Sour Puss (22 page)

40

F
riendship distills the sweetness of life.

Mrs. Murphy listened as the friends below learned more of what had happened. She lay with her belly flat on the wide, low walnut branch, her legs dangling over each side. Nearby, artfully wedged on the picnic-table, Pewter posed, preened, and was so full of the milk of kindness she almost mooed. No one believed her, but they still fed her bits of fried chicken, little clumps of broccoli heads drenched in butter, and succulent bits of honey-cured ham. Tucker, not quite the dramatist, cast soulful eyes as she walked behind BoomBoom, Alicia, Big Mim, Miranda, Cooper, Susan, Fair, and Harry in turn.

“You’re going to wear yourself out going from person to person like that,”
Mrs. Murphy called down to her.

“I burn the calories off moving.”

“O la!”
The tiger laughed as the dog gobbled a large chicken morsel from Big Mim’s fingers.

Simon sat at the open loft doors, half-listening to the chatter in Harry’s front yard across from him. Mostly he chewed a long raspberry penny-candy stick that Harry had given him. Sweets were Simon’s downfall.

Two days had passed since Harry’s battle with Arch. Her wrist, wrapped in a bandage, hurt but not enough to stop her.

“So it wasn’t a full confession, after all?” Big Mim, who liked to be first to hear any news, had only gotten parts.

When Cooper reached Harry, the first thing she had to do after ascertaining Harry was all right was call for an ambulance. Took another day for Arch to be able and willing to talk.

“He says it is.” Cooper passed a plate of corn bread.

“Revenge. A broken heart. I don’t buy the broken-heart bit.” Susan swept back her sleek pageboy with her right hand. “He’d been without Harry for four years, and it’s not like she ever said it would be more than it was.”

“Men hear what they want to hear,” Alicia simply said. “Sorry, Fair.”

“Some truth to it, I expect.” He’d been badly shaken by Harry’s close call and sick with himself for not seeing the true threat.

“He was so likable.” Miranda sought the best in people. She sighed. “‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’ ” Quoting Numbers, Chapter 32, Verse 23, she then added, “You can’t outrun the Lord. Most times you can’t outrun the law, either.”

“Did you have any idea it was Arch, you and Rick?” BoomBoom put it straight to Cooper.

“Our main suspects were Toby, Rollie, Hy, and Arch bringing up the rear. Toby was the front-runner initially because of his unremitting hostility to the others, his crazed competitiveness. I emphasize crazed. Arch confessed to killing Toby and Hy, but he swears he did not kill Professor Forland.”

“It was Toby, then?” Susan asked.

“Yes, I think so. The bullet was from Toby’s gun,” Cooper replied.

“He rode around town showing off that new gun. He must have been nuts,” BoomBoom said, because she’d heard from Alicia how Toby found his misplaced gun in his truck.

“He never thought we’d find the body.” Cooper sipped the best lemonade she’d ever drunk. “By the time we did, well, we’re eating. Anyway, the coroner did retrieve the bullet. Then it took a little time to trace it.”

“He used a brand-new registered gun,” Fair remarked, “a beautiful gun, really. He was either crazy or arrogant. He disguised the grave up in the peach orchard, but earth has a way of rising up or sinking down sooner or later.”

“What about Toby losing his gun?” Alicia had witnessed his surprise at finding it.

“Who knows? He probably did, or forgot where he’d put it. Toby had a motive to kill Professor Forland. He didn’t find out until Arch sort of told him why he wasn’t hired to lecture at Virginia Tech. That’s what Arch says. He said he knew Toby would figure it out from their conversation at Patricia and Bill’s party. So Toby, precarious as he was, went off his rocker. We’ll never know, but he probably asked Professor Forland to swing by on his way out of town or he met him somewhere. We don’t know why he buried Forland in your peach orchard. I suspect he killed him near here and went up to the orchard when he checked to see if you were around. Again, we’ll never know. He was smart enough not to kill him at Rockland Vineyards. The other two murders we do know about.”

“But it does come back to Toby again.” Fair would never erase the sight of the murdered man from his mind. It wasn’t so horrible as it was unexpected, and sad, too, given Toby’s deranged state.

“Yes, it does. Toby, toiling away at his computer, realized quickly that the sharpshooters had been deliberately placed in Harry’s peach orchard. His first response was that this was a plot to ruin his grapes. Always his grapes. Then he thought about other vineyards. The more he worked on it, the more he realized, no matter that the sharpshooter had been planted, it couldn’t do enough damage in a summer to be a problem to the grapes.” Cooper poured herself more lemonade.

“Why would that get him killed?” BoomBoom was very curious.

“He approached Arch. Not on the best of terms. However, they were on better terms than Toby and Hy. Toby accused Arch of bringing up the sharpshooters from North Carolina to scare people, hoping some would bail out. He thought Arch and Rollie were going to corner the market and then price-fix. Rollie, before he retired here, and I use ‘retire’ loosely, engaged in ruthless business practices. He made his fortune crawling over other people. Arch denied this to Toby. But that was the truth.”

“Why didn’t Arch leave well enough alone?” Big Mim inquired.

“He knew how highly intelligent Toby was. Toby, sooner or later, would figure out the sharpshooters were intended for the Alverta peaches. No, they couldn’t destroy the orchard, but they could do some small damage this season, then die in the frost. He knew how much keeping the old variety alive meant to Harry. He would have done more damage to other crops by other means as time went by.”

“So he killed Toby with his own gun?” Fair said.

“Yes, but he had the gun at Toby’s head and forced him to call you. Arch’s anger had escalated from harming peaches to harming you. He said each time he saw you, he hated you more. You don’t deserve Harry.”

Fair put his arm around his wife’s waist. “He might be right there.”

“Honey, don’t be a flatterer.” Harry blushed.

“Sweetheart, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I let you down once in the past and I let you down again. I never saw it coming with Arch.”

“Fair, none of us did.” BoomBoom cared for Fair, always would.

“She’s right. Arch could have won an Oscar for his performance.” Alicia’s bracelet slid down her arm as she lifted her hand for emphasis.

“You would know.” Big Mim smiled.

“Everyone was on the wrong track. Fixed on the vineyards and those who own them.” Susan found each detail more riveting and dismal simultaneously.

“Then why did he kill Hy? He confessed to that, didn’t he?” BoomBoom felt some relief in that Fiona no longer had to bear the stigma of her husband’s supposed suicide.

Such things shouldn’t stick to family and friends, but people were harsh about suicide, it seemed.

“Hy, no slouch either when it came to protecting against parasites and fungi, had been studying the sharpshooter as soon as the news hit. His worry, according to Arch, was that global warming was allowing these things to move ever northward.”

“Boll weevil.” Miranda knew her bugs.

“How about the parasite that kills honeybees that finally made it this far north in 1980 and is wreaking havoc? There sure might be something to this warming stuff.” Harry worried, as did every farmer.

“Hy drove out to your peach orchard to see for himself.” Cooper continued with Arch’s confession. “He determined as did Toby that the sharpshooter had been planted there. Hy thought they hadn’t flown up here, because they would have alighted in other orchards and vineyards between here and North Carolina. He definitely knew the sharpshooters were planted. He tried to find out why. Obviously, there was no way Hy would communicate with Toby over anything. The natural person to discuss this with was Arch, thanks to his extensive knowledge. That turned out to be a fatal mistake.”

“Hy wouldn’t have made the connection to revenge against Fair and Harry, would he?” Susan thought of three lives needlessly cast away.

“Arch wasn’t taking any chances. Hy was piecing things together about the sharpshooters. And Arch was shaken that Hy had driven up before Fair when he’d just shot Toby. Arch’s plan backfired, and that was just dumb luck. He drove out the back way when he heard Hy’s truck coming in the front. He couldn’t see because of the hill there, but he assumed it was Fair. Fair would have been parked in the penitentiary for a good long time or bankrupted by the legal fees regardless of outcome. Arch said he couldn’t believe it when he found out we apprehended Hy. He thought if Fair were put in jail he could win back Harry. If Fair got off and they were bankrupted, well, he’d have some pleasure in seeing her suffer by staying with Fair.”

“Flatface flew over Hy when he drove into the peach orchard,”
Mrs. Murphy casually reminded Pewter and Tucker.

“No way to tell Harry.”
Pewter belched.

“Pewter. Mind your manners,” Harry said.

“You never burp,”
Pewter sassed.

“Could be worse. Could have come out the other end.”
Tucker giggled.

“I’m leaving.”
Pewter, miffed, jumped off the bench seat. She jumped back up, though.

“Ha! The day you walk away from food, the sun will rise in the west.”
Mrs. Murphy swung her tail with vigor.

“The next thing Arch realized, obvious now, is that Harry would figure it out, too. It might take her a little longer; she’d have more resistance to the thought. Dominos.” Cooper finished off her ham sandwich and longingly stared at the cherry cobbler. She’d wait until everyone else finished their meal before grabbing dessert.

“If it weren’t for Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, Arch might have gotten away with it.” Harry glanced up at Mrs. Murphy, who was glowing with the praise.

“He wouldn’t have gotten away with it, Harry. He might have killed you, God forbid, but we would have nailed him, because I think he would have run,” Cooper said forcefully.

“Where’s Rollie in all this?” Fair wondered.

“Shocked. Chauntal, too. I had to tell Rollie he had been a suspect and why. Didn’t much like that, either, but he admitted he had been, in his words, ‘extremely aggressive in business.’ His next concern was if he might be sued. Arch is his business partner. I told him he wouldn’t be the first person to have a business partner in jail. I also told him,” Cooper looked to Harry, then Fair, “that you weren’t the kind of people to do that.”

“Thank you,” Fair simply replied.

“Guess I should thank Matilda, Flatface, and little Simon, too. I told you all what happened earlier.” Harry smiled.

“Matilda didn’t do it because she cares about you. She was pissed that Arch squished her eggs.”

“You don’t know that.”
Tucker used her paw to wipe her whiskers.

“They lay their eggs and forget them. Snakes don’t take care of their babies,”
Pewter announced with authority.

“Could be that Matilda is different.”
Tucker defended the blacksnake, although she didn’t much like her.

“She’s different, all right. She’s working on being the largest blacksnake in America.”
Mrs. Murphy inhaled the clean air, a light current swirling down from the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Isn’t that the truth!”
Pewter said in a burst of animation.
“Bet her bite hurt so bad, Arch saw an hour’s worth of fireworks in a minute.”

“Flatface came through.”
Tucker smiled.

“She complains about us, calls us groundlings, but she does come through. She can’t admit we’re all together.”
Pewter puffed out her chest.

Mrs. Murphy, noticing the expansion, said,
“Are you going to burp again?”

“No,”
came the swift, indignant reply.

Mrs. Murphy lowered her voice.
“Is it going to be worse?”