In reply, Mrs. Murphy flattened her ears and turned her back on Tucker as Mim strode over to her Bentley to retrieve her portable phone. Miranda walked into her house. After ten minutes of phone calls, which left Harry reduced to putting in the garden stakes, Miranda reappeared.
“No, no, and no.”
Mim’s head jerked up. “Impossible.”
Miranda’s rich alto boomed. “Hill and Woods does not have the body. Thacker Funeral Home, ditto, and I even called places in western Orange County. Not a trace of Larry Johnson, and I don’t mind telling you that I think this is awful. How can the rescue squad lose a body?”
Harry reached for Mim’s mobile phone. “May I?”
“Be my guest.” Mim handed over the small, heavy phone.
“Diana”—Harry reached Diana Robb—“do you know what funeral parlor has Larry Johnson’s body?”
“No—we just dropped him off at the hospital.” Diana’s evasive tone alerted Harry, who’d known the nurse since their schooldays.
“Do you know the name of the hospital admissions clerk?”
“Harry, Rick Shaw will take care of everything. Don’t worry.”
Acidly Harry replied, “Since when do sheriffs arrange funerals? Diana, I need your help. We’ve got a lot of work to do here.”
“Look, you talk to Rick.” Diana hung up.
“She hung up on me!” Harry’s face turned beet red. “Something is as queer as a three-dollar bill. I’m going down to the hospital.”
“Don’t do that—just yet.” Mim smiled. She reached out for the phone, her frosted mauve fingernails complementing her plum-colored sweater. She dialed. “Is Sheriff Shaw there? All right, then. What about Deputy Cooper? I see.” Mim paused. “Try and get her out of her meeting, if only for an instant.”
A long pause ensued, during which Mim tapped her foot in the grass and Mrs. Murphy resumed stalking those crocodile loafers. “Ah, Deputy Cooper. I need your assistance. Neither Mrs. Hogendobber, Mrs. Haristeen, nor I can locate Larry Johnson’s body at any of the funeral parlors in either Albemarle or Orange County. There are many arrangements to be made. I’m sure you appreciate that and—”
“Mrs. Sanburne, the body is still at the hospital. Sheriff Shaw wanted more tests run, and until he’s satisfied that Pathology has everything they need, the body won’t be released. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow, I’m afraid.”
“I see. Thank you.” Mim pushed down the aerial and clicked the power to off. She related Cynthia’s explanation.
“I don’t buy it.” Harry crossed her arms over her chest.
“I suppose once the blood is drained out of the body, the samples won’t be as, uh, fresh.” Mim grimaced.
Now Miranda grabbed the phone. She winked. “Hello, this is Mrs. Johnson and I’d like an update on my husband, Dr. Larry Johnson.”
“Larry Johnson, Room 504?”
“That’s right.”
“He’s resting comfortably.”
Mrs. Hogendobber repeated the answer. “He’s resting comfortably—he ought to be, he’s dead.”
A sputter and confusion on the other end of the phone convinced Miranda that something was really amiss. The line was disconnected. Miranda’s eyebrows shot into her coiffure. “Come on, girls.”
As Mrs. Hogendobber climbed into the front seat of the Bentley, Harry unlocked the back door of the post office, shushing the two cats and crestfallen dog inside.
“No fair!” was the animal chorus.
Harry hopped in the back seat as Mim floored it.
“By God, we’ll get to the bottom of this!”
63
The front desk clerk at the Martha Jefferson Hospital tried to waylay Mim, but Harry and Miranda outflanked her. Then Mim, taking advantage of the young woman’s distress, slipped away too.
The three women dashed to the elevator. They reached the fifth floor and were met, as the doors opened, by a red-haired officer from the sheriff’s department.
“I’m sorry, ladies, you aren’t permitted up here.”
“Oh, you’ve taken over the whole floor?” Mim imperiously criticized the young officer, who cringed because he knew more was coming. “I pay taxes, which means I pay your salary and . . .”
Harry used the opportunity to blast down the corridor. She reached Room 504 and opened the door. She screamed so loud, she scared herself.
64
“What a dirty, rotten trick.” Mim lit into the sheriff, who was standing at Larry’s bedside. This was after Harry, Miranda, and Mim cried tears of joy upon seeing their beloved friend again. They even made Larry cry. He had no idea how much he was loved.
“Mrs. Sanburne, it had to be done and I’m running out of time as it is.”
Mim sat on the uncomfortable chair as Harry and Miranda stood on the other side of Larry’s bed. Miranda would not release the older gentleman’s hand until a sharp glance from Mim made her do so. She then remembered that Larry and Mim were once an item.
“Still jealous,” Miranda thought to herself.
Larry, propped up on pillows, reached for a sip of juice. Mim instantly supplied it to him. “Now, Larry, if we fatigue you, we can leave and the sheriff can fill us in. However, if you can talk . . .”
He slurped and handed the drink back to Mim, as unlikely a nurse as ever was born. “Thank you, dear. I can talk if Sheriff Shaw allows me.”
A defeated Rick rubbed his receding hairline. “It’s fine with me, because I think if these girls”—he came down heavy on “girls”—“hear from your own lips what happened, then maybe they’ll behave.”
“We will,” came the unconvincing chorus.
“Harry, I have Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and that funny Paddy to thank for this.”
“Mrs. Murphy again?” Rick shook his head.
“They led me to where Jim Craig, who was killed before you were born, had hidden his diaries. He was my partner, as you may know. Actually, he took me into his practice and I would have purchased part of it in time—with a considerable discount, as Jim was a generous, generous man—but he died and, in effect, I inherited the practice, which afforded me the opportunity to become somewhat comfortable.” He looked at Mim.
Mim couldn’t meet his gaze, so she fiddled with the juice glass and the fat, bendable straw.
He continued. “Jim’s diaries commenced in 1912 and went through to the day he died, March 5, 1948. I believe that either Colonel Randolph killed him, or Wesley, who was right out of the Army Air Corps at the time.”
“But why?” Miranda exclaimed.
Larry leaned his white head back on the pillows and took a deep breath. “Ah, for reasons both sad and interesting. As detection advanced with the electron microscope, it was Jim who discovered that Wesley and his father carried the sickle cell trait. Now, that didn’t give them leukemia—you can develop that disease quite apart from carrying the sickle cells—but what it meant was that no descendant of the colonel or Wesley could, uh, marry someone of color—not without fear of passing on the trait. You see, if the spouse also carried the trait, the children could very well contract the full-blown disease, which has painful episodes, and there’s no cure. The accumulated damage of those episodes can kill you.”
“Oh, God.” Mim’s jaw dropped. “Wesley was, well, you know . . .”
“A racist.” Harry said it for her.
“That’s a harsh way of putting it.” Mim smoothed out the bed sheet. “He was raised a certain way and couldn’t cope with the changes. But if he knew about the sickle cell anemia, you’d think he would soften.”
“Or become worse. Who is more anti-Semitic than another Jew? Who is more antigay than another homosexual? More antifeminist than another woman? The oppressed contain reservoirs of viciousness reserved entirely for their own kind.”