“It was,” Mrs. Murphy agreed. “But you’re being a Drama Queen.”
“The spider knows that.” Tucker tormented Pewter. “She wants to hear you scream.”
“You’d scream, too, if she came after you. The world’s biggest spider.”
Tazio glanced up from the papers. “And?”
“I have no idea.” Harry joined her again. “They did find a triangular stud in a crack when Cooper and I came back here after Gary’s murder. I thought it might be important. Apparently not. Who knows how long it was in that crack?”
“The spider took it. Probably tore it off a jacket or someone’s purse. I bet she knows more than she’s telling.”
“Pewter, spiders don’t talk.” Mrs. Murphy sat by Harry’s chair.
“You don’t know that. I bet they talk to one another.”
“How can they talk when their mouths move like pincers?” Tucker asked.
“Our jaws are long and we can talk,” Brinkley offered.
“We also have tongues. Spiders don’t.” Tucker would have none of it.
“That doesn’t mean they can’t hum. They can communicate. I just know that giant spider has told all her friends about me.” Pewter’s ego, inflated again, irritated the others.
“I’m sure,” Mrs. Murphy dryly said.
Tazio, her left hand resting on Brinkley’s head, pointed to the loft with a pencil. “Do you want planed but unfinished oak or something else?”
“It’s just storage.” Harry shrugged.
“So it is, but it does give you an opportunity to make another work space or even a bedroom. Why don’t you put in planed oak and stain it, put drop cloths over it, and then put whatever you want up there? This gives you more options if your needs change, and Harry, you know as well as I do, building never gets cheaper. Do it now.”
That struck home. “Well…maybe.”
“This isn’t much square footage. An upgrade won’t be expensive. Maybe you’d like something other than oak.”
“No. Oak. I need hardwood. Need hardwood in the downstairs, too. Even though there won’t be much traffic. And even though the uneven-width heart pine in my kitchen is beautiful, it scratches up all the time and I’m rubbing it all the time.”
“Right.” Tazio smiled, knowing she’d swung Harry to a more versatile decision.
The two worked for another hour, going over everything. The little Napoleon clock struck five.
“Where’d the time go?” Harry exclaimed.
Tazio looked up at the graceful hands. “Somewhere we can never retrieve it. Do you know I read about air? I thought the article was going to be about pollution, but it wasn’t. Air doesn’t disappear, and the article said that every two thousand breaths we inhale air that Julius Caesar inhaled.”
“No kidding.” Harry, impressed, then tidied up her pile of notes. “Let me put back the file box and head home. Dark already. I actually like winter but dark at five, not so much.”
“Me, too.”
Once home Harry called Cooper, told her everything about the file box for 1983 and what she thought. She urged Cooper to call Rankin Construction.
“I will but I want to go through the boxes myself before I do that. The research team mentioned marginal notes and rubber toys. No one thought it important, and I don’t know that it is, but I want to see for myself.”
“Can’t hurt.”
“Hold on one sec.” Cooper squinted at a message intruding on the computer screen.
“Harry, when you get home turn on the news. Forensics in Richmond has retrieved the rest of the skeleton and are laying it out on the spot.” She read more, looked at photos. “Male. Middle-aged. A bullet lodged in his left front rib. I doubt the news will show you what we see.”
“Front rib?”
“Probably shot from behind with a light caliber bullet. Stuck in the bone. Murder.”
“You were the one who told me amateurs spray bullets or fire too many.”
“I did.”
“Another marksman.” Harry’s heart was racing.
“A good shot at any rate.” Cooper sighed. “I don’t know how you do it, but you turn up at critical moments.”
“Dumb luck.”
“Let’s hope it isn’t bad luck.”
25
January 28, 2017
Saturday
A column on the front page, “Accident on Broad,” caught her eye. The office building, the very one cited by Harry with notes in the margin made by Gary, had been the site where a worker died leaning next to his excavator. The victim, forty-three years old, Ali Asplundah, stepped down from the giant backhoe. No one saw him drop as he was on the other side of the large machine, other large pieces of equipment were running in the square space that would provide the foundation. When the machine, in neutral, continued to run for over an hour, one of the other heavy equipment men cut his motor, climbed down, walked over. He found Ali sitting on the dirt, slumped against the machine, dead. The medical examiner proclaimed it a heart attack.
Cooper read about Ali, highly skilled, an early Muslim resident of the city. Muslims had come to Richmond in the eighteenth century but in tiny numbers. Little by little a small population gathered. Those interviewed concerning the deceased all testified he didn’t touch alcohol, had a sterling work record, got along with everyone, and loved soccer.