They stripped off their clothes on the screened-in porch, the slate floor cold underneath their feet.
Harry, shivering, hung his bedraggled tie over a peg. They then both burst into the kitchen.
"Two drowned rats." Pewter opened one eye from her bed.
Fair dashed into the bathroom, returning with two large bath towels. He wrapped one around Harry and the other around himself.
As he did so, Harry devilishly said, "Honey, looks like your part got shrink-wrapped."
Teeth chattering, he managed to say, "Things do contract in the cold."
"I can fix that." She laughed as she opened the refrigerator, took out ice, putting it in a bowl. "First, let's work on your hand."
30
The storm purified the air. At sunrise the mountains turned red, then pink, and finally gold. The trees at the very top were beginning to bud. Spring marched onward.
Mrs. Murphy marched onward, too. She liked hunting alone. Pewter complained the farther from the house they traveled, so the tiger pounced on field mice without the whining of the fat gray cat to warn them of a feline presence.
She reached the confluence of the two creeks, Potlicker with Harry's Creek. The oak torn open by the bear served as a shattered sentinel.
The hard rains had knocked blossoms off trees and bushes but also brought down the pine pollen, a relief to anyone suffering from spring allergies. Mrs. Murphy sawglobs of yellow pollen swirling in the creek. She peered down at a deep spot where the water, swollen from the hard rains, came perilously close to the bank. She liked watching fish, turtles, and crawfish, but the current and silt nixed that.
She walked along the eastern bank. Even with the beaver dams and lodges, some damaged by the debris moving in the water, she couldn't cross the creek. Not that it mattered. There was plenty of game on this side of the creek.
Two mourning doves flew overhead as the sun rose higher. Flatface, the great horned owl, silently winged toward the barn. The mighty bird dipped her wings as Mrs. Murphy looked up at her, then continued on her way. Mrs. Murphy respected Flatface for her hunting prowess and for her good sense. Good hunters usually respected one another, including humans. The bad ones pulled everyone down with them, unfortunately.
A surge of water sent a small wave crashing against the bank. The cat jumped high, then turned and trotted away from the creek. Getting her paws wet in the pastures and soggy ground was one thing, being sprayed by the creek was another.
As she headed down toward the back pastures of the farm, she thought she heard a motor on the other side of the creek. The water muffled the sound. She stopped, listened intently, then burst into a run, heading straight for the old hickory in the center of the back pasture. She leapt onto the textured bark, dug in her claws, and rapidly climbed up.
She strained to hear. The rise of the land on the western bank blocked sight of the farm road. She definitely heard a truck. Frustrated, she listened as the motor cut off. Ten minutes passed, the motor cut on again, and the truck, in low gear, drove away.
Whoever had been on the Jones land didn't stay long.
Mrs. Murphy backed down the hickory. Back at the barn, she climbed into the hayloft, where Simon slept, tiny snoring noises coming from his long nose. She noted the Pelham chain prominently displayed. Simon loved his stolen treasures.
She padded across the expanse, half open and swept clean; the other half was filled with high-grade alfalfa-orchard grass mix. Harry always kept a hayloft's supply of good forage in case someone needed to be kept in a stall. Luckily all the horses were easy keepers and didn't need fancy grain mixes. One or two scoops of crimped oats mixed with sweet feed kept everyone happy.
Simon liked the oats, too, eagerly dining on what the horses dropped along with the bits of dry molasses. Harry, after wetting her hand, tossed in a small handful of molasses if someone was picky. Never failed.
Mrs. Murphy inhaled the tang of a working barn, the best perfume in the world. She passed Matilda, the enormous blacksnake, curled up in her hole in a hay bale. Mrs. Murphy gave Matilda and her hay bale a wide berth. This year her eggs, next to her own snake apartment, seemed fatter than last year's. Like most farmers, Harry knew that her best friends apart from the domesticated animals were owls, blacksnakes, bats, honeybees, praying mantises, most spiders, swallowtails, and purple martins. Each of these creatures rid the premises of pests, whether small rodents or insects. The bees kept things pollinated. Abundance rests on the wings of bees.
Mrs. Murphy got along with most of these creatures, but Matilda gave her the willies. She hopped from hay bale to hay bale until she sat on top of the carefully stacked, sweet-smelling mass.
"You asleep yet?"
"Fat chance with your big mouth."Flat-face glared down at her.
"Any eggs up there?"Mrs. Murphy liked owlets.
"No. I can have babies more than once a year, you know. I'll raise a ferocious brood when I'm good and ready."
"Better to plan these things,"Mrs. Murphy agreed. She harbored a great secret, which was that a few years ago, when Harry took her in to be spayed, the vet—not Marty, of course—spayed the wrong cat. But they had shaved her belly before mixing up patients, both tiger cats.
"All the crops that Harry has planted will bring flying and crawling pests from everywhere. The grapes alone will keep the day birds chubby. And wait until the sunflowers lift their heavy heads; won't be for a while, but those seeds bring bugs and bad birds.We both know who the bad birds are. There will be so much to do."Flatface forgot about having owlets.
"Thought you hunted at night."
"If someone tasty shows up during the day, I can be roused."She laughed her deep"Hoo hoo, hoo hoo hoo."
"The crows will be a problem."
"You and Pewter will be on duty for them. They are very intelligent. You have to give them that."
Mrs. Murphy sniffed,"Pewter has the attention span of a gnat. Worse, she's obsessed with the blue jay."
"A most arrogant bird, besotted with his plumage and his topknot."Flatface sighed, then changed the subject."Thought I might pick up something juicy this morning once the storms passed, but my protein sources are still holed up," she said.
Mrs. Murphy moved to the subject she truly wanted to discuss."You didn't happen to fly over the peach orchard?"
"Yes."
"I heard a truck maybe five minutes before I saw you. Did you see it or who was in it?"
"White truck with a gold lily painted on it."
"Hy Maudant,"Mrs. Murphy exclaimed.
Later that day, the contents of Toby's computer, finally transcribed, reached Rick Shaw's desk with a thud.
Cooper looked up. "Can you imagine how many trees died for that?"
"Very funny." Rick sighed, fished out a Camel, and lit up despite the "No Smoking" signs that the county government felt compelled to post in every county government building.
"Let me help." She rolled her chair next to his. They started reading.
"Sure a lot of chemical equations," Rick mumbled.
"Soil stuff. Sugars in the grapes. That kind of thing."
"How do you know that?" Rick asked, surprised.
"Took organic chem in college."
"Why?" He was incredulous.
"I liked it."
"I thought people only took that under pain of death or to get into med school."
"Always knew I wanted to go into this field. Thought it would help me read toxicology reports, stuff like that. It does, too."
"Anything unusual?"
"Pretty much what you'd expect from Toby." The distinctive, inviting odor of tobacco enticed her to bum one of Rick's Camels.
Rick's phone rang, he picked it up, listened, then hung up. "Ballistics. The bullet in Professor Forland was from Toby's gun."