“We are!”
“Here.” Harry handed Mrs. Murphy an extra olive and gave Tucker a nibble of egg. “I don’t know why I spoil you all. Look at how much you’ve had to eat this morning.”
“We love you, Mom.” Mrs. Murphy emitted a major purr.
Harry scratched the tiger cat’s ear with one hand and reached down to perform the same service for Tucker. “I don’t know what I’d do without you two. It’s so easy to love animals and so hard to love people. Men anyway. Your mom is striking out with the opposite sex.”
“No, you’re not.” Tucker consoled her and was very frustrated that Harry couldn’t understand. “You haven’t met the right guy yet.”
“I still think Blair is the right guy.” Mrs. Murphy put in her two cents.
“Blair is off on some modeling job. Anyway, I don’t think Mom needs a man who’s that pretty.”
“What do you mean by that?” the cat asked.
“She needs the outdoor type. You know, a lineman or a farmer or a vet.”
Mrs. Murphy thought about that as Harry rubbed her ears. “You still miss Fair?”
“Sometimes I do,” the little dog replied honestly. “He’s big and strong, he could do a lot of farmwork, and he could protect Mom if something went wrong, you know.”
“She can protect herself.” True as this was, the cat also worried occasionally about Harry being alone. No matter how you cut it, most men were stronger than most women. It was good to have a man around the farm.
“Yeah—but still,” came the weak reply.
Harry stood up and took the dishes to the porcelain sink. She meticulously washed each one, dried them, and put them away. Coming home to dirty dishes in the sink drove Harry to despair. She turned off the coffeepot. “Looks like a Mary Minor Haristeen day.” This meant it was sunny.
She paused for a moment to watch the horses groom one another. Then her mind drifted off for a moment and she spoke to her animal friends. “How could Medley Orion live with a body under her fireplace—if she knew? She may not have known a single thing, but if she did, how could she make her coffee, eat her breakfast, and go about her business—knowing? I don’t think I could do it.”
“If you were scared enough, you could,” Mrs. Murphy wisely noted.
12
The old walnut countertop gleamed as Mrs. Hogendobber polished it with beeswax. Harry, using a stiff broom, swept out the back of the post office. The clock read two-thirty, a time for chores and a lull between people stopping in at lunchtime and on their way home from work. Mrs. Murphy, sound asleep in the mail cart, flicked her tail and cackled, dreaming of mice. Tucker lay on her side on the floor, made shiny from the decades of treading feet. She, too, was out cold.
“Hey, did I tell you that Fair asked me to the movies next week?” Harry attacked a corner.
“He wants you back.”
“Mrs. H., you’ve been saying that since the day we separated. He sure didn’t want me back when he was cavorting with BoomBoom Craycroft, she of the pontoon bosoms.”
Mrs. Hogendobber waved her dust cloth over her head like a small flag. “A passing fancy. He had to get it out of his system.”
“And so he did,” came Harry’s clipped reply.
“You must forgive and forget.”
“Easy for you to say. It wasn’t your husband.”
“You’ve got me there.”
Harry, surprised that Mrs. Hogendobber agreed with her so readily, paused a moment, her broom held off the ground. A knock at the back door brought the broom down again.
“Me,” Market Shiflett called.
“Hi.” Harry opened the door and Market, who owned the grocery store next door, came in, followed by Pewter.
“Haven’t seen you today. What have you been up to?” Miranda kept polishing.
“This and that and who shot the cat.” He smiled, looked down at Pewter, and apologized. “Sorry, Pewter.”
Pewter, far too subtle to push the dog awake, flicked her fat little tail over Tucker’s nose until the dog opened her eyes.
“I was dead to the world.” Tucker blinked.
“Where’s herself?” Pewter inquired.
“Mail cart, last time I saw her.”
A gleam in her eye betrayed Pewter’s intentions. She walked to the mail cart and halted. She scrunched down and wiggled her rear end, then with a mighty leap she catapulted herself into the mail cart. A holy howl attended this action. Had Mrs. Murphy not been a cat in the prime of her life, had she been, say, an older feline, she surely would have lost her bladder control at such a rude awakening. A great hissing and spitting filled the bin, which was beginning to roll just a bit.
“Now, that’s enough.” Market hurried over to the mail cart, where he beheld the spectacle of his beloved cat, claws out, rolling around the heavy canvas bag with Mrs. Murphy in the same posture. Tufts of fur floated in the air.
Harry dashed over. “I don’t know what gets into these two. They’re either the best of friends or like Muslims versus Christians.” Harry reached in to separate the two, receiving a scratch for her concern.
“You fat pig!” Mrs. Murphy bellowed.
“Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat,” Pewter taunted.
“You ought not to make light of religious differences,” Mrs. Hogendobber, faithful to the Church of the Holy Light, admonished Harry. “Cats aren’t religious anyway.”
“Who says?” Two little heads popped over the side of the cart.
This moment of peace lasted a millisecond before they dropped back in the cart and rolled over each other again.
Harry laughed. “I’m not reaching in there. They’re bound to get tired of this sooner or later.”
“Guess you’re right.” Market thought the hissing was awful. “I wanted to tell you I’ve got a special on cat food today. You want me to save you a case?”
“Oh, thanks. How about a nice, fresh chicken too?”
“Harry, don’t tell me you’re going to cook a chicken?” Mrs. Hogendobber held her heart as though this was too much. “What’s this world coming to?”
“Speaking of that, how about them finding a body up at Monticello?”
Before either woman could respond, Samson Coles blustered in the front door, so Market repeated his question.
Samson shook his leonine head. “Damn shame. I guarantee you that by tomorrow the television crews will be camped out at Mulberry Row and this unfortunate event will be blown out of all proportion.”
“Well, I don’t know. It does seem strange that a body would be buried under a cabin. If the death was, uh, legitimate, wouldn’t the body be in a cemetery? Even slaves had cemeteries.” Market said.