Whisker of Evil Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Cast of 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

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Letter to the Reader

  Books by Rita Mae Brown

  Copyright Page

  Dedicated to

  Judy Lynn Pastore.

  Thank you for taking

  in all those homeless

  animals, including this stray.

  Acknowledgments

  Not being a medical person, I relied heavily on my far more intelligent friends who are trained in the medical arts.

  Martin Shulman, V.M.D., Christopher Middleton, D.V.M., and Lauren Keating, D.V.M., provided guidance and information about rabies in the animal kingdom.

  Dr. Anne Bonda, along with keeping my horses healthy and happy, also provided rabies materials. “Dr. Anne” is both a gold mine of information and a godsend to humans and horses.

  Dr. Mary T. O’Brien supplied facts, figures, and gruesome examples, bringing me up to speed concerning rabies in humans. It is, indeed, a dreadful disease and I am indebted to the good doctor for taking so much of her time to work with me.

  Mrs. Jeanne Pitsenberger, a nurse with her own research firm, Foxdale Enterprises, piled folder upon folder on my desk. I have never worked with a researcher as organized, careful, or cheerful as Jeanne. No matter how absurd the question was I lobbed at her, shortly the answer was lobbed back.

  Any mistakes in this book are due to my shortcomings and none of the above.

  And concerning all of the above individuals, it is my privilege to know them. Apart from being good to me, these people cement together the communities in which we live. Our nation is filled with wonderful, giving people but it’s the bums that get the headlines.

  Cast of Characters

  Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen The postmistress of Crozet, Virginia, is curious, sometimes bull-headed, and often in the midst of trouble. Her life is changing and she’s struggling to change with it.

  Mrs. Murphy Harry’s tiger cat accepts change better than her human does. She’s tough, smart, and ready for action and she’ll always take a little catnip, too.

  Tee Tucker Harry’s corgi bubbles with happiness and bravery in equal measure. She loves Harry as only a dog can love.

  Pewter Harry’s gray cat affects aloofness but underneath it all, she does care. What irritates her are comments about her plumpness and her hunting abilities.

  Mrs. Miranda Hogendobber Miranda observes a great deal but keeps most of it to herself. A widow, she’s a surrogate mother to Harry and the relationship means a great deal to both women.

  Susan Tucker Harry’s best friend has been putting up with her friend’s curiosity and attraction to danger since they were children. They have their ups and downs like most friends but they stick together.

  Fair Haristeen, D.V.M. Once Harry’s childhood sweetheart and then her husband, he hopes to be her husband again. He has a good mind, a stout heart, and the patience to put up with her.

  Olivia Craycroft “BoomBoom” Once Harry’s nemesis, the two have settled into a slightly strained rapprochement. BoomBoom is quite beautiful, a fact never lost on men.

  Alicia Palmer A former resident of Crozet, she keeps an estate there. She conquered Hollywood as an actress and now in her late fifties, she’s coming home. She’s retained all of her glamour while losing most of her illusions.

  Rev. Herbert C. Jones Beloved, humorous, fond of fishing, all of Crozet knows that when the chips are down, “The Rev” will come through.

  Marilyn Sanburne “Big Mim” The Queen of Crozet exerts her social power with whatever force is needed to accomplish her task. She can be a snob but she’s fair in her own fashion and believes strongly in justice.

  Jim Sanburne As the mayor of Crozet, he presides over the town, which is easier to do sometimes than to be Big Mim’s husband.

  Marilyn Sanburne, Jr. “Little Mim” She is emerging from her mother’s influence. She’s a contemporary of Harry, Susan, and BoomBoom but she’s always been set apart by her family’s wealth. She is the vice-mayor of Crozet and a Republican, which is quite interesting since her father is a Democrat.

  Deputy Cynthia Cooper A young, bright officer in the Sheriff’s Department, she likes law enforcement but wonders if it keeps romance at bay. She’s become a buddy of Harry’s and the cats and dog like her, too.

  Sheriff Rick Shaw There are days now when Rick is tired of criminals, tired of their lies, tired of pressing the county commissioners for more funds. But when a murder occurs, he focuses his sharp mind to bring the pieces of the puzzle together—if only that damned Harry and her pets would get out of the way.

  Tavener Heyward, D.V.M. A greatly respected equine veterinarian contemplating retirement. He’s generous, hardworking, and often a mentor to young people in the horse industry.

  Mary Patricia Reines Missing since 1974, she casts a lonely shadow over Crozet. She was wealthy, fun-loving, and strong-minded. She ran St. James Farm, breeding thoroughbreds for the track, and she was successful at it.

  Tazio Chappars A young architect of mixed race, she gets men’s hearts racing. She’s a rather serious sort of woman but kind and considerate.

  Paul de Silva Big Mim’s new stable manager is handsome, efficient, and a little bit shy. He’s crazy about Tazio.

  Barry Monteith and Sugar Thierry Two young men, partners in the thoroughbred breeding and lay-up operation, have made some good bloodline choices but some shaky choices in women.

  Carmen Gamble The young owner of Shear Heaven, a beauty parlor, exercises a sharp pair of scissors and a sharp tongue. She has energy to burn; if only she had money to burn.

  1

  Barry Monteith was still breathing when Harry found him. His throat had been ripped out.

  Tee Tucker, a corgi, racing ahead of Mary Minor Haristeen as well as the two cats, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, found him first.

  Barry was on his back, eyes open, gasping and gurgling, life ebbing with each spasm. He did not recognize Tucker nor Harry when they reached him.

  “Barry, Barry.” Harry tried to comfort him, hoping he could hear her. “It will be all right,” she said, knowing perfectly well he was dying.

  The tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy, watched the blood jet upward.

  “Jugular,” fat, gray Pewter succinctly commented.r />
  Gently, Harry took the young man’s hand and prayed, “Dear Lord, receive into thy bosom the soul of Barry Monteith, a good man.” Tears welled in her eyes.

  Barry jerked, then his suffering ended.

  Death, often so shocking to city dwellers, was part of life here in the country. A hawk would swoop down to carry away the chick while the biddy screamed useless defiance. A bull would break his hip and need to be put down. And one day an old farmer would slowly walk to his tractor only to discover he couldn’t climb into the seat. The Angel of Death placed his hand on the stooping shoulder.

  It appeared the Angel had offered little peaceful deliverance to Barry Monteith, thirty-four, fit, handsome with brown curly hair, and fun-loving. Barry had started his own business, breeding thoroughbreds, a year ago, with a business partner, Sugar Thierry.

  “Sweet Jesus.” Harry wiped away the tears.

  That Saturday morning, crisp, clear, and beautiful, had held the alluring promise of a perfect May 29. The promise had just curdled.

  Harry had finished her early-morning chores and, despite a list of projects, decided to take a walk for an hour. She followed Potlicker Creek to see if the beavers had built any new dams. Barry was sprawled at the creek’s edge on a dirt road two miles from her farm that wound up over the mountains into adjoining Augusta County. It edged the vast land holdings of Tally Urquhart, who, well into her nineties and spry, loathed traffic. Three cars constituted traffic in her mind. The only time the road saw much use was during deer-hunting season in the fall.

  “Tucker, Mrs. Murphy, and Pewter, stay. I’m going to run to Tally’s and phone the sheriff.”

  If Harry hit a steady lope, crossed the fields and one set of woods, she figured she could reach the phone in Tally’s stable within fifteen minutes, though the pitch and roll of the land including one steep ravine would cost time.

  As she left her animals, they inspected Barry.

  “What could rip his throat like that? A bear swipe?” Pewter’s pupils widened.

  “Perhaps.” Mrs. Murphy, noncommittal, sniffed the gaping wound, as did Tucker.

  The cat curled her upper lip to waft more scent into her nostrils. The dog, whose nose was much longer and nostrils larger, simply inhaled.

  “I don’t smell bear,” Tucker declared. “That’s an overpowering scent, and on a morning like this it would stick.”

  Pewter, who cherished luxury and beauty, found that Barry’s corpse disturbed her equilibrium. “Let’s be grateful we found him today and not three days from now.”

  “Stop jabbering, Pewter, and look around, will you? Look for tracks.”

  Grumbling, the gray cat daintily stepped down the dirt road. “You mean like car tracks?”

  “Yes, or animal tracks,” Mrs. Murphy directed, then returned her attention to Tucker. “Even though coyote scent isn’t as strong as bear, we’d still smell a whiff. Bobcat? I don’t smell anything like that. Or dog. There are wild dogs and wild pigs back in the mountains. The humans don’t even realize they’re there.”

  Tucker cocked her perfectly shaped head. “No dirt around the wound. No saliva, either.”

  “I don’t see anything. Not even a birdie foot,” Pewter, irritated, called out from a hundred yards down the road.

  “Well, go across the creek then and look over there.” Mrs. Murphy’s patience wore thin.

  “And get my paws wet?” Pewter’s voice rose.

  “It’s a ford. Hop from rock to rock. Go on, Pewt, stop being a chicken.”

  Angrily, Pewter puffed up, tearing past them to launch herself over the ford. She almost made it, but a splash indicated she’d gotten her hind paws wet.

  If circumstances had been different, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker would have laughed. Instead, they returned to Barry.

  “I can’t identify the animal that tore him up.” The tiger shook her head.

  “Well, the wound is jagged but clean. Like I said, no dirt.” Tucker studied the folds of flesh laid back.

  “He was killed lying down,” the cat sagely noted. “If he was standing up, don’t you think blood would be everywhere?”

  “Not necessarily,” the dog replied, thinking how strong heartbeats sent blood straight out from the jugular. Tucker was puzzled by the odd calmness of the scene.

  “Pewter, have you found anything on that side?”

  “Deer tracks. Big deer tracks.”

  “Keep looking,” Mrs. Murphy requested.

  “I hate it when you’re bossy.” Nonetheless, Pewter moved down the dirt road heading west.

  “Barry was such a nice man.” Tucker mournfully looked at the square-jawed face, wide-open eyes staring at heaven.

  Mrs. Murphy circled the body. “Tucker, I’m climbing up that sycamore. If I look down maybe I’ll see something.”

  Her claws, razor sharp, dug into the thin surface of the tree, strips of darker outer bark peeling, exposing the whitish underbark. The odor of fresh water, of the tufted titmouse above her, all informed her. She scanned around for broken limbs, bent bushes, anything indicating Barry—other humans or large animals—had traveled to this spot avoiding the dirt road.

  “Pewter?”

  “Big fat nothing.” The gray kitty noted that her hind paws were wet. She was getting little clods of dirt stuck between her toes. This bothered her more than Barry did. After all, he was dead. Nothing she could do for him. But the hardening brown earth between her toes, that was discomfiting.

  “Well, come on back. We’ll wait for Mom.” Mrs. Murphy dropped her hind legs over the limb where she was sitting. Her hind paws reached for the trunk, the claws dug in, and she released her grip, swinging her front paws to the trunk. She backed down.

  Tucker touched noses with Pewter, who had recrossed the creek more successfully this time.

  Mrs. Murphy came up and sat beside them.

  “Hope his face doesn’t change colors while we’re waiting for the humans. I hate that. They get all mottled.” Pewter wrinkled her nose.

  “I wouldn’t worry.” Tucker sighed.

  In the distance they heard sirens.

  “Bet they won’t know what to make of this, either,” Tucker said.

  “It’s peculiar.” Mrs. Murphy turned her head in the direction of the sirens.

  “Weird and creepy.” Pewter pronounced judgment as she picked at her hind toes, and she was right.

  2

  Crozet was the last stop on the railroad before the locomotive disappeared into the first of the four tunnels Claudius Crozet had dug through the Blue Ridge Mountains. This feat, accomplished before dynamite, was considered one of the seven engineering wonders of the world in the mid–nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twenty-first century they were still wonders as two remained in use; the other two were closed but not filled in.

  On the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains reposed the fertile and long Shenandoah Valley, running from Winchester, Virginia, by the West Virginia line all the way to North Carolina. The Allegheny Mountains bordered the huge valley to the west.

  But on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains the land, although not as fertile, could be quite good in patches.

  Harry’s tidy farm rested on one of those patches. Although lacking the thousands of acres of Tally Urquhart, she owned four hundred acres, give or take, plus she had kept her tobacco allotments current, allotments secured by her late father shortly after World War II. Still, like many a Southerner and especially a Virginian, Harry was land poor: good land, little cash.

  Deputy Cynthia Cooper drove down the long drive with Harry in the front seat, her animals in the back of the squad car, stones crunching underneath her tires.

  “House or barn?”

  “House. Did my barn chores. Want coffee or tea?”

  “Love coffee.” Cooper stopped, cut the motor as Harry opened the car doors for Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker. The animals raced ahead, ducking through the animal door on the side of the screened door and then through the second ani
mal door in the kitchen door.

  Harry and Cooper followed them.

  “Ten-thirty. I hadn’t paid attention to the time.” She ground coffee beans in the electric grinder as she put up water for tea. Harry loved the smell of coffee but couldn’t drink it, as it made her too jumpy. “There’s corn bread in the fridge. Miranda made a mess of it yesterday.”

  Miranda Hogendobber, a lady in her sixties, worked with Harry at the tiny Crozet Post Office, where Harry was postmistress.

  The light inside the refrigerator illuminated Cooper’s badge. She pulled out the corn bread and some sweet butter.

  “Applesauce?”

  Harry nodded. “Church of the Holy Light.”

  Last fall the applesauce had been cooked up to perfection by the ladies of the small church to which Miranda belonged. Harry attended St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, where her friend the Reverend Herbert Jones was the pastor. She sat on the Parish Guild, impressing other, older members with her organizational skills.

  “Here.” Harry refilled the cats’ dried-food bowl, then reached into a large stoneware cookie jar to give Tucker a smoked pig’s ear.

  “Thank you.” The corgi solemnly took the tasty ear, remaining in the kitchen to chew it because she didn’t want to miss anything.

  “You okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “It’s not every day you find a dead man.”

  “Dying. He was dying when we reached him. Yeah, I’m okay. I feel terrible for him, but I’m okay.”

  “Gurgling.” Pewter added the vivid detail.

  “Right.” Cooper opened a drawer, grabbed two blue and yellow linen napkins, placing them by the plates. A country person herself, Cooper understood that country people lived much closer to life and death than most urban or suburban people.

  “It was good of Rick to allow you to take me home. I could have walked.”

  Rick Shaw was sheriff of Albemarle County, an elected position and one growing ever more difficult as more wealthy people moved to this most beautiful place. Wealthy people tend to be very demanding. He was understaffed, underappreciated, and underpaid, but he loved law enforcement and did the best with what he had.

  “Rick’s more flexible than people realize,” Cooper replied. “Once he’d inspected the corpse, questioned you, no reason to keep you. Another thing about Rick, he doesn’t miss much,” she said. “I hope the autopsy will reveal something. No sign of struggle. No sign that he dragged himself there.” Cooper’s blond eyebrows pointed upward as her mind turned over events.