” Miranda was getting confused.
“Yes, Mother is going, she says, in February, but we’re going tonight. A second honeymoon maybe, or just getting away from all this. You heard that Mim received an ugly present.” They nodded and he continued: “I think she ought to go to Tahiti. Oh, well, there’s no talking to Mim. She’ll do as she pleases.”
Blair came in. “Hey, I’ve got good news for you. Orlando Heguay is coming down on the twenty-eighth and he can’t wait to see you.”
“Orlando Heguay.” Fitz pondered the name. “Miami?”
“No. Andover.”
Fitz clapped his hand to his face. “My God, I haven’t seen him since school. What’s he doing?” Fitz caught his breath. “And how do you know him?”
“We’ll catch up on all that when he gets here. He’s looking forward to seeing you.”
“How about dinner at the club Saturday night?” Fitz smiled.
“I’m not a member.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Fitz clapped him on the back. “Be fun. Six?”
“Six,” Blair answered.
As Fitz left with an armful of mail, Blair looked after him. “Does that guy ever work?”
“He handled a real estate closing last year,” Harry laughed.
“Are you going to be home after work?” Blair asked her.
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll stop by.” Blair waved goodbye and left.
Alone again, Miranda smiled. “He likes you.”
“He’s my neighbor. He has to like me.”
55
Four bags of sweet feed, four bags of dog crunchies, and four bags of cat crunchies, plus two cases of canned cat food astounded Harry. Blair unloaded his Explorer to her protests that she couldn’t accept such gifts. He told her she could stand there and complain or she could help unload and then make them cocoa. She chose the latter.
Inside, as they sipped their chocolate drinks, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small light-blue box.
“Here, Harry, you deserve this.”
She untied the white satin ribbon. T
IFFANY
C
O
. in black letters jumped out at her from the middle of the blue box. “I’m afraid to open this.”
“Go on.”
She lifted the lid and found a dark-blue leather box with T
IFFANY
written in gold. She opened that to behold an exquisitely beautiful pair of gold and blue-enameled earrings nestled in the white lining. “Oh,” was all she could say.
“Your colors are blue and gold, aren’t they?”
She nodded yes and carefully removed the earrings. She put them in her ears and looked at herself in the mirror. “These are beautiful. I don’t deserve this. Why do you say I deserve this? It’s . . . well, it’s . . .”
“Take them, Mom. You look great,”
Murphy advised.
“Yeah, it was bad enough you tried to give back our crunchies. You need something pretty,”
Tucker chimed in.
Blair admired the effect. “Terrific.”
“Are you sure you want to give me these?”
“Of course I’m sure. Harry, I’d be lost out here without you. I thought I was hardworking and reasonably intelligent but I would have made a lot more mistakes without you and I would have spent a lot more money. You’ve been helpful to someone you hardly know, and given the circumstances, I’m grateful.”
“What circumstances?”
“The body in the graveyard.”
“Oh, that.” Harry laughed. She’d thought he was talking about BoomBoom. “I don’t mean that quite the way it sounds, Blair, but I’m not worried about you. You’re not killer material.”
“Under the right—or perhaps I should say wrong—circumstances I think anyone could be killer material, but I appreciate your kindness to a stranger. Wasn’t it Blanche DuBois who said, ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’?”
“And it was my mother who said, ‘Many hands make light work.’ Neighbors help one another to make light work. I was glad to do it. It was good for me. I learned that I knew something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I take bush-hogging, knowing when to plant, knowing how to worm a horse, those kinds of things, as a given. Helping you made me realize I’m not so dumb after all.”
“Girls who go to Seven Sisters colleges are rarely dumb.”
“Ha.” Harry exploded with mirth and so did Blair.
“Okay, so there are some dumb Smithies and Holy Jokers but then, there are some abysmal Old Blues and Princeton men too.”
“Have you ever tracked, after a snow?” Harry changed the subject, since she didn’t like to talk about herself or emotions.
“No.”
“I’ve got my father’s old snowshoes. Want to go out?”
“Sure.”
Within minutes the two suited up and left the house. Not much sunlight remained.
“These snowshoes take some getting used to.” Blair picked up a foot.
They trekked into the woods where Harry showed him bobcat and deer tracks. The deer followed air currents. Seeing these things and smelling the air, feeling the difference in temperature along the creek and above it, Blair began to appreciate how intelligent animal life is. Each species evolved a way to survive. If humans humbled themselves to learn, they might be able to better their own lives.