The Tail of the Tip-Off (8 page)

13

A
lthough the storm didn't dump a lot of snow on the ground, the winds howled ferociously. Drifts piled up across the roadways, and five feet behind the drifts the asphalt shone as though picked clean. Nor did the winds abate. Shutters rattled, doors vibrated, and the stinging cold seeped through the cracks and fissures in buildings. The storm system stalled out, too, so every now and then a flurry of snow attended the wind.

Harry's three horses, Gin Fizz, Poptart, and Tomahawk, played outside wearing their blankets, each one a different color to please the horse. Unless the ground was glazed with ice, Harry turned her horses out. They needed to move about, burn off energy. She would bring them in at sundown. Often she'd pause during her barn chores to watch them dash around. Poptart, the youngest and lowest on the totem pole, liked to tease the two older horses. She'd sidle up to Gin Fizz, the handsome, flea-bitten gray, then tug his blanket askew. She'd do this until he'd squeal, then she'd torment Tomahawk. Poptart was the baby sister at her teenage siblings' party. Usually Tomahawk and Gin Fizz indulged her. When she'd cross the line they'd flatten their ears, bare their teeth, and snort. If that failed, a well-timed kick, not connecting, usually backed off the naughty horse.

Simon, the possum, snored slightly as he slept in the hayloft. He'd made cozy quarters out of a hay bale. Since Harry knew he was there she'd never pulled out that bale. The owl dozed in the cupola, glad to be out of the wind. The blacksnake, in deep hibernation, was out of it. She wouldn't stir until April at the earliest. Old and huge, she was as big around as Harry's wrist. The mice cavorted behind the walls of the tack room, having burrowed into the feed room. Theirs was a merry life despite the efforts of Mrs. Murphy and Pewter to curtail their nonstop party.

The doors at both ends of the center-aisle barn were shut tight, but they still slapped and banged. The stall doors to the outside Dutch doors were locked, top and bottom, but wind secreted itself between the frames, causing them to shake with each blast.

Inside, Harry's breath spiraled out as she spread a light dusting of lime over the wet spots. She'd clean out the soiled bedding, expose the wet spots and lime them, then let them dry and come back just before sundown to pull bedding over them. Once a week, usually Saturday morning, she'd strip down each stall so it would air out. Then she'd put a generous helping of fresh wood shavings over it. She liked straw because she could make a better compost out of it for her garden, but soiled straw was heavy and strained her back with each successive full pitchfork. Also, straw was getting expensive; more expensive still were peanut hulls. Some people even tried shredded newspapers. The good thing about Crozet, among other fine qualities, was the availability of small sawmills. She could find a suitable grade of wood shavings without any trouble, for a reasonable cost. Toss a little mix of cedar shavings in each stall and the barn smelled wonderful.

She couldn't prove it but Harry believed those cedar shavings helped keep down the parasites, not that she had to worry about parasites in this weather.

Though proud of her barn system, her farm management, Harry wouldn't brag about her accomplishments. She figured the shine on her horses' coats and their happy attitudes spoke to anyone with horse sense. As to the rest of it, if a person drove down the long road to the farm they would behold a tidy, neat, well-loved farm no matter what the season.

Over the years she'd dug two new wells at each end of the farm to accommodate watering troughs. In time she hoped to purchase one of those irrigation systems with pipes interspersed with wheels. The system would roll at a timed rate of speed over the pastures. It was moving sculpture, a beautiful sight to her eyes. Beautiful price, too.

Droughts had begun to visit central Virginia. Not each year, but three years out of ten, say. She needed a good hay crop. An irrigation system could be a blessing.

Harry tried to think ahead, to plan, but no matter how well she planned Mother Nature surprised her. So did people.

She climbed the ladder to the hayloft. Mrs. Murphy followed her. Pewter adamantly remained in the tack room.
Mouse patrol,
she fibbed. Tucker stayed down in the aisle.

Harry tiptoed to Simon's den. Fast asleep on an old white towel, each time he exhaled the small stalks of hay wavered. She put down a bowl with graham crackers soaked in honey. Simon loved sweets. His water bowl was clean.

Of course, he could drink water out of the horse buckets. The barn stayed warm enough for the water not to freeze over. Sometimes if the mercury dropped into the single digits the buckets would freeze, but if the temperature stayed in the twenties or low thirties outside, the temperature inside usually kept above freezing. The heat coming off those large horse bodies helped, too.

Harry smiled as she peeped over at the possum. She'd even managed last spring to trap him—which he hated—but she took him to the vet where he received every shot possible. He was an extremely healthy possum, no carrier of EPM, a malady affecting first birds, then possums as carriers, and finally horses. Much as she adored Simon, Harry had to see to the health of her horses, hence the shots. He avoided her for weeks after that. No matter how many times the pets told him the traumatic visit had been for his own good, he stayed furious. He finally got over it in June, once again showing himself to Harry, taking small treats from her hand.

By the time Harry climbed back down it was eight-thirty
A
.
M
. She'd knocked out her barn chores. She couldn't do anything outside. She felt good about life. Harry loved getting her chores done in a timely and orderly fashion.

The phone rang in the tack room. She picked it up. Tucker sat at her feet.

A muffled male voice hissed. “Curiosity killed the cat. Mind your own business.”

Click.

She stood there with the receiver in her hand. “Shit.”

“What a pretty thing to say,”
Pewter sarcastically meowed.

“I've just been warned off,” Harry said aloud.

“I knew it! I knew this would happen,”
Tucker worriedly said.

“It will only make her more determined.”
Mrs. Murphy hopped onto a saddle on a saddle rack.

Harry took off her barn coat. The tack room, toasty, invited one to sit down, inhale the aroma of the stable.

“Too bad she doesn't have caller ID,”
Pewter, who was interested in technology, said.

“That's the truth. On a day like today I bet whoever called didn't go to a phone booth.”
Tucker swiveled her left ear toward the wall. She could hear the mice whispering.

“That voice was familiar but he must have had a cloth over the phone or something to disguise it. But damn, I know that voice!” She threw her work gloves on the floor. “I am a perfect ass.”

“Don't be too hard on yourself, Mom,”
Tucker sympathized.

The slender woman pulled over the director's chair from the desk. She dropped down into it, lifting her feet up to rest on her tack trunk, a present from her father for her twelfth birthday. He'd built it from glowing cherrywood, carving her initials in a diamond shape on the front.

Harry observed her audience, which included the mice, although she couldn't hear them nor did she know they'd gathered around their semicircular hole partially hidden by that very tack trunk. “Think about it. How can you have an affair in Crozet? You can't even sneeze without someone saying ‘Gesundheit.' There are only a few ways I figure a man or a woman for that matter can have an affair. Tucker, you look so interested.”

Tucker, her head cocked, was drinking in every word.
“I am. Dogs don't have affairs so the concept alone fascinates me.”

“What is it that dogs have?”
Pewter sniggered.

“Sex.”

“How crude, Tucker.”
Pewter, on the saddle rack below Mrs. Murphy—they were in a vertical line—had to laugh.

“Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, so you need to be able to hide in plain sight assuming the affairee is a person living in Albemarle County. If your paramour lives somewhere else that's easier. Too easy. A doctor has plenty of opportunities to get away with it. A private office, hospital rooms, all those nurses. Pretty easy. Anyone in a nine-to-five job, not so easy, but anyone who is self-employed, more chances. H.H. ran a construction firm. I suppose he could enjoy trysts in an unfinished building after the workers left but he'd have to drag a bed in there or a futon. Scratch that. He has an office. A real possibility, although a wife can cruise by and most wives would have a key. Still, that's possible. The other thing is that a lot of construction sites, the bigger ones, have trailers, an on-site office. That would be real easy. Yeah, I can see that. And the last possibility, open to anyone, not just H.H., would be sneaking in and out of the paramour's house or apartment assuming she's unmarried. If she's married, it's got to be the office or the trailer. No way could he take a woman to the club or to a motel. Not in this county.”

“Mother, have you contemplated an affair? You've certainly thought this out.”
Mrs. Murphy's long whiskers swept forward then back as she, too, listened to the mice.

“What do you want, pussycat?”

“For you to behave,”
the tiger replied.

Harry laughed. She liked conversing with her animals although she didn't know what they were saying. “Next issue. What kind of woman? H.H. wasn't attracted to tarts. I've known him all his life. He liked well-groomed women, nice looking. He wasn't the handsomest guy around nor the richest, so he wasn't going to get, say, a BoomBoom but he could certainly attract, m-m-m, a nice-looking secretary. Maybe someone he met socially. He didn't have much free time. What self-employed person does? He liked kayaking.” She thought. “No. We'd know. I'm sure. There aren't but so many women on the reservoir.”

“Could be on one of the rivers,”
Tucker said.

As if in response to the dog's thought, Harry added, “But Anne would go with him most times. Not a hobby. Has got to be a woman he met through work or someone at an office where he does business, building supply, another construction company, architects' offices.”

“You forget that he goes to the dentist like everyone else. He would have his annual physical at a doctor's office. That's a possibility.”
Mrs. Murphy considered the picking grounds.

“The other issue we have to consider is whoever this was, he nearly left his wife for her. He
did
leave his wife for her if only for one day. So the woman would have to be presentable. H.H. wasn't exactly a snob but he wouldn't risk everything for a woman he didn't think most of his friends would eventually accept.”

“You know, she's smarter than I give her credit for sometimes.”
Pewter blinked, the pupils of her eyes changing shape.

14

M
atthew Crickenberger's rain-forest wall was just wide enough that he could turn around in it. He'd built it four feet deep and to the ceiling.

Outside the office window it was a winter wonderland. Inside his rain forest it was the Colombian jungle.

He could have foisted off cleaning the glassed-in enclosure complete with an expensive air circulation system and humidifier. However, he enjoyed his Sunday-afternoon escapes.

A thorough cleaning, including checking the pond, took three hours. The birds, accustomed to him, opened their wings and their mouths. Matthew always brought treats and not just on Sundays. The neon-colored frogs felt no special affection for the middle-aged man. They hopped for cover. He brought ants and tiny grubs for them, too.

The last chore was washing the inside of the floor-to-ceiling glass. He hummed as he slid the rubber blade to the top of the glass. He could just reach the top. Then he would swiftly bring it straight down. Small droplets fell on his back from the tree canopy overhead. Vines hung like necklaces.

Finished at last, he placed his buckets outside, then stepped out onto a small sisal rug. He shut the door behind him, wiped his feet, and picked up the white towel from the country club draped over a chair. He toweled himself off, making a mental note to tell Hunter at the club that he owed for a towel. Matthew, meticulous about such things, was irritated when people would filch towels, paper, ashtrays. He confronted one of Charlottesville's flush lawyers once, saying, “Never steal anything small.” The other men in the locker room laughed. The lawyer, a banty rooster of a man, laughed, too.

The phone rang. Matthew picked it up, assuming the caller was his wife.

“A loaf of bread, a jug of wine,” he jovially answered.

“Matthew?”

“Fred.” Matthew was surprised.

“The same.”

“Are you working on a snowy Sunday? I don't think the county will pay extra.” A hint of sarcasm crept into Matthew's voice.

Fred ignored him. “Do you know who will take over Donaldson Construction?”

“Uh—no. Why?”

“Well, I wanted to go through the Lindsay house out by Beaverdam Road and I don't want to disturb Anne.”

“Call Tazio.”

“She doesn't work for Donaldson Construction.”

“No, but she's the architect. You'd have a competent person with you.”

“I don't know. I'd like a company representative. It's always better.”

“Well, Fred, I don't think this is the time to bother anyone at the company. They're all reeling. Even the site foreman has got to be upset. Make an exception and call Tazio.”

“Yeah.” Fred's voice faded, he cleared his throat. “I wish I hadn't had that fight with him.”

“Guilt is a useless emotion.”

“I didn't say I felt guilty.” Fred bristled.

“You didn't have to. Now just listen to me. You were not on your best behavior. You really wanted to hit Josef P. but nailed H.H. instead.”

“Well—yeah, but if I told you the times I wanted to slug H.H. Arrogant bastard.” He inhaled sharply. “Dead. Gone. No more trouble.”

“He was either belligerent or a whiner. Let him lose out on a bid and whoever won it was corrupt, paying off. I mean, it couldn't be because someone else could do a better job.”

“That someone was usually you,” Fred dryly commented.

“In the last few years it was.”

A silence followed. “I'll call Tazio.”

“Uh, Fred.” A light note lifted Matthew's voice. “I assume my helpfulness will only influence you to find fault with my projects.”

A rasping laugh followed. “You got that right, Matthew.”