Hiss of Death: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery (8 page)

“That’s a wonderful tribute.”

“The only thing she ever said to me, and this wasn’t about a personal dislike, was she’d become so interested in alternative cancer treatments because of her work on the five-K. She felt some of them were bogus medical scams that preyed on people when they were most vulnerable. She thought others held out such promise for a cure, but the federal government prevented their use. She felt some doctors were so angry they used outlawed substances and treatments. They hid it, of course. Pooch, herself, was disgusted at how pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies, and the government have corrupted medicine. After hearing that, I inquired as to what she’d seen at the hospital. She said she’d tell me later. Now there’s no later.”

Harry considered that. “Every time I pick up the newspaper there seems to be some squib about a new cancer treatment. One article says that eating almonds keeps cancer at bay—you know, that sort of thing. I never know what to believe.”

“Nor I.” Mrs. Benton’s eyes lit up for the first time since she’d come to Virginia. “John and I are fortunate. Cancer doesn’t run in either of our families. Pooch became interested in nursing when a childhood friend died of leukemia in eleventh grade. It was an interest that deepened with the years.”

“She had a good mind,” Harry said.

Mrs. Benton put lots of Bubble Wrap on top of the glasses, for the carton was full. “There. One more done.”

“I’m beginning to understand where Paula acquired her organizational ability. In our meetings, if anyone got off track, she’d say, ‘Let’s cut to the chase.’ I’d tell her she was being a Yankee. Southerners live for anecdotes and diversion. However, I always did just what she said.”

For the first time, Mrs. Benton truly laughed. “I can just hear her.”

Hearing laughter, BoomBoom, Alicia, and Susan looked in from the next room. They each smiled slightly, for they believed laughter healed. A shock such as the one the Bentons had endured would take a lot of laughter and love.

So many people had helped that the house was emptied, tidied up, and the large U-Haul was loaded by three-thirty that afternoon. Mrs. Benton handed each person a potted plant. The dried bulbs in old Ball jars she gave to Alicia as a special thank-you for the pleasure Alicia’s movies had given her and her husband.

As the Bentons walked up to the truck, Dr. Cory Schaeffer stepped up to the driver’s side. Both Bentons looked at him as the other workers crowded around.

“We hope your journey is safe. We know in time the grief will fade and happy memories will remain. We all would like you to know that your daughter’s memory will remain with us. We have renamed the five-K in her honor. From now on it will be known as the Paula Benton Five-K Run for Breast Cancer Research.”

John Benton burst into tears. Words wouldn’t come. His wife reached for his hand, squeezing it.

He nodded to his wife, composed himself. “Thank you. Thank you.”

•    •    •

Later that evening, as Harry finished up her farm chores, she returned to what Pud Benton said about Paula not having any enemies. Maybe she didn’t have any personal enemies, but maybe something else had happened, something to make her a target.

She caught herself. “I watch too many crime shows on TV.”

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, who always helped with the chores—well, Pewter made a stab at it before sitting down—knew their human’s mind was preoccupied.

“Think this has to do with her test Wednesday? The one she’s calling ‘the hook’?”
Tucker picked up a blue rubber bone she’d left in the barn yesterday.

“Not a chance.”
Pewter tossed her head.

“Well, she does have that on her mind,”
Tucker said.

“Pewter’s right. Mom’s displaying that nosy look. First there was the distressed look and the weird smell, and now there’s the nosy look.”
Mrs. Murphy batted the blue rubber bone.

Tucker sighed.
“Yeah, I know. I was hoping I was wrong. That nosy look is never good for her.”

“ ‘Her’? It’s never good for us,”
Pewter said with conviction.

T
he sun bathed the mountains, meadows, and rooftops in soft afternoon light. Harry—an art history major who had graduated from Smith—always thought of this time of day as being wrapped in spun gold. People who didn’t know her well would ask how she shifted from Smith to down-and-dirty farming, and Harry answered truthfully that farming taught her to appreciate nineteenth-century painting. Her eye—good to begin with, and trained at Smith—found in nature such symmetry, change, and ravishing beauty that farming was the perfect life for an art history major.

In an hour, the sun’s outer rim would dip behind the Blue Ridge Mountains. The colors depended on the pollen in the air, dust particles, and the angle of the sun to the earth. Most spring sunsets, like today’s in late April, were a clear sky, which then deepened. However, if there were clouds, the colors radiated salmon, peach, and periwinkle, with streaks of flaming scarlet. This would settle into lavenders, dusty roses, and finally purple, transforming into a pulsating Prussian blue. As for the mountains, the shadows in the deep crevices and bowls turned from dove gray to gray to charcoal and finally black. The normal blue of the mountains became a cobalt blue with dark gray streaks until at last sky and mountains accepted nightfall.

She would turn forty-one in August. With the exception of college in Northampton, Massachusetts, and weekends at Yale and Dartmouth, as
well as Boston, her life was in central Virginia. She loved New York City, but what art history major wouldn’t? For graduation, her parents, not rich, had sent her to Europe. Susan’s parents sent her, too. The friends went to different colleges, but instead of weakening their bond, it had strengthened it. Harry loved England and Ireland, especially the countryside. The biggest surprise to both of them was how small Europe was. Driving east through Austria, they realized an hour would dump them into Hungary. Even Germany, a relatively large country in Europe, seemed tiny compared to the United States. But art, well, Harry often thought of what she had seen in galleries, in cathedrals, and on the people themselves. The Viennese were stylish, the Parisians more so in an obvious manner; the Berliners and Hamburgers certainly threw themselves together; and then there was London. Somehow she expected everyone to look like the since-departed, much-loved Queen Mum. The Brits’ reputation for dowdiness was undeserved. Wherever she and Susan traveled, they were dazzled by the artifacts and the people, all of whom were kind to two kids from Virginia.

Much as she learned and loved it all, looking at the mountains, seeing the peach trees in full bloom, the pastures turning an impossible emerald green, she knew she’d be a country girl forever. Given the lump in her breast, Harry wondered how long forever would be. Putting that out of her mind, as well as the nasty fact that Wednesday loomed, for it was already Sunday, she handed Cynthia Cooper a gin rickey.

“When did you learn to make one of these?” Coop admired the tall, thin glass, leaning back in the lawn chair in Harry’s backyard. “My mother used to make these, and gin and tonics.”

“Once the weather turned, right? That’s when your mother made them?”

“Right.”

“Well, I am officially welcoming spring. We’re more than a month on the other side of the equinox, but damn, March twenty-first was cold. It’s stayed cold. Today feels like spring, the light looks like spring.”

“Yes, it does.” Coop gratefully sipped the drink, her fingerprints on the frosted glass. “Did your mother show you how to make a gin rickey?”

“She did. One and one-half ounces of good gin. Momma stressed
good
. Juice of half a lime and ice-cold club soda. Fill the glass with ice, then add the gin and lime juice, and finally fill it up with club soda. But you know, I’ve turned into a lazy toad. If it takes preparation I don’t do much, and that includes food—unless we’re entertaining or if Fair’s had a brutal day.”

“We’re all starved for time, aren’t we?” Coop pondered.

“My mother always arranged fresh flowers; she handed Dad a Scotch and soda the minute he walked through the door. She made meals with fresh ingredients. Who can live like that anymore?” Harry shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’m lucky if I have time to water my garden. The sheriff’s department hasn’t hired new people since the crash. We need help. I’m working more hours than ever,” Coop noted.

Then Coop added, “Seems like a lame excuse. My mother did it all herself, and she worked as a telephone operator, long hours sometimes. I don’t know as she had any more time than I do.”

“Mine, too. She worked in the library both because they needed the money and she loved it. You know, she’s been dead for eighteen years. Dad, too; one really couldn’t live without the other, and I think about them every day. I miss them, I’d give anything to talk to them. You’re lucky yours are still with you.”

“I am. Say, how did it go packing up Paula’s?”

“Great. So many people turned up to help the Bentons, we had it all knocked out by three-thirty. Hey, Paula’s nickname was Pooch. Her mother told me.”

“Funny.” Coop took a long sip, then closed her eyes, leaning back on the lawn chair.

Both women wore sweaters, for the mercury stubbornly hung at fifty-four degrees all day. However, it was such a lovely time of day, just six
P.M.
, both wanted to be outside.

The cats sat on the fence to watch the horses. Tucker flopped on her side, slept under Harry’s lawn chair.

“Rick’s on a diet,” Coop said, referring to her boss, Sheriff Rick Shaw. “His mood is like the stock market.”

“And you’re in the squad car with him most of the time.”

“Friday he plucked my last nerve. I told him his wife could divorce him, I can’t. Take pity on me. Made him laugh. He’s not really that out
of shape. Ten pounds. If he loses that, he’ll look good. No, he wants to go back to his weight when he played football for Davidson.”

“Give him credit for a high goal.”

“He was the middle linebacker. You know that, I think. He’s got that linebacker brain, which is actually about perfect for law enforcement: Stop the run!”

Harry laughed. “Guess it is.”

“Oh, I did a little research on the scarab beetle. It isn’t a symbol of death. First, I’m sorry it took me a while.”

“Don’t apologize. We’re both busy as cat’s hair.”

The cats, with their sharp hearing, turned to look at Harry, who was about fifty yards from where they sat.

“Is that a slur?”
Pewter wondered.

“Nah, it’s one of those expressions that doesn’t exactly make sense. You know, like ‘the exception proves the rule’.”

“I don’t get that one, either,”
Pewter agreed.
“She has quite a few. ‘A square peg in a round hole’ confuses me. She doesn’t own any square pegs.”

Back on the lawn, Cooper shared her research. “The Egyptians thought the dung beetle, the scarab beetle, kept the sun moving. That’s why they were so important. If they stopped rolling the sun, we’d all die. Turns out, obviously, once I got on the Internet I couldn’t stop.” Coop paused. “Maybe that’s why our mothers could accomplish so much. No Internet. Your mother would have been obsessed with it.”

“You’re probably right, but she loved holding a book in her hands, so perhaps she could moderate her impulse to know everything right this minute.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Coop took another delicious sip. “Back to the poop, literally. Turns out, Harry, that the dung beetle is the strongest beetle in the world. The male can pull one thousand one hundred and forty-one times his own body weight.”

“I’ll be. I’m as amazed that you’ve remembered all this.”

“Got hooked. Plus, I’m a cop. I’m trained to remember detail.” Coop said this not realizing Harry really was going to get hooked midweek. “Okay, there’s more. If you and I were that strong, we’d be able to pull six double-decker London buses filled with passengers.”

“Jeez.” Harry began to admire the beetle.

“Furthermore, the males battle rivals. They descend into the tunnels the female digs under dung. If another male is there, they duke it out. Has to be the heavyweight contest of the world. They actually lock horns. Whoever pushes out his opponent wins.”

“Actually, Coop, the female wins, which is the way of the world.”

The tall, lean deputy thought about this. “True. That explains so much male dysfunction, which I see every day, whether it’s violence, drunkenness, crazy risks. Most crimes are committed by men, and there are millions of unhappy men out there. For some, the unhappiness turns to anger. They have to lash out at somebody or something.”

“Funny. When I was young and the feminist movement was firing up, Mother always said that it didn’t matter how much political power men had. Nature had given women the most powerful weapons.”

“Your mother had a lot of insight. Even the Muslim radicals can’t control women one hundred percent. Instead, they kill them.”

“We don’t have to look to the Mideast for nutcases.”

“Right. How’d we get from dung beetles to this?”