Sour Puss (13 page)

20

A
soft wind swept over Rockland Vineyards; the new leaves swayed slightly, as did the hair on Toby’s head. With his eyes wide open and his mouth slightly ajar, he appeared alive until one noticed the ever-widening circle of blood soaking his chest, another one at his stomach. He had slumped against the base of one of his vines in the row.

Fair studied the situation. Toby appeared to have taken a few steps backward after he was shot, because a few drops of blood speckled the grass. He was as freshly dead as he could be, unless Fair had shot him—then Toby would be dead for seconds instead of minutes.

Rick and Coop showed up within ten minutes, which gave Fair ten minutes to further observe Toby and to wonder at the abruptness of death.

When he called the sheriff with his cell phone, Fair mentioned that Hy had flown out of there, but he didn’t know whether he’d turned left or right once out on the state road at the Rockland entrance.

In the far distance he could hear sirens; he expected officers were running down Hy.

Both Rick and Coop checked the ground as they approached the body.

“Did you hear shots?” Rick asked Fair.

“No. I was walking up from the barn. Maybe I was two hundred yards away, if that. It’s a rise, but I did see Hy drive out once I reached about one hundred fifty yards.”

“Did you hear Hy drive in?”

“No,” Fair replied. “But I was in the barn looking for Jed.” They stared at this name; he added, “Toby’s donkey. I could have missed sounds, truck engines, even shouting. Once out of the barn I could hear well enough.”

Coop squatted down near the new Ruger pistol in Toby’s hand. She didn’t touch it but sniffed the barrel. “Fired.”

“What brought you here?” Rick asked Fair.

“Toby called. He said Jed cut his hind leg and I needed to come immediately. He was bleeding profusely.”

“No donkey?” Rick rubbed his chin.

“No.”

“What time did you reach the barn?”

“Four-thirty, give or take a minute,” Fair told Rick.

“What time do you think you reached here?”

“Four forty-two. I checked my watch the second I saw him collapsed like that.”

“Did you touch him?”

“Yes. If he showed any signs of life I would have done my best. An animal is an animal, and even though I’m a vet, I can fix up a human if it’s a crisis.”

“Mmm,” Rick nodded as Coop moved behind Toby’s body.

“One bullet still in him and one came through,” she said.

“See if you can find it. Just put down a marker if you do.”

As Coop was looking, the rescue-squad sirens wailed.

“This is a hell of a thing,” Fair said.

He wasn’t shaken by the corpse. He was a medical man, after all, but the fact that he had literally walked up on a man killed only moments before was unsettling. Erratic as Toby had been, Fair certainly didn’t wish him dead.

Rick’s phone rang. “Yeah.” He listened intently. “Okay. Take him in.” He clicked off just as Coop yelled, “Got it.”

“Good. Got Hy. He tried to get away but finally gave up when he realized he had one squad car behind him and another blocking the road ahead.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“No.” Rick knew the chances of this being an open-and-shut case were rapidly dimming.

Coop studied Toby, sighed, and walked up to Fair. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Feel sorry for him.”

“It was quick.” Coop believed that was worth some solace.

Rick jotted down a few details.

“Do you two need me?”

“I know where to find you if I do. Why?” Rick replied.

“I’d like to find Jed and stitch him up. I’d hate for the poor little fellow to bleed to death.”

“Go ahead,” Rick said.

As Fair retreated back to the barn, Coop flipped open her notebook. “What do you think?”

Rick shrugged as he heard the rescue-squad vehicle turn onto the farm. “Hy Maudant will hire the best lawyer in the country.”

“Yep.”

“Anything else?”

He glanced at her. “I’d hate to die unmourned.”

21

C
rozet shook as though one of the small earthquakes from the Blue Ridge Mountains had rumbled. The news of Toby’s demise was on everyone’s lips. Humans, being what they are, appear to enjoy horror on some level. The details of his corpse’s disposition added additional allure to the sorry story.

The following morning Fair was in the operating room. He called Sheriff Shaw to ask if Harry could search for Jed. He wanted BoomBoom to accompany her. He emphatically did not want his wife out there alone.

The mercury stuck at fifty-four degrees at eight in the morning; the light breezes gave the temperature a cool tang. Since Boom was six feet tall and strong, Harry was glad she agreed to come along. For good measure both women packed a .38 to humanely end Jed’s suffering if he were found in bad shape. Fair told Harry that Toby was very upset and kept repeating that Jed had deeply cut his hind leg.

The two women walked through Toby’s small barn.

“These little blue pellets do kill the flies, but they crunch.” Harry noted the blue dots on the center aisle.

“I don’t like them underfoot,”
Mrs. Murphy declared.

“Ever try those hanging lanterns filled with kill juice?” BoomBoom asked.

“The smell will kill you, too.” Harry looked around again. “No flies here and no Jed.”

“Silent as a tomb,” BoomBoom said.

Tucker, at their heels, shuddered.
“Wish you hadn’t said that.”

“I had hoped that Jed would come back to his stall. Well, let’s work in circles around the barn. When we can’t see each other, let’s come back here and go to plan B.”

“Sounds good to me,” BoomBoom agreed as she stepped into the feed-and-supply room. “Toby certainly was prepared for summer. I’ve never seen so many rolls of flypaper or blue-crystal bait.”

Harry stuck her head in the open doorway. “One donkey, and Toby was prepared for a zillion flies.”

After an hour of checking through the vineyards and around the house, they reconvened back at the barn.

“Harry, we’d better work in quadrants. There’s a lot left to cover, and we won’t be able to see each other,” BoomBoom, logical as always, suggested.

“Different quadrants or together?”

“Together. Let’s stick together.”

“You’ve got a point there,” Harry agreed.

“I’m going back to the truck.”
Pewter had already had enough of the search and was desirous of her mid-morning nap.

When neither Mrs. Murphy nor Tucker mocked her, she changed her mind. After all, she might miss something, and then she’d have to hear about it ad infinitum.

BoomBoom zipped her Barbour jacket up to her neck as the wind picked up. “Kind of raw. You expect May to be warmer than this.”

“Yeah. The closest farm with horses is the old Berryhill farm. Let’s walk that way first. If there’s a mare in season—and this is the time they go in naturally—the little fellow will have picked up the scent long before we will.”

“That kind of scent can travel a mile on a perfect day,”
Tucker, the scent expert, agreed.

“What worries me, Harry, is we haven’t seen so much as one hoofprint.”

“Yeah.” Harry walked alongside the tall woman. “But there’s been so much traffic on the farm roads that would wipe them out—most of them, anyway. And he’s not shod, so he won’t leave a deep print. But if there had been hoofprints, Fair would have seen them.”

“He could have stayed on grass.”

“He’d have to jump fences,” Harry remarked.

“He can jump.” Boom smiled.

They carefully examined the ground to the northwest of the barn, moving consistently in that direction.

“Remember when we were kids, how Grandpa Berryhill collected old farm tools? Everyone thought he was crackers. Be worth a fortune now.” Harry liked things that were practical and enjoyed Mr. Berryhill’s demonstrations of wooden cider presses, carding utensils, and butter churns.

“Line all died out. Not a Berryhill left.”

“Kind of cruel, really. They were so prosperous, and then a dark cloud settled over them and just rained misery.”

“You never know.”

“No, you don’t.” Harry tramped down a soft, rolling meadow leading to low woodlands, a serviceable three-board fence dividing the open land from the woodland.

Harry grabbed the fence, because the grass, still slick, made the footing dicey. “I can’t help wondering if Hy had something to do with Professor Forland’s disappearance, only because Toby studied with Forland and still seemed enthralled with him in some way.”

“Nah. Doesn’t make any sense.” BoomBoom put her left hand on the top rail and gracefully soared over the fence with a push off.

Harry, not to be outdone, did the same. “Well, nothing makes sense until you find the links.”

Pewter scooted under the bottom plank, as did Mrs. Murphy and Tucker.

The woodlands, cool and damp, reverberated with the sound of birds calling out their territory boundaries. Most daytime species already had eggs in the nests. Some birds sang for the pure pleasure of living.

“Bigmouths,”
Pewter grumbled.

A piercing cry overhead alerted Mrs. Murphy to the red-tailed hawk.
“She may be a bigmouth, but don’t insult her. She’s fearless.”

Pewter did respect big birds.
“Nasty beak.”

“Ever notice how each bird has the right kind of beak for the food it eats?”
Tucker found birds fascinating.

“Must be tough being a human with that flat mouth,”
Pewter said.
“They can’t eat off the ground. They can’t eat without their hands; well, I guess they can, but what a mess. Their jaws go up and down and that’s about it.”

“True, but they’re omnivorous, which gives them a big advantage. They can eat grains and vegetables, fruits and meats. Cats are obligate carnivores. We must eat fresh meat or cooked meat. I really do envy them their range of choices, because it allows them to survive about anywhere,”
Mrs. Murphy said.

“Doesn’t matter where they live, they can’t live without us. We kill the pests,”
Pewter bragged, then yowled,
“It’s wet here. My paws are soaking wet.”

“Poor darling,”
Mrs. Murphy sarcastically remarked.

“Pewter, you ran through a thunderstorm,”
Tucker reminded the fat gray cat.

“That was different. I had no choice.”
Pewter climbed on a fallen log.
“Pick me up! Harry, you come back here and pick me up!”

“What’s she screaming about?” Harry turned to see Pewter marooned on her log.

For spite, Mrs. Murphy splashed past Pewter, puddle water now on her immaculate gray coat.

“I hate you, Murphy.”

“Who cares?”
The tiger ran ahead of BoomBoom.

Harry, worried that they’d come back by another route, returned to Pewter and picked her up. “Jesus, Pewts, go on a diet.”

Tucker mumbled.
“What a phony.”

“I heard that.”
Pewter wrapped her paws around Harry’s neck as the human pushed through the mucky area.

After ten minutes of slogging through the lowlands, passing jack-in-the-pulpits on the edge of the swampy parts, hearing ground nesters in the swamp grass, they emerged at the edge of the old Berryhill place.

“I don’t remember the place ever looking this good,” BoomBoom commented on the restored Virginia farmhouse, the freshly painted white clapboard gleaming along with the new additions.

“The Hahns sure have done a lot in a year.” Harry bent over, glad to put Pewter on the ground.

Pewter stood on her hind paws, reaching up to Harry’s knee.
“I’m traumatized. Carry me some more.”

“I’m going to throw up the biggest hairball.”
Mrs. Murphy pretended to gag.

“Ha! You’ll throw up worms,”
Pewter sassed back, now following Harry, who hadn’t fallen for her ploy.

“We get wormed once a month, remember?”

“Doesn’t work for you. Only works for Tucker and me,”
Pewter saucily declared as they walked through the newly fertilized pastures to the stable, a tidy four–four stall structure that matched the house, Federal-period style.

“Let’s check here before we knock on the door.” Harry walked into the stable, which was clean. Three horses, contented, lounged in their stalls. Each door sported a brass nameplate.

Munching away in a stall, the door still open, stood Jed.

“Bingo!” BoomBoom called out as she found him first.

Harry trotted over to her, and they closed the stall door. “He’s perfectly sound.”

“So he is.”

“Not a scratch.” Harry felt her stomach tighten.

Mrs. Murphy, with presence of mind, asked the happy little fellow,
“Did you cut your leg yesterday?”

“No,”
came the one-syllable reply.

No one ever accused Jed of high intelligence.

“Who let you out?”
Tucker picked up the line of questioning.

“No one.”

“How’d you get here?”
Pewter joined in the questioning.

“Jumped the fence.”

“Jed, did you see anyone on your farm besides Toby?”
Mrs. Murphy asked.

Jed laughed.
“No, didn’t see anybody. Heard two trucks. I knew Toby’d be occupied, so I boogied on.”

“Why’d you jump out?”
Tucker sat down.

“Dunno. Felt good.”

Harry and BoomBoom ran their hands over his legs. Jed didn’t bat one loopy ear.

Mrs. Murphy looked at Tucker, then Pewter. Finally, she said,
“Jed, Toby is dead.”

Jed’s lower lip dropped down.
“Huh?”

“He was murdered yesterday.”

Two big tears welled up in Jed’s large, pretty eyes. He let out a bray that startled Harry and BoomBoom.

“I loved Toby.”

“I’m sorry, Jed. I’m sorry to tell you this.”
Mrs. Murphy was sympathetic.

“Harry will take you home until everything gets settled, Jed. Don’t worry about anything like . . . you know.”
Pewter certainly didn’t want to say what might happen to an animal no one wanted or, worse, pretended to want.

Many a knacker pretended to give a good home to a retiree or a homeless quadruped, only to cart the creature off to the slaughterhouse and pick up about eighty cents to a dollar a pound. Bad enough to cart an animal to a slaughterhouse. It’s another sin to deliberately lie to people who trusted you.

Harry patted him on the neck. “Poor Jed. It’s like he knows.”

“Let’s see if Christy’s home.” BoomBoom wiped Jed’s eye with a handkerchief from her coat pocket.

They walked out and knocked on the back door of the farmhouse.

“Just a minute.”

They heard footsteps, then the door opened and pretty Christy Hahn opened it. Thirty-four and trim, she possessed a bubbling personality. “Come on in, Harry and BoomBoom. What a nice surprise.”

“Actually, Christy, we’ve got to walk back to Pittman’s farm. Jed’s been missing, and we thought he might have come here and he did. When did he show up?”

“What?”

“He’s in your barn; the stall door is open. We closed it.”

“I bet he’s in Hokie’s stall. I turned him out early.” Christy thought for a second. “Is he all right?”

“Fit as a fiddle.” Harry smiled.

“Come on, girls, step inside. It’s raw out today.” Christy tugged them inside.

The three animals, muddy paws and all, walked inside, too. They had to stay in the mudroom.

The kitchen, completely remodeled by a New York interior-design firm, dazzled Harry and Fair.

“This is beautiful. The cabinetwork looks original.” BoomBoom noted the white-oak cabinetry.

“It is. Came from England.” Christy was pleased by the compliments.

Harry had other things on her mind. “Excuse me while I call the sheriff, then Fair, will you?”

As Harry gave Rick the particulars, then called Fair, Christy showed BoomBoom the downstairs of the house. The whole interior was English country. The floors had been sanded, stained again. The walls glowed with subtle colors. The patina on the furniture whispered “money.”

BoomBoom couldn’t wait to tell Alicia.