"Don't I know it."
"Hey, gives us good legs. We'll both look good in bathing suits." He smiled.
"What a happy thought." She lifted Tucker up, putting the heavy corgi in the cab. "Dinny, I had an odd thought."
"Only one?"
"Only one that I can share." Mrs. Murphy and Pewter jumped in the cab while Harry closed the door and leaned against it. "You know most all the growers and vintners. Apart from Hy and Toby, is there bad blood between any of them?"
He considered this. "I don't know as I'dcall it bad blood, but if this were a frog-jumping contest, I'd keep my eyes on my frog, 'cause I expect someone would pour BBs down its throat."
"You think anyone is competitive enough to destroy the other guy's crop? Like with black rot or one of those mildews or the sharpshooter?"
He rubbed his chin, dark underneath the shaved skin. "Seems like it would come back on them."
"What if they unleashed something for which they were prepared? I mean, like downy mildew. Forgive me, Dinny, I don't know these diseases and pests like you do, but if spores were wafted over someone else's grapes, the criminal could have sprayed his own grapes."
"You'd have to be rich."
"Why?"
"Because you'd have to have all those sprayers and booms right there to use before you let loose the spores or the bugs. Couldn't be renting them. Too obvious."
"Don't all the big vineyards have them?"
He nodded yes, but added, "There're Plenty of little guys out there with maybe anacre or two in cultivation. They rent the equipment."
"You don't seem surprised by my questions."
"Harry, you belong with those two cats. Curious."
"Guess so. My fear is that I'm trying to find who hates whom. I'm wondering if the killings are over."
"I expect the people who hated one another are dead." His eyebrows lifted. He stepped back up on his small tractor. "Guess you heard that Tabitha Martin donated Toby's body—I should say body parts—to the medical school for anatomy."
"Some sister."
"Yeah. I look on the bright side. Toby's helping science. He liked science."
"He was on to something, Dinny."
Harry drove by Rockland Vineyards, spied Rollie Barnes's truck and a farm truck next to it. She pulled down the drive onto Toby's farm, came up alongside the two trucks, and cut the motor.
"Hello, Harry." Both Rollie Barnes and Arch Saunders greeted her.
"How's it going?" she asked. The cats put their paws on the windowsill, since Harry had rolled down the truck windows. Tucker stuck her head out.
"If the weather cooperates, this is going to be Toby's best yield yet. A real tribute to him." Rollie swept over the vineyards with his right hand.
"I dropped by Dinny Ostermann's and things look good there, too. You know, he was telling me about a new technology called RT-PCR that can pin down six different viruses that infect grapevines."
Arch spoke up. "Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction."
"That's a mouthful." Harry smiled.
"Pretty close to a miracle. Cheap and fast. The old way to identify corky bark and leafroll virus could take up to three years." Arch liked showing off his knowledge in front of his boss. "Costs a fortune, though. RT-PCR costs twenty-five dollars a pop."
"Yeah, that's what Dinny said. Didn't see you two at Hy's funeral—"
Arch interrupted, "Harry, I'm not that big a hypocrite."
"Didn't think you were, but we all were wondering what Fiona will do. Maybe shecan carry it by herself. A lot of work." Harry's voice was without any accusatory trace.
"I offered her a very good price for the place." Rollie sounded like a charitable man.
"After the funeral?" This time Harry's voice betrayed her surprise.
"Someone has to be first in line, and that's going to be me," Rollie explained himself.
"I suppose. I figured the Belgians would hurry back to Dulles Airport after finding Hy at Tinsley Crossroads," Harry replied. "Called Bo to see how he was doing after finding Hy. He told me they're still in the hunt and that he's fine."
"Probably a lot more exciting than what happens in Belgium." Rollie couldn't help but smile. "Bo will be telling that story for the rest of his life."
"It will be a long life. Only the good die young." Harry adored Bo, as did many women. She liked teasing him. Harry then inquired, "Is there a grape resistant to the sharpshooter?"
"Lake Emerald grape. They developed itin Florida. It's used as a rootstock mostly. Used a lot around Leesburg, Florida."
"We're too far north?" Harry asked.
"Yeah, but it's not the kind of grape we want to grow." Arch left it at that.
"You two need to get back to work and so do I, but I saw your trucks and thought I'd say hello."
"Hey, where's the donkey?" Arch asked.
"BoomBoom took him."
"Place is kind of lonesome without Jed," Arch said.
"Do you mind if I stop by the barn? Think I dropped my penknife in there when I was searching for Jed."
Rollie answered, "Go ahead. I don't think there's much in there."
"I didn't see a knife," Arch offered.
When Harry walked into the barn, she headed straight to the supply room. The boxes of flypaper were still there. She thought maybe Toby had put those sharpshooters in her peach orchard. It would have made more sense to put them in her grapes or someone else's grapes if he had hoped to destroy their business. But Toby could be sly. Maybe he was testing to see if they would survive. She was the only person who went to the peach orchard regularly, and most Crozet friends and neighbors roughly knew her habits and schedule.
She looked around for jars, for any evidence how he might have kept the insects alive. Nothing turned up.
As to the quantities of flypaper, all she could figure out was maybe he got a deal. That wasn't so unusual. She left as ignorant as when she arrived.
36
"I told Coop I snooped around at Toby's barn." Harry and Fair played with the foals when Fair came home from his calls. Although it was Saturday, horses pay no attention to weekends.
The more they were handled, the better the babies would be when they grew up.
"They might be small, but those little buggers can still hurt you,"Mrs. Murphy remarked as she sat on a fence post.
"It's the biting."Pewter steered clear of the foals.
"They're smart. They'll learn, and HarryandFair make it fun." Tucker watched.
"And the mothers like the humans, so that helps."Mrs. Murphy noticed hundreds of tiny green praying mantises who hadpopped out of their pod."Wow, glad I don't have to feed that family."
Tucker squinted, for the newborns crawled on wisteria wrapping up and over a small pergola Harry had put at the entrance to her flower garden. "/can't see that far."
"You can't see much anyway."Pewter felt ever so superior.
"/can see better than you think. I can see colors, too, even though humans used to think dogs couldn't, and furthermore, Miss Snot, I see better than humans in the dark."
"But not as well as I do,"Pewter cattily said.
"/didn't make that claim." Tucker smiled as the light bay foal nuzzled Harry's cheek.
"Funny how humans get things wrong,"Mrs. Murphy mused."All that business about dogs seeing black and white, and now they have research to prove otherwise. Research can be a good thing, but why don't they trust their own senses?"
"The sixth sense is the important one."Pewter shifted her weight on her fence post, a bit small for her large behind.
"Knowing without knowing. Yes, they should listen,"Tucker agreed.
Fair dug in his pocket for dried-appletreats for the patient mothers. "Coop say anything?"
"Not much. I told her I was researching diseases of grapes. She's been doing it, too. Do you know, when I ran off the names, names only of stuff that can attack grapes, I had four pages, two columns each, single spaced? Now I wonder how any grape ripens."
"The same could be said about any crop." He felt a soft muzzle fill his hand. "Back in the office today I was reading where Asian soybean rust is in Georgia. And it's one of those diseases carried by the air. After all that's happened I'm paying more attention."