The Big Cat Nap Read online

  The Big Cat Nap is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either

  are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by American Artists, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House

  Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered

  trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Michael Gellatly

  Brown, Rita Mae.

  The big cat nap : the 20th anniversary Mrs. Murphy mystery / Rita Mae Brown;

  illustrated by Michael Gellatly.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53239-8

  1. Murphy, Mrs. (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Haristeen, Harry (Fictitious

  character)—Fiction. 3. Women cat owners—Fiction. 4. Cats—Fiction. 5. Women

  detectives—Virginia—Fiction. 6. Traffic accident investigation—Fiction.

  7. Crozet (Va.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.R698B54 2012

  813′.54—dc23 2011039014

  www.bantamdell.com

  Cover design: Beverly Leung

  Cover illustration: © Daniel Pelvin (cat), © Shutterstock/MisterElements (yarn)

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Cast of Characters

  The Really Important Characters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Authors

  Cast of Characters

  Mary Minor Haristeen—Harry, at forty, has just faced down breast cancer. She’s making a go at farming; some days are easy, some days less so. She’s a good-natured soul, but her flaming flaw is she’s much too curious.

  Pharamond Haristeen, D.V.M.—“Fair” specializes in equine reproduction. Married to his high school sweetheart, Harry, he’s a powerfully built man. He reads people’s emotions much better than his wife does.

  Susan Tucker—She’s a friend of Harry’s since they were in the cradle together. Much as she loves Harry, her nosy friend can drive her right up the wall.

  Miranda Hogendobber—A woman in her late sixties who worked with Harry when Harry was postmistress of Crozet, she has good sense. She’s a good gardener, is very religious, and possesses a pure soprano voice.

  Olivia Craycroft—“BoomBoom” has known Harry and Susan since kindergarten. She’s tall, blonde, beautiful, and has blue eyes. She runs her late husband’s concrete business; although we usually don’t encounter her there, we do just about everywhere else.

  Alicia Palmer—A gorgeous woman in her fifties, she was a major-motion-picture star in the 1970s. Like most people in the biz, she whipped through a few husbands, affairs, etc., but then wisely walked away from all of that to return to a farm in Crozet she inherited from her first lover. She’s blissfully happy.

  Deputy Cynthia Cooper—This lean woman lives next door to Harry, on the farm she rents. The two enjoy a strong relationship, even though Harry meddles in Cynthia’s business from time to time.

  Sheriff Rick Shaw—He’s a decent man, wise, overburdened, and underfunded, as are most county sheriffs in America.

  The Very Reverend Herbert Jones—A Vietnam veteran, he’s the pastor of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, which is over two hundred years old, and a graceful, peaceful sanctuary. He is a man of deep conviction and deep feeling.

  Victor Gatzembizi—Although only in his early forties, he’s built ReNu, a lucrative collision-repair business, with shops in various Virginia cities. Attractive, good with people, he has the typical trophy wife but he takes good care of her, as he does his employees. He’s been generous to the breast cancer fund.

  Latigo Bly—Also in his early forties, he’s even more successful than Victor is, as he’s built a highly profitable auto-insurance business, Safe & Sound, that’s currently powerful in the mid-Atlantic. Many people think he’ll take the company national.

  Yancy Hampton—Basically he’s a greengrocer who owns and operates Fresh! Fresh! Fresh!, an upscale food emporium. He considers himself green in all things.

  Marilyn Sanburne, Sr.—“Big Mim” runs Crozet. She’s not much in evidence in this volume, but you can be sure she will reassert herself in the future.

  Marilyn Sanburne, Jr.—“Little Mim” is often in her mother’s shadow and resents it. She’s vice-mayor of Crozet to her father’s mayor. As they both represent different political parties, this can be interesting. She’s slowed down on the politics for a bit, as she is expecting her first child.

  Blair Bainbridge—Little Mim’s husband is beside himself with joy at the prospect of being a father.

  Aunt Tally Urquhart—She’s one hundred, and Big Mim is her niece.

  Inez Carpenter, D.V.M.—Aunt Tally’s classmate at William Woods University, she’s ninety-eight and has shepherded Fair Haristeen’s career.

  Mildred Haldane—Now widowed, she still runs the salvage yard she operated with her late husband. She knows more about cars than many mechanics and body-shop workers do. She is passionate about old cars.

  The ReNu Mechanics

  Walt Richardson, Nick Ashby, Jason Brundige, Sammy Collona, Lodi Pingrey, and Bobby Foltz.

  The Really Important Characters

  Mrs. Murphy—She’s a tiger cat who is usually cool, calm, and collected. She loves her humans, Tucker the dog, and even Pewter, the other cat, who can be a pill.

  Pewter—She’s self-centered, rotund, intelligent when she wants to be. Selfish as she is, she often comes through at the last minute to help and then wants all the credit.

  Tee Tucker—This corgi could take your college boards. She is devoted to Harry, Fair, and Mrs. Murphy. She is less devoted to Pewter.

  Simon—He’s an opossum who lives in the hayloft of the Haristeens’ barn.

  Matilda—She’s a large blacksnake with a large sense of humor. She also lives in the hayloft.

  Flatface—This great horned owl lives in the barn cupola. She irritates Pewter, but the cat realizes the bird could easily pick her up and carry her off.

  The Lutheran Cats

  Elocution—She’s the oldest of the St. Luke’s cats and cares a lot about the “Rev,” as his friends sometimes call the Very Reverend Herbert Jones.

  Cazenovia—This cat watches everybody and everything.

  Lucy Fur—She’s the youngest of the kitties. While ever playful, she obeys her elders.

  A red-shouldered hawk, tiny mouse in her talons, swooped
in front of the 2007 Outback rolling along the wet country road. She landed in an old cherry tree covered in pink blossoms, which fluttered to the ground from the hawk’s light impact.

  “Will you look at that?” Miranda Hogendobber exclaimed from behind the Outback’s wheel, as she drove to the garden center over in Waynesboro.

  “Raptors fascinate me, but they scare me, too,” Harry Haristeen remarked. “Poor little mouse.”

  “There is that.” Miranda slowed for a sharp curve.

  Central Virginia, celebrating high spring, was also digging out from torrential rains over the weekend.

  Harry, forty and fit, and Miranda, late sixties and not advertising, had worked together for years at the old Crozet post office.

  When Miranda’s husband, George, died, Harry, fresh from Smith College, took his position as head of the P.O., never thinking the job would last nearly two decades. Miranda, despite her loss, showed up every day to help orient the young woman whom she’d known as a baby. Harry’s youth raised Miranda’s spirits. In mourning, it’s especially good to have a task. Over the years they became extremely close, almost a mother–daughter bond. Harry’s mother had died when Harry was in her early twenties.

  Noticing fields filled with the debris of the now-subsiding waters, Harry observed, “What a mess. Can’t turn out stock in that. You just don’t know what else is wrapped up in all those branches and twigs.”

  “Hey, there’s a plastic chair. Might look good in your yard.” Miranda smiled.

  “Well,” Harry drawled the word out, like the native Southerner she was.

  The younger woman, generous with her time and happy to feed anyone, could be tight with the buck. Miranda couldn’t resist teasing Harry about a free if ugly chair.

  “This is sure better than my 1961 Falcon,” the older woman said. “Initially I resisted the Outback’s fancy radio. I mean, this is a used car and had the Sirius capabilities, but I didn’t want to pay extra. How did I live without it?” Miranda mused, now a Subaru convert.

  “Regular cars can now do more than Mercedes or even Rolls from ten years ago. That’s what amazes me: the speed with which the technological developments of those high-end cars became commonplace in much-lower-priced vehicles. But I still love my old 1978 F-150 and you still drive your old Falcon. Hey, want me to wax it?”

  “Would you? What a lovely offer.”

  “You know how crazy I get with anything with an engine in it. I’ll clean the tires, refresh your dash. I’m a one-woman detailing operation.”

  Her eyebrows knitting together, Miranda said, “Uh-oh.”

  An odd pop, then a lurch, made holding the Outback on the road difficult.

  “Put on your flashers and brake.”

  They slid toward a narrow drainage ditch, and the air bags billowed up inside as the wheel dipped in the ditch. Miranda couldn’t see.

  If there was enough room, narrow drainage ditches, about one to two feet deep, paralleled the country roads. Occasionally, small culverts passed the runoff under farm driveways or sharp curves, moving the water, which could rise very quickly, away from the roads.

  Even without vision, Miranda was not one to panic. She braked smoothly, and the right side of the car dropped into the ditch. The car rocked a little.

  Asleep on the backseat, Harry’s two cats and dog rolled off.

  “Hey!” Pewter, the rotund gray cat, howled.

  The tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy, and the corgi, Tee Tucker, scrambled back up on the seat.

  “No other cars,” the dog noted.

  The tiger cat looked around. “Right.”

  “I was asleep.” Pewter hauled herself up to sit next to her friends.

  “We all were,” Mrs. Murphy drily noted.

  “Well—I was more asleep.”

  Harry, already outside, having punctured the air bag with the penknife she always carried in her hip pocket, crouched down to look at the undercarriage. Then she walked to the right front side of the car, front end in the ditch.

  “See anything?” As best she could, Miranda rolled up her air bag, which Harry had also punctured.

  Harry called back, “Your right tire is cracked; the rubber’s flat, too. Do you have Triple A?”

  “I do.” Miranda slid out as Harry helped her. “But I’m going to call Safe and Sound instead.”

  Safe & Sound, founded and run by Alphonse “Latigo” Bly, was headquartered in Charlottesville. Specializing in auto insurance, the company covered the mid-Atlantic and coastal South. Many business people believed Safe & Sound would go national, sooner or later.

  As Miranda called, Harry opened the back door of the Outback.

  “Does anyone need to go potsie?”

  “Must she put it that way?” Pewter grumbled. “And I am not about to get my paws wet.”

  “We’re okay.” The corgi answered for the rest of the animals. Not seeing one of her best friends budge, Harry closed the door to the rear, then did her best to fold her air bag back into the dash.

  Miranda was already on the phone with Safe & Sound, spilling out details, perhaps too many.

  With difficulty, Harry opened the glove compartment, pulling out the manual.

  Having concluded her phone conversation, Miranda informed Harry, “Someone will be here in twenty minutes. Says don’t call Triple A. He takes care of this stuff all the time.”

  “Always best to do business with friends,” Harry observed. “When you try to save money, you usually waste time or spend even more money. Safe and Sound is local.”

  Miranda sighed. “The older I get, the more I realize time is more precious than money.”

  Harry, flipping through the manual, stopped at a schematic drawing of the auto frame. “You’re not old. Anyone who sings in the choir, gardens like you do, and is a member of every ‘do-good’ group in the state of Virginia isn’t old.” Changing the subject—a habit with dear friends—Harry declared, “Whatever happened, it wasn’t the engine. It may be a defective wheel, but there was that odd pop sound.”

  “Yes. I couldn’t steer after that.”

  “Weird.” Harry glanced back at the manual. “Subaru makes great cars for the money.” A fresh breeze brought the aroma of blossoms, flowers, and hay coming up, filling her nostrils.

  “I’ll be curious to find out what happened. How lucky we were that the car swerved to the right, not the left into oncoming traffic. Better yet, there wasn’t any traffic.” Miranda exhaled.

  “Monday afternoon. Everyone’s at work or in the fields. Herb’s truck is in the shop, too, after his collision last week,” Harry said, thinking of the minister at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, the Very Reverend Herbert Jones. “Things go in threes. Maybe I’m next.”

  “I don’t know what happened, but I bet that will cost Herb an arm and a leg. Truck’s still at ReNu,” Miranda said, naming the garage favored by the insurance company. “He was driving his Chevy truck. His ‘big fib’ truck.”

  They laughed, because the Chevy, used for fishing and filled with tackle, was also filled with fish stories. Oh, how Herb could wax poetic on the one that got away! He was also all too happy to show what he had actually snagged, though the cats generally proved more interested in the display than did the humans.

  “If you’re going to be stuck on the side of the road, best it happens on a beautiful spring day.” Harry smiled. “We were lucky. Unlike Tara Meola.”

  Harry shuddered at the thought of the poor young woman killed last week in the hard rains when a deer smashed into her vehicle.

  “True.” Miranda nodded.

  “You just never know,” Harry sighed.

  After a bitterly cold winter, spring had stayed cool until late April. It was now late May. Nights in the mid-forties or mid-fifties promised days in the sixties. Late-blooming dogwoods dotted the forests and manicured lawns. Over pergolas, the wisteria hung pendulous with lavender or white blossoms. The roses threatened to riot.

  Harry walked through her tended acres. The farm maintai
ned a healthy balance of crops, hay, and woodlands. Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and Pewter followed, taking numerous side trips to investigate rabbit warrens and fox dens. The butterflies danced together, swirling, fluttering their beautiful veined wings.

  Eyeing them deviously, Pewter crouched down.

  “They see you,” Tucker said.

  Ignoring the ever-practical dog, Pewter wiggled her gray butt, then leapt upward.

  Without breaking rhythm, the butterflies flew away.

  “Almost had ’em.”

  “Dream on,” the corgi teased.

  Mrs. Murphy at her heels, Harry turned. “Come on, you two.”

  “She’s always giving orders,” Pewter grumbled.

  “True,” the handsome dog agreed. “And she also always feeds us on time.”

  Considering this, the fat cat trotted toward Harry, who was now leaning over to inspect the tops of sunflower plants just breaking the surface.

  “With a little luck, I’m going to have a good year.” Harry smiled, then moved on to her quarter acre of Petit Manseng grapes.

  Dr. Thomas Walker, Thomas Jefferson’s guardian after Peter Jefferson died, tried to grow grapes. Jefferson did, too. The types they wished to grow didn’t flourish. With the passing centuries, viniculture advanced, thanks to people on both sides of the Atlantic. The wine industry now poured millions upon millions into the area’s coffers, a boon to growers and a boon to Virginia.

  The horse business alone contributed $1.2 billion to the state economy. Not that any horse wishes to be compared to a grape.

  Shortro, a very athletic Saddlebred, and Tomahawk, an old Thoroughbred, hung their heads over their paddock fence.

  “This will be the first year she can sell her grapes,” Tomahawk noted. “Remember, she had to let the first year’s stay on the vine.”

  “Even the broodmares know that.” Shortro laughed. “Harry’s obsessed with her grapes and her sunflowers. She’s just sure both will bring her money.”

  In the adjoining paddock, one of the broodmares heard Shortro’s comment. “I resent that.”

  “Ah, Gigi”—Shortro called the Thoroughbred by her barn name—“I didn’t mean anything by it. You girls are all wrapped up in your foals.”